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 LIBRARY 
 
 mWERSijy OF C/\LlFORNl/» 
 
 RIVERSIDE
 
 CHARLOTTE^S INHEEITAKCE 
 
 % SiDbcl 
 
 HI 
 
 BT THE AUTHOR OF 
 
 "lADY AUDLEY'S SECRET," "AURORA FLOYD" 
 " VIXEN," " ISHMAEL," " WYLLARD'S WEIRD " 
 
 ETC. ETC, 
 
 Stcreotjjpcb CVitioa 
 
 LONDON: 
 SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT & CO., 
 
 LIMITED, 
 STATIONEES' HALTi COURT 
 
 1892. 
 
 [4U rights reserved.']
 
 VRH1S"i 
 /ii9Z 
 
 MISS BRADDON'S NOVELS. 
 
 Now Ready at all Booksellers' and Bookstalls, 
 Fbiob 28. M. each, Cloth gilt. 
 
 THE AUTHOR'S AUTOGRAPH EDITION 
 OF MISS BRADDON'S NOVELS. 
 
 " No one can be dull who has a novel by Miss Braddon In hand. 
 The most tiresome journey is beguiled, and the most wearisome 
 Illness is brightened, by auy one of her books." 
 
 "Miss Braddon Is the Queen of the circulating libraries." 
 
 The World. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 SIMPKIN & CO., Limited, 
 
 Stationers' Hall Court. 
 
 And at all Railway Bookstalls, Booksellers', and Librarvit. 
 
 f
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 33oofe tJ)e jFirst. 
 
 DE PROFUNDIB. 
 
 I, — Lenoble of Beattbocaob .«•..•. 1 
 
 II. — In this Wide World I Stahd Alonb ... 12 
 
 III. — Past Hope, and in Despair 19 
 
 IV. — A Dkorkb of Banishment . . . . • . 34 
 
 iSoofe ttft SffonS. 
 DOWNHILL. 
 
 I. — The Fatk o? Sttsan Lenoble ...•<. S3 
 
 II. — Forgiven Too Late .....»• 42 
 III. — Gustatb the Second . . . . « * .47 
 
 iSooft rte Sljtrli. 
 
 THE HORATIAD. 
 
 I. — Chiefly Retrospective 51 
 
 II. — Epistolary 65 
 
 III. — Too Clever for a Catspaw 64 
 
 IV. — Captain Paget is Paternal ...... 67 
 
 V. — The Captain's Coadjutor ...... 73 
 
 33oofe ti)c iFourrt). 
 
 GUSTAVB IN ENGLAND. 
 
 I. — Halcyon Days . 79 
 
 TI. — Captain Paget awakens to a sense of his Duty . 84 
 
 Hi. — What do We here, my Heart and I?. . , , ' :93 
 
 IV. — Sharper than a Serpent's Tooth .... 103 
 
 Boofe t^f jTtftt). 
 THE FIRST ACT OP MR. SHELDON'S DRAMA. 
 
 I.— Taken by Storm 118 
 
 II. — Firm as a Rock 129 
 
 III. — Against Wind and Tidi . . o .- . . 135 
 
 IV. — Diana asks for a Holiday ..... 141 
 
 V. — Assurance Doubly Sure 144
 
 Coiitfiifs. 
 
 DIANA IN NORMiJNDl, 
 
 Cb»-F. 
 
 Paoi 
 
 I. -At CdxKNoia ... , « . . • 160 
 ISoofe Vcit Scbrnt^. 
 
 A CLOUD OF FEAR. 
 
 I. — The Beginning of Soivkow . . . . . .158 
 
 II,— Fading 168 
 
 ril. — Mrs. Woolper is Akxious . . . • . • 174 
 
 IV.— Valektine's Skeleton ISO 
 
 y. — At Harold's Hill . . ..... 186 
 
 VI. — Desperate Measures. . ..... 195 
 
 »oofe tl)e ©I'sljrt). 
 
 A FIGHT AGAINST TIMS. 
 
 I. — A Dread Revelation ,204 
 
 II. — Phcenicians arb Rising 222 
 
 III. — The Sortes Virgilias^s 226 
 
 Boofe ti)f flintij. 
 THROUGH THE FURNACS. 
 I. — Something too Much . . . . . . . 236 
 
 II. — Dr. Jedd's Opinion 241 
 
 ni. — NoN DoRsiiT Judas 243 
 
 IV. — Counting the Cost ....... 2.^4 
 
 V. — The Beginning of the End . . . . . 2j8 
 
 VI. — Confusion worse Confounded 2ri3 
 
 VII. — There is a Word will Priam turn to Sionk . . 263 
 
 JSoofe ti)c 2rrnt1). 
 
 HARBOUR, AFTER MANY SKIPWRECKS. 
 i.~-CuT OP Tire Dark Valley . . . . . . 276 
 
 II. — After the Wedding. . . . , ' ' . 281 
 
 III. — Greek against Greek . 286 
 
 IV. — Only a Dream ,289 
 
 Y. — Bohemian Independenos ...... 303 
 
 \I. — Beyond the Veil . 306 
 
 VII. — Better than Gold ...... SOS
 
 CHARLOTTE'S INHERITANCE 
 
 DE PR0FUNDI8. 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 LENOBLE OF BEA.UBOCAGB. 
 
 [n the days when the Bourbon reigned over Gaul, before the 
 " sinijile, sensuous, passionate" verse of Alfred de Musset had 
 succeeded the dehonnaire Muse of Beranger in the affections of 
 young France, — in days when the site of the Trocadero was a 
 remote and undiscovered country, and the word " exposition" 
 unknown in the Academic dictionary, and the Gallic Augustus 
 destined to rebuild the city yet an exile, — a young law-student 
 boarded, in common with other students, in a big dreary-looking 
 house at the corner of the Rue Grande-Mademoiselle, abutting 
 on the Place Lauzun, and wdthin some ten minutes walk of the 
 Luxembourg. It was a very dingy quarter, though noble gentle- 
 men and lovely ladies had once occupied the great ghastly man- 
 sions, and disported themselves in the gnxsome gardens. But 
 the young students were in nowise oppressed by the ghastliness 
 of their abode. They sang their Beranger, and they pledged 
 each other in cheap Bordeaux, and cHnked their glasses noisily 
 in their boisterous good-fellowship, and ate the messes com« 
 pounded for them in a darksome cupboard, known as the kitchen, 
 by old Nation the cook, purblind, stone-deaf, and all but imbecile, 
 md 23opularly supposed to be the venerable mother of Madame 
 x^Iagnotte. The youngsters grumbled to each other about the 
 messes when they were unusually mysterious ; and it must be 
 owned that there were vol-au-vents Sbud fricandeaux conauraedin 
 that estabhshment which were awful and wonderful in their 
 nature ; but they ventured on no complaint to the mistress of 
 the mansion. She was a grim and terrible personage. Her 
 tei ms were low, and she treated her boarders de haute en has.
 
 5: CharrhUe's Inheritmi,ce. 
 
 If they were not content witli her viands, they might go and 
 find more agreeable viands elsewhere. 
 
 Madame Magnottewas altogether mysterious and inscrutable. 
 Some people said that she was a countess, and that the wealth 
 and lands of her family had been confiscated by the committee 
 of pubHc unsafety in '93. Others declared that she had been a 
 popular actress in a small theatre in the days of Napoleon. She 
 was taU and thin — nay, of an exceptional leanness — and her 
 complexion was of a more agreeable yellow than the butter that 
 appeared on her hospifeible board; but she had flashing black 
 eyes, and a certain stateHness of gait and grandeur of manner 
 that impressed those young Bohemians, her boarders, with a 
 kind of awe. They talked of her as the " countess," and by 
 that name she was known to all inmates of the mansion ; but in 
 all their dealings with her they treated her with unfailing respect. 
 
 One of the quietest among the young men who enjoyed the pri- 
 vileges of Madame Magnotte's abode was a certain Gustave Le- 
 noble, a law-student, the only son of a very excellent couple 
 who lived on their own estate, near an obscure village in Nor- 
 mandy. The estate was of the smallest ; a dilapidated old house, 
 known in the immediate neighbourhood as " the Chateau," and 
 very dear to those who resided therein ; a garden, in which every- 
 thing seemed to have run to seed ; and about forty acres of the 
 poorest land ia Normandy. These possessions constituted the 
 patrimonial estate of Fran9ois Lenoble, proin-ietaire, of Beau- 
 bocage, near Vevinordin, the department of Eure. 
 
 The people amongst whom the good man lived his simple life 
 called him M. Lenoble de Beaubocage, but he did not insist upon 
 this distinction; and on sending out his only son to begin the 
 battle of Hfe in the gi-eat world of Paris, he recommended the 
 young man to call himself Lenoble, tout court. 
 
 The young man had never cherished any other design. He 
 was of aU creatures the least presuming or pretentious. The 
 father was Legitimist to the very marrow ; the son half Buona- 
 pai-tist, half republican. The father and son had quarrelled 
 about these diiferences of opinion sometimes in a pleasantly dis- 
 putatious inannei~, but uo puhtical disagreement could lessen 
 the love between those two. Giistave loved his parents as only 
 a Frenchman can venture to love his father and mother— with a 
 devotion for the gentleman that bordered on enthusiasm, with a 
 fond reverence for the lady that was the very essence of chivalry. 
 There was a sister, who regarded her brother Gustave as the em- 
 bodiment of all that is perfect La youthful mankind ; and there 
 were a couple of old house-servants, a very stupid clumsy lad in 
 the stables, and half a dozen old mongrel dogs, born and bred 
 0)1 the premises, who seemed to share the young lady's opinions. 
 
 There was not a httle discussion upon the subject of Gubtave
 
 Lendble of Beaubocage. 8 
 
 Lenoble's future career ; and it was not without difficulty that 
 the father could be persuaded to approve the choice of a prof;es- 
 eion which the young man had made. The seigneur of Beaubo- 
 cage cherished an exaggerated pride of race Uttle suspected bj 
 those who saw his simple hfe, and were pleased by his kindly 
 unaffected manners. The house of Lenoble, at some remote and 
 almost mythical period of history, had distinguished itself in 
 divers ways ; and those bygone grandeurs, vague and shadowy 
 in the minds of all others, seemed very real to Monsieur Lenoble. 
 He assured his son that no Lenoble had ever been a lawyer. 
 They had been always lords of the soil, living on their own lands, 
 which had once stretched wide and far in that Norman province ; 
 a fact proved by certain maps in M. Lenoble's possession, the 
 paper whereof was worn and yellow with age. They had stooped 
 to no profession save that of arms. One seigneur of Beaubocage 
 had fought under Bayard himself; another iiad fallen at Pavia, 
 on that great day when aU was lost hormis Vhonneur ; another 
 had followed the white plume of the Bemais ; another — but was 
 there any need to tell of the glories of that house upon which 
 Gustave was so eager to inflict the disgrace of a learned profes- 
 sion? 
 
 Thus argued the father; but the mother had spent her girl- 
 hood amidst the clamour of the Buonapartist campaigns, and 
 the thought of war was very temble to her. The memory of 
 the retreat from Eussia was not yet twenty years old. Thera 
 were men alive to tell the story, to depict those days and nights 
 of horror, that mighty march of death. It was she and her 
 daughter Cydalise who had helped to persuade Gustave that he 
 was bom to distinguish himself ia the law. They wanted him 
 to study in Paris — the young man himself had a wild desire to 
 enjoy the delights of that wondrous capital — and to return in a 
 few years to set up for himself as avocat at the town of Vevi- 
 nord, some half-dozen leagues from the patrimonial estate. He 
 was created to plead for the innocent, to denounce the guilty, to 
 be grand and brave and fieiy-hot -with enthusiasm in defence of 
 virtuous peasants^ charged unjustly with the steaUng of sheep, 
 or firing of corn-ricks. It never struck these simple souls that 
 he might sometimes be called upon to defend the guilty, or to 
 denounce the innocent. 
 
 It was aU settled at last. Gustave was to go to Paris, and 
 enter himself as a student of law. There were plenty of board- 
 ing-houses in the neighbourhood of the Ecole de Droit where a 
 young man might find a home; and to one of these Gustave 
 was recommended by a friend of his famUy. It was the Pension 
 Magnotte to which they had sent him, the big dreaiy house, 
 entre couT et jardin, yi\i\ch. had once been so grand and noble. 
 A printer now occupied the lower chambers, and a hand painted
 
 4 CJiarJofte's Inheritance. 
 
 on the wall pointed to the Pension Magnotte, cm premier. Tirez 
 le cordon, s.v.x>. . 
 
 Gustave was twenty-one years of age when he came to Pans ; 
 tall, stalwart, broad of shoulders and deep of chest, with a fair 
 frank face, an auburn moustache, candid, kind blue eyes— a 
 physiognomy rather Saxon than Celtic. He was a man who 
 made friends quickly, and was soon at home among the students, 
 roaring their favourite songs, and dancing their favourite dances 
 at the dancing-places of that day, joining with a ]3leasant hearti- 
 ness in all their innocent dissipations. For guilty dissipation 
 the young provincial had no taste. Did he not carry the images 
 of two kind and pure women about with lum_ wherever he went, 
 like two attendant angels ever protecting his steps ; and could 
 he leave them sorro^nng on thresholds they could not pass ? Ah, 
 no ! He was loud and boisterous and wild of spirits in those 
 tarly days, but incapable of meanness or vice. 
 
 "It is a brave heart," Madame Magnotte said of him, ** though 
 for the breaking of glasses a scourge — un fleau." 
 
 The ladies of the Pension Magnotte were for the most part of 
 mature age and unattractive appearance — two or three lonely 
 spinsters, eking out their pitiful little incomes as_ best they 
 might, by the surreptitious sa '.e of delicate embroideries,, confec- 
 tioned in their dismal leisure ; and a fat elderly widow, popularly 
 supposed to be enormously rich, but of miserly propensities. 
 " It is the Avidow of Harpagon himself," Madame Magnotte told 
 her gossips — an old woman with two furiously ugly daughters, 
 who for the last fifteen years had lived a nomadic life in divers 
 boarding-houses, fondly clinging to the hope that, amongst so 
 many strange bachelors, husbands for these two solitary ones 
 must at last be found. 
 
 These, with a pale young lady who gave music lessons in the 
 quarter, were all the feminine inmatesof the mansion; and amongst 
 these Gustave Lenoble was chief favourite. His tender courtesy 
 for these lonely women seemed in some manner an evidence 
 ot that good old blood whereof the young man's father boasted. 
 Francis the First, who listened with bent knee and bare head to 
 his mother's discourse, was not more reverential to that noble 
 Savoyarde than was Gustave to the shabby-genteel maiden 
 ladies of the Pension Magnotte. In truth, this young man had 
 a heart pitiful and tender as the heart of woman. To be unfor* 
 tunate was to possess a sure claim upon his pity and regard ; 
 to be poor and friendless was the best appeal to his kindness. 
 He spent his evenings sometimes in the great dreary desert of a 
 salon, and listened resi)ectf'ully while ]\iademoiselle Servin, the 
 young music-teacher, played dismal sonatas of Gluck or Gretry 
 on a cracked old piano that had been one of the earliest made of 
 those instruments, and was now attenuated and feeble as the
 
 Lenohle of Bemibocage. 5 
 
 very ghost of music. He listened to Madame Magnotte's storios 
 of departed splendour. To him she opened her heart as she 
 never had opened it to those other young men. 
 
 "They mock themselves of everything — even the religion!" 
 she exclaimed, with horror. " They are Diderots and Holbachs 
 in the bud, less the talent. But you do not come of that gutter 
 in which they were bom. You are of the old blood of France, 
 M. Lenoble, and I can trust myself to you as I cannot to them. 
 I, who speak to you — I, too, come of a good old race, and there 
 is sympathy between we others." 
 
 And then, after babbling to him of her lost station, the lady 
 would entertain him with some dainty little supper with which 
 she was wont to indulge herself and her lady boarders, when the 
 Btudents — who were treated something after the manner of school- 
 boys — were out of doors. 
 
 For four years the law-student had enjoyed his Parisian Kfe — 
 not altogether idle, but not altogether industrious — amusing 
 himself a great deal, and learning very httle ; moderate in hia 
 expenditure, when compared with his fellow-students, but no 
 small drain upon the funds of the Httle family at home. In 
 Booth, this good old Norman family had in a pecuniary sense 
 sunk very low. There was real poverty in the tumble-down 
 house at Beaubocage, though it was poverty that wore a cheerful 
 face, and took things pleasantly. A very humble Enghsh far- 
 mer would have despised the income which suppoi-ted M. Le- 
 noble's household; and it was only the economy and skill of 
 the matron and her daughter which sustained the dignity of the 
 smaU estabhshment. 
 
 There was one great hope cherished alike by the proud simple- 
 minded old father, the fond mother, the devoted sister, and tha ^ 
 was the hope in the grand things to be done, in the dim future, 
 by Gustave, the son, the heir, the pole-star of the household. 
 
 Out of poverty, out of obscurity, into the broad hght of 
 honour and riches, was the house of Lenoble to be lifted by this 
 young law- student. On the broad shoulders of this modern 
 Atlas the Lenoble world was to be sustained. To him they 
 looked, of him they thought, in the long dreary winter evenings 
 during which the mother nodded over her knitting, the father 
 slept in his capacious easy-chair, the sister toiled at her needle- 
 work by her Uttle table of palissandre. 
 
 He had paid them more than one visit during his two years of 
 study, bringing with him life and hght and gladness, as it seemed 
 to the two women who adored him ; and now, in the winter of 
 ] 828, they expected another visit. He was to be with them on 
 the first day of the new year. He was to stay with them till hia 
 hotlier's fete — the 17th of January. 
 
 Tlie father looked to this special visit with an unusual anxiety . 
 The mother too was more than ever anxious. The sister, if she
 
 Charlottes Inheritance. 
 
 who loved her brother with a somewhat morbid intensity could 
 be more anxious than iisual, was more so now. A dreadful plot, 
 a dire conspiracy, of wliich Gustave was to be the subject and 
 victim, had been concocted beneath that innocent-seeming roof. 
 Father, mother, and sister, seated round the family hearth, fatal 
 as some domestic Parcce, had hatched their horrid scheme, while 
 the helpless lad amused himself yonder in the great city, happily 
 unconscious of the web that was being woven to enmesh him. 
 
 The cord which monsieur unwound, the mesh which madame 
 held, the needle which dexterous mademoiselle wielded, were 
 employed in the fabrication of a matrimonial net. These un- 
 sophisticated conspirators were bent upon biinging about the 
 marriage of their victim, a marriage which should at once 
 elevate and enrich the Lenobles of Beaubocage, in the person 
 of Gustave. 
 
 Francois Lenoble's best friend and nearest neighbour was a 
 certain Baron Frehlter, of Germanic origin, but for some genera- 
 tions past naturalised to the GalUc soil. The Baron was proprietor 
 of an estate which could show ten acres for one of the lands of 
 Beaubocage. The Baron boasted a family tree which derived 
 its root from a ramification of the Hohenzollern pedigree ; but, 
 less proud and more prudent than the Lenobles, the Frehlters 
 had not scorned to intermingle their Prussian blue blood with 
 less pure streams of commercial France. The epicier element 
 had prevailed in the fair brides of the house of Frehlter for the 
 last three or four generations, and the house of Frehlter had 
 considerably enriched itself by this sacrifice of its family pride. 
 
 The present Baron had married a lady ten years his senior, 
 the widow of a Kouen merchant, alike wealthy and pious, but 
 famous rather for these attributes than for any j^ersonal charm. 
 One only child, a girl, had blessed this union. She was now a 
 young person of something under twenty years of age, newly 
 emerged from her convent, and pining for some share in the 
 gaieties and dehghts of a worldly paradise, which had already 
 been open to many of her schoolfellows. 
 
 Mademoiselle Frehlter's companions had, for the most part, 
 left school to be married. She had heard ' f the corheille, the 
 wedding dress, the wedding festivities, and occasionally a word 
 or two about that secondary consideration the bridegroom. 
 The young lady was therefore somewhat inclined to take it ill 
 of her ftithcr that he had not secured for her the eclat of an 
 oarly marriage. Her departure I'rom the convent of the Sacre 
 Co'ur, at Vevinord, was fiat and tame to an extreme degree. 
 The future lay before hei-, a dreary desert of home life, to be 
 spent with a father who gorged himself dailj^ at a grt>asy and 
 savoury bnnquet. and who slept away the greater part of hia 
 existence; and with a mother who divided her affections between 
 a disagreeable poodle unci u, stUl mure di.sagrccablo priest — •
 
 Lenoble of Beaubocage. '/ 
 
 priest who took upon himself to lecture the demoiselle Frehlte* 
 on the smallest provocation. 
 
 The chateau of the Frehlters was a very grand abode as com- 
 pared to the tumble-down house of Beaubocage ; but it was cold 
 and stony to a depressing degree, and the furniture must have 
 been shabby in the days of the Fronde. Faithful old servants 
 kept the mansion in a state of spotless purity, and ruled the 
 Baron and his wife with a rod of iron. Mademoiselle execrated 
 these devoted retainers, and would have welcomed the sauciest 
 of modern domestics who would have released her from the 
 bondage of these sei-vants of the old school. 
 
 Mademoiselle had been at home a year — a year of discontent 
 and ill-humour. She had quarrelled with her father, because he 
 would not take her to Paris ; with her mother, because she would 
 not give her more new gowns and bonnets and feathers and fur- 
 belows; with the priest, the poodle, with the autocracy below- 
 stairs, with everybody and everything. So at last the Baron 
 decided that mademoiselle should marry, whereby he might be 
 rid of her, and of her complaints, vagaries, ill-tempers, and 
 general dissatisfaction. 
 
 Having once made up his mind as to the wisdom of a matri- 
 monial arrangement, Baron Frehlter was not slow to fix upon 
 a bridegroom. He was a very rich man, and Madelon was his 
 only child, and he was furthermore a very lazy man ; so, instead 
 of looking far afield for a wealthy or distinguished suitor for his 
 daughter, he was inclined to take the first that came to hand. 
 It is possible that the Baron, who was of a somewhat cynical 
 turn of mind, may have cherished no very exalted idea of hist 
 daughter's attractions, either personal or mental. However 
 this might be, it is certain that when the demoiselle had ill- 
 treated the poodle, and insulted the priest, and quarrelled with 
 the cook — that high-priestess of the kitchen who alone, in all 
 Normandy, could concoct those messes which the Baron loved 
 — the master of Cotenoir decided on marrying his heiress out of 
 hand. 
 
 He communicated this design to his old crony, Frangoia 
 Lenoble, one day when the Beaubocage family dined at Chateau 
 Cotenoir. 
 
 " I think of marrymg my daughter," he said to his friend, 
 when the ladies were safely out of hearing at the other end oiP 
 the loDg dreary saloon. "Now thy son Gustave is a fine fellow 
 —brave, handsome, and of a good race. It is true he is not 
 as rich as Madelon will be by-and-by ; but I am no huckster, to 
 sell my daughter to the best bidder " (" and I doubt if there 
 would be many biddors for her, if I were so inclined," thought 
 the Baron, in parenthesis); " and if thy son should take a fancy 
 tr> her, and she to him, it would please me well enough, friAJud 
 Francois."
 
 8 CliarJotte's Inheritance. 
 
 Friend Fiun^ois pricked up liis ears, and in his old eyet 
 flickered a feeble light. Cotenoir and Beaubocage united in the 
 person of his son Gustave ! Lenoble of Beaubocage and Cotenoii 
 — Lcnoble of Cotenoir and Beaubocage ! So splendid a vision 
 had never shone before his eyes in all the dreams that he had 
 dreamed about the only son of whom he was so proud. He could 
 not have shaped to himself so bold a project as the union of 
 those two estates. And here was the Baron offeiing it to him, 
 with his snufi'-box, en fassant. 
 
 " It would be a great marriage," he said, " a very great 
 marriage. For Gustave I can answer without hesitation. He 
 could not but be charmed by such a union — so amiable a bride 
 would enchant him." 
 
 He looked down the room to the spot where Madelon and 
 CydaUse were standing, side by side, admiring Madame Frehlter'a 
 poodle. Madelon could afford to be civil to the poodle before 
 company. The contrast between the two girls was sufficiently 
 striking. CydaUse was fair and bright-looking — Mademoiselle 
 Frehlter was square and ungainly of figure, swarthy of com- 
 plexion, dark of brow. 
 
 " He could not but be charmed," repeated the old man, with 
 feeble gaUantiy. 
 
 He was tliinking of the joining together of Beaubocage and 
 Cotenoir ; and it seemed a very small thing to him that such a 
 union of estates would involve the joining of a man and woman, 
 who were to hold to each other and love each other until death 
 should part them. 
 
 " It shall be no marriage of convenience," said the Baron, in 
 a generous spirit; "my daughter is somewhat ill -tern— that is 
 to say, my daughter finds her life somewhat dull with her old 
 father and mother, and I think she might be happier in the 
 society of a husband. I like your son; and my wife, too, hkes 
 him better than any other young man of our acquaintance. 
 Madelon has seen a good deal of him when she has been home 
 from the convent in her holidays, and I have reason to think 
 she does not dislike him. If he Hkes her and she likes him, and 
 the idea is pleasing to you and madame, we wUl make a match 
 of its If not, let it jiass ; we will say no more." 
 
 Again the seigneur of Beaubocage assured his friend that 
 Gustave would be enchanted -with the proposal ; and again it 
 was of Cotenoir that he thought, and not of the heart or the 
 inclinations of his son. 
 
 Tlus conversation took place late in autumn, and at the new 
 year Gustave was to come. Nothing was to be said to him 
 about his inleuded wife until he anived ; that was a point upon 
 whi(.'h the Baron insisted. 
 
 " The young man may have fallen in love with some finej^oung 
 person in PaiiS," ho said; "and in that case we will say nothing
 
 Lenohle of Beauhocage. ft 
 
 to him of Madelon. Bat it" we iind him with the heart free, and 
 mchned to take to my daughter, we may give him. encourage- 
 ment." 
 
 This was solemnly agreed between tne two fathers. Nor was 
 Mademoiselle Frehlter to be told of the matrimonial scheme 
 until it ripened. But after this dinner at Cotenoir the house- 
 hold at Beaubocage talked of little else than of the union of the 
 two families. What grandeur, what wealth, what happiness ! 
 Gustave the lord of Cotenoir ! Poor Cydahse had never seen a 
 finer mansion than the old chateau, with its sugar-loaf towers 
 and stone terraces, and winding stairs, and tiny inconvenient 
 turret chambers, and long dreary salon and salle-a-manger 
 She could picture to herself nothing more splendid. Foi 
 Giistave to be oifered the future possession of Cotenoir was 
 as if he were suddenly to be oifered the succession to a kingdom. 
 She could not bring herself to consider that Madelon was neither 
 agreeable nor attractive, and that, after all, the wife must count 
 for something in every marriage contract. She cotdd see nothing, 
 she could think of nothing, but Cotenoir. The glory and grandeur 
 of that estate absorbed every other consideration. 
 
 No one of those three conspirators feared any opposition on 
 the part of their victim. It was just possible that Gustave 
 might have fallen in love with some Parisian damsel, though 
 his letters gave no hint of any such calamity. But if such a 
 misfortune had happened, he would, of course, fall out of love 
 again, return the damsel her troth and obtain the return of hia 
 own, and straightway offer the second-hand commodity to 
 Mademoiselle Frehlter. 
 
 The object of all these cares and hopes and dreams arrived at 
 last, full of life and spirits, with plenty to tell about Paris in 
 general, and very little to tell about himself in particular. The 
 women questioned him unmercifully. They insisted on a gra^ihic 
 descrii^tion of every female inmate of the boarding-house, and 
 would scarcely beUeve that all except the Httle music-mistress 
 were elderly and unattractive. Of the music-mistress herself 
 they were inclined to be very suspicious, and were not altogether 
 reassured by Gustave's assertion that she was neither pretty nor 
 fascinating. 
 
 " She is a dear, good, industrious little thing," he said, " and 
 works harder than I do. But she is no miracle of beauty ; and 
 her Ufe is so dreary that I often wonder she does not go into a 
 convent. It would be gayer and pleasanter for her than to live 
 with those old women at the Pension Magnotte." 
 
 " I suppose there are many beautiful women in Paris ? " said 
 Cydalise, bent upon knowing the worst. 
 
 " Well, I dare say there are," Gustave answered frankly ; " biit 
 wc students don't see much of them in our quarter. One sees a
 
 10 Charlotte's Inheritance. 
 
 pretty little milliner's girl now and then, or a washerwomaa. 
 In short, there are a good many grisettes in our part of the 
 world," added the young man, blushing, but for no sin of his 
 own. "We get a glimpse of a handsome woman sometimes, 
 rattling past in her carriage ; but in Paris handsome women do 
 not go on foot. I have seen prettiei girls at Vevinord than in 
 Paris." 
 
 CydaHse was enchanted with this confession. 
 
 " X es," she exclaimed, " our Normandy is the place for pretty 
 girls. Madelon Frehlter, for example, is not she a very — amiable 
 girl?" 
 
 " I dare say she's amiable enough," answered Gustave; " but 
 if there were no prettier girls than Mademoiselle Frehlter in this 
 part of the world, we should have no cause to boast. But there 
 are prettier girls, CydaHse, and thou art thyself one of them." 
 
 After this speech the young man bestowed upon his sister a 
 resounding kiss. Yes; it was clear that he was heart-whole. 
 These noisy, boisterous good spirits were not characteristic of a 
 lover. Even innocent CydaHse knew that to be in love was to 
 be miserable. 
 
 From this time mother and sister tormented their victim with 
 the merits and charms of his predestined bride. Madelon on the 
 piano was miraculous ; Madelon's Httie songs were enchanting ; 
 Madelon's worsted-work was a thing to worship ; Madelon's de- 
 votion to her mother and her mother's poodle was unequalled ; 
 Madelon's respectful bearing to the good Abbe St. Velours — 
 her mother's du-ector — was positively beyond aU praise. It waa 
 virtue seraphic, supernal. Such a girl was too good for earth — 
 too good for anything except Gustave. 
 
 The young man heard and wondered. 
 
 "How you rave about Madelon Frehlter!" he exclaimed. 
 " She seems to me the most commonplace young person I ever 
 encountered. She has nothing to say for herself; she never 
 appears to know where to put her elbows. I never saw such 
 elbows ; they are everywhere at once. And her shoulders ! — 
 O heaven, then, her shoulders! — it ought to be forbidden to 
 wear low dresses when one has such shoulders." 
 
 This was discouraging, but the schemers bore up even against 
 this. The mother dwelt on the inteUectual virtues of Madelon ; 
 and what were shoulders compared to mind, piety, amiability 
 — aU the Christian graces ? CydaHse owned that dear Madelon 
 was somewhat gauche; Gustave called her hete. The father 
 remonstrated with his son. Was it not frightful to use a word 
 of the barracks in connection with this charming young lady P 
 
 At last the plot revealed itself. After a dinner at Cotenoir and 
 a dinner at Beaubocage, on both which occasions Gustave had 
 made himself very agreeable to the ladies of the Baron's house-
 
 Jjenohle of JBeaubocage. 11 
 
 hold — since, indeed, it was not in his nature to be otlienviae 
 tlian kind and courteous to the weaker sex — the mother told 
 her son of the splendid destiny that had been shaped for him. 
 It was a matter of surprise and grief to her to find that the 
 revelation gave Gustave no pleasure. 
 
 " Marriage was the last thing in my thoughts, dear mother.*"' 
 he said, gravely ; " and Madelon Frehlter is the very last woman 
 I should think of for a wife. Nevertheless, I am gratified by 
 the honour Monsieur le Baron has done me. That goes without 
 saying." 
 
 " But the two estates ! — ^together they would make you a 
 great proprietor. You would not surely refuse such fortune P " 
 
 CydaUse gave a httle scream of horror. 
 
 " Cotenoir ! to refuse Ootenoir ! Ah, surely that woidd be 
 impossible 1 But figure to yourself, then, Gustave " 
 
 "Nay, Cydalise, you forget the young lady goes with the 
 chateau ; a fixture that we cannot dispense with." 
 
 " But she, so amiable, so pious " 
 
 " So plain, so stupid " 
 
 " So modest, so charitable " 
 
 "In short, so admirably adapted for a Sister of Charity," 
 replied Gustave. " But no, dear CydaUse. Cotenoir is a grand 
 old place ; but I would as soon spend my Hfe at Toulon, dragging 
 a cannon-ball at my heels, as in that dreary salon where Madame 
 Frehlter nurses her maladies and her poodle, and where the 
 good-humoured, easy-going old Baron snores away existence. 
 'Tis very well for those elderly folks, you see, my sister, and for 
 Madelon — for hers is an elderly mind in a youthful body ; but 
 for a young man fuU of hope and gaiety and activity — bah ! It 
 wonld be of all Hving deaths the worst. From the galleys there 
 is always the hope of escaping — an underground passage, 
 burrowed out with one's finger-nails in the dead of the 
 night — a work lasting twenty years or so, but with a feeble stai 
 of hope always ghmmering at the end of the passage. But 
 from the salon, and mamma, and the poodle, and the good, 
 unctuous, lazy old director, and papa's apoplectic snoring, and 
 the plaintive Httle songs and monotonous embroideries of one's 
 wife, there would be no escape. Ah, bah ! " 
 
 Gustave shuddered, and the two women shuddered as they 
 heard him. The prospect was by no means jDromising; but 
 Madame Lenoble and her daughter did not utterly despair. 
 Gustave's heart was disengaged. That was a gi-eat point ; and 
 for the rest, surely persuasion might do much. 
 
 Then came that phenomenon seen very often in this life — a 
 generous-minded, right-thinking young man talked into a posi- 
 tion which of all others is averse from his own inclinations. 
 The mother persuaded, the sister pleaded, the father dwelt
 
 1 2 (fliarlotte' s tnlieriiancB. 
 
 dismally upon the poverty of Beaiibocage, the wealth of Cot^ 
 noir. It was the story of auld Eobin Gray reversed. Gustaye 
 j)erceived that his refusal to avail himself of this spleadid 
 destiny would be a bitter and lasting grief to these people 
 who loved him so fondly — whom he loved as fondly in 
 return. ]\tnst he not be a churl to disappoint hopes so 
 unselfish, to balk an ambition so innocent P And only because 
 Madelon was not the most attractive or the prettiest of 
 women 1 
 
 The young man stood firm against all their arguments, he 
 was unmoved by all their pleading. It was only when his 
 anxious kindred had given up the battle for lost that Gustave 
 wavered. Their mute despair moved him more than the most 
 persuasive eloquence; and the end was submission. He left 
 lieaubocage the pHghted lover of that woman who, of all others, 
 he would have been the last to choose for his wife. It had all 
 been settled very pleasantly — the dowry, the union of the two 
 estates, the two names. For six months Gustave was to enjoy 
 his freedom to finish his studies ; and then he was to return to 
 Normandy for his maniage. 
 
 " I have heard very good accounts of yon from Paris," said 
 the Baron. " You are not Uke some young men, wild, mad- 
 brained. One can confide in your honour, your steadiness." 
 
 The good folks of Beaubocage were in ecstacies. They 
 congratulated Gustave — they congratulated each other. A 
 match so brilliant would be the redemption of the family. The 
 young man at last began to fancy himself the favoured of the 
 gods. What if Madelon seemed a Httle dull — a little wanting 
 in that vivacity which is so pleasing to frivolous minds ? she 
 was doubtless so much the more profound, so much the more 
 virtuous. If she was not bright and varied and beautiful as 
 some limpid fountain dancing in summer sunhght, she was 
 perhaps changeless and steady as a rock ; and who would not 
 rather have the security of a rock than the summer-day beauty 
 of a fountain ? 
 
 Before Gustave departed from his paternal home he had per- 
 suaded himself that he was a very lucky fellow ; and he had 
 paid Mademoiselle Frehlter some pretty little stereotyped com- 
 pliments, and had Ustened with subhme patience to her pretty 
 little stereotyped songs. He left the young lady profoundly 
 impressed by his merits ; he left his own household supremely 
 happy ; and he carried away with him a heart in which Madelon 
 Frehlter's image had no place.
 
 In this wide World t stand Alone, *-3 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 IN THIS WIDE WORLD I STAND ALONE. 
 
 GusTAVE went back to Lis old life, and was not mucli distuibed 
 by the grandeur of Hs destiny as future seigneur of Ootenoir 
 and Beaubocage. It sometimes occurred to bim that he had a 
 weight upon his mind ; and, on consideration, he found that th< 
 weight was Madelon Frehlter. But he continued to carry tha 
 burden very lightly, and his easy-going student life went on, 
 unbroken by thoughts of the future. He sent polite messages 
 to the demoiselle Frehlter in his letters to Cydalise; and he 
 received from Cydalise much information, more gi-aphic than 
 interesting, upon the subject of the family at Cotenoir ; and so 
 his days went on with pleasant monotony. This was the brief 
 summer of his youth ; but, alas, how near at hand was the dark 
 and dismal winter that was to freeze this honest joyous heart ! 
 That heart, so compassionate for all suffering, so especially 
 tender for all womankind, was to be attacked upon its weaker 
 side. 
 
 It was Gustave Lenoble's habit to cross the gardens of the 
 Luxembourg every morning, on his way from the Rue Grande- 
 Mademoiselle to the Ecole de Droit. Sometimes, when he was 
 earher than usual, he can-ied a book with him, and paced one of 
 the more obscure alleys, reading for an odd half-hour before he 
 went to the daily mill-giinding in the big building beyond those 
 quiet gardens. 
 
 Walking with his book one morning — it was a volume of 
 Boileau, which the student knew by heart, and the pages 
 whereof did not altogether absorb his attention — he passed and 
 repassed a beuijh on which a lady sat, pensive and solitaiy, 
 tracing shapeless figures on the gi-ound with the point of her 
 parasol. He glanced at her somewhat carelessly the first time 
 of passing, more curiously on the second occasion, and the third 
 time with considerable attention. Something in her attitude — 
 helplessness, hopelessness, nay indeed, despair itself, all expressed 
 in the drooping head, the listless hand tracing those idle 
 characters on the gravel — enlisted the sympathies of Gustavo* 
 Lenoble. He had pitied her even before his gaze had penetrateC 
 the cavernous depths of the capacious bonnet of those days; 
 but one glimpse of the pale plaintive face inspired him wath. 
 compassion unspeakable. Never had he seen despair more 
 painfully depicted on the human countenance — a despair that 
 sought no sympathy, a sorrow that separated the sufferer from 
 the outer world. Never had he seen a face so beautiful, even in 
 despair. He could have fancied it the face of Andromache, 
 when all that made her world had been reft from liar : or o^
 
 14 VJiartoffe's hikeritanee. 
 
 Aiitifronc, wLen the dread fiat had gone forth— that funerSl 
 riles or sepulture for the last accursed scion of an accursed raca 
 there were to be none. 
 
 He put Boileau into his pocket. That glimpse of a suffering 
 human mind, which had been unconsciously revealed to him, 
 possessed an interest more absorbing than the grandest flight of 
 poet and satirist. As he passed for the fifth time, he looked at 
 the mournful lady still more searchingly, and this time the sad 
 eyes were Hfted, and met his pitying looks. The beautiful hps 
 moved, and murmured something in tones so tremulous as to be 
 quite unintelligi])le. 
 
 The student took off his hat, and approached the lady, 
 deferential as knight-errant of old awaiting the behest of liis 
 liege mistress. 
 
 " In what can I have the happiness to be agreeable to you, 
 madame ? " 
 
 " You are very good, monsieur," murmured the lady in very 
 decent French, but with an accent unmistakably foreign- 
 English, as Gustave opined. " I — I — am quite a stranger in 
 Paris, and — and — I have heard there are numerous lodging- 
 houses in this quarter — where one may obtain a lodging — 
 cheaply. I have asked several nursemaids, and other women, in 
 the gardens this morning ; but they seem very stujiid, and can 
 tell me nothing ; and I do not care to ask at the hotel where I 
 am staying." 
 
 Gustave pondered. Yes, there were many lodgings, he in- 
 formed the lady. And then he thought of Madame Magnotte. 
 "Was it not his duty to secure this stray lodger for that worthy 
 woman, if possible? 
 
 " If madame has no objection to a boarding-house " he 
 
 began. 
 
 Madame shook her head. " A boarding-house would suit me 
 just as well," she said; "but it must not be expensive. I cannot 
 afford to pay much." 
 
 " I know of a boarding-house very near this place, where 
 madame might find a comfortable home on very reasonable 
 terms. It is, in point of fact, the house in which I myself 
 reside," added Gustave, with some timidity. 
 
 " If you will kindly direct me to the house " said the lady, 
 
 looking straight before her with sad unseeing eyes, and evidently 
 supremely indifferent as to the residence or non-residence of M. 
 Lenoble in the habitation referred to. 
 
 " Nay, madame, if you will permit mo to conduct you there. 
 It is but a walk of five minutes." 
 
 The stranger accepted the courtesy vrith a gentle indifference 
 that w\s not ingratitude, but rather incapacity for any feeling 
 except that one great sorrow which seemed to absorb her mind
 
 In this wide World I stand Ahne. 15 
 
 Gustave wondered what calamity could thus overwhelm one 
 BO young and beautiful. 
 
 The lady was quite silent during the little walk from the 
 gardens to the Eue Grande-Mademoiselle, and Gustave observed 
 her attentively as he walked by her side. She was evidently 
 not more than four-and-twenty years of age, and she was 
 certainly the prettiest woman he had ever seen. It was a fair 
 dehcate English beauty, a httle worn and faded, as if by care, 
 but idealized and subKmated in the process. At her brightest 
 this stranger must have been strikingly beautiful ; in her sorrow 
 she was toucHngly lovely. It was what Gustave's countrymen 
 call a heaute navrante. 
 
 Gustave watched her, and wondered about her. The dresa 
 she wore was sufficiently elegant, but had lost the gloss of new- 
 ness. Her shawl, which she cai-ried as gracefully as a French- 
 woman, was, darned. Gustave perceived the neat careful stitches, 
 and divined the poverty of the wearer. That she should be poor 
 was no subject for surprise ; but that she, so sorrowful, so lonely, 
 should seek a home in a strange city, was an enigma not easy to 
 solve. 
 
 To Madame Magnotte Gustave introduced the stranger. She 
 gave just one look rouud the dreary saloon ; but to Gustave's 
 fancy that one look seemed eloquent. "Ah me!" it said; "is 
 this the fairest home I am to find upon this inhospitable 
 earth?" 
 
 " She does not seem to belong to this world," the young man 
 thought, as he went back to the garden where he had found his 
 fair stranger, having been very coolly dismissed by Madame 
 Magnotte after his introduction had been made. 
 
 And then M. Lenoble, being of a romantic turn of mind, re- 
 membered how a lady had been found by a student sitting on 
 the lowest steps of the guillotine, desolate and helpless, at 
 night ; and how the student had taken her home and sheltered 
 her, and had straightway fallen desperately in love with her, to 
 discover, with unutterable horror, that her head had been severed 
 from her fair shoulders by the cruel knife twelve hours before, 
 and that her melancholy loveliness was altogether phantasmal 
 and delusive. 
 
 Was this English stranger whom Gustave had found in the 
 gardens of the Luxembourg twin sister to that ghostly lady of 
 the famiUar legend? Her despair and her beauty seemed to 
 him greater than earthly sorrow or earthly beauty ; and he was 
 half inclined to wonder whether she could be of the same race 
 as Madelon Frehlter. And from this hour the sense of a weight 
 apon his mind, before so vague and intermittent, became an 
 enduring oppression, not to be shaken off by any effort of big 
 will.
 
 16 Charlotte's inheritance.. 
 
 All through that day he found himself thiiikiug more ol tha 
 Qnknown Englishwoman than was consistent with a strict per- 
 formance of his duties. He was vexed with himself on account 
 of this fooUsh distraction of mind. 
 
 " "What a frivolous fellow I must be," he said to himself, " to 
 dwell upon such a trifle ! This comes of leading such a mono- 
 tonoy.s life." 
 
 At dinner he looked for the lady ; but she did not appear at 
 the long table, where the shrill old ladies, the epicurean old 
 bachelors, the noisy students, daily devoured and grumbled at 
 tlje four or five courses which old Nanon developed out of her 
 inner consciousness and a rather scantily furidshed larder. He 
 questioned Madame Magnotte after dinner, and was told that 
 the lady was in the house, but was too tired to dine with the 
 other inmates. 
 
 " I have to thank thee for a new boarder, my friend," she said. 
 " Madame Meynell will not pay lai-gely ; but she seems a quiet 
 and respectable person, and we shall doubtless be well pleased 
 with each other." 
 
 "Madame Meynell !" repeated Gustave, congratulating him- 
 self on finding that the Englishwoman was an inhabitant of the 
 house he Hved in. " She is a widow, I suppose ? " 
 
 " Tes, she is a -widow. I asked that question, and she 
 answered, yes. But she told me nothing of her late husband. 
 She is not at all communicative." 
 
 Tliis was all Gustave could obtain from Madame Magnotte. 
 She was not communicative. No ; she was, indeed, scarcely less 
 silent than that ghostly lady who had been found sitting at the 
 foot of the guillotine. There was some kind of mystery involved 
 in her sorrowful face, her silent apathy. It was possibly the fact 
 of this mystery which interested M. Lenoble. Certain it is that 
 the young man's interest had been aroused by this unknown 
 Englishwoman, and that his mind was more occupied by the 
 image of her whom he had seen but once than by that of his 
 plighted wife. 
 
 He waited anxiously for the next day ; but on the next day 
 Madame MejTiell still pleaded fatigue and illness. It was only 
 on the third day that she appeared at the noisy banquet, pale, 
 Bilent, absent-minded, sheltering herself under the wing of 
 Madame Magnotte, who was disj^osed to be kind to this helpless 
 stranger. To Gustave the young English widow seemed like a 
 ghost at that crowded board. He looked at her every now and 
 then from his distant seat, and saw her always with the same 
 hopeless far-away look in her sad eyes. He himself was silent 
 and distrait. 
 
 " Of what dost thou dream, my droll one?" said his nearest 
 neighbour. " Thon art positively insupportable."
 
 In tJiis wide World 1 stand Alune. 17 
 
 M. Lenoble could not become vivacious or entertaining at the 
 betest of his fellow- student. The consciousness of that strange 
 pale face haunted and oppressed him. He hoped to have a few 
 minutes' talk with the English lady after dinner, but she dis- 
 appeared before the removal of those recondite preparations 
 wliich in the Pension Magnotte v?-ent by the generic name of 
 " dessert." 
 
 For more than a week she appeared thus at the dinner-table, 
 eating very little, speaking not at all, except such monosyllabic 
 repUes as the hostess now and then extorted from her pale lips. 
 A creature at once so beautiful and so profoundly sad became 
 an object of interest to others besides Gustave ; but in no breast 
 was the sympathy which her sadness and beauty excited so 
 poignant as in his. Her face haunted him. The famihar 
 pleasures and amiisements became distasteful to him. He spent 
 his evenings at home in the dismal salon, and was content to 
 listen to the chatter of the old women, the Httle music-mistress's 
 dreary sonatas, the monotonous roll of wheels on the distant 
 quay — anything rather than the hackneyed round of student- 
 life that had once been agreeable to him. He did not fail to 
 write his weekly letter to Cydalise; but, for some reason or 
 other, he refrained from any allusion to the English stranger, 
 although it was his custom to relate all his adventures for the 
 amusement of the family at Beaubocage. 
 
 An evening came at last on which Madame Meynell was per- 
 suaded to remain with the other ladies after dinner. 
 
 " It must be very cold and cheerless for you in your bedroom," 
 said Madame Magnotte; "why not spend your evening with 
 us, in a pleasant and social manner ? " 
 
 " You are very good, madame," murmured the Englishwoman, 
 in the slow timid accents that had so plaintive a sound to Gus- 
 tave's ear; "if you wish it, I will stay." 
 
 She seemed to submit rather from utter weakness and inabihty 
 to refuse anything asked of her than from any hope of finding 
 pleasure in the society of the Magnotte salon. 
 
 It was an evening in March — cold, blustrous, dreary. The 
 east wind blew clouds of dust athwart the Rue Grande-Made- 
 moiselle, and the few foot-passengers in that dull thoroughfare 
 looked pinched and wretched. The old ladies gathered round 
 the great black stove, and gossipped in the twilight ; the music- 
 mistress went to her feeble piano, and played, unasked, un- 
 heeded; for Gustave, who was wont to turn the leaves, or sit 
 attentive by the piano, seemed this evening unconscious of the 
 music. Madame Meynell sat in one of the windows, alone, half- 
 hidden by the faded yellow damask curtains, looking out into 
 the street. 
 
 Something— some impulse which he tned to resist, but coijio
 
 18 Charlotte's Inheritance. 
 
 not— drew Gustave towards that lonely figure by the wind jw. 
 He went close up to the strange lady. This evening, as in the 
 gardens of the Luxembourg, she seemed to him a Hving statue 
 of despair. Now, as then, he felt an interest in her sorrow 
 which he was powerless to combat. He had a vague idea that 
 even this compassionate sympathy was in some manner an of- 
 fence against Madelon rrehlter, the woman to whom he belonged, 
 and yet he yielded to the fatal weakness. 
 
 "Yes, I belong to her," he said to liimself; "I belong to Ma- 
 delon Frehlter, She is neither pretty nor fascinating; but I 
 have every reason to beUeve her very good, very amiable ; and 
 she is the only woman, except those of my own kindred, in 
 whom I have any right to be interested." 
 
 He did not say this in so many words ; but this was the shape 
 •which his thoughts assumed as he yielded to the tempter, and 
 walked straight to the distant window by which Madame Mey- 
 neU had seated herself. 
 
 She started slightly as he approached her, and then looked up 
 and recognized him as her acquaintance of the Lujsembourg. 
 
 " Good evening, monsieur," she said ; " I have to thank you 
 for having helped me to find a comfortable home." 
 
 Having said this in a low gentle voice, she looked out into the 
 etreet once more with her mournful unseeing eyes. It was evi- 
 dent that she had no more to say to M. Lenoble. 
 
 The student, however, had no idea of leaving the window just 
 yet, although he knew — yes, knew — that his presence there was 
 a wrong done to Madelon Frehlter ; but a wrong so small, so 
 infinitesimal, that it was really not worth consideration. 
 
 " I am enchanted to thiok that I was of some slight service 
 to you, madame," he said ; " but I fear you will find this quarter 
 of JParis very dull." 
 
 She did not take any notice of this remark until Gustave had 
 repeated it, and then she spoke as if suddenly awakened from a 
 trance. 
 
 " Dull P" she said. " No, I have not found it dull. I do not 
 care for gaiety." 
 
 After this M. Lenoble felt that he could say no more. The 
 lady relapsed into her waking trance. The dust-clouds in the 
 silent street seemed more interesting to her than M. Lenoble of 
 !6eaubocage. He lingered a few minutes in the neighbourhood 
 of her chair, thoughtfully observant of the delicate profile, the 
 pale clear tints of a complexion that had lost its bloom but not 
 its purity, the settled sadness of the perfect mouth, the dreamy 
 pensiveuess of the dark-grey eye, and then was fain to retire. 
 
 After this, the English widow lady spent many evenings in 
 Madame Magnotte's salon. The old Frenchwoman gossipped 
 en<3 woiidered about her •, but the most speculative could fashiog
 
 Past Mope, and in Despair, 19 
 
 no story from a page so blank as this joyless existence. Even 
 slander could scarcely assaU a creature so unobtrusive as the 
 English boarder. The elderly ladies shrugged their shoulders 
 and pursed up their lips with solemn significance. There must 
 needs be something — a secret, a mystery, sorrow, or wrong-doing 
 — somewhere ; but of Madame Meynell herself no one could 
 Buspect any harm. 
 
 Gustave Lenoble heard little of this gossip about the stranger, 
 but she fiUed his thoughts nevertheless. The vision of her face 
 came between him and his work ; and when he thought of the 
 future, and of the damsel who had been allotted to him for a 
 wife, his thoughts were very bitter. 
 
 " Fate is like Laban," he said to himself; " a man works and 
 does his duty for seven years, and then Fate gives him Leah 
 instead of Eachel. No doubt Leah is a very good young woman ; 
 one has no complaint to make against her, except that she is 
 not Eachel." 
 
 This was not a hopeful manner of looking at things for the 
 destined master of Cotenoir. M. Lenoble's letters to the anxious 
 folks at Beaubocage became, about this time, somewhat brief 
 and unsatisfactory. He no longer gave ample details of his 
 student-hfe — he no longer wrote in his accustomed good spirits. 
 His letters seemed stiff and constrained. 
 
 " I am afraid he is studying too much," said the mother. 
 
 " I daresay the rascal is wasting his time in dissipation," sug- 
 gested the father. 
 
 CHAPTER in. 
 
 "fast hope, and m DESPAra." 
 
 Two months had elapsed since the bleak spring morning on which 
 Gustave Lenoble found the sohtary lady under the leafless trees 
 of the Luxembourg gardens. The inmates of the Pension Mag- 
 notte had grown accustomed to her presence, to her silence, her 
 aettled sadness, and troubled themselves no farther respecting 
 herself or her antecedents. The lapse of time had brought no 
 improvement to her spirits ; indeed, Gustave, who watched her 
 closely, perceived that she had grown paler and thinner since 
 that March morning when he met her in the pubhc garden. 
 Her hfe must have been painfully monotonous. She very rarely 
 vent out of doors, and on no occasion ventured beyond the gar- 
 dens of the Luxembourg. No one visited her. She neither 
 wrote nor received any letters. She was wont to make a pre- 
 tence of reading as she sat in her retired comer of the salon; 
 out Gustave had discovered that she gave little attention to her 
 took. The open volume in her hand seemed no more than an 
 t-jcuse for brooding upon her sorrows.
 
 20 Cliai-lotte's Inheritance. 
 
 If people, prompted by curiosity or by compassion, endeavoure J 
 to get into conversation with this lonely lady, the result was 
 always the same. She would answer their questions in a_ low 
 gentle voice, with a quiet pohteness; but she never assisted 
 them in the smallest degree to interchange thoughts with her. 
 It seemed as if she sought neither friend nor sympathizer, or as 
 if her case was so entirely hopeless as to admit of neither. She 
 paid for her board and lodging weekly with a punctilious exact- 
 ness, though weekly payments were not the rule of the house. 
 
 " My movements are uncertain," she said to Madame Mag- 
 votte. " I cannot tell how long I may be with you. It will 
 t/ierefore be better for me to pay you weekly." 
 
 She had been in the house two months, dining every day at 
 the jDubUc table, spending all her evenings in the public saloon j 
 and during that time her settled gloom had never been broken 
 by any outburst of grief or passion. She might have been a 
 creature of ice, a statue of desj^air modelled in snow by a ]\Iichael 
 Angelo. But one night the ice melted, the statue of snow be- 
 came in a moment a passionate, grief-stricken woman. 
 
 It was one bright evening late in May. Ah, how near at hand 
 was the appointed date of those nuptials to which the household 
 of Beaubocage looked forward with supreme happiness ! The 
 old ladies of the Pension Magnotte were for the most part out of 
 doors. The long saloon was almost empty. There were only 
 Gustave, Madame Magnotte, and the httle music -mistress, who 
 Bat at her piano, with the western sunhght shining full upon 
 her, rosy-hued and glorious, surrounding her with its soft 
 radiance until she looked Hke a humble St. Cecilia. 
 
 Madame Meynell had seated herself close to the piano, and 
 was listening to the music. Gustave hovered near, pretending 
 to be occupied with a Hmp httle sheet of news published that 
 evening. 
 
 Mademoiselle Servin, the teacher of music, upon this occasion 
 deserted her favourite masters. She seemed in a somewhat 
 dreamy and sentimental humour, and played tender little melo- 
 dies and simple plaintive au-s, that were more agreeable to Gus- 
 tave than those graiid examples of the mathematics of counter- 
 point which she so loved to interpret. 
 
 " You like this melody of Gretry's," said the music-mistress, 
 as M. Lenoble seated himself close to the j^iano. "I do not 
 think you care for classic sonatas — the great works of Gluck, or 
 Bach, or Beethoven?" 
 
 " No," replied the young man frankly ; " I do not care about 
 anything I can't understand. I Hke music that goes to one's 
 heart." 
 
 "And yon, too, Madame Meynell, like simple melodies?" 
 naaderaoiselle asked of that lady, who was not wont to oouk.; so
 
 Past Hope, and in Despair. 2\ 
 
 near the little piano, or to pay so much attention to Mademoi- 
 BoUe Servin's performance. 
 
 " O yes," murmnred the Englishwoman, " I like such mnsio 
 as that." 
 
 " And you, too, tliiuk that Beethoven never composed simple 
 plaintive airs — for example," exclaimed the pianist, playing 
 (roftly while she spoke. "You tliink he wrote only sonatas, 
 quartettes, fugues, grand operas, like Fidelio. Have you never 
 heard tliis by your scientific Beethoven ? " 
 
 Hereupon she played " Hope told a flattering tale," with much 
 tenderness and deUcacy. Her two hearers Ustened, mute and 
 deeply moved. And then from that familiar melody she glided 
 softly into another, most musical, most melancholy, which has 
 been set to some of the sweetest verses that Thomas Moore ever 
 composed : 
 
 " Those evening bells, tliose evening bells 1 
 How many a tale their music tells 
 Of youth and home, «,nd that sweet time 
 When last I heard their soothing chime ! " 
 
 All the world sang the verses of Ireland's divine bard in those 
 days. The song was one which the Englishwoman had sung . 
 years ago in a happy home. What recollections, what associa- 
 tions, were evoked by that plaintive melody, who shall say? 
 The words came back with the music to which they have been 
 eternally wedded. The words, their mournful meaning, the faces 
 of the friends amongst whom she had last sung them, the pic- 
 ture of the peaceful home whose walls had echoed the music, — 
 all these things arose before her in a vision too painfully vivid ; 
 and the lonely boarder at the Pension Magnotte covered her face 
 with her hands, and sobbed aloud. 
 
 The passion of tears lasted but a minute. Madame Meynell 
 dried her eyes, and rose to leave the room. 
 
 " Do not question me," she said, perceiving that her two com- 
 panions were about to offer her their syrajDathy. " I cannot tell 
 you the memories that were conjured up by that music. It 
 brought back a home I shall never see again, and the faces of 
 the dead — worse than dead to me — and the happiness I have 
 lost, and the hopes and dreams that once were mine. Oh, I pray 
 God I may never hear that melody again." 
 
 There was a passion, a depth of feeling, in her tone quite new 
 to Gustave Lenoble. He opened the door for her without a word, 
 and she j^assed out of the salon quietly, like a ghost^the ghost 
 of that bright young creature who had once borne her shape, and 
 been called by her name, in a pleasant farmhouse among the 
 Yorkshire wolds. 
 
 " Ah, but how that poor soul must have suffered !" cried the 
 8ymi'>athetic Mademoiselle Servin, as the door closed on the
 
 22 Charlotte's Inheritance. 
 
 Englishwoman. " I did not think it was in her to feel so deeply. 
 I thought she was stone, and now I begin to think it must be of 
 Buch stone as Niobe — the petrification of despair." 
 
 Upon Gustave Lenoble this scene made a profound impres- 
 sion. He lay awake during the greater part of that night, 
 thinking of the lonely lady's tears and anguish. The music of 
 "Those evening bells" pervaded his dreams. He rose unre- 
 freshed, feverish, forgetful of Cotenoir and Madelon Frehlter, 
 as if that place and that person had never emerged from the 
 shapeless substances of chaos. He wanted to see her again, to 
 console her, if that were possible. Oh, that it might be Ids 
 privilege to console her ! He pitied her with a compassion so 
 intense, that thus to compassionate her woes, was himself to 
 suffer a poignant anguish. He pitied her. Yes, he told himself 
 again and again that thia sentiment which so absorbed his heart 
 and mind was no more than pity. But oh, if this were pity, 
 what were love? That was a question which also presented 
 it&elf to the mind of M. Gustave Lenoble, of Beaubocage in esse, 
 and Cotenoir in posse. 
 
 Madame Meynell rarely appeared at the common breakfast in 
 the grim dining-room of the Pension Magnotte. Gustave was 
 therefore in nowise surprised to miss her on this particular morn- 
 ing. He took a cup of coffee, and hurried off to his daily duties. 
 There was a fever on him which he could neither understand nor 
 shake off, and he hastened to the gardens of the Luxembourg, 
 as if there were some special necessity for speed. So do men 
 often hasten unconsciously to their predestined doom, defiant of 
 augury. Soothsayers may menace, and wives may dream dreams ; 
 but when his hour comes, Csesar will go to the appointed spot 
 where the daggers of his assassins await him. 
 
 In the alley where he had first looked upon her sad face, 
 beneath the umbrage of young Umes and chestnuts just bursting 
 into bloom, he saw the Englishwoman to-day, seated on the same 
 bench, almost in the same attitude. 
 
 He went up to her, and bade her good morning ; and then, 
 mtensely conscious of his own temerity, seated himself by her 
 Bide. 
 
 " I did not expect to find you here so early." 
 
 " No, I seldom come out so soon ; but this morning I have to 
 make some inquiries upon a matter of business, and I am only 
 resting here before going to make them." 
 
 She gave a httle weary sigh at the end of this speech. It 
 seemed a strange manner of transacting business to rest in the 
 Luxembourg gardens, which were distant but a few hundred 
 yards from her home. Gustave divined that it was for very 
 forlornness she Uugered there, shrinking from some ditficult 
 encounter that lay before her.
 
 Past Hope, and in Despair. 23 
 
 "Can I not make the inquiries for youP" lie asked. "Pray 
 command me. It will be my happiness to be useful to you." 
 
 " You are very good. I cannot trouble you so much." 
 
 " Pray do not talk of trouble. It can be no trouble to me to 
 aid you in any manner. Ah, madame, you do not know how 
 much I would sacrifice to be useful to you !" 
 
 She must have been dull indeed had she failed to perceive 
 the earnestness of his tone. She did perceive it, and was vaguely 
 conscious that in this student of law she had a friend. 
 
 " I want to know when the diligence for Calais leaves Paris, 
 and from what office," she said. " I am going back to England." 
 
 She was surprised to see the young man's face blanch as she 
 announced this simple fact. The young man himself was sur- 
 prised by the sudden anguish inflicted by her announcement. 
 It was in this moment that he fii-st discovered how completely 
 he had given his heart into this strange woman's keeping. 
 
 "You are really going to leave Paris? — for ever?" he ex- 
 claimed. 
 
 " Yes. I have been here too long already. I have no busi- 
 ness here. I ought to have gone back to England that day 
 when I first met you here, but I put off the day of my return. 
 I can put it off no longer." 
 
 " And you are going back to your friends ? " Gustave asked, 
 in a very mournful tone. 
 
 " I am going back to my friends ? Yes ! " Her lipa quivered 
 a Uttle, and the unbidden tears came to her eyes. 
 
 Ah, what was the sorrow that oppressed this beauteous lonely 
 creature ? What agony of grief or self-reproach was this pain 
 which consumed her ? Gustave remembered her passion of tears 
 on the previous night ; her talk of friends that were dead, and 
 happiness lost ; and now to-day she talked of going home to her 
 friends : but the bitterness of expression with which she had 
 spoken that word " friends ! " 
 
 "Are you going alone, Madame Meynell?" he inquired, after 
 a pause. He could not tear himself from that seat by her side. 
 He could not be manly or rational where she was concerned. 
 The image of Madelon Frehlter rose before his mental vision, 
 reproachful, menacing ; but a thick fog intervened to obscure 
 that unwelcome image. His whole life resolved itself into those 
 thrilling moments in which he sat here, on this common garden 
 bench, by this stranger's side ; the entire universe was contracted 
 into this leafy walk where they two sat. 
 
 " Yes, I am going alone," madame repHed, with a little laugh. 
 " Who should I have to go with me ? I am quite alone in th^ 
 world. I think I had better make these inquiries myself, M. 
 Louoble. There is no reason why I should give you co saucb 
 trouble."
 
 2-i Ch a rl ditto's LJieritance. 
 
 ** There is no such thing as trouble. I will bring you al\ 
 necessary information to-day at dinner, if that mil be soon 
 enough." 
 
 ♦' Quite soon enough, I thank you, monsieur," she answered, 
 with a sigh. " I must ask you Hndly to ascertain for me also 
 the erpense of the journey." 
 
 " Most certainly, madame." 
 
 This request set him wondering whether she were poor, and 
 how poor. But she had evidently no more to say to him ; she 
 had again become impenetrable. He would fain have stayed, 
 though honour and conscience were clamorous in their demands 
 for his departure. Happily for honour and conscience, the lady 
 was silent as death, impervious as marble ; so M. Lenoble pre- 
 Bently bowed and departed. 
 
 He thought of her all day long. The farce of pity was ended. 
 He knew now that he loved this Englishwoman with an affec- 
 tion at once foolish and sinful, — foolish, since he knew not who 
 or what this woman was ; sinful, since the indulgence of this 
 passion involved the forfeiture of his plighted word, the dis- 
 appointment of those who loved him. 
 
 " No, no, no," he said to himself; " I cannot do this base and 
 wicked thing. I must marry Madelon. All the hopes of my 
 mother and father rest on that mamage ; and to disappoint 
 them because this stranger's face has bewitched me ? Ah, no, 
 it cannot be. And even if I were willing to trample my honovir 
 in the dust, how do I know that she would value or accept the 
 sacrifice?" 
 
 M. Lenoble made all necessary inquiries at the office of the 
 l^tessageries, and carried the intelUgence to Madame ]\Ieynell. 
 He could see that she winced a little when he told her the cost 
 of the journey, which in those days was heavy. 
 
 " She mnst certainly be poor," he said to himself; and it rent 
 his heart to think that even in tliis jjaltry matter he could be of 
 no use to her. The destined master of Beaubocage and Cotenoir 
 was entirely without ready money. He had his watch. He put 
 Ids hand ujjon that clumsy timekeeper as he talked to madame. 
 
 "/e te porter ai chez tna tante, mon rjars," he said to liimself. 
 But he doubted whether the high priests of the pious mountain 
 ■ — the Dordona of Pauperism — would advance much upon this 
 antique specimen of the watchmakei-'s art. 
 
 After this evening he looked forward daily, hourly, to the 
 anguish of her departure. She would vanish out of liis Ufe, 
 intangible as a melted snow-flake, and only memory would stay 
 behLnd to tell him he had known and loved her. Why should 
 this be so hard to bear ? If she stayed, he dared not tell her 
 she was dear to him ; he dared not stretch forth his hand to help 
 her. In all the world there was no creature more utterly apart
 
 Past Mope, and in Despair. 25 
 
 from him than she, whether she lived in the same house with 
 him or was distant as the Antipod-es. What did it matter, then, 
 fiince she was destined to disappear from his hfe, whether shd 
 vanished to-day or a year hence ? He argued with himself that 
 it could be a question of no moment to him. There was a death* 
 blow that must descend upon him, cruel, inevitable. Let it come 
 when it would. 
 
 Every day when he came home to dinner, M. Lenoble expected 
 to behold a vacant place by the side of his hostess ; every day 
 he was pleasantly disappointed. The pale hopeless face was still 
 to be seen, ghost-Kke, at that noisy board. The face was more 
 pale, more hojaeless, as it seemed to Gustave, every day he looked 
 ujion it. 
 
 He asked Madame Magnotte when the English lady was going 
 to leave, but she could not tell. 
 
 " She talks of leaving from day to day," said madame ; " if, 
 will no doubt be soon. I am sorry to lose her. She is very 
 gentle, and gives no trouble to any one. But she is sad — ah, 
 how sad she is ! She has suffered, monsieur." 
 
 Gustave agreed to this. Yes, she had suffered ; but what, and 
 how? 
 
 He watched her closely, but she was always the same. She 
 no longer spent her evenings in the salon, but in her own apart- 
 ment. He saw her only at dinner-time, and had no opportunity 
 of speaking to her. 
 
 At last the day came upon which he missed her at the usual 
 hour. He sat through the tedious meal without speaking ; eat- 
 ing a Uttle, drinking a little, mechanically, but with no conscious- 
 ness of what he ate or drank. There was a mist before his eyes, 
 a confusion of voices in his ears ; but the faculties of sight and 
 hearing seemed suspended. The agony he suffered during that 
 miserable hour was bitter as death. 
 
 " O, my God, how I love her ! " he said to himself, while 
 Raoul's bass roar brayed in liis ear on one side, and Leon's 
 shrill squeal tortured him on the other. 
 
 He made his way to Madame Magnotte directly after dinner. 
 
 " She is gone P" he exclaimed. 
 
 " But who, my friend ? Ah, yes ; it is of that poor Madame 
 Meyne'l you speak. How you are interested in her ! No, she 
 is not gone, poor woman. She remains always. She has the 
 ttir of a person who knows not her own mind. Yet I am sure 
 she thinks of going. To-day, for the first time, she has been 
 writing letters. Eeine came to tell me she had seen her occupied 
 in her own room for the first time. It is not her habit to occupy 
 herself." 
 
 Gustave's heart gave a great jump. She was not gone ; he 
 might see her again — if it were but a glimpse of her pale faca
 
 26 Uliarlofid's Inheritance. 
 
 looting out of the diligence as it drove out of the Conr de Mes* 
 sageries. One look, one glance ; it would be something to carry 
 in his heart all his hfe. All his life ! He looked forward and 
 shuddered. "What a dreary life it must needs be! Cotenoir, 
 Beaubocage, Madelon, the law; to plead, to read papers, to 
 study dryasdust books. He shrank appalled from the con- 
 templation of that dreary desert of existence — a life without 
 her. 
 
 She had been writing letters — doubtless letters to her friends 
 to annoixnce her return. Her departure must be very near at 
 hand. 
 
 Gustave refused to go out that evening. His fellow-students 
 were bent on a night's pleasure at a dancing-garden then in 
 vogue, where there would be tmnkhng lamps and meiTy music 
 nnder the May moon. The lamp-lit parten-es, the joyous 
 waltzes, had no attractions for Gustave Lenoble. He haunted 
 the dull salon, dim and dreary in the twihgtt; for Madame 
 Magnotte was chary of lamps and candles, and prolonged to its 
 utmost Limits the pensive interval between day and night. He 
 walked softly up and down the room, unheeded by the ladies 
 clustered in a group by one of the windows. Bestless and un- 
 happy, he could neither go nor stay. She was not coming down 
 to the salon this evening. He had clung to the faint hope that 
 she might appear ; but the faint hope died away in his breast as 
 the night deepened. What purpose could be served by his 
 remaining in that dismal room ? He was no nearer her than he 
 would have been in the remotest wilds of Central America. He 
 would go out — not to the odious dancing-garden, but to the cool 
 dark streets, where the uiglit ^vind might blow this fever from 
 his brain. 
 
 He left the room suddenly, and hurried downstairs. At the 
 bottom of the stau-case he almost stumbled against a woman, 
 who turned and looked at him in the hght of a Uttle oil-lamp 
 that hung over the door of the portress's lodge. 
 
 It was the Enghshwoman, deadly pale, and with a wild look 
 in her face that Gustave had never seen there before. She gave 
 him no sign of recognition, but passed out of the courtyard, 
 aud walked rapidly away. That unusual look in her face, the 
 strangeness of the fact that she should be leaving the house at 
 this hour, inspired him with a vague terror, and he followed her, 
 not stealthily, without a thought that he was doing any wrong 
 by such an act — rather, indeed, with the conviction that he had 
 a right so to foUow her. 
 
 She walked very quickly — at a more rapid pace than Gustave 
 would have supposed ijossible for so fragile a creature. She 
 chose the loneher streets, and Gustave had no difficulty in 
 {allowing her ; she never looked badi^ but went straight on her
 
 Past Hope, and in Vespaii'. 27 
 
 fiCUrsc, v.itliout pause or slackening of lier pace, £3 if with a 
 Bctllecl purpose. 
 
 •' Where can she be going? " GustaVe asked himself; and an 
 answer, vague, hideous, ten-ible, suggested itself to his mind. 
 The idea that occurred to him was one that would scarcely have 
 occun-ed to an EngUshman under the same circumstances, but 
 to a Frenchman it was a very famiUar idea. 
 
 It was dark now — the darkness that reigns between early 
 sunset and late moonrise. As the lonely woman went farther 
 along the dreary streets parallel with the quay, the dreadful 
 suspicion grew stronger in Giistave's mind. From that instant 
 he had but one thought ; in that moment he put away from 
 him for ever all sense of obKgation to Madelon Frehlter; he 
 shook off father, mother, sister, old associations, home ties, 
 ambition, fortune — he lived alone for this woman, and the pur- 
 pose of his life was to save her from despair and death. 
 
 They emerged upon the quay at last. The long stretch of 
 pavement was deserted. Ah, now she looked back — she looked 
 on every side with wild unseeing eyes — and now there could be 
 little doubt as to the jDurpose that brought her here. She 
 crossed the road, and went upon the bridge, Gustave following 
 close ; in the next minute she was standing on the stone bench, 
 a tremulous, fluttering figure, with arms stretched towards the 
 water ; in a breath she was clasjDed to Gustave's breast, clasped 
 by arms that meant to hold her for ever. 
 
 The shock- of that surj^rise utterly unnerved the wretched 
 creature. She shivered violently, and struggled to free herself 
 from those strong arms. 
 
 " Let me go ! " she cried in English. " Let me go ! " And 
 then, finding herself powerless, she turned and looked at her 
 captor. " M. Lenoble ! O, why do you persecute me ? Why 
 do you follow me ? " 
 
 " Because I want to save you." 
 
 " To save me ! To snatch me back when I was going to find 
 rest — an end for my weary Hfe ! O yes, I know that it is a 
 sinful end ; but my fife has been all sin." 
 
 " Tour life all sin ! Foohsh one, I will never believe 
 that." _ 
 
 " It is true," she cried, with passionate self-reproach. " The 
 BUI of selfishness, and pi-ide, and disobedience. There is no fate 
 too hard for me — but, 0, my fate is veiy hard ! Why did you 
 keep me from that river ? Yoii do not know how miserable my 
 life is— you do not know. I paid my last penny to Madame 
 Magnotte this morning. I have no money to take me back to 
 England, even if I dared go there — and I dare not. I have 
 
 E rayed for courage, for strength to go back, but my prayers 
 ave not been heard ; and there is nothing for me but to die.
 
 ^S Cfhariolte^s Inheritance. 
 
 What would be tlie sin of my throwiBg myself into that river r 
 I must die ; I shall die of starvation in the streets." 
 
 " No, no," cried Gustave passionately ; " do you think I have 
 dragged you back from death to give you to loneliness and 
 despair? My dear one, you are mine — mine by right of this 
 night. These arms that have kept you from death shall shelter 
 you, — ah, let them shelter you ! These hands shall work for 
 you. My love, my love ! you cannot tell how dear you are to 
 me. If there must be want or trouble for either of us, it shall 
 come to me first." 
 
 He had placed her on the stone bench, bewildered and tmre- 
 sisting, and had seated liimself by her side. The fragile figure, 
 shivering stiU, even in the mild atmosphere of the spring night, 
 waa sustained by his encircling arm. He felt that she was his, 
 irrevocably and entirely — given to him by the Providence which 
 would have seemed to have abandoned her, but for the love it 
 had imjDlanted for her in tliis one faithful heart. His tone had 
 all the pleading tenderness of a lover's, but it had something 
 more — an authority, a sense of possession. 
 
 " Providence sent me here to save you," he said, with that 
 gentle yet authoritative tone ; " I am your providence, am I 
 not, dearest ? Pate made me love you — fondly, hopelessly, as I 
 thought. Yesterday you seemed as far away from me as those 
 pale stars, shining up yonder — as incomprehensible as that 
 faint silvery mist above the rising moon — and to-night you are 
 my own." 
 
 He knew not what ties might be broken by this act. He had 
 indeed a vague consciousness that the step which he was now 
 taking would cause a lifelong breach between himself and his 
 father. But the time had gone by in which he could count the cost. 
 
 " Let me go back, M. Lenoble," the Englishwoman said 
 presently. The faintuess of ten-or was passing away, and she 
 spoke almost calmly. "Let me go back to the house. It is you 
 that have saved me from a dreadful sin. I promise you that I 
 will not again think of committing that deadly sin. I will wait 
 for the end to come. Let me go, my kind friend. Ah, no, no ; 
 do not detain me ! Forget that you have ever known me." 
 
 " That is not in my power. I will take you back to the 
 Pension Magnotte dii'ectly ; but you must fii'st promise to be 
 my wife." 
 
 " Your wife ! 0, no, no, no ! That is impossible." 
 
 " Because you do not love me," said Gustave, with mournful 
 gravity. 
 
 " Because I am not worthy of you." 
 
 HumiHation and self-rej^roach unspeakable were conveyed in 
 those few words. 
 
 " You are worth all the stars to m^ If I had them in my
 
 Past Hopf., and in tfesjAiir. 29 
 
 hands, those lamps shining up there, I would throw them away, 
 to hold you," said the student passionately. "You cannot 
 understand my love, perhaps. I seem a stranger to you, and 
 all I say sounds wild and foolish. My love, it is true as the 
 heaven above us — true as life or death — death that was so near 
 you jtist now. I have loved you ever since that bleak March 
 morning on which I saw you sitting under the leafless trees 
 yonder. You held me from that moment. I was subjugated — 
 possessed — yours at once and for ever. I would not confess 
 even to myself that my heart had resigned itself to you ; but I 
 know now that it was so from the first. Is there any hope that 
 you will ever pay me back one tithe of my love ? " 
 
 " You love me," the Englishwoman repeated slowly, as if the 
 words were almost beyond her comprehension, — " you love me, 
 a creature so lost, so friendless ! Ah, but you do not know my 
 wretched story ! " 
 
 " I do not ask to know it. I only ask one question — will you 
 be my wife ? " 
 
 " You must be mad to offer your name, your honour to me." 
 
 "Yes, I am mad — madly ia love. And I am waiting for 
 yoiir answer. You will be my wife ? My angel, you will say 
 yes ! It is not much that I offer you — a life of uncertainty, 
 perhaps even of povei-ty ; but a fond and constant heart, and a 
 head and hands that will work for you while God gives them 
 strength. It is better than the river." 
 
 All that was thoughtless and hopeful in his disposition waa 
 expressed in these words. The woman to whom he pleaded was 
 weakened by soitow, and the devotion of this brave true heart 
 brought her strength, comfort, almost hope. 
 
 "Will you be my friend?" she said gently. "Yotir words 
 seem to bring me back to hfe. I wanted to die because I was 
 so wretched, so lonely. I have friends in England — friends who 
 were once aU that is dear and kind ; but I dare not go to them. 
 I think a crael look from one of those friends would kill me 
 \vdth a pain more bitter than any other death could give. And 
 I have no right to hope for kind looks from them. Yours are 
 the only words of friendship I have heard for a long time." 
 
 " And you will give me the right to work for you — to protect 
 you P You will be my wife ? " 
 
 "I would rather be your servant," she answered, with sad 
 humility. "What right have I to accept so great a sacrifice? 
 "What folly can be so fooHsh as your love for me — if it is indeed 
 love, and not a wild fancy of to-night ! " 
 
 " It is a fancy that will last my life." 
 
 " Ah, you do not know how such fancies change." 
 
 " I know nothing except that mine is changeless. Come, my 
 love, it is growing late and cold. Let me take you home. THu 
 
 c
 
 so Oharlotte's tntieritanee, 
 
 j^jilress will wonder. You miist slip past lier quietly witli yon/ 
 veil down. Did you give old Margot your key when you cama 
 down stairs to-night ? " 
 
 " No, it is in my pocket. I was not thinking — I " 
 
 She stopped with a sudden shudder. Gustave understood 
 that shudder ; he also shuddered. She had left her room that 
 night possessed by the suicide's madness; she had left it to 
 come straight to death. Happily his strong arm had come 
 between her and that cruel grave by which they were still 
 lingering. 
 
 They walked slowly back to the Rue Grande-Mademoiselle 
 nnder the light of the newly-risen moon. The Englishwoman's 
 wasted hand rested for the first time on M. Lenoble's arm. She 
 was his — his by the intervention and by the decree of Providence! 
 That became a conviction in the young man's mind. He 
 covered her late return to the house with diplomatic art, 
 engaging the portress in conversation while the dark figure 
 ghded past in the dim lamphght. On the staircase he paused 
 to bid her good night. 
 
 "You will walk with me in the Luxembourg garden to-morrow 
 morning, dearest," he said. " I have so much to say — so much. 
 Until then, adieu ! " 
 
 He kissed her hand, and left her on the threshold of her 
 apartment, and then went to his own humble bachelor's chamber, 
 einging a little drinking song in his deep manly voice, happy 
 beyond all measure. 
 
 They walked together next day in the gardens of the Luxem- 
 bourg. The poor lonely creature whom Gustavo had rescued 
 seemed already to look up to him as a friend and protector, if 
 not in the character of a future husband. It was no longer 
 this fair stranger who held possession of Gustave ; it was 
 Gustave who had taken possession of her. The stronger nature 
 had subjugated the weaker. So friendless, so utterly destitute 
 — penniless, helpless, in a strange land, it is little matter for 
 wonder that Susan Meynell accepted the love that waa at once 
 a refuge and a shelter. 
 
 " Let me tell you my wretched story," she pleaded, as she 
 walked under the chestnut-trees by her lover's side. " Let me 
 teU you everything. And if, when you have heard what an 
 unhappy creature I am, you stiU wish to give me your heart, 
 your name, I will be obedient to your wish. I will not speak to 
 you of gratitude. If you could understand how debased an 
 outcast I seemed to myself last night when I went to the river, 
 you would know how I must feel your goodness. But you can 
 never understand — you can never know what you seem to me." 
 
 And then in a low voice, and with infinite sb"^"™*" "^lA hesitation, 
 Biie told him her story.
 
 Pa»i Itope, and in Despair. 81 
 
 *■' My father Avas a tradesman in tlie city of London," sho 
 b;i id. " We were very well off, and my home ought to have been 
 a happy one. Ah, how happy such a home would seem to mQ 
 now 1 But I was idle and frivolous and discontented in those 
 days, and was dissatisfied with our life in the city because it 
 seemed dull and monotonous to me. When I look back now 
 and remember how poor a return I gave for the love that waa 
 given to me — my mother's anxiety, my father's steady, unpretend- 
 ing kindness — I feel how well I have desei-ved the sorrows that 
 have come to me since then." 
 
 She paused here, but Gustave did not interrupt her. His 
 interest was too profound for any conventional expression. He 
 was listening to the story of his future wife's youth. That 
 there could be any passage in that history which would hinder 
 him from claiming this woman as his wife was a possibility he 
 did not for a moment contemplate. If there were shame 
 involved in the story, as Madame MeyneU's manner led him to 
 suppose there must be, so much the worse was it for him, since 
 the shame must be his, as she was his. 
 
 " When my father and mother died, I went into Yorkshire to 
 live with my married sister. I cannot find words to tell you 
 how kind they were to me — my sister and her husband. I had 
 a little money left me by my father, and I spent the greater 
 
 Eart of it on fine dress, and on foolish presents to my sister and 
 er children. I was happier in Yorkshire than I had been in 
 London ; for I saw more people, and my life seemed gayer and 
 brighter than in the city. One day I saw a gentleman, the 
 brother of a nobleman who lived in the neighbourhood of my 
 sister's house. We met by accident in a field on my brother-in- 
 law's farm, where the gentleman was shooting ; and after that 
 he came to the house. He had seen my sister before, and made 
 some excuse for renewing his acquaintance. He came very 
 often, and before long he asked me to marry him ; and I 
 promised to be his wife, with my sister's knowledge and consent. 
 She loved me so dearly, and was so proud of me out of her dear 
 love, that she saw nothing wonderful in this engagement, 
 especially as Mr. Kingdon, the gentleman I am speaking of, 
 was a younger son, and by no means a rich, man." 
 
 Again she stopped, and waited a Httle before continuing her 
 story. Only by a gentle pressure of the tremulous hand 
 resting on his arm did Gustave express his sympathy. 
 
 " I cannot teU you how happy T was in those days — so 
 bright, so brief. I cannot tell you how I loved Montague 
 Kingdon. When I look back to that time of my life, it seems 
 Uke a picture standing out against a background of darkness, 
 with some strange vivid light shining uptn it. It was arranged 
 betweea Montague tfld my sister that we should be married
 
 82 Churlotte's luIienlancS. 
 
 as soon as liis broiter, Lord Durusville, had paid his deLtS. 
 Tlie payment of the debts was an old promise of Lord 
 Dumsville's, and an imprudent marriage on his brother's part 
 might have prevented the performance of it. This is what 
 Montague told my sister Charlotte. She begged him to confide 
 in her husband, my kind brother-in-law, but this he refused to 
 do. There came a day very soon after this when James HaUiday, 
 my brother-in-law, was told about Montague Kingdon's visits 
 to the farm. He came home and found Mr. Eangdon with us; 
 and then there was a dreadful scene between them. James forbade 
 Mr. Elingdon ever again to set foot in his house. He scolded 
 my sister, he warned me. It was all no use. I loved Montague 
 Kingdon as you say you love me — foolishly, recklessly. I could 
 not disbelieve or doubt him. When he told me of his plans for 
 our marriage, which was to be kept secret until Lord Durnsville 
 had paid his debts, I consented to leave Newhall with him to be 
 mai-ried in London. If he had asked me for my Ufe, I must have 
 given it to him. And how shoiild I disbeHeve his promises when 
 I had lived only amongst peoj^le who were truth itself ? He knew 
 that I had friends in London, and it was arranged between us 
 that I was to be married from the house of one of them, who 
 had been my girlish companion, and who was now well mari'ied. 
 I was to write, telling her of my intended journey to town ; and 
 on the following night I was to leave !Newhall secretly with 
 Montague Kingdon. I was to make my peace with my sister 
 and her husband after my marriage. How shall I tell you the 
 rest? From the first to last he deceived me. The carriage that 
 was, as I believed, to have taken us to London, carried us to Hull. 
 From Hull we crossed to Hamburg. From that time my story- 
 is all shame and misery. I think my heart broke in the hour in 
 which I discovered that I had been cheated. I loved him, and 
 clung to liim long after I knew him to be selfish and false and 
 cruel. It seemed to be a pai-t of my nature to love him. My 
 life was not the kind of life one reads of in novels. It was no 
 existence of splendour and luxury and riot, but one long struggle 
 with debt and difficulty. We Uved abroad — not for our pleasure, 
 but because Mr. Kingdon could not venture to appear in England. 
 His brother, Lord Durnsville, had never promised to pay his 
 debts. That was a falsehood invented to deceive my sister. 
 For seven long weary years I was his slave, a true and faithful 
 slave ; his nurse in iUness, his patient drudge at all times. We 
 had been wandering about France for two years, when he 
 brought me to Pai-is ; and it was here he first began to neglect 
 me. 0, if you could know the dreary days and nights I have 
 spent at the hotel on the other side of the river, where we lived, 
 you would psiy me." 
 " My dear love, my heart is all pity for you," said Gustave.
 
 Past llope^ and in Despair. 33 
 
 " Do not tell me any more. I can gness the end of the story. 
 There came a day in which neglect gave place to desertion." 
 
 •' Yes ; Mr. Kingdon left me one day without a warning word 
 to break the blow. I had been waiting and watching for him 
 through two weary days and nights, when there came a letter 
 to tell me he was on his way to Vienna with a West Indian 
 gentleman and his daughter. He was to be married to the 
 daughter. It was his poverty, he told me, which compelled 
 this step. He advised me to go back to my friends in York- 
 shire. To go back ! — as if he did not know that death would 
 be easier to me. There was a small sum of money in the letter, 
 on which I have hved since that time. "When you first met me 
 here, I had not long received that letter." 
 
 This was the end of her story. In the depth of her 
 humihation she dared not hft her eyes to the face of her 
 companion ; but she felt his hand clasp hers, and knew that he 
 was still her friend. This was all she asked of Providence. 
 
 To Gustavo Lenoble the story had been unutterably painful. 
 He had hoped to hear a tragedy untarnished by shame, and the 
 Bhame was very bitter to him. This woman whom he loved so 
 fondly was no spotless martyr, the victim of inevitable fate, 
 beautiful and sublime in her affliction. She was only a weak 
 vain, village beauty who had suffered herself to be lured away 
 from her peaceful home by the falsehoods of a commonplace 
 scoundrel. 
 
 The story was common, the shame was common, but it 
 seemed to M. Lenoble that the woman by his side was his 
 destiny; and then, prompt to the rescue of offended pride, of 
 outraged love — tortured to think that she, so distant and pure 
 a creature to him, should have been trampled in the dust by 
 another — came the white- winged angel Pity. By her weakness, 
 by her humiliation, by the memory of her suffering, Pity con- 
 jured him to love her so much the more dearly. 
 
 ''My darling," he said softly, "it is a very sad story, and 
 you and I will never speak of it again. We wUl bury the 
 memory of Montague Kingdon in the deepest grave that was 
 ever dug for bitter remembrances ; and we will begin a new life 
 together.*' 
 
 This was the end of M. Lenoble's wooing. He could not 
 speak of his love any more while the sound of Montague 
 Kingdon's name had but lately died away on Susan Meynell's 
 lips. He had taken her to himself, with aU her sorrows and 
 sins, in the hour in which he snatched her from death ; and 
 between these two there was no need of passionate protestations 
 or sentimental rapture. 
 
 M. Lenoble speedily discovered that the law had made no 
 provision for the necessities of a chivalrous young student
 
 84 Charlotte^s Inheritance. 
 
 eager to unite himself withi a friendless foreign woman, who 
 could not produce so mucli as one of the thirty witnesses 
 required to establish her identity. A very httle consideration 
 showed Gustave that a marriage between him and Susan 
 Meynell in France was an impossibility. He explained this, 
 and asked her if she would trust him as she had trusted 
 Montague Kingdon. In Jersey the marriage might easily be 
 solemnised. Would she go with him to Jersey, to stay there so 
 long as the Enghsh law required for the solemnization of their 
 nnion P 
 
 " Why should you take so much trouble about me P " said 
 Susan, m her low sad voice. " You are too good, too generous. 
 I am not worth so much care and thought from you." 
 
 " Does that mean that you will not trust me, Susanne P " 
 
 " I would trust you with my life in a desert, thousands of 
 miles from the rest of mankind — with a happier hfe 'than 
 mine. I have no feeling in my heart bat love for you, and faith 
 in you." 
 
 After this the rest was easy. The lovers left the Pension 
 ]\lagnotte one bright summer morning, and journeyed to Jersey, 
 where, after a fortnight's sbjoui'n, the English Protestant church 
 united them in the bonds of matrimony. 
 
 Susan was a Protestant, Gustave a Catholic, but the differ- 
 ence of religion divided them no more than the difference of 
 country. They came back to Paris directly after the marriage, 
 and M. Lenoble took a very modest lodging for himself and 
 his wife in a narrow street near the Pantheon — a fourth 
 story, very humbly furnished. M. Lenoble had provided for 
 himself an opportunity of testing the truth of that adage 
 which declares that a purse large enough for one is also large 
 enough for two. 
 
 CHAPTEE ly. 
 
 A DECREE OF BANISHMENT. 
 
 After those stormy emotions which accompany the doing of a 
 desperate deed, there comes in the mitids of men a dead calm. 
 The still small voice of Wisdom, unheard while Passion's 
 tempest was raging, whispers grave counsel or mild reproof;, and 
 Folly, who, seen athwart the stoi-m-cloud, subKme in the glare of 
 the lightning, seemed inspiration, veils her face in the clear, com- 
 mon Hght of day. 
 
 Let it not for a moment be supposed that with M. Lenoble 
 time and reflection brought repentance in their train. It was 
 not so. The love which he felt for his Enghsh wife was no
 
 A Decree of Banishment. 85 
 
 eapricions emotion ; it was a passion deep and strong as destiny 
 The worst that afterthought could reveal to him was the fact 
 that the step he had taken was a very desperate one. Before 
 him lay an awful necessity — the necessity of going to Beaubo- 
 cage to tell those who loved him how their air-built castles had 
 been shattered by this deed of his. 
 
 The letters from CydaHse — nay, indeed, more than one letter 
 from his mother, with whom letter- writing was an exceptional 
 business — had of late expressed much anxiety. In less than a 
 month the marriage-contract would be made ready for his 
 signature. Every hour's delay was a new dishonour. He told 
 his wife that he must go home for a few days ; and she prepared 
 his travelling gear, with a sweet dutiful care that seemed to 
 him like the ministration of an angel. 
 
 " My darling girl, can I ever repay you for the hapj^iness you 
 have brought me ! " he exclaimed, as he watched the slight girlish 
 figure flitting about the room, busy v/ith the preparations for 
 his journey. 
 
 And then he thought of Madelon Frehlter — commonplace, 
 stiff, and unimpressionable — the most conventional of school- 
 girls, heavy in face, in figure, in step, in mind even, as it had 
 seemed to him, despite his sister's praises. 
 
 He had been too generous to tell Susan of his engagement, of 
 the briUiant prospects he forfeited by his marriage, or the risk 
 which he ran of offending his father by that rash step. But 
 to-night, when he thought of Madelon's dulness and common- 
 ness, it seemed to him as if Susan had in manner rescued him 
 from a dreadful fate — as maidens were rescued from sea-monsters 
 in the days of Perseus and Heracles. 
 
 " Madelon is not unlike a whale," he thought. " They teU 
 us that whales are of a sagacious and amiable temper, — and 
 Cydalise was always talking of Madelon's good sense and 
 amiablity. I am sure it is quite as easy to believe in the 
 unparalleled virtues of the whale as in the unparalleled virtues 
 of Madelon Frehlter." 
 
 His valise was packed, and he departed for Beaubocage, after 
 a sad and tender parting from his wife. The journey was a 
 long one in those days, when no express train had yet thundered 
 across the winding Seine, cleaving its iron way through the 
 bosom of fertile Norman valleys. M. Lenoble had ample time 
 for reflection as he jogged along in the ponderous dUigence ; and 
 his heart grew more and more heavy as the lumbering vehicle 
 approached nearer to the town of Vevinord, whence he was 
 to make his way to the paternal mansion as best he might. 
 
 He walked to Beaubocage, attended by a peasant lad, who 
 carried his portmanteau. The country was very pleasant in 
 the Quiet snmmer evening, but conscious guilt oppressed the
 
 36 Cliarlolte's Inheritance, 
 
 heart and perplexity disturbed the mind of M. Gustave Lenohle^ 
 and his spirits were in nowise elevated by the walk. 
 
 Lights in the lower chambers gleamed dimly athwart the trim 
 garden at Beaubocage. One faint twinkling candle shone in a 
 little pepper-castor turret, his sister's room. The thought of 
 their glad welcome smote his heart. How could he shape the 
 words that must inform them of their disappointment? And 
 then he thought of the gentle pensive wife in the Parisiitn 
 lodging, so grateful for his devotion, so tender and submissive, 
 — ^the wife he had rescued from death and eternal condemnation, 
 as it seemed to his pious CathoUc mind. The thought of this 
 dear one gave him courage. 
 
 *' I owe much to my parents," he thought to himself, " but 
 not the privilege to sell me for money. The marriage they want 
 to bring about would be a sordid barter of my heart and my 
 honour." 
 
 In a few minutes after this he was otanding in the little 
 salon at Beaubocage, vrith his mother and sister hanging about 
 him and carressing him, his father standing near, less demon- 
 strative, but evidently well j)leased by this unexpected arrival 
 of the son and heir. 
 
 " I heard thy voice in the hall," cried Cydalise, " and flew 
 down from my room to welcome thee. It seems to me that one 
 can fly on these occasions. And how thou art looking well, 
 and how thou art handsome, and how I adore thee !" cries the 
 damsel, more ecstatic than an English sister on a like occasion. 
 " Dost thou know that we began to alarm ourselves about thee? 
 Thy letters became so infrequent, so cold. And all the while 
 thou didst plot this surprise for us. Ah, how it is sweet to see 
 thee again ! " 
 
 And then the mother took up the strain, and anon was 
 spoken the dreaded name of Madelon. She too would be glad 
 — she too had been anxious. The prodigal made no answer- 
 He could not speak, his heart sank within him, he grew cold 
 and pale ; to inflict pain on those who loved him was a sharper 
 pain than death. 
 
 " Gustave!" cried the mother, in sudden alarm, "thou growest 
 pale — thou art iU ! Look then, Francois, thy son is ill !" 
 
 " No, mother, I am not ill," the young man rephed gravely. 
 He kissed his mother, and put her gently away from him. In 
 all the years of her after-hfe she remembered that kiss, cold as 
 death, for it was the farewell kiss of her son. 
 
 " I wish to speak a few words with you alone, father," said 
 Gustave. 
 
 The father was surprised, but in no manner alarmed by this 
 request. He led the way to his den, a small aud dingy chamber, 
 where there were seme dusty editions of the French classics,
 
 ui Uecree of Banishment. 37 
 
 and -where the master of Beaubocage kept accounts and gardeu- 
 eeeds and horse-medicines. 
 
 When they were gone, the mother and sister sat by one of the 
 open windows, waiting for them. "Without all was still. Distant 
 lights gUmmered through the summer twihght, the Ughted 
 windows of Cotenoir. 
 
 " How pleased Madelon will be," said Cydalise, looking towards 
 those glimmering windows. She had really taught herself to 
 beheve that the demoiselle Frehlter was a most estimable 
 young person; but she would have been glad to find more 
 enthusiasm, more brightness and vivacity, in her future sister- 
 in-law. 
 
 The interview between the father and son seemed long to 
 Madame Lenoble and Cydalise. The two women were curioua 
 — nay, indeed, somewhat anxious. 
 
 " I fear he has made debts," said the mother, " and is telhng 
 thy father of his follies. I know not how they are to be paid, 
 unless with the dowry of Madelon, and that would seem a dis- 
 honourable use of her money." 
 
 It was half an hour before any sound broke the stillness of 
 that quiet house. Twihght had thickened into night, when 
 there came a banging of doors and heavy footsteps in the hall. 
 The door of the salon was opened, and M. Lenoble came in 
 alone. At the same moment the outer door closed heavily. 
 
 M. Lenoble went straight to the open window and closed 
 the Venetian shutters. He went from thence to the second 
 window, the shutters whereof he fastened carefully, while the 
 women stared at him wonderingly, for it was not his habit to 
 perform this office. 
 
 " I am shutting out a vagabond," he said, in a cold, cruel 
 voice. 
 
 " Where is Gustave P " cried the mother, alarmed. 
 
 " He is gone." 
 
 "But he is coming back, is he not, directly?" 
 
 " Never while I live!" answered M. Lenoble. "He has married 
 on English adventuress, and is no longer any son of mine."
 
 38 Charlotte's Lilieritance- 
 
 DOWNHILL. 
 
 CHAPTER L 
 
 IHE FATE OP SUSAN LENOBLE. 
 
 Seven years after that miserable summer night at Beaubocaga 
 on which Gustave Lenoble was disowned by his father, a man 
 and woman, with a boy five years of age, were starving in a 
 gan-et amongst the housetops and chimneys of Rouen. In the 
 busy city these people hved lonely as in a forest, and were as 
 securely hidden from the eyes of all who had ever known them. 
 The man — haggard, dying — cherished a pride that had grown 
 fiercer as the grip of poverty tightened upon him. The woman 
 lived only for her husband and her child. 
 
 The man was Gustave Lenoble. The world had gone ill with 
 him since he cast his destiny into the lap of the woman he loved. 
 In all these years no oHve-bearing dove had spanned the gulf 
 that yawned between the prodigal and his father. The seigneur 
 of Beaubocage had been marble. A narrow-minded old man, 
 living his narrow Hfe, and nursing one idea with fanatical 
 devotion, was of all men the least likely to forgive. Vain had 
 been the tears and entreaties of mother and sister. The doors 
 of that joyless dwelling on the fertile flats beyond Vevinord 
 were sealed against the ofiender with a seal not to be broken, 
 even had he come thither to plead for pardon, which he did 
 not. 
 
 " My father would have sold me as negi'o slaves are sold la- 
 has" he said, on those rare occasions when he opened his old 
 wounds, which were to the last unhealed : " I am glad that I 
 escaped the contemptible barter." 
 
 He was in very truth glad. Poverty and hardship seemed to 
 him easier to bear than the dreary prosperity of Cotenoir and a 
 wife he could not have loved. The distinguishing qualities of 
 this man's mind were courage and constancy. There are such 
 noble souls born into the world, some to shine vnth. lustre super- 
 nal, many to bum and die in social depths, obscure as ocean's 
 deepest cavern. 
 
 In his love for the woman he had chosen Gustave Lenoble 
 never wavered. He worked for her, he endured for her, he 
 Jioped against hope for her sake ; and it was only when bodily 
 strength failed that this nameless foot-soldier began to droop 
 and falter in life's bitter battle. Things had gone ill with hini.
 
 The Fate of Susan Lenohle. 39 
 
 He had tried Lis fate as an advocate in Paris, in Caen, in 
 Bouen — but clients would not come. He had been a clerk, 
 now in one counting-house, now in another, and Susan and he 
 had existed somehow duriug the seven years of their mamed 
 life. 
 
 They clung to each other with affection that seemed to grow 
 with every new sorrow ; nor did love exhibit any inclination to 
 spread his wings and take flight from the window, though 
 poverty came in every day at the door, and sat by the hearth, 
 a familiar companion and inevitable guest. 
 
 The mother and sister contrived to help this poor castaway 
 with the veriest scrapings of a miserly household. The old 
 man, soured by his great disappointment, grew sordid and 
 covetous with increasing years, and the hves of the women were 
 hard and hopeless. By httle cheats, and petty contrivances, 
 and pitiful falsifications of financial statements, they managed 
 to scrape together a few lotiis now and then for the struggling 
 exile ; and to do this was the sole dehght of their patient lives. 
 They contrived also to correspond secretly with Gustave, and 
 were infonned of the birth of his son. 
 
 " Ah, if thou couldst see how beautiful he is," wrote the 
 father, " this child of pure and time love, thou wouldst no 
 longer regret my breach of faith with Madelon Frehlter. 
 I knew not until now how hke infant children are to 
 angels. I knew not how true to nature are the angels in 
 the pictures of RaffaeUe and MuriUo. Thou knowest the 
 print of Murillo's Assumption ; the picture is in the Louvre. 
 If thou canst remember that picture, dear mother, thou hast 
 but to recall the face of one of the cherubim about the feet of 
 our Lady, and thou hast the portrait of my boy. He opens hig 
 eyes, and looks at me a^ I write. Ah ! that he and I and my 
 Susanne were with thee in the httle salon at Beaubocage — my 
 sister, Susanne, you, and I ujiited round this darling's cradle. 
 He has been bom in poverty, but his birth has made tis very 
 happy." 
 
 The sentiment of this letter was no spurious or transient 
 feeling. For this child Gustave Lenoble evinced an unchanging 
 fondness. It was indeed no part of his nature to change. The 
 httle one was his comfort in affliction, his joy during every 
 brief interval of prosperity. When the battle was weU nigh 
 fought, and he began to feel himself beaten, Ms chief anxieties, 
 his ever-returning fears, were for his wife and child. 
 
 To Susan the thought of parting from bim was a despair too 
 deep for tears. She would have been something less than 
 woman if she had not loved her husband with more than 
 common affection. She watched the change that dlness brought 
 ig. the frank face, the stalwart fignre; and httle by little th?
 
 40 Cliarlotte' 8 Inheritance. 
 
 awful tratli came home to her. The hour was at hand in which 
 Bhe must lose him. 
 
 *' If you could have rest, Gustave, Ijetter medical advice, more 
 /lomforts, you would soon be strong again, I am sure your 
 father would not refuse to forgive you now. Write to him, 
 dearest. Go back to Beaubocage, and let your mother and 
 sister nurse you. I will stay here with the httle one. It shall 
 be forgotten that you have a wife and chUd." 
 
 " No, dear one ; I will not desert you, even for a day, to buy 
 back my father's love. I would rather be here with you than 
 in the jsleasantest home without you. But we must face the 
 future, Susanne ; we must be brave and wise, for the little one's 
 Bake. You are not so strong that you can afford to trust blindly 
 in your power to protect him by-and-by. I have written a letter 
 to my father. He has proved himself a hard man to me, cruel 
 and obdurate beyond all my fears ; but I know he is not alto- 
 gether heartless. When I am dead, you will take the letter in 
 one hand, the child in the other, and go to Beaubocage. I 
 believe he will adopt the boy, and that the httle one will give 
 him the comfort and happiness he hoj)ed from me. He must be 
 very lonely ; and I cannot doubt that his heart wiU melt when 
 he sees the child's face, and hears that he has no longer a son 
 As for yourself, my poor girl, I see for you no hope except in 
 the old Yorkshire home, and the friejids you fear to see again." 
 
 " I no longer fear them," said his ^vife, with unwonted energy. 
 " I could not go to them seven years ago ; but I can go to them 
 as your wife." 
 
 " Ah, thank God, the poor name is worth something for you." 
 
 " Yes, dear ; and I will go back to them — to-morrow." 
 
 "To-morrow!" 
 
 " To-morrow, Gustave. I have been selfish and cruel to delay 
 so long. The old dread of seeing my sister's reproachful face 
 has been strong enough to hold me back, when a little courage 
 might have enabled me to help you. The burden has been all 
 on you, and I have done nothing. O, what a wretch I miist 
 have been to sit idly by and see you suffer, and make no effort 
 to help you!" 
 
 " But, my darling, you have not been idle. You have been 
 the dearest and most industrious of wives, and have helped me 
 to bear my burden. You have done more, dear — ^you have made 
 my burden pleasant to me." 
 
 " I will try to hghten it, Gustave," cried Susan, with excite- 
 ment. " 0, why, why did I never try before ! My sister and 
 her husband are well off — rich perhaps. If they are still hving, 
 if no cruel changes have come to pass at Newhall, they could 
 help us with a little money. They might even give VM a home, 
 \ will start for England to-moiTow."
 
 The Pate of Susan Lenoble. 41 
 
 '* Kay, my dear, you are not strong enough to travel so far 
 clone. It seems, indeed, a happy thought this^ of your rich 
 relations ; but you must not undertake such a journey. You 
 might wi'ite." 
 
 " No, Gustavo, I will tnist to no letter ; I will go. It will be 
 no pain for me to humble myself for your sake. I will go 
 straight to my sister. I know what a tender compassionate 
 heart it is that I shall appeal to." 
 
 There was much discussion ; but Susan was resolute. To 
 scrape together the money for the journey she made efforts that 
 were heroic in a nature so weak as hers. She went to the 
 Monte de Piete with the last of her little treasures, that one 
 dear trinket to which she had clung even when hunger was at 
 the door — the gimmal or alliance ring that Gustave had placed 
 upon her finger before God's altar — the double symbolic circlet 
 which bore on one side her name, on the other her husband's. 
 This dearest of all her possessions she surrendered for a few 
 francs, to make up the sum needful for her journey. 
 
 What it cost her to do tliis, what it cost her to tear herself 
 away from her sick husband and her only cliild, who shall say P 
 There are pangs that cannot be counted, agonies that will come 
 within no calculation — the infinite of pain. She went. Two 
 kind souls, a labourer and his wife, lodgers in the same garret- 
 Btory, promised to care for and help the invahd and cliild. There 
 is no desolation in which a child will not fiiad a friend. 
 
 The journey was long and fatiguing ; the anguish of her poor 
 aching heart almost too much for endurance — a heart so heavy 
 that even hope could scarce flutter it. It was dull damp weather, 
 though in the middle of summer. The solitary traveller caught 
 cold on the journey, and arrived in London in a high fever. Ill, 
 faint, and helpless, the gi-eat city seemed to her unspeakably 
 dismal — most stony of all stony-hearted mothers to this wretched 
 orphan. She could go no farther than the darksome city inn 
 where the coach from Southampton brought her. She had come 
 via Havre. Here she sank prostrate, and had barely suiEcient 
 strength to write an incoherent letter to her sister, Mrs. Halliday, 
 of Newhall Farm, near Huxter's Cross, Yorkshire. 
 
 The sister came as fast as the fastest coach on the great 
 northern road could cany her. There was infinite joy in that 
 honest sisterly heart over this one sinner's repentance. Fourteen 
 years had gone by since the young city-bred beauty had fled 
 with that falsest of men, and most hardened of profligates, 
 Montague Kingdon ; and tidings from Susan were unlooked for 
 and thrilling as a message from the grave. 
 
 Alas for the adverse fate of Susan Meynell ! The false step 
 of hei youth had set her for ever wi-ong upon life's highway. 
 When kind Mrs. Halliday came, Gustave Lenoble's wife waa
 
 42 Charlotte's InTieritanee. 
 
 past her help ; wandering in her mind ; a girl again, but newiy 
 run away from her peaceful home ; and with no thought save of 
 romorse for her misdeeds. 
 
 The seven years of her married life seemed to have faded out 
 of her mind. She raved of Montague Kingdon's baseness, of her 
 own folly, her vain regret, her yearning for pardon ; but of the 
 dying husband in the garret at Rouen she uttered no word. 
 And so, with her weary head upon her sister's breast, she passed 
 away, her story untold, no wedding-ring on her wasted finger to 
 bear -witness that she died an honest man's wife ; no letters ol 
 papers in her poor httle trunk to throw light on the fourteen 
 years in which she had been a castaway. 
 
 Mrs. HalKday stayed in London to see the wanderer laid in 
 the quiet city churchyard where her family rested, and where for 
 her was chosen an obscure comer in which she might repose 
 forgotten and unknown. 
 
 But not quite nameless. Mrs. Halliday could not leave the 
 grave unmarked by any record of the sister she had loved. The 
 stone above the grave of Gustave's wife bore her maiden name, 
 and the comfortiug familiar text about the one sinner who 
 repenteth. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 rOEGIVEN TOO LATE. 
 
 Fob, a week of long days and longer nights there was no step 
 sounded on the stair, no opening or shutting of a door in the old 
 dilapidated house where he lay languishing on the brink of an 
 open gi-ave, that did not move Gustave Lenoble with a suddei. 
 emotion of hope. But the footsteps came and went, the doora 
 were opened and shut again and again, and the traveller so 
 waited, so hoped for did not return. 
 
 The boy — the brave bright son, who seemed to inherit all that 
 was noblest and best in his father's nature — pined for his 
 mother. The man endured a martyrdom worse than the agony 
 of Damiens, the slow tortures of La Barre. What had befalleK 
 her ? That she could desert him or his child was a possibility 
 that never shaped itself in his mind. TJiat drop of poioon was 
 happily wanting in his cup ; and the bitterness of death waa 
 sweet compared to the scorpion-sting of such a supposition. 
 
 She did not return. Calamity in some shape had overtaken 
 her — calamity dire as death ; for, with life and reason, she could 
 not have failed to send some token, some tidings, to those she 
 loved. The sick man waited a week after the day on which he 
 had begun to expect her return. At the end of that tim<» he 
 rose, with death in his face, and went out to look for her — to 
 look for her in Rouen ; for her whom the instinct of hia heart
 
 ±'orfjiven Too Laie. 43 
 
 toid him was far away from that city— ag far as death from life. 
 He went to the Cour de Mesaageries, and loitered and waited 
 amidst the bustle of arriving and departing diligences, with a 
 half-imbecile hope that she would alight from one of them. 
 The travellers came and went, pushing and hustHng him in 
 their selfish haste. "When night came he went back to his 
 garret. All was quiet. The boy slept with the children of his 
 good neighbour, and was comforted by the warmth of that 
 strange hearth. 
 
 Gustave Ut his candle, a last remaining morsel. 
 
 " You will last my time, friend," he said, with a wan smile. 
 
 He seated himself at the little table, pushed aside the medi- 
 cine-bottles, searched for a stray sheet of letter-paper, and then 
 began to write. 
 
 He wrote to his mother, telling her that death was at hand, 
 and that the time had come in which she must succour her son's 
 orphan child. With this he enclosed a letter to his father— that 
 letter of which he had spoken to his wife, and which had been 
 written in the early days of his illness. Tliis packet he directed 
 to Madame Lenoble, at Beaubocage. There w3s no longer need 
 for secrecy. 
 
 " Wh.en those letters are delivered I shall be past blame, and 
 past forgiveness," he thought. 
 
 In the morning he was dead. 
 
 The neighbours posted the letter. The neighbours comforted 
 and protected the child for two days ; and then there came a 
 lady, very sad, very quiet, who wept bitterly in the stillness of 
 that attic chamber where Gustave Lenoble lay ; and who after- 
 wards, with a gentle calmness of manner that was very sweet to 
 see, made all necessary arrangements for a humble, but not a 
 mean or ignominious, funeral. 
 
 " He was my brother," she said to the good friends of the 
 neighbouring garret. " We did our best to help him, my mother 
 and I ; but we httle thought how bitterly he wanted help. The 
 brave heart would not suffer us to know that." 
 
 And then she thanked them with much tenderness for their 
 charity to the dead man ; and with these good people she went 
 on foot through the narrow streets of the city to see her brother 
 laid in his grave. 
 
 Until this was done the mournful lady, who was not yet 
 thirty years of age, and of a placid nun-like beauty, abandoned 
 herself to no transport of love for her orphan nephew ; but 
 when that last office of affection had been performed, she took 
 the little one on her knees, and folded him to her breast, and 
 gave him her heart, as she had given it long ago to his father ; 
 for this gentle unselfish creature was one who must needs have 
 some shnne at which to offer her daily sacrifice of self. Already
 
 44 Ohariottes tnheritd 
 
 she was beginning to think how the orphan was to be cared fol 
 and the widow also, for whose return she looked daily. 
 
 For the return of Susan Lenoble CydaUse waited at Rouen 
 several days after the funeral. She had, happily, an old school- 
 fellow comfortably established in the city ; and in the house of 
 this old friend she found a home. No one but her mother and 
 this friend, whom she could trust, knew of the business that 
 had brought her from Beaiibocage. In seven years the father 
 had never uttered his only son's name ; in all the seven years 
 that name had never been spoken in his hearing. 
 
 When three weeks had gone by since the departure of Snsau 
 for England, all hope of her return was abandoned by Made- 
 moiselle Lenoble and the neighbours who had known the absent 
 woman. 
 
 " She had the stamp of death on her face when she went 
 away," said the labourer's wife, " as surely as it was on him 
 that she left. I told her she had no strength for the journey ; 
 but she would go : there was no moving her from that. She 
 had rich friends la-has, who might help her husband. It waa 
 for that she went. That thought seemed to give her a kind of 
 fever, and the strength of fever." 
 
 " And there has come no letter — nothing P " 
 
 " Nothing, mademoiselle." 
 
 On this Cydalise determined to return to Beaubocage. Site 
 conld not well leave the child longer on the hands of these 
 friendly peoiDle, even by paying for his maintenance, which she 
 insisted on doing, though they would fain have shared their 
 humble pot-a-feu and coarse loaf with him unrecompensed. She 
 determined on a desperate step. She would take her brother's 
 ori^han child back with her, and leave the rest to Providence — 
 to the chance of some sudden awakening of natural affection in 
 a heart that had long languished in a kind of torpor that waa 
 almost death. 
 
 The little fellow pined sadly for those dear familiar faces, those 
 tender soothing voices, that had vanished so suddenly from his 
 life. But the voice of his aunt was veiy sweet and tender, and 
 had a tone that recalled the father who was gone. With this 
 kind aunt he left Rouen in the lumbering old vehicle that plied 
 daily betwixt that city and Vevinord. 
 
 " Thou canst call me Cydalise for a while, my little one," she 
 said to him ; for she did not wish the child to proclaim the rela- 
 tionship between them yet awhile. 
 
 Ah, what bitter tears the two women shed over the soft fair 
 curls of that httle head, when they had the boy all to themselves 
 in the tun-et chamber at Beaubocage, on whose white walls the 
 eyes of Cydalise had opened almost every morning of her pure 
 ftvoiitless life I
 
 Forgiven Too Late. 45 
 
 "Why dost thou cry so, madame?" the child asked of hia 
 grandmother, as she held him in her arms, kissing and weeping 
 over him; "and what have they done with my father — and 
 mamma too ? She went away one day, but she told me that she 
 would come back, so quickly, ah, so quickly ! and the days passed, 
 and they shut papa in his room, and would not let me go to him ; 
 and mamma did not come, though I asked the Blessed Yirgin to 
 Bend her back to me." 
 
 " Dear child, thy father and mother are in a brighter place 
 than this hard world, where they had so much sorrow," Madame 
 Lenoble answered, gently. 
 
 "Yes, they were often soiTy," murmured the boy thought- 
 fully. " It was because of money ; but then, when there was no 
 moufty, mamma cried and kissed me, and kissed papa, and the 
 good papa kissed us both, and somehow it always ended in 
 happiness." 
 
 Francois Lenoble was, happily, absent on this day of tribula- 
 tion. The women took their fill of sorrow, but it was sorrow 
 mingled with a strange bitter sweetness that was almost joy. 
 The seigneur of Beaubocage had gone to dine, as he still often 
 did, with his old friend Baron Frehlter ; for the breach of faith 
 which had caused a Ufelong disunion of father and son had not 
 divided the two proprietors. Nay, indeed the Baron had been 
 generous enough to plead the cause of the castaway. 
 
 " A man cannot dispose at will of his affections, my friend," 
 he urged; " and it was more generous in your son to break faith 
 with my daughter before marriage than after." 
 
 Mademoiselle Frehlter had not broken her heart on account of 
 her lover's falsehood. She had been sufficiently indignant on 
 the occasion, and had been more impatient of her mother's pet 
 priest and pet poodle during the brief period in which she wore 
 the willow. She had recovered her good humour, however, on 
 being wooed by a young subaltern in a cavalry regiment stationed 
 at Vevinord, the offshoot of a grander house than that of Le- 
 noble, and whose good looks and good hneage had ultimately 
 prevailed with the Baron. That gentleman had by no means 
 too good an opinion of the son-in-law thus forced upon him ; but 
 peace was the highest good (with unlimited tobacco) to whick, 
 his Germanic soul aspired; and for the sake of peace in the 
 present he was content to hazard his daughter's happiness in 
 the future. 
 
 " That is very brilliant," he said of M. Paul de Nerague, the 
 young lieutenant of light cavalry ; " but it is not solid, like 
 Gustave. Your son is honest, candid — a brave heart. It is for 
 that I would have given him Madelon. But it is Providence 
 which disposes of us, as our good father St. Velours tells us 
 olten ; and one must be content. Young Nerague pleases my 
 
 D
 
 46 Charlotte*s Inheritance. 
 
 daughter, and 1 must swallow him, though for me he nmella too 
 
 strong of the barracks : ca jlaire la caserne, mon ami." 
 
 That odour of the barracks which distinguished the sub-lieu- 
 tenant Paul de Nerague became more odious after his marriage 
 with the virtuous Madelon, when he was estabhshed — niche, as 
 he himself called it — in very comfortable, though somewhat 
 grusome, apartments at Cotenoir. His riotous deportment, his 
 hospitable disposition (as disj^layed in the frequent entertain- 
 ment of his brother s-in-arms at the expense of his father-in-law), 
 his Don Juan-hke demeanour in relation to the housemaids and 
 kitchen-wenches of the chateau — innocent enough in the main, 
 but on that account so much the more audacious — struck terror 
 to the hearts of Madame Frehlter and her daughter ; and the 
 elder lady was much gratified by that thirst for foreign territory 
 which carried the greater part of the French army and the regi- 
 ment of the vivacious Paul to the distant wilds of Algeria. 
 
 The virtuous Madelon was too stoUd to weep for her husband. 
 But even her stolidity was not proof against the fiery influence 
 of jealousy, and, waking and sleeping, her visions were of veiled 
 damsels of Orient assailing the too inflammable heart of Lieu- 
 tenant de Nerague. 
 
 The young ofiicer was yet absent at that period in which 
 Cydalise returned from Rouen with her brother's child.- 
 
 The little boy was sleeping peacefully in a cot beside his aunt's 
 bed (it had been his father's cot thirty years ago) when IVan^ois 
 Lenoble returned from Cotenou- that night. 
 
 It was not till the next day that he saw the child. He had 
 been making his usual morning's round in the gardens and 
 orchards, when he came into the salon, and saw the httle boy 
 seated near his grandmother's chair, playing with some domi- 
 noes. Something — perhaps the hkeness to his dead son — the 
 boy's black clothes, for Cydalise had contrived to dress him in 
 decent mourning — struck suddenly on the old man's heart. 
 ""VVho is that boy?" he asked, with a strange earnestness, 
 
 "Your son Gns+nve's only child," answered his wife gently, — 
 *his or}.iiia,Ji cliild." 
 
 Fran9ois Lenoble looked at her, and from her to the boy; 
 tried to speak, but could not; beckoned the child, and then 
 dropped heavily into a chair and sobbed aloud. Until this mo- 
 ment no one had ever seen him shed a tear for the son he had 
 put away from his home — and, as it had seemed, from his heart. 
 Not by one sigh, not by one mournful utterance of the famihar 
 name, had he betrayed the depth of that wound which he had 
 ftiidured, silently, obstinately, in all these years. 
 
 They suftered liim to bemoan his dead son unhindered by 
 Btereotyped consolations. The two women stood by, and pitied 
 him in silence. The little boy stared woiideringly, and at last
 
 I 
 
 Gu^tave the Second. 4H 
 
 crept up to the sorrow-stricken father. " Why do you crj', poor 
 Old manP" he asked. "You have not lost your papa and 
 mamma, as I have lost mine, have you ? I want to stay mth 
 ou and be your Httle boy, please. She told me to say that," 
 e added, pointing to Cydahse. — "And I have said it right, 
 haven't I ? " he asked of the same lady. — " I think I shall love 
 
 Sou, because you are hke my papa, only older and ugUer," the 
 ttle one concluded, with angelic candour. 
 
 The seigneur of Beaubocage dried his tears with an effort. 
 Beaubocage — Cotenoir. Ah, me ! what empty sounds those two 
 onoe magic names seemed to him now that his son's life had 
 been sacrificed to so paltry an ambition, so sordid a passion, so 
 vile and grovelling a desire ! He took the boy on his knee, and 
 kissed him tenderly. His thoughts bridged over a chasm of 
 five-and-twenty years as his hps pressed that fair young brow ; 
 and it was his own son — the son whom he had disowned — whose 
 soft hair was minghng itself now with the grey bristles on his 
 rugged chin. 
 
 " My cliild," he murmured softly, "the fear is that I shall love 
 thee too well, and be to thee as much too weakly indulgent as I 
 was wickedly stern to thy father. Anything is easier to humanity 
 than justice." 
 
 This was said to himself rather than to the boy. 
 
 " Tell me thy name, little one," he asked presently, after a few 
 moments' pensive meditation. 
 
 " I have two names, monsieur." 
 
 " Thou must call me grandfather. And the two names ? ** 
 
 " Francois Gustave." 
 
 " I shall call thee Gustave." 
 
 " But papa always called me Francois, and mamma said it waa 
 the name of a cruel man ; but papa said he loved the name " 
 
 " Ah, no more, httle one ! " cried the lord of Beaubocage sud 
 denly ; " thou knowest not with what dagger-thrusts thou dost 
 pierce this poor old heart." 
 
 CHAPTEE III. 
 
 GUSTAVE THE SECOND. 
 
 The little Gustave grew and flourished. Such love was lavished 
 on him as rarely falls to the lot of children, though the spring 
 of many Uves may be rich in love's pure white blossom. The 
 existence of this child seemed all happiness. He brought hope, 
 and a sense of atonement, and all sweet things, to the quiet 
 family at Beaubocage ; and as he grew from childhood to boy- 
 hood, from boyhood to manhood, it seemed to that huusehold aa 
 if the first Gustave of their love had never been taken from 
 them. That Orphic table of Zagreus repeats itself in many
 
 iib Charlotte's Inheritance. 
 
 houseliolda. For the one bright creature lost another is given ; 
 and then comes a time when it is almost difficult to separate the 
 image of the missing one from the dear substitute who so nearly 
 fills his place. 
 
 Francois Lenoble and his wife enjoyed a green old age, and 
 the affection of their grandson made the cup of life sweet for 
 the?n to the very dregs. There are, happily, some natures which 
 indulgence cannot injure ; some luxuriant flowers which attain 
 etrength as vrell as beauty under the influence of these tropical 
 heats of afi"e ,tion. Gustave the second possessed all the noble 
 qualities of Gustave the first. Frank, generous, brave, constant, 
 aflfectionate, light-hearted, he shone on the faihng eyes of hia 
 kindred radiant as a young Apollo, brave as a mortal Hercules. 
 
 Those things which the ignorant heart has at some time so 
 passionately desired are apt to be granted when the desire has 
 grown somewhat cold and dead. Thus it was with the am- 
 bition of FranQois Lenoble. He lived to see the lands of Cote- 
 noir and Beaubocage united in the person of his grandson, who 
 married Clarice, the only surviving child of M. and Madame de 
 Nerague. Two sons and a daughter had been born at Cotenoir ; 
 but the sons withered and faded in eai-ly boyhood, and even the 
 daughter, though considered a flourishing plant in that poor 
 garden of weakling blossoms, was but a fragile creature. 
 
 The old peoi^le at Beaubocage survived the seigneur and chate- 
 laine of Cotenoir by some years, and survived also the fiery 
 lieutenant, who fell in Algeria without having attained his 
 captaincy, or added any military renown to the good old name 
 of De Nerague in his own magnificent person. 
 
 Francois saw his grandson established at Cotenoir before he 
 died. He expired with his hand in that of Gustave, whom, in 
 the half-consciousness of that last hour, he mistook for the son 
 he had disowned. 
 
 "What door was that that shut?" he asked, in an eager 
 wliisper. " Who said I turned my son out of doors — my only 
 son r It's false ! I couldn't have done it ! Hark ! there's the 
 door shutting again ! It sounds like the door of a tomb." 
 
 After this he dozed a httle, and woke with a smile on his face. 
 
 " I have been dreaming of thy father, Gustave," he said calmly. 
 " I thought that I saw him with a light shining in his face, and 
 that he kissed and forgave me." 
 
 This was the end. The faithful wife was not slow to follow 
 her husband to the grave, and there was now only a placid maiden 
 lady at Beaubocage, Mademoiselle Cydalise Lenoble, whom every- 
 one within ten leagues of Vevinord knew and loved, — a lay ab- 
 bess, a Sister of Mercy in aU save the robes ; a tender creature, 
 who hved only to do good. 
 
 Ten years passed, and M. Lenoble of Cotenoir was a widower.
 
 Gustave the Second. "49 
 
 «vitli two fair young daughters at a convent school on the out- 
 ekirts of Vevinord, and a boisterous son at an academy in Rouen. 
 Gustave had never followed any profession ; the lands of Beau- 
 bocage secured him a competence, so prudently had the small 
 estate been managed by the kindred who adored him. Hia 
 marriage had given him fortune. He had no need of trade or 
 profession. His life was laid out for him like a prim Dutch 
 nower-garden. He was to live at Cotenoir, and look after hii 
 estate, and smoke his pipe, as Baron Frehlter had done, and b€ 
 a good husband to his wife, a kind father to his children. This 
 latter part of his duty came natural to M. Lenoble. It was not 
 in him to be otherwise than kind to women and children. His 
 invahd wife praised him as a model of marital perfection. It 
 was Gustave who wheeled her sofa from one room to another, 
 Gustave who prepared her medicines, Gustave whose careful 
 hands adjusted curtains and j^or^ieres. The poor woman lived 
 and died believing herself the happiest of wives. She mistook 
 kindness for love. 
 
 M. Lenoble bore his wife's demise with Christian calmness. 
 He was sorry that the fragUe creature should have been taken so 
 early from the pleasant home that was hers by right, but of j^as- 
 sionate grief, or dreary sense of kreparable loss, there was none 
 in that manly heart. There were times when the widower re- 
 proached himself for this want of feeling ; but in very truth 
 Madame Lenoble, jeune, had lived and died a nonentity. Her 
 departure left no empty place ; even her children scarcely missed 
 her. The father was all-in-all. 
 
 Gustave had married at twenty years of age. He was twenty- 
 nine when his wife died. His eldest daughter, Clarice, eight; 
 his second, Madelon, seven ; the boy, a spoilt young dog of hve, 
 not yet despatched to the great school at Roiien. 
 
 But in '65 Mademoiselle Clarice was fifteen years of age, and 
 a very charming performer on the pianoforte, as the good nuna 
 at the Convent of the Sacred Heart, at Vevinord, told the father. 
 Mademoiselle Madelon was looking forward to her fourteenth 
 anniversary, and she, too, was a very pretty pianist, and alto- 
 gether a young prodigy of learning and goodness, as the nnna 
 told the master of Cotenoir. The demoiselles of Cotenoir stood 
 high in the estimation of pupils and mistress ; they were a kind 
 of noblesse; and the simple-minded superioress spoke of these 
 young persons with some pride when she described her establish- 
 ment to a stranger. It was a very comfortable little colony, a 
 small world enclosed by high walls. The good mothers who 
 taught and cherished the children were for the greater part ladies 
 of superior and even exalted station ; and there was a gentleness, 
 a tenderness, in their care for these young lambs not always to 
 be insured by the payment of an annual stipend. It must be
 
 50 Charlotte's tnlieritanee. 
 
 confessed that the young lambs were apt to be troublesome, aiifl 
 required a good deal of watching. To the eye of the philosopher 
 that convent school would have afforded scope for curious study ; 
 for it is singidar to discover what exceptional vices the youth- 
 ful mind can develop from its inner consciousness, in homes as 
 pure as this. There were black sheep even in the convent of the 
 Sacre Coeur, damsels marked with a sign that meajit " danger- 
 ous." 
 
 Happily for Gustave Lenoble, his daughters were amongst the 
 brightest and the purest of those girl-graduates. They gave him 
 no trouble, except when they asked him for a home. 
 
 " It seems so dull and dreary at Cotenoir, papa," they said, 
 " though you are always so kind. It doesn't seem like home. 
 Beaubocage is more home-Hke. At Cotenoir, when you are out, 
 there is no one to talk to ; and we have no httle parties, no ex- 
 cursions into the country, none of those pleasures which the 
 other girls tell us they have during the holidays." ■ 
 
 This was the gist ol the lamentations of Mademoiselles Clarice 
 and Madelon; and the father knew not how to supply the mys- 
 terious something which was wanting to make Cotenoir a plea- 
 sant home. The girls could complain of no restraint, or pine for 
 no indulgence, since their father was always prompt to gratify 
 every whim. But there was some element of happiness wanting, 
 nevertheless ; and M. Lenoble perceived that it was so. The Hfe 
 at Cotenoir was desultory, straggling; an existence of perpetual 
 dawdling ; a hfe of shreds and patches, half-formed resolutions, 
 projects begun and broken off in the middle. The good genius, 
 the household angel, order, was wanting in that mansion. There 
 was waste, dirt, destruction of all kinds, in the rambhng old 
 chateau ; old servants, too weak or too lazy to work ; old trades- 
 men, presuming on old-established habits of inaposition, unques- 
 tioned so long as to have become a right — for the feudal system 
 of fine and forfeiture has only changed hands. The power still 
 flourishes, only it is the villein who takes tithe of his lord. 
 
 The seiwants at Cotenoir had gone their own ways with but 
 little interference since the death of Madame de l^Terague, which 
 occurred two years before that of her daughter, Clarice Lenoble. 
 Poor invahd Clarice had been quite unable to superintend he^ 
 household ; and since her death Mademoiselle Cydalise had been 
 too feeble of health to assume any authority in her nephew's 
 estabhshment, even if the household of Cotenoir would have 
 submitted to interference from Beaubocage, which in all likeli- 
 hood they would not. 
 
 Thus it happened that things had taken their own course at 
 the chateau, and the course had been somewhat erratic. There 
 is nothing so costly as muddle, and Gustave Lenoble had of late 
 begun to perceive that he had the maximum of expense with th«
 
 CJiiefly Retrospective. 61 
 
 minimtiin of comfort. Meanwhile tbe kind old aunt at Bcaiibo- 
 cage gave hei' nieces much valuable advice againat the time 
 when they should be old enough to assume the management of 
 then- father's house. The sweet unselfish lady of Beaubocage 
 had indeed undergone hard experience in the ao^uirement of the 
 domestic art. Heaven and her own memory alone recorded 
 those scrapings and pinchings and nice calculations of morsels 
 by which she had contrived to save a few pounds for her outcast 
 brother. Such sordid economics show but poorly on earth; 
 but it is probable that in the mass of documentary evidence 
 which goes before the Great Judge, Mademoiselle Leiioble'o 
 accoont-book will be placed on the right side. 
 
 §0ok i\t C^irAj. 
 
 THE HOEATIAD. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 CHIEFLY RETROSPECTIVE. 
 
 Captain Paget went his way to Rouen in a placid but not an 
 exulting mood, after parting with his young friend Valentine 
 Hawkehurst at the London Bridge terminus of the Brighton 
 line. He was setting out upon an adventure wild and impractic- 
 able as the quest of Jason and his Argonauts ; and this gallant 
 captain was a carpet-knight, sufficiently adventurous and auda- 
 cious in the diplomatic crusades of society, but in nowise eager 
 to hazard his life on tented field and in thick press of war. If 
 the Fates had allowed the accompUshed Horatio to choose his 
 own destiny, he would have elected to live in the immediate 
 neighbourhood of St. James's Street, from the first day to the 
 last of the London season, and to dine artistically and discreetly 
 at one of those older and more exclusive clubs dear and famUiar 
 to him from the bright years of his youth. He was by nature 
 a flaneur, a gossip, a lover of expensive luxuries and frivolous 
 pleasures. He was not only incapable of a high thought him- 
 self, but was an unbehever in the possibility of high thoughts or 
 noble principles in the world he lived in. He measured the uni- 
 verse by that narrow scrap of tape which was the span of hia 
 own littleness. To him Csesar was an imperial brigand, Cicero a 
 hypocritical agitator. To him aU great warriors were greedy 
 time-servers hke John Churchill ; all statesmen plausible place* 
 men; all reformers self-seeking pretenders. Nor did Captain 
 Paget wish that it should be otherwise. In his ideal repxibHc,
 
 S^ charlotte s Inheritance. 
 
 unselfisliiiess and earnestness wonld have rendered a man ratlidt 
 a nuisance than otherwise. With the vices of his fellow-men 
 the diplomatic Horatio was fully competent to deal ; but some 
 of his most subtle combinations on the chess-board of life would 
 have been checkmated by an unexpected encounter with intract- 
 able virtue. 
 
 The necessity of living was the paramount consideration to 
 which this gentleman had given his mind from the time when he 
 found himself a popular subaltern in a crack regiment, admired 
 for his easy manners and good looks, resj^ected by meaner men for 
 his good blood, and rich in everything except that vulgar droaa 
 without which the life of West-end London is so hollow a delu- 
 sion, so bitter a comedy of mean shifts and lying devices. 
 
 That freebooter of civilization, the man who lives by his wita, 
 is subject to strange fluctuations from prosperity to adversity. 
 He is the miner or gold-digger of civilized life ; and as there are 
 times when his pickaxe strikes siaddenly on a rich lode, so there 
 are dreary intervals in which his spade turns up nothing but 
 valueless clay, and the end of each day's work leaves him with 
 no better evidence of his wasted labour than the aching limbs 
 which he drags at nightfall to his dismal shanty. 
 
 For some months Captain Paget had found Philip Sheldon a 
 very useful acquaintance. The stockbroker had been the secret 
 inaugurator of two or three joint-stock companies, though figur- 
 ing to the outer world only as director ; and in the getting-up of 
 these companies Horatio had been a useful instrument, and had 
 received liberal payment for his labours. Unhappily, so serene 
 an occupation as promoting cannot go on for ever ; or rather, 
 cannot remain for ever in the same hands. The human mind is 
 naturally imitative, and the plagiarisms of commerce are infi- 
 nitely more audacious than the small larcenies of literature. 
 The joint-stock company market became day by day mora 
 crowded. No sooner did Pliilip Sheldon float the Non-destructive 
 Laundry Company, the admirable organization of which would 
 offer a guarantee against the use of chloride of Kme and other 
 destructive agencies in the wash-tub, than a rival power launched 
 a colourable imitation thereof, in the Union-is- Strength Domestic 
 Lavatory Company, with a professor of chemistry specially re- 
 tained as inspector of wash-tubs. Thus it was that, after the 
 profitable ripening of three such schemes, Mr. Sheldon deemed 
 it advisable to retire from the field, and await a fitter time for 
 the further exercise of his commercial genius. 
 
 Captain Paget's relations with the stockbroker did not, how- 
 ever, terminate with the cessation of his labours as secretary, jack- 
 of-all-trades, and promoter. Having found him, so far, clever, 
 and to all appearance trustworthy — and this was an important 
 point, for no man so much needs honourable service as a rogue
 
 Chiefly ReirospecUve. 63 
 
 •"-Pliilip Sheldon determined upon confiding to Horatio the con- 
 duct of a more delicate business than anything purely commer- 
 cial. After that discovery of the telegraphic message sent by 
 his brother George to Valentine Hawkehurst, and the further 
 discovery of the advertisement relating to the unclaimed wealth 
 of the lately deceased John Haygarth, Mr. Sheldon lost no time 
 in organizing his plans for his own aggrandizement at the ex- 
 pense of his brother. 
 
 " George refused to let me in for a share of chances when I 
 showed myself willing to help him," thought Philip. " He may 
 discover by and by that I have contrived to let myself into his 
 secrets ; and that he might have played a better game by con- 
 aenting to a partnership." 
 
 A life devoted to his own interests, and a consistent habit of 
 selfishness, had rendered Mr. Sheldon, of the Lawn, Bayswater, 
 and Stags Court, City, very quick of apprehension in all matters 
 connected, immediately or remotely, with the making of money. 
 The broken sentences of the telegrani betrayed by the blotting- 
 pad told him a great deal. They told him that there was a 
 certain Goodge, in the town of UUerton, who possessed letters 
 so valuable to George Sheldon, as to be bought by his agent 
 Valentine Hawkehurst. Letters for which Sheldon was willing 
 to give money must needs be of considerable importance, since 
 monej was a very scarce commodity with that hunter of uncon- 
 scious heirs-at-law. Again, a transaction which required the 
 use of so expensive a medium as the electric telegraph rather 
 than the penny post, might be fairly supposed a transaction of 
 some moment. The letters in question might relate to some 
 other estate than that of John Haygarth, for it was quite pos- 
 sible that the schemer of Gray's Inn had other irons in the fire. 
 But this was a question of no moment to Philip Sheldon. 
 
 If the letters — or the information contained therein — were 
 likely to be useful to George, they might be useful to him. If 
 George found it worth his while to employ an agent at UUerton, 
 why should not he (Phihp) have his agent in the same town ? 
 The pecuniary risk, which might be a serious affair to George, 
 was child's play for Phihp, who had always plenty of money, 
 or, at any rate, the command of money. The whole business of 
 heir-at-law hunting seemed to the stockbroker a very vagiie and 
 shadowy piece of work, as compared to the kind of speculation 
 that was familiar to him; but he knew that men had made 
 money in such a manner, and any business by which money 
 could be made, was interesting to him . Beyond this, the notion 
 of cutting the ground from under his brother's feet had a certain 
 attraction for him. George's manner to him had been somewhat 
 offensive to him on more than one occasion since — well, since 
 Tom Halliday's death. Mr. Sheldon had borne that offensiveness
 
 64 Cliarlotte's tnlieritan^e, 
 
 in mind, with tlie determination to " take it out of" Ws brotlio? 
 on ibe earliest opportunity. 
 
 It seemed as if the opportunity had arrived, and Philij) was 
 not one of those men who wait shivering on the shore when 
 Fortune's tide is at the flood. Mr. Sheldon launched his bark 
 upon the rising waters, and within two hours of his discovery 
 ia the telegraph-office was closeted with Horatio Paget in the 
 little parlour in Omega Street, making 'arrangements for the 
 Captain's journey to Ullerton. 
 
 That Horatio was the right man for the work he wanted done, 
 Mr. Sheldon had been quick to perceive. 
 
 " He knows Hawkehurst, and will be able to reckon up any 
 manoeuvres of his better than a stranger ; and is, I think, alto- 
 gether as deep an old gentleman as one could hope to meet with, 
 barring tlie traditional gentleman who did odd jobs for Dr. 
 Faustus," the stockbroker said to himself, as his hansom sj^ed 
 along Park Lane on its way to Chelsea. The eagerness with 
 which Captain Paget took up the idea of this business was very 
 agreeable to his patron. 
 
 " This is an aifair in which success hinges on time, " said Mr. 
 Sheldon ; " so, if you mean to go in for the business, you must 
 start for Ullerton by the two o'clock express. You'll have just 
 time to throw your razors and a clean shirt into a carpet-bag 
 while I talk to you. I've got a cab outside, and a good one, 
 that wUl take you to Euston Square in half an hour." 
 
 The Captain showed himself prompt in action. His bed- 
 chamber was a small apartment at the back of the jjarlour, and 
 here he packed his bag while conversing with his employer. 
 
 " If you get upon the ground in time, you may obtain a look 
 at the letters before they are handed over to Hawkehurst, or you 
 may outbid him for them," said Mr. Sheldon ; " but remember, 
 whatever you do must be so done as to keep Hawkehurst and 
 George completely in the dark as to our proceedings. If once 
 they find out we are on their track, our chances will be gone, for 
 they have gat the information and we haven't ; and it's only by 
 following close in their footsteps we can hope to do anything." 
 
 "That is understood," replied the Captain, stooping over his 
 bag ; " I shall keep myself as close as possible, you may depend 
 upon it. And it shan't be my fault if Valentine sees me or 
 hears of me. I shall want money, by the bye ; for one can't stir 
 a step in this sort of affair without ready cash." 
 
 " I am quite aware of that. I stopped at the West-end 
 branch of the Unitas and cashed a cheque for forty pounds. 
 You can do a good deal in the way of bribery for forty pounds, 
 in such a place as Ullerton. "What you have to do is to keep 
 your eye on Hawkehurst, and follow up every channel of infor- 
 mation that he opens for you. He has the clue to the labTrinth,
 
 Epistolary. 65 
 
 fCiiiember, the reel of cotton, or whatever it was, that the young 
 woman gave that Roman fellow. All you have to do is to get 
 lioid of it, and follow your leader." continued Plnlip, with hia 
 watch in his hand. " This business of the letters will be sharp 
 work, for the chances are against us here, as it's more than 
 likely the papers will have changed hands before you can get to 
 Dllerton. But if you can't buy the letters, you may buy the 
 infoi-mation contained in them, and that is the next best thing. 
 Tour first move will be to ferret out this man Goodge. Every- 
 body knows everybody else in such a place as UUerton, large 
 and busy as the town is, and you won't find that difficult. 
 When you see Goodge, you'U know how to deal with him. The 
 mode and maimer of your dealing I leave to yourself. You are 
 a man of the world, and will know how to manipulate the 
 gentleman, whoever he may be. And now lock your bag and 
 cut downstairs as fast as you can. Time's up. Here's your 
 money — three tens, two fives. Good day." 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 EPISTOLARY. 
 
 From, Horatio Paget to Philip Sheldon. 
 
 Royal Hotel, Ullerton, Oct. 7, 186—. 
 
 My dear Sir, — I arrived here last evening just in time to run 
 against Hawkehurst on the platform, which was rather a pro- 
 voking encounter at the outset. He went further north by the 
 same train that brought me from London. This train only 
 stops at three places alter Ullerton — Slowport, Black Harbour, 
 and Manchester ; and I shall take pains to discover which o€ 
 these towns was Hawkehujst's destination. There was one 
 Batisfaction in seeing his departure by this train, inasmuch as it 
 assured me that I had the ground clear for my own operations. 
 
 I had no difficulty in discovering the whereabouts of Goodge 
 — the Goodge we want — and at eight o'clock was comfortably 
 seated in that gentleman's parlour, talking over the afi'air ot 
 the letters. Tolerably quick work, I think you will allow, my 
 dear sir, for a man whose years have fallen into the sere and 
 yellow leaf. 
 
 Mr. Goodge is a Methodist parson — a class of person I have 
 always detested. I found him peculiarly amenable to monetary 
 influence. I need scarcely tell you that I was careful to conceal 
 my identity from this person. I made so bold as to borrow the 
 cognomen of an old-established firm of soHcitors in the Fields, 
 and took a somewhat high tone throughout the interview. J 
 infoi-med Mr. Goodge that the young man who had called on 
 him with reference to certain letters connected with the affaira
 
 56 Cliarlotte^s Inheritance. 
 
 of the Haygarth family — and 1 perceived from Mr. Gocxlgc-'i 
 face that we were on the right track — was a person of disreput- 
 able character, engaged in an underhand transaction calculated 
 
 • TIT 
 
 to injure a respected client of our house. I saw that the words 
 " house " and " our " were talismanic in their effect upon the 
 Methodist parson. You see, my dear sir, there is no one can 
 manage this sort of thing so well as a gentleman. It comea 
 natural to him. Your vulgar diplomatist seldom knows how to 
 begin, and never knows when to stop. Here I had this low-bred 
 Methodist fellow impressed by the idea of my individual and 
 collective importance after five minutes' conversation. " But 
 this comes too near the praising of myself; therefore hear other 
 things," as the bard observes. 
 
 A very little further conversation rendered Mr. Goodie 
 malleable. I found that Hawkehurst had ajsproached him m 
 the character of your brother's articled clerk, but under his 
 own proper name. This is one point gained, since it assures me 
 that Valentine is not skulking here under a feigned name ; and 
 will enable me to shape my future inquiries about him accord- 
 ingly. I also ascertained Hawkehurst's whereabouts when in 
 TJllerton. He stays at a low commercial house called the Black 
 Swan. It appears that the man Goodge possesses a packet of 
 letters written by a certain Mrs. Rebecca Haygarth, wife of one 
 Matthew Haygarth. In what relationship this Matthew may 
 stand to the intestate is to be discovered. It is evident he is an 
 important Hnk in the chain, or your brother would not want the 
 letters. I need not trouble you with our conversation in detail. 
 In gross it amounted to this : Mr. Goodge had pledged himself 
 to hand over Mrs. Haygarth's letters, forty or so in number, to 
 Hawkehurst in consideration of twenty pounds. They would 
 have been ah-eady in Hawkehurst's possession, if Mr. Goodge 
 had not objected to part with them exqept for ready money. 
 In consideration of a payment of twenty pounds from me, he 
 was willing to let me read aU the letters, and select any ten I 
 pleased to take. This bargain was not arrived at without con- 
 Biderable discussion, but it certainly struck me as a good one. 
 
 I opened the packet of papers then and there, and sat up 
 until six o'clock the next morning, reading Mrs. Haygarth's 
 letters in Mr. Goodge's i^arlour. Yery fatiguing occupation for 
 a man of my years. Mr. Goodge's hospitality began ^iid ended 
 in a cup of coffee. Such coffee ! and 1 remember the mocha I 
 used to get at Arthur's thirty years ago, — a Promethean beve- 
 rage, that illumined the dullest smoking-room bore with a flash 
 of wit or a glimmer of wisdom. 
 
 I enclose the ten letters which I have selected. They appear 
 to me to tell the history of Mrs. Haygarth and her husband 
 pretty plainly ; but there is e\adently something mysterious
 
 Epistolary. 67 
 
 In I king behind the commonplace exastence of the husband. 
 That is a matter for future consideration. All I have to do in 
 the present is to keep you as well informed as your brother. It 
 may strike you that the letters I forward herewith, which are 
 certainly the cream of the con-espondence, and the notes I have 
 made from the remaining letters, are scarcely worth the money 
 paid for them. In reply to such an objection, I can only say 
 that you get mure for your money than your brother George wiU 
 get for his. 
 
 The hotel at which I have taken up my quarters is but a 
 few paces from the commoner establishment where Hawkelmrst 
 is stopping. He is to call on Goodge for the letters to-day ; so 
 his excursion will be of brief duration. I find that the name of 
 Haygarth is not unknown in this town, as there are a family of 
 Judsons, some of whom call themselves Haygarth Judson. I 
 intend inviting my landlord — a very superior person for his 
 station — to discuss a bottle of wine with me after my chop this 
 evening, and hope to obtain some information from him. In the 
 meantime I shall keep myself close. It it of vital consequence 
 that I should remain unseen by Hawkehursi. I do not beheve 
 he saw me on the platform last night, though -if e were as close to 
 each other as we well could be. 
 
 Let me know what you think of the letters, and believe me 
 to be, my dear sir, very faithfuUy yours, H. N. C. Paget. 
 
 Philip Sheldon, Esq., &c. &c. &c. 
 
 Philip Sheldon to Horatio Paget. 
 
 Bayswater, Oct. 8, 186 — . 
 Dear Paget, — The letters are mysterious, and I don't see my 
 way to getting much good out of them, but heartily appi'ove 
 your management of matters, and give you carte hlaiiclte to 
 proceed, according to your own lights. 
 
 Yours truly, P. S. 
 
 Horatio Paget to Philip Sheldon. 
 
 Royal Hotel, Oct. 9, 186 — . 
 My dear Sm, — The cultivation of my landlord has been very 
 
 Erofitable. The house is the oldest in the town, and the, busiaesa 
 as descended in a direct line from father to son since the time 
 of George the Second. This man's grandfether entertained 
 the officers of William Duke of Cumberland, honoi^red by his 
 contemporaries with the soubriquet of BiUy the Butcher, during 
 the " forty-five." I had to listen to and applaud a good many 
 Btorles about Billy the Butcher before I could lead my landlord 
 round to the subject of the Haygarths. But he was not more 
 prosy than many men I have met at dinner-parties in the daya
 
 4l8 €}harlotte*s Inheritance. 
 
 vhen the liigliest circles in the land were open to your humble 
 
 Bervant. 
 
 The Haygarth family, of which the intestate John Haygarth 
 was the last male descendant, were for a long period inhabitants 
 of this town, and obtained their wealth by trading as grocers and 
 general dealers in a shop not three hundred yards from the room 
 u which I write. The building is still standing, and a curious, 
 old-fashioned-looking place it is. The last of the Haygarths who 
 carried on business therein was one Jonathan, whose son Matthew 
 was the father of that Reverend John Haygarth, lately deceased, 
 intestate. You will thus perceive that the letters I sent you are 
 of much importance, as they relate solely to this Matthew, father 
 of our intestate. 
 
 My next inquiries related to the Judson family, who are, it 
 api^ears, descended from the issue of a certain Ruth Haygarth's 
 marriage with one Peter Judson. This Ruth Haygarth was 
 the only sister of the Matthew alluded to in the letters, and 
 therefore was aunt of the intestate. It would herefrom appear 
 that in this Judson family we must naturally look for the 
 rightful claimant to the fortune of the deceased John Hay- 
 garth. 
 
 Possessed of this conviction, I proceeded to interrogate my 
 landlord very cautiously as to the status, &c. of the Judson family^ 
 and amongst other questions, asked him with a complete assump- 
 tion of indifference, whether he had ever heard that the Judsona 
 expected to inherit property from any branch of the Haygarth 
 family , 
 
 This careless interrogatory produced information of, as I 
 imagine, a very valuable character. A certain Theodore Judson, 
 attorney of this town, calls himself heir-at-law to the Haygarth 
 estates ; but before he can estabhsh his claim, this Theodore 
 must produce evidence of the demise, without heirs, of one Peter 
 Judson, eldest surviving grandson of Ruth Haygarth's eldest 
 son, a scamp and ne'er-do-weel — ^if Hving, supposed to be some- 
 where in India, where he went, as supercargo to a merchant 
 vessel about, the year '41 — who stands prior to Theodore Judson 
 in the succession. I conclude that the said Theodore, who, as a 
 'lawyer, is hkely to do things secundum artern, is doing hiapossiblA 
 to obtain the necessary evidence ; but in the meantime he is at 
 a dead lock, and the whole affair appears to be in a charming 
 condition for speculative interference. I opine, therefore, that 
 your brother really has hit upon a good thing tliis time; and 
 my only wonder is, that instead of allowing his agent, Hawko' 
 hurst, to waste his time hunting up old letters of Matthew 
 Haygarth's (to all apjoearauce valueless as documentary evidencey, 
 he does not send Valentine to India to hunt for Peter Judson, 
 wIju. is living, is the rij^htful liv'i)' 1u thf intestate's fortune, and
 
 Epistolary. 59 
 
 who, as a reckless extravagant fellow, would be likely to make 
 very liberal terms with, any one who offered to procure him a 
 large lump of money. 
 
 I confess that I am quite at a loss to understand why your 
 brother George does not take thia very obvious course, and why 
 Valentitie potters about in this neighbourhood, when a gold 
 mine is waiting to be exploits on the other side. 
 
 I shall be very glad to have your views upon this subject, for 
 at the present moment I am fain to acknowledge that I do not 
 see my way to taking any further steps in this business, unless 
 by commencing a search for the missing Peter. 
 
 I am, my dear Sir, very truly yours, 
 
 H. N. C. Pagm. 
 
 Philip Sheldon to Horatio Paget. 
 
 Bayswater, Oct. 10, 186 — . 
 
 Deak Paget, — When so old a stager as G. S. does not take 
 the obvious course, the inference is that there is a better course 
 to be taken — not obvious to the uninitiated. 
 
 You have done very well so far, but the information you have 
 obtained from your landlord is only such information as any one 
 else may obtain from the current gossip of UUerton. You 
 haven't yet got to the dessous des cartes. Remember what I 
 told you in London. G. S. has the clue to this labyrinth ; and 
 what you have to do is to hold on to the coat-tails (in a figurative 
 sense) of his agent, V. H. 
 
 Don't put your trust in prosy old landlords, but continue to 
 eet a watch upon that young man, and follow up his trail as you 
 did in the matter of the letters. 
 
 If the Peter Judson who went to India three-and-twenty 
 years ago were the right man to follow, G. S. would scarcely 
 give twenty pounds for the letters of Mrs. Matthew Hay garth, 
 it appears to me that G. must be looking for an heir on the 
 Haygarth side of the house ; and if so, rely upon it he has his 
 reasons. Don't bewilder yourself by trying to theorize, but get 
 to the bottom of G.'s theory. 
 
 Yours truly, P. 8. 
 
 Horatio Paget to Philip Sheldon. 
 
 Royal Hotel, Oct. 12, 186.— 
 Li If DEAB, Sir, — Considering the advice contained in your la..t 
 very good, I lost no time in acting upon it. I need hardly tell 
 you, that to employ the services of a hired spy, and to degrade 
 myself in some sort to the level of a private inquirer, was some- 
 what revolting to a man, who, in the decadence of his fortunes, 
 has ever striven to place some hmit on the outra,<.^JS which tluit 
 hard taskuiaater, poverty, niiiy have from time to time com ]^^ 'died
 
 GO Charlotte's Inheritance. 
 
 him to inflict upon his self-respect. But in the furtherance of 
 a cause which I conclude is in no manner dishonourable, since 
 an unclaimed heritage must needs be a prize open to all, I sub- 
 mitted to this temporary degradation of my higher feelings, and 
 I trust that when the time arrives for the settlement of any 
 pecuniary consideration which I am to derive from these irksome 
 and uncongenial labours, my wounded self-resi^ect may not be 
 omitted from the reckoning. 
 
 The above exordium may appear to you tedious, but it is only 
 just to myself to remind you that you are not dealing with a 
 .^Igar hirehng. 
 
 My first step, after duly meditating your suggestions, was to 
 find a fitting watch for the movements of Hawkehurst. I oi^ined 
 that the best person to play the spy would be that class of man 
 whose existence seems for the most part devoted to the lounging 
 at street corners, the chewing of straw, and that desultory kind 
 of industry known in the patois of this race as "fetching 
 errands." This is the man, or boy, who starts up from the 
 pavement (as through a trap-door in the flags) whenever one 
 ahghts from or woiild enter any kind of vehicle. Unbidden, 
 um-equired, and obnoxious, the creatui'e arises, and opens a door, 
 or lays some rag of his wretched attire on a muddy wheel, and 
 then whines, piteous, for a coj^per. 
 
 Such a man, or such a boy, I felt convinced must exist among 
 the hangers-on of the Royal Hotel ; nor was I mistaken. On 
 inquiring for a handy lad, capable of attending upon my needa 
 at all hours in the day, and not a servant in the hotel, but a 
 person who would be wholly at my own disposal, I was informed 
 that the Boots had a younger brother who was skilled in the 
 fetching of errands, and who would be hapjDy to wait upon me 
 for a very reasonable remuneration, or in the words of the waiter 
 himself, would be ready to leave it — i.e. the remuneration — to 
 my own generosity. I know that there are no peojJe who ex- 
 pect so much as those who leave the assessment of their claims 
 to your own generosity ; but as I wanted good service, I was 
 prepared to pay well. 
 
 The younger Boots made his appearance in due course — a 
 sharp young fellow enough — and I forthwith made him my slave 
 by the promise of five shillings a day for every day in wliich I 
 ehould require his services. I then told laim that it was my 
 misfortune to own — with a strong inclination to disown — a re- 
 probate nephew, now an inhabitant of that very town. Thia 
 nephew, I had reason to beheve, was going at a very rapid rate 
 to the dogs ; but my afiectionate feelings would not allow him 
 to consummate his own destruction without one last effort to 
 reclaim him. I had therefore Ibllowcd him to Ullerton, whithei 
 I beheved bim to be le*^ b', *!ie worst possible motives; and
 
 Epistolary. 61 
 
 having done so, my next business was to keep myself informed 
 of his wliercabouts. 
 
 Seeing that the younger Boots accepted these statements with 
 tinquestioning faith, I went on to inquire whether he felt him- 
 self equal to the delicate duty of hanging about the yard of the 
 Black Swan, and watching the doors of exit from that hotel, 
 with a view to following my recreant nejahew wherever he might 
 go, even if considerably beyond the limits of UUerton. I saw 
 that the lad's intelligence was likely to be equal to this trans- 
 action, unless there should arise any difficult or complicated 
 position by reason of the suspicion of Hawkehurst, or other 
 mischance. " Do you think you can watch the gentleman with- 
 out being observed?" I asked, "I'm pretty well sure lean, 
 sir," answered the boy, who is of an enterprising, and indeed 
 audacious, temper. "Very well," said I, "you will go to the 
 Black Swan Inn. Hawkehurst is the name by which my nephew 
 is known there, and it will be your duty to find him out." I 
 gave the boy a minute account of Valentine's appearance, and 
 other instructions with which I need not trouble you. I furtlier 
 furnished him with money, so that he might be able to follow 
 Hawkehurst by rail, or any other mode of conveyance, if neces- 
 sary ; and then despatched him, with an order to come back to 
 me when he had seen our man safely lodged in the Black Swan 
 after his day's perambulations. " And if he shouldn't go out 
 at all?" suggested the lad. "In that case you must stick to 
 your post till nightfall, and pick up all the information you can 
 about my unfortunate nejahew from the hangers-on of the hotel," 
 said I. " I suppose you know some one at the Black Swan ? " 
 The boy informed me, in his untntored language, that he knew 
 " a'most all of 'em," and thereupon departed. 
 
 At nine o'clock at night he again appeared before me, big with 
 the importance of his day's work. He had seen my nephew 
 issue forth from the Black Swan within an hour of leaving my 
 presence, and had followed him, first to Mr. William Judson's 
 m Ferrygate, where he waited and hung about nearly an hour, 
 keeping himself well out of view round the comer of Chalkin 
 Street, a turning close to Mr. Judson's house. After leaving 
 this gentleman's house, my renegade nephew had proceeded — 
 carrying a letter in his hand, and walking as if in very good 
 spirits (but that fellow Hawkehurst would walk to the gallows 
 in good spirits) — to the Lancaster Road, where he was admitted 
 into Lochiel Villa, a house belonging, as my Mercury ascertained 
 from a passing baker's boy, to Miss Judson, sister of the William 
 Judson of Ferrygate. You will perceive that this town appears 
 to teem with the Judson family. My messenger, with praise- 
 worthy art, contrived to engage in a game of tip-cat (what, I 
 wonder, is a tip-cat ?) with some vagrant boys disporting thera«
 
 62 Charlotte's Inheritance. 
 
 Belve* in the roadway, within view of Miss Judsoii's hovee. 
 Hence, after the lapse of more than an hour, Boots-Mercuiy 
 beheld my recreant relative emerge, and from this point followed 
 him — always with extreme caution — back to the Black Swan. 
 Here he hung about the yard, favoured by his close acquaintance 
 with the ostler, until eight o'clock in the evening, no event of 
 the smallest importance occuri'ing during all those hours. But 
 at ei<;^ there arrived a young woman, with a packet from Miss 
 Judson to Mr. Hawkehurst. The packet was small, and was 
 sealed with red wax. This was all my Mercury could ascertain 
 respecting it ; but this was something. 
 
 I at once divined that this packet must needs contain letters. 
 I asked myself whether those letters or papers had been sold to 
 Hawkehurst, or only lent to him, and I immediately concluded 
 that they could only have been lent. It was all very well for 
 Goodge, the Lletnoclist parson, to traffic in the epistles of Mrs. 
 Matthew Haygarth, but it was to the last degi-ee unlikely that a 
 well-to-do maiden lady would part with family letters or papers 
 for any pecuniary consideration whatever. " No," I said to my- 
 self, "the documents have been lent, and will have to be re- 
 turned;" and thereupon I laid m}^ plans for the next day's 
 campaign, with a -\iew to obtaining a peep at those letters, by 
 fair means or foul. I told the boy to be at his post in the inn 
 yard early the next morning, and if my nephew did not leave 
 the inn, va.j agent was to ascertain what he was doing, and to 
 bring me word thereof. " I'll tell you what it is. Boots," I said; 
 " I have reason to beheve that sadly disposed nephew of mine 
 has some wicked intention with regard to Miss Judson, who is 
 nearly related to a young lady with whom that iinprincipled 
 young man is, or pretends to be, in love ; and I very much fear 
 that he means to send her some letters, written by this foolish 
 niece of hers to my more foolish nephew, aiid eminently calcu- 
 lated to wound the good lady's feelings. Now, in order to pre- 
 vent this very shameful conduct on his part, I want to intercept 
 any packet or letter which that mistaken youth may send to 
 Miss Judson. Do jow feel yourself capable of getting hold of 
 such a packet, on consideration of a bonus of half-a-sovereign in 
 addition to the five shillings per diem already agreed upon ^ " 
 
 This, in more direct and vulgar phraseology, was what I said 
 to the boy; and the boy departed, after pledging himself to 
 hsing me any packet which Hawkehurst might despatch from 
 tke Swan Inn. The only fear was that Hawkehurst might 
 carry the packet himself, and this contingency appeared un- 
 pleasantly probable. 
 
 Fortune favoured us. My reprobate nephew was too ill to go 
 out. He intrusted ISIiss Judson's packet to his waiter, tno 
 waiter confided i*; to the Boots, the Boots resigned the vesponsi-
 
 Epistolary. 68 
 
 bility in favour of my boy Mercury, who kindly offered to save 
 that functionary the trouble of a Avalk to the Lancaster Road. 
 
 At eleven a.m. the packet was in my hands. I have devoted 
 the best part of to-day to the contents of this packet. They 
 consist of letters written by Matthew Haygarth, and distin- 
 guished by a most abominable orthography ; but I remember 
 my own father's epistolary composition to have been somewhat 
 deficient in this respect ; nor is it singular that the humble citizen 
 should have been a poor hand at spelling in an age when royal 
 personages indulged in a phonetic style of orthography which 
 would provoke the laughter of a modern charity-boy. That the 
 pretender to the crown of England should murder the two lan- 
 guages in which he wi-ote seems a small thing ; but that Frederick 
 the Great, the most accomplished of princes, l^osom-frisnd of 
 Voltaire, aud sworn patron of the literati, should not have been 
 able to spell, is a matter for some astonishment. I could but 
 remember this fact, as I perused the epistles of Matthew Hay- 
 garth. 
 
 I felt that these letters had in all probabiHty been carefully 
 numbered by the lady to whom they belong, and that to tamper 
 with them to any serious extent might be dangerous. I have 
 therefore only ventured to retain one insignificant scrawl as an 
 example of " 2*latthew Hay garth's caligraphy and signature. 
 From the rest I have taken copious notes. It appears to me 
 that these letters relate to some liaison of the gentleman's youth"; 
 though I am fain to confess myself surjorised to discover that, 
 even in a period notorious for looseness of morals, a man should 
 enter into such details in a correspondence with his sister. 
 Autres temps, autrcs inmurs. I have selected my extracts with 
 great care, and hope that you may be able to make more use of 
 them than I can at i^resent imagine possible. I shall post thia 
 letter and enclosure with my own hands, though in order to do 
 80 I must pass the Black Swan. I shall despatch my messenger 
 to Lochiel Villa, with Miss Judson's packet, under cover of the 
 darkness. 
 
 In much haste, to catch the London mail. 
 
 Truly yours, 
 H. N. C. P. 
 
 Froyn Philip Sheldon to Horatio Paget. 
 
 City, Oct. 12, 186— 
 Dear Paget, — Come back to town. You are only wasting 
 mosiey, time, and trouble. 
 
 Tours, P. S.
 
 64 Charlotte*8 InTieritance, 
 
 CHAPTER ni. 
 
 TOO CLEVER FOK A OATSPAW. 
 
 Captain Paget returned to town, mystified by tliat gndden 
 summons from his patron, and eager to know what new aspect 
 of affairs rendered his further presence in UUerton useless or 
 undesirable. 
 
 Horatio arrived in the great city half-a-dozen hours before hia 
 sometime protege, and was comfortably installed when Valentine 
 returned to those lodgings in Omega Street, Chelsea, which the 
 two men occupied in common. 
 
 Captain Paget went into the City to see Philip Sheldon on 
 the day of his return, but did not succeed in finding the stock- 
 broker. The evening's post brought him a letter from Philip, 
 appointing an interview at Bayswater, at three o'clock on the 
 following day — the day after Valentine's return from Ullerton. 
 
 Punctual to the moment appointed by this letter, Captain 
 Paget appeared at the Lawn on the following day. He was 
 ushered into Mr. Sheldon's study, where he found that gentleman 
 awaitiiig him, grave and meditative of mood, but friendly, and 
 indeed cordial, in his manner to the returning traveller. 
 
 " My dear Paget, sit down ; I am delighted to see you. Yonr 
 trip has made you look five years younger, by Jove ! I was sorry 
 to find you had called while I was out, and had waited for me 
 upwards of an hour yesterday. I have a good deal of worry 
 on my shoulders just now ; commerce is all worry, you know. 
 The Marquis of Lambeth has come into the market and bought 
 up two-thirds of the Astrakhan Grand Trunk debenture bonds, 
 just as our house had speculated for the fall. And since it hasr 
 got wind that the Marqms is sweet wpon the concern, the bonds 
 are going up Hke a skyrocket. Such is life. I thought we had 
 better have our httle talk here ; it's quieter than in the City. 
 Have some sherry and soda ; you like that Manzanilla of mine, 
 I know." 
 
 And the hospitable Philip rang the bell, without thinking it 
 necessary to wait for his guest's answer. 
 
 There was a cordiality, a conciliating friendliness about the 
 stockbroker's manner which Horatio Paget did not like. 
 
 " He's too civil by half," the Captain said to himself; " he 
 means to do me." 
 
 " And now about this Ullerton business," Mr. Sheldon began, 
 when the vnne and soda-water had lieen brought, and a taU 
 tumbler of that refreshing comjiound filled for the Captain ; you 
 have really managed matters admii-ably. I cannot too much 
 applaud your diplomatic tact. You would have put a what's- 
 his-name — tVat fellow of Napoleon's — to the blush by your
 
 Too Clever for a Catspaw. 66 
 
 management of the whole business. But, unfortunately, when 
 it's all done it comes to nothing ; the whole affair is evidently, 
 from beginning to end, a mare's-nest. It is one of those wild 
 geese which my brother George has been chasing for the last 
 ten years, and which never have resulted in profit to him or 
 anybody else ; and I should be sometliing worse than a fool if I 
 were to lend myself any longer to such a folly." 
 
 " Humph," muttered the Captain, "here is a change indeed!" 
 
 " Well, yes," Mr. Sheldon answered coolly. " I dare say my 
 conduct does seem rather capricious; but you see George put 
 me out of temper the other day, and I was determined, if he 
 had got a good thing, to cut the ground from under his feet. 
 All your communications from Ullerton tend to show me that 
 he has not got hold of a good thing, and that in any attempt to 
 circumvent him I should only be circumventing myself, wasting 
 your time, and my own money. This Judson family seems 
 numberless; and it is evident to me that the Reverend John 
 Haygarth's fortune will be a bone of contention amongst the 
 Judsons in the High Court of Chancery for any indefinite 
 number of years between this and the milennium. So I really 
 think, my dear Paget, we'd better consider this transaction 
 finished. I will give you whatever honorarium you think fit to 
 name for your trouble, and we'll close the aflair. I shall find 
 plenty more business as good, or better, for you to do." 
 
 "You are very good," replied the Captain, in nowise satisfied 
 by this promise. It was all too smooth, too conciliatory. And 
 there was a suddenness in this change of plan that was alto- 
 gether mysterious. So indeed might a capricious man be 
 expected to drop a speculation he had been eager to inaugurate, 
 but Phihp Sheldon was the last of men to be suspected of 
 caprice. 
 
 " You must have taken an immense deal of trouble with those 
 extracts, now," said the stockbroker carelessly, as Horatio rose 
 to depart, ofiended and angry, but anxious to conceal his anger. 
 " What, are you off so soon ? I thought you would stop and 
 take a chop with us." 
 
 " ISTo, thanks ; I have an engagement elsewhere. Yes, I took 
 an inordinate trouble vrith those extracts, and I am sony to 
 think they should be useless." 
 
 " Well, yes, it is rather provoking to yon, I dare say. The 
 extracts would be very interesting from a social point of view, 
 no doubt, to people who care about such things ; but in a legal 
 Bense they are waste-paper. I can't understand why Hawke- 
 hurgt was in Ullerton ; for, as you youi-self suggested, that 
 Peter Judson who went to India must be the Judson wanted for 
 this case." 
 
 " Your brother may be in league with some other branch of
 
 66 Charlotte's Inheritance. 
 
 the Judson family. Or what if lie is hunting for an heir on the 
 Haygarth side?" asked the Cajitain, yviih a very close watch 
 ujjon Mr. Sheldon's face. Let the stoclvbroker be never so skilful 
 a navigator of the high seas of life, there was no xmdercurrent, 
 no cross trade-wind, no unexplained veering of the magnetic 
 aeedle to the west, in the mysteries whereof the Captain was 
 not also versed. When Columbus wanted to keeji his sailors 
 quiet on that wondrous voyage over an unknown ocean to the 
 "Western world, the dii^lomatic admii-al made so bold as to 
 underrate the length of each day's sail in an unveracioas 
 log, which he kept for the inspection of his crew ; but no 
 cloctoriiig of the social log-book could mislead the acute 
 Horatio. 
 
 "How about the Haygarth side of the house?" he asked 
 again ; for it had seemed to him that at his first mention of the 
 name of Haygarth Mr. Sheldon had winced, ever so little. 
 This time, however, he betrajred not the faintest concern ; but 
 he was doubtless now on his guard. 
 
 "Well, I don't see how there can be any claimant on that 
 side of the house," he said carelessly. " You see, according to 
 your old landlord's statement — which I take to be correcb- — 
 Jonathan Haygarth had but one son, a certain Matthew, who 
 married one Eebecca So-and-so, and had, in his tam one only 
 son, the intestate John. Now, in that case, where is your heir 
 to come from, except through Matthew's sister Ruth, who 
 married Peter Judson ?" 
 
 "Isn't it just possible that Matthew Haygarth may have 
 married twice, and had other children? Those letters cer- 
 tainly suggest the idea of a secret alHance of some kind on 
 Haygai-th's part, and the existence of a family, to whom he 
 appears to have been warmly attached. My first idea of this 
 afi'air was that it must have been a low liaison ; but I could 
 hardly realize the fact of Matthew's confiding in his sister under 
 any such circumstances, however lax in his morals that gentle- 
 man may have been. Mrs. Matthew Haygarth's letters hint at 
 some mystery in her husband's life. Is it not hkely that this 
 hidden family was a legitimate one?" 
 
 " I can't quite see my way to that idea," Mr. Sheldon 
 answered, in a meditative tone. " It seems very unlikely that 
 any marriage of Haygarth's could have remained unknown to 
 his townsmen ; and even if it were so, I doubt the possibility 
 of our tracing the heirs from such a marriage. No, my dear 
 Paget, I have resolved to wash my hands of the busineses, 
 and leave my brother George in undisturbed possession of his 
 ground." 
 
 " In that case, perhaps, you will return my notes ; they are 
 mtereBting to too.
 
 Captain Paget is Paternal. C7 
 
 Here again the faintest indication of annoyance in th« 
 slockbi oker's face told its tale to Captain Paget._ For your 
 accomplished navigator of the unknown seas there is no opean 
 bird, no floating weed, that has not a language and a signi- 
 ficance. 
 
 "You can have your notes, if you want them," answered 
 Mr. Sheldon ; " they are at my ofifice. I'll hunt them up and 
 send them to you ; or you had Ijotter look iu upon me in the 
 City early next week, and I can give you a cheque at the same 
 time." 
 
 " Thanks. I will be sure and do so." 
 
 " You say the orthography of the original letters was queer. 
 I suppose your copies were faithful in all matters except the 
 orthography. And in the names, you of course adhered to the 
 original spelling ? " 
 
 "Most decidedly," replied Caj)tain Paget, opening the door to 
 depart, and with a somewhat cynical smile upon his face, which 
 was hidden from Mr. Sheldon. 
 
 " I suppose there is no doubt of your accuracy with regard to 
 the name of Meynell, now ? " 
 
 " Not the least. Good afternoon. Ah, there's our ypung 
 friend Hawkehurst ! " exclaimed the Captain, in his "society" 
 voice, as he looked out into the hall, where Yalentme was part- 
 ing with Diana. 
 
 He came and greeted his young friend, and they left the 
 house together. 
 
 This was the occasion upon which Yalentine was startled by 
 hearing the name " MeyneU " pronounced by the lips of Philip 
 Sheldon. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 CAPTAIN PAGET IS PATERNAL, 
 
 HoKATio Paget left the Lawn after the foregoing interview, fully 
 convinced that Mr. Sheldon was only desirous to throw him off 
 the scent, in order to follow up the chase alone, for his sole profit 
 and advantage. 
 
 "My last letter conveyed some intelligence that altered his 
 whole plan of action," thought the Captain ; " that is perfectly 
 clear. He was somewhat wanting in tact when he recalled me 
 80 suddenly. But I suppose he thought it would be easy to 
 throw dust in my poor old eyes. What was the intelligence 
 that made him change his mind ? That is the grand question." 
 
 Captain Paget dined alone at a West-En-d restaurant that 
 evening. He dined well, for he had in hand certain moneys 
 advanced by his patron, and he was not disposed to be parsi- 
 monious. He sat for some time in meditative mood over his pint
 
 68 Charlotte^s Inheritance. 
 
 bottle of Chambertin. and the subject of his meiUtation Was 
 Philip Sheldon. 
 
 " Yes," he murmured at last, " that is it. The charm is in 
 the name of Meynell. Why else should he question me about 
 the orthograj^hy of that name? I sent sent him information 
 about Matthew Hay garth in the wife's letters, and he took no 
 special notice of that information. It was only when the name 
 of Meynell croj^ped up that he changed his tactics and tried to 
 throw me over. It seems to me that he must have some 
 knowledge of this Meynell branch, and therefore thinks himself 
 strong enough to act alone, and to throw me over the bridge. 
 To throw me over," the Cajitain repeated to himself slowly. 
 " Well, we'U see about that. We'll see _; yes, we'll see." 
 
 At noon on the following day Captain Paget presented him- 
 self again at the Bays water villa, where his daughter ate the 
 bread of dependence. He appeared this time in a purely paterna. 
 character. He came to call upon his only child. Before paying 
 this visit the Captain had improved the shining hour by a care- 
 ful study of the current and two or three back volumes of the 
 Post- Office and Trade Directories; but all his researches in those 
 interesting volumes had failed to reveal to him the existence of 
 any metropoUtan MeyneUs. 
 
 " The Lleynells whom Sheldon knows may be in the heart of 
 the country," he said to himself, after these futile labours. 
 
 It was a fine autumnal morning, and as Miss Paget was at 
 home and disengaged, her affectionate father suggested that she 
 should take a walk with him in Kensington Gardens. Such a 
 promenade had very little attraction for the young lady ; but 
 she had a vagTie idea that she owed a kind of duty to her father 
 not remitted by his neglect of all duties to her ; so she assented 
 with a smile, and went out with him, looking very handsome 
 and stylish in her simple but fashionable attire, no part of which 
 had been provided by the parent she accomj^anied. 
 
 The Captain sui-veyed her with some sense of family pride. 
 
 "Upon my word, my dear, you do me credit ! " he exclaimed, 
 with a somewhat patronising kindness of tone and manner; 
 " indeed any man might be proud of such a daughter. You are 
 every inch a Paget." 
 
 " I hope not, papa," said the girl involuntarily ; but the 
 Captain's more dehcate instincts had been considerably blunted 
 in the press and jostle of Hfe, and he did not feel the sting of 
 this remark. 
 
 " Well, perhaps you are right, my love," he rephed blandly ; 
 " the Pagets are an unlucky family. Like those Grecian people, 
 the Atri^, what's-his-name — the man who was killed in hia 
 bath, you know. His wife, or the other young person who had 
 come to visit his daughters, made the water too hot, you kcow
 
 Captain Paget is Paternal. 69 
 
 — and that kind of thing. I am not qnite clear about the story, 
 but it's one of those farragos of rubbish they make young men 
 learn at public schools. Yes, my dear, I really am amazingly 
 pleased by your improved appearance. Those Sheldon people 
 dress you very nicely ; and I consider your residence in that 
 family a very agreeable arrangement for all parties. You confer 
 a favour on the girl by your society, and so on, and the mother 
 provides you with a comfortable home. All I wonder is that 
 jour good looks haven't made their mark before this with some 
 of Sheldon's rich stockbroking fellows." 
 
 " We see very httle of the stockbroking fellows, as you call 
 them, at the Lawn, papa." 
 
 " Indeed ! I thought Sheldon kept a great deal of com- 
 pany." 
 
 " O no. He gives a dinner now and then, a gentleman's 
 dinner usually ; and poor Mrs. Sheldon is very anxious that it 
 should all go off well, as she says ; but I don't think he is a 
 person who cares much for society." 
 
 "EeaUy, now?" 
 
 "His mind seems completely occupied by his business, you 
 see, papa. That horrible pursuit of gain seems to require aU 
 his thoughts, and all his time. He is always reading commercial 
 \>^^i^ers,,il\e Moneij Marhet and On Change, and the Stochh rakers' 
 Vade Mecuni, and publications of that kind. When he is not 
 reading he is thinking ; and by his manner one would fancy his 
 thoughts were always gloomy and unpleasant. What a 
 miserable, hateful, unholy life to lead! I would not be that 
 man for all the money in the Bank of England. But it is a 
 kind of treachery to tell these things. Mr. Sheldon is very 
 good to me. He lets me sit at his table and share the comforts 
 of his home, and I must be very ungrateful to speak against 
 him. I do not mean to speak against him, you see, papa — I 
 only mean that a life devoted to money-making is in itself 
 hateful." 
 
 " My dear child, you may be assured that anything you say 
 to me will go no further," said the Captain, with dignity ; " and 
 in whom should you confide, if not in your father? I have a 
 profound respect for Sheldon and his family — yes, my love, 3 
 profound respect ; and I think that girl Sarah — no, I meax, 
 Charlotte — a very charming young person. I need scarcely tell 
 you that the smallest details of your life in that family possess 
 a keen interest for me. I am not without a father's feelings, 
 Diana, though circumstances ^lave never permitted me to perform 
 a father's duties." 
 
 And here the solitary tear which the accomphshed Horatio 
 could produce at will trembled in his eye. This one tear was 
 always at his command. For the life of him he could not have
 
 70 Charlotte's Inheritance. 
 
 produced a second ; but tlie single drop never failed him, and ha 
 found one tear as effective as a dozen, in giving point and finish 
 to a pathetic speech. 
 
 Diana looked at him, and wondered, and doubted. Alas, she 
 knew him only too well ! Any other creature in this %vide world 
 he might deceive, but not her. She had lived mth him ; sho 
 had tasted the bitterness of dependence upon him — ten times 
 more bitter than dependence on strangers. She had shown liim 
 her threadbare garments day after day, and had pleaded for a 
 little money, to be put off with a lying excuse. She could not 
 forget this. She had furgiven him long ago, being of too gene- 
 rous a nature to Ijrood upon past injuries. But she could not 
 forget what manner of man he was, and thank him for pretty 
 speeches wliich she knew to be meaningless. 
 
 They talked a httle more of IMr. Sheldon and his family, but 
 Diana did not again jjermit herself to lie betrayed into any 
 vehement exjoressions of her opinions. She answered all her 
 father's questions without restraint, for they were very common- 
 place questions, of a kind that might be answered without any 
 breach of faith. 
 
 " Amongst the Sheldons' acquaintances did you ever hear o( 
 any people called Meynell P " Captain Paget asked at length. 
 
 " Yes," Diana rephed, after a moment's thought; "the name 
 is certainly very familiar to me; " and then, after a pause, she 
 exclaimed, " Why, the Meynells were relations of Chai-lotte's ! 
 Yes, her grandmother was a Miss Meynell ; I perfectly remem- 
 ber hearing Mrs. Sheldon talk about the Meynells. But I do 
 not tliink there are any descendants of that family now hving. 
 ^Vhy do you ask the question, papa P What interest have you 
 in the Meynells P " 
 
 " Well, my dear, I have my reasons, but they in no manner 
 concern Mr. Sheldon or his family ; and I niust beg you to be 
 careful not to mention the subject in your conversation with 
 those worthy people. I want to know all about this Meynell 
 family. I have come across some people of that name, and I 
 want to ascertain the precise relationship existing Ijetween these 
 people and the Sheldons. But the Sheldons must know nothing 
 of this inquiry for the present. The people I speak of are poor 
 and proud, and they would perish rather than press a reLition- 
 ship upon a rich man, unless fully justified by the closeness of 
 family ties. I am sure you understand all this, Diana ? " 
 
 " Not very clearly, papa." 
 
 " Well, my dear, it is a deHcate position, and perhaps some* 
 what difficult for the comprehension of a third party. All you 
 need understand is the one fact, that any information respecting 
 the Meynell family will be vitally interestmg to my friends, and, 
 through them, serviceable to me. There is, in fact, a legacy
 
 Captain Paget is Paternal. 71 
 
 wtich these friends of mine conlJ claim, nuder a certain will, if 
 once assured as to the degree of their relationship to your friend 
 Charlotte's kindred on the Meynell side of the house. To give 
 them the means of securing this legacy would be to help the cuds 
 of justice ; and I am sure, Diana, you would wish to do that." 
 
 " Of course, papa, if I can do so without any breach of faith 
 with my employers. Can you promise me that no harm will 
 result to the Slieldons, above all to Charlotte Halliday, from 
 any information I may procure for you respecting the Meynell 
 family ? " 
 
 " Certainly, Diana, I can promise you that. I repeat most 
 solemnly, that by obtaining such information for me you will 
 be aiding the cause of justice." 
 
 If Horatio Paget might ever be betrayed into the incon- 
 sistency of a truthful assertion, it seemed to his daughter that 
 it was likely to be in this moment. His words sounded like 
 truth ; and, on reflection, Diana failed to perceive that she could 
 by any possibility inflict wrong on her friends by obliging her 
 father in tips small affair. 
 
 " Let me think the matter over, papa," she said. 
 
 " Nonsense, Diana ; what thinking over can be wanted about 
 such a trifle P I never before asked you a favour. Surely you 
 cannot refuse to grant so simple a request, after the trouble I 
 have taken to explain my reasons for making it." 
 
 There was some further discussion, which ended in Miss Paget 
 consenting to oblige her father. 
 
 "And you will manage matters with tact P " urged the Captain, 
 at parting. 
 
 " There is no especial tact required, papa," rephed Diana ; 
 " the matter is easy enough. Mrs. Sheldon is very fond of talk 
 ing about her own affairs. I have only to ask her some leading 
 question about the Meynells, and she will run on for an hour, 
 telKng me the minutest details of family history connected with 
 them. I dare say I have heard the whole story befoi e, and have 
 not heeded it : I often find my thouglrts wandering when Mrs. 
 Sheldon is talking." 
 
 Three days after this Captain Paget called on Mr. Sheldon in 
 the City, when he received a very handsome recompense for hia 
 labours at Ullerton, and became repossessed of the extracts he 
 had made from Matthew Haygarth's letters, but not of the same 
 Mr. Haygarth's an^ograph letter: that document Mr. Sheldon 
 lonfessed to having mislaid. 
 
 " He has mislaid the original letter", and he has had ample 
 leisure for copying my extracts; and he thinks I am such a 
 consummate fool as not to see all that," thought Horatio, as he 
 left the stockbroker's office, enriched but not satisfied.
 
 ,72 Charhite's Inheniaitoe. 
 
 In the course of the same day he received a long letter from 
 Diana containing the whole history of the Meynells, as known 
 to Mrs. Sheldon. Once set talking, Georgy had told all she 
 could tell, delighted to find herself listened to with obvious inte- 
 rest by her companion. 
 
 " I trust that you haFve not deceived me, my dear father," 
 Diana concluded, after setting forth the Meynell history. " The 
 dear good soul was so candid and confiding, and seemed so pleased 
 by the interest I showed in her family affairs, that I should feel 
 myself the vilest of wretches if any harm could result to her, or 
 those she loves, from the information thus obtained." 
 
 The information was very complete. Mrs. Sheldon had a 
 kindly and amiable nature, but she was not one of those sensitive 
 souls who instinctively shrink from a story of bitter shame or 
 jDrofound sorrow as from a cureless wound. She told Diana, 
 with many lamentations, and much second-hand morahty, the 
 sad history of Susan Meynell's elopement, and of the return, 
 fourteen years afterwards, of the weary wanderer. Even the 
 poor httle trunk, with the name of the Rouen trunk-maker, 
 Mrs. Sheldon dwelt ujdou with graphic insistence. A certain 
 womanly dehcacy had prevented her ever telling this story in 
 the presence of her brother-in-law, George Sheldon, whose hard 
 worldly manner in no way invited any sentimental revelation. 
 Thus it happened that George had never heard the name of 
 Meynell in connection with his friend Tom Halliday's family, or 
 had heard it so seldom as to have entirely forgotten it. To 
 Horatio his daughter's letter was priceless. It placed him at 
 once in as good a position as Philip Sheldon, or as George 
 Sheldon and his coadjutor, Val-entine Hawkehurst. There were 
 thus three different interests involved in the inheritance of the 
 Reverend John Haygarth. 
 
 Captain Paget sat late by a comfortable fire, in his own bed- 
 chamber, that night, enjoying an excellent cigar, and meditating 
 the following jottings from a pedigree : — 
 
 Charlotte Meynell, married James Halubat. 
 
 I 
 
 Thomas TIalliday, only son of above, married Georgina, 
 1 now Mrffl. Sueldon ; Lad issue, 
 
 tjHARLOTTE HaLLIDAT. 
 
 Susan Meynell, only and elder sister of the above-named Cliarlotte, 
 ran awav trom ber home, in Yorkshire, with a Mr. Kingdoii, brother to 
 Lord Durusville. Fate unknown during fourteen years of her life. Died 
 in London, 1S35. Buried under her maiden name ; but no positive 
 evideace to show that she was unmarried.
 
 The Captain' 8 Coadjutor. 78 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE captain's COADJUTOK. 
 
 Once in possession of the connection between the intestate 
 John Haygarth and the Halliday family, Captain Paget's course 
 was an easy one. He understood now why his investigations 
 had been so suddenly brought to a standstill. Philip Sheldon 
 had discovered the unexpected connection, and was eager to put 
 a stop to researches that might lead to a hke discovery on the 
 part of his coadjutor. 
 
 " And Sheldon expects to prove his stepdaughter's claim to 
 this fortune ? " thought the Captain. " He will affect ignorance 
 of the whole transaction until his plans are ripe, and then spring 
 them suddenly upon his brother George. I wonder if there ia 
 anything to be made out of George by letting him into the 
 secret of his brother's interference ? No ; I think not. George 
 is as jioor as a church mouse, and Philip must always be the 
 more profitable acqiiaintance." 
 
 On the broad basis afforded by Diana's letter Captain Paget 
 was able to build up the whole scheme of the Haygarthian 
 Buccession. The pedigree of the Meynells was sufficiently 
 simple, if their legitimate descent from Matthew Haygarth could 
 be fairly proved. Charlotte HalUday was heiress-at-law to the 
 fortune of John Haygarth, always provided that her great-aunt 
 Susan died without legitimate issue. 
 
 Here was the one chance which appeared to the adventurous 
 mind of Horatio Paget worth some trouble in the way of research. 
 Fourteen years of Susan Meynell's life had been spent away from 
 all who knew her. It was certainly possible that in that time 
 she might have formed some legitimate alliance. 
 
 This was the problem which Horatio set himself to solve. 
 Your adventurer is, of all manner of men, the most sanguine. 
 Sir Walter Raleigh sees visions of gold and glory where grave 
 statesman see only a fool's paradise of dreams and fancies. To 
 the hopeful mind of the Captain these fourteen unrecorded years 
 of Susan Meynell's Hfe seemed a very Golconda. 
 
 He did not, however, rest satisfied with the information 
 afforded by Diana's letter. 
 
 " I will have the story of these Meynells at first-hand as well 
 as at second-hand," he said to himself ; and he lost no time in 
 presenting himself again at the Villa — this time aa a visitor to 
 Mrs. Sheldon. 
 
 With Georgy he had been always a favourite. His little 
 stories of the great world — the Prince and Perdita, Brummel 
 and Sheridan^though by no means novel to those acquainted 
 with that glorious period of British history, were very agreeable
 
 ''* Charlottes Inheritance. 
 
 to Georgy. The Captain's florid flatteries j^leased her ; and she 
 contrasted the ceremonious manners of that gentleman vnih. the 
 curt business-like style of her husband, very much to the 
 Captain's advantage. He came to thank her for her goodness 
 to his child, and this occasion gave him ample opportunity for 
 eeutiment. He had asked to see Mrs. Sheldon alone, as hia 
 daughter's presence would have been some hindrance to the car- 
 rying out of his design. 
 
 " There are things I have to say which I should scarcely care 
 to utter before my daughter, you see, my dear Mrs. Sheldon," 
 he said, with pathetic earnestness. " I should not wish to 
 remind the dear child of her desolate position; and I need 
 scarcly tell you that position is very desolate. A father who, at 
 his best, cannot provide a fitting home for a dehcately nurtured 
 girl, and who at any moment may be snatched away, is but a poor 
 protector. And were it not for your friendship, I know not 
 what my child's fate might be. The dangers and temptations 
 that beset a handsome young woman are very terrible, my dear 
 Mrs. Sheldon." 
 
 This was intended to lead up to the subject of Susan Meynell, 
 but Georgy did not rise to the bait. She only shook her head 
 ptlaintively in assent to the Captain's jiroposition. 
 
 "Yes, madam; beanty, unallied with strength of mind and 
 high jirinciples, is apt to be a fatal dower. In every family 
 there are sad histories," murmured the sentimental Horatio. 
 
 Even this remark did not produce the required result ; so the 
 Captain drew upon his invention for a specimen history from 
 the annals of his own house, which was a colourable imitation 
 of Susan Meynell's story. 
 
 "And what was the end of this lovely Belinda Paget'g 
 career, my dear Mrs. Sheldon? " he concluded. " The gentleman 
 was a man of high rank, but a scoundrel and a dastard. 
 Sophia's brother, a cornet in the First Life Guards, called him 
 out, and there was a meeting on Wimbledon Common, in which 
 Lavinia's seducer was mortally wounded. There was a trial, 
 and the young captain of Hussars, Amelia's brother, was 
 sentenced to transjjortation for life. I need scarcely tell you 
 that the sentence was never cariied out. The young man fell 
 gloriously at Waterloo, at the head of his own regiment, the 
 Scotch Fusiliers, and Lavinia — I beg pardon., Amelia ; nay, what 
 am I saying.P the girl's name was Belinda — embraced the Eoman 
 Cathohc faith, and exjDired from the effects of stigmata inflicted 
 j)y her own hands in a i:>aroxysm of remorse for her brother's 
 antimely death at the hands of her seducer." 
 
 Tliis lively little impromptu sketch had the desired effect. 
 Melted by the woes of Belinda, or Sophia, or AmeUa, or 
 Lavinia Paget, Mrs. Shddon was moved to rclvite a sad evcTit in
 
 The Captain's CoaRjutor. 75 
 
 her husband's family ; and encouraged by the almost tearful 
 sympathy of the Captain, she again repeated every detail of 
 Susan Meynell's life, as known to her kindred. And as this 
 recital had flowed spontaneously from the good soul's lii^s, she 
 would be scarcely likely to allude to it afterwards in conversation 
 with Mr. Sheldon ; more esjjecially as that gentleman was not 
 in the habit of wasting much of his valuable time in small-talk 
 with the members of his own household. 
 
 Captain Paget had duly calculated this, and every other 
 Hazard that menaced the intricate path he had mapped out for 
 himself. 
 
 Satisfied by Mrs. Sheldon's repetition of Susan Meynell's 
 Btory, and possessed of all the information he could hoi:)e to 
 obtain from that quarter, Horatio set himself to consider what 
 stejDS must next be taken. Much serious reflection convinced 
 even his sanguine mind that the enterprise was a difficult one, 
 and could scarcely be carried through successfully without help 
 from some skilled genealogist. 
 
 " George Sheldon has given his lifetime to this sort of thing, 
 and is a skilled lawyer to boot," Captain Paget said to himself. 
 " If I hope to go in against him, I must have someone at my 
 elbow as well verseil in this sort of business as he is." 
 
 Having once admitted this necessity, the Captain set himself 
 to consider where he was to find the right person. A very brief 
 meditation settled this question. One among the numerous 
 business transactions of Captain Paget's life had brought him 
 in contact with a very resjiectable little French gentleman callea 
 Fleurus, who had begun his career as a notary, but, finding that 
 profession unprofitable, had become a hunter of pedigrees and 
 neirs-at-law — for the most part to insignificant legacies, un- 
 claimed stock, and all other jetsam and flotsam thrown up on 
 the shadowy shores of the Court of Chancery. M. Fleurus 
 had not often been so fortunate as to put his industrious 
 fingers into any large pie, but he had contrived to make a 
 good deal of money out of small aff'airs, and had found his clients 
 grateful. 
 
 " The man of men," thought Horatio Paget ; and he betook 
 himself to the office of M. Fleurus early next day, provided with 
 all documents relating to the Haygarthian succession. 
 
 His interview with the little Frenchman was long and satis- 
 factory. On cei-tain conditions as to future reward, said reward 
 to be contingent on success, M. Fleurus was ready to devote 
 himself heart and soul to the interests of Captain Paget. 
 
 " To begin : we must find legal evidence of this Matthew 
 Haygarth's marriage to the mother of this child C, who came 
 afterwards to marry the man Meynell ; and after we will go to 
 Susan Meynell. Her box came from Rouen — that we lcno\T.
 
 76 Charlotte s inheritance. 
 
 Wliere her box came from she is likely to have come from. So 
 it is at Rouen, or near Ronen, we must look for her. Let me 
 see : she die in 1835 ! that is long time. To look for the particu- 
 lars of her life is hke to dive into the ocean for to find the lost 
 cargo of a ship that is gone down to the bottom, no one knowa 
 where. But to a man really expert in these things there ia 
 nv)thing of impossible. I will find you your Susan Meynell in 
 less than six months ; the evidence of her marriage; if she was 
 married ; her children, if she had children. 
 
 In less than six months — the margin seemed a wide one to the 
 impatient Horatio. But he knew that such an investigation 
 must needs be slow, and he left the matters in the hands of his 
 new ally with a sense that he had done the best thing that could 
 be done. Then followed for Horatio Paget two months of patient 
 attendance upon fortiine. He was not idle during this time; 
 for Mr. Sheldon, who seemed particularly anxious to concilirite 
 him, threw waifs and strays of business into his way. Before tlie 
 mid'Ue of November M. Fleurus had found the register of 
 Matthew Haygarth's marriage, as George Sheldon had found 
 it before him, working in the same groove, and with the same 
 order of intelligence. After this important step M. Fleurua 
 departed for his native shores, where he had other business be- 
 sides the Meynell affair to claim his attention. Meanwhile the 
 astute Horatio kept a close eye iipou his young friend Valentine. 
 He knew from Diana that the young man had been in York- 
 shire ; and he guessed the motive of his visit to Newhall, not for 
 a moment supposing that his presence in that farmhouse could 
 have been accidental. The one turn of affairs that utterly and 
 completely mystified him was Mr. Sheldon's sanction of the 
 engagement between Valentine and Charlotte. This was a mys- 
 tery for wliich he could for some time find no solution. 
 
 " Sheldon will try to establish his stepdaughter's claim to the 
 fortune ; that is clear. But why does he allow her to throw 
 herself away on a penniless adventurer like Hawkehurst ? If 
 she were to marry him before recovering the Haygarth estate, 
 Hhe would recover it as his wife, and the fortune woiild be throwii 
 tinprotected into his hands." 
 
 More deliberate reflection cast a faint hght upon PhiKp Shel- 
 don's motives for so quixotic a course. 
 
 " The girl had fallen in love with Val. It was too late to pre- 
 vent that. She is of age, and can marry whom she pleases. By 
 showing himself opposed to her engagement with Val, he might 
 have hun-ied her into rebellion, and an immediate marriage. By 
 affecting to consent to the engagement, he would, on the con- 
 trary, gain time, and the advantage of aU those chances that are 
 involved in the lapse of time."
 
 The Goptawh Coadjutor. 7? 
 
 WitHii a few days of Christmas came the following letter from 
 M. Fleurus : — 
 
 From Jacques Bousseau Fleurus to Horatio Paget. 
 
 Hotel de la Pucelle, place Jeanne d'Arc, Rouen, 
 
 21st December, 186 — . 
 
 Monsieur, — After exertions incalculable, after labours lier- 
 olean, I come to learn something of your Susanne Meynell, — 
 jaore, I come to learn of her marriage. But I will begin at the 
 beginning of things. The labours, the time, the efforts, the 
 courage, the patience, the — I will say it without to blush — the 
 genius which this enterprise has cost me, I will not enlarge 
 upon. There are things which cannot tell themselves. To com- 
 mence, I will tell you how I went to Eouen, how I advertised in 
 the journals of Rouen, and asked among the people of Rouen — 
 at shops, at hotels, by the help of my allies, the police, by means 
 which you, in your inexperience of this science of research, could 
 not even figure to yourself — always seeking the trace of this 
 woman Meynell. It was all pain loHt. Of this woman Meynell 
 in Rouen there was no trace. 
 
 In the end I enraged myself. " Imbecile !" I said to myself, 
 " why seek in tliis duU commercial city, among this heavy people, 
 for that which thou shouldst seek only in the centre of all things? 
 As the rivers go to the ocean, so flow all the streams of human 
 life to the one great central ocean of humanity — Pakis ! It 
 is there the Alpha and the Omega — there the mighty heart 
 through which the blood of aU the body must be pumped, and 
 is pumping always," I say to myself, unconsciously rising to the 
 sublimity of my great countryman, Hugo, in whose verse I find 
 an echo of my own soul, and whose compositions I flatter my- 
 self I could have surpassed, if I had devoted to the Muses the 
 time and the i^owers which I have squandered ona, vilain metier, 
 that demands the genius of a Talleyrand, and rewards with the 
 crust of an artisan. 
 
 In Paris, then, I will seek the woman Meynell, and to Paris I 
 go. In my place an inexperienced person would advertise in the 
 most considerable papers ; would invite Susanne MeyneU to hear 
 of something to her advantage ; and would bring together a 
 crowd of false Susanne Meynells, greedy to obtain the benefice. 
 Me, I do nothing in this style there. On the contrary, in tho 
 most obscure little journals of Paris I publish a modest little 
 advertisement as from the brother of Susanne Meynell, who im- 
 plores his sister to visit him on his deathbed. 
 
 Here are foUies, you wUl say. Since Susanne Meynell is dead 
 it is thii-ty years, and her brother is dead also. Ah, how you 
 are dull, you insulars, and how impossible for your foggy island 
 
 F
 
 78 CJiarlotte's Inheritance. 
 
 to produce a Fouclie, a CaiJer, a geniua of police, a Coliunbtsa 
 
 of tiie subterranean darknesses of your city. 
 
 The brother, dying, advertises for the sister, dead ; and who 
 will answer that letter, think you ? Some good Christian soul 
 who has pity for the sick man, and who will not permit him to 
 languish in waiting the sister who will come to him never. For 
 us of the Roman Catholic religion the duty of charity is para- 
 mount. You of the Anglican faith — bah, how you are cold, 
 how you are hard, how you are unpitiable ! 
 
 My notice appears once, my notice appears twice, three times, 
 four times, many times. I occupy myself about my other busi- 
 ness, and I wait. I do not wait unusefully. In effect, a letter 
 arrives at last at the address of the dying, from a lady who knew 
 Susanne Meynell before her marriage with M. Lenohle. 
 
 Think you not that to me this was a mnment of triumph ? 
 Before her inarriar/e with M. Lenohle! Those words appear 
 under my eyes in the writing of the unknown lady. "It is 
 found!" I cry to myself; and then I hasten myself to reply to 
 the unknown lady. WiU she permit me to see her ? 
 
 With all politeness I make the request ; with all politeness it 
 is answered. The lady calls herself Mademoiselle Servin. She 
 resides in the street Grande-Mademoiselle, at the corner of the 
 Place Lauzun. It is of all the streets of Paris the most miser- 
 able. One side is already removed. In face of the windows of 
 those houses that still stand they are making a new Boulevard. 
 Behind they are pulling down edifices of all kinds in the for- 
 mation of a new square. At the side there is a yawning chasm 
 between two tall houses, through which they pierce a new street. 
 One sees the interior of many rooms rising one above another 
 for seven stories. Here the gay hangings of an apartment of 
 little master; there the still gaudier decoration of a boudoir of 
 these ladies. High above these luxurious salons — ah, but how 
 much more near to the skies ! — one sees the poor grey paj^er, 
 blackened and smoky, of a garret of sempstress, or workman, 
 and the hearths black, deserted. These interiors thus exposed 
 tighten me the heart. It is the autopsy of the domestic hearth. 
 
 I find the Mademoiselle Servin an old lady, grey and wan. 
 The house where she now resides is the house which she has 
 inhabited five-and-thirty years. They talk of pulling it down, 
 and to her the idea of leaving it is exquisite pain. She is alone, 
 a teacher of music. She has seen proprietors come and go. 
 The pension has changed mistresses many times. Students of 
 law and of medicine have come and passed Uke the shadows of a 
 magic lantern ; but this poor soul has remained still in her little 
 room on the fourth, and has kept always her little old piano. 
 
 It was here she knew Susanne Meynell, and a young Frencli*
 
 Halcyon Days. 79 
 
 mat) who became in love with her, for she was beautiful like the 
 angels, tliis lady said to me. 
 
 UntU we meet for all details. Enough that I come to discover 
 where the marriage took place, that I come to obtain a copy o£ 
 the register, and that I do all things in rule. Enough that the 
 marriage is a good marriage — a regular marriage, and that I 
 have placed myself already in communication with the heir 0/ 
 that marriage, who resides within some few leagues of thia 
 city. 
 
 My labours, my successes I will not describe. It must that 
 they will be recompensed ui the future. I have dispensed much 
 money during these transactions. 
 
 Agree, monsieur, that I am your devoted servitor, 
 
 Jacques Rousseau Fleuhus. 
 
 It was in consequence of the receipt of this missive that the 
 Captain trusted himself to the winds and waves in the cheerless 
 December weather. He was weU pleased to find that M. Fleurus 
 had made discoveries so important ; but he had no idea of let- 
 ting that astute practitioner absorb aU the power into his own 
 hands. 
 
 " I must see Susan MeyneU's heir," he said to himself; " I 
 must give him clearly to understand that to me he owes the 
 discovery of his claims, and that in this afi"air the Frenchmaa 
 Fleurus ia no more than a paid agent." 
 
 ^00K iht Jf0itrl^. 
 
 GUSTAYE m ENGLAND. 
 
 CH.APTER I. 
 
 HALCYON DAYS. 
 
 Once having offered up the fondest desires of her own heart on 
 the shrine of duty, Diana Paget was not a person to repent 
 herself of the pious sacrifice. After that Christmas night on 
 which she had knelt at Charlotte's feet to confess her sad secret, 
 and to resign all claim to the man she had loved so foolishly, so 
 tenderly, with such a romantic and unselfish devotion, Miss 
 Paget put away all thought of the past from her heart and 
 mind. Heart and mind seemed empty and joyless without 
 those loved tenants, though the tenants had been only fair
 
 80 Oharlotte'i Inher^Atnoe^ 
 
 wraiths of dreams that were dead. There was a sense of some- 
 thing missing in her hfe — a blank, dull calm, which was at first 
 very painful. But for Charlotte's sake she was careful to hide 
 all outward token of despondency, and the foohsh gi'ief, Y)ut 
 down by so strong a hand, was ere long well-nigh stifled. 
 
 Those dark days which succeeded Christmas were a period of 
 halcyon peace for Valentine and Charlotte. The accepted lover 
 came to the villa when he pleased, but was still carefid not to 
 encroach on the hceuse allowed him. Once a week he jDermitted 
 himself the delight of five-o'clock tea in Mrs. Sheldon's drawing- 
 room, on which occasions he brought Charlotte all the news of 
 his small literary world, and a good deal of useful information 
 out of the books he had been reading. When Mr. Sheldon 
 pleased to invite him to dinner on Sunday he gladly accepted 
 the invitation, and this Sunday dinner became in due course an 
 established institution. 
 
 " You may as well make this your home on a Sunday," said 
 Mr. Sheldon one day, with careless cordiahty ; " I dare say you 
 find Sunday dull in your lodgings." 
 
 " Yes, papa," cried Charlotte, " he does find it very dull- 
 dreadfully dull — don't you, Valentine P " 
 
 And she regarded him with that pretty, tender, almost 
 motherly look, which young ladies who are engaged are apt to 
 bestow on their afiianced lovers. 
 
 Miss Halliday was very grateful to her stepfather for hia 
 kindness to her landless adorer, and showed her appreciation of 
 his conduct in many pretty little caressing ways, which would 
 have been infinitely bewitching to a person of sentiment. 
 
 Unfortunately Mr. Sheldon was not sentimental, and anj 
 exhibition of feehng apjjeared to have an irritating effect upon 
 his nerves. There were times when he shrank from some little 
 sudden caress of Charlotte's as from the sting of an adder. 
 Aversion, surprise, fear^what was it that showed in the exj^res- 
 sion of his face at these moments ? Whatever that strange 
 look was, it dej^arted too quickly for analysis ; and the stock- 
 broker thanked his stejjdaughter for her little affectionate 
 demonstration with his wonted smile — the smile he smiled on 
 Change, the smile which was sometimes on his hps when his 
 mind was a nest of scorpions. 
 
 To Valentine, in these rosy hours, hfe seemed full of hope and 
 brightness. He transferred his goods and chattels from Omega 
 Street, Chelsea, to the pleasant lodging in the Edgware Road, 
 where he was nearer Charlotte, and out of the way of his late 
 patron Captain Paget, in the event of that gentleman's return 
 from the Continent. 
 
 Fortune favoured him. The gaiety of heart which came with 
 his happiness lent a grace to his pen. Pleasant thoughts and
 
 Salcyon Days. 81 
 
 fancies bedecked his pages. He saw everything in the rosy 
 light of love and beauty, and there was a buoyant freshness in 
 all he wrote. The Pegasus might be but a common hackney, 
 but the hack was young and fresh, and galloped gaily as he 
 scented the dewy morning air. It is not every poet whose 
 Pecfasus clears at a bound a space as wide as all that waste of 
 land and sea the watchman views from his tall tower on the 
 rock. 
 
 Mr. Hawkehurst's papers on Lauzun, Brummel, Sardana. 
 palus, Eabelais, Lord Chesterfield, Erasmus, Beau Nash, Apelles, 
 Galileo, and Philip of Orleans, were in demand, and the reading 
 pubhc wondered at this prodigy of book-making. He had 
 begun to save money, and had opened a deposit account at the 
 Unitas Bank. How he gloated over the deposit receipts in the 
 stillness of the night, when he added a fresh one to his store ! 
 When he had three, for sums amounting in all to forty pounds, 
 he took them to Charlotte, and she looked at them, and he 
 looked at them, as if the poor Httle bits of printed paper had 
 been specimens of virgin ore from some gold mine newly dis- 
 covered by Mr. Hawkehurst. And then these _ foolish lovers 
 kissed each other, as William Lee and his wife may have 
 embraced after the penniless young student had perfected his 
 invention of the stocking-frame. 
 
 " Forty pounds ! " exclaimed Miss Halliday, " all won by your 
 pen, and your poor fingers, and your poor, poor head ! How it 
 must ache after a long day's work ! How clever you must be, 
 Valentme!" 
 
 " Yes, dear ; amazingly clever. Clever enough to know that 
 you are the dearest girl in Christendom." 
 
 " Don't talk nonsense, sir ! You are not clever enough to have 
 the privilege of doing that yet awhile. I mean, how learned 
 you must be to know such lots of things, all about Erasmus, 
 and Galileo, and " 
 
 " No, my darhng, not Erasmus and Galileo. I knew all about 
 Erasmus last week ; but I am working at my paper on GaUleo 
 now, an exhaustive review of all the books that were ever 
 written on the subject, in ten pages. I don't ask other people 
 to remember what I write, you know, my dear, and I don't 
 pledge myself to remember it. That sort of thing won't keep. 
 There is a kind of sediment, no doubt, in one's note-book ; but 
 the eff"ervescence of that vintage goes ofi" rather quickly." 
 
 " I only know that you are a very clever person, and that one 
 obtains an immensity of information from your writings," said 
 Charlotte. 
 
 " Yes, dearest, there is a kind of wine that must be made 
 into negus for such pretty Httle topers as you — the ' Wine of 
 Cyprus,' as Mrs. Browning called 't- It is better for pretty
 
 82 Charlotte^g Inheritance. 
 
 girls to li&V3 tlie negus tlian to have nothing, or only weaS 
 home-brewed stuff that results in head-ache. My dearest, Fate 
 has been very good to me, and I love my profession of letters. 
 T am sure that of all educational processes there is none better 
 than book-making ; and the man who begins by making books 
 must be a dolt, dunce, and dunderhead, if he do not end by 
 wiiting them. So you may yet hope to see the morning that 
 shall make your Valentine famous — for a fortnight. What 
 man can hope to be famous for more than a fortnight in such a 
 railroad age as this ?" 
 
 During this halcyon period, in which Mr. Hawkehurst culti- 
 vated alternately the society of the Muses and his mistress, he 
 saw Httle or nothing of George Sheldon. He had washed hia 
 hands of all sha]«e in the work of establishing Charlotte HalH- 
 day's claim to the Keverend John Haygarth's thousands. 
 Indeed, since that interview in which Philip Sheldon had made 
 so hght of his stepdaughter's chances, and ratified his consent 
 to her marriage with so humble a literary adventurer as himself, 
 Mr. Hawkehurst had come to consider the Haygarthian inheri- 
 tance as altogether a visionary business. If it were certain, or 
 even probable, that Charlotte was to inherit a hundred thousand 
 pounds, was it likely that Mr. Sheldon would encourage such 
 an alhance P This question Mr. Hawkehurst always answered 
 in the negative ; and as days and weeks went by, and he heard 
 no more of the Haygarth fortune, the idea of Charlotte's wealth 
 became more and more shadowy. 
 
 If there were anything doing in this matter, the two brothers 
 were now working together, and George had no further need 
 of Valentine's help. 
 
 The two brothers were not working entirely together. Philip 
 Sheldon had taken the matter into his own strong hand, and 
 George found it very dilBcult to hold an inch of ground against 
 that formidable antagonist. The papers and information which 
 George had boasted of to Valentine, and the possession whereof 
 was, as he asserted, the very keystone of the arch, proved to be 
 of such small account that he ultimately consented to hand 
 them over to his brother on the payment of expenses out of 
 pocket, and a bonus of one hundred and fifty pounds, together 
 with a written undertaking from Miss HaUiday to pay him the 
 fifth share of any fortune recovered by means of those papers. 
 
 This undertaking had been executed in the easiest manner. 
 
 " My brother has taken it into his wise head that there is 
 some unclaimed stock standing in your grandfather's name 
 which you are entitled to, Lotta," Mr. Sheldon said one morn, 
 ing ; " and he wants to recover the amount for you, on condition 
 of receiving a clear fifth when the sum is recovered. Have jqu 
 any objection to sign such an undertaking ? "
 
 Salcyon Days. 83 
 
 " Dear papa, how can I object ?" cried Charlotte gaily. " Why, 
 etocks are money, are they not P How fortunate we are, and 
 how rich we are getting !" 
 
 "We!" 
 
 "Valentine and I," murmured the girl, blushing. "I cannot 
 help thinking of him when any windfall of good fortune comes 
 to me. What do you think, papa ? He has saved forty pounds 
 in little more than three months — all earned by his pen ! 
 
 "Behold 
 The arch-enchanter's wand ? Itself a nothing ; 
 But taking sorcery from the master-hand 
 To paralyze the Ceesars, and to strike 
 The loud earth breathless !" 
 
 And Miss HalHday spouted the glowing lines of the noble 
 dramatist with charming enthusiasm. She signed the required 
 undertaking without looking at it, and it was duly witnessed by 
 her stepfather. 
 
 "In your talk with your mother and Valentine, I should 
 advise you to be as silent about this small business as about 
 your own little fortune," Mr. Sheldon remarked presently. 
 
 " Mustn't I tell Valentine ? " cried Charlotte, making a wry 
 face ; " I should so like to tell him — ^just about these stocks. 
 I daresay he knows what stocks are ; and it would be such 
 cheering news for him, after he has worked his poor brain so for 
 that forty pounds. I don't so much care about telling poor 
 mamma; for she does exclaim and wonder so about things, that 
 it is quite fatiguing to hear her. But please let me tell Valen- 
 tine?" 
 
 Miss HalHday pursed-up her Hps and offered her stepfather 
 one of those kisses which she had of late been prompted to 
 bestow on him out of the gratitude of a heart overflowing with 
 girlish joy. He took the kiss as he might have taken a dose of 
 medicine, but did not grant the request preferred by it. 
 
 " If you want to be a fool, you can tell your lover of this 
 windfall ; but if you wish to prove yourself a sensible girl, you 
 ndll hold your tongue. He has saved forty pounds by hard 
 work in the last three months, you say : do you think he would 
 have saved forty pence if he had known that you had five 
 thousand pounds at his disposal ? I know that class of men ; 
 look at Goldsmith, the man who wrote the " Vicar of Wakefield, ' 
 and "Rasselas," and "Clarissa Harlowe," and so on. I have read 
 Bomewhere that he never wrote except under coercion — that ia 
 to say, want of money." 
 
 Charlotte acknowledged the wisdom of this argument, and 
 submitted. She was not what was called a strong-minded 
 woman ; and, indeed, strength of mind is not a plant indigenous
 
 84 Charlotte's Inheritance. 
 
 to tlie female nature, but an exceptional growth developed by 
 exceptional circumstances. In Charlotte's life there had been 
 nothing exceptional, and she was in all tilings soft and womanly, 
 ready to acknowledge, and to be guided by, the wisdoni of her 
 seniors. So Valentine heard nothing of the undertaking exe- 
 cuted by his lady-love. 
 
 After this, Mr. Sheldon took counsel's opinion, and set to 
 work in real earnest to recover the estate of the deceased John 
 Haygarth from the yawning jaws of that tame but all-devour- 
 ing monster, the Crown. The work was slow, and the dryasdust 
 details thereof need not be recorded here. It had but just 
 begun when Horatio Paget suddenly returned from his Conti- 
 nental expedition, and established himself once more in the 
 Omega Street lodgings. 
 
 CHAPTER II, 
 
 CAPTAIN PAGET AWAKENS TO A SENSE OF HIS DUTY. 
 
 Captain Paget's return was made known to the Sheldon circle 
 by a letter from the returning wanderer to his daughter. The 
 Captain was laid up with rheumatic gout, and wrote quite 
 piteously to implore a visit from Diana. Miss Paget, always 
 constant to the idea of a duty to be performed on her side, even 
 to this pere prodifiue, obeyed the summons promptly, with the 
 full approval of Georgy, always good-natured after her own 
 fussy manner. 
 
 "And if you'd like to take your papa a bottle of Mr. 
 Sheldon's old port, Diana, remember it's at your disposal. I'm 
 sure I've heard people say that old port is good for the gout — or 
 perhaps, by the l^ye, what I heard was that it wasuH good. I 
 know old port and gout seem to run together in my head some- 
 how. But if there's anything in the house your papa would 
 like, Diana — wine, or gunpowder tea, or the eider-down coverlet 
 off the spare bed, or the parlour croquet, to amuse him of an 
 evening, or a new novel — surely one couldn't forfeit one's aub- 
 «criT,>tion by lending a book to a non-subscribing invalid ? " 
 
 While Georgy was suggesting the loan of almost every portable 
 object in the house as a specific for Captain Paget's gout, Char- 
 lotte sent for a cab and made things smooth for her friend's 
 departure. She wrapped her warmly against the February 
 blast, and insisted upon going out to see her seated in the cab, 
 whereby she offered to the pedestrians of that neighbourhood a 
 seraphic vision of loveliness with tumbled hair. Charlotte had 
 been always delightful, but Charlotte engaged to Valentine 
 Hawkehurst was a creature of sttpernal sweetness and brightness 
 — a radiant ministering angel, hovering lightly above a world too 
 common for her foot to rest upon.
 
 Captain Paget awakens to a sense of his Duty. 85 
 
 Miss Paget found her father suflFering from a by no means 
 severe attack of a respectable family gout, a little peevish from 
 the effects of this affliction, but not at all depressed in mind. 
 He had, indeed, the manner of a man with whom things are 
 going pleasantly. There was a satisfaction in his tone, a 
 placidity in his face, except when distorted for the moment by 
 a twinge of pain, that were new to Diana, who had not been 
 accustomed to behold the brighter side of her father's disposition. 
 He seemed grateful for his daughter's visit, and received her 
 with unwonted kindness of manner. 
 
 " You have come very promptly, my dear, and I am gratified 
 by your early compliance with my request," he said with 
 dignified affection, after he had given his daughter the kiss of 
 greeting. "I was a great sufferer last night, Diana, a great 
 sufferer, a prisoner to this chair, and the woman below attempted 
 to send me up a dinner — such a dinner ! One would think a 
 very small degree of education necessary for the stewing of a 
 kidney, but the things that woman gave me last night were like 
 morsels of stewed leather. I am not an epicure, Diana; but 
 with such a constitution as mine, good cooking is a vital 
 necessity. Life in lodgings for a man of my age is a sore trial, 
 my dear. I wish you were weU married, Diana, and could give 
 your father a humble corner at your fireside." 
 
 Diana smiled. It was a somewhat bitter smile ; and there 
 was scorn of herself, as well as scorn of her father in that 
 bitterness. 
 
 " I am not the sort of person to marry well, papa," she said. 
 
 " Who knows ? You are handsomer than nine-tenths of the 
 women who marry well." 
 
 " No, papa ; that is your sanguine manner of looking at your 
 own property. And even if I were married to some one to whom 
 I might give obedience and duty, and all that kiai uf thing, in 
 exchange for a comfortable home, as they say in tli^ advertise- 
 ments, woidd you be content with a peaceful comer by my 
 fireside? Do you think you would never pine for clubs and 
 gaming-tables — nay, even for creditors to — ^to diplomatize with, 
 and difficulties to stirmount?" 
 
 *' No, my dear. I am an old man ; the clubs and gaming- 
 houses have done with me, and I with them. I went to see a 
 man at Arthur's a few months ago. I had written to him on a 
 little matter of business — ^in fact, to be candid with you, my 
 love, for the loan of a five-pound note — and I called at the club 
 for his reply. I caught sight of my face in a distant glass as I 
 was waiting in the strangers' room, and I thought I was looking 
 at a ghost. There comes a time towards the close of a long 
 troublesome hfe in which a man begins to feel like a ghost. Hia 
 friends are gone, and hio money ia gone, his health is gone, hia
 
 86 Charlotte's Inlieritance. 
 
 good looks are gone ; and tlie only mistake seems to be that th« 
 man liimself shonld be left bebind. I remember an observation 
 of Lord Chesterfield's : ' Lord * * * * and I have been dead 
 for the last two years, bnt we don't tell any one so,' he said ; and 
 there are few old men who conldn't say the same. But I am 
 not down-hearted to-day, my dear. ISo, the habit of hoping has 
 never qnite deserted me ; and it is only now and then that I 
 take a dismal view of hfe. Come, my love, lay aside your bonnet 
 and things. Dear me ! what a handsome black silk dress, and 
 how well you look in it ! " 
 
 "It is a present from Charlotte, papa. She has a very 
 liberal allowance of pocket-money, and is generosity itself. I 
 don't like to take so much from her, but I only wound her by a 
 refusal." 
 
 '■ Of course, my dear. There is nothing so ungracious as a 
 refusal, and no mark of high breeding so rare as the art of 
 gracious acceptance. Any booby can give a present; but to 
 receive a gift \N-ithout churlish reticence or florid rapture is no 
 easy accompUshment. I am always pleased to see you well- 
 dressed, my love " — Diana winced as she remembered her shabby 
 hat and threadbare gown at Foretdechene — " and I am especially 
 pleased to see you elegantly attired this evening, as I expect a 
 gentleman by-and-by." 
 
 "A gentleman, papa!" exclaimed Miss Paget, with consider- 
 able surprise ; " I thought that you had sent for me because you 
 were ill and depressed and lonely." 
 
 "Well, yes, Diana, I certainly am ill; and I suppose it is 
 scarcely unnatural that a father should wish to see his only 
 daughter." 
 
 Diana was silent. A father's wish to see his daughter was 
 incieed natural and common; but that Captain Paget, who in 
 no period of his daughter's hfe had evinced for her the common 
 affection of paternity, should be seized all of a sudden with a 
 yearning for her society, was somewhat singular. But Diana's 
 nature had been ennobled and fortified by the mental struggle 
 and the impalpable sacrifice of the last few months, and she 
 was in nowise disposed to repel any affectionate feeling of her 
 father's even at this eleventh hour. 
 
 " He tells us the eleventh hour is not too late," she thought. 
 " If it is not too late in the sight of that Di-i-ine Judge, shall it 
 be thought too late by an erring creature hke me ? " 
 
 After a few minutes of thoughtful silence, she knelt down by 
 her father's chair and kissed him. 
 
 " My dear father," she murmured softly, " beheve me, I am 
 very pleased to think you should wish to see me. I will come 
 to you whenever you like to send for me. I am glad not to 
 be a burden to you ; but I should wish to be a comfort when I 
 can."
 
 Captain Paget awakens to a sense of his Duty. 87 
 
 The Captain shed his stock tear. It signified sometliing 
 nearer akin to real emotion than usual. 
 
 " My dear girl," he said, "this is very pleasing, very pleasing 
 indeed. The day may come — I cannot just now say when — 
 and events may arise — which — the nature of which I am not 
 yet in a position to indicate to you — but the barren fig-tree may 
 not be always fruitless. In its old age the withered trunk may 
 
 {)ut forth fresh branches. We will say no more of tliis, my 
 ove ; and I will only remark that you may not go unrequited 
 for any affection bestowed on your poor old father." 
 
 Diana smiled, and this tune it was a pensive rather than a 
 bitter smile. She had often heard her father talk hke this 
 before. She had often heard these oracular hints of some grand 
 event looming mighty in the immediate future; but she had 
 never seen the vague prophecy accomplished. Always a schemer, 
 and always alternating between the boastful confidence of hope 
 and the peevish bewailings of desj^air, the Captain had built his 
 castle to-day to sit among its ruins to-morrow, ever since she 
 had known him. 
 
 So she set Uttle value on his hopeful talk of this evening, but 
 •ras content to see him in good spirits. He contemj^lated her 
 admiringly as she knelt by his easy-chair, and smoothed the 
 shining coils of her dark hair with a gentle hand, as he looked 
 downward at the thoughtful face — proud and grave, but not 
 ungentle. 
 
 " You are a very handsome girl, Diana," he murmured, aa 
 much to himself as to his daughter; "yes, very handsome. 
 Egad, I had no idea how handsome !" 
 
 " What has put such a fancy into your head to-night, papa P" 
 asked Diana, laughing. " I do not believe in the good looks 
 you are so kind as to attribute to me. When I see my face in 
 the glass I perceive a pale gloomy countenance that is by no 
 means pleasing." 
 
 " You may be out of spirits when you look in the glass. I 
 hope you are not unhaj^py at Bayswater." 
 
 "Why should I be unhappy, papa? No sister was ever 
 kinder or more loving than Charlotte Halliday is to me. I 
 should be very ungrateful to Providence as well as to her if I 
 did not appreciate such affection. How many lonely girls, like 
 me, go through life without picking up a sister ? " 
 
 " Yes, you are right, my dear. Those Sheldon people have 
 oeen very useful to you. They are not the kind of peojDle I 
 should have wished a daughter of mine to be Uee with, if I 
 were in the position my birth entitles me to occupy ; but as 1 
 am not in that position, I submit. That black silk becomes you 
 admirably. And now, my love, be so kind as to ring the bell 
 for hghts and tea."
 
 Cliarlotte's Inheritance. 
 
 They had been sitting in the firelight — the mystic magical 
 capricious firelight— which made even that tawdry lodging-house 
 parlour seem a pleasant chamber. The tea-tray was brought, 
 and candles. Diana seated herself at the table, and made tea 
 with the contents of a little mahogany caddy. 
 
 " Don't pour out the tea just yet," said the Captain; " I erpect 
 a gentleman. I don't supjaose he'll take tea, but it will look 
 more civil to wait for him." 
 
 " And who is this mysterious gentleman, papa ? " 
 
 " A Frenchman ; a man I met while I was abroad." 
 
 " Really a gentleman?" 
 
 ** Certainly, Diana," replied her father, with offended dignity. 
 " Do you think I should admit any person to my friendship 
 who is not a gentleman ? My business relations I am power- 
 less to govern; but friendship is a difi'erent matter. There is 
 no man more exclusive than Horatio Paget. M. Lenoble is a 
 gentleman of ancient hneage and amiable character." 
 
 "And rich, I suppose, papa?" asked Diana. She thought 
 that her father would scarcely speak of the gentleman in a tone 
 BO profoundly respectful if he were not rich. 
 
 "Yes, Diana. M. Lenoble is master of a very fair estate, 
 and is hkely to be much richer before he dies." 
 
 " And he has been kind to you, papa ? " 
 
 " Yes, he has shown me hospitality during my residence in 
 Normandy. You need not speak of him to your friends the 
 Sheldons.^' 
 
 " Not even to Charlotte ? " 
 
 " Not even to Charlotte. I do not care to have my afiairs 
 discussed by that class of people." 
 
 "But, dear papa, why make a mystery about so unimportant 
 a matter. 
 
 " I do not make a mystery ; but I hate gossip. Mrs. Sheldon 
 is an incorrigible gossip, and I daresay her daughter is n» 
 better." 
 
 " Charlotte is an angel, papa." 
 
 " That is very possible. But I beg that you will refrain from 
 discussing my friend M. Lenoble in her angelic presence." 
 
 " As you please, papa," said Diana gravely. She felt herself 
 bound to obey her father in this small matter; but the idea of 
 this mystery and secrecy was very unwelcome to her. It implied 
 that her father's acquaintance with this Frenchman was only a 
 part of some new scheme. It was no honest friendship, which 
 the Cajitain might be proud to own, glad to show the world that 
 in these days of decadence he could still point to a friend. It 
 was only some business alliance, underhand and stealthy; a 
 social conspiracy, that must needs be conducted in darkness. 
 
 " Why did papa summon me here if he wants hia acquaint*
 
 Captain Paget awakens to a sense of his Duty. 89 
 
 ance with tliis man kept secret?" slie asked herself; and the 
 question seemed unanswerable. 
 
 She pictured this M. Lenoble to herself — a wizened, sallow- 
 faced Macchiavellian individual, whose business in England 
 must needs be connected with conspiracy, treason, commercial 
 fraud, anything or everything stealthy and criminal. 
 
 " I wish you would let me go back to Bayswater before this 
 gentleman comes, papa," she said presently. " I heard it strike 
 seven just now, and I know I shall be expected early. I can 
 come again whenever you like." 
 
 " No, no, my love ; you must stop to see my friend. And now 
 tell me a little about the Sheldons. Has anything been stirring 
 since I saw them last ? " 
 
 "Nothing whatever, papa. Charlotte is very happy; she 
 always had a happy disposition, but she is gayer than ever since 
 her engagement with — Yalentine." 
 
 "What an absurd infatuation !" muttered the Captain. 
 
 " And he — Valentine — is very good, and works very hard at 
 his literary profession — and loves her very dearly." 
 
 It cost her an effort to say this even now, even now when she 
 fancied herself cui-ed of that folly which had once been so sweet 
 to her. To speak of him hke this — to put him away out of her 
 own Hfe, and contemplate him as an element in the Hfe of 
 another — could not be done vrithout some touch of the old 
 anguish. 
 
 There was a loud double-knock at the street-door as she 
 said this, and a step sounded presently in the passage ; a quick, 
 firm tread. There was nothing stealthy about that, at any rate. 
 
 "My friend Lenoble," said the Captain; and in the next 
 instant a gentleman entered the room, a gentleman who was in 
 every quality the opposite of the person whom Diana had 
 expected to see. 
 
 These speculative pictures are seldom good portraits. Miss 
 Paget had expected to find her father's ally small and shrivelled, 
 old and ugly, dried-up and withered in the fiery atmosphere of 
 fraud and conspiracy ; in outward semblance a monkey, in soul 
 a tiger. And instead of this obnoxious creature there burst in- 
 to the room a man of four-and-thirty years of age, tall, stalwart, 
 with a fair frank face, somewhat browned by summer suns; 
 thick auburn hair and beard, close trimmed and cropped in the 
 ai^proved Gallic fashion — clear earnest blue eyes, and a mouth 
 ■whose candour and sweetness a moustache could not hide. Henry 
 of Navarre, before the white lilies of France had dazzled his eyea 
 with their fatal splendour, before the court of the Medici had 
 taught the Bearnois to dissemble, before the sometime Protestant 
 champion had put on that apparel of stainless white in which he 
 went forth to stain his soul with the sin of a diplomatic aposta»y#
 
 90 Oharlotte's Inheritance. 
 
 Sucli a Burprise as this makes a kind of crisis in the eventless 
 record of a woman's life. Diana found herself blushing as the 
 strangrer stood near the door awaitincc her father's introduction. 
 She was ashamed to think of the wrong her imagmation had 
 done him. 
 
 " My daughter, Diana Paget — M. Lenoble. I have been tell- 
 ing Diana how much I owed to your hospitality during my stay 
 in Normandy," continued the Captain, with his grandest air. 
 " I regret that I can only receive you in an apartment quite 
 unworthy the seigneur of Cotenoir. — A charming place, my 
 dear Diana, which I should much hke you to see on some future 
 occasion. — Will you take some tea, Lenoble ? — Diana, a cup of 
 tea. — The Pagets are a fallen race, you see, my dear sir, and a 
 cujj of tea in a lodging-house parlour is the beat entertainment 
 I can give to a friend. The Cromie Pagets of Hertfordshire will 
 give yoiT dinner in gold plate, with a footman standing behind 
 the chair of every guest ; but our branch is a younger and a 
 poorer one, and I, among others, am paying the price of youth- 
 ful follies." 
 
 Gustave LenoMe looked sympathetic, but the glance of sym- 
 pathy was direct •'"d to Diana, and not to the male representative 
 of the younger Pagets. To pity the distressed damsel was an 
 attribute of the Lenoble mind; and Gustave had already begun 
 to pity IM'sp Paget, and to wonder what her fate in life would 
 be, with no better protector than a father who was confessedly 
 a pauper. He saw that the young lady was very handsome, 
 and he divined, from some indefinable expression of her face, 
 that she was proud ; and as he thought of his own daughters, 
 and their easy life and assured future, the contrast seemed to him 
 very cruel. 
 
 Chivalrous as the house of Lenoble might be by nature, he 
 could scarcely have felt so keen an interest in Captain Paget'a 
 daughter at the first glance, if his sympathies had not been 
 already enlisted for her. The noble Horatio, though slow to 
 act a father's part, had shovtrn himself quick to make capital 
 out of his daught-^r's beauty and virtues when the occasion 
 ofiered. 
 
 In his intercou'-se vrith the seigneur of Cotenoir, which had 
 developed from a mere business acquaintance into friendship, 
 Captain Paget had discoursed with much eloquence upon the 
 subject of his motherless daughter; and M. Lenoble, having 
 daughters of his own, also motherless, lent him the ear of 
 Bympathy, 
 
 •' I have heard much of you. Miss Paget," said Gustave 
 presently, "and of your devotion to your father. He has no 
 more favourite theme than your goodness." 
 
 Diana blushed, and Diana's father blushed also. That skilled
 
 Captain Paget aicahens to a sense of his Duty. 91 
 
 diplomatiat felt the awkwardness of the situation, and waa 
 prompt to the rescue. 
 
 " Yes," he said, " my daughter has been a heroine. There 
 are Antigones, sir, who show their heroic nature by other service 
 than the leading to and fro of a blind father. From the earhest 
 age my poor cliild has striven to stand alone ; too proud, too 
 noble to be a burden on a parent whose love would have given 
 all, but whose means could give but little. And now she conies 
 to me from her home among strangers, to soothe my hour of pain 
 and infirmity. I trust your daughters may prove as worthy of 
 your love, M. Lenoble." 
 
 "They are very dear girls," answered the Frenchman; "but 
 for them life has been all sunshine. They have never known a 
 sorrow except the death of their mother. It is the storm that 
 tests the temper of the tree. I wish they might prove as noble 
 in adversity as Miss Paget has shown herself." 
 
 This was more than Diana could bear without some kind of 
 protest. 
 
 " You must not take papa's praises au pied de la lettre, M, 
 Lenoble," she said ; " I have been by no means brave or patient 
 under adversity. There are troubles which one must bear. I have 
 borne mine somehow; but I claim no praise for having submitted 
 to the inevitable." 
 
 This was spoken with a certain noble pride which impressed 
 Gustave more than all the father's florid eloquence had done. 
 After this the conversation became less personal. M. Lenoble 
 talked of England. It was not his first visit ; but he had only 
 the excursionist's knowledge of the British Isles. 
 
 " I have been to Scotland," he said. " Your Scotland is 
 grand, mountainous — all that there is of the most savage and 
 poetic. It is a Switzerland lined with Brittany. But that 
 which mosts speaks to the heart of a stranger is the peaceful 
 beauty of your English landscape." 
 
 " You like England, M. Lenoble ? " said Diana. 
 
 " Have I not reason ? My mother was EngHsh. I was only 
 five years old when I lost her. She went out of my life hke a 
 dream'; but I can still recall a faint shadow of her face — an 
 EngUsh face — a countenance of placid sadness, very sweet and 
 tender. But why do I talk of these things? " 
 
 On this the Frenchman's talk took a gayer turn. This M. 
 Lenoble showed himself a lively and agreeable companion. Ho 
 talked of Normandy, his daughters and their convent, his Httle 
 Bon at Rouen, his aunt Cydahse, the quiet old lady at Beaubo- 
 cage ; his grandfather, liis grandmother, the old servants, and 
 everything familiar and dear to him. He told of his family 
 history with boyish candour, untainted by egotism, and seeme/l 
 much pleased by Diana's apparent interest in his unstudied talk.
 
 92 GJiarlotte^s Inheritance. 
 
 He was quite unconscious that the diplomatic Horatio was lead* 
 ing him on to talk of these things, with a view to mating the 
 conversation supremely interesting to liim. That arch diplo- 
 matist knew that there is nothing a man hkes better than talk- 
 ing of his own affairs, if he can have a decent excuse for such 
 discourse. 
 
 The clock struck nine while Diana was listening, really inte- 
 rested. This glimpse of a hfe so far apart from her own was a 
 relief, after the brooding introsjaective reveries which of late had 
 constituted so large a portion of her existence. She started up 
 at the sound of the clock. 
 
 " What now, Cinderella ? " cried her father. " Have yon 
 stopped beyond your time, and will your fairy godmother be 
 angry ? " 
 
 "No one will be angry, papa; but I did not mean to stay so 
 late. I am sorry your description of Normandy has been so 
 interesting, M. Lenoble." 
 
 " Come and see Vevinord and Cotenoir, and you will judge for 
 yourself. The town-hall of Vevinord is almost as fine as that 
 of Louvain ; and we have a church that belongs to the time of 
 Dagobert." 
 
 " She shall see them before long," said the Captain ; " I shall 
 have business in Rouen again before the next month is out ; 
 and if my daughter is a good girl, I will take her over there with 
 me." 
 
 Diana stared at her father in utter bewilderment. What could 
 be the meaning of this sudden display of affection ? 
 
 " I should not be free to go with you, pajja, even if you were 
 able to take me," she replied, somewhat coldly ; " I have other 
 duties." 
 
 She felt assured that there was some lurking motive, some 
 diplomatic art at the bottom of the Captain's altered conduct, 
 and she could not altogether repress her scorn. The astute 
 Horatio saw that he had gone a little too far, and that his only 
 child was not of the stuff to be moulded at will by his dexterouB 
 hands. 
 
 "You will come and see me again, Diana?" he said in a 
 pleading tone : " I am likely to be a prisoner in this room for a 
 week or more." 
 
 " Certainly, papa ; I will come if you wish it. When shall I 
 come ? " 
 
 "Well, let me see — to-day is Thursday; can you come on 
 Monday ? " 
 
 " Yes, I will come on Monday." 
 
 A cab was procured, and Miss Paget was conducted to that 
 vehicle by her new acquaiutance, who showed a gallant anxiety 
 for her comfort on the journey, and was extremely careful about
 
 " What do we here, my Heart and I?'^ 93 
 
 the closing of the windows. She arrived at Bayswater l.-efore 
 ten, but being forbidden to talk of M. Lenoble, could give but a 
 scanty account of her evening. 
 
 " And was your papa kind, dear? " asked Charlotte, " and did 
 he seem pleased to see you ? " 
 
 " He was much kinder and more affectionate than usual, Lotta 
 dear ; so much so, that he set me wondering. Now, if I were 
 as confiding and eager to think well of people as you are, I 
 should be quite delighted by this change. As it is, I am only 
 mystified. I should be very glad if my father and I could be 
 drawn closer together; very glad if my influence could bring 
 about an amendment in his Life." 
 
 While Miss Paget was discussing her father's affectionate and 
 novel behaviour, the noble Horatio was meditating, by his soli- 
 tary hearth, upon the events of the evening. 
 
 " I'm half-inclined to think he's hit already," mused the Cap- 
 tain. " I must not allow myself to be deluded by manner. A 
 Frenchman's gallantry rarely means much; but Lenoble is one 
 of those straightforward fellows whose thoughts may be read by 
 a child. He certainly seemed pleased with her ; interested and 
 sympathetic, and all that kind of thing. And she is an uncom- 
 monly handsome girl, and might marr}^ any one if she had the 
 opportunity. I had no idea she was so handsome until to-night. 
 I suppose I never noticed her by candlehght before. By Jove ! 
 I ought to have made her an actress, or singer, or something of 
 that kind. And so I might, if I'd known her face would light 
 up as it does. I wish she wasn't so impracticable — always cut- 
 ting in with some awkward speech, that makes me look like a 
 fool, when, if she had an ounce of common sense, she might see 
 that I'm trying to make her fortune. Yes, egad, and such a 
 fortune as few girls drop into now-a-days ! Some of your strait- 
 laced church-going people would call me a neglectful father to 
 that girl, I daresay ; but I think if I succeed in making her the 
 wife of Gustave Lenoble, I shall have done my duty in a way 
 that very few fathers can hope to surpass. Such a high-pi"in- 
 cipled feUow as Lenoble is too !— and that is a consideration." 
 
 CHAPTER IIL 
 
 " WHAT DO -VTE HEKE, MX HEART AND I P " 
 
 After that first summons to Chelsea, Diana went many times 
 ■ — twice and three times a week — to comfort and tend her invalid 
 father. Captain Paget's novel regard for his only child seemed 
 to increase with the famiharity of frequent intercourse. 
 
 " I have had very great pleasure in making your acquaintance, 
 my dear Diana," he said oue day, in the course of a tate-d-tiU 
 
 G
 
 94 Charlotte's Inhcritanee. 
 
 with his daughter; " and I am charmed to find you everything 
 that a well-l)orn and well-bred young woman ought to be. I 
 am sure you have excellent reason to be grateful to your cousin, 
 Priscilla Paget, for the excellent education you received in her 
 abode ; and 3^ou have some cause to thank me for the dash and 
 style imparted to your carriage and manner by our foreign 
 wanderings." 
 
 The Captain said this with the air of a man who had accom- 
 panied his daughter on the grand tour solely with a view to her 
 intellectual improvement. He really thought she had reason to 
 be grateful to him for those accidents of bis nomadic Hfe which 
 had secured her a good accent for French and German, and the 
 art of putting on her shawl. 
 
 "Yes, my dear child," he continued with dignity, "it affords 
 me real gratification to know you better. I need scarcely say 
 that when you were the associate of my pilgi'image, you were 
 not of an age to be available as a companion. To a man of the 
 world like myself, a young person who has not done growing 
 must always savour somewhat of the schoolroom and the 
 nursery. I am not going to repeat the Byronic impertinence 
 about bread-and-butter ; but the society of a girl of the hobble- 
 dehoy age is apt to be insipid. You are now a young v^oman, 
 and a young woman of whom any father might with justice be 
 proud." 
 
 After a few such speeches as these, Diana began to think that 
 it was just possible her father might really experience some, 
 novel feeling of regard for her. It might be true that his former 
 coldness had been no more than a prejudice against the awk- 
 wardness of girlhood. 
 
 " I was shabby and awkward, I daresay, in those days," she 
 thought ; " and then I was always asking papa for money to 
 buy new clothes ; and that may have set him against me. And 
 now that I am no burden upon him, and can talk to him and 
 amuse him, he may feel more kindly disposed towards me." 
 
 There was some foundation for this idea. Captain Paget had 
 felt himself more kindly disposed towards his only child from 
 the moment in which she ceased to be an encumbrance upon 
 him. Her sudden departure from Foretdechene had been taken 
 in very good part by him. 
 
 "A very spirited thing for her \o do, Val," he had said, when 
 informed of the fact by Mr. Hawkehurst ; " and by far the best 
 thing she could do, under the circumstances." 
 
 From that time his daughter had never asked him for a six- 
 pence, and from that time she had risen steadily in his estimation, 
 feut the feeling which he now exhibited was more than placid 
 approval ; it was an affection at once warm and exacting. The 
 fact was, that Horatio Paget saw in his daughter the high-road
 
 " Whai do we here, my Heart and //"' 96 
 
 to tlie acquirement of a handsome competence for his declining 
 years. His affection was sincere so far as it went; a sentiment 
 inspired by feelings purely mercenary, but not a hypocritical 
 assumption. Diana was, therefore, so much the more likely to 
 be softened and touched by it. 
 
 She was softened, deeply touched by this late awakening of 
 feehng. The engagement of Valentine and Charlotte had left 
 her own hfe very blank, very desolate. It was not alone the man 
 she loved who was lost to her ; Charlotte, the friend, the sister, 
 seemed also slipping away from her. As kind, as loving, as 
 tender as of old, this dear friend and adojoted sister still might 
 be, but no longer wholly her own. Over the hearts of the purest 
 Eros reigns with a too despotic power, and mild affection is apt 
 to sneak away into some corner of the temple on whose shrine 
 Love has descended. This mild affection is but a little twinkling 
 taper, that will bum steadily on, perhaps unseen amidst the 
 dazzling glory of Love's supernal lamp, to be found shining 
 benignantly when the lamp is shattered. 
 
 For Charlotte, Valentine — and for Valentine, Charlotte — made 
 the sum-total of the universe at this time ; or, at best, there was 
 but a small balance which included all the other cares and 
 duties, affections and pleasures, of Ufe. Of this balance Diana 
 had the hon's share ; but she felt that things had changed since 
 those days of romantic school-girl friendship in which Charlotte 
 had talked of never marrying, and travelhng with her dearest 
 friend Diana amongst all the beautiful scenes they had read of, 
 until they found the lovehest spot in the world, where they 
 would estabUsh themselves in an ideal cottage, and live together 
 for the rest of their lives, cultivating their minds and their 
 flower-garden, working berhn-wool chairs for their ideal drawing- 
 room, and doing good to an ideal peasantry, who would he just 
 poor enough to lae interesting, and sickly enough to requu-e 
 frequent gifts of calf 's-foot jelly and green tea. 
 
 Those foolish dreams were done with now; and that other 
 dream, of a life to be spent with the reckless companion of her 
 girlhood, was lost to Diana Paget. There was no point to which 
 she could look forward in the future, no star to lure her onward 
 upon hfe's journey. Her present position was sufficiently com- 
 fortable ; and she told herself that she must needs be weak and 
 wicked if she were not content with her lot. But beyond the 
 present she dared not look, so blank was the prospect — a desert, 
 mthout even the mirage ; for her dreams and delusions were 
 gone with her hope. 
 
 Possessed by such a sense of loneHness, it is scarcely strange 
 if there seemed to her a gleam of joy, a faint gUmmejr of hope, in 
 the newly awakened affection of her father. She began to believe 
 him, and to take comfort from the thought that he was drifting
 
 90 Charlotte's Inlientance. 
 
 to ;i liaven wliere he miglit lie moored, witli otlier battered old 
 hulks of pirate and privateer, inglorious and at rest. To work 
 lor him and succour him in his declining years seemed a brighter 
 prospect to this hopeless woman of four-and-twenty than a 
 future of lonely independence. "It is the nature of woman to 
 lean," says the masculine philosopher ; but is it not rather her 
 nature to supi^ort and sustain, or else why to her is entnisted 
 the sublime resjDonsibility of maternity ? Diana was pleased to 
 think that a remorseful reprobate might be dependent on her 
 toil, and owe his reformation to her influence. She was indeed 
 a new Antigone, ready to lead him in his moral bUndness to an 
 altar of atonement more pure than the ensanguined shrine of 
 the Athenian Eumenides. 
 
 Her visits to Omega Street were not entirely devoted to tete-d- 
 tetes with her father. By reason of those coincidences which are 
 so common to the lives of some people, it generally hapj^ened 
 that M. Lenoble dropped in upon his invalid friend on the verj- 
 day of Miss Paget's visit. M. Lenoble was in London on 
 business, and this business apparently necessitated frequent 
 interviews with Captain Paget. Of course such interviews could 
 not take place in the presence of Diana. Gustave was wont, 
 therefore, to wait with praiseworthy patience until the conclusion 
 of the young lady's visit ; and would even, with an inconsistent 
 gallantry, urge her to prolong her stay to its utmost limit. 
 
 " It will always be time for my affairs, Miss Paget," he urged, 
 " and I know how your father values your society ; and he weU 
 may value it. I only hope my daughters will be as good to me, 
 if I have the gout, by-and-by." 
 
 Diana had spent nearly a dozen evenings in Omega Streei^ 
 and on each of those evenings had happened to meet M. Lenoble. 
 She liked him better on every occasion of these accidental meet- 
 ings. He was indeed a person whom it was difficult for any one 
 to dislike, and in the thirty-four' years of his life had never 
 made an enemy. She had been pleased with him on the first 
 evening; his bright handsome face, his courteous reverence for 
 her sex — expressed in every word, every tone, every look — his 
 sympathy with all good thoughts, his freshness and candour, 
 were calculated to charm the coldest and most difficult off 
 judges. Diana liked, and even admired him, but it was from an 
 abstract looint of viev/. He seemed a creature as remote from 
 her own life as a portrait of Henry of Navarre, seen and admired 
 in some royal picture-gallery to-day, to fade out of her memory 
 to-morrow. 
 
 There was only one point in connection with Gustave Lenoble 
 which occupied her serious thoughts ; and this was the nature 
 of his relations with her father. 
 
 This was a subject that sorely troubled her. Hope as she
 
 " Wliat do we liere, my 'Seart and If" 97 
 
 miglit for the future, she could not shut her eyes to the past. 
 She knew that her father had Hved for years as a cheat and 
 a trickster — now by one species of falsehood and trickeiy, now 
 by another — rarely incautious, but always unscrupulous. How 
 had this village seigneur of Normaudy fallen into the Captain's 
 toils ; and what was the nature of the net that was spread for 
 him ? 
 
 The talk of business, the frequent interviews, the evident 
 elation of her father's spirits, combined to assure her that some 
 great scheme was in progress, some commercial enterprise, per- 
 haps not entii-ely dishonest — nay even honest, when regarded 
 from the sanguine speculator's point of view, but involving the 
 hazard of Gustave Lenoble's fortune. 
 
 " It is quite as easy for my father to delude himself as it is 
 for him to delude others. Tliis M. Lenoljle is ignorant of Eng- 
 lish commerce, no doubt, and will be ready to believe anything 
 papa tells him. And he is so candid, so trusting, it would be 
 very hard if he were to be a loser through his confidence in 
 papa. His daughters, too ; the hazard of his fortune is peril to 
 their future." Such doubts and fears, gradually developed by 
 reflection +«ok stronger hold on Miss Paget's mind after every 
 fresh visit to Omega Street. She saw the Frenchman's hght- 
 hearted confidence in all humanity, her father's specious manner 
 and air of quixotic honour. His sanguine tone, his excellent 
 spirits, filled her with intolerable alarm. Alas ! when had she 
 ever seen her father in good spirits, except when some gentle- 
 manly villany was in progress ? 
 
 Miss Paget endured this uneasiness of mind as long as she 
 could, and then determined to warn the supposed victim. She 
 planned the mode of her warning, and arranged for herself a 
 diplomatic form which would reflect the least possible discredit 
 upon her father ; and having once come to this resolution, she 
 was not slow to put it into effect. 
 
 When her father was about to send for a cab to convey her 
 back to Bayswater, after her next visit to Omega Street, she 
 surprised him by intercepting his order. 
 
 " There is a cab-stand in Sloane Square, papa," she said ; " and 
 if M. Lenoble will be so kmd as to take me there, I — I would 
 rather get the cal) from the stand. The man charges more when 
 he is fetched off the rank, I believe." 
 
 She could think of no better excuse for seeing Gustave alone 
 than this most sordid pretence. She blushed as she thought 
 how mean a sound it must have in the ears of the man for 
 whose advantage she was plotting. Happily M. Lenoble was 
 not among the people who see nothing but meanness iii the 
 desire to save sixjience. His aunt Cydalise had shown him the 
 loveliness of poverty; for there are vows of holy poverty that
 
 98 GTiarlotte't Inheritance. 
 
 need no spoken formula, and that are performed without tha 
 cloister. 
 
 " Poor girl !" thought M. Lenoble ; " I dare say even the cost 
 of her coach is a consideration with her ; and one dare not pay 
 the coachman." 
 
 This was how Gustave read that blush of shame which for a 
 moment dyed Diana's cheek. Her father's was a very different 
 reading. 
 
 " The minx sees my game, and is playing into my hands," 
 thought he. " So demure as she is, too ! I should never have 
 supijosed her capable of such a clever manoeuvre to secure ten 
 minutes' tete-a-tete with an eligible admirer." 
 
 He bade his daughter good night with more than usuaV 
 efiusion. He began to think that she might prove herself 
 worthy of him after all. 
 
 The district between Omega Street and Sloane Square is after 
 dusk of all places the most solitary. It is the border-land of 
 Pimhco, or, to bon'ow from Sidney Smith, the knuckle end of 
 Belgravia. In these regions of desolation and smoke-blackened 
 stucco Diana and her companion were as secure from the inter- 
 ruption of the jostling crowd as they might have been in the 
 primeval forests of Central America. 
 
 Miss Paget's task was not a pleasant one. Shape her warning 
 as she might, it must reflect some discredit upon her father. 
 He had of late been kind to her; she felt this keenly to-night, 
 and it seemed that the thing she was about to do was a sort of 
 parricide. Not against her father's Ufe was her cniel hand to 
 be lifted ; but her still more cruel tongue was to slay her father's 
 good name. 
 
 " This M. Lenoble likes him and trusts him," she thought to 
 herself. " What a hapjiiness for that poor broken-down old 
 man to have so kind a friend ! And I am going to interfere in 
 a manner that may put an end to tliis friendship?" 
 
 This is the shape which her thoughts assumed as she walked 
 silently by Gustavo's side, with her hand lying hghtly on liis 
 arm. He spoke to her two or three times about the dulness of 
 the neighbourhood, the coldness of the night, or some other 
 equally thrilling subject; but, finding by her rephes that she 
 was thinking deeply, he made no further attempt at conver- 
 sation. 
 
 "Poor child! she L^s some trouble on her mind, jierhaps," 
 he thought to himself sadly, for his sympathy with this young 
 lady was a very profound feehng. This was the fii'st occasion 
 on wliich he had ever been alone with her, and he wondered to 
 find what a strange emotion was developed by the novelty of 
 the situation. He had married at twenty years of age, and had 
 uever known those brief fancies or foolish passions which wasta
 
 " What do we here^ my Heart and 2/"' 99 
 
 the freshness of mind and heart. He had married a wife whom 
 he never learned to love; but his nature was so essentially a 
 happy one, that he had failed to discover the something wanting 
 in his life. In all relations- -as gi'andson, husband, father, 
 master — he had been " all simply perfect," as Mademoiselle 
 Cydalise pronounced him ; and in a mind occupied by cares for 
 the welfare and happiness of others, he had never found that 
 blank which needed to be filled in order to make his own hfe 
 comj^letely hapi^y. Only of late, in his thirty-fourth year, had 
 he come to the knowledge of a feeling deej^er than dutiful regard 
 for an invalid wife, or atFectionate solicitude for motherless chil- 
 dren; only of late had he felt his heart stirred by a more 
 thrilling emotion than that placid resignation to the will of 
 Providence which had distinguished his courtship of Made« 
 moiselle de Nerague. 
 
 They had nearly reached Sloane Square before Diana took 
 courage to broach the subject so naturally repugnant to her. 
 She had need to remember that the welfare of M. Lenoble and 
 all belonging to him might be dependent on her fortitude. 
 
 "M. Lenoble," she began at last, " I am going to say some- 
 thing I shall find it most painful to utter, but which I feel it my 
 duty to say to you. I can only ask you to receive it in a gene- 
 rous spirit." 
 
 "But, my dear Miss Paget, I pray you not to say anything 
 that- is disagreeable to you. Why should you give yourself 
 pain ? — why " 
 
 "Because it is my duty to warn you of a danger which I 
 know only too well, and of which you may be quite ignorant. 
 You are my father's friend, M. Lenoble ; and he has very few 
 friends. I should be sorry if anything I were to say should rob 
 him of your regard." 
 
 " Nothing that you say shall rob him of my friendship. But 
 why should you persist thus to say anything that is painful ? 
 Whao can j^ou tell me that I do not know, or that I cannot guess ? 
 Will you tell me that he is poor? But I know it. That he is a 
 broken-down gentleman ? And that also I know. What, then, 
 would you tell me ? That he has a daughter who is to him a 
 treasure without price? Ah, mademoiselle, what must I be if I 
 did not know that also ? — I,iwho have contemplated that daughter 
 80 many times — ah, so many ! — when she could not know with 
 what sympathy my eyes watched her dutiful looks, with what 
 profound emotion my heart interpreted her life of affectionate 
 sacrifice." 
 
 There was a warmth, a tenderness in his tones which touched 
 Diana's heart as it had not been touched of late. Suddenly, 
 unexpectedly, the full meaning of those tender accents came home 
 to her. The love that she had once dreamed of from the lips o/
 
 100 Cliarloite's Inheritance. 
 
 another spoke to her to-night in the words of this stranger. 
 The sympathy for which she had yearned long ago, in the days of 
 her wanderings with Valentine, was given tc her to-night with 
 out stint or measure. Unhappily it came too late ; and it did 
 not come from the only Jiyvg which, as it seemed to her to-night, 
 could make sympathy precious or love divine. But to this lonely 
 girl a good man's affection seemed a treasure for which she must 
 needs be deeply grateful. It was something to discover that she 
 could be loved. 
 
 " I too," she said to herself, — " I, of whose presence Valentine 
 is scarcely conscious when he enters a room where Charlotte and 
 I are together ; I, whom he greets day after day with the same 
 careless words, the same indifferent look ; I, who might fade and 
 waste day by day with some slow disease, until I sank into the 
 grave, before he would be conscious of any change in my face, — 
 is it possible that amongst the same race of beings there can be 
 any creature so widely different from Valentine Hawkehurst aa 
 to love we .'"' 
 
 This was the bitter complaint of her heart as she compared the 
 tenderness of this stranger with the indifference of the man to 
 whom, for three long years of her girlhood, she had given every 
 dream, every thought, every hope of her existence. She could 
 not put him away from her heart all at once. The weak heart 
 still fondly clung to the dear familiar image. But the more 
 intensely she had felt the cold neglect of Valentine, the more 
 grateful to her seemed the unsought affection of Gustave L#- 
 noble. 
 
 '•■ You know me as little as you know my father, M. Lenoble," 
 she said, after a long pause, during which they had walked to 
 the end of the long duU street, and were close to the square. 
 *' Let us go back a little way, please ; I have much more to say. 
 I wish you to be my father's friend always, but, if possible, 
 without danger to yourself. My father is one of those san- 
 guine people who are always ready to embark in some new 
 enterprise, and who go on hoping and dreaming, after the failure 
 of a dozen schemes. He has no money, that I know of, to lose 
 himself, and that fact may make him, unconsciously, reckless of 
 other people's money. I have heard him speak of business rela- 
 tions vnth you, M. Lenoble, and it is on that account I ventura 
 to speak so plainly. I do not want my poor father to delude 
 you, as he has often deluded himself. If you have already per- 
 mitted him to involve you in any speculation, I entreat you to 
 try to withdraw from it — to lose a little money, if necessary, 
 rather than to lose all. If you are not yet involved, let my 
 warning save you from any hazard." 
 
 " My dear Miss Paget, I thank you a thousand times for your 
 ftdvice, your noble thoughtfulness for others. But no, there is
 
 " What do vje here, my Heart and If" 101 
 
 no hazard. The business in which your father is occupied foi 
 me is not a speculation. It involves no risk beyond the expen- 
 diture of a few thousand francs, which, happily, I can afford to 
 lose. I am not at liberty to tell you the nature of the business 
 in question, because I have promised your father to keep that a 
 secret. Dear young lady, you need have no fear for me. I am 
 not a rash speculator. The first years of my life were passed in 
 extreme poverty — the poverty that is near neighbour to starva- 
 tion. That is a lesson one cannot forget. How shall I thank 
 you for your concern for me? — so generous, so noble !" 
 
 " It was only my duty to warn you of my poor father's weak- 
 ness," rephed Diana. " If I needed thanks, your kindness to 
 him is the only boon I could ask. He has bitter need of a 
 friend." 
 
 " And he shall never lack one while I Uve, if only for your 
 sake." The last half of the sentence was spoken in lower tones 
 than the first. Diana was conscious of the lurking tenderness 
 ef those few words, and the consciousness embarrassed her. 
 Happily they had reached the end of the quiet street by this 
 time, and had emerged into the busier square. No more was 
 said till they reached the cab-stand, when Diana wished her 
 companion good night. 
 
 " I am going back to Normandy in a week, Miss Paget ; shall 
 I see you again before I leave England ?" 
 
 " I really don't know ; our meetings are generally accidental, 
 you see." 
 
 " O yes, of course, always accidental," replied Gustave, smiling. 
 
 " I am sorry you are going to leave London — for papa's sake." 
 
 " And I, too, am sorry — for my own sake. But, you see, when 
 one has daughters, and a farm, and a chateau, one must be on 
 the spot. I came to England for one week only, and I have 
 stayed six." 
 
 "You have found so much to amuse yon in London?" 
 
 " Nay, mademoiselle, so much to interest me." 
 
 " It is almost the same thing, is it not ? " 
 
 " A thousand times no ! To be amused and to be interested 
 — ah, what can be so widely different as those two conditions ot 
 mind!" 
 
 "Indeed! Good night, Mr. Lenoble. Please asktlie cabin ar 
 to drive as fast as he can venture to do with consideration fo\ 
 his horse. I am afraid I shall be late, and my friends will Iw 
 anxious about me." 
 
 " You will be late. You consider your friends at Bayswat er, 
 and you consider even the cabman's horse. You are charity 
 itself. Will you not consider me a httle also, Miss Paget .f*" 
 
 "But how?" 
 
 " Let me see you before I go back to Normandy. Your papa
 
 N 
 
 102 CDiarlotte's Inheritance. 
 
 likes to see you twice a week, I know. This is Monday night 
 will you come to see him on Thursday P " 
 
 "If he wishes it." 
 
 " He does wish it. Ah, how he wishes it ! Tou will come F 
 
 " If Mrs. Sheldon and Charlotte can spare me." 
 
 " They cannot spare you. No one can spare you. That can« 
 not be. It is amongst the things that are impossible. But 
 they -svill have pity iipon — your father, and they will let you 
 come." 
 
 "Please ask the cabman to start. Indeed. I shall be lata 
 Good night, M. Lenoble." 
 
 "Goodnight." 
 
 He took her hand in his, and kissed it, with the grace of a 
 Bayard. He loved her, and took no trouble to conceal his pas- 
 Kion. No shadow of doubt darkened that bright horizon to 
 which M. Lenoble looked with hopeful eyes. He loved this 
 penniless, motherless girl, as it was in the blood of the Lenoblea 
 to love the jjoor and the hcli^less ; especially when poverty and 
 helplessness presented themselves in the guise of youth and 
 beauty. He loved her, and she would love him. But why not ? 
 He was ten years her senior, but that makes nothing. His 
 auburn hair and beard, in the style of Henry the Great, could 
 show no streak of grey. His eyes had the brightness of one- 
 and-twenty ; for the eyes of a man whose soul presei^ves its 
 youthfulness will keep their clear lustre for half a century. The 
 tall figure, straight as a dart ; the fi'ank handsome face which 
 M. Lenoble saw in the glass when he made his toilet, were not 
 calculated to dishearten a hopeful lover ; and Gustavo, by nature 
 sanguine, enjoyed his dream of happiness, untroubled by one 
 morbid apprehension. 
 
 He loved her, and he would ask her for his wife. She would 
 accept his offer; her father would rejoice in so fortunate an alli- 
 ance ; her friends of Bayswater would felicitate a change so 
 desirable. And when he returned to Normandy he would take 
 her with him, and say to his children, "Behold your mother!" 
 And then the great rambling mansion of Cotenoir would assuiue 
 a home-like aspect. The ponderous old furniture would be 
 replaced by lightsome appointments of modern fashion ; except, 
 of course, in the grand di-awing-room, where there were tapes- 
 tries said to be from the designs of Boucher, and chairs and 
 Bofas in the true Louis Quinze style, of immovable bulkiness. 
 
 There was but one trifling hitch in the whole scheme of hap- 
 piness — Diana was a Protestant. Ah, but what then ! A crea- 
 ture so sweet, so noble, could not long remain the slave of 
 Anglican heresy. A httle talk with Cydalise, a week's " retreat " 
 at the Sacre Coeur, and the thing would be done. The dear girl 
 would renounce her errors, and enter the bosom of the Mother
 
 Sliarper tlian a Serpent's Tooth. 103 
 
 Charch. Pouff! M. Lenoble blew tlie little difficulty away 
 from his finger-tips, and then wafted a kiss from the same finger* 
 tips to his absent beloved. 
 
 "And this noble heart warned me against her own father!" 
 M. Lenoble said to himself, as he walked towards the hotel at 
 Blackfriars where he had taken up his abode, quite unconscious 
 that the foot of Blackfriars Biidge was not the centre of West 
 End London. " How noble, how disinterested ! Poor old man ! 
 He is, no doubt, a speculator — something even of an adventurer 
 "What then ? He shall have an apartment at Cotenoir, his place 
 at the family table, his fauteuil by the hearth ; and there he 
 can do no harm," 
 
 There was a strange sentiment in Diana's mind after thia 
 evening's conversation with Gustave Lenoble. To feel herself 
 beloved, to know that there was some one creature in the wide 
 crowded world interested in, nay, even attached to her, was a 
 mystery, a surprise, and in some sort a source of pleasure to 
 her. That Gustave Lenoble could ever be any nearer to her 
 than he was at the present time did not occur to her as being 
 within the limits of possibility. She had thrust Valentine from 
 her heart, but the empty chamber could receive no new tenant. 
 It was not swept and garnished ; nay, indeed, it was sadly ht- 
 tered with the shreds and patches left by the late occupant. 
 But, while this was so, to know that she could be loved was in 
 Bome manner sweet to her. 
 
 " Ah, now I know that the poet is right," she said to herself. 
 " There is no creature so desolate but some heart responds unto 
 its own. And I have found the generous responsive heart that 
 can pity and love me because I seem so sorely to need love and 
 l^ity. All my life — my blank, empty Ufe — I vnll remember and 
 be grateful to him, the first good man who ever called my father 
 friend; the first of all mankind who thought this poor hand 
 worthy to be lifted to his hps. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 SHAKPER THAN A SERPENt's TOOTH. 
 
 Having pledged herself to visit Omega Street on Thursday, Diana 
 considered herself bound to perform that jDromise. She felt, 
 however, that there was some touch of absurdity in the i^osition, 
 for to keep a promise so made was in a manner to keep an 
 appointment with M. Lenoble. 
 
 " I dare say he has a habit of falling in love with eveiy young 
 woman he meets," she thought, when she considered his conduct 
 from a more prosaic standpoint than the grateful enthusiasm 
 hifl generous sympathy had at fii'st awakened in her mind. " I
 
 104 OJiarlotte' 8 hiheritanct. 
 
 have heard thafc it is a Frencliman's faculty to consider himsell 
 irresistible, and to avow his adoration for a new divinity every 
 week. And I was so foolisli as to fancy there was a depth of 
 feeling in his tone and manner ! I am sure he is all that is good 
 and generous; but the falhng in love is no doubt a national 
 failing." 
 
 She remembered the impertinent advances of divers unknown 
 foreigners whom sbe had encountered on pier or digue, kursaal 
 or beach, in the frequently unprotected hours of her continental 
 wanderings. 
 
 She had not seen the best side of the foreign mind in her 
 character of unattended and doubtfully attired English demoi- 
 selle. She knew that Gustave Lenoble was of a very different 
 stamjj from those specimens of the genus tiger whose imperti- 
 nent admiration had often wounded and distressed her; but 
 she was inclined to attribute the fault of shallowness to a 
 nature so frank and buoyant as that of her father's friend. 
 
 She walked from Bayswater to Chelsea on the appointed 
 Thursday, for the cost of frequent journeys in cabs was more 
 than her purse could supply. The walk across the Park was 
 
 f)leasant even in the bleak March weather, and she entered the 
 ittle jjarlour in Omega Street with the bloom of damask roses 
 ujjon her cheeks. 
 
 " How do you do, j^apa dear ? " she began, as she came int* 
 the dusky room; but the figure sitting in her father's accustomed 
 place was not that of her father. It was M. Lenoble, who rose 
 to welcome her. 
 
 " Is papa worse ? " she asked, surprised by the CaiDtain's 
 absence. 
 
 "On the contrary, he is better, and has gone out in a hired 
 carriage for a breath of fresh air. I persuaded him to go. He 
 will be back very shortly." 
 
 " I wrote to tell him I should be here to-day, but I am very 
 glad he has gone out, for I am sure the air will do him good. 
 Was he well wrapped up, do you know, M. Lenoble ? " 
 
 " Enveloj^ed in railway-rugs and shawls to liis veiy nose. I 
 arranged all that with my own hands. He looked hke an am- 
 bassador from all the Russias." 
 
 " How kind of you to think of such things ! " said Diana 
 gratefully. 
 
 " And tell me why should I not think of such things ? Do 
 you imagine that it is not a pleasui'e to me to wait upon your 
 father — for your sake ? " 
 
 There was some amount of awkwardness in this kind of thing. 
 Diana busied herself with the removal of her hat and jacket, 
 which she laid neatly upon a stony-hearted horsehair sofa. Aft«r 
 doing this she placed herself near the window, whence she con*
 
 Sharper than a Serpent's Tooth. 105 
 
 templated the dusky street, appeai-ing mucli interested in the 
 movements of the lamp lighter. 
 
 " What an admirable way they have of lighting the lampa 
 now," she remarked, with the conversational brilliance which 
 usually marks this kind of situation ; " how much more con- 
 s^enleut it must be than the old method with the ladder, you 
 know!" 
 
 " Tes, I have no doubt," said Gustave, bringing himself to 
 her side with a couple of steps, and planting himself deliberately 
 in a chair next to hers ; " but don't you think, as I start for 
 Normandy to-morrow, we might talk of something more inte- 
 resting than the lamplighter. Miss Paget ? " 
 
 " I am ready to talk of anything you like," rephed Miss Paget, 
 with that charming assumption of unconsciousness which every 
 woman can command on these occasions. 
 
 " You are very good. Do you know that when I persuaded 
 your father to go out for an airing, I was prompted by a motive 
 so selfish as to render the proceeding quite diabolical ? Don't 
 be alarmed ! The doctor gave his permission for the airing, or 
 I should not have attempted such a thing. Hypocrisy I am 
 capable of, but not assassination. You cannot imagine the 
 diplomacy which I exhibited ; and all to what end P Can you 
 imagine that ? " 
 
 " No, indeed." 
 
 " That I might secure one half-hour's uninterrupted talk with 
 you ; and, unhappily, you are so late that I expect your father's 
 return every minute. He was to be back again before dusk, and 
 the appearance of the lami^lighter demonstrates that the dusk 
 has come. I have so much to say, and so little time to say it ; 
 80 much, Diane " 
 
 She started as he called, her thus, as if in that moment of 
 ■urprise she would have risen from her chaii' by his side. She 
 knew what was coming, and having expected nothing so 
 desperate, knew not how to arrest the confession that she would 
 fain have avoided hearing. M. Lenoble laid his hand firmly on 
 hers. 
 
 " So much, Diane ; and yet so Uttle, that all can be told in 
 three words. I love you." 
 
 " M. Lenoble ! " 
 
 " Ah, you are surprised, you wonder, you look at me with eyea 
 of sweet amazement ! Dear angel, do you think it is possible 
 to see you and not to love you ? To see you once is to respect, 
 to adnure, to bow the knee before beauty and goodness ; but to 
 see you many times, as I have done, the patient consoler of an 
 invalid and somewhat difficult father — ah, my sweet love, who ia 
 there so hard amongst mankind that he should escape from 
 loving you, seeing all that ? "
 
 106 Charlotte's Inheritance. 
 
 The question had a significance that the speaker knevr not 
 Who amongst mankind? Why, was there not one man for 
 frhom she would have been content to be the veriest slave that 
 ftver abnegated every personal delight for the love of a hard 
 master ? And he had passed her by, indifferent, unseeing. She 
 had worshipped him on her knees, as it seemed to her ; and he 
 4ad left her kneeling in the dust, while he went on to offer liim- 
 Belf, heart and soul, at another shrine. 
 
 She could not forget these things. The memory and the 
 bitterness of them came back with renewed poignancy at this 
 moment, when the voice of a stranger told her she was beloved. 
 
 "My dear one, will you not answer me.'^" jvleaded Gusta-ve, m 
 nowise alarmed by Diana's silence, which seemed to him only the 
 natural expression of a maidenly emotion. " Tell me that you 
 will give me measure for measure ; that you will love me as my 
 mother loved my father — with a love that trouble and poverty 
 could never lessen ; with a love that was strongest when fate 
 was darkest — a star which the dreary night of sorrow could not 
 obscure. I am ten years older than you by my baptismal 
 register, Diane; but my heart is young. I never knew what 
 love was until I knew you. And yet those who know me best 
 will tell you that I was no unkind husband, and that my poor 
 wife and I lived happily. I shall never know love again, except 
 for you. The hour comes, I suppose, in every man's life; and 
 the angel of his life comes in that appointed hour. Mine came 
 when I saw you. I have spoken to your father, and have hia 
 warm approval. He was all encouragement, and hinted that I 
 might be assured of your love. Had he sufficient justification 
 for that half- promise, Diane ?" 
 
 " He had none," Miss Paget answered gravely, " none except 
 his own wishes. You have made me hear more than I wished to 
 hear, M. Lenoble, for the treasure you offer me is one that I 
 cannot accept. With all my heart I thank you for the love you 
 tell me of. Even if it is, as I can but think it, a passing fancy, 
 I thank you, nevertheless. It is sweet to win the love of a good 
 man. I pray you to beheve that with all my heart and mind I 
 honour your generous nature, your noble sympathy with the 
 weak and friendless. If you can give me your friendship, yoa 
 shall find how I can value a good man's regard, but I cannot 
 accept youi love." 
 
 " Why not p " asked Gustave, aghast. 
 
 "Because I cannot give you measure for measure, and I will 
 not give you less." 
 
 " But in time, Diane, in time ? " 
 
 " Time cannot show me your character in a nobler hght than 
 that in which I see it now. You do not lack the power to win 
 A woman's heart, but I have no heart to give. If you wiU be
 
 Marper tlian a Serpenfs Tooth.. 107 
 
 my friend, time will increase my affection for you* but time 
 
 cannot restore tlie dead." 
 
 " Wliicli means that your heart is dead, Diane ?" 
 
 " Yes," she answered, with unutterable sadness. 
 
 "You love some one younger, happier than I?" 
 
 " No, M. Lenoble, no one." 
 
 " But you have loTed? Yes ! — a scoundrel, perhaps ; a -villaiEi, 
 who " 
 
 A spasm of pain contracted his face as he looked at the girl's 
 drooping head ; her face, in that dim light, he could not see. 
 
 " Tell me this, Diane," he said presently, in an altered voice ; 
 " there is no barrier between us — no irrevocable obstacle that must 
 part us for ever? There is no one who can claim you by any 
 right — " He paused ; and then added, in a lower voice, " by 
 any wrong ? " 
 
 " No one," answered Miss Paget, lifting her head, and looking 
 her lover full in the face. Even in that uncertain Hght he could. 
 Bee the proud steady gaze that seemed the fittest answer of all 
 doubts. 
 
 '• Thank God ! " he whispered. " Ah, how could I fear, even 
 for one moment, that you could be anything but wha.t you seem 
 — the purest among the pure? Why, then, do you reject me ? 
 You do not love me, but you ask my friendship ; you offer me 
 your friendsliip, even your affection. Ah, believe me, if those 
 are but real, time will ripen them into love. Your heart is 
 dead. Ah, why should that young heart be dead ? It is not 
 dead, Diane ; it needs but the fire of true love to warm it into 
 life again. Why should you reject me, since you tell me that 
 you love me ; unless you love another ? What should divide 
 us?" 
 
 " Shadows and memories," Diana replied mournfully, — " vague 
 and fooUsh ; wicked, perhaps ; but they come between you and 
 me, M. Lenoble. And since I cannot give you a whole heart, I 
 will give you nothing." 
 
 " You have loved some one, some one who did not value your 
 love ? Tell me the truth, Diane ; you owe me at least as much 
 as that." 
 
 " I do owe you the truth. Yes ; I have been very foolish. 
 For two or three years of my life there was a person who was 
 our daily companion. He travelled with us — with my father 
 and me ; and we saw many changes and troubles together. For 
 a long time he was like my brother; and I doubt if many 
 brothers are as kind to their sisters as he was to me. In hia 
 heart that feeUng never changed. He was always equally kind, 
 e<jually careless. Once I deluded myself with the fancy that in 
 his looks and tones, and even in his words, there was some 
 deeper feehng than this careless brotherly kindness ; but it waa
 
 108 Charlottes Inheritance. 
 
 ao more than a delusion. My eyes were opened rudely enougK 
 I saw his heart bestowed elsewhere. Do not think that I am so 
 weak, or so wicked, as to abandon myself to despair because I 
 have been awakened from my foolish dream. I can look the 
 realities of life in the face, M. Lenoble ; and I have .taught 
 myself to wish all good things for the dear girl who has won 
 the heart that I once thought was mine. The jjerson I am 
 Bpeaking of can boast no superior graces of mind or person. 
 He is only a very commonplace young man, with a certain 
 amount of talent, a disposition inclined to good rather than 
 to evil. But he was the companion of my girlhood ; and in 
 losing him it seems to me as if I had lost a part of my youth 
 itself." ... 
 
 To Diana's mind this seemed the end of the discussion. She 
 expected M. Lonoble to bow his head to the inevitable, to utter 
 a friendly farewell, and depart for his Norman home, convinced, 
 if not satisfied. But the light-heai-ted, easy-temjDered Gustavo 
 was not a lover of the despairing order, nor an easily answered 
 Bupjoliant. 
 
 "And that is all! "he exclaimed, in the cheeriest to/ie. "A 
 companion of your girlhood, for whom you had a girl's romantic 
 fancy ! And the memory of this unspeakable idiot — great Heaven ! 
 but how idiotic must this wretch have been, to be loved by you, 
 and not even to know it ! — the memory of this last of the last 
 is to come between you and me, and divide us for ever ? The 
 phantom of this miserable, who could be loved by an angel 
 without knowing it, is to hft its phantasmal hand and thrust 
 me aside — me, Gustave Lenoble, a man, and not an idiot ? Ah, 
 thus we blow him to the uttermost end of the world !" cried M. 
 Lenoble, blowing an imaginary rival from the tips of liis fingers. 
 " Thus we dismiss him to the Arctic regions, the ton-id zone — to 
 the Caucasus, where await vultures to gnaw his liver — wherever 
 earth is most remote and uncomfortable — he and the bread-and- 
 butter miss whom he prefers to my Diane !" 
 
 This manner of taking things was quite unexiDCcted by Diana. 
 It was much more pleasant than gloomy desjjair or sullen 
 resentment ; but it was, at the same time, much more difficult 
 to deal with. 
 
 " He is gone !" cried Gustave presently ; "he is on the top- 
 most heights of Caucasus, and the vultures are sharpening 
 their beaks ! And now, tell me, Diane — you will be my wife, 
 will you not ? You wiU be a mother to my children ? You will 
 transform the old chateau of Cotenoir into a pleasant home ? 
 You will cease to Uve amongst strangers ? You will come to 
 those who will love and cherish you as their own, their dearest 
 and best and brightest ? You will give your poor old father a 
 corner by your fireside? He is old and needs a home for his
 
 Sharper than a Serpent*8 Tooth. 109 
 
 last years. For his sake, Diane, for mine, for my children, let 
 your answer be yes ! Ah, not so fast ! " he cried, as she was 
 about to speak. " Why are you so quick to pronounce your 
 fatal judgment ? Think how much depends on your reply — 
 your father's happiness, my children's, mine !" 
 
 " It is of yours only I must think," Miss Paget answered 
 earnestly. " You fancy it is so easy for me to say no. Believe 
 me, it would be much easier to say yes. When you speak of 
 my father's declining years, I, who know his weary life bo 
 well, would be hard of heart indeed if I were not tempted by 
 the haven you offer. Every word that you say gives me some 
 new proof of your goodness, your generosity. But I will not 
 wi'ong you because you are generous. I shall always be your 
 grateful friend, but you must seek elsewhere for a wife, M. 
 Lenoble. You will have little difficulty in finding one worthier 
 than I." 
 
 " I will seek nowhere else for a wife ; I will have no wife but 
 you. I have had a wife of other people's choosing; I will 
 choose one for myself this time. Let us be friends, Diane, 
 since your decision is as irrevocable as the laws of Draco. You 
 are stone, you are adamant ; but no matter, we can be friends. 
 Your father will be disappointed. But what then ? He is no 
 doubt accustomed to disappointments. My daughters — for 
 them it is a pi-ofound affliction to be motherless, but they 
 must support it, Cotenoir must go to wreck and ruin a Uttle 
 longer — a few more rats behind the panelling, a few more 
 moths in the tapestry, that is all. My children say, 'Papa, 
 our home is not comfortable ; all is upside-down ; ' and I reply, 
 ' But what will you, my children ? A home without a wife is 
 always upside down.' And then I take them between my arms, 
 in weeping. It is a poignant picture to rend the heart. But 
 what does it matter, Miss Paget ? What is that verse of your 
 grand Will? — 
 
 Blow, blow, thou wintry wind ; 
 And let go weep the stricken hind, 
 While harts ungalled go play 
 
 Perhaps I have mixed him up somehow; but the meaning is 
 clear." 
 
 A hollow-sounding and somewhat awful cough heralded the 
 approach of Caj^tain Paget, who entered the room at this 
 juncture. If the Captain had prolonged his first aii'ing, after 
 eix weeks' confinement to the house, until this late period of 
 the afternoon, he would have committed an imprudence which 
 might have cost him dearl}^. Happily, he had done n«thing of 
 the kind, but had re-entered the house unobserved, while Diana 
 ftnd Gustave were conversina close to the window, having 
 
 H
 
 110 Charlotte's InJieritance. 
 
 preferred to leave his fly at tlie end of the street, lather than 
 to incur the hazard of interrupting a critical tete-a-tete. The 
 interval that had elapsed since his return had been spent by the 
 Captain in his own bedchamber, and in the immediate neighbour- 
 hood of the folding-doors between that apartment and the 
 parlour. "\¥hat he had heard had been by no means satisfactory 
 to him ; and if a look could annihilate, Miss Paget might have 
 
 Iierished beneath the Parthian glance which her father shot at 
 ler as he came towards the window, with a stereotyped smile upon 
 his lips and unspeakable anger in his heart. 
 
 He had heard just enough of the conversation to know th 
 Gnstave had been rejected — Gustave, with Cotenoir and 
 handsome independence in the present, and the late John 
 Haygarth's fortune in the future. Rejected by a penniless 
 young woman, who at any moment might find herself without a 
 roof to shelter her from the winds of heaven ! Was ever folly, 
 madness, wickedness supreme as this P 
 
 Iloratio trembled with rage as he took his daughter's hand. 
 She had the insolence to extend her hand for the customary 
 salutation. The Captain's greeting was a grip that made her 
 wince. 
 
 "Good-night, Miss Paget," said Gustave gravely, but with by 
 
 no means the despondent tone of a hopeless lover; " I well, 
 
 I shall see you again, perhaps, before I go to Normandy. 1 
 doubt if I shall go to-morrow. I have my own reasons for stay- 
 ing — unreasonable reasons, perhaps, but I shall stay." 
 
 All this was said in a tone too low to reach Captain Paget's 
 ear. 
 
 " Are you going to leave us, Lenoble ? " he asked in a quaver- 
 ing voice. " You wUl not stop and let Di give you a cup of tea 
 as usual?" 
 
 " Not to-night, Captain. Good-bye." 
 
 He wrung the old man's hand and departed. Captain Paget 
 dropped heavily into a chair, and for some minutes there was 
 silence. D;ana was the first to speak. 
 
 " I am glad your doctor considered you well enoiigh to go out 
 for adiive, papa," she said. 
 
 " Indeed, my dear," answered her father with a groan ; " I 
 hope my next drive may be in a different kind of vehicle — the 
 last journey I shall ever take, until they cart away my bones for 
 manure. I believe they do make manure from the bones of 
 paupei's in our utilitarian age." 
 
 " Papa, how can you talk so horribly ! You are better, are you 
 not? M. Lenoble said you were better." 
 
 "Yes, I am better, God help me!" answered the old man, too 
 weak alike in mind and body to hide the joasision that possessed 
 bim. " That is one of the contradictions of the long farce wf
 
 Sharper than a Serpen fg Tooth. IH 
 
 i;aU life. If I liad been a rich man, with a circle of anxioti* re- 
 lations and all the noted men of Savile Eow dancing attendance 
 round my bed, I dare say I should have died ; but as I happen 
 to be a penniless castaway, with only a lodging-house drudge 
 and a half- starved apothecary to take care of me, and with notliing 
 before me but a workhouse, I hve. It is all very well for a man 
 to take things easily when he is ill and helpless, too weak even 
 to think. Tltat is not the trying time. The real trial arrives 
 when a Httle strength comes back to him, and his landlady 
 fcegins to worry him for her rent, and the lodging-house drudgo 
 gets tired of pitying him, and the apotliecary sends in his bill, 
 and the wretched lugh-road hes bare and broad before him, and 
 he hears the old order to move on. The moving-on time has 
 come for me, Di ; and the Lord alone knows how httle I know 
 where I am to go." 
 
 " Papa, you are not friendless ; even I can give you a little 
 help." 
 
 " Yes," answered the Captain with a bitter laugh ; " a sove- 
 reign once a quarter — the scrapings of your pittance ! That help 
 won't save me from the workhouse." 
 
 " There is M. Lenoble." 
 
 " Tes, there is M. Lenoble ; the man who would have given 
 me a home for my old age : he told me so to-day — a home tit for 
 a gentleman — for the position he now occupies is nottimg com- 
 pared to that which he may occiipy a year hence. He would 
 have received me as his father-in-law, without thoiight or ques- 
 tion of my antecedents ; and if I have not lived like a gentleman, 
 I might have died like one. This is what he would have done 
 for me. But do you think I can ask anything of him now, after 
 you have refused him.P I know of your refusal to be that 
 man's wife. I heard — I saw it in his face. You — a beggar, a 
 friendless wretch, def)endent on the ]3atronage of a stockbroker's 
 silly wife — you must needs give yourself grand airs, and refuse 
 such a man as that ! Do you think such men go begging among 
 young ladies hke you, or that they run about the streets, like 
 the roast pigs in the story, begad, with knives and forks in their 
 Lacks, asking to be eaten P" 
 
 The Captain was walking up and down the room in a fever of 
 rage. Diana looked at him with sad wondering eyes. Yes, it 
 was the old selfish nature. The leopard cannot change his 
 spots ; and the Horatio Paget of the present was the Horatio 
 Paget of the past. 
 
 " Pray don't be angry with me, papa," said Diana son-owfully ; 
 " I beUeve that I have done my duty." 
 
 "Done your fiddlesticks !" cried the Captain, too angry to be 
 cai-eful of liis diction. " Your duty to whom ? Did you happen 
 to remember, miss, that you owe some duty to me, your father.
 
 112 CliarloUe's Inheritance. 
 
 but for whom you wouldn't be standing there talking of duty 
 like a tragedy queen ? By Jove ! I suppose you are too grand a 
 person to consider my trouble in this matter ; the pains I took to 
 get Lenoble over to England ; the way I made the most of my 
 gout even, in order to have you about me ; the way I finessed 
 and diiDlomatized to bring this affair to a successful issue. 
 An d now, when I have succeeded beyond my hopes, you spoil 
 everything, and then dare to stand before me and jDreach about 
 duty. What do you want in a husband, I should hke to know ? 
 A rich man ? Lenoble is that. A handsome man ? Lenoble 
 is that. A gentleman, with good blood in his veins ? Lenoble 
 comes of as pure a race as any man in that part of France. A, 
 good man ? Lenoble is one of the best fellows upon this earth. 
 What is it, then, that you want ? " 
 
 " I want to give my heart to the man who gives me his." 
 
 "And what, in the name of all that's preposterous, is to pre* 
 vent you giving Gustave Lenoble your heart ?" 
 
 " I cannot tell you." 
 
 " No, nor any one else. But let us have no more of this non- 
 sense. If you call yourself a daughter of mine, you will maiTy 
 Gustave Lenoble. If not— — " 
 
 The Captain found himself brought to a sudden stop in his 
 unconscious ^jaraphrase of Signer Capulet's menace to his recal- 
 citrant daughter, Juhet. With what threat could the noble 
 Horatio terrify his daughter to obedience ? Before you talk of 
 turning your rebelhous child out of doors, you must provide a 
 home from which to cast her. Captain Paget remembered this, 
 and was for the moment reduced to sudden and ignominious 
 silence. And yet there must surely be some way of bringmg 
 this besotted young woman to reason. 
 
 He sat for some minutes in silence, with his head leaning on 
 his hand, his face hidden from Diana. This silence, this atti- 
 tude, so expressive of utter despondency, touched her more 
 keenly than his anger. She knew that he was mean and selfish, 
 that it was of his own loss he thought ; and yet she pitied him. 
 He was old and helpless and miserable ; so much the more jiiti- 
 able because of his selfishness and meanness. For the heroic 
 soul there is always some comfort ; but for the grovelling nature 
 8ufi"ering knows no counterbalance. The iUsthat flesh is heir to 
 seem utterly bitter when there is no grand spirit to dominate 
 the flesh, and soar triumphant above the regions of earthly 
 jjain. Captain Paget's mind, to him, was not a kingdom. He 
 could not look declining years of poverty in the face ; he was 
 tired :)f work. The schemes and trickeries of his hfe woie dp- 
 coming very odious to him; they were for the most part worn 
 out, and had ceased to pay. Of course he had great hojjes, in 
 any event, from Gustave Lenoble ; but those hopes were depen-
 
 Sharper tlian a cserpent's Tooth. 113 
 
 dent on Gustave'a inheritance of John Haygarth's estaie. He 
 wanted something more tangible than this — he wanted imme- 
 diate security ; and his daughter' &■ marriage with Gtistave would 
 have given him that security, and still grander hopes for the 
 future. He had fai>cied himself reigning over the vassals of 
 Cotenoir, a far more important personage than the real master 
 of that chateau. He had pictured to himself a pied-d-torre in 
 Paris which it might be agreeable for him to secure, for exist- 
 ence in Nonnandy might occasionally prove ennuyeux. These 
 things were what he meant when he talked of a haven for his 
 declining years ; and against the daughter who, for some caprice 
 of her own, could hinder his possession of these things, he had 
 no feeling but anger. 
 
 Diana compassionated this weak old man, to whose lips the 
 cup of prosperity had seemed so near, from whose lips her hand 
 had tlu'ust it. He had been promised a home, comfort, respect- 
 ability, friendship — "all that should accompany old age"— and 
 she had prevented the fulfilment of the promise. Heaven knows 
 how pure her motives had been ; but as she watched that droop- 
 ing head, with its silvered hair, she felt that she had been cruel. 
 
 " Papa," she began presently, laying her hand carressingly 
 upon her father's neck ; but he pushed aside the timid, caressing 
 hand — " papa, you think me very unkind, only because I have 
 done what I beHeveto be right; indeed it is so, papa dear. In 
 what I said to Gustave Lenoble this evening, I was governed 
 only by my sense of right." 
 
 "Indeed I" cried the Captain, with a strident laugh; "and 
 where did you pick up your sense of right, madam, I should 
 Hke to know? From what Methodist parson's hypocritical 
 twaddle have you learnt to lay down the law to your poor old 
 father about the sense of right ? ' Honour yoiir father and your 
 mother, that your days may be long in the land,' miss. That's 
 what your Bible teaches you ; but the Bible has gone out of 
 fashion, I dare say, since I was a young man ; and your model 
 young woman of the present generation taunts her father with 
 ner sense of right. Will your sense of right be satisfied when 
 you hear of your father rotting in the old-men's ward of a work- 
 house, or dying on the London stones ? " 
 
 " I am not unfeehng, papa. With aU my heart I pity you ; 
 but it is cruel on your part to exaggerate the misery of your 
 position, as I am sure yon must be doing. Why should your 
 means of hving fail because I refuse to marry M. Lenoble? 
 You have Uved hitherto without my help, as I have lived 
 of late without yours. Nothing could give me greater happiness 
 than to know that you were exempt from care; and if my toil 
 can procure you a peaceful home in the future — as I beUeve it 
 can. or education and will to work must go for nothing — thew
 
 114 Cliarlotte^s Inlieritance. 
 
 eliall be no lack of industry on my ])art. I will work for yoti, 
 I will indeed, papa — willingly, happily." 
 
 " When your work can give me such a home as Cotenoir — 
 a home that one word of yonrs would secure for me — I will 
 thank you." 
 
 "If you -ndll only wait, papa, if you will only have pa- 
 tience " 
 
 "Patience! Wait! Do you know what your are talking 
 about ? Do you prate of patience, and waiting, and hope in the 
 future to a man who has no future — to a man whose days are 
 numbered, and who feels the creej^ing chills of death stealing 
 over him every day as he sits beside his wretched hearth, or 
 labours through his daily drudgery? I can live as I have always 
 lived ! Yes ; but do you know, or care to know, that with ever^ 
 day life becomes more difficult for me ? Your fine friends at 
 Bayswater have done with me. I have spent the last sixpence 
 I shall ever see from Philii? riheldon. Hawkehurst has cut me, 
 like the ungrateful hound he is. When they have squeezed the 
 orange, they throw away the rind. Didn't Voltaire say that, 
 when I'rederick of Prussia gave him the go-by ? Heaven knows 
 it's true enough ; and now you, who by a word might secure 
 yourself a splendid position — yes, I say sj^lendid for a poor 
 drudge and dependent like you, and insure a home for me — you, 
 forsooth, must needs favour me with your high-flown sentiments 
 about your sense of right, and promise me a home in the future, 
 if I will wait and ho^De ! No, Diana, waiting and hoping are 
 done with for me, and I can find a home in the bed of the river 
 without your help." 
 
 " You would not be so wicked as to do that !" cried Diana, 
 aghast. 
 
 " I don't know about the wickedness of the act. But, rely 
 upon it, when my choice lies between the workhouse and the 
 river, I shall prefer the river. The modern workhouse is no 
 inviting sanctuary, and I dare say many a homeless wretch 
 makes the same choice." 
 
 For some minutes there was silence. Diana stood with her 
 elbows resting on the chimneypiece, her face covered with her 
 hands. 
 
 "O Lord, teach me to do the thing which is right!" she 
 prayed, and in the next breath acted on the impulse of the 
 moment. 
 
 " What would you have me do ?" she asked. 
 
 " What any one but an idiot would do of her own accord- 
 accept the good fortune that has drojoped into your lap. Do 
 you think such luck as yours goes begging every day ? " 
 
 " You would ha»ve me accept Gustavo Lenoble's offer, no mat* 
 ter what falsehoods may be involved in my acceptance of it?"
 
 Sharper than a Serpenfs Tooth. 115 
 
 " I can see no reason for falseliood. Any one but an diet 
 would honour such, a man ; any one but an idiot would thank 
 Providence for such good fortune 
 
 " Very well, papa," exclaimed Diana, witn a laugh that had 
 no mirthful music, " I will not be the exceptional idiot. If_M. 
 Lenoble does me the honour to repeat his offer — and I think 
 from his manner he means to do so — I will accept it." 
 
 "He shall repeat it!" cried the Captain, throwing off his 
 assumption of the tragic father. The GEdipus Coloneus, the 
 Lear — the venerable victim of winter winds and men's ingrati- 
 tude — was transformed in a moment into an elderly Jeremy 
 Diddler, lined with Lord Foppington. " He shall repeat it ; I 
 %vdll have him at your feet to-morrow. Yes, Di, my love, I 
 pledge myself to bring that about, without compromise to your 
 maidenly pride or the dignity of a Paget. My dear child, I 
 ought to have known that reflection would show you where your 
 duty lies. I fear I have been somewhat harsh, but you must 
 forgive me, Di ; I have set my heart on this match, for your 
 happiness as well as my o\vu. I could not standthe disappoint- 
 ment; though I admired, and still admire, the high feeling, and 
 all that kind of thing, which prompted your refusal. A spho»l- 
 girlish sentimentality, child, but with something noble in it ; 
 not the sentimentality of a vulgar schoolgirl. The blue blood 
 will show itself, my love ; and now — no, no, don't cry. _ You 
 wdl live to thank me for to-night's work; yes, my child, to 
 thank me, when you look round your comfortable home by and 
 by — when my poor old bones are mouldering in their unpre- 
 tending sepulchre — and say to yourself, ' I have my father to 
 thank for this. Adverse circumstances forbade his doing hia 
 duty as happier fathers are allowed the privilege of doing theirs, 
 but it was his forethought, his ever-watchful care, which secured 
 me an admirable husband and a happy home.' Mark my words, 
 the time will come when you will say this, my dear." 
 
 " I will try to think of you always kindly, papa," Miss Paget 
 answered in a low sad voice ; " and if my marriage can secure 
 your happiness and Gustavo Lenoble's, I am content. I only 
 fear to take too much, and give too little." 
 
 " My love, you must certainly be the bneal descendant of Don 
 Quixote, Too much, and too little, forsooth ! Let Lenoble find 
 a handsomer woman, or a more elegant woman, by gad, else- 
 where ! Such a woman as a duke might be proud to make hia 
 duchess, by Jove ! There shall be no sense of obligation on our 
 side, my love. Gustave Lenoble shall be made to feel that he 
 gets change for his shilling. Kiss me, child, and tell me you 
 forgive me for being a httle rough with you, just now." 
 
 " Forgive you ? — yes, papa. I dare say you are wiser than I. 
 Why should I refuse M. Lenoble? He is good and kind, and
 
 116 Charlotte's Inheritance. 
 
 ^111 give ti8 a happy home ? What more can 1 want P Do I 
 want to be like Charlotte, to whom life seems all poetry and 
 brightness ? " 
 
 " And who is going to throw herself away upon a penny-a- 
 liner, by Jove!" interjected the Captain. 
 
 " Can I hope to be like that girl, with her happy ignorance of 
 life, her boundless love and trust ! O, no, no, papa ; those things 
 are not for me." 
 
 She laid her head upon her father's breast, and sobbed like a 
 child. This was her second farewell to the man she had loved, 
 the dreams she had dreamed. The Captain comforted her with 
 a paternal embrace, but was as powerless to comprehend hex 
 emotion as if he had found himself suddenly called upon tc 
 console the sorrows of a Japanese widow. 
 
 "Hysterical," he murmured. " These noble natures are sub- 
 ject to that kind of thing. And now, my love," he continued, 
 m a more business-like tone, " let us talk seriously. I think it 
 would be very advisable for you to leave Bayswater, and take 
 up your abode in these humble lodgings with me immediately." 
 
 "Why, papaP" 
 
 " The reason is sufficiently obvious, my love. It is not right 
 that you should continue to eat the bread of dependence. As 
 the future wife of Gustave Lenoble — -and, in this case, the word 
 future means immediately " 
 
 "Papa," cried Diana suddeidy, "you will not hurry me into 
 this marriage P I have consented for your sake. You will not 
 be so imgenerous as to " 
 
 " As to hurry you ? No, my dear, of course not. There shall 
 be no indecent haste. Tour wishes, your delicate and dis- 
 interested motives, shall be consulted before all things; yes, 
 my love," cried the Captain, sorely afraid of some wavering on 
 the part of his daughter, and painfully anxious to conciUate 
 her, " all shall be in accordance with your wishes. But I must 
 tirge your immediate removal from Baj^swater; first, because 
 M. Lenoble will naturally wish to see you oftener than he can 
 while you are residing with jjeople whose acquaintance I do not 
 want him to make ; and secondly, because you have no further 
 need of Mrs. Sheldon's patronage." 
 
 " It has been kindness, affection, papa — never joatronage. I 
 could not leave Mrs. Sbeldon or Charlotte abruptly or ungra 
 ciously, upon any consideration. They gave me a home when 1 
 most Ijitterly needed one. They took me away from the dull 
 round of schoolroom drudgery, that was fast changing me into 
 a hard hopeless joyless automaton. My first duty is to 
 them." 
 
 The Captain's angry sniff alone expressed the indignation 
 which this impious remark inspired.
 
 Sharper tJian a Serpents Tooth. 117 
 
 •' My next shall be to you and M. Lenoble. Let me give Mrs. 
 Bheldon due notice of the change in our plans."^ 
 
 "■\\^lat do you call due notice? " asked Horatio, peevisLly. 
 
 " A quarter's notice." 
 
 " 0, indeed ! Then for three months you are to dance atten- 
 dance upon Mrs. Sheldon, while M. Lenoble is waiting to make 
 ^'ou his wife." 
 
 " I must consult the wishes of my friends, papa." 
 
 " Very well, my dear," replied the Captain, with a sigh that 
 was next of kin to a groan ; "you must jolease yourself and your 
 friends, I suppose ; your poor old father is a secondary conside- 
 ration." And then, timeously mindful of the skirmish he had 
 t'ust had with his daughter, Captain Paget made haste to assure 
 ler of his regard and submission. 
 
 " All shall be as you please, my love," he murmured. " There, 
 go into my room, and smooth your hair, and bathe your eyes, 
 while I ring for the tea." 
 
 Diana obeyed. She found eau-de-cologne and the most deli- 
 cate of Turkey sponges on her father's wash-handstand ; jockey- 
 club, and ivory-backed brushes, somewhat yellow with age, but 
 bearing crest and monogram, on his dressing-table. The work- 
 house did not seem quite so near at hand as the Captain had 
 jiupliod ; but with these sanguine people it is but a stej^ from 
 disappointment to desjsair. 
 
 " What am I to tell Mrs. Sheldon, papa P " she asked, when 
 she was pouring out her father's tea. 
 
 " Well, I think you had better say nothing, except that my 
 circumstances have somewhat improved, and that my failing 
 health requires your care." 
 
 " I hate secrets, papa." 
 
 "So do L nay dear; but half-confidences are more disagree- 
 able than secrets." 
 
 Diana submitted. She secretly reserved to herself the right 
 to tell Charlotte anything she pleased. From that dear adopted 
 sister she would hide nothing. 
 
 " If M. Lenoble should repeat his offer, and I should accept 
 it, I will tell her all," she thought. " It will make that dear girl 
 happy to know that there is some one who loves me, besides her- 
 self." 
 
 And then she thought of the strange difference of fate that 
 gave to this Charlotte Halhday, vnth her rich stepfather and 
 comfortable surroundings, a penniless soldier of fortune for a 
 lover, while to her, the spendthrift adventurer's daughter, cams 
 a wealthy suitor. 
 
 *' WiU hers be the dinner of herbs, and mine the stalled ox ? " 
 she thought. "Ah, Heaven lorbid! Why is it so difficult to 
 love wisely, so easy to love too well ? "
 
 118 CTiarloffe's Inkeritanee. 
 
 She remembered the cynical French proverb, "When we (.'an 
 not have what we love, we must love what we have." But the 
 cynical proverb brought her no comfort. 
 
 She went back to Bayswater with a strange bewildered feel- 
 ing ; after having promised her father to go to Omega Street 
 whenever he sent for her. There was no actual j^ain in her 
 mind, no passionate desire to recall her promise, no dread horror 
 of the step to which she had pledged herself. The feeling that 
 oppressed her was the sense that such a stejj should have been 
 the spontaneous election of her grateful heart, proud of a good 
 man's preference, instead of a weak submission to a father's 
 helplessness. 
 
 TnE FIEST ACT OF MR. SHELDON'S DRAMA. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 TAKEN BY STORM. 
 
 Two days after her interview with Gustave Lenoble, Miss Paget 
 received a brief note from her father, siimmoning her again to 
 Omega Street. 
 
 "He has not gone back to Normandy," wrote the Captain. 
 " My cliild, he positively worships the ground you walk upon. 
 Ah, my love, it is something to have a father ! I need scarcely 
 tell you that his first idea of your excellence was inspired by 
 those glowing descriptions of your goodness, your beauty, your 
 heroism, which I favoured him with, en fcissant, during our 
 conversations at Cotenoir, where the happy accident of a business 
 transaction first introduced me to him. The interests of my 
 only child have ever been near and dear to me ; and where a 
 duller man would have perceived only a wealthy stranger, my 
 paternal instincts recognized at a glance the predestined husband 
 of my daughter. It needed my wide experience of life— and, as 
 I venture to believe, my subtle knowledge of the human heart — 
 to understand that a man who had lived for five-and-tliirty 
 
 {rears bm-ied alive in a French province — a charming place, my 
 ove, and for your refined taste replete with interest — never 
 seeing a mortal except his immediate neighbours, would be the 
 man of men to fall in love with the first attractive young woman 
 he met among strangers. Come to me this afternoon without 
 fail, and come early. — Tours, H. N. C. P."
 
 TaJcen ly Storm. 119 
 
 Diana obeyed ttis summons submissively, but still troubled 
 by that strange sense of bewilderment which had affected her 
 Binee her stormy interview with Captain Paget. She was not 
 quite certain of herself. The old dreams — the sweet foohsh 
 girlish fancies — were not yet put away altogether from her mind ; 
 but she knew that they were foolish, and she was half-inclined 
 to believe that there had been some wisdom in her father's 
 Econi. 
 
 •• What do I want more ?" she asked herself. " He is good 
 and brave and true, and he loves me. If I were a princess, my 
 marriage would be negotiated for me by other people, and I 
 should have reason to consider myself very happy if the man 
 whom the state selected for my husband should prove as good a 
 man as Gustave Lenoble. And he loves me; me, who have 
 never before had power over a man's heart !" 
 
 She walked across Hyde Park on this occasion, as on the 
 last ; and her thoughts, though always confused — mere rags and 
 scraps of thought — were not all unpleasant. There was a smile, 
 half shy, half tender, on her face as she went into the httle 
 sitting-room where Gustave was waiting for her. She had seen 
 his hat and overcoat in the passage, and knew that he was 
 there waiting for her. To this poor desolate soul there was 
 something sweet in the idea of being waited for. 
 
 As she stood but a Httle within the doorway, blushing, almost 
 trembUng wth the sense other changed j^osition, her lover came 
 across the room and took her in his arms. The strong brave 
 arms held her to his breast; and in that one embrace he took 
 her to his heart, and made her his own for ever. 
 
 In every story of life-long affection, there is one moment in 
 which the bond is sealed. Diana looked up at the frank tender 
 face, and felt that she had found her conqueror. Master, friend, 
 protector, husband, adoring and devoted lover, gallant and fear- 
 less champion — he was all ; and she divined his power and his 
 worth as she glanced shyly upward, ashamed to be so Hghtly 
 won. 
 
 " M. Lenoble," she faltered, trying to withdraw herself from 
 the strong encircUng arm that held her, as if by right. 
 
 " Gustave, now and for ever, my Diane ! There shall be no 
 more Monsieur Lenoble. And in a few weeks it shall be ' my 
 husband.' Your father has given me to you. He tells me to 
 laugh at your refusals your scruples ; to assail you like your 
 Shakespeare's Petruchio assails his Katherine — with audacious 
 insolence that will not be denied. And I shall take his advice. 
 Look up into my face, dear angel, and defy me to take hia 
 ad\ace." 
 
 Happily the dear angel looked only downwards. But. M 
 Lenoble was resolved to have an agreeable response.
 
 120 Charlotte's InJieritance. 
 
 " See, then, thou canst not defy me !," he cried, in the only 
 Janeruage he sj)oke ; and the " tu" for tho first time sounded very 
 tender, very sweet. " Thou canst not tell me thou art angry 
 with me. And the other — the imbecile ; — he is gone for ever, 
 is ho not ? Ah, say yes ! " 
 
 " Yes, he is gone," said Diana, almost in a whisper. 
 
 " Is he quite gone ? The door of thine heart locked against 
 him, his luggage thrown out of the window ? " 
 
 "He is gone!" she murmured softly. " He could not hold 
 his place against you — you are so strong — so brave ; and he waa 
 only a shadow. Yes, he is gone." 
 
 She said this with a little sigh of relief. It was in all sincerity 
 that she answered her suitor's question. She felt that a crisis 
 had come in her Hfe — the first page of a new volume ; and the 
 old sad tear-blotted book might be cast away. 
 
 " Dear angel, wilt thou ever learn to love me ? " asked Gus- 
 tave, in a half-whisper, bending down his bearded face tUl hia 
 lips almost touched her cheek. 
 
 " It is impossible not to love you," she answered softly. And 
 indeed it seemed to her as if this chivalrous Gaul was a creature 
 to command the love of women, the fear of men ; an Achilles en 
 frac ; a Bayard without his coat of mail ; Don Quixote in his 
 youth, geuerous, brave, compassionate, tender, and with a brain 
 not as yet distempered by the reading of silly romances. 
 
 Captain Paget emerged from his den as the little love scene 
 ended. He affected a gentlemanly unconsciousness of the poetry 
 involved in the situation, was pleasantly anxious about the tea- 
 tray, the candles, and minor details of Hfe ; and thus afforded 
 the lovers ample time in which to recover their comjDosure. The 
 Frenchman was in no wise discomposed; he was only abnor- 
 mally gay, with a little air of triumph that was not unj^leasing. 
 Diana was pale ; but there was an unwonted light in her eyes, 
 and she had by no means the appearance of a victim newly 
 offered on the sacrificial altar of filial duty. In sober truth, 
 Miss Paget was hapi:)ier to-night than she had been for a long 
 time. At three-and- twenty she was girl enough to rejoice in tlie 
 knowledge that she was truly loved, and woman enough to value 
 the sense of peace involved in the security of a prosiDcrous 
 future. 
 
 If she was grateful to her lover — and the affection he had 
 inspired in her heart had grown out of gratitude — it was no 
 mercenary consideration as to his income or position that made 
 her grateful. She thanked him for his love — that treasure which 
 she had never expected to possess ; she thanked him because he 
 had taken her by the hand, and led her out of the ranks of 
 lonely dependent womanhood, and seated her upon a throne, on 
 the steps whereof he was content to kneel. Whether the throne
 
 Taken ly Storm. 121 
 
 were a rushen chair in some rustic cottage, or a gilded fauteuU 
 in a palace, she cared very little. It was the subject's devotioq 
 that was new and sweet to her. 
 
 She went to Charlotte's room that night, when Mr. Sheldon's 
 small household was at rest ; as she had gone on Chrismas Eve 
 to renounce her lover and to bless her rival. This time it was 
 a new confession she went to make, and a confession that in- 
 volved some shame. There is nothing so hard to confess as 
 inconstancy ; and every woman is not so philosophic as Rahel 
 Varnhagen, who declared that to be constant was not always to 
 love the same person, but always to love some one. 
 
 Miss Paget seated herself at Charlotte's feet, as she had done 
 on that previous occasion. The weather was still cold enough 
 to make a fire very pleasant, though it was more than two 
 months since the Christmas bells had rung out upon the frosty 
 air. Diana sat on a low hassock, playing with the tassels of 
 her friend's dressing-gown, anxious to make her confession, and 
 solely at a loss for words in which to shape «o humiliating an 
 avowal. 
 
 " Charlotte," she began abrujitly at last, " have you any idea 
 when you and Valentine are to be man-ied ? " 
 
 Miss HalUday gave a httle cry of surprise. 
 
 " \Vliy, of course not, Di ! How can you ask such a question ? 
 Our marriage is what uncle George calls a remote contingency. 
 We are not to be married for ages — not until Valentine has 
 obtained a secure position in literature, and an income that 
 seems almost impossible. That was the special condition upon 
 which Mr. Sheldon — jjapa — gave his consent to our engagement. 
 Of course it was very pi'oper and prudent of him to think of 
 these things ; and as he has been very kind and Uberal-minded 
 in his conduct to me throughout, I should be a most ungrateful 
 person if I refused to be guided by his advice." 
 
 " And I suppose that means that your engagement ia to be a 
 long one?" 
 
 " The longest of long engagements. And what can be happier 
 than a long engagement ? One gets to know and understand 
 the man one is to marry so thoroughly. I think I know every 
 turn of thought in Valentine's mind ; every taste, every fancy ; 
 and I feel myself every day growing to think more and more 
 like him. I read the books he reads, so as to be able to talk to 
 him, you know ; but I am not so clever as you, Di, and Valen- 
 tine's favourite authors do sometimes seem rather dry to me. 
 But I struggle on, you know ; and the harder I find the struggle, 
 the more I admire my dear love's cleverness. Think of him, Di 
 — three different articles in three different magazines last month 1 
 The paper on Apollodorus, in the Ch^eaiii^ide, jou know; and 
 that story in the Charing Cross— ' How 1 lost my Gingham
 
 122 Cnarlotts's Inheritance. 
 
 TTmlbrella, aad gained the Acquaintance of Mr. Gozzleton.' 80 
 funny ! And tli3 exlianstive treatise on tlie Sources of Light, 
 ,'n the ScientifiG Saturday. And think of the fuss they make 
 about Homer, a bhnd old person who wrote a long rigmarole of 
 a poem about battles, and wrote it so badly that to this day no 
 one knows whether it's one complete poem, or a lot of odds-and- 
 ends in the way of poetry, put together by a man with an unpro- 
 nounceable Greek name. When I think of what Valentine 
 accomplishes in comparison to Homer, and the little notice the 
 re\newers take of him, except to make him low-spirited by telling 
 him that he is shallow and frivolous, I begin to think that Utera- 
 ture must be going to the dogs." 
 
 And here Charlotte became meditative, absorbed in the con- 
 templation of Mr. Hawkehurst's genius. Diana had begun the 
 conversation very artfully, intending to proceed by a gentle 
 transition from Charlotte's love affairs to her own ; but the con- 
 versation was driftin<j away from the subject into a discussion 
 U2:)on literature, and the brilliant young essayist whose first 
 adventurous flights seemed grand as the soaring of Theban eagle 
 to this tender and admiring watcher of his skyward progress. 
 
 " Lotta," said Miss Paget, after a pause, " should you be very 
 sorry if I were to leave you before your marriage? " 
 
 " Leave me before my marriage, Diana ! Is it not arranged 
 that you are to hve with mamma, and be a daughter to her, 
 when I am gone ? And you will come and stay with Yalentrue 
 and me at our cottage ; and you will advise me about my house- 
 keeping, and teach me how to be a sensible, useful, economical 
 wife, as well as a devoted one. Leave us, Di ! What have I 
 done, or mamma, or Mr. Sheldon, or anybody, that you should 
 talk of anything so dreadful?" 
 
 "What have you done, dear girl, dear friend, dear sister? 
 Eveiything to Avm my undying love and gratitude. You have 
 changed me from a hard disappointed bitter-minded woman — ■ 
 envious, at times, even of you — into your loving and devoted 
 friend. You have changed me from a miserable creature into a 
 contented and hopeful one. You have taught me to forget that 
 my childhood and youth were one long night of wretchedness 
 and degradation. You have taught me to forgive the father 
 who suffered my life to be what it was, and made no one poor 
 effort to lift me out of the slough of desjaond to which he had 
 sunk. I can say no more, Charlotte. There are things that 
 cannot be told by words." 
 
 " And you want to leave me !" said Charlotte, in accents half- 
 wondering, half-reproachful. 
 
 " My father wants me to leave you, Lotta ; and some one else 
 ^-some one whom you must know and like before I can be sure 
 I like him myself."
 
 ThJcen hy Storm. 123 
 
 "Him!" cried Charlotte, with a faint shriek of surprise, 
 " Diana, wuat are you going to tell me ?" 
 
 " A secret, Lotta ; something which my father has forbidden 
 aie to tell any one, but which I will not hide from you. M;y 
 poor father has found a kind friend — a friend who is almost aa 
 good to him as you are to me. How merciful Heaven is in 
 raismg uj) friends for outcasts ! And I have seen a good d^al 
 of this gentleman who is so kind to papa, and the result is that 
 — chiefly for papa's sake, and because I know that he is generous 
 and brave and true, I mean papa's friend, M. Lenoble — I have 
 consented to be liis wife." 
 
 "Diana!" cried Charlotte, with a sternness of manner that 
 was alarming in so gentle a creature, " it shall never be ! " 
 
 "What dear?" 
 
 " The sacrifice ! No, dear, no ! I understand it all. For 
 your cruel mercenary heartless desiging father's sake, you are 
 going to marry a man whom you can't love. You are going to 
 otfer up your poor bruised desolate heart on the altar of duty. 
 Ah, dear, you can't think I forget what you told me only two 
 short months ago — though I seem selfish and frivolous, and am 
 always talking about him, and parading my happiness, as it 
 must seem to you, reckless of the wounds so newly healed in 
 vour noble unselfish heart. But I do not altogether forget, 
 l)iana, and such a sacrifice as this I will not allow. I know you 
 have resigned him to me — I know you have thrust him from 
 your heart, as you told me that night. But the hollow aching 
 void that is left in your lonely heart shall be sacred, Di. No 
 stranger's image shall pollute it. You shall not sacrifice your 
 own peace to your father's selfishness. No, dear, no ! With 
 mamma and me you will always have a home. You need stoop 
 to no cruel barter such as this marriage." 
 
 And hereupon Miss HalHday wept over and caressed her 
 fiiend, as the confidante of Agamemnon's daughter may have 
 wei^t over and caressed that devoted young princess after the 
 divination of Calchas had become common talk in the royal 
 household. 
 
 " But if I think it my duty to accept M. Lenohle's ofier, 
 liOtta ? " urged Miss Paget with some embarrassment of man- 
 ner. " M. Lenoble is as rich as he is generous, and my marriage 
 v» ith him will secure a happy home for my father. The foolish 
 dreams I told you about on Christmas Eve had faded from my 
 mind before I dared to speak of them. I could only confess 
 my folly when I knew that I was learning to be wise. Pray 
 do not think that I am sordid or mercenary. It is not because 
 M. Lenoble is rich that I am inclined to marry him, it is be- 
 cause " 
 
 " Because you want to throw yourself away for tht advantage
 
 124 Charlotte's Inlieritanee. 
 
 of your selfisli heartless father," inteijected Charlotte. "H* 
 has neglected you all your hfe, and now wants to profit by the 
 sacrifice of your happiness. Be firm, Di, darling; your Char- 
 lotte will stand by you, and find a home for you always, come 
 what may. Who is this M. Lenoble P Some horrible ugly old 
 creature, I dare say." 
 
 Miss Paget smiled and blushed. The vision of Gu stave's 
 frank handsome face arose before her very vividly as Charlotte 
 said this. 
 
 " No, dear," she replied. " M. Lenoble is not an old man — 
 five-and-thirty at most." 
 
 "Five-and-thirty !" repeated Charlotte, with a wry face; you 
 don't call that young ? And what is he hke ?" 
 
 " Well, dear, I think he is the sort of man whom most people 
 would call handsome. I'm sure you would Uke him, Lotta. He 
 is so candid, so animated, so full of strength and courage. The 
 sort of man to whom one would naturally look in any emergency 
 or danger; the sort of man in whose company fear would be 
 impossible." 
 
 "Diana," cried Charlotte, suddenly, "you are in love -with 
 him!" 
 
 "Lotta!" 
 
 "Yes, dear, you are in love with him," repeated Miss HalH- 
 day, embracing her friend with eflfusion ; " yes, over head and 
 ears in love with him. And you are ashamed to confess the 
 truth to me; and you are half ashamed to confess it even to 
 yourself — as if you could deceive an old stager like me ! " cried 
 Charlotte, laugliing. " Why, you dear inconstant thing, while 
 I have felt myself the guiltiest and most selfish creature in the 
 world for robbing you of Valentine, you have been quietly 
 transfen-ing your affections to this M. Gustave Lenoble— who 
 is very rich, and brave, and true, and generous, and what 
 most people would call handsome ! Bless you, a thousand times, 
 my darling ! You have made me so happy ! " 
 
 " Indeed, Lotta ! " 
 
 " Yes, dear. The thought that there was a blank in your life 
 made a dark cloud in mine. I know I have been very selfish, 
 very thoughtless, but I could never have been quite free fi-om a 
 sense of self-rejjroach. But now there is nothing for me but 
 happiness. darhng, I so long to see your M. Lenoble!" 
 
 " You shall see him, dear." 
 
 " And in the meantime tell me what he is like." 
 
 Miss Halliday insisted upon a full, true, and particular ac- 
 count of M. Lenoble's personal appearance. Diana gave it, but 
 not without some sense of embarrassment. She could not bring 
 herself to be enthusiastic about Gustave Lenoble, though in 
 her heart there was a warmth of feehng that surprised her.
 
 Taken ly Sform. 125 
 
 "Vfhat a hypocrite you are, Di!" exclaimed Charlotte pre- 
 eently. "I know you love this good Frencliman almost as 
 dearly as I love Valentine, and that the thought of his affection 
 makes you happy ; and yet you speak of him in httle measured 
 sentences, and you won't be enthusiastic even about his good 
 looks."_ 
 
 " It is difficult to pass from deams to realities, Lotta. I have 
 lived so long among dreams, that the waking world seems strange 
 to me." 
 
 " That is only a poetical way of saying that you are ashamed 
 of having changed your mind. I will tell M. Lenoble what a 
 lukewarm creature you are, and how unworthy of his love ! " 
 
 " You shall tell him what you please. But remember, dear, 
 my engagement must not be spoken about yet awhile, not even 
 to your mamma. Papa makes a strong point of this, and I 
 have promised to obey, though I am quite in the dark as to his 
 reasons." 
 
 Miss Halliday submitted to anything her friend wished ; only 
 entreating that she might be introduced to M. Lenoble. Diana 
 
 E remised her this privilege; but it speedily transpired that 
 )iana's promise was not all that was wanted on this occasion. 
 
 For some time past, in fact from the very commencement of 
 Charlotte's engagement, Mr. Sheldon had shown himself punc- 
 tilious to an exceeding degree vnth regard to his stepdaughter. 
 The places to which she went, and the joeople with whom she 
 consorted, appeared to be matters of supreme importance in his 
 mind. When speaking of these things he gave those about him 
 to understand that his ideas had been the same from the time of 
 Charlotte's leaving school ; but Diana knew that this was not 
 true. Mr. Sheldon's theories had been much less strict, and 
 Mr. Sheldon's practice had been much more careless, prior to 
 Miss HalUday's engagement. 
 
 No stately j^rincipal of a school for young ladies could have 
 been more particular as to the movements of her charges — 
 more apprehensive of wolf-in-sheep's-clothing in the shajje of 
 singing or drawing-master — than Mr. Sheldon seemed to be iu 
 these latter days. Even those pleasant walks in Kensington 
 Gardens, which had been one of the regular occupations of the 
 day, were now forbidden. Mr. Sheldon did not hke that hia 
 daughter should walk in pubUc with no better protector than 
 Diana Paget. 
 
 " There is sometliing disreputable in two girls marching about 
 those gardens together according to my ideas," said this iiltra- 
 refined stockbroker, one morning at the family breakfast-table. 
 " I don't like to see my stepdaughter do anything I should 
 forbid my own daughter to do. And if I had a daughter, I 
 ehould most decidedly forbid all lonely rambles m Kensington 
 
 I
 
 126 Charlotte's Inheritance. 
 
 Gardens. You see, Lotta, two girls as attractive as you and 
 Miss Paget can't be too particular where you go, and what you 
 do. When you want air and exercise, you can get both m the 
 garden ; and when you want change of scene, and a peep at the 
 fasliions, you can drive out with Mrs. Sheldon." 
 
 To tliis deprivation Charlotte submitted, somewhat unwillingly, 
 but with no sign of open rebellion. She thought her stepfather 
 foolish and unreasonable ; but she always bore in mind the fact 
 that he had been kind and disinterested in the matter of her 
 engagement, and she was content to prove her gratitude by any 
 little sacrifice of this kind. Was not her lover permitted to 
 spend his Sundays in her society, and to call on her, at his 
 discretion, during the week ? And what were walks in Ken- 
 sington Gardens comjiared with the delight of his dear presence ! 
 It is true that she had sometimes been favoured with Mr. Hawke- 
 hurst's society in the course of her airing; but she knew that 
 lie sacrificed his hours of work or study for the chance of half 
 an hour in her society ; and she felt that there might be gain to 
 b"m in her loss of hberty. 
 
 She told him, when next they met, that the morning walks 
 were forbidden ; and, so jealous a passion is love, that Mr. 
 Hawkehurst was nowise sorry to find that his pearl was strictly 
 watched and carefully guarded. 
 
 ''Well, it seems very particular of Mr. Sheldon, of course," 
 he said ; " but, upon my word, I think he's right. Such a girl 
 as you oughtn't to go about with no better protection than 
 Diana can give you. Fellows will stare so at a pretty girl, you 
 know ; and I can't bear to think my pearl should be stared at 
 by imj^ertinent strangers." 
 
 Mr. Hawkehurst cUd not, however, find the strict notions of 
 his lady-love's stepfather quite so agreeable when he wanted 
 to take his " pearl " to the winter exhibitions of pictures. He 
 was told that IVIiss Halliday could go nowhere, except accom- 
 panied by her mamma; and as Georgy did not care about 
 pictures, and found herself unequal to the fatigue of attending 
 the winter exhibitions, he was obliged to forego the delight of 
 seeing them with Lotta on his arm. He pronounced Mr. Sheldon 
 on this occasion to be a narrow-minded idiot ; but withdrew the 
 remark in a contrite spirit when Charlotte reminded him of that 
 gentleman's generosity. 
 
 " Tes, dear, he has certainly been very kind and very disin- 
 terested — more disinterested than even you think; but, some- 
 how, I can't make him out." 
 
 It was very well for ]\Iiss Halliday that she had submitted to 
 this novel restriction with so good a grace, inasmuch as Mr. 
 Sheldon had prepared himself for active oj^position. He had 
 given orders to his wife, and further orders' to Mrs. Wooloer, to
 
 Talcen hj ^torm. 127 
 
 the effect that Ids step-daugliter should not be periLitted to go 
 put of doors, except in his own or her mother's comiDany. 
 
 " She is a very good girl, you see, Nancy," he said to the old 
 housekeeper, " but she's young, and she's giddy; and of course 
 i can't take upon myself to answer for Miss Paget, who may or 
 may not be a good girl. She comes of a very bad stock, how 
 ever ; and I am bound to remember that. Some people think 
 that you can't give a girl too much hberty. My ideas lean the 
 other way. I think you can't take too much care of a very 
 pretty girl whom you are bound by duty to protect. 
 
 All this sounded very noble and very conscientious. It 
 sounded thus even to Mrs. Woolper, who in her intercourse with 
 Phihp Sheldon could never quite divest herself of one appalling 
 memory. That memory was the death of Tom Halhday, and 
 the horrible thoughts and fears that had for a time possessed 
 her mmd in relation to that death. The shadow of that old 
 ghastly ten-or sometimes came between her and Mr. Sheldon, 
 even now, though she had long ago assured herself that the 
 terror had been ahke groundless and unreasonable. 
 
 " Didn't I see my own nephew carried off by a fever twice as 
 sudden as the fever tha-^ carried off poor Mr. Halliday ?" she said 
 k> herself; " and am I to think homd things of liim as I nursed 
 % baby, because a cup of greasy beef- tea turned my stomach ?" 
 
 Convinced by such reasoning as this that she had done her 
 master a grievous wrong, and grateful for the timely shelter 
 afforded in her old age, Mrs. Woolper felt that she could not do 
 too much in her benefactor's service. She had already shown 
 herself a clever managing housekeeper ; had reformed abuses, 
 and introduced a new system of care and economy below-stairs, 
 to the utter bewdlderment of poor Greorgy, for whom the respon- 
 sibilities of the gothic villa had been an overwhelming burden. 
 Georgy was not particularly gi-ateful to the energetic old York- 
 Bliirewoman who had taken this burden off her hands, but she 
 was submissive. 
 
 " I never felt myself much in the house, my dear," she said 
 to Lotta ; " but I am sure since Ann Woolper has been here I 
 have felt myself a cii^her." 
 
 Mrs. Woollier, naturally sharp and observant, was not slow to 
 perceive that Mr. Sheldon was abnormally anxious about hia 
 stepdaughter. _ She ascribed this anxiety to a suspicious nature, 
 ^n inherent distrust of other people on the part of her master, 
 and in some measure to his ignorance of womankind. 
 
 " He seems to think that she'd run away and get manied on 
 the sly, at a word from that young man; but he doesn't know 
 what a dear innocent soul she is, and how sorry she'd be to dis- 
 please any one that's kind to her. I don't know anything about 
 Miss Paget. She's more stand-offish than our own Miss, though
 
 128 CTiarloifes Inheritance. 
 
 she is little better tliad a genteel kind of sen^ant ; but sbe seema 
 fair-spoken enough. As to our Miss, bless her dear heart ! she 
 want's no watching, I'll lay. But I daresay those City folks, 
 with their stocks going up and going down, and always bringing 
 about the ruin of somebody or other, go which way they will, 
 get their poor heads so muddled with figures that they can't 
 beheve there's such a thing as honesty in the world." 
 
 This was the gist of Mrs. Woolper's evening musing in the 
 snug Httle housekeeper's room at the Lawn. It was a very 
 comfortable little room, and held sacred to Mrs. Woolper ; the 
 three young females, and the boy in buttons, who formed Mr. 
 Sheldon's in-door estabhshment, preferring the license of the 
 kitchen to the strict etiquette of the housekeeper's room. 
 
 This apartment, as well as every other room in the stock- 
 broker's house, bore the stamp of prosperity. A comfortable 
 easy-chair rejDosed the limbs of Mrs. Woolper; a bright little 
 fire burned in a bright little grate, and its ruddy light was re- 
 flected in a bright little fender. Prints of the goody class 
 adorned the walls ; and a small round table, with a somewhat 
 gaudy cover, supported Mrs. Woolper's work-box and family 
 Bible, both of which she made it a i^oint of honour to carry 
 about with her, and to keep reHgioiasly, through good fortune 
 and through evil fortune; neither of which, however, aff"orded 
 her much employment. She felt herself to be much nearer 
 grace with the family Bible by her side than she would have 
 been without it ; she felt, indeed, that the maintenance and due 
 exhibition of the family Bible was in itself a kind of religion. 
 But that she should peruse its pages was not in the bond. Her 
 eyes were old and weak — sharp enough to discover the short- 
 comings of Mr. Sheldon's young maid- servants, but too feeble 
 even for long-primer. 
 
 As she looked round that snug little chamber of an evening, 
 when her day's labours were ended, and her own particular Bri- 
 tannia-metal tea-pot was basking in the fender, her own special 
 round of toast frizzUng on the trivet, she was very grateful to 
 the man to whom she owed these comforts. 
 
 "What should I be but for him?" she asked herself with a 
 shudd'^r ; for the vision of that darksome abode shut in by high 
 black walls — the metropolitan workhouse — arose before her. 
 She did not know what difficulties would have barred her en- 
 trance even to that dreary asylum; she only thought of the 
 horrors of that sanctuary, and she blessed her master for the 
 benevolence that had accepted the service of her failing 
 hands. 
 
 This was the servant on whom PhiUp Sheldon rehed. He 
 saw that she was grateful, and that she was ready to serve him 
 with an almost slavish devotion. He knew that she had sus-
 
 Firm as a ItocTc, 129 
 
 pected Wni in tlie past, and he saw that she had outlived her 
 
 susiiicion. 
 
 " There is a statute of limitations to these things as well aa 
 for debt," he said to himself. "A man can Hve down anything, 
 if he knows what he is about." 
 
 OHAPTEE II. 
 
 FIRM AS A ROCK. 
 
 Aftek that midnight interview between the two girls in Miss 
 HaUiday's bedroom, life went very smoothly at the gothic villa 
 for two or three days, during which the imjDulsive Charlotte, 
 being forbidden to talk openly of the change in her friend's 
 position, was fain to give vent to her feelings by furtive embraces 
 and hand-squeezings, sly nods and meaning becks, and mis- 
 chievous twinkling of her arch grey eyes. 
 
 She talked of Valentine more than ever now, feeUng herself 
 at hberty to sing what pasans she pleased in praise of her hero, 
 now that her friend had also a fitting subject for pseans. 
 
 " And now it's your turn to talk of M. Lenoble, dear," she 
 woxdd say naively, when she had entertained Diana with the 
 mmute details of her last conversation with her lover, or a 
 lively sketch of the delights of that ideal cottage which she 
 loved to furnish and unfurnish in accordance with the new fancy 
 of the hour. 
 
 Diana was pleased to Hsten to her girlish talk : to hang and 
 rehang the ideal draperies, to fill and refill the ideal bookcase, to 
 plan and rej)lan the arrangements of that ideal existence which 
 was to be all joy and love and harmony ; but when her turn 
 came, and she was asked to be rapturous about her own lover, 
 she could say nothing : that which she felt was too deep for 
 words. The thought of her lover was strange to her ; the fact 
 of his love was mysterious and wonderful. She could not talk 
 of him with the customary frivolous school-girl talk ; and love 
 for him had so newly taken root in her heart that there were as 
 yet no blossoms to be gathered from that magical plant. 
 
 " Don't ask me to talk of him, Lotta, dear ; "* she said. " I am 
 not yet sure that I love him ; I only feel that it is sweet to be 
 loved by him. I think Providence must have sent him to me 
 in pity for my desolation." 
 
 This was abnost the same fancy that had occurred to Susan 
 MeyneU five-and-thirty years before this time, when Gustave 
 the first had resctied her from the suicide's unrepentable sin. 
 
 That chivalrous turn of mind which was hereditary in the 
 race of Lenoble predisposed these men to pity loneliness and 
 beauty, weakness and sorrow. This i>ity for helplessless may
 
 130 Charlotte's IjiJieritance. 
 
 have been indeed only an element of their exceeding strength. 
 Was not the rescue of weaklings and women an unfailing attri- 
 bute in the mighty men of old ? Who so prompt as Hercules 
 to fly to the rescue of Hesione ? who so swift as Perseus to save 
 Andromeda ? And what sea-monster more terrible than loneh- 
 ness and poverty ? 
 
 In a few days there came another letter from Captain Paget, 
 containing a fresh summons to Omega Street. 
 
 "Lenoble positively returns to Normandy to-morrow," he 
 wrote, " to see his girls, and, no doubt, break the news of his 
 approaching marriage. He much wants to see you, and, as I 
 have forbidden liis calling on you at the Lawn, can only meet 
 you here. He is to drink tea with me at the usual time to- 
 morrow evening, and I shall exjject to see you early in the after- 
 noon." 
 
 This afforded an opportimity for that inti'oduction to which 
 Miss IfalUday looked forward with so much interest. 
 
 " If Mr. Sheldon and your mamma will let you come with me 
 this afternoon, dear, I shall be very pleased to take you," said 
 Diana ; and she felt that she would appear less in the character 
 cf a lamb led to the slaughter if she could go to meet her 
 betrothed accompanied by Charlotte. 
 
 But in this matter both the young ladies were doomed to dis- 
 appointment. Mr. Sheldon showed himself a social Draco in 
 all things relating to his stepdaughter. Being forbidden to re- 
 veal the existence of Gustave Lenoble, Charlotte could only urge 
 a frivilous desire to accompany her friend in a pilgnmage dic- 
 tated by filial duty. To the practical mind of Philip Sheldon 
 this desire appeared altogether absurd and unreasonable, and he 
 did not hesitate to express himself to that effect in a tete-a-tete 
 with his ste]3daughter. 
 
 " What good on earth can you do by going to see a gouty old 
 man, who has his own daughter to dance attendance upon him ?" 
 asked Mr. Sheldon. " Really, Charlotte, I am surprised to hear 
 such a proposition from a girl of your good sense. Miss Paget 
 is your companion, not your visitor. It is her duty to indulge 
 yoiir whims, but it is not your place to give way to hers." 
 
 " But this is a whim of mine, papa ; I should really Hke to 
 spend the afternoon at Chelsea. It would be a change, yoti 
 know." 
 
 Mr. Sheldon looked at his stepdaughter with a sharp and 
 searching gaze, a gaze in which there was suspicion as well as 
 curiosity. 
 
 "It is a very discreditable whim for a young lady in your 
 position," he said sternly ; " and I beg that such a proposition 
 may not be made to me again."
 
 j^/rwi as a Hock. 131 
 
 This was decisive. Charlotte submitted, and Diana went alone 
 to Omega Street. She found Gustave waiting for her. He pro- 
 posed a walk, and Captain Paget was enthusiastic upon the 
 subject of fresh air, and the benefits arising therefrom. So the 
 lovers went out in the bleak winter afternoon, and wandered in 
 the dreary Pimlico regioa as far as St. James's Park — Gustave 
 delighted to have Diana's hand upon his arm, and Diana almost 
 bewildered by a sense of happiness, which seemed um-eal by 
 reason of its very novelty. 
 
 Giistave was all enthusiasm, full of plans for the future. He 
 would have had the marriage take place immediately, if such a 
 thing had been possible ; but Diana showed him that it would 
 not be possible. Her first duty was to the only friends she had 
 ever known. Gustave argued the point resolutely for nearly an 
 hour, during which time they made their way to the very gates 
 of St. James's Park, but Diana was more resolute still. 
 
 " What a tyrannical wife I shall have by and by ! " said Gus- 
 tave. " I think you care for these Sheldons more than for me, 
 Diane." 
 
 " These Sheldons have been so good to me in the past." 
 
 " And I mean to be so good to you in the future," answered 
 Gustave. " You shall be the happiest wife in Normandy, if a 
 foolish doting husband's devotion can make you happy." 
 
 " What have I done to deserve so much devotion ? " Diana 
 miirmured wonderingly. 
 
 " What have you done ? Nothing, less than nothing. You 
 will not even run the hazard of offending your family of Sheldon 
 in order to make me happy. But Fate has said, ' At the feet of 
 that girl with the dark eyes and pale proud face shall poor 
 Lenoble of Cotenoir put down his heart.' Do you know what I 
 said to myself when I saw you first in the little parlour yonder ? 
 Ah, no ! How should you guess ? ' She is there,' said I ; ' behold 
 her ! It is thy destiny, Lenoble, on which thou gazest ! ' And 
 thou, love, wert calm and voiceless as Pate. Quiet as the god- 
 dess of marble before which the j^agans offered their sacrifices, 
 across whose cold knees they laid their rich garments. I put 
 my treasiires in your lap, my love ; my heart, my hopes, — all 
 the treasures I had to offer." 
 
 This was all very sweet, but there was a sting even mingled 
 with that sweetness. Diana told herself that love like this 
 should only be offered on the purest shrine; and when she 
 remembered the many stains upon her father's honour, it 
 seemed to her that a part of the shame must needs cleave 
 to her. 
 
 " Gustave," she said presently, after an absent meditative 
 mood, from which her lover had vainly tried to beguile her, 
 " does it not seem to you that there is something foohsh in this
 
 132 Charlotte's Inheritance. 
 
 talk of Uve and confidence between yon and me; and that all 
 your promises liave been a little too lightly made ? What do 
 yon know of me ? Yon see me sitting'in my father's room, and 
 because my eyes happen to please you, or for some reason as 
 foolish as that, you ask me to be your wife. I might have been 
 one of the worst of wom.en." 
 
 " You might have been ? — yes, dear, but you are not. And if 
 you had been, Gustave Lenoble would not have flung his heart 
 into your lap, even if your eyes had been sweeter than they are. 
 We impulsive people are people of quick perceptions, and know 
 what we are doing better than our reflective friends imagine. I 
 did not need to be an hour in your company, dear love, in order 
 to know that you are noble and true. There are tones in the 
 voice, there are expressions of the face, that teU these things 
 better than words can teU them; for, you see, words can he, 
 while tones and looks are apt to be true. Yes, my angel, I knew 
 you from that first night. My heart leapt across ah conventional 
 barriers, and found its way straight to yours." 
 
 " I can see that you think much better of me than I deserve ; 
 but even supposing you not to be deceived as to myself, I fear 
 you are much deceived as to my surroundings." 
 
 " 1 know that your father is poor, and that the burden of 
 his jDoverty weighs heavily on you. That is enough for me to 
 know." 
 
 " No, M. Lenoble ; it is not enough for you to know. If I 
 am to be your wife, I will not enter your family as an imj^ostor. 
 I told you the truth about myself the other day when you 
 questioned me, and I am bound to tell you the truth about my 
 father." 
 
 And then she told him, in the plainest frankest language, the 
 story of her father's life. She inlhcted no unnecessary shame 
 on Captain Paget; she made no complaint of her neglected 
 childhood and joyless youth; but she told Gustave that her 
 father had been an adventurer, keeping doubtful company, and 
 earning his bread by doubtful means. 
 
 " I hojDe and believe that if a ixsaceful home conld be secured 
 for his declining years, he would live the rest of his hfe like a 
 gentleman and a Christian; and that, the bitter struggle for 
 existence being ended, he would be sorry for the past. I doubt 
 if the sense of shame ever deserted him when he was hving that 
 wretched wandering Hfe, leaving debts and difficulties behind 
 him everywhere — always harassed and hunted by creditors, who 
 had good cause to be angry. Yes, Gustave, I do beheve that, if 
 it should please Providence to give my father a peaceful home 
 at last, he will be thankful for God's mercy, and -will repent the 
 eins of life. And now I have told you the kind of heritage I can 
 bring my husband."
 
 Firm at a BocJc. 133 
 
 "My dear love, I will accept the lieritage, for the sake of her 
 who brings it. I never meant to be less than a son to youf 
 father ; and if he is not the best of fathers, as regards the past, 
 we ■svill try to make him a decent kind of father as regards the 
 future. I have long understood that Captain Paget is some- 
 thing — ever so httle — of an adventurer. It was the pursuit of 
 fortune that brought him to me ; and without knowing it, he 
 broiight me my fortune in the shape of his daughter." 
 
 Diana blushed as she remembered that Captain Paget had 
 not been so innocent of any design in this matter as the French- 
 man imagined. 
 
 "And you will receive even papa for my sake P" asked Diana. 
 
 "With aU my heart." 
 
 " Ah, you are indeed a generous lover ! " 
 
 " A lover who is not generous is — bah ! there is nothing in 
 creation so mean as the wi-etch whom love does not render gene- 
 rous. When one sees the woman whom Fate intends for one's 
 wife, is one to stop to inquire the character of her father, her 
 mother, her sister, her coiisin ? — for there is no stopping when 
 you begin that. A man who loves makes no inquiries. If he 
 finds his jewel in the gutter, he jDicks it out of the mud and 
 cai-ries it away in his bosom, too proud of his treasure to remem- 
 ber where he found it; always provided that the jewel is no 
 counterfeit, but the real gem, fit for a king's crown. And my 
 diamond is of the purest water. By and by we will try to drain 
 the gutter — that is to say, we will try to pay those small debta 
 of which you speak, to lodging-house keepers, and tradesmen 
 who have trusted your father." 
 
 " You would pay jiapa's debts ! " cried Diana in amazement. 
 
 " But why not ? All these little debts, the thought of which 
 is 80 bitter to you, might be discharged for two or three thou- 
 sand pounds. Your father teUs me I am to be very rich by 
 and by." 
 
 " My father tells you ! Ah, then, you have allowed him to 
 involve you in some kind of speculation ! " 
 
 " He has involved me in no speculation, and in no risk that 
 two or three hundred pounds will not cover." 
 
 " The W'hole business seems very mysterious, Gustave." 
 
 " Perhaps ; it has to do with a secret which I am pledged to 
 keep. I will not allow your father to lead me into any,quagmire 
 of speculation, believe me, dear one." 
 
 After this they went back to Omega Street in the winter 
 gloaming, and Diana loved and admired this man with all her 
 heart and mind. A new Hfe lay before her, very bright and fait. 
 There, where had been only the barren desert, was now a fair 
 \andscape, shining in the sunhght of hope. 
 
 " Do you think yonr children will ever love me, Gustave P'
 
 134 Uharlotie's Inheritanee. 
 
 she asked, not without some sense of wonder that this im23lil- 
 Bive light-hearted lover should be the owner of children. She 
 fancied that a responsibility so grave as paternity must needa 
 have impressed some stamp of solemnity upon the man who 
 bore it. 
 
 " Ever love thee ! " cried Gustave. " Child, they will adore 
 thee. They ask ouly some one to love. Their hearts are gardens 
 of flowers ; and thou shalt gather the flowers. But wilt thou be 
 happy at Cotenoir, thou ? It is somewhat sad, perhaps — the 
 grave old clmteau with the long sombre con-idors. But thou 
 shalt choose new furniture, new garnitures at Rouen, and we 
 will make all bright and gay, like the heart of thy affianced 
 Thou wilt not be duU?" 
 
 " Dull, with you and • yours ! I shall thank God for my 
 happy home day and night, as I never thought to thank Him a 
 a few months ago, when I was dissatisfied, wicked, tired of my 
 life." 
 
 " And when you thought of that other one ? Ah, how he waa 
 ftn imbecile, that other one ! But thou wilt never think of him 
 again ; it is a dream that is past," said M. Lenoble. 
 
 That self-confidence which was an attribute of his sanguine 
 nature rendered the idea of a rival not altogether unpleasant to 
 him. He was gratified by the idea of his own victory, and the 
 base rival's annihilation. 
 
 " Diane, I want to show thee the home that is to be thine," he 
 said presently. " Your Sheldon family must give thee at least 
 a hoUday, if they refuse to let thee go altogether. Thou wilt 
 come to ISTormandy with thy father. He is coming for a week 
 or two, now that his gout is better. I want to show thee Cote- 
 noir — and Beaubocage, the place where my father was born. It 
 will seem dreary, perhaps, to thine EngUsh eyes ; but to me it is 
 very dear." 
 
 "Nothing that is dear to you shall appear dreary to me," 
 said Diana. 
 
 By this time they had amved at Omega Street. Again Miss 
 Paget made tea for her lover. Strange to say, the operation 
 seemed to grow more agreeable with every repetition. "Wliile 
 taking his tea from the hands of his beloved, Gustave pressed 
 the question of Diana's visit to Normandy. 
 
 "About her Sheldon family she is adama.iit," he said to Captaia 
 Paget, who sipped his tea and smiled at the lovers with the air 
 of an aristocratic patriarch. " There is to be no marriage till it 
 pleases Mrs. Sheldon to set her free. I consent to this only as 
 man must consent to the inevitable ; but I say to her, can she 
 not come to Normandy for a fortnight — say but one short fort- 
 night — to see her home ? She will come with you. She has but 
 to ask a holiday of her friends, and it is done."
 
 Against Wind and Tide 133 
 
 •* Of courst," exclaimed tlie Captain, " slie shall come with 
 me. If necessary, I myself will ask it of Sheldon. — -But it will 
 fce best not to mention where you are going, Diana. There are 
 reasons, best known to onr friend Gustave and myself, which 
 render secrecy advisable just at present. You can say Rouen. 
 That is quite near enough to the mark to come within the limita 
 of truth," added Horatio, with the tone of a man who had never 
 quite outstepped those limits. " Yes, Eouen. And you will 
 V)me with me." 
 
 " With us," said Gustave. " I will put off my journey for a 
 day or two for the sake of going with you. You have to meet 
 Fleurus in Rouen haven't you ? " 
 
 " Yes ; he is to be there on the fifth of March, and this is the 
 last day of February. I had a letter from him this morning. 
 All goes swimmingly. 
 
 Diana wondered what it could be which went swimmingly ; 
 but she was obhged to content herself with her lover's assurance 
 that he had not allowed her father to involve him in any kind 
 of epecuLition. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 AGAINST WIND AND TIDE. 
 
 BET\rEEN Philip Sheldon and his brother there was at this time 
 A state of feeling somewhat akin to the relations between a 
 subjugated countiy and its conqueror. The vanqiiished is fain 
 to accept whatever the victor is pleased to give, though dis- 
 content and impotent rage may be gnawing his entrails. 
 George Sheldon had been a loser in that game in which the 
 Haygarthian inheritance was the stake. He had held good 
 cards, and had played them with considerable cleverness ; but no 
 play could prevail against his antagonist's ace of trumps. The 
 ace of trumps was Charlotte Halliday ; and as to his mode and 
 matter of playing this card, Mr. Sheldon was for the present 
 profoundly mysterious. 
 
 " I have known a good many inscrutable cards in my time," 
 the sohcitor of Gray's Inn observed to his elder brother, in the 
 course of fraternal converse ; " but I think for inscrutabiUty 
 you put the topper on the lot. What do you expect to get out 
 of this Haygarth estate ? Come, Phil, let us have your figures 
 in plain English. I am to have a fifth — that's all signed and 
 sealed. But how about your share? What agreement have 
 you got from Miss HaUiday ?" 
 
 " None." 
 
 " None ! " 
 
 " What would the world think of me if I extorted money, or
 
 136 Charlotte's Inlieritance. 
 
 tlie promise of money, from my wife's daiigliterP Do yon 
 tHnk I could enforce any deed between lier and me ? " 
 
 •' Ah, I see ; you go in for respectability. And you are going 
 to leave the settlement of your claims to your stepdaugbter's 
 generosity. You will let her marry Hawkehurst, with her 
 hundred thousand pounds ; and then yoii will say to those two, 
 ' Mr. and Mrs. Hawkehurst, be so kind as to hand over my 
 share of the plunder.' That is not like you, Phil." 
 
 " Perhaps you will be good enough to spare yourself the 
 trouble of speculating about my motives. Go your way, and 
 leave me to go mine." 
 
 " But this is a case in which I have an interest. If Charlotte 
 marries Hawkehurst, I don't see how you are to profit, to any 
 extent that you would care about, by the Haygarth fortune. 
 But, on the other hand, if she should die unmarried, without a 
 will, the money would go to your wife. O my God ! Philip 
 Sheldon, is that what you mean ? " 
 
 The question was so sudden, the tone of horror in which it 
 was spoken so undisguised, that Mr. Sheldon the stockbroker 
 was for one moment thrown off his guard. His breath 
 thickened; he tried to speak, but his dry lips could shape 
 no word. It was only one moment that he faltered. In the 
 next he turned upon his brother angrily, and asked what he 
 meant. 
 
 "You've been promised your reward," he said; "leave me to 
 look after mine. You'll take those papers round to Greenwood 
 and Greenwood ; they want to talk to you about them." 
 
 " Yes, I'll take the papers." 
 
 Greenwood and Greenwood were Mr. Sheldon's own solicitors 
 — a firm of some distinction, on whose acumen and experience 
 the stockbroker placed implicit reHance. They were men of 
 unblemished respectability, and to them Mr. Sheldon had 
 confided the care of his stepdaughter's interests, always re- 
 serving the chief power in his own hands. These gentlemen 
 thought well of the young lady's prospects, and were handling 
 the case in that slow and stately manner which marks th« 
 handhng of such cases by eminent firms of the slow-and-stately 
 class. 
 
 Mr. Sheldon wished his brother good-day, and was about to 
 depart, when George jjlanted himself suddenly before the door. 
 
 " Look you here, Phil," he said, with an intensity of manner 
 that was by no means common to him ; "I want to say a few 
 words to you, and I will say them. There was an occasion, ten 
 years ago, on which I ought to have spoken out, and didn't. 
 I have never ceased to regi-et my cowardice. Yes, by Jove! 
 I hate myself for it ; and there are times when I feel as if my 
 Bhare in that wretched business was almost as bad as yours.**
 
 Against Wind and Tide. 137 
 
 " I don't know what you mean." 
 
 " Of course not. That's your text, and you'll stick to it. 
 But you do know what I mean, and you shall know what 
 i mean, if plain words can tell you. You and I had a friend, 
 Phil. He was a good friend to me, and I liked him as much as 
 a man of the world can afford to like anybody. If I had been 
 down in the world, and had asked him for a hundred pounds to 
 give me a new start in life, I think he'd have said, ' George, 
 here's a cheque for you.' That's my notion of a friend. And 
 yet I stood by that man's deathbed, and saw him sinking, and 
 knew what ailed him, and didn't stretch out my hand to save 
 him." 
 
 "Be so good as to move away from that door," said Mr. 
 Sheldon, livid to the hps with smothered fury, but able to put 
 on a bold front nevertheless. " I didn't come here to listen to 
 rhodomontade of this kind, or to bandy words with you. Get 
 out of my way." 
 
 " Not till I've said my say. There shall be no rhodomontade 
 this time. I stood by and saw my best friend murdered — by 
 you. I kept my counsel for your sake, and when you had 
 made your fortune — by his death — I asked you for a httle 
 money. You know how much you gave me, and how graciously 
 you gave it. If you had given me twenty times the sum you 
 gained by Tom Halliday's death, I would give it back, and 
 twenty times as much again, to bring him back to life, and to 
 feel that I had never aided and abetted a murderer. Yes, by 
 God, I would ! though I'm not straitlaced or over-scrupulous at 
 the beat of times. But that's past, and all the money in the 
 Bank of England wouldn't undo what you did in Fitzgeorge 
 Street. But if you try on any such tricks with Tom HalHday's 
 daughter, if tliafs the scheme you've hatched for getting hold 
 of this money, as surely as we two live, I'll let in the light upon 
 your doings, and save the girl whose father you murdered. I 
 will, Philip, let come what may. You can't get me out of the 
 way when it suits you, you see. I hnoio you. That's the best 
 antidote against your medicines." 
 
 " If you'll be so good as to say these things on 'Change, I can 
 bring an action for libel, or get you put into a madhouse. 
 There's no good in saying them here." 
 
 Philip Sheldon, even in this crisis, was less agitated that his 
 brother, being of a harder nature, and less subject to random 
 imptilses of good or e\dl. He caught Ids accuser by the collar 
 of Ids coat, and flung him violently from the doorway. Thus 
 ended liis visit to Gray's Inn. 
 
 Boldly as ho had borne himself during the intendew, he went 
 to his office profoundly depressed and dispirited. 
 
 "So I am to have him against me?" ie said to himaelf.
 
 138 Charlotte s Inheritance. 
 
 " He can do me no real harm ; but he can harass and annoy me. 
 If he should drop any hint to Hawkehurst ?— but he'll scarcely 
 do that. Perhaps I've ridden him a little too roughly in the 
 
 East. And yet if I'd been smoother, where would his demands 
 ave ended ? No ; concession in these cases means ruin." 
 He shut himself in his office, and sat down to his desk to 
 confront his difficulties. For a long time the bark which was 
 freighted with Philip Sheldon's fortunes had been saihng in 
 troubled waters. He had been an unconscious disciple of Lord 
 Bacon, inasmuch as the boldness inculcated by that philosopher 
 had been the distinguishing characteristic of his condact in all 
 the operations of Hfe. As a speculator, his boldness had sensed 
 him well. Adventures from which timid spirits shrank appalled 
 had brought golden harvests to this daring gamester. When 
 some rich argosy ujDon the commercial ocean fired her minute- 
 guns, and sent up signals of distress, menaced by the furious 
 tempest, lifted high on the crest of mountainous waves, below 
 which, black and fathomless, yawn the valleys of death, — a frail 
 ark hovering above the ravening jaws of all-devouring Poseidon, 
 — Philip Sheldon was among that chosen band of desperate 
 wreckers Avho dared to face the storm, and profit by the tempest 
 and terror. From such argosies, while other men watched and 
 waited for a gleam of sunlight on the dark horizon, Mr. Sheldon 
 had obtained for himself goodly merchandise. The debenturel 
 of railways that were in bad odour ; Unitas Bank shares, im- 
 mediately after the discovery of gigantic embezzlements by 
 Swillenger, the Unitas-Bank secretary; the Mole-and-Burrow 
 railway stock, when the Mole-and-Burrow scheme was as yet in 
 the clouds, and the wiseacres prognosticated its failure; the 
 shares in foreign loans, which the Rothschilds were buying suh 
 rosa ; — these, and such as these, had emjjloyed Mr. Sheldon's 
 capital; and from the skilful manipulation of cajDital thus 
 employed, Mr. Sheldon had trebled the fortune secured by his 
 alliance with Tom HalKday's widow. 
 
 It had been the stockbrokers fate to enter the money market 
 at a time when fortunes were acquired with an abnormal facihty. 
 He had made the most of his advantages, and neglected none 
 of his oi^portunities. He had seized Good Fortune by th^ 
 forelock, and not waited to find the harridan's bald and slippery 
 crown turned to him in pitiless derision. He had made oiily 
 one mistake — and that he made in common with many of Ids 
 fellow-jjlayers in the ^reat game of speculation always going on 
 eastward of Temple Bar — he had mistaken the abnormal for 
 the normal : he had imagined that these splendid opportunities 
 were the natural evolvements of an endless sequence of every- 
 day events ; and when the sequence was abruj^tly broken, and 
 vrb-Aa the last of the seven fat kine vanished off the transitory
 
 Against Wind and Tide. 139 
 
 •cene of life, to make way for a dismal succession of lean kine, 
 there was no sanguine youngster newly admitted to the sacred 
 
 Srivileges of " The House " more astounded by the change th&u 
 Ir. Sheldon. 
 
 The panic came like a thief in the night, and it found Mr. 
 SheLdou a speculator for the rise. The Melampuses and 
 Amphiarauses of the Stock Exchange had agreed in declaring 
 that a man who bought into consols at 90 must see his capital 
 increased; and what wae true of this chief among securities 
 was of course true of other securities. The panic came, and 
 from 90, consols declined dismally, slowly, hopelessly, to 85^; 
 securities less secure sank with a rapidity coiTCsponding with 
 their constitutional weakness. As dui-ing the ravages of an 
 epidemic the weaker are first to fall victuns to the desti'oyer, so 
 while this fever raged on 'Change, the feeble enterprises, the 
 " risky " transactions, sank at an appalling rate, some to total 
 expiry. The man who holds a roaring lion by the tail could 
 scarcely be worse off than the speculator in these troublous 
 times. To let go is immediate loss, to hold on for a certain time 
 might be redemption, could one but know the exact moment in 
 which it would be wise to let go. But to hold on until the beast 
 grows more aud more fui-ious, aud then to let go and be eaten 
 up ahve, is what many men did in that awful crisis. 
 
 If Philip Sheldon had accepted his first loss, and been 
 warned by the first indication that marked the turniug of the 
 tide, he would have been a considerable loser ; but he would not 
 accept his loss, and he would not be warned by that early 
 indication. He had impHcit behef in liis own cleverness; and 
 he fancied if every other bark in that tem,pest-tossed ocean 
 foundered and sank, his boat might ride triumphantly across 
 the harbour-bar, secure by virtue of his science and daring as a 
 navigator. It was not till he had seen a small fortune melt 
 away in the payment of contango, that he consented to the 
 inevitable. The mistakes of one year devoured the fruits of 
 nine years' successful enterprise, and the Philip Sheldon of this 
 present year was no richer than the man who had stood by Tom 
 Halliday's bedside and waited the advent of the equal foot that 
 knows no difi"erence between the threshold of kingly palace or 
 paui>er refuge. Not only did he find himself as poor a man as 
 m that hateful stage of liis existence — to remember which was 
 a duU dead pain even to him — but a man infinitely more heavily 
 burdened. He had made for himself a certain position, and the 
 fall from that must needs be a cruel and damaging fall, the uttet 
 annihilation of aU his chances in Hfe. 
 
 The stockbroker's fitful slumbers at this time began to be 
 haunted by the vision of a black board fixed against the wall 
 of a place of pubhc resort, a black board on which aopeared hia
 
 140 CharloHe's Inheritance, 
 
 own name. In what strange places feverish dreams showed 
 him this hideous square of painted deal ! — !N"ow it was on the 
 walls of the rooms he Hved in ; now on the door of a church, 
 like Luther's propositions ; now at a street- comer, where should 
 have been the name of the street; now inky-black against the 
 fair white headstone of his own grave. Miserable dream, miser- 
 able man, for whom the scraping together of sordid dross was 
 life's only object, and who, in losing money, lost all ! 
 
 This agonizing consciousness of loss and of close-impending 
 disgrace was the wolf which this Spartan stockbroker concealed 
 beneath his waistcoat day after day, while the duU common, 
 joyless course of his existence went on; and his shallow wife 
 smiled at him from the ojDiJosite side of his hearth, more inte- 
 rested in a new stitch for her crotchet or berlin-wool work than 
 by the inner life of her husband ; and Charlotte and her lover 
 contemplated existence from their own point of view, and che- 
 rished their own dreams and their own hopes, and were, in all 
 things, as far away from the moody meditator as if they had 
 been natives of Upper India. 
 
 The ruin which impended over the unlucky speculator was 
 not immediate, but it was not far off; the shadow of it already 
 wrapped him in a twilight obscurity. His repute as a clever 
 and a safe man had left him. He was described now as a 
 daring man; and the wiseacres shook their heads as they talked 
 of him. 
 
 "One of the next to go will be Sheldon," said the wiseacres ; 
 but in these days of commercial epidemic there was no saying 
 who would be the first to go. It was the end of the world in 
 little. One was taken, and another left. The Gaze.tte overran 
 its customary column like a swollen river, and flooded a whole 
 page of the Times newspaper ; and men looked to the lists of 
 names in the Wednesday and Saturday papers as to the tramp 
 of archangels sounding the destruction of the universe. 
 
 For some time the bark in which Mr. Sheldon had breasted 
 those turbulent waters had been made of paper. This was 
 nothing. Paj^er boats were the prevailing shipping ia those 
 waters ; but Caj^tain Sheldon's bark needed refitting, and the 
 captain feared a scarcity of paj^er, or, worse still, the awful 
 edict issued from some commercial Areopagus that for him 
 there should be no more paper. 
 
 Once before, Mr. Sheldon had found himself face to face with 
 ruin complete and irredeemable. When all common expedients 
 had been exhausted, and his embarrassments had become des- 
 perate, he had found a desperate expedient, and had extri- 
 cated himself from those embarrassments. The time had 
 come in which a new moans of extrication must be found 
 Is desperate as the last, if need were. As Philip Sheldon
 
 D'lona asks for a TLoHihiy. 141 
 
 had faced the situation bofoi-e, lie faced it now — unshrink- 
 ingly, thongh with a gloomy anger against destiny. It wag 
 hard for him that such a thing should have to be repeated 
 If he pitied anybody, he pitiod himself; and this kind of com- 
 passion is very common with this kind of character. Do not 
 the Casket letters show us — if we may trust them to show ua 
 anything — that Mary Stuart was very sorry for herself when 
 she found herself called upon to make an end of Darnley ? In 
 Mr. Swinburne's wonderful study in morbid anatomy, there are 
 perhaps no hner touches than those which reveal the Queen's 
 seliish compassion for her own heartlessnesa. 
 
 CHAPTEE rV. 
 
 DIA-NA ASKS FOR A HOLIDAY. 
 
 Diana informed Mrs. Sheldon of her father's wish that she 
 should leave Bayswater. Before doing this, she had obtained 
 the Captain's consent to the revelation of her engagement to be 
 married. 
 
 "I don't like to leave them in a mysterious manner, papa," 
 she said. " I have told Charlotte a good deal ah-eady, under a 
 promise of secrecy ; but I should Uke to tell Mrs. Sheldon that 
 there is a real reason for my leaving her." 
 
 " Very well, my love, since you are so amazingly squeam — 
 honourable," interposed the Caj^tain, remembering how much 
 depended on his daughter's marriage, and what a very difficult 
 person he had found her. " Yes, my dear, of course ; I respect 
 your honourable feeUng; and — er — yes — yoii inmj tell Mrs. 
 Sheldon — and that of course includes Mr. Sheldon, since the 
 lady is but an inoffensive cipher — that you are about to be 
 married — to a French gentleman of position. You will, of 
 course, be obhged to mention his name, and then will arise 
 the question as to where and how you met him ; and, upon 
 my word, it's confoundedly awkward that you should insist 
 on enlightening these people. You see, my dear girl, what I 
 want to avoid, tor the present, is any chance of collision betweeaa 
 the Sheldons and Lenoble." 
 
 " Papa ! " exclaimed Diana, impatiently, " why imist there b» 
 all this scheming ? " 
 
 " O, very well, Miss Paget ; teU them what you Hke ! " cried 
 the Captain, aggravated beyond endurance by such inherent 
 perversity. " All I can say is, that a young woman who quar- 
 rels with her bread-and-butter is likely to come to diy bread* 
 and veiy little of that, perhaps. I wash my hands of the busi- 
 ness. Tell them what you like." 
 
 " I will not tell them more than I feel to ba actually neaes- 
 
 K
 
 142 Charlotte's Inheritance. 
 
 pary, papa," the young lady replied calmly. I do not tliink 
 Mr. Sheldon will trouble himself about M. Lenoble. He seema 
 very much occupied by his own affairs." 
 
 " Humph ! Sheldon seems harassed, anxious, does he ? " 
 
 " Well, yes, papa ; I have thought so for the last few months. 
 If I may venture to judge by the expression of his face, as he 
 sits at home in the evening, reading the paper, or staring at the 
 fire, I am sure he has many anxieties — troubles even. Mrs. 
 Sheldon and Charlotte do not appear to notice these things. 
 They are accustomed to see him quiet and reserved, and they 
 don't perceive the change in him as I do." . 
 
 " 0, there is a change, is there? " 
 
 " Yes, a decided change." 
 
 " Wliy the deuce couldn't you tell me this before ! " 
 
 " Why should I tell you that Mr. Sheldon seems anxious ? I 
 should not have told you now, if you had not appeared to dread 
 his interference in our affairs. I can't help observing these 
 things ; but I don't want to play the part of a spy." 
 
 " No, you're so infernally punct — so delicate-minded, my 
 love," said the Captain, pulling himself up suddenly, for the 
 second time. " Forgive me if I was impatient just now. You 
 look at these things from a higher point of view than that of a 
 battered old man of the world like me. But if you should see 
 any tiling remarkable in Mr. Sheldon's conduct on another occa- 
 sion, my love, I should be obliged to you if you would be more 
 communicative. He and I have been allied in business, you 
 see, and it is important for me to know these things." 
 
 " I have not seen anything remarkable in Mr. Sheldon's con- 
 duct, papa; I have only seen him thoughtful and dispirited. 
 And I suppose anxieties are common to every man of business." 
 
 Georgy received Miss Paget's announcement with mingled 
 lamentations and congratulations. 
 
 "I am sure I am heartily glad for your sake, Diana," she 
 said ; " but what we shall do without you, I don't know. Who 
 is to see to the drawing-roum being dusted every morning, when 
 yoa are gone ? I'm sure I tremble for the glass shades. Don't 
 imagine I'm not please:! to think you should settle in life 
 advantageously, my love. I'm not so selfish as that; though I 
 will say that there never was a girl with more natural talent for 
 making-up pretty little ca'^.^ than you. The one I have on has 
 been admired by everybody. Even Ann Woolper this morning, 
 when I was going into the butcher's book with her — for I insist 
 apon going into the butcher's book with her weekly, whethf 
 she likes it or not ; though the way that man puts down tlie 
 items is so bewildering that I feel myself a perfect baby in her 
 hands, — even Ann admired it, and said how young-looking it is. 
 -And then she brought up the time in Fitzgeorge Street, and
 
 Diana asks for a Uoliclay. 143 
 
 ■poor Tom's illness, and almost upset me for the rest of the day. 
 Aud now, dear, let me ofi'er you my sincei-e congratulations. Of 
 course, you know that you would always have had a home Avith 
 me ; but service, or at least companionship, is no inheritance, as 
 the proverb says ; and for your own sake I'm very glad to think 
 that you are going to have a house of your own. And now tell 
 me what he is like, Monsieur what's-his-name ? " 
 
 Mrs. Sheldon had been told, but had not remembered the 
 name. Her great anxiety, as well as Charlotte's, was to know 
 what manner of man thi^ tiffianced lover was. If Diana's future 
 happiness had been contingent on the shape of her husband's 
 nose, or the colour of his eyes, these two ladies could not have 
 been more anxious iipon the subject. 
 
 " Has he long eyelashes, and a dreamy look in his eyes, hke 
 Valentine ? " asked Charlotte, secretly convinced that her lover 
 had a copyi-ight in these personal graces. 
 
 " Does he wear whiskers ? " asked Georgy. " I remember, 
 ■when I was quite a girl, and went to parties at Barlingford, 
 being struck by Mr. Sheldon's whiskers. And I was quite 
 offended with papa, who was always making sarcastic remarks, 
 f«r calhng them mutton-chop whiskers ; but they really were 
 the shape of mutton-cutlets at that time. He wears them 
 differently now." 
 
 ]\Irs. Sheldon branched off into a disquisition on whiskers, 
 and Diana escaped from the task of describing her lover. She 
 could not have described him to Georgy. 
 
 By and by she asked permission to leave Bayswater for a 
 a fortnight, in order to see her lover's home and friends. 
 
 " I wiU come back to you, and stay as long as you hke, dear 
 Mrs. Sheldon," she said, " and make you as many caps as you 
 
 E lease. And I will make them for you by and by, when I am 
 ving abroad,_and send them over to you in a bandbox. It vriH 
 be a great delight to me to be of some little sei-vice to a friend 
 who has been so kind. And perhaps you will fancy the caps 
 are prettier when they can boast of being French." 
 
 "You darUng generous-minded gii-1 ! And you won't go 
 away for a fortnight and never come back again, will you, 
 dear ? I had a cook who did that, and left me with a large 
 dinner-party hanging over my head; and how I got through 
 it — with a strange man-cook, who charged a guinea, and used 
 fresh butter, at twentypence, a pound, as if it had been dirt, 
 and two strange men to wait — I don't know. It all seemed 
 like a dream. And since then we have generally had every- 
 thing from the confectioner's; and I assure you, to feel that 
 you can wash your hands of the whole thing, and sit down at 
 the head of your table with your mind as free from care as if 
 jou were a visitor, is worth all the expense."
 
 144 Charlotte s InJierilance. 
 
 Diana promised she would not behave like the cook ; and 
 two days after tliis conversation left the London Bridge ter- 
 minus with her father and Gustave Lenoble. 
 
 Mr. Sheldon troubled himself very little about this departure. 
 He was informed of Miss Paget's intended man-iage ; and the 
 information awakened neither surprise nor interest in his 
 heavily -burdened mind. 
 
 " A Frenchman, a friend of her father's! " he said; "some 
 swindling adventurer, no doubt," he thought. And this was as 
 much consideration as he co^^ld afford to bestow upon Miss 
 Paget's love affairs at tliis present time. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 ASSTJKAXCE DOUBLY SURE. 
 
 On the day after Miss Paget's departure Mr. Sheldon came 
 home from the City rather earlier than usual, and found Char- 
 lotte alone in the drawing-room, reading a ponderous volume 
 from Mudie of an instructive and edifying character, with a 
 view to making herself clever, in order that she might bette-r 
 understand that prodigy of learning, Mr. Hawkehurst. 
 
 She was somewhat inchned to yawn over the big book, which 
 contained a graphii^ account of recent discoveries of an anti- 
 quarian nature. Her mind was not yet attuned to the com- 
 prehension of the subhmer elements in such discoveries. She 
 saw only a dryasdust record of futile gropings in desert sand 
 for the traces of perished empires. Her imagination was not 
 cultivated to that jDoint whereat the gift which Mr. Lewes calls 
 " insight " becomes the daily companion, nay, indeed, the ever- 
 haunting and nightmare-bringing influence of the dreamer. 
 For her sands were only sands, the stones were only stones. 
 No splendour of fallen palaces, no glory and pride of perished 
 kings, no clash and clamour of vanished courts, arose from 
 those barren sands, with all their pomp and circumstance, con- 
 jured into being by half a word on a broken pillar, or a date 
 ujwn a Punic monument. Miss HalUday looked up with a 
 sigh of fatigue as her stejifather came into the room. It was 
 not a room that he particularly affected, and she was surprised 
 when he seated himself in the easy -chair oi^posite her, and 
 jjoked the fire, as if with the intvi'ution of remaining. 
 
 " You shouldn't read by firelight, my dear," he said ; " it is 
 most destructive to the eyesight." 
 
 " I dare say my sight will last my time, papa," the young 
 lady replied carelessly ; " but it's very kind of you to think ot 
 % and I won't read any more." 
 
 A^r. Sheldon made no reply to this observat! n. He sal
 
 Assurance Doiihlij Sure. 145 
 
 looking at the fire, -with that steady gaze which was habitual 
 to him — the gaze of the man who plans and calcnhites. 
 
 " My dear," he said by-and-by, "it seems that this money to 
 which yoii may or may not be entitled is more than we thought 
 at first ; m fact, it appears that the sum is a considerable one. 
 I have been, and still am, particularly anxious to guard against 
 disappointment on your part, as I know the effect that such 
 a disappointment its apt to produce upon a person's life._ The 
 harassing slowness of Chancery proceedings is proverbial ; I 
 am therefore especially desirous that you should not count upon 
 this money." 
 
 " I shall never do that, papa. I should certainly like a fine 
 edition of the EncydopcBdia Britannica for Valentine, by-and- 
 by, as he says that is essential for a literary man ; and a horse, 
 for people say literary men ought to take horse exercise. But 
 beyond that " 
 
 " We need scarcely go into these details, my dear. I want 
 you to understand the broad facts of the case. While, on the 
 one hand, our success in obtaining the inheritance which we are 
 about to claim for you is uncertain, on the other hand the 
 inheritance is large. Of course, when I presented you with the 
 sum of five thousand pounds, I had no idea of this possible 
 inhei'itance." 
 
 " O, of course not, papa." 
 
 " But I now find that there is such a possibility as your 
 becominer a — well — a rich woman." 
 
 " papa ! " 
 
 " In which case I may conclude that your mother would 
 benefit in some measure from your good fortune." 
 
 " Can you doubt that, papa ? There should be no measui-e 
 to her benefit from any money obtained by me." 
 
 " I do not doubt that, my dear. And it is with that idea 
 that I wish to make a proposition to you — for your mother'^ 
 possible advantage." 
 
 " I shall be happy to do anything you wish, papa." 
 
 " It must be done as a spontaneous act of your own. Char* 
 lotte, not in accordance with any wish of mine." 
 
 " "iVhat is it that I am to do ? " asked Charlotte. 
 
 " Well, my dear, you see it is agreed between us that if you 
 do get this money, your mother is certain to benefit consider- 
 ably. But unhappily the proceedings are hkely to drag on for 
 an indefinite time; and in the course of that time it comes 
 within the limits of possibihty that your decease may precede 
 that of your mother." 
 
 " Yes, papa." 
 
 " In which case your mother would lose aU hope of any aucb 
 advantage."
 
 14G Charlotte's Inheritance. 
 
 " Of course, papa." 
 
 Charlotte coiild not help tlainking that there was Bomething 
 eordid in this discussion — this calculation of possible gain or 
 loss contingent on her fresh young life. But she concluded 
 that it was the Kature of business men to see everything from a 
 debased standpoint, and that Mr. Sheldon was no more sordid 
 than other men of liis class. 
 
 " Well, papa?" she asked presently, after some momenta of 
 ilence, dui-ing which she and her stepfather had both been 
 absorbed in the contemplation of the frre. 
 
 " Well, my dear," replied Mr. Sheldon slowly, " I have been 
 thinking that the natural and easy way of guarding against all 
 contingencies would be by your effecting an insurance on your 
 life in your mother's favour." 
 
 " No, no, papa ! " cried Charlotte, with unwonted vehemence; 
 " I would rather do anything than that ! " 
 
 " What can be your objection to such a very simple arrange- 
 ment?" 
 
 " I dare say my objection seems foolish, childish even, papa ; 
 but I really have a horror of life assurances. I always think of 
 papa — my own poor father, whom I loved so dearly. It seemed 
 as if he put a price upon his life for us. He was so anxious to 
 insure his Hfe — I remember hearing him talk of it at Hyley, 
 when I was a child — to make tilings straight, as he said, for us ; 
 and, you see, very soon afterwards he died." 
 
 " But you can't suppose the insurance of his life had any- 
 thing to do with his death ? " 
 
 " Of course not, I am not so childish as that ; only " 
 
 " Only you have a fooHsh lackadaisical prejudice against the 
 only means by which you can protect your mother against a 
 contingency that is so remote as to be scarcely worth considera- 
 tion. Let it pass." 
 
 There was more anger in the tone than in the words. It waa 
 not that angry tone, but the mention of her mother, that 
 impressed Miss HaUiday. She began to consider that her 
 objections were both fooKsh and selfish. 
 
 " If you really think I ought to insure my life, I will do so," 
 Bhe said presently. " Papa did as much for those he loved ; 
 why should I be less thoughtful of others ? " 
 
 Having once brought Sliss Halliday to this frame of mind, 
 the rest was easy. It was agreed between them that as 
 Valentine Hawkehurst was to be kept in ignorance of his 
 betrothed's claim to certain moneys now in the shawdowy 
 under-world of Chancery, so he must be kept in ignorance of 
 the insurance. 
 
 It was only one more secret, and Charlotte had learned that 
 It was possible to keep a secret from her lover.
 
 Asstirance Doully Sure. 147 
 
 " I suppose before we are married I shall able to tell hinr 
 everything?" she said. 
 
 " Certainly, my dear. All I want is to test his endurance 
 and his prudence. If the course of events proves him worth' 
 of being trusted, I will trust liim." 
 
 " I am not afraid of that, papa." 
 
 " Of course not, my dear. But, you see, I have to protect 
 your interests ; and I cannot afford to see tliis gentleman with 
 your eyes. I am compelled to be prudent." 
 
 The stockbroker sighed as he said this — a sigh of utter 
 weariness. Remorse was unknown to him; the finer fibres 
 upon which that chord is struck had not been employed in the 
 fabrication of his heart. But there is a mental fatigue which is 
 a spurious kind of remorse, and has all the anguish of the 
 nobler feeling. It is an utter weariness and prostration of 
 spirit — a sickness of heart and mind — a bitter longing to lie 
 down and die — the weariness of a beaten hound rather than 
 of a baffled man. 
 
 This was what Mr. Sheldon felt, as the threads of the web 
 which he was weaving multiplied, and grew daily and hou^rly 
 more difficult of manipulation. Success in the work which he 
 had to do depended on so many contingencies. Afar off glit- 
 tered the splendid goal — the undisputed possession of the late 
 John Haygarth's hundred thousand pounds ; but between the 
 schemer and that chief end and aim of all his plottings what a 
 sea of troubles ! He folded his arms behind his head, and 
 looked across the girlish face of his companion into the shadow 
 and the darkness. In those calculations which were for ever 
 working themselves out in this man's brain, Charlotte Halliday 
 was only one among many figures. She had her fixed value ia 
 every sum ; but her beauty, her youth, her innocence, her love, 
 her trust, made no unit of that fixed figure, nor weighed in the 
 slightest degree with him who added up the sum. Had she 
 been old, ugly, obnoxious, a creature scarcely fit to live, she 
 would have represented exactly the same amount in the calcu- 
 lations of Philip Sheldon. The graces that made her beautiful 
 were gTaces that he had no power to estimate. He knew she 
 was a pretty woman ; but he knew also that there were pretty 
 women to be seen in any London street ; and the differerjc* 
 between his stepdaughter and the lowest of womankind who 
 passed him iu his daily walks was to him httle more than a 
 social prejudice. 
 
 The insurance business being once decided on, Mr. Sheldon 
 lost no time in putting it into execution. Although he made 
 a point of secrecy as regarded Mr. Hawkehurst, he went to 
 v/or]{ In no underhand manner, but managed matters after %
 
 MS Cliarlotles Inlierilance. 
 
 liighly artistic and superior fashion. He took liis stei^daughtei 
 to the offices of Greenwood and Greenwood, and explained her 
 wishes to one of those gentlemen in her presence. If he dwelt 
 a little more on Miss Halliday's anxiety for her mother's pecu- 
 niary advantage than his previous conversation with Miss 
 Haliiday warranted, the young lady was too confiding and too 
 diffident to contradict him. She allowed him to state, or 
 rather to imply, that the proposed insurance was her spon- 
 taneous vyish, an emanation of her anxious and affectionate 
 heart, the natural result of an almost morbid care for her 
 mother's welfare. 
 
 Mr. Hargrave Greenwood, of Greenwood and Greenwood, 
 seemed at first inclined to throw cold water on the prol^O(^ition, 
 but after some little debate, agreed that extreme caution would 
 certainly counsel such a step. 
 
 " I should imagine there was no better life amongst the 
 inhabitants of London," he said, " than ]\Iiss Shel — pardon me 
 — Miss Halliday's. But, as the young lady herself siiggests, 
 • in the midst of hfe we are — ' ; and, as the young lady herself 
 has observed, these things are ahem — beyond human fore- 
 sight. If there were any truth in the aphorisms of poets, I 
 should say ]\Iiss Haliiday cannot insure too quickly ; for the 
 remark of Cowper-^or, stay, I believe Pojie — ' whom the gods 
 love die young,' might very well be supposed to apply to so 
 charming a young lady. Happily, the secretaries of insurance 
 offices know very little about the poets, unless, indeed. Miss 
 Haliiday were to go to the Royal Widow's and Orphan's Hope, 
 the secretary of which is the author of dramas that may fairly 
 rank with the works of Knowles and Lytton." 
 
 Mr. Greenwood, an elderly gentleman of the ponderous and 
 port- wine school, laughed at his own small jokes, and took things 
 altogether pleasantly. He gave Mr. Sheldon a letter of intro- 
 duction to the secretary of his pet insurance company, the value 
 of whicli to that gentleman was considerable. Nor was this the 
 only advantage derived from the interview. The lawyer's ap- 
 proval of the transaction reassured Charlotte ; and though she 
 had heard her own views somewhat misrepresented, she felt that 
 an operation which appeared wise in the sight of such a lawyer, 
 standing on siich a Turkey hearthrug, commanding such gentle- 
 manly-looking clerks as those who came and went at Mr. Green- 
 wood's bidding, must inevitably be a proceeding at once pradent 
 and proper. 
 
 The business of the insurance was not quite so easy as the 
 interview with the lawyer. The doctor to whom Miss Haliiday 
 was introduced seemed very well satisfied with that young lady's 
 appearance of health and spirits, but in a subsequent interview 
 with Mr. SheMon asked several questions, and shook his head
 
 Assurance Vouhly Sure. 149 
 
 graTcly when told that her father had died at thirty-sevea years 
 of age. But he looked less grave when informed that Mr. 
 Halliday had died of a bilious fever. 
 
 " Did Mr. Halliday die in London P " he asked. 
 
 "He did." 
 
 " I should like — ahem — if it were possible, to see the medical 
 man who attended him. These fevers rarely prove fatal unless 
 there is some predisposing cause." 
 
 " In this case there was none." 
 
 " You speak rather confidently, Mr. Sheldon, at; u non-pro- 
 fessional man." 
 
 " I speak with a certain amount of professional knowledge. 
 I knew Tom Halliday for many years." 
 
 Mr. Sheldon forebore to state that Tom Halliday had died in 
 ais house, and had been attended by him. It is, perhaps, only 
 natural that Philip Sheldon, the stockbroker of repute, should 
 wish to escape identification with Philip Sheldon, the unsuc-- 
 cessful dentist of Bloomsbury. 
 
 After a little more conversational skirmishing, the confidential 
 physician of the Prudential Step Assurance Company agreed to 
 consider that IMr. Halliday's constitution had been in no manner 
 compromised by his early death, and to pass Charlotte's life. 
 The motives for effecting the insurance were bi-iefly touched 
 upon in Mr. Greenwood's letter of introduction, and appeared 
 very proper and feasible in the eyes of the directors ; so, after a 
 delay of a few days, the young lady found herself accepted, and 
 ]\Ir. Sheldon put away among his more important papers a large 
 oblong envelope, containing a policy of assurance on his step- 
 daughter's life for five thousand pounds. He did not, however, 
 stop here, but made assurance doubly sure by eff'ecting a second 
 insurance upon the same young life with the Widow's and 
 Orjihan's Hope Society, within a few dayo of the first tran.3- 
 
 Gr^'/tlOB.
 
 Cliarlottes InJierifancs. 
 
 DIANA IN NORMANDY. 
 CHAPTER L 
 
 AT COTENOIR. 
 
 Beaubocage, near Vevinord, March 15, 186 — . 
 My TAKLnrG LoTTA, — As you extorted from me a solemn pledge 
 that I woidd write you a full and detailed account of my adven- 
 tures, I seat myself in Mademoiselle Leuoble's pretty little tur- 
 ret-cliamber, in tlie liope of completing the first instalment of 
 my work before papa or Gustave summons me to prepare for a 
 drive and visit to the Convent of the Sacred Heart, which, I 
 believe, has been planned for to-day. 
 
 What am I to tell you, dear, and how shall I begin my story ? 
 Let me fancy myself sitting at your feet before your bedroom 
 fire, and you looking down at me with that pretty inquisitive 
 look in your dear grey eyes. Do you know that M. Lenoble's 
 eyes are almost the colour of yours, Lotta ? You asked me a 
 dozen questions about his eyes the other day, and I could give 
 you no clear description of them ; but yesterday, as he stood at 
 the window looking out across the garden, I saw their real 
 colour. It is grey, a deep clear grey, and his lashes are dark, 
 like yours. How shall I begin ? That is the grand difficulty ! 
 I suppose you will want to know something even about the 
 journey. Everytliing was very pleasant, in spite of the cold 
 blusterous March weather. Do you know what my last journey 
 was hke, Lotta ? It was the long dreary journey from Foret- 
 dechene to St. Katharine's Wharf, when Mr. Hawkehurst 
 advised and arranged my return to England. I had been sitting 
 quite alone in a balcony overlooking the Httle town. It was 
 after midnight, but the fights were still burning : I can see the 
 lampht windows shining through the night mist as I write this, 
 and the sense of the hopeless misery of that time comes back to 
 me like the breath of some freezing wind. I can find no words 
 to tell you how desolate I was that night, or how hopeless. 
 
 I dared not think of my future Ufe ; or of the next day, that 
 was to be the beginning of that hopeless future. I was obliged
 
 At Cofenoir. 151 
 
 to bind my thoughta to the present and all its dreariness ; and 
 a kind of dull apathetic feeUng, which was too dull for despair, 
 took possession of me that night. While I was sitting there 
 Mr. Hawkehurst came to me, and told me that my father had 
 become involved in a quarrel, under circumstances of a very 
 Bhameful nature, which I need not tell you. darling. He recom- 
 mended me to leave Foretdechene — indeed, almost insisted that 
 I should do so. He wanted to rescue me from that miserable 
 Ufe. Your lover had noble and generous impulses even then, 
 you see, dear ; at his worst he was not all bad, and needed only 
 your gentle influence to purify and elevate his character. Ha 
 gave me all the money he possessed to pay the expenses of my 
 journey. Ah, what a dreary journey ! I left Foretdechene in 
 the chill daybreak, and travelled third class, with dreadful 
 Belgians who smelt of garHc, to Antwerp. I slept at a very 
 humble inn near the quay, and started for England by the 
 Baron Osy at noon next day. I cannot tell you how lonely I 
 felt on board the steamer. I had travelled uncomfortably before, 
 but never without my father and Valentine — and he had been 
 always kind to me. If we were shabbily dressed, and people 
 thought ill of us, I did not care. The spirit of Bohemianism 
 must have been very strong with me in those days. I remem- 
 bered how we had sat together on the same boat watching the 
 sleepy shores of Holland, or making fun of our respectable 
 fellow-passengers. Now I was quite alone. People stared at 
 me rudely and unkindly, as I thought. I could not afford to 
 dine or breakfast with the rest ; and I was weak enough to feel 
 wounded by the idea that people would guess my motive for 
 shunning the savoury banquets that sent up such horrid odours 
 to the deck where I sat, trying to read a tattered Tauchnitz 
 novel. And the end of my journey? Ah, Charlotte, you can 
 never imagine what it is to travel like that, Avithout knowing 
 whether there is any haven, any shelter for you at the end ot 
 your wanderings ! I knew that at a certain hour we were to 
 arrive at St. Katharine's Dock, but beyond that I knew nothing. 
 I counted my money. There was just enough to pay for a cab 
 that would carry me to Hyde Lodge. I should land there pen- 
 niless. And what if my cousin Priscilla should refuse to receive 
 me ? For a moment I fancied even that possible ; and I pic- 
 twred myself walking about London, hungry and homeless. 
 
 This was my last journey. I have dwelt upon it longer than. 
 I need have done ; but I want you to understand what it is that 
 makes Gustave Lenoble dear to me. If you cotikl feel the con- 
 trast between the past and the present as I felt it when I stood 
 on the deck of the Dover packet with him by my side, you would 
 ^ow why I love him, and am grateful to him. We stood side
 
 152 Charlottes Inheritance. 
 
 by side, watcMng the waves and talking of oui* future, while my 
 Tather enjoyed a nap in one of the little deck cabins. To 
 Gustave that futui'e seems very bright and clear ; to me it seema 
 unutterably strange that the future can be anything but a 
 dismal terra incognita, from the contemplation of which it is 
 wise to refrain. 
 
 Paj^a stays with Gustave at Cotenoir ; but it had been ar- 
 ranged for me to visit Mademoiselle Lenoble, Gustave's aunt, at 
 Beaubocage, and to remain with her during my stay in Nor- 
 mandy. I at once understood the dehcate feeling wliich prompted 
 tliis arrangement. We dined at Rouen, and came to Vevinord 
 in a coach. At Vevinord a queer Uttle countrified vehicle met 
 as, with a very old man, of the farm-servant class, as coachman. 
 Gustave took the reins from the old man's hand and drove to 
 Beaubocage, where Mademoiselle Lenoble received me with much 
 cordiality. She is a dear old lady, with silvery bands of hair 
 neatly arranged under the j^rettiest of caps. Her gown is black 
 sUk, and her collar and cuffs of snowy whiteness ; everything 
 about her exquisitely neat, and of the fashion of twenty, or per- 
 haps tlairty, years ago. 
 
 And now, I suppose, you will want to know what Beaubocage 
 is like. Well, dear, much as I admire Mademoiselle Lenoble, I 
 must confess that her ancestral mansion is neither grand nor 
 pretty. It might have made a very tolerable farmhouse, but 
 has been spoiled by the architect's determination to make it a 
 chateau. It is a square white building, with two pepper-castor- 
 like turrets, in one of which I write this letter. Between the 
 garden and the high road there is a wall, surmounted with 
 plaster vases. The garden is for the greater part utilitarian ; 
 but in front of the salon windows there is a grassplot, bor- 
 dered by stiff gravel- walks, and reheved by a couple of flower- 
 beds. A row of tall jiojilars alone screens the house from the 
 dusty high road. At the back of it there is an orchard ; on one 
 side a farmyard ; behind the orchard He the fields that compose 
 the farm of Beaoibocage and the paternal estate of the Lenoble 
 family. All around the country is very flat. The people seem to 
 be kind and simple, and devotedly attached to "Mademoiselle." 
 There is a rustic j^eacefulness pervading everything which, for 
 me, stands instead of beauty. 
 
 I am hypocrite enough to pretend to be pleased with every- 
 thing, for I can perceive how anxiously M. Lenoble watches ms 
 in order to discover whether I like his native country. He was 
 not born at Beaubocage, but in Paris. Mademoiselle Lenoble 
 told me the story of his childhood, a,nd how she brougb t him to 
 Beaubocage, when quite a lillTe fellow, from Rouen, where his 
 father died. About his mother there seems to have been some 
 mystery Mademoiselle told me notliing of this, except that her
 
 At C6lenoii\ 153 
 
 brother, Gustave the elder, made a love-match, and thereby 
 offended his father. She has the little crib in which her nephew, 
 Gustave the younger, slept on the night of his coming. It 
 h.-,d been his father's little bed thirty years before. She shed 
 tears as she told me the story, and how she sat and watched 
 by the little fellow as he cried himself to sleep with his head 
 lying on her arm, and the summer moonlight shining full upon 
 his face. 
 
 I was deeply touched by her manner as she told me these 
 things ; and I think, if I had not already learned to love M. Le- 
 noble, I should love him for the sake of his aunt. She is charm- 
 ing ; a creature so innocent and pure, that one considers one's 
 words in speaking to her, almost as if she were a child. She is 
 about forty years older than I ; yet for worlds I would not te^ 
 her of the people and the scenes I have beheld at foreign water^. 
 ing-places and gambling-rooms. She has spent the sixty year? 
 of her hfe so completely out of the world, that she has retained 
 the freshness and sweetness of her youth untainted in the least 
 degree. Can there be magical philtre equal to this — a pure 
 unselfish life, far away from the clamour of cities ? 
 
 The old servant who waits upon me is seventy-five years of 
 age, and remembers Ma'amselle Cydalise from her childhood. 
 She is always smging the praises of her mistress, and she sees 
 that I like to hear them. " Ah, ma'amselle," she said to me, 
 " to marry a Lenoble is to maiTy one of the angels. I will not 
 say that the old seigneur was not hard towards his son. Ah, 
 yes, but it was a noble heart. And the young monsieur — that 
 one who died in Rouen, the Poor! — ah, that he was kind, that 
 he was gracious ! What of tears, what of regrets, when the Old 
 chased him ! " 
 
 My position is quite recognised. I think the very cowboy in 
 the farmyard — a broad-shouldered lad, with a good-natured 
 mindless face, and prodigious wooden shoes like clumsy canoes 
 — even the cowboy knows that I am to be Madame Lenoble of 
 Cotenoir. Cotenoir is the Windsor Castle of this district; Beau- 
 bocage is only Frogmore. Yes, dear, the bond is signed and 
 sealed. Even if I did not love M. Lenoble, I have bound myself 
 to marry him ; but I do love him, and thank him with all my 
 heart for having given a definite end and aim to my hfe. Don't 
 think I unden-ate your kindness, darling; I know that I should 
 never want a home while you could give me one. But 'tis hard 
 to be a hanger-on in any household ; and Valentine will exact 
 ull his sweet young wife's love and care. 
 
 I have -wi-itten you a letter which I am sure will require 
 double postage ; so I will say no more except goodbye. Take 
 care of yourself, dear one. Practise your part in our favourite 
 duets; remember your morning walk in the garden; and doi»'^
 
 154 Cliarlotte's Inheritance. 
 
 wear out your eyes over the big boots tbat Mr. Hawkelmrst ia 
 obliged to read. 
 
 Ever your affectionate 
 
 From Charlotte HalUday to Dia/na Paget. 
 
 The dullest house in Christendom, Monday. 
 
 EvEK DEAKEST Di, — Your letter was a welcome relief to tlie 
 ■weariness of my existence. How I wish I were with you ! But 
 that is too bright a dream. I am sure I should idolise Beaubo* 
 cage. I should not mind the dismal row of poplars, or the flat 
 landscape, or the dusty road, or anything, so long as it was not 
 like Bayswater. I languish for a change, dear. I have seen so 
 little of the world, except the dear moorland farmhouse at New- 
 hall. I don't think I was ever created to be " cal^ied, cribbed, 
 confined," in such a narrow life as this, amid such a dull, un- 
 changing round of daily commonj^lace. Sometimes, when the 
 cold spring moon is shining over the tree-tops in Kensington- 
 Gardens, I think of Switzerland, and the snow-clad mountains 
 and fair Alpine valleys we have read of and talked of, until my 
 heart aches at the thought that I may never see them ; and to 
 think that there are people in whom the word * Savoy ' awakes 
 no fairer image than a cabbage! Ah, my poor dear! isn't it 
 almost Avicked of me to complain, when yoto have had such 
 bitter experience of the hard cruel world? 
 
 I am quite in love with your dear Mademoiselle Lenoble ; 
 almost as deeply as I am in love with your magnanimous, 
 chivalrous, generous, audacious — everything ending in ous — 
 Monsieur Lenoble. 
 
 How dare you call him M. Lenoble, by the bye? I have 
 counted the occasions on which you write of him in your nice 
 long letter, and for one Gustave there are half a dozen M. Le- 
 nobles. It must be Gustave in future to me, remember. 
 
 Wliat shall I tell you, dear ? I have nothing to teU, reaUy 
 nothing. To say that I wish you were with me is only to con- 
 fess that I am very selfish ; but I do wish for you, dear — my 
 friend and adoj^ted sister, my old school companion, from whom, 
 willingly, I have never concealed one thought. 
 
 Valentine called on Tuesday afternoon ; but I have nothing 
 to tell you even about him. Mamma dozed in her corner after 
 her cup of tea, and Val and I sat by the fire talking over our 
 future, just like you and M. Lenoble on board the Calais boat. 
 How much engaged people find to say about the future ! Is it 
 our love that makes it seem so bright, so different from aU that 
 has gone before P I cannot fancy hfe with Valentine otherwise 
 than happy. I strive to picture trials, and fancy myself in 
 prisun with him, the wind blovring in at broken windows, thfl
 
 At Cotetioir. 153 
 
 rain coming througli the dilai^idated roof and pattering on the 
 carpetless floor; but the most dismal picture I can paint won't 
 eeem dismal if his figure is a part of it. We would stop the 
 broken windows with rags and paper, we would wipe up the rain 
 with our pocket-handkerchiefs, and sit side by side and talk of 
 the future, as we do now. Hope coitM never abandon us while 
 we were together. And then, sometimes, while I am looking at 
 Valentine, the thought that he might die comes to me suddenly, 
 like the touch of an icy hand upon my heart. 
 
 I he awake at night sometimes thinking of this, and of paj^a'a 
 early death. He came home one night with a cold, and from 
 that hour grew worse until he died. Ah, think what misery for 
 a wife to suffer ! Happily for mamma, she is not capable of 
 suffering intensely. She was very sorry, and even now when 
 she speaks of papa she cries a httle ; but the tears don't hurt 
 her. I think, indeed, they give her a kind of pleasure. 
 
 See, dear, what a long egotistical letter I have written, after 
 all. I will say no more, except that while I am delighted to 
 think of your jDleasure among new friends and new scenes, my 
 selfish heai't still longs for the hour that is to bring you back 
 to me. 
 
 Pray tell me all you can about your daughters that are to be. 
 Ever and ever your loving 
 
 Chahlotte. 
 
 From Dicma Paget to Charlotte HalUday. • 
 
 Beaubocage, near Vevinord, March 30, 186 — . 
 Mt dear Lotta, — In three days more I hope to be with you ; 
 but I suppose, in the meantime, I must keep my promise, and 
 Bend you a faithful account of my hfe here. Everyone here is 
 more kind to me than words can tell; and I have nothing left to 
 wish for, except that you were here to be delighted, as I am sure 
 you would be, with the fi-eshness and the strangeness of every- 
 thing. If I ever do become Madame Lenoble — and even yet I 
 cannot picture to myself that such a thing will be — you must 
 come to Cotenoir, you and Valentine. I was taken through 
 every room in the old chateau the day before yesterdaj'-, and I 
 fixed in my own mind upon the rooms I will give you, if these 
 things come to pass. They are very old rooms, and I can fancy 
 what strange people must have hved in them, and died in them 
 perhaps, in the days that are gone. But if you come to them, 
 they shall be made bright and pretty, and we will chase the 
 shadows of the mediajval age away. There are old pictures, old 
 musical instruments, quaint spindle-legged chairs and tables, 
 tapestries that crumble as you touch them — the ashes and rehcs 
 of many generations. Gusta,ve says we will sweep these poor 
 vestiges away, and begin a new liio. when I come to Cotenoir ;
 
 156 Clmrloite'e Inlier'iiance. 
 
 but I cannot find it in my heart to obliterate every trace ot those 
 dead feet that have come and gone in all the dusky passages of 
 my future home. 
 
 And now I must tell you about my daughters that are to be 
 — my daughter that is, I may say of the elder — for I love her so 
 well already that no breach between Gustave and me could rob 
 her of my afi'ection. She is the dearest, most loving of crea- 
 tures ; and she reminds me of you ! I dare say you will laugh 
 at this, dear ; and, mind, I do not say that Clarice Leuoble ia 
 actually Hke you in comj)lexion or feature — those common attri- 
 butes which every eye can see; the resemljlance is far more 
 subtle. There is a look in this dear girl's face, a smile, an 
 I-know-not-what, which eveiy now and then recalls your own 
 bright countenance. You will say this is mere fancy — and that 
 is what I told myself at the first ; but I found afterwards that 
 it is no fancy, but reaUy one of those vague, indefinable, acciden- 
 tal likenesses which one perceives so often. To me it seems a 
 very happy accident ; for my first glance at my daughter's face 
 told me that I should love her for your sake. 
 
 We wp-nt to the convent the day before yesterday. It is a 
 curious old place, and was once a stately chateau, the habitation 
 of a noble family. A little portress, in the black robes of a lay 
 sister, admitted us, and conducted us to the parlour, a fine old 
 room, decorated with pictures of a religious character, painted 
 by members of the sisterhood. Here Gustave and I were 
 received Jay the superioress, an elderly woman, with a mUd holy 
 face, and a quiet grace of manner which might become a duchess. 
 She sent for the demoiselles Lenoble, and after a delay of a 
 quarter of an hour — you remember the toilet the girls at Hyde 
 Lodge were obHged to make before they went to the drawing- 
 room, Lotta — Mademoiselle Lenoble came, a tall, shm, lovely 
 and lovable girl, who reminded me of the dearest friend I have 
 in this world. She ran to her papa first, and saluted him with 
 an enthusiastic hug ; and then she stood for a moment looking 
 shyly at me, confused and doubtful. It was only for a moment 
 she was left in doubt. Gustave bent down to whisper something 
 in her ear — something for which his letters had in some manner 
 prepared her. The fair young face brightened, the clear grey 
 eyes looked up at me with a sweet afi"ectionate gaze, and she 
 came to me and kissed me. " I shall love you veiy miich," she 
 whispered. " And I love you very much already," I answered, 
 in the same confidential manner. And I think these few words, 
 that one pretty confiding look in her innocent eyes, made a tie 
 between us that it would take much to loosen. A.h, Lotta, what 
 a wide gulf between the Diana Paget who landed alone at 
 St. Katharine's Wharf, in the dim cheerless dawn, and uncer- 
 tain where to find a shelter in all that busy city, and the same
 
 At Colcnoir. 157 
 
 creature redeemed by your affection, and exalted by the love and 
 
 trust of Gustave Lenoble ! 
 
 After this ray second daughter appeared — a pretty young 
 boy den, with lovable cUnging ways; and then the superioress 
 asked if I would like to sec the garden. Of course I said yes ; 
 and we were taken through the long corridors, out into a fine old 
 garden, where the pupils, who looked hke the Hyde Lodge girls 
 translated into French, were prancir^ and scampering about in 
 the usual style. After the garden we went to the chapel, where 
 there were more pictures, and flower-bedecked altars, and pale 
 twinkling tapers burning here and there in the chill sunhght. 
 Here there were damsels engaged in pious meditation, from five 
 years old upwards. They send even the little ones to meditate, 
 Clarice tells me ; and there are these infants kneehng before the 
 flower-bedecked altars, rapt in religious contemplation, like so 
 many Thomas a Kempises. The young meditators glanced 
 shyly at us as we passed. When they had shown me everything 
 of special interest in the pleasant old j^lace, Clarice and Madelon 
 ran ofi" to dress for walking, in order to accompany us to 
 Cotenoir, where we were to dine. 
 
 It was quite a family party. Mademoiselle Lenoble was 
 there, and papa. He arrived at the chateau while Gustave and 
 I were paying our visit to the convent. He is in the highest 
 Bjirits, and treats me with an amount of afiection and courtesy 
 1 have not been accustomed to receive at his hands. Of course 
 I know the cause of this change; the future mistress of 
 Cotenoir is a very different person from that wretched gu-1 who 
 was nothing to him but a burden and an encumbrance. But 
 even while I despise him I cannot refuse to pity him. One for- 
 gives anything in old age. In this, at least, it is a second 
 childhood ; and my father is very old, Lotta. I saw the look of 
 age in his face more plainly at Cotenoir, where he assumed his 
 usual dehonnaire man-of-the-world tone and manner, than I 
 had seen it in London, when he was a professed invalid. lie is 
 much changed since I was with him at Foretdechene. It seems 
 as if he had kept Time at bay very long, and now at ^ast. the 
 common enemy will be held at ai-m's-length no longer. He still 
 braces himself up in the old military manner, still holds himself 
 more erect than many men of half his age ; but, in spite of aU 
 this, I can see that he is very feeble ; shaken and worn by a long 
 life of difiiculty. I am glad to think that there will be a haven 
 for him at last ; and if I did not thank Gustave ^vith my whole 
 heart for giving me a home and a j^lace in the world, I should 
 thank him for giving a shelter to my father. 
 
 And now, dear, as I hope to be with you so very soon, I shall 
 Bay no more. I am to spend a day in Rouen before we come 
 back — papa and I, that is to say; Gustave stays in Nor*
 
 158 Charlotte's InTieritance. 
 
 mafldy to make some arrangements before he comes back t# 
 !Englaud. I cannot compreliend the business relations between 
 him and papa ; but there is some business going on — law busi- 
 ness, as it seems to me — about wbicb papa is very imijortant 
 asd elated. 
 
 I am to see tbe cathedral and cburches at Eoueu, and I shall 
 contrive to see the shops, and to bring you something pretty. 
 Papa has given me money — the first he ever gave me unasked. 
 I have very httle doubt it comes from Gustave ; but I have no 
 sense of shame in accepting it. M. Lenoble's seems to me a 
 royal nature, formed to bestow benefits and bounties on every 
 side. 
 
 Tell Mrs. Sheldon that I shall bring her the prettiest cap I 
 can find in Eouen ; and, with all love, believe me ever you 
 affectionate 
 
 Diana. 
 
 §00k i\t ^i'ami^. 
 
 A CLOUD OF FEAR, 
 
 CHAPTEE I. 
 
 SHE BEGINNING OV SORRCW. 
 
 Who heeds the cloud no bigger than a man's hand amidst a 
 broad expanse of blue ether ? The faint, scarce perceptible 
 menace of that one little cloud is lost in the wide brightness of 
 a summer sky. The traveller jogs on contented and untliink- 
 ing, till the hoarse roar of stormy winds, or the first big drops 
 of the thunder-shower, startle him with a sudden consciousness 
 of the coming storm. 
 
 It was early May, and the young leaves were green in the 
 avenues of Kensington Gardens ; Bayswater was bright and gay 
 with fashionable people ; and Mrs. Sheldon found herself strong 
 enough to enjoy her afternoon drive in Hyde Park, where the 
 contemplation of the bonnets afforded her perennial delight. 
 
 " I think they are actually smaller than ever this year," she 
 remarked every season; and every season the headgear of 
 fashionable London did indeed seem to shrink and dwindle, 
 " fine by degrees, and beautifully less." The coalscuttle-shaped 
 headdress of our grandmothers had not yet resolved itself into
 
 The Beginning of Sorrow. 169 
 
 & string of beads and a rosebud in these days, bnt was obviously 
 
 tending thitherward. 
 
 Charlotte and Diana accompanied Mrs. Sheldon in her drives. 
 The rapture of contemplating the bonnets was not complete 
 unless the lady had some sympathising spirit to share her 
 delight. The two girls were very well pleased to mingle in that 
 brQiiant crowd, and to go back to their own quiet hfe when the 
 mystic hour came, and that bright vision of colour and beauty 
 melted into the tAvilight loneliness. It had seemed just lately, 
 however, as if Charlotte was growing a little weary of the 
 gorgeous spectacle — the ever-changing, ever-splendid diorama of 
 West End life. She no longer exclaimed at the sight of each 
 exceptional toilette; she no longer smilrd admiringly on the 
 thoroughbred horses champing their bits in the immediate 
 neighbourhood of her bonnet ; she no longer gave a little cry of 
 delight when the big drags came slowly along the crowded ranks, 
 the steel bars shining as they swung loosely in the low after- 
 noon sunlight, the driver, conscious of his glory, grave and 
 tranquil, with the pride that apes humility. 
 
 " See, Lotta," said Miss Paget, upon an especially bright May 
 evening, as one of these gorgeous equipages went past Mr. 
 Sheldon's landau, " there's another drag. Did you see it ? " 
 
 " Yes, dear, I saw it." 
 
 " And are you tired of four-in-hands ? You used to admire 
 them so much." 
 
 " I admire them as much as ever, dear." 
 
 "And yet you sca'^cely gave those four splendid roans a 
 glance." 
 
 " No," Charlotte answered, with a faint sigh. 
 
 " Are you tired, Lotta ? " Miss Paget asked, rather anxiously. 
 There was something in Charlotte's manner of late that had in- 
 spired her with a vague sense of anxiety ; some change which she 
 could scarcely define — a change so gradual that it was only by 
 comparing the Charlotte of some months ago with the Charlotte 
 of the present that she perceived how real a change it was. 
 The buoyancy and freshness, the girlish vivacity of Miss 
 Halliday's manner, were rapidly giving place to habitual Ustless- 
 ness. " Arp ^"'i tired, dear ? " she repeated, anxiously ; and Mrs. 
 Sheldon looked round from her contemplation of the bonnets. 
 
 "No, Di, dearest, not tired; but — I don't feel very well this 
 afternoon. ' 
 
 This was the fir^t confession which Charlotte Halliday made 
 of a sense of weakness and languor that had been creeping 
 uix)n her during the last two months, so slowly, so gradually, 
 that the change seemed too insignificant for notice. 
 
 " You feel ill, Lotta dear P " Diana asked.
 
 IGO CharloU'iS Inheritxnce. 
 
 '• Well, no, not exactly ill. I can scarcely call it illness ; I 
 feel rather weak — that is really all." 
 
 At this point Mrs. Sheldon chimed in, with her eyes on a 
 passing bonnet as she spoke. 
 
 " Vou see, you are so dreadfully neg'ectful of your papa's 
 advice, Lotta," she said, in a complaining tone. " Do you like 
 pink roses with mauve areophane, Diana? /do not. Look at 
 that primrose tulle, with dead ivy-leaves and scarlet berries, in 
 the barouche. I dare say you have not taken your glass of old 
 port this morning, Charlotte, and have only yourself to thank 
 if you feel weak." 
 
 "I did take a glass of port this morning, mamma. I don't 
 like it ; but I take it every morning." 
 
 " Don't like old tawny port, that your papa bought at the sale 
 of a bishop of somewhere ? It's perfectly absurd of you, Lotta, 
 to talk of not liking wine that cost fifteen shillings a bottle, and 
 which your papa's friends declare to be worth five-and-thirty." 
 
 " I am sorry it is so expensive, mamma ; but I can't teach 
 myself to think it nice," answered Charlotte, with a smile that 
 sadly lacked the brightness of a few weeks ago. "1 think one 
 requires to go into the City, and become a merchant or a stock- 
 broker, before one can like that sort of wine. "What was it 
 Valentine quoted in the Chccqmde, about some lady whom 
 somebody loved ? — ' To love her was a liberal education.' I 
 think to like old port is a commercial education." 
 
 "I am sure such wine ought to do you good," said Georgy, 
 almost querulously. She thought this bright blooming creature 
 had no right to be ill. The headaches, and little weaknesses 
 and languors and ladylike ailments, were things for which she 
 (Georgy) had taken out a patent ; and this indisposition of her 
 daughter's was an infringement of copyright. 
 
 " I dare say the port will do me good, mamma, in time. No 
 doubt I shall be as strong as that person who strangled lions 
 and snakes and dogs with incalculable heads, and all that kind 
 of thing." 
 
 " I really wish you would not talk in that absurd manner, 
 my dear," said Mrs. Sheldon with offended dignity. "I think 
 you really cannot be too grateful for your papa's kind thought- 
 fulness and anxiety about you. I am sure I myself am not so 
 anxious as he is ; but of course his medical knowledge makes 
 him doubly careful. Six weeks ago he noticed that ^ou wanted 
 strength — tone is what he calls it. ' Georgiana,' he said to me, 
 ' Charlotte wants tone. She is beginning to stoop in a really 
 lamentable manner : we must make her take port or bark, or 
 something of a strengthening kind.' And then a day or two 
 afterwards he decided on port, and gave me the key of the
 
 The Beginnitig of Sorrow. 161 
 
 cellar — which is a thing he rarely gives out of his own hands— 
 and told me the number of the bin from which I was to take 
 the wine — some old mne that he had laid by on purpose for 
 some special occasion ; and no one is to have it but you, and 
 3'ou are to take a glass daily at eleven o'clock. Mr. Sheldon ia 
 most particular about the hour. The regularity of the thing 
 is half the battle in these cases, he says ; and I am sure if you 
 do not observe his wishes and mine, Charlotte, it will be really 
 ungrateful of you." 
 
 '* But, dear mamma, I do observe Mr. — papa's wishes. I take 
 my glass of port every morning at eleven. I go to your cup- 
 board in the breakfast-room and take out my special decanter, 
 and my special glass, in the most j)uuctiliously precise manner. 
 I don't like the wine, and I don't like the trouble involved in 
 the ceremony of drinking it ; but I go through it most reUgiousiy, 
 to please you and papa." 
 
 " And do you mean to say that you do not feel stronger 
 after taking that expensive old port regularly for nearly six 
 wefks. 
 
 " I am sorry to say that I do not, mamma. I think if there 
 is any change, it is that I am weaker." 
 
 "Dear, dear me!" exclaimed Mrs. Sheldon captiously, "you 
 are really a most extraordinary girl." 
 
 Mrs. Sheldon could almost have found it in her heart to 
 say, a most ungrateful girl. There did seem a kind of ingra- 
 titude in this futile consumption of old port at fifteen shillings 
 a bottle. 
 
 " I'll tell you what it is, Lotta," she said presently, " I am 
 convinced that your illness — or your weakness — is all fancy." 
 
 " Vf\xj so, mamma ?" 
 
 " Because, if it were real weakness, that old port onust have 
 made you stronger. And the fact that the port does you no 
 good, is a proof that your weakness is only fancy. Girls of 
 your age are so full of fancies. Look at me, and the martyr- 
 dom I go through with my nervous headaches, which perfectly 
 prostrate me, after the least worry or excitement. The nerves of 
 my head, after going into the butcher's book, are j^erfect agony. 
 When you come to have a house to look after, and find what it 
 is to have the same saddle of mutton charged for twice over, 
 with the most daring impudence — or to have capers and currie- 
 powder, that you kiioio you've never had, staring at you from 
 every page of your grocer's book, and nothing but your memory 
 between you and utter ruin — you'll discover what it is to be 
 really iD." 
 
 In this easy manner did Mrs. Sheldon dismiss the subject of 
 her daughter's illness. But it was not so easily dismissed by 
 Diana Paget, who loved her friend with a profound and pure
 
 162 Charlotte's Inheritance. 
 
 affection, than whicli no sisters love was ever warmer or stronger. 
 Even Valentine's preference for this haj^py rival had not lessened 
 Diana's love for her friend and benefactress. She had been 
 jealous of Charlotte's happier fate : but in the hour when this 
 jealoiisy was most bitter there had been no wavering in her 
 attachment to this one true and generous friend. 
 
 Miss Paget was very silent during the homeward drive. She 
 understood now what that change had been in her friend which 
 until now had so perplexed her. It was a decay of johysical 
 strength which had robbed Lotta's smile of its brightness, her 
 laugh of its merry music. It was physical languor that mad« 
 her so indifferent to the things which had once awakened her 
 girHsh enthusiasm. The discovery was a very painful one. 
 Diana remembered her experience of Hyde Lodge: the girls 
 who had grown day by day more Hstless, now in the doctor's 
 hands for a day or two, now well again and toiling at the old 
 treadmill round of study, now sinking into confirmed invalids ; 
 until the bitter hour in which parents are summoned, and the 
 doctor urges rest, and the fond mother cames her darling home, 
 assured that home comfort and tenderness will speedily restore 
 her. Her schoolfellows cluster round the carriage to bid her 
 " good-bye until next half," full of hopeful talk about her swift 
 recovery. But when the vacation is over, and Black Monday 
 comes, she is not amongst the returning scholars. Has she not 
 gone up to the higher school, and answered Adsum to the call 
 of the Great Master ? 
 
 Diana remembered these old experiences with cruel pain. 
 
 " Girls, as bright and lovable as she is, have drooped and 
 faded away, just when they seem brightest and happiest," she 
 thought as she watched Charlotte, and perceived to-day for the 
 first time that the outhne of her fair young cheek had lost its 
 perfect I'oundness. 
 
 But in such a case love can do nothing except watch and 
 wait. That night, in the course of that girlish talk in Charlotte's 
 bedroom, which had become a habit with the two girls, Diana 
 extorted from her friend a fuU account of the symj)toms which 
 had affected her within the last few weeks. 
 
 " Pray don't look so anxious, dear Di," she said gaily ; " it is 
 really nothing worth talking of; and I knew that if I confessed 
 to feehng ill you and mamma would straightway begin to worry 
 yourselves about me. I have felt a Httle sick and faint some- 
 times ; and now and then a sudden dizziness has come over me. 
 It is nothing of any consequence, and it passes away very 
 quickly. Sometimes I have a kind of torpid languid feehng, 
 which is scarcely unpleasant, only strange, you know. But 
 vhat does it all amount to, except that I am nervous ?" 
 
 " You must have change of air, Lotta," said Diana resolutely,
 
 Tlie Beginning of Sorrow. 163 
 
 " and change of scene. Yes, no doubt 3^ou are nervous. You 
 nave been kept abnost a prisoner in the house through Mr. 
 Sheldon's punctilious nonsense. You miss our brisk morning 
 walks in the Gardens, I dare say. If you were to go to York- 
 shire, now, to your friends at iNewhall, you would bke that 
 change, dear, wouldn't you ? " 
 
 " Yes, I should dearly like to see Aunt Dorothy and uncle 
 Joe; but " 
 
 "But what, darling?" 
 
 " I should scarcely like being at Newhall, unless — you'll think 
 me very foolish, Di — unless Valentine was with me. We were 
 eo happy there, you see, dear ; and it was there he first told 
 me he loved me. No, Di, I couldn't bear Newhall without him." 
 
 " Poor Aunt Dorothy, poor uncle Joe ! feathers when weighed 
 in the scale against a young man whom their niece has kno\vn 
 less than a twelvemonth ! " 
 
 No more was said about Charlotte's illness ; Diana was too 
 prudent to alarm her friend by any expression of uneasiness. 
 She adopted a cheering tone, and the conversation drifted into 
 other channels. 
 
 While Diana's concern for her friend's altered health was yet 
 a new feehng, she found herself called upon to attend her father 
 once more in the character of a ministering angel. And this 
 time Captain Paget's illness was something more than gout. 
 It was, according to his doctors — he had on this occasion two 
 medical attendants — a general breaking up of the system. The 
 poor old wanderer, — the weary Odysseus, hero of so many 
 trickeries, such varied adventures, — laid himself dov/n to rest, 
 within view of the Promised Land for which his soul yearned. 
 
 He was very ill. Gustave Lenoble, who came back to London, 
 did not conceal from Diana that the illness threatened to end 
 fatally. At his instigation the Captain had been removed from 
 Omega Street to pleasant lodgings at the back of Knights- 
 bridge Road, overlooking Hyde Park. This was nearer Bays- 
 water, and it was very pleasant for the fading old worldling. 
 He could see the stream of fashion flowing past as he sat in his 
 easy-chair, propped up with j^iHows, with the western sunlight 
 on his face. He pointed out the liveries and armorial bearings ; 
 and told many scandalous and entertaining anecdotes of their 
 past and present o^vners to Gustave Lenoble, who devoted much 
 of his time to the solacement of the invalid. Everything that 
 affection could do to smooth this dreary time was done for the 
 tired Ulysses. Pleasant books were read to him; earnest 
 thoughts were suggested by earnest words; hothouse flowera 
 adorned his cheerful sitting-room ; hothouse fruits gladdened hia 
 ejo by their rich warmth of colour, and invited his parched lipsr
 
 J6-i Charlotte s InlicrUancs. 
 
 to taste tlieir cool ripeness. Gustave had a piano brought in, so 
 that Diana might sing to her father in the dusky May evenings, 
 when it should please him to hear her. Upon the last feeble 
 footsteps of this old man, whose life htwi been very selfish and 
 wicked, pity waited with a carefulness so fond and tender that 
 he might well mistake it for love. Was it fair that his last days 
 should be so jjeaceful and luxurious, when many a good man 
 falls down to die in the streets, worn out with the hfe-long effort 
 to bear the burden laid upon his weary shoulders ? In the tra- 
 ditions of the Ealjbins it is written that those are the elect of 
 God who suffer His chastisement in the llesh. For the others, 
 for those who on earth drain the goblet of pleasure, and riot in 
 the raptures of sin, for them comes the di'ead retribiition after 
 death. They are plunged in the fire, and driven before the 
 wind ; they take the shape of loathsome rejatiles, and ascend by 
 infinitesimal degrees through all the grades of creation, until 
 their storm-tost wearied degraded souls re-enter human sem- 
 blance once more. But even then their old stand-point is not 
 yet regained; their dread penance not yet performed. As men 
 they are the lowest and worst of men ; slaves toiling in the 
 desert; dirt to be trampled under the feet of their prosperous 
 brethren. Inch by inch the wretched soul regains its lost inherit- 
 ance ; cycles must elapse before the awful sentence is fulfilled. 
 
 Our Christian faith knows no such horrors. Even for the 
 penitent of the eleventh hour there is joromise of jjardon. The 
 most earnest desire of Diana's heart was that her father should 
 enroll himself amongst those late penitents — those last among 
 the last who crowd in to the marriage feast, half afraid to show 
 their shame-darkened faces in that glorious company. 
 
 If we forgive all things to old age, so much the more surely 
 do we forgive all injuries to the fading enemy. That she had 
 Buflered much cruelty and neglect at the hands of her father, 
 was a fact that Diana could not forget, any more than she could 
 forget the name which he had given her. It was a part of her 
 life not to be put off or done away with. But in these last 
 days, with all her heart she forgave and j^itied him. She pitied 
 him for the crooked j^aths into which his feet had wandered at the 
 very outset of life, and from which so weak a soul could find no 
 issue. She pitied him for that moral blindness which had kept 
 him pleasantly unconscious of the supreme dej^th of his degrada- 
 tion — a social Lajjlander, who never having seen a western sum- 
 mer, had no knowledge that his own land was dark and benighted. 
 
 Happily for Diana and her generous lover, the Captain was 
 not a difficult penitent. He was indeed a man who, having lost 
 the capacity and the need for sin, took very kmdly to penitence, 
 as a species of sentimental luxury, 
 
 " Yes, my dear," he said complacently — for tvcu la the houjr
 
 The Ijeginnlng of Sorrow. IG5 
 
 of his penitence lie insisted on regarding himself as a social 
 martyr — " my life has been a very hard one. Fortune has not 
 been kind to me. In the words of the immortal bard, my linea 
 have not been set in pleasant places. I should have been glad 
 if Providence had allowed me to be a better father to you, a 
 better husband to your poor mother — a better Christian, in fact 
 — and had spared me the repeated humihation of going through 
 the Insolvent Debtors' Court. It is not always easy to under- 
 stand the justice of these things : and it has often appeared to 
 me that something of the favouritism which is the bane of our 
 governmeuts on earth must needs obtain at a higher tribunal. 
 One man enters life with an entailed estate worth seventy thou- 
 sand a-year, wliUe another finds himself in the hands of the 
 Jews before he is twenty years of age. ' Thei-e's something ia 
 this world amiss shall be iinriddled by and by,' as the poet ob 
 serves. The circumstances of my own existence I have ever 
 regarded as dark and enigmatic. And, indeed, the events of 
 this life are altogether inexplicable, my love. There is that 
 fellow Sheldon, now, who began Hfe as a country dentist, a man 
 without family or connections, who — well, I will not repine. 
 If I am spared to behold my daughter mistress of a fine estate, 
 although in a foreign country, I can depart in peace. But you 
 must have a house in town, my dear. Yes, London must be 
 your head-quarters. You must not be buried alive in Normandy. 
 There is no place hke London. Take the word of a man who 
 has seen the finest Continental cities, and hved in them — -that 
 is the point, my love — hved in them. For a fine afternoon in 
 the beginning of May, an apartment in the Champs Elysees, or 
 the Boulevard, is an earthly paradise ; but the Champs Elysees 
 in a wet December — the Boulevard in a sweltering August ! 
 London is the only spot upon earth that is never intolerable. 
 And your husband will be a rich man, my dear girl, a really 
 wealthy man ; and you must see that he makes a fitting use of 
 bis wealth, and does his duty to society. The parable of the 
 Talents, which you were reading to me this afternoon, is a moral 
 lesson your husband must not forget." 
 
 After this fashion did the invalid discourse. Gustave and 
 Diana perceived that he still hoped to have his share in their 
 future life, still looked to pleasant days to come in a world 
 which he had loved, not wisely, but too well. Nor could they 
 find it in their hearts to tell him that his journey was drawing 
 to a close, and that on the very threshold of the peaceful home 
 which his dii)lomatic arts had helped to secure, he was to aban- 
 don Ufe's weary race. 
 
 They indulged his hopes a little, in order to win him the mora 
 easily to serious thoughts ; but though at times quite ready to 
 abandon himself to a pcuilentidl mood that wiis almost maudlin,
 
 1G6 Charlotte's Inlieritavce. 
 
 there were other times when the old Adam asserted himself, aud 
 the Captain resented this intrusion of serious subjects as a kind 
 of impertinence. 
 
 " I am not aware that I am at my last gasp, Diana," he said 
 with dignity, on one of these occasions ; '* or that I need to be 
 talked to by my own daughter as if I were on my deathbed. I 
 can show you men some years my senior driving their phaetons- 
 and-pairs in that Park. The Gospel is vd very well in its place — 
 during Sunday-morning service, and o'-'-er morning prayers, in 
 your good old county famiUes, where; the household is large 
 enough to make a fair sbow at the end of tJie dining-room, 
 without bringing in hulkiufi; lads who smell of Vlie stables : but 
 I consider that when a man is iU, there is a considerable want 
 of tact in bringing the subject of religion before him in any 
 obtrusive manner." 
 
 Thus the Captain alternated from sentimental penitence to 
 captious worldliness, during may days ind weeks. The business 
 of the Haygarthian inheritance wa? progressing slowly, but 
 surely. Documents were being prepared, attested copies of cer- 
 tificates of marriages, births, baptisms, and burials were being 
 procured, and all was tending towards the grand result. Once, 
 and sometimes twice a week, M. Fleurtis came to see Captain 
 Paget, and discussed the great aflFair witi that invahd diploma- 
 tist. The Caj^tain had long ago been avare that in entering 
 upon an alliance with that gentleman, he had invoked the aid of 
 a coadjutor likely to prove too strong for him. The event had 
 justified his fears. M. Fleurus had something of Victor Hugo's 
 famous Pouljje in liis nature. Powerful as flexible were the 
 arms he stretched forth to grasp all prizes in the way of heirs- 
 at-law and disputed heritages, unclaimed railway- stock, and for- 
 gotten consols. If the Captain had not played his cards very 
 cleverly, and contrived to obtain a personal influence over Gus* 
 tave Lenoble, he might have found himself thrust entirely out 
 of the business by one of the Frenchman's gelatinous arms. 
 Happily for his own success, however, the Captain did obtain a 
 strong hold upon Gustave. This enabled him to protect his own 
 interests throughout the negotiation, and to keep the insidious 
 Fleurus at bay. 
 
 " My good friend," he said, in his grand Carlton-House manner, 
 " I am bound to jjrotect the interests of my friend M. Lenoble, 
 in any agreement to be entered upon in this matter. I cannot 
 permit M. Leuoble's generosity or M. Lenoble's inexperience to 
 be imposed upon. My own interests are of secondary impor- 
 tance. That I expect to profit by the extraordinary discovery 
 made by-me — by me — alone and unaided, I do not affect to deny. 
 But I will not profit at the expense of a too generous friend." 
 
 ** And what recompense am I to have for my work — a wort
 
 The Beginning of Sorrow. 167 
 
 at once painful and impoverishing?" asked the little French- 
 man, with an angry and suspicious look. " Do you believe that 
 I do that to amuse me ? To run the streets, to go by here, by 
 there, in hunting the paj^ers of that marriage, or this baptism ? 
 Believe you that is so agreeable, Monsieur the Captain ? No ; I 
 desire to be paid for my work. I must have my part in the 
 heritage which 1 have help to win." 
 " It is not won yet. We will talk of your recompense by and 
 
 " "We will talk of it this instant — upon the field. It must 
 that I comprehend where I am in this affair. I will not of 
 mystifications, of prevarications, of lies " 
 
 " M. Fleurus ! " cried the Captain, with a hand stretched 
 towards the bell. 
 
 " You will sound — you will chase me ! Ah, but no ! — you 
 cannot afford to chase me yet. I have to find more papers of 
 baptisms and burials. Go, then, we AviU talk of this affair as 
 friends." 
 
 This friendly talk ended in Captain Paget's complete victory. 
 M. FleuiTiB consented to accept his costs out of pocket in the 
 present, and three per cent, of the heritage in the future. It 
 was further agi'ecd that the Captain should select the English 
 attorney who should conduct M. Lenoble's case in the Court of 
 Chancery. 
 
 This conversation occurred at Rouen, and a day or two after- 
 wards the necessary document was drawn up. Gustave pledged 
 himself to pay over a fourth share of the Haygarthian fortune 
 to Horatio Paget, and three per cent, upon the whole amount to 
 Jean Francois Fleurus. The document was very formal, very 
 complete ; but whether siich an agreement would hold water, if 
 Gustave Lenoble should choose to contest it, was open to 
 question. 
 
 She solicitor to whom Horatio Paget introduced M. Lenoble 
 was a Mr. Dashwood, of the firm of Dashwood and Vernon ; a 
 man whom the Captain had known in the j^ast, and from whom 
 he had received good service in some of the most difficult crises 
 of his difficult career. To this gentleman he confided the con- 
 duct of the case ; and explained his apprehensions with regard 
 to the two Sheldons. 
 
 " You see, as the case now stands, they think they have the 
 claimant to this money in Miss Halhday — Sheldon's stepdaugh- 
 ter. But if they got an inkling of Susan Meynell's marriage — 
 and, in jioint of fact — the actual state of the case — they might 
 try to get hold of my friend, Gustave Lenoble. They could not 
 get hold of him, mind you, Dashwood, but they would try it on, 
 and I don't want trying on of that kind." 
 
 " Of course not. I know Sheldon, of Gray's Inn. He ig
 
 1G8 Charlotte's Inlieritanee. 
 
 rather — well, say shady. That's hardly an actionable epithet, 
 itai it expresses what I mean. Your friend's case seems to me 
 tolerably clear. That little Frenchman is useful, but officious. 
 It is not a speculative affair, I suppose ? There is money to 
 meet the current expenses of the business ?" 
 
 " Yes, there is money. Within reasonable limits my friend ia 
 prepared to pay for the advancement of his claims." 
 
 After this the Haygartliian business progressed, slowly, 
 quietly. The work was u]) to this jDoiut underground work. 
 There were still papers wanting — final links of the chain to be 
 fitted together ; and to the fitting of these links Messrs. Dash- 
 and Vernon devoted themselves, in conjunction with M. Fleurus. 
 
 This was how matters stood when Captain Paget drooped and 
 languished, and was fain to abandon all active share in the 
 strugglfti 
 
 CHAPTER 11. 
 
 FADING. 
 
 While the invalid in the pleasant lodgings overlooking Hyde 
 Park grew day by day weaker, there was a change as marked iu 
 the bright young creature whose loving spmt had first brought 
 the influence of affection to bear upon Diana Paget's character. 
 Charlotte Halliday was ill — very ill. It was with everyday 
 increasing anxiety that Diana watched the slow change — slow 
 in its progress, but awfully rapid to look back upon. The pain, 
 the regret, with which she noted her father's decay were little 
 indeed compared with the sharp agony which rent her heart aa 
 she perceived the alteration in tliis dear friend, the bhghting of 
 this fair young flower. 
 
 That the withered leaves of autumn should fall is sad, but 
 natural, and we submit to the gloomy inevitable fact of decay 
 and death. But to see our rose of roses, the pride and glory of 
 the garden, fade and joerish in its midsummer prime, is a cala- 
 mity inexplicable and mysterious. Diana watched her father's 
 decline with a sense of natural sorrow and pity ; but there was 
 neither surprise nor horror in the thought that for him the end 
 of all things was drawing nigh. How different was it with 
 Charlotte — with that happy soul for whom life and love wore 
 their brightest smile, before whose light joyous footsteps 
 stretched so fan* a pathway ! 
 
 The illness, whatever it was — and neither Mr. Sheldon nor 
 the portly and venerable physician whom he called in could find 
 a name for it — crept ujdou the patient with stealthy and insidious 
 steps. Dizzmess, trembling, faintness ; trembling, faintness, 
 dizziness: the symptoms alternated day by day. Sometimes
 
 Fading. 169 
 
 tLere was a respite of a few days ; and Charlotte — the youthful, 
 the siiuguinc, the happy — declared that her enemy had left 
 her. 
 
 " I am sure mamma is right, Di," she said on these occasions. 
 "My nerves are the beginning and end of the mischief; and if 
 I could get the better of my nerves, I should be as well as ever. 
 I don't wonder that the idea of my symptoms makes mamma 
 almost cross. You see, she has been accustomed to have the 
 symptoms all to herself ; and for me to plagiarise them, as it 
 were, must seem quite an impertinence. For a strong young 
 thing like me, you know, Di dear — who Aave only just broken 
 myself of plunging downstairs two and three steps at a time, 
 and plunging upstairs in the same vulgar manner — to intrude 
 on mamma's shattered nerves, and pirate mamma's low spirits, 
 is utterly absurd and abominable ; so I have resolved to look my 
 nerves straight in the ftice, and get the better of them." 
 
 "My darhng, yo;i will get the better of them if you try," said 
 Diana, who did at times beguile herself with the hope that her 
 friend's ailments were mental rather than bodily. " I dare say 
 your monotonous life has something to do with your altered 
 health ; you want change of scene, dear." 
 
 " Change of scene, when I have you and Valentine ! "Eo, Di. 
 It would certainly be very nice to have the background sliifted 
 now and then ; to see Capabihty Brown's prim gardens melt 
 into Alpine heights or southern vineyards, or even into Russian 
 steppes or Hungarian forests. One does get a little tired of tou- 
 
 i *ows Bayswater ; and Mr. Sheldon ; and crimped skate ; andsir- 
 oin of beef, and the inevitable discussion as to whether it is in a 
 cannibal state of rawness or burnt to a cinder ; and the glasses 
 of pale shwTy ; and the red worsted doyleys and blue finger- 
 glasses; and the almonds and raisins, and crisp biscuits, that 
 nobody ever eats ; and the dreary, dreary funereal business of 
 dinner, when we all talk vapid nonsense, with an ever-present 
 consciousness of the parlourmaid. I am tired of the dull din- 
 ners, and of mamma's peevish complaints about Ann Woolper's 
 ascendancy downstairs ; and of Mr. Sheldon's perpetual news- 
 papers, that crackle, crackle, crackle all the evening through ; 
 and such papers ! — Money Market Monitor, StockJiolder's Vade- 
 Mecum, and all sorts of dreadful things of that kind, with not 
 BO much as an interesting advertisement in one of them. I used 
 never to feel these things an annoyance, you know, dear, till I 
 made the acquaintance of my ner\'es ; but from the moment I 
 allowed my nerves to get the better of me, all these trifles have 
 worried and excruciated me. But I am happy with you, dar- 
 ling ; a".d I am happy -with Valentine. Poor V'alentine !" 
 
 She pronounced his name with a sigh ; and then, after a 
 pause, repeated mournfully, " Poor Valentine ! "
 
 170 CJiariotte's Inlientance. 
 
 "Why do you si^eak of him so sadly, dear? " asked Diana, 
 very pale. 
 
 " Because — because we have planned such a happy life toge* 
 getlier, dear, and " 
 
 " Is that a thing to be sad about, daiiing 'i " 
 
 " And — if it should happen, after all, that we have to part, 
 and he go on alone, the world may seem 80 sad and lonely to 
 him." 
 
 "Charlotte!" cried Diana, with a laugh that was almost 
 choked by a sob, " is this looking your nerves in the face ? 
 Why, my dear one, this is indeed jjlagiarism of your mamma's 
 low spirits. Lotta, you shall have change of air; yes, I am 
 determined on that. The stately physician who came in his 
 caniage the other day, and who looked at your tongue, and said 
 ' Ah ! ' and then felt your jjulse and said ' Ah ! ' again, and then 
 called for pen-and-ink and wrote a Httle prescription, is not the 
 doctor we want for you. We want Dr. Yorkshire ; we want the 
 breezes from the Yorkshire moors, and the smell of the farm- 
 yard, and our dear Aunt Dorothy's sillabubs, and our uJicle Joo 
 to take us for long walks across his clover-fields." 
 
 " I don't want to go to Newhall, Di. I couldn't bear to leave 
 —him." 
 
 " But what is to prevent your meeting 7n'm at the white gate 
 this time, as you met him last October ? Might not accident 
 take Ibivi to Huxter's Cross again ? The archeeological work — 
 of which we have heard no more, by the bye — might necessitate 
 further investigations in that district. If you will go to New- 
 hall, Lotta, I will pledge myself for Mr. Hawkehurst's speedy 
 appearance at the white gate you have so often described to 
 
 me. 
 
 " My dearest Di, you are all kindness ; but even if I were 
 inclined to go to Newhall, I doubt if mamma or Mr. Sheldon 
 would like me to go." 
 
 " I am sure they would be pleased with any arrangement that 
 was Hkely to benefit your health. But I will talk to your 
 mamma about it. I have set my heart on your going to New- 
 hall." 
 
 Miss Paget lost no time in carrying out her idea. She took 
 possession of Georgy that afternoon, while teaching her a new 
 etitch in tricot, and succeeded in imjsressing her with the con- 
 viction that change of air was necessary for Charlotte. 
 
 " But you don't think Lotta really ill P " asked Mrs. Sheldon, 
 neiwously. 
 
 " I trust she is not really ill, dear Mrs. Sheldon ; but I am 
 Bure she is much changed. In talking to her, I affect to think 
 that her illne.ss is only an affair of the nerves; but I sadly fear 
 that it is something more thau that."
 
 S'ading. 171 
 
 ** Bnt what is the matter with her ? " exclaimed Georgy, with 
 a piteous air of perplexity ; " that is the question which I am 
 always asking. People can't be ill, you know, Diana, without 
 having something the matter with them ; and that is what I 
 can't make out in Charlotte's case. Mr. Sheldon says she want.s 
 tone ; the phj^sician who came in a carriage and pair, and ought 
 to know what he is talking about, says there is a lack of vigour. 
 But what does that all amount to ? I'm sure I've wanted tone 
 aU my life. Perhaps there never was a creature so devoid of 
 tone as I am ; and the internal sinking I feel just before luncheon 
 is something that no one but myself can realize. I dare say 
 Lotta is not so strong as she might be; but I do not see that 
 she can be ill, unless her illness is sometliing definite. My poor 
 fii-st husband's illnessi, now, was the kind of thing that any one 
 could understand — bilious fever. The merest child knows what 
 it is to be bilious, and the merest child knows what it is to bo 
 feverish. There can be nothing mysterious in bilious fever." 
 
 '' But, dear Mrs. Sheldon," said Diana, gravely, " don't you 
 think that the weakness of constitution which rendered Char- 
 lotte's_ father liable to be taken off in the prime of life by a 
 fever is a weakness that Charlotte may possibly have inhe- 
 rited ? " 
 
 " Good heavens, Diana ! " cried Georgy, with sudden terror ; 
 " you don't mean to say that you think my Charlotte is goin? to 
 dieP" ■ ° 
 
 It was but one step with Mrs. Sheldon from peevish incre- 
 dulity to frantic alarm ; and Diana found it as difficult to tran- 
 qudhse her newly -awakened fears Tis it had been to rouse her 
 from absolute apathy. 
 
 Change of air — yes, of course — Charlotte must have change 
 of air that instant. Let a cab be sent for immediately to take 
 them to the terminus. Change of air, of course. To Newhall 
 —to Nice— to the Isle of Wight— to Malta; Mrs. Sheldon had 
 heard of people going to Malta. ^Vhere should they go? 
 Would Diana advise, and send for a cab, and pack a travelling 
 bag without an instant's delay ? The rest of the things could 
 be sent aftei-wards. What did luggage matter, when Charlotte's 
 life was at stake ? 
 
 At this point a flood of tears happily reUeved poor Georgy'a 
 excited feeUngs, and then common sense and Diana Paget came 
 to the rescue. 
 
 " My dear Mrs. Sheldon," she said, with a quiet cheerful tone 
 that went far to reassure the excited lady, " in the first place we 
 must, above all things, refrain from any appearance of alarm. 
 Her illness may, after all, be only an afiair of the nerves ; and 
 tiiere is certainly no cause for immediate fear." 
 
 Geor.gj' was tranquilLiw^d, and agreed to take matters quietly.
 
 172 Charlotte s InhcrilOiice. 
 
 She promised to arrange Charlotte's departure for Newhall, with 
 Mr. Sheldon, that evening, 
 
 " Of course, you know, my dear, I like to consult him about 
 everything,' she said, apologetically. " It is a diity which one 
 owes one's husband, you know, and a duty which, as a young 
 woman about to marry, I cannot too much impress upon you; 
 but in this case it is quite a matter of form : Mr. Sheldon never 
 has objected to Charlotte's going to Newhall, and he is not Hkely 
 to object now." 
 
 The event proved Mrs. Sheldon mistaken as to this matter. 
 Georgy proposed the visit to Newhall that evening, while the 
 two girls were strolling listlessly in the dusky garden, and Mr. 
 Sheldon most decidedly rejected the proposition. 
 
 " If she wants change of air — and Dr. Doddleson recom- 
 mended nothing of the kind — Newhall is not the place for 
 her." 
 
 "Wlaynot, dear?" 
 
 " It is too cold. Noi-therly aspect — no shelter — three hundred 
 feet above York minster. " 
 
 "But Dorothy Mercer is such a kind motherly creature; 
 she'd delight in nursing Lotta." 
 
 " Yes," answered Mr. Sheldon, with a laugh, " and in quack- 
 ing her. I know what those good motherly creatures are when 
 they get an excuse for dosing some unhappy victim with their 
 quack nostrums. If Charlotte went to Newhall, Mrs. Mercei' 
 
 would poi woiild make her ten times worse than she is with 
 
 old woman's remedies. Besides, as I said before, the place is too 
 cold. That is a conclusive ai-gument, I suppose ? " 
 
 He said this with some impatience of tone and manner. There 
 was a haggard look in his face, a hurried harassed manner per- 
 vading him this evening, which had been growing iipon him oi 
 late. Georgy was too slow of percejition to remark this ; but 
 Diana Paget had remarked it, and had attributed the change in 
 the stockbroker's manner to a blending of two anxieties. 
 
 " He is anxious about money matters," she had said to herself, 
 " and he is anxious about Charlotte's health. His hps, moving 
 in whispered calculations, as he sits brooding by the fire, tell me 
 of the first anxiety ; his eyes, wandering furtively to his step- 
 daughter's face every now and then, tell me of the second." 
 
 This furtive anxiety of Mr. Sheldon's increased Diana Paget's 
 anxi^y. This man, who had a certain amount of medical know- 
 ledge, could no doubt read the diagnostics of that strange insi- 
 dious illness, which had, as yet, no name, Diana, furtively 
 watching his furtive looks, told herself that he read of danger. 
 
 " If Charlotte wants change of air, let her go to Hastings," 
 he said; " that is the kind of place for an invalid. I want rest 
 ~*7sclf; and there's such utter stagnation in the City nowaday*
 
 Fading. 173 
 
 that I can very well afford to give myself a holiday. We'll run 
 down to Hastings, or the immediate neighbourhood of Hastings, 
 for a week or two." 
 
 " O PhiUi?, how kind and considerate you are ! I am sure, as 
 I was observing to Miss Paget only to-day, you " 
 
 " Ah, by the bye, there's Miss Paget. Is it absolutely nccea- 
 Bary that Miss Paget should go to Hastings -with us? " 
 
 " Well, dear, you see she has so kindly desired to remain with 
 3fle for the quarter, so as to give me time to turn round, you 
 know, with regard to caps and summer things, and so on — for, 
 really, she has such taste, and docs strike out such excellent 
 ideas about turning, and dipping, and dyeing, that I don't know 
 what will become of me when she ieaves us ; and it would look 
 BO i^ointed to " 
 
 " Yes ; she had better go with us. But why all this fuss about 
 Charlotte ? Who put it into your head that she wants change 
 of air?" 
 
 Mr. Sheldon evidently considered it an established fact that 
 any idea in his wife's head must needs have been put there by 
 Bome one or other. 
 
 " Well, you see, Diana and I were talking of Lotta this after- 
 noon, and Diana quite alarmed me." 
 
 " How so ? " asked Mr. Sheldon, with a quick frown. 
 
 " W^hy, she said it was evident, by the fact of poor dear Tom's 
 dying of a fever, that his constitution must have been originally 
 weak. And she said that perhaps Chai-lotte had inherited 
 Tom's weak constitution — and frightened me dreadfully." 
 
 " There is no occasion for yju to be frightened; Charlott/e will 
 get on very well, I dare say, with care. But Miss Paget is a 
 very sensible young woman, and is right in what she says. 
 Charlotte's constitution is not strong." 
 
 " O Phihp ! " said Georgy, in a faint wailing voice. 
 
 " I dare say she will live to follow you and me to our graves," 
 said Mr. Sheldon, with a hard laugh. " Ah, here she is ! " 
 
 Here she was, coming towards the ojjen window near which 
 her stepfather sat. Here she was, pale and tired, with her saun- 
 tering walk, dressed in white, and spectral in the gloaming. To 
 the sad eyes of her mother she looked like a ghost. To the eyes 
 of Philip Sheldon, a man not prone to poetic fancies, she looked 
 «v8n lanre ehosthke. 
 
 M
 
 174 Charlotte's Inlieritance. 
 
 CHAPTEE III. 
 
 MRS. WOOLPER IS ANXIOUS. 
 
 Since the begitming of her illness, Charlotte Halliday had 
 been the object and subject of many anxious thoughts in the 
 minds of several people. That her stepfather had his anxieties 
 about her — anxieties which he tried to hide — was obvious to the 
 one person in the Bayswater villa who noted his looks, and 
 tried to read the thoughts they indicated. 
 
 Mrs. Sheldon's alarm, once fairly awakened, was not to be 
 lulled to rest. And in Valentine Hawkehurst's heart there was 
 an aching pain — a dull dead locu^ of care, which had never been 
 lightened from the hour when he first perceived the change in 
 his dear one's face. 
 
 There was one other person, an inhabitant of the Bayswater 
 villa,' who watched Charlotte Halliday at this time with a care 
 as unresting as the care cf mother or stepfather, bosom friend or 
 plighted lover. This person was ^ nn Woolper. Mrs. Woolper 
 had come to the villa jDrepared to find in Miss Halliday a frivo- 
 lous self-satisfied young person, between whom and an old 
 broken-down woman like / a ^eli there could be no symjsathy. 
 She had expected to be contemptuously — or, at the best, indiffe- 
 rently — entreated by the j^rosperous well-placed young lady, 
 whom Mr. Sheldon had spoken of as a good girl, as girls go ; a 
 vague species of commeudation, which, to the mind of Mrs. 
 Woolper, promised very httle. 
 
 As clearly a,s Philip Sheldon dared express his wishes vrith 
 regard to Charlotte Halliday, he had expressed them to Ann 
 Woolper. What he would fain have said, was, " Watch my 
 stepdaughter, and keep me well acquainted with every step she 
 takes." Thus much he dared not say ; but by insinuating that 
 Tom HaUiday's daughter was frivolous and reckless, and that 
 her lover was not to be trusted, he had contrived to put Mrs. 
 Woolper on the q^ul vive. 
 
 " Mr. Phnij^'s afraid she may go and marry this young man 
 on the sly, before he's got the means to sujsport a wife," she said 
 to herself, as she meditated upon the meaning of her master's 
 injunctions ; *' and well he may be. There's no knowing what 
 young women are up to nowadays ; and the more innocent and 
 inexperienced a young woman is, the more she wants looking 
 after. And Miss Georgy Craddock always was a poor fondy, 
 up to naught but dressing herself fine, and streaming up and 
 down Barlingford High Street with her old schoolfellows. Such 
 as she ain't fit to be trusted with a daughter ; and Mr. Philip 
 knows that. He always was a deep one. But I'r ^lad he looks
 
 3Tr8. (Toolper is AnxioKt. 175 
 
 after Missy: there's many men, having got fast hold of th' 
 father's brass, would let th' daughter marry Old Scratch, for the 
 Bake of gettin' rid of her." 
 
 This is how Mrs. Woolper argued the matter. She came of a 
 prudent race ; and anything Hke prudence seemed to her a com- 
 mendable virtue. She wished to think well of her master ; for 
 her he had been a Providence in the hour of calamity and old 
 a»e. Where else could she look, if not to him ? And to suspect 
 him, or think ill of him, was to reject the one refuge offered to 
 her distress. A magnanimous independence of spirit is not an 
 easy virtue for the old and friendless and poor. The drowning 
 wretch will scarcely question the soundness of the plank that 
 sustains him upon the storm-tossed billows; nor was Mrs. 
 Woolper inclined to question the motives of the man to whom 
 she now owed her daily bread. 
 
 It is possible that befoi-e invoking Mrs. Woolper from the 
 ashes of the past to take her seat by the hearthstone of the 
 
 E resent, Mr. Sheldon may have contemplated the question of 
 er return in all its bearings, and may have assured himself 
 that she was his own, by a tie not easily broken — his bond-slave, 
 fettered hand and foot by the bondage of necessity. 
 
 " "\^^lat choice can she have, except the choice between my 
 house and the workhouse ? " he may naturally have asked him- 
 self; "and is it likely she will quarrel with her bread-and-butter 
 in order to fall back upon di-y bread?" Mr. Sheldon, contem- 
 plating this and all other questions from his one unchanging 
 standpoint, roay reasonably have concluded that Mrs. Woolper 
 would do nothing opiDosed to her own interests; and that so 
 long as it suited her interest to remain at the Lawn, and to 
 serve him, she would there remain, his docile and unquestioning 
 slave. 
 
 The influence of affection, the force of generous impulse, were 
 qualities that did not come into Mr. Sheldon's calculations upon 
 this subject. His addition and subtraction, division and multi- 
 phcation, were all based on one system. 
 
 That hai:)py and unconscious art by which Charlotte Halliday 
 made herself dear to all who knew her had a speedy effect upon 
 the old housekeeper. The girl's amiable consideration for her 
 age and infirmities; the pretty affectionate familiarity with 
 which she treated this countrywoman, who had known her 
 father, and who could talk to her of Yorkshire and Yorkshire 
 people, soon made their way to Nancy Woolper's heart of hearts. 
 For Miss Halliday to come to the housekeeper's room with some 
 message from her mother, and to linger for a few minutes' chat, 
 was a delight to Mrs. Woolper. She would have detained the 
 aright young visitant for hours instead of minutes, if she could 
 aave found any excuse for so doing. Nor was there any tresflon
 
 i' 
 
 176 Charlotte's Inheritance. 
 
 against Mr. Sheldon in her growing attachment to his step* 
 daughter. ^Vl^enever Nancy spoke of that master and bene- 
 factor, she spoke with unfeigned gratitude and affection. 
 
 " I nursed your atep-papa as a baby, Miss Halliday," she said 
 very often on these occasions. " You wouldn't think, to look at 
 him now, that he ever was tliat, would you ? But he was one ol 
 the finest babies you could wish to see — tall, and strong, and 
 with eyes that pierced one through, they were so bright and big 
 and black. He was rather stubborn-spirited with his teething; 
 but what baby isn't trying at such times ? I had rare work 
 with him, I can tell you, Miss, walking him about of nights, 
 and jogging him till there wasn't a jog left in me, as you may 
 say, from sleepiness. I often wonder if he thinks of this now, 
 when I see him looking so grave and stern. But, you see, being 
 ogged doesn't impress the mind like having to jog; and though 
 
 can bring that time back as plain as if it was yesterday, with 
 the very nursery I slept in at Barlingford, and the rushlight 
 in a tall iron cage on the floor, and the shadow of the cage on 
 the bare whitewashed walls — it's clean gone out of liis mind, I 
 dare say." 
 
 " I'm afraid it has, Nancy." 
 
 "But, 0, I was fond of him, Miss Halliday; and what I went 
 through with him about his teeth made me only the fonder of 
 him. He was the first baby I ever nursed, you see, and the 
 last ; for before Master George came to town I'd taken to the 
 cooking, and Mrs. Sheldon liired another girl as nurse ; a regular 
 softy slbe was, and it isn't her fault that Master George has got 
 anything christian-Uke in the way of a back, for the way she 
 carried that blessed chdd used to make my blood run cold." 
 
 Thus would Mrs. Woolper discourse whenever she had a fair 
 excuse for detaining Miss Halliday in her comfortable apart- 
 ment. Charlotte did not perceive much interest in these remini- 
 scences of Mr. Sheldon's infancy, but she was much too kind 
 to bring them abruptly to a close by any show of impatience. 
 When she could get Nancy to talk of Barlingford and Hyley, 
 and the people whom Charlotte herself had known as a child, 
 the conversation was really interesting ; and these recollections 
 formed a link between the old woman and the fair young damsel. 
 
 When the change arose in Charlotte's health and spirits, Mrs. 
 Woolper was one of the first to perceive it. She was skilled in 
 those old woman's remedies which Mr. Sheldon held in such 
 supreme contempt, and she would fain have dosed the invalid 
 with nauseous decoctions of hops, or home-brewed quinine. 
 Charlotte appreciated the kindness of the intent, but she re- 
 belled against the home-brewed medicines, and pinned her faith 
 to the more scientific and less obnoxious preparations procured 
 from the chemist's.
 
 Mrs. Woolper ii Anxious. 177 
 
 For some time Nancy made light of the girl's ail^nents, though 
 she watched her with unf'aiUng attention. 
 
 " You ain't a-done growing yet, miss, I'll lay," she said. 
 
 " But I'm more than twenty-one, Nancy, Peojile don't grow 
 after they're of age, do they?" 
 
 " I've known thcra as have, miss ; I don't say it's common, 
 but it has been done. And then there's the weakness that comes 
 after you've done growing. Girls of your age are apt to be faint 
 and lollopy-like, as you may say ; especially when they're stived 
 up in a smoky place like London. You ought to go to Hyley, 
 miss, where jovl was born ; that's the place to set you up." 
 
 The time had come when the change was no longer matter for 
 doubt. Day by day Charlotte grew weaker and j^aler ; day by 
 day that bright and joyous creature, whose presence had made 
 en atmosphere of youth and gladness even in that prim dwell- 
 ing-place, receded farther into the dimness of the past; until 
 to think of what she had been seemed like recalling the image 
 of the dead. Nancy marked the alteration with a strange pain, 
 80 sharp, so bitter, that its sharpness and bitterness were a per- 
 petual perplexity to her. 
 
 " If the poor dear young thing is meant to go, there's no need 
 for me to fret about it all day long, and wake up sudden in the 
 night with cold water f-tanding out upon my forehead at the 
 thought of it. I haven't known her six months ; and if she is 
 pretty and sweet-spoken, it's not my place to give way at the 
 thoughts of losing her. She's not my own flesh and blood ; and 
 I've sat by to watch tli,cm go, times and often, without feeling 
 as I do when I see the change in her day after day. Why 
 ehould it seem so dreadful to me?" 
 
 Why indeed ? This was a question for which Mrs. Woolper 
 could find no answer. She knew that the pain and horror which 
 ehe felt were something more than nat'aral, but beyond this 
 point her thoughts refused to travel. A superstitious feeling 
 arose at this point, to usurp the office of reason, and she accounted 
 for the strangeness of Miss Halliday's ilhiess as she might have 
 done had she lived in the sixteenth century, and been liable to 
 the suspicion of noctiirnal careerings on broomsticks. 
 
 " I'm sorry Mr. Philip's house should be unlucky to that 
 Bweet young creature," she said to herself. " It was unlucky to 
 the father; and now it seems as if it was going to be unlucky 
 to the daughter. And ^Ir. Philip won't be any richer for her 
 death. Mrs. Sheldon has told me times and often that all Tom 
 Halhday's money went to my master when she married him, 
 and he has doubled and trel)led it by his cleverness. Miss 
 Charlotte's death woukln't bring him a sixpence." 
 
 This was the gist of Mrs. Woolper's meditations very often 
 nowadays. But the strange sense of perplexity, the namelesB
 
 178 Gliarlottes Inlieritance. 
 
 fear, tlie vague hon-or, wei-e not to be banisliecl from her mind 
 A sense of some shapeless presence for ever at her side haunted 
 her by day and night. What was it ? What did its presence 
 portend P It was as if a figure, shrouded from head to foot, 
 was there, dark and terrible, at her elbow, and she would not 
 turn to meet the hoiTor face to face. Sometimes the phantom 
 hand lifted a corner of the veil, and the shade said, " Look at 
 me ! See who and what I am ! You have seen mo before. I 
 am here again ! and this time you shall not refuse to meet me 
 face to face ! I am the shadow of the horror you suspected in 
 the past!" 
 
 The shadowy fears which oppressed Mrs. Woolper during this 
 period did not in any way lessen her practical usefulness. From 
 the commencement of Charlotte's slow decline she had shown 
 herself attentive, and even oiEcious, in all matters relating to 
 the invahd. With her own hands she decanted the famous port 
 which Georgy fetched from the particular bin in Mr. Sheldon's 
 carefully arranged cellar. When the physician was called in, 
 and wrote his harmless little prescription, it was Mrs. Woolper 
 who caiTied the document to the dispensing chemist, and brought 
 back the innocent potion, which might, peradventure, eifect some 
 slight good, and was too feeble a decoction to do any harm. 
 Charlotte duly appreciated all this kindness ; but she repeatedly 
 a^ured the housekeeper that her ailments were not worthy of 
 &o much care. 
 
 It was ]\Irs. Woolper whom Mr. Sheldon employed to get 
 lodgings for the family, when it had been ultimately decided 
 that a change to the seaside was the best cure for Miss Halliday, 
 
 " I am too busy to go to Hastings myself this week," he said ; 
 " but I shall be prepared to spend a fortnight there after next 
 Monday. What I want you to do, Nancy, is to shp down to- 
 morrow, with a second-class return-ticket, and look about for a 
 nice place for us. I don't care about being in Hastings; there's 
 too much cockneyism in the place at this time of year. There's 
 a httle village called Harold's Hill, within a mile or so of St. 
 Leonard's — a dull, out-of-the-way place, but rustic and pic- 
 turesque, and aU that kind of thing — the sort of place that 
 women like. Now, I'd rather stay at that place than at Has- 
 tings. So you can take a fly at the station, drive straight to 
 Harold's Hill, and secure the best lodgings you ran get." 
 
 " You think as the change of air will do Miss Halliday good?" 
 asked Mrs. Woolper anxiously, after she had promised to do all 
 ber kind master required of her. 
 
 "Do ^ think it will do her good? Of course I do. Sea-air 
 and sea bathing will set her up in no time; there's nothing par» 
 ticular the matter with her."
 
 Mrs. Woolper is Anxioui. 179 
 
 " No, Mr, Philip ; that's what bothers me about the whole 
 thing. There's nothing particular the matter -with her; and 
 yet she pines and dwindles, and dwindles and pines, till it 
 malvcs one's heart ache to see her." 
 
 Pliilip Sheldon's face darkened, and he threw himself baric in 
 his chair with an impatient movement. If he had chosen to 
 do so, he could have prevented that darkening of his face ; but 
 he did not consider Mrs. Woolper a person of sufficient import- 
 ance to necessitate the regulation of his countenance. What 
 was she but an ignorant, obstinate old woman, who would most 
 probably perish in the streets if he chose to turn her out of 
 doors ? There are men who consider their clerks and retainers 
 such very dirt, that they would continue the forging of a bill 
 of exchange, or complete the final touches of a murder, with a 
 junior clerk putting coals on the fire, or an errand-boy standing 
 cap in hand on the threshold of the door. They cannot realize 
 the fact that dirt such as this is flesh and blood, and may 
 denounce them by-and-by in a witness-box. 
 
 Of all contingencies Mr. Sheldon least expected that this old 
 woman could prove troublesome to him — this abject wretch, 
 •vN'hose daily bread depended on his will. He could not imagine 
 that there are circumstances under which such abject creatures 
 will renounce their daily bread, and die of hunger, rather than 
 accept the means of hfe from one hateful hand. 
 
 " If you want to know anything about Miss Halliday's ill- 
 ness," he said in his hardest voice, and with his hardest look, 
 "you had better apply to Dr. Doddleson, the physician who 
 has prescribed for her, I do not atteiad her, you see, and I am 
 in no way responsible for her health. When I was attending 
 her father you favoured me by doubting my skill, if I judged 
 rightly as to your tone and manner on one occasion. I don't 
 want to be brought to book by you, Mrs. Woolper, about Miss 
 Halliday's altered looks or Miss HaUiday's illness ; I have 
 nothing to do with either." 
 
 " How should I tliink you had, sir ? Don't be angry with me, 
 or hard upon me, Mr. Phil. I nursed you when you was but a 
 baby, and you're nearer and dearer to me than any other master 
 could be. "VNTiv, I have but to shut my eyes now, and I can 
 feel your httle liand upon my neck, as it used to He there, so 
 soft and dear. And then I look down at the hand on the table, 
 strong and dark, and clenched so firm, and I ask myself, Can it 
 be the same ? For the sake of that time, Mr. PhU, don't be 
 hard upon me. There's notliing I wouldn't do to serve you; 
 there's nothing you could do that would turn me from you. 
 There's no man living in this world, sir, that oughtn't to be 
 glad to know of one person that nothing can turn from him." 
 
 *' That's a very fine sentiment, my good soul," replied Mr.
 
 180 CTiarlotte's InJieritance, 
 
 Sheldon coolly; "but, you see, it's oiily an ex paHe statement; 
 and as tlie case stands tliere is no opiDortunity for the display 
 of those fine feelings you talk about. You hai^pen t» want a 
 home in your old age, and I happen to be able to give you a home. 
 Under such circumstances, your own good sense will show you 
 that all sentimental talk about standing by me, and not turning 
 away from me, is absolute bosh." 
 
 The old woman sighed heavily. She had offered her master a 
 fidelity which involved the abnegation of all impulses of her own 
 heart and mind, and he rejected her love and her service. And 
 "ihen, after the first dreary sense of his coldness, she felt better 
 pleased that it should be so. The man who spoke to her in this 
 harsh uncompromising way could have no cause to fear her. 
 In the mind of such a man there could surely be no secret 
 chamber within which she had, with bis knowledge, almost 
 jienetrated. 
 
 "I won't trouble you any more, sir," she said mournfully. 
 " I dare say I'm a foolish old woman." 
 
 " Toil are, Nancy. We don't get wiser as we grow older, you 
 see ; and when we let our tongues wag, we're apt to talk non- 
 sense. The quieter you keep your tongue, the better for your- 
 self, in more ways than one. To a useful old woman about the 
 place I've no objection ; but a chattering old woman I will not 
 have at any price." 
 
 After this everything was settled in the most agreeable 
 manner, l^ancy Woolper's journey to Hastings was fully 
 arranged; and early the next morning she started, brisk and 
 active, in spite of her sixty-eight years of age. She returned 
 at night, having secured very pleasant lodgings at the village 
 of Harold's Hill. 
 
 " And a very sweet place it is, my dear Miss Lotta," she said 
 to Charlotte the next day, when she described her adventures. 
 " The apartments are at a farmhouse overlooking the sea ; and 
 the smell of the cows under your windows, and the sea-breezes 
 blowing across the farmyard, can't fail to bring the colour back 
 to your pretty cheeks, and the brightness back to your pretty 
 eyes." * 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 yalentixe's SK:mETOir. 
 
 The idea of this visit to the Sussex village by the sea seemed 
 delightful to every one except Gustave Lenoble, who was still 
 in t.owu and who thought it a hard thing that he should be
 
 Valentim^i Skeleton. 181 
 
 dfcprlved of Diana's society during an entire fortnight, for the 
 sake of tliis sickly Miss Halliday. 
 
 For the rest, there was hope and gladness in the thought of 
 tliis change of dwelling. Charlotte languished for fresher 
 breezes and more nistic i)rospects than the breezes and pros- 
 pects of Bayswater ; Diana looked to the sea-air as the doctor 
 of doctors for her fading friend; and Valentine cherished the 
 same hope. 
 
 On Valentine Hawkehurst the bnrden of an unlooked-for 
 sorrow had weighed very heavily. To see this dear girl, who 
 was the beginning, middle, and end of all his hopes, slowly fading 
 before his eyes, was, of all agonies that could have fallen to his 
 lot, the sharpest and most bitter. Not Ugolino sitting silent 
 amidst his famishing children — not Helen, when she would fain 
 that the tempest had swept her from earth's surface on that 
 evil day when she was born — not Penelope, when she cried on 
 Diana, the high-priestess of death, to release her from the weari- 
 ness of her days — not Agamemnon, when the fatal edict had 
 gone forth, and his fair young daughter looked into his face, 
 and asked him if it was true that she was to die — not one of 
 these typical mourners could have suffered a keener torture 
 than that which rent this young man's heart, as he marked the 
 stealthy steps of the Destroyer drawing nearer and nearer the 
 woman he loved. Of all jwssible calamities, this was the last 
 he had ever contemplated. Sometimes, in moments of doubt or 
 despondency, he had thought it possible that poverty, the advice 
 of friends, caprice or inconstancy on the part of Charlotte her- 
 self, should sever them. But among the possible enemies to 
 his happiness he had never counted Death. What had Death 
 to do with so fair and happy a creature as Charlotte HaUiday ? 
 she who, until some two months before this time, might have 
 been the divine Hygieia in person — so fresh was her youthful 
 bloom, so buoyant her step, so bright her glances. Valentine's 
 hardest penance was the necessity for the concealment of his 
 anxiety. The idea that Charlotte's illivCss might be — nay, must 
 be — for the greater part an affair of the nerves was always para- 
 mount in his mind. He and Diana had talked of the subject 
 together whenever they found an opportunity for so doing, and 
 had comforted themselves with the assurance that the nerves 
 alone were to blame ; and they were the more inclined to think 
 this from the conduct of Dr. Doddleson, on that physician's 
 visits to IMiss Halliday. Mrs. Sheldon had been present on 
 each occasion, and to Mrs. Sheldon alone had the physician 
 given utterance to his opinion of the case. That opinion, 
 though expressed with a certain amount of professional dignity, 
 amounted to very little. " Our dear young friend wanted 
 Btrength ; and what we had to do was to give our dear young
 
 182 Charlotte's Inheritance. 
 
 friend streng-th — vital power. Yes — er — um, that was the chief 
 point. And what kind of diet might our dear young friend 
 take now ? Was it a light diet, a httle roast mutton — not too 
 much done, but not underdone? dear, no. And a hght 
 pudding? what he would call — if he might be permitted to 
 have his little joke— a nursery pudding." And then the old 
 gentleman had indulged in a senile chuckle, and patted Char- 
 lotte's head with his fat old fingers. " And our dear young 
 friend's room, now, was it a large room ? — good ! and what was 
 the aspect now, south? — good again! nothing better, unless, 
 perhaps, south-west ; but, of course, everyone's rooms can't look 
 •south-west. A httle tonic draught, and gentle daily exercise 
 in that nice garden, will set our dear young friend right again. 
 Our temperament is nei-vous we are a sensitive plant, and 
 want care." And then the respectable septuagenarian took 
 his fee, and shuffled off to his carriage. And this was all that 
 Mrs. Sheldon could tell Diana, or Nancy Woolper, both of 
 whom questioned her closely about her interview with the 
 doctor. To Diana and to Valentine there was hope to be 
 gathered from the very vagueness of the physician's opinion. 
 If there had been anything serious the matter, the medical 
 adviser must needs have spoken more seriotisly. He came 
 again and again. He found the pulse a little weaker, the 
 patient a httle more nervous, with a shght tendency to hysteria, 
 and so on ; but he still declared that there were no traces of 
 organic disease, and he still talked of Miss Halhday's ailments 
 with a cheery easy-going manner that was very reassuring. 
 
 In his moments of depression Valentine pinned his faith upon 
 Dr. Doddleson. Without organic disease, he told himself, his 
 darling could not perish. He looked for Dr. Doddleson's name 
 in the Directory, and took comfort from the fact of that physi- 
 cian's residence in a fashionable West End square. He took 
 fui-ther comfort from the splendour of the doctor's equipage, as 
 depicted to him by Mrs. Sheldon ; and from the doctor's age and 
 experience, as copiously described by the same lady. 
 
 " There is only one fact that I have ever reproached myself 
 with in relation to my poor Tom,' 'said Georgy, who, in talking 
 to strangers of her first husband, was apt to impress them with 
 the idea that she was talking of a favourite cat ; " and that is, 
 the youthfulness of the doctor Mr. Sheldon employed. Of 
 coiu-se I am well aware that Mr. Sheldon would not have con- 
 sulted the young man if he had not thought him clever ; but I 
 could lay my head upon my pillow at night with a clearer 
 conscience if poor Tom's doctor had been an older and more 
 experienced person. Now, that's what I hke about Dr. Doddle- 
 ym. There's a gravity — a weight — about a man of that age 
 which inspires one with immediate confidence. I'm sure the
 
 Valentine's Skeleton. 183 
 
 eerious manner with wliicia he questioned me about Lotta's diet, 
 and the aspect of her room, was qnite dehghtful." 
 
 In Dr. Doddleson, under Providence, "Valentine was fain to 
 pat his tnist. He did not know that the worthy doctor was one 
 of those harmless inanities who, by the aid _ of money and 
 powerful connections, are sometimes forced into a position 
 which nature never intended them to occupy. Among the 
 real working men of that great and admirable brotherhood, the 
 medical profession. Dr. Doddleson had no rank ; but he was the 
 pet physician of fashionable dowagers suffering from chronic 
 laziness or periodical attacks of ill-humour. For the spleen -or 
 the vapours no one was a better adviser than Dr. Doddleson. 
 He could afford to waste half an hour upon the asking of 
 questions which the fair patient's maid might as well have 
 asked, and the suggestions of remedies which any intelligent 
 abigail could as easily have sugges •\d. Elderly ladies believed 
 in him because he was pompous a.nd ponderous, lived in an 
 expensive neighbour'-ood, and drove a handsome equipage. He 
 wore mourning-rings left him by patients who never had any- 
 thing partictdar the matter with them, and who, dying of sheer 
 old age, or sheer over-eating, declared with their final gasp that 
 Dr. Doddleson had been the guardian angel of their frail lives 
 during the last twenty years. 
 
 This was the man who, of all the medical profession resident 
 in London, Mr. Sheldon had selected as his stepdaughter's me- 
 dical adviser in a case so beyond common experience, that a man 
 of wide practice and keen perception was especially needed for 
 its treatment. 
 
 Dr. Doddleson, accustomed to attribute the fancied ailments 
 of fashionable dowagers to want of tone, and accustomed to pre- 
 scribe the mildest preparations with satisfaction to his patients 
 and profit to bi'^selfl dwelt \i-pon the samf want of tone, and 
 
 {irescribed the same l^armless remedies, in hij treatment of Char- 
 otte Halliday. Wb nihe lound her no better — nay, even worse — 
 after some weeVs of this treatment, he was puzzled ; and for one 
 harmless remedy he svf^stituted another harmless remedy, and 
 waited another week to see what effect the second harmless 
 remedy might have on this somewhat obstinate young person. 
 
 And this was the broken reed to which Valentine clung in the 
 day of his trouble. 
 
 Bitter were his days and sleepless were his nights in this dark 
 period of his existence. He went to the Bayswater villa nearly 
 every day now. It was no longer time for etiquette or ceremony. 
 His darling was fading day by day ; and it was his right to 
 watch the slow sad change, and, if it were possible, to keep the 
 enemy at arm's-length. Every day he came to spend one too 
 brief hour with his dear love ; every day he greeted her with the
 
 184 Cliarloite^ s Inheritance. 
 
 same fond smile, and beguiled her witli the same hopeful talk. 
 He brought her new books and flowers, and any foolish triile 
 wliich he fancied might beguile her thoughts from the contem- 
 plation of that mysterious malady which seemed beyond the 
 reach of science and Dr. Doddleson. He sat and talked with 
 her of the future — that future which in their secret thoughts 
 both held to be a sweet sad fable — the hyperborean garden of 
 their dreams. And after spending this too sweet, too bitter 
 hour with his beloved, Mr. Hawkehurst would dijDlomatise in 
 order to have a little talk with Diana as he left the house. Did 
 Diana think his dear girl better to-day, or worse — surely not 
 worse P He had fancied she had more colour, more of her old 
 gaiety of manner. She had seemed a little feverish ; but that 
 might be the excitement of his visit. And so on, and so on, with 
 sad and dreary repetition. 
 
 And then, having gone away from that house with an aching 
 heart, the young magazine-writer went back to his lodgings, and 
 jDlunged into the dashing essay or the smart pleasant story which 
 was to constitute his monthly contribution to the Cheajiside or 
 the Charing Gross. Gaiety, movement, rollicking, Harry Lon-e- 
 quer-hke spirits were demanded for the Cheapside ; a graceful 
 union of brilliancy and depth was required for the Charing Croes. 
 And, O, be sure the critics lay in wait to catch the young scrib- 
 bler tripping ! An anachronism here, a secondhand idea therei, 
 and the West End Wasj} shrieked its war-whoop in an occasional 
 note ; or the Minerva published a letter from a correspondent in 
 the SciUy Islands, headed "Another Literary Jack Sliepj^ard," 
 to say that in his " Imperial Dictionary " he had discovered with 
 profound indignation a whole column of words feloniously and 
 mendaciously appropriated by the writer of such and such an 
 article in the Ciicapside. While the sunlight of hope had shone 
 upon Irim, Mr. Hawkehurst had found the hardest work pleasant. 
 Was he not working for her sake ? Did not his future union 
 with that dear ghl dej^end upon his present industry ? It had 
 seemed to him as if she stood at his elbow while he wrote, as 
 Pallas stood beside Achilles at the council, invisible to all but 
 her favourite. It was that mystic presence which lent swiftness 
 to his pen. Wlien he was tired and depressed, the thought of 
 Charlotte had revived his courage and vanquished his fatigue. 
 Pleasant images crowded upon him when he thought of her. 
 What could be easier than for him to write a love-story ? He 
 had but to create a shadowy Charlotte for his heroine, and the 
 stream of foolish lover't babble flowed from his pen perennial 
 and inexhaustible. To his reading she lent a charm and a grace 
 that made the most perfect poetry still more poetical. It was 
 not Achilles and Helen who met on Mount Ida, but Valentine 
 and Charlotte ; it was not Paolo and Francesca who read the
 
 Valentine's SJceleton, 185 
 
 fatal book together, but Valentine and Charlotte, in an unre- 
 geuerate and mediasval state of mind. The mere coincidence of 
 a name made the " Sorrows of Werter " delightful. The all-per- 
 vading presence was everywhere and in everything. His reli- 
 gion was not Pantheism, but Charlottism. 
 
 Now all was changed. A brooding care was with him in 
 every moment. The mystic presence was stUI close to him in 
 every hour of his lonely days and nights ; but that image, which 
 had been fair and blooming as the incarnation of youth and 
 spring-time, was now a pale shrouded phantom which he dared 
 not contemplate. He stUl wrote on — for it is marvellous how 
 the pen -will travel 'and the mind will project itself into the 
 shadow-world of fancy wliile cankerous care gnaws the weary 
 heart. Nay, it is perhaps at these times that the imagination 
 is most active ; for the world of shadows is a kind of refuge for 
 the mind that dare not dwell upon realities. Who can say what 
 dull, leaden care may have weighed down the heart of Wilham 
 Shakespeare when his mind conceived that monster of a poet's 
 grand imaginings, Othello ! There is the flavour of racking care 
 in that mighty creation. The strong soul wantonly tortured by 
 a sordid wi-etch ; the noble spirit distraught, the honourable hfe 
 wrecked for so poor a motive ; that sense of the " something in 
 this world amiss," which the poet, of all other creatures, feels 
 most keenly. 
 
 With grief and fear as his constant companions, Valentine 
 Hawkehurst toiled on bravely, patiently. Hope had not deserted 
 him; but between hope and fear the contest was unceasing. 
 Sometimes hope had the best of it for a while, and the toiler 
 comforted himself with the thought that this dark cloud would 
 pass anon from the horizon of his hfe ; and then he counted his 
 gains, and found that the fruit of his labours was increasing 
 monthly, as his name gained rank among the band of young 
 litteratcnrs. The day when he might count upon that income 
 which Mr. Sheldon demanded as his qualification for matrimony 
 did not appear far distant. Given a certain amount of natural 
 ability, and the industrious and indefatigable young writer may 
 Bpeedlly emerge from obscurity, and take his place in the great 
 army of those gallant soldiers whose only weapon is the pen. 
 Whatever good fortune had come to Valentine Hawkehurst he 
 had worked for with all honesty of purpose. The critics were 
 not slow to remark that he worked at a wliite-hot haste, and 
 must needs be a shallow pretender because he was laborious 
 and indefatigable. 
 
 Before the beginning of Charlotte's slow decline he had fancied 
 himself the happiest of men. There were more deposit-receipts 
 in his desk. The nest-egg, about the hatching whereof there 
 had been such cackling and crowing some mouths ago, was now
 
 186 Charlotte's Inlieritance. 
 
 one of many eggs ; for the hard-working scr/bbler had no leisure 
 in which to be extravagant, had he been so minded. The pur- 
 chase of a half-cu'clet of diamonds for his betrothed's slim finger 
 had been his only folly. 
 
 Charlotte had remonstrated with him on the impropriety of. 
 such an extravagance, and had exacted from him a promise that 
 this wild and Monte-Christo-Uke course should be pursued no 
 further ; but she was very proud of her half-hooj) of diamonds 
 nevertheless, and was wont to press it tonderly to her Ups before 
 she laid it aside for the night. 
 
 " There must be no more such extrfivagance, sir," she said to 
 her lover, when he sat by her sido twisting the ring round and 
 round on her pretty finger. Alas, ho^r loose the ring had become 
 since it had first been placed there ! 
 
 " Consider the future, Valentine," continued the girl, hopeful 
 of mood while her hand rested in hiy. " Do you suppose we can 
 furnish our cottage at Wimbledon if we rush into such wild 
 expenses as diamond rings ? Do you know that I am saving 
 money, Valentine? Yes, positively. Papa gives me a very 
 good allowance for my dresses, and bonnets, and things, you 
 know, and I used to be extravagant and spend it all. But now 
 I have become the most miserly creature ; and I have a little 
 packet of money upstairs which you shall put in the Unitas 
 Bank with the rest of your wealth. Diana and I have been 
 darning, and patching, and cutting, and contriving, in the most 
 praiseworthy manner. Even this silk has been turned. You 
 did not think that, did you, when you admired it so?" 
 
 Mr. Hawkehurst looked at his beloved with a tender smile. 
 The exact significance of the operation of turning, as apphed to 
 silk dresses, was somewhat beyond his comijrehension ; but he 
 felt sure that to tiu-n must be a laudable action, else why that 
 air of pride with which Chai-lotte informed him of the fact ? 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 AT HA-ROLd's hill. 
 
 The summer Bun shone upon the village of Harold's Hill when 
 Charlotte arrived there with Mrs. Sheldon and Diana Paget. 
 Mr. Sheldon was to follow them on the same day by a later 
 train; and Valentine was to come two days afterwards to spend 
 the peaceful interval between Saturday and Monday with hi| 
 betrothed. He had seen the travellers depart from the London 
 Bridge terminus, but Mr. Sheldon had been there also, an(J 
 there had been no opportunity for confidential communicatioij 
 between the lovers. 
 
 0£ all Susse i villages Harold's Hill is perhaps the pretties'
 
 At EaroMs mil. 187 
 
 The grey old Saxon church, the scattered farmhouses and pleasant 
 rustic cottages, are built on the slope of a hill, and all the 
 width of ocean lies below the rustic windows. The roses and 
 fuchsias of the cottage gardens seem all the brighter by con- 
 trast with that broad expanse of blue. The fresh breath of the 
 salt sea blends with the perfume of new-mown hay and all the 
 homely odours of the farmyard. The lark sings high in the 
 blue vault of heaven above the church, and over the blue ot 
 the sea the gull skims white in the sunshine. The fisherman 
 and the farm labourer have their cottages side by side, nestling 
 cosily to leeward of the hilly winding road. 
 
 This hiUy winding road in the July afternoon seemed to 
 Charlotte almost like the w-ay to Paradise. 
 
 "It is hke going to heaven, Di!" she cried, with her eyes 
 fixed on the square tower of the old grey church. She wondered 
 why sudden tears sprang to Diana's eyes as she said this. Miss 
 Paget brushed the unbidden tears away with a quick gesture 
 of her hand, and smiled at her friend. 
 
 " Yes, dear, the village is very pretty, isn't it?" 
 
 "It looks awfully dull !" said Mrs. Sheldon, with a shudder ; 
 " and, Diana, I declare there isn't a single shop. Wliere are we 
 to get our provisions ? I told Mr. Sheldon St. Leonards would 
 have been a better place for us." 
 
 " O mamma, St. Leonards is the very essence of all that 
 is tame and commonplace, compared to this darling rural 
 village ! Look, do look, at that fisherman's cottage, with the 
 nets hanging out to dry in the sunshine; just Hke a picture 
 of Hook's!" 
 
 " What's the use of going on about fishermen's cottages, 
 Lotta?" Mrs. Sheldon demanded, peevishly. "Fishermen's 
 cottages won't provide us with butcher's meat. Where are we 
 to get your little bit of roast mutton ? Dr. Doddleson laid such 
 a stress upon the roast mutton." 
 
 " The sea-air \viU do me more good than aU the mutton that 
 ever was roasted at Eton, mamma. 0, dear, is this our farm- 
 house?" cried Charlotte, as the vehicle drew up at a picturesque 
 gate. " 0, what a love of a house ! what diamond-paned 
 windows ! what sweet white curtains ! and a cow staring at me 
 quite in the friendhest way across the gate ! O, can we be so 
 happy as to five here?" 
 
 " Diana," cried Mrs. Sheldon, in a solemn voice, " not a 
 emgle shop have we passed — not so much as a post-office ! 
 And as to haberdashery, I'm sure you might be reduced to 
 rags in this place before you could get so much as a yard of 
 glazed lining !" 
 
 The farnJiouse was one of those ideal homesteads wliich, to 
 the dweller in cities, seems fair as the sapphire-ceiled chambers
 
 Charlotte's Inheritance. 
 
 f the house of Solomon. Charlotte was enraptured by the 
 idea that tliis was to be her home for the next fortnight. 
 
 " I wish it could be for ever, Di," she said, as the two girls 
 were inspecting the rustic, dimity-draperied, lavender- and- rose- 
 leaf-perfumed bedchambers. " Who would wish to go back to 
 prim suburban Bayswater after tliis.P Valentine and I could 
 lodge here after our marriage. It is better than Wimbledon. 
 Grand thoughts would come to him with the thunder of the 
 Btormy waves ; and on calm bright days like this the ripjDhng 
 water would whisper pretty fancies into his ear. Why, to live 
 here would make any one a poet. I think I could write a novel 
 myself, if I lived here long enough." 
 
 Alter this they arranged the pretty sitting-room, and placed 
 an easy-chair by the window for Charlotte, an arm-chair 
 opposite this for Mrs. Sheldon, and between the two a httle 
 table for the fancy work and books and flowers, and all the 
 small necessities of feminine existence. And then — while Mrs. 
 Sheldon prowled about the rooms, and discovered so many 
 faults and made so many objections as to give evidence of a 
 fine faculty for invention unsuspected in her hitherto — Charlotte 
 and Diana explored the garden and peeped at the farmyard, 
 where the friendly cow still stared over the white gate, just as 
 she had stared when the fly came to a stop, as if she had not 
 yet recovered from the astonishment created in her pastoral 
 mind by that phenomenal circumstance. And then Charlotte 
 was suddenly tired, and there came upon her that strange dizzi- 
 ness which was one of her most frequent symptoms. Diana 
 led her immediately back to the house, and established her 
 comfortably in her easy-chair. 
 
 " I must be very ill," she said, plaintively ; " for even the 
 novelty of this pretty place cannot make me happy long." 
 
 Mr. Sheldon arrived in the evening, bringing with him a 
 supply of that simple medicine which Charlotte took three 
 times a day. He had remembered that there was no dispensing 
 chemist at Harold's Hill, and that it would be necessary to send 
 to St. Leonards for the medicine, and had therefore brought 
 with him a double quantity of the rndd tonic. 
 
 " It was very kind of you to think of it, though I really don't 
 believe the stuff does me any good," said Charlotte. " Nancy 
 Woolper used to get it for me at Bayswater. She made quite a 
 point of fetching it from the chemist's herself." 
 
 " Indeed ! " exclaimed Mr. Sheldon. " Nancy troubled herself 
 about your medicine, did she ? " 
 
 "Yes, papa; and about me altogether. If I were her own 
 daughter she could scarcely have seemed more anxious." 
 
 The Btockbroker made a mental note of this in the memoraa*
 
 At JJaroJd'g mil 189 
 
 <}iitn-l)Ook of hts brain. Mrs. Woolper was officious, was she, 
 and sus]>ioiousP — altogether a troublesome sort of person. 
 
 " I tliink a few weeks of workhouse fare would be wholesome 
 for that old lady," he said to himself. " There are some people 
 who never know when they are well off." 
 
 Saturday afternoon came in due course, after a long and 
 dreary intei-val, as it seemed to Charlotte, for whom time 
 travelled very slowly, so painful was the weariness of illness. 
 Now and then a sudden flash of excitement brought the old 
 brightness to her face, the old gaiety to her accents ; but the 
 brightness faded very soon, and the languor of illness was very 
 perceptible. 
 
 Punctual to the hour at which he was expected, Mr. Hawke- 
 hurst appeared, in radiant spirits, laden with new magazines 
 delighted with the village, enraptured with the garden, enchantec 
 with the sea ; full of talk and animation, with all sorts of newt 
 to tell his beloved. Such and such a book was a failure, such 
 and such a comedy was a fiasco ; Jones's novel had made a hit ; 
 Brown's picture was the talk of the year ; and Charlotte must 
 see the picture that had been talked about, and the play that 
 had been condemned, when she returned to town. 
 
 For an hour the lovers sat in the pretty fannhouse parlour 
 talking together thus, the summer sea and the garden flowers 
 before them, and a bird singing high in the calm blue heaven. 
 Charlotte's talk was somewhat languid, though it was perfect 
 happiness for her to be seated thus, with her betrothed by her 
 side ; but Valentine's gaiety of spirits never flagged ; and when 
 Mrs. Sheldon hinted to him that too long a conversation might 
 fatigue the dear invalid, he left the parlour with a smile ,upon 
 his face, and a cheery promise to return after an hour's ramble. 
 
 He did not ramble far. He went straight to a little wooden 
 summer-house in the remotest corner ot the humble garden; 
 uid thither Diana Paget followed him. She had learned the 
 language of his face in the time of their daily companionship, 
 and she had seen a look as he left the house which told her of 
 the struggle his cheerfulness had cost him. 
 
 " You must not be downhearted, Valentine," she said, as she 
 went into the summer-house, where he sat in a listless attitude, 
 with his arms lying loosely folded on the rustic table. 
 
 He flid not answer her. 
 
 " You don't think her worse — much worse — do you, Valen- 
 tine ? " 
 
 " Worse ? I have seen death in her face to-day ! " he cned ; 
 and then he let his forehead fall upon his folded arms, and 
 sobbed aloud. 
 
 Diana 8t>oo<' by his side watching that outburst of grief. 
 
 N
 
 190 Cliarlcties Inlierilance. 
 
 Wlien tlie passionate storm of tears was past, she comforieJ 
 him as best she might. The r.hange so visible to him was in>t 
 so plain to her. He had hoped that the breath of the ocean 
 would have magical power to restore the invalid. He had coma 
 to Harold's Hill full of hope, and instead of the beginning of an 
 improvement he saw the progress of decay. 
 
 " Why did not Sheldon send for the doctor," he asked, 
 indignantly, — " the physician who has attended her ? He might 
 have telegraphed to that man." 
 
 " Charlotte is tatiug Dr. Doddleson's medicine," said Diana, 
 " and all his directions are most carefully obeyed." 
 
 " What of that, if she grows worse P The doctor should see 
 her daily, hourly, if necessary. And if he cannot cure her, 
 another doctor should be sent for. Good heavens, Diana ! are 
 we to let her fade and sink from us before our eyes ? I will go 
 back to London at once, and bring that man Doddleson down 
 by the night mail." 
 
 " Your going back to London would grieve and alarm Char- 
 lotte. You can telegraph for the doctor; or, at least, JMr. 
 Sheldon can do bo. It wotJd not do for you to interfere 
 without his permission." 
 
 " It would not do ! " echoed Yalentine, angrily. " Do you 
 think that I am going to stand upon punctilio, or to consider 
 what will do or will not do?" 
 
 " Above all things, you must avoid alarming Charlotte," 
 pleaded Diana. 
 
 " Do you think I do not know that ? Do you think I did not 
 feel that just now, when I sat by her side, talking inane rubbish 
 about books and plays and pictures, while every stolen glance at 
 my darling's face was like a dagger thrust into my heart ? I 
 will not alarm her. I will consult Mr. Sheldon — will do any- 
 thing, everything, to save her! To save her! O my God, has 
 it come to that ? " 
 
 He grew a Httle calmer presently under Diana's influence, 
 and went slowly back to the house. He avoided the open 
 window by which Charlotte was sitting. He had not yet 
 schooled himself to meet her questioning looks. He went to 
 the room where they were to dine, a diiUer and darker apartment 
 than the parlour, and here he found Mr. Sheldon reading a 
 paper, one of the eternal records of the eternal money-market. 
 
 The stockbroker had been in and out of the house all day, 
 now sauntering by the sea-shore, now leaning mooddy, with 
 folded arms, on the garden gate, meditative and silent as the 
 c Av that stared at Charlotte ; now pacing the garden walks, 
 with his hands in his pockets and his head bent. Diana, who 
 in her anxiety kept a close watch ujoon Mr. Sheldon's move- 
 meutSj ha«l. noted his restlessness, and perceived in it the sign of
 
 At TLi-chVs mn. 101. 
 
 growing anxiety on his part. She knew that he had ence called 
 himseli" surgeon-dentist, and had some medical knowledge, if 
 not so much as he took credit for possessing. He must, there- 
 fore, be better able to judge the state of Charlotte's health than 
 utterly ignorant observers. If he were uneasy, there must be 
 real cause for uneasiness. It was on this account, and on this 
 account only, that Diana watched him. 
 
 " He must love her better than I gave hini credit for being 
 able to love any one," Miss Paget said to herself. "Dear girl! 
 The coldest heart is touched by her sweetness." 
 
 Mr. Sheldon looked up from his newspaper as Valentine came 
 into the room, and saluted the visitor with a friendly nod. 
 
 " Glad to see you, Hawkehurst," he said. " Semper fidelis, 
 and that kind of thing; the very model of devoted lovers. 
 "VMiy, man alive, how glum you look ! " 
 
 "I tlaink I have reason to look glum," answered Valentine, 
 gravely ; " I have seen Charlotte." 
 
 " Yes ? And don't you find her improving ? — gradually, ot 
 course. That constitutional languor is not shaken off in a 
 hurry. But surely you think her improving — brightening " 
 
 "Brightening with the light that never shone on earth or 
 sea. God help me ! I — I — am the merest child, the veriest 
 
 coward, the " He made a great effort, and stifled the sob 
 
 that had well-nigh broken his voice. " Mr. Sheldon," he con- 
 tinued quietly, " I beUeve your stepdaughter is dying." 
 
 " Dying ! Good heavens ! — my dear Hawkehurst, this alarm is 
 most — most premature. There is no cause for fear — at present, 
 no cause — I give you my word as a medical man." 
 
 " No cause for alarm at present P That means my darling 
 win not be taken fi-om me to-night, or to-morrow. I shall have 
 a few days breathing-time. Yes, I understand. The doom is 
 upon us. I saw the shadow of death upon her face to-day." 
 
 " My dear Hawkehurst " 
 
 "My dear Sheldon, for pity's sake don't treat me as if I 
 were a woman or a child. Let me know my fate. If — if — 
 this, the worst, most bitter of all calamities God's hand — raised 
 against me in punishment of past sins, sinned lightly and 
 recklessly, in the days when my heart had no stake in the game 
 of destiny — can inflict upon me; if this deadly sorrow is 
 btaring down upon me, let me meet it like a man. Let me die 
 with my eyes uncovered. O, my dearest, my fondest, redeeming 
 unsi^el of my iU-spout hfe! have you been only a supernal 
 visitant, after aU, shining on me for a little while, to depart 
 when your mission of redemption is accomplished ? " 
 
 "Powers above!" thought Mr. Sheldon, "what nonsenaa 
 < 'lose sentimental magazine-^vritcrs can talk ! "
 
 192 CharTofte's Tnherifanee. 
 
 He was in nomse melted by the lover's ancriiisli, tliongh ii 
 Vvas very real. Such a grief as this was outside the circle in 
 which his thoughts revolved. This display of grief was un- 
 pleasant to him. It grated painfully upon his nerves, as some 
 of poor Tom HaUiday's little speeches had done of old, when 
 the honest-hearted Yorkshireman lay on his deathbed; and 
 the young man's presence and the young man's anxiety were 
 aUke inconvenient. 
 
 "Tell me the truth, Mr. Sheldon," Valentine said presently, 
 with suppressed intensity. " Is there any hope for my darhng, 
 any hope?" 
 
 Mr. Sheldon considered for some moments before he replied 
 to this question. He pursed-up his hps and bent his browa 
 with the same air of business-Hke deliberation that he might 
 have assumed while weighing the relative merits of th^ first 
 and second debenture bonds of some doubtful railway company. 
 
 " You ask me a trying question, Hawkehurst," he said at 
 last. " If you ask me plainly whether I like the turn which 
 Charlotte's illness has taken within the last few weeks, I must 
 tell you frankly, I do not. There is a persistent want of tone — a 
 \'isible decay of vital power — which, I must confess, has caused 
 me some uneasiness. Yon see, the fact is, there is a radical 
 weakness of constitution — as IVIiss Paget, a very sensible girl 
 und acute observer — herself has remarked, indeed a hereditary 
 iveakness; and against this medicine is sometimes unavailing. 
 Fou need apprehend no neglect on my part, Hawkehurst ; aU 
 &at can possibly be done is being done. Dr. Doddleson's 
 instructions are carefully obeyed, and " 
 
 " Is this Dr. Doddleson comjDetent to grapple with the case?" 
 asked Valentine ; " I never heard of him as a great man." 
 
 " That fact proves how httle you know of the medical pro- 
 fession." 
 
 " I know nothing of it ; I have had no need for doctors in my 
 life. And you think this Dr. Doddleson really clever?" 
 
 "His position is a siifficient answer to that question." 
 
 " WiU you let me telegraph for bim — this afternoon — imme- 
 diately?" 
 
 " You cannot telegi-aph from this place." 
 
 "No, but from St. Leonards I can. Do you think 1 am 
 afraid of a five-mile walk?" 
 
 "But why send for Dr. Doddleson? The treatment he 
 prescribed is the treatment we are now following to the letter. 
 To summon him down here would be the merest folly. Our 
 poor Charlotte's illness is, so far, free from all alarming 
 8ymptoms." 
 
 "You do not see the change in her that I can see," cried 
 Valentine piteously. *' For mercy's sake, Mr Sheldon, let ma
 
 At HarolcVs mil 103 
 
 have my way in this. I cannot stand by and see my dear one 
 fading and do nothing — nothing to save her. Lot me send for 
 tliis man. Let me see him myself, and hear what lie says. You 
 can have no objection to his coming, since he is the man you 
 have chosen for Charlotte's adviser ? It can only be a question 
 of expense. Let this laai-ticular visit be my affair." 
 
 " I can afford to pay for my stepdaughter's medical attend- 
 ance without any help from your purse, Mr. Hawkchurst," said 
 the stockbroker with offended pride. " There is one element in 
 the case which you appear to ignore." 
 
 "What is that?" 
 
 "The alarm which this summoning of a doctor from London 
 mi^st cause in Charlotte's mind." 
 
 "It need cause no alarm. She can be told that Dr. 
 Doddleson has come to this part of the world for a Sunday's 
 change of air. The visit can appear to be made en passant. 
 It will be easy to arrang3 that with the doctor before he sees 
 her." 
 
 "As you please, Mr. Hawkehurst," the stockbroker replied 
 coldly. " I consider such a visit to the last degree unnecessary ; 
 but if Dr. Doddleson's coming can give you any satisfaction, 
 by all means let him come. The erpense involved in summon- 
 ing him is of the smallest consideration to me. My position 
 with regard to my wife's daughter is one of extreme respon- 
 sibility, and I am ready to perform aU the obhgations of that 
 position." 
 
 " You are very good : your conduct in relation to Charlotte 
 and myself has been beyond aU praise. It is quite possible that 
 I am over-anxious ; but there was a look in that dear face — no 
 — I cannot forget that look ; it struck terror to my heart. I 
 wUl go at once to St. Leonards. I can tell Charlotte that I am 
 obliged to telegraph to the printer about my copy. You will not 
 object to that white lie ? " 
 
 " Not at all. I think it essential that Charlotte should not be 
 alarmed. You had better stop to dine ; there will be time for 
 the telegram after dinner," 
 
 " I will not risk that," answered Valentine. " I cannot eat 
 or drink tiU I have done something to lessen this wretched 
 anxiety." 
 
 He went back to the room where Charlotte was sitting by 
 the open window, through which there came the murmur of 
 waves, the humming of drowsy bees, the singing of birds, all 
 the happy voices of hapjiy nature in a harmonious chorus. 
 
 " O God, wilt thou take her away from such a beautiful 
 world," he asked, " and change all the glory of earth to darknesa 
 and desolation for me?" 
 
 His heart rebelled against the idea of her death. To save her,
 
 104 Charlotte's Inhericance. 
 
 to win her back to Hmself from the jaws of death, he was ready 
 to promise anything, to do anything. 
 
 •' All my days wSl I give to Thy service, if Thon wilt spare 
 her to me," in his heart he said to his God. " If Thon dost not, 
 I will be an infidel and a pagan — the vilest and most andacious 
 of sinners. Better to serve Lucifer than the God who could so 
 afilict me." 
 
 And this is where the semi-enlightened Christian betrays the 
 weakness of his faith. While the sun shines, and the sweet 
 gospel story reads to him like some tender Arcadian idyl, all 
 love and promise, he is firm in his allegiance ; but when the 
 dark hour comes, he turns his face to the waU, with anger and 
 disappointment in his heart, and will have no further commune 
 with the God who has chastised him. BQs faith is the faith of 
 the gratefcd leper, who, being healed, was eager to return and bless 
 his divine benefactor. It is not the faith of Abraham or of 
 Job, of Paul or of Stephen. 
 
 Valentine told his story about the printers and the copy for 
 the Cheapside magazine, about which there had arisen some 
 absurd mistake, only to be set right by a telegram. 
 
 It was not a very clear account; but Charlotte did not 
 perceive the vagueness of the story ; she thought only of the 
 one fact, that Valentine must leave her for some hours. 
 
 "The evening will seem so long without you," she said. 
 " That is the worst part of my illness ; the time is so long — so 
 weaiy. Diana is the dearest and kindest of friends. She is 
 always trying to amuse me, and reads to me for hours, though I 
 know she must often be tired of reading aloud so long. But even 
 the books I was once so fond of do not amuse me. The words seem 
 to float indistinctly in my brain, and all sorts of strange images 
 mis themselves up with the images of the people in the book. 
 Di has been reaing ••The Bride of Lammermoor " all this morning ; 
 but the pain and weariness I feel seemed to be entangled 
 with Lucy and Edgar somehow, and the dear book gave me no 
 pleasure." 
 
 "My darling, you — you are too weak to Hsten to Diana's 
 reading. It is very kind of her to try to amuse you ; but — but 
 it would be better for you to rest altogether. Any kind of 
 mental exertion may help to retard your recovery." 
 
 He had placed himself behind her chaii", and was bending 
 over the pillows to speak to her. Just now he felt himself 
 unequal to the command of his countenance. He bent his head 
 until his hps touched the soft brown hair, and kissed those loose 
 soft tresses passionately. The thought occurred to bim that a 
 day might come when he should again kiss that soft brown 
 hair, with a deeper passion, with a sharper pain, and when Char- 
 lotte would uo+ '~now of his kisses, or pity his pain.
 
 Desperate Measures. 1D5 
 
 " "Valentine!" cried Charlotte, "you are crying; I can 8e« 
 your face in the glass." 
 
 He had forgotten the glass ; the Httle rococo mirror, with 9,n 
 eagle hovering over the top of the frame, which hung above tb« 
 old-fashioned chifFonier. 
 
 " I am not so veiy ill, dear ; I am not indeed," the girl con- 
 tinued, turning in her chair with an effort, and clasping her 
 lover's hands ; " you must not distress yourself hke this, Valen- 
 tine — dear Valentine ! I shall be better by and by. I can»ot 
 think that I shall be taken from you." 
 
 He had broken down altogether by this time. He buried nis 
 face in the pillows, and contrived to stifle the sobs that would 
 come ; and then, after a sharp struggle, he hfted his face, and 
 bent over the chair once more to kiss the invalid's pale upturned 
 forehead. 
 
 " My dear one, jou shall not, if love can guard and keep you. 
 No, dear, I cannot beheve that God will take you from me. 
 Heaven may be your fittest habitation ; but such sweet spirits 
 as yours are sorely needed upon earth. I will be brave, dearest 
 one ; brave and hopeful in the mercy of Heaven. And now I 
 must go and telegraph to my tii-esome printer. Au revoir ! " 
 
 He hurried away from the farmhouse, and started at a rattling 
 
 {)ace along the pleasant road, with green waving com on his 
 eft, and broad blue ocean on his right. 
 
 " I can get a fly to bring me back from St. Leonard's " he 
 thought ; " I should only lose time by hunting for a vehicle 
 here." 
 
 He was at St. Leonards station within an hour after leaving 
 the fai-m. He desjiatched the message in Atr. Sheldon's name, 
 and took care to make it urgent. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 DESPEBATE MEASTTRES. 
 
 PiTFTTL and feverish were the slumbers which visited ]\Ir. Hawke- 
 hurst on that balmy summer's night. His waking hours were 
 anxious and unhappy ; but his sleeping hours were still more 
 pjiinful. _ To sleep was to be the feverish fool of vague wild 
 visions, in which Charlotte and Dr. Doddleson, the editor of the 
 CheapsiJe, the ofiicials of the British Museum reading-room, 
 Diana Paget, and the Sheldons, figured amidst inextricable con- 
 fusion of circumstances and places. Throughout these wretched 
 dreams he had some consciousness of himself and the room in 
 which he was lying, the July moon shining upon him, broad and 
 bright, throu£;h the diamond-paned lattice. And 0, what tor-
 
 196 Charlotte's Inheritance. 
 
 turing visions were those in wliicTi Charlotte smiled upon liim, 
 radiant with health and happiness ; and there had been no such 
 thing as her illness, no such thing as his grief. And then came 
 hurried dreams, in which Dr. Doddleson was knocking at the 
 farmhouse door, with the printer of the Chea])side. And then 
 he was a spectator in a mighty theatre, large as those Roman 
 amj^hitheatres, wherein the audience seemed a mass of flies, 
 looking down on the encounter of two other flies, and all 
 the glory of an imperial court only a httle spot of purp]e 
 and gold, gleaming afar in the sunshine. To the dreamer it was 
 no surprise that this unknown theatre of his dreams should be 
 vast as the gladiatorial arena. And then came the deep thun- 
 derous music of innumerable bass-viols and bassoons : and some 
 one told him it was the first night of a great tragedy. He felt 
 the breathless hush of expectation ; the solemn bass music sank 
 deeper ; dark curtains were drawn aside, with a motion slow and 
 solemn, like the waving of mountain pines, and there appeared 
 a measureless stage, revealing a moonlit expanse, thickly studded 
 with the white headstones of unnumbered graves, and on the 
 foremost of these — revealed to him by what power he knew not, 
 since moi'tal sight could never have reached a point so distant — 
 he read the name of Charlotte Halliday. He awoke with a 
 sharp cry of pain. It was broad day, and the waves were 
 dancing gaily in the morning sunlight. He rose and dressed 
 himself. Sleep, such as he had known that night, was worse 
 than the weariest waking. He went out into the garden by and 
 by, and paced slowly up and down the narrow pathways, beside 
 which box of a centtiry's growth rose dark and high. Pale 
 yellow lights were in the upper windows. He wondered which 
 of those sickly tapers flickered on the face he loved so fondly. 
 
 " It is only a year since I first saw her," he thought: "one 
 year ! And to love her has been my ' hberal education ; ' to lose 
 her would be my desolation and despair." 
 
 To lose her ! His thoughts approached that dread possibility, 
 but could not reahze it ; not even yet. 
 
 At eight o'clock Diana came to summon him to breakfast. 
 
 •• Shall I see Charlotte?" he asked. 
 
 " ISTo ; for some time past she has not come down to breakfast." 
 
 " What kind of night has she had ? " 
 
 " A very quiet night, she tells me; but I am not quite sure that 
 she tells me the truth, she is so afraid of giving us uneasiness." 
 
 " She tells you. But do you not sleep in her room, now that 
 she is so iU ? " 
 
 "No. I was anxious to sleep on a sofa at the foot of her bed, 
 and proposed doing so, but Mr. Sheldon objects to my being in 
 the room. He thinks that Charlotte is more quiet entirely 
 alone, and that tliere is more air in the room with only one
 
 Desperate Measures. 197 
 
 sleeper. Her illness is not of a kind to require attention of any 
 Bort in the night." 
 
 " Still I should have thought it better for her to have you 
 with her, to cheer and comfort her. 
 
 •' Believe me, Valentine, I wished to be with her." 
 
 "I am sure of that, dear," he answered kindly. 
 
 "It was only Mr. Sheldon's authority, as a man of soma 
 
 edical exiDerience^ that conquered my wish." 
 
 " Well, I suppose he is right. Ami now we must go in to 
 breakfast. Ah, the dreary regidarity of these breakfasts and 
 dinners, which go on just the same when oui* hearts are 
 breaking ! " 
 
 The breakfast was indeed a dreary soul-dispiriting meaL 
 Farmhouse luxuries, in the way of new-laid eggs and home- 
 oured bacon, abounded ; but no one had any incUnation for these 
 things. Yalentuie remembered the homestead among the Tork- 
 Bhire hills, with all the dehght that he had known there ; and 
 the "sorrow's crown of sorrow" was very bitter. Mr. Sheldon 
 gave his Sabbath-morning meditations to the study of a Satur- 
 day-evening share-list ; and Georgy plunged ever and anon in' 
 the closely printed pages of a Dissenting preacher's biography, 
 which she declared to be " comforting." 
 
 Diana and Valentine sat sdent and anxious ; and after the 
 faintest pretence of eating and drinking, they both left the table, 
 *x> stroll drearily in the garden. The beEs were ringing cheerily 
 from the grey stone tower near at hand ; but Valentine had no 
 incUnation for church on this particular morning. Were not all 
 his thoughts prayers — humble piteous entreaties — for one price- 
 less boon? 
 
 " Will you see the doctor when he comes, and manage matters 
 so as not to alarm Charlotte ? " he asked of Mr. Sheldon. 
 
 That gentleman agreed to do so, and went out into the 
 little front-garden to lie in wait for the great Doddleson — 
 " Dowager Doddleson" as he was sumamed by some irreverent 
 unbelievers. 
 
 A St. Leonards fly brought the doctor while the bells were 
 BtUl ringing for morning service. Mr. Sheldon received him at 
 the gate, and explained the motive of his summons. 
 
 The doctor was full of pompous sohcitude about " our sweet 
 young patient." 
 
 " Really one of the most interesting cases I ever had upon 
 my hands," the West-end physician said blandly ; " as I waa 
 remarking to a very charming patient of mine — in point of fact, 
 the amiable and accomplished Countess of Kassel-Kumberterre, 
 only last Tee-usday moniing. A case so nearly resembling the 
 Countessis own condition as to be liighly interesting to her." 
 
 "I real'y ought to apologize for bringing yon down," said
 
 198 Cliarlotte's Inlieritance. 
 
 Mr. Sheldon, as lie led the doctor into the house. " I only con. 
 
 eented to your being sent for in order to tranquillize this you ag 
 fellow Hawkehurst, who is engaged to my daughter; a rising 
 man, I believe, in his own particular Une, but rather wild and 
 imj^racticable. There is really no change for the worse, abso- 
 lutely none; and as we have not been here more than three 
 days, there has been positively no opportunity for te&'ting the 
 effect of change and sea air, and so on." 
 
 This seemed rather Hke giving the learned physician his cue. 
 And there were those among Dr. Doddleson's professional rivals 
 who said that the worthy doctor was never slow to take a cue 
 so given, not Ijeing prejudiced by any opinions of his own. 
 
 Charlotte had by this time been estabUshed in her easy-chair 
 by the open window of the sitting-room, and here Dr. Doddleson 
 saw her, in the presence of Mr. and Mrs. Sheldon; and here 
 Dr. Doddleson went through the usual Abracadabra of his art, 
 and assented to the opinions advanced, with all deference, by 
 Mr. Sheldon. 
 
 To Georgy this interview, in which Mr. Sheldon's opinions 
 were pompously echoed by the West-end physician, proved even 
 more comforting than the benignant career of the Dissenting 
 minister, who was wont to allude to that solemn passing hence 
 of which the ancients spoke in dim suggestive phi-ase, as " going 
 upstairs." 
 
 Diana and Valentine strolled in the garden while the physician 
 saw his patient. Dr. Doddleson's ponderous polysyllables floated 
 out upon the summer air like the di-onin^ of a humble-bee. It 
 was a relief to Valentine to know that the doctor was with his 
 patient : but he had no intention to let that gentleman depart 
 unquestioned. 
 
 " I will take no secondhand information," he thought ; " I 
 will hear this man's opinion from his own lips." 
 
 He went round to the front of the house directly the droning 
 had ceased, and was in the way when Dr. Doddleson and Mr. 
 Sheldon came out of the rose-hung porch. 
 
 " If you have no objection," he said to Mr. Sheldon, " I 
 Bhould hke to ask Dr. Doddleson a few questions." 
 
 "J have no objection," replied the stockbroker; "but it is 
 really altogether such an unusual thing, and I doubt if Dr. 
 Doddleson will consent to " 
 
 And here he casfe a deprecating glance at the doctor, as who 
 should say, " Can you permit yourself to comply with a demand 
 so entirely unwarranted by precedent P " 
 
 Dowager Doddleson was eminently good-natured. 
 
 " And this is our sweet young friend's fiance," he said ; 
 •* dear me — dee-ar me ! " 
 
 And then he looked at Valentine with bland pale-blue eyei
 
 Desperate Meastires. ifj,0 
 
 ^j' 3^* twinkled behind his gold-framed spectacles ; while Valentii® 
 V'^as taking his measure, so far as the measure of any man's 
 r oral and intellectual force can be taken by the eyes of another 
 man. 
 
 " And this is the man who is chosen to snatch my darling 
 from the jaws of death ! " he said to himself, with burning rage 
 in his heart, while the amiable physician repeated blandly : 
 
 " And this is our sweet young patient's fiance. Dee-ar me, 
 how very interesting ! " 
 
 The three men strolled round to the gardji behind the house, 
 Mr. Sheldon close at the physician's elbow. 
 
 "For God's sake tell me the trath, Dr. Doddleson!" said 
 Valentine in a low hoarse voice, directly they were beyond ear- 
 shot of the house. " I am a man, and I can steel myself to 
 hear the worst you can tell." 
 
 " But really, Hawkehurst, there is no occasion for this kind 
 of thing," interjected Philip Sheldon ; " Dr. Doddleson agrees 
 with me, that the case is one of extreme languor, and no more." 
 
 " Unquestionably," said the doctor in a fat voice. 
 
 "And Dr. Doddleson also coincides with me in the opinion 
 that all we can do is to wait the reviving influence of sea-air." 
 
 " Undoubtedly," said the doctor, with a solemn nod. 
 
 " And is this all ? " asked Valentine hopelessly. 
 
 "My dear sir, what else can I say?" said the doctor; "as 
 my good friend Mr. Sheldon has just remarked, there is extreme 
 languor ; and as my good friend Mr. Sheldon further obsierves, 
 we must await the effect of change of air. The — aw — invigo- 
 rating sea-breezes, the — aw — enhvening influence of new sur- 
 roundings, and — aw — so forth. Dr. Poseidon, my dear sir, is a 
 very valuable coadjutor." 
 
 "And you think your patient no worse. Dr. Doddleson?" 
 ^ " The doctor has just left Mrs. Sheldon much comforted by 
 his assnrance that her daughter is better," said the stockbroker. 
 
 " No, no ! " exclaimed Dr. Doddleson ; " no, no ! there my good 
 friend Mr. Sheldon somewhat misrepresents me. I said that 
 our patient was not obviously worse. I did not say that our 
 patient was better. There is a dilatation of the pupil of the eye 
 which I don't quite understand." 
 
 "Mental excitement," said Mr. Sheldon, somewhat hastily; 
 " Charlotte is nervous to an extreme degree, and your sudden 
 arrival was calculated to shake her nerves." 
 
 " Undoubtedly," rejoined the doctor ; " and it is unquestion- 
 able that such a dilatation of the pupil might, under certain 
 circumstances, be occasioned by mental excitement. I am sorry 
 to find that our patient's attacks of dizziness " 
 
 "Which are pur^.ly the effect of fancy," interjected M' 
 r:iolil.,!i.
 
 200 Charlotte's Inheritanee. 
 
 " Wliicli are no doubt, in some measure, attributable to a 
 hypochondriacal condition of mind," continued the doctor in 
 his fat voice. " I am sorry to find that this periodical dizziness 
 has ]>een somewhat increased of late. But here again we must 
 look to Dr. Poseidon. Tepid sea-baths, if they can be managed, 
 in the patient's own room ; and by and by a dip in the waves 
 yonder, may do wonders." 
 
 Yalentine asked no further questions ; and the i^hysiciau 
 dejDai-ted in the St. Leonards fly, to turn his excursion to pro- 
 fitable use by calHng on two or three dowagers in Warrior 
 Square and Marina, who would doubtless be glad of an unex- 
 pected visit from their pet doctor. 
 
 "Well, Hawkehurst," said Mr. Sheldon, when the fly had 
 driven away, " I hope you are satisfied now ? " 
 
 " Satisfied !" cried Yalentine ; " yes, I am satisfied that yom 
 stepdaughter is being murdered!" 
 
 "Murdered!" echoed the stockbroker, his voice thick and 
 faint ; but Yalentine did not heed the change in it. 
 
 " Yes, murdered — sacrificed to the utter incompetence of that 
 old idiot who has just left us." 
 
 Philip Sheldon drew a long breath. 
 
 " ^Vhat ! " he exclaimed ; " do you doubt Doddleson's skill P " 
 
 "Do you believe in it ? Do you ? ISTo ; I cannot think that 
 a man of your keen percejDtion in all other matters — half a 
 medical man yourself — can be the dupe of so shallow an im- 
 postor. And it is to that man's judgment my darhng's life has 
 been confided ; and it is to that man I have looked, with hope 
 and comfort in the thought of his power to save my treasure 1 
 Good God ! what a reed on which to rely ! And of aU the 
 medical men of London, this is the one you have chosen ! " 
 
 " I must really protest against this rant, Hawkehurst," said 
 Philip Sheldon. "I hold myself responsible for the selection 
 which I made, and will not have that selection questioned in 
 this violent and outrageoiis manner by you. Tour anxiety for 
 Charlotte's recovery may excuse a great deal, but it cannot 
 excuse this kind of thing ; and if you cannot command yom-self 
 better, I must beg you to absent yourself from my house until 
 my stepdaughter's recoveiy puts an end to all this fuss." 
 
 "Do you believe in Dr. Doddleson's skill?" asked Yalentine 
 doggedly. He wanted to have that question answered at any 
 cost. 
 
 " Most decidedly I do, with the rest of the medical world. 
 My choice of this gentleman as Charlotte's adviser was governed 
 by his reputation as a safe and conscientious man. His opinions 
 are sound, trustworthy " 
 
 " His opinions !" cned Yalentine with a bitter laugh ; " what 
 in heaven's name do you call his opinions ? The only opinions
 
 Desperale Measures. 201 
 
 I could extract from him to-day were solemn echoes of yours. 
 And the man himself ! I took the measure of him before I 
 asked him a question ; and physiology is a lie if that man ia 
 anything better than an impostor." 
 
 " His position is the answer to that." 
 
 " His position is no answer. He is not the first impostor who 
 /las attained position, and is not likely to be the last. You 
 must forgive me, if I speak with some violence, Mr. Sheldon. 
 I feel too deeply to remember the conventionalities of my 
 position. The dear girl yonder, hovering between life and death, 
 is my promised ^vife. As your stepdaughter she is very dear to 
 you, no doubt, and you are of course anxious to do your duty 
 as her stepfather. But she is all the world to me — my one 
 sweet memory of the past, my sole hope for the future. I will 
 not trust her to the care of Dr. Doddleson ; I claim the right to 
 choose another physician — as that man's coadjutor, if you please. 
 I have no wish to offend the doctor of your choice." 
 
 " This is all sheer nonsense," said Mr. Sheldon. 
 
 " It is nonsense about which you must let me have my own 
 way," replied Valentine, resolutely. " My stake on this hazard 
 is too heavy for careless play. I shall go back to town at once 
 and seek out a physician." 
 
 " Do you know any great man P" 
 
 " No; but I will find one." 
 
 " If you go to-day, you will inevitably alarm Charlotte." 
 
 " True ; and disappoint her into the bargain. I suppose in 
 Buch a case to-moiTow will do as well as to-day ? " 
 
 "Decidedly." 
 
 " I can go by the first train, and return with my doctor in 
 the afternoon. Yes, I will go to-morrow." 
 
 Mr. Sheldon breathed more freely. There are cases in which 
 to obtain time for thought seems the one essential thing — cases 
 in which a reprieve is as good as a pardon. 
 
 " Pray let us consider this business quietly," he said, with a 
 faint sigh of weariness. " There is no necessity for aU this 
 excitement. You can go to town to-morrow, by the fii-st train, 
 as you say. If it is any satisfaction to you to bring down a 
 physician, bring one ; bring half a dozen, if you please. But, 
 for the last time, I most emphatically assure you that any- 
 thing that tends to alarm Charlotte is the one thing of all 
 others most sure to hinder her recovery." 
 
 " I know that. She shall not be Irightened ; but she shall 
 have a better adviser than Dr. Doddleson. And now I will go 
 back to the house. She will wonder at my absence." 
 
 He went to the bright, airy room where Charlotte was 
 seated, her head lying back upon the pillows, her face paler, her 
 glances and tones more languid than on the previous day.
 
 202 Charlotte's Inheritance. 
 
 as it seemed to Yalentine. Diana was near her, solicilotjs 
 and tender; and on the other side of the window sat Mrs. 
 Sheldon, with her Dissenting minister's biography open on 
 her lap. 
 
 All thi'ough that day Valentine Hawkehnrst played his part 
 bravely : it was a hard and bitter part to play — the part of hope 
 and confidence while unutterable fears were rending his heart. 
 He read the epistle and gospel of the day to his betrothed; 
 and afterwards some chapters of St. John — those profoundly 
 mournful chapters that foreshadow the agonising close. It 
 was Charlotte who selected these chapters, and her lover could 
 find no excuse for disputing her choice. 
 
 It was the first time that they had shared any rehgioua 
 exercise, and the hearts of both were deeply touched by the 
 thought of this. 
 
 " How frivolous aU our talk must have been, Valentine, when 
 it seems so new to us to be reading these beautiful words 
 together ? " 
 
 Her head was half supported by the pillows, half resting 
 on her lover's shoulder, and her eyes travelled along the Unes 
 as he read, in a cahn low voice, which was unbroken to the 
 end. 
 
 Early in the evening Charlotte retired, worn out by the day's 
 j)hysical weariness, in spite of Valentine's fond companionship. 
 Later, when it was dusk, Diana came downstairs with the news 
 that the invalid was sleeping quietly. Mrs. Sheldon was dozing 
 in her arm-chair, the Dissenting minister having fallen to the 
 ground; and Valentine was leaning, with folded arms, on the 
 broad window-sill looking out into the shadowy garden. Mr. 
 Sheldon had given them very Httle of his society during that 
 day. He went out immediately after his interview with Valen- 
 tine, on a sea-coast ramble, which lasted till dinner-time. After 
 dinner h© remained in the room where they had dined. He was 
 there now. The Ught of the candles, by which he read hia 
 papers, shone out upon the dusk. 
 
 " "Will you come for a stroU with me, Diana P " asked Valen- 
 tine, 
 
 Miss Paget assented promptly ; and they went out into the 
 garden, beyond the reach of Mr Sheldon's ears, had that gentle- 
 man been disposed to place himself at his open window in the 
 character of a listener. 
 
 " I want to teU you my plans about Charlotte," Valentine 
 began. "I am going to London to-morrow to search for a 
 greater phj^sician than Dr. Doddleson. I shall find my mac 
 in an hour or so ; and, if possible, shall return with him in the 
 evening. There is no apparent reason to anticipate any sudden 
 t'hauge £05 the worse ; but if such a change should take place.
 
 Desperate Measures. 203 
 
 I rely on you, dear, to give me the earliest tidings of it. I 
 suppose you can get a fly here, if you want one P " 
 
 " I can get to St. Leonards, if that is what you mean," Miss 
 Paget answered promptly. " I dare say there is a fly to be 
 had; if not, I can walk there. I am not afraid of a few 
 miles' walk, by day or night. If there should be a change, 
 Valentine — wblch God forbid — I will telegraph the tidings of 
 it to you." 
 
 "You had better address the message to me at Kancy's, 
 Covent Garden ; the house where the Ragamufiius have their 
 rooms, you know, dear. That is a more central point than my 
 lodgings, and nearer the terminus. I will call there two or 
 three times in the course of the day." 
 
 " You may trust my vigilance, Valentine. I did not think 
 it was in my nature to love any one as I love Chai-lotte Halli- 
 day." 
 
 Gustave Lenoble's letters lying unanswered in her desk 
 asserted the all-absorbing nature of Diana's aflFection for the 
 fading girl. She was fading. The consciousness of this made 
 all other love sacrilege, as it seemed to Diana. She sat up 
 late that night to answer Gustavo's last letter of piteous 
 complaint. 
 
 " She had forgotten him. Ah, that he had been foolish — 
 insensate — to confide himself in her love ! Was he not old and 
 crey in comparison to such youth — such freshness — a venerable 
 uotard of thirty-five ? What had he with dreams of love and 
 marriage? Fie, then. He humiliated himself in the dust 
 beneath her mignon feet. He invited her to crush him with 
 those cruel feet. But if she did not answer his letters, he 
 would come to Harold's Hill. He would mock himself of that 
 ferocious Sheldon — of a battahon of Sheldons still more ferocious 
 — of all the world, at last — to be near her." 
 
 " Beheve me, dear Gustave, I do not forget," wrote Diana, in 
 reply to these serio-comic remonstrances. " I was truly sorry 
 to leave town, on your account and on my father's. But my 
 dear adopted sister is paramount with me now. You will not 
 gnidge her my care or my love, for she may not long be with 
 me to claim them. There is nothing but sorrow here in aU our 
 hearts; sorrow, and an ever-present dread."
 
 204 Charlotte' 9 Inheritance, 
 
 go0h i\t €x%\i\' 
 
 A FIGHT AGAINST TIMR 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 A DKEJLD KEVELATION. 
 
 TirE early fast train by whicli Yalentine Hawkeliurst trareUed 
 brouglit him into town at a quarter past nine o'clock. During 
 the journey he had been meditating on the way in which he 
 should set to work when he arrived in London. No ignorance 
 could be more profound than his on all points relating to the 
 medical profession. Dimly floating in his brain there were the 
 names of doctors whom he had heard of as celebrated men — one 
 for the chest, another for the liver, another for the skin, another 
 for the eyes ; but, among all these famous men, who was the man 
 best able to cope with the mysterious wasting away, the gradual, 
 almost imiDerceptible ebbing of that one dear life which Valentine 
 wanted to save ? 
 
 This question must be answered by some one ; and Valentino 
 was sorely jmzzled as to who that some one miist be. 
 
 The struggling young writer had but few friends. He had, 
 indeed, worked too hard for the possibility of friendship. The 
 cultivation of the severer Muses is rarely compatible with a wide 
 circle of acquaintances; and Valentine, if not a cultivator of 
 these severe ones, had been a hard and honest worker during the 
 later reputable portion of his life. His friendship's of the pre- 
 vious portion had been the friendships of the railway-carriage 
 and the smoking room, the cafe and the gaming-table. He 
 could count upon his fingers the people to whom he could apply 
 for counsel in this crisis of his hfe. There was George Sheldon, 
 a man for whom he entertained a most profound contempt ; 
 Captain Paget, a man who might or might not be able to give 
 him good advice, but who would inevitably sacrifice Charlotte 
 Halliday's welfare to self-interest, if self-interest could be served 
 by the recommendation of an incompetent adviser. 
 
 " He would send me to some idiot of the Doddleson class, if ho 
 thought he could get a guinea or a dinner by the recommenda- 
 tion," Valentine said to himself, and decided that to Horatio 
 Paget he would not apply. There were his employers, the 
 editors and poprietors of the magazines for which he worked •,
 
 A Dread Hedelatiorl 205 
 
 all busy over-burdened workers in the great mill, spending tho 
 Bunny hours of their lives between a pile of unanswered letters 
 and a wayte-i)aper basket ; men who would tell him to look in 
 the Post-office Directory, without lifting their eyes from the 
 pa]ier over which their restless pens were s]ieiHli7ig. 
 
 No. Amongst these was not the counsellor whom Valentine 
 Hawkehurst needed in this dire hour of difficulty. 
 
 " There are some very good felllows among the Ragamuffins," 
 he said to himself, as he thought of the only Uterary and artistii* 
 club of which he was a member ; " fellows who stuck by me 
 when I was down in the world, and who would do anything to 
 eerve me now they know me for an honest worker. But, i:nfor- 
 tunately, farce writers and burlesque writers, and young meer- 
 schaum-smoking painters, are not the sort of men to give good 
 advice : I want the advice of a medical man." 
 
 Mr. Hawkehurst almost bounded from his seat as he said this. 
 The advice of a medical man ? Yes ; and was there not a medi- 
 cal man among the Eagamuffins ? and something more than a 
 medical man ? That very doctor, who of all other men upon 
 this earth could best give him counsel — the doctor who had 
 stood by the deathbed of Charlotte Halhday's father. 
 
 He remembered the conversation that had occun-ed at Bays- 
 water, on the evening of Christmas day, upon this very subject. 
 He remembered how from the talk about ghosts they had drifted 
 somehow into talking of Tom Halliday ; whereupon Mrs. Shel- 
 don had been melted to tears, and had gone on to praise Philip 
 Sheldon's conduct to his dying friend, and to speak of Mr. Burk- 
 ham, the strange doctor, called in too late to save, or, it might 
 have been, incapable to save. 
 
 " Sheldon seems to have a genius for calling in incapable 
 doctors," he thought bitterly. 
 
 Incapable as Mr. Burkham might have been for the exigencies 
 of this particular case, he would at least be able to inform 
 Valentine who among the medical celebrities of London would 
 be best adapted to advise in such an illness as Charlotte Halli- 
 day's. 
 
 "And if, as Diana has sometimes suggested, there ia any 
 hereditaiy disease, this Burkham may be able to throw some 
 hght upon the nature of it," thought Valentine. 
 
 He went straight from the railway terminus to the quiet tavern 
 upon the first floor of which the Eagamuffins had their j^lace of 
 rendezvous. It was not an hour for the encounter of many 
 Ragamuffins. A meek-looking young man, of clerical aspect, 
 who had adapted a Palais Eoyal farce, and had awoke in the 
 morning to find himself famous, and eligible for admission 
 amongst the Eagamuffins, was sijiping his sherry and soda- 
 water while he skimmed the morning papers. Him Mr. Hawk©-
 
 208 Gharlott^s InJieritance. 
 
 htu'st saluted witli an absent nod, and went in search of til<i 
 steward of tlie club, from whom he obtained Mr. Burkham'a 
 address, with some little trouble in the way of hunting through 
 old and obscure documents. 
 
 It was the old address; the old dingy, comfortable, mufBn- 
 bell-haunted street in which Mr. Burkliam had lived ten years 
 before, when he was summoned to attend the sick Yorkshire 
 farmer. 
 
 Mr. Burkham's career had not been brightened by the sun- 
 Bhine of prosperity. He had managed to live somehow, and to 
 find food and raiment for his young wife, who, when she con- 
 sidered the lilies of the field, may have envied their shining 
 robes of pure whiteness, so dingy and dark was her own apparel. 
 When children came, the young surgeon contrived to find food 
 and raiment for them also, but not without daily and hourly 
 struggles with that grim wolf who haunts the thresholds of so 
 many dwellings, and will not be thi'ust from the door. Some- 
 times a Httle glimmering ray of light illumined Mr. Burkham's 
 pathway, and he was humbly grateful to Providence for the 
 brief glimpse of sunshine. But for a meek fair-faced man, with 
 a nervous desire to do well, a very poor opinion of liis own 
 merits, and a diffident, not to say depressed manner, the world 
 is apt to be a hard battle-ground. 
 
 Mr. Burkham sometimes found himself well-nigh beaten in 
 the cruel strife ; and at such times, in the dead silence of the 
 night, with mortal agonies, and writhings as of Pythoness upon 
 tripod, Mr. Burkham gave himself up to the composition of a 
 farce, adapted, not from the French, but from his memories of 
 Wright and Bedford in the jovial old student days, when the 
 pit of the Adelplii Theatre had been the pleasant resort of big 
 evenings. He could no longer afi'ord the luxury of theatrical 
 entertainments, except when provided with a free admission. 
 But fiom the hazy reminiscences floating in his poor tired brain 
 he concocted little pieces which he fondly hoped might win him 
 money and fame. 
 
 With much effort and interest he contrived to get himself 
 elected a Ragamuifin ; believing that to be a Ragmufiin was to 
 secure a position as a dramatic writer. But with one or two 
 fortunate exceptions, his pieces were refused. The managers 
 woi;ld not have the poor little feeble phantasmagoria of bygone 
 fun, even supported by the whole clan of Ragamuffins. So Mr. 
 Burkham had gradually melted into the dimness of Bloomsbury, 
 and haunted the club-room of *he Ragamuffins no more. 
 
 A hansom carried Yalentine Hawkehurst swiftly to these 
 regions of Bloomsbury. It was no time for the saving of cab- 
 hhe. The soldier of fortune thought no longer of his nest-egga 
 — his Unitas Bank deposit-notes. He was fighting with time
 
 A Dread Bevelalion. 20> 
 
 6nd with death ; foes dire and dreadful, against whose encroach- 
 ments the sturdiest of mortal warriors can make but a feeble 
 stand. He found the dingy-looldng house in the dingy-looking 
 street ; and the humble drudge who opened the door informed 
 him that Mr. Burkham was at home, and ushered him into a 
 darksome and di-eary surgery at the back of the house, where a 
 phi-enological head, considerably the worse for London smoke, 
 surmounted a dingy bookcase filled with the dingiest of books. 
 A table, upon which were a blotting-book and inkstand, and two 
 shabby horsehair chairs, composed the rest of the furniture. 
 Valentine sent his card to the surgeon, and seated himself on one 
 of the horsehair chairs, to await that gentleman's appearance. 
 
 He came after a brief delay, which seemed long to his visitor. 
 He came from regions in the back of the house, rubbing his 
 hands, which seemed to have been newly washed, and the odour 
 of senna and aloes hung about his garments. 
 
 " I doubt if you remember my name, Mr. Burkham," said 
 Valentine ; " but you and I are members of the same club, and 
 that a club among the members of which considerable good 
 feeling prevails. 1 come to ask a favour" — Mr. Burkham winced, 
 for this sounded like genteel begging, and for genteel beggars 
 this straggling surgeon had no spare cash — "which it will 
 scarcely cause you a moment's thought to grant. I am in great 
 distress" — Mr. Burkham winced again, for this sounded still 
 more like begging — "mental distress" — Mr. Burkham gave a 
 little sigh of rehef — "and I come to you for advice." Mr. 
 Burkham gave a more profound sigh of relief. 
 
 " I can assure you that my best advice is at your command," 
 he said, seatin_^ himself, and motioning to his visitor to be seated. 
 " I am beginnmg to remember yoiir face amongst the members 
 of the club, though the name on your card did not strike me as 
 familiar. You see, I have never been able to afi'ord much time 
 for relaxation at the Ragamufiins', though I assure you I found 
 the agreeable conversation there, the literary 072. ilits, and so on, 
 a very great relief. But my own httle eff'orts in the dramatic 
 line were not successful, and I found myself compelled to devote 
 myself more to my profession. And now I have said quite 
 enough about myself; let me hear how I can be useful to 
 you." 
 
 " In the first place, let me ask you a question. Do you know 
 anything of a certain Dr. Doddleson?" 
 
 " Of Plantagcnet Square ?" 
 
 " Yes ; of Plantagenet Square." 
 
 " "Well, not much, I have heard him called Dowager Doddle- 
 Bon ; and I beUeve he is very popular among hypochondriac old 
 la^lies who have more money than they know what to do with, 
 and very little common sense to regulate their disposal of it."
 
 208 C]iarloUe'"8 Inheritance. 
 
 " Is Dr. Doddleson a man to wliom you would Intrust the life 
 of your dearest friend?" 
 
 " Most emphatically no !" cried tlie surgeon, growing red with 
 excitement. 
 
 " Very well, Mr. Burkham ; my dearest friend, a young lady — 
 well, in plain truth, the woman who was to have been my wife, 
 and whom I love as it is not the lot of every jiilighted wife to be 
 loved- — this dear girl has been wasting away for the last two or 
 three months under the influence of an inscrutable malady, and 
 Dr. Doddleson is the only man called to attend her in all that 
 time." 
 
 "A mistake!" said Mr. Burkbam, gravely; "a very great 
 mistake ! Dr. Doddleson hves in a fine square, and drives a 
 fine caiTiage, and has a reputation amongst the class I have 
 spoken of; but he is about the last man I would consult as to 
 the health of any one dear to me." 
 
 " That is precisely the opinion which I formed after ten 
 minutes' conversation with him. I^ow, what I want from you, 
 Mr. Burkham, is the name and address of the man to whom I 
 can intrust this dear girl's Hfe." 
 
 " Let me see. There are so many men, you know, and great 
 men. Is it a case of consumption ?" 
 
 "No, thank God!" 
 
 " Heart-disease, perhaps P" 
 
 " ISTo ; there is no organic disease. It is a languor — a wasting 
 away." 
 
 Mr. Burkham suggested other diseases whereof the outward 
 sign was languor and wasting. 
 
 " No," replied Valentine ; "according to Dr. Doddleson there 
 is actually no disease — nothing but this extreme 2:)rostration — 
 this gradual vanishing of vital power. And now I come to 
 another point upon which I want your advice. It has been 
 suggested that this constitutional weakness may be inherited; 
 and here I think you can help me." 
 
 "How so?" 
 
 " You attended the lady's father." 
 
 "Indeed!" cried Mr. Burkham, dehghted. "This is really 
 interesting. In what year did I attend this gentleman ? If you 
 will allow me, I will refer to some of my old case-books." 
 
 He di-ew out a clumsy drawer in the clumsy table, in order to 
 hunt for old memoranda. 
 
 " I am not quite certain as to the year," answered Valentine ; 
 " but it was more than ten years ago. The gentleman died close 
 by here, in Fitzgeorge Street. His name was Halliday." 
 
 Mr. Burkham had drawn out the drawer to its farthest extent. 
 As Valentine pronounced this name, he let it drop to the ground 
 with a crash, and sat, statue-hke, staring at the speaker. AH
 
 A Dread Hevdatlon. 209 
 
 other names given to mortal man he might forget; but this one 
 never. "Valentine saw the sudden horror in his face, before he 
 could recompose his features into something of their conveu' 
 tional aspect. 
 
 " Yes," he said, looking down at the fallen drawer with its 
 scattered papers and case-boolcs, " yes, I have some recollection 
 of the name of Ilalliday." 
 
 " Some very strange and agitating recollection it would seem 
 by your manner, Mr. Burkham," said Valentine, at once assured 
 that there was something more than common in the surgeon's 
 look and gesture ; and determined to fathom the mystery, let it 
 be what it might. 
 
 " dear no," said the surgeon nervously ; " I was not agitated, 
 only surprised. It was surprising to me to hear the name of a 
 patient so long forgotten. And so the lady to whom you are 
 engaged is a daughter of Mr, HalUday's'p The wife — Mrs. 
 HaUiday — is still living, I suppose?" 
 
 " Yes ; but the lady who was then Mrs. HaUiday is now Mrs. 
 Sheldon." 
 
 " Of course ; he married her," said Mr. Burkham. " Yes ; I 
 remember hearing of the marriage." 
 
 He had tried in vain to recover his old composure. He was 
 white to the lips, and his hand shook as he tried to arrange hia 
 scattered jDapers. 
 
 "What does it mean?" thought Valentine. "Mrs. Sheldon 
 talked of this man's inexperience. Can it be that his incom- 
 petency lost the hfe of his patient, and that he knows it was 
 so?" 
 
 " Mrs. HaUiday is now Mrs. Sheldon," repeated the surgeon, 
 in a feeble manner. '_' Yes, I remember ; and Mr. Sheldon — the 
 dentist, who at that time resided in Fitzgeortje Street — is he still 
 bving?" 
 
 " He is still living. It was he who called in Dr. Doddleson to 
 attend upon Miss HaUiday. As her stepfather, he has some 
 amount of authority, you see ; not legal authority — for my dear 
 girl is of age— but social authority. He called in Doddleson, 
 and appears to place confidence in him ; and as he is something 
 of a medical man hiniKelf, and pretends to understand Miss 
 Halliday's case thoroughly " 
 
 "Stop!" cried Mr. Burkham, suddenly abandoning aU pre- 
 tence of calmness. "Has he— Sheldon — any interest in hia 
 stepdaughter's death?" 
 
 "No, certainly not. All her father's money went to him 
 upon his marriage with her mother,, He can gain nothing by 
 her death ; on the contrary, he may lose a good deal, for she ig 
 the heir-at-law to a large fortune." 
 
 " And if she dies, that fortune will go .'*
 
 210 Charlotte s Inheritance. 
 
 " I really don't know where it will go," Valentine answered 
 carelessly : lie thouglit the subject was altogether beside the 
 question of Mr. Burkham's agitation, and it was the cause of 
 that agitation which he was anxious to discover. 
 
 " If Mr. Sheldon can gain by his stei^daughter's death, fear 
 him!" exclaimed the surgeon, with sudden passion; "fear him 
 as you would fear death itself — worse than death, for death ia 
 neither so stealthy nor so treacherous as he is ! " 
 
 " What in Heaven's name do you mean ?" 
 
 " That which I thought my lips would never utter to mortal 
 hearing — that which I dare not publicly proclaim, at the hazard 
 of taking the bread out of the mouths of my wife and children. 
 I have kept this hateful secret for eleven years — through many 
 a sleepless night and dreary day. I will tell it to you ; for it 
 there is another Hfe in peril, that life shall be lost through no 
 cowardice of mine." 
 
 " What secret ? " cried Valentine. 
 
 " The secret of that poor fellow's death. My God ! I can 
 remember the clasp of his hand, and the friendly look of his 
 eyes, the day before he died. He was poisoned by Philip 
 Sheldon!" 
 
 " You must be mad !" gasped Valentine, in a faint voice. 
 
 For one moment of astonishment and incredulity he thought 
 this man must needs be a fool or a lunatic, so wildly improbable 
 did the accusation seem. But in the next instant the curtain 
 was lifted, and he knew that PhiHp Sheldon was a villain, and 
 knew that he had never wholly trusted him. 
 
 "Never until to-day have I told this secret," said the sur- 
 geon ; " not even to my wife. ' 
 
 " I thank you," answered Valentine, in the same faint voice; 
 " with all my heart, I thank y«ni." 
 
 Yes, the curtain was lifted. This mysterious illness, this slow 
 silent decay of bloom and beauty, by a j^rocess inscrutable as 
 the devilry of mediaeval poisoner or Hecate- serving witch — this 
 was murder. Murder ! The disease, which had hitherto been 
 nameless, had found its name at last. It was all clear now. 
 PhiHp Sheldon's anxiety; the selection of an utterly incom- 
 petent adviser ; certain looks and tones that had for a moment 
 mj^stified liim, and had been forgotten in the next, came back 
 to him with a strange distinctness, with all their hidden meaning 
 made clear and plain as the broad Hght of day. 
 
 But the motive? What motive coiJd prompt the slow de- 
 struction of that innocent life ? A fortune was at stake, it is 
 true ; but that fortune, as Valentine understood the busim as, 
 depended on the life of Charlotte Halliday. Beyond this point 
 ne had never looked. In all his consideration of the cii-cum- 
 stan^es relating to the Haygarthian estate, he had neve^
 
 A Dread Bcvdation. 21? 
 
 thought of what might happen in the event of Charlotte's 
 decease. 
 
 " It is a diabolical mystery," he said to himself. " There can 
 be no motive — none. To destroy Thomas Halhday was to cleat 
 his way to fortune ; to destroy Charlotte is to destroy his chance 
 of fortune." 
 
 And then he remembered the dark speeches of George Shel- 
 don. 
 
 " My God ! and this was what he meant, as plainly as he 
 dared tell me ! He did tell me that his brother was an unutter- 
 able scoundrel ; and I turned a deaf ear to his warning, because 
 it suited my own interest to believe that villain. For her dear 
 sake I beUeved him. I would have believed in Beelzebub, if 
 he had promised me her dear hand. And I let myself be duped 
 Vy the lying promise, and left my darling in the power of 
 IJeclzebub!" 
 
 Thoughts followed each other swift as lightning through hia 
 overwrought brain. It seemed but a moment that he had been 
 sitting with his clenched hands pressed against his forehead, 
 when he turned suddenly upon the surgeon. 
 
 " For God's sake, help me, guide me ! " he said. " You have 
 struck a blow that has numbed my senses. What am I to do ? 
 My future wife is in that man's keeping — dying, as I beheve. 
 How am I to save her ? " 
 
 "I cannot tell you. You may take the cleverest man in 
 London to see her ; but it is a question if that man will perceive 
 the danger so clearly as to take prompt measures. In these 
 cases there is always room for doubt ; and a man would rather 
 doubt his o^vn perceptions than believe the hellish truth. It is 
 by this natui"al hesitation so many hves are lost. While the 
 doctor deliberates, the patient dies. And then, if the secret 
 of the death transpires — by circumstantial evidence, perhaps, 
 which never came to the doctor's knowledge, — there is a public 
 outcry. The doctor's practice is ruined, and his heart broken. 
 The outcry would have been stiU louder if he had told the truth 
 in time to save the patient, and had not been able to prove his 
 words. You think me a coward and a scoundrel because I dared 
 not utter my suspicion when I saw Mr. Halliday dying. While 
 it was only a suspicion it would have been certain ruin for raa 
 to give utterance to it. The day came when it was almi.€t a 
 conviction. I went back to that man Sheldon's house, deter- 
 mined to insist upon the calUng in of a physician who would 
 have made that conviction certainty. My resolution came too 
 late. It is possible that Sheldon had perceived my suspicions, 
 and had hastened matters. My patient was dead before I 
 reached the house." 
 
 "How am I to save herP" reoeated Valentine, with the same
 
 212 Cluirloites l/iltcrilance. 
 
 liel])lcss manner. He could not bring himself to consider Tom 
 Halliday's death. The subject was too far away from him — 
 remote as the dim shadows of dejDarted centuries. In all the 
 universe there were but two figures standing out in lurid bright- 
 ness against the dense night of chaos — a helpless girl held in the 
 clutches of a secret assassin ; and it was his work to rescue her. 
 
 "What am I to do?" he asked. "Tell me what I am to 
 do." 
 
 " Wliat it may be wisest to do I cannot teU you," answered 
 Mr. Burkham, almost as helplessly as the other had asked the 
 (juestion. " I can give you the name of the best man to get to 
 the bottom of such a case — a man who gave evidence on the 
 Fryar trial — Jedd. You have heard of Jedd, I daresay. You 
 had better go straight to Jedd, and take him down with you to 
 Miss Halliday. His very name will frighten Sheldon." 
 
 " I will go at once. Stay — the address ! Where am. I to 
 find Dr. Judd?" 
 
 ' In Burlington Row. But there is one thing to be consi- 
 dered." 
 
 "What?" 
 
 "The interference of Jedd may only make that man des- 
 perate. He may hasten matters now as he hastened matters 
 before. If you had seen his coolness at that time ; if you had 
 seen him, as I saw him, standing by that poor fellow's death- 
 bed, comforting him — yes, with friendly speeches — laughing 
 and joking, watching the agonising pain and the miserable sick- 
 ness, and all the dreary wretchedness of such a death, and 
 never swerving from his work ; if you had seen him, you would 
 understand why I am afraid to advise you. That man was as 
 desperate as he was cool when he murdered his friend. He 
 will be more reckless this time." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 "Because he has reached a higher stage in the science of 
 murder. The symptoms of that poor Yorkshireman were the 
 symptoms of arsenical poisoning ; the symptoms of which you 
 have told nie to-day denote a vegetable poison. That affords 
 very vague diagnosis, and leaves no trace. That was the agent 
 which enabled the Borgias to decimate Eome. It is older than 
 classic Greece, and simple as a 6 c, and will remain so until the 
 medical expert is a i-ecognized oiBcer of the law, the faithful 
 guardian of the bed over which the suspected poisoner loiters 
 • — past-master of the science in which the murderer is rarely 
 more than an exiDcrimentalist, and protected from all the hazarda 
 of plain sjoeaking by the nature of his ofiice." 
 
 *' Great Heaven, now am I to save her ? " exclaimed Yalentine. 
 He could not contemplate the subject in its broad social aspect; 
 he could only think of tlus one dear life at stake. "To seud
 
 A Dread lircrlation. 213 
 
 this Dr, Jedd mii^lit be to hasten her death; to send a less 
 etHcicnt man wouKl be mere childishness. What shall I do?" 
 
 He looked despairingly at the surgeon, and in that one glance 
 perceived what a frail reed this was upon which he was leaning. 
 And then, like the sudden gleam of lightning, a name flashed 
 across his mind, — George Sheldon, the lawyer, the schemer, 
 the man who of all the world best knew this vile enemy and 
 assassin against whom he was matched ; he it was of whom 
 counsel should be asked in this crisis. Once perceiving this, 
 Valentine was prompt to act. It was the first flash of light in 
 the darkness, 
 
 " Yon mean to stand by me in this, don't you P " he asked 
 Mr. Burkham. 
 
 " With all my heart and soul." 
 
 " Good. Then you must go to Dr. Jedd instantly. Tell him 
 all you know — Tom Halliday's death; the symptoms of Char- 
 lotte's decline, as you have heard them from me — everything ; 
 and let him hold himself in readiness to start for Hastings 
 directly he hears from or sees me. I am going to a man who 
 of all men can tell me how to deal with Philip Sheldon. I 
 shall ivj to be in Burlington Row in an hour from this time ; 
 but in any case you will wait there till I come. I suppose, in a 
 desperate case hke this, Dr. Jedd will put aside all less urgent 
 work?" 
 
 " No doubt of that." 
 
 " I trust to you to secure his sympathy," said Valentine. 
 
 He was in the darksome entrance-hall by this time. Mr. 
 Burkham followed, and opened the door for him. 
 
 " Have no fear of me," he said. " Good bye." 
 
 The two men shook hands with a grip significant as masonic 
 Bign-manual. It meant on the one part hearty co-operation, on 
 the other impUcit confidence. In the next moment Valentine 
 sprang into the cab. 
 
 " King's Road— entrance to Gray's Inn, and drive like mad ! " 
 he shouted to the driver. The hansom rattled across the stones, 
 dashed round corners, struck consternation to scudding children 
 in pinafores, all but annihilated more than one perambulator, 
 and in less than ten minutes after leaving Mr. Burkham's door, 
 ground against the kerbstone before the little gate of Gray's 
 Inn. 
 
 " God grant that George Sheldon may be at home !" Valentine 
 Baid to himself, as he hun-ied towards that gentleman's ottice. 
 George Sheldon was at home. In this fight against time, Mr. 
 Eawkehiirst had so far found the odds in his favour. 
 
 ** Bless my soul!" exclaimed the lawyer, looking up from hia 
 desk, as Valentine appeared on the threshold of the door, pale 
 Hid breathless ; " to -what do I owe the unusual honour of a
 
 214 Charlotte's Inheritance. 
 
 \dsit from Mr. Hawkehurst ? I thought that rising litterateur 
 had cut all old acquaintances, and gone in for the uppei 
 circles." 
 
 " I have come to you on a matter of life and death, George 
 Sheldon," said Valentine ; " this is no time to talk of why I 
 haven't been to you before. When you and I last met, you 
 advised me to beware of your brother Philip. It wasn't the 
 first, or the second, or the third time that you so warned me. 
 And now speak out hke an honest man, and tell me what you 
 meant by that warning ? For God's sake, speak plainly this 
 time." 
 
 " I cannot afford to speak more plainly than I have spoken 
 half a dozen times already. I told you to beware of my brother 
 Phil, and I meant that warning in its fullest significance. 
 If you had chosen to take my advice, you would have jDlaced 
 Charlotte Halhday's fortune, and Charlotte Halliday herself, 
 beyond his power, by an immediate marriage. You didn't 
 choose to do that, and there was an end of the matter. I have 
 been a heavy loser by your pigheaded obstinacy ; and I dare say 
 before you and Phil Sheldon have done with each other, you too 
 will find yourself a loser." 
 
 " God help me, yes ! " cried Valentine, with a groan ; " I stand 
 to make the heaviest loss that was ever made by man." 
 
 " What do you mean ? " exclaimed George. 
 
 " Shall I tell you what you meant when you warned me 
 against your own brother ? ShaU I tell you why you so 
 warned me? You know that Philip Sheldon murdered Tom 
 Halliday." 
 
 " Great God ! " , 
 
 "Yes; the secret is out. You knew it; how or when you 
 discovered it I cannot tell. You knew of that one hellish 
 crime, and would have prevented the commission of a second 
 mujrder. You should have spoken more plainly. To know what 
 you knew, and to confine yourself to cautious hints and vagua 
 suggestions, as you did, was to have part in that devilish work. 
 If Charlotte Halliday dies, her blood be upon youi- head — upon 
 yours — as well as upon his !" 
 
 The young man had risen in his passion, and stood before 
 George Sheldon with uplifted hands, and eyes that flashed angry 
 lightnings. It seemed almost as if he would have called down 
 the Divine vengeance upon this man's head. 
 
 "Ijf Charlotte Halliday dies!" repeated George, in a horror- 
 gtricken whisjaer ; " why should you suggest such a thing ? " 
 
 " Because she is dying." 
 
 There was a pause. Valentine flung himself passionately 
 upon the chair from which he had just risen, with his back to 
 George Sheldon, and his face bent over the back of the chajy.
 
 A Dread llevelation. 213 
 
 The lawyer sat looking straight before him, with a ghastly 
 countenance. 
 
 " I told, him he meant this" he said to himself, in a hoarse 
 whisper. " I told him in this office not six months ago. Powers 
 of hell, what a villain he is! And there are people who do 
 not believe there is a devil ! " 
 
 For a few moments Valentine gave free vent to his passion 
 of grief. These tears of rage, of agony the most supreme, 
 were the first he had shed since he had bent his face over 
 Charlotte's soft brown hair, to hide the evidence of his sorrow. 
 When he had dashed these bitter drops away from his burning 
 eyes, he turned to confront George Sheldon, pale as death, but 
 very calm. And after this he gave way no more to his passion. 
 He was matched against Time, of all enemies the most pitiless 
 and unrelenting, and every minute wasted was a point scored by 
 his foe. 
 
 " I want your help, George Sheldon," he said. " If you have 
 ever been sorry that you made no effort to save Charlotte 
 Halliday's father, prove yourself his friend by trying to save 
 her." 
 
 "If 1 have ever been sorry !" echoed the lawyer. " Why, my 
 miserable dreams have never been free from the horror of that 
 man's face. You don't know what it is — murder ! Nobody 
 knows who hasn't been concerned in it. You read of mui-ders 
 in your newspapers. A shot B, or C poisoned D, and so on, all 
 through the letters of the alphabet, with a fresh batch for every 
 Sunday ; but it never comes home to you. You think of the 
 horror of it ia a shadowy kind of way, as you might think of 
 having a snake twisted round your waist anfl legs, like that 
 blessed man and boys one never sees the last of. But if you 
 were to look at that plaster cast all your life, you couldn't 
 realize ten per cent, of the horror you'd feel if the snake wag 
 there, alive, crushing your bones, and hissing in your ear. I 
 have been face to face with murder, Valentine Hawkehurst; 
 and if I were to live a century, I should never forget what 
 I felt when I stood by Tom Halliday's deathbed, and it 
 flashed upon me, all at once, that my brother Plul was i^oisomng 
 him." 
 
 "And you did not try to save him — ^your friend?" cried 
 Valentine. 
 
 " "Why, you see," replied the other, in a strange slow way, " it 
 was too late to save him : I knew that, and — I held my tongue. 
 What could I do ? Against my own brother ! That sort of 
 thing in a family is ruin for oveiy one ! Do you think anybody 
 would have brout,fht their business to me after my brother had 
 stood in the Old Bailey dock to take his trial for murder ? No ; 
 tiiy only course was to keep mj own counsel, and I kept it. Phil
 
 216 Cliarloltes Infieritance. 
 
 made eighteen thousand pounds by his marriage with poor Tom's 
 widow, and a j^altry hundred or two is all I ever touched of that 
 money." 
 
 " And you could touch that money? " cried Yalentine, aghast. 
 
 " Money can-ies no infection. Did you ever ask any questions 
 about the money you won at German gaming-tables. I dare 
 say some of your napoleons and ten-thaler notes could have 
 told queer stories if they had been able to talk. Taking Phil's 
 money has never weighed upon my conscience. I'm not very 
 inqmsitive about the antecedents of a five-pound note ; but I'll 
 tell you what it is, Havvkehurst, I'd give all I have, and all I 
 ever hope to have, and would go out and sweep a crossing 
 to-morrow, if I could get Tom Halliday's face out of my mind, 
 with the look that he turned ujDon me the last time I saw him. 
 'Ah, George,' he said, 'in illness a man feels the comfort of 
 being among friends ! ' And he took my hand and squeezed it, 
 in his old hearty way. We had been boys together, Hawkehurst, 
 birds-nesting in Hyley Woods ; on the same side in our Barhng- 
 tbrd cricket-matches. And I shook his hand, and went away, 
 and left him to die ! " 
 
 And here Mr. Sheldon of Gray's Inn, the Sheldon who was 
 in with the money-lenders, sharpest of legal prestigiators, most 
 ruthless of opponents, most unscrupulous of alUes, buried his 
 face in a flaming bandanna, and fairly sobbed aloud. When the 
 passion had passed, he got up and walked hastily to the window, 
 more ashamed of this one touch of honest emotion than of all 
 the falsehoods and chicaneries of his career. 
 
 " I didn't think I could have been such an ass," he muttered 
 sheepishly. 
 
 " I did not hope that you could feel so deeply," answered 
 Valentine. " And now help me to save the only cliild of your 
 ill-fated friend. I am sure that you can help me." 
 
 Without waiting to be questioned, Valentine related the 
 circumstances of Charlotte's illness, and of his interview with 
 Mr. Burkham. 
 
 " I did not even know that the poor girl was ill," said George 
 Sheldon. " I have not seen Phil for months. He came here 
 one day, and I gave him a bit of my mind. I told him if he 
 tried to harm her I'd let the light in upon him and his doings. 
 And I'll keep my word." 
 
 " But his motive ? ^\^^at, in the name of Heaven, can be his 
 motive for taking her innocent life? He knows of the 
 Haygarth estate, and must hope to profit by her fortune if she 
 lives." 
 
 " Yes, and to secure the whole of that fortune if she dies. 
 Her death would make her mother sole heir to that estate, and 
 *he mother is the mereat tool in his hands. He may even have
 
 A Dread Uevelaliojl. 217 
 
 indnced Charlotte to make a will in his favour, so tliat he hliu- 
 Belf may stand in her shoes." 
 
 " She would not have made a will without telling me of it." 
 
 " You don't know that. My brother Phil can do anything. 
 It would be as easy for him to persuade her to maintain secrecy 
 about the transaction as to persuade her to make the will. Do 
 you suppose he shrinks from multiplying lies and forgeries and 
 hyijocrisies ? Do you suppose anything in that small way comes 
 amiss to the man who has once brought his mind to murder ? 
 Why, look at the Scotch play of that fellow Shakespeare's. At 
 the beginning, your Macbeth is a respectable trustworthy sort of 
 person, anxious to get on in Ufe, and so on, and that's all ; but 
 no sooner has he made an end of poor old Duncan, than he lays 
 about him right and left — ^Banquo, Fleance, anybody and every- 
 body that happens to be in his way. It was lucky for that 
 Tartar of a wife of his that she hook'd it, or he'd soon have put 
 a stop to her sleep-walking. There's no such wide difference 
 between a man and a tiger, after all. The tiger's a decent fellow 
 enough tiU he has tasted human blood; but when once he has. 
 Lord save the country-side from the jaws of the man-eater ! " 
 
 _" For Heaven's sake let us waste no time in talk ! " Valentine 
 <ried, impetuously. " I am to meet Burkham in Burlington 
 Row directly I have got your advice." 
 
 "What for?" 
 
 " To see Dr. Jedd, and take him down to Hastinccs, if pos- 
 ■ible." 
 
 " That won't do." 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 " Because Jedd's appearance would give PhU the ofEce. Jedd 
 gave evidence on the Fryar trial, and must be a marked man to 
 him. AU Jedd can tell you is that Charlotte is being poisoned. 
 You know that already. Of course she'll want medical treat- 
 ment, and so on, to bring her round ; but she can't get that 
 under my brother's roof. What you have to do is to get her 
 away from that house." 
 
 " You do not know how ill she is. I doubt if she could bear 
 the removal." 
 
 " Anything is better than to remain. That is certain death." 
 
 " But your brother would surely dispute her removal." 
 
 " He would, and oppose it inch by inch. We must get him 
 away, before we attempt to remove her." 
 
 " How ? " 
 
 "I will find the means for that. I know something of his 
 business relations, and can invent some false cry for luring him 
 off the trail. We must get him away. The poor gii-1 was not 
 in actual danger when you left her, was she ? " 
 
 "No, thank God, there was no appearance of immediate
 
 218 CliaiHottes Xnherihinee, 
 
 danger. But ste was very ill. And tliat man holds her life iu 
 his hand. He knows that I have come to London in search of 
 a doctor. What if " 
 
 " Keep yourself quiet, Hawkehurst. He will not hasten her 
 death unless he is desperate ; for a death occurring immediately 
 after your first expression of alarm would seem sudden. He'll 
 avoid any appearance of suddenness, if he can, depend upon it: 
 The first thing is to get him away. But the question is, how tc 
 do it ? There must be a bait. What bait ? Don't talk to me, 
 Hawkehurst. Let me think it out, if I can." 
 
 The lawyer leaned his elbows on the table, and abandoned 
 himself to profound cogitation, with his forehead supported by 
 his clenched hands. Yalentine waited patiently while he thus 
 cogitated. 
 
 " I must go down to Phil's office," he said at last, " and ferret 
 out some of his secrets. Nothing but stock-exchange business, 
 of an important character, would induce him to leave Charlotte 
 Halliday. But if I can telegraph such a message as wUl bring 
 him to town, I'll do it. Leave aU that to me. And now, what 
 about your work ? " 
 
 " I am at a loss what to do, if I am not to take Dr. Jedd to 
 Harold's LiU." 
 
 " Take him to St. Leonards ; and if I get my brother out of 
 the way, you can have Charlotte conveyed to an hotel in St. 
 Leonard's, where she can stop till she picks up strength enough 
 to come to London." 
 
 "Do yoii think her mother will consent to her removal P " 
 
 " Do I think you will be such an idiot as to ask for her con- 
 sent .P " cried George Sheldon impatiently. "My brother's wife 
 is so weak a fool, that the chances are she'd insist on her daugh- 
 ter stopping quietly, to be poisoned. No ; you must get Mrs. 
 Sheldon out of the way somehow. Send her to look at the 
 shops, or to bathe, or to pick up shells on the beach, or anything 
 else equally inane. Slie's easy enough to deal with. There's 
 that young woman, Paget's daughter, with them still, I sup- 
 pose ? Yes. Very weU, then, you and she can get Charlotte 
 away between you." 
 
 •'But for me to take those two girls to an hotel — the chance 
 of scandal, of wonder, of inquiry ? There ought to be some 
 other person — some nurse. Stay, there's Nancy Woolper — the 
 veiy woman ! My darh'ug has told me of that old woman's 
 affectionate anxiety about her health — an anxiety which was 
 singularly intense, it seemed to Lotta. Good God ! do you think 
 she, Nancy Woolper, could have suspected the cause of Mr. 
 Halliday's death ? "_ 
 
 ' I dare say she did. She was in the house when he died, and 
 nursed him all through his iUness. She's a clever old woman.
 
 A Dread Eevelation. 219 
 
 Yea, you mif^ht take her down with you ; I think she wonld be 
 of use in getting Charlotte away." 
 
 " I'U take her, if she will go." 
 
 "1 am not sure of that ; our north-country folks have stifiish 
 notions a}x)ut fidelity to old masters, and that kind of thin<r. 
 Nancy Woolper nursed my brother Phil." 
 
 " If she knows or suspects the fate of Charlotte's father^ she 
 will try to save Charlotte," said Valentine, with conviction. 
 " And now, good bye ! I trust to you for getting your brother 
 out of the vfoy, George Sheldon ; remember that." 
 
 He held out his hand; the lawyer took it with a muscular 
 grip, which, on this occasion, meant something more than that 
 base coin of jolly good fellowship which so often passes cui-rent 
 for friendship's virgin gold. 
 
 " You may tnist me," George Sheldon said gravely. " Stop 
 a moment, though ; I have a projDOsition to make. If my brother 
 Philip has induced that ^rl to make a Avill, as it is my belief he 
 has, we must counter him. Come down with me to Doctors' 
 Commons. You've a cab? Yes; the business won't take half 
 an hour." 
 
 "What business?" 
 
 " A special licence for your marriage with Charlotte Halli- 
 day." 
 
 " A mamage ? " 
 
 " Yes ; her marriage invalidates her will, if she has made one, 
 and does away with Pliil's motive. Come along ; we'll get the 
 hcence." 
 
 "Butthedeky?" 
 
 " Exactly half an hour. Come ! " 
 
 The lawyer dashed out of his office. " At home in an hour," 
 he sh(juted to the clerk, and then ran downstairs, followed closely 
 by Valentine, and did not cease running until he was in the 
 King's Road, where the cab was waiting. 
 
 " Newgate Street and Warwick Lane to Doctors' Commons ! " 
 he cried to the cabman ; and Valentine was fain to take his seat 
 in the cab \vithout further remonstrance. 
 
 " I don't understand " he began, as the cabman drove 
 
 away. 
 
 " I do. It's all right ; you'll put the hcence in your pocket, 
 and call at the church nearest wliich you hang out, Edgwaro 
 Road way, give notice of the marriage, and so on ; and as soon 
 as Charlotte can bear the journey, biing her to London and 
 marry her. I told you your course six months ago. Your 
 obstinacy has caused the hazard of that young woman's life. 
 Don't let us have a second edition of it." 
 
 " I will be governed by your advice," answered Valentine, 
 aubmissively. " It is the delay that tortures me."
 
 220 Ohaflotte'g Inheritance. 
 
 The delay was indeed torture to liim. Everytliiiig and 
 everybody in Doctors' Commons seemed tlie very incarnation 
 of slowness. The hansom cab might tear and grind the pave- 
 ment, the hansom cabman might swear until even monster 
 waggons swerved aside to give him passage ; but neither tear- 
 ing nor swearing could move the incarnate stolidity of Doctors' 
 Commons. When he left that quaint sanctuary of old usages, 
 lie carried with him the Archbishop of Canterbury's benign 
 permission for his union with Charlotte Halliday. But he 
 knew not whether it was only a morsel of waste paper which he 
 carried in his isocket ; and whether there might not ere long be 
 need of a ghastUer certificate, giving leave and hcence for the 
 rendering back of " ashes to ashes, and dust to dust." 
 
 Valentine's first call, after leaving George Sheldon at the gate 
 of Doctors' Commons, was at the head-quarters of the Raga- 
 muffins. His heart sank as he ran into the bar of the hostelry 
 to ask for the telegram which might be waiting for him. 
 
 Happily there was no telegram. To find no tidings of a 
 change for the worse seemed to him almost equivalent to hear- 
 ing of a change for the better. What had he not feared after 
 his interview with the surgeon of Bloom sbury ! 
 
 From Covent Garden the hansom bowled swiftly to Burling- 
 ton Row. Here Valentine found Mr. Burkham, pale and 
 anxious, waiting in a httle den of a third room on the ground- 
 floor — a ghastly Uttle room, hung with anatomical plates, and 
 with some wax j)reparations in jars, on the mantelpiece, by 
 way of ornament. To them presently came Dr. Jedd, as hvely 
 and business-hke as if Miss HalUday's case had been a question 
 of taking out a double-tooth. 
 
 " Very sad ! " he said ; " these vegetable poisons — hands of 
 unscrupulous man. Very interesting article in the Medical 
 Quarteyhj — speculative analysis of the science of toxicology as 
 known to the ancients." 
 
 " You will come down to Harold's HUl at once, sir ? " said 
 Valentine, imploringly. 
 
 " Well, yes ; your friend here, Mr. Burkham, has persuaded 
 me to do so, though I need hardly tell you that such a journey 
 will be to the last degree inconvenient." 
 
 ** It is an affair of Hfe and death," faltered the young man. 
 
 " Of course, my dear sir. But then, you see, I have half-a- 
 dozen other affiiirs of life and death on my hands at this 
 moment. However, I have promised. My consultations will 
 be over in half an hour ; I have a round of visits after that-, 
 and by — well, say by the five o'clock express, I will go to St. 
 Leonards." 
 
 "The delay vnll be very long," said Valentine. 
 
 **It cannot be done sooner. I ought to go down to Herfc*
 
 A Dread Kevrlttloix. 221 
 
 fonlsliire this evening — most interesting case — carbuncle — tlirce 
 operations in tliree consecutive weeks — Swain as ojierator. At 
 five o'clock I shall be at the London Bridge station. Until 
 tnen, gentlemen, good day. Lawson, the door." 
 
 Dr. Jedd left his visitors to follow the respectable white- 
 cravatted butler, and darted back to his consulting-room. 
 
 Mr. Burkham and Valentine walked slowly up and down 
 Burlington Row before the latter returned to his cab. 
 
 " I thank you heartily for your help," said Valentine to the 
 Burgeon ; " and I beheve, with God's grace, we shall save this 
 dear girl's life. It was the hand of Providence that guided 
 me to you this morning. I can but believe the same hand will 
 guide me to the end." 
 
 On this they parted. Valentine told bis cabman to drive to 
 the Edgware Road ; and in one of the churches of the imme- 
 diate neighbourhood of that thoroughfare he gave notice of 
 his intention to enter the bonds of holy matrimony. He had 
 some ditRculty in arranging matters with the clerk, whom he 
 saw in his private abode and non-official guise. That func- 
 tionary was scarcely able to grasp the idea of an intending 
 Benedick who would not state positively when he wanted to 
 be marriecb Happily, however, the administration of half-a- 
 sovereign considerably brightened the clerk's perceptions. 
 
 "I see what you want," he said. "Young lady a invalid, 
 which she wants to leave her home as she finds uncomfortable, 
 she being over twenty-one years of age and her own mistress. 
 It's what you may call a runaway match, although the parties 
 ain't beholden to any one, in a manner of speaking. I under- 
 stand. You give me half an hour's notice any morning within 
 the legal hours, and I'll have one of our young curates ready 
 for you as soon as you're ready for them; and have you and the 
 young lady tied up tight enough before yoxiknow where you are. 
 We ain't very long over ov,r marriages, unless it is something 
 out of the common way." 
 
 The clerk's familiarity was more good-natured than flattering 
 to the ajiphcant's self-esteem ; but Valentine was in no mood to 
 object to this easy-going treatment of the affiiir. He promised 
 to give the clerk the required notice; and having arranged 
 eyorything in sti-ictly legal manner, hurried back to his cab, and 
 dirwcted the man to drive to the Lawn. 
 
 It was now three o'clock. At five he was to meet Dr. Jedd 
 at the station. He had two hours for his interview with Nancy 
 Woolper, and his drive from Bayswater to London Bridge. 
 
 He had tasted nothing since daybreak ; but the necessity to 
 eat and drink never occun-od to liim. He was dimly conscious 
 of feeUng sick and faint, but the reason of this sickness and 
 fkintress did not enter into his thoughts. He took ofif his hat, 
 
 P
 
 22-2 Charlotte^s Inlieritanee. 
 
 and leant Ms head baclc against tlie cushion of the hansom &(! 
 that vehicle rattled across the squares of Paddington. The 
 summer day, the waving of green trees in those suburban 
 squares ; the busy Ufe and motion of the woi'ld through -^yhich 
 he went, mixed themselves into one jarring whirl of hght and 
 colour, noise and motion. He found himself wondering how 
 long it was since he left Harold's Hill. Between the summer 
 morning in which he had walked along the dusty high-road, with 
 fields of ripening corn ujDon his left, and all the broad blue sea 
 tij^on his right, and the summer afternoon ra which he di'ove in 
 a jinghng cab through the noisy streets and squares of Bays- 
 water, there seemed to him a gulf so wide, that his tried brain 
 shrank from scanning it. 
 
 He struggled with this feeling of nelplessness and bewilder- 
 ment, and overcame it. 
 
 "Let me remember what I have to do," he said to himself; 
 " and let me keep my wits about me tdl that is done." 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 PHCENICIANS AUE RISING. 
 
 While Mr. Hawkehurst arranged his affairs with the clerk of 
 St. Matthias-in-the-fields, in the parish of Marylebone, George 
 Sheldon sat in his brother's office writing a letter to that distin- 
 guished stockbroker. The pretext of writing a letter was the 
 simplest pretext for being alone in his brother's room ; and to be 
 alone in Phihp Sheldon's room was the first step in the business 
 which George had to do. 
 
 The room was distractingly neat, and as handsomely furnished 
 Of, it is i30ssible for an office to be -within the closest oificial limits. 
 A Spanish mahogany desk with a cylinder cover, and innume- 
 rable drawers fitted with invisible Bramah locks, occupied the 
 centre of the room ; and four ponderous Spanish mahogany 
 chairs, with padded backs, and seats covered with crimson 
 morocco, were primly ranged against the wall. Upon the man- 
 telpiece ticked a skeleton clock ; above which there hung the 
 stornest and grimmest of almanacks, on either whereof were 
 tastened divers lists and calendars of awful character, affected 
 by gentlemen on 'Change. 
 
 Before penetrating to this innermost and sacred chamber, 
 George Sheldon wasted some httle time in agreeable gossip with 
 a gentleman whom he found yawning over the Times newspaper 
 in an outer and less richly furnished apartment. This gentle- 
 man was Philip Sheldon's clerk, the younger son of a rich York- 
 shire farmer, who had come to London with the intention of
 
 Phoenicians are lilsing. 223 
 
 tuaking his fortune on the Stock Exchange, and whone father 
 had paid a considerable sum in order to obtain for this young 
 man the privilege of reading the Times in Mr. Sheldon's office, 
 and picking up whatever knowledge might be obtained from tLo 
 business transactions of his employer. 
 
 The career of Philip Sheldon had been watched with some 
 interest by his fellow-townsmen of Barhngford. They had seen 
 him leave that town with a few hundreds in his pocket, and they 
 had heard of him twelve years afterwards as a prosperous stock- 
 broker, with a handsome house and a handsome carriage, and 
 the reputation of being one of the sharpest men in the City. 
 The accounts of him that came to Barhngford were all more or 
 less exaggerated ; and the men who discussed his cleverness and 
 his good luck were apt to forget that he owed the beginning of 
 his fortunes to Tom Halliday's eighteen thousand pounds. The 
 one fact that impressed Philip Sheldon's townsmen was the fact 
 that a Barhngford man had made money on the Stock Ex- 
 change; and the one inference they drew therefrom was the 
 inference that other Barhngford men might do the same. 
 
 Thus it had happened that Mr. Stephen Orcott, of Plymley 
 Eise farm, near Barhngford, being at a loss what to do with a 
 somewhat refractory younger son, resolved uiDon planting his 
 footsteps in the path so victoriously trodden by Philip Sheldon. 
 He wrote to Philip, asking him to receive the young man as 
 clerk, assistant, secretary — anything, with a view to an ultimate 
 junior partnersliip ; and Philip consented, upon certain condi- 
 tions. The sum he demanded was rather a stiff one, as it seemed 
 to Stephen Orcott, but he opined that such a sum would not 
 have been asked if the advantages had tiot been proportionately 
 large. The bargain was therefore concluded, and Mr. Frederick 
 Orcott came to London. He was a young man of horsey pro- 
 l^ensities, gifted with a subhme contempt for any kind of busi- 
 ness requiring application or industry, and with a supreme behef 
 in his own merits. 
 
 George Sheldon had known Frederick Orcott as a boy, and 
 had been in his society some half-dozen times since his coming 
 to London. He apprehended no diificulty in obtaining from this 
 young gentleman any information he had the power to afford. 
 
 " How do, Orcott ? " he said, with agi-eeable famiharity. " My 
 brother Phil not come back yet ? " 
 
 "No," replied the other, sulkily. "There have been ever so 
 many people here bothering me about him. Where has he gone ? 
 and when will he be back ? and so on. I might as well be some 
 d — d footman, if I'm to sit here answering questions all day. 
 High Wickham races are on to-day, and I wanted to see Bar- 
 maid ran before I put my money on her for Goodwood. She 
 was bred down our way, you see, and I know she's like enough
 
 224 (jiiartotte's Inlieritancd. 
 
 to win the ctip, if she's fit. They don't know much about her 
 this way, either, though she's own sister to Boots, that won the 
 Chester Cuj^ last year, owing to Topham's being swindled into 
 letting him off with seven lbs. He ran at the York SjDi-ing, you 
 see, for a twopenny-halfpenny plate, and the boy that rode him 
 pulled his head half off — I saw him do it — and then he won the 
 Chester, and brought his owners a pot of money." 
 
 This information was not exactly what George Sheldon wanted, 
 but he planted himself on the hearthrug in an easy attitude, 
 with his back against the mantelpiece, and appeared much 
 interested in Mr. Orcott's discourse. 
 
 " Anytliing stirring in the City ? " he asked presently. 
 
 " Stirring ? No — nothing stirring but stagnation, a« some 
 fellow said in a play I saw the other night. Barlingford folks 
 say your brother Philip has made a heap of money on the Stock 
 Exchange ; Ijut if he has, he must have done a good deal more 
 business before I came to him than he has done lately. I can't 
 see how a man is to develop into a Rothschild out of an occa- 
 sional two-and-sir[3euce per cent, on the transfer of some old 
 woman's savings from railway stock to consols ; and that's 
 about the only kind of business I've seen much of lately. Of 
 course Phil Sheldon has got irons of his own in the fire ; for he's 
 an uncommonly deep car(il, you see, that brother of yours, and it 
 isn't to be exjiected he'll tell me all he's up to. I know he's up 
 to his eyebrows in companies, but I don't see how he's to make 
 his fortune out of tliem, for hmited liability now-a-days seems 
 only another name for uuhmited crash. However, I don't care. 
 It pleased my governor to get me into Sheldon's ofiice, and it 
 suited my book to come to London ; but if the author of my 
 being thinks I'm going to addle my blessed brains with the 
 decline and fall of the money market, he's a greater fool than I 
 took him for — and that's saying a great deal." 
 
 And here Mr. Fredeiick Orcott lapsed into admiring contem- 
 plation of his boots, which were the chefs-d'oeuvre of a sporting 
 bootmaker; boots that were of the ring, ringy, and of the 
 oomer, comery. 
 
 " Ah," said George, " and Phil doesn't tell you much of hia 
 affairs, doesn't he ? That's rather a bad sign, I should think. 
 Looks as if he was rather down upon his luck, eh ? " 
 
 " Well, there's no knowing, you see, with that sort of close 
 fish. He may have made his book for a great haul, and may be 
 keeping himself quiet till the event comes off. He may be lay- 
 ing on to something with all his might, you know, on safe infor* 
 mation. But there's one thing I know he stands to lose by." 
 
 " ^That's that ? " 
 
 " The Phoenician Loan. He speculated in the bonds when 
 they began to go down ; and I'm blessed if they haven't been
 
 Phoenicians are JRising. 22f 
 
 dropping ever since, an eighth a day, as regiilar as the day 
 comes round. He bought them for the March account, and has 
 been paying contango since then, and holding on in hopes of a 
 rise. 1 don't km-\v whether the purchase was a large one, but I 
 know he's been uncommonly savage about the di-op. He bought 
 on the strength of private information from the other side of 
 the Channel. The Emperor was putting his own money into 
 the PhcEuician business, and it was the best game out, and so 
 en. But he seems to have been made a fool of, for once in a 
 way." 
 
 " The bonds may steady themselves." 
 
 " Yes, they ■nuxy ; but, on the other hand, they mayn't. There 
 are the Stock Exchange lists, with Phoenicians ticked off by 
 vour brothei-'s own pen. A steady drop, you see. ' Let me 
 nave a telegram if there's a sudden rise,' said Sheldon to me 
 the day he left London ; ' they'll go up with rush when they 
 do move.' But they've been moving the other way ever since ; 
 and I think if he stayed away till doomsday it would be prettj 
 much the same." 
 
 " rhccnicians are rising rapidly. Come bach to town." 
 
 These were the words of the telegraphic despatch which 
 shaped itself in George Sheldon's brain, as his brother's cleri 
 revealed the secrets of his employer. 
 
 It was found — the solution of the one great question as U, 
 how PhiUp Sheldon was to be lured away from the bedside ol 
 his unconscious victim. Here was the bait. 
 
 " I knew I could do it ; I knew I could get all I wanted tc' 
 know out of this shallow-brained idiot," he said to himself, 
 triumphantly. 
 
 And then "he told the shallow-brained idiot that he thought he 
 would write a line to his brother ; and on that pretence went 
 into Philip's office. 
 
 Here, use his eyes as he might, he could discover nothing ; he 
 could glean no stray scrap of information. The secrets that 
 could be guarded by concealed Bramah locks and iron safes, 
 with mystic words to be learned by the man who would open 
 them, Phihp Sheldon knew how to protect. Unhappily for 
 himself, he had been compelled to confide some of his secrets 
 to human receptacles not to be guarded by Bramah locks or 
 mystic words. 
 
 The lawyer did not waste much time in his brother's office. 
 A very hasty investigation showed him there was nothing to b6 
 learned from those bare walls and that inviolable cylinder- 
 topped desk. He scribbled a few lines of commonplace at a 
 table by the window, sealed and addressed his note, and then 
 departed to despatch his telegram. "Phceniciana are rising
 
 223 Charlollc^s InJierifnnce. 
 
 rapidly," he ^vrote, and that was all. He signed tlie despatcii 
 Frederick Orcott. 
 
 " Phil and Orcott may settle the business between them," h« 
 Baid to himself, as he forged the Yorkshireman's name. " What 
 I have to do is to get Phil away, and give Hawkehurst a chance 
 of saving Tom HalHday's daughter ; and I shan't stand upon 
 trifles in the doing of it." 
 
 After having despatched this telegram, George Sheldon found 
 himself much too restless and excited for ordinary business. 
 He, 80 renowned even amongst cool hands for exceptional cool- 
 ness, was on this occasion thoroughly unnei-ved. He dropped 
 into a City tavern, and refreshed himself with a dram. But, 
 amidst aU the bustle and clatter of a crowded bar, the face of 
 Tom Halhday, haggard and worn with illness, was before hia 
 eyes, and the sound of Tom Halliday's voice was in his ears. 
 "I can't settle to anything this afternoon," he said to himself. 
 " I'U run down to Bayswater, and see whether Hawkehurst has 
 managed matters with Nancy Woolper." 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE SORTES VERGILIAlfJS, 
 
 While George Sheldon was stiU in the depths of the City 
 Valentine Hawkehurst arrived at the gothic villa, where he 
 asked to see Mrs. Woolper. Of the woman herself he knew 
 very little : he had seen her once or twice when some special 
 mission brought her to the drawing-room ; and from Charlotte 
 he had heard much of her affectionate sohcitude. To have been 
 kind to his Charlotte was the strongest claim to his regard. 
 
 "This woman's help would be of inestimable service," he 
 thought ; *' her age, her experience of sickness, her familiarity 
 with the patient, esiDccially adapt her for the office she will be 
 required to fill. K Dr. Jedd should order a nurse to watch by 
 thfe sick-bed, here is the nurse. If it should prove possible to 
 remove the dear sufferer, here is the guardian best calculated to 
 protect and attend her removal." That the desperate step of an 
 immediate marriage would be a wise step Valentine could not 
 doubt, since it wculd at once annihilate ilr. Sheldon's chances, 
 and destroy his motive. But in contemplating this desperate 
 step Valentine liad to consider the reputation as well as the 
 safety of his fu ture wife. He was determined that there should 
 be no opportunity for scandal in the circumstances of his 
 stolen marriage no scope for future mischief from the malignity 
 of that baffled vjllain to whose schemes their marriage would
 
 TJie Sortes Virgiliance. 227 
 
 give the death-blow. He, who from his cradle had been familiar 
 with the darker side of life, knew how often the innocent carry a 
 lifelong burden, and perform a perpetual pennance for the sins 
 or the foUies of others. And over his darling's life in the future, 
 should it please God that he might save hur, he would have no 
 shadow cast by imprudence of his in the present. 
 
 " This sharp-witted, sharp-tongued Yorksliirewoman will be 
 the woman of women to protect her," he thought, as he seated 
 himself in Mr. Sheldon's study, whither the prim jDarlour-maid 
 had ushered him. 
 
 " Mrs. Woolper have just gone upstairs to clean herself," she 
 said; "which we are a-having the dining-room and droring- 
 room carpets up, while the family are away. AVould you please 
 to wait?" 
 
 Valentine looked at his watch. 
 
 " I cannot wait very long," he said ; " and I shall be obliged 
 if you will tell Mrs. Woolper that I wish to see her on very 
 important business." 
 
 The parlour-maid departed, and Valentine was left to endure 
 the weariness of waiting until Mrs. Woolper should have 
 " cleaned herself." 
 
 Mr. Sheldon's study at Bayswater did not offer much more to 
 the eye of the investigator than Mr. Sheldon's otnce in the City. 
 There were the handsomely bound books behind the inviolable 
 plate-glass doors, and there was the neat writing-table with the 
 machine for weighing letters, and the large business-like looking 
 blo-tting-pad, and the ponderous brass-rimmed inkstand, with no 
 nonsense about it; and yonder, on a clumsy little oak table 
 with thick legs, appeared the copying machine, with a big black 
 iron lever, and a massive screw with which to screw all the 
 epontaneous feeling out of every letter that came beneath ita 
 crushing influence. 
 
 Up and down this joyless den Valentine Hawkehurst paced, 
 with the demon of impatience raging in his breast. The July 
 Bunshiiie blazed hot upon the window, and the voices of croquet- 
 players in adjacent gardens rose shrill upon the summer air. 
 And there were girls playing croquet while she, his " rose of the 
 garden, garden of girls," lay sick unto death ! 0, why could he 
 not offer a hecatomb of these common creatures as a substitute 
 for that one fair spirit ? 
 
 He looked into the garden — the prim modem garden, but a 
 few years reclaimed from that abomination of desolation, the 
 •' eUgible lot of building land." Across the well-kept lawn there 
 brooded no shadow of Old- World cedar ; no century-old espaUers 
 divided flower and kitchen ground ; no box-edging of the early 
 Hanoverian era bordered the bods of roses aaid mignonette.
 
 228 Charlolies Inlieritance. 
 
 From one bonndary-wall to the other there was not a bush old 
 enough to hang an association upon. The stereotyped bed of 
 flaming yellow calceolaria balanced the conventional bed of 
 flaming crimson verbena; the lavender heliotrope faced the 
 scarlet geranium, hke the four corners in a quadrille. The 
 garden was the modern nurserymen's ideal of suburban horti- 
 culture, and no more. - But to Valentine this half-acre of smooth 
 lawn and Wimbledon gravel pathway had seemed fair as those 
 pleasure gardens of Semiramis, at the foot of the Bagistanoa 
 mountain, the fame whereof tempted Alexander to turn aside 
 from the direct road, during his march from Chelone to the 
 Nysaic horse pastures. 
 
 To-day the contemplation of that commonplace garden gave 
 him direful pain. Should he ever walk there again with his 
 dear love, or in any other garden upon earth ? 
 
 And then he thought of fairer gardens, in supernal regions 
 whither his soul was slow to travel. " Not easy is the journey 
 from earth to the stars," says the sage ; and from this young 
 wanderer the st^in of earthly travel had yet to be washed 
 away. 
 
 " If she is taken from me, shall I ever be pure enough to 
 foUow her ? " he asked himself. " Will a life that began in such 
 darkness ever rise to the light which is her natural element P If 
 she is taken, and I stay behind, and bear my burden patiently 
 in the hope to follow her, will there not be a gate closed against 
 me in the skies, beyond which I shaU see her, shining among het 
 kindred spirits, in the white robes of perfect innocence ? Ah, 
 my love, my love, as between ua on this earth must for ever bs a 
 gulf your pure soul cannot pass, so between us in the skies wiU 
 rise a barrier to sever me from your sweet company ! " 
 
 The thought of probable separation upon earth, of possible 
 separation in heaven, was too bitter to liim. 
 
 "I will not think of these things," he said to himself; "1 
 will not beheve in that possibihty of this sacrifice. Ah, no ! she 
 wiU be saved. Against the bright young hfe the awful fiat haa 
 not gone forth. Providence has been with me to-day. Provi- 
 dence will go with me tiU the end." 
 
 He thought how other men had so stood, as he was standing 
 now, face to face with the great uncertainty, the crisis, the 
 turning-point — the pivot on which life itself revolved. . The pen- 
 dulum of the mighty clock swings solemnly to and fro ; with 
 every vibration a moment; with every moment each man's 
 shrouded fates move another step in their inexorable progress. 
 And the end ? What was the goal towards which those dark 
 relentless shapes were moving ? 
 
 He thought of Bousseau, balancing the awful question
 
 Tlie Sorlcs VirglUano!. 229 
 
 of his soul's salvation — liis poor weak soul adrift upon a sea 
 of doubt. 
 
 " Behold yonder tree which faces me, as I sit and meditate 
 the problem of my destiny — the destiny of me, Jean Jacques 
 Rousseau, self-conscious genius, and future regenerator of my 
 age. I pick up a pebble, and poise it between my fingers before 
 taking my aim. In another moment the question will be 
 answered. If the pebble hits the tree, I, Jean Jacques, am 
 resei-ved for salvation. If I miss — awful, overwhelming pos- 
 sibility ! — my name will blaze upon that dreadful scroll which 
 numbers the damned." 
 
 Happily the tree is bulky, and within but a lew yards of the 
 speculator ; and the great enigma of the Calvinistic church is 
 answered in favour of Madame de Warenne's protege, whose 
 propensities and prochvitics at that period did not very strongly 
 indicate his claim to a place among the elect. 
 
 Valentine remembered the sortes Virgilimice — the "Wesleyan'a 
 drawing of inferences from Bible tests. Ah, could he not find 
 an answer to the question that was the one thought of his 
 mind ? He would find some answer — a lying oracle, perhaps. 
 It might be a voice from heaven, — some temporary aHsauge- 
 inent of this storm of doubt that raged in his breast. " I doubt 
 if Mr. Sheldon o^wns either a Bible or an'/^neid,' " he said to 
 himself, as he stopped in his rapid pacing of the room ; " I will 
 open the first book I can put my hand upon, and from the first 
 line my eye falls on will draw an augury." 
 
 He looked aboiit the room. Behind the glazed doors of the 
 mahogany bookcase appeared Hume and Smollett, Scott and 
 Shakespeare ; and conspicuous among these a handsome family 
 Bible. But the glazed doors were locked. In Mr. Sheldon's 
 study there ajipeared to be no other books than these few stan- 
 dard works. Yes, on some obscure little shelves, low down in 
 one of the recesses formed by the projection of the fireplace and 
 the chimney, there were three rows of large quarto volumes, in 
 dingy dark-green cloth cases. 
 
 What these volumes might contain "Valentine Hawkehurst 
 knew not; and the very fact of his ignorance rendered these 
 books all the more suitable for the purpose of augury. To dip 
 for a sentence into any of these unknown volumes would be a 
 leap in darkness more profound than he covrld find in the Bible 
 or the " ^neid," where his own foreknowledge of the text might 
 unwittingly infiuence the oracle. He went over to the recess, 
 bent down, and ran his hand along the backs of the volumes, 
 with his face turned away from the books towards the -wuidow. 
 
 " The first obstruction that arrests my hand shall determine 
 my choice of th<> volume," he said to himself.
 
 230 Charlotte s Inlievitance. 
 
 His hand ran easily along the volumes on the npper shelf-— 
 easily along the volumes on the second shelf ; and he began to 
 doubt whether this mode of determining his choice could be per- 
 sisted in. But in its progress along the third and lowest range 
 of volumes, his hand was arrested midway by a book which 
 projected about half an inch beyond its fellows. 
 
 He took this book out and carried it to the table, still without 
 looking at it. He opened it, or rather let its leaves fall open of 
 their own accord — still without looking at it ; and then, with a 
 strange suijerstitious fear — mingled in his mind with the natural 
 shame that accompanied his conscious folly — he looked at the 
 page before him. The Hue on which he fixed his eye was the 
 heading of a letter. It was in larger tyj^e than the rest of the 
 page, and it was very plain to him as he stood a little way from 
 the table, looking down at the open book. 
 
 The Hue ran thus : 
 
 " On the Fallibility of Coppee Gauze as a Test fok thb 
 Detection op Aesenic." 
 
 The book was a volume of the Lancet ; the date twenty years 
 ago. 
 
 " What an oracle !" thought Valentine, with a cynical laugh 
 at his own folly, and some slight sense of relief. In all feeble 
 tamperings with j^owers invisible there lurks a sense of terror in 
 the weak human heart. He had tempted those invisible ones, 
 and the oracle he only half believed in might have spoken to his 
 confusion and dismay. He was glad to think the oracle meant 
 nothing. 
 
 And yet, even in this dryasdust title of a scientific communi- 
 cation from a distinguished toxicologist there was some sinister 
 significance. It was the letter of a great chemist, who demon- 
 strated therein the fallibihty of all tests in relation to a certain 
 poison. It was one of those papers which, while they aid the 
 cause of science, may also further the dark processes of the 
 poisoner, by showing him the forces he has to encounter, and 
 the weapons with which he may defend himself from their 
 
 f)ower. It is needless to dwell here upon the contents of this 
 etter — one of a series on the same subject, c^ range of subjects. 
 Valentine read it with eager interest. For him it had a terrible 
 importance in its relation to the past and to the present. 
 
 " I let the book fall open, and it opened at that letter," he 
 thought to himself. Will it open there a second time, 1 
 wonder?" 
 
 He repeated the experiment, and the book opened in the same 
 place. Again ; and again the book opened as before. Again, 
 many times, and the result was still the same. 
 After this he examined the book, and found that it had been
 
 TJie Sorteg VirgiliancB. 231 
 
 pressed open at this page, as by a reader leaning on the opened 
 vohime. He examined it still more closely, and found here and 
 there on the page faint indications of a pencil, which had under- 
 Bcored certain Imes, and the marks of which had been as far as 
 possible erased. The deduction to be drawn from these small 
 Lets seemed only too clear to Valentine Hawkehurst. By some 
 one reader the pages had been deliberately and carefully studied. 
 Could he doubt that reader to have been the man in whose 
 possession he found the book, the man whom that very day be 
 had heard plainly denounced as a poisoner ? 
 
 He drew out the previous volume, and in this a rapid aearch 
 revealed to him a second fact, significant as the last. 
 
 An old envelope marked the jslace where api^eared an article 
 on the coincidences common to the diagnostics of a certain typo 
 of low fever and the diagnostics of a certain class of poisons. 
 Here the volume again opened of itself, and a blot of ink on the 
 page seemed to indicate that the open book had been leant upon 
 by a person engaged in making memoranda of its contents. 
 Nor was this all. The forgotten envelope that marked the place 
 had its own dismal significance. The postmark bore the 
 date of the year and the month in which Charlotte's fathei 
 had died. 
 
 While this volume was still open in his hand the door opened 
 suddenly, and Mrs. Woolper came into the room. 
 
 She had kept Valentine waiting more than half an hour. He 
 had little more than half an hour at most in which to break the 
 ice of absolute strangeness, and sound the very depths of this 
 woman's character. If she had come to him earher, when his 
 plan of action was clear and definite, his imagination in abey- 
 ance, he would have gone cautiously to work, with slowness and 
 deliberation. Coming to him now, when his mind, unsettled by 
 the discovery of fresh evidence against Phihp Sheldon, was 
 divided between the past and the present, she took him off his 
 guard, and he plunged at once into the subject that absorbed all 
 his thoughts. 
 
 Mrs. Woolper looked from Valentine to the open books on the 
 table with a vague terror in her face. 
 
 " I am sorry I was so long, sir ; but I'd been polishing tha 
 grates and fenders, and suc'h like, and my hands and face wer€ 
 blacker than a sweep's. I hope there's notliing Avrong at tha 
 seaside, where Miss " 
 
 " There is much that's wrong, Mrs. Woclper — hopelessly, 
 irrecoverably wrong. Miss HaUiday is Ul, very ill — doomed to 
 die, if she remain in your master's keeping." 
 
 " Lord help us, Mr. Hawkehurst ! what do you mean P " 
 
 The terror in her face was no longer a vague terror. It had
 
 232 Cliarlotte's Inlieritance. 
 
 taken a form and substance, and was a teiTor unutterably 
 hideous, if ever human countenance gave expression to human 
 thought. 
 
 " I mean that your master is better skilled in the use of the 
 agents that kill than the agents that cure. Charlotte's father 
 came to Philip Sheldon's house a hale strong man, in the very 
 prime of manhood. In that house he sickened of a nameless 
 disease, and died, carefully tended by his watchful friend. The 
 same careful watcher stands by Charlotte Halliday's deathbed, 
 and she is dying ! " 
 
 " Dying ! 0, sir, for God's sake, don't say that !" 
 
 " She is dying, as her father died before her, by the hand of 
 Phihp Sheldon." 
 
 " 0, sir ! Mr. Hawkehurst ! " cried the old woman, with 
 clasped hands lifted in piteous suppHcation towards her master's 
 denouncer. "It's not true. It is not true. For God's dear 
 love don't tell me it is true ! I nui-sed him when he was a 
 baby, sir ; and there wasn't a little trouble I had to bear with 
 him that didn't make him all the dearer to me. I have sat up 
 all the night through, sir, times and often, when he was ill, and 
 have heard Barlingford church clock strike every hour of the 
 long night ; and 0, if I had known that this could ever come 
 to him, I should have wished him dead in the little crib where 
 he lay and seemed so innocent. I tell you, sir, it can't be true ! 
 His father and mother had been respected and looked up to in 
 Barlingford for many a year, — his grandfather and grand- 
 mother before them. There isn't a name that stands better in 
 those parts than the name of Sheldon. Do you think such a 
 man would poison his friend?" 
 
 " J said nothing about poison, Mrs. Woolper," »aid Valentine, 
 sternly. 
 
 This woman had known all, and had held her tongue, like the 
 rest, it seemed. To Valentine there was unutterable horror ia 
 the thought that a cold-blooded murder could be thus perpe- 
 trated in the sight of several joeople, and yet no voice be raised 
 to denounce the assassin. 
 
 "And this is our modem civiUzation ! " he said to himself. 
 * Give me the desert or the jungle. The sons of Bowauee are 
 no worse than Mr. Sheldon, and one might be on one's guard 
 against them." 
 
 Nancy Woolper looked at him aghast. He had said nothing 
 about poison ! Wliat, then — had she betrayed her master ? 
 
 He saw that she had known, or strongly suspected, the worst 
 in the case of Tom HalUday, and that she would easily be 
 influenced to do all he wanted of her. 
 
 "Mrs. Woolper, you must help me to save Charlotte," te
 
 Tlie Sortes Tir(jiVianc6. 233 
 
 •aid, with intensity. " Ton made no attempt to save her father, 
 though you suspected the cause of his death. I have this day 
 seen Mr. Eurkliam, the doctor who attended Mr. Halliday, and 
 from his Hps I have heard the truth. I want yon to accompany 
 me to Hastings, and to take your place by Charlotte's bed, as her 
 nurse and guardian. If Mr. Sheldon suspects your knowledge 
 of the past, and I have little doubt that he does " — a look in the 
 housekeeper's face told him that he was right — " you are of all 
 people best fitted to guard that dear girl. Your part will not 
 be a difficult one. If we dare remove her, we \n\\ remove her 
 beyond the reach of that man's power. If not, your task will 
 be to prevent food or medicine, that his hand has touched, from 
 approaching her lips. You can do it. It will only be a ques- 
 tion of tact and firmness. We shall have one of the greatest 
 doctors in London for our guide. Will you come ?" 
 
 " I don't believe my master poisoned his friend," said Nancy 
 Woolper, doggedly ; " nor I won't believe it. You can't force 
 me to think bad of him I loved when he was little and helpless, 
 and I carried him in my ai-ms. What are you and your fine 
 London doctor, Mr. Burkham— he was but a poor foudy, as I 
 mind well — that I should take your word against my master? 
 If that young man thought as Mr. Halliday was being poisoned, 
 why didn't he speak out, like a man, then? It's a fine piece of 
 work to bring it up against my master eleven years afterwards. 
 As for young missy, she's as sweet a young creature as ever 
 Uved, and I'd do anytliing to serve her. But I won't think, 
 and I can't think, that my master would hurt a hair of her 
 head. ^Vhat would he gain by it?" 
 
 "He has settled that with himself. He has gained by the 
 death of Tom Halliday, and depend upon it he has made his 
 plaris to gain by the death of Tom Halliday's daughter." 
 
 " I won't believe it," the old woman repeated in the same 
 dogged tone. 
 
 i'or such resistance as this Mr. Hawkehurst was in no 
 nr anner prei^ared. He looked at his watch. The half hour 
 was nearly gone. There was little more time for argument. 
 
 *' Great Heaven !" he said to himself, "what argument can I 
 em ploy to infiuence this woman's obdurate heart?" 
 
 What argument, indeed? He knew of none stronger than 
 those he had used. He stood for some moments baffled and 
 helpless, staring absently at the face of his watch, and wonder* 
 ing what he was to do next. 
 
 As Valentine Hawkehurst stood thus, there came a loud 
 ringing of the bell, following quickly on the sound of wheels 
 grinding against the kerlj-stone. 
 
 Mrs. Woolper opened the door and looked out into the hall.
 
 284 Charlotte^s InheritancB. 
 
 " It's master!" cried one of the maids, emerging from tte die^ 
 organized dining-room, " and missus, and Miss Halliday, and 
 Miss Paget — and all the house topsy-tui"vy ! " 
 
 " Charlotte here ! " exclaimed Valentine. " You are dreaming, 
 girl!" 
 
 " And you told me she was dying 1" said Mrs. Woolper, with 
 a look of triumph. "What becomes of your fine story now?" 
 
 "It is Miss Halliday!" cried the housemaid, as she opened 
 the door. "And my!" she added, looking back into the 
 hall with a sorrowful face, " how bad she do look !" 
 
 Valentine ran out to the gate. Yes ; there were two cabs, 
 one laden with luggage, the two cabmen busy about the doors 
 of the veliicles, a little group of stragglers waiting to see the 
 invalid young lady alight. It was the next best thing to a 
 funeral. 
 
 " O, don't she look white !" cried a shrill girl with a baby in 
 her arms. 
 
 " In a decUne, I dessay, pore young thing," said a matron, in 
 an audible aside to her companion. 
 
 Valentine dashed amongst the group of stragglers. He 
 pushed away the girl with the baby, the housemaid who had 
 run out behind him, Mr. Sheldon, the cabman, every one ; and 
 in the next moment Charlotte was in his arms, ai^d he was 
 carrying her into the house. 
 
 He felt as if he had been in a dream ; and all that exceptional 
 force which the dreamer sometimes feels he felt in this crisis. 
 He carried his dear burden into the study, followed by Mr. 
 Sheldon and Diana Paget. The face that dropped upon his 
 shoulder showed deadly white against his dark-blue coat ; the 
 hand which he clasped in his, ah, how Hstless and feeble ! 
 
 " Valentine ! " the girl said, in a low drowsy voice, Hfting her 
 eyes to his face, " is this you ? I have been so ill, so tired ; and 
 they would bring me away. To be near the doctors, papa says. 
 Do you think any doctors will be able to cure me ? " 
 
 " Yes, dear, with God's heljD. I am glad he has brought yon 
 here. And now I must run away " he said, when he had placed 
 Charlotte in Mr. Sheldon's arm-chair, " for a very Httle whUe, 
 darUng. I have seen a doctor, a man in whom I have more 
 confidence than I have in Dr. Doddleson. I am going to fetch 
 him, my dearest," he added tenderly, as he felt the feeble hand 
 cHng to his ; " I shall not be long. Do you think I shall not 
 hurry back to you ? My dearest one, when I return, it will be 
 to stay with you — for ever." 
 
 She was too ill to note the signifioRuce of liis words ; she 
 only knew that they gave her comfort. He hurried from the 
 room. In less than an hour he must be at the LoridctL Bridge
 
 Tlie Sortes Tirgihand. 235 
 
 torminna, or in all probability the five o'clock train wonld 
 carry Dr. Jedd to St. Leonards ; and on Dr. Jedd his chief hoi>« 
 rested. 
 
 "Do you believe me now?" he asked of Mrs. Woolper as he 
 went out into the hall. 
 
 " I do," she answered in a whisper ; " and I will do what you 
 want." 
 
 She took his hand in her wrinkled homy palm and grasped 
 it firmly. He felt that in tliis firm pressure there was a promise 
 sacred as any oath ever registered on earth. He met Mr 
 Sheldon on the threshold, and passed him without a word. 
 The time might come in which he would have to mask his 
 thoughts, and stoop to the hateful hypocrisy of civility to this 
 man ; but he had not yet schooled himself to do this. At the 
 gate he met George Sheldon. 
 
 " Wliat's up now ?" asked the lawyer. 
 
 " Did you send your message ?" 
 
 " Yes; I telegraphed to Phil." 
 
 " It has been trouble wasted. He has brought her home." 
 
 *' AMiat does that mean ?" 
 
 " Who knows ? I pray God that he may have overreached 
 himself. I have set a watch upon my dear love, and no further 
 harm shall come to her. I am going to fetch Dr. Jedd." 
 
 " And you are not afraid of Phil's smelling a rat ? " 
 
 " I am afraid of nothing that he can do henceforward. If it 
 is not too late to save her, I will save her." 
 
 He waited for no more, but jumped into the cab. 
 
 " London Bridge terminus 1 You must get me there by a 
 quarter to five," he said to the driver. 
 
 George Sheldon went no further than the gate of his brother's 
 domain. 
 
 " I wonder whether the Harold's Hill people will send that 
 telegram after him," he thought. " It'll be rather unpleasant 
 for I'red Orcott if they do. But it's ten to one they won't. 
 The normal condition of every seaside lodguig-house keeper ii 
 one degree removed from idiotcy."
 
 203 Charlottes I.i]icr'dans&» 
 
 THROUGH THE FUENACS 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 BOMETIIING TOO MUCH. 
 
 "Is that young man mad? " asked Pliilip Sheldon, as lie went 
 into his study immediately after A^aleutine had passed him ia 
 the hall. 
 
 The question was not addressed to any jDarticular indiAadual ; 
 and Diana, who was standing near the door by which Mr. Sheldon 
 entered, took upon herself to answer it. 
 
 " I think he is very anxious," she said in a half whisper. 
 
 " What brought him here just now ? He did not know we 
 were coming home." 
 
 Mrs. Woolper answered this question. 
 
 " He came for something for Miss Charlotte, sir ; some books 
 as she'd had from the library. They'd not been sent back ; and 
 he came to see about their being sent." 
 
 " "What books ? " murmured Charlotte. But a pressure from 
 Mrs. Woolper's hand prevented her saying more. 
 
 " I never encountered any one with so little self-command," 
 said Mr. Sheldon. " If he is going to rush iu and out of my 
 house in that manner, I must really put a stop to his visits 
 altogether. I cannot suffer that kind of thing. For Char- 
 lotte's welfare quiet is indispensable ; and if Mr. Hawkehurst's 
 presence is to bring noise and excitement, Mr. Hawkehurst 
 must not cross this threshold." 
 
 He spoke with suppressed anger ; with such evident effort to 
 restrain his anger, that it would have seemed as if his indig- 
 nation against Valentine was no common wrath. 
 
 Charlotte caught his last words. 
 
 " Dear papa," she pleaded in her faint voice, " pray do not 
 be angry with Valentine; he is so anxious about me." 
 
 " I am not angry with him ; but while you are ill, I will have 
 quiet — at any price."
 
 Sometliing Too Much. 237 
 
 "Then I'm Bure you sliuuld not have brought Charlotte 
 home," exclaimed Georgy, iu tones of wailing and lamentation; 
 " for of all the miseries in life, there is nothing worse than 
 coming home in the very midst of a general cleaning. It was 
 agreed between Ann Woolper and me that there should be a 
 general cleaning while wo were away at the seaside. We were 
 to be away a fortnight, and everytliing was to be as neat as a 
 new pin when we came home. But here we are back in less 
 than a week, and everything at sixes-and-sevens. Where we 
 are to dine I know not; and as for the carpets, they are all 
 away at the beating-place, and Ann tells me they won't be home 
 till Friday." 
 
 " We can exist without carpets," answered Mr. Sheldon, in a 
 hard dry voice. " I suppose they are seeing to Miss Halliday's 
 room ?" he added, addressing himself to Mrs. Woolper. " Why 
 don't you go and look after them, Nancy F " 
 
 " Sarah knows what she has to do. The bed-rooms was done 
 first ; and there's not much amiss in Miss Charlotte's room." 
 
 Mr. Sheldon dropped wearily into a chair. He looked pale 
 and haggard. Throughout the journey he had been unfailing 
 in his attention to the invalid; but the journey had been fatigu- 
 ing ; for Charlotte Halliday was very ill — so ill as to be unable 
 to avoid inflicting trouble upon others. The weariness — the 
 dizziness — the dull intervals of semi-consciousness — the help- 
 less tottering walk, wliich was like the walk of intoxication 
 rather than ordinary weakness — the clouded sight — all the worst 
 symptoms of this nameless disease, had every hour grown more 
 alarming. 
 
 Against this journey to London Mrs. Sheldon and Diana had 
 pleaded — Georgy with as much earnestness as she could com- 
 mand; Diana as forcibly as she dared argue a question in 
 which her voice had so httle weight. 
 
 But upon tliis point Mr. Sheldon was adamant. 
 
 " She will be better olf in London," he said resolutel}"-. "This 
 irip to the seaside was a whim of my wife's; and, like most 
 other whims of my wife's, it has entailed trouble and expense 
 upon me. Of course I know that Georgy did it for the best," 
 he added, in reply to a rei)roachful " O Philip ! " from Mrs. 
 Sheldon. " But the whole business has been a mistake. No 
 sooner are we comfortably settled down here, than Hawkehurst 
 takes it into his head to be outrageously alarmed about Charlotte, 
 and wants to bring half-a-dozen doctors round the poor gu-l'a 
 bed, to her inevitable peril ; for in an illness which begins and 
 ends in mental depression, all appearance of alarm is calculated 
 to do mischief." 
 
 ITaving said this, Mr. Sheldon lost no tinie in making arrange' 
 
 Q
 
 238 Clmrlotte's Inlieritance. 
 
 ments for the journey. A carriage was ordered; all possible 
 prejiarations were made for the comfort of the invalid — every- 
 thing that care or kindness could do was done ; but the cruelty 
 of the removal was not the less obvious. Georgy wailed 
 piteously about the sizes-and-sevens to wliich they were being 
 taken. Diana cared nothing about sixes-and-sevens ; but she 
 felt supreme indignation against Charlotte's stepfather, and she 
 did not attempt to conceal her feehngs. 
 
 Nor was it without an effort to oppose Mr. Sheldon's authority 
 that Miss Paget succumbed to the force of circumstances. She 
 appealed to his wife. 
 
 " Dear Mrs. Sheldon, I beg you not to suffer Lotta's removal," 
 she said earnestly. " You do not know how ill she is — nor can 
 Mr. Sheldon know, or he would not take such a step. As her 
 mother, your authority is superior to his ; you have but to say 
 that she shall not be taken from this house in her present state 
 of prostration and'sickness." 
 
 "I have only to say!" cried Genrgy, piteously. "0 Diana, 
 how can you say such a thing ? What would be Mr. Sheldon's 
 feelings if I were to stand up against him, and declare that 
 Charlotte should not be moved? And he so anxious too, 
 and so clever. I'm sure his conduct about my poor dear 
 Lotta is positively beautiful. I never saw sxtch anxiety. Why, 
 he has grown ten years older in his looks since the beginning 
 of her illness. People go on about stepfather this, and step- 
 father that, until a poor young widow is almost frightened 
 to marry again. But I don't believe a real father ever was 
 more thoughtful or more careful about a real daughter than 
 Philip has been about Lotta. And what a poor return it would 
 be if I were to oppose him now, when he says that the removal 
 will be for Charlotte's good, and that she wUl be near clever 
 doctors — if she should require clever doctors ! You don't know 
 how experienced he is, and how thoughtful. I shall never 
 forget his kindness to jDOor Tom." 
 
 " Yes," exclaimed Miss Paget impatiently, " but Mr. Halliday 
 died." 
 
 " Diana," whimpered Georgy, " I did not think you could 
 be 80 unkind as to remind ra.e of that." 
 
 " I only want to remind you that Mr. Sheldon is not in- 
 fallible." 
 
 Mr. Sheldon entered the room at this juncture, and Diana 
 left it, passionately indignant against the poor weak creature, 
 to whom no crisis, no danger, could give strength of mind or 
 will. 
 
 " A sheep would make some struggle for her lamb," she 
 thought, angrily. " Mrs. Sheldon is lower than a sheep."
 
 Something Too Mud. 239 
 
 It was the first time she had thought unlnudly of this weak 
 Boul, and her anger soon melted to pity for the powerless nature 
 which Mr. Sheldon held in such supreme control. She made 
 no further attempt at resistance after this; but went to 
 Charlotte's room and prepared for the journey. 
 
 "O, why am I to be moved, dear?" the girl asked piteously. 
 " I am too ill to be moved." 
 
 " It is for your good, darling. Mr. Sheldon wants you to 
 be near the great physicians, who can give you health and 
 strength." 
 
 " There are no physicians who can do that. Let me btay 
 here, Di. Beg papa to let me stay here." 
 
 Diana hid her iace upon the invahd's shoulder. Her tears 
 choked her. To repress her grief was agony scarcely endur- 
 able. But she did hide all trace of anger and sorrow, and 
 cheered the helpless traveller throughout the weariness of the 
 journey. 
 
 Charlotte was lying on a sofa in her bedroom, with Mrs. 
 Woolper in attendance upon her, when Dr. Jedd arrived. It 
 was a quarter to six, and the low western sunshine flooded 
 the room. 
 
 The physician came with Valentine, and did not ask to see 
 Mr. Sheldon before going to his patient's room. He told the 
 housemaid who admitted him to show the way to Miss Halli- 
 day's room. 
 
 " The nurse is there, I suppose ?" he said to the girl. 
 
 "Yes, sir; leastways, Mrs. Woolper." 
 
 " That will do." 
 
 Mr. Sheldon heard the voice in the hall, and came out of the 
 hbrary as the doctor mounted the step of the stairs. 
 
 "^Tbo is tills? What is this?" he asked of Valentine 
 Hawkehurst. 
 
 " I told you I was not satisfied with Dr. Doddleson's opinion," 
 answered the young man cooUy. " This gentleman is here by 
 appointment with me." 
 
 " And pray by what right do you bring a doctor of your own 
 cnoosing to visit my stepdaughter without previous consulta- 
 tion with me ? " 
 
 " By the right of my love for her. I am not satisfied as to 
 the medical treatment your stepdaughter has received in this 
 house, Mr. Sheldon, and I want to be satisfied. Miss Halli- 
 day is something more than your stepdaughter, remember: 
 she is my promised wife. Dr. Jedd's opinion will be more as* 
 Buring to me than the opinion of Dr. Doddleson." 
 
 At the sound of Dr. Jedd's name Mr. Sheldon started slightly,
 
 240 ClmrJolte's Inlierifanee. 
 
 It was a name he knew only too well — a name he had seen 
 among the medical witnesses in the great Fryar trial, tha 
 record of which had for him possessed a hideous fascination. 
 He had fancied himself in the poisoner Fryar's place; and 
 the fancy had sent an icy cliill through his veius. But in 
 the next minute he had said to himself, " I am not such a 
 reckless fool as that man Fryar was ; and have run no such 
 risks as he ran." 
 
 At the name of Jedd the same icy shiver ran through his 
 veins again. His tone of suppi-essed anger changed to a tone 
 of civility which was almost sycophantic." 
 
 " I have the honour to know Dr. Jedd by repute very well 
 indeed, and I withdraw my objection to your course of pro- 
 ceeding, my dear Hawkehm-st ; though I am sure Dr. Jedd will 
 agree with me that such a course is completely against all pro- 
 fessional etiquette, and that Dr. Doddleson will have the right 
 to consider himself aggrieved." 
 
 " There are cases in which one hardly considers professional 
 etiquette. I shall be very happy to meet Dr. Doddleson to- 
 morrow morning. But as Mr. Hawkehurst was very anxious 
 that I should see Miss Halliday to-night, I consented to waive 
 all ceremony, and come with him on the spot." 
 
 " I cannot blame his anxiety to secure so valuable an opinion. 
 I only wonder what lucky star guided him to so excellent an 
 adviser." 
 
 Mr. Sheldon looked from Dr. Jedd to Valentine Hawkehurst 
 as he said this. The physician's face told him no more than 
 he might have learnt from a blank sheet of paper. Valentine's 
 face was dark and gloomy ; but that gloomy darkness might 
 mean no more than natural grief. 
 
 " I will take you to my stepdaughter's room at once," he said 
 to the physician. 
 
 " I think it will be better for me to see the young lady alone," 
 the doctor answered coolly : " that is to say, in the presence ©f 
 her nurse only," 
 
 " As you please," Mr. Sheldon replied. 
 
 He went back to liis study. Georgy was sitting there, 
 whimpering in a feeble way at intervals ; and near her sat 
 Diana, silent and gloomy. A settled gloom, as of the gmve 
 itself, brooded over the house. Mr. Sheldon flung himself ruto 
 a chair with an impatient gesture. He had sneered at the in- 
 convenience involved in uncarpeted floors, but he was begin- 
 ning to feel the aggravation of that inconvenience. These two 
 women in his study were insupportable to him. It seemed as 
 if there was no room in the house m which he could be alone; 
 arid juRt now he had bitter need of soUtary meditiitiou.
 
 Dr. Jf'cdfg Opinion. 241 
 
 " Let them arrange the dining-room somoho-wr, carpet or 
 no carpet," he said to his wife. " We mnst have some room 
 to dine in; and I can't have you here, Georgy ; I have letters 
 to write." 
 
 Mrs. Sheldon and Diana were not slow to take the hint. 
 
 " I'm sure I don't want to be here, or anywhere," exclaimed 
 Georgy in piteous accents ; " I feel so miserable about 
 Charlotte, that if I coiikl lie down and die, it would be a com- 
 fort to me. And it really seems a mockery having dinner at 
 Biich a time. It's just as it was during poor Tom's illness ; 
 there were fowls and all sorts of things cooked, and no one 
 ever ate them." 
 
 "For God's sake go away!" cried Mr. Sheldon passionately; 
 " your perpetiial clack is torture to me." 
 
 Georgy hurried from the room, followed closely by Diana. 
 
 "Did you ever see any one more anxious?" Mrs. Sheldon 
 asked, with something Uke pride. 
 
 " I would rather see Mr. Sheldon less anxious !" Diana 
 answered gravely. 
 
 CHAPTER IL 
 
 DE. JEDD's OPINIOlf. 
 
 AiiOXE, Philip Sheldon breathed more freely. He paced the 
 room, waiting for the appearance of the doctor; and with 
 almost every turn he looked at the clock upon the chimney- 
 piece. 
 
 How intolerable seemed the slow progress of the moments ! 
 How long that man Jedd was staying in the sick-room ! And 
 yet not long ; it was he, Philip Sheldon, who was losing count 
 of time. Where was Yalentine ? He opened the door of the 
 room, and looked out. Yes, there was a figure on the stairs. 
 The lover was waiting the physician's verdict. 
 
 A door on the landing above opened, and the step of tha 
 
 octor sounded on the upper flight. Mr. Sheldon waited for 
 
 r. Jedd's appearance. 
 
 "I shall be glad to hear your opinion," he said quietly; and 
 the Doctor followed him into the study. Valentine followed the 
 Doctor, to Mr. Sheldon's evident surprise. 
 
 "Mr. Hawkehurst is very anxious to hear what I have to 
 
 y," said Dr. Jedd; "and I really see no objection to hia 
 hearing it." 
 
 " If you have no objection, I can have none." Mr. Sheldon
 
 242 Charlotte s Inheritance. 
 
 answered. " I must confess, your course of proceeding appeaf iS 
 «o me altogether exceptional, and " 
 
 " Yes, Mr. Sheldon ; but then, you see, the case is altogethei 
 an exceptional case," said the physician, gravely. 
 
 "You think so?" 
 
 " Decidedly. The young lady is in extreme danger. Yes, 
 Mr. Sheldon, in extreme danger. The mistake involved in her 
 removal to-day is a mistake which I cannot denounce too 
 etrongly. If you had wanted to kill your stepdaughter, you 
 could scarcely have pursued a more hkely course for the a/ttain- 
 ment of your object. No doubt you were actuated by the most 
 amiable motives. I can only regret that you should have acted 
 without competent advice." 
 
 " I beheved myself to be acting for the best," replied Philip 
 Sheldon, in a strange mechanical way. 
 
 He was trying to estimate the true meaning of the Doctor's 
 address. Was he merely expressing anger against an error of 
 ignorance or stupidity, or was there a more fatal significance in 
 his words ? 
 
 " You overwhelm me," the stockbroker said presently ; "you 
 positively overwhelm me by your view of my daughter's con- 
 dition. Dr. Doddleson apprehended no danger. He saw our 
 dear girl on Sunday morning — yesterday morning," added 
 Mr. Sheldon, wonder-stricken to find that the interval was so 
 brief between the time in which he had walked with Valentine 
 and Dr. Doddleson in the garden at Harold's Hill and the 
 present moment. To Valentine it seemed still more wonderfid. 
 Wliat a bridgeless gulf between yesterday morning and to- 
 night ! All his knowledge of this man Sheldon, all the horror 
 involved in Tom HalHday's death, had come upon him in that 
 brief span. 
 
 " I should like to see Dr. Doddleson's prescriptions," said Dr. 
 Jedd, with grave pohteness. 
 
 Mr. Sheldon produced them from his pocket-book with an 
 unshaken hand. No change of countenance, no tremulous 
 hand, no broken voice, betrayed his apprehension. The one 
 distinguishing mark of his manner was an absent, half-mechani- 
 cal tone, as of a man whose mind is employed otherwise than in 
 the conversation of the moment. Prompt at calculation always, 
 he was at this crisis engaged in a kind of mental arithmetic. 
 "The chances of defeat, so much; the chances of detec- 
 tion ? " 
 
 A rapid survey of his position told him what those chances 
 were. Detection by Dr. Jedd? Yes. That had come to him 
 already perhaps. But would any actual harm to him come cf 
 Buch detection P
 
 Hr. JediVs Opinion, 243 
 
 Se calculated the chances for and against this — and the 
 result was in his favour. That Dr. Jedd should form certain 
 opinions of Miss Halliday's case was one thing ; that he 
 enould give public utterance to those opinions was another 
 thing. 
 
 " What can his opinion matter to me P " Mr. Sheldon asked 
 himself; " opinion cannot touch me in a case where there is no 
 euch thing as certainty. He has seen the dilatation of the pupil 
 ^even that old fool Doddleson saw it — and has taken fright. 
 But no jury in England would hang a man on such evidence as 
 that ; or if a jury could be found to put the rope round a man's 
 neck, the British public and the British press would be pretty 
 sure to get the rope taken off again." 
 
 " Chloric tether, spirits of ammonia — hum, ha, hum — yes," 
 muttered Dr. Jedd, looking at one prescription. " Quinine, yee ; 
 aqua pura," he murmured, looking at another. 
 
 He threw them aside with a half-contemptuous gesture, and 
 then took up a pen and began to wi'ite. 
 
 " My mode of treatment will be quite different from that 
 adopted by Dr. Doddleson," he said; "but I apprehend no 
 difficulty in bringing that gentleman round to my view of th( 
 case when we meet." 
 
 As he wrote his prescription PhiHp Sheldon rose and looked 
 over his shoulder. 
 
 The form of the prescription told him that Dr. Jedd knew— 
 all ! He had suspected this from the first, and the confirmation 
 of this suspicion did not shake him. He grew firmer, indeed; 
 for now he knew on what ground he was standing, and what 
 forces were arrayed against him. 
 
 " I really do not understand the basis of your treatment," he 
 said, still looking over the physician's shoulder. 
 
 Dr. Jedd turned his chair with a sudden movement, and faced 
 him. 
 
 " Am I talking to Mr. Sheldon the stockbroker, or Mr, Shel- 
 don the surgeon-dentist ? " he asked. 
 
 This was a blow. This allusion to the past was a sharper 
 Btroke than any that Philip Sheldon had before received. He 
 looked at Valentine; from Valentine to the physician. _ Wliat 
 did it mean, this mention of the past? That blabbing fool 
 George had talked to his friend of the days in Fitzgeorge Street, 
 no doubt ; and Valentine had blabbed Mr. Sheldon's antecedents 
 to the physician. 
 
 "Was this what it all meant ? Or did it mean more than this P 
 Whatever it might mean, he faced the hidden danger, and met 
 the uncei-tainties of his position as calmly as he met its cer* 
 til in ties.
 
 214 Charlottes InJieritancs. 
 
 "I have no desire to interfere with your trealracnt," lie said, 
 very quietly ; " but I have some knowledge of the Pharma- 
 copoeia, and I confess myself quite at a loss to understand youi 
 prescription." 
 
 " Dr. Doddleson will understand it when he has heard my 
 opinion. There is no time to be lost — Mr. Hawkehurst, will 
 you take this to the chemist, and wait for the medicine ? Miss 
 Ealhday cannot take it too soon. I shall be here to-morrow at 
 nine o'clock. — If you wish me to see Dr. Doddleson, Mr. Shel- 
 don, you will perhaps arrange an appointment with him for that 
 hour." 
 
 " It is rather an early hour." 
 
 " No hour is too early in a case attended with so much danger. 
 Perhaps it will be as well for me to call on Dr. Doddleson as I 
 drive home. I shall make a point of seeing Miss Halhday twice 
 a day. I find your housekeeper a very sensible person. She 
 wiU remain in close attendance upon the sick-room ; and I must 
 beg that there is no quackery — no home-made remedies. I have 
 given your housekeeper all directions as to treatment and diet, 
 and she has my orders to allow no one but herself in the invahd's 
 room. There is a marked tendency to delirium, and quiet is 
 indispensable." 
 
 " I have said as much myself," answered Mr. Sheldon. 
 
 " Mr. Hawkehurst will undertake to see to the making-up of 
 my prescriptions," continued Dr. Jedd, as he drew on his gloves. 
 " He is very anxious about the young lady, and it will afford 
 him some relief of mind to be employed in her service. No, 
 thanks," he said, putting aside Mr. Sheldon's hand as that gen- 
 tleman ofiered him his fee. " I have already received my hono- 
 rarium from Mr. Hawkehurst." 
 
 There was no more to be said. The physician wished the two 
 men good evening, and returned to his carriage, to be driven 
 home to dinner by way of Plantagenet Square, where he saw 
 Dr. Doddleson, and appointed to meet him next day, much to 
 the delight of that individual, who was proud to be engaged in 
 a case with the great Jedd. 
 
 Valentine left the house on the heels of the Doctor. He came 
 back in about twenty minutes with the medicine. He did not 
 go to the principal gate, but to a Little side gate, near the offices 
 of the gothic villa — a gate to which butchers and bakers came 
 with their wares in the morning. 
 
 _ "I want to see Miss Paget," he said to the maid who answered 
 his summons ; " and I want to see her without disturbing Mr. 
 and Mrs. Sheldon. Do you know where to find her ? " 
 
 " Yes, sir ; she's in her own room. I took her a cup of tea 
 there ten minutes ago. She's got a headache with fretting about
 
 Dr. Jedd's Ojjinion. 215 
 
 cm poor young lady, and she won't go dcwn to dinner with 
 master and missus." 
 
 " Will you ask her to step out here and speak to me for a few 
 minutes P " 
 
 " Won't you come indoors and see her, sir ? " 
 
 " No ; I'd rather see her in the garden." 
 
 It was still dayhght here, but it was growing shadowy among 
 the avenues in Kensington Gardens. The gate near which 
 Valentine waited was not to be seen from the windows of dining 
 or drawing-room. 
 
 The housemaid ran off to summon Miss Paget ; and in less 
 than five minutes Diana appeared, dressed in her hat and garden 
 jacket. 
 
 "Will you come out into the road with me, dear?" asked 
 Valentine. " I have something serious to say to you." 
 
 "And I am so anxious to hear what the Doctor has said," 
 answered Diana, as she took Valentine's arm. 
 
 " The road before the La\vn was very quiet at this hour of the 
 evening, and here they were safely beyond Mr. Sheldon's ken. 
 
 " Tell me the Doctor's opinion, Valentine," Diana said, eagerly. 
 " Does he think the case very serious ? " 
 
 "He does. It is more serious than you or I could have 
 imagined, if Providence had not helped me to discover the 
 truth." 
 
 " ^Miat do you mean, Valentine ? " 
 
 He gave her in brief the story of his day's work. She listened 
 to him breathlessly, but uttered no exclamation until his story 
 was finished. 
 
 " It is most horrible," she said at last ; " but I beheve it is 
 most true. There has been so much in that man's conduct that 
 has mystified me ; and this explains all. But what earthly 
 motive can have prompted this hideous crime? " 
 
 " He believes that he has a beneficial interest in her death. 1 
 cannot fuUy understand his motive ; but, rely upon it, there is 
 a motive, and a sufficient one. And I have let that man delude 
 me into behef in his honesty after I had been warned against 
 Kim ! But there is no time for regrets. Diana, I look to you 
 to help me in saving my dear love." 
 
 " It is not too late to save her ? " 
 
 " Dr. Jedd will commit himself to no positive statement. He 
 tells me she is in danger, but he does not refuse all hope. Now 
 listen, my dear. In that house I have only two people to help 
 me — Ann Woolper and yt.«rself. Ann Woolper I hold only by 
 a feeble bond, I think she will be true to us ; but I am not 
 sure of her. Sheldon's influence over her is a powerful one; 
 and God knows what concession he might extort from her. She
 
 248 Charlotte's tiiheritame. 
 
 ifl the ostensible guardian of Charlotte's room ; you must cou 
 trive to be the real guardian. You must keep_ custody over the 
 custodian. How is your room situated in relation to Charlotte's 
 room?" 
 
 " The doors of the two rooms are exactly opposite." 
 
 "Providence favours us there. Can you keep watch over 
 Charlotte's door from your room without making your guardian- 
 ship too apparent?" 
 
 " I can." 
 
 "Day and night?" 
 
 " Day and night." 
 
 " God bless you, dear ! Her life may be saved by your 
 fidehty." 
 
 *' I would do as much to render her a smaller service." 
 
 " My dear girl ! And now go back to the house. Here is the 
 medicine. You will give that into Mrs. Woolper's hands ; she 
 has received her instructions from Dr. Jedd, and those instruc- 
 tions leave no room for doubt. If she permits^ Sheldon to 
 tamper with the medicine or the food of her patient, she will 
 be the wilful accompUce of a murderer. I tliink she may be 
 justed." 
 
 " I will watch her." 
 
 "The charge of procuring the medicine is mine. I shall 
 come to this house many times in the course of every day ; but 
 I am bound to prepare myself for the hour in which Mr. Sheldon 
 may forbid me his house. In that event I shaU come to thia 
 gate. I suppose the sei-vants would stand by me if you pleaded 
 for me?" 
 
 " I am sure they would." 
 
 " And now, dear, go ; the medicine is wanted. I shall come 
 back in a few hours to inquire if there is any change for the 
 better. Go." 
 
 They had returned to the gate ere this. He grasped the hand 
 which she held out to him, and stood by the Uttle gate watching 
 her till she had disappeared through the door of the servants' 
 quarters. When the door closed, he walked slowly away. He 
 had done all that it was possible for him to do, and now canie 
 his worst misery. There was nothing left for him but to wait 
 the issue of events. 
 
 What was he to do ? Go home to hia lodgings — eat, drink, 
 sleep ? Was it possible for him to eat or to sleep while that 
 precious life trembled in the balance ? He walked slowly along 
 the endless roads and terraces in a purposeless way. Careless 
 people pushed against him, or he pushed against them; children 
 brushed past him as they ran. What a noisy, busy, clattering 
 world it seemed ! And she lay dying ! O, the droning, dreary
 
 Dr. JedtVs Ojnnlon. 24?* 
 
 ofgane, and the hackneyed, common tunes, how excruciating 
 they were to him to-night ! 
 
 He emerged into the high road by-and-by, in all the bustle 
 and riot of Netting Hill. The crowded shops, the clamorous 
 people, seemed strange to him. It was like the clamour of" a 
 foreign city. He walked on past the bustle and riot, by the 
 quieter terraces near Holland Park, and still held on to Shep- 
 herd's Bush, where he went into a Httle public-house and called 
 for some brandy. 
 
 There was a bench on one side of the space in front of the 
 bar, and towards this he pushed his way. 
 
 " Where are you shoving to, my young swell P " growled a 
 sturdy cabman, indignant at the outrage inflicted by Valentine's 
 elbows ; but in the next moment the sturdy cabman dashed 
 suddenly forward and caught the young swell in his strong 
 arms. 
 
 " My eye, young un ! " he cried ; " where do you want to go 
 to P Here, some one bring a mug of cold water : I'm blest if he 
 ain't in a fit!" 
 
 Happily it was no fit, only a dead faint into which Mr. Hawke- 
 hurst had fallen. He came back to consciousness jaresently, after 
 a few spoonfuls of brandy had been forced into his mouth, and 
 looked about him with a heljsless stare. 
 
 " I'm jiggered if I don't beUeve he's fainted for the want of 
 wittles ! " cried the cabman. " They keeps up till they drop, 
 sometimes, these seedy swells — walks about, lookin' like so many 
 Dossays, on a hempty stomach. Here, some one bring a plate o' 
 oold meat, and look sharp about it. I'll stand sam." 
 
 Valentine looked up with a faint smile. 
 
 " And I'll stand sam for anything you hke to order, my friend," 
 he said, holding out his hand to the good-natured cabman. " I've 
 eaten nothing since last night ; but I haven't fasted for want of 
 money. There are worse troubles than an empty pocket, — and 
 I'm not unacquainted with that." 
 
 " I'm sure I beg your pardon, sir," said the man, sheepishly, 
 very much ashamed of his benevolence ; " but, you see, it ain't 
 the fust time I've seen a swell come to the pavement with a 
 cropper, in consequence of having gone it too fast, and cleaned 
 hisself out> m a manner of speaking."
 
 24i3 Cnarloite'a InJieriiaitdS. 
 
 CHAPTER in. 
 
 NON DOKMIT JUDAS. 
 
 The Bnmmer darkness closed round the Bayswater villa, bnt ol 
 sleep there was little for any one in that household during thia 
 sad night. Is there not, in almost every household, a memory 
 of such days and nights— dread intervals in which the common 
 course of Hfe and time seems to be susjDended, and all the inte- 
 rests of the universe hang upon the fitfnl breath of one dear 
 sufferer ? 
 
 Lonely were the watchers in Mr. Sheldon's house. Georgy 
 was in her own room, forbidden to disturb the invalid by her 
 restless presence — now lying down, now pacing to and fro, now 
 praying a little, now crying a little — the very ideal of helpless 
 misery. 
 
 In the sick-room there was no one but the invalid and Ann 
 Woolper, In the room opposite watched Diana Paget, her door 
 ajar, her senses sharisened by anxiety, quick to hear the faintest 
 sound of footfall on the stairs, or to feel the slightest vibration 
 from steathily opened door on the story below. 
 
 Alone in the study sat PhiHp Sheldon, at the table where he 
 was accustomed to write — a blank sheet of paper before him, a 
 pen held loosely in his outstretched hand, and his eyes fixed in 
 an unseeing gaze upon the bookcase opposite — the living image 
 of care. Now that the turmoil of the day was done, and there 
 was silence in the house, he had set himself to face his position. 
 It was no trifling task which he had to perform. Not one diffi- 
 culty, or one set of difficulties, had he to meet and master. The 
 armed enemies up-springing from the dragon's teeth which he 
 had sown were not to be set fighting amongst themselves, nor 
 were they to be smashed by any rocks that he could hurl 
 amongst them. They stood around him in an awful circle, and 
 turn which way he would, he saw the same appalling figure^ 
 armed to the teeth, and invincible as death. 
 What had he to fear P 
 
 Detection of a past crime P No, that was a fool's terror which 
 shook him at the sound of Tom Halliday's name — a child's fear 
 of the nursery bogie. Detection in the present was more to be 
 dreaded. The work that he had done was, according to his 
 belief, work that could not be proved against him. But there 
 are crimes of which to be accused is to be condemned. Lawyers 
 may plead, and juries may acquit; but the fiat of public opinion 
 goes forth against the suspected wretch, and on Ids forehead for 
 ever shows the dark brand of Cain.
 
 JTon Bormit Juclas. 210 
 
 For tlie criminal of almost every shade of .solour, save this 
 one dread hue. society has a sanct\iary and earth a refuge. The 
 forger may find a circle in wliich the signing of another man'a 
 name, under the pressure of circumstances, is held to be a mis- 
 fortime rather than an offence. The swindler has the gentle- 
 maidy brotherhood and sisterhood of Macaire for his family, 
 and need never be lonely. The thief may dance away his jovial 
 nights among kindred spirits, and be carried to his grave by 
 sorrowing fellow-artists. The coiner may be jolly in his hiding- 
 place among liis chosen band of brother coiners. But for the 
 murderer there is no such thing as human sympathy ; and, 
 when the blood of Nancy dyes his cruel hand, Bill Sykes may 
 thank God if he has a dog that vdll follow him to his vn-etched 
 end, for from mankind he can hope nothing. 
 
 Mr. Sheldon did not contemplate his position from any senti- 
 mental point of view ; but he told himself that to be suspected 
 of having poisoned his friend, and to be accused of poisoning, 
 or attempting to poison, his daughter, would be ruin — ruin 
 social and commercial, ruin complete and irretrievable. 
 
 And having faced one of these dread armed antagonists, he 
 passed on to another shadowy enemy. 
 
 \Vhat if Charlotte recovered, and he escaped the taint of 
 nttered suspicion — for Dr. Jedd's private opinion he cared very 
 little — what then ? 
 
 Then the grim antagonist lifted his visor, and showed him the 
 countenance of Commercial Disgrace. 
 
 Unless within the next few weeks he could command from 
 eight to ten thousand pounds, his disgrace as a member of the 
 Stock Exchange was inevitable. Charlotte's death would givo 
 him the means of raising as much upon the policies of assurance 
 obtained by her, and which, by the terms of her will, he would 
 inherit. The hfe-iusurance people might be somewhat slow to 
 settle his claims ; but he had all possible facilities for the raising 
 of money upon any tangible security, and he could count uixsn 
 immediate cash in the event of Charlotte's death. 
 
 But what if she should not die? What if this nameless 
 languor, this mysterious atrophy, taken vigorously in hand by 
 Dr. Jedd, should be vanquished, and the girl should Uve ? 
 
 What indeed ? A sharp spasm contracted the stockbroker's 
 hard cold face as he pictured to himself the result of failure. 
 
 He saw the crowd of busy faces in the House, and heard the 
 low hum of many voices, anil the dull sound of the big half-glass 
 doors swinging to and fro, and the constant tread of hurrying 
 feet. He heard the buzz of voices and the tramp of feet stop 
 as suddenly as if that busy iiile of human life had been arrested 
 by an enchanter's wand. The enchanter is no other thiin the
 
 250 Cliarlotte's Inlieritance. 
 
 head-waiter of the Stock Exchange, wlio takes liis position by a 
 stand in the midst of that great meeting-place, and removes hia 
 hat. 
 
 After that sudden silence comes a faint sound of anxious 
 ■whisperings ; and then again a second silence, stiU more pro- 
 found, prevails in that assembly. Three times, with wooden 
 hammer sounding dull against the woodwork of his stand, the 
 waiter raps his awful rap. To some it is the caU of doom. The 
 commercial Nemesis hides her awful countenance. Slow and 
 solemn sound those three deliberate strokes of the wooden 
 hammer. You can hear the stertorous breathing of an apo- 
 plectic stockbroker, the short panting respiration of some eager 
 speculator — the rest is silence. And then the voice of the waiter 
 — proxy for the commercial Nemesis — calmly enunciates the 
 dread decree. 
 
 " PhiUp Sheldon begs to inform the members of the Hou3« 
 that he cannot comply with his bargains." 
 
 A sudden flutter of the leaves of many note-books follows 
 that awful announcement. Voices rise loud in united utter- 
 ance of surprise or indignation. The doors swing to and fro, 
 as hurrying members dash in and out to scan the market 
 and ascertain how far they may be affected by this unlooked-for 
 failure. 
 
 This was the scene which the watcher pictured to himself; 
 and for him Fate could wear no aspect more terrible. Respecta- 
 bility, solvency, success — these were the idols to which he had 
 given worship and tribute in aU the days of his Hfe. To pro- 
 pitiate these inexorable ones he had sacrificed all the dearest and 
 best blessings which earth and heaven offer to mankind. Rest 
 or happiness, as other men consider these blessings, he had 
 never known ; the sense of triumph in success of the present, 
 the feverish expectation of success in the future — these had 
 stood to him in the place of love and hope, pleasure and idlesse, 
 all the joys and comforts of this lower world, and aU the holy 
 dreams of purer pleasures in a woi-ld to come. 
 
 One vague brief thought of all that he had sacrificed flashed 
 across his brain ; and swift upon his track followed the thought 
 of what he stood to lose. 
 
 Something more than his position upon the Stock Exchange 
 was at stake. He had done desjDcrate things in the vain hope of 
 sustaining that position against the destroying sweep of For- 
 tune's turning tide. Bills were afloat which he must meet, or 
 etand before the world a detected forger, — bills drawn upon com- 
 panics^ that were shadowy as the regions of their supposed 
 operations. BUls amounting to five thousand pounds, drawn 
 upon the Honduras Mahogany Company, Limited ; other billi^,
 
 Non Dorm if Judaa. 251 
 
 amounting to upwards of three thousand pounds, against the 
 Pennsylvanian Anthracite Coal Corj^oration, Limited. The 
 Bum he might raise on the policies ot insurance would about 
 cover these bills ; and, simultaneously with their withdrawal, 
 fresh bills might be floated, and the horse-leech cry of the 
 brokers for contango might be satisfied until there came a 
 reaction in the City, and the turning tide should float him 
 into some harbour of safety. Beyond this harbour shone a 
 splendid beacon, the dead girl's inheritance — his, to claim by 
 right of the same will that would give him the sum insured 
 upon her hfe. 
 
 Without this immediate ready money there was no extrcation 
 from the hideous labyrinth. His position had been already too 
 long sustained by bills of exchange. There were people in 
 the City who wanted, in vulgar parlance, to see the colour of 
 his money. He knew this — and knew how frail the tenure by 
 which he held his position, and how dire the crash which would 
 hurl him down to ruin. 
 
 After the proclamation of his inability to meet his difier- 
 ences — the Deluge : and, looking gloomily athwart the flood and 
 tempest, he saw neither ark nor Ararat. 
 
 Charlotte's death was the one chance of redemption; and 
 to that event he looked as to a figure in a mathematical pro- 
 position. Of this girl herself, with all her wealth of beauty 
 and goodness, of \\o\)e and love, he had scarcely any definite 
 idea. She had so long been no more to him than an import- 
 ant figure in the mathematics of his life, that he had lost the 
 power to behold her in any other light. 
 
 The hardness of his nature was something lower than abso- 
 lute cruelty of heart. It was less human than the half-insane 
 ferocity of a Nero. It was a calm indifference to the waste of 
 human life, which, displayed upon a larger field of operation, 
 would have made a monster cold and passionless as Sphinx or 
 Chimasra. 
 
 " I must see Ann Woolper," he said to himself, presently, 
 " she win not dare to exclude me from that room." 
 
 He Hstened to the striking of the Bayswater clocks. Two 
 o'clock. Within and without the house reigned a profound 
 silence. The room immediately over Mr. Sheldon's study was 
 Charlotte's room, and here there had been for a long time no 
 sound of Ufe or movement. 
 
 " Asleep, I dare say," muttered Mr. Sheldon, " invahd and 
 nurse both." 
 
 He exchanged his boots for slippers, which he kept in a little 
 cupboard below the bookshelves, among old newspapers, and 
 went softly from the room. The gas was burning dimly rn
 
 252 Cliarlotte's Inlieritance. 
 
 the stairs and on the landing above. He opened the door of the 
 invalid's room softly, and went in. 
 
 Mrs. "Woolper was seated beside the bed. She looked up at 
 him with unwinking eyes. 
 
 " I thought you was abed, sir," she said. 
 
 " No ; I am too anxious to sleep." 
 
 " I think every one is anxious, sir," Mrs. Woolper answered, 
 gi'avely. 
 
 " How is your patient ? " 
 
 The pretty white curtains of the little brass Arabian bed- 
 stead were drawn. 
 
 " She is asleep, sir. She sleeps a great deal. The doctor said 
 that was only natural." 
 
 " She has taken her medicine, I suppose ? " said Mr. Sheldon. 
 
 He glanced round the room as he asked this question, but could 
 see no trace of medicine-bottle or glass. 
 
 " Yes, sir; she has taken it twice, the poor dear." 
 
 " Let me look at the medicine." 
 
 ** The strange doctor said as I was to let no one toucb it, dr." 
 
 " Very likely ; but that direction doesn't apply to me." 
 
 "He said no one, sir." 
 
 ** You are an old fool ! " muttered Mr. Sheldon, savagely. 
 
 "Ah no, sii-," the housekeeper answered, with a profound 
 sigh ; " I am wiser than I was when poor Mr. Halliday died." 
 
 This answer, and the sigh, and the look of solemn sadness 
 which accompanied it, told him that this woman knew all. 
 She had suspected him long ago ; but against her unsupported 
 suspicion the mere force of his character had prevailed. She 
 was wiser now ; for on this occasion suspicion was confirmed by 
 the voice of science. 
 
 He stood for a few minutes looking at his old nurse, vsdth a 
 dark moody face. What could he feel except supreme indigna- 
 tion against this woman, who dared to oppose him when he 
 had the best right to rely on her faithful service ? She had pro- 
 mised him her fidelity, and at the first hint from a stranger she 
 coolly deserted him and went over to the enemy. 
 
 " Do you moan to say that you refuse to let me look at the 
 medicine wlaich you have been giving to my stepdaughter ? " he 
 asked. 
 
 " I mean to say that I will obey the orders given me by the 
 strange doctor," the old woman answered, with a calm sadness of 
 tone, " even if it turns you against me — you that have given me 
 ft comfortable home when there was nothing before me but the 
 workhouse ; you that I carried in my arras forty years ago. If 
 it was anything less than her dear life that was in danger, sir, 
 and if I hadn't stood by her father's deathbed, I couldn't stand
 
 IiTon JDurinil Judas. 263 
 
 against you like tkis. But knowing what I do, I will stand firm 
 as a rock between you and her; and think myself all the more 
 truly your faithful servant because I do not fear to offend 
 you." 
 
 " That's so much arrant humbug, Mrs. "Woolper. I suppose 
 you've made your book with Miss Halliday and Miss HaUiday's 
 lover, and think you can serve your turn best by sticking to 
 them and throwing me over the bridge. It's only the way of 
 the world. You're genuine Yorkshire, and know how to pack 
 your cards for winning the trick. But suj^pose I were to spoil 
 vour game by turning you out of doors neck and crop ? What 
 then?" 
 
 " I don't think you'll do that, sir." 
 
 " Why not, pray ? " 
 
 " I don't think you dare do it, in the face of that strange 
 doctor." 
 
 " You don't P And so Dr. Jedd is the maator of this house, 
 is he?" 
 
 " Yes, sir. Till that poor dear young lady is well again, if 
 ever that day comes, I think Dr. Jedd will be the real master in 
 this house." 
 
 " By ! Mrs. Woolper, you're a cool hand, I must say !" 
 
 He could say no more. Of passionate or declamatory lan- 
 guage he had no command. The symbols of thought that 
 obtained in his world were of a limited and primitive range. 
 
 " You're a cool hand," he rej^eated, under his breath. And 
 then he turned and left the room, opening and closing the door 
 less cautiously than on his entrance. 
 
 The door of the opposite room was opened softly as he came 
 out into the corridor, and Diana Paget stood before him, di'essed 
 as she had been in the day. 
 
 " What !" he exclaimed, impatiently, " are you up too?" 
 
 " Yes, Mr. Sheldon. I cannot sleep while Lotta is so Ul." 
 
 " Humph ! I suppose you mean to get yourself on the sick- 
 hst, and give us another invalid to nurse." 
 
 " I will not trouble you to nuriie me if I should be iU." 
 
 " Ah ! " growled the stockbroker, as he went to . his own 
 room, " you are a pack of silly women altogether ; and your fine 
 friend Hawkehurst is more womanish than the silliest of you.. 
 Good night." 
 
 He went into hig cj/u room, where he found his wife still 
 awake. Her weak lamentings and bewailings were insupjiort- 
 able to him; and at three o'clock he went downstairs, ])ut on 
 hLs boots and a light overcoat, and went out into tlie dim regions 
 of Bayswater, whence he saw the sun rise red above the eastern 
 roofs and chimneys, and wli' re Le walked until the first clatter 
 
 R
 
 254 Charlotte s Inheritance. 
 
 of hoofs and roll of wheela began to eclio tlirougli the empty 
 streets, and, with faint distant cries of sweeps and milk- women, 
 life's chorus recommenced. 
 
 It was seven o'clock when he went back to liis house, and let 
 himself in softly with his latchkey. He knew that he had beea 
 walking a long" time, and that he had seen the sun rise; but 
 what streets or squares he had been walking in lie did not 
 know. He crept upstairs to his dressing-room with stealthy 
 footsteps, and made an elaborate toilet. At eight o'clock h^ 
 was seated at breakfast in the hastily-arranged dining-room, 
 with the newspapers by the side of his cup and saucer. At 
 nine he went into the hall to receive Dr. Jedd and Dr. 
 Doddleson, who arrived almost simultaneously. His carefully- 
 arranged hair and whiskers, his well made unpretentious clothes, 
 his spotless hnen, would have done credit to an archbishop. Of 
 all the cares and calculations of his long dreary night there waa 
 no trace, except a certaiii dxdness in his eyes, and the dark half- 
 circles below them, . 
 
 CHAPTER rV. 
 
 COUNTING THE COST. 
 
 f OR four days and four nights there were fear and watching in 
 Mr. Sheldon's house; and in all that time the master never 
 quitted it, except stealthily, in the dead of the night, or at 
 early daybreak, to roam in a purposeless manner he knew not 
 where. The doctors came and went — Dr. Doddleson once a 
 day, Dr. Jedd two or three times a day — and every one in villas 
 adjoining and villas opposite, and even in villas round the 
 corner, knew that the stockbroker's stepdaughter lay sick unto 
 death; for the white horses of Dr. Jedd's landau were as the 
 pale horse of the Pale Rider himself, and where they came was 
 danger or death. Ah, thank God! to some they have brought 
 hope and blessing ; not always the dread answer, " You have 
 called me" in vain." 
 
 Valentine Hawkehurst came many times in the day, but 
 between him and Mr. Sheldon there could be no safe meeting ; 
 and the lover came quietly to the Httle gate, where a kindly 
 housemaid gave him a httle note from Diana Paget. Miss 
 Paget wrote half a dozen little notes of this kind in the course 
 of every day, but she never left her post in the room opposite 
 the sick-chamber. She complained of headache, or of some 
 "^.gne illness which prevented her taking her meals in the dining-
 
 Counting tlie Cost. 255 
 
 room, and Mr. Sheldon waa fain to be satisfied with this expla- 
 nation of her conduct. 
 
 She waa on guard; and the wretched master of the house 
 knew that she was on guard, and that if Ann Woolper could bo 
 bought over, or frightened into compliance with his wishes, thig 
 girl would still remain, faithful as watchdog, by the door of her 
 friend and companion. He asked himself whether by violent or 
 dijilomatic process, he could rid himself of this second watcher ; 
 and the answer was in the negative. The circle around bim was 
 a circle not to be broken. 
 
 His -wife, as yet, had been told nothing of the suspicions that 
 reigned in the breasta of other people. He knew this ; for in 
 his wife's face there was no token oi that dark knowledge, and 
 she, of all people, would be least skilled to deceive his scruti- 
 nizing eyes. Nor had the younger servants of his household 
 any share in the hideous suspicion. He had watched the coun- 
 tenance of the maid who waited on him, and had convinced 
 himself of this. 
 
 It was something to know that even these were not yet 
 leagued against him ; but he could not tell at what moment 
 they too might be sworn into that secret society which waa 
 growing up against him in his own house. Power to carry out 
 his own schemes in the face of these people he felt that he had 
 none. Upon the dark road which he had travelled until of late 
 without let or hindrance, there had arisen, all at once, an insur- 
 mountable barrier, with the fatal inscription, Here there is no 
 Thoroughfare. 
 
 Beyond this barrier he could not pass. Sudden as the dread 
 arrest of Lot's wife was the mandate which had checked his 
 progress. He was brought to a dead stop ; and there was nothing 
 for him to do but to wait the issue of Fate. He stood, defiant, 
 unaliashed, face to face with the figure of Nemesis, and cabnly 
 awaited the hfting of the veil. 
 
 He hoped that Charlotte Halliday would die. If by her 
 death he could tide over his difficulties and drift into smooth 
 water, it would be but a very small thing to him that Dr. Jedd, 
 and Dr. Doddleson enUghtened by his colleague, and Valentine 
 Hawkehurst, and Diana Paget, and a stupid pig-headed old 
 Yorkshirewoman, should cany in their minds for the remainder 
 of their Hves the suspicion that by hia means that fair young 
 life had been brought to its early close. 
 
 What would it amount to in the future of hia own existence ? 
 Prudential considerations would induce these people to lock the 
 secret of this suspicion in their own breasts. Dr. Jedd would 
 bow to him somewhat coldly, perhaps, if they met in the streets 
 of London, or possibly might refuse to make any return to hi*
 
 256 Charlotte's Inheritance. 
 
 passing saln.tation ; but the cut direct from Dr. Jedd would not 
 oast a shadow over his commercial career, or even weaken his 
 social position. If, by the loud foUy of Hawkehurst, some evil 
 amour about hi-m should float as far eastward as the Sto«k 
 Exchange, who would be found to give credence to the dark 
 report? Men would shrug their shoulders and shake their 
 heads incredulously; and one of these wise men of the east 
 would remark that, " A fellow in Sheldon's position doesn't 
 do that kind of thing, you know;" while another would say, 
 4' I dined with him at Greenwich last summer, and a remark- 
 ably good dinner he gave us. Dawkins, the great shipbuilder, 
 and M'Pherson, of M'Pherson and FHnders, the Glasgow mer- 
 chants, were there. Very jolly affair, I assure you. Deuced 
 gentlemanly fellow, Phil Sheldon." And so the matter would 
 end- 
 Would there be an inquest in the event of his stepdaughter'jj 
 death ? Well, no. Jedd knew that in such a case all post- 
 fnortem inquiry must end in confusion and perplexity, state- 
 ment and counter- statement from medical witnesses, who would 
 contradict one another persistently in the support of their pet 
 theories, and who would regard the investigation as a very con- 
 venient opportunity for ventilating their own opinions and 
 airing their own importance. A considerable number of the 
 canine race would be slaughtered, perhaps, in the process of 
 dilettante experiments ; the broad principles of chemical science 
 would be discussed from every point of view, in innumerable 
 letters pubhshed in the Zeus and the Diurnal Hermes ; and 
 the fact that an amiable and innocent young woman had been 
 foully murdered would be swe^Dt eut of the minds of mankind 
 before a whu'lwind of technical debate. Jedd was the last mau 
 to stake his reputation upon such a hazard, l^o : IVIr. Sheldon 
 knew that he had played a cautious game ; and if he should 
 ultimately lose the stake for which he had ventured, it would be 
 because he had been just a httle too cautious. 
 
 " These things are generally done too quickly," he said to 
 himself. " My mistake has been to make matters too slow." 
 
 Come what might, of after-consequences to himself from 
 Charlotte Halliday's illness or death he had no apprehension. 
 
 Thus it was that he met Dr. Jedd day after day -svith a face 
 as calm as the stony countenance of that distinguished phy- 
 sician himself. Such anxiety as an affectionate stepfather 
 should feel during the peril of his stepdaughter Mr. Sheldon 
 took care to express. Greater anxiety than this by no look or 
 gesture did he betray. He knew that he was watched ; and 
 that the people about him were inimical to himself and to hig 
 interests ; and he was never off his guard.
 
 Counting tlie Cost. 257 
 
 It had been necessary for him to come to London in oidcr to 
 be within easy reach of that troubled sea, the money-market. 
 But perilous though the voyage of his bark across that tem- 
 pestuous ocean was, he could not guide the helm in person. He 
 was obliged to confide matters to the care of Mr. Frederick 
 Orcott, whom he harassed with telegraphic despatches at aU 
 hours of the day, and who at this period seemed to spend his 
 hfe between the stockbroker's oiSce and Bayswater. 
 
 It seemed as if Mr. Sheldon meant to hold his ground in 
 that house imtil the issue of events was determined. Valen- 
 tine Hawkehurst and George Sheldon met at the solicitor's 
 offices, and there was a long and serious consultation between 
 them. 
 
 " One thing seems pretty clear," said George, conclusively, 
 "and that is, that my brother Phil isn't to be got off the 
 premises except by some very deejj move. The question is, 
 what move can be deep enough to trap such a man as he ? He's 
 a man who knows the inside of your mind better than you do 
 yourself; and can reckon you up as easily as the simplest sum 
 in arithmetic." 
 
 The two men talked together very seriously for some time 
 after this, and on the same day Valentine lay in wait for Dr. 
 Jedd as ho left PhiUp Sheldon's house, and was driven back to 
 tomi in that gentleman's carrii'ge. On the road there was 
 much serious talk between Miss HalKday's physician and Miss 
 HaUiday's lover. Valentine was still very grave and very- 
 anxious when he took his leave of Dr. Jedd ; but he was more 
 hopeful than he had been for the last few days. 
 
 On the same evening Gustave Lenoble received a brief epistle 
 from his phghted wife. 
 
 " My deah Gustave, — I regret to find from your letter that 
 the doctors consider my father weaker than when I was last at 
 Knightsbridge ; but, even knowing this, I cannot come to him 
 just yet. The duty which detains me here is even more sacred 
 than his claim upon my care. And I know your goodness to 
 him, and feel that in you he has a better friend and comforter 
 than I could be to him. I thank you, dear, for your kindness 
 to this poor broken-down wanderer even more than for your 
 generous devotion to me. And now I am going to ask you a 
 favour. It is, that you will afford Mr. Hawkehurst, the person 
 who will give you this letter, the help of your friendship and 
 counsel in very difficult and critical circumstances, which he 
 will explain to you. I have spoken to you of him very httle, 
 though his devotion to my dear adopted sister, Charlotte Halli*
 
 258 Gliarlotte' s Inheriiance. 
 
 day, brings him very near to me. Her long, and of late dange^ 
 rous, illness has been a bitter time of trial to him, even more than 
 to me ; but the trial has proved him true as steel. I think your 
 <x>unsel may be of some service to him just now, and I am sure 
 your friendship wiU. help to support him in a period of acute 
 anxiety. 
 
 "Do not ask to see me, dear Gustave. I cannot leave this 
 aouse while Charlotte is in danger; but if it please God to 
 remove that danger, I shall then be free to go where I please, 
 and my future Hfe shall be at your disposal. Do not think me 
 cold or ungrateful ; I am only faithful to the first friend I ever 
 knew. — ^Yours always, with all affection, 
 
 "Diana Paget." 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 IHB BEGINNING OF THE EM). 
 
 Three days elapsed after the dehvery of this letter. Upwards 
 of a week had gone by since the return of Mr. Sheldon and hia 
 family fi-om Harold's HiU : and as yet Philip Sheldon knew not 
 what the issue of events was to be. Yery vague were the 
 oracular sentences which his questioning extorted from Dr. Jedd, 
 and he had tried in vain, to obtain a tete-a-tete interview with 
 Dr. Doddleson. The physix-ian of Burlington Eow took care 
 that his feeble colleague should not fall alone and defenceless 
 into the pathway of Philip Sheldon. Of Charlotte's actual 
 condition her stepfather, therefore, knew very little. He was 
 told that her state was attended by danger; and the solemn 
 faces which gi-eeted him on every side iniphed that the danger 
 was extreme. From her room he was in a manner excluded. 
 If he went to her door to make some benevolent and paternal 
 inquiry, he was met on the threshold by Ann Woolper, the 
 Bleepless and unresting. If he hinted a natural desire to see 
 his invalid stepdaughter, he was told that she had that moment 
 fallen asleep, or that she was too iU to see him. There wa,a 
 always some plausible reason why he should not be admitted to 
 ner room ; and finding that this was so, he did not press the 
 question. 
 
 He had taken Mrs. Woolper's measure, and had found that 
 she was too strong for him ; doubly strong since she was sup- 
 ported and sustained by that second sleepless watcher, Diana
 
 The Beginning of the End. 259 
 
 Paget, whom Mr. Sheldon had long ago pronouBced to be a 
 Btrong-minded and superior j^oung person. _ 
 
 From his wife he could obtain no real information — nothing 
 but weepings and lamentations ; weak apprehensions of future 
 woe, weaker retrospective reflections on the fatal illness and un- 
 timely end of her first husband. Georgy was admitted once or 
 twice a day to the sick-room ; but she emerged therefrom no 
 wiser than she entered it. Sorrow in the present, and the fear 
 of greater sorrow to come, had utterly prostrated this poor weak 
 soul. She beii«fv«d what other people told her to believe, she 
 hoped what they told her to hope. She was the very incarnation 
 and express image of helpless misery. 
 
 So, in utter darkness of mind, Mr. Sheldon awaited his des- 
 tiny. The day drew very near on wliich he must find certain 
 Bums of ready money, or must accept the dreary alternative of 
 ruin and disgrace. He had the pohcies of assurance in his cash- 
 box, together with the will which made him Charlotte's sole 
 legatee ; he had fixed in his own mind upon the man to whom he 
 could apply for an advance of four thousand pounds on one of 
 the two pohcies, and he rehed on getting his banker to lend 
 him money on the security of the second. But for the one 
 needful event he had yet to wait. That event was Charlotte 
 Halliday's death. 
 
 Of his dreary wanderings in the early morning the household 
 knew nothing. The time which he chose for these purposeless 
 rambles was just the time when no one was astir. The watchera 
 in the two rooms above heard neither his going out nor hia 
 coming in, so stealthy were his movements on every occasion. 
 But without this intermission from the dreadful concentration of 
 hisUfe, without this amount of physical exercise and fresh air, 
 I'hilip Sheldon could scarcely have lived through this period. 
 The soHtude of shipwrecked mariaer cast upon a desolate island 
 could hardly be more lonely than this man's hfe had been since 
 his return from Harold's Hill. From his study to the dining- 
 room, and from the dining-room back to his study, was the only 
 variety of his dreary days and nights. He had an iron bedstead 
 pat up in his study, and there he lay in the earlier hours of the 
 night, taking such rest as he could from fitful dozing that was 
 scarcely sleep, or from brief intervals of heavy slxunber made 
 horrible by torturing dreams. 
 
 In this room he cotdd hear every sudden movement in the 
 hall, every footstep on the stairs, every opening and shutting oi 
 the outer door. Here, too, he could keep has watch, holding 
 himself ready to counter the movements of his enemies, should 
 any opportunity arise for action on bis part, defensive or aggrea- 
 
 Bive.
 
 2G0 CJiarhlte's tnheritanci. 
 
 To this room he stealtlilly returned one brilliant snmmer morn- 
 ing as the clocks were striking six. He had been walking in the 
 Bayswater Road, amidst all the pleasant stir and bustle of early 
 morning. "Waggons coming in from the country, milkwoman set- 
 ting forth on their daily rounds, clamorous young rooks cawing 
 among the topmost branches of the elms, song-birds chiiTuping 
 and gurgling their glad morning hymn ; and over all things the 
 glory and the freshness of the summer sunshine. 
 
 B«t to Philip Sheldon it was as if these things were not 
 For the last twelve or fifteen years of his hfe he had taken no 
 heed of the change of the seasons, except insomuch as the 
 passage of time affected his bill-book, or the condition of that 
 commercial world which was the beginning and end of his life 
 Now, less than ever, had he an ear for the carolling of birds, 
 or an eye for the glory of summer sunlight, or the flickering 
 shadows of summer leaves faintly stirred by the soft summer 
 wind. 
 
 He re-entered his house with a half-dazed sense of the stir and 
 life that had been about him in the high roud. It was a relief 
 to him to escape this life and brightness, and to take shelter in 
 the gloom of his study, where the shutters were closed, and only 
 a faint glimmer of day crept through a chink in the shrunken 
 woodwork. 
 
 For the first time since the beginning of this dreary period of 
 idleness and suspense he felt *liimself thoroughly beaten, and 
 instead of going up to his dressing-room for his careful morning 
 toilet, as it was his habit to do at this hour, he flung himself, 
 dressed as he was, upon the low iron bedstead, and fell into a 
 heavy slumber. 
 
 Yes, there they were — the familiar tortures of his slumbers, 
 the shadows of busy, eager faces ; and upon all one universal 
 expression of mingled anger and surprise. The sound of a 
 wooden hammer striking three solemn strokes; the faint tones 
 of Tom Halliday's voice, thanking him for his friendly care ; the 
 dying look in Tom Halhday's face, turned to him with such 
 depth of trust and affection. And then across the shadowy 
 realm of dreams there swept the slow solemn progress of a 
 funeral cortege — plumed hearses, blacker than blackest night; 
 innumerable horses, with funereal trappings and plumed head- 
 gear waving in an icy wind; long trains of shrouded figures 
 stretching on into infinite space, in spectral procession that knew 
 neither beginning nor end. And in all the solemn crowd passing 
 perpetually with the same unceasing motion, there was no sound 
 of human footfall, no tramp of horse's hoof, only that dismal 
 waving of black plumage in an icy wind, and the deep boom of 
 a bell tolling for the dead.
 
 T7ie Beginning of tlie End. 2GT 
 
 ]Ie awoke with a start, and exclaimed, " If tliis is what it ia 
 to rsleep, I will never sleep again ! " 
 
 In the next minute he recovered himself. He had been lying 
 on his back. The endless pageant, the dreadful toUing of the 
 funeral bell, meant no more than nightmare, the common torment 
 of all humanity. 
 
 " What a fool I must be !" he muttered to himself, as he wiped 
 his forehead, which had grown cold and damp in the agony of 
 his dream. 
 
 He opened the shutters, and then looked at the clock on the 
 mantelpiece. To his surprise he found that he had been sleep- 
 ing three hours. It was nine o'clock. He went iipstairs to dress. 
 There was an unusual stir in the corridor above. Ann Woolper 
 was standing there, with her hand on the door of the sick-room, 
 talking to Diana, who covered her face suddenly as he approached, 
 and disappeared into her own room. 
 
 The beati-ng of his heart quickened suddenly. Something had 
 happened to disturb the common course of events. Something ? 
 What was Hkely to happen, except the one dread circum- 
 stance for which he hoped and waited with such horrible 
 eagerness ? 
 
 In Ann Woolper's solemn face he read an answer to his 
 thought. For the first time he was well nigh _ losing his self- 
 possession. It was with an effort that he steadied himself suffi- 
 ciently to ask the usual conventional question ia the usual con- 
 ventional tone. 
 
 " Is she any better this morning, Ann ? " 
 
 " Yes, sir, she is much better," the Yorkshirewoman answercQ 
 solemnly. " She is where none can harm her now." 
 
 Yes ; it was the usual periphrase of these vulgar people. He 
 knew all their cant by heart. 
 
 " You mean to say — she — is dead ? " 
 
 He no longer tried to conceal his agitation. It was a part of 
 his duty to be agitated by the news of his stepdaughter's 
 untimely death. 
 
 " 0, sir, you may well be sorry," said the Yorkshirewomat, 
 with deep feeling. " She was the sweetest, most forgiving crea- 
 ture that ever came into this world ; and to the last no hard or 
 cruel word ever passed her innocent lips. Yes, sir, she is gone ; 
 she is beyond the power of any one to harm her." 
 
 "All that sort of stuff is so much hypocritical twaddle, Mrs. 
 Woolper," muttered Mr. Sheldon impatiently; " and I recommend 
 you to keep it for the chaplain of the workhouse in which you 
 are likely to end your days. At what time— did — did this — «ad 
 event — happen ?' 
 
 •' About an hour Rjfo."
 
 262 Charlotte^s InJierlianee. 
 
 In the very hour when, in his hideous dream, he had beheld 
 the solemn funeral train winding on for ever through the dim 
 realms of sleep. Was there some meaning in such fooUsh 
 ehadows, after all ? 
 
 " And why was I not sent for P" 
 
 " You were asleep, sir. I came downstairs myself, and looked 
 into your room. You were fast asleep, and I wouldn't disturb 
 you." 
 
 " That was very wrong ; but it was of a piece with the rest of 
 your conduct, which has been from first to last antagonistic 
 to me. I siippose I can see my stepdaughter now," Mr. Sheldon 
 added, with a grim smile. " There is no further excuse — about 
 headache — or sleep." 
 
 " No, sir, you cannot see her yet. In an hour, if you wish to 
 come into this room, you can come." 
 
 " You are extremely obHging. I begin to doubt whether I 
 am really in my own house. In an hour, then, I will come. 
 Where is my wife ?" 
 
 " In her own room, sir, lying down ; asleep, I believe." 
 
 " I will not disturb her. How about the registration, by the 
 bye ? That must be seen to." 
 
 " Dr. Jedd has promised to attend to that, sir." 
 
 " Has Dr. Jedd been here P" 
 
 " He was here an hour ago." 
 
 " Very good. And he will see to that," muttered Mr. Sheldon 
 thoughtfully. 
 
 The event for which he had been so long waiting seemed at 
 the last a httle sudden. It had shaken his nerves more than he 
 had supposed it possible that they could be shaken. 
 
 He went to his dressing-room, and on this occasion made a 
 very hasty toilet. The event had been tardy, and he had n<i 
 time to lose in discounting it now that it had come to pasf* 
 He went from his dressing-room back to his study, took the 
 acket containing the policies of assurance r.ad the will from 
 the deeii-LK.::, and left the house.
 
 Confusion Worse Confoundied, 2G3 
 
 CHAPTER VL 
 
 CONTUSTON WORSE CONTOTJNDED. 
 
 A CAB conveyed Mr. Slieldon swiftly to a dingy street in the 
 Qity — a street which, might have been called the pavement of 
 wasted footsteps, so many an impecunious wretch tramped to 
 and fro upon those dreary flags in vain. 
 
 The person whom Mr. Sheldon came to see was a distin- 
 guished bill-discounter, who had served him well in more 
 than one crisis, and on whose service he fancied he could 
 now rely. 
 
 Mr. Kaye, the bill-discounter, was delighted to see his worthy 
 friend Mr. Sheldon. He had just come up from his family at 
 Brighton, and had quite a little court awaiting him in an outer 
 chamber, through which Mr. Sheldon had been ushered to the 
 inner office. 
 
 " It's rather early for such a visitor as you,"_ Mr. Kaye said, 
 after a few commonplaces. " I have not been in town half an 
 hour." 
 
 " My business is too important for any consideration about 
 hours," answered Mr. Sheldon, " or I should not be here at all. 
 I have just come from the deathbed of my wife]s daughter." 
 
 " Indeed !" exclaimed the bill-discounter, looking inexpressibly 
 shocked. Until that moment he -had Uved in supreme ignorance 
 of the fact that Mr. Sheldon had a stepdaughter; but his 
 sorrow-stricken expression of countenance might have implied 
 that he had known and esteemed the young lady. 
 
 "Yes, it's very sad," said Mr. Sheldon; "and something 
 more than sad for me. The poor girl had great expectatioug, 
 and would have come into a very fine fortune if she had lived a 
 year or two longer." 
 
 " Ha ! dear me, how very unfortunate ! Poor young lady !" 
 
 " Jedd and Doddleson — you know them by repute, of course 
 — have been attending her for the last six weeks. There will be 
 no end of expense for me ; and it has been all of no use." 
 
 "Consumption, I suppose?" 
 
 " Well, no ; not pulmonary disease. A kind of atrophy. I 
 scarcely know what to call it. Now, look here, Kaye. Thia 
 illness has thrown all my affiiirs into a muddle. Taken in con- 
 junction with the depressed state of the money-market, it has 
 been altogether an upset for me. I have been staying at home 
 booking after this poor girl and my wife — who of course is dread- 
 fi'lly cut up, and that sort of thing — when I ought to have been
 
 2G4 Charlotte's Inheritance. 
 
 in the City. Luckily for me, and for my wife, in whose interests 
 I acted, I took the precaution to get her daughter's hfe insured 
 eight or nine months ago ; in point of fact, immediately after 
 finding she was heir-at-law to a considerable fortune. The 
 pohcy is for five thousand pounds. I want you to give me four 
 bhousand immediately upon the strength of the document and 
 bi my stepdaughter's will." 
 
 " Give you four thousand!" exclaimed Mr. Kaye, with a lit k* 
 unctuous laugh. " Do you suppose I keep such a balance as 
 •nat at my banker's ? " 
 
 " I suppose that you can give me the money if you like." 
 
 " I might be able to get it for you." 
 
 " Yes ; that's a kind of humbug a hundred years old. "We've 
 heard all about httle Premium and his friend in the City, and 
 so (. n, from that man who wrote plays and cut a figure in Par- 
 liaxnent. You can give me the money on the spot if you like, 
 Knye ; and if 1 didn't want ready money very badly I shouldn't 
 cone to you. The insurance company will give me five thousand 
 in a month or two. I can give you my bill at two months' date, 
 aiid deposit the policy m. your hands as collateral security. 
 I might gel this money from other quarters — from my 
 bankers', for instance ; but I don't want to let them know too 
 n.ich." 
 
 Ml'. Kaye dehberated. He had assisted Mr. Sheldon's financial 
 operations, and had profited thereby. Money advanced upon 
 srndh. a security must be as safe as money invested in Consols, 
 railess there were anything doubtful in the circumstances of 
 the pohcy; and that, with a man of Mr. Sheldon's respecta- 
 oiUty, was to the last degree unUkely. 
 
 " When do you want tliis money ?" he asked at last. 
 
 "At the beginning of next week. On the twenty-fifth at 
 /atest." 
 
 " And this is the twentieth. Sharp work." 
 
 " Not at all. You could give me the money this afternoon, if 
 you pleased." 
 
 " Well, I'll think it over. It's a matter in which I feel myself 
 bound to take my solicitor's opinion. Suppose you meet him 
 Here to-morrow at twelve o'clock ? You can bring the necessary 
 evidence to support the claim — the doctor's and registrar's cer- 
 tificate, and so on P " 
 
 "Yes," Mr. Sheldon answered, thoughtfully ; "I will bring 
 he documentary evidence. To-morrow at twelve, then." 
 
 Very little more was said. Mr. Sheldon left the will and the 
 pohcy in the bill-discounter's possession, and departed. Things 
 had gone as smoothly as he could fairly expect them to go. 
 Frort' Mr. Kaye's ofiirte he went to the Unitas Bank, where he
 
 Confusion worse Confounded. 2C5 
 
 had a very friendly, but not altogetlier Batisfactory, interview 
 •with the secretary, He wanted the Unitas people to advance 
 him money on the strength of the second policy of assurance ; 
 but his balance had been very low of late, and the secretary 
 could not promise compliance with his desires. Those Unitas 
 shares valued at five thousand pounds, v^hich he had transferred 
 to liis beloved stepdaughter, had been _ retransfen-ed by the 
 young lady some months before, with a view to the more profit- 
 able investment of the money. 
 
 This money, as well as all else that PhUip Sheldon could 
 command, had gone to the same bottomless pit of unlucky 
 Bpeculation. From the bank the stockbroker v?ent to his office, 
 where he saw Frederick Orcott, to whom he announced his step- 
 daughter's death with all due appearance of sorrow. He sat 
 for an hour in his office, arranging his aff'airs for the following 
 day, then sent for another cab, and di-ove back to Bayswater. 
 The noonday press and noise of the City seemed strange to him, 
 almost as they might have seemed to a man newly returned 
 from lonely wanderings in distant wildernesses. 
 
 The bUnds were down at the Lawn. His own handsome 
 bedchamber and adjoining dressing-room faced the road, and it 
 was at the windows of these two rooms he looked. He fancied 
 his weak fooUsh wife wailing and lamenting behind those lowered 
 bUiids. 
 
 " And I shall have to endure her lamentations," he thought, 
 with a shudder. " I shall have no further excuse for avoiding 
 her. But, on the other hand, I shall have the pleasure of giring 
 Mrs. Woolper and Miss Paget notice to quit." 
 
 He derived a grim satisfaction from this thought. Yes; 
 insolence from those two women he would endure no longer. 
 The time had come in which he would assert his right to be 
 master in his own house. The game had been played against 
 him boldly by Jedd and these people, and had been lost by 
 them. He was the winner. He could not dismiss doctors, 
 nurse, friend, lover. Charlotte Halliday's death made him 
 master of the situation. 
 
 Ho went into his house with the determination to assert hia 
 authority at once. Within all was very quiet. He looked into the 
 dining-room — it was quite empty ; into the study — also empty. 
 He went slowly iipstairs, composing his face into the a])propriate 
 expression. At the door of that chamber which to him should 
 have seemed of all earthly chambers the most awful, he knocked 
 Boitly. 
 
 There was no answer. 
 
 He knocked a Uttle louder, but there was stili no answer. A 
 little louder again, and with the same result.
 
 2G6 Charlotte* 8 Inheritance. 
 
 "Is tliere no one there?" lie asked himself. "No ono, 
 except P" 
 
 He opened the door, and "went in, with unshaken nerves, to 
 look upon that one quiet sleeper whom his summons could not 
 awaken, whom his presence could not disturb. 
 
 There was no nurse or watcher by the bed. Everything was 
 arranged with extreme neatness and precision ; but it seemed to 
 him that there were objects missing in the room, objects that 
 had been famihar to him during the dead girl's Uhiess, and 
 which were associated with her presence, — the clock that had 
 stood on the table by her bed, a stand of books, a low easy- 
 chair, with embroidered cover worked by her mother and Diana 
 Paget. The room looked blank and emj^ty without these things, 
 and Mr. Sheldon wondered what officious hand had removed 
 them. 
 
 Yonder stood the pretty Httle bedstead, shrouded by closely 
 drawn white curtains. Philip Sheldon walked slowly across the 
 room, and drew aside one of the curtains. He had looked upon 
 the death-sleep of Charlotte Halhday's father, why not upon 
 hers? 
 
 She was not there ! Those closely drawn curtains shrouded 
 only the bed on which she had slept in the tranqud slumbers 
 of her careless girlhood. That cold Hfeless form, whose rigid 
 outline Philip Sheldon had steeled himself to see, had no place 
 here. 
 
 He put his hand to his head, bewildered. "What does it 
 mean ? " he asked himself; " surely she died in this room ! " 
 
 He went hurriedly to his wife's room. They had taken 
 Charlotte there, perhaps, shortly before her death. Some fever- 
 ish fancy might have possessed her with the desire to be taken 
 thither. 
 
 He opened the door and went in; but here again all was 
 blank and empty. The room was arranged after its usual fashion ; 
 but of his wife's presence there was no token. His sense of 
 mystification and bewilderment grew suddenly into a sense of 
 fear. What did it mean ? What helush fooling had he beeu 
 the dupe of ? 
 
 He went to Diana's room. That, too, was empty. A trunk 
 and a portmanteau, covered and strapped as if for removal, 
 occupied the centre of the room. 
 
 There was no other room upon this floor. Above this floor 
 there were only the rooms of the servants. 
 
 He went downstairs to the dining-room and rang the bell. 
 The parlour-maid came in answer to his summons. 
 
 " Where is your mistress ? " he asked. 
 
 " Gone out, sir; she went at eiarbt- o'«^looV this morning. AncI
 
 Confusion worse Confounded. 2G7 
 
 0, if you please, sir, Dr. Jedd called, and said I was to give you 
 this — with the cci-tificate." 
 
 The certificate ! Yes, the certificate of Charlotte Halliday's 
 death, — the certificate whicli lie must produce to-morrow, with 
 other evidence, for the satisfaction of the bill-discounter and his 
 legal adviser. He stared at the girl, still possessed by the sense 
 of bewilderment which had come upon him on seeing those empty 
 rooms upstairs. He took the letter from her almost mechanically, 
 and tore it open without looking at the address. The certificate 
 dropped to the ground. He picked it up with a tremulous hand, 
 and for aome moments stood staring at it with dazzled, unseeing 
 eyes. He could see that it was a document with dates and names 
 written in a clerkly hand. For some moments he could see no 
 more. And then words and names shone out of the confusion 
 of letters that spun and whirled, Hke motes in the sunshine, 
 before his dazzled eyes. 
 
 "Valentine Hawkehurst, bachelor, author, Carlyle Terrace, 
 Edgware Road, son of Arthur Hawkehijrst, joumahst ; Charlotte 
 Halliday, spinster, of the Lawn, Bayswater, daughter of Thomas 
 HaUiday, farmer." 
 
 Fe read no more. 
 
 It was a copy of a certificate of marriage — not a certificate of 
 death — that had been brought to him. 
 
 " You can go," he said to the servant hoarelsy. 
 
 He had a vague consciousness that she was staring at him 
 with curious looks, and that it was not good for him to be 
 watched by any one just now. 
 
 " About dinner, sir, if you please ? " the young woman began 
 timidly. 
 
 " What do I know about dinner P" 
 
 " You will dine at home, sir ? " 
 
 " Dine at home ? Yes ; Mrs. "Woolper can give you. your 
 orders." 
 
 " Mrs. Woolper has gone out, sir. She has gone for good, I 
 believe, sir; she took her boxes. And Miss Paget's luggage 
 wiU be sent for, if you please, sit There's a letter, sir, thaf 
 Mrs. "Woolper left for you on the mantelpiece." 
 
 " She was very good. That will do ; you can go." 
 
 The girl departed, bewildered like her fellow- servants by fta 
 strangeness of the day's proceedings, still more bewildered by 
 t'le strangeneao of her master's manner.
 
 268 GharloUe's Inheritance* 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 "there IS A WOKD WILL PRIAM TURN TO STONE.** 
 
 When the servant was gone, Mr. Sheldon sat down and examined 
 the document she had given him. 
 
 Yes, it was in due form. A certified copy of the certificate 
 of a marriage performed that morning at the church of St. 
 Matthias-in-the-fields, Paddington, and duly witnessed by the 
 registrar of that parish. If this document were mdeed genuine, 
 as to all appearance it was, Valentine Hawkehurst and Charlotte 
 Halhday had been married that morning ; and the will and the 
 poUcy of assurance deposited with Mr. Kaye the biU-discounter 
 were so much waste-paper. 
 
 And they had fooled him, PhiHp Sheldon, as easily as this ! 
 The furious rage which he felt against all these people, and, 
 more than against them, against his own besotted folly for 
 allowing himself to be so fooled, was a sharjoer agony than had 
 ever yet rent his cruel heart. He had been a scoundrel aU hia 
 life, and had felt some of the pains and penalties of his posi- 
 tion ; but to be a defeated scoundrel was a new sensation to him ; 
 and a savage impotent hate and anger against himself and the 
 universe took possession of his mind. 
 
 He walked up and down the room for some time, abandoned 
 wholly to the ungovernable rage that consumed him, and with 
 no thought beyond that bUnd useless fury. And then there 
 came upon him the feeling that was almost a part of hia 
 mind — the consciousness that something must be done, and 
 promptly. Whatever his position was, he must face it. Hia 
 hun-ied pacing to and fro came to a sudden stop, and he took 
 the crumpled document from his pocket, and examined it once 
 more. 
 
 There seemed httle doubt that it was genuine ; and a visit to 
 the church where the marriage was stated to have been per- 
 formed would immediately j^lace the matter beyond all doubt. 
 With the copy of the certificate, he had taken from his pocket 
 the letter that had enclosed it. He saw now that the envelope 
 was addressed in Hawkehurst's hand. 
 
 " Favoured by Dr. Jedd," he had written in a corner of the 
 envelope. 
 
 Why should Dr. Jedd " favour " Mr. Hawkehurst's letter P 
 Why, indeed, unless there had been a conspiracy conoocted by 
 these men against his authority and his interests P 
 
 Valentine's letter was brief and bosiness-like.
 
 ^' Tiiere is a Tt'ord idlt Pridm tiirii to Stoned 2G9 
 
 '' SiK, — With the full approbation of licr mother and only 
 Bear relation, my dear Charlotte has this day become my wife. 
 The enclosed attested copy of the certificate of our marriage 
 wlU afford you all particulars. I shall refrain from entei-ing 
 upon any explanation of my conduct ; and I beheve such ex- 
 planation to be wholly unnecessary. You can scarcely fail to 
 understand why I have acted in this manner, and why I con- 
 gi-atulate myself and my dear wife on her departure from your 
 house as on an escape from imminent peril. It will be, I fear, 
 httle satisfaction to you to hear that the doctors have pro- 
 nounced your stepdaughter to be out of danger, though still in 
 very weak health. She is now comfortably estabUshed in a 
 temporary home, •with her mother and Diana Paget ; and in 
 aU probabihty some months must elapse before she and I can 
 begin our new Ufe together. To ailbrd my darhng girl the 
 legal protection of man-iage was the object of this sudden 
 and secret union. You, of all men, will most fuUy comprehend 
 how necessary such protection had become to ensure her 
 safety. 
 
 " Should you, however, require farther enlightenment as to 
 the motives that promj^ted this step. Dr. Jedd will be the 
 fittest person to give you such information ; and has expressed 
 his willingness to answer any questions you may please to put 
 to him. 
 
 " For the rest, I beg to assure you that the rights of Mrs. 
 Hawkehurst in relation to the inheritance of the late John Hay- 
 parth's wealth will be as carefully protected as those of Miss 
 Halliday; nor will the hasty marriage of this morning hinder 
 the execution of any deed of settlement calculated to guard her 
 interests in the future. 
 
 " With this assui'ance, I remain, sir, 
 
 " Your obedient servant, 
 
 "VaLENTIXE HAWKEHtrUST. 
 
 ** Carlyle Terrace, Edgware Eoad." 
 
 Enclosed with this there was a second letter — from his 
 wife. 
 
 He read it with a countenance that expressed mingled anger 
 and contempt. 
 
 "Fool!" he muttered; "this is about the only service she 
 could do me." 
 
 The letter was long and incoherent ; blotted with tears — in 
 places completely illegible. Mr. Sheldon cared only to master 
 the main facts contained in it, which were these : — 
 
 His wife had left him for ever. Dr. Jedd and Valentine 
 Hawkehurst had told her of something — something that affocLed 
 
 8
 
 270 Oharlotte's Inheritance, 
 
 the safety of her darling and only child — and the knowlcdga 
 of which must separate her for ever from him. Of the money 
 ■which she had brought to him she claimed nothing. Even her 
 
 i"ewels, which were in his keeping, in the iron safe where he 
 :ept his papers, she did not attempt to obtain from him. Valen- 
 tine would not allow her to starve. The humblest shelter, the 
 poorest food, would suffice her in the future ; but no home of 
 Jus providing could she ever inhabit again. 
 
 " What I have suffered in this last few days is only known 
 to myself and to heaven," she wrote. " O Phihp, how could 
 you — how could you even shape the thought of such a deed 
 as this, which you have been doing, day after day, for the last 
 two months ? I could not have believed what they have told me, it 
 I had not seen my child fade hour by hour under your care, 
 Blowly, surely — and recover as surely directly you were excluded 
 from any part in our care of her. If it were possible not to 
 beheve these people, I would disbeUeve them, and would cUng to 
 you faithfully still ; but the voices against you are too many, 
 the proofs against you are too strong. 
 
 " Do not seek to see me. I am with my poor child, who waa 
 but just able to bear the removal from your house, and to go 
 through the ceremony that was performed this morning. Little 
 did I ever think my daughter would have such a wedding. 
 What a mockery all my plans seem now ! — and I had chosen the 
 six bridesmaids, and arranged all the dresses in my own mind. 
 To see my dear girl dressed anyhow, in her oldest bonnet, 
 standing before the altar huddled up in a shawl, and given 
 away by a strange doctor, who kept looking at his watch in a 
 most disrespectful manner during the ceremony, was very bitter 
 to me." 
 
 Mr. Sheldon flung aside the letter with an oath. He had 
 no time to waste upon such twaddle as this. He tore open 
 Nancy Woolper's letter. It was a poor honest scrawl, temng 
 him how faithfully she had served him, how truly she had 
 loved him in the past, and how she could henceforth serve 
 him no more. It exhorted him, in humble ill-spelt phrases, to 
 repentance. It might not yet be too late even for such a sinner 
 as he had been. 
 
 He tore these two epistles into infinitesimal fragments, and 
 flung them into the fireplace. Valentine Hawkehurst's letter 
 he kept. It was a document of some legal importance. 
 
 For a moment there had flashed across his brain the thought 
 that he might punish these people for their interference with his 
 affairs. He might bring an action against Dr. Jedd for slander, 
 and compel the physician to prove the charges insinuated against 
 Lim, or pay the penalty attend'int npon an unjustifiable accusa-
 
 " Tliere is a tVord icill Priam turn to Stone.^' 271 
 
 tdon. He was well assured that Dr. Jedd could prove very little, 
 and a jury, if properly worked, miglit award liim exemplary 
 damages. 
 
 But on the other hand, the circumstantial evidence against 
 him was very strong ; and evidence which might be insufficient 
 to prove him guilty in a trial for his life might be a sufficient 
 defence for his enemies against an action for slander ; if, indeed, 
 the course which Dr. Jedd and Valentine Hawkehurst had taken 
 did in itself constitute a slanderous and malicious imputation. 
 'Not could any such action invalidate the marriage solemnized 
 that morning; and that one fact comprised his utter ruin. 
 Charlotte's interests were merged in the interests of her husband. 
 No shadow of claim upon John Haygarth's wealth remained to 
 him. 
 
 His ruin was complete and dire. For a long time his circum- 
 stances had been desperate — no avenue of escape open to him 
 but the one dark way which he had trodden ; and now that last 
 road was closed against him. The day was very near at hand 
 when his fictitious bills on shadowy companies must be dis- 
 honoured ; and with the dishonour of those bills came the end 
 of aU things for him, — a comjilete revelation of aU those dis- 
 honest artifices by which he had kept his piratical bark afloat on 
 the commercial waters. 
 
 He surveyed his position in every light, calmly and delibe- 
 rately, and saw there was no hope. The whole scheme of his 
 existence was reduced to the question of how much ready-money 
 he could carry out of that house ia his pocket, and in what 
 direction he should betake himself after leaving it. 
 
 His first care must be to "ascertain whether the marriage 
 described in the dupheate certificate had really taken place ; his 
 next to repossess himself of the papers left with Mr. Kaye. 
 
 Before leaving the house he went to his study, where he 
 examined his banker's book. Tes, it was as they had told him 
 at the bank. He was overdrawn. Among the letters lying 
 unopened on his writing-table he found a letter from one of the 
 officials of the Unitas, calling his attention, politely and respect- 
 fully, to that oversight upon his part. He read the letter, and 
 crumpled it into his pocket with an angry gesture. 
 
 " I am just about as weU off now as I was twelve years ago, 
 before Tom Halliday came to Fitzgeorge Street," he said to 
 himself; " and I have the advantage of being twelve years 
 older." 
 
 Tes, this is what it all came to, after all. He had been 
 travelling in a circle. The discovery was humiliating. Mr. 
 Sheldon began to think that his line of Ufe had not b^en a 
 paying one.
 
 272 Carlotte's tnlieritance. 
 
 He opened his iron safe, and forced the lock of the jewel-case 
 in which his wife had kept the few handsome ornaments that 
 he had given her in the early days of their marriage, as a reward 
 for being good — that is to say, for allowing her second husband 
 to dispose of her first husband's patrimony without let or hin- 
 drance. The jewels were only a few rings, a brooch, a pair of 
 earrings, and a bracelet -, but they were good of their kind, and 
 'ti all worth sometliing like two hundred pounds. 
 
 These, and the gold chronometer which he carried in his waist- 
 coat-pocket, constituted all the worldly wealth which Mr. 
 Sheldon could command, now that the volcanic ground upon 
 ■which his commercial position had been built began to crumble 
 beneath his feet, and the bubbling of the crater warned him of 
 his peril. He put the tiinkets into his pocket without compunc- 
 tion, and then went upstairs to his dressing-room, where he pro- 
 ceeded to pack his clothes in a capacious portmanteau, which in 
 itself might constitute his credentials among strangers, so 
 eminently respectable was its appearance. 
 
 In this dread crisis of his Hfe he thought of everything that 
 affected his own interests. To what was he going? That 
 question was for the moment unanswerable. In every quarter 
 of tt3 globe there are haj^py hunting-grounds for the soldier of 
 fortune. Some plan for the future would shape itself in his 
 mind by-and-by. His wife's desertion had left him thoroughly 
 independent. He had no tie to restrain his movements, nothing 
 to dread except such proceedings as might be taken against him 
 by the holders of those bills. And such proceedings are slow, 
 while modem locomotion is 8\\Tft. 
 
 What was he leaving ? That was easily answered. A laby- 
 rinth of debt and difficulty. The fine house, the handsome 
 fiu-niture, were held in the same bondage of the law as his 
 household goods in Fitzgeorge Street had been. He had given 
 a bill of sale ujDon everything he possessed six months before, 
 to obtain ready-money. The final terrible resource had not 
 been resorted to untd all other means had been exhausted. Let 
 this fact at least be recorded to his credit. He was like the lady 
 whom the poet sings, who, 
 
 "tolerably mild, 
 To make a wash -w-ould hardly boil a child :" 
 
 that is to say, she would try aU other materials for her cosmetic 
 preparation first ; and if they failed, would at last resort, unwill* 
 zngly, to the boiling of children. 
 
 No ; he had nothing to lose by flight — of that fact it was easy 
 for him to assure himself. 
 
 Ho went downstairs, and rang for the servant.
 
 " Tliere is a Word will Priam turn to Stone." 273 
 
 " I am goin<T out," lie said, " to join my wife and her daughter, 
 and return with them to the sea-side. There is a portmanteau 
 upstairs in my room, ready packed. You will give it to the 
 messenger I shall send in the course of the next day or two. 
 At what time did Mrs. Sheldon and Miss HaUiday leave this 
 morning ? " 
 
 " At eight o'clock, sir. Mr. Hawkehurst came to fetch the in 
 in a carriage. They went out by the kitchen passage and the 
 oide gate, sir, because you were asleep, Mrs. Woolper said, and 
 was not to be disturbed." 
 
 "At eight. Yes. And Mrs. Woolper and Miss Paget?" 
 
 " They went a'most directly after you was gone out, sir. There 
 was two cabs to take Miss Halliday's and Mrs. Sheldon's things, 
 and such hke, — just as there was when you came from Hai'old's 
 HilL" 
 
 " Yes ; I understand." 
 
 He was half inchned to ask the young woman if she had heard 
 the direction given to the drivers of these two cabs. But he 
 refrained from doing so. "What could it profit him to know 
 where his wife and stepdaughter were to be found ? "Whether 
 they were in the next street or at the antipodes could matter 
 very httle to him, except so far as the knowledge of their place of 
 habitation might guide him in his avoidance of them. Between 
 him and them there was a gulf wider than all the waters of the 
 world, and to consider them was only foohsh waste of time and 
 thought. He left the house, which for the last five years of his 
 Ufe had been the outward and visible sign of his social status, 
 fully conscious that he left it for ever ; and he left it without a 
 sigh. For him the word home had no tender associations, and 
 the domestic hearth had never inspired him with any sense of 
 comfort or jroasure vKT^a which he might not have been inspired 
 by the luxurious fireside of a first-class coffee-room. He was a 
 man who would have chosen to spend his existence in joint-stock 
 hotels, if there had not been sohdity of position to be acquired 
 from the possession of a handsome house. 
 
 He went to the Paddington church. It was only five o'clock 
 in the afternoon by the clock of that edifice. The church was 
 closely shut, but Mr. Sheldon found the clerk, who, in considera- 
 tion of a handsome donation, took him to the vestry, and there 
 showed him the register of marriages — the last entry therein. 
 
 Yes, there was Charlotte HaUiday's signature, a little tmcer- 
 tain and tremulous. 
 
 " I suppose you are one of the young lady's relatione, sir," 
 said the clerk. " It was rather a strange aflFair ; but the young 
 lady's ma was with her; and the young lady was over age, bOj 
 you see, there's nothing tc be said again.st it."
 
 274 Charlotte's Inheritance. 
 
 Mr. Sheldon had nothing to say against the marriage. If any 
 false statement of his, however base or cruel, could have invali- 
 dated the ceremonial, he would have spared no pains to devise 
 BucJi ". faJsi^iood. If he had been a citizen of the Southern 
 States, he might have suborned witnesses to prove that there 
 was black blood in the veins of Valentine Hawkehurst. If he 
 had not been opposed to so strong an opponent as Dr. Jedd, he 
 might have trie'! to get a commission of lunacy to declare Char- 
 lotte HaUiday a mad^firoman, and thus invalidate her marriage. 
 A.S it was, he kne'<7 that he could do nothing. He had failed, 
 AH v^s f'aid ia thcs'^ three words. 
 
 He vast-'fi no tune at the church, but hurried on to the City, 
 where he 'a,s mst in time ^> catch Mr. Kaye leaving his office. 
 
 " Have you Kent t.hose papers to youjf solicitor ? " he asked. 
 
 " !No ; I was ju^t going to take them round to him. I have 
 been thinking that it will be necessary to ascertain that there is 
 no will of Miss HalUday's subsequent to this ; and that vrill be 
 rather difficult to find out. Women never know when to leave 
 off making wills, if they once begin making them. They have 
 a positive rage for multiplying documents, you know. If the 
 testator in that great codicil case had been a woman, a jury 
 would scarcely have refused to beheve in the story of half a dozen 
 different codicils hidden away in half a dozen different holes and 
 corners. Women like that sort of thing. Of course, I quite 
 understand that you bring me the wiU in all good faith ; but I 
 foresee difficulties in raising money upon such a security." 
 
 " You need give yourself" no further trouble about the matter," 
 Baid Mr. Sheldon cooly. "I find that I can do without the 
 money, and I've come to reclaim the papers." 
 
 Mr, Kaye handed them to his client. He was not altogether 
 pleased by this turn of affairs ; for he had expected to profit con- 
 siderably by Mr. Sheldon's necessities. That gentleman honoured 
 him with no further explanations, but put the papers in hia 
 pocket, and wished the bill-discounter good day. 
 
 And this was the last time that Phihp Sheldon was ever seen 
 in his character of a soUd and respectable citizen of London. 
 He went from the bUl-discounter's office to a pawnbroker in the 
 City, with whom he pledged Georgy's trinkets and his own 
 watch for the sum of a hundred and twenty pounds. Trom the 
 pawnbroker's he went back to Bayswater for his portmanteau, 
 and thence to the Euston Hotel, where he dined temperately in 
 the coffee-room. After dinner he went out into the dull back 
 streets that lurk behind Euston Square, and found an obscure 
 little barber's shop, where he had his whiskers shaved off, and 
 his hyacinthine locks cropped as close as the barber's big scissors 
 could crop tbem.
 
 " Tliere is a Word will Priam turn to St07ie." 275 
 
 The sacrifice of these hirsute adornments made an extra- 
 ordinary change in this man. All the worst characteristics ot 
 his countenance came out with a new force; and the face ot 
 Mr. Sheldon, undisguised by the whiskers that had hidJen the 
 corners of his mouth, or the waving locks that had gitf'en height 
 and breadth to his forehead, was a face that no one would be 
 likely to trust. 
 
 From the Euston Station he departed hy the night mail for 
 Liverpool, under the cover of darkness. In that city he quietly 
 awaited the departure of the Cunard steamer for New York, 
 aad was so fortunate as to leave England one day before that 
 tatal date on which the lirat of kia hotitious bills arrive*! 14 
 maturitj.
 
 276 Cliarlotte^g Inlieritance, 
 
 g0oK llje ^tni\. 
 
 EAEBOUE, AFTER MANY SHIPWRECKS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Otrr OF THE DAUK VALLEY, 
 
 jS"oT with pomp or with splendour, with rejoicing or strewing of 
 summer blossoms in the pathway of bride and bridegroom, had 
 the marriage of Valentine and Charlotte been solemnized. 
 Simple and secret had been the ceremonial, dark with clouds wag 
 the sky above them ; and yet it is doubtful if happier bride- 
 groom ever trod this earth than Valentine Hawkehurst as he 
 went to his lonely lodging under the starry summer sky, after 
 leaving his young wife to her mother's care in the new home 
 that had been found for them. 
 
 He had reason to rejoice ; for he had passed through the 
 valley of the shadow of death. He had seen, very near, that 
 dread presence before which the angels of faith and love can 
 avail nothing. Fearless as Alcides had he gone down to the 
 realms of darkness; triumphant and glad as the demigod he 
 returned from the under-world, bearing his precious burden in 
 his strong arms. The struggle had been dire, the agony of sus- 
 pense a supreme torture ; but from the awful contest the man 
 came forth a better and a wiser man. Whatever strength of 
 principle had been wanting to complete the work of reformation 
 inaugurated by love, had been gained by Valentine Hawkehurst 
 during the period of Charlotte's illness. His promised wife, hia 
 redeeming angel, she for whose affection he had first learned to 
 render thanks to his God, had seemed to be slipping away from 
 liim. In the happiest hour of his prosperous courtship he had 
 known himself unworthy of her, with no right, no claim, to so 
 fair a prize, except the right of pure and unselfish love. 
 
 When the hour of trial came to him he had said, " Behold 
 the^ avenger ! " and in that hour it seemed to him that a lurking 
 !' nticipation of future woe had been ever present with him in the 
 midst of his happiness, — it seemed so natural, go reasonably
 
 Out of tie Dark Valley. 277 
 
 that this treasure should he taken away from him. What had 
 he done, that he should go unpunished for all the errors and 
 follies of his youth p 
 
 He looked back, and asked himself if he had been so vile a 
 sinner as in these hours of self-reproach he was inclined to 
 esteem himself? Could his Ufe have been otherwise ? Had ho 
 not been set in a groove, his young feet planted in the crooked 
 ways, before he knew that Ufe's journey might be travelled by a 
 straighter road P 
 
 Alas, the answer given at the tribunal of conscience went 
 against him ! Other men had come into this world amidst sur- 
 roundings as bad, nay, indeed, worse than the surroundings ot 
 his cradle. And of these men some had emerged from their 
 native mire spotless and pure as from newly-fallen snow. The 
 natural force of character which had saved these men had not 
 heen given to him. His feet had been set in the crooked ways, 
 and he had travelled on, reckless, defiant, dimly conscious that 
 the road was a bad one, and that his garments were bespattered 
 with more mud-stains than would be agreeable to some travel- 
 lers. 
 
 It was only when the all-powerful influence of love was 
 brought to bear upon tliis plastic nature that Yalentine Hawke- 
 hurst became fully awakened to the degradation of his position, 
 and possessed with an earnest desire to emerge from the great 
 dismal swamp of bad company. Then, and then only, began 
 the transformation which was ultimately to become so complete 
 a change. Some influence, even beyond that of happy_ love, 
 was needed to give force to this man's character; and in the 
 great terror of the last three months that influence had been 
 found. The very foundations of Valentine Hawkehurst's hfe 
 had been shaken, and, come what might, he could never be 
 again what he had been. 
 
 He had almost lost her. AU was said in that. She had beer. 
 almost taken from him — she, who to this man was father. 
 mother, wife, household, past, present, future, glory, ambition, 
 happiness — everything except that God who ruled above and held 
 her life and his peace in the hollow of His hand. He had been 
 face to face with death ; and never, in all the years to come- 
 never in the brightest hour of fuboi-e happiness, could he forget 
 the peril that had come upon him, and might come again. He 
 had learned to understand that he held her, not as a free gift, 
 but as a loan — a treasure to be reclaimed at any moment by tlie 
 God who lent her. 
 
 The darksome valley was past, and Valentine stood by bis 
 darling's side, safe upon the sunlit uplands. 
 
 The doctors had declared tht'ir patient safe. Tie hour jf
 
 278 CJiarlottes Inheritance. 
 
 danger had been passed in safety, and tlie miscliief worked by 
 the poisoner's slow process bad been well nigh counteracted by 
 medical skill. 
 
 " In six weeks' time you may take your wife for her honey* 
 moon tour, Mr. Hawkehurst, with her health and spirits tho« 
 roughly re-established," said Dr. Jedd. 
 
 " What is that you say about honeymoon tours ? " cried Gus- 
 tave Lenoble. "Hawkehurst and his wife will spend their 
 honeymoon at Cotenoir ; is it not, Diana .P " 
 
 Diana rephed that it was to be, and must be so. 
 
 It was impossible to imagine a happier party than that 
 which met day after day in those pleasant lodgings at Kll- 
 burn, wherein Georgy and Diana and Charlotte had been 
 estabHshed with much devotion and care on the parts of Valen- 
 tine and Gustave. Mr. Hawkehurst had chosen the apartments, 
 and M. Lenoble had spent the day oeiore tne wedding in rush- 
 ing to and fro between the West End and Kilbum, caiTying 
 hot-house flowers, comestibles of all kinds from Fortnum and 
 Mason's, bonbon boxes, perfumery, new books, new music, and 
 superintending the dehvery of luxurious easy-chairs, hired from 
 expensive upholsterers, a grand piano, and a harmonium. 
 
 " We will have music in the evenings," he said to Diana, upon 
 her expressing surprise on beholding these arrangements, "when 
 we are assembled here, all. How thou dost open thine eyes on 
 beholding these nothings ! Do you think it has been no pleasure 
 to me to testify my affection for one who has been so good to 
 thee— thy friend, thine adopted sister ? I wished that all things 
 should look bright around her, when they brought her here, after 
 that she had come to escape from the jaws of death. And thou, 
 was it not that thou wert also coming to make thy home here 
 for some days, until thy day of marriage ? Thy father astonishes 
 himself to hear of such sudden events. Thou wilt go to see him, 
 soon, is it not P " 
 
 " Yes, dear Gustave. I will go to-morrow." 
 
 She went on the next day, and found Captain Paget mucli 
 weaker than on her last visit. 
 
 It was evident that for him the end was very near. He was 
 much changed and subdued by his long illness ; but the spirit of 
 worldhness had not been altogether exorcised even in this dismal 
 period of self-communion. 
 
 " What does it all mean, Diana P " he asked. " I don't under- 
 stand being kept in the dark like this. Here are you suddenly 
 leaving Mr. Sheldon's house without rhyme or reason, to take 
 up your quarters in lodgings with Mrs. Sheldon. Here is a 
 mysterious marriage taking place at a time when I have been 
 given to understand that one of the parties is at death's door ;
 
 Out oj the Dark Valley. 273 
 
 and here is Lenoble introduced to Valentine Hawkeliurst, in 
 exj)ress opposition to my particular request that my future son- 
 in-law should be introduced to none of the Sheldon set." 
 
 "Yalentine is not one of the Sheldon set, papa. I do not 
 think it likely that he wiU ever see Phihp Sheldon again." 
 
 "Bless my soul!" exclaimed Captain Paget. "There has 
 been something serious going on, then, surely r " 
 
 After this he insisted on an explanation, and Diana told him 
 the story of the last two or three weeks : Charlotte's increasing 
 illness — so mysterious and incurable ; the sudden return from 
 Harold's Hill ; Valentine's fears ; Dr. Jedd's boldly-expressed 
 opinion that the patient was the victim of foul play ; the syste- 
 matic exclusion of Phihp Sheldon from the sick-room, followed 
 immediately by symptoms of amehoration, leading to gradual 
 recovery. 
 
 AU this Captain Paget heard with an awe-stricken countenaUce. 
 The distance that divides the shedder of blood from all other 
 •wrong-doers is so great, that the minor sinner feels himself a 
 saint when he contemplates the guilt of the greater criminal. 
 
 " Great God! is this possible?" exclaimed the Captain, with 
 A shudder. " And I have taken that man's hand !" 
 
 Later in the evening, when Diana had left him, and he had 
 been thinking seriously of his own career, and those many 
 transactions of his troubled hfe which, in the slang denomina- 
 tion of the day, would be called " shady," he derived some scrap 
 of comfort from one consideration. 
 
 " I never hurt a worm," he murmured to himself, complacently. 
 " No, I can lay my hand upon my heart and say, I never hurt a 
 worm." 
 
 The Captain did not pause to reflect that some of the merit 
 involved in this amiable trait of character might have been 
 referable to the fact, that he had never happened to fall upon a 
 state of society in which a comfortable hving was to be made 
 by the hurting of worms. He thought only of the story he had 
 heard about Philip Sheldon ; and he told himself that not in the 
 direst necessity of his Ufe could his brain have fashioned the 
 thought of such a deed as that, in the doing of which this man 
 had persevered for nearly three months. 
 
 For Charlotte Hawkehurst the summer days which succeeded 
 her marriage passed very quietly. She had not been told the 
 real motive of that hasty and stolen marriage which had given 
 her to the man she loved and trusted so completely. Valentine 
 and Diana had between them contrived to mould Mrs. Sheldon 
 to their wUl ; and it was at her request that Charlotte had con- 
 sented to so strange a step.
 
 iSO Charlottes Inheritance. 
 
 The Idble invented to account for this desire on the part of 
 Mrs. Sheldon was very innocent. The doctors had ordered a 
 milder climate than England for the dear convalescent — Madeira, 
 Algeria, Malta — or some other equally remote quarter of the 
 globe. It was impossible that Mr. or Mrs. Sheldon could take 
 so long a journey ; Mr. Sheldon being bound hand and foot to 
 the mill-wheel of City hfe, Mrs. Sheldon being the slave and 
 helpmeet of her husband. Nor could dear Charlotte go to Malta 
 alone, or attended only by faithful Diana Paget. In short, there 
 was no course so obvious or so prudent as a hasty marriage, 
 which would enable the invalid to seek a milder chme, accom- 
 panied and guarded by her natural jDrotector — a husband. 
 
 "Consent, dearest, I entreat you," wrote Valeutine, in the 
 little note which sujDported Mrs. Sheldon's request, "however 
 strange our wishes may seem to you. BeHeve that it is for the 
 best, for your own sake, for the sake of all who love you, and 
 ask no questions. Say only yes." 
 
 To the prayer in this letter, to the entreaties of her mother 
 and Diana, Charlotte yielded. She wondered why Mr. Sheldon 
 avoided her, and asked anxiously, on more than one occasion, 
 why she did not see that gentleman. 
 
 " Is papa ill," she asked, " that he never comes to see how I 
 ainP" 
 
 " The doctors have forbidden many people in your room, dear." 
 
 " Yes, a few days ago, when I was so very ill ; but now that I 
 am better, papa might come. I want to thank him for all his 
 anxious cai'e of me, and to be sure that he consents to this 
 marriage." 
 
 " My darling, be assured the marriage is for the best," pleaded 
 Diana. 
 
 And the marriage took place. 
 
 Charlotte's innocent soul was thus spared the pain of a reve- 
 lation which must have cast a dark shadow on the bright begin- 
 ning of her wedded Life. Georgy pledged herself to keep the 
 fatal secret from her daughter; and Diana Paget rewarded 
 her discretion by the most patient attention to her piteous and 
 prosy lamentations upon the iniquity of mankind in general, and 
 rhihp Sheldon in particular. 
 
 Of that hideous secret of the past, lately revealed by Mr. 
 Burkham, Mrs. Sheldon had been told nothing. No good end 
 could have been served by such a revelation. The criminal law 
 has its statute of limitations — unwritten, but not the less exist- 
 ent. A crime which would have been difficult of proof at the 
 time of its commission must after the lapse of twelve years have 
 travelled beyond the pale of justice. For three people to come 
 forward and declare that at the time of Mr. HalUday's deaf*
 
 Aflcr tie jretlJlii^. SSI 
 
 they Kad suspected Mr. Sheldon of poisoning him, would be to 
 ))rove nothing to the minds of a British jury, except that the 
 three people in question were libellous and iU-disposed persons. 
 The greater the issue, the wider the chances of escape given to 
 the accused ; and a petty offender will be condemned for picking 
 a pocket upon much lighter grounds than will be considered 
 sufficient to prove a man guilty of blowing up the Houses of 
 Parliameut. 
 
 CHAPTER 11. 
 
 AFTER THE WEDDINS. 
 
 The manner in which Mr. Sheldon would act in the future was 
 a matter of considerable fear to his wife. She had a hazy idea 
 that he would come to the pleasant Kilburn lodgings to claim 
 her, and insist upon her sharing his dreary future. 
 
 " If I could only have a divorce," she said piteously, when 
 ehe discussed the subject with her son-in-law. "There ought 
 to be divorces for such dreadful things ; but I never heard of 
 one before Sir Creswick Creswick, or the new judge, whose name 
 I can't remember. Valentine, I cannot live with him ; I can- 
 not sit down to dinner day after day with such a man as that. 
 And to think that I should have known him when I was the 
 merest gii'l, and have danced my very first polka -with him when 
 it first came in, and people wore polka boots and polka jackets, 
 and wrote their notes of invitation upon polka pajjer, and sang 
 polka songs, and worked polking peasants in Berlin wool, and 
 went on altogether in the most absurd manner. And Valen- 
 tine, whom can one trust, if not the man. one has known aU 
 one's life P ** 
 
 Mr. Hawkehurst pledged himself to protect his mother-in-law 
 from any attempt at perseciition upon the jjart of her husband 
 He did not know what difficulties he might have to encounter in 
 the performance of this pledge ; for, in his ignorance of the 
 stockbroker's desperate circumstances, he imagined that Philip 
 Sheldon would make some attempt to right himself in the eyes 
 of the world, by compelling his wife to reassume her position in 
 his house. 
 
 He went to George Sheldon's office within a few days after 
 his marriage to take counsel from that astute adviser. He found 
 the lawyer hard at work, and in very good spirits. It was by 
 his advice the marriage had been hurried on; Charlotte's 
 etealthy removal from the house while Philip Sheldon slum«
 
 282 Charlotte's InTieriiancB. 
 
 bered had been planned by him ; and he was triumphant ifl 
 the thought that the plot had succeeded so well, and that PhiUp^ 
 the coolest and deepest of schemers, had been so completel} 
 baffled. 
 
 " That Ann Woolper is a treasure," he said ; " I didn't think 
 it was in her to do what she has done. Nothing could be neater 
 than the way she kept Phil at bay ; and nothing could be better 
 than her tact and cleverness in getting Charlotte and her mother 
 quietly off the other morning while my precious brother was in 
 the land of nod." 
 
 "Yes, she has been invaluable to us." 
 
 " And that girl Paget, too ; she has turned out a regular 
 trump. I used to think her a very stiff, consequential piece of 
 goods when I saw her at the Lawn ; but, egad, -she has shown * 
 herself the genuine metal all through this business. Now that's * 
 a young woman I wouldn't mind making Mrs. George Sheldon 
 any day in the week." 
 
 " You do her too much honour," said Valentine, with an 
 internal shiver. "Unhappily, a prior engagement will pre« 
 vent Miss Paget' s avaihng herself of so excellent an oppor- 
 tunity." 
 
 " It mayn't be such a very bad chance as you seem to think 
 it, my friend," George rei^lied, with some indignation. " When- 
 ever the Reverend John Haygarth's estate drops in, I stand to 
 win fifty thousand pounds. And that's not so bad for a start 
 in life. I supj^ose yoii haven't forgotten that your wife is heir- 
 at-law to a hundred thousand pounds ? " 
 
 "No, I have not forgotten her position in relation to the 
 Haygarth estate." 
 
 " Humph ! I should rather think not. People don't generally 
 forget that kind of thing. But you are uncommonly cool aboui 
 the business." 
 
 " Yes, I have passed through a fiery furnace in which all the 
 bullion in the Bank of England will not serve a man. That 
 kind of ordeal upsets one's old notions as to the value of money. 
 And, again, I have never been able to contemplate Charlotte's 
 inheritance of that fortune as anything but a remote contin- 
 gency ; the business is so slow." 
 
 " Yes, but it has been going on. Affidavits have been made ; 
 the whole affair is in progress." 
 
 " I am glad to hear it. Don't thmk that I pretend not to 
 value the j^rospect of wealth ; I have only learnt to know that 
 money is not the be-all and end-all of life. I could be very happy 
 with my dear wife if there were no prospect of this Haygarthian 
 inheritance ; but if it does come to us, we shall, no doubt, be all 
 the happier. The millionaire sees the world from a very plea-
 
 After tlie Wedding. 233 
 
 6ant point of view. I sliould like my dear girl to be tlie mistresa 
 ol" a3 fair a home as money can buy for her." 
 
 " Yes, and you'd Uke to bave your name stand bigb in the 
 statistics of Government stockholders. Don't be sentimental, 
 Hawkehurst ; that kind of thing won't wash. Thank God, we 
 managed to save poor Tom's daughter from the fangs of my 
 brother Phil. But you oan't suppose that I am going to shut 
 my eyes to the fact that this affair has been a very good thing 
 for you, and that you owe your chances of a great fortune 
 entirely to me ? You don't pretend to forget iliat, I suppose ? " 
 said George Sheldon, with some acrimony. 
 
 " Why should I pretend to forget that, or any circumstance of 
 our business relations ? I am perfectly aware that you started 
 the hunt of the Haygartlis, and that to your investigations is to 
 be traced the discovery that proves my wife a claimant to the 
 estate now held by the Crown." 
 
 " Very good ; that's outspoken and honest, at any rate. And 
 now, how about our agreement ? It's only a jsarole agreement, 
 but an honest man's word is as good as his bond." 
 
 " Our agreement ! " repeated Valentine, with a puzzled expres- 
 sion of countenance. " Upon my word, I foi'get." 
 
 " Ah, I thought it would come to that ; I thought you would 
 manage to forget the terms agreed upon by you and me in the 
 event of your marriage with Charlotte Halliday. My memory 
 is not so short as yours ; and I can swear to a conversation 
 between you and me in this room, in which you consented to my 
 taking half the Haygarthian estate as the price of my discovery 
 and the fail* reward of my labours." 
 
 " Yes," said Valentine, "I rem ember that conversation; and I 
 remember saying that the demand was a stiff" one, but that 
 I, as Charlotte's future husband, would not oppose such a 
 demand." 
 
 " You remember that ? " 
 
 " I do i and if my wife is willing to consent to yonr terms, I 
 will hold to my promise." 
 
 "Yoar wife's consent is not wanted. She married you with- 
 out a settlement, and her rights are merged in yours. To all 
 intents and purposes, yov, are heir-at-law to John Haygai-th'a 
 estate." 
 
 Valentine laughed aloud ; the whole affair seemed a tremen- 
 dous joke. He, the homeless, penniless, friendless reprobate of 
 but one year ago — he, the son and heir of a man who had 
 been always on the verge of social shipwreck for want of 
 five pounds — he, of all other men upon this earth, claimant 
 against the Crown for an estate worth one hundred thousand 
 poxmds !
 
 284 Cliartotte's tafieriiance. 
 
 " The whole aiFair seems ridiculously improbable," he said. 
 
 " My brother wouldn't have done what he did if the whola 
 thing had seemed improbable to him. However, we needn't 
 estimate the chances for or against; all I want is a legal 
 agreement between you and me, securing my share of the 
 plunder." 
 
 " I am ready to execute any reasonable agreement; but I am 
 bound to protect my wife's interests, and I must have a solicitor 
 to act for me in this affair. Greek must meet Greek, you 
 know." 
 
 " Very good. I could have conducted the business myself 
 without the interference of strangers ; but if you are going in 
 for extreme caution, you'd better leave your wife's affairs in the 
 hands of Messrs. Greenwood and Greenwood, who have acted 
 for her hitherto, and have all pajjtrs relating to the case in theii 
 possession." 
 
 " Greenwood and Greenwood ? My dear girl told me she had 
 signed some document, and had seen some lawyers ; but she did 
 not tell me the nature of the document, or the name of the 
 lawyers. I have forborne to speak to her on business matters. 
 The treatment that she has undergone has left her very nervous, 
 and we try to keep all nnjjleasant subjects out of her mind." 
 
 "Yes, that's all very well; but business is business, you 
 know. You'd better see Messrs. Greenwood and Greenwood at 
 once. Tell them of your marriage. You'll have to keep Phil's 
 conduct dark, of course ; that is understood between us. You 
 must say the marriage was a love-match against my brother's 
 wish, romantic, sentimental, and so on. They'll raise no objec- 
 tions when they find you are willing to leave the case in their 
 hands." 
 
 " You have heard nothing of your brother P " 
 
 "Well, no — nothing, or next to nothing. I called at his 
 office yesterday. He has not been there since the beginning of 
 Charlotte's illness, and there has been no letter or message for 
 Orcott since your wedding-day. Things look rather piscatorial, 
 altogether. Orcott hints that Phil's affairs are in queer street; 
 but he's a shallow-headed fool, and knows very little. It seems, 
 by his account, that Phil was a Bull, and that the fall in every 
 Bpecies of stock has been ruin to him. You see, when a man once 
 goes in for the Bull business, he never by any chance tuma 
 Bear — and vice versa. There's a kind of infatuation in the 
 thing, and a man sticks to his line until he's cleaned out — at 
 least, that's what stockbrokers have told me — and I believe it's 
 pretty near the truth." 
 
 This was aU that Valentine could ascertain about Mr. Sheldon 
 at present. Every knock flattered Georgy ; every accidental
 
 Aflf/j- {Is XVcdtUng. 285 
 
 risiior at the Kilburu villa seemed like the swooping of eagle on 
 dovecote. 
 
 " I cannot get over the feeling that he will come and take mo 
 away with him," she said. " If Sir Wilde Oreswick would only 
 do something, so that my second husband mayn't be able to 
 insist upon my Uving in that dreadful, dreadful house, where I 
 eufiered such nights'and days of agony, that I am convinced the 
 sight of chintz curtains lined with pink will make me wretched 
 as long as I live ! " 
 
 "My dear Mrs. Sheldon, he shall not come," said Valentine. 
 
 "If I could only go ever so far away from him, and feel 
 that there was the sea, or something of that kind, between 
 
 us 
 
 "We will take you away — across the British Channel, or 
 further still, if you like. Diana and M. Lenoble are to be 
 married soon; and directly Lotta is strong enough for the 
 journey we are to go over to Normandy, to their chateau." 
 
 " Chateau, indeed ! " Mrs. Sheldon exclaimed peevishly. " The 
 idea of Diana Paget, without a sixpence, and with a regular 
 scamp of a father, marrying a man with a chateau, while my 
 
 poor Charlotte ! I don't wish to wound your feelings, Mr. 
 
 Hawkehurst, but it really does seem hard." 
 
 " It is hard that Lotta should not have man-ied a prince — all 
 the grandeurs of a prince in a fairy tale would only be her due ; 
 but it happens fortunately, you see, dear Mrs. Sheldon,^ that 
 our sweet girl has simple tastes, and does not languish for jewels 
 or palaces. If she should ever become rich " 
 
 "Ah," sighed, Georgy despondently, "I don't expect that. 
 I can't understand anything about this idea of a fine fortune 
 that Mr. Sheldon had got into his head. I know that my 
 husband's mother was a Miss Meynell, the daughter of a 
 carpet- warehouseman in the city, and I can't see how any grand 
 fortune is to come to Charlotte through her. And as for the 
 Halhdays — Hyley and Newhall farms were all the property they 
 over owned within the memory of man." 
 
 "The fortune for which Charlotte is a claimant comes from 
 the maternal ancestor of Christian Meynell. I do not count 
 upon her possession of it as a certain good in the future. If it 
 comes we wiU be thankful." 
 
 " Is it a very large sum of money P " 
 
 " AVell, yes ; I believe it is a considerable sum." 
 
 " Twenty thousand pounds, perhaps ? " 
 
 "I have been told that it is as much." 
 
 He did not want Georgy's weak mind to become posses?;ed of 
 the idea of shadowy wealth. He remembered what Philip 
 Sheldon had said to him on the Christmas night in which they 
 
 T
 
 286 Charlotte's Infierifance. 
 
 had paced the little Bayswater garden together, and lie felt thai 
 there was a substratum of common sense in that scoundrel's 
 artful warning. 
 
 CHAPTEE in. 
 
 OKEEK AGAINST GREEK. 
 
 Valentixe Hawrehtjkst called upon Mr. Greenwood, of the 
 firm of Greenwood and Greenwood, within a Aveek of his n^ar- 
 riage, and exhibited the certificate to that gentleman. Mr. 
 Greenwood received the information with much solemnity, and 
 even severity, of manner. 
 
 " Are you aware that this is a very serious step which you 
 have taken, Mr. Hawkehurst?" he demanded, sternly. "You 
 entrap — that is to say, you persuade a lady into a hasty marriage 
 — without consultation with her legal advisers, without settle- 
 ments of any kind whatever — while at the same time you are 
 aware that the lady in question is heir-at-law to a very large 
 fortune, iDroceedings for the recovery of which are now pending. 
 Pardon me if I observe that there is a want of delicacy — of — a 
 — hem — right-mindedness in the transaction." 
 
 " The imputation contained in your remarks is not a pleasa' t 
 one, Mr. Greenwood," Valentine remarked quietly; "but I an. 
 quite wilUng to pardon any injustice which you may infiict upon 
 me by your desire to protect the interests of your chent. I 
 think you will speedily discover that those interests are in no 
 way endangered by the lady's marriage with me. There are 
 social comphcations which are not to be settled by either law or 
 equity. Miss Halliday's surroundings of the last few months 
 were of a very painful nature; so painful, that the legal pro- 
 tection of marriage became the only means of saving her from 
 imminent peril. I cannot enter moi'e fiiUy into those painful 
 circumstances. I can only assure you that I married your 
 chent with the consent and approval of her only near relation, 
 and uninfluenced in the smallest degree by mercenary conside- 
 rations. Whatever post-nuptial settlement you please to make 
 for ray wife's protection I shall promptly execute." 
 
 " You express yourself in a very honourable and highly ere- 
 datable manner, Mr. Hawkehurst," exclaimed the lawyer, with 
 Budden cordiaHty ; " and I beg distinctly to withdraw any 
 offensive observations I may have made just now. Your own 
 affairs are, I conclude, in a sufficiently solvent state P "
 
 Greek against Greets. ^o.'i 
 
 *• 1 do not owe a sixpence." 
 
 " Good ; and Mr. Sheldon, the lady's stepfather and my 
 tlient — had you his approval for this hasty marriage ? " 
 
 " The marriage took place without Mr. Sheldon's knowledge 
 or consent." 
 
 " May I ask your reason for tliis secrecy P " 
 
 " No, Mr. Greenwood; it is just that one reason that I cannot 
 tell you. Accept my assurance that it was an allipowerful 
 reason." 
 
 " I am cocpelled to do so, if you decline to confide in my 
 discretion; but as Mr. Sheldon is my client, I am bound to 
 think of his interests as well as those of Miss Halliday — er — 
 Mrs. Hawkehurst. I am somewhat surprised that he has not 
 called upon me since the marriage. He has been made aware 
 of that circumstance, I suppose?" 
 
 " Yes ; I wi'ote to him immediately after the ceremony, en« 
 closing liim a copy of the certificate." 
 
 "The marriage will make a considerable difference to him." 
 
 " In what manner ? " 
 
 " "Well, in the event of his stepdaughter's death. If she had 
 died unmarried and intestate, this fortune would have gone to 
 her mother; besides which, there was the insurance on Miss 
 Halliday's Ufe." 
 
 " An insurance !" 
 
 " Yes. Were you not apprised of that fact P Mr. Sheldon, 
 with very natural precaution, insured his -stepdaughter's hfe for 
 a considerable sum — in point of fact, as I believe, five thousand 
 pounds; so that, in case of her death prior to the recovery 
 of the Haygarth estate, her mother might receive some sola- 
 tium." 
 
 " He had insured her hfe ! " said Valentine, under his breath. 
 
 This, then, was the key to the mystery. The Haygarthian 
 inheritance was but a remote contingency, a shadowy prize, 
 which could scarcely have tempted the secret assassin ; but the 
 insurance had offered the prospect of immediate gain. The one 
 link wanting to complete the chain of evidence agaiast Philip 
 Sheldon was found. There was no longer a question as to Ma 
 motive. 
 
 " This man knows of one insurance on her life," Valentae 
 thought to himself; "there may have been more than one." 
 
 After a brief sUence, in which Mr. Hawkehurst had been loEt . 
 in thought, the lawyer proceeded to discuss the terms of the 
 post-nuptial settlement necessary for the protection of his 
 client's interests. In the course of this discussion Valentine 
 explained his position in relation to George Sheldon, and stated 
 _the demands of that sharp practitioner.
 
 288 Cftartofte^s Inheritance. 
 
 Mr. Greenwoo.l was utterly aghast upon hearing Mr. Hawke* 
 hurst's views on this subject. 
 
 " You mean to tell me that this man claims a clear half of 
 the Hay garth estate — fifty thousand pounds — in consideration 
 of his paltry discoveries!" 
 
 " Such is the demand he has made, and which I have pledge^ 
 myself not to oppose. He certainly does open his mou.th very 
 wide ; but we are bound to consider that but for these dis- 
 overies of his, my wife and my wife's relatives would in all 
 |)robabiHty have gone down to their graves in ignorance of their 
 daim to this estate." 
 
 "I beg your pardon, Mr. Hawkehurst. If Mr. George Shel- 
 don had not made the discovery, some one else would have made 
 it sooner or later, depend upon it. There would have been 
 a little loss of time, that is all. There are plenty of men of 
 George Sheldon's class always on the look-out for such chances 
 as this — and for very small chances in comparison to this. 
 Why, I know a fellow, a Frenchman, called Fleurus, who will 
 take as much trouble about a few hundred pounds' worth of 
 Tinclaimed stock as this man, George Sheldon, has taken about 
 the Haygarth succession. And he has really the impudence to 
 claim fifty thousand pounds from you ? " 
 
 " A claim which I have pledged myself not to oppose." 
 
 "But which you have not pledgea yourself to support. My 
 dear Mr. Hawkehiirst, this is a business which you must allow 
 me to settle for you, as your wife's legal adviser. We will con- 
 sider you quite out of the question, if you please; you will 
 thus come out of your relations to Mr. George Sheldon with 
 perfectly clean hands. Tou will not oppose his claim ; but I 
 shall oppose him in my character of legal adviser to your wife. 
 Why, are you aware that this man executed an agreement with 
 1 lis brother, consenting to receive a fifth share of the estate, and 
 c Dsts out of pocket, in complete acquittance of all claims ? I 
 1 ave an abstract of the agreement amongst Miss Halliday'a — 
 li [rs. Hawkehurst's papers." 
 
 After some further discussion, Valentine agreed to leave the 
 tvhole matter in Mr. Greenwood's hands. Greek must meet 
 Greek. Gray's Inn and the Fields must settle this business 
 between themselves. 
 
 " I am only prince consort," he said, with a smile. " I pre- 
 tend to no actual interest in my wife's estate. I doubt, indeed, 
 whether I should not have felt more complete hapj^iness in out 
 maiTiage if she had not been heiress to so large a fortune." 
 
 At this Mr. Greenwood laughed oatright. 
 
 "Come, come, Mr. Hawkehurst," he exclaimed, "that really 
 ^on't do. I am an old stager, you know — a man of the world;
 
 Only a Dream. 289 
 
 - a,nd yon nrastii't ask me to believe that the idea of your 
 wife's expectations can afford you anything but unquahfied 
 satisfaction." 
 
 " You cannot beheve P No, perhaps not," Yalentine 
 answered, thoughtfully, " But you do not know how nearly 
 these expectations have lost me my wife. And even now, when 
 she is mine by virtue of a bond that only death can loosen.^ it 
 seems to me as if her wealth would make a kind of division 
 between us. There are people who wiU always consider me a 
 lucky adventurer, and look at my marriage as the result of 
 clever scheming. I cannot advertise to the world the fact that 
 I loved Charlotte HaUiday from the first hour in which I saw 
 hor, and asked her to be my wife three days before I discovered 
 her claim to John Haygarth's estate. A man_ can't go through 
 the world with his justification pinned upon his breast. I think 
 it will be my fate to be misjudged all my Hfe. A twelvemonth 
 ago I cared very little about the opinions of my fellow-men ; 
 but I want to be worthy of my wife in the esteem of man- 
 kind, as well as in the depths of my own moral conscious- 
 ness.'' 
 
 "Go and finish your honeymoon," said the lawyer, digging 
 his chent in the ribs with elephantine playfulness; " the moon 
 must be in her first quarter, I should think. Go along with 
 you, and leave me to tackle Mr. George Sheldon." 
 
 CHAPTEB lY. 
 
 ONLY A DEEAM 
 
 *' I 3A7, Lenoble," Captain Paget began abruptly one afternooa 
 when his daughter and his future son-in-law were in attendance 
 upon his sofa, "when are you and Diana to be married? There 
 is nothing to hinder your mai-riage now, you know." 
 
 Diana looked at the speaker with a grave countenance. 
 
 " Dear papa, there can be no marriage while you are so ill," 
 she said gently. 
 
 "And afterwards, when I'm gone, you won't like to marry 
 within six months of yoxir father's funeral ; and you wlU be left 
 alone in the world. You can't hang on to Hawkehurst and his 
 wife. The best thing you can do, Lenoble, is to many her out 
 of hand, and let me see her by my bedside as Madame Lenoble 
 of Cotenoir. It will be some consolation for me to see that day. 
 r thought to have shared jovcc home, with a nm to Paris occa-
 
 290 Cliarhttea LihsrilanGe. 
 
 Bionally just to freslien myself up a little ; but that's aU over 
 now. It does seem rather hard to me sometimes ; and I think 
 of Moses, and his forty years in the Desert with those ill-con- 
 ditioned Israelites, who were always getting into some scrape of 
 other — setting up golden calves, and that kind of thing — if h«i 
 turned his back on them for twenty-four hours. A pack of un» 
 grateful beggars too, always ready for mutiny — regular radicals, 
 begad ! And he went through it all : the sand, and the toujout-; 
 quails, and the ingratitude ; and after forty years of it, when h< 
 saw the Promised Land stretched before him green and fertile or 
 the other side of the river — he died ! I've been through m; 
 desert, the dreary wanderings over the barren sand, and th^ 
 ingratitude of men I've served. Yes, I've gone through U 
 all ; and just as I catch a glimpse of Canaan, the curtail 
 drops." 
 
 On this they comforted him ; and sustained Mm with tht 
 promise of a brighter Canaan than Cotenoir. 
 
 " Yes," he said in a dreamy voice, " I read about it very often. 
 A city with foundations of jasper and chalcedony, emerald and 
 sardonyx ; gates of pearl, pavements of gold. That's what St. 
 John the Evangehst saw in his vision; and we've only his word 
 Sor it. But there's something that I can believe and can under- 
 stand : ' In my Father's house there are many mansions.' There's 
 more hope for_a sinful man of the world in that promise than ia 
 all St. John's di-eams about gates of pearl and foundations of 
 emerald." 
 
 The Captain was failing fast. He had exchanged his easy- 
 chair for a sofa now ; and the time seemed near at hand when 
 he must exchange the sofa for his bed. After that there would 
 remain but one last change, to the contemplation whereof the 
 sick man was becoming daily more reconciled. 
 
 He had read his Gospel more diligently of late, and had taken 
 comfort from those subhme pages. Do they not contain conso- 
 lation, hope, promise for all — for the weary m.an of the world ag 
 well as for the saint P There is to be found the only creed that 
 can adapt itself to every condition of Hfe, and has a margin wide 
 enough for every weakness of erring humanity. Buddhism may 
 contain a scheme of morality almost as perfect ; Mahomet may 
 have expounded hopes tha teem well-nigh as divine; but m the 
 Gospel is the only system that will adapt itself at once to the 
 culture of the spiritual man, and the active life of the practical 
 worker in this lower world. 
 
 Gustave Lenoble was only too glad to claim his promised wife 
 a little sooner than he had hoped to claim her. " Thou hast 
 put me off long enough, cruel," he said ; " and now it is thy 
 ather's wish that our marriage should be soon. It shall be this
 
 Only a Dream. 291 
 
 week; T will take no longer tliine excuses. We shall be the 
 Booner ready to receive thy friends, thy Charlotte and her 
 Ilawkehurst." 
 
 Diana smiled. 
 
 " Dear Gustave, you are always kind," she said. 
 
 It was very sweet to her to think that her new home would 
 aflFord a pleasant haven for that dear friend who had sheltered 
 her. And with Charlotte, the dear adopted sister, would come 
 the man she had once loved, to share whose cares had once been 
 th« brightest dream. 
 
 She wondered at her own inconstancy on perceiving how com- 
 pletely the dream had flown. Before the stern realities of life — • 
 before sickness and son-ow and the dread shadow of death — 
 that schoolgirl's vision had utterly melted away. It is just 
 possible that Gustave's manly outspoken love mayhave helped 
 to blot from the tablet of her mind the fantastic picture of the 
 life that might have been. She scarcely knew whether this was 
 80 ; but she did know that a new and happier existence began 
 for her from the hour in which she gave her heart in all truth 
 and loyalty to Gustave Lenoble. 
 
 The wedding was arranged to take place within a week of 
 Captaia Paget's expressly declared wish. It was to be solem- 
 nised at a chui-ch near Knightsbridge, and again at a Catholic 
 chapel in the neighbourhood of Sloane- street; by which double 
 ceremonial a knot would be tied that no legal quibble could 
 hereafter loosen. Charlotte was just sufficiently recovered to 
 obtain permission to be present at the ceremonial, after some 
 little exercise of her persuasive pr^wers with the medical prac- 
 titioner to whose care Dr. Jedd had committed her when all 
 danger was past. 
 
 The Captain protested, with an eager insistence, that the 
 wedding breakfast should be eaten at his domicile. 
 
 " And Val," he said, " be sure Val is with you. I have a 
 secret to tell him — a kind ot atonement to make ; some news 
 to give him that he won't qxiite relish, perhaps. But that's no 
 fault of mine.'' 
 
 "No bad news, I hope, papa; for Charlotte's sake as well as 
 for Valentine's." 
 
 " That depends upon how they both take it. Your friend 
 Charlotte is not particularly fond of money, is she ?" 
 
 " Fond of money, papa ? A baby knows as much of the 
 value of money as Lotta. Except to give to beggars in the 
 streets, or to buy pretty frivolous presents for her friends, she 
 has neither use nor desire for money. She is the most generous, 
 most disinterested of created beings." 
 
 " J'm very glad to hear it," said the Captain, drily. " And
 
 292 Charlotte't Inheritance. 
 
 how about Hawkehurst, now P Do you tMnk it was a real love* 
 matcL, Ids marriage with. Miss HaUiday? No arriere pensee — 
 no looking out for the main chance at the bottom of his 
 romantic attachment, eh, Di?" 
 
 " No, papa. I am stire there was never truer love than his. 
 I saw him under most trying circumstances, and I can pledge 
 myself for the truth of his devotion." 
 
 " I am very glad to hear it. Be sure you bring Hawke- 
 hurst and his wife to my little breakfast. A chicken, a pine, 
 a bottle of sparkling hock, and a fond father's blessing, are 
 all I shall give you; but the chicken and the hock will be 
 from Gunter, and the blessing from the bottom of a paternal 
 heart." 
 
 Bright shone the day that gave Diana to her husband, and 
 very beautiful looked the bride in her simple dress. Gustave 
 Lenoble's marriage was no less quietly performed than that 
 union which had secured the safety of Charlotte HaUiday and 
 the happiness of Valentine Hawkehurst. The shadow of death 
 hovered very near bride and bridegroom ; for they knew full well 
 that he who was to preside that day at their simple marriage- 
 feast would soon have tasted that last sacred cup which has no 
 after-flavour of bitterness. 
 
 The breakfast promised by the Captain was arranged with 
 much elegance. Hothouse flowers and fruits ; wines with the 
 icedew sparkhng on the dark glass ; chickens and tongue, ideal- 
 ized by the confectioner's art, and scarcely recognizable beneath 
 rich glazings and embellishments of jellies and forcemeats ; the 
 airiest and least earthly of lobster salads, and a pyramid of 
 cofi'ee-ice, testified to the glory of the Belgravian purveyor. It 
 had been pleasant to Captain Paget to send his orders to 
 Gunter, certain of funds to meet the bill. It was almost a 
 ghmpse of that land of milk and honey, that Canaan in 
 Normandy, which he was never to inhabit. 
 
 He was very weak, very iU ; but the excitement of the occa- 
 sion in some measure sustained and revivified him. The man 
 who had been engaged to nurse and wait upon him had attired 
 him with much care in a dressing-gown as elegant as the robe 
 in which he had disported himself, a penniless young comet, in 
 his luxurious garrison quarters, some fifty years before. His 
 loose white locks were crowned with an embi'oidered smoking- 
 cap ; his patrician instep was set off by a dainty scarlet shpi^er. 
 He had put away the Gospel, and all thoughts of that dread 
 reckoning which he had really some shadowy desire and hope to 
 settle satisfactorily, by some poor dividend which might dis- 
 charge his obUgations to that merciful Creditor who forgives so
 
 Otily a Dream, 293 
 
 many just debts. To-day he was of the world, worldly. It was 
 a kind of ante-mortem lying-in- state — his last levee ; and he was 
 equal to the occasion. 
 
 The prettily adorned table was drawn near the sofa where the 
 invahd host reclined, supported by numerous pUlows. His 
 daughter and her husband, Valentine, Charlotte, and Georgy, 
 made a Httle cu-cle about him. His own man, and a clerical- 
 looking person from Gunter's, assisted at the airy banquet. 
 Very httle was eaten by any of the guests, and it was a rehef 
 to every one when the clerical personage and Captain Paget's 
 factotum retired, after serving tea and coffee with funereal 
 solemnity. 
 
 Valentine Hawkehurst was all gentleness and cordiaHty 
 towards his old taskmaster. The wrong must indeed be dire 
 which is considered in such an hour as this. Valentine remem- 
 bered only that with this old man he had seen many troubled 
 days ; and that for him the end of all earthly wanderings was 
 very near. 
 
 The httle banquet was not served in Captain Paget's ordinary 
 sitting-room. For this distinguished occasion the landlady had 
 lent a dining-room and drawing-room on the ground floor, just 
 deserted by a fashionable bachelor lodger who had left town at 
 the close of the season. This drawing-room on the ground floor, 
 like the room above, overlooked the Park, and to this apartment 
 the Captain requested his guests to adjourn, with the exception 
 of Mr. Hawkehurst, some httle time after the departure of the 
 servants. 
 
 " I want to have a few words with Val in private," he said; 
 " I have a secret to communicate. Diana, show Mrs. Hawke- 
 hurst the Drive. You can see the Eow from my room, but not 
 from these lower windows. There are a good many carriages 
 still, but it is too late for the creme de la creme. I remember 
 when the West End was a desert at this time of year ; but I 
 have lived to see the levelling of all distinctions, those of time 
 as well as of class." 
 
 Charlotte and Diana retired to the adjoining room with Mrs. 
 Sheldon and M. Lenoble. Valentine was at a loss to imagine 
 what manner of confidential commanication his late patron and 
 employer could desire to impart to him. The cautious Horatio 
 waited until the rest of the party were quite out of hearing, 
 talking gaily by the open window, beyond which appeared all 
 the fluttering hfe and motion of summer leaves, all the brightness 
 of summer green below, and deep blue sky above. When they 
 seemed to him to be quite engaged with their own conversation, 
 Captain Paget turned to his old companion. 
 
 *' Val." he said, " we have seen hard times together we've
 
 204 Charlottes Inlieritance. 
 
 rouglied it among strange places and strange people, you know 
 and so on; and I thmk there is a friendly kind of feeling 
 between us ? " 
 
 He held out his poor wasted hand, and Valentine grasped it 
 firmly in kis own with prompt cordiality. 
 
 " My dear governor, I have no feeling in my heart that is not 
 friendly to you." 
 
 This was i^erfectly true. 
 
 " And even if I had been inclined to bear any grudge against 
 you on account of the old days, when, you know, you were a 
 tittle upt to be indiiferent as to what scrape you left me in, 
 provided you got off scot-free yourself; if I had been incUned 
 to remember that kind of thing (which, on my honour, I am not), 
 your daughter's noble courage and devotion in the time of 
 my dear wife's peiil should have stood against that old wrong. 
 I cannot tell you how deeply I feel her goodness in that bitter 
 Ime." 
 
 " She is a Paget," murmured the Captain, complacently. 
 "Noblesse oblige." 
 
 Valentine could scarcely refrain from a smile as he remem- 
 bered the many occasions upon which the obligations of a 
 noble Uaeage had weighed very lightly on his aristocratic 
 patron. 
 
 " Yes, Val," the Captain resumed, in a dreamy tone, " we have 
 seen many strange things together. When I began my travels 
 through this world, in the palmy days of the Regency, I little 
 thought what a weary journey it was to be, and what queer 
 people I was to encounter among my fellow-passengers. How- 
 ever, I've come to the last stage of the long journey now, and I 
 thank Providence that it ends so comfortably." 
 
 To this Valentine assented kindly, but he was at a loss to 
 understand why Captain Paget should have required the adjourn- 
 ment of the rest of the party before giving utterance to these 
 mild commonj^laces. 
 
 For some moments the invahd relapsed into thoughtful silence. 
 Then, rousing himself as if with an effort, he took a few sips of 
 a coohng diink that stood by his side, and began with a startling 
 abruptness. 
 
 " You remember your journey to Dorking, Val, last October, 
 when you went to see that mysterious old aunt of yours, eh ?" 
 
 Valentine blushed as the Captain recalled this cunningly- 
 devised fable. 
 
 " Yes," he said gravely ; " I remember telling you that I was 
 gomg to see an aunt at Dorking." 
 
 "An aunt who had a little bit of money, eh, ValP" asked 
 the Captain, with a grin.
 
 Only a Dream. 295 
 
 " Ym. I may have gone so far as to speak of a little bit of 
 money." 
 
 " And neither the aunt nor the bit of money ever existed, eh, 
 Val? They were mere figments of the brain; and instead of 
 going to Dorking yon went to UUerton, eh, Val ? You stole a 
 march upon me there. You wanted to throw your old chum off 
 the scent, eh ? Yckl thought you had got hold of a good thing, 
 and you were afraid your friend and companion might get a share 
 of it." 
 
 "Well, you see, my friend and companion had a knack of 
 getting the hon's share. Besides, this good thing was not my 
 own affair. I had to protect the interest of another person — 
 my employer, in point of fact ; and it was by his suggestion, 
 and in compliance with his request, that I invented that harm- 
 less fiction about Dorking. I don't think there was any 
 dishonourable dealing in the matter. We were soldiers of 
 fortune both ; and the stratagem with which I protected mysell 
 against you was a very innocent one. You would have employed 
 any stratagem or invented any fiction under the same circum- 
 stances. It was a case of diamond cut diamond." 
 
 " Precisely ; and if the older soldier, if the free lance of 
 many a campaign, got the best of it in the long run, the 
 younger freebooter could hardly think himself ill-used — could 
 he now, Val?" 
 
 " Well, no, I suppose not," repHed Valentine, puzzled by the 
 significance in the face of his old companion. That sly twinkle 
 in the Captain's eyes, that triumphant smile wreathing the 
 Captain's- hps, must surely mean mischief. 
 
 Valentine Hawkehurst remembered the vague suspicion that 
 liad flashed into his mind on that Christmas Eve when Captaia 
 Paget and he had dined together at a West End restaurant, 
 and the Captain had toasted Charlotte HaUiday with a smile 
 of sinister meaning. He began to anticipate some startling 
 and unpleasant revelation. He began to understand that in 
 some maimer this iascrutible schemer had contrived to overreach 
 him. 
 
 " What are you going to tell me ? " he asked. " I see there ia 
 some lurking mischief in your mind. How was it you were at 
 UUerton when I was there ? I met you on the platform of th» 
 station, and I had a vague half suspicion that you followed me 
 up on more than one occasion. I saw a glove in a man's parlour 
 — a glove which I could have sworn to as yours. But when I 
 came back, you were so plausible with your talk of promoting 
 business, and so on, that I was fool enough to beheve you. And 
 T suppose you cheated and tricked me after all ? " 
 
 " Cheated and tricked are hard words, my dear Val," said the
 
 296 Charlotte s Inheritance. 
 
 Captain, with delightful blandness. " I had as much right tfl 
 transact imaginary business in the promoting Hne at Ullerton as 
 you had to visit a fictitious aunt at Doi'king. Self-interest was 
 the governing principle in both cases. I do not think you can 
 have any right to consider yourself injured by me if I did steal 
 &, march ujDon you, and follow close upon your heels throughout 
 that Ullerton business. I do not think that you can have, on 
 moral grounds, any justification for making a complaint against 
 your old ally." 
 
 " Well, I suppose you are right enough in that," said Yalen- 
 tine. 
 
 " Shake hands upon it, then. I have not very long to live, 
 and I want to feel myself at peace with mankind. You see, if 
 you had come to me in the first place, in a frank and generous 
 spirit, and had said, ' My dear friend, here is a good thing ; let 
 us go into it together, and see what there is to be made out of 
 it,' you would have placed the matter on such a footing that, as 
 a man of honour, I should have been bound to regard youi 
 interests as my own. But when you set up a separate interest, 
 when you try to throw dust in my eyes, to hoodwink me — me, 
 Horatio Paget, a man of the world, possessed of some little 
 genius for social diplomacy — you attemj^t to do that which no 
 man ever yet succeeded in doing, and you immediately release 
 me from those obligations which an honourable man holds 
 sacred. It was my glove which you saw in Mr. Goodge's 
 parlour. I had a very satisfactory intemew with that reverend 
 person whde you were absent from Ullei'ton on some short 
 excursion, as to the purpose of which I am still in the dark. 
 On certain terms Mr. Goodge agreed to give me the privilege of 
 selecting a stated number from the letters of Mrs. Rebecca 
 Haygarth. I have reason to beheve that I made a judicious 
 choice; for the information thus obtained placed me at once 
 upon a track which I followed industriously until it led me to a 
 triumphant result." 
 
 " I do not understand " began Yalentine; but the Captain 
 
 did not allow him time to say more. 
 
 " You do not understand that there could be any other genea- 
 logical line than that which you and George Sheldon fitted 
 together so neatly. You have neither of you the exiDcrience of 
 iife which alone gives wideucss of vision. You discovered the 
 connections of the Haygarth and the i\Ieynell famihes in the 
 past. That was a step in the right direction. The discovery, so 
 far as it went, was a triumph. You allowed the sense of that 
 triumph to intoxicate you. In a business Avhich of all businesses 
 <vithin the range of man's intellect most requires deliberation 
 and sobriety, you went to work in a fever of haste and excite*
 
 Only a Bream. 297 
 
 Eient. Instead of searching out aZZ tlie descendants of Cliristian 
 Meynell, you pounce upon the first descendant who comes to 
 hand, and elect her, at your o-wn pleasure, sole heiress to the 
 estate of the deceased John Haygarth. You forget that there 
 may be other descendants of the said Christian Meynell — ■ 
 descendants standing prior to your wife Charlotte in the line of 
 succession." 
 
 " I can imagine no such descendants existing," said Yalentine, 
 with a puzzled manner. "You seem to have made yourself 
 master of our business ; but there is one point upon which you 
 are mistaken. George Sheldon and I did not go to work in a 
 fever of haste. We did fully and thoroughly examine the 
 pedigree of that person whom we — and legal advisers of con- 
 siderable standing— believe to be the sole heir-at-law to the 
 Haygarth estate ; and we took good care to convince ourselves 
 that there was no other claimant in existence." 
 
 " What do you call convincing yourselves ? ** 
 
 " Christian Meynell had only three children — Samuel, Susan, 
 and Charlotte. The last, Charlotte, married James Halliday, of 
 Newhall and Hyley farms ; the other two died unmarried." 
 
 " How do you know that ? How do you propose to demon- 
 Btrate that Samuel and Susan Meynell died unmarried ? " 
 
 " Susan was buried in her maiden name. Mrs. Halliday, her 
 sister, was with her when she died. There was no question of 
 marriage ; nor is there the record of any marriage contracted by 
 Samuel." 
 
 " All that is no proof." 
 
 "Indeed! I should have thought the evidence sufficient. 
 But, in any case, the omis prohandi is not upon us. Can you 
 prove the marriage of the Samuel Meynell who died at Calais, 
 or of the Susan Meynell who died in London ? '* 
 
 " I can. Susan Meynell's legitimate son is in the next room. 
 It's an unpleasant kind of revelation to make, Yal ; as he, the 
 son of one sister, stands prior to your wife, the granddaughter 
 of the other sister, in the order of succession. And he takes 
 all!" 
 
 " He takes all ! " repeated Yalentine, bewildered. " He I Susan 
 Meynell's son ? — in the next room ? What does all this mean ? " 
 
 " It means that when Susan was deserted by the scoundrel 
 who took her away from her home, she found an honest fellow 
 to marry her. The name of her husband was Lenoble. Gustave 
 Lenoble yonder, my daughter's husband, is her only child by that 
 marriage. A perfectly legal marriage, my dear Yal — everything 
 en regie, I assure you. The business is in the hands of Messrs. 
 Dashwood and Yemon of Whitehall — a first-class firm ; counsel'^ 
 opinion most decided as to Lenoble's position. They have bee|
 
 298 (Jliarlotte^ s Inheritance. 
 
 rather slow aLout the prehminary steps ; and, entre n(Mi8, 1 tava 
 not cared to hurry them, for I wanted to get my daughter's mar- 
 riage over quietly before we began our proceedings in Chancery. 
 It comes rather hard upon you, Yal, I allow ; but, you see, if yoiu 
 had acted generously, not to say honourably, towards me in the 
 first instance, you'd have had the advantage of my experience. 
 As it is, you have been working in the dark. However, things 
 are not so bad as they might be. You might have married some 
 ugly old harridan for the sake of this Haygarth estate ; you have 
 secured a jDretty and amiable wife, and you mustn't be down- 
 hearted if you find youi-self, from a financial point of view, mos^t 
 outrageously sold." 
 
 The Captain could not refrain from a laugh as he contemplated 
 his young friend's sm-prise. The laugh degenerated into a fit of 
 coughing, and it was some httle time before the enfeebled Horatio 
 was ready to resunae the inten-upted conversation. In this 
 pause Valentine had leisure to face this new position. There 
 was for the moment a sharp sense of disappointment. It is not 
 possible for humanity to be quite indiiFerent to a hundred thou- 
 sand pounds. So much of the " fight and sweetness " of fife is 
 attainable for that sum, — such pleasures, of the purest and 
 noblest, are in the power of the possessor. But in this moment 
 Valentine fully realized the fact that he had never taken the idea 
 of this fortune into his mind — never made it part and parcel ot 
 himself, to be plucked out of his heart with anguish, and to 
 leave a bleeding wound in the place where it had grown. It 
 seemed to him as if he had been wakened abruptly from some 
 Ijright bewildeiing dream; but the sharp pang of mercenary 
 desires disappomted, of sordid hopes suddenly reft, was not for 
 him. 
 
 Beyond this sense of uncertainty, which had made the Hay- 
 garthian fortune seem at best such " stufi" as dreams are made 
 of," there had been ever present in his n-Jid of late the dismal 
 association connected with this money. For this, and to get 
 power over this through the rights of his weak wife, had Philip 
 Sheldon plotted against the life of that sweet girl who was but 
 newly rescued from the jaws of the grave. The bitter memory 
 of those days and nights of suspense could never have been 
 quite dissociated from the money that had been the primary 
 cause of all this slow torture. 
 
 " Do you think I shall love my wife any less because she has 
 no claim to the Haygarth estate ?" he exclaimed presently, look- 
 ing with half-contemptuous indignation upon the broken-down 
 schemer. " I loved her long before I knew the name of Hay- 
 garth; I should have loved her if I had found her a beggar m 
 the London streets, a peasait-girl w*>(^ding for sixpence a day vf
 
 Only a t)reani. 205 
 
 i^ome dismal swamp of agricultural poverty and ignorance. I 
 am not going to say that this money would not have broiight us 
 pleasure; pictures and gardens, and bright rooms, and books 
 without number, and intercourse with congenial acquaintance 
 and delightful journeyings to all the fairest places upon th& 
 earth, and the power to do some good in our generation, and a 
 sense of security for our future, and by-and-by, perhaps, for the 
 future of dear children, for whose prosperity we should be more 
 anxious than for our own. Pleasure the money would most 
 probably have brought for us in abundance ; but I doubt if it 
 could buy us more perfect happiness than we may know in the 
 simplest home that my toil can support. Ah, Captain, I ques- 
 tion if you ever knew the sweetest sensation life can give — the 
 deUght of working for those we love." 
 
 Captain Paget stared at his sometime protege in a kind of 
 rapture of wonder, not entirely unmingled with admiration. 
 
 " Egad !" he exclaimed, " I have read of this kind of thing in 
 novels ; but in the whole course of my expenence I never met 
 with anything equal to it. My son-in-law, Lenoble yonder, is a 
 generous foo— fellow enough; but then, since infancy, he has 
 never kno^vn the want of money. And generosity from that 
 kind of man is no more of a virtue than the foolhardiness of a 
 child who pokes his finger into the candle, not knowing the pro- 
 pei-ties of the thing he has to deal with. But anything like 
 generosity from you, from a man reared as you were reared, is, I 
 freely confess, a little beyond my comprehension." 
 
 " Yes ; it is a transformation, is it not P But I don't think I 
 was ever inordinately fond of money. Your genuine Bohemian 
 rarely is. He is too well schooled in the art of living without 
 cash, and he asks so little here below. His pipe, his friend, his 
 dog, his books, his garret, his billiards, his beer. It is all a 
 question of a few pounds a week. And if, some day, the divine 
 enchanter Love takes the poor fellow under his guidance, and 
 teaches him to do without biUiards and beer, your Bohemian 
 settles down into the purest and best of men. Think what 
 Goldj might have been if some good woman had taken compas- 
 sion upon him and manied him, and henpecked liim ever after- 
 wards. He might have written as many novels as Sir Walter 
 Scott, and died master of some Hibernian Abbotsford, some 
 fair domain among the bright green hills that look down upon 
 broad Shannon's silvery falls. No, Captain ; your intelligence 
 has not annihilated me. I can face the future boldly with my 
 dear young wife upon my arm." 
 
 " Upon my soul, Yal, you're a very noble fellow !" exclaimed 
 Horatio Paget, with real enthusiasm ; " and I am sorry I hava 
 kept yon in the dark so long.'
 
 800 C'h-!7lnlff'\^ IrJieiiraYiC^. 
 
 "You kave kept me hi the dark? Yes; to be sure. HotV 
 long have you known this — about Susan JMeynell ? " 
 
 " Well, my dear boy, not very long." 
 
 " But how long ? A month — two months ? Yes ; you have 
 known Lenoble's position ever since you knew him ; and Char- 
 lotte told me three months ago of Diana's engagement to Le- 
 noble. Do you know that if Sheldon had succeeded, Charlotte's 
 blood would have been upon your head ? If you had not con- 
 cealed the truth, his villany woiild never have been attempted." 
 
 "But, my dear Val," exclaimed the Captain j)iteously, "I 
 ■was not to know " 
 
 " No ; you were not to know that there could be such a wretch 
 as Philip Sheldon upon this earth. We will say no more of 
 that. I kept my secret, you kept yours. Mischief unspeakable 
 well-nigh came of all this underhand work. But heaven has 
 been merciful to us. We have passed through the valley of the 
 Bhadow of death ; and if anything could make my wife dearer 
 to me than she was when first I won her j^romise to be mine, it 
 would be the sorrow of the last few months. And now I wiU 
 go and shake hands mth Lenoble, my wife's kinsman. He is a 
 fine fellow, and well deserves his good fortune. Stay ; one word. 
 Did Diana know this ? did she know that her lover is heir to 
 the Haygarth estate ? " 
 
 " She does not know it now. She has never heard the name 
 of Haygarth. And, between you and me, Yal, it cost me a 
 world of trouble to persuade her to say yes to Lenoble's ofi'er, 
 though he is a very decent match for her, even without reference 
 to the Haygarth estate." 
 
 " I am glad she knew nothing of this," said Valentine ; " I 
 am very glad." 
 
 After this he again shook hands with Captain Paget, at that 
 gentleman's request, and the Cai^tain expressed himself much 
 reheved by the conversation, and by his late jDrotege's very 
 generous behaviour. He called to his daughter and the rest 
 presently, and they came at his summons. 
 
 " Is your long talk finished, jjapa ? " asked Diana. 
 
 " Ajid is the secret told?" demanded Charlotte of her obedient 
 husband and slave. 
 
 " Yes, dear, it is told," he answered gravely. 
 
 " I hope it is a pleasant secret." 
 
 " I do not think the knowledge of it will give you much pain, 
 dearest. You have learnt to thmk yom-self a — a kind of an 
 heiress of late, have you not?" 
 
 "Papa — Mr. Sheldon — told me that I had a claim to some 
 money ; but I have not thought much about it, except that I 
 ■should give you Grote and Macaulay in dark-brown calf, with
 
 Only a Dream. 301 
 
 bevelled boards and red edges, like that edition you saw at the 
 auctioneer's in Bond Street, and have talked about ever since ; 
 and a horse, perhaps ; and a glass porch to our cottage." 
 
 " Well, darUng, the books in dark-brown calf, and the horse, 
 and the glass porch, may all be ours in the future ; but tlw 
 money was only a dream — it has melted away, dear." 
 
 "Is that all? " asked Charlotte. " Why, I dare say the day 
 ■will come when you will be as rich as Sir Walter Scott." 
 
 " In the meantime I have something to give you instead of 
 the money." 
 "Indeed!" 
 
 " Yes ; a cousin. Will that do as well, my loveP" _ 
 ' A cousin ? I shall like her very much if she is nice." 
 " The cousin I mean is a gentleman." 
 
 "But where is he to come from? " cried Charlotte, laughmg. 
 Has he dropped from the moon ? The only relations I have 
 the world are Uncle and Aunt Mercer. How can you pretend 
 to find me a cousin ? " 
 
 "Do you remember telling me of your grandmother's only 
 sister — Susan MeyneU?" 
 
 " Yes," said Charlotte, with a sudden blush ; " I remember." 
 " That Miss Meynell married a gentleman of Normandy, and 
 left one only child, a son. His name is Gustave Lenoble, and 
 he is standing by your side. He is heir-at-law to a very large 
 fortune, which it was once supposed you could claim. Are you 
 sorry, Lotta, to find a kinsman and lose a fortune? — and are 
 you contented to begin the world with no hope except in your 
 husband's patience and courage ? " 
 
 " And genius ! " cried Charlotte, with enthusiasm. 
 The sweet blinding glamour of love shone upon this young 
 scribbler, and she believed that he was indeed worthy to take 
 rank among the greatest of that grand brotherhood of which he 
 was so humble a memj)er. She looked up at him with the 
 prettiest confidence; her clinging hand clasped his with love 
 and trust immeasurable. He felt and knew that love hke this 
 was a treasure beside which the Eevercnd John Hay garth's 
 hoarded thousands must needs seem but sorry dross. 
 
 After this there was much explanation and congratulation. 
 Gustave Lenoble was delighted to claim so fail- a kinswoman, 
 
 " Thou art like my eldest, my cousin," he said ; " Diana saw 
 the likeness at the Sacrc Coeur when she beheld my daughter ; 
 and I too saw my eldest' s look in thine eyes when I first met 
 thee. Remember, it was convened between us that Cotenoir 
 should be a home for thee and for Hawkehui'st before I knew 
 what Hnk bound thee to the house of Lenoble. Now thou and 
 tliy husband will be of our family.' ^
 
 B02 Charlotte's Inheritance. 
 
 Diana was bewildered, grieved, indignant with the father who 
 had deceived her by his studious suppression of the truth. She 
 found herself placed in the position of rival to Charlotte, and 
 the whole proceeding seemed to her mean and treacherous. 
 
 But it was no time for remonstrance or open expression of 
 indignant feehng. Her father's days were numbered. She 
 knew this, and she held her peace. Nor did Mrs. Sheldon utter 
 any word of complaint, though the disappointment she expe- 
 rienced upon healing this revelation was very keen. The idea 
 of the four or five thousand pounds which were to come to 
 Charlotte had been a consolation to her in the midst of that 
 confusion and desolation which had newly come upon her Hfe. 
 She left KJnightsbridge that evening somewhat depressed in 
 spirits, and half inclined to be angry with Charlotte and her 
 husband for their gaiety of manner, and evident happiness in 
 each other's society. 
 
 " It seems hard to have to begin the world at my age," she 
 murmured hopelessly, " after being accustomed to have every- 
 thing nice about me, as I had at the Lawn; though I own 
 that the trouble and care of the servants was wearing me to the 
 grave." 
 
 "Dear mamma," exclaimed Charlotte tenderly, "there is no 
 fear of trouble or poverty for you or for us. Valentine has 
 plenty of money, and is on the high road to securing a comfort- 
 able income. Authors do not starve in garrets now, you know, 
 as they used to do, poor things, when Doctor Johnson ate his 
 dinner in a cave, or something dreadful of that kind ; and when 
 Sir Richard Steele thought it quite a wonderful thing to get a 
 pound of tea for his wife. And Valentine's heart is in his 
 profession, and he will work for us." 
 
 " As long as I have a hand that can write, and a brain that 
 can guide my pen," inter[50sed Mr. Hawkehurst, gaily. " I 
 have given hostages to Fortune. I cati face the hazard boldly. 
 I feel as confident and as happy as if we Hved in the golden 
 age, when there was neither care nor toil for innocent maukiud, 
 a,nd all the brigb+P3t +^:"gj c- s£,rlh ~?r'? the spontareonf gift 
 of the god*}."
 
 Bohemian Independence. S^ 
 
 CHAPTEE V. 
 
 BOHEMIAN INDEPENDENCE. 
 
 Monsieur and Madame Lenoble went to Brighton for thei 
 honeymoon. A letter or a telegraphic message wonld brins 
 them thence swiftly to the bedside of the dying Captain, should 
 the last fatal change set in suddenly. Diana had wished to stay 
 with her father, but Horatio insisted upon the honeymooa trip, 
 and that everything should be done in a correct and gentlemanly 
 manner. 
 
 " You can engage rooms at the Albion," Captain Paget had 
 said to his son-in-law a few days before the quiet wedding. 
 " The house is extremely comfortable ; and you will be received 
 by a compatriot. The proprietor is a Frenchman, and a very- 
 gentlemanly person, I assure you; the adsine irrej^roachablw. 
 I remember the old Steyne when Mrs. FitzHerbert lived close 
 by, and received all the best people, in the days when the Cock- 
 ney had not yet taken possession of Brighthelmstone, and 
 the Chinese dragons and pagodas were bright and fresh in the 
 Pavihon." 
 
 To Brighton, therefore, the bride and bridegroom departed ; 
 Diana attended by a maid, an appanage which the Captain had 
 insisted upon. Poor Diana was sorely puzzled as to what she 
 should find for the maid to do when her hair had been dressed 
 early in the morning, and her costume laid out in state for the 
 day. 
 
 " 1 think I must buy some handkerchiefs for her to hem," she 
 said to Gustavo ; " it will be quite dreadful for her to have nothing 
 to do all day long." 
 
 The weather was warm and bright. The sea danced and 
 sparkled under the windows. Gustavo was always in the same 
 happy frame of mind. An elegant landau had been secured for 
 the period of their visit, and a pair of capital horses carried them 
 out on long and pleasant expeditions to the pretty Sussex villages, 
 or across the broad bare downs, beyond which the sea stretched 
 blue and bright. 
 
 In the evening, when the lamp was Kghted and the urn hissed 
 gaily, Diana felt that she and her husband were at home. It 
 was the first home she had known — the first time she had been 
 Bole mistress and centre of a household. She looked back at 
 all the old desolation, the dreary shifting from lodging to 
 lodging, the degradation, the self-abasement, the dull apathy 
 of despair; and tlien she looked across" at her huebq,nd as ho
 
 304 Cliarlotte's Inheritance. 
 
 lounged in his easy-chair, contemplating her with dretiuiy 
 adoring eye, in a kind of lazy worship ; and she knew that for 
 this man she was the centre of the universe, the very keystone 
 in the arch of life. 
 
 She stretched out her hand to him with a smile, and he pressed 
 it fondly to his lips. There were twinkling jewels ujDon the 
 slender fingers ; for the prettiest shop in Brighton — the brightest 
 Bhop in Brighton — had been ransacked that morning by the fond, 
 frivolous, happy husband, as pleased to bedeck his wife as a child 
 to dress her last new doll. 
 
 " How can I ever be worthy of so much affection, Gustave ! " 
 she exclaimed, as he kissed the twinkling fingers. 
 
 And it did indeed seem to her that for this free gift of love 
 she could never render a sufficient recompense. 
 
 " Thou wilt make Cotenoir a home," he said ; " thou knowes-* 
 not how I have sighed for a home. This room, with the lamp- 
 light shining on thy face, and thy white hands moving about 
 the teacups, and thy sweet smile, which greets me every now 
 and then when thou lookest by here, — it is more of home than 
 I have ever known since I left Beaubocage, that modest dwelling 
 where lived those two angels of kindness, my aunt and my 
 grandmother." 
 
 In one of those long pleasant drives to a distant village nest- 
 ling under the lee of a steep hill, the husband and wife had much 
 serious talk about the position of the former with reference to the 
 Haygarth estate. The result of that conversation was shown in 
 a letter which Charlotte Hawkehurst received the next day from 
 her friend Diana Lenoble. 
 
 " Albion Hotel, Brighton. 
 " Ever deab, Lotta, — Gustave and I have discussed the Hay- 
 garth business with great satisfaction to ourselves, since it trans- 
 I^ired in the course of our conversation that we are both of one 
 mmd in the matter. It is agreed between us that, as he is very 
 well off already, and as he never hoped or expected to inherit a 
 fortune from his maternal ancestor, it is only just that he should 
 divide this unlooked-for wealth with his dear cousin, whose claim 
 to that inheritance he recognizes as equal to his own ; the mere 
 fact of seniority making only a legal and not a moral difference 
 in the degree of relationship to the Reverend John Haygarth. 
 Do you understand, darling ? — you are to have half this money. 
 My husband will not step in between you and good fortune. I 
 cannot tell you how happy this determination of Gustavo's has 
 made me. I felt myself in a manner base and ungrateful when 
 I thought I was to share wealth that might have been yours ; 
 but I ought to have better understood the just^'ce of my
 
 JSohemian tndepenilenc6. SOS 
 
 husband's mind. And now, dearest, all will be arranged very 
 bimply; Gustave will come to London and see his lawyers, 
 and execute some kind of deed, and the whole afiair wiU be 
 settled. 
 " We have had some charming drives," &c. &c. 
 
 Here the young wife branched off into a description of the 
 simple pleasures of their honeymoon holiday. 
 
 Tliis letter was answered by Valentine Hawkehurst in person. 
 He came down to Brighton to thank his friends for their generous 
 desire to enrich his wife, and to decline, on her part, any share 
 in John Haygarth's wealth. 
 
 It was in vain that Gustave and Diana argued the point, Mr. 
 Hawkehurst was fixed as fate. 
 
 " Believe me, it is better as it is," he said. " Charlotte and 1 
 have arrived at this conviction with all due thought and dehbe- 
 ration. We are both young, and the world is all before us. 
 There is much in the past that I have to redeem, as Diana well 
 knows. It is better that I should fight the battle ot life unaided, 
 and rise from the ranks by right of my merit as a soldier. If 
 ever we have need of help — if ever I find myself breaking down 
 — you may be sure that it is to you I shall come. By and by, 
 if Providence gives me children to work for, I will refuse no 
 bounty that you may bestow on them. Their future may be 
 rendered secure b;^ your generosity, if you please, Lenoble ; 
 they will be your kindred. But for an alien like myself there 
 is no discipline so wholesome as honest hard work. I am as 
 rich as John Milton when he set up a school in St. Bride's 
 Churchyard." 
 
 To this resolution Mr. Hawkehurst adhered with a gentle 
 firmness. 
 
 "Thou art chivalrous Hke Don Quixote," said Gustave 
 Lenoble ; " but it shall be as thou wouldest. Touch there." 
 
 He offered his hand, which the other grasped with all hearti- 
 ness. 
 
 " I win be godfather to thy Httle first one, and I wiU settle on 
 him ten thousand pounds before he cuts his first tooth," said 
 Gustave decisively.
 
 306 Charlotte's tnJieritanCi. 
 
 CHAPTEE VL 
 
 BEYOND THE VEIL. 
 
 Diana and her husband did not linger long at BrigMon ; ihey 
 went beck to town in time to see the last of that old wayfarer 
 whose troubled journey came to so peaceful an ending. It was 
 a very calm haven in which, this battered old privateer lay at 
 anchor after life's tempestuous course ; but to the Captain him- 
 self it seemed a hard thing that he should not have been per- 
 mitted one brief cruise upon that summer sea which danced so 
 f aily beneath the keel of the Lenobles' prosperoiis bark. 
 
 " We have shared adversity, my love," he said sadly, when he 
 talked with his daughter in the last few days ; " but your pros- 
 perity I am to have no share in. Well, I suppose I have no 
 right to complain. My Ufe has been an erring one ; but poverty 
 is the most viscious companion that a man can consort with. 
 If I had come into six or seven thousand a year, I might have 
 been as starch in my notions as a bishop; but I have been 
 obliged to live, Diana — that was the primary necessity, and I 
 learnt to accommodate myself to it." 
 
 That he had erred, the Captain was very ready to acklowledge. 
 That he had sinned deeply, and had much need to repent himself 
 of his iniquity, he was very slow to perceive. But sometimes, 
 in the still watches of the night, when the faint lamplight on 
 the shadowy wall was more gloomy than darkness, when the 
 nurse, hired to assist his own man in these last days, dozed in 
 her comfortable chair, the truth came home to his shallow soul, 
 and Horatio Paget knew that he had been indeed a sinner, and 
 very vile among sinners. Then, for a moment, the veil of self- 
 deception was hfted, and he saw his past life as it had really 
 been, — selfish, dishonourable, cruel beyond measure in reckless 
 injury of others. For a moment the awful book was opened, 
 and the sinner saw the fearful sum set against his name. 
 
 " What can wipe out the dread account P " he asked himself. 
 " Is there such a thing as forgiveness for a selfish useless life — a 
 life which is one long offence against God and man P " 
 
 In these long wakeful nights the dying man thought much of 
 his wife. The sweet tender face came back to him, with its 
 mournful wondering look. He knew, now, how his falsehooda 
 and dishonours had wounded and oppressed that gentle soul. 
 He remembered how often she had pleaded for the right, niid
 
 Seyond the Veil. S07 
 
 ho->« he had ridiculed her arpfuments, and set at naught her 
 tender pleadings. He had fancied her in a manner inimical to 
 himself when she urged the cause of some angry creditor or 
 meek deluded landlady. Now, with the_ Hghf that is not upon 
 earth or sea shining on the picture of his past career, he could 
 see and understand things as he had never seen or understood 
 them before. He knew now that it was for his own sake that 
 faithful and devoted wife had pleaded, his own_ interest that had 
 been near to her pitying heart, as well as the interest of bakers 
 and butchers, landladies and tailors. 
 
 " She might have made a good man of me, if I had let her 
 have her way," he thought to himself. " I know that slie is in 
 heaven. Will she plead for me, I wonder, at the foot of the 
 Great Throne? I used to laugh at her bad Enghsh, or fly in a 
 passion with her sometimes, poor soul, when I wanted her k) 
 pass for a lady, and she broke down outrageously. But there 
 her voice will be heard when mine appeals in vain. Dear soul ! 
 I wonder who taught her to be so pure and unselfish, and 
 trusting and faithful ? She was a Christian without knowing 
 it. 'I thank Thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because 
 Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast 
 revealed them unto babes.' " 
 
 He thought of his wife's lonely deathbed, and compared it 
 with his own. For him there was lurury ; by him watched a 
 devoted and all-forgiving daughter, a generous friend and son- 
 in-law. All that could be done to soothe the painful descent 
 was done for him. For her there had been nothing but lone- 
 liness and sorrow. 
 
 " But she might be certain of a speedy welcome in a better 
 • home," thought Horatio; "and I—? Ah, dear kind creature, 
 there the difference was all in her favour." 
 
 As the closing scene grew nearer, he thought more and more 
 of his gentle low-born wife, whose hold upon him in life had 
 been so slender, whose memory had occupied until now so insig- 
 nificant a place in his mind. His daughter watched with him 
 unceasingly in the last two days and nights. His mind wan- 
 dered. On the day of his death he mistook Diana for that 
 long-lost companion. 
 
 " I have not been a kind husband, Mary, my dear," he fal- 
 tered ; " but the world has been hard upon me — debts — d£B.cultie3 
 — crack regiment — expensive mess — set of gfunblers — no pity 
 on a young man without fortune — force of example — tied a 
 millstone round my wretched neck before I was twenty-one 
 years of age." 
 
 Later, when the doctor had felt his pulse for the last time, 
 \-:V cried out suddenly, " I have made a statement of my affaira.
 
 808 Charlotte^g Inheritance. 
 
 Tlie liabilities are numerous— the assets nil; but 1 rely on tlie 
 clemency of tbis court." 
 
 These were his last words. He sank into a kind of stuiwr 
 betwixt sleeping and waking, and in this he died. 
 
 CHAPTER YIL 
 
 BETTER THAN GOLD. 
 
 The little fleet of paper boats which Mr. Sheldon had pioneered 
 so skilfully over the commercial seas came to grief very soon 
 after the disappearance of the admiral. A bill drawn upon the 
 Honduras Mahogany Company, Limited, was the first to reach 
 maturity. The bUl was referred to the drawer — the drawer was 
 not to be found. 
 
 " I have not seen Sheldon for the last fortnight," Mr. Orcott 
 informed the gentleman who brought him the document. 
 
 " Out of business for a fortnight?" 
 
 " He has not been in business for a month. His stepdaughter 
 has been very ill — at death's door, and all that kind of thing, 
 and my governor was awfully cut up about it. There used to 
 be a couijle of doctors at the house every day, and no end of 
 fuss. I took Sheldon his letters, and managed matters for him 
 here, and so on. And one fine morning my young lady runs 
 ofi" and gets married on the quiet ; so I suspect there was a 
 good deal of shamming about the illness — and those old fogies, 
 the doctors, vmiked at it. Between them all, I fancy Sheldon 
 was completely sold; and he has turned savage and gone off 
 somewhere in the sulks." 
 
 " I wish he had chosen any other time for his sulks," said the 
 /older of the bUl ; " my partner and I have discounted several 
 acceptances for him. He gave us Hberal terms, and we con- 
 sidered any paper of his as safe as a Bank of England note; 
 and now this confounded bill comes back to us through out 
 bankers, noted, 'Refer to drawer' — a most unpleasant thing, 
 you know, and very inconsiderate of Sheldon to leave us in 
 such a fix." 
 
 " He has forgotten the bill, I suppose," said Mr. Orcott. 
 
 "Well, but you see, really now, a business man ought not 
 to forget that kind of thing. And so Miss Halliday has made 
 a runaway match, has she? I remember seeing her when I
 
 Better than Gold. 300 
 
 dined at Bayswater — an uncommonly fine girl. And slie has 
 gone and thrown herself away upon some penniless scapegrace, 
 most likely? Now, by the bye, how about this Honduraa 
 Company, Mr. Orcott; they don't seem to have any Loudon 
 offices?" 
 
 " I beheve not. We've some of their prospectuses somewhere 
 about, I think. "Would you lite to see one?" 
 
 " I should, very much." 
 
 Mr. Orcott opened two or three drawers, and after some littla 
 trouble produced the required document. 
 
 It was a very flourishing prospectus, setting forth the enormous 
 benefits to be derived by shareholders from the profitable deal- 
 ings of the company. Some good high-sounding names figured 
 in the list of directors, and the chairman was Captain H. N. 
 Cromie Paget. The prospectus looked weU enough, but the 
 holder of Mr. Sheldon's dishonoured biU was not able to derive 
 much comfort from high-sounding phrases and high-sounding 
 names. 
 
 " I'U go down to Bayswater, and see if I can hear anything of 
 four governor," he said to Mr. Orcott. 
 
 " He was not there yesterday when I called, and his sei-vants 
 could tell me nothing of his whereabouts," the young Yorkshire- 
 man said vei-y coolly. 
 
 "Indeed!" cried the holder of the dishonoured bill in some 
 alarm. " Now, really, that is not right ; a business man ought 
 not to do that kind of thing." 
 
 He called a cab and drove to the Lawn. There was the smart 
 gothic villa, with its pointed gables, and florid chimneys, and 
 oriel windows, and in the Tudor casements of the ground-floor 
 appeared the bills of a West-end auctioneer, announcing in large 
 letters that the lease of this charming mansion, together with 
 the nearly new furniture, Knen, books, china, plate, carefully- 
 selected proof-prints after distinguished modern artists, small 
 cellar of choice wines, &c., &c., &c., would be disposed of by 
 auction on the following day, 
 
 Mr. Sheldon's victim went into the house, where he found 
 Bome men preparing for the forthcoming sale. 
 
 " \Vhat IS the meaning of all this ?" he asked, aghast. 
 
 " A bill of sale, sir. Messrs. Napthali and Zabulon." 
 
 This was enough. The holder of the bill went back to the 
 City. Another bill came due on the following day, and before 
 the members of the Stock Exchange took their luncheon, it was 
 known that Philip Sheldon's credit was among the things of 
 the past. 
 
 " I always thought he was out of his depth," said one set of 
 talkers.
 
 810 CharJotte's InhentancB. 
 
 " He was the last man I should have expected to see oorae in 
 grief," said another set of talkers. 
 
 On settUng-day came the awful proclamation — Philip Sheldon 
 had absconded, and would not meet his differences.. 
 
 On the same day came a terrible revelation to Mr. George 
 Sheldon, of Gray's Inn, solicitor, genealogist, and pedigree 
 hunter. The first official step in the advancement of Gu stave 
 Lenoble's claim against the Crown was taken by Messrs. Dash- 
 wood and Vernon, the solicitors, of Whitehall; and George 
 Sheldon discovered that between Charlotte Hawkehurst and 
 the Haygarth estate there stood a prior claimant, whereby all 
 his toil, trouble, costs out of pocket, and wear and tear of body 
 and mind, had been wasted. 
 
 " It is enough to make a man go and cut his throat," cried 
 George, in his first savage sense of utter disappointment. 
 
 He went into his slovenly bedroom, and took out one of his 
 razors, and felt the corrugated surface of the ieft side of hia 
 neck meditatively. But the razor was blunt, and the corrugated 
 surface seemed very tough and unmanageable ; so George Shel- 
 don decided that this kind of operation was an affair which 
 might be defeiTed. i' 
 
 He heard the nest day that his brother was non est, and, in 
 his own phraseology, that there was a pretty kettle of fish in 
 the City. 
 
 " Upon my word, Phil and I seem to have brought our piga 
 to a very nice market," he said. "I dare say, wherever that 
 fellow has gone, he has carried a well-hned purse with him. 
 But I wouldn't have his conscience for all the wealth of the 
 Eothschilds. It's bad enough to see Tom HaUiday's face as 1 
 see it sometimes. What must it be to him, ?" 
 
 A little more than a year after this, and the yellow com waa 
 waving on the fertile plains of Normandy, fruit ripening in '' 
 orchards on hillside and in valley ; merry holiday folks splash- 
 ing and dabbhng in the waves that wash the yellow sanda 
 of Dieppe ; horses coming to grief in Norman steeplechases ; 
 desperate gamesters losing their francs and half-francs in 
 all kinds of frivolous games in the Dieppe etablissenient ; 
 and yonder, in the heart of Normandy, beyond the talj 
 steeples of Bouen, a happy family assembled at the Chateau 
 Cotenoir. 
 
 One happy family — ^two happy families rather, but so closely 
 nnited by the bonds of love and friendship as to seem indeed 
 one. Here are Gustave Lenoble and his young wife Diana, with 
 two tall slender damsels by their side ; and here is Valentine 
 Hawkehurst, the successful young scribbler, with his fair young
 
 :Better than Gold. 3ll 
 
 vnle Charlotte; and out on tlie terrace yonder are two nnrses walk- 
 ing with, two babies, at that early, and, to some minds, obn-oxioua 
 stage of babyhood in whicb a perpetual rocking, and pacing to 
 and fro, and swaying backwards and forwards in the air, is 
 necessary for the preservation of anything approaching tran- 
 quillity. But to the minds of the two young mothers and the 
 two proud fathers, these small creatures in their long white 
 robes seem something too bright for earth. The united ages of 
 lie babies do not amount to six months ; but the mothers have 
 counted every gradual stage of these young hves, and to both it 
 seems as if there had been no time in which the children were 
 not, with so firm a hold have they possessed themselves of every 
 thought in the foolish maternal mind, of every impulse in the 
 weak maternal heart. 
 
 Mrs. Hawkehurst has brougbt her son to see his aunt Diana; 
 for Diana, has insisted upon assuming that relationship by 
 letters-patent, as it were. Madame Lenoble's baby is a daughter, 
 and this fact in itself seems to the two friends to be a special 
 interposition of Providence. 
 
 " Would it not be delightful if they should grow up to love 
 each other and many ?" exclaimed Diana; and Charlotte agreed 
 with her that such an event in the future did indeed seem in 
 a manner foreshadowed by the conduct of the infants in the 
 present. 
 
 •' He takes notice of her already ! " she exclaimed, looking out 
 at the httle creature in white muslin robes, held up against the 
 warm blue sky ; " see, they are cooing at each other ! I am sure 
 that must be cooing." 
 
 And then the two mothers went out upon the sunny terrace- 
 walk and fondly contemplated these domestic treasures, imtil 
 the domestic treasures were seized with some of the inexplicable 
 throes and mysterious agonies of early babyhood, and had to be 
 borne ofi" shrieking to their nurseries. 
 
 " Dear angel," said Gustave, of his "httle last one," "she has 
 the very shriek of Clarice here, poignant and penetrating, until 
 to drown the heart. Dost thou figure to thyself that thy voice 
 was penetrating as that, my beautiful, in the time ? " 
 
 He kissed his beautiful, and she ran off to join the procession 
 following the two babies, — alarmed nurses, distracted mammas, 
 ghrieking infants, anxious damsels. 
 
 " C'est un vrai tourhillon," as Gustave remarked to hia 
 companion Valentine Hawkehurst; "these women, how they 
 love their children ! What of saints, what of Madonnas, what 
 of angels 1" 
 
 Whereupon he spouted Victor Hugo :
 
 312 Charlotte's Inlieritmice. 
 
 *' Loi'sque renfant paralt, le cercle de faniille 
 Applaudit ^ grands cris ; son doux regard qui brills 
 
 Fait briller tons les yetis ; 
 Et les plus tristes fronts, les plus souilles peut-6tre, 
 Se derident soudain a voir I'enfant paraitre, 
 
 Innocent et joyeux." 
 
 All tilings had gone well for M. Lenoble. His direct descent 
 from Mattliew Haygarth, the father of the intestate, had been 
 proved to the satisfaction of Crown lawyers and High Court of 
 Chancery, and he had been in due course placed iu possession of 
 the reverend intestate's estate, to the profit and pleasure of his 
 Bohcitors and M. Fleurus, and to the unspeakable aggravation 
 of George Sheldon, who washed his hands at once and for ever 
 of all genealogical research, and fell back in an embittered and 
 angry spirit upon the smaller profits to be derived from petty 
 transactions in the bill- discounting hne, and a championship of 
 pennUess sufferers of all classes, from a damsel who considered 
 herself jilted by a fickle swain, in proof of whose inconstancy 
 she could produce documentary evidence of the " pork-chop and 
 tomato sauce" order, to a pedestrian who knocked his head 
 against a projecting shutter in the Strand, and straightway 
 walked home to HoUoway to lay himself up for a twelvemonth 
 in a state of mental and bodily incapacity requiring large 
 pecuniary redress from the owner of the fatal shutter. To 
 this noble protection of the rights of the weak did George 
 Sheldon devote his intellect ; and when malicious enemies 
 stigmatized these Quixotic endeavours as " speculative actions," 
 or when, in the breaking-down of some oppressed damsel's 
 cause by reason of the slender evidence afforded by some 
 reticent lover's epistolary effusions, unjust judges told him that 
 he "ought to be ashamed of himself" for bringing such an 
 action, the generous attoi*ney no doubt took consolation from 
 an approving conscience, and went forth from that court, to 
 look for other oppressed damsels or injured wayfarers, erect and 
 unshaken. 
 
 Some Httle profit Mr. Sheldon of Gray's Inn did derive 
 from the Haygarth estate ; for at the request of Gustave 
 Lenoble Messrs. Dashwood and Yemon sent him a cheque for 
 one thousand pounds, as the price of those early investigations 
 which had set the artful Captain upon the right track. He 
 wrote a ceremoniously grateful letter to Gustave Lenoble on 
 receiving this honorarium. It is always well to be grateful 
 for benefits received from a rich man ; but in the depths of hia 
 heart he execrated the fortunate inheritor of the Haygarthian 
 thousands.
 
 Belter than Gold. 3.13 
 
 Mr. Hawkelmrst was not quite so vehement in the expression 
 af his feelings as that lively Celt, Gustave; bat deep in hia 
 heart there was a sense of happiness no less pure and exalted. 
 
 Pro\ndence had given liim more than he had ever dared to 
 hope ; not John Hay garth's thousands ; not a life of luxurious 
 idleness, and dinner-giving, and Derby days, and boxes on the 
 grand tier, and carriage-horses at five hundi-ed guineas a pair ; 
 not a palace ia Belgravia, and a shooting-box in the Highlands, 
 and a villa at Cowes ; not these things, in which he would once 
 have perceived the suvimunn honum ; but a fair price for hia 
 labour, a dear young wife, a tranquil home. 
 
 Nor had his researches among the dusty records of the 
 departed Haygarths been profitless in a pecuniary sense to 
 himself. Gustave Lenoble insisted that he should accept that 
 honorarium of three thousand pounds which had been promised 
 by George Sheldon as the reward of his success. 
 
 " Captain Paget would never have been put on the right track 
 if he had not filched your secrets from you," said the son and 
 heir of Susan Meynell. " It is to your researches, in the first 
 place, that I owe this inheritance; and you cannot refuse to 
 accept the agreed price of your labour." 
 
 Valentine did not refuse this fairly-earned reward, nor did he 
 oppose the settlement which Gustave made in favour of Char- 
 lotte's infant son. It seemed to him only just that some share 
 of the heritage should fall to the descendant of poor Susan's 
 younger sister and faithful friend. 
 
 "With this capital of three thousand pounds comfortably 
 invested in consols, and with the interest of that sum of ten 
 thousand pounds settled on his infant son, Mr. Hawkehurst 
 began the world, in his new character of a husband and a father, 
 very pleasantly. 
 
 Of his literary career very little need be said here. He was 
 yet at the beginning of the long dusty road that leads to the 
 temple of Fame. It is enough to state that he found the dusty 
 high-road rather difficult walking, and that he was pelted with 
 more mud, flung by nameless assailants hidden behind the 
 hedges, than he "had anticipated when he set out upon the first 
 stage of his journey. Happily, he found pleasant fellow-travellers 
 and kindly encoiiragement from an indulgent pubHc, and was 
 thus able to accept the mud which bespattered his gai-ments in 
 a very placid spirit, and to make light of all obstacles in the 
 great highway. 
 
 The cottage at Wimbledon was no longer a dream. It was a 
 pleasant reality, the p ide and deUght of Mrs. Sheldon and Ann 
 Wuolpor. It was a ijicturesque dwelling-place, half cottage, half 
 ▼ilia, situated on the broad high-road fi'om Loudon to King-
 
 ^14) Charlotte's Inheritance. 
 
 Bton. with all the ■woodland of Richmond Park to be seen ftvm 
 the windows at the back. Only a wall divided Mr. Hawkehurst'a 
 
 fardens from the coverts of the Queen. It was hke a royal 
 emesne, Charotte said ; whereupon her husband insisted that it 
 should be christened by the name of a royal dwelling, and so 
 called it Charlottenburgh. 
 
 Mr. Hawkehurst had secured this delightful abode for a 
 considerable term of years, and upon the furnishing and deco- 
 ration of the pretty rustic rooms Charlotte and he lavished 
 unmeasured care. The delicious excitement of "picking up," 
 or, in more elegant parlance, " collectiug," was to these two 
 happy people an inhexaustible source of pleasure. Every eccen- 
 tric little table, every luxurious chair, had its special history, 
 and had been the subject of negotiation and diplomacy that 
 might have sufficed a Burleigh in the reorganization of Western 
 Europe. The Httle Dresden and Vienna cups and saucers ia 
 the maple cabinet had been every one bought from a different 
 dealer. The figures on the mantelpiece were Old Cbelsea, of a 
 quaUty that would have excited the envy of a Bemal or a Bohn, 
 and had only fallen to the proud possessors by a sequence of 
 fortuitous cii'cumstances, the history of which was almost as 
 thrilKng as the story of Boehmer's diamond-necklace. The 
 curtains in the drawing-room had draped the portieres of the 
 lovely Lady Blessington, and had been bought for a song by 
 Valentine Hawkehurst, after passing through the hands of 
 brokers and dealers innumerable. The tapestry-covered Louis- 
 Quatorze chairs had belonged to Madame de Sevigne, and had 
 furnished that dull country house whence she wrote the UveHest 
 letters extant to her disreputable cousin, Bussy, Count of 
 Eabutin. These inestimable treasures had been picked up by 
 Mr. and Mrs. Hawkehurst from a bric-a-brac merchant in a little 
 coui^ at the back of the Rue Vivienne, whither the young couple 
 had gone arm-in-arm to choose a bonnet on their first pleasure- 
 trip to Paris. The clock in the modest dining-room had been 
 secured from the re230sitory of the same merchant, and was 
 waiTanted to have sounded the last domestic hours of Maxi- 
 milian Robespierre in his humble lodging cliez le Menuisier. 
 The inkstand into which Mr. Hawkehurst dipped his rapid pen 
 had served the hterary career of Voltaire ; the blotting-book on 
 which he wrote had been used by Balzac. 
 
 To the plausible fictions of the second-hand dealer ]\Ir. and 
 Mrs. Hawkehurst lent vdlling ears, and it seemed to them as if 
 these associations, for which they had paid somewhat deai'ly, 
 imparted a new grace to their home. 
 
 The an-angement and superintendence of aU these treasures 
 gave poor Georgy endless pleasure and employment ; but in hor
 
 Better than Gold. 815 
 
 heai-t of hearts she beKeved in the prim splendours of the dis- 
 mantled Lawn as much superior to these second-hand objects 
 of art and upholstery. Nor did A Tin Woolper regard the 
 Chelsea figures and Dresden teacups and old black Albert- 
 Diirer engravings as anything better than an innocent eccen« 
 tricity on the part of the master of the house, for the saving 
 of whose pui'se she managed and economized as faithfully as 
 she had done for that lost master whereof the memory was so 
 bitter. 
 
 It will be seen, therefore, that Mr. Hawkehurst with a wife, a 
 mother-in-law, and a faithful old servant, was Hkely to be well 
 taken care of; a little spoiled perhaps by " much cherishing," 
 bnt carefully guarded from all those temptations which are 
 supposed to assaU the bachelor man-of-letters, toiling alone and 
 neglected in Temple chambers. For liim the days passed in a 
 pleasant monotony of constant labour, Hghtened always by the 
 thought of those for whom he worked, cheered ever by the fond 
 hope of future fame. He was no longer a bookmaker. He had 
 written a book, the proceeds of which had enabled liim to fur- 
 nish the Wimbledon villa ; and he was engaged in writing a 
 second book, the fruits whereof would secure the needs of the 
 immediate future. He had insured his hfe for a considerable 
 amount, and had shown himself in all things prudent to a degree 
 that verged upon Phihstinism. But the policies taken out on 
 Charlotte's Ufa by Mr. Sheldon had been suffered to lapse. 
 Valentine would have no money staked on that dear head. 
 
 The steed wlaich Charlotte had desii'ed for her husband's 
 pleasure, the Hbrary which she had catalogued so often, were 
 yet among the delights of the future ; but life has lost half its 
 brightness when there is no unfulfilled desire left to the 
 dreamer ; and the horse which Mr. Hawkehui-st was to ride in 
 time to come, a,nd the noble library which he was to collect, 
 were the pleasant themes of Charlotte's conversation very often, 
 as she and her husband walked on the heights of Wimbledon in 
 the twihght, when his day's work was done. 
 
 These twilight walks were the happy holidays of his hfe, and 
 a part of his hberal education. He told his wife everything, 
 every literary scheme, every fancy, every shadovrjr outline of 
 future work, every new discovery in the boundless realms of 
 Bookland. His enthusiasm ; his hero-worship ; his setting-up 
 of one favoui-ite and knocking-down of another; his unchristian 
 pleasure in that awful slating of poor Jones in this week's 
 Saturday, or the fiayiug aJive of Robinson in the Bund Street 
 Backbiter ; — in a word, his " shop" never became wearisome to 
 Charlotte. She listened always with a Uke rapture and sym- 
 pathy; she worshipped his favourites of Bookland; she ■vrel-
 
 316 Charlotte^s Inheritance. 
 
 corned Lis friends and fellow- workers with unvarying sweetness ^ 
 she devised and superintended tlie fitting-up of a smoking-room 
 tliat was perfectly paradisaical, a glimpse of tlie Alkambra in 
 miniature; and that obnoxious dish, the cold shoulder, was 
 never served in Mr. Hawkehurst's dweUing. So sweet a wife, 
 so pleasant a home, popularized the institution of matrimony 
 among the young writer's bachelor friends; and that much- 
 abused and cruelly maUgned member of the human race, the 
 mother-in-law, was almost rehabihtated by IMrs. Sheldon's 
 easy good-nature and evident regard for the interests of her 
 daughter's husband. 
 
 And after all the groping among dryasdust records of a by- 
 gone centuiy, after all the patient following of those faint traces 
 on the sands of time left by the feet of Matthew Haygarth, 
 this was Charlotte's Inheritance, — a heart whose innocence and 
 affection made home a kind of earthly paradise, and gave to life's 
 commonest things a charm that all the gold ever found in Cali- 
 fornia could not have imparted to them. This was Charlotte's 
 Inheritance, — the tender, unselfish nature of the Haygarths 
 and HaUidays ; and thus dowered, her husband would not have 
 exchanged her for the wealthiest heiress whose marriage was 
 ever chi'onicled in Court Circular or Court Journal. 
 
 CHAPTEE yill. 
 
 LOST SIGHT OF. 
 
 A YEAH and a half had passed since the disappearance of Philip 
 Sheldon from the chcle in which he had been considered a person 
 of some importance. The repudiation of those bills by which 
 he had sustained his exhausted credit, or rather the discovery 
 that the companies upon which the bills pretended to be drawn 
 were of all shadows the most shadowy, had brought consterna- 
 tion ujDon many, and ruin upon some. Bitter and unmeasured 
 were the terms in which City men spoke of that Phil Sheldon 
 with whom they had eaten the sacred bait and quaffed the soci 
 moselle in the taverns of Greenwich and BlackwaU. 
 
 There is a saying current on the Stock Exchange to the effeco 
 that the man who fails, and disappears from among his fellows 
 behind a curtain of commercial cloud, is sure to return sooner 
 or later to his old circle, with a moustache and a brougham. 
 For Philip Sheldon there was, however, no coming back. The 
 moustache and the brougham of the chastened and penitent 
 defaulter were not for him. By his deliberate and notorious 
 dishonoor he had shut the door against the possibihty of retur
 
 Lost Sight of. 317 
 
 It may be supposed that tlie defaulter knew tliis, for he did 
 not come back; and since he had no lack of moral courage, ha 
 would scarcely have refrained from showing himself ouce moiij 
 in his old haunts, if it had been possible for him to face the 
 difficulties of his position. 
 
 Time passed, and there came no tidings of the missing man, 
 though a detective was despatched to America in search of him 
 by one vengeful sufferer among the many victims of the fictitious 
 bills-of-exchange. It was supposed that he must inevitably go 
 to America, and thither went his pursuer, but with no resuH 
 except the expenditure of money and the further exasperation 
 of the vengeful sufferer. 
 
 " "What will you do with him, if you gel him P " a^d a philo- 
 sophical friend of the sufferer. " He has nothing to surrender. 
 Zabulon had a bill-of-sale on his furniture." 
 
 *' Purniture ! " cried the infuriated victim ; " I don't want his 
 furniture. I want his flesh and bones. I want to shut him up 
 in Dartmoor Prison, or to get him twenty years' hard labour at 
 Portland Island." 
 
 " That sort of man would get a ticket-of-leave in less than 
 twelve months," replied the philosoi)hic friend. "I'm afraid 
 you are only throwing good money after bad." 
 
 The event proved this gentleman but too able a Beer. In the 
 monster city of New York Philip Sheldon had disappeared like 
 a single drop of water flung upon the Atlantic Ocean. There 
 was no trace of him : too intangible for the grasp of international 
 law, he melted iuto the mass of humanity, only one struggler 
 the more in the great ai'my perpetually fighting Ufe's desperate 
 battle. 
 
 From among all those who had known him this man had 
 utterly vanisheJ^ and not one sigh of regret followed him in his 
 unknown wandeiviigtj — not one creature amongst all those who 
 had taken his hand and given him friendly gi-eeting thought of 
 him kindly, or cared to know whither he went or how he pros- 
 pered. He had not left in the house that had sheltered him for 
 years so much as a dog to wliine at his door or Hsten for his 
 returning footstep. 
 
 Tliis fact, if he had known it or considered it, would have 
 troubled him very httle. He had played his game for a certain 
 stake, and had lost it. This he telt, and cursed his own too 
 cautious play as the cause of his defeat. That thene were higher 
 stakes for which he might have played an easier game, was a 
 fact that never occurred to him. In his philosophy there was 
 indeed nothing higher given to the hopes of man than worldly 
 success, and a dull, cold, prosperoua life spent among prosperous 
 Acquaintance.
 
 818 Charlotte's Inheritance. 
 
 He was gone, and those who remembered him most keenly— 
 Valentine Hawkehnrst, Diana Paget, Ann _Woolper — remem- 
 bered him with a shudder. The old Torkshirewoman thought 
 of him sometimes as she bent over the little muslin-bedecked 
 cradle where the hope of the Hawkehursts slumbered, and looked 
 round fearfully in the gloaming, half expecting to see his dreaded 
 face glower upon her, dark and threatening, from between the 
 curtains of the window. 
 
 It was a belief of all ancient races, nay indeed, a belief still 
 current amongst modem nations, that it is not given to man to 
 behold the beings of another world and live. The Arab who 
 meets a phantom in the desert goes home to his tent to die. 
 He knows that the hand of doom is upon him. He has seen 
 that upon which, for mortal eyes, it is fatal to look. And it is 
 thus in some measure with those who are admitted within the 
 dark precincts of murder's dread sanctuary. Not swiftly does 
 the curtain fall which has once been Lifted from the hidden 
 horrors of that ghastly temple. The revelations of an utterly 
 ^vicked soul leave a lasting impress upon the mind which unwil- 
 lingly becomes recipient of those awful secrets. 
 
 The circumstances of Tom Halhday's death and of Charlotte's 
 illness were not to be forgotten by Ann Woolper. The shadow 
 of that dai'k cniel face, which had lain tipon her bosom forty 
 years before, haunted many a peaceful hour of her quiet old 
 age. Her ignorance, and that faint tinge of superstition which 
 generally accompanies ignorance, exaggerated the terror of those 
 dark memories. The thought that Philip Sheldon still lived, 
 still had the power to plot and plan evil against the innocent, 
 was an ever-present source of terror to her. She could not 
 understand that such an element could exist among the forcea 
 of evil without fatal result to some one. It seemed to her as if 
 a devil were at large, and there could be neither peace nor 
 security until the evil spirit was exorcised, the baneful presence 
 laid in nethermost depths of unfathomable sea. 
 
 These feeUngs and these fears would scarcely have arisen in 
 the old woman's breast, had she alone been subject to the pos- 
 sible plottings of that evil nature. For herself she had httle 
 fear. Her span of hfe was nearly ended ; very few were the 
 sands that had yet to run ; and, for her own sake, she would 
 have cared Httle if some rough hand had spilt them untimely. 
 But a new interest in hfe had been given to Mrs. "Woolper just 
 as hfe drew near its close. That peerless child, the son and heir 
 of the Hawkehursts, had been intrusted to the old woman's 
 care ; and this infant she loved with an affection much more 
 intense than that which had once made Philip Shellon so deaf 
 to her.
 
 Lost Siglt of. 319 
 
 It was by the cradle of this much-treasured child that Ann 
 Woolper nui-sed her fear of her old master. She Jjnew that he 
 had been counter-plotted and beaten ignominiously in that de;xdly 
 game which he had played so boldly. And she asked herself 
 whether he was the man to submit to such utter defeat with- 
 out any effort to revenge himself upon those who had helped to 
 compass his failure. 
 
 On that night when Charlotte Halliday had lain between life 
 and death, suffering on the one hand from the effects of a pro- 
 longed and gradual course of poison, on the other from the 
 violent measures taken to ehminato that poisonous element from 
 her system, — on that night when the precious Ufe yet trembled 
 in the balance, Ann Woolper had seen murderous looks in the 
 face of the man whom she dared boldly to defy, and who knew 
 in that hour that his ghastly plot was discovered. Even now, 
 secure in a haven of safety, she could not forget that baneful 
 look in PhiUp Sheldon's eyes. She could not find perfect rest 
 while she knew not where that man might be, or what mischief 
 he might be plotting against those she loved. 
 
 Her fears showed themselves in many ways. When she read 
 of dark and vengeful deeds in her newspaper, she thought of 
 her old master, and how, in such or such an act, liis fatal 
 hand might reveal itself. He might he in wait for "Valentine 
 some night on the dark road between Charlottenburg and the 
 distant railway-station. She could fancy the young wife's agony 
 of terror as the night wore on, and her husband did not return; the 
 unspeakable hoiTor that would come over all that happy house- 
 hold when the news came that its young master had been found 
 on the lonely road slain by some unknown hand. Open utter- 
 ance to her fears she was too wise to give ; but she warned Mr. 
 Hawkehurst of the dangers on that dark road, and besought 
 him to arm himself with a trusty bludgeon wherewith to meet 
 and vanquish any chance assailant. Valentine laughed at 
 her anxious warning ; but when Charlotte took up the cry he 
 was fain to content her by the purchase of a sturdy stick, which 
 he swung cheerily to and fro as he walked homewards in the 
 gloaming, planning a chapter in his new book, and composing 
 powerful and eloquent sentences which eluded his mental grasp 
 when he tried to reduce his evening reverie to pen-and-ink. 
 
 " When the air blows fresh across the common, and the 
 distant Hghts twinKle, and the bright stars peep out in the pale- 
 yellow sl^, my language flows as it never does when I sit at 
 my desk, Lotta," he said to his vnfe. " I feel myself a Swift or 
 a Junius out there ; equal to the tackling of any social question 
 that ever arose upon this earth, from the Wood halfpence to 
 'he jiohcy of American taxation, and triennial olcrtl.T.s. A?
 
 320 Charlotte's Inheritance. 
 
 home I am only Valentine Hawkeliurst, with an ever-present 
 consciousness that so many pages of copy are required from 
 me within a given time, and that my son-and-heir is cutting 
 his teeth, and making more fuss about it than I ever made 
 about my teeth ; and that the man about the water-rate ia 
 waiting to see me, please, and is desperately anxious about 
 makiiig-up his books ; and that I have the dearest wife in 
 Christendom, who opens my door, and puts her pretty head 
 into my room once in half an hour to see how I am getting on, 
 or to ask whether I want any more coals, or to borrow my ink 
 to make-up her washing-book." 
 
 " You mean, sir, that I prevent your becoming a Junius ? " 
 cried Charlotte, with an enchanting vnoue. 
 
 " Yes, dear. I begin to understand why Swift kept his poor 
 ill-used wife at a respectful distance. She would have made him 
 too happy if he had allowed her to be on the premises. She 
 would have given the cruel indignation no chance of lacerating 
 his heart; and such wi-iting as Swift's is only produced by a 
 man whose heart is so lacerated. No, my darling, I shall never 
 be a Swift or a Junius while yomr pretty head is thrust into my 
 room once or twice an hour ; but I may hope to be something 
 better, if bright eyes can inspire bright thoughts, and innocent 
 smiles give birth to pleasant fancies." 
 
 Upon this there was the usual little demonstration of affection 
 between this young couple ; and Charlotte praised her husband 
 as the most brilliant and admirable of men ; after which pleasing 
 llatteiy she favoured him with a httle interestmg information 
 about the baby's last tooth, and the contumacious behaviour of 
 the new housemaid, between whom and Mrs. Woolper there had 
 been a species of disagreement, which the Yorkshirewoman 
 described as a " standfurther." 
 
 Thus occupied in simple pleasureg and simple cares, the lives 
 of Mr. and Mrs. Hawkehurst went on, untroubled by any fear of 
 that crime-burdened wretch whose image haunted the dreams 
 and meditations of Ann Woolper. For these two Mr. Sheldon 
 was numbered among the dead. To Charlotte the actual truth 
 had never been revealed ; but she had been, in the course of time, 
 given to understand that her stepfather had committed some 
 unpardonable sin, which must for ever separate him from herself 
 and her mother. She had been told as much as this, and had 
 been told that she must seek to know no more. To this she 
 Bubmitted without questioning. 
 
 " I am very son*y for him," she said, " and for mamma." 
 
 She concluded that the unpardonable offence must needs have 
 been some sin against her mother, some long-hidden infidelity 
 brought suddenly to licfht, with all the treacherv and falsehood
 
 Eteoeles and Polynicca. 321 
 
 iuvolved therein. She never mentioned her stepfather after 
 this; but in her prayers the sinner was not forgotten. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 ETEOCLES AND P0LYNICE8. 
 
 George Shelpon went his ways, picking up as good a living as 
 he could from that chivalrous assertion of the rights of tha 
 weak which has been already described ; and the thought of his 
 brother's sin-burdened soul troubled him very little. He did 
 tliink of Tom HalUday ; for that last grasp of the honest Tork- 
 shireman's hand, that last look in his old friend's face, were 
 haunting memories which this sharp practitioner had found 
 himself powerless to exorcise. If his brother, after an absence 
 of many years in the remote regions of the East Indies, had 
 come home to his fatherland with a colossal fortune, and the 
 reputation of having strangled a few natives during the process 
 of amassing that fortune, George Sheldon would have welcomed 
 the returning wanderer, and would, in his own parlance, have 
 " swallowed the natives." A few niggers, more or less, sent 
 untimely to Gehenna, would have seemed scarcely sufficient 
 cause for quarrel with a fraternal and hberaUy-disposed mil- 
 lionaire. But the circumstances of Tom HalHday's death had 
 brought aU the hon-or of crime and treachery home to the 
 spectator of that dehberate assassination, and had produced 
 such an impression as no other circumstances could on so hard 
 a nature. 
 
 It was some satisfaction to George Sheldon to know that his 
 old friend's daughter had found a happy home ; and he was apt 
 to take some credit from his own share in his brother's discom- 
 fiture. He met Yalentine sometimes in the course of his pere- 
 grinations in the neighbourhood of the British Museum, and 
 the greeting between the two men was sufficiently cordial ; but 
 Mr. Hawkehurst did not iavite his old employer to Charlotten- 
 Durg, and George was able to comprehend that to that house- 
 hold no one bearing the name of Sheldon could be a welcome 
 visitor. 
 
 He jogged on comfortably enough in his own way ; living in 
 his chambers, and consorting with a few chosen friends an(/ 
 kindred spirits of the joUy-good- fellow class, whom he met at an 
 old-established tavern in the west-central district, and in whose 
 society, and the society of the subscription-groimd in the Far- 
 ringdon Road, he found the sv/mmwm bonmn in the way of 
 gocial intercourse. He did a little speculation upon the turf.
 
 S22 Cliarlotte^s Inheritance. 
 
 and discounted the bills of needy bookmakers, or bmglit tip 
 their bad debts, and thereby gained introductions to the noLla 
 patrons of the humble " scums," and pushed his business into 
 new grooves. He had no idea that such an existence was in 
 any way ignoble ; nay, indeed, when he had paid his rent, and 
 his clerk, and his laundress, and his tavern score, and " stood 
 glasses round " amongst his friends, he lighted his cigar, an<l 
 thrust his hands into the depths of his pockets, and paced the 
 flags of Holborn happy in the behef that he had performed th 9 
 ■whole duty of man. 
 
 " There are men whose business obliges them to keep up as 
 establishment, and go to church twice a day, and all that kind 
 of thing," he said ; " and I dare say they find it pay. My 
 clients don't care a doit where I live, or how I spend my 
 Sundays ; and I'd rather have five pounds a week and my 
 liberty than the best family connection in the Fields." 
 
 The fate of that wretched man, who had dropped out of hia 
 old circle and vanished no one knew whither, in no manner dis- 
 turbed the peace of George Sheldon. 
 
 " Take my word for it, that gentleman has fallen on his feet," 
 lie said, on the only occasion when the fate of PhUip was dis- 
 cussed by Valentine and himself. " He's doing well enough, 
 somewhere or other, you may depend ; but I don't think he'll 
 ever be able to show his nose in London after those bill transac- 
 tions. There's a very strong feeling against him on Change. 
 He's looked upon as a discredit to the order, and that sort of 
 thing, you see. It isn't often a member of the House goes to 
 the bad like that. No, I don't think Phil will ever show himself 
 in London again; but such a man as that can always find a 
 platform somewhere " 
 
 " And go on to the end of his days unpunished, I suppose," 
 remarked Mr. Hawkehurst, with some bitterness. 
 
 " Well, yes ; I don't see what's to touch him in the future. 
 Of course he could be dropped upon for those bills, if he came 
 in the way of being dropped upon; but, as I said before, he's 
 too deep a card for that." 
 
 Thus did George Sheldon dismiss the subject. That hia 
 brother was an exile for life from his native land he did not 
 doubt ; but he took it for granted that in whatever distant spot 
 of earth Philip had found a refuge, he would there contrive to 
 prosper and to show a bold front m the city of his adoption. 
 
 This belief Mr. Sheldon tf Gray's Inn cherished until one 
 snowy Christmas Eve, a year nnd a half after that event, or 
 series of events, which the lawyer briefly designated " the burst- 
 np at Bayswater." 
 
 Bleak and bitter was that December, a December not long
 
 JSteocles and Potynices. 823 
 
 gOiie by. The heart of the prosperous British nation melted as 
 the heart of one man. The columns of the Zeus and the 
 Diurnal Het-mes, the Flag and the Jlesper, overflowed with the 
 record of subscriptions to charity funds; and the leaders of 
 the morning journals all preached the same kindly sermon on 
 the same Christian text. Thick lay the snow upon the house- 
 tops; "thick and slab" the greasy slush upon the pavements 
 of crowded thoroughfares ; merry the rogues and ragamuffins of 
 the great city. The ideal Christmas of our dreams seemed to 
 have come at last, and the heart of every true Briton rejoiced^; 
 ■while skaters in the parks made merry, and cabmen demanded 
 fabulous sums of helpless wayfarers ; and luckless, overworked, 
 nnder-fed horses stiimbled and fell at every turn, and the 
 famihar steep of Holborn was dangerous as Alpine mountain. 
 
 To George Sheldon neither the weather nor the Christmas 
 season made much difference. The even current of his hfe was 
 little disturbed by festive pleasures or dissipations. An extra 
 glass at his tavern, an invitation to dinner from some friend in 
 the bill-discounting line, were the most exciting events the 
 season was likely to bring him. He saw the shops brighten 
 suddenly with semi-supernal glories of crystaUized fruits and 
 gorgeous bonbon-boxes, and he was aware of a kind of move- 
 ment in the streets that was brisker and gayer than the plod- 
 ding hurry of everyday hfe. He stood aside and let the mum- 
 meries go by him, and was glad when these Christmas follies 
 were done with, and the law-courts in full swing once more. In 
 the happiest and most innocent days of his youth, Christmas 
 had brought him no more than extraordinary indulgences in the 
 way of eating and drinlcing, swiftly followed by that dread 
 avenger, the demon of the bilious. 
 
 Upon this particular occasion Mr. Sheldon had pledged him- 
 self to dine with a horsey pubhcan lately retired from business, 
 and big with all the pride and gloiy of a " place " at Hornsey. 
 
 "Come down and see my place, Sheldon," this gentleman 
 had said. " I don't pretend to do the swell thing ; but I force 
 my own pines and grow my own grapes, and can put as good a 
 dessert on my table as you could buy in Covent Garden for a 
 five-pun' note. That's my missus's fad, that is, and I can afford 
 it; so why shouldn't I do it P You come and eat your Christ- 
 mas dinner with us, Sheldon. I've got a friend coming that 
 can sing as good a song as Reeves hisself, and might make a 
 fortune, if he wasn't above coming out at one of them music- 
 halls. And I'U give you a bottle of Madeira that you won't 
 match at any nobleman's table, if noblemen's tables was in 
 your line of business, which yon and I know they ain't, old 
 fellow."
 
 824 Oharlotte's tnheriiancS> 
 
 And then the jolly good fellow dug his fat fingers into Georg* 
 Sheldon's ribs, and George accepted the invitation; not with 
 any elation of spirits, but sufficiently pleased to secure a good 
 dinner with a man who promised to be a profitable client, and 
 whose house was within a reasonable cab-fare from the west- 
 central district. 
 
 " The cabmen are trying it on, anyhow, just now," thought 
 Mr. Sheldon; "but I don't think they'll try it on with me. 
 And if they do, there's the Marylebone stage. I'm not afraid 
 of a five-mile walk." 
 
 Having accepted this invitation, and thus disposed of his 
 Christmas-day, George Sheldon refrained from the dehghts of 
 social converse at his tavern on Christmas-eve, and occupied 
 Jiimself with business. His clerk left him at the usual hour; 
 but the master sat, long after dark, writing letters and reading 
 law-payers, while the snow drifted against his windows and 
 whitened the quiet quadrangle below. 
 
 He had just laid aside his papers and lighted a cigar, when 
 he was startled by a stealthy knocking at his door. He wag 
 not unaccustomed to late visitors, as he was known to Uve at 
 his chambers, and to woi-k after ofiice-hours ; but the knocking 
 of to-night was not the loud rolhcking rat-a-tat of his jolly- 
 good-fellow friends or clients. If he had been a student of 
 light literature, and imbued with the ghostly associations of the 
 season, he would have gone to his door expecting to behold a 
 weird figure clothed in the vestments of the last century ; or an 
 old woman in rufi" and martingale, whose figure in the flesh had 
 once haunted those legal precincts; or the ghostly semblance 
 of the Baron of Yerulam himself, revisiting the ghmpses of the 
 moon and Hhe avenue of elms that were planted by his order. 
 
 In George Sheldon's nature there was, however, no lurking 
 dread of fiend or phantom. His ideas in connection with ghosts 
 were limited to a white sheet, a broomstick, and a hollow 
 turnip with a lighted candle inside it; and he would have set 
 down the most awful apparition that ever was revealed to Ger- 
 man ghost-seer, with a scornful grin, as a member of the sheet 
 and-hollow-turnip confraternity. 
 
 " I know how it's done," he would have said, if the spectral 
 form had glowered upon him in midnight churchyard or ruined 
 abbey. " You'd better go and try it on somewhere else, my 
 friend." 
 
 To a superstitions mind the thing which crept across the 
 dark lobby and dragged itself into the glare of the gas-lighted 
 office might hare seemed, indeed, some creature too loathsoma 
 (or humanity. A plague-stricken corpse galvanized into a
 
 Eteocles and Foli/niccg. 825 
 
 Bpasinodic life could scarcely have lifted to the light a moro 
 awful countenance than that on which George Sheldon Ijoked 
 with mingled anger and disgust. 
 
 " What do you want hereP" he asked. "Do you take this 
 for the workhouse ? " 
 
 " No," the creature answered, in % faint hoarse voice; "but 
 £ take you for my brother." 
 
 " What ! " cried George Sheldon, aghast. 
 
 He bent down and looked at the awful face. Yes, from the 
 cavernous hollows of those sunken cheeks, beneath the shaggy 
 penthouse of those bony brows, the fierce black eyes of Philip 
 Sheldon looked out at him with a savage glare that he had 
 never seen in them before — even when the savage nature of the 
 man had revealed itself most nakedly — the fierce glare of fevei 
 and starvation. 
 
 This walking horror, this mass of loathsome rags endued with 
 motion, this H\'ing disease, was the sometime prosperous stock- 
 broker, the man whom it had been impossible to think of except 
 furnished with linen of spotless whiteness, and the glossy broad- 
 cloth, and well-made boots, and keyless chronometer, and silk 
 umbrella of commercial success. 
 
 " Good God!" exclaimed George, horror-stricken, "is it you?" 
 
 "Yes, it's I," answered the creature in his strange husky 
 accents ; and the change — nay, indeed, the degradation, of the 
 voice was as complete as the degradation of the man. " Yes, 
 George, it's I ; your brother Phil. You're surprised to see me 
 fallen so low in the world, I suppose ; but you can't be more 
 surprised than I am myself. I've tried hard enough to hold my 
 head above water. There's scarcely any trade that mortal man 
 ever tried to earn his bread by, that I haven't tried — and failed 
 in. it has been the experience of Fitzgeorge- street over and 
 over again, in every trade and every profession. I started as 
 doctor in Philadelphia, and was doing well ; — till — till a patient 
 died — and things went against me. I've been clerk in more offices 
 than you can count on your ten fingers ; but there was always 
 something — my employer levanted, or was bankrupt, or died, or 
 dismissed me. I've been travelHng-dentist, auctioneer, commis- 
 sion-agent, tout, pedlar, out yonder ; but it all came to the sania 
 thing — ruin, starvation, the hospital, or the pauper's ward. I 
 have swept crossings in the city, and camj^ed oiit in the wilder- 
 ness among the bears and opossums. One day I thought I'd 
 come home. ' There's George,' I said to myself ; ' if I can get 
 money enough to take me across the Atlantic, I shall be all 
 right. George will give me a hft.' I don't stand alone in the 
 world. A man's own flesh and blood won't let him starve — • 
 tan't let him starve. Blood's thicker than water, you know,
 
 826 CJiarloties tnheriianee. 
 
 Geoi'ge. So I came home. I got the money ; never you mhnj 
 how. I needn't tell you what it cost me to scrape half-a-dozen 
 pounds together. When a man's as low down in the world as I 
 am, there's not a shilling he earns that doesn't cost him a drop 
 of his heart's blood ; there's not a pound he gets together that 
 isn't bought by the discount of so much of liis life. I found 
 money enough for my passage in an emigrant vessel ; and here I 
 am, ready for anything. I'll work like your bought nigger. 
 I'll do the work your clerk does for a quarter of his wages. I'll 
 Bweep out your office, and run errands for you. You'll give me 
 something to keep body and soul together, won't you, George ? " 
 
 Nothing could be more utterly abject than the tone of this 
 most abject wretch. 
 
 This man, who in prosperity had been the very personification 
 of hardness and insolence, was transformed into a gi-ovelling, 
 cringing suppHcant^ ready to Ue face dovniward in the dust 
 beneath the feet of that brother whose patronage, or charity, he 
 besought. 
 
 Mr. Sheldon the younger contemplated the supplicant with 
 looks of undisguised gratification. He walked a few paces back- 
 ward from the spot where his brother had fallen, in a half- 
 sitting, hal&crouching attitude, and where he remained, hugging 
 himself in Jiis rags, too abject to be acutely conscious of his 
 degradation A year ago and he would have held himself 
 obstinately aloof from all old associations, and would have 
 declared himself ready to face starvation, rather than accept, 
 still less supplicate, relief from liis younger brother. The eveuts 
 of that one year had involved alternations and convulsions that 
 change a year into a cycle. He had faced starvation ; he had 
 walked with hujiger for liis travelling companion ; he had lain 
 down night after night in such lairs as the tramp can find for 
 his refuge, with sickness and pain for his bed-fellows. Tiie 
 cracible through which he had passed had left in him no more 
 of humanity than its outward semblance, and scarcely that ; for 
 when the moral man sinks to the level of the beasts of prey, the 
 physical man undergoes an assimilative process only less marked 
 than that which transforms the mental nature. 
 
 For six months this man had Uved by fawning upon or 
 threatening his fellow-men ; by violence or craft ; by the degra- 
 dation of the vagrant or the audacity of the thief. There is no 
 limit to man's capacity for infamy which he had not touched. 
 Vilest amongst the vile, he had been cast forth from the haunts 
 of beggars and reprobates, as no fitting company for honourable 
 thieves or cadgers of good repute. 
 
 George Sheldon seated himself astride upon a chair, and, witli 
 his folded arms resting on the back of it, contemplated this
 
 Eteocles and Polynices. 327 
 
 hideous spectacle. It was a picture that he had never lliougLt 
 to see, aud the feehng with which he surveyed it waa not 
 unmingled witli pleasure. 
 
 " When you rode me rough-shod, my friend, I used to think 
 how I should enjoy taking my change out of you," he said; 
 " but I never thought I should have such an opportunity as 
 this — never, by Jove ! I thought you would ride the high horse 
 to the end of the journey ; I didn't think your steed would land 
 you in the gutter. And so you've tried every move, |have 
 you? — tumbled upon every platform? — and you've found all 
 your cleverness no go upon the other side of the three thousand 
 miles of everlasting wet, as my Yankee friends call the Atlantic ; 
 and you've come back whming to me, and I'm to help you, am 
 I, and to give you a fresh start in life, I sujipose, and make you 
 my clerk, or my jimior partner, eh ? — that would be better. 
 Messrs. Sheldon and Sheldon wouldn't look bad on my door. 
 That's about what you mean when you talk of blood being 
 thicker than water, isn't it ? " 
 
 The abject wretch who had once been Philip Sheldon felt 
 that his brother was trifling with him, savouring to the last 
 drop that cup of triumph which the chances of fortune had 
 oflfered to his lips. 
 
 "Don't play the fool with me, George," he said piteously. 
 "I don't ask you much — a crust of bread, a comer to sleep in, 
 and a cast-off suit of clothes : that's not much for one brother 
 to ask of another." 
 
 " Perhaps not," rephed George Sheldon ; " but it's a great 
 deal for you to ask of me. You've had your turn, Phil ; and yon 
 made the most of it, and contrived to keep me at arm's lengtli. 
 ]My turn has come at last, and you may depend upon it I shall 
 contrive now to keep you at arm's length." 
 
 The vagrant stared at him aghast. Here he had felt secure 
 of food and shelter ; and he had endured miseries and depriva- 
 tions that reduce a man to a state in which food and shelter 
 seem to constitute the supreme good that can be obtained in 
 this life. 
 
 " You won't refuse to do something for me, George," he whined 
 piteously. 
 
 "I will do nothing for you. Do you hear that, my man? 
 Nothing ! You taught me that blood is not thicker than water 
 twelve years ago, when you married Tom Halhday's widow, and 
 drew your purse-strings, after flinging me a beggarly hundred 
 as you'd throw a bone to a dog. You made me understand that 
 was all I should ever get out of your brotherly love, or your fear 
 of my telling the world ivhat I knew. You gave me a dinner 
 now and then, because it suited you to teep your eye upon me ;
 
 S'iS Charlottes Inheritance. 
 
 and yon had generally some piece of dirt^ work on hand that 
 made the advice of a sharp practitioner hke me uncommonly 
 ■usefal to yon. I don't believe that you ever gave me so much 
 as a dinner that you didn't take payment for in meal or in malt. 
 Don't come howling here now, trying to persuade me that blood 
 is thicker than water, or that brotherhood means anything more 
 than the accident of birth. And now I've said all I have to 
 say; and the sooner you make yourself scarce, the better fpr 
 both of us." 
 
 "George!" cried the miserable suppliant, clasping his bony 
 hands convulsively, and whimpering as he had whimpered when 
 he begged his bread in the streets of New York, "you can't 
 mean to turn me out of doors on such a night. Look at me. 
 It was as much as I could do to crawl to this room. I have 
 walked every step of the way from Liverpool; my wretched 
 limbs have been frost-bitten, and ulcered, and bruised, and racked 
 with rheumatism, and bent double with cramp. I came over in 
 an emigrant vessel, with a herd of miserable creatures who had 
 tried their luck on the other side of the Atlantic, and had failed, 
 like me, and were coming home to their native workhouses. 
 You don't know what some of your emigrant ships are, perhaps. 
 People talk about the Black Hole of Calcutta, and the Middle 
 Passage ; but let them try the cabin of an emigrant vessel, and 
 they'll have a pretty fair idea of what human beings have to 
 Buffer when Poverty drives the ship. I landed in Liverpool with 
 half-a-doUar in my pocket, and I've had neither decent food nor 
 decent shelter since I landed. Give me some hole to lie in, 
 George, till you can get me an order for the nearest hospital. 
 It's a toss-up whether I ever come out of it." 
 
 " Do you think I'd sleep under the roof that sheltered you'" 
 cried George. 
 
 "Whynotf" 
 
 "Why not! Because I'm afraid of you. Because I'd as soon 
 have a cobra for my companion, or a wolf for my bedfellow. I 
 know you. I've seen what you can do, and how you can do it. 
 And if you could do those things when the only pressure upon 
 you was one that you could have cast off by going through the 
 Gazette, what would you not do now when you are as desperate 
 as a famished wolf, and governed by no better law than that 
 which governs a wolf — the law of self-preservation? Am I to 
 trust a tiger because he tells me he is hungry? No, Phil Shel- 
 don ; neither will I trust you." 
 
 •* You will give me some money — enough to keep me alive for 
 a week or two." 
 
 " Not one sirpence. I'll establish no precedent ; I'll acknow- 
 ledge no tie between us. You'd better march. I don't want to
 
 Eteocles and Polynices. 329 
 
 eeud for a policeman ; but if you won't go quietly, you must do 
 the other thiug." 
 
 "You mean that P" 
 
 " Most emphatically yes." 
 
 " I didn't think it was in you to be so hard upon me," 
 faltered the wretch in that faint hoarse voice which had grown 
 fainter and hoarser during this interview, 
 
 "Did you think that I would trust youP" cried George. 
 "Trust you! You call me hard because I won't give you a 
 corner to He in. And if I did, you would creep out of your 
 corner to poison me, or cut my throat. You would crawl into 
 my room in the dead of the night and put a pillow over my 
 face, and kneel upon it till you'd done the trick for me ; and 
 then you'd walk off with as much as you could carry, and begin 
 the same kind of work over again \vith some one else. I tell 
 you, Mr. Phil Sheldon, I will hold no intercourse with you. 
 You've escaped hanging, but there's something that's worse 
 than hanging, to my mind, and that is the state of a man 
 whom nobody will trust. You've come to that; and if you 
 had a spark of gentlemanly feeling, you'd have bought two- 
 pennyworth of rope and hung yourself rather than come 
 cringing to me." 
 
 " Suppose I don't cringe," said the outcast, dropping the 
 fawning tone of the mendicant for the threatening ferocity of 
 the social wolf ; " you'd better give me a trifle to keep body and 
 soul together for the next few weeks. I'm a desperate man, 
 George ! You and I are alone up here. You are pretty sure 
 to have ready money about you. And there's your watch; 
 that's worth something. I didn't come here to go away empty- 
 handed. AxD I won't !" 
 
 He sprang to his feet, and in the next moment the lawyer 
 heard the shai-p clicking noise made by the opening of a clasp- 
 knife. 
 
 " O," cried he, "that's what you want, is it !" 
 
 He bent over his desk, with his eyes fixed on those other evil 
 jyes that still retained some likeness to his own, and with his 
 left arm raised in a boxer's defensive attitude, to guard his 
 bead, while his right hand groped for something in a drawer. 
 It was a moment's work. Philip had seized that uplifted left 
 arm, and was hanging on to it hke a cat, with his knife betweea 
 his teeth, when George clapped the muzzle of a revolver t4 
 Lis brow. 
 
 " There are plenty of wild beasts in London besides you," he 
 said, " and I am not such a fool as to be without the means of 
 BettUng a chance visitor of your sort. Drop your knife, and 
 march,"
 
 330 Gliarloite's Inheritance. 
 
 The outcast dropped Ha knife submissively. He i»as tot 
 weak for anything more than a spasmodic violence. 
 
 *' Take your pistol away from my head," he whined. 
 
 " Certainly, when you are outside my door." 
 
 " You might give me a handful of silver, George. I haven't 
 a week's life left in me." 
 
 " All the better for society if you hadn't an hour's life in 
 you. Be off. I'm tired of holding this revolver to your head, 
 and I don't mean to let it go till you're off my premises." 
 
 Philip saw that there was no hope. Food and shelter were 
 all he had hoiDed for ; but even these blessings were not for him. 
 He backed oiit of the office, closely followed by George, holding 
 the muzzle of the revolver within an inch or so of the fraternal 
 brains. Upon the threshold only did he pause. 
 
 " TeU me one thing," he said. " You won't give me sixpence 
 to buy a loaf of bread or a glass of gin. Give me one scrap of 
 comfort. It need cost you nothing. Tell me something bad of 
 Valentine Hawkehurst : that he's gone to the dogs, or drowned 
 himself; that his wife has run away from him, or his house 
 been burned to the ground. Tell me that he's had a taste of 
 ray luck ; and that Ann Woolj^er has died in a workhouse. It 
 will be as good as meat and drink to me, and it wiU cost you 
 nothing." 
 
 "If I told you anything of the kiad, I should tell you a Ue, 
 Valentine Hawkehurst is doing uncommonly well, and has got 
 one of the prettiest httle boxes between "Wimbledon and King- 
 ston. Ann Woolper lives with them, and is ia better feather 
 than she ever was in your time." 
 
 With this, Mr. Sheldon of Gray's Inn pushed his brother out 
 on to the staircase, and shut his door. Philip sat upon the 
 stairs, and drew his rags together a little, and rubbed hia 
 wretched limbs, while the bolts and chains whereby the lawyer 
 defended his citadel clanked close behind him. 
 
 " I wonder whether he'U pay Hawkehurst a visit," thought 
 George, as he bolted his door ; and he had a kind of grim satis- 
 faction in the idea that Valentine's Christmas peace m'.ght b« 
 disturbed by the advent of that grisly visitor.
 
 " According to their Deeit" 331 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 ■accokding to tiieir deeds." 
 
 "Bk-TWEEn Wimbledon and Kingston," mutt#red the tramp. 
 •* li I can drag myself as far as that, I'll go tliefe this night." 
 
 He went down stairs and out into the pitiless cold and snow, 
 and made his way down Fetter Lane, and across Blackfriars 
 Bridge to the Surrey side of the water, stopping to beg here 
 and there. 
 
 Upon this snowy Christmas night there were plenty of people 
 abroad ; and amongst them Philip Sheldon ^und pitying ma- 
 trons, who explored the depths of their capacious i^ockcts to 
 find him a halfpenn}', and good-natured young men, who flung 
 the " copper" he besought with piteous professional whine. 
 
 When he had collected the price of a glass of gin, he went 
 into the first public-house he came to, and spent his money. 
 1 le was too ill to stay the cravings of his stomach with sub- 
 stantial food. Gin gave him temporary warmth and temporary 
 strength, and enabled him to push on vigorously for a little 
 while ; and then came dreary periods of faintness and exhaus- 
 tion, in which every step was sheer pain and weariness. 
 
 Something of his old self, some remnant of that hard strength 
 of purpose which had once characterized him, remained with 
 him still, utterly fallen and brutalized as he was. As a savage 
 creature of the jungle might pursue a given course, pushing 
 always onward to that camp or village whence the scent of 
 human flesh and blood was wafted to his quivering nostrils, so 
 Philip Sheldon pushed on towards the dwelling-place of that 
 man and that woman whom of all creatures upon this earth he 
 most savagely hated. 
 
 " There's nothing left for me but to turn housebreaker," he 
 Baid to himself; " and the first house I'll try my hand upon 
 shall be Valentine Hawkehurst's." 
 
 The idea of violence in such a creature was the idea of a 
 madman. Weapon he had none, nor the physical strength that 
 would have enabled him to grapple with a boy of twelve years 
 old. Half intoxicated with the spirits he had consumed on hia 
 long tramp, half delirious with fever, he had a vague notion 
 that he could make an entrance into some iU-defeuded house 
 under cover of night, and steal something that should j^rocure 
 him food and shelter. And let the house be Valentine Hawke- 
 hurst's, the man who had hafflnd his plans and crushed him !
 
 d2 Charlottes Inheritance. 
 
 •j-j^ 
 
 If blood must be shed, let the blood be iiia ! Never was man 
 better primed for murder than the man who tramped across 
 Wimbledon Common at eleven o'clock this night, with the sno\» 
 drifting against his face, and his hmbs shaken every now and 
 then by an ague-fit. 
 
 Happily for the interests of society, his hand lacked the 
 power to execute that iniquity which liis heart willed. 
 
 He reached a little wayside inn near the Robin Hood gate of 
 Richmond Park, just as the shutters were being closed, and 
 asked a man if any one of the name of Hawkehurst lived in 
 that neighbourhood. 
 
 " What do you want with Mr. Hawkehurst P" asked the man, 
 contemptuously. 
 
 " I've got a letter for him." 
 
 " Have you ? A begging letter, I should think, from the look 
 of you." 
 
 " No ; it's a business letter. You'd better "show me where he 
 lives, if he's a customer of yours. The business is particular." 
 
 " Is it ? You're a queer kind of messenger to trust with par- 
 ticular business. Mr. Hawkehurst's house is the third you 
 come to on the opposite side of the way. But I don't suppose 
 you'll find anybody up as late as this. Their Hghts are out by 
 eleven, in a general way." 
 
 The third house on the opposite side of the road was half 
 a mile distant from the Httle inn. Lights shone bright in the 
 lower windows as the tramp dragged his tired limbs to the stout 
 oaken gate. The gate was fastened only by a latch, and offered 
 no resistance to the Intruder. He crept with stealthy footsteps 
 along the smooth gravel walk, sheltered by dark laurels, on 
 which the light flashed cheerily from those bright windows. 
 Sounds of laughter and of music pealed out upon the wintry 
 air. Shadows flitted across the blinds of the broad bay windows. 
 Philip Sheldon crept into a sheltered nook beside the rustic 
 porch, and sank down exhausted in the shadow of the laurels. 
 
 He sat there in a kind of stupor. He had lost the power of 
 thought, somehow, on that dreary journey. It seemed almost as 
 if he had left some portion of his being out yonder in the cold 
 and darkness. He had difliculty in remembering why he had 
 i'.ome to this place, and what that deed was which he meant to do. 
 
 " Hawkehurst," he muttered to himself — " Hawkehurst, the 
 man who leagued against me with Jedd ! I swore to be even 
 with him if ever I found the opportunity — if ever ! And George 
 refused me a few shillings ; my brother, my only brother, refuse4 
 to stand my friend!" 
 
 Hawkehurst and Greorge— hifl only brother — the images ui
 
 "According to their Deeds.'' 333 
 
 these two men floated confusedly in his brain : he could scarcely 
 separate them. Sometimes it seemed to him that he was still 
 sitting outside his brother's door, on the staircase in Gray's Inn, 
 hugging himself in his rags, and cursing his unnatural kins- 
 man's cruelty; then in the next moment he remembered where 
 he was, and breathed bitter curses upon that unconscious enemy 
 whose laugh pealed out every now and then amid a chorus of 
 'ight-hearted laughter. 
 
 There was a little Christmas party at Charlottenburg. Two 
 riys were waiting in the laurel-avenue to convey Mr. ilawke- 
 hurst's guests to distant abodes. The door was opened presently, 
 and all the bustle of departure made itself heard by that 
 wretched wayfarer who found it so dithcult to keep his hold upon 
 the consciousness of these things. 
 
 " What is it ? " he said to himself—" a party ! Hawkehurst 
 has been giving a jjarty." 
 
 He had lived through too much degradation, he had de- 
 scended into too deep a gulf of wretchedness, to be conscious of 
 the contrast between his present situation and his position iv. 
 those days when he had played the host, and seen handsome 
 carriages bear prosperous guests away from his door. In that 
 cycle of misery which he had endured, these things and the 
 memory of them had faded from him as completely as if they 
 had been obliterated by the passage of a century. The hapless 
 wretch tried to give sustained attention to all the animated dis- 
 cussion that attended the departure of the merry guests. Half- 
 a-dozen people seemed to be talking at once. Valentine was 
 giving his friends counsel about the way home. 
 
 " You will keep to the lower road, you know, Fred. Lawaley'a 
 dab can follow yours. You came a couple of miles out of your 
 way. And tell that fellow Battersea Bridge is a mistake." 
 
 And then followed Charlotte's friendly questioning about 
 wraps, and hoods, and comforters, and other feminine gear. 
 
 ''And when are you coming to dine at Fulham?" cried one 
 voice. 
 
 " I shall certainly get those quadrilles of Offenbach's," said 
 iiother. 
 
 " How delightfully Mr. Lawsley sang that song of Santley's! " 
 
 And anon a chorus of " Never enjoyed myself more !" " Most 
 delightful evening!" "Pray don't come out in the cold." 
 *' Thanks ; well, yes, yours are always capital." " No, I won't 
 Hght up till I'm on the road." " Give my book a lift in the 
 D. H., eh, old fellow?" "Are you quite sure that shawl is 
 warm enough ?" " Take a rug for your feet." " Thanks, no." 
 • Good-night." •* See jou on Tuesday." " Don't forget the 
 
 Y
 
 33^ CJiarlottes Inheritance. 
 
 box for D. L." "All right, old fellow!" "Lower Eoad, Eo©. 
 liampton liane, Putney Bridge. Good-niglit." 
 
 Among the confusion of voices Philip Sheldon, had recognized 
 more than one voice that was familiar to him. There were 
 Charlotte's gentle tones, and Valentine's hearty barytone, and 
 another that he knew. 
 
 Diana Paget! Yes, it was her voice. Diana Paget, whom 
 he had cause to hate for her interfsrence with his affairs. 
 
 " A beggar," he muttered to himself, " and the daugiiter ot a 
 beggar ! She was a nice young lady to set herself in opposition 
 to the man who gave her a home." 
 
 The veliicles drove away, but there was still a little group in 
 the rustic porch. Valentine and Charlotte, with Monsieur ami 
 Madame Lenoble, who had come to spend their Christmas with 
 their English friends. 
 
 "How we have been gay this evening!" cried Gustave. 
 " There is nothing like your English interior for that which you 
 call the comfortable, the jolly, you others. Thy friends are the 
 jollity itself, Hawkehurst. And our acting charades, when that 
 we all talked at once, and with a such emphasis on the word we 
 would make to know. Was it not that our spectators were 
 cunning to divine the words ? And your friend Lawsley — it is 
 a mixture of Got and Sanson. It is a true genius. Tliink, 
 then, Diane, while we were amusing ourselves, our girls were at 
 the midnight mass at the Sacre Coeur ? Dear j^ious children, 
 their innocent prayers ascended towards the heavens for we who 
 are absent. Come, Madame Hawkehurst, Diane, it makes 
 cold." 
 
 "But we are sheltered here. And the stars are so bright 
 after the snow," said Charlotte. " Do you remember the 
 Christmas-day you spent at the Lawn, Valentine, when we 
 walked in Kensington Gardens together, just when we were 
 first engaged?" the young wife added shyly. 
 
 " Do I not remember ? It was the first time the holiness of 
 Christmas came home to my heart. And now let us go back to 
 the drawing-room, and sit round the fire, and tell ghost stories. 
 Lenoble shall give us the legends of Cotenoir." 
 
 "Valentine," murmured Charlotte, " do you know that it is 
 nearly one o'clock ?" 
 
 " And we must put in an appearance at church to-morrow 
 morning. And Lenoble has to walk to Kingston to early mass. 
 We will i:)Ostpone our ghost stories to New- Year's eve. And 
 Lenoble shall read Tennyson's JVew Tear, to demonstrate his 
 improvement in the Enghsh language. Lead the way, Mrs. 
 Hawkehurst; your obedient slave obeys. Mamma is waiting 
 
 n
 
 "According to their Deeds." 335 
 
 for us in the drawing-room, marvelling at our delay, no doubt. 
 And Nancy Woolper stalks ghost-like through the house, op- 
 pr»esed by the awful responsibility of to-morrow's pudding." 
 
 Anon came a clanking of bolts and bars; and Philip Shelilon, 
 for the second time that night, heard a door shut against him. 
 As the voices died away, his consciousness of external things 
 died with him. He fancied himself on the Gray's-Inn stair- 
 case. 
 
 "Don't be so hard upon me, George," he muttered faintly. 
 " If my own kith and kin turn against me, whom shall I look 
 to?" 
 
 Mrs. Woolper opened the door early next day, when night was 
 yet at odds with morning. All through the night the silent 
 enow-Hakes had been falling thick and fast ; and they had woven 
 the shroud of Philip Sheldon. The woman who had watched 
 his infant slumbers Ibrty years before, was the first to look upon 
 him in that deeper sleep, of whose waking we know so little. It 
 was not until she had looked long and closely at the dead face 
 that she knew why it was that the aspect of that countenance 
 had affected her with so strange a pang. She did recognize that 
 altered wretch, and kept her counsel. 
 
 Before the bells rang for morning service the tramp was lying 
 in the dead-house of Kingston Union, whither he had been con- 
 veyed very quietl}' in the early morning, unknown to any one but 
 the constable who superintended the removal, and the servants 
 of Mr. Hawkehurst's household. Only the next day did Ann 
 Woolper tell Valentine -ftrhat had happened. There was to be 
 an inquest. It would be well that some one should identify the 
 dead man, and establish the fact of Philip Sheldon's decease. 
 
 Valentine was able to do this unaided. He attended the 
 inquest, and made arrangements for the oiitcast's decent burial; 
 and in due course he gave Mrs. Sheldon notice of her freedom. - 
 
 Beyond that nameless grave whose fancy shall dare follow 
 Philip Sheldon ? He died and made no sign. And in the last 
 dread day, when the dead, small and great, from the sea and 
 from the grave, press together at the foot of the great white 
 Throne, and the books of doom are opened ; when above shiuea 
 the city whose light is the glory of God, and below yawns tfte 
 lake of fire, — what voice shall plead for Philip Sheldon, what 
 entreating cr}' shall Pity send forth that sentence against him 
 may be stayed ^ 
 
 Surely none ; unless it issue from the lips of that one con- 
 iiding friend, whose last words upon earth thanked and blessed 
 him, and whose long agonies he watched with unshaken purpose,
 
 336 Charlottes Inheritance. 
 
 conscious that in every convulsive cliange in the familiar face 
 and every pang that shook the stalwart form, he saw the resuH 
 of his own work. 
 
 Perhaps at that dread Judgment Day, when every othei 
 tongue is silent, the voice of Tom Halliday may be heard plead' 
 ing for the man who murdered him. 
 
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