LIBRARY 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OE CALIEORNIA 
 
 SANTA BARBARA 
 
 PRESENTED BY 
 
 Mr. H. H. Kil iani
 
 Twenty-one of these walks did she take 
 
 Original Etching
 
 3IUustratrii ^Icrltmi lEiiUtou 
 
 A SIMPLETON 
 
 WHITE LIES 
 
 By 
 CHARLES READE, D. C. L. 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 DANA FSTF.S & COMPANY 
 
 PUBIISHERS 
 
 m
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 A SIMPLETON 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Twenty - one of these walks did she take . Frontispiece 
 
 " So it is a lady this time " 65 
 
 Laid her gently on the floor, and kneeled over her 195 
 Not till he was within five yards did he fire . 362 
 
 WHITE LIES 
 
 Rose . . . fastened on the epaulets . . . .157 
 
 It was Colonel Raynal 294 
 
 What he wrote ran thus, — 356
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 It has lately been objected to me, in studiously court- 
 eous terms of course, that I borrow from other books, 
 and am a plagiarist. To this I reply that T borrow facts 
 from every accessible source, and am not a plagiarist. 
 The plagiarist is one who borrows from a homogeneous 
 work : for such a man borrows not ideas only, but their 
 treatment. He who borrows only from heterogeneous 
 works is not a plagiarist. All fiction, worth a button, is 
 founded on facts ; and it does not matter one straw 
 whether the facts are taken from personal experience, 
 hearsay, or printed books ; only those books must not be 
 works of fiction. 
 
 Ask your common sense why a man writes better fic- 
 tion at forty than he can at twenty. It is simply because 
 he has gathered more facts from each of these three 
 sources, — experience, hearsay, print. 
 
 To those who have science enough to appreciate the 
 above distinction, I am very willing to admit that in all 
 my tales I use a vast deal of heterogeneous material, 
 which in a life of study I have gathered from * men, 
 journals, blue-books, histories, biographies, law reports, 
 etc. And if I could, I would gladly specify all the
 
 4 PBEFACE. 
 
 various printed sources to which I am indebted. But 
 my memory is not equal to such a feat. I can only say 
 that I rarely write a novel without milking about two 
 hundred heterogeneous cows into my pail, and that " A 
 Simpleton " is no exception to my general method ; that 
 method is the true method, and the best, and if on that 
 method I do not write prime novels, it is the fault of the 
 man, and not of the method. 
 
 I give the following particulars as an illustration of 
 my method : 
 
 In "A Simpleton," the whole business of the girl 
 spitting blood, the surgeon ascribing it to the liver, the 
 consultation, the final solution of the mystery, is a 
 matter of personal experience accurately recorded. But 
 the rest of the medical truths, both fact and argument, 
 are all from medical books far too numerous to specify. 
 This includes the strange fluctuations of memory in a 
 man recovering his reason by degrees. The behavior of 
 the doctor's first two patients I had from a surgeon's 
 daughter in Pimlico. The servant-girl and her box ; the 
 purple-faced, pig-faced Beak and his justice, are personal 
 experience. The business of house-renting, and the 
 auction-room, is also personal experience. 
 
 In the nautical business I had the assistance of two 
 practical seamen : my brother, William Barrington Keade, 
 and Commander Charles Edward Reade, R.N. 
 
 In the South African business I gleaned from Mr. 
 Day's recent handbooks; the old handbooks; Galton's 
 "Vacation Tourist;" "Philip Mavor; or. Life among 
 the Caffres ; " " Fossor ; " " Notes on the Cape of Good 
 Hope," 1821 ; " Scenes and Occurrences in Albany and
 
 PKEFACE. 6 
 
 Caffre-land," 1827 ; Bowler's " South African Sketches ; " 
 " A Campaign in South Africa/' Lucas ; " Five Years in 
 Caffre-land," Mrs. Ward ; etc., etc., etc. But my principal 
 obligation on this head is to Mr. Boyle, the author of 
 some admirable letters to the Daily Telegraph, which he 
 afterwards reprinted in a delightful volume. INIr. Boyle 
 has a painter's eye, and a writer's pen, and if the Afri- 
 can scenes in '•' A Simpleton " please my readers, I hope 
 they will go to the fountain-head, where they will find 
 many more. 
 
 As to the plot and characters, they are invented. 
 
 The title, " A Simpleton," is not quite new. There is 
 a French play called La JSlaise. But La Niaise is in 
 reality a woman of rare intelligence, who is taken for a 
 simpleton by a lot of conceited fools, and the play runs 
 on their blunders, and her unpretending wisdom. That 
 is a very fine plot, which I recommend to our female 
 novelists. My aim in these pages has been much 
 humbler, and is, I hope, too clear to need explanation. 
 
 CHAKLES READE,
 
 A SIMPLETOIS". 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 A YOUNG lady sat pricking a framed canvas in the 
 drawing-room of Kent Villa, a mile from Gravesend; 
 she was making, at a cost of time and tinted wool, a 
 chair cover, admirably unfit to be sat upon — except by 
 some severe artist, bent on obliterating discordant colors. 
 To do her justice, her mind was not in her work ; for she 
 rustled softly with restlessness as she sat, and she rose 
 three times in twenty minutes, and went to the window. 
 Thence she looked down, over a trim flowery lawn, and 
 long, sloping meadows, on to the silver Thames, alive 
 with steamboats ploughing, white sails bellying, and 
 great ships carrying to and fro the treasures of the globe. 
 From this fair landscape and epitome of commerce she 
 retired each time with listless disdain ; she was waiting 
 for somebody. 
 
 Yet she was one of those whom few men care to keep 
 waiting. Rosa Lusignan was a dark but dazzling beauty, 
 Avith coal-black hair, and glorious dark eyes, that seemed 
 to beam with soul all day long ; her eyebrows, black, 
 straightish, and rather thick, would have been majestic 
 and too severe, had the other features followed suit ; but 
 her black brows were succeeded by long silky lashes, a 
 sweet oval face, two pouting lips studded with ivory, and
 
 8 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 an exquisite chin, as feeble as any man could desire in 
 the partner of his bosom. Person — straight, elastic, 
 and rather tall. Mind — nineteen. Accomplishments — 
 numerous; a poor French scholar, a worse German, a 
 worse English, an admirable dancer, an inaccurate musi- 
 cian, a good rider, a bad draughtswoman, a bad hair- 
 dresser, at the mercy of her maid; a hot theologian, 
 knowing nothing, a sorry accountant, no housekeeper, no 
 seamstress, a fair embroideress, a capital geographer, and 
 no cook. 
 
 Collectively, viz., mind and body, the girl we kneel to. 
 
 This ornamental member of society now glanced at the 
 clock once more, and then glided to the window for the 
 fourth time. She peeped at the side a good while, with 
 superfluous slyness or shyness, and presently she drew 
 back, blushing crimson; then she peei^ed again, still 
 more furtively ; then retired softly to her frame, and, 
 for the first time, set to work in earnest. As she plied 
 her harpoon, smiling now, the large and vivid blush, 
 that had suffused her face and throat, turned from car- 
 nation to rose, and melted away slowly, but perceptibly, 
 and ever so sweetly; and somebody knocked at the 
 street door. 
 
 The blow seemed to drive her deeper into her work. 
 She leaned over it, graceful as a willow, and so absorbed, 
 she could not even see the door of the room open and 
 Dr. Staines come in. 
 
 All the better : her not perceiving that slight addition 
 to her furniture gives me a moment to describe him. 
 
 A young man, five feet eleven inches high, very square 
 shouldered and deep chested, but so symmetrical, and 
 light in his movements, that his size hardl}^ struck one 
 at first. He was smooth shaved, all but a short, thick, 
 auburn whisker ; his hair was brown. His features no 
 more then comely: the brow full, the eyes wide apart
 
 A SIMPLETON. 9 
 
 and deep-seated, the lips rather thin, but expressive, the 
 chin solid and square. It was a face of power, and 
 capable of harshness ; but relieved by an eye of unusual 
 color, between hazel and gray, and wonderfully tender. 
 In complexion he could not compare with Rosa; his 
 cheek was clear, but pale; for few young men had 
 studied night and day so constantly. Though but 
 twenty-eight years of age, he was literally a learned 
 physician ; deep in hospital practice ; deep in books ; 
 especially deep in German science, too often neglected 
 or skimmed by English physicians. He had delivered a 
 course of lectures at a learned university with general 
 applause. 
 
 As my reader has divined, Eosa was preparing the 
 comedy of a cool reception ; but looking up, she saw his 
 pale cheek tinted with a lover's beautiful joy at the 
 bare sight of her, and his soft eye so divine with love, 
 that she had not the heart to chill him. She gave him 
 her hand kindly, and smiled brightly on him instead of 
 remonstrating. She lost nothing by it, for the very first 
 thing he did was to excuse himself eagerly. ''I am 
 behind time : the fact is, just as I was mounting my 
 horse, a poor man came to the gate to consult me. He 
 had a terrible disorder I have sometimes succeeded in 
 arresting — I attack the cause instead of the symptoms, 
 which is the old practice — and so that detained me. 
 You forgive me ? " 
 
 " Of course. Poor man ! — only you said you wanted 
 to see papa, and he always goes out at two." 
 
 Wlien she had been betrayed into saying this, she drew 
 in suddenly, and blushed with a pretty consciousness. 
 
 " Then don't let me lose another minute," said the 
 lover. "Have you prepared him for — for — what I 
 am going to have the audacity to say ? " 
 
 Rosa answered, with some hesitation, " I must have — ■
 
 10 A SIMPLETOlT. 
 
 a little. When I refused Colonel Bright — you need not 
 devour my hand quite — he is forty." 
 
 Her sentence ended, and away went the original topic, 
 and grammatical sequence along with it. Christopher 
 Staines recaptured them both. "Yes, dear, when you 
 refused Colonel Bright" — 
 
 " Well, papa was astonished ; for everybody says the 
 colonel is a most eligible match. Don't 3'ou hate that 
 expression ? I do. Eligible ! " 
 
 Christopher made due haste, and reca^ptured her. 
 "Yes, love, your papa said" — 
 
 "I don't think I will tell you. He asked me was there 
 anybody else ; and of course I said ' No.' " 
 
 " Oh ! " 
 
 " Oh, that is nothing ; I had not time to make up my 
 mind to tell the truth. I was taken by surprise; and 
 you know one's first impulse is to fib — about thatP 
 
 " But did you really deceive him ? " 
 
 " No, I blushed ; and he caught me ; so he said, ' Come, 
 now, there was. ' " 
 
 " And you said, ' Yes, there is,' like a brave girl as 
 you are." 
 
 " What, plump like that ? No, I was frightened out 
 of my wits, like a brave girl as I am not, and said I 
 should never marry any one he could disapprove; and 
 then — oh, then I believe I began to cry. Christoj)her, 
 I'll tell you something ; I find people leave off teasing 
 you when you cry — gentlemen, I mean. Ladies go on 
 all the more. So then dear papa kissed me, and told me 
 I must not be imprudent, and throw myself away, that 
 was all ; and I promised him I never would. I said he 
 would be sure to approve my choice; and he said he 
 hoped so. And so he v/ill." 
 
 Dr. Staines looked thoiightful, and said he hoped so 
 t-oo. "But now it comes to the point of asking him for 
 such a treasure, I feel my deficiencies."
 
 A SIMPLETON. 11 
 
 " Why, what deficiencies ? You are young, and hand- 
 some, and good, and ever so much cleverer than other 
 people. You have only to ask for me, and insist on 
 having me. Come, dear, go and get it over." She 
 added, mighty coolly, "There is nothing so dreadful as 
 suspense." 
 
 " I'll go this minute," said he, and took a step towards 
 the door; but he turned, and in a moment was at her 
 knees. He took both her hands in his, and pressed them 
 to his beating bosom, while his beautiful eyes poured 
 love into hers point-blank. " May I tell him you love 
 me ? Oh, I know you cannot love me as I love you ; but 
 I may say you love me a little, may I not ? — that will 
 go farther with him than anything else. May I, Eosa, 
 may I?— a little?" 
 
 His passion mastered her. She dropped her head 
 sweetly on his shoulder, and murmured, " You know you 
 may, my own. Who would not love you ? " 
 
 He parted lingeringly from her, then marched away, 
 bold with love and hope, to demand her hand in 
 marriage. 
 
 Rosa leaned back in her chair, and quivered a little 
 with new emotions. Christopher was right ; she was not 
 capable of loving like him ; but still the actual contact 
 of so strong a passion made her woman's nature vibrate. 
 A dewy tear hung on the fringes of her long lashes, and 
 she leaned back in her chair and fluttered awhile. 
 
 That emotion, almost new to her, soon yielded, in her 
 girlish mind, to a complacent languor ; and that, in its 
 turn, to a soft reverie. So she was going to be married ! 
 To be mistress of a house ; settle in London (that she 
 had quite determined long ago) ; be able to go out into 
 the streets all alone, to shop, or visit ; have a gentleman 
 all her own, whom she could put her finger on any 
 moment and make him take her about, even to the
 
 12 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 opera and the theatre ; to give dinner-parties her own 
 self, and even a little ball once in a way ; to buy what- 
 ever dresses she thought proper, instead of being crippled 
 by an allowance ; have the legal right of speaking first 
 in society, even to gentlemen rich in ideas but bad 
 starters, instead of sitting mumchance and mock-modest; 
 to be Mistress, instead of Miss — contemptible title ; to 
 be a woman, instead of a girl ; and all this rational 
 liberty, domestic power, and social dignity were to be 
 obtained by merely wedding a dear fellow, who loved 
 her, and was so nice; and the bright career to be 
 ushered in with several delights, each of them dear to 
 a girl's very soul : presents from all her friends ; as many 
 beautiful new dresses as if she was changing her body or 
 her hemisphere, instead of her name; eclat; going to 
 church, which is a good English girl's theatre of display 
 and temple of vanity, and there tasting delightful pub- 
 licity and whispered admiration, in a heavenly long veil, 
 which she could not wear even once if she remained 
 single. 
 
 This bright variegated picture of holy wedlock, and 
 its essential features, as revealed to young ladies by 
 feminine tradition, though not enumerated in the Book 
 of Common Prayer writ by grim males, so entranced her, 
 that time flew by unheeded, and Christopher Staines 
 came back from her father. His step was heavy; he 
 looked pale, and deeply distressed ; then stood like a 
 statue, and did not come close to her, but cast a piteous 
 look, and gasped out one word, that seemed almost to 
 choke him, — " Kefused ! " 
 
 Miss Lusignan rose from her chair, and looked almost 
 wildly at him with her great eyes. " Kefused ? " said 
 she, faintly. 
 
 "Yes," said he, sadly. "Your father is a man of 
 business ; and he took a mere business view of our love ;
 
 A SEVrPLETON. 13 
 
 he asked me directly what provision I could make for 
 his daughter and her children. Well, I told him I had 
 three thousand pounds in the Funds, and a good profes- 
 sion; and then I said I had youth, health, and love, 
 boundless love, the love that can do, or suffer, the love 
 that can conquer the world." 
 
 " Dear Christopher ! And what could he say to all 
 that ? " 
 
 " He ignored it entirely. There ! I'll give you his 
 very words. He said, ' In that case. Dr. Staines, the 
 simple question is, what does your profession bring you 
 in per annum ? ' " 
 
 *' Oh ! There ! I always hated arithmetic, and now I 
 abominate it." 
 
 " Then I was obliged to confess I had scarcely received 
 a hundred pounds in fees this year ; but I told him the 
 reason ; this is such a small district, and all the ground 
 occupied. London, I said, was my sphere." 
 
 "And so it is," said Rosa, eagerly; for this jumped 
 with her own little designs. " Genius is wasted in the 
 country. Besides, whenever anybody worth curing is ill 
 down here, they always send to London for a doctor." 
 
 " I told him so, dearest," said the lover. '•' But he an- 
 swered me directly, then I must set up in London, and 
 as soon as my books showed an income to keep a wife, 
 and servants, and children, and insure my life for five 
 thousand pounds " — 
 
 " Oh, that is so like papa. He is director of an insur- 
 ance company, so all the world must insure their lives." 
 
 " No, dear, he was quite right there : professional in- 
 comes are most precarious. Death spares neither young 
 nor old, neither warm hearts nor cold. I should be no 
 true physician if I could not see my own mortality." 
 He hung his head and pondered a moment, then went 
 on, sadly, " It all comes to this — until I have a prof es-
 
 14 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 sional income of eight hundred a year at least, he will 
 not hear of our marrying ; and the cruel thing is, he will 
 not even consent to an engagement. But," said the 
 rejected, with a look of sad anxiety, "you will wait for 
 me without that, dear Kosa ? " 
 
 She could give him that comfort, and she gave it him 
 with loving earnestness. " Of course I will ; and it shall 
 not be very long. Whilst you are making your fortune, 
 to please papa, I will keep fretting, and pouting, and 
 crying, till he sends for you." 
 
 " Bless you, dearest ! Stop ! — not to make yourself 
 ill ! not for all the world." The lover and the physician 
 spoke in turn. 
 
 He came, all gratitude, to her side, and they sat, hand 
 in hand, comforting each other : indeed, parting was such 
 sweet sorrow that they sat, handed, and very close to 
 one another, till Mr. Lusignan, who thought five minutes 
 quite enough for rational beings to take leave in, walked 
 into the room and surprised them. At sight of his gray 
 head and iron-gray eyebrows, Christopher Staines started 
 up and looked confused ; he thought some apology neces- 
 sary, so he faltered out, " Forgive me, sir ; it is a bitter 
 parting to me, you may be sure." 
 
 Eosa's bosom heaved at these simple words. She flew 
 to her father, and cried, "Oh, papa! papa! you were 
 never cruel before ; " and hid her burning face on his 
 shoulder ; and then burst out crying, partly for Christo- 
 pher, partly because she was now ashamed of herself for 
 having taken a young man's part so openly. 
 
 Mr. Lusignan looked sadly discomposed at this out- 
 burst : she had taken him by his weak point ; he told 
 her so. "Now, Eosa," said he, rather peevishly, "you 
 know I hate — noise." 
 
 Eosa had actually forgotten that trait for a single 
 moment; but, being reminded of it, she reduced her
 
 A SIMPLETON. 15 
 
 sobs in the prettiest way, not to offend a tender parent 
 who could not bear noise. Under this homely term, you 
 must know, he included all scenes, disturbances, rum- 
 puses, passions ; and expected all men, women, and 
 things in Kent Villa to go smoothly — or go elsewhere. 
 
 "Come, young people," said he, "don't make a dis- 
 turbance. Where's the grievance ? Have I said he 
 shall never marry you ? Have I forbidden him to cor- 
 respond ? or even to call, say twice a year. All I say is, 
 no marriage, nor contract of marriage, until there is an 
 income." Then he turned to Christopher. "Now if 
 you can't make an income without her, how could you 
 make one with her, weighed down by the load of ex- 
 penses a wife entails ? I know her better than you do ; 
 she is a good girl, but rather luxurious and self-indulgent. 
 She is not cut out for a poor man's wife. And pray 
 don't go and fancy that nobody loves my child but you. 
 Mine is not so hot as yours, of course ; but believe me, 
 sir, it is less selfish. You would expose her to poverty 
 and misery ; but I say no ; it is my duty to protect her 
 from all chance of them ; and, in doing it, I am as much 
 your friend as hers, if you could but see it. Come, Dr. 
 Staines, be a man, and see the Vv'orld as it is. I have 
 told you how to earn my daughter's hand and my 
 esteem : you must gain both, or neither." 
 
 Dr. Staines was never quite deaf to reason: he now 
 put his hand to his brow and said, with a sort of wonder 
 and pitiful dismay, "My love for Eosa selfish! Sir, 
 your words are bitter and hard." Then, after a struggle, 
 and with rare and touching candor, " Ay, but 80 are bark 
 and steel ; yet they are good medicines." Tlxen with a 
 great glow in his heart and tears in his eyes, " My dar- 
 ling shall not be a poor man's wife, she who would 
 adorn a coronet, ay, or a crown. Good-by, Rosa, for the 
 present." He darted to her, and kissed her hand with
 
 16 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 all his soul. " Oh, the sacrifice of leaving you," he fal- 
 tered; ''the very world is dark to me without you. 
 Ah, well, I must earn the right to come again." He 
 summoned all his manhood, and marched to the door. 
 There he seemed to turn calmer all of a sudden, and said 
 firmly, yet humbly, '' I'll try and show you, sir, what love 
 can do." 
 
 " And I'll show you what love can suffer," said Kosa, 
 folding her beautiful arms superbly. 
 
 It was not in her to have shot such a bolt, except in 
 imitation ; yet how promptly the mimic thunder came, 
 and how grand the beauty looked, with her dark brows, 
 and flashing eyes, and folded arms ! much grander and 
 more inspired than poor Staines, who had only furnished 
 the idea. 
 
 But between these two figures swelling with emotion, 
 the representative of common sense, Lusignan ^:)ere, stood 
 cool and impassive ; he shrugged his shoulders, and 
 looked on both lovers as a couple of ranting novices he 
 was saving from each other and almshouses. 
 
 For all that, when the lover had torn himself away, 
 papa's composure was suddenly disturbed by a misgiv- 
 ing. He stepped hastily to the stairhead, and gave it 
 vent. " Dr. Staines," said he, in a loud whisper (Staines 
 was half way down the stairs: he stopped). "I trust to 
 you as a gentleman, not to mention this ; it will never 
 transpire here. Whatever we do — no noise ! "
 
 A SBIPLETON. 17 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 EosA LusiGNAN Set lierself pining as she had prom- 
 ised; and she did it discreetly for so young a person. 
 She was never peevish, but always sad and listless. By 
 this means she did not anger her parent, but only made 
 him feel she was unhappy, and the house she had hither- 
 to brightened exceeding dismal. 
 
 By degrees this noiseless melancholy undermined the 
 old gentleman, and he well-nigh tottered. 
 
 But one day, calling suddenly on a neighbor with six 
 daughters, he heard peals of laughter, and found Rosa 
 taking her full share of the senseless mirth. She pulled 
 up short at sight of him, and colored high ; but it Avas 
 too late, for he launched a knowing look at her on the 
 spot, and muttered something about seven foolish virgins. 
 
 He took the first opportunity, when they were alone, 
 and told her he was glad to find she was only dismal at 
 home. 
 
 But Rosa had prepared for him. " One can be loud 
 without being gay at heart," said she, with a lofty, 
 languid air. " I have not forgotten your last words to 
 him. We were to hide our broken hearts from the world. 
 I try to obey you, dear papa ; but, if I had my way, I 
 would never go into the world at all. I have but one 
 desire now — to end my days in a convent." 
 
 " Please begin them first. A convent ! Why, you'd 
 turn it out of window. You are no more fit to be a nun 
 than — a pauper." 
 
 Not having foreseen this facer, Rosa had nothing 
 ready ; so she received it with a sad, submissive, help-
 
 18 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 less sigh, as who would say, " Hit me, papa : I have no 
 friend now." So then he was sorry he had been so 
 clever ; and, indeed, there is one provoking thing about 
 " a woman's weakness " — it is invincible. 
 
 The next minute, what should come but a long letter 
 from Dr. Staines, detailing his endeavors to purchase 
 a practice in London, and his ill-success. The letter 
 spoke the language of love and hope ; but the facts were 
 discouraging; and, indeed, a touching sadness pierced 
 through the veil of the brave words. 
 
 Rosa read it again and again, and cried over it before 
 her father, to encourage him in his heartless behavior. 
 
 About ten days after this, something occurred that 
 altered her mood. 
 
 She became grave and thoughtful, but no longer lugu- 
 brious. She seemed desirous to atone to her father for 
 having disturbed his cheerfulness. She smiled affection- 
 ately on him, and often sat on a stool at his knee, and 
 glided her hand into his. 
 
 He was not a little pleased, and said to himself, " She 
 is coming round to common-sense." 
 
 Now, on the contrary, she was farther from it than 
 ever. 
 
 At last he got the clew. One afternoon he met Mr. 
 Wyman coming out of the villa. Mr. Wyman was the 
 consulting surgeon of that part. 
 
 " What ! anybody ill ? " said Mr. Lusignan. " One of 
 the servants ? " 
 
 " No ; it is Miss Lusignan." 
 
 " Why, what is the matter with her ? " 
 
 Wyman hesitated. " Oh, nothing very alarming. 
 Would you mind asking her ? " 
 
 " Why ? " 
 
 " The fact is, she requested me not to tell you : made 
 me promise."
 
 A SEVrPLETON. 19 
 
 ^' And I insist upon your telling me." 
 
 " And I think you are quite right, sir, as her father. 
 Well, she is troubled with a little spitting of blood." 
 
 Mr. Lusignan turned pale. " My child ! spitting of 
 blood ! God forbid ! " 
 
 " Oh, do not alarm yourself. It is nothing serious." 
 
 " Don't tell me ! " said the father. " It is always 
 serious. And she kept this from me ! " 
 
 Masking his agitation for the time, he inquired how 
 often it had occurred, this grave symptom. 
 
 " Three or four times this last month. But I may as 
 well tell you at once : I have examined her carefully, 
 and I do not think it is from the lungs." 
 
 " From the throat, then ? " 
 
 " No ; from the liver. Everything points to that 
 organ as the seat of derangement : not that there is any 
 lesion ; only a tendency to congestion. I am treating 
 her accordingly, and have no doubt of the result." 
 
 " Who is the ablest physician hereabouts ? " asked 
 Lusignan, abruptly. 
 
 '' Dr. Snell, I think." 
 
 " Give me his address." 
 
 " I'll write to him, if you like, and appoint a consulta- 
 tion." He added, with vast but rather sudden alacrity, 
 " It will be a great satisfaction to my own mind." 
 
 " Then send to him, if you please, and let him be here 
 to-morrow morning ; if not, I shall take her to London 
 for advice at once." 
 
 On this understanding they parted, and Lusignan went 
 at once to his daughter. " my child ! " said he, deeply 
 distressed, " how could you hide this from me ? " 
 
 " Hide what, papa ? " said the girl, looking the picture 
 of unconsciousness. 
 .y '' That you have been spitting blood." 
 
 " Who told you that ? " said she, sharply.
 
 2.0 A SIMPLETON". 
 
 "Wyman. He is attending you." 
 
 Rosa colored with anger. " Chatterbox ! He prom- 
 ised me faithfully not to." 
 
 " But why, in Heaven's name ? What ! would you 
 trust this terrible thing to a stranger, and hide it from 
 your poor father ? " 
 
 " Yes," replied Rosa, quietly. 
 
 The old man would not scold her now ; he only said, 
 sadly, " I see how it is : because I will not let you marry 
 poverty, you think I do not love you." And he sighed. 
 
 " papa ! the idea ! " said Rosa. " Of course, I know 
 you love me. It was not that, you dear, darling, foolish 
 papa. There ! if you must know, it was because I did 
 not want you to be distressed. I thought I might get 
 better with a little physic; and, if not, why, then I 
 thought, ' Papa is an old man ; la ! I dare say I shall last 
 his time ; ' and so, why should I poison your latter days 
 with worrying about me ? " 
 
 Mr. Lusignan stared at her, and his lip quivered ; but 
 he thought the trait hardly consistent with her super- 
 ficial character. He could not help saying, half sadly, 
 half bitterly, "Well, but of course you have told Dr. 
 Staines." 
 
 Rosa opened her beautiful eyes, like two suns. " Of 
 course I have done nothing of the sort. He has enough 
 to trouble him, without that. Poor fellow ! there he is, 
 worrying and striving to make his fortune, and gain 
 your esteem — ' they go together,' you know ; you told 
 him so." (Young cats will scratch when least expected.) 
 "And for me to go and tell him I am in danger ! Why, 
 he would go wild. He would think of nothing but me 
 and my health. He would never make his fortune : and 
 so then, even when I am gone, he will never get a wife, 
 because he has only got genius and goodness and three 
 thousand pounds. No, papa, I have not told poor Chris-
 
 A SIMPLETON. 21 
 
 topher. I may tease those I love. I have been teasing 
 you this ever so long ; but frighten them, and make them 
 miserable ? No ! " 
 
 And here, thinking of the anguish that was perhaps 
 in store for those she loved, she wanted to cry ; it almost 
 choked her not to. But she fought it bravely down : she 
 reserved her tears for lighter occasions and less noble 
 sentiments. 
 
 Her father held out his arms to her. She ran her 
 footstool to him, and sat nestling to his heart. 
 
 " Please forgive me my misconduct. I have not been 
 a dutiful daughter ever since you — but now I will. Kiss 
 me, my own papa ! There ! Now we are as we always 
 were." 
 
 Then she purred to him on every possible topic but 
 the one that now filled his parental heart, and bade him 
 good-night at last with a cheerfvil smile. 
 
 Wyman was exact, and ten minutes afterwards Dr. 
 Snell drove up in a carriage and pair. He was inter- 
 cepted in the hall by Wyman, and, after a few minutes' 
 conversation, presented to Mr. Lusignan, 
 
 The father gave vent to his paternal anxiety in a few 
 simple but touching words, and was proceeding to state 
 the symptoms as he had gathered them from his daughter ; 
 but Dr. Snell interrupted him politely, and said he had 
 heard the principal symptoms from Mr. Wyman. Then, 
 turning to the latter, he said, " We had better proceed to 
 examine the patient." 
 
 '' Certainly," said Mr. Lusignan. " She is in the 
 drawing-room ; " and he led the way, and was about to 
 enter the room, when Wyman informed him it was against 
 etiquette for him to be present at the examination. 
 
 " Oh, very well ! " said he. " Yes, I see the propriety 
 of that. But oblige me by asking her if she has any- 
 thing on her mind."
 
 22 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 Dr. Snell bowed a lofty assent ; for, to receive a hint 
 from a layman was to confer a favor on him. 
 
 The men of science were closeted full half an houi 
 with the patient. She was too beautiful to be slurred 
 over, even by a busy doctor : he felt her pulse, looked at 
 her tongue, and listened attentively to her lungs, to her 
 heart, and to the organ suspected by Wyman. He left 
 her at last with a kindly assurance that the case was 
 perfectly curable. 
 
 At the door they were met by the anxious father, who 
 came with throbbing heart, and asked the doctors' 
 verdict. 
 
 He was coolly informed that could not be given until 
 the consultation had taken place; the result of that 
 consultation would be conveyed to him. 
 
 "And pray, why can't I be present at the consulta- 
 tion ? The grounds on which two able men agree or 
 disagree must be well worth listening to." 
 
 "No doubt," said Dr. Snell; "but," with a superior 
 smile, "my dear sir, it is not the etiquette." 
 
 "Oh, very well," said Lusignan. But he muttered, 
 " So, then, a father is nobody ! " 
 
 And this unreasonable person retired to his study, 
 miserable, and gave up the dining-room to the consulta- 
 tion. 
 
 They soon rejoined him. 
 
 Dr. Snell's opinion was communicated by Wyman. 
 " I am happy to tell you that Dr. Snell agrees with me, 
 entirely : the lungs are not affected, and the liver is con- 
 gested, but not diseased." 
 
 " Is that so. Dr. Snell ? " asked Lusignan, anxiously. 
 
 " It is so, sir." He added, " The treatment has been 
 submitted to me, and I quite approve it." 
 
 He then asked for a pen and paper, and wrote a pre- 
 scription. He assured Mr. Lusignan that the case had
 
 A SIMPLETON. 23 
 
 no extraordinary feature, whatever ; he was not to alarm 
 himself. Dr. Snell then drove away, leaving the parent 
 rather puzzled, but, on the Avhole, much comforted. 
 
 And here I must reveal an extraordinary circumstance. 
 
 Wyman's treatment was by drugs. 
 
 Dr. Snell's was by drugs. 
 
 Dr. Snell, as you have seen, entirely approved Wyman's 
 treatment. 
 
 His own had nothing in common with it. The Arctic 
 and Antarctic poles are not farther apart than was his pre- 
 scription from the prescription he thoroughly approved. 
 
 Amiable science ! In which complete diversity of prac- 
 tice did not interfere with perfect uniformity of opinion. 
 
 All this was kept from Dr. Staines, and he was 
 entirely occupied in trying to get a position that might 
 lead to fortune, and satisfy Mr. Lusignan. He called 
 on every friend he had, to inquire where there was an 
 opening. He walked miles and miles in the best quar- 
 ters of London, looking for an opening; he let it be 
 known in many quarters that he would give a good pre- 
 mium to any physician who was about to retire, and 
 would introduce him to his patients. 
 
 No : he could hear of nothing. 
 
 Then, after a great struggle with himself, he called 
 upon his uncle, Philip Staines, a retired M.D., to see if 
 he would do anything for him. He left this to the last, 
 for a very good reason : Dr. Philip was an irritable old 
 bachelor, who had assisted most of his married relatives ; 
 but, finding no bottom to the well, had turned rusty and 
 crusty, and now was apt to administer kicks instead of 
 checks to all who were near and dear to him. However, 
 Christopher was the old gentleman's favorite, and was 
 now desperate ; so he mustered courage, and went. He 
 was graciously received — warmly, indeed. This gave 
 him great hopes, and he told his tale.
 
 24 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 The old bachelor sided with Mr. Lusignan. " What ! " 
 said he, "do you want to many, and propagate pau- 
 perism ? I thought you had more sense. Confound it 
 all ! I had just one nephew whose knock at my street- 
 door did not make me tremble ; he was a bachelor and a 
 thinker, and came for a friendly chat ; the rest are mar- 
 ried men, highwaymen, who come to say, 'Stand and 
 deliver ; ' and now even you want to join the giddy 
 throng. Well, don't ask me to have any hand in it. 
 You are a man of promise ; and you might as well hang 
 a millstone round your neck as a wife. Marriage is a 
 greater mistake than ever now ; the women dress more 
 and manage worse. I met your cousin Jack the other 
 day, and his wife with seventy pounds on her back ; and 
 next door to paupers. No ; whilst you are a bachelor, 
 like me, you are my favorite, and down in my will for a 
 lump. Once marry, and you join the noble army of foot- 
 pads, leeches, vultures, paupers, gone coons, and babblers 
 about brats — and I disown you." 
 
 There was no hoj)e from old Crusty. Christopher left 
 him, snubbed and heart-sick. At last he met a sensible 
 man, who made him see there was no short cut in that 
 profession. He must be content to play the up-hill 
 game; must settle in some good neighborhood; marry, 
 if possible, since husbands and fathers of families prefer 
 married physicians; and so be poor at thirty, comfort- 
 able at forty, and rich at fifty — perhaps. 
 
 Then Christopher came down to his lodgings at Graves- 
 end, and was very unhappy; and after some days of 
 misery, he wrote a letter to Kosa in a moment of impa- 
 tience, despondency, and passion. 
 
 Kosa Lusignan got worse and worse. The slight but 
 frequent hemorrhage was a drain upon her system, and 
 weakened her visibly. She began to lose her rich com- 
 plexion, and sometimes looked almost sallow; and a
 
 A SIMPLETON. 25 
 
 slight circle showed itself under her eyes. These symp- 
 toms were unfavorable ; nevertheless, Dr. Snell and Mr. 
 Wyman accepted them cheerfully, as fresh indications 
 that nothing was affected but the liver ; they multiplied 
 and varied their prescriptions ; the malady ignored those 
 prescriptions, and went steadily on. Mr. Lusignan was 
 terrified but helpless. Eosa resigned and reticent. 
 
 But it was not in human nature that a girl of this age 
 could always and at all hours be mistress of herself. 
 One evening in particular she stood before the glass in 
 the drawing-room, and looked at herself a long time with 
 horror. " Is that Kosa Lusignan ? " said she, aloud ; " it 
 is her ghost." 
 
 A deep groan startled her. She turned; it was her 
 father. She thought he was fast asleep ; and so indeed 
 he had been ; but he was just awaking, and heard his 
 daughter utter her real mind. It was a thunder-clap. 
 " Oh, my child ! what shall I do ? " he cried. 
 
 Then Rosa was taken by surprise in her turn. She 
 spoke out. "Send for a great physician, papa. Don't 
 let us deceive ourselves ; it is our only chance." 
 
 " I will ask Mr. Wyman to get a physician down from 
 London." 
 
 " No, no ; that is no use ; they will put their heads 
 together, and he will say whatever Mr. Wyman tells 
 him. La ! papa, a clever man like you, not to see what 
 a cheat that consultation was. Wliy, from what jon 
 told me, one can see it was managed so that Dr. Snell 
 could not possibly have an opinion of his own. No ; no 
 more echoes of Mr. Chatterbox. If you really want to 
 cure me, send for Christopher Staines." 
 
 " Dr. Staines ! he is very young." 
 
 "But he is very clever, and he is not an echo. He 
 won't care how many doctors he contradicts when I am 
 in danger. Papa, it is your child's one chance."
 
 26 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 " I'll try it," said the old man, eagerly. " How confi- 
 dent you look ! your color has come back. It is an inspi- 
 ration. Where is he ? " 
 
 " I think by this time he must be at his lodgings in 
 Gravesend. Send to him to-morrow morning." 
 
 " Not I ! I'll go to him to-night. It is only a mile, 
 and a fine clear night." 
 
 *' My own, good, kind papa ! Ah ! well, come what 
 may, I have lived long enough to be loved. Yes, dear 
 papa, save me. I am very young to die ; and he loves 
 me so dearly." 
 
 The old man bustled away to put on something warmer 
 for his night walk, and Rosa leaned back, and the tears 
 welled out of her eyes, now he was gone. 
 
 Before she had recovered her composure, a letter was 
 brought her, and this was the letter from Christopher 
 Staines, alluded to already. 
 
 She took it from the servant with averted head, not 
 wishing it to be seen she had been crying, and she started 
 at the handwriting ; it seemed such a coincidence that it 
 should come just as she was sending for him. 
 
 I\Iy own beloved Rosa, — I now write to tell you, with a 
 heavy heart, that all is vain. I cannot make, nor purchase, 
 a connection, except as others do, by time and patience. Being 
 a bachelor is quite against a young physician. If I had a 
 wife, and such a wife as you, I should be sure to get on ; you 
 would increase my connection very soon. What, then, lies 
 before us? I see but two things — to wait till we are old, and 
 our pockets are filled, but our hearts chilled or soured ; or else 
 to marry at once, and climb the hill together. If you love me 
 as I love you, you will be saving till the battle is over ; and I 
 feel I could find energy and fortitude for both. Your father, 
 who thinks so much of wealth, can surely settle something on 
 you ; and I am not too poor to furnish a house and start fair. 
 I am not quite obscure — my lectures have given me a name — 
 and to you, my own love, I hope I may say that I know more
 
 A SIMPLETON. 27 
 
 than many of ray elders, thanks to good schools, good method, 
 a genuine love of my noble profession, and a tendency to study 
 from my childhood. Will you not risk something on my 
 ability? If not, God help me, for I shall lose you; and what 
 is life, or fame, or wealth, or any mortal thing to me, without 
 you ? I cannot accept your father's decision ; you must decide 
 my fate. 
 
 You see I have kept away from you until I can do so no 
 more. All this time the world to me has seemed to want the 
 sun, and my heart pines and sickens for one sight of you. 
 Darling Rosa, pray let me look at your face once more. 
 
 When this I'eaches you I shall be at your gate. Let me 
 see you, though but for a moment, and let me hear my fate 
 from no lips but yours. — My own love, your heart-broken 
 lover, 
 
 Christopuer Staines. 
 
 This letter stunned her at first. Her mind of late had 
 been turned away from love to such stern realities. Now 
 she began to be sorry she had not told him. "Poor 
 thing ! " she said to herself, " he little knows that now 
 all is changed. Papa, I sometimes think, would deny 
 me nothing now ; it is I who would not marry him — to 
 be buried by him in a month or two. Poor Christopher ! " 
 
 The next moment she started up in dismay. Why, her 
 father would miss him. No ; perhaps catch him waiting 
 for her. What Avould he think ? What would Christopher 
 think ? — that she had shown her papa his letter. 
 
 She rang the bell hard. The footman came. 
 
 " Send Harriet to me this instant. Oh, and ask papa 
 to come to me." 
 
 Then she sat down and dashed off a line to Christopher. 
 This was for Harriet to take out to him. Anything better 
 than for Christopher to be caught doing w^hat was wrong. 
 
 The footman came back first. "If you please, miss, 
 master has gone out." 
 
 " Eun after him — the road to Gravesend."
 
 28 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 "Yes, miss." 
 
 "No. It is no itse. Nevermind." 
 
 "Yes, miss." 
 
 Then Harriet came in. " Did you want me, miss ? " 
 
 " Yes. No — never mind now." 
 
 She was afraid to do anything for fear of making 
 matters worse. She went to the window, and stood look- 
 ing anxiously out, with her hands working. Presently 
 she uttered a little scream and shrank away to the sofa. 
 She sank down on it, half sitting, half lying, hid her 
 face in her hands, and waited. 
 
 Staines, with a lover's impatience, had been more than 
 an hour at the gate, or walking up and down close by it, 
 his heart now burning with hope, now freezing with fear, 
 that she would decline a meeting on these terms. 
 
 At last the postman came, and then he saw he was too 
 soon; but now in a few minutes Eosa would have his 
 letter, and then he should soon know whether she would 
 come or not. He looked up at the drawing-room windows. 
 They were full of light. She was there in all probability. 
 Yet she did not come to them. But why should she, if 
 she was coming out ? 
 
 He walked up and down the road. She did not come. 
 His heart began to sicken with doubt. His head drooped ; 
 and perhaps it was owing to this that he almost ran 
 against a gentleman who was coming the other way. 
 The moon shone bright on both faces. 
 
 " Dr. Staines ! " said Mr. Lusignan surprised. Chris- 
 topher uttered an ejaculation more eloquent than words. 
 
 They stared at each other. 
 
 " You were coming to call on us ? " 
 
 "N — no," stammered Christopher. 
 
 Lusignan thought that odd ; however, he said politely, 
 "No matter, it is fortunate. Would you mind coming 
 in?"
 
 A SIMPLETON. 29 
 
 "No," faltered Christopher, and stared at him ruefully, 
 puzzled iuore and more, but beginning to think, after all, 
 it might be a casual meeting. 
 
 They entered the gate, and in one moment he saw 
 Kosa at the window, and she saw him. 
 
 Then he altered his opinion again. Eosa had sent her 
 father out to him. But how was this ? The old man 
 did not seem angry. Christopher's heart gave a leap 
 inside him, and he began to glow with the wildest hopes. 
 For, what could this mean but relenting ? 
 
 Mr. Lusignan took him first into the study, and lighted 
 two candles himself. He did not want the servants 
 prying. 
 
 The lights showed Christopher a change in Mr. 
 Lusignan. He looked ten years older. 
 
 "■ You are not well, sir," said Christopher gently. 
 
 " My health is well enough, but I am a broken-hearted 
 man. Dr. Staines, forget all that passed here at your 
 last visit. All that is over. Thank you for loving my 
 jioor girl as you do ; give me your hand ; God bless you. 
 Sir, I am sorry to say it is as a physician I invite you 
 now. She is ill, sir, very, very ill." 
 
 "111! and not tell me ! " 
 
 " She kept it from you, my poor friend, not to distress 
 you ; and she tried to keep it from me, but how could 
 she ? For two months she has had some terrible com- 
 plaint — it is destroying her. She is the ghost of herself. 
 Oh, my poor child ! my child ! " 
 
 The old man sobbed aloud. The young man stood 
 trembling, and ashy pale. Still, the habits of his pro- 
 fession, and the experience of dangers overcome, together 
 with a certain sense of power, kept him up ; but, above 
 all, love and duty said, "Be firm." He asked for an out* 
 line of the symptoms. 
 
 They alarmed him greatly.
 
 30 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 " Let us lose no more time," said he. " I will see her 
 
 at once." 
 
 " Do you object to my being present ? " 
 
 " Of course not." 
 
 " Shall I tell you what Dr. Snell says it is, and Mr. 
 Wyman ? " 
 
 " By all means — after I have seen her." 
 
 This comforted Mr. Lusignan. He was to get an inde* 
 pendent judgment, at all events. 
 
 When they reached the top of the stairs, Dr. Staines 
 paused and leaned against the baluster. "Give me a 
 moment," said he. "The patient must not know how 
 my heart is beating, and she must see nothing in my 
 face but what I choose her to see. Give me your ha,nd 
 once more, sir; let us both control ourselves. Now 
 announce me." 
 
 Mr. Lusignan opened the door, and said, with forced 
 cheerfulness, "Dr. Staines, my dear, come to give you 
 the benefit of his skill." 
 
 She lay on the sofa, just as we left her. Only her 
 bosom began to heave. 
 
 Then Christopher Staines drew himself up, and the 
 majesty of knowledge and love together seemed to dilate 
 his noble frame. He fixed his eye on that reclining, 
 panting figure, and stepped lightly but firmly across the 
 room to know the worst, like a lion walking up to levelled 
 lances.
 
 A SIMPLETON. 31 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 The young physician walked steadily up to his patient 
 without taking his eye off her, and drew a chair to her 
 side. 
 
 Then she took down one hand — the left — and gave it 
 him, averting her face tenderly, and still covering it with 
 her right ; "For," said she to herself, "I am such a fright 
 now." This opportune reflection, and her heaving hosom, 
 proved that she at least felt herself something more than 
 his patient. Her pretty consciousness made his task more 
 difficult ; nevertheless, he only allowed himself to press 
 her hand tenderly with both his palms one moment, and 
 then he entered on his functions bravely. " I am here 
 as your physician." 
 
 " Very well," said she softly. 
 
 He gently detained the hand, and put his finger lightly 
 to her pulse ; it was palpitating, and a fallacious test. 
 Oh, how that beating pulse, by love's electric current, set 
 his own heart throbbing in a moment ! 
 
 He put her hand gently, reluctantly down, and said, 
 " Oblige me by turning this way." She turned, and he 
 winced internally at the change in her; but his face 
 betrayed nothing. He looked at her full ; and, after a 
 pause, put her some questions : one was as to the color 
 of the hemorrhage. She said it was bright red. 
 
 " Not a tinge of purple ? " 
 
 " No," said she hopefully, mistaking him. 
 
 He suppressed a sigh. 
 
 Then he listened at her shoulder-blade and at her 
 chest, and made her draw her breath while he was
 
 32 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 listening. The acts were simple, and usual in medicine, 
 hut there was a deep, patient, silent intensity about his 
 way of doing them. 
 
 Mr. Lusignan crept nearer, and stood with both hands 
 on a table, and his old head bowed, awaiting yet dread- 
 ing the verdict. 
 
 Up to this time. Dr. Staines, instead of tapping and 
 squeezing, and pulling the patient about, had never 
 touched her with his hand, and only grazed her with 
 his ear; but now he said "Allow me," and put both 
 hands to her waist, more lightly and reverently 
 than I can describe ; " Now draw a deep breath, if you 
 please." 
 
 " There ! " 
 
 "If you could draw a deeper still," said he, insinu- 
 atingly. 
 
 " There, then ! " said she, a little pettishly. 
 
 Dr. Staines's eye kindled. 
 
 " Hum ! " said he. Then, after a considerable pause, 
 "Are you better or worse after each hemorrhage ? " 
 
 " La ! " said Eosa ; " they never asked me that. Why, 
 better." 
 
 " No faintness ? " 
 
 "Not a bit." 
 
 " Rather a sense of relief, perhaps ? " 
 
 " Yes ; I feel lighter and better." 
 
 The examination was concluded. 
 
 Dr. Staines looked at Eosa, and then at her father. 
 The agony in that aged face, and the love that agony 
 implied, won him, and it was to the parent he turned to 
 give his verdict. 
 
 " The hemorrhage is from the lungs " — 
 
 Lusignan interrupted him : " From the lungs ! " cried 
 he, in dismay. 
 
 " Yes ; a slight congestion of the lungs."
 
 A SIMPLETON. 33 
 
 " But not incurable ! Oh, not incurable, doctor ! " 
 
 " Heaven forbid ! It is curable — easily — by remov- 
 ing the cause." 
 
 " And what is the cause ? " 
 
 " The cause ? " — he hesitated, and looked rather 
 uneasy. — '' Well, the cause, sir, is — tight stays." 
 
 The tranquillity of the meeting was instantly disturbed. 
 « Tight stays ! Me ! " cried Kosa. " Why, I am the 
 loosest girl in England. Look, papa ! " And, without 
 any apparent effort, she drew herself in, and poked her 
 little fist between her sash and her gown. "There ! " 
 
 Dr. Staines smiled sadly and a little sarcastically : he 
 was evidently shy of encountering the lady in this argu- 
 ment ; but he was more at his ease with her father ; so 
 he turned towards him and lectured him freely. 
 
 "That is wonderful, sir; and the first four or five 
 female patients that favored me with it, made me dis- 
 believe my other senses; but Miss Lusignan is now 
 about the thirtieth who has shown me that marvelloas 
 feat, with a calm countenance that belies the herculean 
 effort. Nature has her every-day miracles : a boa-con- 
 strictor, diameter seventeen inches, can swallow a buffalo ; 
 a woman, with her stays bisecting her almost, and lacer- 
 ating her skin, can yet for one moment make herself 
 seem slack, to deceive a juvenile physician. The snake 
 is the miracle of expansion ; the woman is the prodigy 
 of contraction." 
 
 "Highly grateful for the comparison!" cried Eosa. 
 " Women and snakes ! " 
 
 Dr. Staines blushed and looked uncomfortable. "I 
 did not mean to be offensive ; it certainly was a very 
 clumsy comparison. 
 
 " What does that matter ? " said Mr. Lusignan, impa- 
 tiently. "Be quiet, Kosa, and let Dr. Staines and me 
 talk sense."
 
 34 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 " Oh, then I am nobody in the business ! " said this 
 wise young lady. 
 
 " You are everybody," said Staines, soothingly. "But," 
 suggested he, obsequiously, " if you don't mind, I would 
 rather explain my views to your father — on this one 
 subject." 
 
 " And a pretty subject it is ! " 
 
 Dr. Staines then invited Mr. Lusignan to his lodg- 
 ings, and promised to explain the matter anatomically. 
 " Meantime," said he, " would you be good enough to put 
 your hands to my waist, as I did to the patient's." 
 
 Mr. Lusignan complied; and the patient began to 
 titter directly, to put them out of countenance. 
 
 " Please observe what takes place when I draw a full 
 breath. 
 
 "Now apply the same test to the patient. Breathe 
 your best, please. Miss Lusignan." 
 
 The patient put on a face full of saucy mutiny. 
 
 " To oblige us both." 
 
 " Oh, how tiresome ! " 
 
 "I am aware it is rather laborious," said Staines, a 
 little dryly ; " but to oblige your father ! " 
 
 "Oh, anything to oblige papa," said she, spitefully. 
 " There ! And I do hope it will be the last — la ! no ; 
 I don't hope that, neither." 
 
 Dr. Staines politely ignored her little attempts to 
 interrupt the argument. "You found, sir, that the 
 muscles of my waist, and my intercostal ribs themselves, 
 rose and fell with each inhalation and exhalation of air 
 by the lungs." 
 
 "I did ; but my daughter's waist was like dead wood, 
 and so were her lower ribs." 
 
 At this volunteer statement, Eosa colored to her 
 temples. " Thanks, papa ! Pack me off to London, and 
 sell me for a big doll 1 "
 
 A SEVIPLETON. 35 
 
 " In other words," said the lecturer, mild and pertina.- 
 cious, "with us the lungs have room to blow, and the 
 whole bony frame expands elastic with them, like the 
 woodwork of a blacksmith's bellows; but with this 
 patient, and many of her sex, that noble and divinely 
 framed bellows is crippled and confined by a powerful 
 machine of human construction ; so it works lamely and 
 feebly : consequently too little air, and of course too 
 little oxygen, passes through that spongy organ whose 
 very life is air. Now mark the special result in this 
 case : being otherwise healthy and vigorous, our patient's 
 system sends into the lungs more blood than that one 
 crippled organ can deal with ; a small quantity becomes 
 extravasated at odd times ; it accumulates, and would 
 become dangerous ; then Nature, strengthened by sleep, 
 and by some hours' relief from the diabolical engine, 
 makes an effort and flings it off : that is why the hem- 
 orrhage comes in the morning, and why she is the better 
 for it, feeling neither faint nor sick, but relieved of a 
 weight. This, sir, is the rationale of the complaint ; and 
 it is to you I must look for the cure. To judge from my 
 other female patients, and from the few words Miss 
 Lusignan has let fall, I fear we must not count on any 
 very hearty co-operation from her: but you are her 
 father, and have great authority ; I conjure you to use it 
 to the full, as you once used it — to my sorrow — in this 
 very room. I am forgetting my character. I was asked 
 here only as her physician. Good-evening." 
 
 He gave a little gulp, and hurried away, with an 
 abruptness that touched the father and offended the 
 sapient daughter. 
 
 However, Mr. Lusignan followed him, and stopped 
 him before he left the house, and thanked him warmly ; 
 and to his surprise, begged him to call again in a day or 
 two.
 
 36 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 " Well, Rosa, what do you say ? " 
 
 " I say that I am very unfortunate in my doctors. 
 Mr. Wyman is a chatterbox and knows nothing. Dr. 
 Snell is Mr. Wyman's echo. Christopher is a genius, 
 and they are always full of crotchets. A pretty doctor ! 
 Gone away, and not prescribed for me ! " 
 
 Mr. Lusignan admitted it was odd. "But, after all," 
 said he, " if medicine does you no good ? " 
 
 " Ah ! but any medicine he had prescribed would have 
 done me good, and that makes it all the unkinder.^' 
 
 " If you think so highly of his skill, why not take his 
 advice ? It can do no harm." 
 
 " No harm ? Why, if I was to leave them off I should 
 catch a dreadful cold ; and that would be sure to settle 
 on my chest, and carry me off, in my present delicate 
 state. Besides, it is so unfeminine not to wear them." 
 
 This staggered Mr. Lusignan, and he was afraid to 
 press the point ; but what Staines had said fermented in 
 his mind. 
 
 Dr. Snell and Mr. Wyman continued their visits and 
 their prescriptions. 
 
 The patient got a little worse. 
 
 Mr. Lusignan hoped Christopher would call again, but 
 he did not. 
 
 When Dr. Staines had satisfied himself that the dis- 
 order was easily curable, then wounded pride found an 
 entrance even into his loving heart. That two strangers 
 should have been consulted before him ! He was only 
 sent for because they could not cure her. 
 
 As he seemed in no hurry to repeat his visit, Mr. 
 Lusignan called on him, and said, politely, he had hoped 
 to receive another call ere this. "Personally," said he, 
 " I was much struck with your observations ; but my 
 daughter is afraid she will catch cold if she leaves oif 
 her corset, and that, you know, might be very serious."
 
 A SIMPLETON. 37 
 
 Dr. Staines groaned, and, when he had groaned, he 
 lectured. "Female patients are wonderfully monoto- 
 nous in this matter ; they have a programme of evasions ; 
 and whether the patient is a lady or a housemaid, she 
 seldom varies from that programme. You find her 
 breathing life's air with half a bellows, and you tell 
 her so. ' Oh, no,' says she ; and does the gigantic feat 
 of contraction we witnessed that evening at your house. 
 But, on inquiry, you learn there is a raw red line 
 ploughed in her flesh by the cruel stays. 'What is 
 that ? ' you ask, and flatter yourself you have pinned 
 her. jS'ot a bit. 'That was the last pair. I changed 
 them, because they hurt me.' Driven out of that by 
 proofs of recent laceration, they say, ' If I leave them 
 off I should catch my death of cold,' which is equivalent 
 to saying there is no flannel in the shops, no common 
 sense nor needles at home." 
 
 He then laid before him some large French plates, 
 showing the organs of the human trunk, and bade him 
 observe in how small a space, and with what skill, the 
 Creator has packed so many large yet delicate organs, so 
 that they should be free and secure from friction, though 
 so close to each other. He showed him the liver, an 
 organ weighing four pounds, and of large circumference ; 
 the lungs, a very large organ, suspended in the chest and 
 impatient of pressure ; the heart, the stomach, the spleen, 
 all of them too closely and artfully packed to bear any 
 further compression. 
 
 Having thus taken him by the eye, he took him by 
 the mind. 
 
 "Is it a small thing for the creature to say to her 
 Creator, ' I can pack all this egg-china better than you 
 can,' and thereupon to jam all those vital organs close, 
 by a powerful, a very powerful and ingenious machine ? 
 Is it a small thing for that sex, which; for good reasons,
 
 38 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 the Omniscient has made larger in the waist than the 
 male, to say to her Creator, ' You don't know your busi- 
 ness ; women ought to be smaller in the waist than men, 
 and shall be throughout the civilized world ' ? " 
 
 In short, he delivered so many true and pointed things 
 on this trite subject, that the old gentleman was con- 
 vinced, and begged him to come over that very evening 
 and convince Rosa. 
 
 Dr. Staines shook his head dolefully, and all his fire 
 died out of him at having to face the fair. " Reason will 
 be wasted. Authority is the only weapon. My pro- 
 fession and my reading have both taught me that the 
 whole character of her sex undergoes a change the 
 moment a man interferes with their dress. From 
 Chaucer's day to our own, neither public satire nor 
 private remonstrance has ever shaken any of their 
 monstrous fashions. Easy, obliging, pliable, and weaker 
 of will than men in other things, do but touch their 
 dress, however objectionable, and rock is not harder, 
 iron is not more stubborn, than these soft and yielding 
 creatures. It is no earthly use my coming — I'll come." 
 
 He came that very evening, and saw directly she was 
 worse. " Of course," said he, sadly, " you have not taken 
 my advice." 
 
 Rosa replied with a toss and an evasion, " I was not 
 worth a prescription ! " 
 
 " A physician can prescribe without sending his patient 
 to the druggist ; and when he does, then it is his words 
 are gold." 
 
 Rosa shook her head with an air of lofty incredulity. 
 
 He looked ruefully at Mr. Lusignan and was silent. 
 Rosa smiled sarcastically ; she thought he was at his 
 wit's end. 
 
 Not quite : he was cudgelling his brains in search of 
 some horribly unscientific argument, that might prevail ;
 
 A SIMPLETON. 39 
 
 for lie felt science would fall dead upon so fair an antag- 
 onist. At last his eye kindled ; he had hit on an argu- 
 ment unscientific enough for anybody, he thought. Said 
 he, ingratiatingly, "You believe the Old Testament?" 
 
 " Of course I do, every syllable." 
 
 " And the lessons it teaches ? " 
 
 " Certainly ! " 
 
 " Then let me tell you a story from that book. A 
 Syrian general had a terrible disease. He consulted 
 Elisha by deputy. Elisha said, ' Bathe seven times in a 
 certain river, Jordan, and you will get well.' The general 
 did not like this at all ; he wanted a prescription ; wanted 
 to go to the druggist ; didn't believe in hydropathy 
 to begin, and, in any case, turned up his nose at Jordan. 
 "What ! bathe in an Israelitish brook, when his own 
 country boasted noble rivers, with a reputation for 
 sanctity into the bargain ? In short, he preferred his 
 leprosy to such irregular medicine. But it happened, 
 by some immense fortuity, that one of his servants, 
 though an Oriental, was a friend, instead of a flatterer ; 
 and this sensible fellow said, * If the prophet told you 
 to do some great and difficult thing, to get rid of this 
 fearful malady, would not you do it, however distasteful ? 
 and can you hesitate when he merely says. Wash in the 
 Jordan, and be healed ? ' The general listened to good 
 sense, and cured himself. Your case is parallel. You 
 would take quantities of foul medicine ; you would 
 submit to some painful operation, if life and health 
 depended on it ; then why not do a small thing for a 
 great result ? You have only to take off an unnatural 
 machine which cripples your growing frame, and was 
 unknown to every one of the women whose forms in 
 Parian marble the world admires. Off with that mon- 
 strosity, and your cure is as certain as the Syrian gener- 
 al's ; though science, and not inspiration, dictates the 
 easy remedy."
 
 40 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 Rosa had listened impatiently, and now replied with 
 some warmth, " This is shockingly profane. The idea of 
 comparing yourself to Elisha, and me to a horrid leper ! 
 Much obliged ! Not that I know what a leper is." 
 
 " Come, come ! that is not fair," said Mr. Lusignan. 
 " lie only compared the situation, not the people." 
 
 " But, papa, the Bible is not to be dragged into the 
 common affairs of life." 
 
 " Then what on earth is the use of it ? " 
 
 " Oh, papa ! Well, it is not Sunday, but I have had a 
 sermon. This is the clergyman, and you are the com- 
 mentator — he ! he ! And so now let us go back from 
 divinity to medicine. I repeat " (this was the first time 
 she had said it) " that my other doctors give me real 
 prescriptions, written in hieroglyphics. You can't look, 
 at them without feeling there must be something in 
 them." 
 
 An angry spot rose on Christopher's cheek, but he 
 only said, " And are your other doctors satisfied with the 
 progress your disorder is making under their superin- 
 tcAidence ? " 
 
 " Perfectly ! Papa, tell him what they say, and I'll 
 find him their prescriptions." She went to a drawer, 
 and rummaged, affecting not to listen. 
 
 Lusignan complied. " First of all, sir, I must tell you 
 they are confident it is not the lungs, but the liver." 
 
 *' The what ! " shouted Christopher. 
 
 " Ah ! " screamed Eosa. " Oh, don't ! — bawling ! " 
 
 " And don't you screech," said her father, with a look 
 of misery and apprehension impartially distributed on 
 the resounding pair. 
 
 " You must have misunderstood them," murmured 
 Staines, in a voice that was now barely audible a yard 
 off. "The hemorrhage of a bright red color, and 
 expelled without effort or nausea ? "
 
 A SBIPLETON. 41 
 
 "From the liver — they have assured me again and 
 again," said Lusignan. 
 
 Christoplier's face still ■wore a look of blank amaze- 
 ment, till Eosa herself confirmed it positively. 
 
 Then he cast a look of agony upon her, and started up 
 in a passion, forgetting once more that his host abhorred 
 the sonorous. " Oh, shame ! shame ! " he cried, " that 
 the noble profession of medicine should be disgraced by 
 ignorance such as this." Then he said, sternly, " Sir, 
 do not mistake my motives'; but I decline to have any- 
 thing further to do with this case, until those two gentle- 
 men have been relieved of it ; and, as this is very harsh, 
 and on my part unprecedented, I will give you one reason 
 out of many I could give you. Sir, there is no road 
 from the liver to the throat by which blood can travel 
 in this way, defying the laws of gravity ; and they knew, 
 from the patient, that no strong expellent force has ever 
 been in operation. Their diagnosis, therefore, implies 
 agnosis, or ignorance too great to be forgiven. I will 
 not share my patient with two gentlemen who know so 
 little of medicine, and know nothing of anatomy, which 
 is the A B C of medicine. Can I see their prescriptions ? " 
 
 These were handed to him. '^ Good heavens ! " said 
 he, " have you taken all these ? " 
 
 « Most of them." 
 
 "Why, then you have drunk about two gallons of 
 unwholesome liquids, and eaten a pound or two of un- 
 wholesome solids. These medicines have co-operated 
 with the malady. The disorder lies, not in the hemor- 
 rhage, but in the precedent extravasation ; that is a 
 drain on the system ; and how is the loss to be supplied ? 
 Why, by taking a little more nourishment than before ; 
 there is no other way ; and probably Nature, left to 
 herself, might have increased your appetite to meet the 
 occasion. But those two worthies have struck thiU
 
 42 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 weapon out of Nature's hand ; they have peppered away 
 at the poor ill-used stomach with drugs and draughts, 
 not very deleterious I grant you, but all more or less 
 indigestible, and all tending, not to whet the appetite, 
 but to clog the stomach, or turn the stomach, or pester 
 the stomach, and so impair the appetite, and so co- 
 operate, indirectly, with the malady." 
 
 "This is good sense," said Lusignan. "I declare, I — 
 I wish I knew how to get rid of them." 
 
 " Oh, I'll do that, papa." 
 
 " No, no ; it is not worth a rumpus." 
 
 " I'll do it too politely for that. Christopher, you are 
 very clever — terribly clever. Whenever I threw their 
 medicines away, I was always a little better that day. 
 I will sacrifice them to you. It is a sacrifice. They are 
 both so kind and chatty, and don't grudge me hiero- 
 glyphics ; now you do." 
 
 She sat down and wrote two sweet letters to Dr. Snell 
 and Mr. Wyman, thanking them for the great attention 
 they had paid her ; but finding herself getting steadily 
 worse, in spite of all they had done for her, she pro- 
 posed to discontinue her medicines for a time, and try 
 change of air. 
 
 " And suppose they call to see whether you are chang- 
 ing the air ? " 
 
 " In that case, papa — ' not at home.' " 
 
 The notes were addressed and despatched. 
 
 Then Dr. Staines brightened up, and said to Lusignan, 
 " I am now happy to tell you that I have overrated the 
 malady. The sad change I see in Miss Lusignan is 
 partly due to the great bulk of unM^holesome esculents 
 she has been eating and drinking under the head of 
 medicines. These discontinued, she might linger on for 
 years, existing, though not living — the tight-laced can- 
 not be said to live. But if she would be healthy and
 
 A SIIVIPLETON. 43 
 
 happy, let her throw that diabolical machine into the 
 fire. It is no use asking her to loosen it ; she can't. 
 Once there, the temptation is too strong. Off with it, 
 and, take my word, you will be one of the healthiest and 
 most vigorous young ladies in Europe." 
 
 Rosa looked rueful, and almost sullen. She said she 
 had parted with her doctors for him, but she really could 
 not go about without stays. " They are as loose as they 
 can be. See ! " 
 
 "That part of the programme is disposed of," said 
 Christopher. " Please go on to No. 2. How about the 
 raw red line where the loose machine has sawed you ? " 
 
 " What red line ? No such thing ! Somebody or 
 other has been peeping in at my window. I'll have the 
 ivy cut down to-morrow." 
 
 " Simpleton ! " said Mr. Lusignan, angrily. " You 
 have let the cat out of the bag. There is such a mark, 
 then, and this extraordinary young man has discerned it 
 with the eye of science." 
 
 " He never discerned it at all," said Eosa, red as fire ; 
 " and, what is more, he never will." 
 
 " I don't want to. I should be very sorry to. I hope 
 it will be gone in a week." 
 
 "I wish 7/oti were gone now — exposing me in this 
 cruel way," said Rosa, angry with herself for having 
 said an idiotic thing, and furious with him for having 
 made her say it. 
 
 " Oh, Rosa ! " said Christopher, in a voice of tenderest 
 reproach. 
 
 But Mr. Lusignan interfered promptly. "Rosa, no 
 noise. I will not have you snapping at your best friend 
 and mine. If you are excited, you had better retire to 
 your own room and compose yourself. I hate a clamor." 
 
 Rosa made a wry face at this rebuke, and then began 
 to cry quietly.
 
 44 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 Every tear was like a drop of blood from Christopher's 
 heart. "Pray don't scold her, sir," said he, ready to 
 snivel himself. " She meant nothing unkind : it is only 
 her pretty sprightly way ; and she did not really imagine 
 a love so reverent as mine " — 
 
 " Don't you interfere between my father and me," said 
 this reasonable young lady, now in an ungovernable 
 state of feminine irritability. 
 
 "No, Eosa," said Christopher, humbly. "Mr. Lusi- 
 gnan," said he, " I hope you will tell her that, from the 
 very first, I was unwilling to enter on this subject with 
 her. Neither she nor I can forget my double character. 
 I have not said half as much to her as I ought, being her 
 physician ; and yet you see I have said more than she 
 can bear from me, who, she knows, love her and revere 
 her. Then, once for all, do pray let me put this deli- 
 cate matter into your hands : it is a case for parental 
 authority." 
 
 " Unf atherly tyranny, that means," said Eosa. " What 
 business have gentlemen interfering in such things ? It 
 is unheard of. I will not submit to it, even from papa." 
 
 "Well, you need not scream at me," said Mr. Lusi- 
 gnan ; and he shrugged his shoulders to Staines. " She 
 is impracticable, you see. If I do my duty, there will 
 be a disturbance." 
 
 Now this roused the bile of Dr. Staines. "What, 
 sir ! " said he, " you could separate her and me by your 
 authority, here in this very room; and yet, when her 
 life is at stake, you abdicate ! You could part her from 
 a man who loved her with every drop of his heart, — and 
 she said she loved him, or, at all events, preferred him 
 to others, — and you cannot part her from a miserable 
 corset, although you see in her poor wasted face that it 
 is carrying her to the churchyard. In that case, sir, 
 there is but one thing for you to do, — withdraw your
 
 A SIMPLETON. 46 
 
 opposition and let me marry her. As lier lover I am 
 
 powerless ; but invest me with a husband's authority, 
 and you will soon see the roses return to her cheek, and 
 her elastic figure expanding, and her eye beaming with 
 health and the happiness that comes of perfect health." 
 
 Mr. Lusignan made an answer neither of his hearers 
 expected. He said, " I have a great mind to take you 
 at your word. I am too old and fond of quiet to drive a 
 Simpleton in single harness." 
 
 This contemptuous speech, and, above all, the word 
 Simpleton, which had been applied to her pretty freely 
 by young ladies at school, and always galled her terribly, 
 inflicted so intolerable a wound on Eosa's vanity, that 
 she was ready to biu'st: on that, of course, her stays 
 contributed their mite of physical uneasiness. Thus 
 irritated mind and body, she burned to strike in retm-n ; 
 and as she could not slap her father in the presence of 
 another, she gave it Christopher back-handed. 
 
 " You can turn me out of doors," said she, " if you are 
 tired of your daughter, but I am not such a simpleton as 
 to marry a t3'rant. No ; he has shown the cloven foot 
 in time. A husband's authority, indeed!" Then she 
 turned her hand, and gave it him direct. " You told me 
 a different story when you were paying your court to 
 me ; then you were to be my servant, — all hypocritical 
 sweetness. You had better go and marry a Circassian 
 slave. They don't wear stays, and they do wear trou- 
 sers ; so she will be iinfeminine enough, even for you. 
 No English lady would let her husband dictate to her 
 about such a thing. I can have as many husbands as I 
 like, without falling into the clutches of a tyrant. You 
 are a rude, indelicate — And so please understand it is 
 all over between you and me." 
 
 Both her auditors stood aghast, for she uttered this 
 conclusion with a dignity of which the opening gav3 ny
 
 46 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 promise, and the occasion, weighed in masculine balances, 
 was not wortliy. 
 
 " You do not mean that. You cannot mean it," said 
 Dr. Staines, aghast. 
 
 "I do mean it," said she, firmly; "and, if you are a 
 gentleman, you will not compel me to say it twice — 
 three times, I mean." 
 
 At this dagger-stroke Christopher turned very pale, 
 but he maintained his dignity. "I am a gentleman," 
 said he, quietly, "and a very unfortunate one. Good- 
 by, sir; thank you kindly. Good-by, Rosa; God bless 
 you ! Oh, pray take a thought ! Kemember, your life 
 and death are in your own hand now. I am powerless." 
 
 And he left the house in sorrow, and just, but not 
 pettish, indignation. 
 
 When he was gone, father and daughter looked at each 
 other, and there was the silence that succeeds a storm. 
 
 Rosa, feeling the most uneasy, was the first to express 
 her satisfaction. " There, he is gone, and I am glad of 
 it. Now you and I shall never quarrel again. I was 
 quite right. Such impertinence ! Such indelicacy ! A 
 fine prospect for me if I had married such a man ! How- 
 ever, he is gone, and so there's an end of it. The idea ! 
 telling a young lady, before her father, she is tight-laced ! 
 If you had not been there I could have forgiven him. 
 But I am not ; it is a story. Now," suddenly exalting 
 her voice, " I know you believe him." 
 
 "I say nothing," whispered papa, hoping to still her 
 by example. This ruse did not succeed. 
 
 " But you look volumes," cried she : " and I can't bear 
 it. I won't bear it. If you don't believe me, ask my 
 maid." And with this felicitous speech, she rang the 
 bell. 
 
 " You'll break the wire if you don't mind," suggested 
 her father, piteously.
 
 A SIMPLETON. 47 
 
 •' All the better ! "Why should not wires be broken as 
 well as my heart ? Oh, here she is ! Now, Harriet, 
 come here." 
 
 " Yes, miss." 
 
 " And tell the truth. Am I tight-laced ? " 
 
 Harriet looked in her face a moment to see what was 
 required of her, and then said, " That you are not, miss. 
 I never dressed a young lady as wore 'em easier than 
 you do." 
 
 " There, papa ! That will do, Harriet." 
 
 Harriet retired as far as the keyhole ; she saw some- 
 thing was up. 
 
 "Now," said Eosa, "you see I was right; and, after 
 all, it was a match you did not approve. Well, it is all 
 over, and now you may write to your favorite, Colonel 
 Bright. If he comes here, I'll box his old ears. I hate 
 him. I hate them all. Forgive your wayward girl. I'll 
 stay with you all my days. I dare say that will not be 
 long, now I have quarrelled with my guardian angel; 
 and all for what ? Papa ! papa ! how can you sit there 
 and not speak me one word of comfort ? ' Sivipleton ? ' 
 Ah ! that I am to throw away a love a queen is scarcely 
 worthy of ; and all for what ? Really, if it wasn't for 
 the ingratitude and wickedness of the thing, it is too 
 laughable. Ha ! ha ! — oh ! oh ! oh ! — ha ! ha ! ha ! " 
 
 And off she went into hysterics, and began to gulp 
 and choke frightfully. 
 
 Her father cried for help in dismay. In ran Harriet, 
 saw, and screamed, but did not lose her head ; this vera- 
 cious person whipped a pair of scissors off the table, and 
 cut the young lady's stay-laces directly. Then there was 
 a burst of imprisoned beauty ; a deep, deep sigh of 
 relief came from a bosom that would have done honor 
 to Diana ; and the scene soon concluded with fits of 
 harmless weeping, renewed at intervals.
 
 48 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 Wlien it liacl settled down to this, her father, to soothe 
 her, said he would write to Dr. Staines, and bring about 
 a reconciliation, if she liked. 
 
 "No," said she, "you shall kill me sooner. I should 
 die of shame." 
 
 She added, "Oh, pray, from this hour, never mention 
 his name to me." 
 
 And then she had another cry. 
 
 Mr. Lusignan was a sensible man: he dropped the 
 subject for the present ; but he made up his mind to one 
 thing — that he would never part with Dr. Staines as a 
 physician. 
 
 Next day Kosa kept her own room until dinner-time, 
 ftnd was as unhappy as she deserved to be. She spent 
 her time in sewing on stiff flannel linings and crying. 
 She half hoped Christopher would write to her, so that 
 she might write back that she forgave him. But not a 
 line. 
 
 At half-past six her volatile mind took a turn, real or 
 affected. She would cry no more for an ungrateful fel- 
 low, — ungrateful for not seeing through the stone walls 
 how she had been employed all the morning ; and making 
 it up. So she bathed her red eyes, made a .great altera- 
 tion in her dress, and came dancing into the room hum- 
 ming an Italian ditty. 
 
 As they were sitting together in the dining-room after 
 dinner, two letters came by the same post to Mr. Lusignan 
 from Mr. Wyman and Dr. Snell. 
 
 Mr. AVyman's letter : — 
 
 Dear Sir, — lam sorry to hear from Miss Lusignan that 
 
 she intends to discontinue medical advice. The disorder was 
 
 progressing favorably, and nothing to be feared, under proper 
 
 treatment. 
 
 Yours, etc.
 
 A SIMPLETON". 49 
 
 Dr. Snell's letter: — 
 
 Dear Sir, — Miss Lusignan has written to me somewhat 
 impatiently, and seems disposed to dispense with my visits. I 
 do not, however, think it right to withdraw without telling you 
 candidly that this is an unwise step. Your daughter's health 
 is in a very precarious condition. 
 
 Yours, etc. 
 
 Rosa burst out laughing. "I have nothing to fear, 
 and I'm on the brink of the grave. That comes of 
 writing without a consultation. If they had written 
 at one table, I should have been neither well nor ill. 
 Poor Christopher ! " and her sweet face began to work 
 piteously. 
 
 " There ! there ! drink a glass of wine." 
 
 She did, and a tear with it, that ran into the glass like 
 lightning. 
 
 Warned by this that grief sat very near the bright, 
 hilarious surface, Mr. Lusignan avoided all emotional 
 subjects for the present. Next day, however, he told 
 her she might dismiss her lover, but no power should 
 make him dismiss his pet physician, unless her health 
 improved. 
 
 " I will not give you that excuse for inflicting him on 
 me again," said the young hypocrite. 
 
 She kept her word. She got better and better, stronger, 
 brighter, gayer. 
 
 She took to walking every day, and increasing the dis- 
 tance, till she could walk ten miles Avithout fatigue. 
 
 Her favorite walk was to a certain cliff tliat com- 
 manded a noble view of the sea. To get to it she must 
 pass through the town of Gravesend ; and we may be 
 sure she did not pass so often through that city without 
 some idea of meeting the lover she had used so ill, and 
 eliciting an apology from him. Sly puss ! 
 4
 
 60 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 When she had walked twenty times, or thereabouts, 
 through the town, and never seen him, she began to fear 
 she had offended liim past hope. Then she used to cry 
 at the end of every walk. 
 
 But by and by bodily health, vanity, and temper com- 
 bined to rouse the defiant spirit. Said she, "If he really 
 loved me, he would not take my word in such a hurry. 
 And besides, why does he not watch me, and find out 
 what I am doing, and where I walk ? " 
 
 At last she really began to persuade herself that she 
 was an ill-used and slighted girl. She was very angry at 
 times, and disconsolate at others ; a mixed state in which 
 hasty and impulsive young ladies commit lifelong follies. 
 
 Mr. Lusignan observed the surface only : he saw his 
 invalid daughter getting better every day, till at last she 
 became a picture of health and bodily vigor. Eelieved 
 of his fears, he troubled his head but little about Christo- 
 pher Staines. Yet he esteemed him, and had got to like 
 him ; but Eosa was a beauty, and could do better than 
 marry a struggling physician, however able. He launched 
 out into a little gayety, resumed his quiet dinner-parties ; 
 and, after some persuasion, took his now blooming 
 daughter to a ball given by the officers of Chatham. 
 
 She was the belle of the ball beyond dispute, and 
 danced with ethereal grace and athletic endurance. She 
 was madly fond of waltzing, and here she encountered 
 what she was pleased to call a divine dancer. It was a 
 Mr. Keginald Falcon, a gentleman who had retired to 
 the seaside to recruit his health and finances sore tried 
 by London and Paris. Falcon had run through his for- 
 tune, but had acquired, in the process, certain talents 
 which, as they cost the acquirer dear, so they sometimes 
 repay him, especially if he is not overburdened with 
 principle, and adopts the notion that, the world having 
 plucked him, he has a right to pluck the world. He
 
 A SIMPLETON. 51 
 
 could play billiards well, but never so well as when back- 
 ing himself for a heavy stake. He could shoot pigeons 
 well, and his shooting improved under that which makes 
 some marksmen miss — a heavy bet against the gun. 
 He danced to perfection ; and being a well-bred, experi- 
 enced, brazen, adroit fellow, who knew a little of every- 
 thing that was going, he had always plenty to say. 
 Above all, he had made a particular study of the fair 
 sex ; had met with many successes, many rebuffs ; and, 
 at last, by keen study of their minds, and a habit he had 
 acquired of watching their faces, and shifting his helm 
 accordingly, had learned the great art of pleasing them. 
 They admired his face ; to me, the short space between 
 his eyes and his hair, his aquiline nose, and thin straight 
 lips, suggested the bird of prey a little too much : but to 
 fair doves, born to be clutched, this similitude perhaj)s 
 was not very alarming, even if they observed it. 
 
 Eosa danced several times with him, and told him he 
 danced like an angel. He informed her that was because, 
 for once, he was dancing with an angel. She laughed 
 and blushed. He flattered deliciously, and it cost him 
 little ; for he fell in love with her that night, deeper 
 than he had ever been in his whole life of intrigue. He 
 asked leave to call on her : she looked a little shy at 
 that, and did not respond. He instantly withdrew his 
 proposal, with an apology and a sigh that raised her 
 pity. However, she was not a forward girl, even Avhen 
 excited by dancing and charmed with her partner; so 
 she left him to find his own way out of that difficulty. 
 
 He was not long about it. At the end of the next 
 waltz he asked her if he might venture to solicit an 
 introduction to her father. 
 
 " Oh, certainly," said she. " What a selfish girl I am ! 
 this is terribly dull for him." 
 
 The introduction being made, and Rosa being engaged
 
 52 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 for the next three dances, Mr. Falcon sat by Mr. Lusignan 
 and entertained him. For this little piece of apparent 
 self-denial he was paid in various coin : Lusignan found 
 out he was the son of an old acquaintance, and so the 
 door of Kent Villa opened to him ; meantime, Rosa 
 Lusignan never passed him, even in the arms of a cav- 
 alry officer, without bestowing a glance of approval and 
 gratitude on him. " What a good-hearted young man ! " 
 thought she. " How kind of him to amuse papa ; and 
 now I can stay so much longer." 
 
 Falcon followed up the dance by a call, and was infi- 
 nitely agreeable : followed up the call by another, and 
 admired Eosa with so little disguise that Mr. Lusignan 
 said to her, " I think you have made a conquest. His 
 father had considerable estates in Essex. I presume he 
 inherits them." 
 
 " Oh, never mind his estates," said Eosa, " he dances 
 like an angel, and gossips charmingly, and is so nice." 
 
 Christopher Staines pined for this girl in silence : his 
 fine frame got thinner, his pale cheek paler, as she got 
 rosier and rosier ; and how ? Why, by following the 
 very advice she had snubbed him for giving her. At 
 last, he heard she had been the belle of a ball, and 
 that she had been seen walking miles from home, and 
 blooming as a Hebe. Then his deep anxiety ceased, his 
 pride stung him furiously ; he began to think of his own 
 value, and to struggle with all his might against his 
 deep love. Sometimes he would even inveigh against 
 her, and call her a fickle, ungrateful girl, capable of no 
 strong passion but vanity. Many a hard term he applied 
 to her in his sorrowful solitude ; but not a word when 
 he had a hearer. He found it hard to rest: he kept 
 dashing up to London and back. He plunged furiously 
 into study. He groaned and sighed, and fought the 
 hard and bitter fight that is too often the lot of the deep
 
 A SEMPLETON. 53 
 
 that love the shallow. Strong, but single-hearted, no 
 other lady could comfort him. He turned from female 
 company, and shunned all for the fault of one. 
 
 The inward contest wore him. He began to look very 
 thin and wan ; and all for a Simpleton ! 
 
 Mr. Falcon prolonged his stay in the neighborhood, 
 and drove a handsome dogcart over twice a week to visit 
 Mr. Lusignan. 
 
 He used to call on that gentleman at four o'clock, for 
 at that hour Mr. Lusignan was always out, and his 
 daughter always at home. 
 
 She was at home at that hour because she took her 
 long walks in the morning. "V\Tiile her new admirer 
 Avas in bed, or dressing, or breakfasting, she was spring- 
 ing along the road with all the elasticity of youth, and 
 health, and native vigor, braced by daily exercise. 
 
 Twenty-one of these walks did she take, with no other 
 result than health and appetite ; but the twenty-second 
 was more fertile — extremely fertile. Starting later than 
 usual, she passed through Gravesend while Reginald 
 Falcon was smoking at his front window. He saw her, 
 and instantly doffed his dressing-gown and donned his 
 coat to follow her. He was madly in love with her, and 
 being a man who had learned to shoot pigeons and 
 opportunities flying, he instantly resolved to join hei 
 in her walk, get her clear of the town, by the sea-beach, 
 where beauty melts, and propose to her. Yes, marriage 
 had not been hitherto his habit, but this girl was peer- 
 less : he was pledged by honor and gratitude to Phoebe 
 Dale ; but hang all that now. " No man should marry 
 one woman when he loves another ; it is dishonorable." 
 He got into the street and followed her as fast as he 
 could without running. 
 
 It was not so easy to catch her. Ladies are not built 
 for running ; but a fine, tall, symmetrical girl who has
 
 64 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 practised walking fast can cover the ground wonderfully 
 in walking — if she chooses. It was a sight to see how 
 Rosa Lusignan squared her shoulders and stepped out 
 from the waist like a Canadian girl skating, while her 
 elastic foot slapped the pavement as she spanked along. 
 
 She had nearly cleared the town before Falcon came 
 up with her. 
 
 He was hardly ten yards from her when an unexpected 
 incident occurred. She whisked round the corner of 
 Bird Street, and ran plump against Christopher Staines ; 
 in fact, she darted into his arms, and her face almost 
 touched the breast she had wounded so deeply.
 
 A SESIPLETON. 65 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Rosa cried " Oli ! " and put up her hands to her face 
 in lovely confusion, coloring like a peony. 
 
 " I beg your pardon," said Christopher, stiffly, but in a 
 voice that trembled. 
 
 " No," said Rosa, " it was I ran against you. I walk 
 so fast now. Hope I did not hurt you." 
 
 "Hurt me?" 
 
 " Well, then, frighten you ? " 
 
 No answer. 
 
 " Oh, please don't quarrel with me in the street^'' said 
 Rosa, cunningly implying that he was the quarrelsome 
 one. " I am going on the beach. Good-by ! " This 
 adieu she uttered softly, and in a hesitating tone that 
 belied it. She started off, however, but much more 
 slowly than she was going before ; and, as she went, she 
 turned her head with infinite grace, and kept looking 
 askant down at the pavement two yards behind her : 
 moreover she went close to the wall, and left room at 
 her side for another to walk. 
 
 Christopher hesitated a moment ; but the mute invita- 
 tion, so arch yet timid, so pretty, tender, sly, and 
 womanly, was too much for him, as it has generally 
 proved for males, and the philosopher's foot was soon in 
 the very place to which the Simpleton with the mere tail 
 of her eye directed it. 
 
 They walked along, side by side, in silence, Staines agi- 
 tated, gloomy, confused, Rosa radiant and glowing, yet 
 not knowing what to say for herself, and wanting Chris- 
 topher to begin. So they walked along without a word.
 
 66 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 Falcon followed them at some distance to see whether 
 it was an admirer or only an acquaintance. A lover he 
 never dreamed of ; she had shown such evident pleasure 
 in his company, and had received his visits alone so 
 constantly. 
 
 However, when the pair had got to the beach, and were 
 walking slower and slower, he felt a pang of rage and 
 jealousy, turned on his heel with an audible curse, and 
 found Phoebe Dale a few yards behind him with a white 
 face and a peculiar look. He knew what the look 
 meant; he had brought it to that faithful face before 
 to-day. 
 
 "You are better. Miss Lusignan." 
 
 " Better, Dr. Staines ? I am health itself, thanks to — 
 hem ! " 
 
 " Our estrangement has agreed with you ? " This very 
 bitterly. 
 
 " You know very well it is not that. Oh, please don't 
 make me cry in the streets." 
 
 This humble petition, or rather meek threat, led to 
 another long silence. It was continued till they had 
 nearly reached the shore. But, meantime, Eosa's furtive 
 eyes scanned Christopher's face, and her conscience smote 
 her at the signs of sufLcring. She felt a desire to beg 
 his pardon with deep humility ; but she suppressed that 
 weakness. She hung her head with a pretty, sheepish 
 air, and asked him if he could not think of something 
 agreeable to say to one after deserting one so long. 
 
 '' I am afraid not," said Christopher, bluntly. " I have 
 an awkward habit of speaking the truth; and some 
 people can't bear that, not even when it is spoken for 
 their good." 
 
 "That depends on temper, and nerves, and things," 
 said Rosa, deprecatingly ; then softly, "I could bear 
 anything from you now."
 
 A SIMPLETON". 57 
 
 " Indeed ! " said Christoplier, grimly. " Well, then, I 
 hear you had no sooner got rid of your old lover, for 
 loving 3'ou too well and telling you the truth, than you 
 took up another, — some flimsy man of fashion, who 
 will tell you any lie you like." 
 
 " It is a story, a wicked story," cried Eosa, thoroughly 
 alarmed. ^' Me, a lover ! He dances like an angel ; I 
 can't help that." 
 
 " Are his visits at your house like angels' — few and 
 far between ? " And the true lover's brow lowered black 
 upon her for the first time, 
 
 Eosa changed color, and her eyes fell a moment. 
 " Ask papa," she said. " His father was an old friend 
 of papa's." • 
 
 " Eosa, you are prevaricating. Young men do not call 
 on old gentlemen when there is an attractive young lady 
 in the house." 
 
 The argument was getting too close ; so Eosa operated 
 a diversion. "So," said she, with a sudden air of lofty 
 disdain, swiftly and adroitly assumed, "you have had me 
 watched ? " 
 
 " Not I ; I only hear what people say." 
 
 " Listen to gossip and not have me watched ! That 
 shows how little you really cared for me. Well, if 
 you had, you would have made a little discovery, that 
 is all." ' ■ 
 
 " Should I ? " said Christopher, puzzled. " ^Vhat ? " 
 
 " I shall not tell you. Think what you please. Yes, 
 sir, you would have found out that I take long walks 
 every day, all alone ; and what is more, that I walk 
 through Gravesend, hoping — like a goose — that some- 
 body really loved me, and would meet me, and beg my 
 pardon ; and if he had, I should have told him it was 
 only my tongue, and my nerves, and things ; my heart 
 was his, and my gratitude. And after all, what do words
 
 68 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 signify, when I am a good, obedient girl at bottom ? So 
 that is what you have lost by not condescending to look 
 after me. Fine love ! — Christoj)her, beg my pardon." 
 
 "May I inquire for what ? " 
 
 " Why, for not understanding me ; for not knowing 
 that I should be sorry the moment you were gone. I 
 took them oil the very next day, to please you." 
 
 " Took off whom ? — Oh, I understand. You did ? 
 Then you are a good girl." 
 
 " Didn't I tell you I was ? A good, obedient girl, and 
 anything but a flirt." 
 
 "I don't say that." 
 
 "But I do. Don't interrupt. It is to your good 
 advice J owe my health ; and to love anybody but you, 
 when I owe you my love and my life, I must be a heart- 
 less, ungrateful, worthless — Oh, Christopher, forgive 
 me ! No, no ; I mean, beg my pardon." 
 
 "I'll do both," said Christoijher, taking her in his 
 arms. "I beg your pardon, and I forgive you." 
 
 Rosa leaned her head tenderly on his shoulder, and 
 began to sigh. " Oh, dear, dear ! I am a wicked, foolish 
 girl, not fit to walk alone." 
 
 On this admission, Christopher spoke out, and urged 
 her to put an end to all these unhappy misunderstandings, 
 and to his new torment, jealousy, by marrying him. 
 
 " And so I would this very minute, if papa would con- 
 sent. But," said she, slyly, " you never can be so foolish 
 to wish it. What! a wise man like you marry a 
 simpleton ! " 
 
 " Did I ever call you that ? " asked Christopher, 
 reproachfully. 
 
 " No, dear ; but you are the only one who has not ; and 
 perhaps I should lose even the one, if you were to marry 
 me. Oh, husbands are not so polite as lovers ! I have 
 observed that, simpleton or not."
 
 A SIMPLETON. 59 
 
 Christopher assured her that he took quite a different 
 view of her character ; he believed her to be too profound 
 for shallow people to read all in a moment : he even 
 intimated that he himself had experienced no little diffi- 
 culty in understanding her at odd times. " And so," said 
 he, "they turn round upon you, and instead of saying, 
 ' We are too shallow to fathom you,' they pretend you 
 are a simpleton." 
 
 This solution of the mystery had never occurred to 
 Rosa, nor indeed was it likely to occur to any creature 
 less ingenious than a lover : it pleased her hugely ; her 
 fine eyes sparkled, and she nestled closer still to the 
 strong arm that was to parry every ill, from mortal 
 disease to galling epithets. 
 
 She listened with a willing ear to all his reasons, his 
 hopes, his fears, and, when they reached her father's 
 door, it was settled that he should dine there that day, 
 and urge his suit to her father after dinner. She would 
 implore the old gentleman to listen to it favorably. 
 
 The lovers parted, and Christopher went home like 
 one who has awakened from a hideous dream to daylight 
 and happiness. 
 
 He had not gone far before he met a dashing dogcart, 
 driven by an exquisite. He turned to look after it, and 
 saw it drive up to Kent Villa. 
 
 In a moment he divined his rival, and a sickness of 
 heart came over him. But he recovered himself directly, 
 and said, " If tlia.t is the fellow, she will not receive him 
 now." 
 
 She did receive him though : at all events, the 
 dogcart stood at the door, and its master remained 
 inside. 
 
 Christopher stood, and counted the minutes : five, ten, 
 fifteen, twenty minutes, and still the dogcart stood there. 
 
 It was more than he could bear. He turned savagely,
 
 60 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 and strode back to Gravesend, resolving that all tliis 
 torture should end that night, one way or other. 
 
 Phoebe Dale was the daughter of a farmer in Essex, 
 and one of the happiest young women in England till 
 she knew Reginald Ealcon, Esq. 
 
 She was reared on wholesome food, in wholesome air, 
 and used to churn butter, make bread, cook a bit now 
 and then, cut out and sew all her own dresses, get up hei 
 own linen, make hay, ride anything on four legs ; and, 
 for all that, was a great reader, and taught in the Sunday 
 school to oblige the vicar ; wrote a neat hand, and was a 
 good arithmetician, kept all the house accounts and farm 
 accounts. She was a musician, too, — not profound, but 
 very correct. She would take her turn at the harmonium 
 in church, and, when she was there, you never heard a 
 wrong note in the bass, nor an inappropriate flourish, 
 nor bad time. She could sing, too, but never would, 
 except her part in a psalm. Her voice was a deep con- 
 tralto, and she chose to be ashamed of this heavenly 
 organ, because a pack of envious girls had giggled, and 
 said it was like a man's. 
 
 In short, her natural ability and the range and variety 
 of her useful accomplishments were considerable; not 
 that she was a prodigy ; but she belonged to a small class 
 of women in this island who are not too high to use their 
 arms, nor too low to cultivate their minds ; and, having 
 a faculty and a habit deplorably rare amongst her sex, 
 viz.. Attention, she had profited by her miscellaneous 
 advantages. 
 
 Her figure and face both told her breed at once : here 
 was an old English pastoral beauty ; not the round-backed, 
 narrow-chested cottager, but the well-fed, erect rustic, 
 with broad, full bust and massive shoulder, and arm as 
 hard as a rock with health and constant use; a hand
 
 " 6U IT IS A LAUV THIS TIME.''
 
 A SESIPLETON. 61 
 
 finely cut, though neither small nor very white, and jvist 
 a little hard inside, compared with Luxury's soft palm ; 
 a face honest, fair, and rather large than small; not 
 beautiful, but exceedingly comely ; a complexion not 
 pink and white, but that delicately blended brickdusty 
 color, which tints the whole cheek in fine gradation, out- 
 lasts other complexions twenty years, and beautifies the 
 true Northern, even in old age. Gray, limpid, honest, 
 point-blank, searching eyes ; hair true nut-brown, with- 
 out a shade of red or black ; and a high, smooth forehead, 
 full of sense. Across it ran one deep wrinkle that did 
 not belong to her youth. That wrinkle was the brand of 
 trouble, the line of agony. It had come of loving above 
 her, yet below her, and of loving an egotist. 
 
 Three years before our tale commenced, a gentleman's 
 horse ran away with him, and threw him on a heap of 
 stones by the roadside, not very far from Farmer Dale's 
 gate. The farmer had him taken in. The doctor said 
 he must not be moved. He was insensible ; his cheek 
 like delicate wax ; his fair hair like silk stained with 
 blood. He became Phoebe's patient, and, in due course, 
 her convalescent : his pale, handsome face and fasci- 
 nating manners gained one charm more from weakness ; 
 his vices were in abeyance. 
 
 The womanly nurse's heart yearned over her child; 
 for he was feeble as a child; and, when he got well 
 enough to amuse his weary hours by making love to her, 
 and telling her a pack of arrant lies, she was a ready 
 dupe. He was to marry her as soon as ever his old 
 uncle died, and left him the means, etc., etc. At last he 
 got well enough to leave her, and went away, her open 
 admirer and secret lover. He borrowed twenty pounds 
 of her the day he left. 
 
 He used to write her charming letters, and feed the 
 flame ; but one day her father sent her up to London, on
 
 62 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 his own business, all of a sudden, and she called on Mr. 
 Falcon at his real address. She found he did not live 
 there — only received letters. However, half-a-crown 
 soon bought his real address, and thither Phoebe pro- 
 ceeded with a troubled heart, for she suspected that her 
 true lover was in debt or trouble, and obliged to hide. 
 Well, he must be got out of it, and hide at the farm 
 meantime. 
 
 So the loving girl knocked at the door, asked for Mr. 
 Falcon, and was shown in to a lady rather showily dressed, 
 who asked her business. 
 
 Phoebe Dale stared at her, and then turned pale as 
 ashes. She was paralyzed, and could not find her tongue. 
 
 " Why, what is the matter now ? " said the other, 
 sharply. 
 
 "Are you married to E-eginald Falcon ? " 
 
 " Of course I am. Look at my wedding-ring." 
 
 "Then I am not wanted here," faltered Phoebe, ready 
 to sink on the floor. 
 
 " Certainly not, if you are one of the bygones," said 
 the woman, coarsely ; and Phoebe Dale waited to hear no 
 more, but found her way, Heaven knows how, into the 
 street, and there leaned, half-fainting, on a rail, till a 
 policeman came, and told her she had been drinking, 
 and suggested a cool cell as the best cure. 
 
 " Not drink ; only a breaking heart," said she, in her 
 low, mellow voice that few could resist. 
 
 He got her a glass of water, drove away the boys that 
 congregated directly, and she left the street. But she 
 soon came back again, and waited- about for Reginald 
 Falcon. 
 
 It was night when he appeared. She seized him by 
 the breast, and taxed him with his villany. 
 
 What with her iron grasp, pale face, and flashing eyes, 
 he lost his cool impudence, and blurted out excuses. It
 
 A SIMPLETON. 63 
 
 was an old and unfortunate connection ; he would give 
 the world to dissolve it, if he could do it like a gentleman. 
 
 Phcebe told him to please himself : he must part with 
 one or the other. 
 
 " Don't talk nonsense," said this man of brass ; " I'll 
 un-Falcon her on the spot." 
 
 " Very well," said Phoebe. " I am going home ; and, 
 if you are not there by to-morrow at noon " — She said 
 no more, but looked a great deal. Then she departed, 
 and refused him her hand at parting. " We will see 
 about that by and by," said she. 
 
 At noon my lord came down to the farm, and, unfor- 
 tunately for Phoebe, played the penitent so skilfully for 
 about a month, that she forgave him, and loved him all 
 the more for having so nearly parted with him. 
 
 Her peace was not to endure long. He was detected 
 in an intrigue in the very village. 
 
 The insult struck so home that Phoebe herself, to her 
 parents' satisfaction, ordered him out of the house at 
 once. 
 
 But, when he was gone, she had fits of weeping, and 
 could settle to nothing for a long time. 
 
 Months had elapsed, and she was getting a sort of dull 
 tranquillity, when, one evening, taking a walk she had 
 often with him, and mourning her solitude and wasted 
 affection, he waylaid her, and clung to her knees, and 
 shed crocodile tears on her hands, and, after a long 
 resistance, violent at first, but fainter and fainter, got 
 her in his power again, and that so completely that she 
 met him several times by night, being ashamed to be 
 seen with him in those parts by day. 
 
 This ended in fresh promises of marriage, and in a 
 constant correspondence by letter. This pest knew 
 exactly how to talk to a woman, and how to write to one. 
 His letters fed the unhappy flame ; and, mind you, he
 
 64 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 sometimes deceived himself, and thought he loved her ; 
 but it was only himself he loved. She was an invaluable 
 lover ; a faithful, disinterested friend ; hers was a vile 
 bargain ; his, an excellent one, and he clung to it. 
 
 And so they went on. She detected him in another 
 infidelity, and reproached him bitterly ; but she had no 
 longer the strength to break with him. Nevertheless, 
 this time she had the sense to make a struggle. She 
 implored him, on her very knees, to show her a little 
 mercy in return for all her love. " For pity's sake, leave 
 me ! " she cried. " You are strong, and I am weak. You 
 can end it forever, and pray do. You don't want me ; 
 you don't value me : then, leave me, once and for all, 
 and end this hell you keep me in." 
 
 No; he could not, or he would not, leave her alone. 
 Look at a bird's wings ! — how like an angel's ! Yet so 
 vile a thing as a bit of birdlime subdues them utterly ; 
 and such was the fascinating power of this mean man 
 over this Avorthy woman. She was a reader, a thinker, 
 a model of respectability, industry, and sense ; a business- 
 woman, keen and practical ; could encounter sharp hands 
 in sharp trades ; could buy or sell hogs, calves, or beasts 
 with any farmer or butcher in the country, yet no match 
 for a cunning fool. She had enshrined an idol in her 
 heart, and that heart adored it, and clung to it, though 
 the superior head saw through it, dreaded it, despised it. 
 
 No wonder three years of this had drawn a tell-tale 
 wrinkle across the polished brow. 
 
 Phoebe Dale had not received a letter for some days ; 
 that roused her suspicion and stung her jealousy ; she 
 came up to London by fast train, and down to Gravesend 
 directly. 
 
 She had a thick veil that concealed her features ; and 
 with a little inquiring and bribing, she soon found out
 
 A SIMPLETON. 65 
 
 that Mr. Falcon was there with a showy dogcart. "Ah!" 
 thought Phoebe, " he has won a little money at play or 
 pigeon-shooting ; so now he has no need of me." 
 
 She took the lodgings opposite him, but observed 
 nothing till this very morning, when she saw him throw 
 off his dressing-goAvn all in a hurry and fling on his coat. 
 She tied on her bonnet as rapidly, and followed him, 
 until she discovered the object of his pursuit. It was a 
 surprise to her, and a puzzle, to see another man step in, 
 as if to take her part. But as Reginald still followed the 
 loitering pair, she followed Reginald, till he turned and 
 found her at his heels, white and lowering. 
 
 She confronted him in threatening silence for some 
 time, during which he prepared his defence. 
 
 " So it is a ladtj this time," said she, in her low, r'lch 
 voice, sternly. 
 
 " Is it ? " 
 
 "Yes, and I should say she is bespoke — that tall, fine- 
 built gentleman. But I suppose you care no more for 
 his feelings than you do for mine." 
 
 " Phoebe," said the egotist, " I will not try to deceive 
 you. You have often said you are my true friend." 
 
 " And I think I have proved it." 
 
 " That you have. Well, then, be my true friend now. 
 I am in love — really in love — this time. You and I 
 only torment each other ; let us part friends. There are 
 plenty of farmers in Essex that would jump at you. As 
 for me, I'll tell you the truth ; I have run through every 
 farthing; my estate mortgaged beyond its value — two or 
 three writs out against me — that is why I slipped doAvn 
 here. My only chance is to marry ]\Ioney. Her father 
 knows I have land, and he knows nothing about the 
 mortgages ; she is his only daughter. Don't stand in 
 my way, that is a good girl ; be my friend, as you always 
 were. Hang it all, Phoebe, can't you say a word to a
 
 66 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 fellow that is driven into a corner, instead of glaring at 
 me like that ? There ! I know it is ungrateful ; but what 
 can a fellow do ? I must live like a gentleman or else 
 take a dose of prussic acid; you don't want to drive me 
 to that. Why, you proposed to part, last time, yourself." 
 
 She gave him one majestic, indescribable look, that 
 made even his callous heart quiver, and turned away. 
 
 Then the scamp admired her for despising him, and 
 could not bear to lose her. He followed her, and put 
 forth all those powers of persuading and soothing, which 
 had so often proved irresistible. But this time it was in 
 vain. The insult was too savage, and his egotism too 
 brutal, for honeyed phrases to blind her. 
 
 After enduring it a long time with a silent shudder, 
 she turned and shook him fiercely off her like some 
 poisonous reptile. 
 
 " Do you want me to kill you ? I'd liever kill myself 
 for loving such a thing as thou. Go thy ways, man, and 
 let me go mine." In her passion she dropjjed her culti- 
 vation for once, and went back to the thou and thee of 
 her grandam. 
 
 He colored up and looked spiteful enough ; but he soon 
 recovered his cynical egotism, and went off whistling an 
 operatic passage. 
 
 She crept to her lodgings, and buried her face in her 
 pillow, and rocked herself to and fro for hours in the 
 bitterest agony the heart can feel, groaning over her 
 great affection wasted, flung into the dirt. 
 
 While she was thus, she heard a little commotion. 
 She came to the window and saw Falcon, exquisitely 
 dressed, drive off in his dogcart, attended by the accla- 
 mations of eight boys. She saw at a glance he was gone 
 courting; her knees gave way under her, and, such is 
 the power of the mind, this stalwart girl lay weak as 
 water on the sofa, and had not the power to go home,
 
 A SIMPLETON. 67 
 
 though just then she had but one wish, one hope — to 
 see her idol's face no more, nor hear his wheedling 
 tongue, that had ruined her peace. 
 
 The exquisite Mr. Falcon was received by Rosa Lusi- 
 gnan with a certain tremor that flattered his hopes. He 
 told her, in charming language, how he had admired her 
 at first sight, then esteemed her, then loved her. 
 
 She blushed and panted, and showed more than once a 
 desire to interrupt him, but was too polite. She heard 
 him out with rising dismay, and he offered her his hand 
 and heart. 
 
 But by this time she had made up her mind what to 
 say. " Mr. Falcon ! " she cried, " how can you speak 
 to me in this way ? Why, I am engaged. Didn't j'ou 
 know ? " 
 
 *' No ; I am sure you are not, or you would never have 
 given me the encouragement you have." 
 
 " Oh, all engaged young ladies flirt — a little ; and 
 everybody here knows I am engaged to Dr. Staines." 
 
 " Why, I never saw* him here." 
 
 Rosa's tact was a quality that came and went ; so she 
 blushed, and faltered out, "We had a little tiff, as lovers 
 will." 
 
 " And you did me the honor to select me as cat's-paw 
 to bring him on again. Was not that rather heartless ? " 
 
 Rosa's fitful tact returned to her. 
 
 '' Oh, sir, do not think so ill of me. I am not heartless, 
 I am only unwise ; and you are so superior to the people 
 about you; I could not help appreciating you, and I 
 thought you knew I was engaged, and so I was less on 
 my guard. I hope I shall not lose your esteem, though 
 I have no right to anything more. Ah ! I see by your 
 face I have behaved very ill : pray forgive me." 
 
 And with this she turned on the waters of the Nile, 
 better known to you, perhaps, as " crocodile tears."
 
 68 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 Falcon was a gentleman on the surface, and knew 
 he should only make matters worse by quarrelling with 
 her. So he ground his teeth, and said, " May your own 
 heart never feel the pangs you have inflicted. I shall 
 love you and remember you till my dying day." 
 
 He bowed ceremoniously and left her. 
 
 " Ay," said he to himself, " I will remember you, you 
 heartless jilt, and the man you have jilted me for. 
 Staines is his d d name, is it ? " 
 
 He drove back crestfallen, bitter, and, for once in his 
 life, heart-sick, and drew up at his lodgings. Here he 
 found attendants waiting to receive him. 
 
 A sheriff's ofiicer took his dogcart and horse under a 
 judgment; the disturbance this caused collected a tiny 
 crowd, gaping and grinning, and brought Phoebe's white 
 face and eyes swollen with weeping to the window. 
 
 Falcon saw her and brazened it out. "Take them," 
 said he, with an oath. " I'll have a better turn-out by 
 to-morrov^, breakfast-time." 
 
 The crowd cheered him for his spirit. 
 
 He got down, lit a cigar, chaffed the officer and the 
 crowd, and was, on the whole, admired. 
 
 Then another officer, who had been hunting him in 
 couples with the other, stepped forward and took hivi, 
 for the balance of a judgment debt. 
 
 Then the swell's cigar fell out of his mouth, and he 
 was seriously alarmed. "Why, Cartwright," said he, 
 "this is too bad. You promised not to see me this 
 month. You passed me full in the Strand." 
 
 " You are mistaken, sir," said Cartwright, with sullen 
 irony. " I've got a twin-brother ; a many takes him for 
 me, till they finds the difference." Then, lowering his 
 voice, " Wliat call had you to boast in your club you had 
 made it right with Bill Cartwright, and he'd never see 
 you ? That got about, and so I was bound to see you or
 
 A SIMPLETON. 69 
 
 lose my bread. There's one or two I don't see, but then 
 they are real gentlemen, and thinks of me as Avell as 
 theirselves, and doesn't blab." 
 
 " I must have been drunk," said Falcon apologetically. 
 
 " More likely blowing a cloud. When you young gents 
 gets a-smoking together, you'd tell on your own mothers. 
 Come along, colonel, off we go to Merrimashee." 
 
 " Why, it is only twenty-six pounds. I have paid the 
 rest." 
 
 '• More than that ; there's the costs." 
 
 '•' Come in, and I'll settle it." 
 
 " All right, sir. Jem, watch the back." 
 
 " Oh, I shall not try that game with a sharp hand like 
 you, Cartwright." 
 
 "You had better not, sir," said Cartwright; but he 
 was softened a little by the compliment. 
 
 When they were alone, Falcon began by saying it was 
 a bad job for him. 
 
 " Why, I thought you was a-going to pay it all in a 
 moment." 
 
 " I can't ; but I have got a friend over the way that 
 could, if she chose. She has always got money, some- 
 how." 
 
 " Oh, if it is a she, it is all right." 
 
 "I don't know. She has quarrelled with me; but 
 give me a little time. Here ! have a glass of sherry 
 and a biscuit, while I try it on." 
 
 Having thus muffled Cartwright, this man of the world 
 opened his window and looked out. The crowd had 
 followed the captured dogcart, so he had the street to 
 himself. He beckoned to Phoebe, and after considerable 
 hesitation she opened her window. 
 
 " Phoebe," said he, in tones of tender regret, admirably 
 natural and sweet, " I shall never offend you again ; so 
 forgive me this once. I have given that girl up."
 
 70 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 " Not you," said Phoebe, sullenly. 
 
 " Indeed I have. After our quarrel, I started to pro- 
 pose to her ; but I had not the heart ; I came back and 
 left her." 
 
 "Time will show. If it is not her, it will be some 
 other, you false, heartless villain." 
 
 " Come, I say, don't be so hard on me in trouble. I 
 am going to jorison." 
 
 " So I suppose." 
 
 " Ah ! but it is Avorse than you think. I am only taken 
 for a paltry thirty pounds or so." 
 
 " Thirty -three, fifteen, five," suggested Cartwright, in 
 a muffled whisper, his mouth being full of biscuit. 
 
 " But once they get me to a sponging-house, detainers 
 will pour in, and my cruel creditors will confine me for 
 life." 
 
 " It is the best place for you. It will put a stop to 
 your wickedness, and I shall be at peace. That's what 
 I have never known, night or day, this three years." 
 
 " But you will not be happy if you see me go to prison 
 before your eyes. Were you ever inside a prison ? 
 Just think what it must be to be cooped up in those cold 
 grim cells all alone ; for they use a debtor like a criminal 
 now." 
 
 Phoebe shuddered ; but she said, bravely, " Well, tell 
 them you have been a-courting. There was a time I'd 
 have died sooner than see a hair of your head hurt ; but 
 it is all over now ; you have worn me out." 
 
 Then she began to cry. 
 
 Falcon heaved a deep sigh. "It is no more than I 
 deserve," said he. " I'll pack up my things, and go with 
 the officer. Give me one kind word at parting, and I'll 
 think of it in my prison, night and day." 
 
 He withdrew from the window with another deep 
 sigh, told Cartwright, cheerfully, it was all right, and 
 proceeded to pack up his traps.
 
 A SEVIPLETON. 71 
 
 Meantime Phoebe sat at her window and cried bitterly. 
 Her words had been braver than her heart. 
 
 Falcon managed to pay the trifle he owed for the 
 lodgings, and presently he came out with Cartwright, 
 and the attendant called a cab. His things were thrown 
 in, and Cartwright invited him to follow. Then he 
 looked up, and cast a genuine look of terror and misery 
 at Phoebe. He thought she would have relented before 
 this. 
 
 Her heart gave way ; I am afraid it would, even with- 
 out that piteous and mute appeal. She opened the win- 
 dow, and asked Mr. Cartwright if he would be good 
 enough to come and speak to her. 
 
 Cartwright committed his prisoner to the subordinate, 
 and knocked at the door of Phoebe's lodgings. She 
 came down herself and let him in. She led the Avay 
 upstairs, motioned him to a seat, sat down by him, and 
 began to cry again. She was thoroughly unstrung. 
 
 Cartwright was human, and muttered some words of 
 regret that a poor fellow must do his duty. 
 
 " Oh, it is not that," sobbed Phoebe. " I can find the 
 money. I have found more for him than that, many's 
 the time." Then, drying her eyes, ''But you must know 
 the world, and I dare say you can see how 'tis with me." 
 
 '' I can," said Cartwright, gravely, " I overheard you 
 and him ; and, my girl, if you take my advice, why, let 
 him go. He is a gentleman skin deep, and dresses well, 
 and can palaver a girl, no doubt ; but bless your heart, 
 I can see at a glance he is not worth your little finger, 
 an honest, decent young woman like you. Why, it is 
 like "butter fighting with stone. Let him go ; or I will 
 tell you what it is, you will hang for him some day, or 
 else make away with yourself." 
 
 " Ay, sir," said Phoebe, " that's likelier ; and if I was 
 to let him go to prison, I should sit me down and think
 
 72 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 of his parting look, and I should fling myself into the 
 water for him before I was a day older." 
 
 "Ye mustn't do that anyway. While there's life 
 there's hope." 
 
 Upon this Phoebe put him a question, and found hirn 
 ready to do anything for her, in reason — provided he 
 was paid for it. And the end of it all was, the prisoner 
 was conveyed to London ; Phoebe got the requisite sum ; 
 Falcon was deposited in a third-class carriage bound for 
 Essex. Phoebe paid his debt, and gave Cartwright a 
 present, and away rattled the train conveying the hand- 
 some egotist into temporary retirement, to wit, at a 
 village five miles from the Dales' farm. She was too 
 ashamed of her young gentleman and herself to be seen 
 with him in her native village. On the road down he 
 was full of little practical attentions ; she received them 
 coldly ; his mellifluous mouth was often at her ear, pour- 
 ing thanks and praises into it ; she never vouchsafed a 
 word of reply. All she did was to shudder now and 
 then, and cry at intervals. Yet, whenever he left her 
 side, her whole body became restless ; and when he came 
 back to her, a furtive thrill announced the insane com- 
 placency his bare contact gave her. Surely, of all the 
 forms in which love torments the heart, this was the 
 most terrible and pitiable. 
 
 Mr. Lusignan found his daughter in tears. 
 
 " Why, what is the matter now ? " said he, a little 
 peevishly. " We have had nothing of this sort of thing 
 lately." 
 
 "Papa, it is because I have misconducted myself. I 
 am a foolish, imprudent girl. I have been flirting with 
 Mr. Falcon, and he has taken a cruel advantage of it — 
 proposed to me — this very a;^ternoon — actually ! " 
 
 " Has he ? Well, he is a fine fellow, and has a landed
 
 A SnVIPLETOlT. 73 
 
 estate in Norfolk. There's nothing like land. They 
 may well call it real property — there is something to 
 show ; you can walk on it, and ride on it, and look out 
 of window at it : that is property." 
 
 " Oh, papa ! what are you saj'ing ? "Would j^ou have 
 me marry one man when I belong to another ? " 
 " But you don't belong to any one except to me." 
 " Oh, yes ; I do. I belong to my dear Christopher." 
 " AVliy, you dismissed him before my very eyes ; and 
 very ill you behaved, begging your pardon. The man 
 was your able physician and your best friend, and said 
 nothing that was not for your good; and you treated 
 him like a dog." 
 
 " Yes, but he has apologized." 
 " What for ? being treated like a dog ? " 
 " Oh, don't say so, papa ! At all events, he has 
 apologized, as a gentleman should whenever — when- 
 ever " — 
 
 " Whenever a lady is in the wrong." 
 " Don't, papa ; and I have asked him to dinner." 
 " With all my heart. I shall be downright glad to see 
 him again. You used him abominably." 
 
 " But you need not keep saying so," whined Rosa. 
 " And that is not all, dear papa ; the worst of it is, Mr. 
 Falcon proposing to me has opened my eyes. I am not 
 fit to be trusted alone. I am too fond of dancing, and 
 flirting will follow somehow. Oh, think how ill I was 
 a few months ago, and how unhappy you were about me ! 
 They were killing me. He came and saved me. Yes, 
 papa, I owe all this health and strength to Christopher. 
 I did take them off, the very next day, and see the effect 
 of it and my long walks. I owe him my life, and what 
 I value far more, my good looks. La ! I wish I had not 
 told you that. And after all this, don't I belong to my 
 Christopher ? How could I be happy or respect myself
 
 74 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 if I married any one else ? And oh, papa ! he looks wan 
 and worn. He has been fretting for his Simpleton. Oh, 
 dear ! I mustn't think of that — it makes me cry ; and 
 you don't like scenes, do you ? " 
 
 " Hate 'em ! " 
 
 "Well, then," said Eosa, coaxingly, "I'll tell you how 
 to end them. Marry your Simpleton to the only man 
 who is fit to take care of her. Oh, papa ! think of his 
 deep, deep affection for me, and pray don't snub him if 
 — by any chance — after dinner — he should ha'ppen to 
 ask you — something." 
 
 "Oh, then it is possible that, by the merest chance, 
 the gentleman you have accidentally asked to dinner, 
 may, by some strange fortuity, be surprised into asking 
 me a second time for something very much resembling 
 my daughter's hand — eh ? " 
 
 Rosa colored high. " He might, you know. How can 
 I tell what gentlemen will say when the ladies have 
 retired and they are left alone with — with " — 
 
 " With the bottle. Ay, that's true ; when the wine is 
 in, the wit is out." 
 
 Said Rosa, " Well, if he should happen to be so foolish, 
 pray think of we ; of all we owe him, and how much I 
 love him, and ought to love him." She then bestowed a 
 propitiatory kiss, and ran off to dress for dinner ; it was 
 a miich longer operation to-day than usual. 
 
 Dr. Staines was punctual. Mr. Lusignan commented 
 favorably on that. 
 
 " He always is," said Rosa, eagerly. 
 
 They dined together. Mr. Lusignan chatted freely, 
 but Staines and Rosa were under a feeling of restraint, 
 Staines in particular; he could not help feeling that 
 before long his fate must be settled. He would either 
 obtain Rosa's hand, or have to resign her to some man 
 of fortune who would step in ; for beauty such as hers
 
 A SEMPLETOK. 75 
 
 could not long lack brilliant offers. Longing, tliough 
 dreading, to know his fate, he was glad when dinner 
 ended. 
 
 Kosa sat with them a little while after dinner, then 
 rose, bestowed another propitiatory kiss on her father's 
 head, and retired with a modest blush, and a look at 
 Christopher that was almost divine. 
 
 It inspired him with the courage of lions, and he 
 commenced the attack at once.
 
 76 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 CHAPTEK V. 
 
 "Mr. Lusignan," said he, "the last time I was here 
 you gave me some hopes that you might be prevailed on 
 to trust that angel's health and happiness to my care." 
 
 "Well, Dr. Staines, I will not beat about the bush 
 with you. My judgment is still against this marriage ; 
 you need not look so alarmed ; it does not follow I shall 
 forbid it. I feel I have hardly a right to, for my Rosa 
 might be in her grave now but for you; and, another 
 thing, when I interfered between you two I had no proof 
 you were a man of ability ; I had only your sweetheart's 
 word for that ; and I never knew a case before where a 
 young lady's swan did not turn out a goose. Your rare 
 ability gives you another chance in the professional 
 battle that is before you ; indeed, it puts a different face 
 on the whole matter. I still think it premature. Come 
 now, would it not be much wiser to wait, and secure a 
 good practice before you marry a mere child ? There ! 
 there ! I only advise ; I don't dictate ; you shall settle 
 it together, you two wiseacres. Only I must make one 
 positive condition. I have nothing to give my child 
 during my lifetime ; but one thing I have done for her ; 
 years ago I insured my life for six thousand pounds ; 
 and you must do the same. I will not have her thrown 
 on the world a widow, with a child or two, perhaps, to 
 support, and not a farthing ; you know the insecurity of 
 mortal life." 
 
 "I do ! I do ! Why, of course I will insure my life, 
 and pay the annual premium out of my little capital, 
 until income flows in."
 
 A SIMPLETON. 77 
 
 " Will you hand me over a sum sufficient to pay that 
 premium for five years ? " 
 
 "With pleasure." 
 
 "Then I fear/' said the old gentleman, with a sigh, 
 " my opposition to the match must cease here. I still 
 recommend you to wait; but — there! I might just as 
 well advise fire and tow to live neighbors and keep cool." 
 
 To show the injustice of this simile, Christopher 
 Staines started up with his eyes all aglow, and cried out, 
 rapturously, " Oh, sir, may I tell her ? " 
 
 " Yes, you may tell her," said Lusignan, with a smile. 
 " Stop — what are you going to tell her ? " 
 
 "That you consent, sir. God bless you! God bless 
 you ! Oh ! " 
 
 " Yes, but that I advise you to wait." 
 
 " I'll tell her all," said Staines, and rushed out even as 
 he spoke, and upset a heavy chair with a loud thud. 
 
 " Ah ! ah ! " cried the old gentleman in dismay, and 
 put his fingers in his ears — too late. " I see," said he, 
 " there will be no peace and quiet now till they are out 
 of the house." He lighted a soothing cigar to counteract 
 the fracas. 
 
 " Poor little Eosa ! a child but yesterday, and now to 
 encounter the cares of a wife, and perhaps a mother. 
 Ah ! she is but young, but young." . 
 
 The old gentleman prophesied truly ; from that moment 
 he had no peace till he withdrew all semblance of dissent, 
 and even of procrastination. 
 
 Christopher insured his life for six thousand pounds, 
 and assigned the policy to his wife. Four hundred 
 pounds was handed to Mr. Lusignan to pay the premiums 
 until the genius of Dr. Staines shoidd have secured him 
 that large professional income, which does not come all 
 at once, even to the rare physician, who is Capax, Effi- 
 cax, Sagax.
 
 78 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 The wedding-day was named. The bridesmaids were 
 selected, the guests invited. None refused but Uncle 
 Philip. He declined, in his fine bold hand, to counte- 
 nance in person an act of folly he disapproved. Chris- 
 topher put his letter away with a momentary sigh, and 
 would not show it Eosa. All other letters they read 
 together, charming pastime of that happy period. Pres- 
 ents poured in. Silver teapots, coffeepots, sugar-basins, 
 cream-jugs, fruit-dishes, silver-gilt inkstands, albums, 
 photograph-books, little candlesticks, choice little services 
 of china, shell salt-cellars in a case lined with maroon 
 velvet ; a Bible, superb in binding and clasps, and every- 
 thing but the text — that was illegible ; a silk scarf from 
 Benares ; a gold chain from Delhi, six feet long or 
 nearly ; a Maltese necklace, a ditto in exquisite filagree 
 from Genoa ; English brooches, a trifle too big and brain- 
 less ; apostle spoons ; a treble-lined parasol with ivory 
 stick and handle; an ivory card-case, richly carved; 
 workbox of sandal-wood and ivory, etc. Mr. Lusignan's 
 City friends, as usual with these gentlemen, sent the 
 most valuable things. Every day one or two packages 
 were delivered, and, in opening them, Kosa invariably 
 uttered a peculiar scream of delight, and her father put 
 his fingers in his ears ; yet there was music in this very 
 scream, if he wouM only have listened to it candidly, 
 instead of fixing his mind on his vague theory of screams 
 — so formed was she to please the ear as well as the eye. 
 
 At last came a parcel she opened and stared at, smiling 
 and coloring like a rose, but did not scream, being too 
 dumfounded and perplexed ; for lo ! a teapot of some 
 base material, but simple and elegant in form, being an 
 exact reproduction of a melon ; and inside this teapot a 
 canvas bag containing ten guineas in silver, and a wash- 
 leather bag containing twenty guineas in gold, and a 
 slip of paper, which Kosa, being now half recovered
 
 A SIMPLETON. 79 
 
 from her stupefaction, read out to her father and Dr. 
 Staines : 
 
 "People that buy presents blindfold give duplicates and 
 trii^licates ; and men seldom choose to a woman's taste ; so be 
 pleased to accept the enclosed tea-leaves, and buy for yourself. 
 The teapot you can put on the hob, for it is nickel." 
 
 Kosa looked sore puzzled again. "Papa/' said she, 
 timidly, "have we any friend that is — a little — de- 
 ranged ? " 
 
 " A lot." 
 
 "' Oh, then, that accounts." 
 
 "Why no, love," said Christopher. "I have heard of 
 much learning making a man mad, but never of much 
 good sense." 
 
 " What ! Do you call this sensible ? " 
 
 " Don't you ? " 
 
 "I'll read it again," said Rosa. "Well — yes — I 
 declare — it is not so mad as I thought ; but it is very 
 eccentric." 
 
 Lusignan suggested there was nothing so eccentric as 
 common sense, especially in time of wedding. " This," 
 said he, " comes from the City. It is a friend of mine, 
 some old fox ; he is throwing dust in your eyes with his 
 reasons ; his real reason was that his time is money ; it 
 • would have cost the old rogue a hundred pounds' worth 
 of time — you know the City, Christopher — to go out 
 and choose the girl a present ; so he has sent his clerk 
 out with a check to buy a pewter teapot, and fill* it with 
 specie." 
 
 " Pewter ! " cried Rosa. " No such thing ! It's nickel. 
 What is nickel, I wonder ? " 
 
 The handwriting afforded no clew, so there the dis- 
 cussion ended : but it was a nice little mystery, and very
 
 80 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 convenient; made conversation. Rosa had many an 
 animated discussion about it with her female friends. 
 
 The wedding-day came at last. The sun shone — 
 actually, as Rosa observed. The carriages drove up. 
 The bridesmaids, principally old schoolfellows and 
 impassioned correspondents of Rosa, were pretty, and 
 dressed alike and delightfully ; but the bride was peer- 
 less ; her Southern beauty literally shone in that white 
 satin dress and veil, and her head was regal with the 
 crown of orange-blossoms. Another crown she had — 
 true virgin modesty. A low murmur burst from the 
 men the moment they saw her ; the old women forgave 
 her beauty on the spot, and the young women almost 
 pardoned it; she was so sweet and womanly, and so 
 sisterly to her own sex. 
 
 When they started for the church she began to tremble, 
 she scarce knew why ; and when the solemn words were 
 said, and the ring was put on her finger, she cried a 
 little, and looked half imploringly at her bridesmaids 
 once, as if scared at leaving them for an untried and 
 mysterious life with no woman near. 
 
 They were married. Then came the breakfast, that 
 hour of uneasiness and blushing to such a bride as this ; 
 but at last she was released. She sped up-stairs, thank- 
 ing goodness it was over. Down came her last box. The 
 bride followed in a plain travelling dress, which her 
 glorious eyes and brows and her rich glowing cheeks" 
 seemed to illumine : she was handed into the carriage, 
 the bridegroom followed. All the young guests clustered 
 about the door, armed with white shoes — slippers are 
 gone by. 
 
 They started ; the ladies flung their white shoes right 
 and left with religious impartiality, except that not one 
 of their missiles went at the object. The men, more 
 skilful, sent a shower on to the roof of the carriage.
 
 A SIMPLETON. 81 
 
 whicli is the lucky spot. The bride kissed her hand, 
 and managed to put off crying, though it cost her a 
 struggle. The party hurrahed ; enthusiastic youths 
 gathered fallen shoes, and ran and hurled them again 
 with cheerful yells, and away went the happy pair, the 
 bride leaning sweetly and confidingly with both her 
 white hands on the bridegroom's shoulder, while he 
 dried the tears that Avould run now at leaving home and 
 parent forever, and kissed her often, and encircled her 
 with his strong arm, and murmured comfort, and love, 
 and pride, and joy, and sweet vows of lifelong tenderness 
 into her ears, that soon stole nearer his lips to hear, and 
 the fair cheek grew softly to his shoulder.
 
 82 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Dr. Staines and Mrs. Staines visited France, Switzer- 
 land, and the Rhine, and passed a month of Elysium 
 before they came to London to face their real destiny 
 and fight the battle of life. 
 
 And here, methinks, a reader of novels may perhaps 
 cry out and say, " What manner of man is this, who 
 marries his hero and heroine, and then, instead of leav- 
 ing them happy for life, and at rest from his uneasy pen 
 and all their other troubles, flows coolly on with their 
 adventures ? " 
 
 To this I can only reply that the old English novel is 
 no rule to me, and life is ; and I respectfully propose an 
 experiment. Catch eight old married people, four of 
 each sex, and say unto them, " Sir," or " Madam, did the 
 more remarkable events of your life come to you before 
 marriage or after ? " Most of them will say " after," and 
 let that be my excuse for treating the marriage of Christo- 
 pher Staines and Rosa Lusignan as merely one incident 
 in their lives ; an incident which, so far from ending their 
 story, led by degrees to more striking events than any that 
 occurred to them before they were man and wife. 
 
 They returned, then, from their honey tour, and 
 Staines, who was methodical and kept a diary, made 
 the following entry therein : — 
 
 " We have now a life of endurance, and self-denial, 
 and economy, before us ; we have to rent a house, and 
 furnish it, and live in it, until professional income shall 
 flow in and make all things easy: and we have two 
 thousand five hundred pounds left to do it with."
 
 A SIMPLETON. 83 
 
 They calne to a family hotel, and Dr. Staines went 
 out directly after breakfast to look for a house. Acting 
 on a friend's advice, he visited the streets and places 
 north of Oxford Street, looking for a good commodious 
 house adapted to his business. He found three or four 
 at fair rents, neither cheap nor dear, the district being 
 respectable and rather wealthy, but no longer fashionable. 
 He carne home with his notes, and found Eosa beaming 
 in a cvisTp 2)6 ignoir, and her lovely head its natural size 
 and shape, high-bred and elegant. He sat down, and 
 with her hand in his proceeded to describe the houses to 
 her, when a waiter threw open the door — " Mrs. John 
 Cole." 
 
 " Florence ! " cried Rosa, starting up. 
 
 In flowed Florence : they both uttered a little squawk 
 of delight, and went at each other like two little tigresses, 
 and kissed in swift alternation with a singular ardor, 
 drawing their crests back like snakes, and then darting 
 them forward and inflicting what, to the male philosopher 
 looking on, seemed hard kisses, violent kisses, rather 
 than the tender ones to be expected from two tender 
 creatures embracing each other. 
 
 " Darling," said Rosa, " I knew you would be the first. 
 Didn't I tell you so, Christopher ? — My husband — my 
 darling Florry ! Sit down, love, and tell me everything ; 
 he has just been looking out for a house. Ah ! you have 
 got all that over long ago : she has been married six 
 months. Florry, you are handsomer than ever ; and 
 what a beautiful dress ! Ah ! London is the place. Real 
 Brussels, I declare," and she took hold of her friend's 
 lace and gloated on it. 
 
 Christopher smiled good-naturedly, and said, " I dare 
 say you ladies have a good deal to say to each other." 
 
 " Oceans," said Rosa. 
 
 " I will go and hunt houses again."
 
 84 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 " There's a good husband," said Mrs. Cole, as soon as 
 the door closed on him, " and such a line man ! Why, 
 he must be six feet. Mine is rather short. But he is 
 very good ; refuses me nothing. My will is law." 
 
 " That is all right — you are so sensible ; but I want 
 governing a little, and I like it — actually. Did the 
 dressmaker find it, dear ? " 
 
 " Oh, no ! I had it by me. I bought it at Brussels on 
 our wedding tour : it is dearer there than in London." 
 
 She said this as if " dearer " and " better " were 
 synonymous. 
 
 " But about your house, Eosie dear ? " 
 
 " Yes, darling, I'll tell you all about it. I never saw 
 a moir^ this shade before. I don't care for them in 
 general ; but this is so distingue." 
 
 Florence rewarded her with a kiss. 
 
 "The house," said Eosa. "Oh, he has seen one in 
 Portman Street, and one in Gloucester Place." 
 
 " Oh, that will never do," cried Mrs. Cole. " It is no 
 use being a physician in those out-of-the-way places. 
 He must be in Mayfair." 
 
 " Must he ? " 
 
 " Of course. Besides, then my Johnnie can call him 
 in when they are just going to die. Jolinnie is a general 
 prac, and makes two thousand a year ; and he shall call 
 your one in ; but he must live in Mayfair. Why, Eosie, 
 you would not be such a goose as to live in those places 
 — they are quite gone by." 
 
 " I shall do whatever you advise me, dear. Oh, what 
 a comfort to have a dear friend : and six months mar- 
 ried, and knows things. How richly it is trimmed ! 
 Why, it is nearly all trimmings." 
 
 " That is the fashion." 
 
 " Oh ! " 
 
 And after that big word there was no more to be said.
 
 A SIMPLETON. 85 
 
 These two ladies in their conversation gravitated 
 towards dress, and fell flat on it every half-minute. 
 That great and elevating topic held them by a silken 
 cord, but it allowed them to flutter upwards into other 
 topics ; and in those intervals, numerous though brief, 
 the lady who had been married six months found time 
 to instruct the matrimonial novice with great authority, 
 and even a shade of pomposity. "My dear, the way 
 ladies and gentlemen get a house — in the first place, you 
 don't go about yourself like that, and you never go to 
 the people themselves, or you are sure to be taken in, 
 but to a respectable house-agent." 
 
 "Yes, dear, that must be the best way, one would 
 think." 
 
 " Of course it is ; and you ask for a house in Mayfair, 
 and he shows you several, and recommends you the best, 
 and sees you are not cheated." 
 
 " Thank you, love," said Kosa ; " now I know what to 
 do ; I'll not forget a word. And the train so beautifully 
 shaped ! Ah ! it is only in London or Paris they can 
 make a dress flow behind like that," etc., etc. 
 
 Dr. Staines came back to dinner in good spirits; he 
 had found a house in Harewood Square ; good entrance- 
 hall, where his gratuitous patients might sit on benches ; 
 good dining-room where his superior patients might wait ; 
 and good library, to be used as a consulting-room. Rent 
 only eighty-five pounds per annum. 
 
 But Rosa told him that would never do ; a physicjian 
 must be in the fashionable part of the town. 
 
 "Eventually," said Christopher; "but surely at first 
 starting — and you know they say little boats should not 
 go too far from shore." 
 
 Then Rosa repeated all her friend's arguments, and 
 seemed so unhappy at the idea of not living near her, 
 that Staines, who had not yet said the hard word " no "
 
 86 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 to her, gave in ; consoling his prudence with the reflec- 
 tion that, after all, Mr. Cole could put many a guinea in 
 his way, for Mr. Cole was middle-aged, — though his 
 wife was young, — and had really a very large practice. 
 
 So next day, the newly-wedded pair called on a house- 
 agent in Mayfair, and his son and partner went with 
 them to several places. The rents of houses equal to 
 that in Harewood Square were three hundred pounds a 
 year at least, and a premium to boot. 
 
 Christopher told him these were quite beyond the 
 mark. " Very well," said the agent. " Then I'll show 
 you a Bijou." 
 
 Eosa clapped her hands. " That is the thing for us. 
 We don't want a large house, only a beautiful one, and in 
 Mayfair." 
 
 " Then the Bijou will be sure to suit you." 
 
 He took them to the Bijou. 
 
 The Bijou had a small dining-room with one very large 
 window in two sheets of plate glass, and a projecting 
 balcony full of flowers ; a still smaller library, which 
 opened on a square yard enclosed. Here were a great 
 many pots, with flowers dead or dying from neglect. 
 On the first floor a fair-sized drawing-room, and a tiny 
 one at the back : on the second floor, one good bedroom, 
 and a dressing-room, or little bedroom: three garrets 
 above. 
 
 Eosa was in ecstasies. "It is a nest," said she. 
 
 " It is a bank-note," said the agent, stimulating equal 
 enthusiasm, after his fashion. " You can always sell the 
 lease again for more money." 
 
 Christopher kept cool. " I don't want a house to sell, 
 but to live in, and do my business ; I am a physician : 
 now the drawing-room is built over the entrance to a 
 mews ; the back rooms all look into a mews : we shall 
 have the eternal noise and smell of a mews. My wife's
 
 A SIMPLETON. 87 
 
 rest will be broken by the carriages rolling in and out. 
 The hall is fearfully small and stuffy. The rent is 
 abominably high; and what is the premium for, I 
 wonder ? " 
 
 " Always a premium in Mayfair, sir, A lease is prop 
 erty here: the gentleman is not acquainted with this 
 part, madam." 
 
 " Oh, yes, he is," said Rosa, as boldly as a six years' 
 wife : " he knows everything." 
 
 " Then he knows that a house of this kind at a hun- 
 dred and thirty pounds a year in Mayfair is a bank-note." 
 
 Staines turned to Eosa. " The poor patients, where 
 am I to receive them ? " 
 
 " In the stable," suggested the house agent. 
 
 " Oh ! " said Rosa, shocked. 
 
 "Well, then, the coach-house. Why, there's plenty of 
 room for a brougham, and one horse, and fifty poor 
 patients at a time : beggars musn't be choosers ; if you 
 give them physic gratis, that is enough : you ain't bound 
 to find 'em a palace to sit down in, and hot coffee and 
 rump steaks all round, doctor." 
 
 This tickled Rosa so that she burst out laughing, and 
 thenceforward giggled at intervals, wit of this refined 
 nature having all the charm of novelty for her. 
 
 They inspected the stables, which were indeed the one 
 redeeming feature in the horrid little Bijou ; and then 
 the agent would show them the kitchen, and the new 
 stove. He expatiated on this to Mrs. Staines. " Cook a 
 dinner for thirty people, madam." 
 
 " And there's room for them to eat it — in the road," 
 said Staines. 
 
 The agent reminded him there were larger places to 
 be had, by a very simple process, viz., paying for 
 them, 
 
 Staines thought of the large, comfortable house in
 
 88 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 Harewood Square. " One hundred and thirty pounds a 
 year for this poky little hole ? " he groaned. 
 
 " Why, it is nothing at all for a Bijou." 
 
 " But it is too much for a bandbox." 
 
 Kosa laid her hand on his arm, with an imploring 
 glance. 
 
 " Well," said he, " I'll submit to the rent, but I really 
 cannot give the premium, it is too ridiculous. He ought 
 to bribe me to rent it, not I him." 
 
 " Can't be done without, sir." 
 
 "Well, I'll give a hundred pounds and no more." 
 
 " Impossible, sir." 
 
 " Then good morning. Now, dearest, just come and 
 see the house at Harewood Square, — eighty -five pounds 
 and no premium." 
 
 "Will you oblige me with your address, doctor?" 
 said the agent. 
 
 " Dr. Staines, Morley's Hotel." 
 
 And so they left Mayfair. 
 
 Rosa sighed and said, " Oh, the nice little place ; and 
 we have lost it for two hundred pounds." 
 
 " Two hundred pounds is a great deal for us to throw 
 away." 
 
 " Being near the Coles would soon have made that up 
 to you : and such a cosey little nest." 
 
 " Well the house will not run away." 
 
 "But somebody is sure to snap it up. It is a Bijou." 
 She was disappointed, and half inclined to pout. But 
 she vented her feelings in a letter to her beloved Florry, 
 and appeared at dinner as sweet as usual. 
 
 During dinner a note came from the agent, accepting 
 Dr. Staine's offer. He glozed the matter thus : he had 
 persuaded the owner it was better to take a good tenant 
 at a moderate loss, than to let the Bijou be uninhabited 
 during the present rainy season. An assignment of the
 
 A SIMPLETON. 89 
 
 lease — which contained the usual covenants — would 
 be prepared immediately, and Dr. Staines could have 
 possession in forty-eight hours, by paying the pre- 
 mium. 
 
 Rosa was delighted, and as soon as dinner was over, 
 and the waiters gone, she came and kissed Christopher. 
 
 He smiled, and said, " Well, you are pleased ; that is 
 the principal thing. I have saved two hundred pounds, 
 and that is something. It will go towards furnishing." 
 
 "La! yes," said Rosa, "I forgot. We shall have to 
 get furniture now. How nice ! " It was a pleasure the 
 man of forecast could have willingly dispensed with ; 
 but he smiled at her, and they discussed furniture, and 
 Christopher, whose retentive memory had picked up a 
 little of everything, said there were wholesale uphol- 
 sterers in the City who sold cheaper than the West-end 
 houses, and he thought the best way was to measure the 
 rooms in the Bijou, and go to the city with a clear idea 
 of what they wanted ; ask the prices of various neces- 
 sary articles, and then make a list, and demand a dis- 
 count of fifteen per cent on the whole order, being so 
 considerable, and paid for in cash. 
 
 Rosa acquiesced, and told Christopher he was the 
 cleverest man in England. 
 
 About nine o'clock Mrs. Cole came in to condole with 
 her friend, and heard the good news. "When Rosa told 
 her how they thought of furnishing, she said, " Oh no, 
 you must not do that ; you will pay double for every- 
 thing. That is the mistake Johnnie and I made ; and 
 after that a friend of mine took me to the auction-rooms, 
 and I saw everything sold — oh, such bargains ; half, 
 and less than half, their value. She has furnished her 
 house almost entirely from sales, and she has the love- 
 liest things in the world — such ducks of tables, and^ar- 
 dinieres, and things; and beautiful rare china — her
 
 90 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 house swarms with it — for an old song. A sale is the 
 place. And then so amusing." 
 
 " Yes, but," said Christopher, " I should not like my 
 wife to encounter a public room." 
 
 " Not alone, of course ; but with me. La ! Dr. Staines, 
 they are too full of buying and selling to trouble their 
 heads about us." 
 
 " Oh, Christopher, do let me go with her. Am I always 
 to be a child ? " 
 
 Thus appealed to before a stranger, Staines replied 
 warmly, '' No, dearest, no ; you cannot please me better 
 than by beginning life in earnest. If you two ladies 
 together can face an auction-room, go by all means ; only 
 I must ask you not to buy china or ormulu, or anything 
 that will break or spoil, but only solid, good furniture." 
 
 " Won't you come with us ? " 
 
 "No; or you might feel yourself in leading-strings. 
 Remember the Bijou is a small house ; choose your fur- 
 niture to fit it, and then we shall save something by its 
 being so small." 
 
 This was Wednesday. There was a weekly sale in 
 Oxford Street on Fridays ; and the ladies made the ap- 
 pointment accordingly. 
 
 Next day, after breakfast, Christopher was silent and 
 thoughtful awhile, and at last said to Eosa, " I'll show 
 you I don't look on you as a child ; I'll consult you in a 
 delicate matter." 
 
 Rosa's eyes sparkled. 
 
 "It is about my Uncle Philip. He has been very 
 cruel ; he has wounded me deeply ; he has wounded me 
 through my wife. I never thought he would refuse to 
 come to our marriage." 
 
 " And did he ? You never showed me his letter." 
 
 " You were not my wife then. I kept an affront from 
 you J but now, you see, I keep nothing."
 
 A SBIPLETON. 91 
 
 "Dear Christie !" 
 
 " I am so happy, I have got over that sting — almost ; 
 and the memory of many kind acts comes back to me ; 
 and I don't know what to do. It seems ungrateful not 
 to visit him — it seems almost mean to call." 
 
 " I'll tell you ; take me to see him directly. He won't 
 hate us forever, if he sees us often. We may as well 
 begin at once. Nobody hates me long." 
 
 Christopher was proud of his wife's courage and wis- 
 dom. He kissed her, begged her to put on the plainest 
 dress she could, and they went together to call on Uncle 
 Philip. 
 
 When they got to his house in Gloucester Place, Port- 
 man Square, Rosa's heart began to quake, and she was 
 right glad when the servant said '^ iS"ot at home." 
 
 They left their cards and address ; and she persuaded 
 Christopher to take her to the sale-room to see the things. 
 
 A lot of brokers were there, like vultures ; and one 
 after another stepped forward and pestered them to 
 employ him in the morning. Dr. Staines declined their 
 services civilly but firmly, and he and Rosa looked over 
 a quantity of furniture, and settled what sort of things 
 to buy. 
 
 Another broker came up, and whenever the couple 
 stopped before an article, proceeded to praise it as some- 
 thing most extraordinary. Staines listened in cold, satir- 
 ical silence, and told his wife, in French, to do the same. 
 Notwithstanding their marked disgust, the impudent, 
 intrusive fellow stuck to them, and forced his venal 
 criticism on them, and made them uncomfortable, and 
 shortened their tour of observation. 
 
 " I think I shall come with you to-morrow," said Chris- 
 topher, " or I shall have these blackguards pestering you." 
 
 "Oh, Florry will send them to the right-about. She 
 is as brave as a lion."
 
 92 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 Next day Dr. Staines was sent for into the City at 
 twelve to pay the money and receive the lease of the 
 Bijou, and this and the taking possession occupied him 
 till four o'clock, when he came to his hotel. 
 
 Meantime, his wife and Mrs. Cole had gone to the 
 auction-room. 
 
 It was a large room, with a good sprinkling of people, 
 but not crowded except about the table. At the head of 
 this table — full twenty feet long — was the auctioneer's 
 pulpit, and the lots were brought in turn to the other 
 end of the table for sight and sale. 
 
 "We must try and get a seat," said the enterprising 
 Mrs. Cole, and pushed boldly in; the timid Eosa fol- 
 lowed strictly in her wake, and so evaded the human 
 waves her leader clove. They were importuned at every 
 step by brokers thrusting catalogues on them, with offers 
 of their services, yet they soon got to the table. A 
 gentleman resigned one chair, a broker another, and they 
 were seated. 
 
 Mrs. Staines let down half her veil, but Mrs. Cole sur- 
 veyed the company point-blank. 
 
 The broker who had given up his seat, and now stood 
 behind Kosa, offered her his catalogue. "No, thank 
 you," said Rosa ; " I have one ; " and she produced it, 
 and studied it, yet managed to look furtively at the 
 company. 
 
 There were not above a dozen private persons visible 
 from where Rosa sat; perhaps as many more in the 
 whole room. They were easily distinguishable by their 
 cleanly appearance : the dealers, male or female, were 
 more or less rusty, greasy, dirty, aquiline. Not even 
 the amateurs were brightly dressed; that fundamental 
 error was confined to Mesdames Cole and Staines. The 
 experienced, however wealthy, do not hunt bargains in 
 silk and satin.
 
 A SIMPLETON". 93 
 
 The auctioneer called " Lot 7. Four saucepans, two 
 trays, a kettle, a bootjack, and a towel-horse." 
 
 These were put up at two shillings, and speedily 
 knocked down for five to a fat old woman in a greasy 
 velvet jacket; blind industry had sewed bugles on it, 
 not artfully, but agriculturally. 
 
 "The lady on the left!" said the auctioneer to his 
 clerk. That meant " Get the money." 
 
 The old lady plunged a huge paw into a huge pocket, 
 and pulled out a huge handful of coin — copper, silver, 
 and gold — and paid for the lot ; and Rosa surveyed her 
 dirty hands and nails with innocent dismay. " Oh, what 
 a dreadful creature!" she whispered; ''and what can 
 she want with those old rubbishy things ? I saw a hole 
 in one from here." The broker overheard, and said, 
 " She is a dealer, ma'am, and the things were given 
 away. She'll sell them for a guinea, easy." 
 
 " Didn't I tell you ? " said Mrs. Cole. 
 
 Soon after this the superior lots came on, and six very 
 neat bedroom chairs were sold to all appearance for fif- 
 teen shillings. 
 
 The next lot was identical, and Rosa hazarded a bid, 
 — " Sixteen shillings." 
 
 Instantly some dealer, one of the hook-nosed that 
 gathered round each lot as it came to the foot of the 
 table, cried " Eighteen shillings." 
 
 " Nineteen," said Rosa. 
 
 " A guinea," said the dealer. 
 
 " Don't let it go," said the broker behind her. " Don't 
 let it go, ma'am." 
 
 She colored at the intrusion, and left off bidding 
 directly, and addressed herself to Mrs. Cole. " Why 
 should I give so much, when the last were sold for fif- 
 teen shillings ? " 
 
 The real reason was that the first lot was not bid for
 
 94 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 at all, except by tlie proprietor. However, the broker 
 gave her a very different solution ; he said, " The trade 
 always run up a lady or a gentleman. Let me bid for 
 you ; they won't run me up ; they know better." 
 
 Rosa did not reply, but looked at Mrs. Cole. 
 
 " Yes, dear," said that lady ; " you had much better 
 let him bid for you." 
 
 " Very well," said Rosa ; " you can bid for this chest 
 of drawers — lot 25." 
 
 When lot 25 came on, the broker bid in the silliest 
 possible way, if his object had been to get a bargain. 
 He began to bid early and ostentatiously; the article 
 was protected by somebody or other there present, who 
 now of course saw his way clear; he ran it up auda- 
 ciously, and it was purchased for Rosa at about the price 
 it could have been bought for at a shop. 
 
 The next thing she wanted was a set of oak chairs. 
 
 They went up to twenty-eight pounds ; then she said, 
 " I shall give no more, sir." 
 
 " Better not lose them," said the agent ; " they are a 
 great bargain ; " and bid another pound for her on his 
 own responsibility. 
 
 They were still run up, and Rosa peremptorily refused 
 to give any more. She lost them, accordingly, by good 
 luck. Her faithful broker looked blank; so did the 
 proprietor. 
 
 But, as the sale proceeded, she being young, the com- 
 petition, though most of it sham, being artful and excit- 
 ing, and the traitor she employed constantly puffing 
 every article, she was drawn in to wishing for things, 
 and bidding by her feelings. 
 
 Then her traitor played a game that has been played a 
 hundred times, and the perpetrators never once lynched, 
 as they ought to be, on the spot. He signalled a con- 
 federate with a hooked nose ; the Jew rascal bid against
 
 A SIMPLETOl* 95 
 
 the Christian scoundrel, and so they ran up the more 
 enticing things to twice their vahie under the hammer. 
 
 Kosa got flushed, and her eye gleamed like a gambler's, 
 and she bought away like wildfire. In which sport she 
 caught sight of an old gentleman, with little black eyes 
 that kept twinkling at her. 
 
 She complained of these eyes to Mrs. Cole. "Wliy 
 does he twinkle so ? I can see it is at me. I am doing 
 something foolish — I know I am." 
 
 Mrs. Cole turned, and fixed a haughty stare on the old 
 gentleman. Would you believe it ? instead of sinking 
 through the floor, he sat his ground, and retorted with a 
 cold, clear grin. 
 
 But now, whenever Rosa's agent bid for her, and the 
 other man of straw against him, the black eyes twinkled, 
 and Eosa's courage began to ooze away. At last she said, 
 " That is enough for one day. I shall go. Who could 
 'bear those eyes ? " 
 
 The broker took her address ; so did the auctioneer's 
 clerk. The auctioneer asked her for no deposit; her 
 beautiful, innocent, and high-bred face was enough for 
 a man who was always reading faces, and interpreting 
 them. 
 
 And so they retired. 
 
 But this charming sex is like that same auctioneer's 
 hammer, it cannot go abruptly. It is always going — 
 going — going — a long time before it is gone. I think 
 it would perhaps loiter at the door of a jail, with the 
 order of release in its hand, after six years' confinement. 
 Getting up to go quenches in it the desire to go. So 
 these ladies having got up to go, turned and lingered, 
 and hung fire so long, that at last another set of oak 
 chairs came up. " Oh ! I must see what these go for," 
 said Rosa, at the door. 
 
 The bidding was mighty languid now Rosa's broker
 
 96 i* SIMPLETON. 
 
 was not stimulating it; and the auctioneer was just 
 knocking down twelve chairs — oak and leather — and 
 two arm-chairs, for twenty pounds, when, casting his 
 eyes around, he caught sight of Kosa looking at him 
 rather excited. He looked inquiringly at her. She 
 nodded slightly; he knocked them down to her at 
 twenty guineas, and they were really a great bargain. 
 
 " Twenty -two," cried the dealer. 
 
 " Too late," said the auctioneer. 
 
 " I spoke with the hammer, sir." 
 
 "After the hammer, Isaacs." 
 
 " Shelp me God, we was together." 
 
 One or two more of his tribe confirmed this pious 
 falsehood, and clamored to have them put up again. 
 
 " Call the next lot," said the auctioneer, peremptorily. 
 "Make up your mind a little quicker next time, Mr. 
 Isaacs; you have been long enough at it to know the 
 value of oak and moroccar." 
 
 Mrs. Staines and her friend now started for Morley's 
 Hotel, but went round by Regent Street, whereby they 
 got glued at Peter Robinson's window, and nine other 
 windows ; and it was nearly five o'clock when they 
 reached Morley's. As they came near the door of their 
 sitting-room, Mrs. Staines heard somebody laughing and 
 talking to her husband. The laugh, to her subtle eaxs, 
 did not sound musical and genial, but keen, satirical, 
 unpleasant; so it was with some timidity she opened 
 the door, and there sat the old chap with the twinkling 
 eyes. Both parties stared at each other a moment. 
 
 " Why, it is them," cried the old gentleman. " Ha ! 
 ha! ha! ha! ha!" 
 
 Rosa colored all over, and felt guilty somehow, and 
 looked miserable. 
 
 "Rosa dear," said Dr. Staines, "this is our Uncle 
 Philip."
 
 A SIMPLETON. 97 
 
 " Oh I " said Rosa, and turned red and pale by turns ; 
 for she had a great desire to propitiate Uncle Philip. 
 
 " You were in the auction-room, sir ? '' said Mrs. Cole, 
 severely. 
 
 " I was, madam. He ! he ! " 
 
 " Furnishing a house ? " 
 
 " No, ma'am. I go to a dozen sales a week ; but it is 
 not to buy — I enjoy the humors. Did you ever hear of 
 Robert Burton, ma'am ? " 
 
 " No. Yes ; a great traveller, isn't he ? Discovered 
 the Nile — or the Niger — or something ?^^ 
 
 This majestic vagueness staggered old Crusty at fi,vst, 
 but he recovered his equilibrium, and said, "Why, jes, 
 now I think of it, you are right ; he has travelled farther 
 than most of us, for about two centuries ago he visited 
 that bourn whence no traveller returns. Well, when he 
 was alive — he was a student of Christchurch — he used 
 to go down to a certain bridge over the Isis and 
 enjoy the chaff of the bargemen. Now there are no 
 bargemen left to speak of ; the mantle of Bobby Burton's 
 bargees has fallen on the Jews and demi-semi-Christians 
 that buy and sell furniture at the weekly auctions ; 
 thither I repair to hear what little coarse wit is left us. 
 Used to go to the House of Commons; but they are 
 getting too civil by half for my money. Besides, charac- 
 ters come out in an auction. For instance, only this vcny 
 day I saw two ladies enter, in gorgeous attire, like 
 heifers decked for sacrifice, and reduce their spoliation 
 to a certainty by employing a broker to bid. Now, what 
 is a broker ? A fellow who is to be paid a shilling in 
 the pound for all articles purchased. AVhat is his inter- 
 est, then ? To buy cheap ? Clearly not. He is paid 
 in proportion to the dearness of the article." 
 
 Rosa's face began to work piteously. 
 
 "Accordingly, what did the broker in question do?
 
 98 A SEVrPLETON. 
 
 He winked to another broker, and these two bid against 
 one another, over their victim's head, and ran everything 
 she wanted up at least a hundred per cent above the 
 value. So open and transparent a swindle I have seldom 
 seen, even in an auction-room. Ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!" 
 
 His mirth was interrupted by Kosa going to her 
 husband, hiding her head on his shoulder, and meekly 
 crying. 
 
 Christopher comforted her like a man. "Don't you 
 cry, darling," said he ; " how should a pure creature like 
 you know the badness of the world all in a moment ? 
 If it is my wife you are laughing at, Uncle Philip, let 
 me tell you this is the wrong place. I'd rather a thou- 
 sand times have her as she is, than armed with the 
 cunning and suspicions of a hardened old worldling like 
 you." 
 
 " With all my heart," said Uncle Philip, who, to do 
 him justice, could take blows as well as give them ; 
 " but why employ a broker ? AVhy pay a scoundrel five 
 per cent to make you pay a hundred per cent ? Why 
 pay a noisy fool a farthing to open his mouth for you 
 when you have taken the trouble to be there yourself, 
 and have got a mouth of your own to bid discreetly 
 with ? Was ever such an absurdity ? " He began to 
 get angry. 
 
 " Do you want to quarrel with me, Uncle Philip ? " 
 said Christopher, firing up; "because sneering at my 
 Rosa is the way, and the only way, and the sure way." 
 
 " Oh, no," said Rosa, interposing. " Uncle Philip was 
 right. I am very foolish and inexperienced, but I am 
 not so vain as to turn from good advice. I will never 
 employ a broker again, sir." 
 
 Uncle Philip smiled and looked pleased. 
 
 Mrs. Cole caused a diversion by taking leave, and 
 Rosa followed her down-stairs. On her return she found
 
 A SEMPLETON. 99 
 
 Christopher telling his uncle all about the Bijou, and 
 how he had taken it for a hundred and thirty pounds a 
 year and a hundred pounds premixun, and Uncle Philip 
 staring fearfully. 
 
 At last he found his tongue. " The Bijou ! " said he. 
 " Why, that is a name they gave to a little den in Dear 
 Street, Mayf air. You haven't ever been and taken that ! 
 Built over a mews." 
 
 Christopher groaned. " That is the place, I fear." 
 
 " Why the owner is a friend of mine ; an old patient. 
 Stables stunk him out. Let it to a man ; I forget his 
 name. Stables stunk him out. He said, 'I shall go. 
 'You can't,' said my friend; 'you have taken a lease.' 
 
 ' Lease be d d,' said the other ; ' I never took ~yoicr 
 
 house ; here's quite a large stench not specified in your 
 description of the property — it canH be the satne j^lcice ; ' 
 flung the lease at his head, and cut like the wind to 
 foreign parts less odoriferous. I'd have got you the 
 hole for ninety ; but you are like your wife — you must 
 go to an agent. What ! don't you know that an agent is 
 a man acting for you with an interest opposed to yours ? 
 Employing an agent ! it is like a Trojan seeking the aid 
 of a Greek. You needn't cry, Mrs. Staines ; your husband 
 has been let in deeper than you have. Now, you are 
 young people beginning life ; I'll give you a piece of 
 advice. Employ others to do what you can't do, and it 
 must be done ; but never to do anything you can do 
 better for yourselves ! Agent ! The word is derived 
 from a Latin word 'ayere,' to do; and agents act up to 
 their etymology, for they invariably do the nincompoop 
 that employs them, or deals with them, in any mortal way. 
 I'd have got you that beastly little Bijou for ninety 
 pounds a year." 
 
 Uncle Philip went away crusty, leaving the young 
 couple finely mortified and discouraged.
 
 100 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 That did not last very long. Christopher noted the 
 experience and Uncle Phil's wisdom in his diary, and 
 then took his wife on his knee, and comforted her, and 
 said, " Never mind ; experience is worth money, and it 
 always has to be bought. Those who cheat us will die 
 poorer than we shall, if we are honest and economical. 
 I have observed that people are seldom ruined by the 
 vices of others ; these may hurt them, of course ; but 
 it is only their own faults and follies that can destroy 
 them." 
 
 " Ah ! Christie," said Kosa, " you are a man ! Oh, the 
 comfort of being married to a man. A man sees the 
 best side. I do adore men. Dearest, I will waste no 
 more of your money. I will go to no more sales." 
 
 Christopher saw she was deeply mortified, and he said, 
 quietly, " On the contrary, you will go to the very next. 
 Only take Uncle Philip's advice, employ no broker ; and 
 watch the prices things fetch Avhen you are not bidding ; 
 and keep cool." 
 
 She caressed his ears with both her white hands, and 
 thanked him for giving her another trial. So that 
 trouble melted in the sunshine of conjugal love. 
 
 Notwithstanding the agent's solemn assurance, the 
 Bijou was out of repair. Dr. Staines detected internal 
 odors, as well as those that flowed in from the mews. 
 "He was not the man to let his wife perish by miasma ; 
 so he had the drains all up, and actually found brick 
 drains, and a cesspool. He stopped that up, and laid 
 down new pipe drains, with a good fall, and properly 
 trapped. The old drains were hidden, after the manner 
 of builders. He had the whole course of his new drains 
 marked upon all the floors they passed under, and had 
 several stones and boards hinged to facilitate examina- 
 tion at any period. 
 
 But all this, with the necessary cleaning, whitewashing.
 
 A SIMPLETON. 101 
 
 painting, and papering, ran away with money. Then came 
 Rosa's purchases, which, to her amazement, amounted to 
 one hundred and ninety pounds, and not a carpet, curtain, 
 or bed amongst the lot. Then there was the carriage 
 home from the auction-room, an expense one avoids by 
 buying at a shop, and the broker claimed his shilling in 
 the pound. This, however, Staines refused. The man 
 came and blustered. Rosa, who was there, trembled. 
 Then, for the first time, she saw her husband's brow 
 lower; he seemed transfigured, and looked terrible. 
 "You scoundrel," said he, "you set another villain like 
 yourself to bid against you, and you betrayed the inno- 
 cent lady that employed you. I could indict you and 
 your confederate for a conspiracy. I take the goods out 
 of respect for my wife's credit, but you shall gain nothing 
 by swindling her. Be off, you heartless miscreant, or 
 
 rii" — 
 
 " I'll take the law, if you do." 
 
 " Take it, then ! I'll give you something to howl for ; " 
 and he seized him with a grasp so tremendous that the 
 fellow cried out in dismay, " Oh ! don't hit me, sir ; pray 
 don't." 
 
 On this abject appeal, Staines tore the door open with 
 his left hand, and spun the broker out into the passage 
 with his right. Two movements of this angry Hercules, 
 and the man was literally whirled out of sight with a 
 rapidity and swiftness almost ludicrous ; it was like a 
 trick in a pantomime. A clatter on the stairs betrayed 
 that he had gone down the first few steps in a wholesale 
 and irregular manner, though he had just managed to 
 keep his feet. 
 
 As for Staines, he stood there still lowering like tliun- 
 der, and his eyes like hot coals ; but his wife threw her 
 tender arms around him, and begged him consolingly not 
 to mind.
 
 102 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 She was trembling like an aspen. 
 
 *' Dear me," said Christopher, with a ludicrous change 
 to marked politeness and respect, " I forgot you, in my 
 righteous indignation." Next he became uxorious. " Did 
 they frighten her, a duck ? Sit on my knee, darling, and 
 pull my hair, for not being more considerate — there ! 
 there ! " 
 
 This was followed by the whole absurd soothing process, 
 as practised by manly husbands upon quivering and some- 
 what hysterical wives, and ended with a formal apology. 
 *' You must not think that I am passionate ; on the con- 
 trary, I am always practising self-government. My maxim 
 is, Animum rege qui nisi paret imperat, and that means. 
 Make your temper your servant, or else it will be your 
 master. But to ill-use my dear little wife — it is unnat- 
 ural, it is monstrous, it makes my blood boil." 
 
 " Oh, dear ! don't go into another. It is all over. I 
 can't bear to see you in a passion ; you are so terrible, so 
 beautiful. Ah ! they are fine things, courage and strength. 
 There's nothing I admire so much." 
 
 "Why, they are as common as dirt. What I admire 
 is modesty, timidity, sweetness ; the sensitive cheek that 
 pales or blushes at a word, the bosom that quivers, and 
 clings to a fellow whenever anything goes wrong." 
 
 "Oh, that is what you admire, is it ? " said Kosa dryly. 
 
 " Admire it ? " said Christopher, not seeing the trap ; 
 " I adore it." 
 
 " Then, Christie, dear, you are a Simpleton, that is all. 
 And we are made for one another." 
 
 The house was to be furnished and occupied as soon as 
 possible ; so Mrs. Staines and Mrs. Cole went to another 
 sale-room. Mrs. Staines remembered all Uncle Philip had 
 said, and went plainly dressed ; but her friend declined 
 to sacrifice her showy dress to her friend's interests. 
 Rosa thought that a little unkind, but said nothing.
 
 A SIMPLETON. 103 
 
 In this auction-room they easily got a place at the 
 table, but did not find it heaven ; for a number of second- 
 hand carpets were in the sale, and these, brimful of dust, 
 were all shown on the table, and the dirt choked and 
 poisoned our fair friends. Brokers pestered them, until 
 at last Kosa, smarting under her late exposure, addressed 
 the auctioneer quietly, in her silvery tones : " Sir, these 
 gentlemen are annoying me by forcing their services on 
 me. I do not intend to buy at all unless I can be allowed 
 to bid for myself." 
 
 When Rosa, blushing and amazed at her own boldness, 
 uttered these words, she little foresaw their effect. She 
 had touched a popular sore. 
 
 "You are quite right, madam," said a respectable 
 tradesman opposite her. "What business have these 
 dirty fellows, without a shilling in their pockets, to go 
 and force themselves on a lady against her will ? " 
 
 " It has been complained of in the papers again and 
 again," said another. 
 
 " What ! mayn't we live as well as you ? " retorted a 
 broker. 
 
 "Yes, but not to force yourself on a lady. Why, she'd 
 give you in charge of the police if you tried it on out- 
 side." 
 
 Then there was a downright clamor of discussion and 
 chaff. 
 
 Presently up rises very slowly a countryman so colossal, 
 that it seemed as if he would never have done getting up, 
 and gives his experiences. He informed the company, 
 in a broad Yorkshire dialect, that he did a bit in furni- 
 ture, and at first starting these brokers buzzed about him 
 like flies, and pestered him. " Aah damned 'em pretty 
 hard," said he, " but they didn't heed any. So then ah 
 spoke 'em civil, and ah said, ' Well, lads, I dinna come 
 fra Yorkshire to sit like a dummy and let you buy wi'
 
 104 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 my brass ; the first that pesters me again ah'll just fell 
 him on t' plaace, like a caulf, and ah'm not very sure 
 he'll get up again in a hurry.' So they dropped me like 
 a hot potato ; never pestered me again. But if they 
 won't give over pestering you, mistress, ah'll come round 
 and just stand behind your chair, and bring nieve with 
 me," showing a fist like a leg of mutton. 
 
 "No, no," said the auctioneer, "that will not do. I 
 will have no disturbance here. Call the policeman." 
 
 While the clerk went to the door for the bobby, a 
 gentleman reminded the auctioneer that the journals 
 had repeatedly drawn attention to the nuisance. 
 
 " Fault of the public, not mine, sir. Policeman, stand 
 behind that lady's chair, and if anybody annoys her put 
 him quietly into the street." 
 
 " This auction-room will be to let soon," said a voice 
 at the end of the table. 
 
 " This auction-room," said the auctioneer, master of the 
 gay or grave at a moment's notice, " is supported by the 
 public and the trade ; it is not supported by paupers." 
 
 A Jew upholsterer put in his word. " I do my own 
 business ; but I like to let a poor man live." 
 
 " Jonathan," said the auctioneer to one of his servants, 
 " after this sale you may put up the shutters ; we have 
 gone and offended Mr. Jacobs. He keeps a shop in 
 Blind Alley, Whitechapel. Now then, lot 69." 
 
 Rosa bid timidly for one or two lots, and bought them 
 Cheap. 
 
 The auctioneer kept looking her way, and she had only 
 to nod. 
 
 The obnoxious broker got opposite her, and ran her up 
 a little out of spite ; but as he had only got half a crowy 
 about him, and no means of doubling it, he dared not go 
 far. 
 
 On the other side of the table was a figure to which
 
 A SIMPLETON. 105 
 
 Bosa's eyes often turned Avith interest — a fair young boy 
 about twelve years old ; he had golden hair, and was in 
 deep mourning. His appearance interested Rosa, and she 
 wondered how he came there, and why ; he looked like 
 a lamb wedged in among wolves, a flower among weeds. 
 As the lots proceeded, the boy seemed to get uneasy; 
 and at last, when lot 73 was put up, anybody could see 
 in his poor little face that he was there to bid for it. 
 
 " Lot 73, an armchair covered in morocco. An excel- 
 lent and useful article. Should not be at all surprised if 
 it was made by Gillow." 
 
 " Gillow would though," said Jacobs, who owed him a 
 turn. 
 
 Choms of dealers. — " Haw ! haw ! " 
 
 The auctioneer. — "I like to hear some people run a 
 lot down ; shows they are going to bid for it in earnest. 
 Well, name your own price. Five pounds to begin ? " 
 
 Now if nobody had spoken the auctioneer would have 
 gone on, "Well, four pounds then — three, two, whatever 
 you like," and at last obtained a bona fide offer of thirty 
 shillings ; but the moment he said " Five pounds to 
 begin," the boy in black lifted up his childish treble and 
 bid thus, " Five pound ten " — "six pounds " — " six pound 
 ten " — " seven pounds " — " seven pound ten " — "eight 
 pounds " — " eight pound ten " — " nine pounds " — " nine 
 pound ten " — " ten pounds ! " without interruption, and 
 indeed almost in a breath. 
 
 There w^s a momentary pause of amazement, and then 
 an outburst of chaff. 
 
 " Nice little boy ! " 
 
 " Didn't he say his lesson well ? " 
 
 "Favor us with your card, sir. You are a gent as 
 knows how to buy." 
 
 " What did he stop for ? If it's worth ten, it is worth 
 a hundred."
 
 106 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 " Bless the child ! " said a female dealer, kindly, " what 
 made you go on like that ? Why, there was no one bid 
 against you ! you'd have got it for two pounds — a rickety 
 old thing." 
 
 Young master began to whimper. " Why, the gentle- 
 man said, ' Five pounds to hegin.^ It was the chair poor 
 grandpapa always sat in, and all the things are sold, and 
 mamma said it would break her heart to lose it. She 
 was too ill to come, so she sent me. She told me I was 
 not to let it be sold away from us for less than ten 
 pounds, or she sh — should be m — m — miserable," and 
 the poor little fellow began to cry. Rosa followed suit 
 promptly but unobtrusively. 
 
 "Sentiment always costs money," said Mr. Jacobs, 
 gravely. 
 
 " How do you know ? " asked Mr. Cohen. " Have you 
 got any on hand ? I never seen none at your shop." 
 
 Some tempting things now came up, and Mrs. Staines 
 bid freely ; but all of a sudden she looked down the table, 
 and there was Uncle Philip, twinkling as before. " Oh, 
 dear ! what am I doing now ! " thought she. " I have got 
 no broker." 
 
 She bid on, but in fear and trembling, because of those 
 twinkling eyes. At last she mustered courage, wrote on 
 a leaf of her pocket-book, and passed it down to him : 
 " It would be only kind to warn me. What am I doing 
 wrong ? " 
 
 He sent her back a line directly : " Auctioneer running 
 you up himself. Follow his eye when he bids ; you will 
 see there is no bona fide bidder at your prices." 
 
 Rosa did so, and found that it was true. 
 
 She nodded to Uncle Philip ; and, with her expressive 
 face, asked him what she should do. 
 
 The old boy must have his joke. So he wrote back : 
 " Tell him, as you see he has a fancy for certain articles.
 
 A SIMPLETON. 107 
 
 you would not be so discourteous as to bid against 
 him." 
 
 The next article but one was a drawing-room suite 
 Eosa wanted ; but the auctioneer bid against her ; so at 
 eighteen pounds she stopped. 
 
 " It is against you, madam," said the auctioneer. 
 
 " Yes, sir," said Eosa ; " but as you are the only bidder, 
 and you have been so kind to me, I would not think of 
 opposing you." 
 
 The words were scarcely out of her mouth, when they 
 were greeted with a roar of Homeric laughter that liter- 
 ally shook the room, and this time not at the expense of 
 the innocent speaker. 
 
 " That's into your mutton, governor." 
 
 " Sharp's the word this time." 
 
 " I say, governor, don't you want a broker to bid for 
 
 ye 
 
 ?" 
 
 " Wink at me next time, sir ; I'll do the office for you." 
 
 " No greenhorns left now." 
 
 " That lady won't give a ten-pund note for her grand- 
 father's armchair." 
 
 " Oh, yes, she will, if it's stuffed with banknotes." 
 
 "Put the next lot up with the owner's name and the 
 reserve price. Open business." 
 
 " And sing a psalm at starting." 
 
 <•' A little less noise in Judsea, if you please," said the 
 auctioneer, who had now recovered from the blow. 
 " Lot 97." 
 
 This was a very pretty marqueterie cabinet ; it stood 
 against the wall, and Eosa had set her heart upon it. 
 Nobody would bid. She had muzzled the auctioneer 
 effectually. 
 
 '' Your own price." 
 
 "Two pounds," said Eosa. 
 
 A dealer offered guineas; and it advanced slowly to
 
 108 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 four pounds and lialf a crown, at which it was about to 
 be knocked down to Rosa, when suddenly a new bidder 
 arose in tlie broker Rosa had rejected. They bid slowly 
 and sturdily against each other, until a line was given 
 to Rosa from Uncle Philip. 
 
 ''This time it is your own friend, the snipe-nosed 
 woman. She telegraphed a broker." 
 
 Rosa read, and crushed the note. '' Six guineas," said 
 she. 
 
 " Six-ten." 
 
 " Seven." 
 
 " Seven-ten." 
 . "Eight." 
 
 "Eight-ten." 
 
 "Ten guineas," said Rosa; and then, with feminine 
 cunning, stealing a sudden glance, caught her friend 
 leaning back and signalling the broker not to give in. 
 
 " Eleven pounds." 
 
 "Twelve." 
 
 "Thirteen." 
 
 " Fourteen." 
 
 " Sixteen." 
 
 "Eighteen." 
 
 " Twenty." 
 
 " Twenty guineas." 
 
 "It is yours, my faithful friend," said Rosa, turning 
 suddenly round to Mrs. Cole, with a magnificent glance 
 no one would have thought her capable of. 
 
 Then she rose and stalked away. 
 
 Dumfounded for the moment, Mrs. Cole followed her, 
 and stopped her at the door. 
 
 " Why, Rosie dear, it is the only thing I have bid for. 
 There I've sat by your side like a mouse." 
 
 Rosa turned gravely towards her. " You knoAv it is 
 not that. You had only to tell me you wanted it. I
 
 A SIMPLETON. 100 
 
 would never have been so mean as to bid against 
 you." 
 
 " Mean, indeed ! " said Florence, tossing her head. 
 
 " Yes, mean ; to draw back and hide behind the friend 
 you were with, and employ the very rogue she had 
 turned off. But it is my own fault. Cecilia warned me 
 against you. She always said you were a treacherous 
 girl." 
 
 " And I say you are an impudent little minx. Only 
 just married, and going about like two vagabonds, and 
 talk to me like that ! " 
 
 "We are not going about like two vagabonds. We 
 have taken a house in Mayfair." 
 
 " Say a stable." 
 
 " It was by your advice, you false-hearted creature." 
 
 *' You are a fool." 
 
 '' You are worse ; you are a traitress." 
 
 '' Then don't you have anything to do with me." 
 
 " Heaven forbid I should, you treacherous thing ! " 
 
 " You insolent — insolent — I hate you." 
 
 " And I despise you." 
 
 " I always hated you at bottom." 
 
 " That's why you pretended to love me, you wretch." 
 
 " Well, I pretend no more. I am your enemy for life." 
 
 "Thank you. You have told the truth for once in 
 your life." 
 
 "I have. And he shall never call in your husband; 
 so you may leave Mayfair as soon as you like." 
 
 "Not to please you, madam. We can get on without 
 traitors." 
 
 And so they parted, with eyes that gleamed like 
 tigers. 
 
 Rosa drove home in great agitation, and tried to tell 
 Christopher; but choked, and became hysterical. The 
 husband-physician coaxed and scolded her out of that ;
 
 110 A SIMPLETON, 
 
 and presently in came Uncle Philip, full of the humors 
 of the auction-room. He told about the little boy with 
 a delight that disgusted Mrs. Staines, and then was par- 
 ticularly merry on female friendships. '' Fancy a man 
 going to a sale with his friend, and bidding against him 
 on the sly." 
 
 " She is no friend of mine. We are enemies for life." 
 
 " And you were to be friends till death," said Staines, 
 with a sigh. 
 
 Philip inquired who she was. 
 
 " Mrs. John Cole." 
 
 " Not of Curzon Street ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " And you have quarrelled with her ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Well, but her husband is a general practitioner.'^ 
 
 " She is a traitress." 
 
 " But her husband could put a good deal of money in 
 Christopher's way." 
 
 " I can't help it. She is a traitress." 
 
 "And you have quarrelled with her about an old 
 wardrobe." 
 
 "No, for her disloyalty, and her base good-for-noth- 
 ingness. Oh ! oh ! oh ! " 
 
 Uncle Philip got up, looking sour. " Good afternoon, 
 Mrs. Christopher," said he, very dryly. 
 
 Christopher accompanied him to the foot of the stairs. 
 
 " Well, Christopher," said he, " matrimony is a blunder 
 at the best ; and you have not done the thing by halves. 
 You have married a simpleton. She will be your ruin." 
 
 " Uncle Philip, since you only come here to insult us, 
 I hope in future you will stay at home." 
 
 " Oh ! with pleasure, sir. Good-by ! "
 
 A SIMPLETON. Ill 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Christopher Staines came back, looking pained and 
 disturbed. "There," said he, "I feared it would come 
 to this. I have quarrelled with Uncle Philip." 
 
 " Oh ! how could you ? " 
 
 " He affronted me." 
 
 " What about ? " 
 
 "Never you mind. Don't let us say anything more 
 about it, darling. It is a pity, a sad pity — he was a 
 good friend of mine once." 
 
 He paused, entered what had passed in his diary, and 
 then sat down, with a gentle expression of sadness on 
 his manly features. Rosa hung about him, soft and 
 pitying, till it cleared away, at all events for the time. 
 
 Next day they went together to clear the goods Rosa 
 had purchased. Whilst the list was being made out in 
 the office, in came the fair-haired boy, with a ten-pound 
 note in his very hand. Rosa caught sight of it, and 
 turned to the auctioneer, with a sweet, pitying face : 
 " Oh ! sir, surely you will not take all that money from 
 him, poor child, for a rickety old chair." 
 
 The auctioneer stared with amazement at her sim- 
 plicity, and said, " ^Vhat would the vendors say to 
 me?" 
 
 She looked distressed, and said, "Well, then, really 
 we ought to raise a subscription, poor thing ! " 
 
 " Why, ma'am," said the auctioneer, " he isn't hurt : 
 the article belonged to his mother and her sister ; the 
 brother-in-law isn't on good terms ; so he demanded a 
 public sale. She will get oack four pun ten out of it."
 
 112 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 Here the clerk put in his word. "And there's five 
 pounds paid, I forgot to tell you." 
 
 " Oh ! left a deposit, did he ? " 
 
 "No, sir. But the laughing hyena gave you five 
 pounds at the end of the sale." 
 
 " The laughing hyena, Mr. Jones ? " 
 
 " Oh ! beg pardon ; that is what we call him in the 
 room. He has got such a curious laugh." 
 
 " Oh ! I know the gent. He is a retired doctor. I 
 wish he'd laugh less and buy more : and he gave you 
 five pounds towards the young gentleman's arm-chair ! 
 Well, I should as soon have expected blood from a flint. 
 You have got five pounds to pay, sir : so now the chair 
 will cost your mamma ten shillings. Give him the order 
 and the change, Mr. Jones." 
 
 Christopher and Kosa talked this over in the room 
 whilst the men were looking out their purchases. 
 " Come," said Kosa ; " now I forgive him sneering at 
 me ; his heart is not really hard, you see." Staines, on 
 the contrary, was very angry. " What ! " he cried, 
 " pity a boy who made one bad bargain, that, after 
 all, was not a very bad bargain ; and he had no kindness, 
 nor even common humanity, for my beautiful Rosa, 
 inexperienced as a child, and buying for her husband, 
 like a good, affectionate, honest creature, amongst a lot 
 of sharpers and hard-hearted cynics — like himself." 
 
 "It was cruel of him," said Rosa, altering her mind 
 in a moment, and half inclined to cry. 
 
 This made Christopher furious. "The ill-natured, 
 crotchety, old — the fact is, he is a misogynist." 
 
 "Oh, the wretch!" said Rosa warmly. "And what 
 is that ? " 
 
 " A woman-hater." 
 
 • " Oh ! is that all ? Why, so do I — after that Elorence 
 Cole. Women are mean, heartless things. Give me 
 men; they are loyal and true."
 
 A SIMPLETON. 113 
 
 " All of them ? " inquired Christopher, a little satiri- 
 cally. " Read the papers." 
 
 " Every soul of them," said Mrs. Staines, passing 
 loftily over the proposed test. " That is, all the ones 1 
 care about ; and that is my own, own one." 
 
 Disagreeable creatures to have about one — these 
 simpletons ! 
 
 Mrs. Staines took Christopher to shops to buy the 
 remaining requisites : and in three days more the house 
 was furnished, two female servants engaged, and the 
 couple took their luggage over to the Bijou. 
 
 Eosa was excited and happy at the novelty of posses- 
 sion and authority', and that close sense of house pro- 
 prietorship which belongs to woman. By dinner-time 
 she could have told you how many shelves there were 
 in every cupboard, and knew the Bijou by heart in a 
 way that Christopher never knew it. All this ended, 
 as running about and excitement generally does, with 
 my lady being exhausted, and lax with fatigue. So 
 then he made her lie down on a little couch, while he 
 went through his accounts. 
 
 When he had examined all the bills carefully he looked 
 very grave, and said, " Who would believe this ? We 
 began with three thousand pounds. It was to last us 
 several years — till I got a good practice. Eosa, there 
 is only fourteen hundred and forty pounds left." 
 
 " Oh, impossible ! " said Eosa. " Oh, dear ! why did 
 I ever enter a saleroom ? " 
 
 "No, no, my darling; you were bitten once or twice, 
 but you made some good bargains too. Eemember there 
 was four hundred pounds set apart for my life policy." 
 
 " What a waste of money ! " 
 
 " Your father did not think so. Then the lease : the 
 premium ; repairs of the drains that would have poisoned 
 my Eosa ; turning the coach-house into a dispensary j
 
 114 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 painting, papering, and furnishing ; china, and linen, 
 and everything to buy. We must look at this seriously. 
 Only fourteen hundred and forty pounds left. A slow 
 profession. No friends. I have quarrelled with Uncle 
 Philip : you with Mrs. Cole ; and her husband would 
 have launched me." 
 
 "And it was to please her we settled here. Oh, I 
 could kill her : nasty cat ! " 
 
 " Never mind ; it is not a case for despondency, but it 
 is for prudence. All we have to do is to look the thing 
 in the face, and be very economical in everything. I had 
 better give you an allowance for housekeeping; and I 
 earnestly beg you to buy things yourself whilst you are 
 a poor man's wife, and pay ready money for everything. 
 My mother was a great manager, and she always said, 
 ' There is but one way : be your own market-woman, and 
 pay on the spot ; never let the tradesmen get you on 
 their books, or, what with false weight, double charges, 
 and the things your servants order that never enter the 
 house, you lose more than a hundred a year by cheating.' " 
 
 Rosa yielded a languid assent to this part of his dis- 
 course, and it hardly seemed to enter her mind ; but she 
 raised no objection; and in due course he made her a 
 special allowance for housekeeping. 
 
 It soon transpired that medical advice was to be had, 
 gratis, at the Bijou, from eight till ten : and there was 
 generally a good attendance. But a week passed, and 
 not one patient came of the class this couple must live 
 by. Christopher set this down to what people call "the 
 transition period : " his Kent patients had lost him ; his 
 London patients not found him. He wrote to all his 
 patients in the country, and many of his pupils at the 
 university, to let them know where he was settled : and 
 then he waited. 
 
 Not a creature came.
 
 A SIMPLETON. 115 
 
 Rosa bore this very well for a time, so long as the 
 house was a novelty ; but when that excitement was 
 worn out, she began to be very dull, and used to come 
 and entice him out to walk with her : he would look 
 wistfully at her, but object that, if he left the house, he 
 should be sure to lose a patient. 
 
 " Oh, they won't come any more for our staying in — 
 tiresome things ! " said Rosa. 
 
 But Christopher would kiss her, and remain firm. 
 " My love," said he, " you do not realize how hard a 
 fight there is before us. How should you ? You are 
 very young. No, for your sake, I must not throw a 
 chance away. Write to your female friends : that will 
 while away an hour or two." 
 
 ''What, after that Florence Cole ?" 
 
 " Write to those who have not made such violent 
 professions." 
 
 " So I will, dear. Especially to those that are married 
 and come to London. Oh, and I'll write to that cold- 
 blooded thing, Lady Cicely Treherne. Why do you shake 
 your head ? " 
 
 " Did I ? I was not aware. Well, dear, if ladies of 
 rank were to come here, I fear they might make you 
 discontented with your lot." 
 
 " All the women on earth could not do that. How- 
 ever, the chances are she will not come near me : she 
 left the school quite a big girl, an immense girl, when I 
 was only twelve. She used to smile at my capriccios ; 
 and once she kissed me — actually. She was an awful 
 Sa-wny, though, and so affected : I think I will write to 
 her." 
 
 These letters brought just one lady, a Mrs. Turner, 
 who talked to Rosa very glibly about herself, and amused 
 Rosa twice : at the third visit, Rosa tried to change the 
 conversation. Mrs. Turner instantly got up, and went
 
 116 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 away. She could not boar tlie sound of the human 
 voice, unless it was talking about her and her affairs. 
 
 And now Staines began to feel downright uneasy. 
 Income was going steadily out : not a shilling coming 
 in. The lame, the blind, and the sick frequented his 
 dispensary, and got his skill out of him gratis, and some- 
 times a little physic, a little wine, and other things that 
 cost him money : but of the patients that pay, not one 
 came to his front door. 
 
 He walked round and round his little yard, like a 
 hyena in its cage, waiting, waiting, waiting : and oh ! 
 how he envied the lot of those who can hunt for work, 
 instead of having to stay at home and wait for others to 
 come, whose will they cannot influence. His heart began 
 to sicken with hope deferred, and dim forebodings of the 
 future ; and he saw, with grief, that his wife was getting 
 duller and duller, and that her days dragged more heavily 
 far than his own ; for he could study. 
 
 At last his knocker began to show signs of life : his 
 visitors were physicians. His lectures on " Diagnosis " 
 were well known to them ; and one after another found 
 him out. They were polite, kind, even friendly ; but 
 here it ended : these gentlemen, of course, did not resign 
 their patients to him ; and the inferior class of practi- 
 tioners avoided his door like a pestilence. 
 
 Mrs. Staines, who had always lived for amusement, 
 could strike out no fixed occupation ; her time hung like 
 lead; the house ^vas small; and in small houses the 
 faults of servants run against the mistress, and she 
 can't help seeing them, and all the worse for her. It is 
 easier to keep things clean in the country, and Eosa had 
 a high standard, which her two servants could never 
 quite attain. This annoyed her, and she began to scold 
 a little. They answered civilly, but in other respects 
 remained imperfect beings ; they laid out every shilling
 
 A SEVIPLETON. 117 
 
 they earned in finery ; and, this, I am ashamed to say, 
 irritated Mrs. Staines, who was wearing out her wedding 
 garments, and had no excuse for buying, and Staines had 
 begged her to be economical. The more they dressed, 
 the more she scolded ; they began to answer. She gave 
 the cook warning ; the other, though not on good terms 
 with the cook, had a gush of esprit de corps directly, and 
 gave Mrs. Staines warning. 
 
 Mrs. Staines told her husband all this : he took her 
 part, though without openly interfering; and they had 
 two new servants, not so good as the last. 
 
 This worried Eosa sadly ; but it was a fl.ea-bite to the 
 deeper nature, and more forecasting mind of her hus- 
 band, still doomed to pace that miserable yard, like a 
 hyena, chafing, seeking, longing for the patient that 
 never came. 
 
 Rosa used to look out of his dressing-room window, 
 and see him pace the yard. At first, tears of pity stood 
 in her ej'es. By and by she got angry with the world ; 
 and at last, strange to say, a little irritated with him. 
 It is hard for a weak woman to keep up all her respect 
 for the man that fails. 
 
 One day, after watching him a long time unseen, 
 she got excited, put on her shawl and bonnet, and ran 
 down to him : she took him by the arm : " If you love 
 me, come out of this prison, and walk with me ; we are 
 too miserable. I shall be your first patient if this goes 
 on much longer." He looked at her, saw she was very 
 excited, and had better be humored ; so he kissed her and 
 just said, with a melancholy smile, "How poor are they 
 that have not patience ! " Then he put on his hat, and 
 walked in the Park and Kensington Gardens with her. 
 The season was just beginning. There were carriages 
 enough, and gay Amazons enough, to make poor Rosa 
 sigh more than once.
 
 118 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 Christopher heard the sigh ; and pressed her arm, and 
 said, " Courage, love, I hope to see you among them yet." 
 
 " The sooner the better," said she, a little hardly, 
 
 "And, meantime, which of them all is as beautiful as 
 you ? " 
 
 " All I know is, they are more attractive. Wlio looks 
 at me, walking tamely by ? " 
 
 Christopher said nothing : but these words seemed to 
 imply a thirst for admiration, and made him a little 
 uneasy. 
 
 By and by the walk put the swift-changing Eosa in 
 spirits, and she began to chat gayly, and hung prattling 
 and beaming on her husband's arm, when they entered 
 Curzon Street. Here, however, occurred an incident, 
 trifling in itself, but unpleasant. Dr. Staines saw one of 
 his best Kentish patients get feebly out of his carriage, 
 and call on Dr. Barr. He started, and stopped. Eosa 
 asked what was the matter. He told her. She said, 
 " We are unfortunate." 
 
 Staines said nothing ; he only quickened his pace ; 
 but he was greatly disturbed. She expected him to 
 complain that she had dragged him out, and lost him 
 that first chance. But he said nothing. When they got 
 home, he asked the servant had anybody called. 
 
 "No, sir." 
 
 " Surely you are mistaken, Jane. A gentleman in a 
 carriage ! " 
 
 " Not a creature have been since you went out, sir," 
 
 "Well, then, dearest," said he sweetly, "we have 
 nothing to reproach ourselves with." Then he knit his 
 brow gloomily. " It is worse than I thought. It seems 
 even one's country patients go to another doctor when 
 they visit London. It is hard. It is hard." 
 
 Eosa leaned her head on his shoulder, and curled round 
 him, as one she would shield against the world's injus-
 
 A SIMPLETON. 119 
 
 tice ; but she said notliing ; she was a little frightened 
 at his eye that lowered, and his noble frame that trem- 
 bled a little, with ire suppressed. 
 
 Two days after this, a brougham drove up to the door, 
 and a tallish, fattish, pasty-faced man got out, and 
 inquired for Dr. Staines. 
 
 He was shown into the dining-room, and told Jane he 
 had come to consult the doctor. 
 
 Kosa had peeped over the stairs, all curiosity ; she 
 glided noiselessly down, and with love's swift foot got 
 into the yard before Jane. " He is come ! he is come ! 
 Kiss me." 
 
 Dr. Staines kissed her first, and then asked who was 
 come. 
 
 "Oh, nobody of any consequence. Only the first 
 patient. Kiss me again." 
 
 Dr. Staines kissed her again, and then was for going 
 to the first patient. 
 
 " No," said she ; " not yet. I met a doctor's wife at 
 Dr. Mayne's, and she told me things. You must always 
 keep them waiting ; or else they think nothing of you. 
 Such a funny woman ! ' Treat 'em like dogs, my dear,' 
 she said. But I told her they wouldn't come to be 
 treated like dogs or any other animal." 
 
 " You had better have kept that to j^ourself, I think." 
 
 " Oh ! if you are going to be disagreeable, good-by. 
 You can go to your patient, sir. Christie, dear, if he is 
 very — very ill — and I'm sure I hope he is — oh, how 
 wicked I am ; may I have a new bonnet ? " 
 
 " If you really want one." 
 
 On the patient's card was "Mr. Pettigrew, 47 Man- 
 chester Square." 
 
 As soon as Staines entered the room, the first patient 
 told him who and what he was, a retired civilian from 
 India j but he had got a son there still, a very rising
 
 120 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 inan ; wanted to be a parson ; but he would not stand 
 that ; bad profession ; don't rise by merit ; very hard to 
 rise at all ; — no, India was the place. " As for me, I 
 made my fortune there in ten years. Obliged to leave 
 it now — invalid this many years ; no tone. Tried two 
 or three doctors in this neighborhood ; heard there was 
 a new one, had written a book on something. Thought 
 I would try /mnJ^ 
 
 To stop him, Staines requested to feel his pulse, and 
 examine his tongue and eye. 
 
 " You are suffering from indigestion," said he. " I 
 will write you a prescription ; but if you want to get 
 well, you must simplify your diet very much." 
 
 While he was Avriting the prescription, off went this 
 patient's tongue, and ran through the topics of the day 
 and into his family history again. 
 
 Staines listened politely. He could afford it, having 
 only this one. 
 
 At last, the first patient, having delivered an octavo 
 volume of nothing, rose to go ; but it seems that speak- 
 ing an " infinite deal of nothing " exhausts the body, 
 though it does not affect the mind ; for the first patient 
 sank down in his chair again. " I have excited myself 
 too much — feel rather faint." 
 
 Staines saw no signs of coming syncope ; he rang the 
 bell quietly, and ordered a decanter of sherry to be 
 brought ; the first patient filled himself a glass ; then 
 another; and went off, revived, to chatter elsewhere. 
 But at the door he said, " I had always a running account 
 with Dr. Mivar. I suppose you don't object to that 
 system. Double fee the first visit, single afterwards." 
 
 Dr. Staines bowed a little stifily ; he would have pre- 
 ferred the money. However, he looked at the Blue 
 Book, and found his visitor lived at 47 Manchester 
 Square ; so that removed his anxiety.
 
 A SEVIPLETON. 121 
 
 The first patient called every other day, chattered 
 nineteen to the dozen, w\as exhausted, drank two glasses 
 of sherry, and drove away. 
 
 Soon after this a second patient called. This one was 
 a* deputy patient — Collett, a retired butler — kept a 
 lodging-house, and waited at parties ; he lived close by, 
 but had a married daughter in Chelsea. Would the 
 doctor visit her, and he would be responsible ? 
 
 Staines paid the woman a visit or two, and treated 
 her so effectually, that soon her visits were paid to him. 
 She was cured, and Staines, who by this time wanted to 
 see money, sent to Collett. 
 
 Collett did not answer. 
 
 Staines wrote warmly. 
 
 Collett dead silent. 
 
 Staines employed a solicitor. 
 
 Collett said he had recommended the patient, that was 
 all. He had never said he would pay her debts. That 
 was her husband's business. 
 
 Now her husband was the mate of a ship ; would not 
 be in England for eighteen months. 
 
 The woman, visited by lawyer's clerk, cried bitterly, 
 and said she and her children had scarcely enough to eat. 
 
 Lawyer advised Staines to abandon the case, and pay 
 him two pounds fifteen shillings expenses. He did so. 
 
 " This is damnable," said he. " I must get it out of 
 Pettigrew ; by-the-by, he has not been here this two 
 days." 
 
 He waited another day for Pettigrew, and then wrote 
 to him. No answer. Called. Pettigrew gone abroad. 
 House in Manchester Square to let. 
 
 Staines went to the house-agent with his tale. Agent 
 was impenetrable at first; but, at last, won by the 
 doctor's manner and his unhappiness, referred him to 
 Pettigrew's solicitor ; the solicitor was a respectable
 
 122 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 man, and said lie would forward the claim to Pettigrew 
 in Paris. 
 
 But by this time Pettigrew was chattering and guz- 
 zling in Berlin ; and thence he got to St. Petersburg. In 
 that stronghold of gluttony, he gormandized more than 
 ever, and, being unable to talk it off his stomach, as in 
 other cities, had apoplexy, and died. 
 
 But long before this Staines saw his money was as 
 irrecoverable as his sherry ; and he said to Eosa, " I 
 wonder whether I shall ever live to curse the human 
 race ? " 
 
 " Heaven forbid ! " said Eosa. " Oh, they use you 
 cruelly, my poor, poor Christie ! " 
 
 Thus for months the young doctor's patients bled him, 
 and that was all. 
 
 And Eosa got more and more moped at being in the 
 house so much, and pestered Christopher to take her 
 out, and he declined: and, being a man hard to beat, 
 took to writing on medical subjects, in hopes of getting 
 some money from the various medical and scientific pub- 
 lications ; but he found it as hard to get the wedge in 
 there as to get patients. 
 
 At last Eosa's remonstrances began to rise into some- 
 thing that sounded like reproaches. One Sunday she 
 came to him in her bonnet, and interrupted his studies, 
 to say he might as well lay down the pen, and talk. 
 Nobody would publish anything he wrote. 
 
 Christopher frowned, but contained himself, and laid 
 down the pen. 
 
 " I might as well not be married at all as be a doctor's 
 wife. You are never seen out with me, not even to 
 church. Do behave like a Christian, and come to church 
 with me now." 
 
 Dr. Staines shook his head. 
 
 " Why, I wouldn't miss church for all the world. Any
 
 A SUrPLETON. 123 
 
 excitement is better than always moping. Come over 
 the water with me. The time Jane and I went, the 
 clergyman read a paper that Mr. Brown had fallen down 
 in a fit. There was such a rush directly, and I'm sure 
 fifty ladies went out — fancy, all Mrs. Browns ! Wasn't 
 that fun ? " 
 
 " Fun ? I don't see it. Well, Rosa, your mind is 
 evidently better adapted to diversion than mine is. Go 
 you to church, love, and I'll continue my studies." 
 
 "Then all I can say is, I wish I was back in my 
 father's house. Husband ! friend ! companion ! — I have 
 none." 
 
 Then she burst out crying violently; and, being shocked 
 at what she had said, and at the agony it had brought 
 into her husband's face, she went off into hysterics ; and 
 as his heart would not let him bellow at her, or empty a 
 bucket on her as he would on another patient, she had 
 a good long bout of them : and got her way, for she 
 broke up his studies for that day, at all events. 
 
 Even after the hysterics were got under, she continued 
 to moan and sigh very prettily, with her lovely, languid 
 head pillowed on her husband's arm ; in a word, though 
 the hysterics were real, yet this innocent young person 
 had the presence of mind to postpone entire convales- 
 cence, and lay herself out to be petted all day. But 
 fate willed it otherwise : while she was sighing and 
 moaning, came to the door a scurrying of feet, and then 
 a sharp, persistent ringing that meant something. The 
 moaner cocked eye and ear, and said, in her every-day 
 voice, which, coming so suddenly, sounded very droll, 
 " What is that, I wonder ? " 
 
 Jane hurried to the street-door, and Rosa recovered by 
 magic; and, preferring gossip to hysterics, in an almost 
 gleeful whisper, ordered Christopher to open the door of 
 the study. The Bijou was so small that the following 
 dialogue rang in their ears »—•
 
 124 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 A boy in buttons gasped out, " Oh, if yoii please, will 
 you ast the doctor to come roimd directly ; there's a 
 haccident." 
 
 " La, bless me ! " said Jane, and never budged. 
 
 " Yes, miss. It's our missus's little girl fallen right 
 off an i-chair, and cut her head dreadful, and smothered 
 in blood." 
 
 " La, to be sure ! " And she waited steadily for more. 
 
 " Ay, and missus she fainted right off ; and I've been 
 to the regler doctor, which he's out; and Sarah, the 
 housemaid, said I had better come here ; you was only 
 just set up, she said ; you w^ouldn't have so much to do, 
 says she." 
 
 "That is all she knows," said Jane. "Why, our 
 master — they pulls him in pieces which is to have him 
 fust." 
 
 " What an awful liar ! Oh, you good girl ! " whispered 
 Dr. Staines and Eosa in one breath. 
 
 " Ah, w^ell," said Buttons, " any way, Sarah says she 
 knows you are clever, 'cos her little girl as lives with 
 l]^r mother, and calls Sarah aunt, has bin to your 'spen- 
 sary with ringworm, and you cured her right off." 
 
 "Ay, and a good many more," said Jane, loftily. She 
 was a housemaid of imagination ; and while Staines was 
 putting some lint and an instrument case into his pocket, 
 she proceeded to relate a number of miraculous cures. 
 Dr. Staines interrupted them by suddenly emerging, and 
 inviting Buttons to take him to the house. 
 
 Mrs. Staines was so pleased with Jane for cracking up 
 the doctor, that she gave her five shillings ; and, after 
 that, used to talk to her a great deal more than to the 
 cook, which judicious conduct presently set all three by 
 the ears. 
 
 Buttons took the doctor to a fine house in the same 
 street, and told him his mistress's name on the way — 
 
 I
 
 A SIMPLETON. 125 
 
 Mrs. Lucas. He was taken up to the nursery, and found 
 Mrs. Lucas seated, crying and lamenting, and a woman 
 holding a little girl of about seven, whose brow had been 
 cut open by the fender, on which she had fallen from a 
 chair ; it looked very ugly, and was even now bleeding. 
 
 Dr. Staines lost no time; he examined the wound 
 keenly, and then said kindly to Mrs. Lucas, " I am happy 
 to tell yoif it is not serious." He then asked for a large 
 basin and some tepid water, and bathed it so softly and 
 soothingly that the child soon became composed; and 
 the mother discovered the artist at once. He compressed 
 the wound, and explained to Mrs. Lucas that the princi- 
 pal thing really was to avoid an ugly scar. " There is 
 no danger," said he. He then bound the wound neatly 
 up, and had the girl put to bed. " You will not wake 
 her at any particular hour, nurse. Let her sleep. Have 
 a little strong beef-tea ready, and give it her at any hour, 
 night or day, she asks for it. But do not force it on her, 
 or you will do her more harm than good. She had better 
 sleep before she eats." 
 
 Mrs. Lucas begged him to come every morning ; and, 
 as he was going, she shook hands with him, and the soft 
 palm deposited a hard substance wrapped in paper. He 
 took it with professional gravity and seeming uncon- 
 sciousness ; but, once outside the house, went home on 
 wings. He ran up to the drawing-room, and found his 
 wife seated, and playing at reading. He threw himself 
 on his knees, and the fee into her lap ; and, while she 
 unfolded the paper with an ejaculation of pleasure, he 
 said, " Darling, the first real patient — the first real fee. 
 It is yours to buy the new bonnet." 
 
 " Oh, I'm so glad ! " said she, with her eyes glistening. 
 " But I'm afraid one can't get a bonnet fit to wear — toi 
 a guinea." 
 
 Dr. Staines visited his little patient every day, and
 
 126 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 received his guinea. Mrs. Lucas also called him in for 
 her own little ailments, and they were the best possible 
 kind of ailments : for, being imaginary, there was no 
 limit to them. 
 
 Then did Mrs. Staines turn jealous of her husband. 
 " They never ask me," said she ; " and I am moped to 
 death." 
 
 "It is hard," said Christopher, sadly. "But have a 
 little patience. Society will come to you long before 
 practice comes to me." 
 
 About two o'clock one afternoon a carriage and pair 
 drove up, and a gorgeous footman delivered a card — 
 " Lady Cicely Treherne." 
 
 Of course Mrs. Staines was at home, and only with- 
 held by propriety from bounding into the passage to 
 meet her school-fellow. However, she composed herself 
 in the drawing-room, and presently the door was opened, 
 and a very tall young woman, richly but not gayly 
 dressed, drifted into the room, and stood there a statue 
 of composure. 
 
 Kosa had risen to ily to her ; but the reverence a girl 
 of eighteen strikes into a child of twelve hung about her 
 still, and she came timidly forward, blushing and spark- 
 ling, a curious contrast in color and mind to her visitor ; 
 for Lady Cicely was Languor in person — her hair whitey- 
 brown, her face a fine oval, but almost colorless ; her eyes 
 a pale gray, her neck and hands incomparably white and 
 beautiful — a lymphatic young lady, a live antidote to 
 emotion. However, Rosa's beauty, timidity, and undis- 
 guised affectionateness were something so different from 
 what she was used to in the world of fashion, that she 
 actually smiled, and held out both her hands a little way. 
 Rosa seized them, and pressed them ; they left her, and 
 remained passive and limp. 
 
 "0 Lady Cicely," said Rosa, "how kind of you to 
 come."
 
 A SIMPLETON. 127 
 
 " How kind of you to send to me," was the polite, but 
 perfectly cool reply. " But how you are gwown, and — 
 may I say impwoved ? — You la petite Lusignan ! It is 
 iucwedible," lisped her ladyship, very calmly. 
 
 "I was only a child," said Rosa. "You were always 
 so beautiful and tall, and kind to a little monkey like me. 
 Oh, pray sit down, Lady Cicely, and talk of old times." 
 
 She drew her gently to the sofa, and they sat down 
 hand in hand ; but Lady Cicely's high-bred reserve made 
 her a very poor gossip about anything that touched her- 
 self and her family; so Eosa, though no egotist, was 
 drawn into talking about herself more than she would 
 have done had she deliberately planned the conversation. 
 But here was an old school-fellow, and a singularly polite 
 listener, and so out came her love, her genuine happi- 
 ness, her particular griefs, and especially the crowning 
 grievance, no society, moped to death, etc. 
 
 Lady Cicely could hardly understand the sentiment in 
 a woman who so evidently loved her husband. " So- 
 ciety ! " said she, after due reflection, " why, it is a boa." 
 (And here I may as well explain that Lady Cicely spoke 
 certain words falsely, and others affectedly ; and as for 
 the letter r, she could say it if she made a hearty effort, 
 but was generally too lazy to throw her leg over it.) 
 " Society ! I'm dwenched to death with it. If I could 
 only catch fiah like other women, and love somebody, I 
 would much rather have a tete-a-tete with him than go 
 teawing about all day and all night, from one unintwist- 
 ing cwowd to another. To be sure," said she, puzzling 
 the matter out, "you are a beauty, and would be more 
 looked at." 
 
 " The idea ! and — oh no ! no ! it is not that. But 
 even in the country we had always some society." 
 
 "Well, dyar, believe me, with your appeawance, you 
 can have as much society as you please ; but it will boa
 
 128 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 you to death, as it does me, and then you will long to be 
 left quiet with a sensible man who loves you." 
 
 Said Kosa, " When shall I have another tete-a-tete with 
 xjou, I wonder ? Oh, it has been such a comfort to me. 
 Bless you for coming. There — 1 wrote to Cecilia, and 
 Emily, and Mrs. Bosanquet that is now, and all my 
 sworn friends, and to think of you being the one to 
 come — you that never kissed me but once, and an earl's 
 daughter into the bargain." 
 
 •' Ha ! ha ! ha ! " — Lady Cicely actually laughed for 
 once in a "vvay, and did not feel the effort. " As for kiss- 
 ing," said she, '• if I fall shawt, f awgive me. I was nevaa 
 vewy demonstwative." 
 
 " No ; and I have had a lesson. That Florence Cole 
 — Florence Whiting that was, you know — was always 
 kissing me, and she has turned out a traitor. I'll tell 
 you all about her." And she did. 
 
 Lady Cicely thought Mrs. Staines a little too unre- 
 served in her conversation ; but was so charmed with her 
 sweetness and freshness that she kept up the acquaint- 
 ance, and called on her twice a week during the season. 
 At first she wondered that her visits were not returned ; 
 but Eosa let out that she was ashamed to call on foot in 
 Grosvenor Square. 
 
 Lady Cicely shrugged her beautiful shoulders a little at 
 that ; but she continued to do the visiting, and to enjoy the 
 simple, innoceiit rapture with which she was received. 
 
 This lady's pronunciation of many words was false or 
 affected. She said '' good murning " for " good morning," 
 and turned other vowels to diphthongs, and played two 
 or three pranks with her "r's." But we cannot be all 
 imperfection : with her pronunciation her folly came to 
 a full stop. I really believe she lisped less nonsense and 
 bad taste in a year than some of us articulate in a day. 
 To be sure, folly is generally uttered in a hurry, and she
 
 A SEVrPLETON. 129 
 
 was too deplorably lazy to speak fast on any occasion 
 whatever. 
 
 One day Mrs. Staines took her up-stairs, and showed 
 her from the back window her husband pacing the yard, 
 waiting for patients. Lady Cicely folded her arms, and 
 contemplated him at first with a sort of zoological curi- 
 osity. Gentleman pacing back yard, like hyena, she had 
 never seen before. 
 
 At last she opened her mouth in a whisper, " 'What is 
 he doing ? " 
 
 " Waiting for patients." 
 
 " Oh ! Waiting — for — patients ? " 
 
 " For patients that never come, and never will come." 
 
 " Cuwious ! How little I know of life." 
 
 " It is that all day, dear, or else writing." 
 
 Lady Cicely, with her eyes fixed on Staines, made a 
 motion with her hand that she was attending. 
 
 " And they won't publish a word he writes." 
 
 " Poor man ! " 
 
 " Nice for me ; is it not ? " 
 
 " I begin to understand," said Lady Cicely quietly ; 
 and soon after retired with her invariable composure. 
 
 Meantime, Dr. Staines, like a good husband, had 
 thrown out occasional hints to Mrs. Lucas that he had a 
 wife, beautiful, accomplished, moped. More than that, 
 he went so far as to regret to her that Mrs. Staines, 
 being in a neighborhood new to him, saw so little so- 
 ciety ; the more so, as she was formed to shine, and had 
 not been used to seclusion. 
 
 All these hints fell dead on INIrs. Lucas. A handsome 
 and skilful doctor was welcome to her : his wife — that 
 was quite another matter. 
 
 But one day Mrs. Lucas saw Lady Cicely Treherne's 
 carriage standing at the door. The style of the whole 
 turnout impressed her. She wondered whose it was.
 
 130 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 On another occasion she saw it drive up, and the lady 
 get out. She recognized her; and the very next day 
 this parvenue said adroitly, "Now, Dr. Staines, really 
 you can't be allowed to hide your wife in this way. 
 (Staines stared.) Why not introduce her to me next 
 Wednesday ? It is ray night. I would give a dinner 
 expressly for her ; but I don't like to do that while my 
 husband is in Naples." 
 
 When Staines carried the invitation to his wife, she 
 was delighted, and kissed him with childish frankness. 
 
 But the very next moment she became thoughtful, 
 uneasy, depressed. "Oh, dear; I've nothing to wear," 
 
 " Oh, nonsense, Rosa. Your wedding outfit." 
 
 "The idea! I can't go as a bride. It's not a mas- 
 querade." 
 
 "But you have other dresses." 
 
 " All gone by, more or less ; or not fit for such parties 
 as she gives. A hundred carriages ! " 
 
 " Bring them down, and let me see them." 
 
 " Oh yes." And the lady, who had nothing to wear, 
 paraded a very fair show of dresses. 
 
 Staines saw something to admire in all of them. Mrs. 
 Staines found more to object to in each. 
 
 At last he fell upon a silver-gray silk, of superlative 
 quality. . 
 
 " That ! It is as old as the hills," shrieked Rosa. 
 
 " It looks just out of the shop. Come, tell the truth ; 
 how often have you worn it ? " 
 
 " I wore it before I was married." 
 
 " Ay, but how often ? " 
 
 " Twice. Three times, I believe." 
 
 " I thought so. It is good as new." 
 
 " But I have had it so long by me. I had it two years 
 before I made it up." 
 
 " What does that matter ? Do you think the people
 
 A SIMPLETON. 131 
 
 can tell how long a dress lias been lurking in your ward- 
 robe ? This is childish, Rosa. There, with this dress 
 as good as new, and your beauty, you will be as much 
 admired, and perhaps hated, as your heart can desire." 
 
 "I am afraid not," said Rosa naively. "Oh, how I 
 wish I had known a week ago." 
 
 " I am very thankful you did not," said Staines dryly. 
 
 At ten o'clock Mrs. Staines was nearly dressed ; at a 
 quarter past ten she demanded ten minutes; at half- 
 past ten she sought a reprieve ; at a quarter to eleven, 
 being assured that the street was full of carriages, which 
 had put down at Mrs. Lucas's, she consented to emerge ; 
 and in a minute they were at the house. 
 
 They were shown first into a cloak-room, and then into 
 a tea-room, and then mounted the stairs. One servant 
 took their names, and bawled them to another four yards 
 off, he to another about as near, and so on; and they 
 edged themselves into the room, not yet too crowded to 
 move in. 
 
 They had not taken many steps, on the chance of find- 
 ing their hostess, when a slight buzz arose, and seemed 
 to follow them. 
 
 Rosa wondered what that was ; but only for a moment ; 
 she observed a tall, stout, aquiline woman fix an eye of 
 bitter, diabolical, malignant hatred on her ; and as she ad- 
 vanced, ugly noses were cocked disdainfully, and scraggy 
 shoulders elevated at the risk of sending the bones 
 through the leather, and a titter or two shot after her. 
 A woman's instinct gave her the key at once ; the sexes 
 had complimented her at sight ; each in their way ; the 
 men with respectful admiration ; the women, with their 
 inflammable jealousy and ready hatred in another of the 
 quality they value most in themselves. But the country 
 girl was too many for them : she would neither see nor 
 hear, but moved sedately on, and calmly crushed them
 
 132 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 with her Southern beauty. Their dry, powdered faces 
 coukl not live by the side of her glowing skin, with 
 nature's delicate gloss upon it, and the rich blood man- 
 tling below it. The got-up beauties, i.e., the majority, 
 seemed literally to fade and wither as she passed. 
 
 Mrs. Lucas got to her, suppressed a slight maternal 
 pang, having daughters to marry, and took her line in a 
 moment ; here was a decoy duck. Mrs. Lucas was all 
 graciousness, made acquaintance, and took a little turn 
 with her, introducing her to one or two persons ; among 
 the rest, to the malignant woman, Mrs. Barr. Mrs. 
 Barr, on this, ceased to look daggers and substituted 
 icicles ; but on the hateful beauty moving away, dropped 
 the icicles, and resumed the poniards. 
 
 The rooms filled ; the heat became oppressive, and the 
 mixed odors of flowers, scents, and persj^iring humanity, 
 sickening. Some, unable to bear it, trickled out of the 
 room, and sat all do^vn the stairs. 
 
 Eosa began to feel faint. Up came a tall, sprightly 
 girl, whose pertness was redeemed by a certain bonhomie, 
 and said, " Mrs. Staines, I believe ? I am to make my- 
 self agreeable to you. That is the order from head- 
 quarters." 
 
 " Miss Lucas," said Staines. 
 
 She jerked a little off-hand bow to him, and said, 
 " Will you trust her to me for five minutes ? " 
 
 " Certainly." But he did not much like it. 
 
 Miss Lucas carried her off, and told Dr. Staines, over 
 her shoulder, now he could flirt to his heart's content. 
 
 " Thank you," said he dryly. " I'll await your return." 
 
 " Oh, there are some much greater flirts here than I 
 am," said the ready Miss Lucas ; and whispering some- 
 thing in Mrs. Staines's ear, suddenly glided with her 
 behind a curtain, pressed a sort of button fixed to a 
 looking-glass door. The door opened, and behold they
 
 A SIlVrPLETON. 133 
 
 were in a delicious place, for which I can hardly find a 
 word, since it was a boudoir and a conservatory in one : 
 a large octagon, the walls lined from floor to ceiling with 
 looking-glasses of moderate width, at intervals, and with 
 creepers that covered the intervening spaces of the wall, 
 and were trained so as to break the outline of the glasses 
 without greatly clouding the reflection. Ferns, in great 
 variety, were grouped in a deep crescent, and in the 
 bight of this green bay were a small table and chairs. 
 As there were no hot-house plants, the temperature was 
 very cool, compared with the reeking oven they had 
 escaped; and a little fountain bubbled, and fed a little 
 meandering gutter that trickled away among the ferns ; 
 it ran crystal clear over little bright pebbles and shells. 
 It did not always run, you understand ; but Miss Lucas 
 turned a secret tap, and started it. 
 
 " Oh, how heavenly ! " said Rosa, with a sigh of relief ; 
 " and how good of you to bring me here ! " 
 
 " Yes ; by rights I ought to have waited till you 
 fainted. But there is no making acquaintance among 
 all those people. Mamma will ask such crowds ; one is 
 like a fly in a glue-pot." 
 
 Miss Lucas had good nature, smartness, and animal 
 spirits ; hence arose a vivacity and fluency that Avere 
 often amusing, and passed for very clever. Reserve she 
 had none ; would talk about strangers, or friends, herself, 
 her mother, her God, and the last buffoon-singer, in a 
 breath. At a hint from Rosa, she told her who the lady 
 in the pink dress was, and the lady in the violet velvet, 
 and so on ; for each lady was defined by her dress, and, 
 more or less, quizzed by this show-woman, not exactly 
 out of malice, but because it is smarter and more natural 
 to decry than to praise, and a little medisance is the 
 spice to gossip, belongs to it, as mint sauce to lamb. So 
 they chatted away, and were pleased with each other,
 
 134 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 and made friends, and there, in eool grot, quite forgot 
 the sufferings of tlieir fellow-creatures in the adjacent 
 Turkish bath, yclept society. It was Rosa who first 
 recollected herself. "Will not Mrs. Lucas be angry 
 with me, if I keep you all to myself ? " 
 
 " Oh no ; but I'm afraid we must go into the hot-house 
 again. I like the greenhouse best, with such a nice 
 companion." 
 
 They slipped noiselessly into the throng again, and 
 wriggled about, Miss Lucas presenting her new friend to 
 several ladies and gentlemen. 
 
 Presently Staines found them, and then Miss Lucas 
 wriggled away ; and in due course the room was thinned 
 by many guests driving off home, or to balls, and other 
 receptions, and Dr. Staines and Mrs. Staines went home 
 to the Bijou. Here the physician prescribed bed; but 
 the lady would not hear of such a thing until she had 
 talked it all over. So they compared notes, and Rosa 
 told him how well she had got on with Miss Lucas, and 
 made a friendshij). " But for that/' said she, " I should 
 be sorry I went among those people, such a dowdy." 
 
 " Dowdy ! " said Staines. " Why, you stormed the 
 town ; you were the great success of the night, and, for 
 all I know, of the season." The wretch delivered this 
 with unbecoming indifference. 
 
 "It is too bad to mock me, Christie. Where were 
 your eyes ? " 
 
 "To the best of my recollection, they were one on 
 each side of my nose." 
 
 " Yes, but some people are eyes and no eyes." 
 
 "I scorn the imputation; try me." 
 
 " Very well. Then did you see that lady in sky-blue 
 silk, embroidered with flowers, and flounced with white 
 velvet, and the corsage point lace ; and oh, such em- 
 eralds ? "
 
 A SIMPLETON. 135 
 
 "I did; a tall, skinny woman, with eyes resembling 
 her jewels in color, though not in brightness." 
 
 " Never mind her eyes ; it is her dress I am speak- 
 ing of. Exquisite ; and what a coiffure ! Well, did 
 you see her in the black velvet, trimmed so deep with 
 Chantilly lace, wave on wave, and her head-dress of crim- 
 son flowers, and such a riviere of diamonds ; oh, dear ! oh, 
 dear ! " 
 
 "I did, love. The room was an oven, but her rubi- 
 cund face and suffocating costume made it seem a 
 furnace." 
 
 '' Stuff ! Well, did you see the lady in the corn-colored 
 silk, and poppies in her hair ? " 
 
 "Of course I did. Ceres in person. She made me 
 feel hot, too ; but I cooled myself a bit at her pale, 
 sickly face." 
 
 " Never mind their faces ; that is not the point." 
 
 " Oh, excuse me ; it is always a point with us benighted 
 males, all eyes and no eyes." 
 
 "Well, then, the lady in white, with cherry-velvet 
 bands, and a white tunic looped with crimson, and head- 
 dress of white illusion, a la vierge, I think they call it." 
 
 "It was very refreshing; and adapted to that awful 
 atmosphere. It was the nearest approach to nudity I 
 ever saw, even amongst fashionable people." 
 
 " It was lovely ; and then that superb figure in white 
 illusion and gold, with all those narrow flounces over her 
 slip of white silk glacee, and a wreath of white flowers, 
 with gold wheat ears amongst them, in her hair ; and oh ! 
 oh ! oh ! her pearls, oriental, and as big as almonds ! " 
 
 "And oh! oh! oh! her nose I reddish, and as long as 
 a woodcock's." 
 
 "Noses! noses! stupid! That is not what strikes 
 you first in a woman dressed like an angel." 
 
 "Well, if you were to run up against that one, as I
 
 136 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 nearly did, her nose would be the thing that would strike 
 you first. Nose ! it was a rostrum ! the spear-head of 
 Goliah." 
 
 ''Now, don't, Christopher. This is no laughing mat- 
 ter. Do you mean you were not ashamed of your wife ? 
 I was." 
 
 " No, I was not ; you had but one rival ; a very young 
 lady, wise before her age ; a blonde, with violet eyes. 
 She was dressed in light mauve-colored silk, Avithout a 
 single flounce, or any other tomfoolery to fritter away 
 the sheen and color of an exquisite material ; her sunny 
 hair was another wave of color, wreathed with a thin 
 line of white jessamine flowers closely woven, that 
 scented the air. This girl was the moon of that assem- 
 bly, and you were the sun." 
 
 '' I never even saw her." 
 
 ''Eyes and no eyes. She saw you, and said, 'Oh, 
 what a beautiful creature ! ' for I heard her. As for the 
 qW stagers, whom you admire so, their faces were all 
 clogged with powder, the pores stopped up, the true 
 texture of the skin abolished. They looked downright 
 nanty, whenever you or that young girl passed by them. 
 Then it was you saw to what a frightful extent women 
 are got up in ovir day, even young women, and respect- 
 able women. No, Eosa, dress can do little for you ; you 
 have beauty — real beauty." 
 
 " Beauty ! That passes unnoticed, unless one is well 
 dressed." 
 
 " Then what an obscure pair the Apollo Belvidere and 
 the Venus de Medicis must be." 
 
 " Oh ! they are dressed — in marble." 
 
 Christopher Staines stared first, then smiled. 
 
 " Well done," said he, admiringly. " That is a knock- 
 down blow. So now you have silenced your husband, 
 go you to bed directly. I can't afford you diamonds ; so
 
 A SIMPLETON. 137 
 
 I will take care of that little insignificant trifle, your 
 beauty." 
 
 Mrs. Staines and Mrs. Lucas exchanged calls, and 
 soon Mrs. Staines could no longer complain she was out 
 of the world. Mrs. Lucas invited her to every party, 
 because her beauty was an instrument of attraction she 
 knew how to use ; and Miss Lucas took a downright 
 fancy to her ; drove her in the park, and on Sundays to 
 the Zoological Gardens, just beginning to be fashionable. 
 
 The Lucases rented a box at the opera, and if it was 
 not let at the library by six o'clock, and if other engage- 
 ments permitted, word was sent round to Mrs. Staines, 
 as a matter of course, and she was taken to the opera. 
 She began almost to live at the Lucases, and to be 
 oftener fatigued than moped. 
 
 The usual order of things was inverted ; the maiden 
 lady educated the matron; for Miss Lucas knew all 
 about everybody in the Park, honorable or dishonorable ; 
 all the scandals, and all the flirtations ; and whatever 
 she knew, she related point-blank. Being as inquisitive 
 as voluble, she soon learned how Mrs. Staines and her 
 husband were situated. She took upon her to advise her 
 in many things, and especially impressed upon her that 
 Dr. Staines must keep a carriage, if he wanted to get on 
 in medicine. The piece of advice accorded so well with 
 Rosa's wishes, that she urged it on her husband again 
 and again. 
 
 He objected that no money was coming in, and there- 
 fore it would be insane to add to their expenses. Eosa 
 persisted, and at last worried Staines with her impor- 
 tunity. He began to give rather short answers. Then 
 she quoted Miss Lucas against him. He treated the 
 authority with marked contempt; and then Rosa fired 
 up a little. Then Staines held his peace ; but did not 
 buy a carriage to visit his no patients.
 
 138 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 So at last Rosa complained to Lady Cicely Treherne, 
 and made lier the judge between her liusband and herself. 
 Lady Cicely drawled oiit a prompt but polite refusal to 
 play that part. All that could be elicited from her, and 
 that with difficulty, was, " Why quail with your husband 
 about a cawwige ; he is your best fwiend." 
 
 "Ah, that he is," said Rosa; "but Miss Lucas is a 
 good friend, and she knows the world. We don't ; neither 
 Christopher nor I." 
 
 So she continued to nag at her husband about it, and 
 to say that he was throwing his only chance away. 
 
 Galled as he was by neglect, this was irritating, and 
 at last he could not help telling her she was unreason- 
 able. " You live a gay life, and I a sad one. I consent 
 to this, and let you go about with these Lucases, because 
 you were so dull ; but you should not consult them in 
 our private affairs. Their interference is indelicate and 
 improper. I will not set up a carriage till I have 
 patients to visit. I am sick of seeing our capital 
 dwindle, and no income created. I will never set up a 
 carriage till I have taken a hundred-guinea fee." 
 
 " Oh ! Then we shall go splashing through the mud 
 all our days." 
 
 " Or ride in a cab," said Christopher, with a quiet 
 doggedness that left no hope of his yielding. 
 
 One afternoon Miss Lucas called for Mrs. Staines to 
 drive in the Park, but did not come up-stairs ; it was an 
 engagement, and she knew Mrs. Staines would be ready, 
 or nearly. Mrs. Staines, not to keep her waiting, came 
 down rather hastily, and in the very passage whipped 
 out of her pocket a little glass, and a little powder puff, 
 and puffed her face all over in a trice. She Avas then 
 going out; but her husband called her into the study. 
 " Rosa, my dear," said he, " you were going out with a 
 dirty face."
 
 A SIMPLETON. 139 
 
 '' Oh ! " cried she, " give me a glass." 
 
 " There is no need of that. All you want is a basin 
 and some nice rain-water. I keep a little reservoir 
 of it." 
 
 He then handed her the same with great politeness. 
 She looked in his eye, and saw he was not to be trifled 
 with. She complied like a lamb, and the heavenly color 
 and velvet gloss that resulted were admirable. 
 
 He kissed her and said, " Ah ! now you are my Rosa 
 again. Oblige me by handing over that powder-puff to 
 me." She looked vexed, but complied. " When you 
 come back I will tell you why." 
 
 "You are a pest," said Mrs. Staines, and so joined her 
 friend, rosy with rain-water and a rub. 
 
 " Dear me, how handsome you look to-day ! " was Miss 
 Lucas's first remark. 
 
 Rosa never dreamed that rain-water and rub could be 
 the cause of her looking so well. 
 
 " It is my tiresome husband," said she. " He objects 
 to powder, and he has taken away my puff." 
 
 " And you stood that ? " 
 
 "Obliged to." 
 
 " Why, you poor-spirited little creature, I should like 
 to see a husband presume to interfere with me in those 
 things. Here, take mine." 
 
 Rosa hesitated a little. " Well — no — I think not." 
 
 Miss Lucas laughed at her, and quizzed her so on her 
 allowing a man to interfere in such sacred things as 
 dress and cosmetics, that she came back irritated with 
 her husband, and gave him a short answer or two. Then 
 he asked what was the matter. 
 
 "You treat me like a child — taking away my very 
 puff." 
 
 " I treat you like a beautiful flower, that no bad gar- 
 dener shall wither whilst I am here."
 
 140 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 " What nonsense ! How could that wither me ? It is 
 only violet powder — Avhat they put on babies." 
 
 " And who are the Herods that put it on babies ? " 
 
 " Their own mothers, that love them ten times more 
 than the fathers do." 
 
 " And kill a hundred of them for one a man ever kills. 
 Mothers ! — the most wholesale homicides in the nation. 
 We will examine your violet-powder : bring it down 
 here." 
 
 While she was gone he sent for a breakfast-cupful of 
 flour, and when she came back he had his scales out, and 
 begged her to put a teaspoonful of flour into one scale 
 and of violet powder into another. The flour kicked the 
 beam, as Homer expresses himself. 
 
 *' Put another spoonful of flour." 
 
 The one spoonful of violet powder outweighed the two 
 of flour. 
 
 " Now," said Staines, " does not that show you the 
 presence of a mineral in your vegetable powder ? I sup- 
 pose they tell you it is made of white violets dried, and 
 triturated in a diamond mill. Let us find out what 
 metal it is. We need not go very deep into chemistry 
 for that." He then applied a simple test, and detected 
 the presence of lead in large quantities. Then he 
 lectured her : " Invisible perspiration is a process of 
 nature necessary to health and to life. The skin is 
 made porous for that purpose. You can kill anybody in 
 an hour or two by closing the pores. A certain infalli- 
 ble ass, called Pope Leo XII., killed a little boy in two 
 hours, by gilding him to adorn the pageant of his first 
 procession as Pope. But what is death to the whole 
 body must be injurious to a part. What madness, then, 
 to clog the pores of so large and important a surface as 
 the face, and check the invisible perspiration : how much 
 more to insert lead into your system every day of your
 
 A SIMPLETON. 141 
 
 life ; a cumulative poison, and one so deadly and so 
 subtle, that the Sheffield file-cutters die in their prime, 
 from merely hammering on a leaden anvil. And what 
 do you gain by this suicidal habit ? No plum has a 
 sweeter bloom or more delicious texture than the skin 
 of your young face ; but this mineral filth hides that 
 delicate texture, and substitutes a dry, uniform appear- 
 ance, more like a certain kind of leprosy than health. 
 Nature made your face the rival of peaches, roses, lilies ; 
 and you say, ' No ; I know better than my Creator and 
 my God ; my face shall be like a dusty miller's.' Go 
 into any flour-mill, and there you shall see men with 
 faces exactly like your friend Miss Lucas's. But before 
 a miller goes to his sweetheart, he always washes liis 
 face. You ladies would never get a miller down to your 
 level in brains. It is a miller's dirty face our mono- 
 maniacs of Avoman imitate, not the face a miller goes 
 a-courting with." 
 
 " La ! what a fuss about nothing ! " 
 
 " About nothing ! Is your health nothing ? Is your 
 beauty nothing ? Well, then, it will cost you nothing to 
 promise me never to put powder on your face again." 
 
 "Very well, I promise. Now what will you do for 
 me ? " 
 
 " Work for you — write for you — suffer for you — be 
 self-denying for you — and even give myself the pain of 
 disappointing you now and then — looking forward to 
 the time when I shall be able to say 'Yes ' to everything 
 you ask me. Ah ! child, you little know what it costs 
 me to say 'No' to yo?<." 
 
 Kosa put her arms round him and acquiesced. She was 
 one of those who go with the last speaker ; but, for that 
 very reason, the eternal companionship of so flighty and 
 flirty a girl as Miss Lucas was injurious to her. 
 
 One day Lady Cicely Treherne was sitting with Mrs.
 
 142 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 Staines, smiling languidly at her talk, and occasionally 
 drawling out a little plain good sense, when in came Miss 
 Lucas, with her tongue well hung, as usual, and dashed 
 into twenty topics in ten minutes. 
 
 This young lady in her discourse was like those little 
 oily beetles you see in small ponds, whose whole life is 
 spent in tacking — confound them for it ! — generally at 
 right angles. What they are in navigation was Miss 
 Lucas in conversation : tacked so eternally from topic to 
 topic, that no man on earth, and not every woman, could 
 follow her. 
 
 At the sight and sound of her. Lady Cicely congealed 
 and stiffened. Easy and unpretending with Mrs. Staines, 
 she was all dignity, and even majesty, in the presence 
 of this chatterbox ; and the smoothness with which the 
 transfiguration was accomplished marked that accom- 
 plished actress the high-bred woman of the world. 
 
 Rosa, better able to estimate the change of manner 
 than Miss Lucas was, who did not know how little this 
 Sawny was afflicted with misplaced dignity, looked wist- 
 fully and distressed at her. Lady Cicely smiled kindly 
 in reply, rose, without seeming to hurry, — catch her 
 condescending to be rude to Charlotte Lucas, — and took 
 her departure, with a profound and most gracious courtesy 
 to the lady who had driven her away. 
 
 Mrs. Staines saw her down-stairs, and said, ruefully, 
 "I am afraid you do not like my friend Miss Lucas. She 
 is a great rattle, but so good-natured and clever." 
 
 Lady Cicely shook her head. "Clevaa peoj^le don't 
 talk so much nonsense before strangaas." 
 
 " Oh, dear ! " said Rosa. " I was in hopes you would 
 like her." 
 
 " Do you like her ? " 
 
 " Indeed I do ; but I shall not, if she drives an older 
 friend away."
 
 A SEMPLETON. 143 
 
 '^ My dyah, I'm not easily dwiven from those I esteem. 
 But you undastand that is not a "woman for me to mis- 
 pwonoAvnce my 'ah's befaw — xor for you to make a 
 
 BOSOM FWIEXD OF WOSA StAIXES." 
 
 She said this with a sudden maternal solemnity and 
 kindness that contrasted nobly and strangely with her 
 yea-nay style, and Mrs. Staines remembered the words 
 years after they were spoken. 
 
 It so happened that after this Mrs. Staines received no 
 more visits from Lady Cicely for some time, and that 
 vexed her. She knew her sex enough to be aware that 
 they are very jealous, and she permitted herself to 
 think that this high-minded Sawny was jealous of Miss 
 Lucas. 
 
 This idea, founded on a general estimate of her sex, 
 was dispelled by a few lines from Lady Cicely, to say 
 her family and herself were in deep distress ; her brother, 
 Lord Ayscough, lay dying from an accident. 
 
 Then Rosa was all remorse, and ran down to Staines 
 to tell him. She found him with an open letter in his 
 hand. It was from Dr. Barr, and on the same subject. 
 The doctor, who had always been friendly to him, invited 
 him to come down at once to Hallowtree Hall, in Hunt- 
 ingdonshire, to a consultation. There was a friendly 
 intimation to start at once, as the patient might die any 
 moment. 
 
 Husband and wife embraced each other in a tumult of 
 surprised thankfulness. A few necessaries were thrown 
 into a carpet-bag, and Dr. Staines was soon whirled into 
 Huntingdonshire. Having telegraphed beforehand, he 
 was met at the station by the earl's carriage and people, 
 and driven to the Hall. He was received by an old, 
 silver-haired butler, looking very sad, who conducted him 
 to a boudoir ; and then went and tapped gently at the 
 door of the patient's room. It was opened and shut very
 
 144 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 softly, and Lady Cicely, dressed in black, and looking 
 paler than ever, came into the room. 
 
 "Dr. Staines, I think?" 
 
 He bowed. 
 
 ''Thank you for coming so promptly. Dr. Barr is 
 gone. I fear he thinks — he thinks — O Dr. Staines — 
 no sign of life but in his poor hands, that keep moving 
 night and day." 
 
 Staines looked very grave at that. Lady Cicely ob- 
 served it, and, faint at heart, could say no more, but led 
 the way to the sick-room. 
 
 There in a spacious chamber, lighted by a grand oriel 
 window and two side windows, lay rank, title, wealth, 
 and youth, stricken down in a moment by a common 
 accident. The sufferer's face was bloodless, his eyes 
 fixed, and no signs of life but in his thumbs, and they 
 kept working with strange regularity. 
 
 In the room were a nurse and the surgeon ; the neigh- 
 boring physician, who had called in Dr. Barr, had just 
 paid his visit and gone away. 
 
 Lady Cicely introduced Dr. Staines and Mr. White, and 
 then Dr. Staines stood and fixed his eyes on the patient 
 in profound silence. Lady Cicely scanned his counte- 
 nance searchingly, and was struck with the extraordinary 
 power and intensity it assumed in examining the patient; 
 but the result was not encouraging. Dr. Staines looked 
 grave and gloomy. 
 
 At last, without removing his eye from the recumbent 
 figure, he said quietly to Mr. White, " Thrown from his 
 horse, sir." 
 
 " Horse fell on him, Dr. Staines." 
 
 "Any visible injuries ? " 
 
 "Yes. Severe contusions, and a rib broken and pressed 
 upon the lungs. I replaced and set it. Will you 
 see ? "
 
 A SIMPLETON. 145 
 
 " If you please." 
 
 He examined and felt the patient, and said it had been 
 ably done. 
 
 Then he was silent and searching. 
 
 At last he spoke again. " The motion of the thumbs 
 corresponds exactly with his pulse." 
 
 "Is that so, sir?" 
 
 "It is. The case is without a parallel. How long 
 has he been so ? " 
 
 " Nearly a week." 
 
 " Impossible ! " 
 
 " It is so, sir." 
 
 Lady Cicely confirmed this. 
 
 "All the better," said Dr. Staines upon reflection. 
 "Well, sir," said he, "the visible injuries having been 
 ably relieved, I shall look another way for the cause." 
 Then, after another pause, "I must have his head 
 shaved." 
 
 Lady Cicely demurred a little to this ; but Dr. Staines 
 stood firm, and his lordship's valet undertook the job. 
 
 Staines directed him where to begin; and when he 
 had made a circular tonsure on the top of the head, had 
 it sponged with tepid water. 
 
 " I thought so," said he. " Here is the mischief ; " 
 and he pointed to a very slight indentation on the left 
 side of the pia mater. " Observe," said he, " there is no 
 corresponding indentation on the other side. Under- 
 neath this trifling depression a minute piece of bone is 
 doubtless pressing on the most sensitive part of the 
 brain. He must be trephined." 
 
 Mr. White's eyes sparkled. 
 
 " You are an hospital surgeon, sir ? " 
 
 " Yes, Dr. Staines. I have no fear of the operation." 
 
 " Then I hand the patient over to you. The case at 
 present is entirely surgical."
 
 146 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 "White was driven home, and soon returned with the 
 requisite instruments. The operation was neatly per- 
 formed, and then Lady Cicely was called in. She came 
 trembling ; her brother's fingers were still working, but 
 not so regularly, 
 
 " That is only hahit,^^ said Staines ; " it will soon leave 
 off, now the cause is gone." 
 
 And, truly enough, in about five minutes the fingers 
 became quiet. The eyes became human next; and 
 within half an hour after the operation the earl gave a 
 little sigh. 
 
 Lady Cicely clasped her hands, and uttered a little 
 cry of delight, 
 
 "This will not do," said Staines, "I shall have you 
 screaming when he speaks," 
 
 " Oh, Dr, Staines ! will he ever speak ? " 
 
 " I think so, and very soon. So be on your guard." 
 
 This strange scene reached its climax soon after, by 
 the earl saying, quietly, — 
 
 " Are her knees broke, Tom ? " 
 
 Lady Cicely uttered a little scream, but instantly sup- 
 pressed it, 
 
 '' No, my lord," said Staines, smartly ; " only rubbed a 
 bit. You can go to sleep, my lord, I'll take care of the 
 mare." 
 
 " All right/' said his lordship ; and composed himself 
 to slumber. 
 
 Dr. Staines, at the earnest request of Lady Cicely, 
 stayed all night ; and in course of the day advised her 
 how to nurse the patient, since both physician and sur- 
 geon had done Avith him. 
 
 He said the patient's brain might be irritable for some 
 days, and no women in silk dresses or crinoline, or creak- 
 ing shoes, must enter the room. He told her the nurse 
 was evidently a clumsy woman, and would be letting
 
 A SIMPLETON. 147 
 
 things fall. She had better get some old soldier used to 
 nursing. " And don't whisper in the room," said he ; 
 "nothing irritates them worse; and don't let anybody- 
 play g, piano within hearing ; but in a day or two you 
 may try him with slow and continuous music on the 
 flute or violin if you like. Don't touch his bed sud- 
 denly ; don't sit on it or lean on it. Dole sunlight into 
 his room by degrees ; and when he can bear it, drench 
 him with it. Never mind what the old school tell you. 
 About these things they know a good deal less than 
 nothing." 
 
 Lady Cicely received all this like an oracle. 
 
 The cure was telegraphed to Dr. Barr, and he was 
 requested to settle the fee. He was not the man to 
 undersell the profession, and was jealous of nobody, 
 having a large practice, and a very wealthy wife. So he 
 telegraphed back — " Fifty guineas, and a guinea a mile 
 from London." 
 
 So, as Christopher Staines sat at an early breakfast, 
 with the carriage waiting to take him to the train, two 
 notes were brought him on a salver. 
 
 They were both directed by Lady Cicely Treherne. 
 One of them contained a few kind and feeling words of 
 gratitude and esteem ; the other, a check, drawn by the 
 earl's steward, for one hundred and thirty guineas. 
 
 He bowled up to London, and told it all to Rosa. She 
 sparkled with pride, affection, and joy. 
 
 " Now, who says you are not a genius ? " she cried. 
 " A hundred and thirty guineas for one fee ! Now, if 
 you love your wife as she loves you — you will set up a 
 brougham."
 
 148 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Doctor Staines begged leave to distinguisli ; he had 
 not said he would set up a carriage at the first one 
 hundred guinea fee, but only that he would not set up 
 one before. There are misguided people who would call 
 this logic : but Rosa said it was equivocating, and urged 
 him so warmly that at last he burst out, " Who can go 
 on forever saying ' No,' to the only creature he loves ? " 
 — and caved. In forty-eight hours more a brougham 
 waited at Mrs. Staines's door. The servant engaged to 
 drive it was Andrew Pearman, a bachelor, and, hitherto, 
 an under-groom. He readily consented to be coachman, 
 and to do certain domestic work as well. So Mrs. Staines 
 had a man-servant as well as a carriage. 
 
 Ere long, three or four patients called, or wrote, one 
 after the other. These Rosa set down to brougham, and 
 crowed; she even crowed to Lady Cicely Treherne, to 
 whose influence, and not to brougham's, every one of 
 these patients was owing. Lady Cicely kissed her, and 
 demurely enjoyed the poor soul's self-satisfaction. 
 
 Staines himself, while he drove to or from these 
 patients, felt more sanguine, and buoyed as he was by 
 the consciousness of ability, began to hope he had turned 
 the corner. 
 
 He sent an account of Lord Ayscough's case to a 
 medical magazine : and so full is the world of flunkey- 
 ism, that this article, though he withheld the name, 
 retaining only the title, got the literary wedge in for 
 him at once : and in due course he became a paid con- 
 tributor to two medical organs, and used to study and
 
 A SIMPLETON. 149 
 
 write more, and indent the little stone yard less than 
 heretofore. 
 
 It was about this time circumstances made him 
 acquainted with Phoebe Dale. Her intermediate history 
 I will dispose of in fewer words than it deserves. Her 
 ruin, Mr. Reginald Falcon, was dismissed from his club, 
 for marking high cards on the back with his nail. This 
 stopped his remaining resource — borrowing : so he got 
 more and more out at elbows, till at last he came down 
 to hanging about billiard-rooms, and making a little 
 money by concealing his game ; from that, however, he 
 rose to be a marker. 
 
 Having culminated to that, he wrote and proposed 
 marriage to Miss Dale, in a charming letter : she showed 
 it to her father with pride. 
 
 Now, if his vanity, his disloyalty, his falsehood, his 
 ingratitude, and his other virtues had not stood in the 
 way, he would have done this three years ago, and been 
 jumped at. 
 
 But the offer came too late; not for Phcebe — she 
 would have taken him in a moment — but for her friends. 
 A baited hook is one thing, a bare hook is another. 
 Farmer Dale had long discovered where Phoebe's money 
 went : he said not a word to her ; but went up to town 
 like a shot ; found Falcon out, and told him he mustn't 
 think to eat his daughter's bread. She should marry a 
 man that could make a decent livelihood; and if she 
 was to run away with him, why they'd starve together. 
 The farmer was resolute, and spoke very loud, like one 
 that expects opposition, and comes prepared to quarrel. 
 Instead of that, this artful rogue addressed him with 
 deep respect and an affected veneration, that quite puz- 
 zled the old man ; acquiesced in every word, expressed 
 contrition for his past misdeeds, and told the farmer he 
 had quite determined to labor with his hands. " You
 
 150 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 know, farmer," said he, " I am not the only gentleman 
 who has come to that in the present day. Now, all my 
 friends that have seen my sketches, assure me I am a 
 born painter ; and a painter I'll be — for love of Phoebe." 
 
 The farmer made a wry face. "Painter! that is a 
 sorry sort of a trade." 
 
 " You are mistaken. It's the best trade going. There 
 are gentlemen making their thousands a year by it." 
 
 " Not in our parts, there hain't. Stop a bit. What be 
 ye going to paint, sir ? Housen, or folk ? " 
 
 '' Oh, hang it, not houses. Figures, landscapes." 
 
 " Well, ye might just make shift to live at it, I sup- 
 pose, with here and there a signboard. They are the 
 best paid, our way : but, Lord bless ye, they wants head- 
 piece. Well, sir, let me see your work. Then we'll talk 
 further." 
 
 " I'll go to work this afternoon," said Falcon eagerly ; 
 then with affected surprise, "Bless me; I forgot. I 
 have no palette, no canvas, no colors. You couldn't 
 lend me a couple of sovereigns to buy them, could you ?" 
 
 "Ay, sir; I could. But I woan't. I'll lend ye the 
 things, though, if you have a mind to go with me and 
 buy 'em." 
 
 Falcon agreed, with a lofty smile ; and the purchases 
 were made. 
 
 Mr. Falcon painted a landscape or two out of his 
 imagination. The dealers to whom he took them de- 
 clined them ; one advised the gentleman painter to color 
 tea-boards. " That's your line," said he. 
 
 " The world has no taste," said the gentleman painter : 
 " but it has got lots of vanity : I'll paint portraits." 
 
 He did ; and formidable ones : his portraits were 
 amazingly like the people, and yet unlike men and 
 women, especially about the face. One thing, he didn't 
 trouble with lights and shades, but went slap at the 
 fpatui-ej.
 
 A SIMPLElOlf. 151 
 
 His brush would never have kept him ; but he carried 
 an instrument, in the use of which he was really an 
 artist, viz., his tongue. By wheedling and underselling 
 — for he only charged a pound for the painted canvas — 
 he contrived to live ; then he aspired to dress as well as 
 live. With this second object in view, he hit upon a 
 characteristic expedient. 
 
 He used to prowl about, and when he saw a young 
 woman sweeping the afternoon streets with a long silk 
 train, and, in short, dressed to ride in the park, yet 
 parading the streets, he would take his hat off to her, 
 with an air of profound respect, and ask permission to 
 take her portrait. Generally he met a prompt rebuff; 
 but if the fair was so unlucky as to hesitate a single 
 moment, he told her a melting tale ; he had once driven 
 his four-in-hand ; but by indorsing his friends' bills, 
 was reduced to painting likeness, admirable likenesses 
 in oil, only a guinea each. 
 
 His piteous tale provoked more gibes than pity, but as 
 he had no shame, the rebuffs went for nothing : he actu- 
 ally did get a few sitters by his audacity : and some of 
 the sitters actually took the pictures, and paid for them; 
 others declined them with fury as soon as they were 
 finished. These he took back with a piteous sigh, that 
 sometimes extracted half a crown. Then he painted 
 over the rejected one and let it dry ; so that sometimes 
 a paid portrait would present a beauty enthroned on the 
 debris of two or three rivals, and that is where few 
 beauties would object to sit. 
 
 All this time he wrote nice letters to Phoebe, and 
 adopted the tone of the struggling artist, and the true 
 lover, who wins his bride by patience, perseverance, and 
 indomitable industry ; a babbled of " Self Help." 
 
 Meantime, Phoebe was not idle : an excellent business 
 woman, she took immediate advantage of a new station
 
 152 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 that was built near the farm, to send up milk, butter, 
 and eggs to London. Being genuine, they sold like wild- 
 fire. Observing that, she extended her operations, by 
 buying of other farmers, and forwarding to London: 
 and then, having of course an eye to her struggling 
 artist, she told her father she must have a shop in 
 London, and somebody in it she could depend upon. 
 
 " With all my heart, wench," said he ; " but it must 
 not be thou. I can't spare thee." 
 
 " May I have Dick, father ? " 
 
 " Dick ! he is rather young." 
 
 "But he is very quick, father, and minds every word 
 I tell him." 
 
 "Ay, he is as fond of thee as ever a cow was of a 
 calf. Well, you can try him." 
 
 So the love-sick woman of business set up a little 
 shop, and put her brother Dick in it, and all to see more 
 of her struggling artist. She stayed several days, to 
 open the little shop, and start the business. She adver- 
 tised pure milk, and challenged scientific analysis of 
 everything she sold. This came of her being a reader ; 
 she knew, by the journals, that we live in a sinful and 
 adulterating generation, and anything pure must be a 
 godsend to the poor poisoned public. 
 
 Now, Dr. Staines, though known to the profession as 
 a diagnost, was also an analyst, and this challenge 
 brought him down on Phoebe Dale. He told her he was 
 a physician, and in search of pure food for his own 
 family — would she really submit the milk to analysis ? 
 
 Phoebe smiled an honest country smile, and said, 
 "Surely, sir." She gave him every facility, and he 
 applied those simple tests which are commonly used in 
 France, though hardly known in England. 
 
 He found it perfectly pure, and told her so ; and gazed 
 at Phoebe for a moment, as a phenomenon.
 
 A SiaiPLETON. 153 
 
 She smiled again at that, her broad country smile. 
 "That is a wonder in London, I dare say. It's my 
 belief half the children that die here are perished with 
 watered milk. Well, sir, we shan't have that on our 
 souls, father and I ; he is a farmer in Essex. This 
 comes a many miles, this milk." 
 
 Staines looked in her face, with kindly approval 
 marked on his own eloquent features. She blushed a 
 little at so fixed a regard. Then he asked her if she 
 would supply him with milk, butter, and eggs. 
 
 "Why, if you mean sell you them, yes, sir, with 
 pleasure. But for sending them home to you in this big 
 town, as some do, I can't ; for there's only brother Dick 
 and me : it is an experiment like." 
 
 " Very well," said Staines : " I will send for them." 
 
 " Thank you kindly, sir. I hope you won't be offended, 
 sir ; but we only sell for ready money." 
 
 " All the better : my order at home is, no bills." 
 
 When he was gone, Phoebe, assuming vast experience, 
 though this was only her third day, told Dick that was 
 one of the right sort: "and oh, Dick," said she, "did 
 you notice his eye ? " 
 
 " Not particklar, sister." 
 
 " There now ; the boy is blind. Why, 'twas like a 
 jewel. Such an eye I never saw in a man's head, nor 
 a woman's neither," 
 
 Staines told his wife about Phoebe and her brother, 
 and spoke of her with a certain admiration that raised 
 Rosa's curiosity, and even that sort of vague jealousy 
 that fires at bare praise. "I should like to see this phe- 
 nomenon," said she. "You shall," said he. "I have to 
 call on Mrs. Manly. She lives near. I will drop you at 
 the little shop, and come back for you." 
 
 He did so, and that gave Rosa a quarter of an hour 
 to make her purchases. When he came back he found
 
 154 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 her conversing with Phoebe, as if they were old friends, 
 and Dick glaring at his wife with awe and admiration. 
 He could hardly get her away. 
 
 She was far more extravagant in her praises than 
 Dr. Staines had been. " What a good creature ! " said 
 she. " And how clever ! To think of her setting up a 
 shop like that all by herself; for her Dick is only 
 seventeen." 
 
 Dr. Staines recommended the little shop wherever 
 he went, and even extended its operations. He asked 
 Phoebe to get her own wheat ground at home, and send 
 the flour up in bushel bags. "These assassins, the 
 bakers," said he, " are putting copper into the flour now, 
 as well as alum. Pure flour is worth a fancy price to 
 any family. With that we can make the bread of life. 
 What you buy in the shops is the bread of death." 
 
 Dick was a good, sharp boy, devoted to his sister. He 
 stuck to the shop in London, and handed the money to 
 Phoebe, when she came for it. She worked for it in 
 Essex, and extended her country connection for supply 
 as the retail business increased. 
 
 Staines wrote an article on pure food, and incidentally 
 mentioned the shop as a place where flour, milk, and 
 butter were to be had pure. This article was published 
 in the Lancet, and caused quite a run upon the little 
 shop. By and by Phoebe enlarged it, for which there 
 were great capabilities, and made herself a pretty little 
 parlor, and there she and Dick sat to Falcon for their 
 portraits; here, too, she hung his rejected landscapes. 
 They were fair in her eyes ; what matter whether they 
 were like nature ? his hand had painted them. She 
 knew, from him, that everybody else had rejected them. 
 With all the more pride and love did she have them 
 framed in gold, and hung up with the portraits in her 
 little sanctum.
 
 A SESrPLETON". 155 
 
 For a few months Phoebe Dale was as happy as she 
 deserved to be. Her lover was working, and faithful to 
 her — at least she saw no reason to doubt it. He came 
 to see her every evening, and seemed devoted to her : 
 would sit quietly with her, or walk with her, or take her 
 to a play, or a music-hall — at lier expense. 
 
 She now lived in a quiet elysium, with a bright and 
 rapturous dream of the future ; for she saw she had hit 
 on a good vein of business, and should soon be inde- 
 pendent, and able to indulge herself Avith a husband, and 
 ask no man's leave. 
 
 She sent to Essex for a dairymaid, and set her to churn 
 milk into butter, coram poimlo, at a certain hour every 
 morning. This made a new sensation. At other times 
 the woman was employed to deliver milk and cream to 
 a few favored customers. 
 
 Mrs. Staines dropped in now and then, and chatted 
 with her. Her SAveet face and her naivete won Phoebe's 
 heart ; and one day, as happiness is apt to be comnnmi- 
 catiA^e, she let out to her, in reply to a feeler or two 
 as to Avhether she Avas quite alone, that she was engaged 
 to be married to a gentleman. "But he is not rich, 
 ma'am," said Phoebe plaintively ; " he has had trouble : 
 obliged to AA'ork for his liA'ing, like me ; he painted these 
 pictures, every one of them. If it was not making too 
 free, and you could spare a guinea — he charges no more 
 for the picture, only you must go to the expense of the 
 frame." 
 
 " Of course I will," said Eosa warmly. "I'll sit for it 
 here, any day you like." 
 
 NoAV, Eosa said this, out of her ever ready kindness, 
 not to wound Phoebe : but liaA'iug made the promise, she 
 kept clear of the place for some days, hoping Phoebe 
 would forget all about it. Meantime she sent her 
 husband to buy.
 
 156 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 In about a fortnight she called again, primed with 
 evasions if she should be asked to sit ; but nothing of 
 the kind was proposed. Phoebe was dealing when she 
 went in. The customers disposed of, she said to Mrs. 
 Staines, " Oh, ma'am, I am glad you are come. I have 
 something I should like to show you." She took her 
 into the parlor, and made her sit down : then she opened 
 a drawer, and took out a very small substance that looked 
 like a tear of ground glass, and put it on the table before 
 her. " There, ma'am," said she, " that is all he has had 
 for painting a friend's picture." 
 
 " Oh ! what a shame." 
 
 ''His friend was going abroad — to Natal; to his uncle 
 that farms out there, and does very well ; it is a first-rate 
 part, if you take out a little stock with you, and some 
 money ; so my one gave him credit, and when the letter 
 came with that postmark, he counted on a five-pound 
 note ; but the letter only said he had got no money yet, 
 but sent him something as a keepsake : and there was 
 this little stone. Poor fellow ! he flung it down in a 
 passion ; he was so disappointed." 
 
 Phoebe's great gray eyes filled ; and Eosa gave a little 
 coo of sympathy that was very womanly and lovable. 
 
 Phoebe leaned her cheek on her hand, and said thought- 
 fully, " I picked it up, and brought it away ; for, after 
 all — don't you think, ma'am, it is very strange that a 
 friend should send it all that way, if it was worth nothing 
 at all ? " 
 
 " It is impossible. He could not be so heartless." 
 
 " And do you know, ma'am, when I take it up in 
 my fingers, it doesn't feel like a thing that was worth 
 nothing." 
 
 '' N"o more it does : it makes my fingers tremble. May 
 I take it home, and show it my luisband ? he is a great 
 physician and knows everything."
 
 A SIMPLETON. 157 
 
 " I am sure I should be obliged to you, ma'am." 
 
 Rosa drove liome, on purpose to show it to Christopher. 
 She ran into his study : " Oh, Christopher, please look at 
 that. You know that good creature we have our flour 
 and milk and things of. She is is engaged, and he is a 
 painter. Oh, such daubs ! He painted a friend, and the 
 friend sent that home all the way from Natal, and he 
 dashed it down, and she picked it up, and what is it ? 
 ground glass, or a pebble, or what ? " 
 
 " Humph ! — by its shape, and the great — brilliancy 
 — and refraction of light, on this angle, where the stone 
 has got polished by rubbing against other stones, in the 
 course of ages, I'm inclined to think it is — a diamond." 
 
 " A diamond ! " shrieked Rosa. " No wonder my 
 fingers trembled. Oh, can it be ? Oh, you good, cold- 
 blooded Christie! — Poor things! — Come along, Dia- 
 mond ! Oh you beauty ! Oh you duck ! " 
 
 " Don't be in such a hurry. I only said I thought it 
 was a diamond. Let me weigh it against water, and 
 then I shall know." 
 
 He took it to his little laboratory, and returned in a 
 few minutes, and said, "Yes. It is just three times 
 and a half heavier than water. It is a diamond." 
 
 " Are you positive ? " 
 
 " I'll stake my existence." 
 
 " What is it worth ? " 
 
 " My dear, I'm not a jeweller : but it is very large and 
 pear-shaped, and I see no flaw : I don't think you could 
 buy it for less than three hundred pounds." 
 
 " Three hundred pounds ! It is worth three hundred 
 pounds." 
 
 "Or sell it for more than a hundred and fifty 
 pounds." 
 
 " A hundred and fifty ! It is worth a hundred and 
 fifty pounds."
 
 158 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 "Why, my dear, one would think you had invented 
 ' the diamond.' Show me how to crystallize carbon, and 
 I will share your enthusiasm." 
 
 "Oh, I leave you to carbonize crystal. I prefer to 
 gladden hearts : and I will do it this minute, with my 
 diamond." 
 
 " Do, dear ; and I will take that opportunity to finish 
 my article on Adulteration." 
 
 Kosa drove off to Phoebe Dale. 
 
 Now Phoebe was drinking tea with Keginald Falcon, 
 in her little parlor. " Who is that, I wonder ? " said 
 she, when the carriage drew up. 
 
 Reginald drew back a corner of the gauze curtain 
 which had been drawn across the little glass door leading 
 from the shop. 
 
 " It is a lady, and a beautiful — Oh ! let me get out." 
 And he rushed out at the door leading to the kitchen, 
 not to be recognized. 
 
 This set Phoebe all in a flutter, and the next moment 
 Mrs. Staines tapped at the little door, then opened it, 
 and peeped. " Good news ! may I come in ? " 
 
 " Surely," said Phoebe, still troubled and confused by 
 Reginald's strange agitation. 
 
 " There ! It is a diamond ! " screamed Rosa. " My 
 husband knew it directly. He knows everything. If 
 ever you are ill, go to him and nobody else — by the 
 refraction, and the angle, and its being three times and 
 a half as heavy as water. It is worth three hundred 
 pounds to buy, and a hundred and fifty pounds to 
 sell" 
 
 " Oh ! " 
 
 " So don't you go throwing it away, as he did. (In a 
 whisper.) Two teacups ? Was that him? I have 
 driven him away. I am so sorry. I'll go; and then 
 you can tell him. Poor fellow ! "
 
 A SIMPLETON. 159 
 
 " Oh, ma'am, don't go yet," said Phoebe, trembling. 
 " I haven't half thanked you." 
 
 " Oh, bother thanks. Kiss me ; that is the way." 
 
 "May I?" 
 
 " You may, and must. There — and there — and 
 there. Oh dear, what nice things good luck and happi- 
 ness are, and how sweet to bring them for once." 
 
 Upon this Phoebe and she had a.nice little cry together, 
 and Mrs. Staines went off refreshed thereby, and as gay 
 as a lark, pointing slyly at the door, and making faces 
 to Phoebe that she knew he was there, and she only 
 retired, out of her admirable discretion, that they might 
 enjoy the diamond together. 
 
 When she was gone, Reginald, whose eye and ear had 
 been at the keyhole, alternately gloating on the face and 
 drinking the accents of the only woman he had ever 
 really loved, came out, looking pale, and strangely 
 disturbed ; and sat down at table, without a word. 
 
 Phoebe came back to him, full of the diamond. " Did 
 you hear what she said, my dear ? It is a diamond ; it 
 is worth a hundred and fifty pounds at least. Why, 
 what ails you ? Ah ! to be sure ! you know that lady." 
 
 " I have cause to know her. Cursed jilt ! " 
 
 " You seem a good deal put out at the sight of her." 
 
 " It took me by surprise, that is all." 
 
 "It takes me by surprise too. I thought you Avere 
 cured. I thought my turn had come at last." 
 
 Reginald met this in sullen silence. Then Phoebe was 
 sorry she had said it ; for, after all, it wasn't the man's 
 fault if an old sweetheart had run into the room, and 
 given him a start. So she made him some fresh tea, and 
 pressed him kindly to try her home-made bread and 
 butter. 
 
 My lord relaxed his frown and consented, and of course 
 they talked diamond.
 
 160 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 He told her, loftily, he must take a studio, and his 
 sitters must come to him, and must no longer expect to 
 be immortalized for one pound. It must be two pounds 
 for a bust, and three pounds for a kitcat. 
 
 " Nay, but, my dear," said Phoebe, " they will pay no 
 more because you have a diamond." 
 
 "Then they will have to go unpainted," said Mr, 
 Falcon, 
 
 This was intended for a threat, Phoebe instinctively 
 felt that it might not be so received ; she counselled 
 moderation. " It is a great thing to have earned a dia- 
 mond," said she : "but 'tis only once in a life. Now, be 
 ruled by me : go on just as you are. Sell the diamond, 
 and give me the money to keep for you. Why, you 
 might add a little to it, and so would I, till we made it 
 up two hundred pounds. And if you could only show 
 two hundred pounds you had made and laid by, father 
 would let us marry, and I might keep this shop — it pays 
 well, I can tell you — and keep my gentleman in a sly 
 corner ; you need never be seen in it." 
 
 " Ay, ay," said he, " that is the small game. But I 
 am a man that have always preferred the big game. I 
 shall set up my studio, and make enough to keep us both. 
 So give me the stone, if you please, I shall take it 
 round to them all, and the rogues won't get it out of vie 
 for a hundred and fifty ; why, it is as big as a nut." 
 
 " No, no, Reginald, Money has always made mischief 
 between you and me. You never had fifty pounds yet, 
 you didn't fall into temptation. Do pray let me keep 
 it for you ; or else sell it — I know how to sell ; nobody 
 better — and keep the money for a good occasion," 
 
 " Is it yours, or mine ? " said he, sulkily. 
 
 " Why yours, dear ; you earned it," 
 
 " Then give it me, please," And he almost forced it 
 out of her hand.
 
 A SIMPLETON. 161 
 
 So now she sat down and cried over this piece of good 
 luck, for her heart filled with forebodings. 
 
 He laughed at her, but at last had the grace to console her, 
 and assure her she was tormenting herself for nothing. 
 
 " Time will show," said she, sadly. 
 
 Time did show. 
 
 Three or four days he came, as usual, to laugh her out 
 of her forebodings. But presently his visits ceased. She 
 knew what that meant : he was living like a gentleman, 
 melting his diamond, and playing her false with the first 
 pretty face he met. 
 
 This blow, coming after she had been so happy, struck 
 Phoebe Dale stupid with grief. The line on her high 
 forehead deepened ; and at night she sat with her hands 
 before her, sighing, and sighing, and listening for the 
 footsteps that never came. 
 
 " Oh, Dick ! " she said, " never you love any one. I 
 am aweary of my life. And to think that, but for that 
 diamond — oh, dear ! oh, dear ! oh, dear ! " 
 
 Then Dick used to try and comfort her in his way, 
 and often put his arm round her neck, and gave her his 
 rough but honest sympathy. Dick's rare affection was 
 her one drop of comfort ; it was something to relieve her 
 swelling heart. 
 
 " Oh, Dick ! " she said to him one night, "■ I wish I 
 had married him." 
 
 "What, to be ill-used ? " 
 
 " He couldn't use me worse. I have been wife, and 
 mother, and sweetheart, and all, to him ; and to be left 
 like this. He treats me like the dirt beneath his feet." 
 
 "'Tis your own fault, Phoebe, partly. You say the 
 word, and I'll break every bone in his carcass." 
 
 " What, do him a mischief ! Why, I'd rather die than 
 harm a hair of his head. You must never lift a hand to 
 him, or I shall hate you."
 
 162 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 " Hate me, Phoebe ? " 
 
 " Ay, boy : I should. God forgive me : 'tis no use 
 deceiving ourselves ; when a woman loves a man she 
 despises, never you come between them ; there's no 
 reason in her love, so it is incurable. One comfort, it 
 can't go on forever ; it must kill me, before my time ; 
 and so best. If I was only a mother, and had a little 
 Reginald to dandle on my knee and gloat upon, till he 
 spent his money, and came back to me. That's why I 
 said I wished I was his wife. Oh ! why does God fill a 
 poor woman's bosom with love, and nothing to spend it 
 on but a stone ; for sure his heart must be one. If I had 
 only something that would let me always love it, a little 
 toddling thing at my knee, that would always let me 
 look at it, and love it, something too young to be false 
 to me, too weak to run away from my long — ing — arms 
 — and — year — ning heart!" Then came a burst of 
 agony, and moans of desolation, till poor puzzled Dick 
 blubbered loudly at her grief ; and then her tears flowed 
 in streams. 
 
 Trouble on trouble. Dick himself got strangely out 
 of sorts, and complained of shivers. Phoebe sent him to 
 bed early, and made him some white Avine whey very hot. 
 In the morning he got up, and said he was better ; but 
 after breakfast he was violently sick, and suffered several 
 returns of nausea before noon. " One would think I 
 was poisoned," said he. 
 
 At one o'clock he was seized with a kind of spasm 
 in the throat that lasted so long it nearly choked him. 
 
 Then Phoebe got frightened, and sent to the nearest 
 surgeon. He did not hurry, and poor Dick had another 
 frightful spasm just as he came in. 
 
 "It is hysterical," said the surgeon. "ISTo disease of 
 the heart, is there ? Give him a little sal-volatile every 
 half hour."
 
 A SIMPLETON. 163 
 
 In spite of the sal-volatile these terrible spasms seized 
 him every half hour ; and now he used to spring off the 
 bed with a cry of terror Avhen they came ; and each one 
 left him weaker and weaker ; he had to be carried back 
 by the women. 
 
 A sad, sickening fear seized on Phoebe. She left Dick 
 with the maid, and tying on her bonnet in a moment, 
 rushed wildly down the street, asking the neighbors for 
 a great doctor, the best that could be had for money. One 
 sent her east a mile, another west, and she was almost 
 distracted, when who should drive up but Dr. and Mrs. 
 Staines, to make purchases. She did not know his name, 
 but she knew he was a doctor. She ran to the window, 
 and cried, " Oh, doctor, my brother ! Oh, pray come to 
 him. Oh! oh!" 
 
 Dr. Staines got quickly, but calmly, out ; told his wife 
 to wait ; and followed Phoebe up-stairs. She told him in 
 a few agitated words how Dick had been taken, and all 
 the symptoms ; especially what had alarmed her so, his 
 springing off the bed when the spasm came. 
 
 Dr. Staines told her to hold the patient up. He lost 
 not a moment, but opened his mouth resolutely, and 
 looked down. 
 
 "The glottis is swollen," said he: then he felt his 
 hands, and said, with the grave, terrible calm of expe- 
 rience, "He is dying." 
 
 " Oh, no ! no ! Oh, doctor, save him ! save him ! " 
 
 " Nothing can save him, unless we had a surgeon on 
 the spot. Yes, I might save him, if you have the cour- 
 age : opening his windpipe before the next spasm is his 
 one chance." 
 
 " Open his windpipe ! Oh, doctor ! It will kill him. 
 Let me look at you." 
 
 She looked hard in his face. It gave her confidence. 
 
 " Is it the only chance ? "
 
 164 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 *' The only one : and it is flying while we chatter." 
 
 "Do IT." 
 
 " He whipped out his lancet. 
 
 "But I can't look on it. I trust to you and my 
 Saviour's mercy." 
 
 She fell on her knees, and bowed her head in prayer. 
 
 Staines seized a basin, put it by the bedside, made an 
 incision in the windpipe, and got Dick down on his 
 stomach, with his face over the bedside. Some blood 
 ran, but not much. " Now ! " he cried, cheerfully, " a 
 small bellows ! There's one in your parlor. Run." 
 
 Phoebe ran for it, and at Dr. Staines' direction lifted 
 Dick a little, while the bellows, duly cleansed, were 
 gently applied to the aperture in the windpipe, and the 
 action of the lungs delicately aided by this primitive but 
 effectual means. 
 
 He showed Phoebe how to do it, tore a leaf out of his 
 pocket-book, wrote a hasty direction to an able surgeon 
 near, and sent his wife off with it in the carriage. 
 
 Phoebe and he never left the patient till the surgeon 
 came with all the instruments required ; amongst the 
 rest, with a big, tortuous pair of nippers, with which he 
 could reach the glottis, and snip it. But they con- 
 sulted, and thought it wiser to continue the surer 
 method ; and so a little tube was neatly inserted into 
 Dick's windpipe, and his throat bandaged ; and by this 
 aperture he did his breathing for some little time. 
 
 Phoebe nursed him like a mother ; and the terror and 
 the joy did her good, and made her less desolate. 
 
 Dick was only just well when both of them were sum- 
 moned to the farm, and arrived only just in time to 
 receive their father's blessing and his last sigh. 
 
 Their elder brother, a married man, inherited the farm, 
 and was executor. Phoebe and Dick were left fifteen 
 hundred pounds apiece, on condition of their leaving 
 England and going to Natal.
 
 A SBIPLETON. 165 
 
 They knew directly what that meant. Phoebe was to 
 be parted from a bad man, and Dick was to comfort her 
 for the loss. 
 
 When this part of the will was read to Phoebe, she 
 turned faint, and only her health and bodily vigor kept 
 her from swooning right away. 
 
 But she yielded. ''It is the will of the dead," said 
 she, " and I will obey it ; for, oh, if I had but listened to 
 him more when he was alive to advise me, I should not 
 sit here now, sick at heart and dry-eyed, when I ought 
 to be thinking only of the good friend that is gone." 
 
 When she had come to this she became feverishly 
 anxious to be gone. She busied herself in purchasing 
 agricultural machines, and stores, and even stock; and 
 to see her pinching the beasts' ribs to find their con- 
 dition, and parrying all attempts to cheat her, you would 
 never have believed she could be a love-sick woman. 
 
 Dick kept her up to the mark. He only left her to 
 bargain with the master of a good vessel ; for it was no 
 trifle to take out horses and cows, and machines, and 
 bales of cloth, cotton, and linen. 
 
 When that was settled they came in to town together, 
 and Phoebe bought shrewdly, at wholesale houses in the 
 city, for cash, and would have bargains : and the little 
 shop in Street was turned into a warehouse. 
 
 They were all ardor, as colonists should be ; and what 
 pleased Dick most, she never mentioned Falcon ; yet he 
 learned from the maid that worthy had been there twice, 
 looking very seedy. 
 
 The day drew near. Dick was in high spirits. 
 
 " We shall soon make our fortune out there," he said ; 
 " and I'll get you a good husband." 
 
 She shuddered, but said nothing. 
 
 The evening before they were to sail, Phoebe sat alone, 
 in her black dress, tired with work, and asking herself.
 
 166 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 sick at heart, could she ever really leave England, when 
 the door opened softly, and Keginald Falcon, shabbily 
 dressed, came in, and threw himself into a chair. 
 
 She started up with a scream, then sank down again, 
 trembling, and turned her face to the wall. 
 
 " So you are going to run away from me ! " said he 
 savagely. 
 
 "Ay, Reginald," said she meekly. 
 
 " This is your fine love, is it ? " 
 
 " You have worn it out, dear," she said softly, without 
 turning her head from the wall. 
 
 " I wish I could say as much ; but, curse it, every time 
 I leave you I learn to love you more. I am never really 
 happy but when I am with you." 
 
 " Bless you for saying that, dear. I often thought you 
 imist find that out one day ; but you took too long." 
 
 " Oh, better late than never. Phoebe ! Can you have 
 the heart to go to the Cape, and leave me all alone in 
 the world, with nobody that really cares for me ? Surely 
 you are not obliged to go." 
 
 "Yes; my father left Dick and me fifteen hundred 
 pounds apiece to go : that was the condition. Poor Dick 
 loves his unhappy sister. He won't go without me — I 
 should be his ruin — poor Dick, that really loves me ; 
 and he lay a-dying here, and the good doctor and me — 
 God bless him — we brought him back from the grave. 
 Ah, you little know what I have gone through. You 
 were not here. Catch you being near me when I am in 
 trouble. There, I must go. I must go. I will go ; if I 
 fling myself into the sea half way." 
 
 " And, if you do, I'll take a dose of poison ; for I have 
 thrown away the truest heart, the sweetest, most unself- 
 ish, kindest, generous — oh ! oh ! oh ! " 
 
 And he began to howl. 
 
 This set Phoebe 'fobbing. "Don't cry, dear," she mur-
 
 A SIMPLETON. 167 
 
 mured through her tears ; " if you have really any love 
 for me, come with me." 
 
 " What, leave England, and go to a desert ? " 
 
 " Love can make a desert a garden." 
 
 " Phoebe, I'll do anything else. I'll swear not to leave 
 your side. I'll never look at any other face but yours. 
 But I can't live in Africa." 
 
 "1 know you can't. It takes a little real love to go 
 there with a poor girl like me. Ah, well, I'd have made 
 you so happy. We are not poor emigrants. I have a 
 horse for you to ride, and guns to shoot; and me and 
 Dick would do all the work for you. But there are 
 others here you can't leave for me. Well, then, good-by, 
 dear. In Africa, or here, I shall always love you ; and 
 many a salt tear I shall shed for you yet, many a one I 
 have, as well you know. God bless you. Pray for poor 
 Phoebe, that goes against her will to Africa, and leaves 
 her heart with thee." 
 
 This was too much even for the selfish Reginald. He 
 kneeled at her knees, and took her hand, and kissed it, 
 and actually shed a tear or two Over it. 
 
 She could not speak. He had no hope of changing 
 her resolution ; and presently he heard Dick's voice out- 
 side, so he got up to avoid him. " I'll come again in the 
 morning, before you go." 
 
 " Oh, no ! no ! " she gasped. " Unless you want me to 
 die at your feet. I am almost dead now." 
 
 Reginald slipped out by the kitchen. 
 
 Dick came in, and found his sister leaning with her 
 head back against the wall. "Why, Phoebe," said lie, 
 " whatever is the matter ? " and he took her by the 
 shoulder. 
 
 She moaned, and he felt her all limp and powerless. 
 
 " What is it, lass ? Whatever is the matter ? Is it 
 about going away ? "
 
 168 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 She would not speak for a long time. 
 
 When she did speak, it was to say something for 
 which my male reader may not be prepared. . But it will 
 not surprise the women. 
 
 " Dick — forgive me ! " 
 
 "Why, what for?" 
 
 " Forgive me, or else kill me : I don't care which." 
 
 "I do, though. There, I forgive you. Now what's 
 your crime ? " 
 
 " I can't go. Forgive me ! " 
 
 "Can't go?" 
 
 " I can't. Forgive me ! " 
 
 " I'm blessed if I don't believe that vagabond has been 
 here tormenting of you again." 
 
 " Oh, don't miscall him. He is penitent. Yes, Dick, 
 he has been here crying to me — and I can't leave him. 
 I can't — I can't. Dear Dick ! you are young and stout- 
 hearted ; take all the things over, and make your fortune 
 out there, and leave your poor foolish sister behind. I 
 should only fling myself into the salt sea if I left him 
 now, and that would be peace to me, but a grief to 
 thee." 
 
 " Lordsake, Phoebe, don't talk so. I can't go without 
 you. And do but think, why, the horses are on board by 
 now, and all the gear. It's my belief a good hiding is all 
 you want, to bring you to your senses ; but I han't the 
 heart to give you one, worse luck. Blessed if I know 
 what to say or do." 
 
 " I won't go ! " cried Phoebe, turning violent all of a 
 sudden. "No, not if I am dragged to the ship by the 
 hair of my head. Forgive me ! " And with that word 
 she was a mouse again. 
 
 " Eh, but women are kittle cattle to drive," said poor 
 Dick ruefully. And down he sat at a nonplus, and very 
 unhappy.
 
 A SmPLETON. 169 
 
 Phoebe sat opposite, sullen, heart-sick, wretched to the 
 core ; but determined not to leave Reginald. 
 
 Then came an event that might have been foreseen, 
 yet it took them both by surprise. 
 
 A light step Tvas heard, and a graceful, though seedy, 
 figure entered the room with a set speech in his mouth : 
 "Phoebe, you are right. I owe it to your long and faith- 
 ful affection to make a sacrifice for you. I will go to 
 Africa with you. I will go to the end of the world, 
 sooner than you shall say I care for any Avoman on earth 
 but you." 
 
 Both brother and sister were so unprepared for this, 
 that they could hardly realize it at first. 
 
 Phoebe turned her great, inquiring eyes on the speaker, 
 and it was a sight to see amazement, doubt, hope, and 
 happiness animating her features, one after another. 
 
 " Is this real ? " said she. 
 
 " I will sail with you to-morrow, Phcebe ; and I will 
 make you a good husband, if you will have me." 
 
 "That is spoke like a man," said Dick. "You take 
 him at his word, Phoebe ; and if he ill-uses you out there, 
 I'll break every bone in his skin." 
 
 " How dare you threaten him ? " said Phcebe. " You 
 had best leave the room." 
 
 Out went poor Dick, with the tear in his eye at being 
 snubbed so. "While he was putting up the shutters, 
 Phoebe was making love to her pseudo penitent. " My 
 dear," said she, " trust yourself to me. You don't know 
 all my love yet ; for I have never been your wife, and I 
 would not be your jade ; that is the only thing I ever 
 refused you. Trust yourself to me. Why, you never 
 found happiness with others ; try it with me. It shall 
 be the best day's work you ever did, going out in the 
 ship with me. You don't know how happy a loving wife 
 can make her husband. I'll pet you out there as man
 
 170 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 was nerer petted. And besides, it isn't for life; Dick 
 and me will soon make a fortune out there, and then I'll 
 bring you home, and see you spend it any way you like 
 but one. Oh, how I love you ! do you love me a little ? 
 I worship the ground you walk on. I adore every hair 
 of your head ! " Her noble arm went round his neck in 
 a moment, and the grandeur of her passion electrified 
 him so far that he kissed her affectionately, if not quite 
 so warmly as she did him : and so it was all settled. 
 The maid was discharged that night instead of the morn- 
 ing, and Keginald was to occupy her bed. Phoebe went 
 up-stairs with her heart literally on fire, to prepare his 
 sleeping-room, and so Dick and Reginald had a word. 
 
 " I say, Dick, how long will this voyage be ? " 
 
 " Two months, sir, I am told." 
 
 " Please to cast your eyes on this suit of mine. Don't 
 you think it is rather seedy — to go to Africa with? 
 Why, I shall disgrace you on board the ship. I say, 
 Dick, lend me three sovs., just to buy a new suit at the 
 slop-shop." 
 
 " Well, brother-in-law," said Dick, " I don't see any 
 harm in that. I'll go and fetch them for you." 
 
 What does this sensible Dick do but go up-stairs to 
 Phoebe, and say, " He wants three pounds to buy a suit ; 
 am I to lend it him ? " 
 
 Phoebe was shaking and patting her penitent's pillow. 
 She dropped it on the bed in dismay. ''Oh, Dick, not 
 for all the world ! Why, if he had three sovereigns, he'd 
 desert me at the water's edge. Oh, God help me, how I 
 love him ! God forgive me, how I mistrust him ! Good 
 Dick ! kind Dick ! say we have suits of clothes, and 
 we'll fit him like a prince, as he ought to be, on board 
 ship ; but not a shilling of money : and, my dear, don't 
 put the weight on me. You understand ? " 
 
 " Ay, mistresS; I understand."
 
 A SIMPLETON. 171 
 
 "Good Dick!" 
 
 " Oh, all right ! and then don't you snap this here 
 good, kind Dick's nose off at a word again." 
 
 ''Never. I get wild if anybody threatens him. Then 
 I'm not myself. Forgive my hasty tongue. You know 
 I love you, dear ! " 
 
 " Oh, ay ! you love me well enough. But seems to me 
 your love is precious like cold veal, and your love for 
 that chap is hot roast beef." 
 
 "Ha, ha, ha, ha!" 
 
 " Oh, ye can laugh now, can ye ? " 
 
 "Ha, ha, ha!" 
 
 "Well, the more of that music, the better for me." 
 
 " Yes, dear ; but go and tell him." 
 
 Dick went down, and said, "I've got no money to 
 spare, till I get to the Cape ; but Phoebe has got a box 
 full of suits, and I made her promise to keep it out. 
 She will dress you like a prince, you may be sure." 
 
 " Oh, that is it, is it ? " said Reginald dryly. 
 
 Dick made no reply. 
 
 At nine o'clock they were on board the vessel ; at ten 
 she weighed anchor, and a steam-vessel drew her down 
 the river about thirty miles, then cast off, and left her to 
 the south-easterly breeze. Up went sail after sail ; she 
 nodded her lofty head, and glided away for Africa. 
 
 Phoebe shed a few natural tears at leaving the shores 
 of Old England ; but they soon dried. She was demurely 
 happy, watching her prize, and asking herself had she 
 really secured it, and all in a few hours ? 
 
 They had a prosperous voyage : were married at Cape 
 Town, and went up the country, bag and baggage, look- 
 ing out for a good bargain in land. Reginald was mounted 
 on an English horse, and allowed to zigzag about, and 
 shoot, and play, while his wife and brother-in-law marched 
 slowly with their cavalcade.
 
 172 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 What with air, exercise, wholesome food, and smiles 
 of welcome, and delicious petting, this egotist enjoyed 
 himself finely. He admitted as much. Says he, one 
 evening to his wife, who sat by him for the pleasure of 
 seeing him feed, " It sounds absurd ; but I never was so 
 happy in all my life." 
 
 At that, the celestial expression of her pastoral face, 
 and the maternal gesture with which she drew her pet's 
 head to her queenly bosom, was a picture for celibacy to 
 gnash the teeth at.
 
 A SIMPLETON. 173 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 During this period, the most remarkable things that 
 happened to Dr. and Mrs. Staines were really those whieli 
 I have related as connecting them with Phoebe Dale and 
 her brother ; to which I will now add that Dr. Staines 
 detailed Dick's case in a remarkable paper, entitled 
 " (Edema of the Glottis," and showed how the patient 
 had been brought back from the grave by tracheotomy 
 and artificial respiration. He received a high price for 
 this article. 
 
 To tell the truth, he was careful not to admit that it 
 was he who had opened the windpipe ; so the credit of 
 the whole operation was given to Mr. Jenkyn ; and this 
 gentleman was naturally pleased, and threw a good many 
 consultation fees in Staines's way. 
 
 The Lucases, to his great comfort — for he had an 
 instinctive aversion to Miss Lucas — left London for 
 Paris in August, and did not return all the year. 
 
 In February he reviewed his year's work and twelve 
 months' residence in the Bijou. The pecuniary result 
 was, outgoings, nine hundred and fifty pounds ; income, 
 from fees, two hundred and eighty pounds; writing, 
 ninety pounds. 
 
 He showed these figures to Mrs. Staines, and asked 
 her if she could suggest any diminution of expenditure. 
 Could she do with less housekeeping money ? 
 
 " Oh, impossible ! You cannot think how the servants 
 eat ; and they won't touch our home-made bread." 
 . ''The fools! Why? 
 
 " Oh, because they think it costs us less. Servants
 
 174 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 seem to me always to hate the people whose bread they 
 eat." 
 
 "More likely it is their vanity. Nothing that is not 
 paid for before their eyes seems good enough for them. 
 Well, dear, the bakers will revenge us. But is there any 
 other item we could reduce ? Dress ? " 
 
 " Dress ! Why, I spend nothing." 
 
 "Forty -five pounds this year." 
 
 " Well, I shall want none next year." 
 
 " Well, then, Rosa, as there is nothing we can reduce, 
 I must write more, and take more fees, or we shall be in 
 the wrong box. Only eight hundred and sixty pounds 
 left of our little capital ; and, mind, we have not another 
 shilling in the world. One comfort, there is no debt. 
 We pay ready money for everything." 
 
 Rosa colored a little, but said nothing. 
 
 Staines did his part nobly. He read; he wrote; he 
 paced the yard. He wore his old clothes in the house ; 
 he took off his new ones when he came in. He was all 
 genius, drudgery, patience. 
 
 How Phoebe Dale would have valued him, co-operated 
 with him, and petted him, if she had had the good luck 
 to be his wife ! 
 
 The season came back, and with it Miss Lucas, towing 
 a brilliant bride, Mrs. Vivian, young, rich, pretty, and 
 gay, with a waist you could span, and athirst for pleasure. 
 
 This lady was the first that ever made Rosa downright 
 jealous. She seemed to have everything the female 
 heart could desire ; and she was No. 1 with Miss Lucas 
 this year. Now, Rosa was No. 1 last season, and had 
 weakly imagined that was to last forever. But Miss 
 Lucas had always a sort of female flame, and it never 
 lasted two seasons. 
 
 Rosa did not care so very much for Miss Lucas before, 
 except as a convenient friend ; but now she was mortified
 
 A SIMPLETON. 175 
 
 to tears at finding Miss Lucas made more fuss with 
 another than with her. 
 
 This foolish feeling spurred her to attempt a rivalry 
 with Mrs. Vivian, in the very things where rivalry was 
 hopeless. 
 
 Miss Lucas gave both ladies tickets for a flower- 
 show, where all the great folk were to be, princes and 
 princesses, etc. 
 
 " But I have nothing to wear," sighed Rosa. 
 
 "Then you must get something, and mind it is not 
 pink, please; for we must not clash in colors. You 
 know I'm dark, and pink becomes me. (The selfish 
 young brute was not half so dark as Rosa.) Mine is 
 coming from Worth's, in Paris, on purpose. And this 
 new Madame Cie, of Regent Street, has such a duck of 
 a bonnet, just come from Paris. She wanted to make 
 me one from it ; but I told her I would have none but 
 the pattern bonnet — and she knows very well she can't 
 pass a copy off on me. Let me drive you up there, and 
 you can see mine, and order one, if you like it." 
 
 " Oh, thank you ! let me just run and speak to my 
 husband first." 
 
 Staines was writing for the bare life, and a number of 
 German books about him, slaving to make a few pounds 
 — when in comes the buoyant figure and beaming face 
 his soul delighted in. 
 
 He laid down his work, to enjoy the sunbeam of love. 
 
 "Oh, darling, I've only come in for a minute. We 
 are going to a flower-show on the 13th ; everybody will 
 be so beautifully dressed — especially that Mrs. Vivian. 
 I have got ten yards of beautiful blue silk in my Avard- 
 robe, but that is not enough to make a whole dress — 
 everything takes so much stuff now. Madame Cie does 
 not care to make up dresses unless she finds the silk, but 
 Miss Lucas says she thinks, to oblige a friend of hers,
 
 176 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 she would do it for once in a way. You know, dear, it 
 would only take a few yards more, and it would last as a 
 dinner-dress for ever so long." 
 
 Then she clasped him round the neck, and leaned her 
 head upon his shoulder, and looked lovingly up in his 
 face. "I know you would like your Rosa to look as 
 well as Mrs. Vivian." 
 
 "No one ever looks as well, in my eyes, as my Rosa. 
 There, the dress will add nothing to your beauty ; but 
 go and get it, to please yourself; it is very considerate 
 of you to have chosen something of which you have ten 
 yards, already. See, dear, I'm to receive twenty pounds 
 for this article ; if research was paid it ought to be a 
 hundred. I shall add it all to your allowance for dresses 
 this year. So no debt, mind ; but come to me for every- 
 thing." 
 
 The two ladies drove off to Madame Cie's, a pretty 
 shop lined with dark velvet and lace draperies. 
 
 In the back room they were packiiag a lovely bridal 
 dress, going off the following Saturday to New York. 
 
 '' What, send from America to London ? " 
 
 " Oh, dear, yes ! " exclaimed Madame Cie. " The 
 American ladies are excellent customers. They buy 
 everything of the best, and the most expensive." 
 
 " I have brought a new customer," said Miss Lucas ; 
 " and I want you to do a great favor, and that is to match 
 a blue silk, and make her a pretty dress for the flower- 
 show on the 13th." 
 
 Madame Cie prodviced a white muslin polonaise, which 
 
 she was just going to send home to the Princess , to 
 
 be worn over mauve. 
 
 " Oh, how pretty and simple ! " exclaimed Miss Lucas. 
 
 " I have some lace exactly like that," said Mrs. Staines. 
 
 " Then why don't you have a polonaise ? The lace is 
 the only expensive part, the muslin is a mere nothing ;
 
 A SIMPLETON. 177 
 
 and it is such a useful dress, it can be worn over any- 
 silk." 
 
 It was agreed Madame Cie was to send for the blue 
 silk and the lace, and the dresses were to be tried on on 
 Thursday. 
 
 On Thursday, as Rosa went gayly into Madame Cie's 
 back room to have the dresses tried on, Madame Cie 
 said, "You have a beautiful lace shawl, but it wants 
 arranging; in five minutes I could astonish you with 
 what I could do to that shawl." 
 
 " Oh, pray do," said Mrs. Staines. 
 
 The dressmaker kept her word. By the time the blue 
 dress was tried on, Madame Cie had, with the aid of a 
 few pins, plaits, and a bow of blue ribbon, transformed 
 the half lace shawl into one of the smartest and distingiiS 
 things imaginable ; but when the bill came in at Christ- 
 mas, for that five minutes' labor and distingue touch, she 
 charged one pound eight. 
 
 Madame Cie then told the ladies, in an artfully confi- 
 dential tone, she had a quantity of black silk coming 
 home, which she had purchased considerably below cost 
 price; and that she should like to make them each a 
 dress — not for her own sake, but theirs — as she knew 
 they would never meet such a bargain again. "You 
 know. Miss Lucas," she continued, " we don't want our 
 money, when we know our customers. Christmas is 
 soon enough for us." 
 
 "Christmas is a long time off," thought the young 
 wife, " nearly ten months. I think I'll have a black silk, 
 Madame Cie ; but I must not say anything to the doctor 
 about it just yet, or he might think me extravagant." 
 
 "No one can ever think a lady extravagant for buying 
 a black silk; it's such a useful dress; lasts forever — 
 almost." 
 
 Days, weeks, and months rolled on, and with them au
 
 178 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 ever-rolling tide of flower-shows, dinners, at-homes, balls, 
 operas, lawn-parties, concerts, and theatres. 
 
 Strange that in one house there should be two people 
 who loved each other, yet their lives ran so far apart, 
 except while they were asleep : the man all industry, 
 self-denial, patience ; the woman all frivolity, self-indul- 
 gence, and amusement ; both chained to an oar, only — 
 one in a working boat, the other in a painted galley. 
 
 The woman got tired first, and her charming color 
 waned sadly. She came to him for medicine to set her 
 up, " I feel so languid." 
 
 " No, no," said he ; " no medicine can do the work of 
 wholesome food and rational repose. You lack the 
 season of all natures, sleep. Dine at home three days 
 running, and go to bed at ten." 
 
 On this the doctor's wife went to a chemist for advice. 
 He gave her a pink stimulant ; and, as stimulants have 
 two effects, viz., first to stimulate, and then to weaken, 
 this did her no lasting good. Dr. Staines cursed the 
 London season, and threatened to migrate to Liver- 
 pool. 
 
 But there was worse behind. 
 
 Returning one day to his dressing-room, just after 
 Eosa had come down-stairs, he caught sight of a red stain 
 in a wash-hand-basin. He examined it ; it was arterial 
 blood. 
 
 He went to her directly, and expressed his anxiety. 
 
 " Oh, it is nothing," said she. 
 
 " Nothing ! Pray, how often has it occurred ? " 
 
 "Once or twice. I must take your advice, and be 
 quiet, that is all." 
 
 Staines examined the housemaid; she lied instinc- 
 tively at first, seeing he was alarmed ; but, being urged 
 to tell the truth, said she had seen it repeatedly, and had 
 told the cook.
 
 A SIMPLETOl^. 179 
 
 He went down-stairs again, and sat down, looking 
 wretched. 
 
 " Oh, dear ! " said Eosa. " What is the matter now ? " 
 " Rosa," said he, very gravely, " there are two people 
 a woman is mad to deceive — her husband and her phy- 
 sician. You have deceived both."
 
 180 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 I SUSPECT Dr. Staines merely meant to say that she 
 had concealed from him an alarming symptom for several 
 weeks ; but she answered in a hurry, to excuse herself, 
 and let the cat out of the bag — excuse my vulgarity. 
 
 " It was all that Mrs. Vivian's fault. She laughed at 
 me so for not wearing them ; and she has a waist you 
 can span — the wretch ! " 
 
 "Oh, then, you have been wearing stays clandes- 
 tinely ? " 
 
 " Why, you know I have. Oh, what a stupid ! I have 
 let it all out." 
 
 " How could you do it, when you knew, by experience, 
 it is your death ? " 
 
 " But it looks so beautiful, a tiny waist." 
 
 " It looks as hideous as a Chinese foot, and, to the eye 
 of science, far more disgusting; it is the cause of so 
 many unlovely diseases." 
 
 "Just tell me one thing; have you looked at Mrs. 
 Vivian ? " 
 
 "Minutely. I look at all your friends with great 
 anxiety, knowing no animal more dangerous than a fool. 
 Vivian — a skinny woman, with a pretty face, lovely 
 hair, good teeth, dying eyes " — 
 
 " Yes, lovely ! " 
 
 "A sure proof of a disordered stomach — and a waist 
 pinched in so unnaturally, that I said to myself, * Where 
 on earth does this idiot put her liver ? ' Did you ever 
 read of the frog who burst, trying to swell to an ox ? 
 Well, here is the rivalry reversed ; Mrs. Vivian is a bag
 
 A SIMPLETON. 181 
 
 of bones in a balloon; she can machine herself into a 
 wasp ; but a fine young woman like you, with flesh and 
 muscle, must kill yourself three or four times before 
 you can make your body as meagre, hideous, angular, 
 and unnatural as Vivian's. But all you ladies are mono- 
 maniacs ; one might as well talk sense to a gorilla. It 
 brought you to the edge of the grave. I saved you. Yet 
 you could go and — God grant me patience. So I sup- 
 pose these unprincipled women lent you their stays to 
 deceive your husband ? " 
 
 "No. But they laughed at me so that — Oh, 
 Christie, I'm a wretch; I kept a pair at the Lucases, 
 and a pair at Madame Cie's, and I put them on now and 
 then." 
 
 " But you never appeared here in them ? " 
 
 " What, before my tyrant ? Oh no, I dared not." 
 
 " So you took them off before you came home ? " 
 
 Kosa hung her head, and said "Yes" in a reluctant 
 whisper. 
 
 " You spent your daylight dressing. You dressed to 
 go out ; dressed again in stays ; dressed again without 
 them ; and all to deceive your husband, and kill your- 
 self, at the bidding of two shallow, heartless women, 
 who would dance over your grave without a pang of 
 remorse, or sentiment of any kind, since they live, like 
 midges, only to dance in the sun, aiid suck some ivorker's 
 blood:' 
 
 " Oh, Christie ! I'm so easily led. I am too great a 
 fool to live. Kill me !" 
 
 And she kneeled down, and renewed the request, look- 
 ing up in his face with an expression that might have 
 disarmed Cain ipsum. 
 
 He smiled superior. " The question is, are you sorry 
 you have been so thoughtless ? " 
 
 " Yes, dear. Oh ! oh ! "
 
 182 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 " Will you be very good to make up ? " 
 
 "Oh, yes. Only tell me how; for it does not come 
 natural to poor me." 
 
 " Keep out of those women's way for the rest of the 
 season." 
 
 "I will." 
 
 " Bring your stays home, and allow me to do what I 
 like with them." 
 
 " Of course. Cut them in a million pieces." 
 
 " Till you are recovered, joii must be my patient, and 
 go nowhere without me." 
 
 " That is no punishment, I am sure." 
 
 " Punishment ! Am I the man to punish you ? I only 
 want to save you." 
 
 " Well, darling, it won't be the first time." 
 
 " No ; but I do hope it will be the last."
 
 A SIMPLETON. 183 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 " Sublatd causa tollitur effectusP The stays being 
 gone, and dissipation moderated, Mrs. Staines bloomed 
 again, and they gave one or two unpretending little 
 dinners at the Bijou. Dr. Staines admitted no false 
 friends to these. They never went beyond eight; five 
 gentlemen, three ladies. By this arrangement the terri- 
 ble discursiveness of the fair, and man's cruel disposi- 
 tion to work a subject threadbare, were controlled and 
 modified, and a happy balance of conversation established. 
 Lady Cicely Treherne was always invited, and always 
 managed to come ; for she said, " They were the most 
 agweeable little paaties in London, and the host and 
 hostess both so intewesting." In the autumn, Staines 
 worked double tides with the pen, and found a vehicle 
 for medical narratives in a weekly magazine that did 
 not profess medicine. 
 
 This new vein put him in heart. His fees, towards 
 the end of the year, were less than last year, because 
 there was no hundred-guinea fee; but there was a 
 marked increase in the small fees, and the unflagging 
 pen had actually earned him two hundred pounds, or 
 nearly. So he was in good spirits. 
 
 Not so Mrs. Staines ; for some time she had been 
 uneasy, fretful, and like a person with a weight on her 
 mind. 
 
 One Sunday she said to him, "Oh, dear, I do feel so 
 dull. Nobody to go to church with, nor yet to the 
 Zoo." 
 
 " I'll go with you," said Staines.
 
 184 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 "You will! To which?" 
 
 " To both ; in for a penny, in for a pound." 
 
 So to church they went ; and Staines, whose motto was 
 "Hoc age" minded his book. Rosa had intervals of 
 attention to the words, but found plenty of time to 
 study the costumes. 
 
 During the Litany in bustled Clara, the housemaid, 
 with a white jacket on so like her mistress's, that Rosa 
 clutched her own convulsively, to see whether she had 
 not been skinned of it by some devilish sleight-of-hand. 
 
 No, it was on her back ; but Clara's was identical. 
 
 In her excitement, Rosa pinched Staines, and with her 
 nose, that went like a water-wagtail, pointed out the 
 malefactor. Then she whispered, " Look ! How dare 
 she ? My very jacket ! Earrings too, and brooches, and 
 dresses her hair like mine." 
 
 '' Well, never mind," whispered Staines. " Sunday is 
 her day. We have got all the week to shine. There, 
 don't look at her — 'From all evil speaking, lying, and 
 slandering ' " — 
 
 " I can't keep my eyes off her." 
 
 *' Attend to the Litany. Do you know, this is really a 
 beautiful composition ? " 
 
 " I'd rather do the work fifty times over myself." 
 
 " Hush ! people will hear you." 
 
 When they walked home after church, Staines tried to 
 divert her from the consideration of her wrongs; but 
 no — all other topics were too flat by comparison. 
 
 She mourned the hard fate of mistresses — unfortu- 
 nate creatures that could not do without servants. 
 
 "Is not that a confession that servants are good, 
 useful creatures, with all their faults ? Then as to the 
 mania for dress, why, that is not confined to them. It 
 is the mania of the sex. Are you free from it ? " 
 
 " No, of course not. But I am a lady, if you please."
 
 A SIMPLETON. 185 
 
 "Then she is your intellectual inferior, and more 
 excusable. Anyway, it is wise to connive at a thing we 
 can't help." 
 
 " Wliat keep her, after this ? no, never." 
 
 " My dear, pray do not send her away, for she is tidy 
 in the house, and quick, and better than any one we have 
 had this last six months ; and you know you have tried 
 a great number." 
 
 " To hear you speak, one would think it was my fault 
 that we have so many bad servants." 
 
 " I never said it was your fault ; but I think, dearest, 
 a little more forbearance in trifles " — 
 
 " Trifles ! trifles — for a mistress and maid to be seen 
 dressed alike in the same church ? You take the serv- 
 ants' part against me, that you do." 
 
 "You should not say that, even in jest. Come now, 
 do you really think a jacket like yours can make the 
 servant look like you, or detract from your grace and 
 beauty ? There is a very simple way ; put your jacket 
 by for a future occasion, and wear something else in its 
 stead at church." 
 
 "A nice thing, indeed, to give in to these creatures. 
 I won't do it." 
 
 " Why won't you, this once ? " 
 
 "Because I won't — there !" 
 
 " That is unanswerable," said he. 
 
 Mrs. Staines said that; but when it came to acting, 
 she deferred to her husband's wish; she resigned her 
 intention of sending for Clara and giving her warning. 
 On the contrary, when Clara let her in, and the white 
 jackets rubbed together in the narrow passage, she 
 actually said nothing, but stalked to her own room, and 
 tore her jacket off, and flung it on the floor. 
 
 Unfortunately, she was so long dressing for the Zoo, 
 that Clara came in to arrange the room. She picks up
 
 186 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 the white jacket, takes it in both hands, gives it a flap, 
 and proceeds to hang it up in the wardrobe. 
 
 Then the great feminine heart burst its bounds. 
 
 "You can leave that alone. I shall not wear that 
 again." 
 
 Thereupon ensued an uneven encounter, Clara being 
 one of those of whom the Scripture says, "The poison 
 of asps is under their tongues." 
 
 " La, ma'am," said she, " why, 'tain't so very dirty." 
 
 " No ; but it is too common." 
 
 " Oh, because I've got one like it. Ay. Missises can't 
 abide a good-looking servant, nor to see 'em dressed 
 becoming." 
 
 " Mistresses do not like servants to forget their place, 
 nor wear what does not become their situation." 
 
 " My situation ! Why, I can pay my way, go where I 
 will. I don't tremble at the tradesmen's knock, as 
 some do." 
 
 " Leave the room ! Leave it this moment." 
 
 " Leave the room, yes — and I'll leave the house too, 
 and tell all the neighbors what I know about it." 
 
 She flounced out and slammed the door; and Rosa 
 sat down, trembling. 
 
 Clara rushed to the kitchen, and there told the cook 
 and Andrew Pearman how she had given it to the 
 mistress, and every word she had said to her, with a 
 good many more she had not. 
 
 The cook laughed and encouraged her. 
 
 But Andrew Pearman was wroth, and said, " You to 
 affront our mistress like that ! Why, if I had heard you, 
 I'd have twisted your neck for ye." 
 
 " It would take a better man than you to do that. You 
 mind you.r own business. Stick to your one-horse chay." 
 
 " Well, I'm not above my place, for that matter. But 
 you gals must always be aping your betters."
 
 A SBIPLETON. 187 
 
 " I have got a proper pride, that is all, and you haven't. 
 You ought to be ashamed of yourself to do two men's 
 work ; drive a brougham and wait on a horse, and then 
 come in and wait at table, You are a tea-kettle groom, 
 that is what you are. Why, my brother was coachman 
 to Lord Fitz-James, and gave his lordship notice the first 
 time he had to drive the children. Says he, '1 don't 
 object to the children, my lord, but with her ladyship in 
 the carriage.' It's such servants as you as spoil places. 
 No servant as knows what's due to a servant ought to 
 know you. They'd scorn your 'quaintance, as I do, Mr. 
 Pearman." 
 
 " You are a stuck-up hussy, and a soldier's jade," roared 
 Andrew. 
 
 " And you are a low tea-kettle groom." 
 
 This expression wounded the great equestrian soul to 
 the quick ; the rest of Sunday he pondered on it ; the 
 next morning he drove the doctor, as usual, but with a 
 heavy heart. 
 
 Meantime, the cook made haste and told the baker 
 Pearman had " got it hot " from the housemaid, and she 
 had called him a tea-kettle groom ; and in less than half 
 an hour after that it was in every stable in the mews. 
 Why, as Pearman was taking the horse out of the 
 brougham, didn't two little red-headed urchins call out, 
 " Here, come and see the tea-kettle groom ! " and at 
 night some mischievous boy chalked on the black door 
 of the stable a large white tea-kettle, and next morning 
 a drunken, idle fellow, with a clay pipe in his mouth, 
 and a dirty pair of corduroy trousers, no coat, but a shirt 
 very open at the chest, showing inflamed skin, the effect 
 of drink, inspected that work of art with blinking eyes 
 and vacillating toes, and said, " This comes of a chap 
 doing too much. A few more like you, and work would 
 be scarce. A fine thing for gentlefolks to make one man
 
 188 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 fill two places ! but it ain't the gentlefolks' fault, it's the 
 man as humors 'em." 
 
 Pearman was a peaceable man, and made no rei)ly, 
 but went on with his work ; only during the day he told 
 his master that he should be obliged to him if he would 
 fill his situation as soon as convenient. 
 
 The master inquired the cause, and the man told him, 
 and said the mews was too hot for him. 
 
 The doctor offered him five pounds a year more, know- 
 ing he had a treasure ; but Pearman said, with sadness 
 and firmness, that he had made up his mind to go, and 
 go he would. 
 
 The doctor's heart fairly sank at the prospect of losing 
 the one creature he could depend upon. 
 
 Next Sunday evening Clara was out, and fell in with 
 friends, to whom she exaggerated her grievance. 
 
 Then they worked her up to fury, after the manner of 
 servants' friends. She came home, packed her box, 
 brought it down, and then flounced into the room to 
 Doctor and Mrs. Staines, and said, " I shan't sleep 
 another night in this house." 
 
 Kosa was about to speak, but Dr. Staines forbade her : 
 he said, " You had better think twice of that. You are 
 a good servant, though for once you have been betrayed 
 into speaking disrespectfully. Why forfeit your charac- 
 ter, and three weeks' wages ? " 
 
 " I don't care for my wages. I won't stay in such a 
 house as this." 
 
 " Come, you must not be impertinent." 
 
 "I don't mean to, sir," said she, lowering her voice 
 suddenly ; then, raising it as suddenly, " There are my 
 keys, ma'am, and you can search my box." 
 
 "Mrs. Staines will not search your box ; and you will 
 retire at once to your own part of the house." 
 
 "I'll go farther than that," said she, and soon after 
 the street door was slammed ; the Bijou shook.
 
 A SIMPLETON. 189 
 
 At six o'clock next morning, slie came for her box. 
 It had been put aAvay for safety. Pearman told her she 
 must wait till the doctor came down. She did not wait, 
 but went at eleven a.m. to a police-magistrate, and took 
 out a summons against Dr. Staines, for detaining a box 
 containing certain articles specified — value under fifteen 
 pounds. 
 
 When Dr. Staines heard she had been for her box, but 
 left no address, he sent Pearman to hunt for her. He 
 could not find her. She avoided the house, but sent a 
 woman for her diurnal love letters. Dr. Staines sent 
 the woman back to fetch her. She came, received her 
 box, her letters, and the balance of her wages, which 
 was small, for Staines deducted the three weeks' wages. 
 
 Two days afterwards, to his surprise, the summons 
 was served. 
 
 Out of respect for a court of justice, however humble. 
 Dr. Staines attended next Monday to meet the sum- 
 mons. 
 
 The magistrate was an elderly man, with a face shaped 
 like a hog's, but much richer in color, being purple and 
 pimply ; so foul a visage Staines had rarely seen, even 
 in the lowest class of the community. 
 
 Clara SAvore that her box had been opened, and certain 
 things stolen out of it ; and that she had been refused 
 the box next morning. 
 
 Staines swore that he had never opened the box, and 
 that, if any one else had, it was with her consent, for 
 she had left the keys for that purpose. He bade the 
 magistrate observe that if a servant went away like this, 
 and left no address, she put it out of the master's j^ower 
 to send her box after her; and he proved he had some 
 trouble to force the box on her. 
 
 The pig-faced beak showed a manifest leaning towards 
 the servant, but there wasn't a leg to stand on ; and he
 
 190 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 did not believe, nor was it credible, that anything had 
 been stolen out of her box. 
 
 At this moment, Pearman, sent by Rosa, entered the 
 court with an old gown of Clara's that had been discov- 
 ered in the scullery, and a scribbling-book of the doc- 
 tor's, which Clara had appropriated, and written amorous 
 verses in, very superior — in number — to those that 
 have come down to us from Anacreon. 
 
 " Hand me those," said the pig-faced beak. 
 
 " What are they. Dr. Staines ? " 
 
 '' I really don't know. I must ask my servant." 
 
 " Why, more things of mine that have been detained," 
 said Clara. 
 
 " Some things that have been found since she left," 
 said Staines. 
 
 " Oh ! those that hide know where to find." 
 
 "Young woman," said Staines, "do not insult those 
 whose bread you have eaten, and who have given you 
 many presents besides your wages. Since you are so 
 ready to accuse people of stealing, permit me to say that 
 this book is mine, and not yours ; and yet, you see, it is 
 sent after you because you have written your trash in it." 
 
 The purple, pig-faced beak went instantly out of the 
 record, and wasted a deal of time reading Clara's poetry, 
 and trying to be witty. He raised the question whose 
 book this was. The girl swore that it was given her by 
 a lady who was now in Rome. Staines swore he bought 
 it of a certain stationer, and happening to have his pass- 
 book in his pocket, produced an entry corresponding 
 with the date of the book. 
 
 The pig-faced beak said that the doctor's was an im- 
 probable story, and that the gown and the book were 
 quite enough to justify the summons. Verdict, one 
 guinea costs. 
 
 "What, because two things she never demanded have
 
 A SIMPLETON. 191 
 
 been found and sent after her ? This is monstrous. I 
 shall appeal to your superiors." 
 
 "If you are impertinent I'll fine you five pounds." 
 
 " Very well, sir. Now hear me : if this is an honest 
 judgment, I pray God I may be dead before the year's 
 out ; and, if it isn't, I pray God you may be." 
 
 Then the pig-faced beak fired up, and threatened to 
 fine him for blaspheming. 
 
 He deigned no reply, but paid the guinea, and Clara 
 swept out of the court, with a train a yard long, and 
 leaning on the arm of a scarlet soldier who avenged Dr. 
 Staines with military promptitude. 
 
 Christopher went home raging internally, for hitherto 
 he had never seen so gross a case of injustice. 
 
 One of his humble patients followed him, and said, " I 
 wish I had known, sir ; you shouldn't have come here to 
 be insulted. Why, no gentleman can ever get justice 
 against a servant girl when he is sitting. It is notorious, 
 and that makes these hussies so bold. I've seen that 
 jade here with the same story twice afore." 
 
 Staines reached home more discomposed than he could 
 have himself believed. The reason was that barefaced 
 injustice in a court of justice shook his whole faith in 
 man. He opened the street door with his latch-key, and 
 found two men standing in the passage. He inquired 
 what they wanted. 
 
 "Well, sir," said one of them, civilly enough, "we 
 only want our due." 
 
 "For what ? " 
 
 "For goods delivered at this house, sir. Balance of 
 account." And he handed him a butcher's bill, £88, 
 lis. Bid. 
 
 " You must be mistaken ; we run no bills here. We 
 pay ready money for everything." 
 
 " Well, sir," said the butcher, " there have been pay-
 
 192 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 inents; but tlie balance has always been gaining; and 
 we have been put off so often, we determined to see the 
 master. Show you the books, sir, and welcome." 
 
 " This instant, if you please." He took the butcher's 
 address, who then retired, and the other tradesman, a 
 grocer, told him a similar tale ; balance, sixty pounds 
 odd. 
 
 He went to the butcher's, sick at heart, inspected the 
 books, and saw that, right or wrong, they were incontro- 
 vertible ; that debt had been gaining slowly, but surely, 
 almost from the time he confided the accounts to his 
 wife. She had kept faith with him about five weeks, no 
 more. 
 
 The grocer's books told a similar tale. 
 
 The debtor put his hand to his heart, and stood a 
 moment. The very grocer pitied him, and said, " There's 
 no hurry, doctor ; a trifle on account, if settlement in full 
 not convenient just now. I see you have been kept in 
 the dark." 
 
 " No, no," said Christopher ; " I'll pay every shilling." 
 He gave one gulp, and hurried away. 
 
 At the fishmonger's, the same story, only for a smaller 
 amount. 
 
 A bill of nineteen pounds at the very pastrycook's ; a 
 place she had promised him, as her physician, never to 
 enter. 
 
 At the draper's, thirty-seven pounds odd. 
 
 In short, wherever she had dealt, the same system : 
 partial payments, and ever-growing debt. 
 
 Remembering Madame Cie, he drove in a cab to Regent 
 Street, and asked for Mrs. Staines's account. 
 
 " Shall I send it, sir ? " 
 
 " No ; I will take it with me." 
 
 "Miss Edwards, make out Mrs. Staines's account, if 
 you please."
 
 A SEVIPLETON. 193 
 
 Miss Edwards was a good while making it out ; but 
 it was ready at last. He thrust it into his pocket, with- 
 out daring to look at it there ; but he went into Verrey's, 
 and asked for a cup of coffee, and perused the document. 
 
 The principal items were as follows : — 
 
 £ «. 
 
 May 4. Re-shaping and repairing elegant lace mantle, 1 8 
 Chip bonnet, feather, and flowers .... 4 4 
 May 20. Making and trimming blue silk dress — mate- 
 rial part found 19 19 
 
 Five yards rich blue silk to match .... 4 2 
 June 1. Polonaise and jacket trimmed with lace — 
 
 material part found 17 17 
 
 June 8. One black silk dress, handsomely trimmed 
 
 with jet guipure and lace 49 18 
 
 A few shreds and fragments of finery, bought at odd 
 times, swelled the bill to £99 lis. 6(/. — not to terrify the 
 female mind with three figures. 
 
 And let no unsophisticated young lady imagine that 
 the trimmings, which constituted three-fourths of this 
 bill, were worth anything. The word " lace," in Madame 
 Cie's bill, invariably meant machine-made trash, worth 
 tenpence a yard, but charged eighteen shillings a yard 
 for one pennyworth of work in putting it on. Where 
 real lace was used, Madame Cie always let her cxistomers 
 know it. Miss Lucas's bill for this year contained the 
 two following little items : — 
 
 £ ». 
 
 Hich gros de cecile polonaise and jacket to match, 
 
 trimmed with Chantilly lace and Valenciennes . . .68 5 
 
 Superb robe de chambre, richly trimmed with skunk fur, 40 
 
 The customer found the stuff; viz., two shawls. Caro- 
 lina found the nasty little pole-cats, and got twenty-four 
 shillings for them ; Madame Cie found the rest. 
 
 But Christopher Staines had not Miss Lucas's bill to
 
 194 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 compare his wife's with. He could only compare the 
 latter with their income, and with male notions of 
 common sense and reason. 
 
 He went home, and into his studio, and sat down on 
 his hard beech chair ; he looked round on his books and 
 his work, and then, for the first time, remembered how 
 long and how patiently he had toiled for every hundred 
 pounds he had made ; and he laid the evidences of his 
 wife's profusion and deceit by the side of those signs of 
 painful industry and self-denial, and his soul filled with 
 bitterness. " Deceit ! deceit ! " 
 
 Mrs. Staines heard he was in the house, and came to 
 know about the trial. She came hurriedly in, and caught 
 him with his head on the table, in an attitude of prostra- 
 tion, quite new to him ; he raised his head directly he 
 heard her, and revealed a face, pale, stern, and wretched. 
 
 " Oh ! what is the matter now ? " said she. 
 
 "The matter is what it has always been, if I could 
 only have seen it. You have deceived me, and disgraced 
 yourself. Look at those bills." 
 
 "What bills? Oh!" 
 
 " You have had an allowance for housekeeping." 
 
 " It wasn't enough." 
 
 " It was plenty, if you had kept faith with me, and 
 paid ready money. It was enough for the first five 
 weeks. I am housekeeper now, and I shall allow myself 
 two pounds a week less, and not owe a shilling either." 
 
 "Well, all I know is, I couldn't do it: no woman 
 could." 
 
 " Then, you should have come to me, and said so ; and 
 I would have shown you how. Was I in Egypt, or at 
 the North Pole, that you could not find me, to treat me 
 like a friend ? You have ruined us : these debts will 
 sweep away the last shilling of our little capital ; but it 
 isn't that, oh, no ! it is the miserable deceit."
 
 A SIMPLETON. ' 195 
 
 Rosa's eye caught the sum total of Madame Cie's bill, 
 and she turned pale. " Oh, what a cheat that woman is ! " 
 
 But she turned paler wheu Christopher said, " That is 
 the one honest bill ; for I gave you leave. It is these 
 that part us : these ! these ! Look at them, false heart ! 
 There, go and pack up your things. We can live here 
 no longer; we are ruined. I must send you back to 
 your father." 
 
 "I thought you would, sooner or later," said Mrs. 
 Staines, panting, trembling, but showing a little fight. 
 " He told you I wasn't fit to be a poor man's wife." 
 
 " An honest man's wife, you mean : that is what you 
 are not fit for. You will go home to your father, and I 
 shall go into some humble lodging to work for you. 
 I'll contrive to keep you, and find you a hundred a year 
 to sj)end in dress — the only thing your heart can really 
 love. But I won't have an enemy here in the disguise 
 of a friend ; and I won't have a wife about me I must 
 treat like a servant, and watch like a traitor." 
 
 The words were harsh, but the agony with which they 
 were spoken distinguished them from vulgar vituperation. 
 
 They overpowered poor Rosa ; she had been ailing a 
 little some time, and from remorse and terror, coupled 
 with other causes, nature gave way. Her lips turned 
 white, she gasped inarticulately, and, with a little piteous 
 moan, tottered, and swooned dead away. 
 
 He was walking wildly about, ready to tear his hair, 
 when she tottered ; he saw her just in time to save her, 
 and laid her gently on the floor, and kneeled over her. 
 
 Away went anger and every other feeling but love and 
 pity for the poor, weak creature that, with all her faults, 
 was so lovable and so loved. 
 
 He applied no remedies at first : he knew they were 
 useless and unnecessary. He laid her head quite low, 
 and opened door and window, and loosened all her dress, 
 sighing deeply all the time at her condition.
 
 196 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 While he was thus employed, suddenly a strange cry 
 broke from him : a cry of horror, remorse, joy, tender- 
 ness, all combined : a cry compared with which language 
 is inarticulate. His swift and practical eye had made a 
 discovery. 
 
 He kneeled over her, with his eyes dilating and his 
 hands clasped, a picture of love and tender remorse. 
 
 She stirred. 
 
 Then he made haste, and applied his remedies, and 
 brought her slowly back to life ; he lifted her up, and 
 carried her in his arms quite away from the bills and 
 things, that, when she came to, she might see nothing to 
 revive her distress. He carried her to the drawing-room, 
 and kneeled down and rocked her in his arms, and pressed 
 her again and again gently to his heart, and cried over 
 her. " my dove, my dove ! the tender creature God 
 gave me to love and cherish, and have I used it harshly ? 
 If I had only known ! if I had only known ! " 
 
 While he was thus bemoaning her, and blaming him- 
 self, and crying over her like the rain, — he, whom she 
 had never seen shed a tear before in all his troubles, — 
 she was coming to entirely, and her quick ears caught 
 his words, and she opened her lovely eyes on him. 
 
 "I forgive you, dear," she said feebly. "But I hope 
 
 YOU WILL BE A KINDER FATHER THAN A HUSBAND." 
 
 These quiet words, spoken with rare gravity and soft- 
 ness, went through the great heart like a knife. 
 
 He gave a sort of shiver, but said not a word. 
 
 But that night he made a solemn vow to God that no 
 harsh word from his lips should ever again strike a being 
 so weak, so loving, and so beyond his comprehension. 
 Why look for courage and candor in a creature so timid 
 and shy, she could not even tell her husband that until, 
 with her subtle sense, she saw he had discovered it ?
 
 /"-": 
 
 
 lifw. 
 
 j-!-«p5si:_ 
 
 LAID HKK CKXTLY ON THE FLCX R, AND KXEKLKI) OVKK HER.
 
 A SBIPLETON. 197 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 To be a father ; to have an image of his darling Rosa, 
 and a fruit of their love to live and work for : this gave 
 the sore heart a heavenly glow, and elasticity to bear. 
 Should this dear object be born to an inheritance of 
 debt, of poverty ? Never. 
 
 He began to act as if he was even now a father. He 
 entreated Rosa not to trouble or vex herself ; he would 
 look into their finances, and set all straight. 
 
 He paid all the bills, and put by a quarter's rent and 
 taxes. Then there remained of his little capital just 
 ten pounds. 
 
 He went to his printers, and had a thousand order- 
 checks printed. These forms ran thus : — 
 
 "Dr. Staines, of 13 Dear Street, Mayfair (blank for 
 date), orders of (blank here for tradesman and goods 
 ordered), for cash. Received same time (blank for 
 tradesman's receipt). Notice : Dr. Staines disowns all 
 orders not printed on this form, and paid for at date of 
 order." 
 
 He exhibited these forms, and warned all the trades- 
 people, before a witness whom he took round for that 
 purpose. 
 
 He paid off Pearman on the spot. Pearman had met 
 Clara, dressed like a pauper, her soldier having emptied 
 her box to the very dregs, and he now offered to stay. 
 But it was too late. 
 
 Staines told the cook Mrs. Staines was in delicate 
 health, and must not l)e troubled with anything. She 
 must come to him for all orders.
 
 1C8 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 " Yes, sir," said she. But she no sooner comprehended 
 the check system fully than she gave warning. It 
 put a stop to her wholesale pilfering. Rosa's cooks liad 
 made fully a hundred pounds out of her amongst them 
 since she began to keep accounts. 
 
 Under the male housekeeper every article was weighed 
 on delivery, and this soon revealed that the butcher and 
 the fishmonger had habitually delivered short weight 
 from the first, besides putting down the same thing 
 twice. The things were sent back that moment, with a 
 printed form, stating the nature and extent of the fraud. 
 
 The washerwoman, who had been pilfering wholesale 
 so long as Mrs. Staines and her sloppy-headed maids 
 counted the linen, and then forgot it, was brought up 
 with a run, by triplicate forms, and by Staines counting 
 the things before two witnesses, and compelling the 
 washerwoman to count them as well, and verify or dis- 
 pute on the spot. The laundress gave warning — a plain 
 confession that stealing had been part of her trade. 
 
 He kept the house well for three pounds a week, 
 exclusive of coals, candles, and wine. His wife had had 
 five pounds, and whatever she asked for dinner-parties, 
 yet found it not half enough upon her method. 
 
 He kept no coachman. If he visited a patient, a man 
 in the yard drove him at a shilling per hour. 
 
 By these means, and by working like a galley slave, 
 he dragged his expenditure down almost to a level with 
 his income. 
 
 Rosa was quite content at first, and thought herself 
 lucky to escape reproaches on such easy terms. 
 
 But by and by so rigorous a system began to gall her. 
 One day she fancied a Bath bun ; sent the new maid to 
 the pastry-cook's. Pastry-cook asked to see the doctor's 
 order. Maid could not show it, and came back bunless. 
 
 Rosa came into the study to complain to her husband.
 
 A SIMPLETOi'T. 199 
 
 " A Bath bun," said Staines. " Why, they are colored 
 with annotto, to save an egg, and annotto is adulterated 
 with chromates that are poison. Adulteration upon 
 adulteration, i'll make you a real Bath bun." Off coat, 
 and into the kitchen, and made her three, pure, but 
 rather heavy. He brought them her in due course. 
 She declined them languidly. She was off the notion, 
 as they say in Scotland. 
 
 " If I can't have a thing when I want it, I don't care 
 for it at all." Such was the principle she laid down for 
 his future guidance. 
 
 He sighed, and went back to his work ; she cleared 
 the plate. 
 
 One day, when she asked for the carriage, he told her 
 the time was now come for her to leave off carriage 
 exercise. She must walk with him every day, instead. 
 - " But I don't like walking." 
 
 " I am sorry for that. But it is necessary to you, and 
 by and by your life may depend on it." 
 
 Quietly, but inexorably, he dragged her out walking 
 every day. 
 
 In one of these walks she stoj)ped at a shop window, 
 and fell in love with some baby's things. " Oh ! I must 
 have that," said she. " I must. I shall die if I don't ; 
 you'll see now." 
 
 " You shall," said he, " when I can pay for it," and 
 drew her away. 
 
 The tears of disappointment stood in her eyes, and his 
 heart yearned over her. But he kept his head. 
 
 He changed the dinner hour to six, and used to go out 
 directly afterwards. 
 
 She began to complain of his leaving her alone like that. 
 
 " Well, but wait a bit," said he ; " suppose I am 
 making a little money by it, to buy you something you 
 have set your heart on, poor darling ! "
 
 200 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 In a very few days after this, he brought her a little 
 box with a slit in it. He shook it, and money rattled ; 
 then he unlocked it, and poured out a little pile of 
 silver. "There," said he, "put on your bonnet, and 
 come and buy those things." 
 
 She put on her bonnet, and on the way she asked how 
 it came to be all in silver. 
 
 " That is a puzzler," said he, " isn't it ? " 
 
 " And how did you make it, dear ? by writing ? " 
 
 "No." 
 
 " By fees from the poor people ? " 
 
 " What, undersell my brethren ! Hang it, no ! My 
 dear, I made it honestly, and some day I will tell you 
 how I made it ; at present, all I will tell you is this : 
 I saw my darling longing for something she had a right 
 to long for ; I saw the tears in her sweet eyes, and — 
 oh, come along, do. I am wretched till I see you with 
 the things in your hand." 
 
 They went to the shop ; and Staines sat and watched 
 Eosa buying baby-clothes. Oh, it was a pretty sight to 
 see this modest young creature, little more than a child 
 herself, anticipating maternity, but blushing every now 
 and then, and looking askant at her lord and master. 
 How his very bowels yearned over her ! 
 
 And when they got home, she spread the things on a 
 table, and they sat hand in hand, and looked at them, 
 and she leaned her head on his shoulder, and went quietly 
 to sleep there. 
 
 And yet, as time rolled on, she became irritable at 
 times, and impatient, and wanted all manner of things 
 she could not have, and made him unhappy. 
 
 Then he was out from six o'clock till one, and she 
 took it into her head to be jealous. So many hours to 
 spend away from her! Now that she wanted all his 
 comfort.
 
 A SmPLETOX. 201 
 
 Presently, Ellen, tlie new maid, got gossiping in the 
 yard, and a groom told her her master had a sweetheart 
 OD the sly, he thought ; for he drove the brougham out 
 every evening himself ; " and," said the man, " he wears 
 a mustache at night." 
 
 Ellen ran in, brimful of this, and told the cook ; the 
 cook told the washerwoman ; the washerwoman told a 
 dozen families, till about two hundred people knew it. 
 
 At last it came to Mrs. Staines in a roundabout way, 
 at the very moment when she was complaining to Lady 
 Cicely Treherne of her hard lot. She had been telling 
 her she was nothing more than a lay-figure in the house. 
 
 " My husband is housekeeper now, and cook, and all, 
 and makes me delicious dishes, I can tell you; such 
 curries ! I couldn't keep the house with five pounds a 
 week, so now he does it with three : and I never get the 
 carriage, because walking is best for me ; and he takes 
 it out every night to make money. I don't understand 
 it" 
 
 Lady Cicely suggested that perhaps Dr. Staines 
 thought it best for her to be relieved of all worry, and 
 so undertook the housekeeping. 
 
 "No, no, no," said Eosa ; "I used to pay them all a 
 part of their bills, and then a little more, and so I kept 
 getting deeper ; and I was ashamed to tell Christie, so 
 that he calls deceit ; and oh, he spoke to me so cruelly 
 once ! But he was very sorry afterwards, poor dear ! 
 Why are girls brought up so silly ? all piano, and no 
 sense; and why are men sillier still to go and marry 
 such silly things ? A wife ! I am not so- much as a 
 servant. Oh, I am finely humiliated, and," with a sudden 
 hearty naivete all her own, "it serves me just right." 
 
 While Lady Cicely was puzzling this out, in came a 
 letter. Rosa opened it, read it, and gave a cry like 
 a wounded deer.
 
 202 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 " Oh ! " she cried, " I am a miserable woman. What 
 will become of me ? " 
 
 The letter informed her bluntly that her husband 
 drove his brougham out every night to pursue a criminal 
 amour. 
 
 While Eosa was wringing her hands in real anguish 
 of heart, Lady Cicely read the letter carefully. 
 
 " I don't believe this," said she quietly. 
 
 " Not true ! Why, who would be so wicked as to stab 
 a poor, inoffensive wretch like me, if it wasn't true ? " 
 
 "The first ugly woman would, in a minute. Don't 
 you see the witer can't tell you where he goes ? Dwives 
 his bwougham out ! That is all your inf aumant knows." 
 
 " Oh, my dear friend, bless you ! What have I been 
 complaining to you about ? All is light, except to lose 
 his love. What shall I do ? I will never tell him. I 
 will never affront him by saying I suspected him." 
 
 " Wosa, if you do that, you will always have a serpent 
 gnawing you. No ; you must put the letter quietly into 
 his hand, and say, ' Is there any truth in that ? ' " 
 
 "Oh, I could not. I haven't the courage. If I do 
 that, I shall know by his face if there is any truth in it." 
 
 "Well, and you must know the twuth. You shall 
 know it. I want to know it too ; for if he does not love 
 you twuly, I will nevaa twust myself to anything so 
 deceitful as a man." 
 
 Eosa at last consented to follow this advice. 
 
 After dinner she put the letter into Christopher's hand, 
 and asked him quietly was there any truth in that : then 
 her hands trembled, and her eyes drank him. 
 
 Christopher read it, and frowned; then he looked 
 lip, and said, " No, not a word. What scoundrels there 
 are in the world ! To go and tell you that, noiv ! Why, 
 you little goose ! have you been silly enough to believe 
 it?"
 
 A SIMPLETON. 203 
 
 " No, " said she irresolutely. " But do you drive the 
 brougham out every night ? " 
 
 " Except Sunday." 
 
 " Where ? " 
 
 "My dear wife, I never loved you as I love you 
 now ; and if it was not for you, I should not drive the 
 brougham out of nights. That is all I shall tell you at 
 present ; but some day I'll tell you all about it." 
 
 He took such a calm high hand with her about it, that 
 she submitted to leave it there ; but from this moment 
 the serpent doubt nibbled her. 
 
 It had one curious effect, though. She left off com- 
 plaining of trifles. 
 
 Now it happened one night that Lady Cicely Treherne 
 and a friend were at a concert in Hanover Square. The 
 otlier lady felt rather faint, and Lady Cicely offered to 
 take her home. The carriages had not yet arrived, and 
 Miss Macnamara said to walk a few steps would do her 
 good : a smart cabman saw them from a distance and 
 drove up, and touching his hat said, " Cab, ladies ? " 
 
 It seemed a very superior cab, and Miss Macnamara 
 said " Yes " directly. 
 
 The cabman bustled down and opened the door ; Miss 
 Macnamara got in first, then Lady Cicely ; her eye fell 
 on the cabman's face, which was lighted full by a street- 
 lamp, and it was Christopher Staines ! 
 
 He started and winced ; but the woman of the world 
 never moved a muscle. 
 
 " Where to ? " said Staines, averting his head. 
 
 She told him where, and when they got out, said, " I'll 
 send it you by the servant." 
 
 A flunkey soon after appeared with half-a-crown, and 
 the amateur coachman drove away. He said to him- 
 self, "Come, my mustache is a better disguise than I 
 thought."
 
 204 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 Next day, and the day after, he asked Eosa, with 
 affected carelessness, had she heard anything of Lady 
 Cicely. 
 
 " No, dear ; but I dare say she will call this afternoon : 
 it is her day." 
 
 She did call at last, and after a few words with Kosa, 
 became a little restless, and asked if she might consult 
 Dr. Staines. 
 
 " Certainly, dear. Come to his studio." 
 
 *' No ; might I see him here ? " 
 
 " Certainly." She rang the bell, and told the servant 
 to ask Dr. Staines if he would be kind enough to step 
 into the drawing-room. 
 
 Dr. Staines came in, and bowed to Lady Cicely, and 
 ej'^ed her a little uncomfortably. 
 
 She began, however, in a way that put him quite at 
 his ease. " You remember the advice you gave us about 
 ray little cousin Tadcastah." 
 
 " Perfectly : his life is very precarious ; he is bilious, 
 consumptive, and, if not watched, will be epileptical ; 
 and he has a fond, weak mother, who will let him kill 
 himself." 
 
 " Exactly : and you wecommended a sea voyage, with 
 a medical attendant to watch his diet, and contwol his 
 habits. Well, she took other advice, and the youth is 
 worse ; so now she is fwightened, and a month ago slie 
 asked me to pwopose to you to sail about with Tadcastah ; 
 and she offered me a thousand pounds a year. I put on 
 my stiff look, and said, ' Countess, with every desiah to 
 oblige you, I must decline to cawwy that offah to a man 
 of genius, learning, and weputation, who has the ball at 
 his feet in London.' " 
 
 " Lord forgive you. Lady Cicely." 
 
 " Lord bless her for standing up for my Christie." 
 
 Lady Cicely continued : " Now, this good lady, you
 
 A SEVrPLETON. 205 
 
 must know, is not exactly one of us : the late earl 
 mawwied into cotton, or wool, or something. So she 
 said, ' Name your price for him.' I shwugged my 
 shoulders, smiled affably, and as affectedly as you like, 
 and changed the subject. But since then things have 
 happened. I am afwaid it is my duty to make you the 
 judge whether you choose to sail about with that little 
 cub — Rosa, I can beat about the bush no longer. Is it 
 a fit thing that a man of genius, at whose feet we ought 
 all to be sitting with reverence, should drive a cab in the 
 public streets ? Yes, Eosa Staines, your husband drives 
 his brougham out at night, not to visit any other lady, 
 as that anonymous wretch told you, but to make a few 
 misewable shillings for you." 
 
 " Oh, Christie ! " 
 
 " It is no use. Dr. Staines ; I must and will tell her. 
 My dear, he drove ?/ie three nights ago. He had a cab- 
 man's badge on his poor arm. If you knew what I suf- 
 fered in those five minutes ! Indeed it seems cruel to 
 speak of it — but I could not keep it from Eosa, and the 
 reason I muster courage to say it before you, sir, it is 
 because I know she has other friends who keep you out 
 of their consultations ; and, after all, it is the world that 
 ought to blush, and not you." 
 
 Her ladyship's kindly bosom heaved, and she wanted 
 to cry ; so she took her handkerchief out of her pocket 
 without the least hurry, and pressed it delicately to her 
 eyes, and did cry quietly, but without any disguise, like 
 a brave lady, who neither cried nor did anything else 
 she was ashamed to be seen at. 
 
 As for Rosa, she sat sobbing round Christopher's neck, 
 and kissed him with all her soul. 
 
 " Dear me ! " said Christopher. " You are both very 
 kind. But, begging your pardon, it is much ado about 
 nothing."
 
 206 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 Lady Cicely took no notice of that observation. " So, 
 Rosa dear," said she, " I think you are the person to 
 decide whether he had not better sail about with that 
 little cub, than — oh ! " 
 
 " I will settle that," said Staines. " I have one beloved 
 creature to provide for. I may have another. I must 
 make money. Turning a brougham into a cab, whatever 
 you may think, is an honest way of making it, and I am 
 not the first doctor who has coined his brougham at 
 night. But if there is a good deal of money to be made 
 by sailing with Lord Tadcaster, of course I should prefer 
 that to cab-driving, for I have never made above twelve 
 shillings a night." 
 
 " Oh, as to that, she shall give you fifteen hundred a 
 year." 
 
 « Then I jump at it." 
 
 " What ! and leave me ? " 
 
 " Yes, love : leave you — for your good ; and only for 
 a time. Lady Cicely, it is a noble offer. My darling 
 Rosa will have every comfort — ay, every luxury, till I 
 come home, and then we will start afresh with a good 
 balance, and with more experience than we did at first." 
 
 Lady Cicely gazed on him with wonder. She said, 
 " Oh ! Avhat stout hearts men have ! No, no ; don't let 
 him go. See ; he is acting. His great heart is torn 
 with agony. I will have no hand in jiarting man and 
 wife — no, not for a day." And she hurried away in 
 rare agitation. 
 
 Rosa fell on her knees, and asked Christopher's pardon 
 for having been jealous ; and that day she was a flood of 
 divine tenderness. She repaid him richly for driving 
 the cab. But she was unnaturally cool about Lady 
 Cicely ; and the exquisite reason soon came out. " Oh 
 yes ! She is very good ; very kind ; but it is not for me 
 now ! No ! you shall not sail about with her cub of a 
 cousin, and leave me at such a time."
 
 A SEVIPLETON. 207 
 
 Christopher groaned. 
 
 "Christie, you shall not see that lady again. She 
 came here to part us. She is in love ivith you. I was 
 blind not to see it before." 
 
 Next day, as Lady Cicely sat alone in the morning- 
 room thinking over this very scene, a footman brought 
 in a card and a note. " Dr. Staines begs particularly to 
 see Lady Cicely Treherne." 
 
 The lady's pale cheek colored ; she stood irresolute a 
 single moment. " I will see Dr. Staines," said she. 
 
 Dr. Staines came in, looking pale and worn ; he had 
 not slept a wink since she saw him last. 
 
 She looked at him full, and divined this at a glance. 
 She motioned him to a seat, and sat down herself, with 
 her white hand pressing her forehead, and her head 
 turned a little away from him.
 
 208 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 He told her he had come to thank her for her great 
 kindness, and to accept the offer. 
 
 She sighed. '' I hoped it was to decline it. Think of 
 the misery of separation, both to you and her." 
 
 " It will be misery. But we are not happy as it is, 
 and she cannot bear poverty. Nor is it fair she should, 
 when I can give her every comfort by just playing the 
 man for a year or two." He then told Lady Cicely there 
 were more reasons than he chose to mention : go he must, 
 and would; and he implored her not to let the affair 
 drop. In short, he was sad but resolved, and she found 
 she must go on with it, or break faith with him. She 
 took her desk, and wrote a letter concluding the bargain 
 for him. She stipulated for half the year's fee in 
 advance. She read Dr. Staines the letter. 
 
 " You are a friend ! " said he. " I should never have 
 ventured on that ; it will be a godsend to my poor Eosa. 
 You will be kind to her when I am gone ? " 
 
 "I will." 
 
 " So will Uncle Philip, I think. I will see him before 
 I go, and shake hands. He has been a good friend to 
 me; but he was too hard upon Aery and I could not 
 stand that." 
 
 Then he thanked and blessed her again, with the tears 
 in his eyes, and left her more disturbed and tearful than 
 she had ever been since she grew to woman. " cruel 
 poverty ! " she thought, " that such a man should be 
 torn from his home, and thank me for doing it — all 
 for a little money — and here are we poor commonplace 
 creatures rolling in it."
 
 A SIMPLETON. 209 
 
 Staines hurried home, and told his wife. She chmg 
 to him convulsively, and wept bitterly ; but she made no 
 direct attempt to shake his resolution ; she saw, by his 
 iron look, that she could only afflict, not turn him. 
 
 Next day came Lady Cicely to see her. Lady Cicely 
 was very uneasy in her mind, and wanted to know 
 whether Rosa was reconciled to the separation. 
 
 Rosa received her with a forced politeness and an icy 
 coldness that petrified her. She could not stay long in 
 face of such a reception. At parting, she said, sadly, 
 "You look on me as an enemy." 
 
 " What else can you expect, when you part my husband 
 and me ? " said Rosa, with quiet sternness. 
 
 " I meant well," said Lady Cicely sorrowfully ; " but I 
 wish I had never interfered." 
 
 " So do I," and she began to cry. 
 
 Lady Cicely made no answer. She went quietly away, 
 hanging her head sadly. 
 
 Rosa was unjust, but she was not rude nor vulgar; 
 and Lady Cicely's temper was so well governed that it 
 never blinded her heart. She withdrew, but without 
 the least idea of quarrelling with her afflicted friend, or 
 abandoning her. She went quietly home, and wrote to 
 
 Lady , to say that she should be glad to receive 
 
 Dr. Staines's advance as soon as convenient, since Mrs. 
 Staines would have to make fresh arrangements, and 
 the money might be useful. 
 
 The money was forthcoming directly. Lady Cicely 
 brought it to Dear Street, and handed it to Dr. Staines. 
 His eyes sparkled at the sight of it. 
 
 " Give my love to Rosa," said she softly, and cut her 
 visit very short. 
 
 Staines took the money to Rosa, and said, " See what 
 our best friend has brought us. You shall have four 
 hundred, and I hope, after the bitter lessons you have 
 14
 
 210 A SJMPLRTON. 
 
 had, you will be able to do with that for some months. 
 The two hundred I shall keep as a reserve fund for you 
 to draw on." 
 
 '' Ko, no ! " said Kosa. " I shall go and live with my 
 father, and never spend a penny. Christie, if you 
 knew how I hate myself for the folly that is parting us ! 
 Oh, why don't they teach girls sense and money, instead 
 of music and the globes ? " 
 
 But Christopher opened a banking account for her, 
 and gave her a check-book, and entreated her to pay 
 everything by check, and run no bills whatever; and she 
 promised. He also advertised the Bijou, and put a bill 
 in the window : " The lease of this house, and the furni- 
 ture, to be sold." 
 
 Eosa cried bitterly at sight of it, thinking how high in 
 hope they were, when they had their first dinner there, 
 and also when she went to her first sale to buy the fur- 
 niture cheap. 
 
 And now everything moved with terrible rapidity. 
 The Amphitrite was to sail from Plymouth in five days ; 
 and, meantime, there was so much to be done, that the 
 days seemed to gallop away. 
 
 Dr. Staines forgot nothing. He made his will in 
 duplicate, leaving all to his wife ; he left one copy at 
 Doctors' Commons and another with his lawyer ; inven- 
 toried all his furniture and effects in duplicate, too; 
 wrote to Uncle Philij), and then called on him to seek a 
 reconciliation. Unfortunately, Dr. Philip was in Scot- 
 land. At last this sad pair went down to Plymouth 
 together, there to meet Lord Tadcaster and go on board 
 H.M.S. Amphitrite, lying out at anchor, under orders for 
 the Australian Station. 
 
 They met at the inn, as appointed ; and sent word of 
 their arrival on board the frigate, asking to remain on 
 shore till the last minute.
 
 A SEVrPLETON. 211 
 
 Dr. Staines presented his patient to Rosa; and after 
 a little while drew him apart and questioned him pro- 
 fessionally. He then asked for a private room. Here 
 he and Rosa really took leave ; for what could the poor 
 things say to each other on a crowded quay ? He begged 
 her forgiveness, on his knees, for having once spoken 
 harshly to her, and she told him, with passionate sobs, 
 he had never spoken harshly to her; her folly it was had 
 parted them. 
 
 Poor wretches ! they clung together with a thousand 
 vows of love and constancy. They were to pray for each 
 other at the same hours : to think of some kind word or 
 loving act, at other stated hours ; and so they tried to 
 fight with their suffering minds against the cruel separa- 
 tion; and if either should die, the other was to live 
 wedded to memory, and never listen to love from other 
 lips ; but no ! God was pitiful ; He would let them meet 
 again ere long, to part no more. They rocked in each 
 other's arms ; they cried over each other — it was pitiful. 
 
 At last the cruel summons came ; they shuddered, as 
 if it was their death-blow. Christopher, with a face of 
 agony, was yet himself, and would have parted then : 
 and so best. But Rosa could not. She would see the 
 last of him, and became almost wild and violent when 
 he opposed it. 
 
 Then he let her come with him to Milbay Steps ; but 
 into the boat he would not let her step. 
 
 The ship's boat lay at the steps, manned by six sailors, 
 all seated, with their oars tossed in two vertical rows. A 
 smart middy in charge conducted them, and Dr. Staines 
 and Lord Tadcaster got in, leaving Rosa, in charge of 
 her maid, on the quay. 
 
 « Shove off " — « Down " — " Give way." 
 
 Each order was executed so swiftly and surely that, in 
 as many seconds, the boat was clear, the oars struck the
 
 212 A &IMPLET017. 
 
 water with a loud splash, and the husband was shot 
 away like an arrow, and the wife's despairing cry rang 
 on the stony quay, as many a poor woman's cry had rung 
 before. 
 
 In half a minute the boat shot under the stern of the 
 frigate. 
 
 They were received on the quarter-deck by Captain 
 Hamilton : he introduced them to the officers — a torture 
 to poor Staines, to have his mind taken for a single 
 instant from his wife — the first lieutenant came aft, 
 and reported, "Ready for making sail, sir." 
 
 Staines seized the excuse, rushed to the other side of 
 the vessel, leaned over the taffrail, as if he would fly 
 ashore, and stretched out his hands to his beloved Rosa ; 
 and she stretched out her hands to him. They were so 
 near, he could read the expression of her face. It was 
 wild and troubled, as one who did not yet realize the 
 terrible situation, but would not be long first. 
 
 " Hands make sail — away, aloft — up anchor " — 
 rang in Christopher's ear, as if in a dream. All his 
 soul and senses were bent on that desolate young 
 creature. How young and amazed her lovely face ! Yet 
 this bewildered child was about to become a mother. 
 Even a stranger's heart might have yearned with pity 
 for her : how much more her miserable husband's ! 
 
 The capstan was manned, and worked to a merry tune 
 that struck chill to the bereaved ; yards were braced for 
 casting, anchor hove, catted, and fished, sail was spread 
 with amazing swiftness, the ship's head dipped, and 
 slowly and gracefully paid off towards the breakwater, 
 and she stood out to sea under swiftly-swelling canvas 
 and a light north-westerly breeze. 
 
 Staines only felt the motion: his body was in the 
 ship, his soul with his Rosa. He gazed, he strained his 
 eyes to see her eyes, as the ship glided from England
 
 A SIMPLETON. 213 
 
 and her. Wliile he was thus gazing and trembling all 
 over, up came to him a smart second lieutenant, with a 
 brilliant voice that struck him like a sword. " Captain's 
 orders to show you berths; please choose for Lord 
 Tadcaster and yourself." 
 
 The man's wild answer made the young officer stare. 
 " Oh, sir ! not now — try and do my duty when I have 
 quite lost her — my poor wife — a child — a mother — 
 there — sir — on the steps — there ! — there ! " 
 
 Now this officer always went to sea singing " Oh be 
 joyful." But a strong man's agony, who can make light 
 of it ? It was a revelation to him ; but he took it 
 quickly. The first thing he did, being a man of action, 
 was to dash into his cabin, and come back with a short, 
 powerful double glass. " There ! " said he roughly, but 
 kindly, and shoved it into Staines's hand. He took it, 
 stared at it stupidly, then used it, without a word of 
 thanks, so wrapped was he in his anguish. 
 
 This glass prolonged the misery of that bitter hour. 
 When Rosa could no longer tell her husband from another, 
 she felt he was really gone, and she threw her hands aloft, 
 and clasped them above her head, with the wild abandon 
 of a woman who could never again be a child ; and Staines 
 saw it, and a sharp sigh burst from him, and he saw her 
 maid and others gather round her. He saw the poor 
 young thing led away, with her head all down, as he had 
 never seen her before, and supported to the inn; and 
 then he saw her no more. 
 
 His heart seemed to go out of his bosom in search of 
 her, and leave nothing but a stone behind : he hung over 
 the taffrail like a dead thing. A steady foot-fall slapped 
 his ear. He raised his white face and filmy eyes, and 
 saw Lieutenant Fitzroy marching to and fro like a senti- 
 nel, keeping everybody away from the mourner, with the 
 steady, resolute, business-like face of a man in whom
 
 214 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 sentiment is confined to action; its phrases and its 
 flourishes being literally terrob incognita to the honest 
 fellow. 
 
 Staines staggered towards him, holding out both hands, 
 and gasped out, " God bless you. Hide me somewhere — 
 must not be seen so — got duty to do — Patient — can't 
 do it yet — one hour to draw my breath — oh, my God, 
 my God ! — one hour, sir. Then do my duty, if I die — 
 as you would." 
 
 Fitzroy tore him down into his own cabin, shut him in 
 and ran to the first lieutenant, with a tear in his eye. 
 " Can I have a sentry, sir ? " 
 
 "Sentry! What for?" 
 
 " The doctor — awfully cut up at leaving his wife : got 
 him in my cabin. Wants to have his cry to himself." 
 
 " Fancy a fellow crying at going to sea ! " 
 
 " It is not that, sir ; it is leaving his wife." 
 
 "Well, is he the only man on board that has got a 
 wife ? " 
 
 " Why, no, sir. It is odd, now I think of it. Perhaps 
 he has only got that owe." 
 
 " Curious creatures, landsmen," said the first lieutenant. 
 " However, you can stick a marine there." 
 
 "Yes, sir." 
 
 "And I say, show the youngster the berths, and let 
 him choose, as the doctor's aground." 
 
 "Yes, sir." 
 
 So Fitzoy planted his marine, and then went after Lord 
 Tadcaster: he had drawn up alongside his cousin. 
 Captain Hamilton. The captain, being an admirer of 
 Lady Cicely, was mighty civil to his little lordship, and 
 talked to him more than was his wont on the quarter- 
 deck; for though he had a good flow of conversation, 
 and dispensed with ceremony in his cabin, he was apt 
 to be rather short on deck. However, he told little
 
 A SIMPLETON. 21;") 
 
 Tadeaster he was fortunate ; they had a good start, and, 
 if the wind hekl, might hope to be clear of the Channel 
 in twenty-four hours. " You will see Eddystone light- 
 house about four bells," said he. 
 
 " Shall we go out of sight of land altogether ? " 
 inquired his lordshijD. 
 
 " Of course we shall, and the sooner the better." He 
 then explained to the novice that the only danger to a 
 good ship was from the land. 
 
 While Tadeaster was digesting this paradox, Captain 
 Hamilton proceeded to descant on the beauties of blue 
 water and its fine medicinal qualities, which, he said, 
 were particularly suited to young gentlemen with bilious 
 stomachs, but presently, catching sight of Lieutenant 
 Fitzroy standing apart, but with the manner of a lieu- 
 tenant not there by accident, he stopped, and said, civilly 
 but smartly, " Well, sir ? " 
 
 Fitzroy came forward directly, saluted, and said he had 
 orders from the first lieutenant to show Lord Tadeaster 
 the berths. His lordship must be good enough to choose, 
 because the doctor — couldn't. 
 
 " Why not ? " 
 
 "Brought to, sir — for the present — by — well, by 
 grief." 
 
 " Brought to by grief ! Who the deuce is grief ? No 
 riddles on the quarter-deck, if you please, sir." 
 
 " Oh no, sir. I assure you he is awfully cut up ; and 
 he is having his cry out in my cabin." 
 
 " Having his cry out ! why, what for ? " 
 
 " Leaving his wife, sir." 
 
 "Oh, is that all?" 
 
 " Well, I don't wonder," cried little Tadeaster warmly. 
 " She is, oh, so beautiful ! " and a sudden blush o'erspread 
 his pasty cheeks. " Why on earth didn't we bring her 
 along with us here ? " said he, suddenly opening his 
 eyes with astonishment at the childish omission.
 
 216 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 " "Why, indeed ? " said the captain comically, and dived 
 below, attended by the well-disciplined laughter of Lieu- 
 tenant Fitzroy, who was too good an officer not to be 
 amused at his captain's jokes. Having acquitted him- 
 self of that duty — and it is a very difficult one some- 
 times — he took Lord Tadcaster to the main-deck, and 
 showed him two comfortable sleeping-berths that had 
 been screened off for him and Dr. Staines ; one of these 
 was fitted with a standing bed-place, the other had a cot 
 swung in it. Fitzroy offered him the choice, but hinted 
 that he himself preferred a cot. 
 
 " No, thank you," says my lord mighty dryly. 
 
 " All right," said Fitzroy cheerfully. " Take the other, 
 then, my lord." 
 
 His little lordship cocked his eye like a jackdaw, and 
 looked almost as cunning. " You see," said he, " I have 
 been reading up for this voyage." 
 
 " Oh, indeed ! Logarithms ? " 
 
 " Of course not." 
 
 "What then?" 
 
 " Why, ' Peter Simple ' — to be sure." 
 
 "Ah, ha!" said Fitzroy, with a chuckle that showed 
 plainly he had some delicious reminiscences of youthful 
 study in the same quarter. 
 
 The little lord chuckled too, and put one finger on 
 Fitzroy's shoulder, and pointed at the cot with another. 
 " Tumble out the other side, you know — slippery hitches 
 — cords cut — down you come flop in the middle of the 
 night." 
 
 Fitzroy's eye flashed merriment: but only for a 
 moment. His countenance fell the next. " Lord bless 
 you," said he sorrowfully, " all that game is over now. 
 Her Majesty's ship ! — it is a church afloat. The service 
 is going to the devil, as the old fogies say." 
 
 " Ain't j^ou sorry ? " says the little lord, cocking his 
 eye again like the bird hereinbefore mentioned.
 
 A SIMPLETON. 217 
 
 "Of course I am." 
 
 "Then I'll take the standing bed." 
 
 " All right. I say, you don't mind the doctor coming 
 down with a run, eh ? " 
 
 " He is not ill : I am. He is paid to take care of me : 
 I am not paid to take care of him," said the young lord 
 sententiously. 
 
 "I understand," replied Fitzroy, dryly. "Well, every 
 one for himself, and Providence for us all — as the ele- 
 phant said when he danced among the chickens." 
 
 Here my lord was summoned to dine with the captain. 
 Staines was not there ; but he had not forgotten his duty ; 
 in the midst of his grief he had written a note to the 
 captain, hoping that a bereaved husband might not seem 
 to desert his post if he hid for a few hours the sorrow 
 he felt himself unable to control. Meantime he would 
 be grateful if Captain Hamilton would give orders that 
 Lord Tadcaster should eat no pastry, and drink only six 
 ounces of claret, otherwise he should feel that he Avas 
 indeed betraying his trust. 
 
 The captain was pleased and touched with this letter. 
 It recalled to him how his mother sobbed when she 
 launched her little middy, swelling with his first cocked 
 hat and dirk. 
 
 There was champagne at dinner, and little Tadcaster 
 began to pour out a tumbler. " Hold on ! " said Captain 
 Hamilton ; " you are not to drink that ; " and he quietly 
 removed the tumbler. " Bring him six ounces of claret." 
 
 A^Tiile they were weighing the claret with scientific 
 precision, Tadcaster remonstrated ; and, being told it was 
 the doctor's order, he squeaked out, " Confound him ! 
 why did not he stay with his wife ? She is beautiful." 
 Nor did he give it up without a struggle. "Here's hos- 
 pitality ! " said he. " Six ounces ! " 
 
 Receiving no reply, he inquired of the third lieuten-
 
 218 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 ant, which was generally considered the greatest authority 
 in a ship — the captain, or the doctor. 
 
 The third lieutenant answered not, but turned his head 
 away, and, by violent exertion, succeeded in not splitting. 
 
 " I'll answer that," said Hamilton politely. " The 
 captain is the highest in his department, and the doctor 
 in his : now Doctor Staines is strictly within his depart- 
 ment, and will be supported by me and my officers. You 
 are bilious, and epileptical, and all the rest of it, and 
 you are to be cured by diet and blue water." 
 
 Tadcaster was inclined to snivel : however, he subdued 
 that weakness with a visible effort, and, in due course, 
 returned to the charge. " How would you look," qua- 
 vered he, " if there was to be a mutiny in this ship of 
 yours, and I was to head it ? ' 
 
 " Well, I should look shayp — hang all the ringleaders 
 at the yardarm, clap the rest under hatches, and steer 
 for the nearest prison." 
 
 " Oh ! " said Tadcaster, and digested this scheme a 
 bit. At last he perked up again, and made his final hit. 
 " Well, I shouldn't care, for one, if you didn't flog us." 
 
 " In that case," said Captain Hamilton, " I'd flog yon 
 — and stop your six ounces." 
 
 " Then curse the sea ; that is all I say." 
 
 " Why, you have not seen it ; you have only seen the 
 British Channel." It was Mr. Fitzroy who contributed 
 this last observation. 
 
 After dinner all but the captain went on deck, and saw 
 the Eddystone lighthouse ahead and to leeward. They 
 passed it. Fitzroy told his lordship its story, and that 
 of its unfortunate predecessors. Soon after this Lord 
 Tadcaster turned in. 
 
 Presently the captain observed a change in the ther- 
 mometer, which brought him on deck. He scanned the 
 water and the sky, and as these experienced commanders
 
 A SIMPLETON. 219 
 
 have a subtle insight into the weather, especially in 
 familiar latitudes, he remarked to the first lieutenant 
 that it looked rather unsettled ; and, as a matter of pru- 
 dence, ordered a reef in the topsails, and the royal yards 
 to be sent down : ship to be steered W. by S. This done, 
 he turned in, but told them to call him if there was any 
 change in the weather. 
 
 During the night the wind gradually headed ; and at 
 four bells in the middle watch a heavy squall came up 
 from the south-west. 
 
 This brought the captain on deck again : he found the 
 officer of the watch at his post, and at work. Sail was 
 shortened, and the ship made snug for heavy weather. 
 
 At four A.M. it was blowing hard, and, being too near 
 the French coast, they wore the ship. 
 
 Now, this operation was bad for little Tadcaster. 
 While the vessel was on the starboard tack, the side kept 
 him snug ; but, when they wore her, of course he had 
 no leeboard to keep him in. The ship gave a lee-lurch, 
 and shot him clean out of his bunk into the middle of 
 the cabin. 
 
 He shrieked and shrieked, with terror and pain, till 
 the captain and Staines, who were his nearest neighbors, 
 came to him, and they gave him a little brandy, and got 
 him to bed again. Here he suffered nothing but violent 
 sea-sickness for some hours. 
 
 As for Staines, he had boen swinging heavily in his 
 cot ; but such was his mental distress that he would have 
 welcomed sea-sickness, or any reasonable bodily suffer- 
 ing. He was in that state when the sting of a wasp is 
 a touch of comfort. 
 
 Worn out with sickness, Tadcaster would not move. 
 Invited to breakfast, he swore faintly, and insisted on 
 dying in peace. At last exhaustion gave him a sort of 
 sleep, in spite of the motion, which was violent, for it
 
 220 A SIMPLETOK. 
 
 was now blowing great guns, a heavy sea on, and the 
 great waves dirty in color and crested with raging foam. 
 
 They had to wear ship again, always a ticklish manoeu- 
 vre in weather like this. 
 
 A tremendous sea struck her quarter, stove in the very 
 port abreast of which the little lord was lying, and 
 washed him clean out of bed into the lee scuppers, and 
 set all swimming around him. 
 
 Didn't he yell, and wash about the cabin, and grab at 
 all the chairs and tables and things that drifted about, 
 nimble as eels, avoiding his grasp ! 
 
 In rushed the captain, and in staggered Staines. They 
 stopped his "voyage autourde sachambre," and dragged 
 him into the after saloon. 
 
 He clung to them by turns, and begged, with many 
 tears, to be put on the nearest land ; a rock woiald do. 
 
 " Much obliged," said the captain ; " now is the very 
 time to give rocks a wide berth." 
 
 " A dead whale, then — a lighthouse — anything but a 
 beast of a ship." 
 
 They pacified him with a little brandy, and for the 
 next twenty-four hours he scarcely opened his mouth, 
 except for a purpose it is needless to dwell on. "We can 
 trust to our terrestrial readers' personal reminiscences of 
 lee-lurches, weather-rolls, and their faithful concomitant. 
 
 At last they wriggled out of the Channel, and soon 
 after that the wind abated, and next day veered round to 
 the northward, and the ship sailed almost on an even 
 keel. The motion became as heavenly as it had been 
 diabolical, and the passengers came on deck. 
 
 Staines had suffered one whole day from sea-sickness, 
 but never complained. I believe it did his mind more 
 good than harm. 
 
 As for Tadcaster, he continued to suffer, at intervals, 
 for two days more, but on the fifth day out he appeared
 
 A SUMPLETON. 221 
 
 ■with a little pink tinge on his cheek and a wolfish appe- 
 tite. Dr. Staines controlled his diet severely, as to 
 quality, and, when they had been at sea just eleven 
 days, the physician's heavy heart was not a little light- 
 ened by the mai-vellous change in him. The unthinking, 
 who believe in the drug system, should have seen what 
 a physician can do with air and food, when circumstances 
 enable him to enforce the diet he enjoins. Money will 
 sometimes buy even health, if you avoid drugs entireli/, 
 and go another road. 
 
 Little Tadcaster went on board, pasty, dim-eyed, and 
 very subject to fits, because his stomach was constantly 
 overloaded with indigestible trash, and the blood in his 
 brain-vessels was always either galloping or creeping, 
 under the first or second effect of stimulants adminis- 
 tered, at first, by thoughtless physicians. Behold him 
 now — bronzed, pinky, bright-eyed, elastic; and only 
 one fit in twelve days. 
 
 The quarter-deck was hailed from the " look-out " with 
 a cry that is sometimes terrible, but in this latitude and 
 weather welcome and exciting. " Land, ho ! " 
 
 " Where away ? " cried the officer of the watch. 
 
 " A point on the lee-bow, sir." 
 
 It was the island of Madeira : they dropped anchor in 
 Funchal Koads, furled sails, squared yards, and fired a 
 salute of twenty-one guns for the Portuguese flag. 
 
 They went ashore, and found a good hotel, and were 
 no longer dosed, as in former days, with oil, onions, gar- 
 lic, eggs. But the wine queer, and no madeira to be got. 
 
 Staines wrote home to his wife : he told her how 
 deeply he had felt the bereavement ; but did not dwell 
 on that; his object being to cheer her. He told her it 
 promised to be a rapid and wonderful cure, and one that 
 might very well give him a fresh start in London. They 
 need not be parted a whole year, he thought. He sent
 
 222 A SIMPLETON". 
 
 her a very long letter, and also such extracts from his 
 sea journal as he thought might please her. After din- 
 ner they inspected the town, and vv^hat struck them most 
 was to find the streets paved with flag-stones, and most 
 of the carts drawn by bullocks on sledges. A man 
 every now and then would run. forward and drop a greasy 
 cloth in front of the sledge, to lubricate the way. 
 
 Next day, after breakfast, they ordered horses ; these 
 on inspection, proved to be of excellent breed, either 
 from Australia or America — very rough shod, for the 
 stony roads. Started for the Grand Canal — peeped 
 down that mighty chasm, which has the appearance of 
 an immense mass having been blown out of the centre 
 of the mountain. 
 
 They lunched under the great dragon tree near its 
 brink, then rode back admiring the bold mountain 
 scenery. Next morning at dawn, rode on horses up 
 the hill to the convent. Admired the beautiful gardens 
 on the way. Remained a short time ; then came down 
 in hand-sleighs — little baskets slung on sledges, guided 
 by two natives; these sledges run down the hill with 
 surprising rapidity, and the men guide them round cor- 
 ners by sticking out a foot to port or starboard. 
 
 Embarked at 11.30 a.m. 
 
 At 1.30, the men having dined, the ship was got under 
 way for the Cape of Good Hope, and all sail made for a 
 southerly course, to get into the north-east trades. 
 
 The weather was now balmy and delightful, and so 
 genial that everybody lived on deck, and could hardly 
 be got to turn in to their cabins, even for sleep. 
 
 Dr. Staines became a favorite with the officers. There 
 is a great deal of science on board a modern ship of war, 
 and, of course, on some points Staines, a Cambridge 
 wrangler, and a man of many sciences and books, was 
 an oracle. On others he was quite behind, but a ready
 
 A SIMPLETON. 223 
 
 and quick pupil. He made up to the navigating officer, 
 and learned, with his help, to take observations. In 
 return he was always at any youngster's service in a 
 trigonometrical problem ; and he amused the midshipmen 
 and young lieutenants with analytical tests ; some of 
 these were applicable to certain liquids dispensed by the 
 paymaster. Under one of them the port wine assumed 
 some very droll colors and appearances not proper to 
 grape-juice. 
 
 One lovely night that the ship clove the dark sea into 
 a blaze of phosphorescence, and her wake streamed like 
 a comet's tail, a waggish middy got a bucketful hoisted 
 on deck, and asked the doctor to analyze that. He did 
 not much like it, but yielded to the general request; 
 and by dividing it into smaller vessels, and dropping 
 in various chemicals, made rainbows and silvery flames 
 and what not. But he declined to repeat the experi- 
 ment : " No, no ; once is philosophy ; twice is cruelty. 
 I've slain more than Samson already." 
 
 As for Tadcaster, science had no charms for him ; 
 but fiction had ; and he got it galore ; for he cruised 
 about the forecastle, and there the quartermasters and 
 old seamen spun him yarns that held him breathless. 
 
 But one day my lord had a fit on the quarter-deck, 
 and a bad one ; and Staines found him smelling strong 
 of rum. He represented this to Captain Hamilton. The 
 captain caused strict inquiries to be made, and it came 
 out that my lord had gone among the men, with money 
 in both pockets, and bought a little of one man's grog, 
 and a little of another, and had been sipping the furtive 
 but transient joys of solitary intoxication. 
 
 Captain Hamilton talked to him seriously ; told him 
 it was suicide. 
 
 "Nevermind, old boy," said the young monkey; "a, 
 short life and a merry one."
 
 224 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 Then Hamilton represented that it was very ungentle- 
 manlike to go and tempt poor Jack with his money, to 
 offend discipline, and get flogged. " How will you feel, 
 Tadcaster, when you see their backs bleeding under the 
 cat ? " 
 
 ''Oh, d n it all, George, don't do that," says the 
 
 young gentleman, all in a hurry. 
 
 Then the commander saw he had touched the right 
 chord. So he played on it, till he got Lord Tadcaster to 
 pledge his honor not to do it again. 
 
 The little fellow gave the pledge, but relieved his 
 mind as follows : " But it is a cursed tyrannical hole, 
 this tiresome old ship. You can't do what you like 
 in it." 
 
 '* Well, but no more you can in the grave : and that is 
 the agreeable residence you were hurrying to but for this 
 tiresome old ship." 
 
 " Lord ! no more you can," said Tadcaster, with sudden 
 candor. '^ I forgot that.^^ 
 
 The airs were very light ; the ship hardly moved. It 
 was beginning to get dull, when one day a sail was 
 sighted on the weather-bow, standing to the eastward: 
 on nearing her, she was seen, by the cut of her sails, to 
 be a man-of-war, evidently homeward bound : so Captain 
 Hamilton ordered the main-royal to be lowered (to ren- 
 der signal more visible) and the '' demand" hoisted. 
 No notice being taken of this, a gun was fired to draw 
 her attention to the signal. This had the desired effect ; 
 down went her main-royal, up went her "number." 
 On referring to the signal book, she proved to be the 
 Vindictive from the Pacific Station. 
 
 This being ascertained. Captain Hamilton, being that 
 captain's senior, signalled " Close and prepare to receive 
 letters." In obedience to this she bore up, ran down, and 
 rounded to ; the sail in the Amphitrite was also short-
 
 A SIMPLETON. 225 
 
 ened, the maintopsail laid to the mast, and a boat low- 
 ered. The captain having finished his despatches, they, 
 with the letter-bags, were handed into the boat, which 
 shoved off, pulled to the lee side of the Vindictive, and 
 left the despatches, with Captain Hamilton's compli- 
 ments. On its return, both ships made sail on their 
 respective course, exchanging " bon voyage " by signal, 
 and soon the upper sails of the homeward-bounder were 
 seen dipping below the horizon : longing eyes followed 
 her on board the Amphitrite. 
 
 How many hurried missives had been written and de- 
 spatched in that half-hour. But as for Staines, he was a 
 man of forethought, and had a volume ready for his dear 
 wife. 
 
 Lord Tadcaster wrote to Lady Cicely Treherne. His 
 epistle, though brief, contained a plum or two. 
 
 He wrote : " What with sailing, and fishing, and eating 
 nothing but roast meat, I'm quite another man." 
 
 This amused her ladyship a little, but not so much as 
 the postscript, which was indeed the neatest thing in its 
 way she had met with, and she had some experience, too. 
 
 "P.S. — I say. Cicely, I think I should like to marry 
 you. Would you mind ? " 
 
 Let us defy time and space to give you Lady Cicely's 
 reply : " I should enjoy it of all things, Taddy. But, 
 alas ! I am too young." 
 
 N.B. — She was twenty-seven, and Tad sixteen. To 
 be sure, Tad was four feet eleven, and she was only five 
 feet six and a half. 
 
 To return to my narrative (with apologies), this meet- 
 ing of the vessels caused a very agreeable excitement 
 that day ; but a greater was in store. In the afternoon, 
 Tadcaster, Staines, and the principal officers of the ship, 
 being at dinner in the captain's cabin, in came the officer of 
 the watch, and reported a large spar on the weather-bow.
 
 226 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 "Well, close it, if you can; and let me know if it 
 looks worth picking up." 
 
 He then explained to Lord Tadcaster that, on a cruise, 
 he never liked to pass a spar, or anything that might 
 possibly reveal the fate of some vessel or other. 
 
 In the middle of his discourse the officer came in 
 again, but not in the same cool business way : he ran in 
 excitedly, and said, "Captain, the signalman reports it 
 alive ! " 
 
 "Alive ? — a spar ! What do you mean ? Something 
 alive on it, eh ? " 
 
 " No, sir ; alive itself." 
 
 "How can that be ? Hail him again. Ask him what 
 it is." 
 
 The officer went out, and hailed the signalman at the 
 mast-head. " What is it ? " 
 
 " Sea-sarpint, I think." 
 
 This hail reached the captain's ears faintly. However, 
 he waited quietly till the officer came in and reported it ; 
 then he burst out, "Absurd! there is no such creature 
 in the universe. What do you say. Dr. Staines ? — It is 
 in your department." 
 
 " The universe in my department, captain ? " 
 
 " Haw ! haw ! haw ! " went Fitzroy and two more. 
 
 "No, you rogue, the serpent." 
 
 Dr. Staines, thus aj)pealed to, asked the captain if he 
 had ever seen small snakes out at sea. 
 
 "Why, of course. Sailed through a mile of them 
 once, in the archipelago." 
 
 " Sure they were snakes ? " 
 
 " Quite sure ; and the biggest was not eight feet long." 
 
 "Very well, captain; then sea-serpents exist, and it 
 becomes a mere question of size. Now which produces 
 the larger animals in every kind, — land or sea ? The 
 grown elephant weighs, I believe, about five tons. The
 
 A SIMPLETON. *2:£l 
 
 very smallest of tue whale tribe weighs ten ; and they 
 go as high as forty tons. There are smaller fish than 
 the whale, that are four times as heavy as the elephant. 
 Why doubt, then, that the sea can breed a snake to 
 eclipse the boa-constrictor ? Even if the creature had 
 never been seen, I should, by mere reasoning from anal- 
 ogy, expect the sea to produce a serpent excelling the 
 boa-constrictor, as the lobster excels a crayfish of our 
 rivers : see how large things grow at sea ! the salmon 
 born in our rivers weighs in six months a quarter of a 
 pound, or less ; it goes out to sea, and comes back in one 
 year weighing seven pounds. So far from doubting the 
 large sea-serpents, I believe they exist by the million. 
 The only thing that puzzles me is, why they should ever 
 show a nose above water ; they must be very numerous, 
 I think." 
 
 Captain Hamilton laughed, and said, "Well, this is 
 new. Doctor, in compliment to your opinion, we will go 
 on deck, and inspect the reptile you think so common." 
 He stopped at the door, and said, " Doctor, the saltcellar 
 is by you. Would you mind bringing it on deck? We 
 shall want a little to secure the animal." 
 
 So they all went on deck right merrily. 
 
 The captain went up a few ratlines in the mizzen 
 rigging, and looked to Avindward, laughing all the time : 
 but, all of a sudden, there was a great change in his 
 manner. " Good heavens, it is alive — Luff ! " 
 
 The helmsman obeyed ; the news spread like wildfire. 
 Mess kids, grog kids, pipes, were all let fall, and some 
 three hundred sailors clustered on the rigging like bees, 
 to view the long-talked-of monster. 
 
 It was soon discovered to be moving lazily along, the 
 propelling part being under water, and about twenty-five 
 feet visible. It had a small head for so large a body, 
 and, as they got nearer, rough scales were seen, ending
 
 228 A STMPLETONo 
 
 in smaller ones further down the body. It had a mane, 
 but not like a lion's, as some have pretended. If you 
 have ever seen a pony with a hog-mane, that was more 
 the character of this creature's mane, if mane it was. 
 
 They got within a hundred yards of it, and all saw it 
 plainly, scarce believing their senses. 
 
 When they could get no nearer for the wind, the cap- 
 tain yiel'ded to that instinct which urges man always to 
 kill a curiosity, "to encourage the rest," as saith the 
 witty Voltaire. "Get ready a gun — best shot in the 
 ship lay and fire it." 
 
 This was soon done. Bang went the gun. The shot 
 struck the water close to the brute, and may have struck 
 him under water, for aught I know. Any way, it sorely 
 disturbed him ; for he reared into the air a column of 
 serpent's flesh that looked as thick as the maintopmast 
 of a seventy-four, opened a mouth that looked capacious 
 enough to swallow the largest buoy anchor in the ship, 
 and, with a strange grating noise between a bark and a 
 hiss, dived, and was seen no more. 
 
 When he was gone, they all looked at one another like 
 men awaking from a dream. 
 
 Staines alone took it quite coolly. It did not surprise 
 him in the least. He had always thought it incredible 
 that the boa-constrictor should be larger than any sea- 
 snake. That idea struck him as monstrous and absurd. 
 He noted the sea-serpent in his journal, but with this 
 doubt, " Semble — more like a very large eel." 
 
 Next day they crossed the line. Just before noon a 
 young gentleman burst into Staines's cabin, apologizing 
 for want of ceremony ; but if Dr. Staines would like to 
 see the line, it was now in sight from the mizzentop. 
 
 "Glad of it, sir," said Staines; "collect it for me in 
 the ship's buckets, if you please. I want to send a l{n§ 
 to friends at home."
 
 A SIMPLETON. 229 
 
 Young gentleman buried his hands in his pockets, 
 walked out in solemn silence, and resumed his position 
 on the lee-side of the quarter-deck. 
 
 Nevertheless, this opening, coupled with what he had 
 heard and read, made Staines a little uneasy, and he 
 went to his friend Fitzroy, and said, " Now, look here : 
 / am at the service of you experienced and humorous 
 mariners. I plead guilty at once to the crime of never 
 having passed the line ; so, make ready your swabs, and 
 lather me ; your ship's scraper, and shave me ; and let us 
 get it over. But Lord Tadcaster is nervous, sensitive, 
 prouder than he seems, and I'm not going to have him 
 driven into a fit for all the Neptunes and Amphitrites in 
 creation." 
 
 Fitzroy heard him out, then burst out laughing. " Why, 
 there is none of that game in the Eoyal Navy," said he. 
 " Hasn't been this twenty years." 
 
 " I'm so sorry," said Dr. Staines. " If there's a form 
 of wit I revere, it is practical joking." 
 
 " Doctor, you are a satirical beggar." 
 
 Staines told Tadcaster, and he went forward and chaffed 
 his friend the quartermaster, who was one of the fore- 
 castle wits. 
 
 " I say, quartermaster, why doesn't Neptune come on 
 board ? " 
 
 Dead silence. 
 
 " I wonder what has become of poor old Nep ? " 
 
 " Gone ashore ! " growled the seaman. " Last seen in 
 RatclifC Highway. Got a shop there — lends a shilling 
 in the pound on seamen's advance tickets." 
 
 " Oh ! and Amphitrite ? " 
 
 " Married the sexton at Wapping." 
 
 " And the Nereids ? " 
 
 " Neruds ! " (scratching his head.) " I harn't kept my 
 eye on them small craft. But I believe they are selling 
 oysters in the port of Leith."
 
 230 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 A light breeze carried them across the equator; but 
 soon after they got becalmed, and it was dreary work, 
 and the ship rolled gently, but continuously, and upset 
 Lord Tadcaster's stomach again, and quenched his manly 
 spirit. 
 
 At last they were fortunate enough to catch the south- 
 east trade, but it was so languid at first that the shii) 
 barely moved through the water, though they set every 
 stitch, and studding sails alow and aloft, till really she 
 was acres of canvas. 
 
 While sJie was so creeping along, a man in the mizzen- 
 top noticed an enormous shark gliding steadily in her 
 wake. This may seem a small incident, yet it ran through 
 the ship like wildfire, and caused more or less uneasiness 
 in three hundred stout hearts ; so near is every seaman 
 to death, and so strong the persuasion in their supersti- 
 tious minds, that a shark does not follow a ship perti- 
 naciously without a prophetic instinct of calamity. 
 
 Unfortunately, the quartermaster conveyed this idea to 
 Lord Tadcaster, and confirmed it by numerous examples 
 to prove that there was always death at hand when a 
 shark followed the ship. 
 
 Thereupon Tadcaster took it into his head that he was 
 under a relapse, and the shark was waiting for his dead 
 body : he got quite low-spirited. 
 
 Staines told Fitzroy. Fitzroy said, " Shark be hanged ! 
 I'll have him on deck in half an hour." He got leave 
 from the captain : a hook was baited with a large piece 
 of pork, and towed astern by a stout line, experienced 
 old hands attending to it by turns. 
 
 The shark came up leisurely, surveyed the bait, and, I 
 apprehend, ascertained the position of the hook. At all 
 events, he turned quietly on his back, sucked the bait ofl", 
 and retired to enjoy it. 
 
 Every officer in the ship tried him in turn, but with*
 
 A SIMPLETON. 231 
 
 out success ; for, if they got ready for liim, and, the 
 moment he took the bait, jerked the rope hard, in that 
 case he opened his enormous mouth so wide that the 
 bait and hook came out clear. But, sooner or later, he 
 always got the bait, and left his captors the hook. 
 
 This went on for days, and his huge dorsal fin always 
 in the ship's wake. 
 
 Then Tadcaster, who had watched these experiments 
 with hope, lost his spirit and appetite. 
 
 Staines reasoned with him, but in vain. Somebody 
 was to die ; and, although there were three hundred and 
 more in the ship, he must be the one. At last he actu- 
 ally made his will, and threw himself into Staines's arms, 
 and gave him messages to his mother and Lady Cicely ; 
 and ended by frightening himself into a fit. 
 
 This roused Staines's pity, and also put him on his 
 mettle. What, science be beaten by a shark ! 
 
 He pondered the matter with all his might ; and at 
 last an idea came to him. 
 
 He asked the captain's permission to try his hand. This 
 was accorded immediately, and the ship's stores placed at 
 his disposal very politely, but with a sly, comical grin. 
 
 Dr. Staines got from the carpenter some sheets of zinc 
 and spare copper, and some flannel: these he cut into 
 three-inch squares, and soaked the flannel in acidulated 
 water. He then procured a quantity of bell-wire, the 
 greater part of which he insulated by wrapping it round 
 with hot gutta percha. So eager was he, that he did not 
 turn in all night. 
 
 In the morning he prepared what he called an electric 
 fuse — he filled a soda-water bottle with gunpowder, 
 attaching some cork to make it buoyant, put in the fuse 
 and bung, made it water-tight, connected and insulated 
 his main wires — enveloped the bottle in pork — tied a 
 line to it, and let the bottle overboard.
 
 232 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 The captain and officers shook their heads mysteriously. 
 The tars peeped and grinned from every rope to see a 
 doctor try and catch a shark with a soda-water bottle 
 and no hook ; but somehow the doctor seemed to know 
 what he was about, so they hovered round, and awaited 
 the result, mystified, but curious, and showing their 
 teeth from ear to ear. 
 
 "■ The only thing I fear," said Staines, " is that, the 
 moment he takes the bait, he will cut the wire before I 
 can complete the circuit, and fire the fuse." 
 
 Nevertheless, there was another objection to the success 
 of the experiment. The shark had disappeared. 
 
 "Well," said the captain, "at all events, you have 
 frightened him away." 
 
 '' No," said little Tadcaster, white as a ghost ; " he is 
 only under water, I know; waiting — waiting." 
 
 " There he is," cried one in the ratlines. 
 
 There was a rush to the taffrail — great excitement. 
 
 " Keep clear of me," said Staines quietly but firmly. 
 " It can only be done at the moment before he cuts the 
 wire." 
 
 The old shark swam slowly round the bait. 
 
 He saw it was something new. 
 
 He swam round and round it. 
 
 " He won't take it," said one. 
 
 "He suspects something." 
 
 " Oh, yes, he will take the meat somehow, and leave 
 the pepper. Sly old fox ! " 
 
 " He has eaten many a poor Jack, that one." 
 
 The shark turned slowly on his back, and, instead of 
 grabbing at the bait, seemed to draw it by gentle suction 
 into that capacious throat, ready to blow it out in a 
 moment if it was not all right. 
 
 The moment the bait was drawn out of sight, Staines 
 completed the circuit; the bottle exploded with a fury
 
 A SBIPLETON. 233 
 
 that surprised hiin and everybody who saw it ; a ton of 
 water flew into the air, and came down in spray, and a 
 gory carcass floated, belly uppermost, visibly staining 
 the blue water. 
 
 There was a roar of amazement and applause. 
 
 The carcass was towed alongside, at Tadcaster's urgent 
 request, and then the power of the explosion was seen. 
 Confined, first by the bottle, then by the meat, then by 
 the fish, and lastly by the water, it had exploded with 
 tenfold power, had bloAvn the brute's head into a million 
 atoms, and had even torn a great furrow in its carcass, 
 exposing three feet of the backbone. 
 
 Taddy gloated on his enemy^ and began to pick up 
 again from that hour. 
 
 The wind improved, and, as usual in that latitude, 
 scarcely varied a point. They had a pleasant time, — 
 private theatricals and other amusements till they got 
 to latitude 26° S. and longitude 27' W. Then the trade 
 wind deserted them. Light and variable winds succeeded. 
 
 The master complained of the chronometers, and the 
 captain thought it his duty to verify or correct them ; 
 and so shaped his course for the island of Tristan 
 d'Acunha, then lying a little way out of his course. I 
 ought, perhaps, to explain to the general reader that the 
 exact position of this island being long ago established 
 and recorded, it was an infallible guide to go by in veri- 
 fying a ship's chronometers. 
 
 Next day the glass fell all day, and the captain said 
 he should double-reef topsails at nightfall, for something 
 was brewing. 
 
 The weather, however, was fine, and the ship was 
 sailing very fast, when, about half an hour before sunset, 
 the mast-head man hailed that there was a bulk of timber 
 in sight, broad on the weather-bow. 
 
 The signalman was sent up, and said it looked like a 
 raft.
 
 234 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 The captain, who was on deck, levelled his glass at it, 
 and made it out a raft, with a sort of rail to it, and the 
 stump of a mast. 
 
 He ordered the of&cer of the watch to keep the ship 
 as close to the wind as possible. He should like to 
 examine it if he could. 
 
 The master represented, respectfully, that it would be 
 unadvisable to beat to windward for that. " I have no 
 faith in our chronometers, sir, and it is important to 
 make the island before dark ; fogs rise here so suddenly." 
 
 " Very well, Mr. Bolt ; then I suppose we must let the 
 raft go." 
 
 *' Man on the eaft to windward ! " hailed the 
 signalman. 
 
 This electrified the ship. The captain ran up the 
 mizzen rigging, and scanned the raft, now nearly abeam. 
 
 " It is a man ! " he cried, and was about to alter the 
 ship's course when, at that moment, the signalman hailed 
 again, — 
 
 "It is a corpse." 
 
 " How d'ye know ? " 
 
 "By the gulls." 
 
 Then succeeded an exciting dialogue between the 
 captain and the master, who, being in his department, 
 was very firm ; and went so far as to say he would not 
 answer for the safety of the ship, if they did not sight 
 the land before dark. 
 
 The captain said, " Very well," and took a turn or two. 
 But at last he said, " No. Her Majesty's ship must not 
 pass a raft with a man on it, dead or alive." 
 
 He then began to give the necessary orders ; but before 
 they were all out of his mouth, a fatal interruption 
 occurred. 
 
 Tadcaster ran into Dr. Staines's cabin, crying, " A raft 
 with a corpse close by ! "
 
 A SIMPLETON. 235 
 
 Staines sprang to the quarter port to see, and craning 
 eagerly out, the lower port chain, which had not been 
 well secured, slipped, the port gave way, and as his 
 whole weight rested on it, canted him headlong into the 
 sea. 
 
 A smart seaman in the forechains saw the accident, 
 and instantly roared out, " Man overboard ! " a cry that 
 sends a thrill through a ship's very ribs. 
 
 Another smart fellow cut the life-buoy adrift so quickly 
 that it struck the water within ten yards of Staines. 
 
 The officer of the watch, without the interval of half a 
 moment, gave the right orders, in the voice of a stentor: 
 
 " Let go life-buoy. 
 
 '' Life-boat's crew away. 
 
 " Hands shorten sail. 
 
 " Mainsel up. 
 
 " Main topsel to mast." 
 
 These orders were executed with admirable swiftness. 
 Meantime there was a mighty rush of feet throughout 
 the frigate, every hatchway was crammed with men eager 
 to force their way on deck. 
 
 In five seconds the middy of the watch and half 
 her crew were in the lee cutter, fitted with Clifford's 
 apparatus. 
 
 " Lower away ! " cried the excited officer ; " the others 
 will come down by the pendants." 
 
 The man stationed, sitting on the bottom boards, eased 
 away roundly, when suddenly there was a hitch — the 
 boat would go no farther. 
 
 " Lower away there in the cutter ! Why don't you 
 lower ? " screamed the captain, who had come over to 
 leeward expecting to see the boat in the water, 
 
 "The rope has swollen, sir, and the pendants won't 
 unreeve," cried the middy in agony. 
 
 " Volunteers for the weather-boat ! " shouted the first
 
 236 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 lieutenant ; but the order was unnecessary, for more than 
 the proper number were in her already. 
 
 "Plug in — lower away." 
 
 But mishaps never come singly. Scarcely had this 
 boat gone a foot from the davit, than the volunteer wlio 
 was acting as coxswain, in reaching out for something, 
 inadvertently let go the line, which, in Kynaston's appa- 
 ratus, keeps the tackles hooked ; consequently, down 
 went the boat and crew twenty feet, with a terrific crash ; 
 the men were struggling for their lives, and the boat was 
 stove. 
 
 But, meantime, more men having been sent into the 
 lee cutter, their weight caused the pendants to render, 
 and the boat got afloat, and was soon employed picking 
 up the struggling crew. 
 
 Seeing this. Lieutenant Fitzroy collected some hands, 
 and lowered the life-boat gig, which was fitted with 
 common tackles, got down into her himself by the falls, 
 and pulling round to windward, shouted to the signalman 
 for directions. 
 
 The signalman was at his post, and had fixed his eye 
 on the man overboard, as his duty was ; but his mess- 
 mate was in the stove boat, and he had cast one anxious 
 look down to see if he was saved, and, sad to relate, in 
 that one moment he had lost sight of Staines ; the sudden 
 darkness — there was no twilight — confused him more, 
 and the ship had increased her drift. 
 
 Fitzroy, however, made a rapid calculation, and pulled 
 to windward with all his might. He was followed in 
 about a minute by the other sound boat powerfully 
 manned, and both boats melted away into the night. 
 
 There was a long and anxious suspense, during which 
 it became pitch dark, and the ship burned blue lights to 
 mark her position more plainly to the crews that were 
 groping the sea for that beloved passenger.
 
 A SIMPLETON. 237 
 
 Captain Hamilton had no doubt that the fate of Staines 
 was decided, one way or other, long before this ; but he 
 kept quiet until he saw the plain signs of a squall at 
 hand. Then, as he was responsible for the safety of 
 boats and ship, he sent up rockets to recall them. 
 
 The cutter came alongside first. Lights were poured 
 on her, and quavering voices asked, " Have you got 
 him ? " 
 
 The answer was dead silence, and sorrowful, drooping 
 heads. 
 
 Sadly and reluctaiitly was the order given to hoist the 
 boat in. 
 
 Then the gig came alongside. Fitzroy seated in her, 
 with his hands before his face ; the men gloomy and sad. 
 
 "Gone! Gone!" 
 
 Soon the ship was battling a heavy squall. 
 
 At midnight all quiet again, and hove to. Then, at 
 the request of many, the bell was tolled, and the ship's 
 company mustered bareheaded, and many a stout seaman 
 in tears, as the last service was read for Christopher 
 Staines.
 
 238 A smPLETOiT. 
 
 CHAPTER XTV. 
 
 Rosa fell ill with grief at tlie hotel, and could not 
 move for some days ; but the moment she was strong 
 enough, she insisted on leaving Plymouth : like all 
 wounded things, she must drag herself home. 
 
 But what a home ! How empty it struck, and she 
 heart-sick and desolate. Now all the familiar places 
 wore a new aspect: the little yard, where he had so 
 walked and waited, became a temple to her, and she 
 came out and sat in it, and now first felt to the full how 
 much he had suffered there — with what fortitude. She 
 crept about the house, and kissed the chair he had sat 
 in, and every much-used place and thing of the departed. 
 
 Her shallow nature deepened and deepened under this 
 bereavement, of which, she said to herself, with a shud- 
 der, she was the cause. And this is the course of nature ; 
 there is nothing like suffering to enlighten the giddy 
 brain, widen the narrow mind, improve the trivial heart. 
 
 As her regrets were tender and deep, so her vows of 
 repentance were sincere. Oh, what a wife she would 
 make when he came back ! how thoughtful ! how pru- 
 dent ! how loyal ! and never have a secret. She who had 
 once said, " What is the use of your writing ? nobody 
 will publish it," now collected and perused every written 
 scrap. With simple affection she even locked up his 
 very waste-paper basket, full of fragments he had torn, 
 or useless papers he had thrown there, before he went to 
 Plymouth. 
 
 In the drawer of his writing-table she found his diary. 
 It was a thick quarto : it began with their marriage, and
 
 A SIMPLETON. 239 
 
 ended with his leaving home — for then he took another 
 volume. This diary became her Bible ; she studied it 
 daily, till her tears hid his lines. The entries were very 
 miscellaneous, very exact ; it was a map of their married 
 life. But what she studied most was his observations 
 on her own character, so scientific, yet so kindly ; and 
 his scholar-like and wise reflections. The book was an 
 unconscious picture of a great mind she had hitherto 
 but glanced at : now she saw it all plain before her ; 
 saw it, understood it, adored it, mourned it. Such women 
 are shallow, not for want of a head upon their shoulders, 
 but of attention. They do not really study anything : 
 they have been taught at their schools the bad art of 
 skimming ; but let their hearts compel their brains to 
 think and think, the result is considerable. The deepest 
 philosopher never fathomed a character more thoroughly 
 than this poor child fathomed her philosopher, when 
 she had read his journal ten or eleven times, and bedewed 
 it with a thousand tears. 
 
 One passage almost cut her more intelligent heart in 
 twain : — 
 
 " This dark day I have done a thing incredible. I 
 have spoken with brutal harshness to the innocent 
 creature I have sworn to protect. She had run in debt, 
 through inexperience, and that unhappy timidity which 
 makes women conceal an error till it ramifies, by con- 
 cealment, into a fault; and I must storm and rave at 
 her, till she actually fainted away. Brute ! Ruffian ! 
 Monster ! And she, how did she punish me, poor lamb ? 
 By soft and tender words — like a lady, as she is. Oh, 
 my sweet Rosa, I wish you could know how you are 
 avenged. Talk of the scourge — the cat ! I would be 
 thankful for two dozen lashes. Ah ! there is no need, 
 I think, to punish a man who has been cruel to a woman. 
 Let him alone. He will punish himself more than you 
 can, if he is really a man."
 
 240 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 From the date of that entry, this self-reproach and 
 self-torture kept cropping up every now and then in the 
 diary ; and it appeared to have been not entirely without 
 its influence in sending Staines to sea, though the main 
 reason he gave was that his Kosa might have the com- 
 forts and luxuries she had enjoyed before she married 
 him. 
 
 One day, while she was crying over this diary. Uncle 
 Philip called ; but not to comfort her, I promise you. 
 He burst on her, irate, to take her to task. He had 
 returned, learned Christopher's departure, and settled 
 the reason in his own mind : that uxorious fool was gone 
 to sea by a natural reaction ; his eyes were open to his 
 wife at last, and he was sick of her folly ; so he had fled 
 to distant climes, as who would not, that could ? 
 
 " So, ma'am," said he, " my nephew is gone to sea, 
 I find — all in a hurry. Pray may I ask what he has 
 done that for ? " 
 
 It was a very simple question, yet it did not elicit 
 a very plain answer. She only stared at this abrupt 
 inquisitor, and then cried, piteously, " Oh, Uncle Philip ! " 
 and burst out sobbing. 
 
 " Why, what is the matter ? " 
 
 "You will hate me now. He is gone to make money 
 for me ; and I would rather have lived on a crust. Uncle 
 — don't hate me. I'm a poor, bereaved, heart-broken 
 creature, that repents." 
 
 " Repents ! heigho ! why, what have you been up to 
 now, ma'am ? No great harm, I'll be bound. Flirting 
 a little with some fool — eh ? " 
 
 " Flirting ! Me ! a married woman." 
 
 " Oh, to be sure ; I forgot. Why, surely he has not 
 deserted you." 
 
 " My Christopher desert me ! He loves me too well ; 
 far more than I deserve j but not more than I will.
 
 A SIMPLETON. 241 
 
 Uncle Philip, I am too confused and wretched to tell 
 you all that has happened ; but I know you love him, 
 though you had a tiff: uncle, he called on you, to shake 
 hands and ask your forgiveness, poor fellow ! He was 
 so sorry you were away. Please read his dear diary : 
 it will tell you all, better than his poor foolish wife can. 
 I know it by heart. I'll show you where you and he 
 quarrelled about me. There, see." And she showed him 
 the passage with her finger. " He never told me it was 
 that, or I would have come and begged your pardon on 
 my knees. But see how sorry he was. There, see. 
 And now I'll show you another place, where my Chris- 
 topher speaks of your many, many acts of kindness. 
 There, see. And now please let me show you how he 
 longed for reconciliation. There, see. And it is the 
 same through the book. And now I'll show you how 
 grieved he was to go without your blessing. I told him 
 I was sure you would give him that, and him going 
 away. Ah, me ! will he ever return ? Uncle dear, don't 
 hate me. What shall I do, now he is gone, if you disown 
 me ? Why, you are the only Staines left me to love." 
 
 " Disown you, ma'am ! that I'll never do. You are a 
 good-hearted young woman, I find. There, run and dry 
 your eyes ; and let me read Christopher's diary all 
 through. Then I shall see how the land lies." 
 
 Rosa complied with his proposal ; and left him alone 
 while she bathed her eyes, and tried to compose herself, 
 for she was all trembling at this sudden irruption. 
 
 When she returned to the drawing-room, he was walk- 
 ing about, looking grave and thoughtful. 
 
 "It is the old story," said he, rather gently: "aviis- 
 under standing. How wise our ancestors were that first 
 used that word to mean a quarrel! for, look into twenty 
 quarrels, and you shall detect a score of mis-under-stand- 
 ings. Yet our American cousins must go and substitute 
 16
 
 242 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 the un-ideaed word ' difficulty ; ' tliat is wonderful. 1 
 had no quarrel with him: delighted to see either of you. 
 But I had called twice on him ; so I thought he ought to 
 get over his temper, and call on a tried friend like me. 
 A misunderstanding ! Now, my dear, let us have no 
 more of these misunderstandings. You will always be 
 welcome at my house, and I shall often come here and 
 look after you and your interests. What do you mean 
 to do, I wonder ? " 
 
 " Sir, I am to go home to my father, if he will be 
 troubled with me. I have written to him." 
 
 "And what is to become of the Bijou ?" 
 
 " My Christie thought I should like to part with it, and 
 the furniture — but his own writing-desk and his chair, 
 no, I never will, and his little clock. Oh ! oh ! oh ! — 
 But I remember what you said about agents, and I don't 
 know what to do ; for I shall be away." 
 
 " Then, leave it to me. I'll come and live here with 
 one servant ; and I'll soon sell it for you." 
 
 " You, Uncle Philip ! " 
 
 " Well, why not ? " said he roughly. 
 
 " That will be a great trouble and discomfort to you, 
 I'm afraid." 
 
 " If I find it so, I'll soon drop it. I'm not the fool to 
 put myself out for anybody. When you are ready to go 
 out, send me word, and I'll come in." 
 
 Soon after this he bustled off. He gave her a sort of 
 hurried kiss at parting, as if he was ashamed of it, and 
 wanted it over as quickly as possible. 
 
 Next day her father came, condoled with her politely, 
 assured her there was nothing to cry about ; husbands 
 were a sort of functionaries that generally went to sea 
 at some part of their career, and no harm ever came of 
 it. On the contrary, "Absence makes the heart grow 
 fonder," said this judicious parent.
 
 A SEMPLETON. 243 
 
 This sentiment happened to be just a little too true, 
 and set the daughter cr^-ing bitterly. But she fought 
 against it. " Oh no I " said she, " I mustn't. I will not 
 be always crying in Kent Villa." 
 
 " Lord forbid ! " 
 
 *' I shall get over it in time — a little." 
 
 " Why, of course you will. But as to your coming to 
 Kent Villa, I am afraid you would not be very comfort- 
 able there. You know I am superannuated. Only got 
 my pension now." 
 
 " I know that, papa : and — why, that is one of the 
 reasons. I have a good income now ; and I thought if 
 we put our means together " — 
 
 " Oh, that is a very different thing. You will want a 
 carriage, I suppose. I have put mine down." 
 
 " No carriage ; no horse ; no footman ; no luxury of 
 any kind till my Christie comes back. I abhor dress ; I 
 abhor expense ; I loathe everything I once liked too well ; 
 I detest every folly that has parted us ; and I hate my- 
 self worst of all. Oh ! oh ! oh ! Forgive me for crying 
 so." 
 
 "Well, I dare say there are associations about this 
 place' that upset you. I shall go and make ready for 
 you, dear ; and then you can come as soon as you like." 
 
 He bestowed a paternal kiss on her brow, and glided 
 doucely away before she could possibly cry again. 
 
 The very next week Rosa was at Kent Villa, with the 
 relics of her husband about her ; his chair, his writing- 
 table, his clock, his waste-paper basket, a very deep and 
 large one. She had them all in her bedroom at Kent 
 Villa. 
 
 Here the days glided quietly but heavily. 
 
 She derived some comfort from Uncle Philip. His 
 rough, friendly way was a tonic, and braced her. He 
 called several times about the Bijou. Told her he had
 
 244 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 put up enormous boards all over the house, and puffed it 
 finely. " I have had a hundred agents at me," said he ; 
 " and the next thing, I hope, will be one customer ; that 
 is about the proportion." At last he wrote her he had 
 hooked a victim, and sold the lease and furniture for 
 nine hundred guineas. Staines had assigned the lease to 
 Eosa, so she had full powers ; and Philip invested the 
 money, and two hundred more she gave him, in a little 
 mortgage at six per cent. 
 
 Now came the letter from Madeira. It gave her new 
 life. Christopher was well, contented, hopeful. His 
 example should animate her. She would bravely bear 
 the present, and share his hopes of the future : with 
 these brighter views Nature co-operated. The instincts 
 of approaching maternity brightened the future. She 
 fell into gentle reveries, and saw her husband return, 
 and saw herself place their infant in his arms with all a 
 wife's, a mother's pride. 
 
 In due course came another long letter from the equa- 
 tor, with a full journal, and more words of hope. Home 
 in less than a year, with reputation increased by this 
 last cure ; home, to part no more. 
 
 Ah ! what a changed wife he should find ! how frugal, 
 how candid, how full of appreciation, admiration, and 
 love, of the noblest, dearest husband that ever breathed ! 
 
 Lady Cicely Trelierne waited some weeks, to let 
 kinder sentiments return. She then called in Dear 
 Street, but found Mrs. Staines was gone to Gravesend. 
 She wrote to her. 
 
 In a few days she received a reply, studiously polite 
 and cold. 
 
 This persistent injustice mortified her at last. She 
 said to herself, " Does she think his departure was no loss 
 to me ? It was to her interests, as well as his, I sacri- 
 ficed my own seliish wishes. I will write to her no more."
 
 A SIMPLETON. 245 
 
 This resolution she steadily maintained. It was 
 shaken for a moment, when she heard, by a side wind, 
 that Mrs. Staines was fast approaching the great pain 
 and peril of women. Then she wavered. But no. She 
 prayed for her by name in the Liturgy, but she troubled 
 her no more. 
 
 This state of things lasted some six weeks, when she 
 received a letter from her cousin Tadcaster, close on the 
 heels of his last, to which she had replied as I have in- 
 dicated. She knew his handwriting, and opened it with 
 a smile. 
 
 That smile soon died off her horror-stricken face. The 
 letter ran thus : — 
 
 Tristan d'Acunha, Jan. 5. 
 
 Dear Cicely, — A terrible thing has just happened. We 
 signalled a raft, with a body on it, and jDoor Dr. Staines leaned 
 out of the port-hole, and fell overboard. Three boats were let 
 down after him ; but it all went wrong, somehow, or it was too 
 late. They could never find him, he was drowned ; and the 
 funeral service was read for the poor fellow. 
 
 We ai'e all sadly cut up. Everybody loved him. It was 
 dreadfiil next day at dinner, when his chair was empty. The 
 very sailors cried at not finding him. 
 
 First of all, I thought I ought to write to his wife. I know 
 where she lives ; it is called Kent Villa, Gravesend. But I 
 was afraid ; it might kill her : and you are so good and sensi- 
 ble, I thought I had better write to you, and perhaps you could 
 break it to her by degrees, before it gets in all the papers. 
 
 I send this from the island, by a small vessel, and paid him 
 ten pounds to take it. 
 
 Your affectionate cousin, 
 
 Tadcastek. 
 
 Words are powerless to describe a blow like this : the 
 amazement, the stupor, the reluctance to believe — the 
 rising, swelling, surging horror. She sat like a woman 
 of stone, crumpling the letter. ^' Dead ! — dead ? "
 
 246 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 For a long time this was all her mind could realize — 
 that Christopher Staines was dead. He who had been 
 so full of life and thought and genius, and worthier to 
 live than all the world, was dead ; and a million no- 
 bodies were still alive, and he was dead. 
 
 She lay back on the sofa, and all the power left her 
 limbs. She could not move a hand. 
 
 But suddenly she started up ; for a noble instinct told 
 her this blow must not fall on the wife as it had on her, 
 and in her time of peril. 
 
 She had her bonnet on in a moment, and for the first 
 time in her life, darted out of the house without her 
 maid. She flew along the streets, scarcely feeling the 
 ground. She got to Dear Street, and obtained Philip 
 Staines's address. She flew to it, and there learned he 
 was down at Kent Villa, Instantly she telegraphed to 
 her maid to come down to her at Gravesend, with things 
 for a short visit, and wait for her at the station ; and she 
 went down by train to Gravesend. 
 
 Hitherto she had walked on air, driven by one over- 
 powering impulse. Now, as she sat in the train, she 
 thought a little of herself. What was before her ? To 
 break to Mrs. Staines that her husband was dead. To 
 tell her all her misgivings were more than justified. 
 To encounter her cold civility, and let her know, inch by 
 inch, it must be exchanged for curses and tearing of 
 hair ; her husband was dead. To tell her this, and in 
 the telling of it, perhaps reveal that it was her great 
 bereavement, as well as the wife's, for she had a deeper 
 affection for him than she ought. 
 
 Well, she trembled like an aspen leaf, trembled like 
 one in an ague, even as she sat. But she persevered. 
 
 A noble woman has her courage ; not exactly the same 
 as that which leads forlorn hopes against bastions 
 bristling with rifles and tongued with flames and 
 thunderbolts ; yet not inferior to it.
 
 A SIMPLETON. 247 
 
 Tadcaster, small and dull, but noble by birth and 
 instinct, had seen the right thing for her to do ; and she, 
 of the same breed, and nobler far, had seen it too ; and 
 the great soul steadily drew the recoiling heart and 
 quivering body to this fiery trial, this act of humanity — 
 to do which was terrible and hard, to shirk it, cowardly 
 and cruel. 
 
 She reached Gravesend, and drove in a fly to Kent 
 Villa. 
 
 The door was opened by a maid. 
 
 " Is Mrs. Staines at home ? " 
 
 " Yes, ma'am, she is at home : but — " 
 
 " Can I see her ? " 
 
 " Why, no, ma'am, not at present." 
 
 " But I must see her. I am an old friend. Please 
 take her my card. Lady Cicely Treherne." 
 
 The maid hesitated, and looked confused, " Perhaps 
 you don't know, ma'am. Mrs. Staines, she is — the 
 doctor have been in the house all day." 
 
 " Ah, the doctor ! I believe Dr. Philip Staines is 
 here." 
 
 " Why, that is the doctor, ma'am. Yes, he is here." 
 
 " Then, pray let me see him — or no ; I had better see 
 Mr. Lusignan." 
 
 " Master have gone out for the day, ma'am ; but if 
 you'll step in the drawing-room, I'll tell the doctor." 
 
 Lady Cicely waited in the drawing-room some time, 
 heart-sick and trembling. 
 
 At last Dr. Philip came in, with her card in his hand, 
 looking evidently a little cross at the interruption. 
 '■' iSTow, madam, please tell me, as briefly as you can, 
 what I can do for you." 
 
 " Are you Dr. Philip Staines ? " 
 
 " I am, madam, at your service — for five minutes. 
 Can't quit my patient long, just now."
 
 248 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 " Oh, sir, thank God I have found you. Be prepared 
 for ill news — sad news — a terrible calamity — I can't 
 speak. Kead that, sir." And she handed him Tadcaster's 
 note. 
 
 He took it, and read it. 
 
 He buried his face in his hands. " Christopher ! my 
 poor, poor boy ! " he groaned. But suddenly a terrible 
 anxiety seized him. " Who knows of this ? " he asked. 
 
 " Only myself, sir. I came here to break it to her." 
 
 " You are a good, kind lady, for being so thoughtful. 
 Madam, if this gets to my niece's ears, it will kill her, 
 as sure as we stand here." 
 
 '' Then let us keep it from her. Command me, sir. 
 I will do anything. I will live here — take the letters 
 in — the journals — anything." 
 
 " No, no ; you have done your part, and God bless you 
 for it. You must not stay here. Your ladyship's very 
 presence, and your agitation, would set the servants 
 talking, and some idiot-fiend among them babbling — 
 there is nothing so terrible as a fool." 
 
 *'May I remain at the inn, sir; just one night ? " 
 
 " Oh yes, I wish you would ; and I will run over, if 
 all is well with her — well with her ? poor unfortunate 
 girl!" 
 
 Lady Cicely saw he wished her gone, and she went 
 directly. 
 
 At nine o'clock that same evening, as she lay on a sofa 
 in the best room of the inn, attended by her maid, Dr. 
 Philip Staines came to her. She dismissed her maid. 
 
 Dr. Philip was too old, in other words, had lost too 
 many friends, to be really broken down by bereavement ; 
 but he was strangely subdued. The loud tones were out 
 of him, and the loud laugh, and even the keen sneer. 
 Yet he was the same man ; but with a gentler surface ; 
 and this was not without its pathos.
 
 A SIMPLETON. 249 
 
 " Well, madam," said lie gravely and quietly. " It is 
 as it always lias been. * As is the race of leaves, so that 
 of man.' When one falls, another comes. Here's a little 
 Cliristopher come, in place of him that is gone : a brave, 
 beautiful boy, ma'am ; the finest but one I ever brought 
 into the world. He is come to take his father's place in 
 our hearts — I see you valued his poor father, ma'am — 
 but he comes too late for me. At your age, ma'am, 
 friendships come naturally ; they spring like loves in 
 the soft heart of youth : at seventy, the gate is not so 
 open ; the soil is more sterile. I shall never care for 
 another Christopher; never see another grow to man's 
 estate." 
 
 "The mother, sir," sobbed Lady Cicely; "the poor 
 mother ? " 
 
 " Like them all — poor creature : in heaven, madam ; 
 in heaven. New life ! new existence ! a new character. 
 All the pride, glory, rapture, and amazement of maternity 
 — thanks to her ignorance, which we must prolong, or 
 I would not give one straw for her life, or her son's. I 
 shall never leave the house till she does know it, and 
 come when it may, I dread the hour. She is not framed 
 by nature to bear so deadly a shock." 
 
 " Her father, sir. Would he not be the best person to 
 break it to her ? He was out to-day." 
 
 " Her father, ma'am ? I shall get no help from him. 
 He is one of those soft, gentle creatures, that come into 
 the world with what your canting fools call a mission ; 
 and his mission is to take care of number one. Xot 
 dishonestly, mind you, nor violently, nor rudely, but 
 doucely and calmly. The care a brute like me takes 
 of his vitals, that care Lusignan takes of his outer cuticle. 
 His number one is a sensitive plant. No scenes, no 
 noise ; nothing painful — by-the-by, the little creature 
 that writes in the papers, and calls calamities 2^«''"/"^, is
 
 250 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 of Lusignan's breed. Out to-day ! of course lie was out, 
 ma'am : he knew from me his daughter would be in peril 
 all day, so he visited a friend. He knew his own tender- 
 ness, and evaded paternal sensibilities : a self -defender. 
 I count on no help from that charming man." 
 
 " A man ! I call such creachaas weptiles ! " said Lady 
 Cicely, her ghastly cheek coloring for a moment. 
 
 "Then you give them a false importance." 
 
 In the course of this interview, Lady Cicely accused 
 herself sadly of having interfered between man and wife, 
 and with the best intentions brought about this cruel 
 calamity. *' Judge, then, sir," said she, " how grateful 
 I am to you for undertaking this cruel task. I was her 
 schoolfellow, sir, and I love her dearly ; but she has 
 turned against me, and now, oh, with what horror she 
 will regard me ! " 
 
 " Madam," said the doctor, " there is nothing more 
 mean and unjust than to judge others by events that 
 none could foresee. Your conscience is clear. You did 
 your best for my poor nephew : but Fate willed it other- 
 wise. As for my niece, she has many virtues, but justice 
 is one you must not look for in that quarter. Justice 
 requires brains. It's a virtue the heart does not deal in. 
 You must be content with your own good conscience, 
 and an old man's esteem. You did all for the best; 
 and this very day you have done a good, kind action. 
 God bless you for it ! " 
 
 Then he left her ; and next day she went sadly home, 
 and for many a long day the hollow world saw nothing 
 of Cicely Treherne. 
 
 When Mr. Lusignan came home that night. Dr. Philip 
 told him the miserable story, and his fears. He received 
 it, not as Philip had expected. The bachelor had counted 
 without his dormant paternity. He was terror-stricken 
 — abject — fell into a chair, and wrung his hands, and
 
 A SIMPLETON. 251 
 
 wept piteously. To keep it from his daughter till she 
 should be stronger, seemed to him chimerical, impossible. 
 However, Philip insisted it must be done ; and he must 
 make some excuse for keeping out of her way, or his 
 manner would rouse her suspicions. He consented 
 readily to that, and indeed left all to Dr. Philip. 
 
 Dr. Philip trusted nobody ; not even his own confiden- 
 tial servant. He allowed no journal to come into the 
 house without passing through his hands, and he read 
 them all before he would let any other soul in the house 
 see them. He asked Posa to let him be her secretary 
 and open her letters, giving as a pretext that it would 
 be as well she should have no small worries or trouble 
 just now. 
 
 " Why," said she, " I was never so well able to bear 
 them. It must be a -great thing to put me out now. I 
 am so happy, and live in the future. Well, dear uncle, 
 you can if you like — what does it matter ? — only there 
 must be one exception : my own Christie's letters, you 
 know." 
 
 " Of course," said he, wincing inwardly. 
 
 The very next day came a letter of condolence from 
 Miss Lucas. Dr. Philip intercepted it, and locked it up, 
 to be shown her at a more fitting time. 
 
 But how could he hope to keep so public a thing as 
 this from entering the house in one of a hundred news- 
 papers ? 
 
 He went into Gravesend, and searched all the news- 
 papers, to see what he had to contend with. To his 
 horror, he found it in several dailies and weeklies, and 
 in two illustrated papers. He sat aghast at the difficulty 
 and the danger. 
 
 The best thing he could think of was to buy them all, 
 and cut out the account. He did so, and brought all the 
 papers, thus mutilated, into the house, and sent them
 
 252 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 into the kitchen. He said to his old servant, "These 
 may amuse Mr. Liisignan's people, and I have extracted 
 all that interests me." 
 
 By these means he hoped that none of the servants 
 would go and buy more of these same papers else- 
 where. 
 
 Notwithstanding these precautions, he took the nurse 
 apart, and said, " Now, you are an experienced woman, 
 and to be trusted about an excitable patient. Mind, I 
 object to any female servant entering Mrs. Staines's room 
 with gossip. Keep them outside the door for the present, 
 please. Oh, and nurse, if anything should happen, likely 
 to grieve or to worry her, it must be kept from her 
 entirely : can I trust you ? " 
 
 " You may, sir." 
 
 "I shall add ten guineas to your fee, if she gets 
 through the month without a shock or disturbance of 
 any kind." 
 
 She stared at him, inquiringly. Then she said, — 
 
 " You may rely on me, doctor." 
 
 " I feel I may. Still, she alarms me. She looks quiet 
 enough, but she is very excitable." 
 
 Not all these precautions gave Dr. Philip any real 
 sense of security; still less did they to Mr. Lusignan. 
 He was not a tender father, in small things, but the idea 
 of actual danger to his only child was terrible to him ; 
 and he now passed his life in a continual tremble. 
 
 This is the less to be wondered at, when I tell you 
 that even the stout Philip began to lose his nerve, his 
 appetite, his sleep, under this hourly terror and this 
 hourly torture. 
 
 Well did the great imagination of antiquity feign a 
 torment, too great for the mind long to endure, in the 
 sword of Damocles suspended by a single hair over his 
 head. Here the sword hung over an innocent creature,
 
 A SIMPLETON. 253 
 
 who smiled beneath it, fearless ; but these two old men 
 must sit and watch the sword, and ask themselves how 
 long before that subtle salvation shall snap. 
 
 " 111 news travels fast," says the proverb. " The birds 
 of the air shall carry the matter," says Holy Writ ; and 
 it is so. No bolts nor bars, no promises nor precautions, 
 can long shut out a great calamity from the ears it is to 
 blast, the heart it is to wither. The very air seems full 
 of it, until it falls. 
 
 Kosa's child was more than a fortnight old ; and she 
 was looking more beautiful than ever, as is often the 
 case with a very young mother, and Dr. Philip compli- 
 mented her on her looks. " Now,'' said he, " you reap 
 the advantage of being good, and obedient, and keeping 
 quiet. In another ten days or so, I may take you to the 
 seaside for a week. I have the honor to inform you 
 that from about the fourth to the tenth of March there 
 is always a week of fine weather, which takes everybody 
 by surprise, except me. It does not astonish me, because 
 I observe it is invariable. Now, what would you say if 
 I gave you a week at Heme Bay, to set you up 
 altogether ? " 
 
 " As you please, dear uncle," said Mrs. Staines, with a 
 sweet smile. " I shall be very happy to go, or to stay. 
 I shall be happy everywhere, with my darling boy, and 
 the thought of my husband. Why, I count the days till 
 he shall come back to me. No, to us ; to us, my pet. 
 How dare a naughty mammy say to 'me,' as if 'me' was 
 half the 'portance of oo, a precious pets ! " 
 
 Dr. Philip was surprised into a sigh. 
 
 " What is the matter, dear ? " said Rosa, very quickly. 
 
 " The matter ? " 
 
 "Yes, dear, the matter. You sighed; you, the laugh- 
 ing philosopher." 
 
 " Did I ? " said he, to gain time. " Perhaps I remem-
 
 254 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 bered the uncertainty of human life, and of all mortal 
 hopes. The old will have their thoughts, my dear. 
 They have seen so much trouble." 
 
 " But, uncle dear, he is a very healthy child." 
 
 "Very." 
 
 " And you told me yourself carelessness was the cause 
 so many children die." 
 
 " That is true." 
 
 She gave him a curious and rather searching look; 
 then, leaning over her boy, said, "Mammy's not afraid. 
 Beautiful Pet was not born to die directly. He will 
 never leave his mam-ma. No, uncle, he never can. For 
 my life is bound in his and his dear father's. It is a 
 triple cord : one go, go all." 
 
 She said this with a quiet resolution that chilled 
 Uncle Philip. 
 
 At this moment the nurse, who had been bending so 
 pertinaciously over some work that her eyes were invisi- 
 ble, looked quickly up, cast a furtive glance at Mrs. 
 Staines, and finding she was employed for the moment, 
 made an agitated signal to Dr. Philip. All she did was 
 to clench her two hands and lift them half was to her 
 face, and then cast a frightened look towards the door ; 
 but Philip's senses were so sharpened by constant alarm 
 and watching, that he saw at once something serious was 
 the matter. But as he had asked himself what he 
 should do in case of some sudden alarm, he merely gave 
 a nod of intelligence to the nurse, scarcely perceptible, 
 then rose quietly from his seat, and went to the window. 
 "Snow coming, I think," said he. "For all that we 
 shall have the March summer in ten days. You mark 
 my words." He then went leisurely out of the room ; 
 at the door he turned, and, with all the cunning he was 
 master of, said, " Oh, by the by, come to my room, nurse, 
 when you are at leisure."
 
 A SIMPLETON. 255 
 
 " Yes, doctor," said the nurse, but never moved. She 
 was too bent on hiding the agitation she really felt. 
 
 " Had you not better go to him, nurse ? " 
 
 "Perhaps I had, madam." 
 
 She rose with feigned indifference, and left the room. 
 She walked leisurely down the passage, then, casting a 
 hasty glance behind her, for fear Mrs. Staines should be 
 watching her, hurried into the doctor's room. They met 
 at once in the middle of the room, and Mrs. Briscoe 
 burst out, " Sir, it is known all over the house ! " 
 
 " Heaven forbid ! What is known ? " 
 
 " What you would give the world to keep from her. 
 Why, sir, the moment you cavitioned me, of course I saw 
 there was trouble. But little I thought — sir, not a serv- 
 ant in the kitchen or the stable but knows that her 
 husband — poor thing ! poor thing ! — Ah ! there goes 
 the housemaid — to have a look at her." 
 
 " Stop her ! " 
 
 Mrs. Briscoe had not waited for this ; she rushed after 
 the woman, and told her Mrs. Staines was sleeping, and 
 the room must not be entered on any account. 
 
 " Oh, very well," said the maid, rather sullenly. 
 
 Mrs. Briscoe saw her return to the kitchen, and came 
 back to Dr. Staines ; he was pacing the room in torments 
 of anxiety. 
 
 " Doctor," said she, " it is the old story : ' Servants' 
 friends, the master's enemies.' An old servant came 
 here to gossip with her friend the cook (she never could 
 abide her while they were together, by all accounts), 
 and told her the whole story of his being drowned at 
 sea." 
 
 Dr. Philip groaned, " Cursed chatterbox ! " said he. 
 " What is to be done ? Must we break it to her now ? 
 Oh, if I could only buy a few days more ! The heart to 
 be crushed while the body is weak ! It is too cruel.
 
 256 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 Advise me, Mrs. Briscoe. You are an experienced 
 woman, and I think you are a kind-hearted woman." 
 
 " Well, sir," said Mrs. Briscoe, " I had the name of it, 
 wlien I was younger — before Briscoe failed, and I took 
 to nursing ; which it hardens, sir, by use, and along of 
 the patients themselves ; for sick folk are lumps of self- 
 ishness; we see more of them than you do, sir. But 
 this I ivill say, 'tisn't selfishness that lies now in that 
 room, waiting for the blow that will bring her to death's 
 door, I'm sore afraid; but a sweet, gentle, thoughtful 
 creature, as ever supped sorrow ; for I don't know how 
 'tis, doctor, nor why 'tis, but an angel like that has 
 always to sup sorrow." 
 
 " But you do not advise me," said the doctor, in agita- 
 tion, " and something must be done." 
 
 " Advise you, sir ; it is not for me to do that. I am 
 sure I'm at my wits' ends, poor thing ! Well, sir, I don't 
 see what you can do, but try and break it to her. Better 
 so, than let it come to her like a clap of thunder. But 
 I think, sir, I'd have a wet-nurse ready, before I said 
 much : for she is very quick — and ten to one but the 
 first word of such a thing turns her blood to gall. Sir, 
 I once knew a poor woman — she was a carpenter's wife 
 — a-nursing her child in the afternoon — and in runs a 
 foolish woman, and tells her he was killed dead, off a 
 scaffold. 'Twas the man's sister told her. Well, sir, 
 she was knocked stupid like, and she sat staring, and 
 nursing of her child, before she could take it in rightly. 
 The child was dead before supper-time, and the woman 
 was not long after. The whole family was swept away, 
 sir, in a few hours, and I mind the table was not cleared 
 he had dined on, when they came to lay them out. Well- 
 a-day, nurses see sorrow ! " 
 
 "We all see sorrow that live long, Mrs. Briscoe. I 
 am heart-broken myself; I am desperate. You are a
 
 A SIMPLETON. 257 
 
 good soul, and I'll tell you. When my nephew married 
 this poor girl, I was very angry with him ; and I soon 
 found she was not fit to be a struggling man's wife ; and 
 then I was very angry with her. She had spoiled a first- 
 rate physician, I thought. But, since I knew her better, 
 it is all changed. She is so lovable. How I shall ever 
 tell her this terrible thing, God knows. All I know is, 
 that I will not throw a chance away. Her body shall be 
 stronger, before I break her heart. Cursed idiots, that 
 could not save a single man, with their boats, in a calm 
 sea ! Lord forgive me for blaming people, when I was 
 not there to see. I say I will give her every chance. 
 She shall not know it till she is stronger : no, not if I 
 live at her door, and sleep there, and all. Good God ! 
 inspire me with something. There is always something 
 to be done, if one could but see it." 
 
 Mrs. Briscoe sighed and said, " Sir, I think anything 
 is better than for her to hear it from a servant — and 
 they are sure to blurt it out. Young women are such 
 fools." 
 
 " No, no ; I see what it is," said Dr. Philip, " I have 
 gone all wrong from the first. I have been acting like a 
 woman, when I should have acted like a man. Why, I 
 only trusted yoii by halves. There was a fool for you. 
 Never trust people by halves." 
 
 " That is true, sir." 
 
 " Well, then, now I shall go at it like a man. I have 
 a vile opinion of servants ; but no matter. I'll try them : 
 they are human, I suppose. I'll hit them between the 
 eyes like a man. Go to the kitchen, Mrs. Briscoe, and 
 tell them I wish to speak to all the servants, indoors or 
 out." 
 
 " Yes, sir." 
 
 She stopped at the door, and said, "I had better get 
 back to her, as soon as I have told them."
 
 258 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 " Certainly." 
 
 " And what shall I tell her, sir ? Her first word will 
 be to ask me what you wanted me for. I saw that in her 
 eye. She was curious : that is why she sent me after 
 you so quick." 
 
 Dr. Philip groaned. He felt he was walking among 
 pitfalls. He rapidly flavored some distilled water with 
 orange-flower, then tinted it a beautiful pink, and bottled 
 it. '' There," said he; "I was mixing a new medicine. 
 Tablespoon, four times a day : had to filter it. Any lie 
 you like." 
 
 Mrs. Briscoe went to the kitchen, and gave her 
 message : then went to Mrs. Staines with the mix- 
 ture. 
 
 Dr. Philip went down to the kitchen, and spoke to 
 the servants very solemnly. He said, " My good friends, 
 I am come to ask your help in a matter of life and 
 death. There is a poor young woman up-stairs ; she is a 
 widow, and does not know it ; and must not know it yet. 
 If the blow fell now, I think it would kill her : indeed, 
 if she hears it all of a sudden, at any time, that might 
 destroy her. We are in so sore a strait that a feather 
 may turn the scale. So we must try all we can to gain 
 a little time, and then trust to God's mercy after all. 
 Well, now, what do you say ? Will you help me keep it 
 from her, till the tenth of March, say ? and then I will 
 break it to her by degrees. Forget she is your mistress. 
 Master and servant, that is all very well at a proper 
 time ; but this is the time to remember nothing but that 
 we are all one flesh and blood. We lie down together 
 in the churchyard, and we hope to rise together where 
 there will be no master and servant. Think of the poor 
 unfortunate creature as your own £esh and blood, and 
 tell me, will you help me try and save her, under this 
 terrible blow ? "
 
 A SIMPLETON. 259 
 
 '' Ay, doctor, that we will," said the footman. <' Only 
 you give us our orders, and you will see." 
 
 " I have no right to give you orders ; but I entreat you 
 not to show her by word or look, that calamity is upon 
 her. Alas ! it is only a reprieve you can give her and to 
 me. The bitter hour must come when I must tell her 
 she is a widow, and her boy an orphan. When that day 
 comes, I will ask you all to pray for me that I may find 
 words. But now I ask you to give me that ten days' 
 reprieve. Let the poor creature recover a little strength, 
 before the thunderbolt of affliction falls on her head. 
 Will you promise me ? " 
 
 They promised heartily; and more than one of the 
 women began to cry. 
 
 " A general assent will not satisfy me," said Dr. Philip. 
 *' I want every man, and every woman, to give me a hand 
 upon it ; then I shall feel sure of you." 
 
 The men gave him their hands at once. The women 
 wiped their hands with their aprons, to make sure they 
 were clean, and gave him their hands too. The cook 
 said, " If any one of us goes from it, this kitchen will 
 be too hot to hold her." 
 
 " Nobody will go from it, cook," said the doctor. " I'm 
 not afraid of that; and now since you have promised 
 me, out of your own good hearts, I'll try and be even 
 with you. If she knows nothing of it by the tenth of 
 March, five guineas to every man and woman in this 
 kitchen. You shall see that, if you can be kind, we can 
 be grateful." 
 
 He then hurried away. He found Mr. Lusignan in 
 the drawing-room, and told him all this. Lusignan was 
 fluttered, but grateful. '' Ah, my good friend," said he, 
 " this is a hard trial to two old men, like you and me." 
 
 " It is," said Philip. " It has shown me my age. I 
 declare I am trembling ; I, whose nerves were iron. But
 
 260 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 I have a particular contempt for servants. Mercenary 
 wretches ! I think Heaven inspired me to talk to them. 
 After all, who knows '/ perhaps we might find a way to 
 their hearts, if we did not eternally shock their vanity, 
 and forget that it is, and must be, far greater than our 
 own. The women gave me their tears, and the men were 
 earnest. Not one hand lay cold in mine. As for your 
 kitchen-maid, I'd trust my life to that girl. What a 
 grip she gave me ! What strength ! What fidelity was 
 in it ! My hand was never grasped before. I think we 
 are safe for a few days more." 
 
 Lusignan sighed. " What does it all come to ? We 
 are pulling the trigger gently, that is all." 
 
 *' No, no ; that is not it. Don't let us confound the 
 matter with similes, please. Keep them for children." 
 
 Mrs. Staines left her bed ; and would have left her 
 room, but Dr. Philip forbade it strictly. 
 
 One day, seated in her arm-chair, she said to the nurse, 
 before Dr. Philip, " Nurse, why do the servants look so 
 curiously at me ? " 
 
 Mrs. Briscoe cast a hasty glance at Dr. Philip, and 
 then said, "I don't know, madam. I never noticed 
 that." 
 
 "Uncle, why did nurse look at you before she 
 answered such a simple question ? " 
 
 " I don't know. What question ? " 
 
 " About the servants." 
 
 "■ Oh, about the servants ! " said he contemptuously. 
 
 " You should not turn up your nose at them, for they 
 are all most kind and attentive. Only, I catch them 
 looking at me so strangely ; really — as if they — " 
 
 " Eosa, you are taking me quite out of my depth. The 
 looks of servant girls ! Why, of course a lady in your 
 condition is an object of especial interest to them. I 
 dare say they are saying to one another, *I wonder
 
 A SIMPLETON. 261 
 
 when my turn will come ! ' A fellow-feeling makes us 
 wondrous kind — that is a proverb, is it not ? " 
 
 " To be sure. I forgot that." 
 
 She said no more ; but seemed thoughtful, and not 
 quite satisfied. 
 
 On this Dr. Philip begged the maids to go near her as 
 little as possible. "You are not aware of it," said he, 
 " but your looks, and your manner of speaking, rouse her 
 attention, and she is quicker than I thought she was, 
 and observes very subtly." 
 
 This was done ; and then she complained that nobody 
 came near her. She insisted on coming down-stairs ; it 
 was so dull. 
 
 Dr. Philip consented, if she would be content to 
 receive no visits for a week. 
 
 She assented to that ; and now passed some hours every 
 day in the drawing-room. In her morning wrappers, so 
 fresh and crisp, she looked lovely, and increased in 
 health and strength every day. 
 
 Dr. Philip used to look at her, and his very flesh 
 would creep at the thought that, ere long, he must hurl 
 this fair creature into the dust of affliction ; must, with 
 a word, take the ruby from her lips, the rose from her 
 cheeks, the sparkle from her glorious eyes — eyes that 
 beamed on him with sweet affection, and a mouth that 
 never opened, but to show some simplicity of mind, or 
 some pretty burst of the sensitive heart. 
 
 He put off, and put off, and at last cowardice began to 
 whisper, " AVhy tell her the whole truth at all ? Why 
 not take her through stages of doubt, alarm, and, after 
 all, leave a grain of hope till her child gets so rooted 
 in her heart that" — But conscience and good sense 
 interrupted this temporary thought, and made him see 
 to what a horrible life of suspense he should condemn a 
 human creature, and live a perpetual lie, and be always 
 at the edge of some pitfall or other.
 
 262 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 One day, while he sat looking at her, with all these 
 thoughts, and many more, coursing through his mind, 
 she looked up at him, and surprised him. " Ah ! " said 
 she gravely. 
 
 " What is the matter, my dear ? " 
 
 " Oh, nothing," said she cunningly. 
 
 " Uncle, dear," said she presently, " when do we go to 
 Heme Bay ? " 
 
 Now, Dr. Philip had given that up. He had got the 
 servants at Kent Villa on his side, and he felt safer 
 here than in any strange place: so he said, "I don't 
 know : that all depends. There is plenty of time." 
 
 " No, uncle," said Kosa gravely. " I wish to leave this 
 house. I can hardly breathe in it." 
 
 " What ! your native air ? " 
 
 " Mystery is not my native air ; and this house is full 
 of mystery. Voices whisper at my door, and the people 
 don't come in. The maids cast strange looks at me, and 
 hurry away. I scolded that pert girl Jane, and she 
 answered me as meek as Moses. I catch you looking at 
 me, with love, and something else. What is that some- 
 thing — ? It is Pity : that is what it is. Do you 
 think, because I am called a simpleton, that I have no 
 eyes, nor ears, nor sense ? What is this secret which 
 you are all hiding from one person, and that is me ? 
 Ah ! Christopher has not written these five weeks. Tell 
 me the truth, for I will know it," and she started up in 
 wild excitement. 
 
 Then Dr. Philip saw the hour was come. 
 
 He said, " My poor girl, you have read us right. I am 
 anxious about Christopher, and all the servants know it." 
 
 " Anxious, and not tell me ; his wife ; the woman 
 whose life is bound up in his." 
 
 " Was it for us to retard your convalescence, and set 
 you fretting, and perhaps destroy your child ? Eosa,
 
 A SUrPLETON. 263 
 
 my darling, think what a treasure Heaven has sent you, 
 to love and care for." 
 
 " Yes," said she, trembling, " Heaven has been good to 
 me ; I hope Heaven will always be as good to me. I 
 don't deserve it; but then I tell God so. I am very 
 grateful, and very penitent. I never forget that, if I 
 had been a good wife, my husband — five weeks is a long 
 time. Why do you tremble so ? Why are you so pale 
 — a strong man like you ? Calamity ! calamity ! " 
 
 Dr. Philip hung his head. 
 
 She looked at him, started wildly up, then sank back 
 into her chair. So the stricken deer leaps, then falls. 
 Yet even now she put on a deceitful calm, and said, 
 " Tell me the truth. I have a right to know." 
 
 He stammered out, " There is a report of an accident 
 at sea." 
 
 She kept silence. 
 
 " Of a passenger drowned — out of that ship. This, 
 coupled with his silence, fills our hearts with fear." 
 
 "It is worse — you are breaking it to me — you have 
 gone too far to stop. One word : is he alive ? Oh, say 
 he is alive ! " 
 
 Philip rang the bell hard, and said in a troubled voice, 
 "Rosa, think of your child." 
 
 " Not when my husband — Is he alive or dead ? " 
 
 " It is hard to say, with such a terrible report about, 
 and no letters," faltered the old man, his courage failing 
 him. 
 
 " What are you afraid of ? Do you think I can't die, 
 and go to him ? Alive, or dead ? " and she stood before 
 him, raging and quivering in every limb. 
 
 The nurse came in. 
 
 " Fetch her child," he cried ; "God have mercy on her." 
 
 "Ah, then he is dead," said she, with stony calmness. 
 " I drove him to sea, and he is dead."
 
 264 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 The nurse rushed in, and held the child to her. 
 
 She would not look at it. 
 
 « Dead ! " 
 
 " Yes, our poor Christie is gone — but his child is 
 here — the image of him. Do not forget the mother. 
 Have pity on his child and yours." 
 
 " Take it out of my sight ! " she screamed. '' Away 
 with it, or I shall murder it, as I have murdered its 
 father. My dear Christie, before all that live ! I have 
 killed him. I shall die for him. I shall go to him." 
 She raved and tore her hair. Servants rushed in. Rosa 
 was carried to her bed, screaming and raving, and her 
 black hair all down on both sides, a piteous sight. 
 
 Swoon followed swoon, and that very night brain fever 
 set in with all its sad accompaniments ; a poor bereaved 
 creature, tossing and moaning ; pale, anxious, but reso- 
 lute faces of the nurse and the kitchen-maid watching : 
 on one table a pail of ice, and on another the long, thick 
 raven hair of our poor Simpleton, lying on clean silver 
 paper. Dr. Philip had cut it all off with his own hand, 
 and he was now folding it up, and crying over it ; for he 
 thought to himself, " Perhaps in a few days more only 
 this will be left of her on earth."
 
 A SIMPLETON. 265 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 Staines lell head-foremost into the sea with a heavy- 
 plunge. Being an excellent swimmer, he struck out the 
 moment he touched ths water, and that arrested his dive, 
 and brought him up with a slant, shocked and panting, 
 drenched and confused. The next moment he saw, as 
 through a fog — his eyes being full of water — something 
 fall from the ship. He breasted the big waves, and swam 
 towards it : it rose on the top of a wave, and he saw 
 it was a life-buoy. Encumbered with wet clothes, he 
 seemed impotent in the big waves ; they threw him up 
 so. high, and down so low. 
 
 Almost exhausted, he got to the life-buoy, and clutched 
 it with a fierce grasp and a wild cry of delight. He got 
 it over his head, and, placing his arms round the buoyant 
 circle, stood with his breast and head out of water, 
 gasping. 
 
 He now drew a long breath, and got his wet hair out 
 of his eyes, already smarting with salt water, and, rais- 
 ing himself on the buoy, looked out for help. 
 
 He saw, to his great concern, the ship already at a 
 distance. She seemed to have flown, and she was still 
 drifting fast away from him. 
 
 He saw no signs of help. His heart began to turn as 
 cold as his drenched body. A horrible fear crossed him. 
 
 But presently he saw the weather-boat filled, and fall 
 into the water ; and then a wave rolled between him and 
 the ship, and he only saw her topmast. 
 
 The next time he rose on a mighty wave he saw the 
 boats together astern of the vessel, but not coming his
 
 266 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 way ; and the gloom was thickening, the ship becoming 
 indistinct, and all was doubt and horror. 
 
 A life of agony passed in a few minutes. 
 
 He rose and fell like a cork on the buoyant waves — 
 rose and fell, and saw nothing but the ship's lights, now 
 terribly distant. 
 
 But at last, as he rose and fell, he caught a few fitful 
 glimpses of a smaller light rising and falling like him- 
 self. " A boat ! " he cried, and raising himself as high 
 as he could, shouted, cried, implored for help. He 
 stretched his hands across the water. " This way ! this 
 way ! " 
 
 The light kept moving, but it came no nearer. They 
 had greatly underrated the drift. The other boat had no 
 light. 
 
 Minutes passed of suspense, hope, doubt, dismay, 
 terror. Those minutes seemed hours. 
 
 In the agony of suspense the quaking heart sent beads 
 of sweat to the brow, though the body was immersed. 
 
 And the gloom deepened, and the cold waves flung 
 him up to heaven with their giant arms, and then down 
 again to hell : and still that light, his only hope, was 
 several hundred yards from him. 
 
 Only for a moment at a time could his eyeballs, strain- 
 ing with agony, catch this will-o'-the-wisp, the boat's 
 light. It groped the sea up and down, but came no 
 near. 
 
 When what seemed days of agony had passed, sud- 
 denly a rocket rose in the horizon — so it seemed to him. 
 
 The lost man gave a shriek of joy ; so prone are we 
 to interpret things hopefully. 
 
 Misery ! The next time he saw that little light, that 
 solitary spark of hope, it was not quite so near as before. 
 A mortal sickness fell on his heart. The ship had 
 recalled the boats by rocket.
 
 A SIMPLETON. 267 
 
 He shrieked, he cried, he screamed, he raved. "Oh, 
 Rosa ! Rosa ! for her sake, men, men, do not leave me. 
 I am here ! here ! " 
 
 In vain. The miserable man saw the boat's little 
 light retire, recede, and melt into the ship's larger light, 
 and that light glided away. 
 
 Then, a cold, deadly stupor fell on him. Then, death's 
 icy claw seized his heart, and seemed to run from it to 
 every part of him. He was a dead man. Only a ques- 
 tion of time. jSTothing to gain by floating. 
 
 But the despairing mind could not quit the world in 
 peace, and even here in the cold, cruel sea, the quivering 
 body clung to this fragment of life, and winced at death's 
 touch, though more merciful. 
 
 He despised this weakness ; he raged at it ; he could 
 not overcome it. 
 
 Unable to live or to die, condemned to float slowly, 
 hour by hour, down into death's jaws. 
 
 To a long, death-like stupor succeeded frenzy. Fury 
 seized this great and long-suffering mind. It rose 
 against the cruelty and injustice of his fate. He cursed 
 the world, whose stupidity had driven him to sea; he 
 cursed remorseless nature ; and at last he railed on the 
 God who made him, and made the cruel water, that was 
 waiting for his body. " God's justice ! God's mercy ! 
 God's power ! they are all lies," he shouted, " dreams, 
 chimeras, like Him the all-powerful and good, men babble 
 of by the fire. If there was a God more powerful than 
 the sea, and only half as good as men are, he would pity 
 my poor Rosa and me, and send a hurricane to drive 
 those caitiffs back to the wretch they have abandoned. 
 Nature alone is mighty. Oh, if I could have her on my 
 side, and only God against me ! But she is as deaf to 
 prayer as He is : as mechanical and remorseless. I am 
 a bubble melting into the sea. Soul I have none j my
 
 268 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 body will soon be nothing, nothing. So ends an honest, 
 loving life. I always tried to love my fellow-creatures. 
 Curse them ! curse them ! Curse the earth ! Curse the 
 sea ! Curse all nature : there is no other God for me to 
 curse." 
 
 The moon came out. 
 
 He raised his head and staring eyeballs, and cursed 
 her. 
 
 The wind began to whistle, and flung spray in his face. 
 
 He raised his fallen head and staring eyeballs, and 
 cursed the wind. 
 
 While he was thus raving, he became sensible of a 
 black object to windward. 
 
 It looked like a rail, and a man leaning on it. 
 
 He stared, he cleared the wet hair from his eyes, and 
 stared again. 
 
 The thing, being larger than himself and partly out 
 of water, was drifting to leeward faster than himself. 
 
 He stared and trembled, and at last it came nearly 
 abreast, black, black. 
 
 He gave a loud cry, and tried to swim towards it ; but 
 encumbered with his life-buoy, he made little progress. 
 The thing drifted abreast of him, but ten yards distant. 
 
 As they each rose high ujDon the waves, he saw it 
 plainly. 
 
 It was the very raft that had been the innocent cause 
 of his sad fate. 
 
 He shouted with hope, he swam, he struggled ; he got 
 near it, but not to it ; it drifted past, and he lost his 
 chance of intercepting it. He struggled after it. The 
 life-buoy would not let him catch it. 
 
 Then he gave a cry of agony, rage, despair, and flung 
 off the life-buoy, and risked all on this one chance. 
 
 He gains a little on the raft. 
 
 He loses.
 
 A SIMPLETON. 269 
 
 He gains : lie cries, " Rosa ! Rosa ! " and struggles 
 with all his soul, as well as his body : he gains. 
 
 But when almost within reach, a wave half drowns 
 him, and he loses. 
 
 He cries, " Rosa ! Rosa ! " and swims high and strong. 
 ''Rosa! Rosa! Rosa!" 
 
 He is near it. He cries, '' Rosa ! Rosa ! " and with all 
 the energy of love and life flings himself almost out of 
 the water, and catches hold of the nearest thing on the 
 raft. 
 
 It was the dead man's leg. 
 
 It seemed as if it would come away in his grasp. He 
 dared not try to pull himself up by that. But he held 
 on by it, panting, exhausting, faint. 
 
 This faintness terrified him. "Oh," thought he, "if 
 I faint now, all is over." 
 
 Holding by that terrible and strange support, he made 
 a grasp, and caught hold of the woodwork at the bottom 
 of the rail. He tried to draw himself up. Impossible. 
 
 He was no better off than with his life-buoy. 
 
 But in situations so dreadful, men think fast ; he 
 worked gradually round the bottom of the raft by his 
 hands, till he got to leeward, still holding on. There he 
 found a solid block of wood at the edge of the raft. He 
 prised himself carefully up ; the raft in that part then 
 sank a little : he got his knee upon the timber of the 
 raft, and with a wild cry seized the nearest upright, and 
 threw both arms round it and clung tight. Then first 
 he found breath to speak. " Thank God ! " he cried, 
 kneeling on the timber, and grasping the upright post — 
 " Oh, thank God ! thank God ! "
 
 270 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 " Thank God ! " why, according to his theory, it 
 should have been " Thank Nature." But I observe that, 
 in sucli cases, even philosophers are ungrateful to the 
 mistress they worship. 
 
 Our philosopher not only thanked God, but being on 
 his knees, prayed forgiveness for his late ravings, prayed 
 hard, with one arm curled round the upright, lest the 
 sea, which ever and anon rushed over the bottom of the 
 raft, should swallow him up in a moment. 
 
 Then he rose carefully, and wedged himself into the 
 corner of the raft opposite to that other figure, ominous 
 relic of the wild voyage the new-comer had entered 
 upon ; he put both arms over the rail, and stood erect. 
 
 The moon was now up ; but so was the breeze : fleecy 
 clouds flew with vast rapidity across her bright face, and 
 it was by fitful though vivid glances Staines examined 
 the raft and his companion. 
 
 The raft was large, and well made of timbers tied and 
 nailed together, and a strong rail ran round it resting on 
 several uprights. There were also some blocks of a very 
 light wood screwed to the horizontal timbers, and these 
 made it float high. 
 
 But what arrested and fascinated the man's gaze was 
 his dead companion, sole survivor, doubtless, of a horri- 
 ble voyage, since the raft was not made for one, nor by 
 one. 
 
 It was a skeleton, or nearly, whose clothes the sea- 
 birds had torn, and pecked every limb in all the fleshy 
 parts J the rest of the body had dried to dark leather on
 
 A SIMPLETON. 271 
 
 ^-he bones. The head was little more than an eyeless 
 skull ; but in the fitful moonlight, those huge hollow 
 caverns seemed gigantic lamp-like eyes, and glared at 
 him fiendishly, appallingly. 
 
 He sickened at the sight. He tried not to look at it ; 
 but it would be looked at, and threaten him in the moon- 
 light, with great lack-lustre eyes. 
 
 The wind whistled, and lashed his face with spray 
 torn off the big waves, and the water was nearly up to 
 his knees, and the raft tossed so wildly, it was all he 
 could do to hold on in his corner: in which struggle, 
 still those monstrous lack-lustre eyes, like lamps of 
 death, glared at him in the moon; all else was dark, 
 except the fiery crests of the black mountain-billows, 
 tumbling and raging all around. 
 
 What a night ! 
 
 But, before morning, the breeze sank, the moon set, 
 and a sombre quiet succeeded, with only that grim figure 
 in outline dimly visible. Owing to the motion still 
 retained by the waves, it seemed to nod and rear, and be 
 ever preparing to rush upon him. 
 
 The sun rose glorious, on a lovely scene ; the sky was 
 a very mosaic of colors sweet and vivid, and the tranquil, 
 rippling sea, peach-colored to the horizon, with lines of 
 diamonds where the myriad ripples broke into smiles. 
 
 Staines was asleep, exhausted. Soon the light awoke 
 him, and he looked up. What an incongruous picture 
 met his eye : that heaven of color all above and around, 
 and right before him, like a devil stuck in mid-heaven, 
 that grinning corpse, whose fate foreshadowed his own. 
 
 But daylight is a great strengthener of the nerves ; 
 the figure no longer appalled him — a man who had long 
 learned to look with Science's calm eye upon the dead. 
 When the sea became like glass, and from peach-color 
 deepened to rose, he walked along the raft, and inspected
 
 272 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 the dead man. He found it was a man of color, but not 
 a black. The body was not kept in its place, as he had 
 supposed, merely by being jammed into the angle caused 
 by the rail ; it was also lashed to the corner upright by 
 a long, stout belt. Staines concluded this had kept the 
 body there, and its companions had been swept away. 
 
 This was not lost on him : he removed the belt for his 
 own use : he then found it was not only a belt, but a 
 receptacle ; it was nearly full of small, hard substances 
 that felt like stones. 
 
 When he had taken it off the body, he felt a compunc- 
 tion. " Ought he to rob the dead, and expose it to be 
 swept into the sea at the first wave, like a dead dog ? " 
 
 He was about to replace the belt, Avhen a middle course 
 occurred to him. He was a man who always carried 
 certain useful little things about him, viz., needles, 
 thread, scissors, and string. He took a piece of string, 
 and easily secured this poor light skeleton to the raft. 
 The belt he strapped to the rail, and kept for his own 
 need. 
 
 And now hunger gnawed him. No food was near. 
 There was nothing but the lovely sea and sky, mosaic 
 with color, and that grim, ominous skeleton. 
 
 Hunger comes and goes many times before it becomes 
 insupportable. All that day and night, and the next 
 day, he suffered its pangs ; and then it became torture, 
 but the thirst anaddening. 
 
 Towards night fell a gentle rain. He spread a hand- 
 kerchief and caught it. He sucked the handkerchief. 
 
 This revived him, and even allayed in some degree the 
 pangs of hunger. 
 
 Next day was cloudless. A hot sun glared on his 
 unprotected head, and battered down his enfeebled frame. 
 
 He resisted as well as he could. He often dipped his 
 head, and as often the persistent sun, with cruel glare, 
 made it smoke again.
 
 A SEVIPLETON. 273 
 
 Next day the same : but the strength to meet it was 
 waning. He lay down and thought of Eosa, and wept 
 bitterly. He took the dead man's belt, and lashed him- 
 self to the upright. That act, and his tears for his 
 beloved, were almost his last acts of perfect reason : for 
 next day came the delusions and the dreams that succeed 
 when hunger ceases to torture, and the vital powers 
 begin to ebb. He lay and saw pleasant meadows witli 
 meandering streams, and clusters of rich fruit that 
 courted the hand and melted in the mouth. 
 
 Ever and anon they vanished, and he saw grim death 
 looking down on him with those big cavernous eyes. 
 
 By and by, whether his body's eye saw the grim skel- 
 eton, or his mind's eye the juicy fruits, green meadows, 
 and pearly brooks, all was shadowy. 
 
 So, in a placid calm, beneath a blue sky, the raft 
 drifted dead, with its dead freight, upon the glassy pur- 
 ple, and he drifted, too, towards the world unknown. 
 
 There came across the wate,rs to that dismal raft a 
 tiling none too common, by sea or land — a good man. 
 
 He was tall, stalwart, bronzed, and had hair like snow, 
 before his time, for he had known trouble. He com- 
 manded a merchant steamer, bound for Calcutta, on the 
 old route. 
 
 The man at the mast-head descried a floating wreck, 
 and hailed the deck accordingly. The captain altered 
 his course without one moment's hesitation, and brought 
 up alongside, lowered a boat, and brought the dead, and 
 the breathing man, on board. 
 
 A young middy lifted Staines in his arms from the 
 wreck to the boat ; he whose person I described in chap- 
 ter one weighed now no more than that. 
 
 Men are not always rougher tlian women. Their 
 strength and nerve enable them now and then to be 
 gentler than buttery-lingered angels, who drop frail 
 18
 
 274 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 things through sensitive agitation, and break them. 
 These rough men saw Staines was hovering between 
 life and death, and they handled him like a thing the 
 ebbing life might be shaken out of in a moment. It 
 was pretty to see how gingerly the sailors carried the 
 sinking man up the ladder, and one fetched swabs, and 
 the others laid him down softly on them at their captain's 
 feet. 
 
 " Well done, men," said he. " Poor fellow ! Pray 
 Heaven, we may not have come too late. Now stand 
 aloof a bit. Send the surgeon aft." 
 
 The surgeon came, and looked, and felt the heart. He 
 shook his head, and called for brandy. He had Staines's 
 head raised, and got half a spoonful of diluted brandy 
 down his throat. But there was an ominous gurgling. 
 
 After several such attempts at intervals, he said plainly 
 the man's life could not be saved by ordinary means. 
 
 "Then try extraordinary," said the captain. "My 
 orders are that he is to be saved. There is life in him. 
 You have only got to keep it there. He must be saved ; 
 he shall be saved." 
 
 " I should like to try Dr. Staines's remedy," said the 
 surgeon. 
 
 « Try it, then . what is it ? " 
 
 "A bath of beef-tea. Dr. Staines says he applied it 
 to a starved child — in the Lancet.''^ 
 
 "Take a hundred-weight of beef, and boil it in the 
 coppers." 
 
 Thus encouraged, the surgeon went to the cook, and 
 very soon beef was steaming on a scale and at a rate 
 unparalleled. 
 
 Meantime, Captain Dodd had the patient taken to his 
 own cabin, and he and his servant administered weak 
 brandy and water with great caution and skill. 
 
 There was no perceptible result. But at all events
 
 A SIJVrPLETON. 276 
 
 there was life and vital instinct left, or he could not 
 have swallowed. 
 
 Thus they hovered about him for some hours, and then 
 the bath was ready. 
 
 The captain took charge of the patient's clothes : the 
 surgeon and a sailor bathed him in lukewarm beef-tea, 
 and then covered him very warm with blankets next the 
 skin. Guess how near a thing it seemed to them, when 
 I tell you they dared not rub him. 
 
 Just before sunset his pulse became perceptible. The 
 surgeon administered half a spoonful of egg-flip. The 
 patient swallowed it. 
 
 By and by he sighed. 
 
 " He must not be left, day or night," said the captain. 
 " I don't know who or what he is, but he is a man ; and 
 I could not bear him to die now." 
 
 That night Captain Dodd overhauled the patient's 
 clothes, and looked for marks on his linen. There were 
 none. 
 
 " Poor devil ! " said Captain Dodd. " He is a bachelor." 
 
 Captain Dodd found his pocket-book, with bank-notes, 
 two hundred pounds. He took the numbers, made a 
 memorandum of them, and locked the notes up. 
 
 He lighted his lamp, examined the belt, unripped it, 
 and poured out the contents on his table. 
 
 They were dazzling. A great many large pieces of 
 amethyst, and some of white topaz and rock crystal ; a 
 large number of smaller stones, carbuncles, chrysolites, 
 and not a few emeralds. Dodd looked at them with 
 pleasure, sparkling in the lamplight. 
 
 " Wliat a lot ! " said he. " I wonder what they are 
 worth ! " He sent for the first mate, who, he knew, did 
 a little private business in precious stones. "Master- 
 ton," said he, " oblige me by counting these stones with 
 me, and valuing them."
 
 276 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 Mr. Masterton stared, and liis mouth watered. How- 
 ever, he named the various stones and valued them. He 
 said there was one stone, a large emerald, without a 
 flaw, that was worth a heavy sum by itself; and the 
 pearls, very fine : and looking at the great number, they 
 must be worth a thousand pounds. 
 
 Captain Dodd then entered the whole business care- 
 fully in the ship's log: the living man he described 
 thus: "About five feet six in height, and about fifty 
 years of age." Then he described the notes and the 
 stones very exactly, and made Masterton, the valuer, 
 sign the log. 
 
 Staines took a good deal of egg-flip that night, and 
 next day ate solid food; but they questioned him in 
 vain; his reason was entirely in abeyance: he had be- 
 come an eater, and nothing else. Whenever they gave 
 him food, he showed a sort of fawning animal gratitude. 
 Other sentiment he had none, nor did words enter his 
 mind any more than a bird's. And since it is not pleas- 
 ant to dwell on the wreck of a fine understanding, I will 
 only say that they landed him at Cape Town, out of 
 bodily danger, but weak, and his mind, to all appearance, 
 a hopeless blank. 
 
 They buried the skeleton, — read the service of the 
 English Church over a Malabar heathen. 
 
 Dodd took Staines to the hospital, and left twenty 
 pounds with the governor of it to cure him. But he 
 deposited Staines's money and jewels with a friendly 
 banker, and begged that the principal cashier might see 
 the man, and be able to recognize him, should he apply 
 for his own. 
 
 The cashier came and examined him, and also the 
 ruby ring on his finger — a parting gift from Eosa — 
 and remarked this was a new way of doing business. 
 
 " Why, it is the only one, sir/' said Dodd. " How can
 
 A SIMPLETON. 277 
 
 we give you his signature ? He is not in his right 
 mind." 
 
 " Nor never will be." 
 
 " Don't say that, sir. Let us hope for the best, poor 
 fellow." 
 
 Having made these provisions, the worthy captain 
 weighed anchor, with a warm heart and a good con- 
 science. Yet the image of the man he had saved pur- 
 sued him, and he resolved to look after him next time 
 he should coal at Cape Town, homeward bound. 
 
 Staines recovered his strength in about two months ; 
 but his mind returned in fragments, and very slowly. 
 For a long, long time he remembered nothing that had 
 preceded his great calamity. His mind started afresh, 
 aided only by certain fixed habits ; for instance, he could 
 read and write : but, strange as it may appear, he had 
 no idea who he was; and when his memory cleared a 
 little on that head, he thought his surname was Christie, 
 but he was not sure. 
 
 Nevertheless, the presiding physician discovered in 
 him a certain progress of intelligence, which gave him 
 great hopes. In the fifth month, having shown a marked 
 interest in the other sick patients, coupled with a dispo- 
 sition to be careful and attentive, they made him a 
 nurse, or rather a sub-nurse under the special orders of 
 a responsible nurse. I really believe it was done at first 
 to avoid the alternative of sending him adrift, or trans- 
 ferring him to the insane ward of the hospital. In this 
 congenial pursuit he showed such watchfulness and skill, 
 that by and by they found they had got a treasure. Two 
 months after that he began to talk about medicine, and 
 astonished them still more. He became the puzzle of 
 the establishment. The doctor and surgeon would con- 
 verse with him, and try and lead him to his past life ; 
 but when it came to that, he used to put his hands to
 
 278 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 his head with a face of great distress, and it was clear 
 some impassable barrier lay between his growing intelli- 
 gence and the past events of his life. Indeed, on one 
 occasion, he said to his kind friend the doctor, "The 
 past ! — a black wall ! a black wall ! " 
 
 Ten months after his admission he was promoted to 
 be an attendant, with a salary. 
 
 He put by every shilling of it ; for he said, " A voice 
 from the dark past tells me money is everything in this 
 world." 
 
 A discussion was held by the authorities as to whether 
 he should be informed he had money and jewels at the 
 bank or not. 
 
 Upon the whole, it was thought advisable to postpone 
 this information, lest he should throw it away ; but they 
 told him he had been picked up at sea, and both money 
 and jewels found on him ; they were in safe hands, only 
 the person was away for the time. Still, he was not to 
 look upon himself as either friendless or moneyless. 
 
 At this communication he showed an almost childish 
 delight, that confirmed the doctor in his opinion he was 
 acting prudently, and for the real benefit of an amiable 
 and afflicted person, not yet to be trusted with mone^' 
 and jewels.
 
 A SIMPLETON. 2Td 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 In Ills quality of attendant on the sick, Staines some- 
 times conducted a weak but convalescent patient into the 
 open air ; and he was always pleased to do this, for the 
 air of the Cape carries health and vigor on its wings. 
 He had seen its fine recreative properties, and he divined, 
 somehow, that the minds of convalescents ought to be 
 amused, and so he often begged the doctor to let him 
 take a convalescent abroad. Sooner than not, he would 
 draw the patient several miles in a Bath chair. He 
 rather liked this; for he was a Hercules, and had no 
 egotism or false pride where the sick were concerned. 
 
 Now, these open-air walks exerted a beneficial influence 
 on his own darkened mind. It is one thing to struggle 
 from idea to idea; it is another when material objects 
 mingle with the retrospect ; they seem to supply stepping- 
 stones in the gradual resuscitation of memory and reason. 
 
 The ships going out of port were such a stepping- 
 stone to him, and a vague consciousness came back to 
 him of having been in a ship. 
 
 Unfortunately, along with this reminiscence came a 
 desire to go in one again ; and this sowed discontent in 
 his mind, and the more that mind enlarged, the more he 
 began to dislike the hospital and its confinement. The 
 feeling grew, and bade fair to disqualify him for his 
 humble office. The authorities could not fail to hear of 
 this, and they had a little discussion about parting with 
 him ; but they hesitated to turn him adrift, and they 
 still doubted the propriety of trusting him with money 
 and jewels.
 
 280 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 While matters were in this state a remarkable event 
 occurred. He drew a sick patient down to the quay one 
 morning, and watched the business of the port witli the 
 keenest interest. A ship at anchor was unloading, and 
 a great heavy boat was sticking to her side like a black 
 leech. Presently this boat came away, and moved slug- 
 gishly towards the shore, rather by help of the tide than 
 of the two men who went through the form of propelling 
 her with two monstrous sweeps, while a third steered her. 
 She contained English goods : agricultural implements, 
 some cases, four horses, and a buxom young woman with 
 a thorough English face. The woman seemed a little 
 excited, and as she neared the landing-place, she called 
 out in jocund tones to a young man on the shore, " It is 
 all right, Dick ; they are beauties," and she patted the 
 beasts as people do who are fond of them. 
 
 She stepped lightly ashore, and then came the slower 
 work of landing her imports. She bustled about, like a 
 hen over her brood, and wasn't always talking, but put 
 in her word every now and then, never crossly, and always 
 to the point, 
 
 Staines listened to her, and examined her with a sort 
 of puzzled look ; but she took no notice of him ; her 
 whole soul was in the cattle. 
 
 They got the things on board well enough; but the 
 horses were frightened at the gangway, and jibbed. Then 
 a man was for driving them, and poked one of them in 
 the quarter ; he snorted and reared directly. 
 
 " Man alive ! " cried the young woman, " that is not the 
 way. They are docile enough, but frightened. Encourage 
 'em, and let 'em look at it. Give 'em time. More haste 
 less speed, with timorous cattle." 
 
 "That is a very pleasant voice," said poor Staines, 
 rather more dictatorially than became the present state 
 of his intellect. He added softly, "a true woman's
 
 A SIMPLETON. 281 
 
 voice ; " then gloomily, " a voice of the past — the dark, 
 dark past." 
 
 At this speech intruding itself upon the short sentences 
 of business, there was a roar of laughter, and Phoebe 
 Falcon turned sharply round to look at the speaker. She 
 stared at him ; she cried " Oh ! " and clasped her hands, 
 and colored all over. "Why, sure," said she, "I can't be 
 mistook. Those eyes — 'tis you, doctor, isn't it ? " 
 
 " Doctor ? " said Staines, with a puzzled look. " Yes ; 
 I think they called me doctor once. I'm an attendant in 
 the hospital now." 
 
 " Dick ! " cried Phcebe, in no little agitation. " Come 
 here this minute." 
 
 " What, afore I get the horses ashore ? " 
 
 "Ay, before you do another thing, or say another word. 
 Come here, now." So he came, and she told him to take a 
 good look at the man. "Now," said she, "who is that?" 
 
 " Blest if I know," said he. 
 
 "What, not know the man who saved your own life! 
 Oh, Dick, what are your eyes worth ? " 
 
 This discourse brought the few persons within hearing 
 into one band of excited starers. 
 
 Dick took a good look, and said, " I'm blest if I don't, 
 though ; it is the doctor that cut my throat." 
 
 This strange statement drew forth quite a shout of 
 ejaculations. 
 
 "Oh, better breathe through a slit than not at all," 
 said Dick. " Saved my life with that cut, he did, didn't 
 he, Pheeb ? " 
 
 " That he did, Dick. Dear heart, I hardly know whether 
 I am in my senses or not, seeing him a-looking so blank. 
 You try him." 
 
 Dick came forward. " Sure you remember me, sir. 
 Dick Dale. You cut my throat, and saved my life." 
 
 " Cut your throat I why, that would kill you."
 
 282 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 "Not the way you done it. Well, sir, you ain't the 
 man you was, that is clear ; but you was a good friend 
 to me, and there's my hand." 
 
 " Thank you, Dick," said Staines, and took his hand. " I 
 don't remember yo^l. Perhaps you are one of the j)ast. 
 Tlie past is dead wall to me — a dark dead wall," and he 
 put his hands to his head with a look of distress. 
 
 Everybody there now suspected the truth, and some 
 pointed mysteriously to their own heads. 
 
 Phoebe whispered an inquiry to the sick person. 
 
 He said a little pettishly, " All I know is, he is the 
 kindest attendant in the ward, and very attentive." 
 
 " Oh, then, he is in the public hospital." 
 
 " Of course he is." 
 
 The invalid, with the selfishness of his class, then 
 begged Staines to take him out of all this bustle down 
 to the beach. Staines complied at once, with the utmost 
 meekness, and said, " Good-by, old friends ; forgive me 
 for not remembering you. It is my great affliction that 
 the past is gone from me — gone, gone." And he went 
 sadly away, drawing his sick charge like a patient mule. 
 
 Phoebe Falcon looked after him, and began to cry. 
 
 "Nay, nay, Phoebe," said Dick; "don't ye take on 
 about it." 
 
 "I wonder at you," sobbed Phoebe. "Good people, 
 I'm fonder of my brother than he is of himself, it 
 seems ; for I can't take it so easy. Well, the Avorld is 
 full of trouble. Let us do what we are here for. But I 
 shall pray for the poor soul every night, that his mind 
 may be given back to him." 
 
 So then she bustled, and gave herself to getting the 
 cattle on shore, and the things put on board her wagon. 
 
 But when this was done, she said to her brother, 
 "Dick, I did not think anything on earth could take my 
 heart off the cattle and the things we have got from
 
 A SIMPLETON. 283 
 
 home ; but I can't leave this without going to the hospi- 
 tal about our poor dear doctor : and it is late for making 
 a start, any way — and you mustn't forget the news- 
 papers for Eeginald — he is so fond of them — and you 
 must contrive to have one sent out regular after this, 
 and I'll go to the hospital." 
 
 She went, and saw the head doctor, and told him he 
 had got an attendant there she had known in England 
 in a very different condition, and she had come to see if 
 there was anything she could do for him — for she felt 
 very grateful to him, and grieved to see him so. 
 
 The doctor was pleased and surprised, and put several 
 questions. 
 
 Then she gave him a clear statement of what he had 
 done for Dick in England. 
 
 " Well," said the doctor, " I believe it is the same man ; 
 for, now you tell me this — yes, one of the nurses told 
 me he knew more about medicine than she did. His 
 name, if you please." 
 
 " His name, sir ? " 
 
 *' Yes, his name. Of course you know his name. Is 
 it Christie ? " 
 
 " Doctor," said Phoebe, blushing, " I don't know what 
 you will think of me, but I don't know his name. Laws 
 forgive me, I never had the sense to ask it." 
 
 A shade of suspicion crossed the doctor's face. 
 
 Phoebe saw it, and colored to the temples. " Oh, sir," 
 she cried piteously, " don't go for to think I have told 
 you a lie ! why should I ? and indeed I am not of that 
 sort, nor Dick neither. Sir, I'll bring him to you, and 
 he will say the same. Well, we were all in terror and 
 confusion, and I met him accidentally in the street. 
 He was only a customer till then, and paid ready money, 
 BO that is how I never knew his name, but if I hadn't 
 been the greatest fool in England, I should have asked 
 his wife."
 
 284 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 '' What ! he has a wife ? " 
 
 " Ay, sir, the loveliest lady you ever clapped eyes on, 
 and he is almost as handsome ; has eyes in his head like 
 jewels ; 'twas by them I knew him on the quay, and I 
 think he knew my voice again, said as good as he had 
 heard it in past times." 
 
 " Did he ? Then we have got him/' cried the doctor 
 energetically. 
 
 " La, sir." 
 
 " Yes ; if he knows your voice, you will be able in 
 time to lead his memory back ; at least, I think so. Do 
 you live in Cape Town ? " 
 
 " Dear heart, no. I live at my own farm, a hundred 
 and eighty miles from this." 
 
 " What a pity ! " 
 
 « Why, sir ? " 
 
 "Well— hum!" 
 
 " Oh, if you think I could do the poor doctor good by 
 having him with me, you have only to say the word, and 
 out he goes with Dick and me to-morrow morning. We 
 should have started for home to-night, but for this." 
 
 " Are you in earnest, madam ? " said the doctor, open- 
 ing his eyes. " Would you really encumber yourself with 
 a person whose reason is in suspense, and may never 
 return ? " 
 
 " But that is not his fault, sir. Why, if a dog had 
 saved my brother's life, I'd take it home, and keep it all 
 its days ; and this is a man, and a worthy man. Oh, sir, 
 when I saw him brought down so, and his beautiful eyes 
 clouded like, my very bosom yearned over the poor soul ; 
 a kind act done in dear old England, who can see the 
 man in trouble here, and not repay it — ay, if it cost 
 one's blood. But indeed he is strong and healthy, and 
 hands are always scarce our way, and the odds are 
 he will earn his meat one way or t'other j and if he
 
 A SIMPLETON. 285 
 
 doesn't, why, all the better for me ; I shall have the 
 pleasure of serving him for nought that once served me 
 for neither money nor reward." 
 
 " You are a good woman," said the doctor warmly. 
 
 " There's better, and there's worse," said Phoebe 
 quietly, and even a little coldly. 
 
 " More of the latter," said the doctor dryly. " Well, 
 Mrs. ? " 
 
 " Falcon, sir." 
 
 " We shall hand him over to your care : but first — ■ 
 just for form — if you are a married woman, we should 
 like to see Dick here : he is your husband, I presume." 
 
 Phcfibe laughed merrily. " Dick is my brother ; and 
 he can't be spared to come here. Dick ! he'd say black 
 was white if I told him to." 
 
 "Then let us see your husband a.bout it — just for 
 form." 
 
 " My husband is at the farm. I could not venture so 
 far away, and not leave him in charge." If she had 
 said, " I will not bring him into temptation," that would 
 have been nearer the truth. " Let that fly stick on the 
 wall, sir. What I do, my husband will approve." 
 
 " I see how it is. You rule the roost." 
 
 PhcEbe did not reply point-blank to that ; she merely 
 said, " All my chickens are happy, great and small," and 
 an expression of lofty, womanly, innocent pride illu- 
 minated her face and made it superb for a moment. 
 
 Jn short, it was settled that Staines should accompany 
 her next morning to Dale's Kloof Farm, if he chose. 
 On inquiry, it appeared that he had just returned to the 
 hospital with his patient. He was sent for, and Phoebe 
 asked him sweetly if he would go with her to her liouse, 
 one hundred and eighty miles away, and she would be 
 kind to him. 
 
 « On the water ? "
 
 286 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 " Nay, by land ; but 'tis a fine country, and you will 
 see beautiful deer and things running across the plains, 
 and " — 
 
 " Shall I find the past again, the past again ? " 
 
 " Ay, poor soul, that we shall, God willing. You and 
 I, we will hunt it together." 
 
 He looked at her, and gave her his hand. " I will go 
 with you. Your face belongs to the past, so does your 
 voice." 
 
 He then inquired, rather abruptly, had she any chil- 
 dren. She smiled. 
 
 " Ay, that I have, the loveliest little boy you ever saw. 
 When you are as you used to be, you will be his doctor, 
 won't you ? " 
 
 " Yes, I will nurse him, and you will help me find the 
 past." 
 
 Phoebe then begged Staines to be ready to start at six 
 in the morning. She and Dick would take him up on 
 their way. 
 
 While she was talking to him the doctor slipped out, 
 and to tell the truth he went to consult with another 
 authority, whether he should take this opportunity of 
 telling Staines that he had money and jewels at the 
 bank : he himself was half inclined to do so ; but the 
 other, who had not seen Phoebe's face, advised him to do 
 nothing of the kind. " They are always short of money, 
 these colonial farmers," said he ; " she would get every 
 shilling out of him." 
 
 " Most would ; but this is such an honest face." 
 
 " Well, but she is a mother, you say." 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Well, what mother could be just to a lunatic, with 
 her own sweet angel babes to provide for ? " 
 
 " That is true," said Dr. . " Maternal love is apt 
 
 tc modify the conscience."
 
 A SIMPLETON". 2^7 
 
 " What I would do, — I would take her address, and 
 make her promise to write if he gets well, and if he does 
 get well then write to him, and tell him all about it." 
 
 Dr. acted on this shrewd advice, and ordered a 
 
 bundle to be made up for the traveller out of the hos- 
 pital stores : it contained a nice light summer suit and 
 two changes of linen.
 
 288 A SIMPLETON". 
 
 CHAPTEK XVIII. 
 
 Next morning, Staines and Dick Dale walked through 
 the streets of Cape Town side by side. Dick felt the 
 uneasiness of a sane man, not familiar with the mentally 
 afflicted, who suddenly finds himself alone with one. 
 Insanity turns men oftenest into sheep and hares ; but it 
 does now and then make them wolves and tigers ; and that 
 has saddled the insane in general with a character for 
 ferocity. Young Dale, then, cast many a suspicious 
 glance at his comrade, as he took him along. These 
 glances were reassuring: Christopher's face had no 
 longer the mobility, the expressive changes, that mark 
 the superior mind ; his countenance was monotonous : 
 but the one expression was engaging ; there was a sweet, 
 patient, lamb-like look : the glorious eye a little troubled 
 and perplexed, but wonderfully mild. Dick Dale looked 
 and looked, and his uneasiness vanished. And the more 
 he looked, the more did a certain wonder creep over him, 
 and make him scarce believe the thing he knew; viz., 
 that a learned doctor had saved him from the jaws of 
 death by rare knowledge, sagacity, courage, and skill 
 combined : and that mighty man of wisdom was brought 
 down to this lamb, and would go north, south, east, or 
 west, with sweet and perfect submission, even as he, 
 Dick Dale, should appoint. With these reflections honest 
 Dick felt his eyes get a little misty, and, to use those 
 words of Scripture, which nothing can surpass or equal, 
 his bowels yearned over the man. 
 
 As for Christopher, he looked straight forward, and 
 said not a word till they cleared the town j but when he
 
 A SBIPLETON. 289 
 
 saw the vast flowery vale, and the far-off violet hills, 
 like Scotland glorified, he turned to Dick with an 
 ineffable expression of sweetness and good fellowship, 
 and said, " Oh, beautiful ! We'll hunt the past together." 
 
 " We — will — so," said Dick, with a sturdy and indeed 
 almost a stern resolution. 
 
 Now, this he said, not that he cared for the past, nor 
 intended to waste the present by going upon its prede- 
 cessor's trail ; but he had come to a resolution — full 
 three minutes ago — to humor his companion to the top 
 of his bent, and say " Yes " with hypocritical vigor to 
 everything not directly and immediately destructive to 
 him and his. 
 
 The next moment they turned a corner and came upon 
 the rest of their party, hitherto hidden by the apricot 
 hedge and a turning in the road. A blue-black Kafir, 
 with two yellow Hottentot drivers, man and boj', was 
 harnessing, in the most primitive mode, four horses on 
 to the six oxen attached to the wagon ; and the horses 
 Avere flattening their ears, and otherwise resenting the 
 incongruity. Meantime a fourth figure, a colossal young 
 Kafir woman, looked on superior with folded arms, like 
 a sable Juno looking down with that absolute composure 
 upon the struggles of man and other animals, which 
 Lucretius and his master Epicurus assigned to the 
 Divine nature. Without jesting, the grandeur, majesty, 
 and repose of this figure were unsurpassable in nature, 
 and such as have vanished from sculpture two thousand 
 years and more. 
 
 Dick Dale joined the group immediately, and soon 
 arranged the matter. Meantime, Phoebe descended from 
 the wagon, and welcomed Christopher very kindly, and 
 asked him if he Avould like to sit beside her, or to 
 walk. 
 
 He glanced into the wagon ; it was covered and cur-
 
 290 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 tained, and dark as a cupboard. "I think,"- said he, 
 timidly, " I shall see more of the past out here." 
 
 " So you will, poor soul," said Phoebe kindly, " and 
 better for your health : but you must not go far from the 
 wagon, for I'm a fidget ; and I have got the care of 
 you now, you know, for want of a better. Come, Ucatella ; 
 you must ride with me, and help me sort the things; 
 they are all higgledy-piggledy." So those two got into 
 the wagon through the back curtains. Then the Kafir 
 driver flourished his kambok, or long whip, in the air, 
 and made it crack like a jjistol, and the horses reared, 
 and the oxen started and slowly bored in between' them, 
 for they whinnied, and kicked, and spread out like a fan 
 all over the road ; but a flick or two from the terrible 
 kambok soon sent them bleeding and trembling and 
 rubbing shoulders, and the oxen, mildly but persistently 
 goring their recalcitrating haunches, the intelligent 
 animals went ahead, and revenged themselves by 
 breaking the harness. But that goes for little in Cape 
 travel. 
 
 The body of the wagon was long and low and very 
 stout. The tilt strong and tight-made. The roof inside, 
 and most of the sides, lined with green baize. Curtains 
 of the same to the little window and the back. There 
 was a sort of hold literally built full of purchases ; a small 
 fireproof safe ; huge blocks of salt ; saws, axes, pick- 
 axes, adzes, flails, tools innumerable, bales of wool and 
 linen stuff, hams, and two hundred empty sacks strewn 
 over all. In large pigeon-holes fixed to the sides were 
 light goods, groceries, collars, glaring cotton handker- 
 chiefs for Phoebe's aboriginal domestics, since not every 
 year did she go to Cape Town, a twenty days' journey 
 by wagon : things dangled from the very roof ; but no 
 hard goods there, if you please, to batter one's head in a 
 spill. Outside were latticed grooves with tent, tent-poles,
 
 A SIMPLETON. 291 
 
 and rifles. Great pieces of cork, and bags of hay and 
 corn, hung dangling from mighty hooks — the latter to 
 feed the cattle, should they be compelled to camp out on 
 some sterile spot on the Veldt, and methinks to act as 
 buffers, should the whole concern roll down a nullah or 
 little precipice, no very uncommon incident in the blessed 
 region they must pass to reach Dale's Kloof. 
 
 Harness mended; fresh start. The Hottentots and 
 Kafir vociferated and yelled, and made the unearthly 
 row of a dozen wild beasts wrangling : the horses drew 
 the bullocks, they the wagon; it crawled and creaked, 
 and its appendages wobbled finely. 
 
 Slowly they creaked and wobbled past apricot hedges 
 and detached houses and huts, and got into an open 
 country without a tree, but here and there a stunted 
 camel-thorn. The soil was arid, and grew little food for 
 man or beast ; yet, b}^ a singular freak of nature, it put 
 forth abundantly things that here at home we find it 
 harder to raise than homely grass and oats ; the ground 
 was thickly clad with flowers of delightful hues ; pyra- 
 mids of snow or rose-color bordered the track ; j^ellow 
 and crimson stars bejewelled the ground, and a thousand 
 bulbous plants burst into all imaginable colors, and 
 spread a rainbow carpet to the foot of the violet hills ; 
 and all this glowed, and gleamed, and glittered in a sun 
 shining with incredible brightness and purity of light, 
 but, somehow, without giving a headache or making the 
 air sultry. 
 
 Christopher fell to gathering flowers, and interrogating 
 the past by means of them ; for he had studied botany : 
 the past gave him back some pitiably vague ideas. He 
 sighed. "Never mind," said he to Dick, and tapped his 
 forehead : " it is here : it is only locked up." 
 
 "All. right," said Dick; "nothing is lost when you 
 know where 'tis."
 
 202 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 "This is a beautiful country," suggested Christopher. 
 " It is all flowers. It is like the garden of — the garden 
 of — locked up." 
 
 "It is de — light — ful," replied the self-compelled 
 optimist sturdily. But here nature gave way ; he was 
 obliged to relieve his agricultural bile by getting into 
 the cart and complaining to his sister. " 'Twill take us 
 all our time to cure him. He have been bepraising this 
 here soil, which it is only fit to clean the women's kettles. 
 'T wouldn't feed three larks to an acre, I know ; no, nor 
 half so 'tiianyP 
 
 " Poor soul ! mayhap the flowers have took his eye. Sit 
 here a bit, Dick. I want to talk to you about a many 
 things." 
 
 While these two were conversing, Ucatella, who was 
 very fond of Phoebe, but abhorred wagons, stepped out 
 and stalked by the side, like an ostrich, a camelopard, or 
 a Taglioni ; nor did the effort with which she subdued 
 her stride to the pace of the procession appear : it was 
 Lhe poetry of walking. Christopher admired it a moment ; 
 i,)ut the noble expanse tempted him, and he strode forth 
 l,ke a giant, his lungs inflating in the glorious air, and 
 s )on left the wagon far behind. 
 
 The consequence was that when they came to a halt, 
 a.,.,id Dick and Phoebe got out to release and water the 
 cj»,ttle, there was Christopher's figure retiring into 
 space. 
 
 "Hanc rem segre tulit Phoebe," as my old friend Livy 
 would say. " Oh dear ! oh dear ! if he strays so far from 
 us, he will be eaten up at nightfall by jackals, or lions, 
 or something. One of you must go after him." 
 
 " Me go, missy," said Ucatella zealously, pleased with 
 an excuse for stretching her magnificent limbs. 
 
 " Ay, but mayhap he will not come back with you : 
 will he, Dick ? "
 
 A SIMPLETON. 293 
 
 " That he will, like a lamb." Dick wanted to look 
 after the cattle. 
 
 " Yuke, my girl," said Phoebe, " listen. He has been 
 a good friend of ours in trouble ; and now he is not quite 
 right here. So be very kind to him, but be sure and 
 bring him back, or keep him till we come." 
 
 " Me bring him back alive, certain sure," said Ucatella, 
 smiling from ear to ear. She started with a sudden glide, 
 like a boat taking the water, and appeared almost to 
 saunter away, so easy was the motion; but when you 
 looked at the ground she was covering, the stride, or 
 glide, or whatever it was, was amazing. 
 
 " She seem'd in walking to devour the way." 
 
 Christopher walked fast, but nothing like this ; and as 
 he stopped at times to botanize and gaze at the violet 
 hills, and interrogate the past, she came up with him 
 about five miles from the halting-place. 
 
 She laid her hand quietly on his shoulder, and said, 
 with a broad genial smile, and a musical chuckle, " Uca- 
 tella come for you. Missy want to speak you." 
 
 " Oh ! very well ; " and he turned back with her, 
 directly ; but she took him by the hand to make sure ; 
 and they marched back peaceably, in silence, and hand 
 in hand. But he looked and looked at her, and at last 
 he stopped dead short, and said, a little arrogantly, 
 " Come, I know you. You are not locked up ; " and he 
 inspected her point-blank. She stood like an antique 
 statue, and faced the examination. " You are ' the noble 
 savage,' " said he, having concluded his inspection. 
 
 "Nay," said she. "I be the housemaid." 
 
 " The housemaid ? " 
 
 "Iss, the housemaid, Ucatella. So come on." And 
 she drew him along, sore perplexed.
 
 294 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 They met the cavalcade a mile from the halting-place, 
 and Phoebe apologized a little to Christopher, " I hope 
 yovi'll excuse me, sir," said she, " but I am just for all 
 the world like a hen with her chickens ; if but one 
 strays, I'm all in a flutter till I get him back." 
 
 " Madam," said Christopher, " I am very unhappy at 
 the way things are locked up. Please tell me truly, is 
 this ' the housemaid,' or ' the noble savage ' ? " 
 
 '•'Well, she is both, if you go to that, and the best 
 creature ever breathed." 
 
 " Then she is ' the noble savage ' ? " 
 
 " Ay, so they call her, becavise she is black." 
 
 " Then, thank Heaven," said Christopher, " the past is 
 not all locked up." 
 
 That afternoon they stopped at an inn. But Dick 
 slept in the cart. At three in the morning they took 
 the road again, and creaked along supernaturally loud 
 under a purple firmament studded with huge stars, all 
 bright as moons, that lit the way quite clear, and showed 
 black things innumerable flitting to and fro ; these made 
 Phoebe shudder, but were no doubt harmless ; still Dick 
 carried his double rifle, and a revolver in his belt. 
 
 They made a fine march in the cool, until some slight 
 mists gathered, and then they halted and breakfasted 
 near a silvery kloof, and watered the cattle. While thus 
 employed, suddenly a golden tinge seemed to fall like a 
 lash on the vapors of night ; they scudded away directly, 
 as jackals before the lion; the stars paled, and with one 
 incredible bound, the mighty sun leaped into the horizon, 
 and rose into the sky. In a moment all the lesser lamps 
 of heaven were out, though late so glorious, and there 
 was nothing but one vast vaulted turquoise, and a great 
 flaming topaz mounting with eternal ardor to its 
 centre. 
 
 This did not escape Christopher. " What is this ? "
 
 A SIMPLETON. 295 
 
 said lie. " No twilight. The tropics ! " He managed 
 to dig that word out of the past in a moment. 
 
 At ten o'clock the sun was so hot that they halted, and 
 let the oxen loose till sun-down. Then they began to 
 climb the mountains. 
 
 The way was steep and rugged ; indeed, so rough in 
 places, that the cattle had to jump over the holes, and as 
 the wagon could not jump so cleverly, it jolted appall- 
 ingly, and many a scream issued forth. 
 
 'Near the summit, when the poor beasts were dead 
 beat, they got into clouds and storms, and the wind 
 rushed howling at them through the narrow pass with 
 such fury it flattened the horses' ears, and bade fair to 
 sweep the whole cavalcade to the plains below. 
 
 Christopher and Dick walked close behind, under the 
 lee of the wagon. Christopher said in Dick's ear, " D'ye 
 hear that ? Time to reef topsails, captain." 
 
 "It is time to do something j'^ said Dick. He took 
 advantage of a jutting rock, drew the wagon half behind 
 it and across the road, propped the wheels with stones, 
 and they all huddled to leeward, man and beast indis- 
 criminately. 
 
 " Ah ! " said Christopher, approvingly ; " we are lying 
 to : a very — proper — course." 
 
 They huddled and shivered three hours, and then the 
 sun leaped into the sky, and lo ! a transformation scene. 
 The cold clouds were first rosy fleeces, then golden ones, 
 then gold-dust, then gone ; the rain was big diamonds, 
 then crystal sparks, then gone ; the rocks and the bushes 
 sparkled with gem-like drops, and shone and smiled. 
 
 The shivering party bustled, and toasted the potent 
 luminary in hot coffee ; for Phoebe's wagon had a stove 
 and chimney; and then they yoked their miscellaneous 
 cattle again, and breasted the hill. With many a jump, 
 and bump, and jolt, and scream from inside, they reached
 
 296 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 the summit, and looked down on a vast slope, flowering 
 but arid, a region of gaudy sterility. 
 
 The descent was more tremendous than the ascent, 
 and Phcebe got out, and told Christopher she would 
 liever cross the ocean twice than this dreadful mountain 
 once. 
 
 The Hottentot with the reins was now bent like a bow 
 all the time, keeping the cattle from flowing diverse over 
 precipices, and the Kafir with his kambok was here, and 
 there, and everywhere, his whip flicking like a lancet, 
 and cracking like a horse-pistol, and the pair vied like 
 Apollo and Pan, not which could sing sweetest, but swear 
 loudest. Having the lofty hill for some hoars between 
 them and the sun, they bumped, and jolted, and stuck in 
 mud-holes, and flogged and swore the cattle out of them 
 again, till at last they got to the bottom, where ran a 
 turbid kloof or stream. It was fordable, but the recent 
 rains had licked away the slope ; so the existing bank 
 was two feet above the stream. Little recked the demon 
 drivers or the parched cattle ; in they plunged promiscu- 
 ously, with a flop like thunder, followed by an awful 
 splashing. The wagon stuck fast in the mud, the horses 
 tied themselves in a knot, and rolled about in the stream, 
 and the oxen drank imperturbably. 
 
 "Oh, the salt! the salt!" screamed Phcebe, and the 
 rocks re-echoed her lamentations. 
 
 The wagon was inextricable, the cattle done up, the 
 savages lazy, so they stayed for several hours. Chris- 
 topher botanized, but not alone. Phoebe drew Ucatella 
 apart, and explained to her that when a man is a little 
 wrong in the head, it makes a child of him : " So," said 
 she, " you must think he is your child, and never let him 
 out of your sight." 
 
 " All right," said the sable Juno, who spoke English 
 ridiculously well, and rapped out idioms; especially 
 " Come on," and " All right."
 
 A SIMPLETON. 297 
 
 About dusk, what the drivers had foreseen, though 
 they had not the sense to explain it, took place ; the 
 kloof dwindled to a mere gutter, and the wagon stuck 
 high and dry, Phoebe waved her handkerchief to Uca- 
 tella. Ucatella, who had dogged Christopher about four 
 hours without a word, now took his hand, and said, " My 
 child, missy wants us ; come on ; " and so led him unre- 
 sistingly. 
 
 The drivers, flogging like devils, cursing like troopers, 
 and yelling like hyenas gone mad, tried to get the wagon 
 off ; but it was fast as a rock. Then Dick and the Hot- 
 tentot put their shoulders to one wheel, and tried to 
 prise it up, while the Kaiir encouraged the cattle v/ith 
 his thong. Observing this, Christopher went in, with 
 his sable custodian at his heels, and heaved at the other 
 embedded wheel. The wagon was lifted directly, so that 
 the cattle tugged it out, and they got clear. On examin- 
 ation, the salt had just escaped. 
 
 Says Ucatella to Phoebe, a little ostentatiously, " My 
 child is strong and useful; make little missy a good 
 slave." 
 
 " A slave ! Heaven forbid ! " said Phoebe. " He'll be 
 a father to us all, once he gets his head back ; and I do 
 think it is coming — but very slow." 
 
 The next three days offered the ordinary incidents of 
 African travel, but nothing that operated much on Chris- 
 topher's mind, which is the true point of this narrative ; 
 and as there are many admirable books of African travel, 
 it is the more proper I should confine myself to what 
 may be called the relevant incidents of the journey. 
 
 On the sixth day from Cape Town, they came up with 
 a large wagon stuck in a mud-hole. There was quite a 
 party of Boers, Hottentots, Kafirs, round it, armed with 
 whips, shamboks, and oaths, lashing and cursing without 
 intermission, or any good effect; and there were *--h(»
 
 298 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 wretclied beasts straining in vain at their choking yokes, 
 moaning with anguish, trembling with terror, their poor 
 mihl eyes dilated with agony and fear, and often, when 
 the blows of the cruel shamboks cut open their bleeding 
 flesh, they bellowed to Heaven their miserable and vain 
 protest against this devil's work. 
 
 Then the past opened its stores, and lent Christopher 
 a word. 
 
 "Barbarians ! " he roared, and seized a gigantic Kafir 
 by the throat, just as his shambok descended for the 
 hundredth time. There was a mighty struggle, as of 
 two Titans ; dust flew round the combatants in a cloud ; 
 a whirling of big bodies, and down they both went with 
 an awful thud, the Saxon uppermost, by Nature's law. 
 
 The Kafir's companions, amazed at first, began to roll 
 their eyes and draw a knife or two ; but Dick ran for 
 ward, and said, " Don't hurt him : he is wrong hereP 
 
 This representation pacified them more readily than 
 one might have expected. Dick added hastily, "We'll 
 get you out of the hole oxir way, and cry quits." 
 • The proposal was favorably received, and the next 
 minute Christopher and Ucatella at one wheel, and Dick 
 and the Hottentot at the other, with no other help than 
 two pointed iron bars bought for their shepherds, had 
 effected what sixteen oxen could not. To do this Dick 
 Dale had bared his arm to the shoulder; it was a 
 stalwart limb, like his sister's, and he now held it out all 
 swollen and corded, and slapped it with his other hand. 
 " Look'ee here, you chaps," said he : " the worst use a man 
 can put that there to is to go cutting out a poor beast's 
 heart for not doing more than he can. You are good 
 fellows, you Kafirs ; but I think you have sworn never 
 to put your shoulder to a wheel. But, bless your poor 
 silly hearts, a little strength put on at the right place is 
 better than a deal at the wrong."
 
 A SIMPLETON. 299 
 
 " You hear that, you Kafir chaps ? " inquired Ucatella, 
 a little arrogantly — for a Kafir. 
 
 The Kafii'S, who had stood quite silent to imbibe these 
 remarks, bowed their heads with all the dignity and 
 politeness of Koman senators, Spanish grandees, etc. ; 
 and one of the party replied gravely, " The words of the 
 white man are always wise." 
 
 " And his arm blanked ^ strong," said Christopher's late 
 opponent, from whose mind, however, all resentment had 
 vanished. 
 
 Thus spake the Kafirs ; yet to this day never hath a 
 man of all their tribe put his shoulder to a wheel, so 
 strong is custom in South Africa; probably in all Africa; 
 since I remember St. Augustin found it stronger than he 
 liked, at Carthage. 
 
 Ucatella went to Phoebe, and said, " Missy, my child is 
 good and brave." 
 
 " Bother you and your child ! " said poor Phoebe. '* To 
 think of his flying at a giant like that, and you letting 
 of him. I'm all of a tremble from head to foot : " and 
 Phoebe relieved herself with a cry. 
 
 " Oh, missy ! " said Ucatella. 
 
 " There, never mind me. Do go and look after your 
 child, and keep him out of more mischief. I wish we 
 were safe at Dale's Kloof, I do." 
 
 Ucatella complied, and Avent botanizing with Dr. 
 Staines ; but that gentleman, in the course of his scien- 
 tific researches into camomile flowers and blasted heath, 
 which were all that lovely region afforded, suddenly suc- 
 cumbed and stretched out his limbs, and said, sleepily, 
 "Good-night — U — cat — ".and was off into the land of 
 Nod. 
 
 The wagon, which, by the way, had passed the larger 
 
 > I take this very useful expression from a delightful volume by Mr 
 Boyle.
 
 300 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 but slower vehicle, found him fast asleep, and Ucatella 
 standing by him as ordered, motionless and grand. 
 
 " Oh, dear ! what now ? " said Phoebe : but being a 
 sensible woman, though in the hen and chickens line, 
 she said, " 'Tis the fighting and the excitement. 'Twill 
 do him more good than harm, I think : " and she had 
 him bestowed in the wagon, and never disturbed him 
 night nor day. He slept thirty-six hours at a stretch ; 
 and when he awoke, she noticed a slight change in his 
 eye. He looked at her with an interest he had not 
 shown before, and said, "Madam, I know you." 
 
 '' Thank God for that," said Phoebe. 
 
 " You kept a little shop, in the other world." 
 
 Phoebe opened her eyes with some little alarm. 
 
 '* You understand — the world that is locked up — for 
 the present." 
 
 "Well, sir, so I did; and sold you milk and butter. 
 Don't you mind ? " 
 
 "No — the milk and butter — they are locked up." 
 
 The country became wilder, the signs of life miserably 
 sparse ; about every twenty miles the farmhouse or hut 
 of a degenerate Boer, whose children and slaves pigged 
 together, and all ran jostling, and the mistress screamed 
 in her shrill Dutch, and the Hottentots all chirped 
 together, and confusion reigned for want of method: 
 often they went miles, and saw nothing but a hut or 
 two, with a nude Hottentot eating flesh, burnt a little, 
 but not cooked, at the door ; and the kloofs became 
 deeper and more turbid, and Phoebe was in an agony 
 about her salt, and Christopher advised her to break it 
 in big lumps, and hang it all about the wagon in sacks ; 
 and she did, and Ucatella said profoundly, " My child is 
 wise ; " and they began to draw near home, and Phoebe 
 to fidget ; and she said to Christopher, " Oh, dear ! I 
 hope they are all alive and well : once you leave home,
 
 A SIMPLETON. 301 
 
 you don't know what may have happened by then you 
 come back. One comfort, I've got Sophy: she is very 
 dependable, and no beauty, thank my stars." 
 
 That night, the last they had to travel, was cloudy, for 
 a wonder, and they groped with lanterns. 
 
 Ucatella and her child brought up the rear. Presently 
 there was a light pattering behind them. The swift- 
 eared Ucatella clutched Christopher's arm, and turning 
 round, pointed back, with eyeballs white and rolling. 
 There were full a dozen animals following them, whose 
 bodies seemed colorless as shadows, but their eyes little 
 balls of flaming lime-light. 
 
 " Gun ! " said Christie, and gave the Kafir's arm a 
 pinch. She flew to the caravan ; he walked backwards, 
 facing the foe. The wagon was halted, and Dick ran 
 back with two loaded rifles. In his haste he gave one 
 to Christopher, and repented at leisure ; but Christopher 
 took it, and handled it like an experienced person, and 
 said, with delight, "Volunteer." But with this the 
 cautious animals had vanished like bubbles. But Dick 
 told Christopher they would be sure to come back ; he 
 ordered Ucatella into the wagon, and told her to warn 
 Phoebe not to be frightened if guns should be fired. 
 This soothing message brought Phoebe's white face out 
 between the curtains, and she implored them to get into 
 the wagon, and not tempt Providence. 
 
 '' Not till I have got thee a kaross of jackal's fur." 
 
 " I'll never wear it ! " said Phoebe violently, co divert 
 iiim from his purpose. 
 
 "Time will show," said Dick dryly. "These varmint 
 are on and of£ like shadows, and as cunning as Old Nick. 
 We two will walk on quite unconcerned like, and as soon 
 as ever the varmint are at our heels you give us the 
 office; and we'll pepper their fur — won't we, doctor?" 
 
 "We — will — pepper — their fur," said Christopher,
 
 302 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 repeating what to him was a lesson in the ancient and 
 venerable English tongue. 
 
 So they walked on expectant ; and by and by the four- 
 footed shadows with large lime-light eyes came stealing 
 on ; and Phoebe shrieked, and they vanished before the 
 men could draw a bead on them. 
 
 "Thou's no use at this work, Pheeb," said Dick. 
 "Shut thy eyes, and let us have Yuke." 
 
 " Iss, master : here I be." 
 
 " You can bleat like a lamb ; for I've heard ye." 
 
 " Iss, master. I bleats beautiful ; " and she showed 
 snowy teeth from ear to ear. 
 
 "Well, then, when the varmint are at our heels, draw 
 in thy woolly head, and bleat like a young lamb. They 
 won't turn from that, I know, the vagabonds." 
 
 Matters being thus prepared, they sauntered on ; but 
 the jackals were very wary. They came like shadows, 
 so departed — a great many times : but at last being 
 re-enforced, they lessened the distance, and got so close, 
 that Ucatella withdrew her head, and bleated faintly 
 inside the wagon. The men turned, levelling their rifles, 
 and found the troop within twenty yards of them. They 
 wheeled directly : but the four barrels poured their flame, 
 four loud reports startled the night, and one jackal lay 
 dead as a stone, another limped behind the flying crowd, 
 and one lay kicking. He was soon despatched, and both 
 carcasses flung over the patient oxen; and good-by 
 jackals for the rest of that journey. 
 
 Ucatella, with all a Kafir's love of fire-arms, clapped 
 her hands with delight. "My child shoots loud and 
 strong," said she. 
 
 " Ay, ay," replied Phoebe ; " they are all alike ; 
 wherever there's men, look for quarrelling and firing off. 
 We had only to sit quiet in the wagon." 
 
 "Ay," said Dick, "the cattle especially — for it is
 
 A SDIPLETON. 303 
 
 them the varmint were after — and let 'em eat my 
 Hottentots." 
 
 At this picture of the cattle inside the wagon, and 
 the jackals supping on cold Hottentot alongside, Phoebe, 
 who had no more humor than a cat, but a heart of gold, 
 shut up, and turned red with confusion at her false 
 estimate of the recent transaction in fur. 
 
 When the sun rose they found themselves in a tract 
 somewhat less arid and inhuman; and, at last, at the 
 rise of a gentle slope, they saw, half a mile before them, 
 a large farmhouse partly clad with creepers, and a little 
 plot of turf, the fruit of eternal watering ; item, a 
 flower-bed ; item, snow-white palings ; item, an air of 
 cleanliness and neatness scarcely known to those dirty 
 descendants of clean ancestors, the Boers. At some 
 distance a very large dam glittered in the sun, and a 
 troop of snow-white sheep were watering at it. 
 
 " England ! " cried Christopher. 
 
 " Ay, sir," said Phoebe ; " as nigh as man can make 
 it." But soon she began to fret : " Oh, dear ! where are 
 they all ? If it was me, I'd be at the door looking out. 
 Ah, there goes Yuke to rouse them up." 
 
 "Come, Pheeb, don't you fidget," said Dick kindly. 
 " Why, the lazy lot are scarce out of their beds by this 
 time." 
 
 " More shame for 'em. If they were away from me, 
 and coming home, I should be at the door day and night, 
 I know. Ah ! " 
 
 She uttered a scream of delight, for just then, out 
 came Ucatella, with little Tommy on her shoulder, and 
 danced along to meet her. As she came close, she raised 
 the chubby child high in the air, and he crowed ; and 
 then she lowered him to his mother, who rushed at him, 
 seized, and devoured him with a hundred inarticidate 
 cries of joy and love unspeakable.
 
 304 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 " Nature ! " said Christopher dogmatically, recog- 
 nizing an old acquaintance, and booking it as one more 
 conquest gained over the past. But there was too much 
 excitement over the cherub to attend to him. So he 
 watched the woman gravely, and began to moralize with 
 all his might. " This," said he, " is what we used to 
 call maternal love ; and all animals had it, and that is 
 why the noble savage went for him. It was very 
 good of you. Miss Savage," said the poor soul senten- 
 tiously. 
 
 " Good of her ! " cried Phoebe. " She is all goodness. 
 Savage, find me a Dutchwoman like her ! I'll give her a 
 good cuddle for it ; " and she took the Kafir round the 
 neck, and gave her a hearty kiss, and made the little boy 
 kiss her too. 
 
 At this moment out came a collie dog, hunting Ucatella 
 by scent alone, which process landed him headlong in 
 the group ; he gave loud barks of recognition, fawned 
 on Phcebe and Dick, smelt poor Christopher, gave a 
 growl of suspicion, and lurked about squinting, dissatis- 
 fied, and lowering his tail. 
 
 " Thou art wrong, lad, for once," said Dick ; " for he's 
 an old friend, and a good one." 
 
 " After the dog, perhaps some Christian will come to 
 welcome us," said poor Phoebe. 
 
 Obedient to the wish, out walked Sophy, the English 
 nurse, a scraggy woman, with a very cocked nose and 
 thin, pinched lips, and an air of respectability and pert- 
 ness mingled. She dropped a short courtesy, shot the 
 glance of a basilisk at Ucatella, and said stiffly, " You 
 are welcome home, ma'am." Then she took the little 
 boy as one having authority. Not that Phoebe would 
 have surrendered him ; but just then Mr. Falcon strolled 
 out, with a cigar in his mouth, and Phoebe, with her 
 heart in h^r mouth, flew to meet him. There was a
 
 A SIMPLETON. 305 
 
 rapturous conjugal embrace, followed by mutual in- 
 quiries ; and the wagon drew up at the door. Then, for 
 the first time, Falcon observed Staines, saw at once he 
 was a gentleman, and touched his hat to him, to which 
 Christopher responded in kind, and remembered he had 
 done so in the locked-up past. 
 
 Phoebe instantly drew her husband apart by the sleeve. 
 " Who do you think that is ? You'll never guess. 'Tis 
 the great doctor that saved Dick's life in England with 
 cutting of his throat. But, oh, my dear, he is not the 
 man he was. He is afflicted. Out of his mind partly. 
 Well, we must cure him, and square the account for Dick. 
 I'm a proud woman at finding him, and bringing him 
 here to make him all right again, I can tell you. Oh, I 
 am happy, I am happy. Little did I think to be so happy 
 as I am. And, my dear, I have brought you a whole sack- 
 ful of newspapers, old and new." 
 
 " That is a good girl. But tell me a little more about 
 him. What is his name ? " 
 
 " Christie." 
 
 '' Dr. Christie ? " 
 
 " No doubt. He wasn't an apothecary, or a chemist, 
 you may be sure, but a high doctor, and the cleverest 
 ever was or ever will be : and isn't it sad, love, to see 
 him brought down so ? My heart yearns for the poor 
 man : and then his wife — the sweetest, loveliest creature 
 you ever — oh ! " Phoebe stopped very short, for she 
 remembered something all of a sudden ; nor did she ever 
 again give Falcon a chance of knowing that the woman, 
 whose presence had so disturbed him, was this very Dr. 
 Christie's wife. " Curious ! " thought she to lierself, 
 *' the world to be so large, and yet so small : " then aloud, 
 " They are unpacking the wagon ; come, dear. I don't 
 think I have forgotten anything of yours. There's 
 cigars, and tobacco, and powder, and shot, and bullets, 
 20
 
 306 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 and everything to make you comfortable, as my duty 
 'tis ; and — oh, but I'm a happy woman." 
 
 Hottentots, big and little, clustered about the wagon. 
 Treasure after treasure was delivered with cries of 
 delight; the dogs found out it was a joyful time, and 
 barked about the wheeled treasury; and the place did 
 not quiet down till sunset. 
 
 A plain but tidy little room was given to Christopher, 
 and he slept there like a top. Next morning his nurse 
 called him up to help her water the grass. She led the 
 way with a tub on her head and two buckets in it. She 
 took him to the dam ; when she got there she took out 
 the buckets, left one on the bank, and gave the other to 
 Christie. She then went down the steps till the water 
 was up to her neck, and bade Christie fill the tub. He 
 poured eight bucketsful in. Then she came slowly out, 
 straight as an arrow, balancing this tub full on her head. 
 Then she held out her hands for the two buckets. Chris- 
 tie filled them, wondering, and gave them to her. She 
 took them like toy buckets, and glided slowly home with 
 this enormous weight, and never spilled a drop. Indeed, 
 the walk was more smooth and noble than ever, if possible. 
 
 When she reached the house, she hailed a Hottentot, 
 and it cost the man and Christopher a great effort of 
 strength to lower her tub between them. 
 
 " What a vertebral column you must have ! " said 
 Christopher. 
 
 " You must not speak bad words, my child," said she. 
 " Now, you water the grass and the flowers." She gave 
 him a watering-pot, and watched him maternally; but 
 did not put a hand to it. She evidently considered this 
 part of the business as child's play, and not a fit exercise 
 of her powers. 
 
 It was only by drowning that little oasis twice a day 
 that the grass was kept green and the flowers alive.
 
 A SIMPLETON. 307 
 
 She found him other jobs in course of the day, and 
 indeed he was always helping somebody or other, and 
 became quite ruddy, bronzed, and plump of cheek, and 
 wore a strange look of happiness, except at times when 
 he got apart, and tried to recall the distant past. Then 
 he would knit his brow, and looked perplexed and sad. 
 
 They were getting quite used to him, and he to them, 
 when one day he did not come in to dinner. Phoebe sent 
 out for him ; but they could not find him. 
 
 The sun set. Phoebe became greatly alarmed, and 
 even Dick was anxious. 
 
 They all turned out, with guns and dogs, and hunted 
 for him beneath the stars. 
 
 Just before daybreak Dick Dale saw a fire sparkle by 
 the side of a distant thicket. He went to it, and there 
 was Ucatella seated, calm and grand as antique statue, 
 and Cliristopher lying by her side, with a shawl thrown 
 over him. As Dale came hurriedly up, she put her 
 finger to her lips, and said, " My child sleeps. Do not 
 wake him. When he sleeps, he hunts the past, as Collie 
 hunts the springbok." 
 
 *' Here's a go," said Dick. Then, hearing a chuckle, 
 he looked up, and was aware of a comical appendage to 
 the scene. There hung, head downwards, from a branch, 
 a Kafir boy, who was, in fact, the brother of the stately 
 Ucatella, only went further into antiquity for his models 
 of deportment ; for, as she imitated the antique marbles, 
 he reproduced the habits of that epoch when man roosted, 
 and Avas arboreal. Wheel somersaults, and, above all, 
 swinging head downwards from a branch, Avere the 
 sweeteners of his existence. 
 
 " Oh ! yow are there, are you ? " said Dick. 
 
 " Iss," said Ucatella. " Tim good boy. Tim found 
 my child." 
 
 " Well," said Dick, " he has chosen a nice place. This
 
 308 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 is the clump the last lion came out of, at least they say 
 so. For my part, I never saw an African lion ; Falcon 
 says they've all took ship, and gone to England. How- 
 ever, I shall stay here with my rifle till daybreak. 'Tis 
 tempting Providence to lie down on the skirt of a wood 
 for Lord knows what to jump out on ye unawares." 
 
 Tim was sent home for Hottentots, and Christopher 
 was carried home, still sleeping, and laid on his own 
 bed. 
 
 He slept twenty-four hours more, and, when he was 
 fairly awake, a sort of mist seemed to clear away in 
 places, and he remembered things at random. He 
 remembered being at sea on the raft with the dead body ; 
 that picture was quite vivid to him. He remembered, 
 too, being in the hospital, and meeting Phoebe, and every 
 succeeding incident ; but as respected the more distant 
 past, he could not recall it by any effort of his will. His 
 mind could only go into that remoter past by material 
 stepping-stones ; and what stepping-stones he had about 
 him here led him back to general knowledge, but not to 
 his private history. 
 
 In this condition he puzzled them all strangely at the 
 farm ; his mind was alternately so clear and so obscure. 
 He would chat with Phoebe, and sometimes give her a 
 good practical hint ; but the next moment, helpless for 
 want of memory, that great faculty without which judg- 
 ment cannot act, having no material. 
 
 After some days of this, he had another great sleep. 
 It brought him back the distant past in chapters. His 
 wedding-day. His wife's face and dress upon that day. 
 His parting with her : his whole voyage out : but, strange 
 to say, it swept away one-half of that which he had 
 recovered at his last sleep, and he no longer remembered 
 clearly how he came to be at Dale's Kloof. 
 
 Thus his mind might be compared to one climbing a
 
 A SBIPLETON. 309 
 
 slippery place, who gains a foot or two, then slips back ; 
 but on the whole gains more than he loses. 
 
 He took a great liking to Falcon. That gentleman 
 had the art of pleasing, and the tact never to olfend. 
 
 Falcon affected to treat the poor soul's want of memory 
 as a common infirmity ; pretended he was himself very 
 often troubled in the same way, and advised him to read 
 the newspapers. " My good wife," said he, " has brought 
 me a whole file of the Cape Gazette. I'd read them if 
 I was you. The deuce is in it, if you don't rake up 
 something or other." 
 
 Christopher thanked him warmly for this : he got the 
 papers to his own little room, and had always one or two 
 in his pocket for reading. At first he found a good many 
 hard words that puzzled him ; and he borrowed a pencil 
 of Phoebe, and noted them down. Strange to say, the 
 words that puzzled him were always common words, 
 that his unaccountable memory had forgotten: a hard 
 word, he was sure to remember that. 
 
 One day he had to ask Falcon the meaning of " spend- 
 thrift." Falcon told him briefly. He could have illus- 
 trated the word by a striking example ; but he did not. 
 He added, in his polite way, " No fellow can understand 
 all the words in a newspaper. Now, here's a word in 
 mine — ' Anemometer ; ' who the deuce can understand 
 such a word ? " 
 
 " Oh, that is a common word enough," said poor 
 Christopher. "It means a machine for measuring the 
 force of the wind." 
 
 " Oh, indeed," said Falcon ; but did not believe a word 
 of it. 
 
 One sultry day Christopher had a violent headache, 
 and complained to Ucatella. She told Phoebe, and they 
 bound his brows with a wet handkerchief, and advised 
 him to keep in-doors. He sat down in the coolest part
 
 310 A SIMPLETON". 
 
 of the house, and held his head with his hands, for it 
 seemed as if it would explode into two great fragments. 
 
 All in a moment the sky was overcast with angry- 
 clouds, whirling this way and that. Huge drops of hail 
 pattered down, and the next minute came a tremendous 
 flash of lightning, accompanied, rather than followed, 
 by a crash of thunder close over their heads. 
 
 This was the opening. Down came a deluge out of 
 clouds that looked mountains of j)itch, and made the 
 day night but for the fast and furious strokes of light- 
 ning that fired the air. The scream of wind and awful 
 peals of thunder completed the horrors of the scene. 
 
 In the midst of this, by what agency I know no more 
 than science or a sheep does, something went off inside 
 Christopher's head, like a pistol-shot. He gave a sort of 
 scream, and dashed out into the weather. 
 
 Phoebe heard his scream and his flying footstep, and 
 uttered an ejaculation of fear. The whole household 
 was alarmed, and, under other circumstances, would have 
 followed him ; but you could not see ten yards. 
 
 A chill sense of impending misfortune settled on the 
 house, Phoebe threw her apron over her head, and 
 rocked in her chair. 
 
 Dick himself looked very grava 
 
 Ucatella would have tried to follow him ; but Dick 
 forbade her. " 'Tis no use," said he. " When it clears, 
 we that be men will go for him." 
 
 " Pray Heaven you may find him alive ! " 
 
 " I don't think but what we shall. There's nowhere 
 he can fall down to hurt himself, nor yet drown himself, 
 but our dam ; and he has not gone that way. But " — 
 
 "But what?" 
 
 " If we do find him, we must take him back to Cape 
 Town, before he does himself, or some one, a mischief. 
 Wliy, Phoebe, don't you see the man has gone raving 
 mad?"
 
 A SIMPLETON. 311 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 The electrified man rushed out into the storm, but he 
 scarcely felt it in his body ; the effect on his mind over- 
 powered hail-stones. The lightning seemed to light up 
 the past ; the mighty explosions of thunder seemed 
 cannon strokes knocking down a wall, and letting in his 
 Avhole life. 
 
 Six hours the storm raged, and, before it ended, he 
 had recovered nearly his whole past, except his voyage 
 with Captain Dodd — that, indeed, he never recovered — 
 and the things that happened to him in the hospital 
 before he met Phoebe Falcon and her brother: and as 
 soon as he had recovered his lost memory, his body began 
 to shiver at the hail and rain. He tried to find his way 
 home, but missed it ; not so much, however, but that he 
 recovered it as soon as it began to clear, and just as they 
 were coming out to look for him, he appeared before 
 them, dripping, shivering, very pale and worn, with the 
 handkerchief still about his head. 
 
 At sight of him, Dick slipped back to his sister, and 
 said, rather roughly, " There now, you may leave off cry- 
 ing : he is come home ; and to-morrow I take him to 
 Cape Town." 
 
 Christopher crept in, a dismal, sinister figure. 
 
 " Oh, sir," said Phoebe, " was this a day for a Christian 
 to be out in ? How could you go and frighten us so ? " 
 
 " Forgive me, madam," said Christopher humbly ; " I 
 was not myself." 
 
 " The best thing you can do now is to go to bed, and 
 let us send you up something warm."
 
 312 A SIMPLETOlsr. 
 
 *' You are very good," said Christoplier, aud retired 
 with the air of one too full of great amazing thoughts 
 to gossip. 
 
 He slept thirty hovirs at a stretch, and then, awaking 
 in the dead of night, he saw the past even more clear and 
 vivid ; he lighted his candle and began to grope in the 
 Cape Gazette. As to dates, he now remembered when 
 he had sailed from England, and also from Madeira. 
 Following up this clew, he found in the Gazette a notice 
 that H. M. ship Amphitrite had been spoken off the 
 Cape, and had reported the melancholy loss of a prom- 
 ising physician and man of science. Dr. Staines. 
 
 The account said every exertion had been made to 
 save him, but in vain. 
 
 Staines ground his teeth with rage at this. " Every 
 exertion ! the false-hearted curs. They left me to drov/n, 
 without one manly effort to save me. Curse them, and 
 curse all the world." 
 
 Pursuing his researches rapidly, he found a much 
 longer account of a raft picked up by Captain Dodd, 
 with a white man on it and a dead body, the white man 
 having on him a considerable sum in money and jewels. 
 
 Then a new anxiety chilled him. There was not a 
 word to identify him with Dr. Staines. The idea had 
 never occurred to the editor of the Cape Gazette. Still 
 less would it occur to any one in England. At this 
 moment his wife must be mourning for him. " Poor — 
 poor Rosa ! " 
 
 But perhaps the fatal news might not have reached 
 her. 
 
 That hope was dashed away as soon as found. Why. 
 these were all old newspajMvs. That gentlemanly man 
 who had lent them to him had said so. 
 
 Old ! yet they completed the year 1867. 
 
 He now tore through them for the dates alone, and
 
 A SIMPLETON. 313 
 
 soon found they went to 1868. Yet they were old papers. 
 He had sailed in May, 1867. 
 
 '' My God ! " he cried, in agony, " I ha\'t; lost a 
 
 YEAR." 
 
 This thought crushed him. By and by he began to 
 carry this awful idea into details. " My Rosa has worn 
 mourning for me, and put it off again. I am dead to 
 her, and to all the world." 
 
 He wept long and bitterly. 
 
 Those tears cleared his brain still more. For all that, 
 he was not yet himself ; at least, I doubt it ; his insanity, 
 driven from the intellect, fastened one lingering claw 
 into his moral nature, and hung on by it. His soul filled 
 with bitterness and a desire to be revenged on mankind 
 for their injustice, and this thought possessed hira more 
 than reason. 
 
 He joined the family at breakfast ; and never a word 
 all the time. But when he got up to go, he said, in a 
 strange, dogged way, as if it went against the grain, 
 " God bless the house that succors the af&icted." Then 
 he went out to brood alone. 
 
 "Dick," said Phoebe, "there's a change. I'll never 
 part with him : and look, there's Collie following him, 
 that never could abide him." 
 
 " Part with him ? " said Reginald. " Of course not. 
 He is a gentleman, and they are not so common in 
 Africa." 
 
 Dick, who hated Falcon, ignored this speech entirely, 
 and said, " Well, Pheeb, you and Collie are wiser than I 
 am. Take your OAvn way, and don't blame me if any- 
 thing happens." 
 
 Soon Christopher paid the penalty of returning reason. 
 He suffered all the poignant agony a great heart can 
 endure. 
 
 So this was his reward for his great act of self-denial
 
 314 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 in leaving his beloved wife. He had lost his patient; 
 he had lost the income from that patient; his wife was 
 worse off than before, and had doubtless suffered the 
 anguish of a loving heg-rt bereaved. His mind, which 
 now seemed more vigorous than ever, after its long rest, 
 placed her before his very eyes, pale, and worn with 
 grief, in her widow's cap. 
 
 At the picture, he cried like the rain. He could give 
 her joy, by writing ; but he could not prevent her from 
 suffering a whole year of misery. 
 
 Turning this over in connection with their poverty, 
 his evil genius whispered, "By this time she has -re- 
 ceived the six thousand pounds for your death. She 
 would never think of that ; but her father has : and 
 there is her comfort assured, in spite of the caitiffs who 
 left her husband to drown like a dog." 
 
 " I know my Eosa," he thought. " She has swooned 
 — ah, my poor darling — she has raved — she has wept," 
 he wept himself at the thought — " she has mourned 
 every indiscreet act, as if it was a crime. But she has 
 done all this. Her good and loving but shallow nature 
 is now at rest from the agonies of bereavement, and 
 nought remains but sad and tender regrets. She can 
 better endure that than poverty : cursed poverty, which 
 has brought her and me to this, and is the only real evil 
 in the world, but bodily pain." 
 
 Then came a struggle, that lasted a whole week, and 
 knitted his brows, and took the color from his cheek; 
 but it ended in the triumph of love and hate, over con- 
 science and common sense. His Eosa should not be 
 poor ; and he woiild cheat some of those contemptible 
 creatures called men, who had done him nothing but in- 
 justice, and at last had sacrificed his life like a rat's. 
 
 When the struggle was over, and the fatal resolution 
 taken, then he became calmer, less solitary, and more 
 sociable.
 
 A SEVIPLETON. 315 
 
 Phcebe, who was secretly watching him with a woman's 
 eye, observed this change in him, and, with benevolent 
 intentions, invited him one day to ride round the farm 
 with her. He consented readily. She showed him the 
 fields devoted to maize and wheat, and then the sheep- 
 folds. Tim's sheep were apparently deserted; but he 
 was discovered swinging head downwards from the branch 
 of a camel-thorn, and seeing him, it did strike one that 
 if he had had a tail he would have been swinging by 
 that. Phoebe called to him : he never answered, but set 
 off running to her, and landed himself under her nose 
 in a wheel somersault. 
 
 "I hope you are watching them, Tim," said his mis- 
 tress. 
 
 " Iss, missy, always washing 'em." 
 
 " Why, there's one straying towards the wood now." 
 
 " He not go far," said Tim coolly. The young monkey 
 stole off a little way, then fell flat, and uttered the cry 
 of a jackal, with startling precision. Back went the 
 sheep to his comrades post haste, and Tim effected a 
 somersault and a chuckle. 
 
 " You are a clever boy," said Phcebe. " So that is how 
 you manage them." 
 
 " Dat one way, miss}'," said Tim, not caring to reveal 
 all his resources at once. 
 
 Then Phoebe rode on, and showed Christopher the 
 ostrich pan. It was a large basin, a form the soil often 
 takes in these parts ; and in it strutted several full- 
 grown ostriches and their young, bred on the premises. 
 There was a little dam of water, and plenty of food 
 about. They were herded by a Kafir infant of about 
 six, black, glossy, fat, and clean, being in the water six 
 times a day. 
 
 Sometimes one of the older birds would show an incli- 
 nation to stray out of the pan. Then the infant rolled
 
 316 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 after lier, and tapped her ankles with a Avand. She in- 
 stantly came back, but without any loss of dignity, for 
 she strutted with her nose in the air, affecting com- 
 pletely to ignore the inferior little animal, that was 
 nevertheless controlling her movements. "There's a 
 farce," said Phoebe. "But you would not believe the 
 money they cost me, nor the money they bring me in. 
 Grain will not sell here for a quarter its value : and we 
 can't afford to send it to Cape Town, twenty days and 
 back ; but finery, that sells everywhere. I gather sixty 
 pounds the year off those poor fowls' backs — clear 
 profit." 
 
 She showed him the granary, and told him there wasn't 
 such another in Africa. This farm had belonged to one 
 of the old Dutch settlers, and that breed had been going 
 down this many a year. " You see, sir, Dick and I 
 being English, and not downright in want of money, we 
 can't bring ourselves to sell grain to the middlemen for 
 nothing, so we store it, hoping for better times, that 
 maybe will never come. Now I'll show you how the 
 dam is made." 
 
 They inspected the dam all round. " This is our best 
 friend of all," said she. " Without this the sun would 
 turn us all to tinder, — crops, flowers, beasts, and folk." 
 
 "Oh, indeed," said Staines. "Then it is a pity you 
 have not built it more scientifically. I must have a look 
 at this." 
 
 " Ay do, sir, and advise us if you see anything wrong. 
 But hark ! it is milking time. Come and see that." So 
 she led the way to some sheds, and there they found sev- 
 eral cows being milked, each by a little calf and a little 
 Hottentot at the same time, and both fighting and jos- 
 tling each other for the udder. Now and then a young 
 cow, unused to incongruous twins, would kick impatiently 
 at both animals and scatter them.
 
 A SIMPLETON". S17 
 
 " That is their way," said Phoebe : " they have got it 
 into their silly Hottentot heads as kye won't yield their 
 milk if the calf is taken away ; and it is no use arguing 
 with 'em ; they will have their own way ; but they are 
 very trusty and honest, poor things. We soon found 
 that out. When we came here first it was in a hired 
 wagon, and Hottentot drivers : so when we came to 
 settle I made ready for a bit of a wrangle. But my maid 
 Sophy, that is nurse now, and a great despiser of heath- 
 ens, she says, * Don't you trouble ; them nasty ignorant 
 blacks never charges more than their due.' *I for- 
 give 'em,' says I ; 'I wish all white folk was as nice.' 
 However, I did give them a trifle over, for luck: and 
 then they got together and chattered something near the 
 door, hand in hand. ' La, Sophy,' says I, ' what is up 
 now ? ' Says she, ' They are blessing of us. Things is 
 come to a pretty pass, for ignorant Muslinmen heathen 
 to be blessing Christian folk.' * Well,' says I, ' it Avon't 
 hurt us any.' ' I don't know,' says she. ' I don't want 
 the devil prayed over me.' So she cocked that long nose 
 of hers and followed it in a doors." 
 
 By this time they were near the house, and Phoebe 
 was obliged to come to her postscript, for the sake of 
 which, believe me, she had uttered every syllable of this 
 varied chat. " Well, sir," said she, affecting to proceed 
 without any considerable change of topic, "and how do 
 you find yourself ? Have you discovered the past ? " 
 
 " I have, madam. I remember every leading incident 
 of my life." 
 
 " And has it made you happier ? " said Phoebe softly. 
 
 " No," said Christopher gravely. " Memory has brought 
 me misery." 
 
 " I feared as much ; for you have lost your fine color, 
 and your eyes are hollow, and lines on your poor brow 
 that were not there before. Are you not sorry you have 
 discovered the past ? '*
 
 318 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 "'No, Mrs. Falcon. Give me the sovereign gift of 
 reason, with, all the torture it can inflict. I thank God 
 for returning memory, even with the misery it brings." 
 
 Phoebe was silent a long time : then she said in a low, 
 gentle voice, and with the indirectness of a truly femi- 
 nine nature, "I have plenty of writing-paper in the 
 house ; and the post goes south to-morrow, such as 'tis." 
 
 Christopher struggled with his misery, and trembled. 
 
 He was silent a long time. Then he said, "Xo. It 
 is her interest that I should be dead." 
 
 "Well, but, sir — take a thought." 
 
 "Not a word more, I implore you. I am the most 
 miserable man that ever breathed." As he spoke, two 
 bitter tears forced their way. 
 
 Phoebe cast a look of pity on him, and said no more ; 
 but she shook her head. Her plain common sense 
 revolted. 
 
 However, it did not follow he would be in the same 
 mind next Aveek : so she was in excellent spirits at her 
 protege's recovery, and very proud of her cure, and cele- 
 brated the event with a roaring supper, including an 
 English ham, and a bottle of port wine ; and, ten to one, 
 that was English too. 
 
 Dick Dale looked a little incredulous, but he did not 
 spare the ham any the more for that. 
 
 After supper, in a pause of conversation, Staines 
 turned to Dick, and said, rather abruptly, " Su2:)pose that 
 dam of yours were to burst and empty its contents, 
 would it not be a great misfortune to you ? " 
 
 " Misfortune, sir ! Don't talk of it. Why, it would 
 ruin us, beast and body." 
 
 " Well, it will burst, if it is not looked to." 
 
 " Dale's Kloof dam burst ! the biggest and strongest 
 for a hundred miles round." 
 
 " You deceive yourself. It is not scientifically built,
 
 A SIMPLETON. 319 
 
 to begin, and there is a cause at work tliat will infallibly 
 burst it, if not looked to in time." 
 
 "And what is that, sir?" 
 
 " The dam is full of crabs." 
 
 " So 'tis ; but what of them ? " 
 
 " I detected two of them that had perforated the dyke 
 from the wet side to the dry, and water was trickling 
 through the channel they had made. Noav, for me to 
 catch tAvo that had come right through, there must be a 
 great many at work honeycombing your dyke ; those 
 channels, once made, will be enlarged by the permeating 
 water, and a mere cupful of water forced into a dyke by 
 the great pressure of a heavy column has an expansive 
 power quite out of proportion to the quantity forced in. 
 Colossal dykes have been burst in this way with dis- 
 astrous effects. Indeed, it is only a question of time, 
 and I would not guarantee your dyke twelve hours. It 
 is full, too, with the heavy rains." 
 
 " Here's a go ! " said Dick, turning pale. " Well, if it 
 is to burst, it must." 
 
 " Why so ? You can make it safe in a few hours. 
 You have got a clumsy contrivance for letting off the 
 excess of water : let us go and relieve the dam at once 
 of two feet of water. That will make it safe for a day 
 or two, and to-morrow we will puddle it afresh, and 
 demolish those busy excavators." 
 
 He spoke with such authority and earnestness, that 
 they all got up from table ; a horn was blown that soon 
 brought the Hottentots, and they all proceeded to the 
 dam. With infinite difficulty they opened the waste 
 sluice, lowered the water two feet, and so drenched the 
 arid soil that in forty-eight hours flowers unknown 
 sprang up. 
 
 Next morning, under the doctor's orders, all the black 
 men and boys were diving with lumps of stiff clay and
 
 320 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 puddling the endangered wall with a thick wall of it. 
 This took all the people the whole day. 
 
 Next day the clay wall was carried two feet higher, 
 and then the doctor made them work on the other side 
 and buttress the dyke with supports so enormous as 
 seemed extravagant to Dick and Phoebe ; but, after all, 
 it was as well to be on the safe side, they thought : and 
 soon they were sure of it, for the whole work was hardly 
 finished when the news came in that the dyke of a 
 7:ieighboring Boer, ten miles off, had exploded like a 
 cannon, and emptied itself in five minutes, drowning 
 the farm-yard and floating the furniture, but leaving 
 them all to perish of drought; and indeed the Boer's 
 cart came every day, with empty barrels, for some time, 
 to beg water of the Dales. Ucatella pondered all this, 
 and said her doctor child was wise. 
 
 This brief excitement over, Staines went back to his 
 own gloomy thoughts, and they scarcely saw him, except 
 at supper-tiine. 
 
 One evening he surprised them all by asking if they 
 would add to all their kindness by lending him a horse, 
 and a spade, and a few pounds to go to the diamond 
 fields. 
 
 Dick Dale looked at his sister. She said, "We had 
 rather lend them you to go home with, sir, if you must 
 leave us ; but, dear heart, I was half in hopes — Dick 
 and I were talking it over only yesterday — that you 
 would go partners like with us ; ever since you saved the 
 dam." 
 
 " I have too little to offer for that, Mrs. Falcon ; and, 
 besides, I am driven into a corner. I must make money 
 quickly, or not at all : the diamonds are only three hun- 
 dred miles off : for heaven's sake, let me try my luck." 
 
 They tried to dissuade him, and told him not one in 
 fifty did any good at it.
 
 A SEMPLETON. 321 
 
 " Ay, but / shall," said he. " Great bad luck is f oL 
 lowed by great good luck, and I feel my turn is come. 
 Not that I rely on luck. An accident directed my at- 
 tention to the diamond a few years ago, and I read a 
 number of prime works upon the subject that told me of 
 things not known to the miners. It is clear, from the 
 Cape journals, that they are looking for diamonds in the 
 river only. Now, I am sure that is a mistake. Dia- 
 monds, like gold, have their matrix, and it is compara- 
 tively few gems that get washed into the river. I am 
 confident that I shall find the volcanic matrix, and per- 
 haps make iny fortune in a week or two." 
 
 When the dialogue took this turn, Reginald Falcon's 
 cheek began to flush, and his eyes to glitter. 
 
 Christopher continued : " You who have befriended me 
 so will not turn back, I am sure, when I have such a 
 chance before me ; and as for the small sum of money I 
 shall require, I will repay you some day, even if " — 
 
 " La, sir, don't talk so. If you put it that way, why, 
 the best horse we have, and fifty pounds in good English 
 gold, they are at your service to-morrow." 
 
 " And pick and spade to boot," said Dick, " and a 
 double rifle, for there are lions, and Lord knows what, 
 between this and the Vaal river." 
 
 " God bless you both ! " said Christopher. " I will 
 start to-morrow." 
 
 " And I'll go with you," said Reginald Falcon. 
 
 21
 
 322 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 " Heaven forbid ! " said Phoebe. " No, my dear, no 
 niorc diamonds for us. We never had but one, and it 
 brouglit us trouble." 
 
 " Nonsense, Phoebe," replied Palcon ; " it was not the 
 diamond's fault. You know I have often wanted to go 
 there, but you objected. You said you were afraid some 
 evil would befall me. But now Solomon himself is going 
 to the mines, let us have no more of that nonsense. We 
 will take our rifles and our pistols." 
 
 *' There — there — rifles and pistols," cried Phoebe; 
 "that shows." 
 
 " And we will be there in a week ; stay a month, and 
 home with our pockets full of diamonds." 
 
 " And find me dead of a broken heart." 
 
 "Broken fiddlestick! We have been parted longei 
 than that, and yet here we are all right." 
 
 " Ay, but the pitcher that goes too often to the well 
 gets broke at last. No, Eeginald, now I have tasted 
 three years' happiness and peace of mind, I cannot go 
 through what I used in England. Oh, doctor ! have you 
 the heart to part man and wife, that have never been a 
 day from each other all these years ? " 
 
 " Mrs. Falcon, I would not do it for all the diamonds 
 in Brazil. No, Mr. Falcon, I need hardly say how 
 charmed I should be to have your company : but that 
 is a pleasure I shall certainly deny myself, after what 
 your good wife has said. I owe her too much to cause 
 her a single pang." 
 
 "Doctor," said the charming Reginald, "you are a
 
 A SIMPLETON. 323 
 
 gentleman and side with tlie lady. Quite right. It adds 
 to my esteem, if possible. Make your mind easy ; I will 
 go alone. I am not a farmer. I am dead sick of this 
 monotonous life ; and, since I am compelled to speak my 
 mind, a little ashamed, as a gentleman, of living on my 
 Avife and her brother, and doing nothing for myself. So 
 I shall go to the Vaal river, and see a little life ; here 
 there's nothing but vegetation — and not much of that. 
 Not a word more, Phoebe, if you please. I am a good, 
 easy, affectionate husband, but I am a man, and not a 
 child to be tied to a woman's apron-strings, however 
 much I may love and respect her." 
 
 Dick put in his word : " Since you are so independent, 
 you can walk to the Vaal river. I can't spare a couple 
 of horses." 
 
 This hit the sybarite hard, and he cast a bitter glance 
 of hatred at his brother-in-law, and fell into a moody 
 silence. 
 
 But when he got Phoebe to himself, he descanted on 
 her selfishness, Dick's rudeness, and his own wounded 
 dignity, till he made her quite anxious he should have 
 his own way. She came to Staines, with red eyes, and 
 said, "Tell me, doctor, will there be any women up there 
 
 — to take care of you ? " 
 
 " Not a petticoat in the place, I believe. It is a very 
 rough life ; and how Falcon could think of leaving you 
 and sweet little Tommy, and tliis life of health, and 
 peace, and comfort — " 
 
 " Yet you do leave us, sir." 
 
 " I am the most unfortunate man upon the earth ; 
 Falcon is one of the happiest. Would I leave wife and 
 child to go there ? Ah me ! I am dead to those I love. 
 This is my one chance of seeing my darling again for 
 many a long year perhaps. Oh, I must not speak of her 
 
 — it unmans me. My good, kind friend, I'll tell you
 
 324 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 what to do. Wlien we are all at supper, let a horse be 
 saddled and left in the yard for me. I'll bid you all 
 good-night, and I'll put fifty miles between us before 
 morning. Even then he need not be told I am gone ; he 
 will not follow me." 
 
 " You are very good, sir," said Phoebe ; " but no. Too 
 much has been said. I can't have him humbled by my 
 brother, nor any one. He says I am selfish. Perhaps I 
 am ; though I never was called so. I can't bear he should 
 think me selfish. He ivill go, and so let us have no ill 
 blood about it. Since he is to go, of course I'd much 
 liever he should go with you than by himself. You are 
 sure there are no women up there — to take care of — 
 you — both ? You must be purse-bearer, sir, and look 
 to every penny. He is too generous when he has got 
 money to spend." 
 
 In short, Reginald had played so upon her heart, that 
 she now urged the joint expedition, only she asked a 
 delay of a day or two to equip them, and steel herself to 
 the separation. 
 
 Staines did not share those vague fears that overpow- 
 ered the wife, whose bitter experiences were unknown to 
 him ; but he felt uncomfortable at her condition — for 
 now she was often in tears — and he said all he could to 
 comfort her ; and he also advised her how to profit by 
 these terrible diamonds, in her way. He pointed out to 
 her that her farm lay right in the road to the diamonds, 
 yet the traffic all shunned her, passing twenty miles to 
 the westward. Said he, " You should profit by all your 
 resources. You have wood, a great rarity in Africa; 
 order a portable forge ; run up a building where miners 
 can sleep, another where they can feed; the grain you 
 have so wisely refused to sell, grind it into flour." 
 
 " Dear heart ! why, there's neither wind nor water to 
 turn a mill."
 
 A SIMPLETON. 325 
 
 "But there are oxen. I'll show you how to make an 
 ox-mill. Send your Cape cart into Cape Town for iron 
 lathes, for coffee and tea, and groceries by the hundred- 
 weight. The moment you are ready — for success depends 
 on the order in which we act — then prepare great boards, 
 and plant them twenty miles south. Write or paint on 
 them, very large, ' The nearest way to the Diamond Mines, 
 through Dale's Kloof, where is excellent accommodation 
 for man and beast. Tea, coffee, home-made bread, fresh 
 butter, etc., etc' Do this, and you will soon leave off 
 decrying diamonds. This is the sure way to coin them. 
 I myself take the doubtful way ; but I can't help it. I 
 am a dead man, and swift good fortune will give me life. 
 You can afford to go the slower road and the surer." 
 
 Then he drew her a model of an ox-mill, and of a 
 miner's dormitory, the partitions six feet six apart, so 
 that these very partitions formed the bedstead, the bed- 
 sacking being hooked to the uprights. He drew his 
 model for twenty bedrooms. 
 
 The portable forge and the ox-mill pleased Dick Dale 
 most, but the partitioned bedsteads charmed Phoebe. 
 She said, " Oh, doctor, how can one man's head hold so 
 many things ? If there's a man on earth I can trust my 
 husband with, 'tis you. But if things go cross up there, 
 promise me you will come back at once and cast in your 
 lot with us. We have got money and stock, and you 
 have got headpiece; we might do very well together. 
 Indeed, indeed we might. Promise me. Oh, do, please, 
 promise me ! " 
 
 "I promise you." 
 
 And on this understanding, Staines and Falcon were 
 equipped with rifles, pickaxe, shovels, waterproofs, and 
 full saddle-bags, and started, with many shakings of the 
 hand, and many teai'S from Phoebe, for tlie diamond 
 washings.
 
 326 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 Phcebe's tears at parting made Staines feel uncomfort- 
 able, and lie said so. 
 
 " Pooh, pooh ! " said Falcon, " crying for nothing does 
 a woman good." 
 
 Christopher stared at him. 
 
 Falcon's spirits rose as they proceeded. He was like 
 a boy let loose from school. His fluency and charm of 
 manner served, however, to cheer a singularly dreary 
 journey. 
 
 The travellers soon entered on a vast and forbidding 
 region, that wearied the eye ; at their feet a dull, rusty 
 carpet of dried grass and wild camomile, with pale-red 
 sand peeping through the burnt and scanty herbage. 
 On the low mounds, that looked like heaps of sifted 
 ashes, struggled now and then into sickliness a ragged, 
 twisted shrub. There were flowers too, but so sparse, 
 that they sparkled vainly in the colorless waste, which 
 stretched to the horizon. The farmhouses were twenty 
 miles apart, and nine out of ten of them were new ones 
 built by the Boers since they degenerated into white sav- 
 ages : mere huts, with domed kitchens behind them. In 
 the dwelling-house the whole family pigged together, with 
 raw flesh drying on the rafters, stinking skins in a corner, 
 parasitical vermin of all sorts blackening the floor, and 
 particularly a small, biting, and odoriferous tortoise, com- 
 pared with which the insect a London washerwoman 
 brings into your house in her basket, is a stroke with a 
 feather — and all this without the excuse of penury ; for 
 many of these were shepherd kings, sheared four thou-
 
 A SIMPLETON. 327 
 
 sand fleeces a year, and owned a hundred horses and 
 horned cattle. 
 
 These Boers are compelled, by unwritten law, to receive 
 travellers and water their cattle ; but our travellers, after 
 one or two experiences, ceased to trouble them ; for, 
 added to the dirt, the men were sullen, the women moody, 
 silent, brainless ; the whole reception churlish. Staines 
 detected in them an uneasy consciousness that they had 
 descended, in more ways than one, from a civilized race ; 
 and the superior bearing of a European seemed to remind 
 them Avliat they had been, and might have been, and were 
 not ; so, after an attempt or two, our adventurers avoided 
 the Boers, and tried the Kafirs. They found the savages 
 socially superior, though their moral character does not 
 rank high. 
 
 The Kafir cabins they entered were caves, lighted only 
 by the door, but deliciously cool, and quite clean; the 
 floors of puddled clay or ants' nests, and very clean. On 
 entering these cool retreats, the flies that had tormented 
 them shirked the cool grot, and buzzed off to the nearest 
 farm to batten on congenial foulness. On the fat, round, 
 glossy babies, not a speck of dirt, Avhereas the little 
 Boers were cakes thereof. The Kafir would meet them 
 at the door, his clean black face all smiles and welcome. 
 The women and grown girls would fling a spotless hand- 
 kerchief over their shoulders in a moment, and display 
 their snowy teeth, in unaffected joy at sight of an 
 Englishman. 
 
 At one of these huts, one evening, they met with 
 something St. Paul ranks above cleanliness even, viz., 
 Christianity. A neighboring lion had just eaten a 
 Hottentot /(zw^e de mieux; and these good Kafirs wanted 
 the Europeans not to go on at night and be eaten for 
 dessert. But they could not speak a word of English, 
 and pantomimic expression exists in theory alone. In
 
 328 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 vain the women held our travellers by the coat-tails, and 
 pointed to a distant wood. In vain Kafir pere went on 
 all-fours and growled sore. But at last a savage youth 
 ran to the kitchen — for they never cook in the liouse — 
 and came back with a brand, and sketched, on the wall 
 of the hut, a lion with a mane down to the ground, and 
 a saucer eye, not loving. The creature's paw rested on a 
 hat and coat and another fragment or two of a European. 
 The rest was fore-shortened, or else eaten. 
 
 The picture completed, the females looked, approved, 
 and raised a dismal howl. 
 
 " A lion on the road," said Christopher gravely. 
 
 Then the undaunted Falcon seized the charcoal, and 
 drew an Englishman in a theatrical attitude, left foot 
 well forward, firing a gun, and a lion rolling head over 
 heels like a buck rabbit, and blood squirting out of a hole 
 in his perforated carcass. 
 
 The savages saw, and exulted. They were so off their 
 guard as to confound representation with fact ; they danced 
 round the white warrior, and launched him to victory. 
 
 " Aha ! " said Falcon, " I took the shine out of their 
 lion, didn't I ? " 
 
 " You did : and once there was a sculptor who showed 
 a lion his marble group, a man trampling a lion, extract- 
 ing his tongue, and so on ; but report says it did not 
 convince the lion." 
 
 " Why, no ; a lion is not an ass. But, for your com- 
 fort, there are no lions in this part of the world. They 
 are myths. There were lions in Africa. But now they 
 are all at the Zoo. And I wish I was there too." 
 
 " In what character — of a discontented animal — with 
 every blessing ? They would not take you in ; too 
 common in England. Hallo! this is something new. 
 What lots of bushes ! We should not have much chance 
 with a lion here."
 
 A SIMPLETON. 329 
 
 " There are no lions : it is not the Zoo," said Falcon ; 
 but he spurred on faster. 
 
 The country, however, did not change its feature; 
 bushes and little acacias prevailed, and presently dark 
 forms began to glide across at intervals. 
 
 The travellers held their breath, and pushed on ; but 
 at last their horses flagged ; so they thought it best to 
 stop and light a fire and stand upon their guard. 
 
 They did so, and Falcon sat with his rifle cocked, while 
 Staines boiled coffee, and they drank it, and after two 
 hours' halt, pushed on ; and at last the bushes got more 
 scattered, and they were on the dreary plain again. 
 Falcon drew the rein, with a sigh of relief, and they 
 walked their horses side by side. 
 
 '' Well, what has become of the lions ? " said Falcon 
 jauntily. He turned in his saddle, and saw a large 
 animal stealing behind them with its belly to the very 
 eartk, and eyes hot coals ; he uttered an eldrich screech, 
 fired both barrels, with no more aim than a baby, and 
 spurred away, yelling like a demon. The animal fled 
 another way, in equal trepidation at those tongues of 
 flame and loud reports, and Christopher's horse reared 
 and plunged, and deposited him promptly on the sward; 
 but he held the bridle, mounted again, and rode after his 
 companion. A stern chase is a long chase ; and for that 
 or some other reason he could never catch him again till 
 sunrise. Being caught, he ignored the lioness, with cool 
 hauteur : he said he had ridden on to find comfortable 
 quarters : and craved thanks. 
 
 This was literally the only incident worth recording 
 that the companions met with in three hundred miles. 
 
 On the sixth day out, towards afternoon, they found 
 by inquiring they were near the diamond washings, and 
 the short route was pointed out by an exceptionally civil 
 Boer.
 
 330 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 But Christoplier's eye had lighted upon a sort of chain 
 of knolls, or little round hills, devoid of vegetation, and 
 he told Falcon he would like to inspect these, before 
 going farther. 
 
 " Oh," said the Boer, " they are not on my farm, thank 
 goodness! they are on my cousin Bulteel's;" and he 
 pointed to a large white house about four miles distant, 
 and quite off the road. Nevertheless, Staines insisted 
 on going to it. But first they made up to one of these 
 knolls, and examined it ; it was about thirty feet high, 
 and not a vestige of herbage on it ; the surface was 
 composed of sand and of lumps of gray limestone very 
 hard, diversified with lots of quartz, mica, and other old 
 formations. 
 
 Staines got to the top of it with some difficulty, and 
 examined the surface all over. He came down again, 
 and said, " All these little hills mark hot volcanic action 
 — why, they are like boiling earth-bubbles — which is 
 the very thing, under certain conditions, to turn carbon- 
 ate of lime into diamonds. Now here is plenty of lime- 
 stone unnaturally hard ; and being in a diamond country, 
 I can fancy no place more likely to be the matrix than 
 these earth-bubbles. Let us tether the horses, and use 
 our shovels." 
 
 They did so ; and found one or two common crystaL^ 
 and some jasper, and a piece of chalcedony all in little 
 bubbles, but no diamond. Falcon said it was wasting 
 time. 
 
 Just then the proprietor, a gigantic, pasty colonist, 
 came up, with his pipe, and stood calmly looking on. 
 Staines came down, and made a sort of apology. Bulteel 
 smiled quietly, and asked what harm they could do him, 
 raking that rubbish. " Rake it all avay, mine vriends," 
 said he : " ve shall thank you moch." 
 
 He then invited them languidly to his house. They
 
 A SIMPLETON. 331 
 
 went with him, and as he volunteered no more remarks, 
 they questioned him, and learned his father had been a 
 Hollander, and so had his vrow's. This accounted for 
 the size and comparative cleanliness of his place. It was 
 stuccoed with the lime of the country outside, and was 
 four times as large as the miserable farmhouses of the 
 degenerate Boers. For all this, the street door opened 
 on the principal room, and that room was kitchen and 
 parlor, only very large and wholesome. "But, Lord," 
 as poor dear Pepys used to blurt out — " to see how some 
 folk understand cleanliness ! " The floor was made of 
 powdered ants' nests, and smeared with fresh cow-dung 
 every day. Yet these people were the cleanest Boers in 
 the colony. 
 
 The vrow met them, with a snow-white collar and 
 cuffs of Hamburgh linen, and the brats had pasty faces 
 round as pumpkins, but shone with soap. The vrow was 
 also pasty-faced, but gentle, and welcomed them with a 
 smile, languid, but unequivocal. 
 
 The Hottentots took their horses, as a matter of course. 
 Their guns were put in a corner. A clean cloth was 
 spread, and they saw they were to sup and sleep there, 
 though the words of invitation were never spoken. 
 
 At supper, sun-dried flesh, cabbage, and a savory dish 
 the travellers returned to with gusto. Staines asked 
 what it was : the vrow told him — locusts. They had 
 stripped her garden, and filled her very rooms, and fallen 
 in heaps under her walls ; so she had pressed them, by 
 the million, into cakes, had salted them lightly, and 
 stored them, and they were excellent, baked. 
 
 After supper, the accomplished Reginald, observing a 
 wire guitar, tuned it with some difiiculty, and so twanged 
 it, and sang ditties to it, that the flabby giant's pasty 
 face wore a look of dreamy content over his everlasting 
 pipe ; and in the morning, after a silent breakfast, he
 
 332 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 said, " Mine vriends, stay here a year or two, and rake 
 in mine rubbish. Ven you are tired, here are springbok 
 and antelopes, and you can shoot mit your rifles, and ve 
 vil cook them, and you shall zing us zongs of Vaderland." 
 
 They thanked him heartily, and said they would stay 
 a few days, at all events. 
 
 The placid Boer went a-farming ; and the pair shoul- 
 dered their pick and shovel, and worked on their heap 
 all day, and found a number of pretty stones, but no 
 diamond. 
 
 " Come," said Falcon, " Ave must go to the river ; " and 
 Staines acquiesced. " I bow to experience," said he. 
 
 At the threshold they found two of the little Bulteels, 
 playing with pieces of quartz, crystal, etc., on the door- 
 stone. One of these stones caught Staines's eye directly. 
 It sparkled in a different way from the others : he exam- 
 ined it : it was the size of a white haricot bean, and one 
 side of it polished by friction. He looked at it, and 
 looked, and saw that it refracted the light. He felt 
 convinced it was a diamond. 
 
 "Give the boy a penny for it," said the ingenious 
 Falcon, on receiving the information. 
 
 " Oh ! " said Staines. " Take advantage of a child ? " 
 
 He borrowed it of the boy, and laid it on the table, 
 after supper. "Sir," said he, "this is what we were 
 raking in your kopjes for, and could not find it. It 
 belongs to little Hans. Will you sell it us ? We are 
 not experts, but we think it may be a diamond. We 
 will risk ten pounds on it." 
 
 " Ten pounds ! " said the farmer. " Nay, we rob not 
 travellers, mine vriend." 
 
 " But if it is a diamond, it is "worth a hundred. See 
 how it gains fire in the dusk." 
 
 In short, they forced the ten pounds on him, and next 
 day went to work on another kopje.
 
 A SIMPLETON. 333 
 
 But the simple farmer's conscience smote him. It 
 was a slack time; so he sent four Hottentots, with 
 shovels, to help these friendly maniacs. These worked 
 away gayly, and the white men set up a sorting table, 
 and sorted the stuff, and hammered the nodules, and at 
 last found a little stone as big as a pea that refracted the 
 iight. Staines showed this to the Hottentots, and their 
 quick eyes discovered two more that day, only smaller. 
 
 Next day, nothing but a splinter or two. 
 
 Then Staines determined to dig deeper, contrary to 
 the general impression. He gave his reason : " Diamonds 
 don't fall from the sky. They work up from the ground ; 
 and clearly the heat must be greater farther down." 
 
 Acting on this, they tried the next strata, but found it 
 entirely barren. After that, however, they came to a 
 fresh layer of carbonate, and here. Falcon hammering a 
 large lump of conglomerate, out leaped, all of a sudden, 
 a diamond big as a nut, that ran along the earth, gleam- 
 ing like a star. It had polished angles and natural 
 facets, and even a novice, with an eye in his head, could 
 see it was a diamond of the purest water. Staines and 
 Falcon shout.ed with delight, and made the blacks a 
 present on the spot. 
 
 They showed the prize, at night, and begged the fanner 
 to take to digging. There was ten times more money 
 beneath his soil than on it. 
 
 Not he. He was a farmer : did not believe in diamonds. 
 
 Two days afterwards, another great find. Seven small 
 diamonds. 
 
 Next day, a stone as large as a cob-nut, and with 
 strange and beautiful streaks. They carried it home to 
 dinner, and set it on the table, and told the family it 
 was worth a thousand pounds. Bulteel scarcely looked 
 at it; but the vrow trembled and all the young folk 
 glowered at it.
 
 334 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 In the middle of dinner, it exploded like a cracker, 
 and went literally into diamond-dust. 
 
 " Dere goes von tousand pounds," said Bulteel, with- 
 out moving a muscle. 
 
 Falcon swore. But Staines showed fortitude. "It 
 was laminated," said he, "and exposure to the air was 
 fatal." 
 
 Owing to the invaluable assistance of the Hottentots, 
 they had in less than a month collected four large stones 
 of pure water, and a wineglassful of small stones, when, 
 one fine day, going to work calmly after breakfast, they 
 found some tents pitched, and at least a score of dirty 
 diggers, bearded like the pard, at work on the ground. 
 Staines sent Falcon back to tell Bulteel, and suggest that 
 he should at once order them off, or, better still, make 
 terms with them. The phlegmatic Boer did neitlier. 
 
 In twenty-four hours it was too late. The place was 
 rushed. In other words, diggers swarmed to the spot, 
 with no idea of law but digger's law. 
 
 A thousand tents rose like mushrooms; and poor 
 Bulteel stood smoking, and staring amazed, at his own 
 door, and saw a veritable procession of wagons, Cape 
 carts, and powdered travellers file past him to take pos- 
 session of his hillocks. Him, the proprietor, they simply 
 ignored ; they had a committee who were to deal with 
 all obstructions, landlords and tenants included. They 
 themselves measured out Bulteel's farm into thirty-foot 
 claims, and went to work with shovel and pick. They 
 held Staines's claim sacred — that was diggers' law ; 
 but they confined it strictly to thirty feet square. 
 
 Had the friends resisted, their brains would have 
 been knocked out. However, they gained this, that 
 dealers poured in, and the market not being yet glutted, 
 the price was good. Staines sold a feAV of the small 
 stones for two hundred pounds. He showed one of the
 
 A SIMPLETON. 335 
 
 larger stones. The dealer's eye glittered, but lie offered 
 only three hundred pounds, and this was so wide of the 
 ascending scale, on which a stone of that importance is 
 priced, that Staines reserved it for sale at Cape Town. 
 
 Nevertheless, he afterwards doubted whether he had 
 not better have taken it; for the multitude of diggers 
 turned out such a prodigious number of diamonds at 
 Bulteel's pan, that a sort of panic fell on the market. 
 
 These dry diggings were a revelation to the world. 
 Men began to think the diamond perhaps was a com- 
 moner stone than any one had dreamed it to be. 
 
 As to the discovery of stones, Staines and Falcon lost 
 nothing by being confined to a thirty-foot claim. Com- 
 pelled to dig deeper, they got into a rich strata, where 
 they found garnets by the pint, and some small dia- 
 monds, and at last, one lucky day, their largest diamond. 
 It weighed thirty-seven carats, and was a rich yellow. 
 N'ow, when a diamond is clouded or off color, it is terri- 
 bly depreciated ; but a diamond with a positive color is 
 called a fancy stone, and ranks with the purest stones. 
 
 "I wish I had this in Cape Town," said Staines. 
 
 " Why, I'll take it to Cape Town, if you like," said 
 the changeable Falcon. 
 
 ** You will ? " said Christopher, surprised. 
 
 " Why not ? I'm not much of a digger. I can serve 
 our interest better by selling. I could get a thousand 
 pounds for this at Cape Town." 
 
 " We will talk of that quietly," said Christopher. 
 
 Now, the fact is. Falcon, as a digger, was not worth a 
 pin. He could not sort. His eyes Avould not bear the 
 blinding glare of a tropical sun upon lime and dazzling 
 bits of mica, quartz, crystal, white topaz, etc., in the 
 midst of which the true glint of the royal stone had to 
 be caught in a moment. He could not sort, and he had 
 not the heart to dig. The only way to make him earn
 
 336 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 liis half was to turn him into the travelling and selling 
 partner. 
 
 Christopher was too generous to tell him this ; but he 
 acted on it, and said he thought his was an excellent 
 proposal; indeed, he had better take all the diamonds 
 they had got to Dale's Kloof first, and show them to his 
 wife, for her consolation : " And perhaps," said he, " in a 
 matter of this importance, she will go to Cape Town 
 with you, and try the market there." 
 
 " All right," said Falcon. 
 
 He sat and brooded over the matter a long time, and 
 said, " Why make two bites of a cherry ? They will 
 only give us half the value at Cape Town ; why not go 
 by the steamer to England, before the London market 
 is glutted, and all the world finds out that diamonds are 
 as common as dirt ? " 
 
 "Go to England! What! without your wife? I'll 
 never be a party to that. Me part man and wife ! If 
 you knew my own story " — 
 
 " Why, who wants you ? " said Eeginald. " You don't 
 understand. Phoebe is dyiug to visit England again; 
 but she has got no excuse. If you like to give her one, 
 she will be much obliged to you, I can tell you." 
 
 " Oh, that is a very different matter. If Mrs. Falcon 
 can leave her farm " — 
 
 "Oh, that brute of a brother. of hers is a very honest 
 fellow, for that matter. She can trust the farm to him. 
 Besides, it is only a month's voyage by the mail steamer." 
 
 This suggestion of Falcon's set Christopher's heart 
 bounding, and his eyes glistening. But he restrained 
 himself, and said, " This takes me by surprise ; let me 
 smoke a pipe over it." 
 
 He not only did that, but he lay awake all night. 
 
 The fact is that for some time past, Christopher had 
 felt sharp twinges of conscience; and deep misgivings as
 
 A SIMPLETON. 337 
 
 to the course he had pursued in leaving his wife a single 
 day in the dark. Complete convalescence had cleared 
 his moral sentiments, and perhaps, after all, the discovery 
 of the diamonds had co-operated ; since now the insur- 
 ance money was no longer necessary to keep his wife 
 from starving. 
 
 " Ah ! " said he ; " faith is a great quality ; and how I 
 have lacked it ! " 
 
 To do him justice, he knew his wife's excitable nature, 
 and was not without fears of some disaster, should the 
 news be communicated to her unskilfully. 
 
 But this proposal of Falcon's made the way clearer. 
 Mrs. Falcon, though not a lady, had all a lady's delicacy, 
 and all a woman's tact and tenderness. He knew no one 
 in the world more fit to be trusted with the delicate task 
 of breaking to his Rosa that the grave, for once, was 
 baffled, and her husband lived. He now became quite 
 anxious for Falcon's departure, and ardently hoped that 
 Avorthy had not deceived himself as to Mrs. Falcon's 
 desire to visit England. 
 
 In short, it was settled that Falcon should start for 
 Dale's Kloof, taking with him the diamonds, believed to 
 be worth altogether three thousand pounds at Cape 
 Town, and nearly as much again in England, and a long 
 letter to Mrs. Falcon, in which Staines revealed his true 
 story, told her where to find his wife, or hear of her, 
 viz., at Kent Villa, Gravesend, and sketched an outline 
 of instructions as to the way, and cunning degrees, by 
 which the joyful news should be broken to her. With 
 this he sent a long letter to be given to Rosa herself, 
 but not till she should know all : and in this letter he 
 enclosed the ruby ring she had given him. Tliat ring 
 had never left his finger, by sea or land, in sickness or 
 health. 
 
 The letter to Rosa was sealed. The two letters nia^lc 
 22
 
 338 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 quite a packet ; for, in the letter to his beloved Eosa, he 
 told her everything that had befallen him. It was a 
 romance, and a picture of love ; a letter to lift a loving 
 woman to heaven, and almost reconcile her to all her 
 bereaved heart had suffered. 
 
 This letter, written with many tears from the heart 
 that had so suffered, and was now softened by good 
 fortune and bounding with joy, Staines entrusted to 
 Falcon, together with the other diamonds, and with many 
 warm shakings of the hand, started him on his way. 
 
 '' But mind, Falcon," said Christopher, " I shall expect 
 an answer from Mrs. Falcon in twenty days at farthest. 
 I do not feel so sure as you do that she wants to go to 
 England ; and, if not, I must write to Uncle Philip. Give 
 me your solemn promise, old fellow, an answer in twenty 
 days — if you have to send a Kafir on horseback." 
 
 " I give you my honor," said Falcon superbly. 
 
 " Send it to me at Bulteel's Farm." 
 
 " All right. ' Dr. Christie, Bulteel's Farm.' " 
 
 "Well — no. Why should I conceal my real name 
 any longer from such friends as you and your wife ? 
 Christie is short for Christopher — that is my Chris- 
 tian name; but my surname is Staines. Write to 
 'Dr. Staines.'" 
 
 " Dr. Staines ! " 
 
 "Yes. Did you ever hear of me ? " 
 
 Falcon wore a strange look. " I almost think I have. 
 Down at Gravesend, or somewhere." 
 
 " That is curious. Yes, I married my Kosa there ; 
 poor thing! God bless her; God comfort her. She 
 thinks me dead." 
 
 His voice trembled, he grasped Falcon's cold hand till 
 the latter winced again, and so they parted, and Falcon rode 
 off muttering, "Dr. Staines ! so then you are Dr. Staines.''
 
 A SIMPLETON. 339 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 Rosa Staines had youth on her side, and it is an old 
 saying that youth will not be denied. Youth struggled 
 with death for her, and won the battle. 
 
 But she came out of that terrible fight weak as a child. 
 The sweet pale face, the widow's cap, the suit of deep 
 black — it was long ere these came down from the sick- 
 room. And when they did, oh, the dead blank ! The 
 weary, listless life ! The days spent in sighs, and tears, 
 and desolation. Solitude ! solitude ! Her husband was 
 gone, and a strange woman played the mother to her 
 child before her eyes. 
 
 Uncle Philip was devotedly kind to her, and so was 
 her father ; but they could do nothing for her. 
 
 Months rolled on, and skinned the wound over. 
 Months could not heal. Her boy became dearer and 
 dearer, and it was from him came the first real drops of 
 comfort, however feeble. 
 
 She used to read her lost one's diary every day, and 
 worship, in deep sorrow, the mind she had scarcely 
 respected until it was too late. She searched in his 
 diary to find his will, and often she mourned that he had 
 written on it so few things she could obey. Her desire 
 to obey the dead, whom, living, she had often disobeyed, 
 was really simple and touching. She would mourn to 
 her father that there were so few commands to her in his 
 diary. " But," said she, " memory brings me back his 
 will in many things, and to obey is now the only sad 
 comfort I have." 
 
 It was in this spirit she now forced herself to keep
 
 340 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 accounts. No fear of her wearing stays now ; no 
 powder ; no trimmings ; no waste. 
 
 After the usual delay, her father told her she should 
 instruct a solicitor to apply to the insurance company for 
 the six thousand pounds. She refused with a burst of 
 agony. " The price of his life," she screamed. " Never ! 
 I'd live on bread and water sooner than touch that vile 
 money." 
 
 Her father remonstrated gently. But she was immov- 
 able. " No. It would be like consenting to his death." 
 
 Then Uncle Philip was sent for. 
 
 He set her child on her knee; and gave her a pen. 
 "Come," said he, sternly, "be a woman, and do your 
 duty to little Christie." 
 
 She kissed the boy, cried, and did her duty meekly. 
 But when the money was brought her, she flew to Uncle 
 Philip, and said, " There ! there ! " and threw it all 
 before him, and cried as if her heart would break. He 
 waited patiently, and asked her what he was to do with 
 all that : invest it ? 
 
 " Yes, yes ; for my little Christie." 
 
 " And pay you the interest quarterly." 
 
 "Oh, no, no. Dribble us out a little as we want it. 
 That is the way to be truly kind to a simpleton. I hate 
 that word." 
 
 " And suppose I run off with it ? Such confiding 
 geese as you corrupt a man." 
 
 "I shall never corrupt you. Crusty people are the 
 soul of honor." 
 
 " Crusty people ! " cried Philip, affecting amazement. 
 "Whatare they ?" 
 
 She bit her lip and colored a little ; but answered 
 adroitly, " They are people that pretend not to have good 
 hearts, but have the best in the world ; far better ones 
 than your smooth ones : that's crusty people."
 
 A SIMPLETON. 341 
 
 "Very well," said Philip; "and I'll tell you what sim- 
 pletons are. They are little transparent-looking creatures 
 that look shallow, but are as deep as Old Nick, and make 
 you love them in spite of your judgment. They are the 
 most artful of their sex ; for they always achieve its 
 great object, to be loved — the very thing that clever 
 women sometimes fail in." 
 
 " Well, and if we are not to be loved, why live at all — 
 such useless things as I am ? " said Kosa simply. 
 
 So Philip took charge of her money, and agreed to 
 help her save money for her little Christopher. Poverty 
 should never destroy him, as it had his father. 
 
 As months rolled on, she crept out into public a little ; 
 but always on foot, and a very little way from home. 
 
 Youth and sober life gradually restored her strength, 
 but not her color, nor her buoyancy. 
 
 Yet she was perhaps more beautiful than ever ; for a 
 holy sorrow chastened and sublimed her features : it was 
 now a sweet, angelic, pensive beauty, that interested 
 every feeling person at a glance. 
 
 She would visit no one ; but a twelvemonth after her 
 bereavement, she received a few chosen visitors. 
 
 One day a young gentleman called, and sent up his 
 card, " Lord Tadcaster," with a note from Lady Cicely 
 Treherne, full of kindly feeling. Uncle Philip had 
 reconciled her to Lady Cicely ; but they had never 
 met. 
 
 Mrs. Staines was much agitated at the very name of 
 Lord Tadcaster ; but she would not have missed seeing 
 him for the world. 
 
 She received him with her beautiful eyes wide open, 
 to drink in every lineament of one who had seen the 
 last of her Christopher. 
 
 Tadcaster was wonderfully improved : he had grown 
 six inches out at sea, and though still short, was not
 
 342 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 diminutive ; he was a small Apollo, a model of symmetry, 
 and had an engaging, girlish beauty, redeemed from 
 downright effeminacy by a golden mustache like silk, 
 and a tanned cheek that became him wonderfully. 
 
 He seemed dazzled at first by Mrs. Staines, but mur- 
 mured that Lady Cicely had told him to come, or he 
 would not have ventured. 
 
 "■ Who can be so welcome to me as you ? " said she, 
 and the tears came thick in her eyes directly. 
 
 Soon, he hardly knew how, he found himself talking 
 of Staines, and telling her what a favorite he was, and 
 all the clever things he had done. 
 
 The tears streamed down her cheeks, but she begged 
 him to go on telling her, and omit nothing. 
 
 He complied heartily, and was even so moved by the 
 telling of his friend's virtues, and her tears and sobs, 
 that he mingled his tears with hers. She rewarded him 
 by giving him her hand as she turned away her tearful 
 face to indulge the fresh burst of grief his sympathy 
 evoked. 
 
 When he was leaving, she said, in her simple way, 
 "Bless you" — "Come again," she said: "you have 
 done a poor widow good." 
 
 Lord Tadcaster was so interested and charmed, he 
 would gladly have come back next day to see her ; but 
 he restrained that extravagance, and waited a week. 
 
 Then he visited her again. He had observed the villa 
 was not rich in flowers, and he took her down a magnifi- 
 cent bouquet, cut from his father's hot-houses. At sight 
 of him, or at sight of it, or both, the color rose for 
 once in her pale cheek, and her pensive face wore a 
 sweet expression of satisfaction. She took his flowers, 
 and thanked him for them, and for coming to see her. 
 
 Soon they got on the only topic she cared for, and, in 
 the course of this second conversation, he took her into
 
 A SIMPLETON. 343 
 
 his confidence, and told her he owed everything to Dr. 
 Staines. ''' I was on the wrong road altogether, and he 
 put me right. To tell you the truth, I used to disobey 
 him now and then, while he was alive, and I was always 
 the worse for it ; now he is gone, I never disobey him. 
 I have written down a lot of wise, kind things he said 
 to me, and I never go against any one of them. I call it 
 my book of oracles. Dear me, I might have brought it 
 with me." 
 
 " Oh, yes ! why didn't you ? " rather reproachfully. 
 
 " I will bring it next time." 
 
 « Pray do." 
 
 Then she looked at him with her lovely swimming 
 eyes, and said tenderly, "And so here is another that 
 disobeyed him living, but obeys him dead. What will 
 you think when I tell you that I, his wife, who now 
 worship him when it is too late, often thwarted and 
 vexed him when he was alive ? " 
 
 " No, no. He told me you were an angel, and I believe 
 it." 
 
 " An angel ! a good-for-nothing, foolish woman, who 
 sees everything too late." 
 
 " Nobody else should say so before me," said the little 
 gentleman grandly. " I shall take his word before yours 
 on this one subject. If ever there was an angel, you are 
 one ; and oh, what would I give if I could but say or do 
 anything in the world to comfort you ! " 
 
 " You can do nothing for me, dear, but come and see 
 me often, and talk to me as you do — on the one sad 
 theme my broken heart has room for." 
 
 This invitation delighted Lord Tadcaster, and the 
 sweet word " dear," from her lovely lips, entered his 
 heart, and ran through all his veins like some rapturous 
 but dangerous elixir. He did not say to himself, " She 
 is a widow with a child, feels old with grief, and looks
 
 344 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 on me as a boy wlio has been kind to her." Such pru- 
 dence and wariness were hardly to be expected from his 
 age. He had admired her at first sight, very nearly 
 loved her at their first interview, and now this sweet 
 word opened a heavenly vista. The generous heart that 
 beat in his small frame burned to console her with a 
 life-long devotion and all the sweet offices of love. 
 
 He ordered his yacht to Gravesend — for he had become 
 a sailor — and then he called on Mrs. Staines, and told 
 her, with a sort of sheepish cunning, that now, as his 
 yacht liappened to be at Gravesend, he could come and 
 see her very often. He watched her timidly, to see how 
 she would take that proposition. 
 
 She said, with the utmost simplicity, "I'm very glad 
 of it." 
 
 Then he produced his oracles : and she devoured them. 
 Such precepts to Tadcaster as she could apply to her own 
 case she instantly noted in her memory, and they became 
 her law from that moment. 
 
 Then, in her simplicity, she said, "And I w^ill show 
 you some things, in his own handwriting, that may be 
 good for you ; but I can't show you the whole book : 
 some of it is sacred from every eye but his wife's. His 
 wife's ? Ah me ! his widow's." 
 
 Then she pointed out passages in the diary that she 
 thought might be for his good ; and he nestled to her 
 side, and followed her white finger with loving eyes, and 
 was in an elysium — which she would certainly have 
 put a stop to at that time, had she divined it. But all 
 wisdom does not come at once to an unguarded woman. 
 Eosa Staines was wiser about her husband than she had 
 been, but she had plenty to learn. 
 
 Lord Tadcaster anchored off Gravesend, and visited 
 Mrs. Staines nearly every day. She received him with 
 a pleasure that was not at all lively, but quite undis-
 
 A SIMPLETON. 345 
 
 guised. He could not doubt liis welcome ; for once, 
 when he came, she said to the servant, "Not at home," a 
 plain proof she did not wish his visit to be cut short by 
 any one else. 
 
 And so these visits and devoted attentions of every 
 kind went on unobserved by Lord Tadcaster's friends, 
 because Eosa would never go out, even with him ; but at 
 last Mr. Lusignan saw plainly how this would end, unless 
 he interfered. 
 
 AVell, he did not interfere ; on the contrary, he was 
 careful to avoid putting his daughter on her guard : he 
 said to himself, ''Lord Tadcaster does her good. I'm 
 afraid she would not marry him, if he was to ask her 
 now ; but in time she might. She likes him a great deal 
 better than any one else." 
 
 As for Philip, he was abroad for his own health, some- 
 what impaired by his long and faithful attendance oi? 
 Rosa. 
 
 So now Lord Tadcaster was in constant attendance on 
 Kosa. She was languid, but gentle and kind ; and, as 
 mourners, like invalids, are apt to be egotistical, she saw 
 nothing but that he was a comfort to her in her affliction. 
 
 While matters were so, the Earl of Miltshire, who 
 had long been sinking, died, and Tadcaster succeeded to 
 his honors and estates. 
 
 Rosa heard of it, and, thinking it was a great bereave- 
 ment, wrote him one of those exquisite letters of con- 
 dolence a lady alone can write. He took it to Lady 
 Cicely, and showed it her. She highly approved it. 
 
 He said, " The only thing — it makes me ashamed, I 
 do not feel my poor father's death more ; but you know 
 it has been so long expected." Then he was silent a 
 long time ; and then he asked her if such a woman as 
 that would not make him happy, if he could win her. 
 
 It was on her ladyship's tongue to say, " She did not
 
 346 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 make her first happy ; " hut she forbore, and said coldly, 
 that was maw than she could say. 
 
 Tadcaster seemed disappointed by that, and by and by 
 Cicely took herself to task. She asked herself what 
 were Tadcaster's chances in the lottery of wives. The 
 heavy army of scheming mothers, and the light cavalry 
 of artful daughters, rose before her cousinly and disin- 
 terested eyes, and she asked herself what chance poor 
 little Tadcaster would have of catching a true love, with 
 a hundred female artists manoeuvring, wheeling, ambus- 
 cading, and charging ujwn his wealth and titles. She 
 returned to the subject of her own accord, and told him 
 she saw but one objection to such a match : the lady had 
 a son by a man of rare merit and misfortune. Could 
 he, at his age, undertake to be a father to that son ? 
 " Othahwise," said Lady Cicely, '" mark my words, you 
 will quail over that poor child ; and you will have two 
 to quail with, because I shall be on her side." 
 
 Tadcaster declared to her that child should be quite 
 the opposite of a bone of contention. '' I have thought 
 of that," said he, " and I mean to be so kind to that boy, 
 I shall make her love me for that." 
 
 On these terms Lady Cicely gave her consent. 
 
 Then he asked her should he write, or ask her in 
 person. 
 
 Lady Cicely reflected. "If you write, I think she 
 will say no." 
 
 "But if I go?" 
 
 " Then, it will depend on how you do it. Eosa Staines 
 is a true mourner. Whatever you may think, I don't 
 believe the idea of a second union has ever entered her 
 head. But then she is very unselfish : and she likes 
 you better than any one else, I dare say. I don't tliink 
 your title or your money will weigh with her now. But, 
 if you show her your happiness depends on it, she may,
 
 A SIMPLETON. 347 
 
 perhaps, cwy and sob at the very idea of it, and then, 
 after all, say, 'Well, why not — if I can make the poor 
 soul happy ? ' " 
 
 So, on this advice, Tadcaster went down to Gravesend, 
 and Lady Cicely felt a certain self-satisfaction ; for, h(n- 
 well-meant interference having lost Rosa one husband, 
 she was pleased to think she had done something to 
 give her another. 
 
 Lord Tadcaster came to Rosa Staines; he found her 
 seated with her head upon her white hand, thinking 
 sadly of the past. 
 
 At sight of him in deep mourning, she started, and 
 said, " Oh ! " 
 
 Then she said tenderly, " We are of one color now," 
 and gave him her hand. 
 
 He sat down beside her, not knowing how to begin. 
 
 ".I am not Tadcaster now. I am Earl of Miltshire." 
 
 "Ah, yes; I forgot," said she indifferently. 
 
 " This is my first visit to any one in that character." 
 
 " Thank you." 
 
 " It is an awfully important visit to me. I could not 
 feel myself independent, and able to secure your com- 
 fort and little Christie's, without coming to the lady, the 
 only lady I ever saw, that — oh, Mrs. Staines — Rosa — 
 who could see you, as I have done — mingle his tears 
 with yours, as I have done, and not love you, and long 
 to offer you his love ? " 
 
 " Love ! to me, a broken-hearted woman, with nothing 
 to live for but his memory and his child." 
 
 She looked at him with a sort of scared amazement. 
 
 " His child shall be mine. His memory is almost as 
 dear to me as to you." 
 
 " Nonsense, child, nonsense ! " said she, almost sternly. 
 
 " Was he not my best friend ? Should I have the 
 health I enjoy, or even be alive, but for him ? Oh, IVlrs.
 
 348 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 Staines — E,osa, yon will not live all your life unmarried; 
 and who will love you as I do ? You are my first and 
 only love. My happiness depends on you." 
 
 " Your happiness depend on me ! Heaven forbid — a 
 woman of my age, that feels so old, old, old." 
 
 " You are not old ; you are young, and sad, and beauti- 
 ful, and my happiness depends on you." She began to 
 tremble a little. Then he kneeled at her knees, and im- 
 plored her, and his hot tears fell upon the hand she put 
 out to stop him, while she turned her head away, and 
 the tears began to run. 
 
 Oh ! never can the cold dissecting pen tell what rushes 
 over the heart that has loved and lost, when another true 
 love first kneels and implores for love, or pity, or any- 
 thing the bereaved can give.
 
 A SIAIPLETON. 349 
 
 CHAPTEK XXTII. 
 
 When Falcon went, luck seemed to desert their claim : 
 day after day went by without a find ; and the discov- 
 eries on every side made this the more mortifying. 
 
 By this time the diggers at Bulteel's pan were as mis- 
 cellaneous as the audience at Drury Lane Theatre, only 
 mixed more closely; the gallery folk and the stalls 
 worked cheek by jowl. Here a gentleman with an af- 
 fected lisp, and close by an honest fellow, who could not 
 deliver a sentence Avithout an oath, or some still more 
 horrible expletive that meant nothing at all in reality, 
 but served to make respectable flesh creep : interspersed 
 with these, Hottentots, Kafirs, and wild blue blacks 
 gayly clad in an ostrich feather, a scarlet ribbon, and a 
 Tower musket sold them by some good Christian for a 
 modern rifle. 
 
 On one side of Staines were two swells, who lay on 
 their backs and talked opera half the day, but seldom 
 condescended to work without finding a diamond of 
 some sort. 
 
 After a week's deplorable luck, his Kafir boy struck 
 work on account of a sore in his leg; the sore was due 
 to a very common cause, the burning sand had got into 
 a scratch, and festered. Staines, out of humanity, ex- 
 amined the sore ; and proceeding to clean it, before 
 bandaging, out popped a diamond worth forty pounds, 
 even in the depreciated market. Staines quietly pocketed 
 it, and bandaged the leg. This made him suspect his 
 blacks had been cheating him on a large scale, and he 
 borrowed Hans Bulteel to watch them, giving him a
 
 350 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 tliird, with wliicli Master Hans was mightily pleased. 
 But they covild only find small diamonds, and by this 
 time prodigious slices of luck were reported on every 
 side. Kafirs and Boers that Avould not dig, but traversed 
 large tracts of ground when the sun was shining, stumbled 
 over diamonds. One Boer pointed to a wagon and eight 
 oxen, and said that one lucky glance on the sand had 
 given him that lot : but day after day Staines returned 
 home, covered with dust, and almost blinded, yet with 
 little or nothing to show for it. 
 
 One evening, complaining of his change of luck, Bulteel 
 quietly proposed to him migration. " I am going," said 
 he resignedly : " and you can come with me." 
 
 " You leave your farm, sir ? Why, they pay you ten 
 shillings a claim, and that must make a large return; 
 the pan is fifteen acres." 
 
 "Yes, mine vriend," said the poor Hollander, "they 
 pay; but deir money it cost too dear. Vere is mine 
 peace ? Dis farm is six tousand acres. If de cursed 
 diamonds was farther off, den it vas veil. But dey are 
 too near. Once I could smoke in peace, and zleep. Now 
 diamonds is come, and zleep and peace is fled. Dere is 
 four tousand tents, and to each tent a dawg ; dat dawg 
 bark at four tousand other dawgs all night, and dey bark 
 at him and at each oder. Den de masters of de dawgs dey 
 get angry, and fire four tousand pistole at de four tousand 
 dawgs, and make my bed shake wid the trembling of 
 mine vrow. My vamily is with diamonds infected. Dey 
 vill not vork. Dey takes long valks, and always looks 
 on de ground. Mine childre shall be hump-backed, 
 round-shouldered, looking down for diamonds. Dey 
 shall forget Gott. He is on high : dere eyes are always 
 on de earth. De diggers found a diamond in mine plas- 
 ter of mine wall of mine house. Dat plaster vas lime- 
 stone; it come from dose kopjes de good Gott made in
 
 A SEMPLETON". 351 
 
 His anger against man for his vickedness. I zay so. 
 Dey not believe me. Dey tink dem abominable stones 
 grow in mine house, and break out in mine plaster like 
 de measle : dey vaunt to dig in mine wall, in mine gar- 
 den, in mine floor. One day dey shall dig in mine body. 
 I vill go. Better I love peace dan money. Here is 
 English company make me offer for mine varm. Dey 
 forgive de diamonds." 
 
 " You have not accepted it ? " cried Staines in alarm. 
 
 "No, but I vill. I have said I shall tink of it. Dat 
 is my vay. So I say yah." 
 
 " An English company ? They will cheat you without 
 mercy. No, they shall not, though, for I will have a 
 hand in the bargain." 
 
 He set to work directly, added up the value of the 
 claims, at ten shillings per mouth, and amazed the poor 
 Hollander by his statement of the value of those fifteen 
 acres, capitalized. 
 
 And to close this part of the subject, the obnoxious 
 diamonds obtained him three times as much as his father 
 had given for the whole six thousand acres. 
 
 The company got a great bargain, but Bulteel received 
 what for him was a large capital, and settling far to the 
 south, this lineal descendant of le philosophe sans le 
 savoir carried his godliness, his cleanliness, and his love 
 of peace, out of the turmoil, and was happier than ever, 
 since now he could compare his placid existence with 
 one year of noise and clamor. 
 
 But long before this, events more pertinent to my 
 story had occurred. 
 
 One day, a Hottentot came into Bulteel's farm and 
 went out among the diggers, till he found Staines. The 
 Hottentot was one employed at Dale's Kloof, and knew 
 him. He brought Staines a letter. 
 
 Staines opened the letter, and another letter fell out; 
 it was directed to "Reginald Falcon, Esq."
 
 352 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 "Why," thought Staines, "what a time this letter 
 must have been on the road ! So much for private mess- 
 engers." 
 
 The letter ran thus : — 
 
 Dear Sir, — This leaves us all well at Dale's Kloof, as I 
 hojje it shall find you and my dear husband at the diggings. 
 Sir, I am happy to say I have good news for you. When you 
 got well by God's mei'cy, I wrote to the doctor at the hospital 
 and told him so. I wrote unbeknown to you, because I had 
 promised him. Well, sir, he has written back to say you have 
 two hundred pounds in money, and a great many valuable 
 things, such as gold and jewels. They are all at the old bank 
 in Cape Town, and the cashier has seen you, and will deliver 
 them on demand. So that is the first of my good news, because 
 it is good news to you. But, dear sir, I think you will be 
 pleased to hear that Dick and I are thriving wonderfully, 
 tlianks to your good advice. The wooden house it is built, and 
 a great oven. But, sir, the traffic came almost before we were 
 ready, and the miners that call here, coming and going, every 
 day, you would not believe, likewise wagons and carts. It is 
 all bustle, morn till night, and dear Reginald will never be 
 dull here now ; I hope you will be so kind as tell him so, for 
 1 do long to see you both home again. 
 
 Sir, we are making our fortunes. The grain we could not 
 sell at a fair price, we sell as bread, and higher than in England 
 ever so much. Tea and coftee the same ; and the poor things 
 praise us, too, for being so moderate. So, sir, Dick bids me 
 say that we owe this to you, and if so be you are minded to 
 share, why nothing would please us better. Head-piece is 
 always worth money in these parts ; and if it hurts your pride 
 to be our partner without money, why you can throw in what 
 you have at the Cape, though we don't ask that. And, besides, 
 we are offered diamonds a bargain every day, but are afraid to 
 deal, for want of experience ; but if you were in it with us, j^ou 
 must know them well by this time, and we luight turn many a 
 good pound that way. Dear sir, I hope you will not be offended, 
 but I think this is the only way we have, Dick and I, to show 
 our respect and good-will.
 
 A SIMPLETON". 353 
 
 Dear sir, digging is hard work, and not fit for you and 
 Reginald, that are gentlemen, amongst a lot of rough fellows, 
 that their talk makes my hair stand on end, though I dare say 
 they mean no harm. 
 
 Your bedroom is always ready, sir. I never will let it to 
 any of them, hoping now to see you every day. You that 
 know everything, can guess how I long to see you both home. 
 My very good fortune seems not to taste like good fortune, 
 without those I love and esteem to share it. I shall count how 
 many days this letter will take to reach you, and then I shall 
 pray for your safety harder than ever, till the blessed hour 
 comes when I see my husband, and my good friend, never to 
 part again, I hojie, in this world. 
 
 I am sir, your dutiful servant and friend, 
 
 Ph(ebe Dale. 
 
 P.S. There is regular travelling to and from Cape Town, 
 and a post now to Pniel, but I thought it surest to send by one 
 that knows you. 
 
 Staines read this letter with great satisfaction. He 
 remembered his two hundred pounds, but his gold and 
 jewels puzzled him. Still it was good news, and pleased 
 him not a little. Phoebe's good fortune gratified him too, 
 and her offer of a partnership, especially in tlie purchase 
 of diamonds from returning diggers. He saw a large 
 fortune to be made; and wearied and disgusted with 
 recent ill-luck, blear-eyed and almost blinded with sort- 
 ing in the blazing sun, he resolved to go at once to Dale's 
 Kloof. Should Mrs. Falcon be gone to England with the 
 diamonds, he would stay there, and Eosa should come out 
 to him, or he would go and fetch her. 
 
 He went home, and washed himself, and told Bulteel 
 he had had good news, and should leave the diggings at 
 once. He gave him up the claim, and told him to sell 
 it by auction. It was worth two hundred pounds still. 
 The good people sympathized witli him, and ho started 
 within an hour. He left his pickaxe and shovel, and
 
 354 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 took only his double rifle, an admirable one, some ammu- 
 nition, including conical bullets and projectile shells 
 given him by Falcon, a bag full of carbuncles and garnets 
 he had collected for Ucatella, a few small diamonds, and 
 one hiindred pounds, — all that remained to him, since 
 he had been paying wages and other things for months, 
 and had given Falcon twenty for his journey. 
 
 He rode away and soon put twenty miles between him 
 and the diggings. 
 
 He came to a little store that bought diamonds and 
 sold groceries and tobacco. He haltered his horse to a 
 hook, and went in. He offered a small diamond for sale. 
 The master was out, and the assistant said there was a 
 glut of these small stones, he did not care to give money 
 for it. 
 
 "Well, give me three dozen cigars." 
 
 While they were chaffering, in walked a Hottentot, and 
 said, " Will you buy this ? " and laid a clear, glittering 
 stone on the counter, as large as a walnut. 
 
 " Yes," said the young man. " How much ? " 
 
 " Two hundred pounds." 
 
 "Two hundred pounds ! Let us look at it;" he exam- 
 ined it, and said he thought it was a diamond, but these 
 large stones were so deceitful, he dared not give two 
 hundred pounds. "Come again in an hour," said he, 
 " then the master will be in." 
 
 " No," said the Hottentot quietly, and walked out. 
 
 Staines, who had been literally perspiring at the sight 
 of this stone, mounted his horse and followed the man. 
 When he came up to him, he asked leave to examine the 
 gem. The Hottentot quietly assented. 
 
 Staines looked at it all over. It had a rough side and 
 a polished side, and the latter was of amazing softness 
 and lustre. It made him tremble. He said, "Look here, 
 I have only one hundred pounds in my pocket."
 
 A SIMPLETON. 355 
 
 The Hottentot shook his head. 
 
 " But if you will go back with me to Bulteel's farm, 
 I'll borrow the other hundred." 
 
 The Hottentot declined, and told him he could get four 
 hundred pounds for it by going back to Pniel. " But," 
 said he, " my face is turned so ; and when Squat turn his 
 face so, he going home. Kot can bear go the other way 
 then," and he held out his hand for the diamond. 
 
 Staines gave it him, and was in despair at seeing such 
 a prize so near, yet leaving him. 
 
 He made one more effort. " Well, but," said he, " how 
 far are you going this way ? " 
 
 "Ten days." 
 
 " Why, so am I. Come with me to Dale's Kloof, and 
 I will give the other hundred. See, I am in earnest, for 
 here is one hundred, at all events." 
 
 Staines made this proposal, trembling with excitement. 
 To his surprise and joy, the Hottentot assented, though 
 with an air of indifference ; and on these terms they be- 
 came fellow-travellers, and Staines gave him a cigar. 
 They went on side by side, and halted for the night forty 
 miles from Bulteel's farm. 
 
 They slept in a Boer's out-house, and the vrow was 
 civil, and lent Staines a jackal's skin. In the morning 
 he bought it for a diamond, a carbuncle, and a score of 
 garnets ; for a horrible thought had occurred to him, if 
 they stopped at any place where miners were, somebody 
 might buy the great diamond over his head. This fear, 
 and others, grew on him, and with all his philosophy he 
 went on thorns, and was the slave of the diamond. 
 
 He resolved to keep his Hottentot all to himself if 
 possible. He shot a springbok that crossed the road, 
 and they roasted a portion of the animal, and the Hotten- 
 tot carried some on with him. 
 
 Seeing he admired the riflC; Staines offered it him for
 
 356 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 the odd hundred pounds ; but though Squat's eye glittered 
 a moment, he declined. 
 
 rinding that they met too many diggers and carts, 
 Staines asked his Hottentot was there no nearer way to 
 reach that star, pointing to one he knew was just over 
 Dale's Kloof. 
 
 Oh, yes, he knew a nearer way, where there were trees, 
 and shade, and grass, and many beasts to shoot. 
 
 " Let us take that way," said Staines. 
 
 The Hottentot, ductile as wax, except about the price 
 of the diamond, assented calmly ; and next day they 
 diverged, and got into forest scenery, and their eyes were 
 soothed with green glades here and there, wherever the 
 clumps of trees sheltered the grass from the panting sun. 
 Animals abounded, and were tame. Staines, an excellent 
 marksman, shot the Hottentot his supper without any 
 trouble. 
 
 Sleeping in the wood, with not a creature near but 
 Squat, a sombre thought struck Staines. Suppose this 
 Hottentot should assassinate him for his money, who 
 would ever know ? The thought was horrible, and he 
 awoke with a start ten times that night. The Hottentot 
 slept like a stone, and never feared for his own life and 
 precious booty. Staines was compelled to own to himself 
 he had less faith in human goodness than the savage had. 
 He said to himself, "He is my superior. He is the master 
 of this dreadful diamond, and I am its slave." 
 
 Next day they went on till noon, and then they halted 
 at a really delightful spot; a silver kloof ran along a 
 bottom, and there was a little clump of three acacia-trees 
 that lowered their long tresses, pining for the stream, 
 and sometimes getting a cool grateful kiss from it when 
 the water was high. 
 
 They halted the horse, bathed in the stream, and lay 
 luxurious under the acacias. All was delicious languor 
 and enjoyment of life.
 
 A SIMPLETON. 357 
 
 The Hottentot made a fire, and burnt the remains of a 
 little sort of kangaroo Staines had shot him the evening 
 before ; but it did not suflBce his maw, and looking about 
 him, he saw three elands leisurely feeding about three 
 hundred yards off. They were cropping the rich herbage 
 close to the shelter of a wood. 
 
 The Hottentot suggested that this was an excellent 
 opportunity. He would borrow Staines's rifle, steal into 
 the wood, crawl on his belly close up to them, and send 
 a bullet through one. 
 
 Staines did not relish the proposal. He had seen the 
 savage's eye repeatedly gloat on the rifle, and was not 
 without hopes he might even yet relent, and give the 
 great diamond for the hundred pounds and this rifle : 
 and he was so demoralized by the diamond, and filled 
 with suspicion, that he feared the savage, if he once had 
 the rifle in his possession, might levant, and be seen no 
 more, in which case he, Staines, still the slave of the 
 diamond, might hang himself on the nearest tree, and so 
 secure his Rosa the insurance money, at all events. In 
 short, he had really diamond on the brain. 
 
 He hem'd and haw'd a little at Squat's proposal, and 
 then got out of it by saying, " That is not necessary. I 
 can shoot it from here." 
 
 " It is too far," objected Blacky. 
 
 " Too far ! This is an Enfield rifle. I could kill the 
 poor beast at three times that distance." 
 
 Blacky was amazed. " An Enfield rifle," said he, in 
 the soft musical murmur of his tribe, which is the one 
 charm of the poor Hottentot; "and shoot three times 
 so far." 
 
 "Yes," said Christopher. Then, seeing his compan- 
 ion's hesitation, he conceived a hope. " If I kill that 
 eland from here, will you give me the diamond for my 
 horse and the wonderful rifle? — no Hottentot has such 
 a rifle."
 
 368 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 Squat became cold directly. " The price of the dia- 
 mond is two hundred pounds." 
 
 Staines groaned with disappointment, and thought to 
 himself with rage, "Anybody but me would club the 
 rifle, give the obstinate black brute a stunner, and take 
 the diamond — God forgive me ! " 
 
 Says the Hottentot cunningly, "I can't think so far 
 as white man. Let me see the eland dead, and then I 
 shall know how far the rifle shoot." 
 
 " Very well," said Staines. But he felt sure the 
 savage only wanted his meal, and would never part with 
 the diamond, except for the odd money. 
 
 However, he loaded his left barrel with one of the 
 explosive projectiles Falcon had given him ; it was a 
 little fulminating shell with a steel point. It was with 
 this barrel he had shot the murcat overnight, and he had 
 found he shot better with this barrel than the other. 
 He loaded his left barrel then, saw the powder well up, 
 capped it and cut away a strip of the acacia with his 
 knife to see clear, and lying down in volunteer fashion, 
 elbow on ground, drew his' bead steadily on an eland 
 who presented him her broadside, her back being turned 
 to the wood. The sun shone on her soft coat, and never 
 was a fairer mark, the sportsman's deadly eye being in 
 the cool shade, the animal in the sun. 
 
 He aimed long and steadily. But just as he was about 
 to pull the trigger. Mind interposed, and he lowered the 
 deadly weapon. " Poor creature ! " he said, " I am going 
 to take her life — for what ? for a single meal. She is 
 as big as a pony ; and I am to lay her carcass on the 
 plain, that we may eat two pounds of it. This is how 
 the weasel kills the rabbit ; sucks an ounce of blood for 
 his food, and wastes the rest. So the demoralized sheep- 
 dog tears out the poor creature's kidneys, and wastes the 
 rest. Man, armed by science with such powers of slay^
 
 A SIMPLETON". 359 
 
 ing, should be less egotistical tlian weasels and perverted 
 sheep-dogs. I will not kill her. I will not lay that 
 beautiful body of hers low, and glaze those tender, loving 
 eyes that never gleamed with hate or rage at man, and 
 fix those innocent jaws that never bit the life out of 
 anything, not even of the grass she feeds on, and does it 
 more good than harm. Feed on, poor innocent. And 
 you be blanked ; you and your diamond, that I begin to 
 wish I had never seen ; for it would corrupt an angel." 
 
 Squat understood one word in ten, but he managed to 
 reply. " This is nonsense-talk," said he, gravely. " The 
 life is no bigger in that than in the murcat you shot last 
 shoot." 
 
 " No more it is," said Staines. " I am a fool. It is 
 come to this, then ; Kafirs teach us theology, and Hotten- 
 tots morality. I bow to my intellectual superior. I'll 
 shoot the eland." He raised his rifle again. 
 
 " No, no, no, no, no, no," murmured the Hottentot, in 
 a sweet voice scarcely audible, yet so keen in its entreaty, 
 that Staines turned hastily round to look at him. His 
 face was ashy, his teeth chattering, his limbs shaking. 
 Before Staines could ask him what was the matter, he 
 pointed through an aperture of the acacias into the 
 wood hard by the elands. Staines looked, and saw what 
 seemed to him like a very long dog, or some such animal, 
 crawling from tree to tree. He did not at all share the 
 terror of his companion, nor understand it. But a terri- 
 ble explanation followed. This creature, having got to 
 the skirt of the wood, expanded, by some strange magic, 
 to an incredible size, and sprang into the open, with a 
 growl, a mighty lion; he seemed to ricochet from the 
 ground, so immense was his second bound, that carried 
 him to the eland, and he struck her one blow on the 
 head with his terrible paw, and felled her as if with a 
 thunderbolt: down went her body, with all the legs
 
 360 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 doubled, and her poor head turned over, and the nose 
 kissed the ground. The lion stood motionless. Pres- 
 ently the eland, who was not dead, but stunned, began 
 to recover and struggle feebly up. Then the lion sprang 
 on her with a roar, and rolled her over, and with two 
 tremendous bites and a shake, tore her entrails out and 
 laid her dying. He sat composedly down, and contem- 
 plated her last convulsions, without touching her again. 
 
 At this roar, though not loud, the horse, though he 
 had never heard or seen a lion, trembled, and pulled at 
 his halter. 
 
 Blacky crept into the water ; and Staines was struck 
 with such an awe as he had never felt. Nevertheless, 
 the king of beasts being at a distance, and occupied, and 
 Staines a brave man, and out of sight, he kept his ground 
 and watched, and by those means saw a sight never to 
 be forgotten. The lion rose up, and stood in the sun 
 incredibly beautiful as well as terrible. He was not the 
 mangy hue of the caged lion, but a skin tawny, golden, 
 glossy as a race-horse, and of exquisite tint that shone 
 like pure gold in the sun ; his eye a lustrous jewel of 
 richest hue, and his mane sublime. He looked towards 
 the wood, and uttered a full roar. This was so tremen- 
 dous that the horse shook all over as if in an ague, and 
 began to lather. Staines recoiled, and his flesh crept, 
 and the Hottentot went under water, and did not emerge 
 for ever so long. 
 
 After a pause, the lion roared again, and all the beasts 
 and birds of prey seemed to know the meaning of that 
 terrible roar. Till then the place had been a solitude, 
 but now it began to fill in the strangest way, as if the 
 lord of the forest could call all his subjects together 
 w^ith a trumpet roar : first came two lion cubs, to whom, 
 in fact, the roar had been addressed. The lion rubbed 
 himself several times against the eland, but did not eat
 
 A SIMPLETON. 361 
 
 a morsel, and the cubs went in and feasted on the prey. 
 The lion politely and paternally drew back, and watched 
 the young people enjoying themselves. 
 
 Meantime approached, on tiptoe, jackals and hyenas, 
 but dared not come too near. Slate-colored ^ixltures 
 settled at a little distance, but not a soul dared interfere 
 with the cubs; they saw the lion was acting sentinel, 
 and they knew better than come near. 
 
 After a time, papa feared for the digestion of those 
 brats, or else his own mouth watered ; for he came up, 
 knocked them head over heels with his velvet paw, and 
 they took the gentle hint, and ran into the wood double 
 quick. 
 
 Then the lion began tearing away at the eland, and 
 bolting huge morsels greedily. This made the rabble's 
 mouth water. The hyenas, and jackals, and vultures 
 formed a circle ludicrous to behold, and that circle kept 
 narrowing as the lion tore away at his prey. They 
 increased in number, and at last hunger overcame pru- 
 dence ; the rear rank shoved on the front, as amongst 
 men, and a general attack seemed imminent. 
 
 Then the lion looked up at these invaders, uttered a 
 reproachful growl, and went at them, patting them right 
 and left, and knocking them over. He never touched a 
 vulture, nor indeed did he kill an animal. He was 
 a lion, and only killed to eat ; yet he soon cleared the 
 place, because he knocked over a few hyenas and jackals, 
 and the rest, being active, tumbled over the vultures before 
 they could spread their heavy wings. After this warning, 
 they made a respectful circle again, through which, in 
 due course, the gorged lion stalked into the wood. 
 
 A savage's sentiments change quickly, and the Hotten- 
 tot, fearing little from a full lion, was now giggling at 
 Staines's side. Staines asked him which he thought was 
 the lord of all creatures, a man or a lion.
 
 362 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 "A lion," said Blacky, amazed at such a shallow 
 question. 
 
 Staines now got up, and proposed to continue their 
 journey. But Blacky was for waiting till the lion was 
 gone to sleep after his meal. 
 
 While they discussed the question, the lion burst out 
 of the wood within hearing of their voices, as his 
 pricked-up ears showed, and made straight for them at 
 a distance of scarcely thirty yards. 
 
 Now, the chances are, the lion knew nothing about 
 them, and only came to drink at the kloof, after his 
 meal, and perhaps lie under the acacias : but who can 
 think calmly, when his first lion bursts out on him a 
 few paces off ? Staines shouldered his rifle, took a hasty, 
 flurried aim, and sent a bullet at him. 
 
 If he had missed him, perhaps the report might have 
 turned the lion ; but he wounded him, and not mortally. 
 Instantly the enraged beast uttered a terrific roar, and 
 came at him with his mane distended with rage, his eyes 
 glaring, his mouth open, and his whole body dilated with 
 fury. 
 
 At that terrible moment, Staines recovered his wits 
 enough to see that what little chance he had was to fire 
 into the destroyer, not at him. He kneeled, and levelled 
 at the centre of the lion's chest, and not till he was 
 within five yards did he fire. Through the smoke he 
 saw the lion in the air above him, and rolled shrieking 
 into the stream and crawled like a worm under the bank, 
 by one motion, and there lay trembling. A few seconds 
 of sick stupor passed : all was silent. Had the lion lost 
 him ? Was it possible he might yet escape ? 
 
 All was silent. 
 
 He listened, in agony, for the sniffing of the lion, puz- 
 zling him out by scent. 
 
 No : all was silent.
 
 "M- ■■■■ 
 
 ■ ■ V ( ■•■, 
 
 . ,^; 
 
 v^ 
 
 
 •^ 
 
 
 NOT TILL HK WAS WITHIN' ITVE YARDS DID HE FIRE.
 
 A SIMPLETON. 363 
 
 Staines looked round, and saw a woolly head, and two 
 saucer eyes and open nostrils close by him. It was the 
 Hottentot, more dead than alive. 
 
 Staines whispered him, " I think he is gone." 
 
 The Hottentot whispered, '• Gone a little way to watch. 
 He is wise as well as strong." With this he disappeared 
 beneath the water. 
 
 Still no sound but the screaming of the vultures, and 
 snarling of the hyenas and jackals over the eland. 
 
 " Take a look," said Staines. 
 
 " Yes," said Squat ; " but not to-day. Wait here a day 
 or two. Den he forget and forgive." 
 
 Now Staines, having seen the lion lie down and watch 
 the dying eland, was a great deal impressed by this ; 
 and as he had now good hopes of saving his life, he 
 would not throw away a chance. He kept his head just 
 above water, and never moved. 
 
 In this freezing situation they remained. 
 
 Presently there was a rustling that made both crouch. 
 
 It was followed by a croaking noise. 
 
 Christopher made himself small. 
 
 The Hottentot, on the contrary, raised his head, and 
 ventured a little way into the stream. 
 
 By these means he saw it was something very foul, 
 but not terrible. It was a large vulture that had settled 
 on the very top of the nearest acacia. 
 
 At this the Hottentot got bolder still, and to the great 
 surprise of Staines began to crawl cautiously into some 
 rushes, and through them up the bank. 
 
 The next moment he burst into a mixture of yelling 
 and chirping and singing, and other sounds so manifestly 
 jubilant, that the vulture flapped hea^'ily away, and 
 Staines emerged in turn, but very cautiously. 
 
 Could he believe his eyes ? There lay the lion, dead 
 as a stone, on his back, with his four legs in the air, like
 
 364 A SBIPLETON. 
 
 wooden legs, they were so very dead : and the valiant 
 Squat, dancing about him, and on him, and over him. 
 
 Staines, unable to change his sentiments so quickly, 
 eyed even the dead body of the royal beast with awe and 
 wonder. What ! had he already laid that terrible mon- 
 arch low, and with a tube made in a London shop by men 
 who never saw a lion spring, nor heard his awful roar 
 shake the air ? He stood with his heart still beating, 
 and said not a word. The shallow Hottentot whipped 
 out a large knife, and began to skin the king of beasts. 
 Staines wondered he could so profane that masterpiece 
 of nature. He felt more inclined to thank God for so 
 great a preservation, and then pass reverently on, and 
 leave the dead king undesecrated. 
 
 He was roused from his solemn thoughts by the reflec- 
 tion that there might be a lioness about, since there were 
 cubs : he took a piece of paper, emptied his remaining 
 powder into it, and proceeded to dry it in the sun. This 
 was soon done, and then he loaded both barrels. 
 
 By this time the adroit Hottentot had flayed the car- 
 cass sufficiently to reveal the mortal injury. The pro- 
 jectile had entered the chest, and slanting upwards, had 
 burst among the vitals, reducing them to a gory pulp. 
 The lion must have died in the air, when he bounded on 
 receiving the fatal shot. 
 
 The Hottentot uttered a cry of admiration. " Not the 
 lion king of all, nor even the white man/' he said ; " but 
 Enfeel rifle ! " 
 
 Staines's eyes glittered. " You shall have it, and the 
 horse, for your diamond," said he eagerly. 
 
 The black seemed a little shaken ; but did not reply. 
 He got out of it by going on with his lion ; and Staines 
 eyed him, and was bitterly disappointed at not getting 
 the diamond even on these terms. He began to feel he 
 should never get it : they were near the high-road j he
 
 A SEVIPLETOK. 365 
 
 could not keep the Hottentot to himself much longer. 
 He felt sick at heart. He had wild and wicked thoughts ; 
 half hoped the lioness would come and kill the Hotten- 
 tot, and liberate the jewel that possessed his soul. 
 
 At last the skin was off, and the Hottentot said, " Me 
 take this to my kraal, and dey all say, ' Squat a great 
 shooter ; kill um lion.' " 
 
 Then Staines saw another chance for him, and sum- 
 moned all his address for a last effort. " No, Squat," 
 said he, *' that skin belongs to me. I shot the lion, with 
 the only rifle that can kill a lion like a cat. Yet you 
 would not give me a diamond — a paltry stone for it. 
 No, Squat, if you were to go into your village with that 
 lion's skin, why the old men would bend their heads to 
 you, and say, ' Great is Squat ! He killed the lion, and 
 wears his skin.' The young women would all fight which 
 should be the wife of Squat. Squat would be king of 
 the village." 
 
 Squat's eyes began to roll. 
 
 " And shall I give the skin, and the glory that is my 
 due, to an ill-natured fellow, who refuses me his paltry 
 diamond for a good horse — look at him — and for the 
 rifle that kills lions like rabbits — behold it ; and a hun- 
 dred pounds in good gold and Dutch notes — see ; and 
 for the lion's skin, and glory, and honor, and a rich wife, 
 and to be king of Africa ? Never ! " 
 
 The Hottentot's hands and toes began to work convul- 
 sively. " Good master, Squat ask pardon. Squat was 
 blind. Squat will give the diamond, the great diamond 
 of Africa, for the lion's skin, and the king rifle, and the 
 little horse, and the gold, and Dutch notes every one of 
 them. Dat make just two hundred pounds." 
 
 "More like four hundred," cried Staines very loud. 
 "And how do I know it is a diamond? These large 
 stones are the most deceitful. Show it me, this instant," 
 said he imperiously.
 
 366 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 "Iss, master," said the cruslied Hottentot^ with the 
 voice of a mouse, and put the stone into his hand with 
 a child-like faith that almost melted Staines ; but he 
 saw he must be firm. " Where did you find it ? " he 
 bawled. 
 
 "Master," said poor Squat, in deprecating tones, "my 
 little master at the farm wanted plaster. He send to 
 Bulteel's pan; dere was large lumps. Squat say to 
 miners, ' May we take de large lumps ? Dey say, ' Yes ; 
 take de cursed lumps we no can break.' We took de 
 cursed lumps. We ride 'em in de cart to farm twenty 
 milses. I beat 'em with my hammer. Dey is very hard. 
 More dey break my heart dan I break their cursed heads. 
 One day I use strong words, like white man, and I hit 
 one large lump too hard ; he break, and out come de 
 white clear stone. Iss, him diamond. Long time we 
 know him in our kraal, because he hard. Long time 
 before ever white man know him, tousand years ago, we 
 find him, and he make us lilly hole in big stone for make 
 wheat dust. Him a diamond, blank my eyes ! " 
 
 This was intended as a solemn form of asseveration 
 adapted to the white man's habits. 
 
 Yes, reader, he told the truth ; and strange to say, the 
 miners knew the largest stones were in these great lumps 
 of carbonate, but then the lumps were so cruelly hard, 
 they lost all patience with them, and so, finding it was 
 no use to break some of them, and not all, they rejected 
 them all, with curses; and thus this great stone was 
 carted away as rubbish from the mine, and found, like a 
 toad in a hole, by Squat. 
 
 " Well," said Christopher, " after all, you are an hon- 
 est fellow, and I think I will buy it ; but first you must 
 show me out of this wood ; I am not going to be eaten 
 alive in it for want of the king of rifles." 
 
 Squat assented eagerly, and they started at once.
 
 A SIMPLETON. 367 
 
 They passed the skeleton of the eland ; its very bones 
 were polished, and its head carried into the wood ; and 
 looking back they saw vultures busy on the lion. They 
 soon cleared the wood. 
 
 Squat handed Staines the diamond — when it touched 
 his hand, as his own, a bolt of ice seemed to run down 
 his back, and hot water to follow it — and the money, 
 horse, rifle, and skin were made over to Squat. 
 
 " Shake hands over it, Squat," said Staines ; " you are 
 hard, but you are honest." 
 
 " Iss, master, I a good much hard and honest/' said 
 Squat. 
 
 " Good-by, old fellow." 
 
 " Good-by, master." 
 
 And Squat strutted away, with the halter in his hand, 
 horse following him, rifle under his arm, and the lion's 
 skin over his shoulders, and the tail trailing, a figure sub- 
 lime in his own eyes, ridiculous in creation's. So vanity 
 triumphed, even in the wilds of Africa. 
 
 Staines hurried forward on foot, loading his revolver 
 as he went, for the very vicinity of the wood alarmed 
 him now that he had parted with his trusty rifle. 
 
 That night he lay down on the open veldt, in his 
 jackal's skin, with no weapon but his revolver, and woke 
 with a start a dozen times. Just before daybreak he 
 scanned the stars carefully, and noting exactly where 
 the sun rose, made a rough guess at his course, and fol- 
 lowed it till the sun was too hot ; then he crept under a 
 ragged bush, hung up his jackal's skin, and sweated 
 there, parched with thirst, and gnawed with hunger. 
 When it was cooler, he crept on, and found water, but no 
 food. He was in torture, and began to be frightened, 
 for he was in a desert. He found an ostrich egg and 
 ate it ravenously. 
 
 Next day, hunger took a new form, faintness. He
 
 368 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 could not walk for it ; his jackal's skin oppressed him ; 
 he lay down exhausted. A horror seized his dejected 
 soul. The diamond ! It would be his death. No man 
 must so long for any earthly thing as he had for this 
 glittering traitor. " Oh ! my good horse ! my trusty 
 rifle ! " he cried. " For what have I thrown you away ? 
 For starvation. Misers have been found stretched over 
 their gold; and some day my skeleton will be found, 
 and nothing to tell the base death I died of and de- 
 served ; nothing but the cursed diamond. Ay, fiend, 
 glare in my eyes, do ! " He felt delirium creeping over 
 him ; and at that a new terror froze him. His reason, 
 that he had lost once, was he to lose it again ? He 
 prayed; he wept; he dozed, and forgot all. When he 
 woke again, a cool air was fanning his cheeks ; it revived 
 him a little ; it became almost a breeze. 
 
 And this breeze, as it happened, carried on its wings 
 the curse of Africa. There loomed in the north-west a 
 cloud of singular density, that seemed to expand in size 
 as it drew nearer, yet to be still more solid, and darken 
 the air. It seemed a dust-storm. Staines took out his 
 handkerchief, prepared to wrap his face in it, not to be 
 stifled. 
 
 But soon there was a whirring and a whizzing, and 
 hundreds of locusts flew over his head ; they were fol- 
 lowed by thousands, the swiftest of the mighty host. 
 They thickened and thickened, till the air looked solid, 
 and even that glaring sun was blackened by the rushing 
 mass. Birds of all sorts whirled above, and swoojsed 
 among them. They peppered Staines all over like shot. 
 They stuck in his beard, and all over him ; they clogged 
 the bushes, carpeted the ground, while the darkened air 
 sang as with the whirl of machinery. Every bird in the 
 air, and beast of the field, granivorous or carnivorous, 
 was gorged with them ; and to these animals was added
 
 A SBIPLETON. 369 
 
 man, for Staines, being famished, and remembering the 
 vrow Bulteel, lighted a fire, and roasted a handful or 
 two on a flat stone ; they were delicious. The lire once 
 lighted, they cooked themselves, for they kept flying 
 into it. Three hours, without interruption, did they 
 darken nature, and, before the column ceased, all the 
 beasts of the field came after, gorging them so recklessly, 
 that Staines could have shot an antelope dead with his 
 pistol within a yard of him. 
 
 But to tell the horrible truth, the cooked locusts were 
 so nice that he preferred to gorge on them along with 
 the other animals. 
 
 He roasted another lot, for future use, and marched on 
 with a good heart. 
 
 But now he got on some rough, scrubby ground, and 
 damaged his shoes, and tore his trousers. 
 
 This lasted a terrible distance ; but at the end of it 
 came the usual arid ground ; and at last he came upon 
 the track of wheels and hoofs. He struck it at an acute 
 angle, and that showed him he had made a good line. 
 He limped along it a little way, slowly, being footsore. 
 
 By and by, looking back, he saw a lot of rough fellows 
 swaggering along behind him. Then he was alarmed, 
 terribly alarmed, for his diamond ; he tore a strip of his 
 handkerchief, and tied the stone cunningly under his 
 armpit as he hobbled on. 
 
 The men came up with him. 
 
 " Hallo, mate ! Come from the diggings ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " What luck ? " 
 
 " Very good." 
 
 " Haw ! haw ! What ! found a fifty -carat ? Show it 
 us." 
 
 " We found five big stones, my mate and me. He is 
 gone to Cape Town to sell them. I had no luck when 
 24
 
 370 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 he had left me, so I have cut it ; going to turn farmer. 
 Can you tell me how far it is to Dale's Kloof ? " 
 
 No, they could not tell him that. They swung on; 
 and, to Staines, their backs were a cordial, as we say in 
 Scotland. 
 
 However, his travels were near an end. Next morn- 
 ing he saw Dale's Kloof in the distance ; and as soon as 
 the heat moderated, he pushed on, with one shoe and 
 tattered trousers; and half an hour before sunset he 
 hobbled up to the place. 
 
 It was all bustle. Travellers at the door ; their wagons 
 and carts under a long shed. 
 
 Ucatella was the first to see him coming, and came 
 and fawned on him with delight. Her eyes glistened, 
 her teeth gleamed. She patted both his cheeks, and 
 then his shoulders, and even his knees, and then flew 
 in-doors crying, " My doctor child is come home ! " This 
 amused three travellers, and brought out Dick, with a 
 hearty welcome. 
 
 " But Lordsake, sir, why have you come afoot ; and a 
 rough road too ? Look at your shoes. Hallo ! What 
 is come of the horse ? " 
 
 " I exchanged him for a diamond." 
 
 " The deuce you did ! And the rifle ? " 
 
 " Exchanged that for the same diamond." 
 
 " It ought to be a big 'un." 
 
 " It is." 
 
 Dick made a wry face. " Well, sir, you know best. 
 You are welcome, on horse or afoot. You are just in 
 time ; Phoebe and me are just sitting down to dinner." 
 
 He took him into a little room they had built for their 
 own privacy, for they liked to be quiet now and then, 
 being country bred ; and Phoebe was putting their dinner 
 on the table, when Staines limped in. 
 
 She gave a joyful cry, and turned red all over. "Oh,
 
 A SIMPLETON. 371 
 
 doctor ! " Then his travel-torn appearance struck her. 
 " But, dear heart ! what a figure ! Where's Reginald ? 
 Oh, he's not far off, I know." 
 
 And she flung open the window, and almost flew 
 through it in a moment, to look for her husband. 
 
 " Reginald ? " said Staines. Then turning to Dick 
 Dale, " Why, he is here — isn't he ? " 
 
 " No, sir : not without he is just come with you." 
 
 " With me ? — no. You know we parted at the dig- 
 gings. Come, Mr. Dale, he may not be here now ; but 
 he has been here. He must have been here." 
 
 Phoebe, who had not lost a word, turned round, with 
 all her high color gone, and her cheeks getting paler and 
 paler. " Oh, Dick ! what is this ? " 
 
 " I don't understand it," said Dick. " Whatever made 
 you think he was here, sir ? " 
 
 " Why, I tell you he left me to come here." 
 
 " Left you, sir ! " faltered Phoebe. " Why, when ? — 
 where ? " 
 
 '' At the diggings — ever so long ago." 
 
 " Blank him ! that is just like him ; the uneasy fool ! " 
 roared Dick. 
 
 "No, Mr. Dale, you should not say that; he left me, 
 with my consent, to come to Mrs. Falcon here, and con- 
 sult her about disposing of our diamonds." 
 
 " Diamonds ! — diamonds ! " cried Phoebe. " Oh, they 
 make me tremble. How could you let him go alone ! 
 You didn't let him go on foot, I hope ? " 
 
 " Oh, no, Mrs. Falcon ; he had his horse, and his rifle, 
 and money to spend on the road." 
 
 " How long ago did he leave you, sir ? " 
 
 "I — I am sorry to say it was five weeks ago." 
 
 " Five weeks ! and not come yet. Ah ! the wild 
 beasts ! — the diggers ! — the murderers ! He is dead ! " 
 
 " God forbid ! " faltered Staines ; but his own blood 
 began to run cold.
 
 372 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 "He is dead. He has died between this and the 
 dreadful diamonds. I shall never see my darling again : 
 he is dead. He is dead." 
 
 She rushed out of the room, and out of the house, 
 throwing her arms above her head in despair, and 
 uttering those words of agony again and again in every 
 variety of anguish. 
 
 At such horrible moments women always swoon — if 
 we are to believe the dramatists. I doubt if there is one 
 grain of truth in this. Women seldom swoon at all, 
 unless their bodies are unhealthy, or weakened by the 
 reaction that follows so terrible a shock as this. At all 
 events, Phoebe, at first, was strong and wild as a lion, 
 and went to and fro outside the house, unconscious of 
 her body's motion, frenzied with agony, and but one 
 word on her lips, " He is dead ! — he is dead ! " 
 
 Dick followed her, crying like a child, but master of 
 himself; he got his people about her, and half carried 
 her in again ; then shut the door in all their faces. 
 
 He got the poor creature to sit down, and she began 
 to rock and moan, with her apron over her head, and 
 her brown hair loose about her. 
 
 " Why should he be dead ? " said Dick. " Don't give 
 a man up like that, Phoebe. Doctor, tell us more about 
 it. Oh, man, how could you let him out of your sight ? 
 You knew how fond the poor creature was of him." 
 
 " But that was it, Mr. Dale," said Staines. " I knew 
 his wife must pine for him ; and we had found six large 
 diamonds, and a handful of small ones ; but the market 
 was glutted ; and to get a better price, he wanted to go 
 straight to Cape Town. But I said, ' No ; go and show 
 them to your wife, and see whether she will go to Cape 
 Town.'" 
 
 Phoebe began to listen, as was evident by her moaning 
 more softly.
 
 A SIMPLETON. 373 
 
 " Might he not have gone straight to Cape Town ? " 
 Staines hazarded this timidly. 
 
 " Why should he do that, sir ? Dale's Kloof is on the 
 road." 
 
 " Only on one road. Mr. Dale, he was well armed, 
 with rifle and revolver; and I cautioned him not to 
 show a diamond on the road. Who would molest him ? 
 Diamonds don't show, like gold. Who was to know he 
 had three thousand pounds hidden under his armpits, 
 and in tAvo barrels of his revolver ? " 
 
 " Three thousand pounds ! " cried Dale. " You trusted 
 him with three thousand pounds ? " 
 
 " Certainly. They were worth about three thousand 
 pounds in Cape Town, and half as much again in " — 
 
 Phcfibe started up in a moment. " Thank God ! " she 
 cried. " There's hope for me. Oh, Dick, he is not dead : 
 
 HE HAS ONLY DESERTED ME." 
 
 And with these strange and pitiable words, she fell to 
 sobbing as if her great heart would burst at last.
 
 374 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 There came a reaction, and Phoebe was prostrated 
 with grief and alarm. Her brother never doubted now 
 that Reginakl had run to Cape Town for a lark. But 
 Phoebe, though she thought so too, could not be sure; 
 and so the double agony of bereavement and desertion 
 tortured her by turns, and almost together. For the first 
 time these many years, she was so crushed she could 
 not go about her business, but lay on a little sofa in her 
 own room, and had the blinds down, for her head ached 
 so she could not bear the light. 
 
 She conceived a bitter resentment against Staines ; 
 and told Dick never to let him into her sight, if he did 
 not want to be her death. 
 
 In vain Dick made excuses for him : she would hear 
 none. For once she was as unreasonable as any other 
 living woman : she could see nothing but that she had 
 been happy, after years of misery, and should be happy 
 now if this man had never entered her house. "Ah, 
 Collie ! " she cried, " you were wiser than I was. You 
 as good as told me he would make me smart for lodging 
 and curing him. And I was so happy ! " 
 
 Dale communicated this as delicately as he could to 
 Staines. Christopher was deeply grieved and wounded. 
 He thought it unjust, but he knew it was natural : he 
 said, humbly, " I feel guilty myself, Mr. Dale ; and yet, 
 unless I had possessed omniscience, what could I do ? I 
 thought of her in all — poor thing ! poor thing ! " 
 
 The tears were in his eyes, and Dick Dale went 
 away scratching his head and thinking it over. The
 
 A SIMPLETON. 375 
 
 more lie thought, the less he was inclined to condemn 
 him. 
 
 Staines himself was much troubled in mind, and lived 
 on thorns. He wanted to be off to England; grudged 
 every day, every hour, he spent in Africa. But Mrs. 
 Falcon was his benefactress; he had been, for months 
 and months, garnering up a heap of gratitude towards 
 her. He had not the heart to leave her bad friends, and 
 in misery. He kept hoping Falcon would return, or 
 write. 
 
 Two days after his return, he was seated, disconsolate, 
 gluing garnets and carbuncles on to a broad tapering bit 
 of lambskin, when Ucatella came to him and said, " My 
 doctor child sick ? " 
 
 '' No, not sick : but miserable." And he explained to 
 her, as well as he could, what had passed. " But," said 
 he, " I would not mind the loss of the diamonds now, if 
 I was only sure he was alive. I think most of poor, 
 poor Mrs. Falcon." 
 
 While Ucatella pondered this, but with one eye of 
 demure curiosity on the coronet he was making, he told 
 her it was for her — he had not forgot her at the mines. 
 
 " These stones," said he, " are not valued there ; but 
 see how glorious they are 1 " 
 
 In a few minutes he had finished the coronet, and gave 
 it her. She uttered a chuckle of delight, and with 
 instinctive art, bound it, in a turn of her hand, about 
 her brow ; and then Staines himself was struck dumb 
 with amazement. The carbuncles gathered from those 
 mines look like rubies, so full of fire are they, and of 
 enormous size. The chaplet had twelve great carbuncles 
 in the centre, and went off by gradations into smaller 
 garnets by the thousand. They flashed their blood-red 
 flames in the African sun, and the head of Ucatella, 
 grand before, became the head of the Sphinx, encircled
 
 376 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 with a coronet of fire. She bestowed a look of rapturous 
 gratitude on Staines, and then glided away, like the stately 
 Juno, to admire herself in the nearest glass like any other 
 coquette, black, brown, yellow, copper, or white. 
 
 That very day, towards sunset, she burst upon Staines 
 quite siiddenly, with her coronet gleaming on her magni- 
 ficent head, and her eyes like coals of fire, and under 
 her magnificent arm, hard as a rock, a boy kicking aud 
 struggling in vain. She was furiously excited, and, for 
 the first time, showed signs of the savage in the whites 
 of her eyes, which seemed to turn the glorious pupils 
 into semicircles. She clutched Staines by the shoulder 
 with her left hand, and swept along with the pair, like 
 dark Fate, or as potent justice sweeps away a pair of 
 culprits, and carried them to the little window, and cried 
 "Open — open !" 
 
 Dick Dale was at dinner ; Phoebe lying down. Dick 
 got up, rather crossly, and threw open the window. 
 " What is up now ? " said he crossly : he was like two 
 or three more Englishmen — hated to be bothered at 
 dinner-time. 
 
 "Dar," screamed Ucatella, setting down Tim, but 
 holding him tight by the shoulder ; " now you tell what 
 you see that night, you lilly Kafir trash ; if you not tell, 
 I kill you DEAD ; " and she showed the whites of her 
 eyes, like a wild beast. 
 
 Tim, thoroughly alarmed, quivered out that he had 
 seen lilly master ride up to the gate one bright night, 
 and look in, and Tim thought he was going in ; but he 
 changed his mind, and galloped away that way ; and the 
 monkey pointed south. 
 
 " And why couldn't you tell us this before ? " ques- 
 tioned Dick. 
 
 "Me mind de sheep," said Tim apologetically. "Me 
 not mind de lilly master: jackals not eat him."
 
 A SIMPLETON. 377 
 
 "You no more sense dan a sheep yourself," said 
 Ucatella loftily. 
 
 " No, no : God bless you both," cried poor Phoebe : 
 " now I know the worst : " and a great burst of tears 
 relieved her suffering heart. 
 
 Dick went out softly. When he got outside the door, 
 he drew them all apart, and said, " Yuke, you are a good- 
 hearted girl. I'll never forget this while I live ; and, 
 Tim, there's a shilling for thee ; but don't you go and 
 spend it in Cape smoke; that is poison to whites, and 
 destruction to blacks." 
 
 " No, master," said Tim. " I shall buy much bread, 
 and make my tomacli tiff ; " then, with a glance of 
 reproach aX, the domestic caterer, Ucatella, "I almost 
 never have my tomach tiff." 
 
 Dick left his sister alone an hour or two, to have her 
 cry out. 
 
 When he went back to her there was a change : the 
 brave woman no longer lay prostrate. She went about 
 her business ; only she was always either crying or 
 drowning her tears. 
 
 He brought Dr. Staines in. Phoebe instantly turned 
 her back on him with a shudder there was no mistaking. 
 
 "I had better go," said Staines. "Mrs. Falcon will 
 never forgive me." 
 
 "She will have to quarrel with me else," said Dick 
 steadily. " Sit you down, doctor. Honest folk like you 
 and me and Phoebe wasn't made to quarrel for want 
 of looking a thing all round. My sister she hasn't looked 
 it all round, and I have. Come, Pheeb, 'tis no use your 
 blinding yourself. How was the poor doctor to know 
 your husband is a blackguard ? " 
 
 " He is not a blackguard. How dare you say that to 
 my face ? " 
 
 "He is a blackguard^ and always was. And now ht
 
 378 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 is a tliief to boot. He has stolen those diamonds ; you 
 know that very welL" 
 
 " Gently, Mr. Dale ; you forget : they are as much his 
 as mine." 
 
 " Well, and if half a sheep is mine, and I take the 
 whole and sell him, and keep the money, what is that 
 but stealing ? Why, I wonder at you, Pheeb. You was 
 always honest yourself, and yet you see the doctor robbed 
 by your man, and that does not trouble you. What has 
 he done to deserve it ? He has been a good friend to us. 
 He has put us on the road. We did little more than 
 keep the pot boiling before he came — well, yes, we 
 stored grain ; but whose advice has turned that grain to 
 gold, I might say ? Well, what's his offence ? He 
 trusted the diamonds to your man, and sent him to you. 
 Is he the first honest man that has trusted a rogue ? 
 How was he to know ? Likely he judged the husband 
 by the wife. Answer me one thing, Pheeb. If he makes 
 away with fifteen hundred pounds that is his, or partly 
 yours — for he has eaten your bread ever since I knew 
 him — and fifteen hundred more that is the doctor's, 
 where shall we find fifteen hundred pounds, all in a 
 moment, to pay the doctor back his own ? " 
 
 " My honest friend," said Staines, " you are torment- 
 ing yourself with shadows. I don't believe Mr. Falcon 
 will wrong me of a shilling; and, if he does, I shall 
 quietly repay myself out of the big diamond. Yes, my 
 dear friends, I did not throw away your horse, nor your 
 rifle, nor your money: I gave them all, and the lion's 
 skin — I gave them all — for this." 
 
 And he laid the big diamond on the table. 
 
 It was as big as a walnut, and of the purest water. 
 
 Dick Dale glanced at it stupidly. Phoebe turned her 
 back on it, with a cry of horror, and then came slowly 
 round by degrees ; and her eyes were fascinated by the 
 royal gem.
 
 A SEVEPLETON. 379 
 
 " Yes," said Staines sadly, "I had to strip myself of 
 all to buy it, and, when I had got it, how proud I was, 
 and how happy I thought we should all be over it, for it 
 is half yours, half mine. Yes, Mr. Dale, there lies six 
 thousand pounds that belong to Mrs. Falcon." 
 
 " Six thousand pounds ! " cried Dick. 
 
 "I'm sure of it. And so, if your suspicions are cor- 
 rect, and poor Falcon should yield to a sudden tempta- 
 tion, and spend all that money, I shall just coolly deduct 
 it from your share of this wonderful stone : so make 
 your mind easy. But no ; if Falcon is really so wicked 
 as to desert his happy home, and so mad as to spend 
 thousands in a month or two, let us go and save him." 
 
 " That is my business," said Phoebe. " I am going in 
 the mail-cart to-morrow." 
 
 " Well, you won't go alone," said Dick. 
 
 " Mrs. Falcon," said Staines imploringly, " let me go 
 with you." 
 
 '' Thank you, sir. My brother can take care of me." 
 
 " Me ! You had better not take me. If I catch hold 
 
 of him, by I'll break his neck, or his back, or his 
 
 leg, or something ; he'll never run away from you again, 
 if I lay hands on him," replied Dick. 
 
 " I'll go alone. You are both against me." 
 
 "No, Mrs. Falcon; I am not," said Staines. "My 
 heart bleeds for you." 
 
 " Don't you demean yourself, praying her," said Dick. 
 " It's a public conveyance : you have no need to ask her 
 leave." 
 
 " That is true : I can't hinder folk from going to Cape 
 Town the same day," said Phoebe sullenly. 
 
 "If I might presume to advise, I would take little 
 Tommy." 
 
 " What ! all that road ? Do you want me to lose my 
 child, as well as my man ? "
 
 380 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 " Mrs. Falcon ! " 
 
 " Don't speak to her, doctor, to get your nose snapped 
 off. Give her time. She'll come to her senses before 
 she dies." 
 
 Next day Mrs. Falcon and Staines started for Cape 
 Town. Staines paid her every attention, when oppor- 
 tunity offered. But she was sullen and gloomy, and 
 held no converse with him. 
 
 He landed her at an inn, and then told her he would 
 go at once to the jeweller's. He asked her piteously 
 would she lend him a pound or two to prosecute his 
 researches. She took out her purse, without a word, and 
 lent him two pounds. 
 
 He began to scour the town : the jewellers he visited 
 could tell him nothing. At last he came to a shop, and 
 there he found Mrs. Falcon making her inquiries inde- 
 pendently. She said coldly, " You had better come with 
 me, and get your money and things." 
 
 She took him to the bank — it happened to be the one 
 she did business with — and said, "This is Dr. Christie, 
 come for his money and jewels." 
 
 There was some demur at this ; but the cashier recog- 
 nized him, and Phoebe making herself responsible, the 
 money and jewels were handed over. 
 
 Staines whispered Phoebe, "Are you sure the jewels 
 are mine ? " 
 
 " They were found on you, sir." 
 
 Staines took them, looking confused. He did not 
 know what to think. When they got into the street 
 again, he told her it was very kind of her to think of his 
 interest at all. 
 
 No answer : she was not going to make friends with 
 him over such a trifle as that. 
 
 By degrees, however, Christopher's zeal on her behalf 
 broke the ice ; and besides, as the search proved unavail-
 
 A SIMPLETON. 381 
 
 ing, she needed sympathy ; and he gave it her, and did 
 not abuse her husband as Dick Dale did. 
 
 One day, in the street, after a long thought, she said 
 to him, " Didn't you say, sir, you gave him a letter for 
 me?" 
 
 " I gave him two letters ; one of them was to you." 
 
 " Could you remember what you said in it ? " 
 
 "Perfectly. I begged you, if you should go to Eng- 
 land, to break the truth to my wife. She is very excit- 
 able ; and sudden joy has killed ere now. I gave you 
 particular instructions." 
 
 " And you were very wise. But whatever could make 
 you think I would go to England ? " 
 
 " He told me you only wanted an excuse." 
 
 " Oh ! ! " 
 
 " When he told me that, I caught at it, of course. It 
 was all the world to me to get my Kosa told by such a 
 kind, good, sensible friend as you; and, Mrs. Falcon, I 
 had no scruple about troubling you, because I knew the 
 stones would sell for at least a thousand pounds more in 
 England than here, and that would pay your expenses." 
 
 " I see, sir ; I see. 'Twas very natural : you love your 
 wife." 
 
 " Better than my life." 
 
 " And he told you I only wanted an excuse to go to 
 England ? " 
 
 " He did, indeed. It was not true ? " 
 
 "It was anything but true. I had suffered so in 
 England ; I had been so happy here : too happy to last. 
 Ah ! well, it is all over. Let us think of the matter in 
 hand. Sure that was not the only letter you gave my 
 husband ? Didn't you write to ?i,er ? " 
 
 " Of course I did ; but that was enclosed to you, and 
 not to be given to her until you had broken the joyful 
 news to her. Yes, Mrs. Falcon, I wrote and told her
 
 382 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 everything : my loss at sea ; how I was saved, after, by 
 your kindness. Our journeys, from Cape Town, and 
 then to the diggings; my sudden good fortune, my 
 hopes, my joy — my poor Rosa ! and now I suppose 
 she will never get it. It is too cruel of him. I shall go 
 home by the next steamer. I canH stay here any longer, 
 for you or anybody. Oh, and I enclosed my ruby ring 
 that she gave me, for I thought she might not believe 
 you without that." 
 
 '' Let me think," said Phoebe, turning ashy pale. " For 
 mercy's sake, let me think ! 
 
 " He has read both those letters, sir. 
 
 " She will never see hers : any more than I shall see 
 mine." 
 
 She paused again, thinking harder and harder. 
 
 " We must take two places in the next mail steamer. 
 I must look after my husband, akd you aftek your 
 
 WIFE."
 
 A SIMPLETON. 383 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 Mrs. Falcon's bitter feeling against Dr. Staines did 
 not subside ; it merely went out of sight a little. They 
 were thrown together by potent circumstances, and in a 
 manner connected by mutual obligations ; so an open 
 rupture seemed too unnatural. Still Phoebe was a 
 woman, and, blinded by her love for her husband, could 
 not forgive the innocent cause of their present un- 
 happy separation ; though the fault lay entirely with 
 Falcon. 
 
 Staines took her on board the steamer, and paid her 
 every attention. She was also civil to him ; but it was 
 a cold and constrained civility. 
 
 About a hundred miles from land the steamer stopped, 
 and the passengers soon learned there was something 
 wrong with her machinery. In fact, after due consulta- 
 tion, the captain decided to put back. 
 
 This irritated and distressed Mrs. Falcon so that the 
 captain, desirous to oblige her, hailed a fast schooner, 
 that tacked across her bows, and gave Mrs. Falcon the 
 option of going back with him, or going on in the 
 schooner, with whose skipper he was acquainted. 
 
 Staines advised her on no account to trust to sails, 
 when she could have steam with only a delay of four or 
 five days ; but she said, " Anything sooner than go back. 
 I can't, I can't on such an errand." 
 
 Accordingly she was put on board the schooner, and 
 Staines, after some hesitation, felt bound to accompany 
 her. 
 
 It proved a sad error. Contrary winds assailed them
 
 384 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 the very next day, and with such severity that they had 
 repeatedly to lie to. 
 
 On one of these occasions, with a ship reeling under 
 them like a restive horse, and the waves running moun. 
 tains high, poor Phoebe's terrors overmastered both her 
 hostility and her reserve. " Doctor," said she, " I believe 
 'tis God's will we shall never see England. I must try 
 and die more like a Christian than I have lived, forgiving 
 all who have wronged me, and you, that have been my 
 good friend and my worst enemy, but you did not mean 
 it. Sir, what has turned me against you so — your wife 
 was my husband's sweetheart before he married me." 
 
 '' My wife your husband's — you are dreaming." 
 
 "Nay, sir, once she came to my shop, and I sav/ 
 directly I was nothing to him, and he owned it all to me ; 
 he had courted her, and she jilted him; so he said. Why 
 should he tell me a lie about that ? I'd lay my life 'tis 
 true. And now you have sent him to her your own self ; 
 and, at sight of her, I shall be nothing again. Well, 
 when this ship goes down, they can marry, and I hope 
 he will be happy, happier than I can make him, that 
 tried my best, God knows." 
 
 This conversation surprised Staines not a little. How- 
 ever, he said, with great warmth, it was false. His wife 
 had danced and flirted with some young gentleman at 
 one time, when there was a brief misunderstanding 
 between him and her, but sweetheart she had never had, 
 except him. He courted her fresh from school. " Now, 
 my good soul," said he, "make your mind easy; the 
 ship is a good one, and well handled, and in no danger 
 whatever, and my wife is in no danger from your 
 husband. Since you and your brother tell me that he 
 is a villain, I am bound to believe you. But my wife 
 is an angel. In our miserable hour of parting, she 
 vowed not to marry again, should I be taken from lier.
 
 A SIMPLETON. 385 
 
 Many again ! wliat am I talking of ? Why, if he visits 
 her at all, it will be to let her know I am alive, and give 
 her my letter. Do you mean to tell me she will listen 
 to vows of love from him, when her whole heart is in 
 rapture for me ? Such nonsense ! " 
 
 This burst of his did not affront her, and did not 
 comfort her. 
 
 At last the wind abated ; and after a wearisome calm, 
 a light breeze came, and the schooner crept home- 
 ward. 
 
 Phoebe restrained herself for several days ; but at last 
 she came back to the subject; this time it was in an 
 apologetic tone at starting. "I know you think me a 
 foolish woman," she said ; " but my poor Reginald could 
 never resist a pretty face ; and she is so lovely ; and you 
 should have seen how he turned when she came in to my 
 place. Oh, sir, there has been more between them than 
 you know of ; and when I think that he will have been 
 in England so many months before we get there, oh, 
 doctor, sometimes I feel as I should go mad ; my head it 
 is like a furnace, and see, my brow is all wrinkled again." 
 
 Then Staines tried to comfort her ; assured her she 
 was tormenting herself idly ; her husband would perhaps 
 have spent some of the diamond money on his amuse- 
 ment ; but what if he had ? he should deduct it out of 
 the big diamond, which was also their joint property, 
 and the loss would hardly be felt. " As to my wife, 
 madam, I have but one anxiety ; lest he should go blurt- 
 ing it out that I am alive, and almost kill her with joy." 
 
 " He will not do that, sir. He is no fool." 
 
 "I am glad of it; for there is nothing else to fear." 
 
 "Man, I tell you there is everything to fear. You 
 dcn't know him as I do ; nor his power over women.'' 
 
 " IVIrs. Falcon, are you bent on affronting me ? " 
 
 "No, sir ; Heaven forbid ! "
 
 386 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 " Then please to close this subject forever. In three 
 
 weeks we shall be in England." 
 
 "Ay; but he has been there six months." 
 
 He bowed stiffly to her, went to his cabin, and avoided 
 
 the poor foolish woman as much as he could without 
 
 seeming too unkind.
 
 A SIMPLETON. 387 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 Mrs. Staines made one or two movements — to stop 
 Lord Tadcaster — with her hand, that expressive feature 
 with which, at such times, a sensitive woman can do all 
 but speak. 
 
 When at last he paused for her reply, she said, '' Me 
 marry again ! Oh ! for shame ! " 
 
 "Mrs. Staines — Rosa — you will marry again, some 
 day." 
 
 " Never. Me take another husband, after such a man 
 as I have lost ! I should be a monster. Oh, Lord Tad- 
 caster, you have been so kind to me ; so sympathizing. 
 You made me believe you loved my Christopher, too; 
 and now you have spoiled all. It is too cruel." 
 
 " Oh ! Mrs. Staines, do you think me capable of feign- 
 ing — don't you see my love for you has taken you by 
 surprise ? But how could I visit you — look on you — 
 hear you — mingle my regrets with yours ; yours were 
 the deepest, of course ; but mine were honest." 
 
 *' I believe it." And she gave him her hand. He held 
 it, and kissed it, and cried over it, as the young will, and 
 implored her, on his knees, not to condemn herself to 
 life-long widowhood, and him to despair. 
 
 Then she cried, too; but she was firm; and by 
 degrees she made him see that her heart was inac- 
 cessible. 
 
 Then at last he submitted with tearful eyes, but a 
 valiant heart. 
 
 She offered friendship timidly. 
 
 But he was too much of a man to fall into that trap.
 
 388 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 "No," he said: "1 could not, I could not. Love or 
 nothing." 
 
 "You are right," said she, pityingly. "Forgive me. 
 In my selfishness and my usual folly, I did not see this 
 coming on, or I would have spared you this mortification." 
 
 " Never mind that," gulped the little earl. " I shall 
 always be proud I knew you, and proud I loved you, and 
 offered you my hand." 
 
 Then the magnanimous little fellow blessed her, and 
 left her, and discontinued his visits. 
 
 Mr. Lusignan found her crying, and got the truth out 
 of her. He was in despair. He remonstrated kindly, 
 but firmly. Truth compels me to say that she politely 
 ignored him. He observed that phenomenon, and said, 
 " Very well then, I shall telegraph for Uncle Philip." 
 
 " Do," said the rebel. " He is always welcome." 
 
 Philip, telegraphed, came down that evening ; likewise 
 his little black bag. He found them in the drawing- 
 room : papa with the Fall Mall Gazette, Rosa seated, 
 sewing, at a lamp. She made little Christie's clothes 
 herself, — fancy that ! 
 
 Having ascertained that the little boy was well, Philip, 
 adroitly hiding that he had come down torn with anxiety 
 on that head, inquired with a show of contemptuous in- 
 difference, whose cat was dead. 
 
 "Nobody's," said Lusignan crossly. Then he turned 
 and pointed the Gazette at his offspring. " Do you see 
 that young lady stitching there so demurely ? " 
 
 Philip carefully wiped and then put on his spectacles. 
 
 "I see her," said he. "She does look a little too 
 innocent. None of them are really so innocent as all 
 that. Has she been swearing at the nurse, and boxing 
 her ears ? " 
 
 " Worse than that. She has been and refused the Earl 
 of Tadcaster."
 
 A smPLETON. 389 
 
 " Eefused him — what ! has that little monkey had 
 the audacity ? " 
 
 " The condescension, you mean. Yes." 
 
 " And she has refused him ? " 
 
 " And twenty thousand a year," 
 
 " What immorality ! " 
 
 " Worse. AVhat absurdity ! " 
 
 " How is it to be accounted for ? Is it the old story ? 
 ' I could never love him,' No ; that's inadequate ; for 
 they all love a title and twenty thousand a year." 
 
 Rosa sewed on all this time in demure and absolute 
 silence, 
 
 " She ignores us," said Philip. " It is intolerable. 
 She does not appreciate our politeness in talking at her. 
 Let us arraign her before our sacred tribunal, and have 
 her into court, Now, mistress, the Senate of Venice is 
 assembled, and you must be pleased to tell us why yow. 
 refused a title and twenty thousand a year, with a small 
 but symmetrical earl tacked on," 
 
 Rosa laid down her work, and said quietly, " Uncle, 
 almost the last words that passed between me and my 
 Christopher, we promised each other solemnly never to 
 marry again till death should us part. You know how 
 deep my sorrow has been that I can find so few wishes 
 of my lost Christopher to obey. Well, to-day I have 
 had an opportunity at last, I have obeyed my own lost 
 one ; it has cost me a tear or two ; but, for all that, it 
 has given me one little gleam of happiness. Ah, foolish 
 woman, that obeys too late ! " 
 
 And with this the tears began to run. 
 
 All this seemed a little too high-flown to Mr, Lusignan. 
 " There," said he, " see on what a straw her mind turns. 
 So, but for that, you would have done the right thing, 
 and married the earl ? " 
 
 " I dare say I should — at the time — to stop his 
 crying,"
 
 390 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 And with this listless remark she quietly took up her 
 sewing again. 
 
 The sagacious Philip looked at her gravely. He thought 
 to himself how piteous it was to see so young and lovely 
 a creature, that had given up all hope of happiness for 
 herself. These being his real thoughts, he expressed 
 himself as follows: "We had better drop this subject, 
 sir. This young lady will take us potent, grave, and 
 reverend seignors out of our depth, if we don't mind.'' 
 
 But the moment he got her alone he kissed her pater- 
 nally, and said, " Rosa, it is not lost on me, your fidelity 
 to the dead. As years roll on, and your deep wound first 
 closes, then skins, then heals — " 
 
 " Ah, let me die first — " 
 
 "Time and nature will absolve you from that vow; 
 but bless you for thinking this can never be. Rosa, 
 your folly of this day has made you my heir ; so never 
 let money tempt you, for you have enough, and will 
 have more than enough when I go." 
 
 He was as good as his word ; altered his will next day, 
 and made Rosa his residuary legatee. When he had 
 done this, foreseeing no fresh occasion for his services, 
 he prepared for a long visit to Italy. He was packing 
 up his things to go there, when he received a line from 
 Lady Cicely Treherne, asking him to call on her pro- 
 fessionally. As the lady's servant brought it, he sent 
 back a line to say he no longer practised medicine, but 
 would call on her as a friend in an hour's time. 
 
 He found her reclining, the picture of lassitude. " How 
 good of you to come," she drawled. 
 
 " What's the matter ? " said he brusquely. 
 
 " I wish to cawnsult you about myself. I think if any- 
 body can brighten me up, it is you. I feel such a languaw 
 — such a want of spirit; and I get palaa, and that is not 
 desiwable."
 
 A SIMPLETON. 391 
 
 He examined her tongue and the white of her eye, and 
 told her, in his blunt way, she ate and drank too much. 
 
 " Excuse me, sir," said she stilfly. 
 
 "I mean too often. Now, let's see. Cup of tea in 
 bed, of a morning ? " 
 
 " Yaas." 
 
 " Dinner at two ? " 
 
 " We call it luncheon." 
 
 " Are you a ventriloquist ? " 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Then it is only your lips call it luncheon. Your poor 
 stomach, could it speak, would call it dinner. Afternoon 
 tea ? " 
 
 "Yaas." 
 
 "At seven-thirty another dinner. Tea after that. 
 Yonr afflicted stomach gets no rest. You eat pastry?" 
 
 " I confess it." 
 
 " And sugar in a dozen forms ? " 
 
 She nodded. 
 
 "Well, sugar is poison to your temperament. Now 
 I'll set you up, if you can obey. Give up your morning 
 dram." 
 
 " What dwam ? " 
 
 " Tea in bed, before eating. Can't you see that is a 
 dram ? Animal food twice a day. No wine but a little 
 claret and water ; no pastry, no sweets, and play battle- 
 dore with one of your male subjects." 
 
 " Battledaw ! won't a lady do for that ? " 
 
 "No : you would get talking, and not play ad sudorem.^' 
 
 " Ad sudawem ! what is that ? " 
 
 " In earnest." 
 
 "And will sudawem and the west put me in better 
 spiwits, and give me a tinge ? " 
 
 " It will incarnadine the lily, and make you the happi- 
 est young lady in England, as you are the best."
 
 392 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 " I should like to be muoli happier than I am good, if 
 we could manage it among us." 
 
 " We will manage it amonrj us ; for if the diet allowed 
 should not make you boisterously gay, I have a remedy 
 behind, suited to your temperament. I am old-fashioned, 
 and believe in the temperaments." 
 
 " And what is that wemedy ? " 
 
 " Try diet, and hard exercise, first." 
 
 " Oh, yes ; but let me know that wemedy." 
 
 " I warn you it is what we call in medicine an heroic 
 one." 
 
 "Never mind. I am despewate." 
 
 " Well, then, the heroic remedy — to be used only as a 
 desperate resort, mind — you must marry an Irishman." 
 
 This took the lady's breath away. 
 
 " Mawwy a nice man ? " 
 
 " A nice man ; no. That means a fool. Marry scien- 
 tifically — a precaution eternally neglected. Marry a 
 Hibernian gentleman, a being as mercurial as you are 
 lymphatic." 
 
 " Mercurial ! — lymphatic ! " — 
 
 " Oh, hard words break no bones, ma'am." 
 
 "No, sir. And it is very curious. No, I won't tell 
 you. Yes, I will. Hem! — I think I have noticed 
 one." 
 
 " One what ? " 
 
 " One Iwishman — dangling after me." 
 
 " Then your ladyship has only to tighten the cord — 
 and he's done for." 
 
 Having administered this prescription, our laughing 
 philosopher went off to Italy, and there fell in with 
 some countrymen to his mind, so he accompanied them 
 to Egypt and Palestine, 
 
 His absence, and Lord Tadcaster's, made Eosa Staines's 
 life extremely monotonous. Day followed day, and week
 
 A SIMPLETON. 393 
 
 followed week, each so unvarying, that, on a retrospect, 
 three months seemed like one day. 
 
 And I think at last youth and nature began to rebel, 
 and secretly to crave some little change or incident to 
 ruffle the stagnant pool. Yet she would not go into 
 society, and would only receive two or three dull people 
 at the villa ; so she made the very monotony which was 
 beginning to tire her, and nursed a sacred grief she had 
 no need to nurse, it was so truly genuine. 
 
 She was in this forlorn condition, when, one morning, 
 a carriage drove to the door, and a card was brought up 
 to her — "Mr. Eeginald Falcon." 
 
 Falcon's history, between this and our last advices, is 
 soon disposed of. 
 
 When, after a little struggle with his better angel, he 
 rode past his wife's gate, he intended, at first, only to go 
 to Cape Town, sell the diamonds, have a lark, and bring 
 home the balance : but, as he rode south, his views 
 expanded. He could have ten times the fun in London, 
 and cheaper ; since he could sell the diamonds for more 
 money, and also conceal the true price. This was the 
 Bohemian's whole mind in the business. He had no 
 designs whatever on Mrs. Staines, nor did he intend to 
 steal the diamonds, but to embezzle a portion of the 
 purchase-money, and enjoy the pleasures and vices of 
 the capital for a few months ; then back to his milch 
 cow, Phoebe, and lead a quiet life till the next uncon- 
 trollable fit should come upon him along with the means 
 of satisfying it. 
 
 On the way, he read Staines's letter to Mrs. Falcon, 
 very carefully. He never broke the seal of the letter 
 to Mrs. Staines. That was to be given her when he had 
 broken the good news to her ; and this he determined to 
 do with such skill, as should make Dr. Staines very 
 unwilling to look suspiciously or ill-naturedly into money 
 accounts.
 
 394 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 He reached London; and being a thorough egotist, 
 attended first to his own interests ; he never went near 
 Mrs. Staines until he had visited every diamond mer- 
 chant and dealer in the metropolis ; he showed the small 
 stones to them all ; but he showed no more than one 
 large stone to each. 
 
 At last he got an offer of twelve hundred pounds for 
 the small stones, and the same for the large yellow stone, 
 and nine hundred pounds for the second largest stone. 
 He took this nine hundred pounds, and instantly wrote 
 to Phoebe, telling her he had a sudden inspiration to 
 bring the diamonds to England, which he could not 
 regret, since he had never done a wiser thing. He had 
 sold a single stone for eight hundred pounds, and had 
 sent the doctor's four hundred pounds to her account in 
 Cape Town ; and as each sale was effected, the half would 
 be so remitted. She would see by that, he was wiser 
 than in former days. He should only stay so long as 
 might be necessary to sell them all equally well. His 
 own share he would apply to paying off mortgages on 
 the family estate, of which he hoped some day to see 
 her the mistress, or he would send it direct to her, 
 whichever she might prefer. 
 
 Now the main object of this artful letter was to keep 
 Phoebe quiet, and not have her coming after him, of 
 which he felt she was very capable. 
 
 The money got safe to Cape Town, but the letter to 
 Phoebe miscarried. How this happened was never posi- 
 tively known ; but the servant of the lodging-house was 
 afterwards detected cutting stamps off a letter ; so per- 
 haps she had played that game on this occasion. 
 
 By this means, matters took a curious turn. Palcon, 
 intending to lull his wife into a false security, lulled 
 himself into that state instead. 
 
 When he had taken care of himself, and got five hun-
 
 A SIMPLETON. 395 
 
 dred pounds to play the fool with, then he condescended 
 to remember his errand of mercy ; and he came down to 
 Graves end, to see Mrs. Staines. 
 
 On the road, he gave his mind seriously to the delicate 
 and dangerous task. It did not, however, disquiet him 
 as it would you, sir, or you, madam. He had a great 
 advantage over you. He was a liar — a smooth, ready, 
 accomplished liar — and he knew it. 
 
 This was the outline he had traced in his mind : he 
 should appear very subdued and sad; should wear an 
 air of condolence. But, after a while, should say, ''' And 
 yet men have been lost like that, and escaped. A man 
 was picked up on a raft in those very latitudes, and 
 brought into Cape Town. A friend of mine saw him, 
 months after, at the hospital. His memory Avas shaken 
 — could not tell his name ; but in other respects he was 
 all right again." 
 
 If Mrs. Staines took fire at this, he would say his 
 friend knew all the particulars, and he would ask him, 
 and so leave that to rankle till next visit. And having 
 planted his germ of hope, he would grow it, and water 
 it, by visits and correspondence, till he could throw off 
 the mask, and say he was convinced Staines was alive : 
 and from that, by other degrees, till he could say, on his 
 wife's authority, that the man picked up at sea, and 
 cured at her house, was the very physician who had saved 
 her brother's life : and so on to the overwhelming proof 
 he carried in the ruby ring and the letter. 
 
 I am afraid the cunning and dexterity, the subtlety 
 and tact required, interested him more in the commission 
 than did the benevolence. He called, sent up his card, 
 and composed his countenance for his part; like an actor 
 at the Wing. 
 
 " Not at home." 
 
 He stared with amazement.
 
 396 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 The history of a "Not at home" is not, in general, 
 worth recording : but this is an exception. 
 
 On receiving Falcon's card, Mrs. Staines gave a little 
 start, and colored faintly. She instantly resolved not to 
 see him. What ! the man she had flirted with, almost 
 jilted, and refused to marry — he dared to be alive when 
 her Christopher was dead, and had come there to show 
 her he was alive ! 
 
 She said "Not at home " with a tone of unusual sharp- 
 ness and decision, which left the servant in no doubt he 
 must be equally decided at the hall door. 
 
 Falcon received the sudden freezer with amazement. 
 " Nonsense," said he. " Not at home at this time of the 
 morning — to an old friend ! " 
 
 " Not at home," said the man doggedly. 
 
 " Oh, very well," said Falcon with a bitter sneer, and 
 returned to London. 
 
 He felt sure she was at home ; and being a tremendous 
 egotist, he said, "Oh! all right. If she would rather 
 not know her husband is alive, it is all one to me ; " 
 and he actually took no more notice of her for a full 
 week, and never thought of her, except to chuckle over 
 the penalty she was paying for daring to affront his 
 vanity. 
 
 However, Sunday came; he saw a dull day before 
 him, and so he relented, and thought he would give her 
 another trial. 
 
 He went down to Gravesend by boat, and strolled 
 towards the villa. 
 
 When he was about a hundred yards from the villa, a 
 lady, all in black, came out with a nurse and child. 
 
 Falcon knew her figure all that way off, and it gave 
 him a curious thrill that surprised him. He followed 
 her, and was not very far behind her when she reached 
 the church. She turned at the porch, kissed the child
 
 A SIMPLETON. 397 
 
 earnestly, and gave the nurse some directions ; then 
 entered the church. 
 
 " Come," said Falcon, " I'll have a look at her, any 
 way." 
 
 He went into the church, and walked up a side aisle 
 to a pillar, from which he thought he might be able to 
 see the whole congregation ; and, sure enough, there she 
 sat, a few yards from him. She was lovelier than ever. 
 Mind had grown on her face with trouble. An angelic 
 expression illuminated her beauty ; he gazed on her, 
 fascinated. He drank and drank her beauty two mortal 
 hours, and when the church broke up, and she went 
 home, he was half afraid to follow her, for he felt how 
 hard it would be to say anything to her but that the old 
 love had returned on him with double force. 
 
 However, having watched her home, he walked slowly 
 to and fro composing himself for the interview. 
 
 He now determined to make the process of informing 
 her a very long one : he would spin it out, and so secure 
 many a sweet interview with her : and, who knows ? he 
 might fascinate her as she had him, and ripen gratitude 
 into love, as he understood that word. 
 
 He called, he sent in his card. The man went in, and 
 came back with a sonorous " Not at home." 
 
 " Not at home ? nonsense. Why, she is just come in 
 from church." 
 
 " Not at home," said the man, evidently strong in his 
 instructions. 
 
 Falcon turned white with rage at this second affront. 
 " All the worse for her," said he, and turned on his 
 heel. 
 
 He went home, raging with disappointment and 
 wounded vanity, and — since such love as his is seldom 
 very far from hate — he swore she should never know 
 from him that her husband was alive. He even moral-
 
 398 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 ized, " This comes of being so unselfish," said he. " I'll 
 give that game up forever." 
 
 By and by, a mere negative revenge was not enough 
 for him, and he set his wits to work to make her smart. 
 
 He wrote to her from his lodgings : — 
 
 Dear Madam, — What a pity you are never at home to me. 
 I had something to say about your husband, that I thought 
 might interest you 
 
 Yours truly, 
 
 R. Falcon. 
 
 Imagine the effect of this abominable note. It was 
 like a rock flung into a placid pool. It set Rosa trem- 
 bling all over. What could he mean ? 
 
 She ran with it to her father, and asked him what Mr. 
 Falcon could mean. 
 
 '' I have no idea," said he. " You had better ask him, 
 not me." 
 
 " I am afraid it is only to get to see me. You know 
 he admired me once. Ah, how suspicious I am getting." 
 
 Rosa wrote to Falcon : — 
 
 Dear Sir, — Since my bereavement I see scarcely anybody. 
 My .«ervant did not know you ; so I hope you will excuse me. 
 If it is too much trouble to call again, would you kindly explain 
 your note to me ? 
 
 Yours respectfully, 
 
 Rosa Staines. 
 
 Falcon chuckled bitterly over this. "No, my lady," 
 said he. " I'll serve you out. You shall run after me like 
 a little dog. I have got the bone that will draw you." 
 
 He wrote back coldly to say that the matter he had 
 wished to communicate was too delicate and important 
 to put on paper ; that he would try and get down to 
 Gravesend again some day or other, but was much occu-
 
 A SIMPLETON. 399 
 
 pied, and had already put himself to inconvenience. He 
 added, in a postscript, that he was always at home from 
 four to five. 
 
 Next day he got hold of the servant, and gave her 
 minute instructions, and a guinea. 
 
 Then the wretch got some tools and bored a hole in 
 the partition wall of his sitting-room. The paper had 
 large flowers. He was artist enough to conceal the trick 
 with water-colors. In his bed-room the hole came behind 
 the curtains. 
 
 That very afternoon, as he had foreseen, Mrs. Staines 
 called on him. The maid, duly instructed, said Mr. 
 Falcon was out, but would soon return, and could she 
 wait his return? The maid being so very civil, Mrs. 
 Staines said she would wait a little while, and was im- 
 mediately ushered into Falcon's sitting-room. There she 
 sat down ; but was evidently ill at ease, restless, flushed. 
 She could not sit quiet, and at last began to walk up and 
 down the room, almost wildly. Her beautiful eyes glit- 
 tered, and the whole woman seemed on lire. The caitiff, 
 who was watching her, saw and gloated on all this, and 
 enjoyed to the full her beauty and agitation, and his 
 revenge for her "Not at homes." 
 
 But after a long time, there was a reaction : she sat 
 down and uttered some plaintive sounds inarticulate, or 
 nearly ; and at last she began to cry. 
 
 Then it cost Falcon an effort not to come in and com- 
 fort her ; but he controlled himself and kept quiet. 
 
 She rang the bell. She asked for writing paper, and 
 she wrote her unseen tormentor a humble note, begging 
 him, for old acquaintance, to call on her, and tell her 
 what his mysterious Avords meant that had filled her 
 with agitation. 
 
 This done, she went away, with a deep sigh, and FalcoD 
 emerged, and pounced upon her letter.
 
 400 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 He kissed it; he read it a dozen times: he sat down 
 where she had sat, and his base passion overpowered 
 him. Her beauty, her agitation, her fear, her tears, all 
 combined to madden him, and do the devil's work in his 
 false, selfish heart, so open to violent passions, so dead 
 to conscience. 
 
 For once in his life he was violently agitated, and torn 
 by conflicting feelings : he walked aboiit the room more 
 wildly than his victim had ; and if it be true that, in 
 certain great temptations, good and bad angels fight for 
 a man, here you might have seen as fierce a battle of 
 that kind as ever was. 
 
 At last he rushed out into the air, and did not return 
 till ten o'clock at night. He came back pale and haggard, 
 and with a look of crime upon his face. 
 
 True Bohemian as he was, he sent for a pint of brandy. 
 
 So then the die was cast, and something was to be 
 done that called for brandy. 
 
 He bolted himself in, and drank a wine-glass of it 
 neat ; then another ; then another. 
 
 Now his pale cheek is flushed, and his eye glitters. 
 Drink forever ! great ruin of English souls as well as 
 bodies. 
 
 He put the poker in the fire, and heated it red hot. 
 
 He brought Staines's letter, and softened the sealing- 
 wax with the hot poker ; then with his pen-knife made a 
 neat incision in the wax, and opened the letter. He 
 took out the ring, and put it carefully away. Then he 
 lighted a cigar, and read the letter, and studied it. 
 Many a man, capable of murder in heat of passion, 
 could not have resisted the pathos of this letter. ]V[any 
 a Newgate thief, after reading it, would have felt such 
 pity for the loving husband who had suffered to the 
 verge of death, and then to the brink of madness, and 
 for the poor bereaved wife, that he would have taken
 
 A SINrPLETOIT. 401 
 
 the letter down to Gravesend that very night, though he 
 picked two fresh pockets to defray the expenses of the 
 road. 
 
 But this was an egotist. Good nature had curbed his 
 egotism a little while ; but now vanity and passion had 
 swept away all unselfish feelings, and the pure egotist 
 alone remained. 
 
 Xow, the pure egotist has been defined as a man wlio 
 will burn down his neighhoi^s house to cook himself dM. 
 ^%%. Murder is but egotism carried out to its natural 
 climax. What is murder to a pure egotist; especially a 
 brandied one ? 
 
 I knew an egotist who met a female acquaintance in 
 Newhaven village. She had a one-pound note, and 
 offered to treat him. She changed tliis note to treat 
 him. Fish she gave him, and much whiskey. Cost her 
 four shillings. He ate and drank with her, at her ex- 
 pense ; and his aorta, or principal blood-vessel, being 
 warmed with her whiskey, he murdered her for the 
 change, the odd sixteen shillings. 
 
 I had the pleasure of seeing that egotist hung, with 
 these eyes. It was a slice of luck that, I grieve to say, 
 has not occurred again to me. 
 
 So much for a whiskied egotist. 
 
 His less truculent but equally remorseless brother in 
 villany, the brandied egotist. Falcon, could read that 
 poor husband's letter without blenching ; the love and 
 the anticipations of rapture, these made him writhe a 
 little with jealousy, but they roused not a grain of pity. 
 He was a true egotist, blind, remorseless. 
 
 In this, his true character, he studied the letter pro- 
 foundly, and mastered all the facts, and digested them 
 well. 
 
 All manner of diabolical artifices presented themselves 
 to his brain, barren of true intellect, yet fertile in fraud ,• 
 26
 
 402 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 in that, and all low cunning and subtlety, far more than 
 a match for Solomon or Bacon. 
 
 His sinister studies were pursued far into the night. 
 Then he went to bed, and his unbounded egotism gave 
 him the sleep a grander criminal would have courted in 
 vain on the verge of a monstrous and deliberate crime. 
 
 Next day he went to a fashionable tailor, and ordered 
 a complete suit of black. This was made in forty-eight 
 hours ; the interval was spent mainly in concocting lies 
 to be incorporated with the number of minute facts he 
 had gained from Staines's letter, and in making close 
 imitations of his handwriting. 
 
 Thus armed, and crammed with more lies, than the 
 " Menteur " of Corneille, but not such innocent ones, he 
 went down to Gravesend, all in deep mourning, with 
 crape round his hat. 
 
 He presented himself at the villa. 
 
 The servant was all obsequiousness. Yes, Mrs. Staines 
 received few visitors ; but she was at home to him. He 
 even began to falter excuses. "Nonsense," said Falcon, 
 and slipped a sovereign into his hand ; " you are a good 
 servant, and obey orders." 
 
 The servant's respect doubled, and he ushered the 
 visitor into the drawing-room, as one whose name was a 
 passport. " Mr. Eeginald Falcon, madam." 
 
 Mrs. Staines was alone. She rose to meet him. Her 
 color came and went, her full eye fell on him, and took 
 in all at a glance — that he was all in black, and that he 
 had a beard, and looked pale, and ill at ease. 
 
 Little dreaming that this was the anxiety of a felon 
 about to take the actual plunge into a novel crime, she 
 was rather prepossessed by it. The beard gave him dig- 
 nity, and hid his mean, cruel mouth. His black suit 
 seemed to say he, too, had lost some one dear to him ; 
 and that was a ground of sympathy.
 
 A SIMPLETON. 403 
 
 She received him kindly, and thanked him for taking 
 the trouble to come again. She begged him to be seated ; 
 and then, womanlike, she waited for him to explain. 
 
 But he was in no hurry, and waited for her. He knew 
 she would speak if he was silent. 
 
 She could not keep him waiting long. " Mr. Falcon," 
 said she, hesitating a little, " you have something to say 
 to me about him I have lost." 
 
 *'Yes," said he softly. "I have something I could 
 say, and I think I ought to say it ; but I am afraid : be- 
 cause I don't know what will be the result. I fear to 
 make you more unhappy." 
 
 " Me ! more unhappy ? Me, whose dear husband lies 
 at the bottom of the ocean. Other poor wounded creat- 
 ures have the wretched comfort of knowing where he 
 lies — of carrying flowers to his tomb. But I — oh, Mr. 
 Falcon, I am bereaved of all : even his poor remains lost, 
 — lost " — she could say no more. 
 
 Then that craven heart began to quake at what he 
 was doing ; quaked, yet persevered ; but his own voice 
 quivered, and his cheek grew ashy pale. No wonder. 
 If ever God condescended to pour lightning on a skunk, 
 surely now was the time. 
 
 Shaking and sweating with terror at his own act, he 
 stammered out, " Would it be the least comfort to you 
 to know that you are not denied that poor consolation ? 
 Suppose he died not so miserably as you think ? Sup- 
 pose he was picked up at sea, in a dying state ? " 
 
 " Ah ! " 
 
 " Suppose he lingered, nursed by kind and sympathizing 
 hands, that almost saved him ? Suppose he was laid in 
 halloAved ground, and a great many tears shed over his 
 grave ? " 
 
 " Ah, that would indeed be a comfort. And it was to 
 say this you came. I thank you. I bless you. But, my
 
 404 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 good, kind friend, you are deceived. You don't know 
 my husband. You never saw him. He perished at 
 sea." 
 
 " Will it be kind or unkind, to tell you why I think he 
 died as I tell you, and not at sea ? " 
 
 " Kind, but impossible. You deceive yourself. Ah, I 
 see. You found some poor sufferer, and were good to 
 him ; but it was not my poor Christie. Oh, if it were, 
 I should worship you. But I thank you as it is. It 
 was very kind to want to give me this little, little crumb 
 of comfort ; for I know I did not behave well to you, 
 sir: but you are generous, and have forgiven a poor 
 heart-broken creature, that never was very wise." 
 
 He gave her time to cry, and then said to her, " I only 
 wanted to be sure it ivould be any comfort to you. Mrs. 
 Staines, it is true I did not even know his name ; nor 
 yours. When I met, in this very room, the great dis- 
 appointment that has saddened my own life, I left Eng- 
 land directly. I collected funds, went to Natal, and 
 turned land-owner and farmer. I have made a large 
 fortune, but I need not tell you I am not happy. Well, 
 I had a yacht, and sailing from Cape Town to Algoa Bay, 
 I picked up a raft, with a dying man on it. He was 
 perishing from exhaustion and exposure. I got a little 
 brandy between his lips, and kept him alive. I landed 
 with him at once : and we nursed him on shore. We 
 had to be very cautious. He improved. We got him to 
 take egg-flip. He smiled on us at first, and then he 
 thanked us. I nursed him day and night for ten days. 
 He got much stronger. He spoke to me, thanked him 
 again and again, and told me his name was Christopher 
 Staines. He told me that he should never get well. I 
 implored him to have courage. He said he did not want 
 for courage ; but nature had been tried too hard. We 
 got so fond of each other. Oh ! " — and the caitiff pre-
 
 A SIMPLETON. 405 
 
 tended to break down; and his feigned grief mingled 
 with Kosa's despairing sobs. 
 
 He made an apparent effort, and said, "He spoke to 
 me of his wife, his darling Rosa. The name made me 
 start, but I could not know it was you. At last he was 
 strong enough to write a few lines, and he made me 
 promise to take them to his wife." 
 
 " Ah ! " said Rosa. " Show them me." 
 
 " I will." 
 
 "This moment." And her hands began to work 
 convulsively. 
 
 " I cannot," said Falcon. " I have not brought them 
 with me." 
 
 Rosa cast a keen eye of suspicion and terror on him. 
 His not bringing the letter seemed monstrous ; and so 
 indeed it was. The fact is, the letter was not written. 
 
 Falcon affected not to notice her keen look. He flowed 
 on, " The address he put on that letter astonished me. 
 'Kent Villa.' Of course I knew Kent Villa: and he 
 called you ' Rosa.' " 
 
 " How could you come to me without that letter ? " 
 cried Rosa, wringing her hands. " How am I to know ? 
 It is all so strange, so incredible." 
 
 " Don't you believe me ? " said Falcon sadly. " Why 
 should I deceive you ? The first time I came down to 
 tell you all this, I did not kiiow who Mrs. Staines was. 
 I suspected ; but no more. The second time I saw you 
 in the church, and then I knew ; and followed you to 
 try and tell you all this ; and you were not at home 
 to me." 
 
 " Forgive me," said Rosa carelessly : then earnestly, 
 " The letter ! when can I see it ? " 
 
 " I will send, or bring it." 
 
 " Bring it ! I am in agony till I see it. Oh, my dar- 
 ling! my darling! It can't be true. It was not my
 
 406 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 Christie. He lies in the depths of the ocean. Lord 
 Tadcaster was in the ship, and he says so ; everybody 
 says so." 
 
 " And I say he sleeps in hallowed ground, and these 
 hands laid him there." 
 
 Rosa lifted her hands to heaven, and cried piteously, 
 " I don't know what to think. You would not willingly 
 deceive me. But how can this be ? Oh, Uncle Philip, 
 why are you away from me ? Sir, you say he gave you 
 a letter ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Oh, why, why did you not bring it ? " 
 
 " Because he told me the contents ; and I thought he 
 prized my poor efforts too highly. It did not occur to 
 me you would doubt my word." 
 
 " Oh, no : no more I do : but I fear it was not my 
 Christie." 
 
 " I'll go for the letter at once, Mrs. Staines." 
 
 '' Oh, thank you ! Bless you ! Yes, this minute ! " 
 
 The artful rogue did not go ; never intended. 
 
 He rose to go ; but had a sudden inspiration ; very 
 sudden, of course. '^Had he nothing about him you 
 could recognize him by ? " 
 
 " Yes, he had a ring I gave him." 
 
 Falcon took a black-edged envelope out of his pocket. 
 
 " A ruby ring," said she, beginning to tremble at his 
 quiet action. 
 
 " Is that it ? " and he handed her a ruby ring.
 
 A SIMPLETON. 407 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 Mrs. Staines uttered a sharp cry and seized the ring. 
 Her eyes dilated over it, and she began to tremble in 
 every limb ; and at last she sank slowly back, and her 
 head fell on one side like a broken lily. The sudden 
 sight of the ring overpowered her almost to fainting. 
 
 Falcon rose to call for assistance ; but she made him a 
 feeble motion not to do so. 
 
 She got the better of her faintness, and then she fell 
 to kissing the ring, in an agony of love, and wept over 
 it, and still held it, and gazed at it through her blinding 
 tears. 
 
 Falcon eyed her uneasily. 
 
 But he soon found he had nothing to fear. For a long 
 time she seemed scarcely aware of his presence ; and 
 when she noticed him, it was to thank him, almost 
 passionately. 
 
 " It was my Christie you were so good to : may Heaven 
 bless you for it : and you will bring me his letter, will 
 you not ? " 
 
 *' Of course I will." 
 
 " Oh, do not go yet. It is all so strange : so sad. I 
 seem to have lost my poor Christie again, since he did 
 not die at sea. But no, I am ungrateful to God, and 
 ungrateful to the kind friend that nursed him to the last. 
 Ah, I envy you that. Tell me all. Never mind my 
 crying. I have seen the time I could not cry. It was 
 worse then than now. I shall always cry when I speak 
 of him, ay, to my dying day. Tell me, tell me all." 
 
 Her passion frightened the egotist, but did not turn
 
 408 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 him. He had gone too far. He told her that, after 
 raising all their hopes, Dr. Staines had suddenly changed 
 for the worse, and sunk rapidly ; that his last words 
 had been about her, and he had said, " My poor Rosa, 
 who will protect her ? " That, to comfort him, he had 
 said he would protect her. Then the dying man had 
 managed to write a line or two, and to address it. Almost 
 his last words had been, " Be a father to my child." 
 
 " That is strange." 
 
 " You have no child ? Then it must have been you 
 he meant. He spoke of you as a child more than once." 
 
 " Mr. Falcon, I have a child ; but born since I lost my 
 poor child's father." 
 
 " Then I think he knew it. They say that dying men 
 can see all over the world : and I remember, when he 
 said it, his eyes seemed fixed very strangely, as if on 
 something distant. Oh, how wonderful all this is. May 
 I see his child, to whom I promised " — 
 
 The artist in lies left his sentence half completed. 
 
 Rosa rang, and sent for her little boy. 
 
 Mr. Falcon admired his beauty, and said quietly, " I 
 shall keep my vow." 
 
 He then left her, with a promise to come back early 
 next morning with the letter. 
 
 She let him go only on those conditions. 
 
 As soon as her father came in, she ran to him with 
 this strange story. 
 
 " I don't believe it," said he. " It is impossible." 
 
 She showed him the proof, the ruby ring. 
 
 Then he became very uneasy, and begged her not to 
 tell a soul. He did not tell her the reason, but he feared 
 the insurance office would hear of it, and require proofs 
 of Christopher's decease, whereas they had accepted it 
 without a murmur, on the evidence of Captain Hamilton 
 and the Amphitrite's log-book.
 
 A SIMPLETON. 409 
 
 As for Falcon^ lie Avent carefully tlirougli Staines's two 
 setters, and wherever he found a word that suited his 
 purpose, he traced it by the usual process, and so, in the 
 course of a few hours, he concocted a short letter, all 
 the words in which, except three, were facsimiles, only 
 here and there a little shaky ; the three odd words he 
 Aad to imitate by observation of the letters. The sig- 
 nature he got to perfection by tracing. 
 
 He inserted this letter in the original envelope, and 
 sealed it very carefully, so as to hide that the seal had 
 been tampered with. 
 
 Thus armed, he went down to Gravesend. There he 
 hired a horse and rode to Kent Villa. 
 
 Why he hired a horse, he knew how hard it is to 
 forge handwriting, and he chose to have the means of 
 escape at hand. 
 
 He came into the drawing-room, ghastly pale, and 
 almost immediately gave her the letter ; then turned his 
 back, feigning delicacy. In reality he was quaking with 
 fear lest she should suspect the handwriting. But the 
 envelope was addressed by Staines, and paved the way 
 for the letter ; she was unsuspicious and good, and her 
 heart cried out for her husband's last written words : at 
 such a moment, what chance had judgment and suspicion 
 in an innocent and loving soul ? 
 
 Her eloquent sighs and sobs soon told the caitiff he 
 had nothing to fear. 
 
 The letter ran thus : — 
 
 My own Rosa, — All that a brother could do for a beloved 
 brother, Falcon has done, lie nursed mc night and day. But 
 it is vain. I shall never see you again in this world. I send 
 you a protector, and a father to your child. Value him. lie 
 has promised to be your stay on earth, and my spirit shall 
 watch over you. — To my last breath, your loving husband, 
 
 CiuabToriiEU Stalnes.
 
 410 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 Falcon rose, and began to steal on tiptoe out of the 
 room. 
 
 Rosa stopped him. "You need not go," said she. 
 "You are our friend. By and by I hope I shall find 
 words to thank you." 
 
 " Pray let me retire a moment," said the hypocrite. 
 "A husband's last words : too sacred — a stranger: " and 
 he went out into the garden. There he found the nurse- 
 maid Emily, and the little boy. 
 
 He stopped the child, and made love to the nursemaid ; 
 showed her his diamonds — he carried them all about 
 him — told her he had thirty thousand acres in Cape 
 Colony, and diamonds on them ; and was going to buy 
 •ihirty thousand more of the government. " Here, take 
 one," said he. " Oh, you needn't be shy. They are 
 common enough on my estates. I'll tell you what, 
 though, you could not buy that for less than thirty 
 pounds at any shop in London. Could she, my little 
 duck ? Never mind, it is no brighter than her eyes. 
 Now do you know what she will do with that, Master 
 Christie ? She will give it to some duffer to put in a 
 pin." 
 
 " She won't do nothing of the kind," said Emily, 
 flushing all over. " She is not such a fool." She then 
 volunteered to tell him she had no sweetheart, and did 
 not trouble her head about young men at all. He inter- 
 preted this to mean she was looking out for one. So 
 do I. 
 
 " No sweetheart ! " said he ; " and the prettiest girl I 
 have seen since I landed : then I put in for the situation." 
 
 Here, seeing the footman coming, he bestowed a most 
 paternal kiss on little Christie, and saying, "Not a word 
 to John, or no more diamonds from me ; " he moved 
 carefully away, leaving the girl all in a flutter with 
 extravagant hopes.
 
 A SIMPLETON". 411 
 
 The next moment this wolf in the sheep-fold entered 
 the drawing-room. Mrs. Staines was not there. He 
 waited, and waited, and began to get rather uneasy, as 
 men will who walk among pitfalls. 
 
 Presently the footman came to say that Mrs. Staines 
 was with hei' father, in his study, but she would come to 
 him in five minutes. 
 
 This increased his anxiety. What ! She was taking 
 advice of an older head. He began to be very seriously 
 alarmed, and, indeed, had pretty well made up his mind 
 to go down and gallop off, when the door opened, and 
 Rosa came hastily in. Her eyes were very red with 
 weeping. She canie to him with both hands extended to 
 him ; he gave her his, timidly. She pressed them with 
 such earnestness and power as he could not have sus- 
 pected ; and thanked him, and blessed him, with such a 
 torrent of eloquence, that he hung his head with shame ; 
 and, being unable to face it out, villain as he was, yet 
 still artful to the core, he pretended to burst out crying, 
 and ran out of the room, and rode away. 
 
 He waited two days, and then called again. Rosa 
 reproached him sweetly for going before she had half 
 thanked him. 
 
 ''All the better," said he. "I have been thanked a 
 great deal too much already. Who would not do his best 
 for a dying countryman, and fight night and day to save 
 him for his wife and child at home ? If I had succeeded, 
 then I would be greedy of praise : but now it makes me 
 blush ; it makes me very sad." 
 
 " You did your best," said Rosa tearfully. 
 
 " Ah ! that I did. Indeed, I was ill for weeks after, 
 myself, through the strain upon my mind, and the dis- 
 appointment, and going so many nights without sleep. 
 But don't let us talk of that." 
 
 " Do you know what my darling says to me in my 
 letter ? "
 
 412 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 ''No." 
 
 " Would you like to see it ? " 
 
 " Indeed I should ; but I have no right." 
 
 '' Every right. It is the only mark of esteem, worth 
 anything, I can show you." 
 
 She handed him the letter, and buried her own face in 
 her hands. 
 
 He read it, and acted the deepest emotion. 
 
 He handed it back, without a word.
 
 A SmPLETON. 413 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 From this time Falcon was always welcome at Kent 
 Villa. He fascinated everybody in the house. He 
 renewed his acquaintance with Mr. Lusignan, and got 
 asked to stay a week in the house. He showed Rosa 
 and her father the diamonds, and, the truth must be 
 owned, they made Rosa's eyes sparkle for the first time 
 this eighteen months. He insinuated rather than declared 
 his enormous wealth. 
 
 In reply to the old man's eager questions, as the large 
 diamonds lay glittering on the table, and pointed every 
 word, he said that a few of his Hottentots had found 
 these for him ; he had made them dig on a diamondifer- 
 ous part of his estate, just by way of testing the matter ; 
 and this was the result ; this, and a much larger stone, 
 for which he had received eight thousand pounds from 
 Posno. 
 
 " If I was a young man," said Lusignan, *' I would go 
 out directly, and dig on your estate." 
 
 " I would not let you do anything so paltry," said " le 
 Menteur." " Why, my dear sir, there are no fortunes to 
 be made by grubbing for diamonds ; tlie fortunes are 
 made out of the diamonds, but not in that way. Now, 
 I have thirty thousand acres, and am just concluding a 
 bargain for thirty thousand more, on which I happen to 
 know there are diamonds in a sly corner. Well, of my 
 thirty thousand tried acres, a hundred only are diamond- 
 iferous. But I have four thousand thirty-foot claims 
 leased at ten shillings per month. Count that up." 
 
 " Why, it is twenty-four thousand pounds a year."
 
 414 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 " Excuse me : you must deduct a thousand a year for 
 the expenses of collection. But this is only one phase 
 of the business. I have a large inn upon each of the 
 three great routes from the diamonds to the coast ; and 
 these inns are supplied with the produce of my own 
 farms. Mark the effect of the diamonds on property. 
 My sixty thousand acres, which are not diamondiferous, 
 will very soon be worth as much as sixty thousand Eng- 
 lish acres, say two pounds the acre per annum. That is 
 under the mark, because in Africa the land is not bur- 
 dened with poor-rates, tithes, and all the other iniquities 
 that crush the English land-owner, as I know to my cost. 
 But that is not all, sir. Would you believe it ? even 
 after the diamonds were declared, the people out there 
 had so little foresight that they allowed me to buy land 
 all round Port Elizabeth, Natal, and Cape Town, the 
 three ports through which the world get at the diamonds, 
 and the diamonds get at the world. I have got a girdle 
 of land round those three outlets, bought by the acre ; in 
 two years I shall sell it by the yard. Believe me, sir, 
 English fortunes, even the largest, are mere child's play, 
 compared with the colossal wealth a man can accumulate, 
 if he looks beyond these great discoveries to their conse- 
 quences, and lets others grub for him. But what is the 
 use of it all to me ? " said this Bohemian, with a sigh. 
 "I have no taste for luxuries; no love of display. I 
 have not even charity to dispense on a large scale ; for 
 there are no deserving poor out there ; and the poverty 
 that springs from vice, that I never will encourage." 
 
 John heard nearly all this, and took it into the 
 kitchen ; and henceforth Adoration was the only word 
 for this prince of men, this rare combination of the 
 Adonis and the millionnaire. 
 
 He seldom held such discourses before Rosa; but 
 talked her father into an impression of his boundless
 
 A SmPLETON. 415 
 
 wealth, and half reconciled him to Rosa's refusal of 
 Lord Tadcaster, since here was an old suitor, who, doubt- 
 less, with a little encouragement, would soon come on 
 again. 
 
 Under this impression, Mr. Lusignan gave Palcon more 
 than a little encouragement, and, as Rosa did not resist, 
 he became a constant visitor at the villa, and was always 
 there from Saturday to Monday. 
 
 He exerted all his art of pleasing, and he succeeded. 
 He was welcome to Rosa, and she made no secret of it. 
 
 Emily threw herself in his way, and had many a sly 
 talk with him, while he was pretending to be engaged 
 with young Christie. He flattered her, and made her 
 sweet on him, but was too much in love with Rosa, after 
 his fashion, to flirt seriously with her. He thought he 
 might want her services : so he worked upon her after 
 this fashion ; asked her if she would like to keep an inn. 
 
 " Wouldn't I just ? " said she frankly. 
 
 Then he told her that, if all went to his wish in 
 England, she should be landlady of one of his inns in 
 the Cape Colony. ''And you will get a good husband 
 out there directly,'' said he. " BeauLy is a very uncom- 
 mon thing in those parts. But I shall ask you to marry 
 somebody who can help you in the business — or not to 
 marry at all." 
 
 " I wish I had the inn," said Emily. " Husbands are 
 soon got when a girl hasn't her face only to look to." 
 
 "Well, I promise you the inn," said he, "and a good 
 outfit of clothes, and money in both pockets, if you will 
 do me a good turn here in England." 
 
 "That I would, sir. But, laws, what can a poor giii 
 like me do for a rich gentleman like you ? " 
 
 " Can you keep a secret, Emily ? " 
 
 " Nobody better. You try me, sir." 
 
 He looked at her well j saw she was one of those who
 
 416 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 could keep a secret, if she chose, and he resolved to risk 
 it. 
 
 "Emily, my girl," said he sadly, "I am an unhappy 
 man." 
 
 " You, sir ! Why, you didn't ought to be." 
 
 " I am then. I am in love ; and cannot win her." 
 
 Then he told the girl a pretty tender tale, that he had 
 loved Mrs. Staines when she was Miss Lusignan, had 
 thought himself beloved in turn, but was rejected ; and 
 now, though she was a widow, he had not the courage to 
 court her, her heart was in the grave. He spoke in such 
 a broken voice that the girl's good-nature fought against 
 her little pique at finding how little he was smitten 
 with her, and Falcon soon found means to array Ler 
 cupidity on the side of her good-nature. He gave Ler 
 a five-pound note to buy gloves, and promised hei' a 
 fortune, and she undertook to be secret as the grave, 
 and say certain things adroitly to Mrs. Staines, 
 
 Accordingly, this young woman omitted no opportunity 
 of dropping a word in favor of Falcon. For one thing, 
 she said to Mrs. Staines, " Mr. Falcon must be very fond 
 of children, ma'am. Why, he worships Master Christie." 
 
 " Indeed ! I have not observed that." 
 
 " Why, no, ma'am. He is rather shy over it ; but 
 when he sees us alone, he is sure to come to us, and say, 
 * Let me look at my child, nurse ; ' and he do seem fit to 
 eat him. Oust he says to me, ' This boy is my heir, 
 nurse.' What did he mean by that, ma'am ? " 
 
 " I don't know." 
 
 " Is he any kin to you, ma'am ? " 
 
 "None whatever. You must have misunderstood him. 
 You should not repeat all that people say." 
 
 "No, ma'am ; only I did think it so odd. Poor gentle- 
 man, I don't think he is happy, for all his money." 
 
 " He is too good to be unhappy all his life."
 
 A SIMPLETON. 417 
 
 " So I think, ma'am." 
 
 These conversations were always short, for Rosa, 
 though she was too kind and gentle to snub the girl, 
 was also too delicate to give the least encouragement to 
 her gossip. 
 
 But Rosa's was a mind that could be worked upon, 
 and these short but repeated eulogies were not altogether 
 without effect. 
 
 At last the insidious Falcon, by not making his 
 approaches in a way to alarm her, acquired her friend- 
 ship as well as her gratitude ; and, in short, she got used 
 to him and liked him. Not being bound by any limit 
 of fact whatever, he entertained her, and took her out of 
 herself a little by extemporaneous pictures ; he told her 
 all his thrilling adventures by flood and field, not one of 
 which had ever occurred, yet he made them all sound 
 like truth ; he invented strange characters, and set them 
 talking ; he went after great whales, and harpooned one, 
 which slapped his boat into fragments with one stroke 
 of its tail ; then died, and he hung on by the harpoon 
 protruding from the carcass till a ship came and picked 
 him up. He shot a lion that was carrying off his favorite 
 Hottentot. He encountered another, wounded him with 
 both barrels, was seized, and dragged along the ground, 
 and gave himself up for lost, but kept firing his revolver 
 down the monster's throat till at last he sickened him, 
 and so escaped out of death's maw ; he did not say how 
 he had fired in the air, and ridden fourteen miles on end, 
 at the bare sight of a lion's cub ; but, to compensate that 
 one reserve, plunged into a raging torrent and saved a 
 drowning woman by her long hair, which he caught in 
 his teeth ; he rode a race on an ostrich against a friend 
 on a zebra, which went faster, but threw Ids rider, and 
 screamed with rage at not being able to eat him ; he, 
 Falcon, having declined to run unless liis friend's zebra
 
 418 A SIMPLETON". 
 
 was muzzled. He fed the hungry, clothed the naked, 
 and shot a wild elephant in the eye ; and all this he 
 enlivened with pictorial descriptions of no mean beauty, 
 and as like South Africa as if it had been feu George 
 Robins advertising that continent for sale. 
 
 In short, never was there a more voluble and interest- 
 ing liar by word of mouth, and never was there a more 
 agreeable creature interposed between a bereaved widow 
 and her daily grief and regrets. He diverted her mind 
 from herself, and did her good. 
 
 At last, such was the charm of infinite lying, she 
 missed him on the days he did not come, and was 
 brighter when he did come and lie. 
 
 Things went smoothly, and so pleasantly, that he 
 would gladly have prolonged this form of courtship for 
 a month or two longer, sooner than risk a premature 
 declaration. But more than one cause drove him to a 
 bolder course ; his passion, which increased in violence 
 by contact with its beautiful object, and also a great 
 uneasiness he felt at not hearing from Phoebe. This 
 silence was ominous. He and she knew each other, 
 and what the other was capable of. He knew she was 
 the woman to cross the seas after him, if Staines left the 
 diggings, and any explanation took place that might 
 point to his whereabouts. 
 
 These double causes precipitated matters, and at last 
 he began to throw more devotion into his manner ; and 
 having so prepared her for a few days, he took his oppor- 
 tunity and said, one day, "We are both unhappy. Give 
 me the right to console you." 
 
 She colored high, and said, "You have consoled me 
 more than all the world. But there is a limit; always 
 will be." 
 
 One less adroit would have brought her to the point ; 
 but this artist only sighed, and let the arrow rankle. By
 
 A SEVIPLETON. 419 
 
 this means he out-fenced her ; for now she had listened 
 to a declaration and not stopped it short. 
 
 He played melancholy for a day or two, and then he 
 tried her another way. He said, " I promised your dying 
 husband to be your protector, and a father to his child. 
 I see but one way to keep my word, and that gives me 
 courage to speak — without that I never could. Rosa, 
 I loved you years ago, I am unmarried for your sake. 
 Let me be your husband, and a father to your child." 
 
 Rosa shook her head. " I could not marry again. I 
 esteem you, I am very grateful to you : and I knoAv I 
 behaved ill to you before. If I could marry again, it 
 would be you. But I cannot. Oh, never ! never ! " 
 
 " Then we both are to be unhappy all our days." 
 
 " I shall, as I ought to be. You will not, I hope. I 
 shall miss you sadly ; but, for all that, I advise you to 
 leave me. You will carry my everlasting gratitude, go 
 where you will ; that and my esteem are all I have to 
 give." 
 
 " I will go," said he ; " and I hope he who is gone will 
 forgive my want of courage." 
 
 " He who is gone took my promise never to marry 
 again." 
 
 " Dying men see clearer. I am sure he wished — no 
 matter ; it is too delicate." He kissed her hand and 
 went out, a picture of dejection. 
 
 Mrs. Staines shed a tear for him. 
 
 Nothing was heard of him for several days ; and Rosa 
 pitied him more and more, and felt a certain discontent 
 with herself, and doubt whether she had done right. 
 
 Matters were in this state, when one morning Emily 
 came screaming in from the garden, " The child ! — 
 Master Christie! — Where is he? — Where is he?" 
 
 The house was alarmed. The garden searched, the 
 adjoining paddock. The child was gone.
 
 420 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 Emily was examined, and owned, with many sobs and 
 hysterical cries, that she had put him down in the sum- 
 mer-house for a minute, while she went to ask the gardener 
 for some balm, balm tea being a favorite drink of hers. 
 " But there was nobody near that I saw," she sobbed. 
 
 Further inquiry proved, however, that a tall gypsy 
 woman had been seen prowling about that morning ; and 
 suspicion instantly fastened on her. Servants were sent 
 out right and left; but nothing discovered; and the 
 agonized mother, terrified out of her wits, had Falcon 
 telegraphed to immediately. 
 
 He came galloping down that very evening, and heard 
 the story. He galloped into Gravesend, and after seeing 
 the police, sent word out he should advertise. He 
 placarded Gravesend with bills, offering a reward of 
 a thousand pounds, the child to be brought to him, and 
 no questions asked. 
 
 Meantime the police and many of the neighboring 
 gentry came about the miserable mother with their 
 vague ideas. 
 
 Down comes Falcon again next day ; tells what he 
 has done, and treats them all with contempt. " Don't 
 you be afraid, Mrs. Staines," said he. " You will get 
 him back. I have taken the sure way. This sort of 
 rogues dare not go near the police, and the police can't 
 find them. You have no enemies ; it is only some 
 woman that has fancied a beautiful child. Well, she 
 can have them by the score, for a thousand pounds." 
 
 He was the only one with a real idea; the woman saw 
 it, and clung to him. He left late at night. 
 
 Next morning out came the advertisements, and he 
 sent her a handful by special messenger. His zeal and 
 activity kept her bereaved heart from utter despair. 
 
 At eleven that night came a telegraph : — 
 
 " I have got him. Coming down by special train."
 
 A SBIPLETO^T. 421 
 
 Then what a burst of joy and gratitude ! The very 
 walls of the house seemed to ring with it as a harp rings 
 with music. A special train, too ! he would not let the 
 mother yearn all night. 
 
 At one in the morning he drove up with the child and 
 a hired nurse. 
 
 Imagine the scene ! The mother's screams of joy, 
 her furious kisses, her cooing, her tears, and all the 
 miracles of nature at such a time. The servants all 
 mingled with their employers in the general rapture, 
 and Emily, who was pale as death, cried and sobbed, and 
 said, "Oh, ma'am, I'll never let him out of my sight 
 again, no, not for one minute." Falcon made her a 
 signal, and went out. She met him in the garden. 
 
 She was much agitated, and cried, " Oh, you did well 
 to bring him to-day. I could not have kept it another 
 hour. I'm a wretch." 
 
 " You are a good kind girl ; and here's the fifty pounds 
 I promised you." 
 
 "Yfell, and I have earned it." 
 
 " Of course you have. Meet me in the garden to-morrow 
 morning, and I'll show you you have done a kind thing 
 to your mistress, as well as me. And as for the fifty 
 pounds, that is nothing ; do you hear? it is nothing at 
 all, compared with what I will do for you, if you Avill be 
 true to me, and hold your tongue." 
 
 " Oh ! as for that, my tongue shan't betray you, nor 
 shame me. You are a gentleman, and I do think you love 
 her, or I would not help you." 
 
 So she salved her nursemaid's conscience — with the 
 help of the fifty pounds. 
 
 The mother was left to her rapture that night. In the 
 morning Falcon told his tale. 
 
 "At two P.M. a man had called on him, and had pro- 
 duced one of his advertisements, and had asked him if
 
 422 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 that was all square — no bobbies on the lurk. ' All 
 square, my fine fellow.' 'Well,' said he, 'I suppose you 
 are a gentleman.' *I am of that opinion too.' ' Well, sir,' 
 says he, ' I know a party as has found a young gent as 
 comes werry nigh your advertisement.' *It will be a 
 very lucky find to that party,' I said, 'if he is on the 
 square.' 'Oh, we are always on the square, when the 
 blunt is put down.' ' The blunt for the child, when you 
 like, and where you like,' said I. 'You are the right 
 sort,' said he. ' I am,' replied I. ' Will you come and 
 see if it is all right ? ' said he. * In a minute,' said I. 
 Stepped into my bedroom, and loaded my six-shooter." 
 
 " What is that ? " said Lusignan. 
 
 " A revolver with six barrels : by the by, the very same 
 I killed the lion with. Ugh ! I never think of that scene 
 without feeling a little quiver ; and my nerves are pretty 
 good, too. Well, he took me into an awful part of the 
 town, down a filthy close, into some boozing ken — I beg 
 pardon, some thieves' public-house." 
 
 "Oh, my dear friend," said Eosa, "were you not 
 frightened ? " 
 
 " Shall I tell you the truth, or play the hero ? I think 
 I'll tell you the truth. I felt a little frightened, lest they 
 should get my money and my life, without my getting 
 my godson: that is what I call him now. Well, two 
 ugly dogs cam. in, and said, 'Let us see the flimsies, 
 before you see the kid.' 
 
 " 'That is rather sharp practice, I think,' said I; 'how- 
 ever, here's the swag, and here's the watch-dog.' So I 
 put down the notes, and my hand over them with my 
 revolver cocked, and ready to fire." 
 
 "Yes, yes," said Eosa pantingly. "Ah, you were a 
 match for them." 
 
 "Well, Mrs. Staines, if I was writing you a novel, I 
 suppose I should tell you the rogues recoiled; but the
 
 A SIMPLETON. 423 
 
 truth is they only laughed, and were quite pleased. 
 ' Swell's in earnest/ said one, ' Jem, show the kid.' Jem 
 whistled, and in came a great tall black gypsy woman, 
 with the darling. My heart was in my mouth, but I 
 would not let them see it. I said, ' It is all right. Take 
 half the notes here, and half at the door,' They agreed, 
 and then I did it quick, walked to the door, took the 
 child, gave them the odd notes, and made off as fast as 
 I could, hired a nurse at the hospital — and the rest you 
 know." 
 
 "Papa," said Rosa, with enthusiasm, "there is but one 
 man in England who would have got me back my child, 
 and this is he." 
 
 When they were alone. Falcon told her she had said 
 words that gladdened his very heart. " You admit I can 
 carry out one half of his wishes ? " said he. 
 
 Mrs. Staines said " Yes," then colored high ; then, to 
 turn it off, said, "But I cannot allow you to lose that 
 large sum of money. You must let me repay you." 
 
 " Large sum of money ! " said he. " It is no more to 
 me than sixpence to most people. I don't know what to 
 do with my money ; and I never shall know, unless you 
 will make a sacrifice of your own feelings to the wishes 
 of the dead. Mrs. Staines — Rosa, do pray consider 
 that a man of that wisdom sees the future, and gives 
 wise advice. Sure am I that, if you could overcome your 
 natural repugnance to a second marriage, it would be the 
 best thing for your little boy — I love him already as if 
 he were my own — and in time would bring you peace 
 and comfort, and some day, years hence, even happiness. 
 You are my only love ; yet I should never have come to 
 you again if he had not sent me. Do consider how 
 strange it all is, and what it points to, and don't let me 
 have the misery of losing you again, when you can do no 
 better now, alas ! than reward my fidelity."
 
 424 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 She was much moved at this artful appeal, and said, 
 "If I was sure I was obeying his will. But how can I 
 feel that, when we both promised never to wed again ? " 
 
 " A man's dying words are more sacred than any other. 
 You have his letter." 
 
 " Yes, but he does not say ' marry again.' " 
 
 " That is what he meant, though." 
 
 " How can you say that ? How can you know ? " 
 
 " Because I put the words he said to me together with 
 that short line to you. Mind, I don't say that he did not 
 exaggerate my poor merits ; on the contrary, I think he 
 did. But I declare to you that he did hope I should 
 take care of you and your child. Eight or wrong, it was 
 his wish, so pray do not deceive yourself on that point." 
 
 This made more impression on her than anything else 
 he could say, and she said, " I promise you one thing, I 
 will never marry any man but you." 
 
 Instead of pressing her further, as an inferior artist 
 would, he broke into raptures, kissed her hand tenderly, 
 and was in such high spirits, and so voluble all day, that 
 she smiled sweetly on him, and thought to herself, "Poor 
 soul ! how happy I could make him with a word ! " 
 
 As he was always watching her face — a practice he 
 carried further than any person living — he divined that 
 sentiment, and wrought upon it so, that at last he 
 tormented her into saying she would marry him soyne 
 day. 
 
 When he had brought her to that, he raged inwardly 
 to think he had not two years to work in; for it was evi- 
 dent she would marry him in time. But no, it had taken 
 him more than four months, close siege, to bring her to 
 that. No word from Phoebe. An ominous dread hung 
 over his own soul. His wife would be upon him, or, 
 worse still, her brother Dick, who he knew would beat 
 him to a mummy on the spot j or^ worst of all, the hus-
 
 A SIMPLETOK. 425 
 
 band of Rosa Staines, who would kill him, or fling him 
 into a prison. He must make a push. 
 
 In this emergency he used his ally, Mr. Lusignan ; he 
 told him Mrs. Staines had promised to marry him, but 
 at some distant date. This would not do ; he must look 
 after his enormous interests in the colony, and he was so 
 much in love he could not leave her. 
 
 The old gentleman was desperately fond of Falcon, and 
 bent on the match, and he actually consented to give his 
 daughter what Falcon called a little push. 
 
 The little push was a very great one, I think. 
 
 It consisted in directing the clergyman to call in 
 church the banns of marriage between Keginald Falcon 
 and Rosa Staines. 
 
 They were both in church together when this Avas 
 done. Rosa all but screamed, and then turned red as 
 fire and white as a ghost, by turns. She never stood up 
 again all the service ; and in going home refused Falcon's 
 arm, and walked swiftly home by herself. Kot that she 
 had the slightest intention of passing this monstrous 
 thing by in silence. On the contrary, her wrath was 
 boiling over, and so hot that she knew she should make 
 a scene in the street if she said a word there. 
 
 Once inside the house she turned on Falcon, with a 
 white cheek and a flashing eye, and said, "Follow me, sir, 
 if you please." She led the way to her father's study. 
 "Papa," said she, "I throw myself on your protection. 
 Mr. Falcon has affronted me." 
 
 " Oh, Rosa ! " cried Falcon, affecting utter dismay. 
 
 " Publicly — publicly : he has had the banns of mar- 
 riage cried in the church, without my permission." 
 
 " Don't raise your voice so loud, child. All the house 
 will hear you." 
 
 " I choose all the house to hear me. I will not endure 
 it. I will never marry you now — never ! "
 
 426 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 *' Kosa, my child," said Liisignan, "you need not scold 
 poor Falcon, for I am tlie culprit. It was I who ordered 
 the banns to be cried." 
 
 " Oh ! papa, you had no right to do such a thing as 
 that." 
 
 "I think I had. I exercised parental authority for 
 once, and for your good, and for the good of a true and 
 faithful lover of yours, whom you jilted once, and now 
 you trifle with his affection and his interests. He loves 
 you too well to leave you ; yet you know his vast estates 
 and interests require supervision." 
 
 " That for his vast estates ! " said Eosa contemptu- 
 ovisly. "1 am not to be driven to the altar like this, 
 when my heart is in the grave. Don't you do it again, 
 papa, or I'll get up and forbid the banns ; affront for 
 affront." 
 
 "I should like to see that," said the old gentleman 
 dryly. 
 
 Rosa vouchsafed no reply, but swept out of the room, 
 with burning cheeks and glittering eyes, and was not 
 seen all day, would not dine with them, in spite of three 
 humble, deprecating notes Falcon sent her. 
 
 " Let the spiteful cat alone," said old Lusignan. " You 
 and I will dine together in peace and quiet." 
 
 It was a dull dinner; but Falcon took advantage of 
 the opportunity, imj)regnated the father with his views, 
 and got him to promise to have the banns cried next 
 Sunday. He consented. 
 
 Rosa learned next Sunday morning that this was to be 
 done, and her courage failed her. She did not go to 
 church at all. 
 
 She cried a great deal, and submitted to violence, as 
 your true women are too apt to do. They had compro- 
 mised her, and so conquered her. The permanent 
 feelings of gratitude and esteem caused a reaction after
 
 A SIIVIPLETON. 427 
 
 her passion, and slie gave up open resistance as hope- 
 less. 
 
 Falcon renewed his visits, and was received with the 
 mere sullen languor of a woman who has given in. 
 
 The banns were cried a third time. 
 
 Then the patient Kosa bought laudanum enough to 
 reunite her to her Christopher, in spite of them all; 
 and having provided herself with this resource, became 
 more cheerful, and even kind and caressing. 
 
 She declined to name the day at present, and that was 
 awkward. - Nevertheless the consj)irators felt sure they 
 should tire her out into doing that, before long ; for they 
 saw their way clear, and she was perplexed in the 
 extreme. 
 
 In her perplexity, she used to talk to a certain beauti- 
 ful star she called her Christopher. She loved to fancy 
 he was now an inliabitant of that bright star ; and often 
 on a clear night she would look up, and beg for guidance 
 from this star. This I consider foolish : but then I am 
 old and sceptical ; she was still young and innocent, and 
 sorely puzzled to know her husband's real will. 
 
 I don't suppose the star had anything to do with it, 
 except as a focus of her thoughts ; but one fine night, 
 after a long inspection of Christopher's star, she dreamed 
 a dream. She thought that a lovely wedding-dress hung 
 over a chair, that a crown of diamonds as large as almonds 
 sparkled ready for her on the dressing-table, and she 
 was undoing her black gown, and about to take it off, 
 Avhen suddenly the diamonds began to pale, and the 
 white satin dress to melt away, and in its place there 
 rose a pale face and a long beard, and Christopher Staines 
 stood before her, and said quietly, " Is this how you 
 keep your vow ? " Then he sank slowly, and the white 
 dress was black, and the diamonds were jet ; and she 
 awoke, with his gentle words of remonstrance and his 
 very tones ringing in her ear.
 
 428 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 Tliis dream, co-operating with her previous agitation 
 and misgivings, sliook her very much ; she did not come 
 down-stairs till near dinner-time ; and both her father 
 and Falcon, who came as a matter of course to spend 
 his Sunday, were struck with her appearance. She was 
 pale, gloomy, morose, and had an air of desperation 
 about her. 
 
 Falcon would not see it ; he knew that it is safest to 
 let her sex alone when they look like that ; and then the 
 storm sometimes subsides of itself. 
 
 After dinner, Rosa retired early ; and soon she was 
 heard walking rapidly up and down the dressing-room. 
 
 This was quite unusual, and made a noise. 
 
 Papa Lusignan thought it inconsiderate ; and after a 
 while, remarking gently that he was not particularly 
 fond of sound, he proposed they should smoke the pipe 
 of peace on the lawn. 
 
 They did so ; but after a while, finding that Falcon 
 was not smoking, he said, "Don't let me detain you. 
 Rosa is alone." 
 
 Falcon took the hint, and went to the drawing-room. 
 Rosa met him on the stairs, with a scarf over her shoul- 
 ders. " I must speak to papa," said she. '^ Where is 
 he?" 
 
 " He is on the lawn, dear Rosa," said Falcon, in his 
 most dulcet tones. He was sure of his ally, and very 
 glad to use him as a buffer to receive the first shock. 
 
 So he went into the draAving-room, where all the lights 
 were burning, and quietly took up a book. But he did 
 not read a line ; he was too occupied in trying to read 
 his own future. 
 
 The mean villain, who is incapable of remorse, is, of all 
 men, most capable of fear. His villany had, to all ap- 
 pearance, reached the goal; for he felt sure that all 
 Rosa's struggles would, sooner or later, succumb to her
 
 A SIMPLETON. 429 
 
 sense of gratitude and his strong will and patient tem- 
 per. But when the victory was won, what a life ! He 
 must fly with her to some foreign country, pursued from 
 pillar to post by an enraged husband, and by the offended 
 law. And if he escaped the vindictive foe a year or two, 
 how could he escape that other enemy he kneAV, and 
 dreaded — poverty ? He foresaw he should come to 
 hate the woman he was about to wrong, and she would 
 instantly revenge herself, by making him an exile and, 
 soon or late, a prisoner, or a pauper. 
 
 While these misgivings battled with his base but 
 ardent passion, strange things were going on out of 
 doors — but they will be best related in another sequence 
 of events, to which indeed they fairly belong.
 
 430 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 Staines and Mrs. Falcon landed at Plymouth, and 
 went up to town by tlie same train. They parted in 
 London, Staines to go down to Gravesend, Mrs. Falcon 
 to visit her husband's old haunts, and see if she could 
 find him. 
 
 She did not find him; but she heard of him, and 
 learned that he always went down to Gravesend from 
 Saturday till Monday. 
 
 Notwithstanding all she had said to Staines, the actual 
 information startled her, and gave her a turn. She was 
 obliged to sit down, for her knees seemed to give way. 
 It was but a momentary weakness. She was now a wife 
 and a mother, and had her rights. She said to herself, 
 "My rogue has turned that poor woman's head long 
 before this, no doubt. But I shall go down and just 
 bring him away by the ear." 
 
 For once her bitter indignation overpowered every 
 other sentiment, and she lost no time, but late as it Avas 
 went down to Gravesend, ordered a private sitting-room 
 and bedroom for the night, and took a fly to Kent Villa. 
 
 But Christopher Staines had the start of her. He had 
 already gone down to Gravesend with his carpet-bag, 
 left it at the inn, and walked to Kent Villa that lovely 
 summer night, the happiest husband in England. 
 
 His heart had never for one instant been disturbed by 
 Mrs. Falcon's monstrou.s suspicion ; he looked on her as 
 a monomaniac ; a sensible woman insane on one point, 
 her husband. 
 
 When he reached the villa, however, he thought it
 
 A SIMPLETON. 431 
 
 prudent to make sure that Falcon had come to Eng- 
 land at all, and discharged his commission. He would 
 not run the risk, small as he thought it, of po\incing un- 
 expected on his Rosa, being taken for a ghost, and terri- 
 fying her, or exciting her to madness. 
 
 Now the premises of Kent Villa were admirably 
 adapted to what they call in war a reconnoissance. Tlie 
 lawn was studded with laurestinas and other shrubs that 
 had grown magnificently in that Kentish air. 
 
 Staines had no sooner set his foot on the lawn, than 
 he heard voices ; he crept towards them from bush to 
 bush ; and standing in impenetrable shade, he saw in 
 the clear moonlight two figures — Mr. Lusignan and 
 Reginald Falcon. 
 
 These two dropped out only a word or two at inter- 
 vals ; but what they did say struck Staines as odd. For 
 one thing, Lusignan remarked, " I suppose you will want 
 to go back to the Cape. Such enormous estates as yours 
 will want looking after." 
 
 " Enormous estates ! " said Staines to himself. " Then 
 they must have grown very fast in a few months." 
 
 " Oh, yes," said Falcon ; '' but I think of showing her 
 a little of Europe first." 
 
 Staines thought this still more mysterious ; he waited 
 to hear more, but the succeeding remarks were of an 
 ordinary kind. 
 
 He noticed, however, that Falcon spoke of his wife 
 by her Christian name, and that neither party mentioned 
 Christopher Staines. He seemed quite out of their little 
 world. 
 
 He began to feel a strange chill creep down him. 
 
 Presently Falcon went off to join Rosa ; and Staines 
 thought it was quite time to ask the old gentleman 
 whether Falcon had executed his commission, or not. 
 
 He was only hesitating how to do it, not liking to
 
 432 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 pounce in the dark on a man who abhorred everything 
 like excitement, when Kosa herself came flying out in 
 great agitation. 
 
 Oh ! the thrill he felt at the sight of her ! With all 
 his self-possession, he would have sprung forward and 
 taken her in his arms with a mighty cry of love, if she 
 had not immediately spoken words that rooted him to 
 the spot with horror. But she came with the words in 
 her very mouth ; " Papa, I am come to tell you I cannot, 
 and will not, marry Mr. Falcon." 
 
 " Oh, yes, you will, my dear." 
 
 " Never ! I'll die sooner. Not that you will care for 
 that. I tell you I saw my Christopher last night — in a 
 dream. He had a beard ; but I saw him, oh, so plain ; 
 and he said, * Is this the way you keep your promise ? ' 
 That is enough for me. I have prayed, again and again, 
 to his star, for light. I am so perplexed and harassed 
 by you all, and you make me believe what you like. 
 Well, I have had a revelation. It is not my poor lost 
 darling's wish I should wed again. I don't believe Mr. 
 Falcon any more. I hear nothing but lies by day. The 
 truth comes to my bedside at night. I will not marry 
 this man." 
 
 " Consider, Kosa, your credit is pledged. You must 
 not be always jilting him heartlessly. Dreams ! non- 
 sense. There — I love peace. It is no use your storm- 
 ing at me ; rave to the moon and the stars, if you like, 
 and when you have done, do pray come in, and behave 
 like a rational woman, who has pledged her faith to an 
 honorable man, and a man of vast estates — a man that 
 nursed your husband in his last illness, found your child, 
 at a great expense, when you had lost him, and merits 
 eternal gratitude, not eternal jilting. I have no patience 
 with you." 
 
 The old gentleman retired in high dudgeon.
 
 A SIIMPLETON. 433 
 
 Staines stood in the black shade of his cedar-tree, 
 rooted to the ground by this revelation of male villany 
 and female credulity. 
 
 He did not know what on earth to do. He wanted to 
 kill Falcon, but not to terrify his own wife to death. It 
 was now too clear she thought he was dead. 
 
 Rosa watched her father's retiring figure out of sight. 
 " Very well," said she, clenching her teeth ; then sud- 
 denly she turned, and looked up to heaven "Do you 
 hear ? " said she, " my Christie's star ? I am a poor per- 
 plexed creature, I asked you for a sign, and that very 
 night I saAV him in a dream. Why should I marry out 
 of gratitude ? Why should I marry one man, when I 
 love another ? What does it matter his being dead ? 
 I love him too well to be wife to any living man. They 
 persuade me, they coax me, they pull me, they push me. 
 I see they will make me. But I will outwit them. See 
 — see ! " and she held up a little phial in the moonlight. 
 " This shall cut the knot for me ; this shall keep me true 
 to my Christie, and save me from breaking promises I 
 ought never to have made. This shall unite me once 
 more with him I killed, and loved," 
 
 She meant she would kill herself the night before the 
 wedding, which perhaps she would not, and perhaps she 
 would. Who can tell ? The weak are violent. But Chris- 
 topher, seeing the poison so near her lips, was perplexed, 
 took two strides, wrenched it out of her hand, with a snarl 
 of rage, and instantly plunged into the shade again. 
 
 Rosa uttered a shriek, and flew into the house. 
 
 The farther she got, the more terrified she became, and 
 soon Christopher heard her screaming in the drawing- 
 room in an alarming way. They were like the screams 
 of the insane. 
 
 He got terribly anxious, and followed her. All the 
 doors were open. 
 28
 
 434 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 As he went up-stairs, he heard her cry, " His ghost ! 
 his ghost ! I have seen his ghost ! No, no. I feel his 
 hand upon my arm now. A beard ! and so he had in the 
 dream ! He is alive. My darling is alive. You have 
 deceived me. You are an impostor — a villain. Out of 
 the house this moment, or he shall kill you." 
 
 " Are you mad ? " cried Falcon. '' How can he be 
 alive, when I saw him dead ? " 
 
 This was too much. Staines gave the door a blow 
 with his arm, and strode into the apartment, looking 
 white and tremendous. 
 
 Falcon saw death in his face ; gave a shriek, drew his 
 revolver, and fired at him with as little aim as he had at 
 the lioness; then made for the open window. Staines 
 seized a chair, followed him, and hurled it at him ; and 
 the chair and the man went through the window together, 
 and then there was a strange thud heard outside. 
 
 Rosa gave a loud scream, and swooned away. 
 
 Staines laid his wife flat on the floor, got the women 
 about her, and at last she began to give the usual signs 
 of returning life. 
 
 Staines said to the oldest woman there, " If she sees 
 me, she will go off again. Carry her to her room ; and 
 tell her, by degrees, that I am alive." 
 
 All this time Papa Lusignan had sat trembling and 
 whimpering in a chair, moaning, "This is a painful 
 scene — very painful." But at last an idea struck him 
 — " Why, you have robbed the office ! " 
 
 Scarcely was Mrs. Staines out of the room, when a fly 
 drove up, and this was immediately followed by violent 
 and continuous screaming close under the window, 
 
 " Oh, dear ! " sighed Papa Lusignan. 
 
 They ran down, and found Falcon impaled at full 
 length on the spikes of the villa, and Phoebe screaming 
 over him, and trying in vain to lift him off them. He
 
 A SIMPLETON. 435 
 
 had struggled a little, in silent terror, but had then 
 fainted from fear and loss of blood, and lying rather 
 inside the rails, which were high, he could not be extri- 
 cated from the outside. 
 
 As soon as his miserable condition was discovered, the 
 servants ran down into the kitchen, and so up to the 
 rails by the area steps. These rails had caught him ; 
 one had gone clean through his arm, the other had pene- 
 trated the fleshy part of the thigh, and a third pierced 
 his ear. 
 
 They got him off ; but he was insensible, and the place 
 drenched with his blood. 
 
 Phoebe clutched Staines by the arm. " Let me know 
 the worst," said she. " Is he dead ? " 
 
 Staines examined him, and said " No." 
 
 " Can you save him ? " 
 
 " I ? " 
 
 " Yes. Who can, if you cannot ? Oh, have mercy on 
 me ! " and she went on her knees to him, and put her 
 forehead on his knees. 
 
 He was touched by her simple faith ; and the noble 
 traditions of his profession sided with his gratitude to 
 this injured woman. " My poor friend," said he, "I will 
 do my best, for your sake." 
 
 He took immediate steps for stanching the blood ; and 
 the fly carried Phoebe and her villain to the inn at 
 Gravesend. 
 
 Falcon came to on the road ; but finding himself alone 
 with Phoebe, shammed unconsciousness of everything 
 but pain. 
 
 Staines, being thoroughly enraged with Rosa, yet 
 remembering his solemn vow never to abuse her again, 
 saw her father, and told him to tell her he should think 
 over her conduct quietly, not wishing to be harder upon 
 her than she deserved.
 
 436 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 Rosa, who had been screaming, and crying for joy, 
 ever since she came to her senses, was not so much 
 afflicted at this message as one might have expected. 
 He was alive, and all things else were trifles. 
 
 Nevertheless, when day after day went by, and not 
 even a line from Christopher, she began to fear he would 
 cast her off entirely ; the more so as she heard he was 
 now and then at Gravesend to visit Mrs. Falcon at the 
 inn. 
 
 While matters were thus, Uncle Philip burst on her 
 like a bomb. " He is alive ! he is alive ! he is alive ! " 
 And they had a cuddle over it. 
 
 " Oh, Uncle Philip ! Have you seen him ? " 
 
 " Seen him ? Yes. He caught me on the hop, just as 
 I came in from Italy. I took him for a ghost." 
 
 " Oh, weren't you frightened ?" 
 
 "Not a bit. I don't mind ghosts. I'd have half a 
 dozen to dinner every day, if I might choose 'em. I 
 couldn't stand stupid ones. But I say, his temper isn't 
 improved by all this dying : he is in an awful rage with 
 you ; and what for ? " 
 
 " uncle ! what for ? Because I'm the vilest of 
 women ! " 
 
 " Vilest of fiddlesticks ! It's his fault, not yours. 
 Shouldn't have died. It's always a dangerous experi- 
 ment." 
 
 "/shall die if he will not forgive me. He keeps away 
 from me and from his child." 
 
 " I'll tell you. He heard, in Gravesend, your banns 
 had been cried: that has moved the peevish fellow's 
 bile." 
 
 " It was done without my consent. Papa will tell you 
 so ; and, O uncle, if you knew the arts, the forged letter 
 in my darling's hand, the way he wrought on me ! 
 villain ! villain ! Uncle, forgive your poor silly niece,
 
 A SIMPLETON. 437 
 
 that the world is too wicked and too clever for her to 
 live in." 
 
 "Because you are too good and innocent," said Uncle 
 Philip. "There, don't you be down-hearted. I'll soon 
 bring you two together again — a couple of ninnies. 
 I'll tell you what is the first thing : you must come and 
 live with me. Come at once, bag and baggage. He 
 won't show here, the sulky brute." 
 
 Philip Staines had a large house in Cavendish Square, 
 a crusty old patient, like himself, had left him. It was 
 his humor to live in a corner of this mansion, though 
 the whole was capitally furnished by his judicious pur- 
 chases at auctions. 
 
 He gave Eosa and her boy and his nurse the entire 
 first floor, and told her she was there for life. "Look 
 here," said he, "this last affair has opened my eyes. 
 Such women as you are the sweeteners of existence. 
 You leave my roof no more. Your husband will make 
 the same discovery. Let him run about, and be miserable 
 a bit. He will have to come to book." 
 
 She shook her head sadly. 
 
 " My Christopher will never say a harsh word to me. 
 All the worse for me. He will quietly abandon a 
 creature so inferior to him." 
 
 "Stuff!" 
 
 Now, she was always running to the window, in hope 
 that Christopher would call on his uncle, and that she 
 might see him ; and one day she gave a scream so elo- 
 quent, Philip knew what it meant. " Get you behind 
 that screen, you and your boy," said he, " and be as still 
 as mice. Stop ! give me that letter the scoundrel forged, 
 and the ring." 
 
 This was hardly done, and Kosa out of sight, and 
 trembling from head to foot, when Christopher was 
 announced. Philip received him very affectionately, 
 but wasted no time.
 
 438 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 " Been to Kent Villa yet ? " 
 
 " No," was the grim reply. 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 " Because I have sworn never to say an angry word to 
 her again ; and, if I was to go there, I should say a good 
 many angry ones. Oh, when I think that her folly drove 
 me to sea, to do my best for her, and that I was nearer 
 death for that woman than ever man was, and lost my 
 reason for her, and went through toil and privations, 
 hunger, exile, mainly for her, and then to find the banns 
 cried in open church, with that scoundrel ! — say no more, 
 uncle. I shall never reproach her, and never forgive 
 her." 
 
 •' She was deceived." 
 
 " I don't doubt that ; but nobody has a right to be so 
 great a fool as all that." 
 
 " It was not her folly, but her innocence, that was 
 imposed on. You a philosopher, and not know that 
 wisdom itself is sometimes imposed on, and deceived by 
 cunning folly ! Have you forgotten your Milton ? — 
 
 " * At Wisdom's gate, Suspicion sleeps, 
 And deems no ill where no ill seems.' 
 
 Come, come ! are are sure you are not a little to blame ? 
 Did you write home the moment you found you were 
 not dead ? " 
 
 Christopher colored high. 
 
 "Evidently not," said the keen old man. "Ah, my 
 fine fellow ! have I found the flaw in your own armor ? " 
 
 " I did wrong, but it was for her. I sinned for her. 
 I could not bear her to be without money, and I knew 
 the insurance — I sinned for her. She has sinned against 
 me." 
 
 " And she had much better have sinned against God, 
 hadn't she ? He is more forgiving than we perfect
 
 A SIMPLETON. 439 
 
 creatures that cheat insurance companies. And so, my 
 fine fellow, you hid the truth from her for two or three 
 months." 
 
 No answer. 
 
 " Strike off those two or three months ; would the 
 banns have ever been cried ? " 
 
 " Well, uncle," said Christopher, hard pressed, " I am 
 glad she has got a champion ; and I hope you will always 
 keep your eye on her." 
 
 " I mean to." 
 
 " Good-morning." 
 
 " No ; don't be in a hurry. I have something else to 
 say, not so provoking. Do you know the arts by which 
 she was made to believe you wished her to marry again ? " 
 
 " I wished her to marry again ! Are you mad, uncle ? " 
 
 " Whose handwriting is on this envelope ? " 
 
 " Mine, to be sure." 
 
 "Now, read the letter." 
 
 Christopher read the forged letter. 
 
 " Oh, monstrous ! " 
 
 ''' This was given her with your ruby ring, and a tale 
 so artful that nothing we read about the devil comes 
 near it. This was what did it. The Earl of Tadcaster 
 brought her title, and wealth, and love." 
 
 " What, he too ! The little cub I saved, and lost my- 
 self for — blank him ! blank him ! " 
 
 " Why, you stupid ninny ! you forget you were dead ; 
 and he could not help loving her. How could he ? 
 Well, but you see she refused him. And why ? because 
 he came without a forged letter from you. Do you doubt 
 her love for you ? " 
 
 "Of course I do. She never loved me as I loved her." 
 
 "Christopher, don't you say that before me, or you 
 and I shall quarrel. Poor girl ! she lay, in my sight, as 
 near death for you as you were for her. I'll show you 
 something."
 
 440 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 He went to a cabinet, and took out a silver paper ; he 
 unpinned it, and laid Rosa's beautiful black hair upon 
 her husband's knees. " Look at that, you hard-liearted 
 brute ! " he roared to Christopher, who sat, anything but 
 hard-hearted, his eyes filling fast, at the sad proof of 
 his wife's love and suffering. 
 
 Rosa could bear no more. She came out with her boy 
 in her hand. " uncle, do not speak harshly to him, or 
 you will kill me quite ! " 
 
 She came across the room, a picture of timidity and 
 penitence, with her whole eloquent body bent forward 
 at an angle. She kneeled at his knees, with streaming 
 eyes, and held her boy up to him : " Plead for your poor 
 mother, my darling. She mourns her fault, and will 
 never excuse it." 
 
 The cause was soon decided. All Philip's logic was 
 nothing, compared with mighty nature. Christopher 
 gave one great sob, and took his darling to his heart, 
 without one word ; and he and Rosa clung together, and 
 cried over each other. Philip slipped out of the room, 
 and left the restored ones together. 
 
 I have something more to say about my hero and 
 heroine, but must first deal with other characters, not 
 wholly uninteresting to the reader, I hope. 
 
 Dr. Staines directed Phoebe Falcon how to treat her 
 husband. No medicine, no stimulants ; very wholesome 
 food, in moderation, and the temperature of the body 
 regulated by tepid water. Under these instructions, the 
 injured but still devoted wife was the real healer. He 
 pulled through, but was lame for life, and ridiculously 
 lame, for he went with a spring halt, — a sort of hop-and- 
 go-one that made the girls laugh, and vexed Adonis. 
 
 Phoebe found the diamonds, and offered them all to 
 Staines, in expiation of his villany. " See/' she said, 
 " he has only spent one."
 
 A SIMPLETON. 441 
 
 Staines said he was glad of it, for her sake, for he 
 must be just to his own family. He sold them for three 
 thousand two hundred pounds ; but for the big diamond 
 he got twelve thousand pounds, and I believe it was 
 worth double the money. 
 
 Counting the two sums, and deducting six hundred 
 for the stone Mr. Falcon had embezzled, he gave her over 
 seven thousand pounds. 
 
 She stared at him, and changed color at so large a sum. 
 " But I have no claim on that, sir." 
 
 " That is a good joke," said he. "Why, you and I are 
 partners in the whole thing — you and I and Dick. Was 
 it not with his horse and rifle I bought the big diamond ? 
 Poor dear, honest, manly Dick ! No, the money is 
 honestly yours, Mrs. Falcon ; but don't tiiist a penny to 
 your husband." 
 
 " He will never see it, sir. I shall take him back, and 
 give him all his heart can ask for, with this ; but he will 
 be little more than a servant in the house now, as long 
 as Dick is single ; I know that ; " and she could still cry 
 at the humiliation of her villain. 
 
 Staines made her promise to write to him ; and she 
 did write him a sweet, womanly letter, to say that they 
 were making an enormous fortune, and hoped to end 
 their days in England. Dick sent his kind love and 
 thanks. 
 
 I will add, what she only said by implication, that she 
 was happy after all. She still contrived to love the 
 thing she could not respect. Once, when an officious 
 friend pitied her for her husband's lameness, she said,. 
 " Find me a face like his. The lamer the better j he 
 can't run after the girls, like some^ 
 
 Dr. Staines called on Lady Cicely Treherne ; the foot- 
 man stared. He left his card. 
 
 A week afterwards, she called on him. She had a
 
 442 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 pink tinge in her cheeks, a general animation, and her 
 face full of brightness and archness. 
 
 " Bless me ! " said he bluntly, " is this you ? How 
 you are improved ! " 
 
 " Yes," said she ; " and I am come to thank you for 
 your pwescwiption : I followed it to the lettaa." 
 
 " Woe is me ! I have forgotten it." 
 
 " You diwected me to mawwy a nice man." 
 
 " Never : I hate a nice man." 
 
 " No, no — an Iwishman : and I have done it." 
 
 " Good gracious ! you don't mean that ! I must be 
 more cautious in my prescriptions. After all, it seems 
 to agree." 
 
 " Admiwably." 
 
 " He loves you ? " 
 
 "To distwaction." 
 
 " He amuses you ? " 
 
 " Pwodigiously. Come and see." 
 
 Dr. and Mrs. Staines live with Uncle Philip. The 
 insurance money is returned, but the diamond money 
 makes them very easy. Staines follows his profession 
 now under great advantages : a noble house, rent free ; 
 the curiosity that attaches to a man who has been canted 
 out of a ship in mid-ocean, and lives to tell it ; and then 
 Lord Tadcaster, married into another noble house, swears 
 by him, and talks of him ; so does Lady Cicely Munster, 
 late Treherne ; and when such friends as these are warm, 
 it makes a physician the centre of an important clien- 
 tele; but his best friend of all is his unflagging indus- 
 try, and his truly wonderful diagnosis, which resembles 
 divination. He has the ball at his feet, and above all, 
 that without which worldly success soon palls, a happy 
 home, a fireside warm with sympathy. 
 
 Mrs. Staines is an admiring, sympathizing wife, and
 
 A SIMPLETON. 443 
 
 an admirable housekeeper. She still utters inadverten- 
 cies now and then, commits new errors at odd times, but 
 never repeats them when exposed. Observing which 
 docility. Uncle Philip has been heard to express a fear 
 that, in twenty years, she will be the wisest woman in 
 England. " But, thank heaven ! " he adds, " I shall be 
 gone before that." 
 
 Her conduct and conversation afford this cynic con- 
 stant food for observation ; and he has delivered himself 
 oracularly at various stages of the study : but I cannot 
 say that his observations, taken as a whole, present that 
 consistency which entitles them to be regarded as a body 
 of philosophy. Examples : In the second month after 
 Mrs. Staines came to live with him, he delivered himself 
 thus : " My niece Rosa is an anomaly. She gives you 
 the impression she is shallow. Mind your eye : in one 
 moment she will take you out of your depth or any 
 man's depth. She is like those country streams I used 
 to tish for pike when I was young ; you go along, seeing 
 the bottom everywhere ; but presently you come to a 
 corner, and it is fifteen deep all in a moment, and souse 
 you go over head and ears : that's my niece Rosa." 
 
 In six months he had got to this — and, mind you, 
 each successive dogma was delivered in a loud, aggressive 
 tone, and in sublime oblivion of the preceding oracle — • 
 " My niece Rosa is the most artful woman. (You may 
 haw ! haw ! haw ! as much as you like. You have not 
 found out her little game — I have.) What is the aim 
 of all women ? To be beloved by an unconscionable 
 number of people. Well, she sets up for a simpleton, 
 and so disarms all the brilliant people, and they love 
 her. Everybody loves her. Just you put her down in 
 a room with six clever women, and you will see who is 
 the favorite. She looks as shallow as a pond, and she 
 is as deep as the ocean."
 
 444 A SIMPLETON. 
 
 At the end of the year he threw off the mask alto- 
 gether. " The great sweetener of a man's life," said he, 
 ''is 'a simpleton.' I shall not go abroad any more ; my 
 house has become attractive : I've got a simpleton. 
 When I have a headache, her eyes fill with tender con- 
 cern, and she hovers about me and pesters me with 
 pillows : when I am cross with her, she is afraid I am 
 ill. When I die, and leave her a lot of money, she will 
 howl for months, and say I don't want his money : ' I 
 Avaw-waw-waw-waw-want my Uncle Philip, to love me, 
 and scold me.' One day she told me, with a sigh, I 
 hadn't lectured her for a month. ' I am afraid I have 
 offended you,' says she, ' or else worn you out, dear.' 
 When I am well, give me a simpleton, to make me laugh. 
 When I am ill, give me a simpleton to soothe me with 
 her innocent tenderness. A simpleton shall wipe the 
 dews of death, and close my eyes : and when I cross 
 the river of death, let me be met by a band of the 
 heavenly host, who were all simpletons here on earth, 
 and too good for such a hole, so now they are in heaven, 
 and their garments always white — because there are no 
 laundresses there." 
 
 Arrived at this point, the Anglo-Saxon race will retire, 
 grinning, to fresh pastures, and leave this champion of 
 " a Simpleton," to thunder paradoxes in a desert.
 
 WHITE LIES,
 
 WHITE LIES. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Towards the close of the last century the Baron de 
 Beaurepaire lived in the chateau of that name in Brit- 
 tany. His family was of prodigious antiquity ; seven 
 successive barons had already flourished on this spot 
 when a younger son of the house accompanied his neigh- 
 bor the Duke of Normandy in his descent on England, 
 and was rewarded by a grant of English land, on which 
 he dug a mote and built a chateau, and called it Beaure- 
 paire (the worthy Saxons turned this into Borreper 
 without delay). Since that day more than twenty gen- 
 tlemen of the same lineage had held in turn the original 
 chateau and lands, and handed them down to their pres- 
 ent lord. 
 
 Thus rooted in his native Brittany, Henri Lionel Marie 
 St. Quentin de Beaurepaire was as fortunate as any man can 
 be pronounced before he dies. He had health, rank, a good 
 income, a fair domain, a goodly house, a loving wife, and 
 two lovely young daughters, all veneration and affection. 
 Two months every year he visited the Faubourg St. Ger- 
 main and the Court. At both every gentleman and every 
 lacquey knew his name, and his face : his return to Brit- 
 tany after this short absence was celebrated by a rustic 
 fete.
 
 4 WHITE LIES. 
 
 Above all, Monsieui- de Beaurepaire possessed that 
 treasure of treasures, couteut. He hunted no heart-burns. 
 Ambition did not tempt him ; why should he listen to 
 long speeches, and court the unworthy, and descend to 
 intrigue, for so precarious and equivocal a prize as a 
 place in the Government, when he could be De Beaure- 
 paire without trouble or loss of self-respect ? Social 
 ambition could get little hold of him ; let parvenus give 
 balls half in doors, half out, and light two thousand lamps, 
 and waste their substance battling and manoeuvring for 
 fashionable distinction ; he had nothing to gain by such 
 foolery, nothing to lose by modest living; he Avas the 
 twenty-ninth Baron of Beaurepaire. So wise, so proud, 
 so little vain, so strong in health and wealth and honor, 
 one would have said nothing less than an earthquake 
 could shake this gentleman and hf.s house. Yet both 
 were shaken, though rooted by centuries to the soil ; and 
 by no vulgar earthquake. 
 
 For years France had bowed in siience beneath two 
 galling burdens — a selfish and corrupt monai<;diy, and a 
 multitudinous, privileged, lazy, and oppressive aristoc- 
 racy, by whom the peasant was handled like a Russian 
 serf. [Said peasant is now the principal proprietor of 
 the soil.] 
 
 The lower orders rose upon their oppressors, and soon 
 showed themselves far blacker specimens of the same 
 breed. Law, religion, humanity, and common sense, hid 
 their faces ; innocent blood flowed in a stream, and terror 
 reigned. To Monsieur de Beaurepaire these republicans 
 — murderers of women, children, and kings — seemed 
 the most horrible monsters nature had ever produced ; he 
 put on black, and retired from society ; he felled timber, 
 and raised large sums of money upon his estate. And 
 one day he mounted his charger, and disappeared from 
 the chateau.
 
 WHITE LIES. 5 
 
 Three months after this, a cavalier, dusty and pale, 
 rode into the courtyard of Beaurepaire, and asked to see 
 the baroness. She came to him ; he hung his head and 
 held her out a letter. 
 
 It contained a few sad words from Monsieur de Laroche- 
 jaquelin. The baron had just fallen in La Vendee, fight- 
 ing for the Crown. 
 
 From that hour till her death the baroness wore black. 
 
 The mourner would have been arrested, and perhaps 
 beheaded, but for a friend, the last in the world on whom 
 the family reckoned for any solid aid. Dr. Aubertin 
 had lived in the chateau twenty years. He was a man 
 of science, and did not care a button for money; so he 
 had retired from the practice of medicine, and pursued 
 his researches at ease under the baron's roof. They all 
 loved him, and laughed at his occasional reveries, in the 
 days of prosperity ; and now, in one great crisis, the 
 protege became the protector, to their astonishment and 
 his own. But it was an age of ups and downs. This 
 amiable theorist was one of the oldest verbal republi- 
 cans in Europe. And why not ? In theory a republic 
 is the perfect form of government : it is merely in 
 practice that it is impossible ; it is only upon going off 
 paper into reality, and trying actually to self-govern 
 limited nations, after heating them white hot with the 
 fire of politics and the bellows of bombast — that the 
 thing resolves itself into bloodshed silvered with moon- 
 shine. 
 
 Dr. Aubertin had for years talked and written specula- 
 tive republicanism. So they applied to him whether 
 the baroness shared her husband's opinions, and he 
 boldly assured them she did not ; he added, " She is 
 a pupil of mine." On this audacious statement they con- 
 tented themselves with laying a heavy fine on the lands 
 of Heaurepaire.
 
 6 WHITE LIES. 
 
 Assignats were abundant, but good mercantile paper, 
 a notorious coward, had made itself wings and fled, and 
 specie was creeping into strong boxes like a startled rab- 
 bit into its liole. The fine was paid ; but Beaurepaire 
 had to be heavily mortgaged, and the loan bore a high 
 rate of interest. This, with the baron's previous mort- 
 gages, swamped the estate. 
 
 The baroness sold her carriage and horses, and she 
 and her daughters prepared to deny themselves all but 
 the bare necessaries of life, and pay off their debts if 
 possible. On this their dependants fell away from them ; 
 their fair-weather friends came no longer near them ; and 
 many a flush of indignation crossed their brows, and 
 many an aching pang their hearts, as adversity revealed 
 the baseness and inconstancy of common people high or 
 low. 
 
 When the other servants had retired with their wages, 
 one Jacintha remained behind, and begged permission to 
 speak to the baroness. 
 
 " What would you with me, my child ? " asked that lady, 
 with an accent in which a shade of surprise mingled with 
 great politeness. 
 
 "Forgive me, madame," began Jacintha, with a formal 
 courtesy ; " but how can I leave you, and Mademoiselle 
 Josephine, and Mademoiselle Rose ? I was born at 
 Beaurepaire ; my mother died in the chateau : my father 
 died in the village ; but he had meat every day from the 
 baron's own table, and fuel from the baron's wood, and 
 died blessing the house of Beaurepaire. I cannot go. 
 The others are gone because prosperity is here no longer. 
 Let it be so ; I will stay till the sun shines again upon 
 the chateau, and then you shall send me away if you are 
 bent on it ; but not now, my ladies — oh, not now ! Oh ! 
 ■oh ! oh ! " And the warm-hearted girl burst out sobbing 
 ungracefully.
 
 WHITE LIES. 7 
 
 " My child," said the baroness, " these sentiments touch 
 me, and honor you. But retire, if you please, while I 
 consult my daughters." 
 
 Jacintha cut her sobs dead short, and retreated with a 
 formal reverence. 
 
 The consultation consisted of the baroness opening her 
 arms, and both her daughters embracing her at once. 
 Proud as they were, they wept with joy at having made 
 one friend amongst all their servants. Jacintha stayed. 
 
 As months rolled on. Rose de Beaurepaire recovered 
 her natural gayety in spite of bereavement and poverty ; 
 so strong are youth, and health, and temperament. But 
 her elder sister had a grief all her own : Captain Dujardin, 
 a gallant young officer, well-born, and. his own master, 
 had courted her with her parents' consent ; and, even 
 when the baron began to look coldly on the soldier of the 
 Republic, young Dujardin, though too proud to encounter 
 the baron's irony and looks of scorn, would not yield love 
 to pique. He came no more to the chateau, but he would 
 wait hours and hours on the path to the little oratory in 
 the park, on the bare chance of a passing word or even a 
 kind look from Josephine. So much devotion gradually 
 won a heart which in happier times she had been half 
 encouraged to give him ; and, when he left her on a mil- 
 itary service of uncommon danger, the woman's reserve 
 melted, and, in that moment of mutual grief and passion, 
 she vowed she loved him better than all the world. 
 
 Letters from the camp breathing a devotion little short 
 of worship fed her attachment ; and more than one pub- 
 lic mention of his name and services made her proud as 
 well as fond of the fiery young soldier. 
 
 Still she did not open her heart to her parents. The 
 baron, alive at that time, was exasperated against the 
 Republic, and all who served it; and, as for the baroness, 
 she was of the old school : a passionate love in a lady's
 
 8 WHITE LIES. 
 
 heart before marriage was contrary to her notions of 
 etiquette. Josephine loved Kose very tenderly; but 
 shrank with modest delicacy from making her a confi- 
 dante of feelings, the bare relation of which leaves the 
 female hearer a child no longer. 
 
 So she hid her heart, and delicious first love nestled 
 deep in her nature, and thrilled in every secret vein and 
 fibre. 
 
 They had parted two years, and he had joined the 
 army of the Pyrenees about one month, when suddenly 
 all correspondence ceased on his part. 
 
 Restless anxiety rose into terror as this silence con- 
 tinued ; and starting and trembling at every sound, and 
 edging to the window at every footstep, Josephine ex- 
 pected hourly the tidings of her lover's death. 
 
 Months rolled on in silence. 
 
 Then a new torture came. He must not be dead but 
 unfaithful. At this all the pride of her race was fired 
 in her. 
 
 The struggle between love and ire was almost too 
 much for nature : violently gay and moody by turns she 
 alarmed both her mother and the good Dr. Aubertin. 
 The latter was not, I think, quite without suspicion of 
 the truth ; however, he simply prescribed change of air 
 and place; she must go to Frejus, a watering-place dis- 
 tant about five leagues. Mademoiselle de Beaurepaire 
 yielded a languid assent. To her all places were alike. 
 
 But when they returned from Frejus a change had 
 taken place. Eose had extracted her sister's secret, and 
 was a changed girl. Pity, and the keen sense of Joseph- 
 ine's wrong, had raised her sisterly love to a passion. 
 The great-hearted girl hovered about her lovely, suffer- 
 ing sister like an angel, and paid her the tender atten- 
 tions of a devoted lover, and hated Camille Dujardin 
 with all her heart : hated him all the more that she saw
 
 WHITE LIES. 9 
 
 Josephine shrink even from lier whenever she inveighed 
 against him. 
 
 At last Rose heard some news of the truant lover. 
 The fact is, this young lady was as intelligent as she 
 was inexperienced ; and she had asked Jacintha to tell 
 Dard to talk to every soldier that passed through the 
 village, and ask him if he knew anything about Captain 
 Dujardin of the 17th regiment. Dard cross-examined 
 about a hundred invalided warriors, who did not even 
 recognize the captain's name ; but at last, by extraordi- 
 nary luck, he actually did fall in with two, who told him 
 strange news about Captain Dujardin. And so then 
 Dard told Jacintha ; and Jacintha soon had the men 
 into the kitchen and told Rose. Rose ran to tell Joseph- 
 ine ; but stopped in the passage, and turned suddenly 
 very cold. Her courage failed her; she feared Joseph- 
 ine would not take the news as she ought ; and perhaps 
 would not love her so Avell if she told her; so she 
 thought to herself she would let the soldiers tell their 
 own tale. She went into the room where Josephine was 
 reading to the baroness and Dr. Aubertin ; she sat quietly 
 down ; but at the first opportunity made Josephine one 
 of those imperceptible signals which women, and above 
 all, sisters, have reduced to so subtle a system. This 
 done, she went carelessly out : and Josephine in due 
 course followed her, and found her at the door. 
 
 " Wliat is it ? " said Josephine, earnestly. 
 
 " Have you courage ? " was Rose's reply. 
 
 " He is dead ? " said Josephine, turning pale as ashes. 
 
 " No, no ; " said Rose hastily ; "• he is alive. But j-ou 
 will need all your courage." 
 
 " Since he lives I fear nothing," said Josephine ; and 
 stood there and quivered from head to foot. Rose, with 
 pitying looks, took her by the hand and drew her iu 
 silence towards the kitchen.
 
 10 WHITE LIES. 
 
 Josephine yielded a mute submission at first; but at 
 the very door hung back and faltered, "He loves an- 
 other; he is married: let me go." Rose made no reply, 
 but left her there and went into the kitchen and found 
 two dragoons seated round a bottle of wine. They rose 
 and saluted her. 
 
 " Be seated, my brave men," said she ; " only please 
 tell me what you told Jacintha about Captain Dujardin." 
 
 "Don't stain your mouth with the captain, my little 
 lady. He is a traitor." 
 
 " How do you know ? " 
 
 "Marcellus ! mademoiselle asks us how we know Cap- 
 tain Dujardin to be a traitor. Speak." 
 
 Marcellus, thus appealed to, told Rose after his own 
 fashion that he knew the captain well : that one day the 
 captain rode out of the camp and never returned : that 
 at first great anxiety was felt on his behalf, for the cap- 
 tain was a great favorite, and passed for the smartest 
 soldier in the division : that after awhile anxiety gave 
 place to some very awkward suspicions, and these suspi- 
 cions it was his lot and his comrade's here to confirm. 
 About a month later he and the said comrade and two 
 more were sent, well mounted, to reconnoitre a Spanish 
 village. At the door of a little inn they caught sight of 
 a French uniform. This so excited their curiosity thit 
 he went forward nearer than prudent, and distinctly 
 recognized Captain Dujardin seated at a table drinking 
 between two guerillas ; then he rode back and told the 
 others, who then came up and satisfied themselves it was 
 so : that if any of the party had entertained a doubt, it 
 was removed in an unpleasant way ; he, Marcellus, dis- 
 gusted at the sight of a French uniform drinking among 
 Spaniards, took down his carabine and fired at the group 
 as carefully as a somewhat restive horse permitted : at 
 this, as if by magic, a score or so of guerillas poured out
 
 WHITE LIES. 11 
 
 from Heaven knows .where, nnisket in hand, and deliv- 
 ered a volley ; the officer in command of the party fell 
 dead, Jean Jacques here got a broken arm, and his own 
 horse was wounded in two places, and fell from loss of 
 blood a few furlongs from the French camp, to the 
 neighborhood of which the vagabonds pursued them, 
 hallooing and shouting and tiring like barbarous banditti 
 as they were. 
 
 ''However, here I am," concluded Marcellus, "in- 
 valided for awhile, my lady, but not expended yet : we 
 will soon dash in among them again for death or glory. 
 Meantime," concluded he, filling both glasses, "let us 
 drink to the eyes of beauty (military salute) ; and to the 
 renown of France ; and double damnation to all her 
 traitors, like that Captain Dujardin ; whose neck may 
 the devil twist." 
 
 Ere they could drink to this energetic toast, a low 
 wail at the door, like a dying hare's, arrested the glasses 
 on their road, and the rough soldiers stood transfixed, 
 and looked at one another in some dismay. Kose flew 
 to the door with a face full of concern. 
 
 Josephine was gone. 
 
 Then Eose had the tact and resolution to sa}' a few 
 kind, encouraging words to the soldiers, and bid Jacintha 
 be hospitable to them. This done she darted up-stairs 
 after Josephine ; she reached the main corridor just in 
 time to see her creep along it Avith the air and carriage 
 of a woman of fifty, and enter her own room. 
 
 Kose followed softly with wet eyes, and turned the 
 handle gently. But the door was locked. 
 
 '*' Josephine ! Josephine ! " 
 
 Ko answer. 
 
 "I want to speak to you. I am frightened. Oh, do 
 not be alone." 
 
 A choking voice answered, " Give me a little while to
 
 12 WHITE LIES. 
 
 draw my breath." Rose sank down at the door, and sat 
 close to it, with her head against it, sobbing bitterly. 
 She was hurt at not being let in ; such a friend as she 
 had proved herself. But this personal feeling was only 
 a fraction of her grief and anxiety. 
 
 A good half hour elapsed ere Josephine, pale and 
 stern as no one had ever seen her till that hour, suddenly 
 opened the door. She started at sight of Hose couched 
 sorrowful on the threshold ; her stern look relaxed into 
 tender love and pity ; she sank, blushing, on her knees, 
 and took her sister's head quickly to her bosom. " Oh, 
 my little love, have you been here all this time ? " — • 
 <'0h! oh! oh!" was all the little love could reply. 
 Then the deserted one, still kneeling, took Rose in her 
 lap, and caressed and comforted her, and poured words 
 of gratitude and affection over her like a warm shower. 
 
 They rose hand in hand. 
 
 Then Rose suddenly seized Josephine, and looked 
 long and anxiously dowi. into her eyes. They flashed 
 fire under the scrutiny. " Yes, it is all over ; I could not 
 despise and love. I am dead to him, as he is dead to 
 France." 
 
 This was joyful n^^ws to Rose. " I hoped it would be 
 so," said she ; " but y u frightened me. My noble sister, 
 were I ever to lose your esteem, I should die. Oh, how 
 awful yet how beautiful is your scorn. For worlds I 
 would not be that Cam " — Josephine laid her hand 
 imperiously on Rose's mouth. " To mention his name 
 to me will be to insult me ; De Beaurepaire I am, and a 
 Frenchwoman. Come, dear, let us go down and comfort 
 our mother." 
 
 They went down ; and this patient sufferer, and high- 
 minded conqueror, of her own accord took up a common- 
 place book, and read aloud for two mortal hours to her 
 mother and Aubertin. Her voice only wavered twice.
 
 "WHITE LIES. 13 
 
 To feel that life is ended; to wish existence, too, had 
 ceased ; and so to sit down, an aching hollow, and take 
 a part and sham an interest in twaddle to please others; 
 snch are woman's feats. How like nothing at all they 
 look ! 
 
 A man would rather sit on the buffer of a steam- 
 engine and rids at the Great Redan. 
 
 Rose sat at her elbow, a little behind her, and turned 
 the leaves, and on one pretence or other held Josephine's 
 hand nearly all the rest of the day. Its delicate fibres 
 remained tense, like a greyhound's sinews after a race, 
 and the blue veins rose to sight in it, though her voice 
 and eyes were mastered. 
 
 So keen was the strife, so matched the antagonists, so 
 hard the victory. 
 
 For ire and scorn are mighty. And noble blood in a 
 noble heart is heroic. And Love is a giant.
 
 14 WHITE LIES. 
 
 CHAPTER 11. 
 
 The French provinces were now organized upon a half 
 military plan, by which all the local authorities radiated 
 towards a centre of government. By-the-by, this feature 
 has survived subsequent revolutions and political changes. 
 
 In days of change, youth is at a premium ; because, 
 though experience is valuable, the experience of one 
 order of things unfits ordinary men for another order of 
 things. So a good many old fogies in ffice were shown 
 the door, and a good deal of youth and energy infused 
 into the veins of provincial government. For instance, 
 Edouard Riviere, who had but just completed his educa- 
 tion with singular eclat at a military school, was one fine 
 day ordered into Brittany to fill a responsible post under 
 Commandant Raynal, a blunt, rough soldier, that had 
 risen from the ranks, and bore a much higher character 
 for zeal and moral integrity than for affability. 
 
 This officer was the son of a widow that kept a grocer's 
 shop in Paris. She intended him for spice, but he 
 thirsted for glory, and vexed her. So she yielded, as 
 mothers will. 
 
 In the armies of the republic a good soldier rose with 
 unparalleled certainty, and rapidity, too ; for when sol- 
 diers are being mowed down like oats, it is a glorious 
 time for such of them as keep their feet. Raynal 
 mounted fast, and used to write to his mother, and joke 
 her about the army being such a bad profession ; and, as 
 he was all for glory, not money, he lived with Spartan 
 frugality, and saved half his pay and all his prize money 
 for the old lady in Paris.
 
 WHITE LIES. 15 
 
 But this prosperous man had to endure a deep disap- 
 pointment ; on the very day he was made commandant 
 and one of the general's aides-de-camp, came a letter 
 into the camp. His mother was dead after a short ill- 
 ness. This was a terrible blow to the simple, rugged 
 soldier, who had never had much time nor inclination to 
 flirt with a lot of girls, and toughen his heart. He came 
 back to Paris honored and rich, but downcast. The old 
 home, empty of his mother, seemed to him not to have 
 the old look. It made him sadder. To cheer him up 
 they brought him much money. The widow's trade had 
 taken a wonderful start the last few years,- and she had 
 been playing the same game as he had, living on ten- 
 pence a day, and saving all for him. This made him 
 sadder, if anything. 
 
 "What," said he, '-have we both been scraping all this 
 dross together for ? I would give it all to sit one hour 
 by the fire, with her hand in mine, and hear her say, 
 ' Scamp, you made me unhappy when you were young, 
 but I have lived to be proud of you.' " 
 
 He applied for active service, no matter what : obtainbd 
 at once this post in Brittany, and threw himself into it 
 with that honest zeal and activity, which are the best 
 earthly medicine for all our griefs. He was busy writ- 
 ing, when young Riviero first presented himself. He 
 looked up for a moment, and eyed him, to take his 
 measure ; then put into his hand a report by young 
 Nicole, a subordinate filling a post of the same nature as 
 Riviere's ; and bade him analyze that report on the spot : 
 with this he instantly resumed his own work. 
 
 Edouard Riviere was an adept at this sort of task, and 
 soon handed him a neat analysis. Raynal ran his eye 
 over it, nodded cold approval, and told him to take this 
 for the present as a guide as to his own duties. He 
 then pointed to a map on which Riviere's district was
 
 16 WHITE LIES. 
 
 marked in blue ink, and bade him find the centre of it. 
 Edouard took a pair of compasses off the table, and soon 
 discovered that tlie village of Beaurepaire was his centre. 
 " Then quarter yourself at Beaurepaire ; and good-day," 
 said Raynal. 
 
 The chateau was in sight from Riviere's quarters, and 
 he soon learned that it belonged to a royalist widow 
 and her daughters, who all three held themselves quite 
 aloof from the rest of the world. " Ah," said the young 
 citizen, " I see. If these rococo citizens play that game 
 with me, I shall have to take them down." Thus a fresh 
 peril menaced this family, on whose hearts and fortunes 
 such heavy blows had fallen. 
 
 One evening our young official, after a day spent in 
 the service of the country, deigned to take a little stroll 
 to relieve the cares of administration. He imprinted on 
 his beardless face the expression of a wearied statesman, 
 and strolled through an admiring village. The men pre- 
 tended veneration from policy ; the women, whose views 
 of this great man were shallower but more sincere, 
 smiled approval of his airs ; and the young puppy 
 affected to take no notice of either sex. 
 
 Outside the village, Publicola suddenly encountered 
 two young ladies, who resembled nothing he had hith- 
 erto met with in his district ; they were dressed in black, 
 and with extreme simplicity ; but their easy grace and 
 composure, and the refined sentiment of their gentle 
 faces, told at a glance they belonged to the high nobility. 
 Publicola divined them at once, and involuntarily raised 
 his hat to so much beauty and dignity, instead of poking 
 it with a finger as usual. On this the ladies instantly 
 courtesied to him after the manner of their party, with a 
 sweep and a majesty, and a precision of politeness, that 
 the pup would have laughed at if he had heard of it ; 
 but seeing it done, and well done, and by lovely women
 
 "WHITE LIES. 17 
 
 of rank, he was taken aback by it, and lifted his hat 
 again, and bowed again after lie had gone by, and was 
 generally flustered. In short, instead of a member of 
 the Consular Government saluting private individuals of 
 a decayed party that existed only by sufferance, a hand- 
 some, vain, good-natured boy had met two self-possessed 
 young ladies of distinction and breeding, and had cut 
 the usual figure. 
 
 For the next hundred yards his cheeks burned and his 
 vanity cooled. But bumptiousness is elastic iu France, 
 as in England, and doubtless among the Esquimaux. 
 "Well, they are pretty girls," says he to himself. "I 
 never saw two such pretty girls together ; they will do 
 for me to flirt with while I am banished to this Arcadia." 
 Banished from school, I beg to observe. 
 
 And " awful beauty " being no longer in sight, ^[r. 
 Edouard resolved he would flirt with them to their 
 hearts' content. But there are ladies with whom a cer- 
 tain preliminary is required before you can flirt with 
 them. You must be on speaking terms. How was this 
 to be managed ? 
 
 He used to watch at his window with a telescope, and 
 whenever the sisters came out of their own grounds, 
 which unfortunately was not above twice a week, he 
 would throw himself in their way by the merest acci- 
 dent, and pay them a dignified and courteous salute, 
 which he had carefully got up before a mirror in the 
 privacy of his own chamber. 
 
 One day, as he took off his hat to the young ladies, 
 there broke from one of them a smile, so sudden, sweet, 
 and vivid, that he seemed to feel it smite him first on 
 the eyes then in the heart. He could not sleep for this 
 smile. 
 
 Yet he had seen many smilers ; but to be sure most of 
 them smiled without effect, because they smiled eter- 
 2
 
 18 WHITE LIES. 
 
 nally ; they seemed cast with their mouths open, and 
 their pretty teeth forever in sight; and this has a sad- 
 dening influence on a man of sense — when it has any. 
 But here a fair, pensive face had brightened at sight of 
 him ; a lovely countenance, on which circumstances, not 
 nature, had impressed gravity, had sprung back to its 
 natural gayCty for a moment, and had thrilled and 
 bewitched the beholder. 
 
 The next Sunday he went to church — and there 
 worshipped — whom ? Cupid. He smarted for his 
 heathenism ; for the young ladies went with higher 
 motives, and took no notice of him. They lowered 
 their long silken lashes over one breviary, and scarcely 
 observed the handsome citizen. Meantime he, contem- 
 plating their pious beauty with earthly eyes, was drink- 
 ing long draughts of intoxicating passion. And when 
 after the service they each took an arm of Dr. Aubertin, 
 and he with the air of an admiral convoying two ships 
 choke-full of specie, conducted his precious charge away 
 home, our young citizen felt jealous, and all but hated 
 the worthy doctor. 
 
 This went on till he became listless and dejected on 
 the days he did not see them. Then he asked himself 
 Avhether he was not a cowardly fool to keep at such a 
 distance. After all he was a man in authority. His 
 friendship was not to be despised, least of all by a 
 family suspected of disaffection to the state. 
 
 He put on his glossy beaver with enormous brim, high 
 curved; his blue coat with brass buttons; his white 
 waistcoat, gray breeches, and top-boots ; and marched up 
 to the chateau of Beaurepaire, and sent in his card with 
 his name and office inscribed. 
 
 Jacintha took it, bestowed a glance of undisguised 
 admiration on the yoiing Adonis, and carried it to the 
 baroness. That lady sent her promptly down again with 
 a black-edged note to this effect.
 
 WHITE LIES. 19 
 
 Highly flattered by ^lonsieur de Riviere's visit, the baroness 
 must inform him that she receives none but old acquaintances, 
 in the present grief of the family, and of the kingdom. 
 
 Youug Riviere was cruelly mortified by this rebuff. 
 He went off hurriedly, grinding his teeth with rage. 
 
 " Cursed aristocrats ! We have done well to pull you 
 down, and we will have you lower still. How I despise 
 myself for giving any one the chance to affront me thus. 
 The haughty old fool ; if she had known her interest, 
 she would have been too glad to make a powerful friend. 
 These royalists are in a ticklish position; I can tell her 
 that. She calls me De Riviere ; that implies nobody 
 without a ' De ' to their name would have the pre- 
 sumption to visit her old tumble-down house. Well, it 
 is a lesson ; I am a republican, and the Commonwealth 
 trusts and honors me ; yet I am so ungrateful as to go 
 out of the way to be civil to her enemies, to royalists ; 
 as if those worn-out creatures had hearts, as if they 
 could comprehend the struggle that took place in my 
 mind between duty, and generosity to the fallen, before 
 I could make the first overture to their acquaintance ; as 
 if they could understand the politeness of the heart, or 
 anything nobler than curving and ducking and heartless 
 etiquette. This is the last notice I will ever take of that 
 old woman, unless it is to denounce her." 
 
 He walked home to the town very fast, his heart boil- 
 ing, and his lips compressed, and his brow knitted. 
 
 To this mood succeeded a sullen and bitter one. He 
 was generous, but vain, and his love had humiliated him 
 so bitterly, he resolved to tear it out of his heart. He 
 absented himself from church ; he met the young ladies 
 no more. He struggled fiercely with his passion ; he 
 went about dogged, silent, and sigliing. Presently he 
 devoted his leisure hours to shooting partridges instead
 
 20 WHITE LIES. 
 
 of ladies. And he was right ; partridges cannot shoot 
 back; whereas beautiful women, like Cupid, are all 
 archers more or less, and often with one arrow from eye 
 or lip do more execution than they have suffered from 
 several discharges of our small shot. 
 
 In these excursions, Edouard was generally accom- 
 panied by a thick-set rustic called Dard, who, I believe, 
 purposes to reveal his own character to you, and so save 
 me that trouble. 
 
 One fine afternoon, about four o'clock, this pair burst 
 remorselessly through a fence, and landed in the road 
 opposite Bigot's Auberge ; a long Tow house, with " Ici 
 ON LOGE A PIED ET A CHEVAL," Written all across it in 
 gigantic letters. Riviere was for iiaoving homeward, but 
 Dard halted and complained dismally of " the soldier's 
 gripes." The statesman had never heard of that com- 
 plaint, so Dard explained that the vulgar name for it was 
 hunger. " And only smell," said he, " the soup is just fit 
 to come off the fire." 
 
 Riviere smiled sadly, but consented to deign to eat a 
 morsel in the porch. Thereat Dard dashed Avildly into 
 the kitchen. 
 
 They dined at one little round table, each after his 
 fashion. When Dard could eat no more, he proceeded 
 to drink ; and to talk in proportion. Riviere, lost in his 
 own thoughts, attended to him as men of business do to 
 a babbling brook ; until suddenly from the mass of 
 twaddle broke forth a magic word — Beaurepaire ; then 
 the languid lover pricked up his ears and found Mr. 
 Dard was abusing that noble family right and left.. 
 Young Riviere inquired what ground of offence they had 
 given him. •' I'll tell you," said Dard ; " they impose 
 on Jacintha ; and so she imposes on me." Then observ- 
 ing he had at last gained his employer's ear, he became 
 prodigiously loquacious, as such people generally are 
 when once they get upon their own griefs.
 
 WHITE LIES. 21 
 
 " These Beaurepaire aristocrats," said he, with his 
 hard peasant good-sense, " are neither the one thing nor 
 the other; they cannot keep up nobility, they have not 
 the means ; they will not come down off their perch, 
 they have not the sense. 'No, for as small as they are, 
 they must look and talk as big as ever. They can only 
 afford one servant, and I don't believe they pay her ; 
 but they must be attended on just as obsequious as when 
 they had a dozen. And this is fatal to all us little 
 people that have the misfortune to be connected with 
 them." 
 
 " Why, how are you connected with them ? " 
 
 " By the tie of affection." 
 
 " I thought you hated them." 
 
 '•' Of course I do ; but I have the ill-luck to love 
 Jacintha, and she loves these aristocrats, and makes me 
 do little odd jobs for them." And at this Dard's eyes 
 suddenly glared with horror. 
 
 " Weil, what of that ?" asked Eiviere. 
 
 " What of it, citizen, what ? you do not know the 
 fatal meaning of those accursed words ? " 
 
 " Why, I never heard of a man's back being broken 
 by little odd jobs." 
 
 " Perhaps not his back, citizen, but his heart ? if little 
 odd jobs will not break that, why nothing will. Torn 
 from place to place, and from trouble to trouble ; as soon 
 as one tiresome thing begins to go a bit smooth, off to a 
 fresh plague, in-doors work when it is dry, out-a-doors 
 when it snows ; and then all bustle ; no taking one's 
 Avork quietly, the only way it agrees with a fellow. 
 * Milk the cow, Dard, but look sharp ; the baroness's 
 chair wants mending. Take these slops to the pig, but 
 you must not wait to see him enjoy them : you are 
 wanted to chop billets.' Beat the mats, take down the 
 curtains, walk to church (best part of a league), and
 
 22 . WHITE LIES. 
 
 heat the pew cushions ; come back and cut the cabbages, 
 paint the door, and wheel the okl lady about the terrace, 
 rub quicksilver on the little dog's back, — mind he don't 
 bite you to make hisself sick, — repair the ottoman, roll 
 the gravel, scour the kettles, carry half a ton of water 
 up twopurostairs, trim the turf, prune the vine, drag the 
 fish-pond; and when you are there, go in and gather 
 water lilies for Mademoiselle Josephine while you are 
 drowning the puppies; that is little odd jobs: may 
 Satan twist her neck who invented them ! " 
 
 '' Very sad all this," said young Riviere. 
 
 Dard took the little sneer for sympathy, and proceeded 
 to " the cruellest wrong of all." 
 
 "When I go into their kitchen to court Jacintha a 
 bit, instead of finding a good supper there, which a man 
 has a right to, courting a cook, if I don't take one in my 
 pocket, there is no supper, not to say supper, for either 
 her or me. / don't call a salad* and a bit of cheese-rind 
 — supper. Beggars in silk and satin ! Every sou they 
 have goes on to their backs, instead of into their bellies." 
 
 "I have heard their income is much reduced," said 
 Edouard gently. 
 
 " Income ! I would not change with them if they'd 
 throw me in half a pancake a day. I tell you they are 
 the poorest family for leagues round ; not that they need 
 be quite so starved, if they could swallow a little of their 
 pride. But no, they must have china and plate and fine 
 linen at dinner ; so their fine plates are always bare, and 
 their silver trays empty. Ask the butcher, if you don't 
 believe vie. Just you ask him whether he does not go 
 three times to the smallest shopkeeper, for once he goes 
 to Beaurepaire. Their tenants send them a little meal 
 and eggs, and now and then a hen ; and their great garden 
 is chock full of fruit and vegetables, and Jacintha makes 
 me dig in it gratis ; and so they muddle on. But, bless
 
 WHITE LIES. 23 
 
 your heart, coffee ! they can't afford it ; so they roast a 
 lot of horse-beans that cost nothing, and grind them, and 
 serve up the liquor in a silver coffee-pot, on a silver 
 salver. Haw, haw, haw I " 
 
 " Is it j)0ssible ? reduced to this ? " said Edouard 
 gravely. 
 
 '•' Don't you be so weak as to pity them," cried the 
 remorseless plebeian. " Why don't they melt their sil- 
 ver into soup, and cut down their plate into rashers of 
 bacon ? why not sell the superfluous, and buy the need- 
 ful, which it is grub ? And, above all, why don't they 
 let their old tumble-down palace to some rich grocer, and 
 that accursed garden along with it, where I sweat gratis, 
 and live small and comfortable, and pay honest men for 
 their little odd jobs, and " — Here Eiviere interrupted 
 him, and asked if it was really true about the beans. 
 
 " True ? " said Dard, " why, I have seen Rose doing it 
 for the old woman's breakfast : it was Rose invented the 
 move. A girl of nineteen beginning already to deceive 
 the world ! But they are all tarred with the same stick. 
 Down with the aristocrats ! " 
 
 "Dard," said Riviere, "you are a brute." 
 
 " Me, citizen ? " inquired Dard with every appearance 
 of genuine surprise. 
 
 Edouard Riviere rose from his seat in great excite- 
 ment. Dard's abuse of the family he was lately so 
 bitter against had turned him right round. He pitied 
 the very baroness herself, and forgave her declining his 
 visit. 
 
 " Be silent," said he, " for shame ! There is such a 
 thing as noble povert}' ; and you have described it. I 
 might have disdained these people in their prosperity, 
 but I revere them in their affliction. And I'll tell you 
 Avhat, don't you ever dare to speak slightly of them 
 again in my presence, or " —
 
 24 WHITE LIK.S. 
 
 He did not conclude his threat, for just then he 
 observed that a strai)ping girl, with a basket at her feet, 
 was standing against the corner of tlie Auberge, in a 
 mighty careless attitude, but doing nothing, so most 
 likely listening with all her ears and soul. Dard, how- 
 ever, did not see her, his back being turned to her as he 
 Bat ; so he replied at his ease, — 
 
 " I consent," said he very coolly : " that is your affair; 
 but permit me," and here he clenched his teeth at re- 
 membrance of his wrongs, " to say that I will no more 
 be a scullery man without wages to these high-minded 
 starvelings, these illustrious beggars." Then he heated 
 himself red-hot. " I will not even be their galley slave. 
 Next, I have done my last little odd job in this world," 
 yelled the now infuriated factotum, bouncing up to his 
 feet in brief fury. '' Of two things one : either Jacintha 
 quits those aristos, or I leave Jacin — eh ? — ah ! — oh ! 
 — ahem ! How — 'ow d'ye do, Jacintha ? " And his 
 roar ended in a whine, as when a dog runs barking out, 
 and receives in full career a cut from his master's whip, 
 his generous rage turns to whimper with ludicrous 
 abruptness. " I was just talking of you, Jacintha," 
 quavered Dard in conclusion. 
 
 "I heard you, Dard," replied Jacintha slowly, softly, 
 grimly. 
 
 Dard withered. 
 
 It was a lusty young woman, with a comely peasant 
 face somewhat freckled, and a pair of large black eyes 
 surmounted by coal-black brows. She stood in a bold 
 attitude, her massive but well-formed arms folded so that 
 the pressure of each against the other made them seem 
 gigantic, and her cheek red with anger, and her eyes 
 glistening like basilisks upon citizen Dard. She looked 
 so grand, with her lowering black brows, that even 
 Kiviere felt a little uneasy. As for Jacintha, she was
 
 \VHITE LIES. 25 
 
 evidently brooding with more ire than she chose to utter 
 before a stranger. She just slowly unclasped her arms, 
 and, keeping her eye lixed on Dard, pointed with a 
 domineering gesture towards Beaurepaire. Then the 
 doughty Dard seemed no longer master of his limbs : he 
 rose slowly, with his eyes fastened to hers, and was 
 moving off like an ill-oiled automaton in the direction 
 indicated ; but at that a suppressed snigger began to 
 shake Riviere's whole body till it bobbed up and down 
 on the seat. Dard turned to him for sympathy. 
 
 " There, citizen,'^ he cried, " do you see that imperious 
 gesture ? That means you promised to dig in the aris- 
 tocrat's garden this afternoon, so march ! Here, then, is 
 one that has gained nothing by kings being put down, 
 for I am ruled with a mopstick of iron. Thank your 
 stars, citizen, that you are not in my place." 
 
 "Dard," retorted Jacintha, "if you don't like your 
 place, I'd quit it. There are two or three young men 
 down in the village will be glad to take it." 
 
 " I won't give them the chance, the vile egotists ! " 
 cried Dard. And he returned to the chateau and little 
 odd jobs. 
 
 Jacintha hung behind, lowered her eyes, put on a very 
 deferential manner, and thanked Edouard for the kind 
 sentiments he had uttered ; but at the same time she 
 took the liberty to warn him against believing the ex- 
 travagant stories Dard had been telling about her mis- 
 tress's poverty. She said the simple fact was that the 
 baron had contracted debts, and the baroness, being the 
 soul of honor, was living in great economy to pay them 
 off. Then, as to Dard getting no supper up at I>eaure- 
 paire, a complaint that appeared to sting her particularly, 
 she assured him she was alone to blame ; the baroness 
 would be very angry if she knew it. " But," said she, 
 " Dard is an egotist. Perhaps you may have noticed 
 that trait in him."
 
 26 WHITE LIES. 
 
 "Glimpses of it," replied Riviere, laughing. 
 
 " Monsieur, he is so egotistic that he has not a friend 
 in the world but me. I forgive him, because I know the 
 reason ; he has never had a headache or a heartache in 
 his life." 
 
 Edouard, aged twenty, and a male, did not comprehend 
 this piece of feminine logic one bit : and, while he puz- 
 zled over it in silence, Jacintha went on to say that if 
 she were to fill her egotist's paunch, she should never 
 know whether he came to Beaurepaire for her, or him- 
 self. "Now, Dard," she added, "is no beauty, monsieur; 
 why, he is three inches shorter than I am." 
 
 " You are joking ! he looks a foot," said Edouard. 
 
 " He is no scholar neither, and I have had to wipe up 
 many a sneer and many a sarcasm on his account ; but 
 up to now I have always been able to reply that this live 
 feet one of egotism loves me sincerely ; and the moment 
 I doubt this, I give him the sack, — poor little fel- 
 low ! " 
 
 " In a word," said Eiviere, a little impatiently, " the 
 family at Beaurepaire are not in such straits as he pre- 
 tends ? " 
 
 " Monsieur, do I look like one starved ? " 
 
 " By Jove, no ! by Ceres, I mean." 
 
 " Are my young mistresses wan, and thin ? " 
 
 " Treason ! blasphemy ! ah, no ! By Venus and Hebe, 
 no!" 
 
 Jacintha smiled at this enthusiastic denial, and also 
 because her sex is apt to smile when words are used they 
 do not understand. 
 
 " Dard is a fool," suggested Riviere, by way of general 
 solution. He added, "And yet, do you know I wish 
 every word he said had been true." (Jacintha's eyes 
 expressed some astonishment.) "Because then you and 
 I would have concerted means to do them kindnesses,
 
 WHITE LIES. 27 
 
 secretly; for I see you are no ordinary servant; you 
 love your young mistresses. Do you not ? " 
 
 These simple words seemed to touch a grander chord 
 in Jacintha's nature. 
 
 " Love them ? " said she, clasping her hands ; " ah, 
 sir, do not be offended; but, believe me, it is no small 
 thing to serve an old, old family. My grandfather lived 
 and died with them ; my father was their gamekeeper, 
 and fed to his last from off the poor baron's j^late (and 
 now they have killed him, poor man) ; my mother died 
 in the house and was buried in the sacred ground near 
 the family chapel. They put an inscription on her tomb 
 praising her fidelity and probity. Do you think these 
 things do not sink into the heart of the poor ? — praise 
 on her tomb, and not a word on their own, but just the 
 name, and when each was born and died, you know. 
 Ah ! the pride of the mean is dirt ; but the pride of the 
 noble is gold." 
 
 ^ " For, look you, among parveuues I should be a ser- 
 vant, and nothing more ; in this proud family I am a 
 humble friend ; of course they are not always gossiping 
 with me like vulgar masters and mistresses ; if they did, 
 I should neither respect nor love them ; but they all 
 smile on me whenever I come into the room, even the 
 baroness herself. I belong to them, and they belong to 
 me, by ties without number, by the many kind words in 
 many troubles, by the one roof that sheltered us a hun- 
 dred years, and the grave where our bones lie together 
 till the day of judgment." 
 
 Jacintha clasped her hands, and her black eyes shone 
 out warm through the dew. Riviere's glistened too. 
 
 1 The French peasant often thinks half a sentence, and utters tlie other 
 half aloud, and so breaks air in the middle of a thought. I'robably Jacintha's 
 whole thouj^lit, if we had the means of knowing it, would have run like this 
 — Besides, I have another reason: I couKl not be so comfortable myself else- 
 wliere — for, look you " —
 
 28 WHITE LIES. 
 
 " That is well said," he cried ; " it is nobly said : yet, 
 after all, these are ties that owe their force to the souls 
 they bind. How often have such bonds round human 
 hearts proved ropes of sand ! They grapple you like 
 hooks of steel ; because you are steel yourself to the 
 backbone. I admire you, Jacintha. Such women as 
 you have a great mission in France just now." 
 
 Jacintha shook her head incredulously. " What can 
 we poor women do ? " 
 
 " Bring forth heroes," cried Publicola Avith fervor. 
 " Be the mothers of great men, the Catos and the Gracchi 
 of the future ! " 
 
 Jacintha smiled. She did not know the Gracchi nor 
 their politics ; but the name rang well. " Gracchi ! " 
 Aristocrats, no doubt. " That would be too much 
 honor," replied she modestly. " At present, T must say 
 adieu ! " and she moved off an inch at a time, in an 
 uncertain hesitating manner, not very difficult to read ; 
 but Riviere, you must know, had more than once during 
 this interview begged her to sit down, and in vain ; she 
 had always thanked him, but said she had not a moment 
 to stay. So he made no effort to detain her now. The 
 consequence was — she came slowly back of her own 
 accord, and sat down in a corner of the porch, where 
 nobody could see her, and then she sighed deeply. 
 
 " What is the matter now ? " said Edouard, opening 
 his eyes. 
 
 She looked at him point-blank for one moment ; and 
 her scale turned. 
 
 "Monsieur," said she timidly, "you have a good face, 
 and a good heart. All I told you was — give me your 
 honor not to betray us." 
 
 " I swear it," said Edouard, a little pompously. 
 
 " Then — Dard was not so far from the truth ; it was 
 but a guess of his, for I never trusted my own sweet-
 
 WHITE LIES. 29 
 
 heart as I now trust a stranger. But to see what I see 
 every day, and have no one I dare breathe a word to, oh, 
 it is very hard ! But on what a thread things turn ! If 
 any one had tokl me an hour ago it was you I should 
 open my heart to ! It's not economy : it's not stinginess ; 
 they are not paying ofi their debts. They never can. 
 The baroness and the Demoiselles de Beaurepaire — are 
 paupers." 
 
 " Paupers, Jacintha ? " 
 
 " Ay, paupers ! their debts are greater than their 
 means. They live here by sufferance. The}' have only 
 their old clothes to wear. They have hardly enough to 
 eat. Just now our cow is in full milk, you know ; so that 
 is a great help : but, when she goes dry, Heaven knows 
 what we shall do; for I don't. But that is not the worst ; 
 better a light meal than a broken heart. Your precious 
 government offers the chateau for sale. They might as 
 well send for the guillotine at once, and cut off all our 
 heads. You don't know my mistress as I do. Ah, 
 butchers, you will drag nothing out of that but her 
 corpse. And is it come to this ? the great old family to 
 be turned adrift like beggars. My poor mistress ! my 
 pretty demoiselles that I played with and nursed ever 
 since I was a child ! (I was just six when Josephine was 
 born) and that I shall love with my last breath " — 
 
 She could say no more, but choked by the strong feel- 
 ing so long pent up in her own bosom, fell to sobbing 
 hysterically, and trembling like one in an ague. 
 
 The statesman, who had passed all his short life at 
 school and college, was frightened, and took hold of her 
 and pulled her, and cried, " Oh ! don't, Jacintha ; you 
 will kill yourself, you will die ; this is frightful : help 
 here ! help ! " Jacintha put her hand to his mouth, and, 
 without leaving off her hysterics, gasped out, " Ah ! don't 
 expose me." So then he didn't know what to do ; but
 
 30 WHITE LIES. 
 
 he seized a tumbler and filled it with wine, and forced it 
 between her lips. All she did was to bite a piece out of 
 the glass as clean as if a diamond had cut it. This did 
 her a world of good : destruction of sacred household 
 property gave her another turn. "There, I've broke 
 your glass now," she cried, with a marvellous change of 
 tone ; and she came-to and cried quietly like a reasonable 
 person, with her apron to her eyes. 
 
 When Edouard saw she was better, he took her hand 
 and said proudly, " Secret for secret. I choose this 
 moment to confide to you that I love Mademoiselle Rose 
 de Beaurepaire. Love her ? 1 did love her ; but now 
 you tell me she is poor and in distress, I adore her." 
 The effect of this declaration on Jacintha was magical, 
 comical. Her apron came down from one eye, and that 
 eye "dried itself and sparkled with curiosity : the whole 
 countenance speedily followed suit and beamed with 
 sacred joy. What ! an interesting love affair confided 
 to her all in a moment ! She lowered her voice to a 
 whisper directly. "Why, how did you manage? She 
 never goes into company." 
 
 "No; but she goes to church. Besides, I have met 
 her eleven times out walking with her sister, and twice 
 out of the eleven she smiled on me. Jacintha! a smile 
 such as angels smile ; a smile to warm the heart and 
 purify the soul and last forever in the mind." 
 
 "Well, they say 'man is fire and woman tow:' but 
 this beats all. Ha ! ha ! " 
 
 " Oh ! do not jest. I did not laugh at you. Jacintha, 
 it is no laughing matter; I revere her as mortals revere 
 the saints; I love her so that were I ever to lose all hope 
 of her I would not live a day. And now that you have 
 told me she is poor and in sorrow, and I think of her 
 walking so calm and gentle — always in black, Jacintha, 
 — and her low courtesy to me whenever we met, and her
 
 WHITE LIES. 31 
 
 sweet smile to me though her heart must be sad, oh ! 
 my heart yearns for her. What can I do for her ? How 
 shall I surround her with myself unseen — make her 
 feel that a man's love waits upon her feet every step she 
 takes — that a man's love floats in the air round that 
 lovely head?" Then descending to earth for a moment, 
 " but I say, you promise not to betray me ; come, secret 
 for secret." 
 
 " I will not tell a soul ; on the honor of a woman," said 
 Jacintha. 
 
 The form of protestation was quite new to Edouard, 
 and not exactly the one his study of the ancient writers 
 would have led him to select. But the tone was convinc- 
 ing : he trusted her. They parted sworn allies ; and, 
 at the very moment of parting, Jacintha, who had cast 
 many a furtive glance at the dead game, told Edouard 
 demurely, Mademoiselle Rose was very fond of roast 
 partridge. On this he made her take the whole bag; 
 and went home on wings. Jacintha's revelation roused 
 all that was noble and forgiving in him. His under- 
 standing and his heart expanded from that hour, and 
 his fancy spread its pinions to the sun of love. Ah ! 
 generous Youth, let who will betray thee ; let who will 
 sneer at thee ; let me, though young no longer, smile on 
 thee and joy in thee ! She he loved was sad, was poor, 
 was menaced by many ills ; then she needed a champion. 
 He would be her unseen friend, her guardian angel. A 
 hundred wild schemes whirled in his beating heart and 
 brain. He could not go in-doors, indeed, no room could 
 contain him : he made for a green lane he knew at the 
 back of the village, and there he walked up and down 
 for hours. The sun set, and the night came, and the 
 stars glittered ; but still he walked alone, inspired, ex- 
 alted, full of generous and loving schemes : of sweet and 
 iender fancies : a heart on tire ; and youth the fuel, and 
 the flame vestal.
 
 32 WHITE LIES. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 This very day was the anniversary of the baron's 
 death. 
 
 The baroness kept her room all the morning, and took 
 no nourishment but one cup of spurious coffee Rose 
 brought her. Towards evening she came down-stairs. 
 In the hall she found two chaplets of flowers ; they were 
 always placed there for her on this sad day. She took 
 them in her hand, and went into the little oratory that 
 was in the park ; there she found two wax candles burn- 
 ing, and two fresh chaplets hung up. Her daughters 
 had been there before her. 
 
 She knelt and prayed many hours for her husband's 
 soul ; then she rose and hung up one chaplet and came 
 slowly away with the other in her hand. At the gate of 
 the park, Josephine met her with tender anxiety in her 
 sapphire eyes, and wreathed her arms round her, and 
 whispered, "But you have your children still." 
 
 The baroness kissed her and they came towards the 
 house together, the baroness leaning gently on her daugh- 
 ter's elbow. 
 
 Between the park and the angle of the chateau was a 
 small plot of turf called at Beaurepaire the Pleasance, a 
 name that had descended along with other traditions ; 
 and in the centre of this Pleasance, or Pleasaunce, stood 
 a wonderful oak-tree. Its circumference was thirty-four 
 feet. The baroness came to this ancient tree, and liung 
 her chaplet on a mutilated limb called the "knights' 
 bough." 
 
 The sui\ was setting tranquil and red ; a broad ruby
 
 WHITE LIES. 33 
 
 streak lingered on the deep green leaves of the prodigious 
 oak. The baroness looked at it awhile in silence. 
 
 Then she spoke slowly to it and said, " You were here 
 before us : you will be here when we are gone." 
 
 A spasm crossed Josephine's face, but she said nothing 
 at the time. And so they went in together. 
 
 Now as this tree was a feat of nature, and, above all, 
 played a curious part in our story, I will ask you to stay 
 a few minutes and look at it, while I say what was known 
 about it ; not the thousandth part of what it could have 
 told, if trees could speak as well as breathe. 
 
 The baroness did not exaggerate ; the tree was far 
 older than even this ancient family. They possessed 
 among other archives a manuscript written by a monk, 
 a son of the house, about four hundred years before our 
 story, and containing many of the oral traditions about 
 this tree that had come down to him from remote antiq- 
 uity. According to this authority, the first Baron of 
 Beaurepaire had pitched his tent under a fair oak-tree 
 that stood p}'ope rivnm, near a brook. His grandson built 
 a square tower hard by, and dug a moat that enclosed 
 both tree and tower, and received the waters of the brook 
 aforesaid. 
 
 At this time the tree seems only to have been remarked 
 for its height. But, a century and a half before the 
 monk wrote, it had become famous in all the district for 
 its girth, and in the monk's own day had ceased to grow; 
 but not begun to decay. The mutilated arm I have men- 
 tioned was once a long sturdy bough, worn smooth as 
 velvet in one part from a curious cause : it ran about as 
 high above the ground as a full-sized horse, and the 
 knights and squires used to be forever vaulting upon it, 
 the former in armor ; the monk, when a boy, had seen 
 them do it a thousand times. This bough broke in two, 
 A.D. 1617 : but the mutilated limb was still called the
 
 34 WHITE LIES. 
 
 knights' bough, nobody knew why. So do names survive 
 their ideas. 
 
 What had not this tree seen since first it came green 
 and tender as a cabbage above the soil, and stood at the 
 mercy of the first hare or rabbit that should choose to 
 cut short its frail existence ! 
 
 Since then eagles had perched on its crown, and wild 
 boars fed without fear of man upon its acorns. Trouba- 
 dours had sung beneath it to lords and ladies seated 
 round, or walking on the grass and commenting the min- 
 strel's tales of love by exchange of amorous glances. 
 Medigeval sculptors had taken its leaves, and wisely 
 trusting to nature, had adorned churches with those 
 leaves cut in stone. 
 
 It had seen a Norman duke conquer England, and 
 English kings invade France and be crowned at Paris. 
 It had seen a girl put knights to the rout, and seen the 
 warrior virgin burned by envious priests with common 
 consent both of the curs she had defended and the curs 
 she had defeated. 
 
 Why, in its old age it had seen the rise of printing, 
 and the first dawn of national civilization in Europe. It 
 flourished and decayed in France ; but it sprung in Gaul. 
 And more remarkable still, though by all accounts it may 
 see the world to an end, it was a tree in ancient history : 
 its old age awaits the millennium ; its first youth belonged 
 to that great tract of time which includes the birth of 
 Christ, the building of Kome, and the siege of Troy. 
 
 The tree had, ere this, mingled in the fortunes of the 
 family. It had saved their lives and taken their lives. 
 One lord of Beaurepaire, hotly pursued by his feudal 
 enemies, made for the tree, and hid himself partly by a 
 great bough, partly by the thick screen of leaves. The 
 foe darted in, made sure he had taken to the house, ran- 
 sacked it, and got into the cellar, where by good-luck was
 
 WHITE LIES. 35 
 
 a store of Malvoisie : and so the oak and the vine saved 
 the quaking baron. Another lord of Beaurepaire, be- 
 sieged in his castle, was shot dead on the ramparts by a 
 cross-bowman who had secreted himself unobserved in 
 this tree a little before the dawn. 
 
 A young heir of Beaurepaire, climbing for a raven's 
 nest to the top of this tree, lost his footing and fell, and 
 died at its foot : and his mother in her anguish bade 
 them cut down the tree that had killed her boy. But 
 the baron her husband refused, and spake in this wise : 
 " ytte ys eneugh that I lose mine sonne, I will nat alsoe 
 lose mine Tre." In the male you see the sober sentiment 
 of the proprietor outweighed the temporary irritation of 
 the parent. Then the mother bought iifteen ells of black 
 velvet, and stretched a pall from the knights' bough 
 across the west side to another branch, and cursed the 
 hand that should remove it, and she herself " wolde never 
 passe the Tre neither going nor coming, but went still 
 about." And when she died and should have been car- 
 ried past the tree to the park, her dochter did cry from a 
 window to the bearers, " Goe about ! goe about ! " and 
 they went about, and all the company. And in time the 
 velvet pall rotted, and was torn and driven away by the 
 winds : and when the hand of Nature, and no human 
 hand, had thus flouted and dispersed the trappings of 
 the mother's grief, two pieces were picked up and pre- 
 served among the family relics : but the black velvet had 
 turned a rusty red. 
 
 So the baroness did nothing new in this family when 
 she hung her chaplet on the knights' bough ; and, in fact, 
 on the west side, about eighteen feet from the ground, 
 there still mouldered one corner of an Atchievement an 
 heir of Beaurepaire had nailed there two centuries before, 
 when his predecessor died : "For,'' said he, "the chfiteau 
 is of yesterday, but the tree has seen us all come and go.''
 
 36 WHITE LIES. 
 
 The inside of the oak was liollow as a drum ; and on its 
 east side yawned a fissure as high as a man and as broad 
 as a street-door. Dard used to wheel his wheelbarrow 
 into the tree at a trot, and there leave it. 
 
 Yet in spite of excavation and mutilation not life only 
 but vigor dwelt in this wooden shell. The extreme ends 
 of the longer boughs were firewood, touchwood, and the 
 crown was gone this many a year : but narrow the circle 
 a very little to where the indomitable trunk could still 
 shoot sap from its cruse deep in earth, and there on 
 every side burst the green foliage in its season countless 
 as the sand. The leaves carved centuries ago from these 
 very models, though cut in stone, were most of theni 
 mouldered, blunted, notched, deformed : but the delicate 
 types came back with every summer, perfect and lovely 
 as when the tree was but their elder brother : and greener 
 than ever : for, from what cause nature only knows, the 
 leaves were many shades richer than any other tree could 
 show for a hundred miles round ; a deep green, fiery, yet 
 soft; and then their multitude — the staircases of foliage 
 as you looked up the tree, and could scarce catch a 
 glimpse of the sky. An inverted abyss of color, a 
 mound, a dome, of flake emeralds that quivered in the 
 golden air. 
 
 And now the sun sets ; the green leaves are black ; 
 the moon rises : her cold light shoots across one half 
 that giant stem. 
 
 How solemn and calm stands the great round tower 
 of living wood, half ebony, half silver, with its mighty 
 cloud above of flake jet leaves tipped with frosty 
 fire ! 
 
 Now is the still hour to repeat in a whisper the words 
 of the dame of Beaurepaire, " You were here before us : 
 you will be here when we are gone." 
 
 We leave the hoary king of trees standing in the 
 
 1
 
 WHITE LIES. 37 
 
 moonlight, calmly defying time, and follow the creat- 
 ures of a day ; for, what they were, we are, 
 
 A spacious saloon panelled ; dead but snowy white 
 picked out sparingly with gold. Festoons of fruits and 
 flowers finely carved in wood on some of the panels. 
 These also not smothered in gilding, but as it were gold 
 speckled here and there, like tongues of flame winding 
 among insoluble snow. Ranged against the walls Avere 
 sofas and chairs covered with rich stuffs well worn. And 
 in one little distant corner of the long room a gray-haired 
 gentleman and two young ladies sat round a small plain 
 table, on which burned a solitary candle ; and a little way 
 apart in this candle's twilight an old' lady sat in an easy- 
 chair, thinking of the past, scarce daring to inquire the 
 future. Josephine and Rose were working : not fancy- 
 work but needle-work ; Dr. Aubertin writing. Every 
 now and then he put the one candle nearer the girls. 
 They raised no objection : only a few minutes after a 
 whit'' hand would glide from one or other of them like 
 a serpent, and smoothly convey the light nearer to the 
 doctor's manuscript. 
 
 "Is it not supper-time?" he inquired. "I have an 
 inward monitor ; and I think our dinner was more ethe- 
 real than usual." 
 
 "Hush !" said Josephine, and looked uneasily towards 
 her mother. " Wax is so dear." 
 
 "Wax? — ah! — pardon me:" and the doctor returned 
 hastily to his work. But Rose looked up and said, " I 
 wonder Jacintha does not come ; it is certainly past the 
 hour ; " and she pried into the room as if she expected 
 to see Jacintha on the road. But she saw in fact very 
 little of anything, for the spacious room was impenetra- 
 ble to her eye ; midway from the candle to the distant 
 door its twilight deepened, and all became shapeless and
 
 38 WHITE LIES. 
 
 sombre. The prospect ended sharp and black, as in 
 those out-o'-door closets imagined and painted by a cer- 
 tain great painter, whose Nature comes to a full stop as 
 soon as he has no further commercial need of her, instead 
 of melting by fine expanse and exquisite gradation into 
 genuine distance, as nature does in Claude and in nature. 
 To reverse the picture, if you stood at the door you 
 looked across forty feet of black, and the little corner 
 seemed on fire, and the fair heads about the candle shone 
 like the St. Cecilias and Madonnas in an antique stained- 
 glass window. 
 
 At last the door opened, and another candle fired 
 Jacintha's comely peasant face in the doorway. She 
 put down her candle outside the door, and started as 
 crow flies for the other light. After glowing a moment in 
 the doorway she dived into the shadow and emerged into 
 light again close to the table with napkins on her arm. 
 She removed the work-box reverentially, the doctor's 
 manuscript unceremoniously, and proceeded to lay a 
 cloth : in which operation she looked at Rose a point- 
 blank glance of admiration : then she placed the nap- 
 kins ; and in this process she again cast a strange look 
 cf interest upon Rose. The young lady noticed it this 
 time, and looked inquiringly at her in return, half 
 expecting some communication ; but Jacintha lowered 
 her eyes and bustled about the table. Then Rose spoke 
 to her with a soi't of instinct of curiosity, on the chance 
 of drawing her out. 
 
 " Supper is late to-night, is it not, Jacintha ? " 
 
 " Yes, mademoiselle ; I have had more cooking than 
 usual," and with this she delivered another point-blank 
 look as before, and dived into the palpable obscure, and 
 came to light in the doorway. 
 
 Her return was anxiously expected; for, if the truth 
 must be told, they were very hungry. So rigorous was
 
 WHITE LIES. 39 
 
 the economy in this decayed but lionorable house that 
 the wax candles burned to-day in the oratory had scrimped 
 their dinner, unsubstantial as it was wont to be. Think 
 of that, you in fustian jackets who grumble after meat. 
 The door opened, Jacintha reappeared in the light of her 
 candle a moment with a tray in both hands, and, approach- 
 ing, was lost to view ; but a strange and fragrant smell 
 heralded her. All their eyes turned with curiosity towards 
 the unwonted odor, and Jacintha dawned with three roast 
 partridges on a dish. 
 
 They were wonder-struck, and looked from the birds 
 to her in mute surprise, that was not diminished by a 
 certain cynical indifference she put on. She avoided 
 their eyes, and forcibly excluded from her face every- 
 thing that could imply she did not serve up partridges 
 to this family every night of her life. 
 
 "The supper is served, madame," said she, with a 
 respectful courtesy and a mechanical tone, and, plunging 
 into the night, swam out at her own candle, shut the 
 door, and, unlocking her face that moment, burst out 
 radiant, and so to the kitchen, and, with a tear in her 
 eye, set-to and polished all the copper stewpans with 
 a vigor and expedition unknown to the new-fangled 
 domestic. 
 
 " Partridges, mamma ! What next ? " 
 
 "Pheasants, I hope," cried the doctor, gayly. "And 
 after them hares ; to conclude with royal venison. Permit 
 me, ladies." And he set himself to carve with zeal. 
 
 Now nature is nature, and two pair of violet eyes 
 brightened and dwelt on the fragrant and delicate food 
 with demure desire ; for all that, when Aubertin offered 
 Josephine a wing, she declined it. " No partridge ? " 
 cried the savant, in utter amazement. 
 
 " Not to-day, dear friend ; it is not a feast day to-day " 
 
 " Ah ! no ; what was I thinking of ? "
 
 40 WHITE LIES. 
 
 " But you are not to be deprived," put in Josephine, 
 anxiously. " We will not deny ourselves the pleasure of 
 seeing you eat some." 
 
 " What ! " remonstrated Aubertin, '' am I not one of 
 you ? " 
 
 The baroness had attended to every word of this. She 
 rose from her chaii', and said quietly, " Both you and he 
 and Rose will be so good as to let me see you eat." 
 
 "But, mamma," remonstrated Josephine and Rose in 
 one breath. 
 
 "t/e le veiix,^^ was the cold reply. 
 
 These were words the baroness uttered so seldom that 
 they were little likely to be disjmted. 
 
 The doctor carved and helped the young ladies and 
 himself. 
 
 When they had all eaten a little, a discussion was 
 observed to be going on between Rose and her sister. 
 At last Aubertin caught these words, " It will be in vain; 
 even you have not influence enough for that, Rose." 
 
 " We shall see," was the reply, and Rose put the wing 
 of a partridge on a plate and rose calmly from her chair. 
 She took the plate and put it on a little work-table by 
 her mother's side. The others pretended to be all mouths, 
 but they were all ears. The baroness looked in Rose's 
 face with an air of wonder that was not very encouraging. 
 Then, as Rose said nothing, she raised her aristocratic 
 hand with a courteous but decided gesture of refusal. 
 
 Undaunted Rose laid her palm softly on the baroness's 
 shoulder, and said to her as firmly as the baroness her- 
 self had just spoken, — 
 
 '< II le veuty 
 
 The baroness was staggered. Then she looked with 
 moist eyes at the fair young face, then she reflected. At 
 last she said, with an exquisite mixture of politeness and 
 affection, " It is his daughter who has told me ' II le 
 veut.' I obey."
 
 WHITE LIES. 41 
 
 Rose returning like a victorious knight from the lists, 
 saucily exultant, and with only one wet eyelash, was 
 solemnly kissed and petted by Josephine and the doctor. 
 
 Thus they loved one another in this great, old, falling 
 house. Their familiarity had no coarse side ; a form, 
 not of custom but affection, it went hand-in-hand with 
 courtesy by day and night. 
 
 The love of the daughters for their mother had all the 
 tenderness, subtlety, and unselfishness of womanly na- 
 tures, together with a certain characteristic of the female 
 character. And whither that one defect led them, and 
 by what gradations, it may be worth the reader's while 
 to observe. 
 
 The baroness retired to rest early ; and she was no 
 sooner gone than Josephine leaned over to Rose, and 
 told her what their mother had said to the oak-tree. Rose 
 heard this with anxiety ; hitherto they had carefully con- 
 cealed from their mother that the gov^ernment claimed 
 the right of selling the chateau to pay the creditors, etc. ; 
 and now both sisters feared the old lady had discovered 
 it somehow, or why that strange thing she had said to 
 the oak-tree ? But Dr. Aubertin caught their remarks, 
 and laid down his immortal MS. on French insects, to 
 express his hope that they were putting a forced inter- 
 pretation on the baroness's words. 
 
 "I think," said he, "she merely meant how short-lived 
 are we all compared with this ancient oak. I should be 
 very sorry to adopt the other interpretation ; for if she 
 knows she can at any moment be expelled from Beau- 
 repaire, it will be almost as bad for her as the calamity 
 itself; that, I think, would kill her." 
 
 " Why so ? " said Rose, eagerly. " What is this house 
 or that ? Mamma will still have her daughters' love, go 
 where she will." 
 
 Aubertin replied^ "It is idle to deceive ourselves; at
 
 42 WHITE LIES. 
 
 her age men and women hang to life by their habits ; 
 take her away from her chateau, from the little oratory 
 where she prays every day for the departed, from her 
 place in the sun on the south terrace, and from all the 
 memories that surround her here ; she would soon pine, 
 and die." 
 
 Here the savant seeing a hobby-horse near, caught him 
 and jumped on. He launched into a treatise upon the 
 vitality of human beings, and proved that it is the mind 
 which keeps the body of a man alive for so great a length 
 of time as fourscore years ; for that he had in the earlier 
 part of his studies carefully dissected a multitude of ani- 
 mals, — frogs, rabbits, dogs, men, horses, sheep, squirrels, 
 foxes, cats, etc., — and discovered no peculiarity in man's 
 organs to account for his singular longevity, except in 
 the brain or organ of mind. Thence he went to the 
 longevity of men with contented minds, and the rapid 
 decay of the careworn. Finally he succeeded in convinc- 
 ing them the baroness was so constituted, physically 
 and mentally, that she would never move from Beau- 
 repaire except into her grave. However, having thus 
 terrified them, he proceeded to console them. " You 
 have a friend," said he, " a powerful friend ; and here in 
 my pocket — somewhere — is a letter that proves it." 
 
 The letter was from Mr. Perrin the notary. It appeared 
 by it that Dr. Aubertin had reminded the said Perrin of 
 his obligations to the late baron, and entreated him to 
 use all his influence to keep the estate in this ancient 
 family. 
 
 Perrin had replied at first in a few civil lines ; but his 
 present letter was a long and friendly one. It made both 
 the daughters of Beaurepaire shudder at the peril they 
 had so narrowly escaped. For by it they now learned 
 for the first time that one Jaques Bonard, a small farmer, 
 to whom they owed but five thousand francs, had gone
 
 WHITE LIES. 43 
 
 to the mayor and insisted, as lie had a perfect right, on 
 the estate being pnt up to public auction. This had 
 come to Perrin's ears just in time, and he had instantly 
 bought Bouard's debt, and stopped the auction ; not, how- 
 ever, before the very bills were printed ; for which he, 
 Perrin, had paid, and now forwarded the receipt. He 
 concluded by saying that the government agent was per- 
 sonally inert, and would never move a step in the matter 
 unless driven by a creditor. 
 
 " But we have so many," said Kose in dismay. " We 
 are not safe a day." 
 
 Aubertin assured her the danger was only in appear- 
 ance. "Your large creditors are men of property, and 
 such men let their funds lie unless compelled to move 
 them. The small mortgagee, the petty miser, wlio has, 
 perhaps, no investment to watch but one small loan, 
 about Avhich he is as anxious and as noisy as a hen with 
 one chicken, he is the clamorous creditor, the harsh little 
 egoist, who for fear of risking a crown piece would bring 
 the Garden of Eden to the hammer. Now we are rid of 
 that little wretch, Bonard, and have Perrin on our side ; 
 so there is literally nothing to fear." 
 
 The sisters thanked him warmly, and Rose shared his 
 hopes ; and said so ; but Josephine was silent and 
 thoughtful. Nothing more worth recording passed that 
 night. But the next day was the first of May, Josephine's 
 birthday. 
 
 Now they always celebrated this day as well as they 
 could; and used to plant a tree, for one thing. Dard, 
 well spurred by Jacintha, had got a little acacia; and 
 they were all out in the Pleasaunce to plant it. Un- 
 happily, they were a preposterous time making up their 
 feminine minds where to have it set ; so Dard turned 
 rusty and said the park was the best place for it. There 
 it could do no harm, stick it where you would.
 
 44' WHITE LIES. 
 
 " And wlio told you to put iu your word ?" inquired 
 Jacintha. " You're here to dig the hole where madem'^i- 
 selle chooses ; not to argufy." 
 
 Josephine whispered Rose, " I admire the energy of 
 her character. Could she be induced to order once for 
 all where the poor thing is to be planted ? " 
 
 " Then where will you have it, mademoiselle ? " asked 
 Dard, sulkily. 
 
 " Here, I think, Dard," said Josephine sweetly. 
 
 Dard grinned malignantly, and drove in his spade. 
 '' It will never be much bigger than a stinging nettle," 
 thought he, " for the roots of the oak have sucked every 
 atom of heart out of this." His black soul exulted 
 secretly. 
 
 Jacintha stood by Dard, inspecting his work ; the 
 sisters intertwined, a few feet from him. The baroness 
 turned aside, and went to look for a moment at the 
 chaplet she had placed yesterday on the oak-tree bough. 
 Presently she uttered a slight ejaculation ; and her 
 daughters looked up directly. 
 
 " Come here, children," said she. They glided to her 
 in a moment ; and found her eyes fixed upon an object 
 that lay on the knights' bough. 
 
 It was a sparkling purse. 
 
 I dare say you have noticed that the bark on the 
 boughs of these very ancient trees is as deeply furrowed 
 as the very stem of an oak tree that boasts but a few 
 centuries ; and in one of these deep furrows lay a green 
 silk purse with gold coins glittering through the gloss}' 
 meshes. 
 
 Josephine and Rose eyed it a moment like startled 
 deer ; then Rose pounced on it. " Oh, how heavy ! " she 
 cried. This brought up Dard and Jacintha, in time to 
 see Rose pour ten shining gold pieces out of the purse 
 into her pink-white palm, while her face flushed and her
 
 WHITE LIES. 45 
 
 eyes glittered with excitement. Jacintha gave a scream 
 of joy ; " Our luck is turned," she cried, superstitiously. 
 Meanwhile, Josephine had found a slip of paper close 
 to the purse. She opened it with nimble fingers ; it 
 contained one line in a hand like that of a copying 
 clerk : From a friend : in part payment of a great 
 
 DEBT. 
 
 Keen, piquant curiosity now took the place of surprise. 
 Who could it be ? The baroness's suspicion fell at once 
 on Dr. Aubertin. But Eose maintained he had not ten 
 gold pieces in the world. The baroness appealed to 
 Josephine. She only blushed in an extraordinary way, 
 and said nothing. They puzzled, and puzzled, and were 
 as much in the dark as ever, when lo ! one of the sus- 
 pected parties delivered himself into the hands of justice 
 with ludicrous simplicity. It happened to be Dr. Auber- 
 tin's hour of out-a-door study; and he came mooning 
 along, buried in a book, and walked slowly into the 
 group — started, made a slight apology, and was moon- 
 ing off, lost in his book again. Then the baroness, who 
 had eyed him with grim suspicion all the time, said with 
 well-affected nonchalance, "Doctor, you dropped your 
 purse; we have just picked it up." And she handed it 
 to him. "Thank you, madame," said he, and took it 
 quietly without looking at it, put it in his pocket, and 
 retired, with his soul in his book. They stared comically 
 at one another, and at this cool hand. " It's no more his 
 than it's mine," said Jacintha, bluntly. Kose darted 
 after the absorbed student, and took him captive. "Now, 
 doctor," she cried, "be pleased to come out of the 
 clouds." And with the word she whipped the purse out 
 of his coat pocket, and holding it right up before his eye, 
 insisted on his telling her whether that was his purse or 
 not, money and all. Thus adjured, he disowned the 
 property mighty coolly, for a retired ])hysician, who had 
 just pocketed it.
 
 46 WHITE LIES. 
 
 " No, my dear," said he ; " and, now I think of it, I 
 have not carried a purse this twenty years." 
 
 The baroness, as a last resource, appealed to his lionor 
 whether he had not left a purse and paper on the knights' 
 bough. The question had to be explained by Josephine, 
 and then the doctor surprised them all by being rather 
 affronted — for once in his life. 
 
 ''Baroness," said he, "I have been your friend and 
 pensioner nearly twenty years ; if by some strange chance 
 money were to come into my hands, I should not play 
 you a childish trick like this. What ! have I not the 
 right to come to you, and say, * My old friend, here I 
 bring you back a very small part of all I owe you ? ' " 
 
 " What geese we are," remarked Rose. " Dear doctor, 
 you tell us who it is." 
 
 Dr. Aubertin reflected a single moment ; then said he 
 could make a shrewd guess. 
 
 " Who ? who ? who ? " cried the whole party. 
 
 "Perrin the notary." 
 
 It was the baroness's turn to be surprised ; for there 
 was nothing romantic about Perrin the notary. Auber- 
 tin, however, let her know that he was in private com- 
 munication with the said Perrin, and this was not the 
 first friendly act the good notary had done her in secret. 
 
 While he was converting the baroness to his view, 
 Josephine and Eose exchanged a signal, and slipped 
 away round an angle of the chateau. 
 
 "■ Who is it V " said Rose. 
 
 *' It is some one who has a delicate mind." 
 
 " Clearly, and therefore not a notary." 
 
 "Rose, dear, might it not be some person who has 
 done us some wrong, and is perhaps penitent ? '* 
 
 " Certainly ; one of our tenants, or creditors, you mean ; 
 but then, the paper says 'a friend.' Stay, it says a 
 debtor. Why a debtor ? Down with enigmas ! "
 
 WHITE LIES. 47 
 
 "Roes, love," said Josephine, coaxingly, "think of 
 some one that might — since it is not the doctor, nor 
 Monsieur Perrin, might it not be — for after all, he 
 would naturally be ashamed to appear before me." 
 
 " Before you ? Who do you mean ? " asked Rose 
 nervously, catching a glimpse now, 
 
 " He who once pretended to love me." 
 
 " Josephine, you love that man still." 
 
 " No, no. Spare me ! " 
 
 "You love him just the same as ever. Oh, it is won- 
 derful ; it is terrible ; the power he has over you ; over 
 your judgment as well as your heart." 
 
 " No ! for I believe he has forgotten my very name ; 
 don't you think so ? " 
 
 " Dear Josephine, can you doubt it ? Come, you do 
 doubt it." 
 
 " Sometimes." 
 
 " But why ? for what reason ? " 
 
 " Because of what he said to me as we parted at that 
 gate ; the words and the voice seem still to ring like 
 truth across the weary years. He said, 'I am to join 
 the army of the Pyrenees, so fatal to our troops; but 
 say to me what you never yet have said, Camille, I love 
 you : and I swear I will come back alive.' So then I 
 said to him, 'I love you,' — and he never came back." 
 
 " How could he come here ? a deserter, a traitor ! " 
 
 " It is not true ; it is not in his nature ; inconstancy 
 may be. Tell me that he never really loved me, and I 
 will believe you ; but not that he is a traitor. Let me 
 weep over my past love, not blush for it." 
 
 " Past ? You love him to-day as you did three years 
 ago." 
 
 " No," said Josephine, " no ; I love no one. I never 
 shall love any one again." 
 
 "But him. It is that love which turns your heart
 
 48 WHITE LIES. 
 
 against others. Oh, yes, you love him, dearest, or why 
 shouhl you fancy our secret benefactor could be that 
 Camille ? " 
 
 "Why? Because I was mad: because it is impossi- 
 ble ; but I see my folly. I am going in." 
 
 " What ! don't you care to know who / think it was, 
 perhaps ? " 
 
 "■ No," said Josephine sadly and doggedly ; she added 
 with cold nonchalance, "I dare say time will show." 
 And she went slowly in, her hand to her head. 
 
 " Her birthday ! " sighed Rose, 
 
 The donor, whoever he was, little knew the pain he 
 was inflicting on this distressed but proud family, or the 
 hard battle that ensued between their necessities and 
 their delicacy. The ten gold pieces were a perpetual 
 temptation : a daily conflict. The words that accompa- 
 nied the donation offered a bait. Their pride and dig- 
 nity declined it ; but these bright bits of gold cost them 
 many a sharp pang. You must know that Josephine 
 and Rose had worn out their mourning by this time ; 
 and were obliged to have recourse to gayer materials 
 that lay in their great wardrobes, and were older, but 
 less worn. A few of these gold pieces would have 
 enabled the poor girls to be neat, and yet to mourn 
 their father openly. And it went through and through 
 those tender, simple hearts, to think that they must be 
 disunited, even in so small a thing as dress ; that while 
 their mother remained in her weeds, they must seem no 
 longer to share her woe. 
 
 The baroness knew their feeling, and felt its piety, 
 and yet could not bow her dignity to say, "Take five 
 of these bits of gold, and let us all look what we are — 
 one." Yet in this, as in everything else, they supported 
 each other. They resisted, they struggled, and with a 
 wrench they conquered day by day. At last, by general
 
 WHITE LIES. 49 
 
 consent, Josephine locked up the tempter, and they 
 looked at it no more. But the little bit of paper met a 
 kinder fate. Rose made a little frame for it, and it was 
 kept in a drawer, in the salon : and often looked at and 
 blessed. Just when they despaired of human friendship, 
 this paper with the sacred word '' friend " written on it, 
 had fallen all in a moment on their aching hearts. 
 
 They could not tell whence it came, this blessed word. 
 
 But men dispute whence comes the dew ? 
 
 Then let us go with the poets, who say it comes from 
 heaven. 
 
 And even so that sweet word, friend, dropped like the 
 dew from heaven on these afflicted ones. 
 
 So they locked the potent gold away from themselves, 
 and took the kind slip of paper to their hearts. 
 
 The others left off guessing : Aubertin had it all his 
 own way : he upheld Perrin as their silent benefactor, and 
 bade them all observe that the worthy notary had never 
 visited the cluUeau openly since the day the purse was 
 left there. " Guilty conscience," said Aubertin dryly. 
 
 One day in his walks he met a gaunt figure ambling 
 on a fat pony : he stopped him, and, holding up his 
 finger, said abruptly, "We have found you out, Maitre 
 Perrin." 
 
 The notary changed color. 
 
 "Oh, never be ashamed," said Aubertin; "a good 
 action done slyly is none the less a good action." 
 
 The notary wore a puzzled air. 
 
 Aubertin admired his histrionic powers in calling up 
 this look. 
 
 "Come, come, don't overdo it," said he. "Well, well ; 
 they cannot profit by your liberality ; but you will be 
 rewarded in a better world, take my word for that." 
 
 The notary muttered indistinctly. He was a man of 
 moderate desires ; would have been quite content if there 
 4
 
 50 WHITE LIES. 
 
 had been no other world in perspective. He had studied 
 this one, and made it pay : did not desire a better; some- 
 tijnes feared a worse. 
 
 "Ah!" said Aubertin, "I see how it is; we do not 
 like to hear ourselves praised, do we ? When shall we 
 see you at the chateau ? " 
 
 " I propose to call on the baroness the moment I have 
 good news to bring," replied Perrin ; and to avoid any 
 more compliments spurred the dun pony suddenly ; and 
 he waddled away. 
 
 Now this Perrin was at that moment on the way to 
 dine with a character who plays a considerable part in 
 the tale — Commandant Raynal. Perrin had made him- 
 self useful to the commandant, and had become his legal 
 adviser. And, this very day after dinner, the comman- 
 dant having done a good day's work permitted himself a 
 little sentiment over the bottle, and to a man he thought 
 his friend. He let out that he had a heap of money he 
 did not know what to do with, and almost hated it now 
 his mother was gone and could not share it. 
 
 The man of law consoled him with oleaginous phrases : 
 told him he very much underrated the power of money. 
 His hoard, directed by a judicious adviser, would make 
 him a landed proprietor, and the husband of some young 
 lady, all beauty, virtue, and accomplishment, whose 
 soothing influence would soon heal the sorrow caused 
 by an excess of filial sentiment. 
 
 " Halt ! " shouted Raynal : " say that again in half the 
 words." 
 
 Perrin was nettled, for he prided himself on his collo- 
 quial style. 
 
 " You can buy a fine estate and a chaste wife with the 
 money," snapped this smooth personage, substituting 
 curt brutality for honeyed prolixity. 
 
 The soldier was struck by the propositions the moment 
 they flew at him small and solid, like bullets.
 
 WHITE LIES. 61 
 
 " I've no time," said he, " to be running after women. 
 But the estate I'll certainly have, because you can get 
 that for me without my troubling my head." 
 
 " Is it a commission, then ? " asked the other sharply. 
 
 " Of course. Do you think I speak for the sake of 
 talking ? " 
 
 And so Perrin received formal instructions to look out 
 for a landed estate ; and he was to receive a handsome 
 commission as agent. 
 
 Now to settle this affair, and pocket a handsome per- 
 centage for himself, he had only to say " Beaurepaire." 
 
 Well, he didn't. Never mentioned the place ; nor the 
 fact that it was for sale. 
 
 Such are all our agents, when rival speculators. Mind 
 that. Still it is a terrible thing to be so completely in 
 the power of any man of the world, as from this hour 
 Beaurepaire was in the power of Perrin the notary.
 
 62 WHITE LIES, 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Edouard Riviere was unhappy. She never came 
 out now. This alone made the days dark to him. And 
 then he began to fear it was him she shunned. She 
 must have seen him lie in wait for her ; and so she 
 would come out no more. He prowled about and con- 
 trived to fall in with Jacintha; he told her his grief. 
 She assured him the simple fact was their mourning was 
 worn out, and they were ashamed to go abroad in colors. 
 This revelation made his heart yearn still more. 
 
 " Jacintha," said he, " if I could only make a begin- 
 ning ; but here we might live a century in the same 
 parish, and not one chance for a poor wretch to make 
 acquaintance." 
 
 Jacintha admitted this, and said gentlefolks were to 
 be pitied. " Why, if it was the likes of me, you and I 
 should have made friends long before nov/." 
 
 Jacintha herself was puzzled what to do ; she would 
 have told Rose if she had felt sure it would be well 
 received ; but she could not find out that the young lady 
 had even noticed the existence of Edouard. But her 
 brain worked, and lay in wait for an opportunity. 
 
 One came sooner than she expected. One morning at 
 about six o'clock, as she came home from milking the 
 cow, she caught sight of young Riviere trying to open 
 the iron gate. " What is up now ? " thought she ; sud- 
 denly the truth flashed upon her, clear as day. She put 
 her pail down and stole upon him. " You want to leave 
 us another purse," said she. He colored all over and 
 panted.
 
 WHITE LIES. 53 
 
 '■* How did 3'ou know ? how could you know ? you 
 won't betray me ? you won't be so cruel ? you prom- 
 ised." 
 
 " Me betray you," said Jacintha ; " why, I'll help you ; 
 and then they Avill be able to buy mourning, you know, 
 and then they will come out, and give you a chance. 
 You can't open that gate, for it's locked. But you come 
 round to the lane, and I'll get you the key ; it is hanging 
 up in the kitchen." 
 
 The key was in her pocket. But the sly jade wanted 
 him away from that gate ; it commanded a view of the 
 Pleasaunce. He Avas no sooner safe in the lane, than 
 she tore up-stairs to her young ladies, and asked them 
 with affected calm whether they would like to know who 
 left the purse. 
 
 " Oh, yes, yes I " screamed Rose. 
 
 " Then come with me. You are dressed ; never mind 
 your bonnets, or you will be too late." 
 
 Questions poured on her ; but she waived all explana- 
 tion, and did not give them time to think, or Josephine, 
 for one, she knew would raise objections. She led the 
 way to the Pleasaunce, and, when she got to the ances- 
 tral oak, she said hurriedl}^ " Now, mesdemoiselles, hide 
 in there, and as still as mice. You'll soon know who 
 leaves the purses." 
 
 With this she scudded to the lane, and gave Edouard 
 the key. " Look sharp," said she, " before they get up ; 
 it's almost their dressing time." 
 
 '' You'' II soon know who leaves the purses ! " 
 
 Curiosity, delicious curiosity, thrilled our two daugh- 
 ters of Eve. 
 
 This soon began to alternate with chill misgivings at 
 the novelty of the situation. 
 
 " She is not coming back," said Josephine ruefully. 
 
 " No," said Rose, '• and suppose when we pounce out 
 On him, it should be a stranger."
 
 54 WHITE LIES. 
 
 " Pounce on him ? surcjly we are not to do that ? " 
 
 " Oh, y-yes ; that is the p-p-pvogramme," quaverea 
 Rose. 
 
 A key grated, and the iron gate creaked on its hinges. 
 They ran together and pinched one another for mutual 
 support, but did not dare to speak. 
 
 Presently a man's shadow came slap into the tree. 
 They crouched and quivered, and expected to be caught 
 instead of catching, and wished themselves safe back in 
 bed, and all this a nightmare, and no worse. 
 
 At last they recovered themselves enough to observe 
 that this shadow, one half of which lay on the ground, 
 while the head and shoulders went a little way up the 
 wall of the tree, represented a man's profile, not his 
 front face. The figure, in short, was standing between 
 them and the sun, and was contemplating the chateau, 
 not the tree. 
 
 The shadow took off its hat to Josephine, in the tree. 
 Then would she have screamed if she had not bitten 
 her white hand instead, and made a red mark thereon. 
 
 It wiped its brow with a handkerchief ; it had walked 
 fast, poor thing ! The next moment it was away. 
 
 They looked at one another and panted. They scarcely 
 dared do it before. Then Rose, with one hand on her 
 heaving bosom, shook her little white fist viciously at 
 where the figure must be, and perhaps a comical desire 
 of vengeance stimulated her curiosity. She now glided 
 through the fissure like a cautious panther from her 
 den ; and noiseless and supple as a serpent began to wind 
 slowly round the tree. She soon came to a great protu- 
 berance in the tree, and twining and peering round it 
 with diamond eye, she saw a very young, very hand- 
 some gentleman, stealing on tiptoe to the nearest flower- 
 bed. Then she saw him take a purse out of his bosom, 
 and drop it on the bed. This done, he came slowly past
 
 WHITE LIES. 65 
 
 the tree again, and was even heard to vent a little inno- 
 cent chuckle of intense satisfaction : but of brief dura- 
 tion ; for, when Rose saw the purse leave his hand, she 
 made a rapid signal to Josephine to wheel round the 
 other side of the tree, and, starting together with admir- 
 able concert, both the daughters of Beaurepaire glided 
 into sight with a vast appearance of composure. 
 
 Two women together are really braver than fifteen 
 separate; but still, most of this tranquillity was merely 
 put on, but so admirably that Edouard Riviere had 
 no chance with them. He knew nothing about their 
 tremors ; all he saw or heard was, a rustle, then a flap 
 on each side of him as of great wings, and two lovely 
 women were upon him with angelic swiftness. " Ah ! " 
 he cried out with a start, and glanced from the first- 
 comer, Rose, to the gate. But Josephine was on that 
 side by this time, and put up her hand, as much as to 
 say, " You can't pass here." In such situations, the 
 mind works quicker than lightning. He took off his 
 hat, and stammered an excuse — " Come to look at the 
 oak." At this moment Rose pounced on the purse, and 
 held it up to Josephine. He was caught. His only 
 chance now was to bolt for the mark and run ; but it 
 Avas not the notary, it was a novice who lost his presence 
 of mind, or perhaps thought it rude to run when a lady 
 told him to stand still. All he did was to crush his face 
 into his two hands, round which his cheeks and neck 
 now blushed red as blood. Blush ? they could both see 
 the color rush like a wave to the very roots of his luiir 
 and the tips of his fingers. 
 
 The moment our heroines, who, in that desperation 
 which is one of the forms of cowardice, had hurled 
 themselves on the foe, saw this, flash — the quick-witted 
 poltroons exchanged purple lightning over Edouard'a 
 drooping head, and enacted lionesses in a moment.
 
 56 WHITK LIES. 
 
 It was with the quiet composure of lofty and powerful 
 natures that Josephine opened on him. " Compose 
 yourself, sir ; and be so good as to tell us who you are." 
 Edouard must answer. Now he could not speak through 
 his hands ; and he could not face a brace of tranquil 
 lionesses : so he took a middle course, removed one 
 hand, and shading himself from Josephine with the 
 other, he gasped out, " I am — my name is Riviere ; and 
 I_I_ladies!" 
 
 "I am afraid we frighten you," said Josephine, 
 demurely. 
 
 " Don't be frightened," said Rose, majestically ; " we 
 are not very angry, only a little curious to know why you 
 water our flowers with gold." 
 
 At this point-blank thrust, and from her, Edouard was 
 so confounded and distressed, they both began to pity 
 him. He stammered out that he was so confused he did 
 not know what to say. He couldn't think how ever he 
 could have taken such a liberty ; might he be permitted 
 to retire ? and with this he tried to slip away. 
 
 "Let me detain you one instant," said Josephine, 
 and made for the house. 
 
 Left alone so suddenly with the culprit, the dignity, 
 and majesty, and valor of Rose seemed to ooze gently 
 out; and she stood blushing, and had not a word to say; 
 no more had Edouard. But he hung his head, and she 
 hung her head. And, somehow or other, whenever she 
 raised her eyes to glance at him, he raised his to steal a 
 look at her, and mutual discomfiture resulted. 
 
 This awkward, embarrassing delirium was interrupted 
 by Josephine's return. She now held another purse in 
 her hand, and quietly poured the rest of the coin into it. 
 She then, with a blush, requested him to take back the 
 money. 
 
 At that he found his tongue. "No, no," he cried, and
 
 WHITE LIES. 57 
 
 put up his hands in supplication. "Ladies, do let nie 
 speak one word to you. Do not reject my friendship. 
 You are alone in the world ; your father is dead ; your 
 mother has but you to lean on. After all, I am your 
 neighbor, and neighbors should be friends. And I am 
 yoiir debtor; I owe you more than you could ever owe 
 me ; for ever s.ince I came into this neighborhood I have 
 been happy. No man was ever so happy as I, ever since 
 one day I was walking, and met for the first time an 
 angel. I don't say it was you, Mademoiselle Eose. It 
 might be Mademoiselle Josephine." 
 
 " How pat he has got our names," said Rose, smiling. 
 
 "A look from that angel has made me so good, so 
 happy. I used to vegetate, but now I live. Live ! I 
 walk on wings, and tread on roses. Yet you insist on 
 declining a few miserable louis d'or from him who owes 
 you so much. "Well, don't be angry ; I'll take them back, 
 and throw them into the nearest pond, for they are really 
 no use to me. But then you will be generous in your 
 turn. You will accept my devotion, my services. You 
 have no brother, you know ; well, I have no sisters ; let 
 me be your brother, and your servant forever." 
 
 At all this, delivered in as many little earnest pants 
 as there were sentences, the water stood in the fair eyes 
 he was looking into so piteously. 
 
 Josephine was firm, but angelical. "We thank you, 
 IVIonsieur Riviere," said she, softly, "for showing us 
 that the world is still embellished with hearts like 
 yours. Here is the money ; " and she held it out in her 
 creamy hand. 
 
 " But we are very grateful," put in Rose, softly and 
 earnestly. 
 
 " That we are," said Josephine, " and we beg to keep 
 the purse as a souvenir of one who tried to do us a kind- 
 ness without mortifying us. And now. Monsieur Riviere, 
 you will permit us to bid you adieu."
 
 58 WHITE LIES. 
 
 Eclouard was obliged to take the hint. " It is I who 
 am the intruder," said he. " Mesdemoiselles, conceive, 
 if you can, my pride and my disappointment." He then 
 bowed low ; they courtesied low to him in return ; and he 
 retired slowly in a state of mixed feeling indescribable. 
 
 With all their sweetness and graciousness, he felt 
 overpowered by their high breeding, their reserve, and 
 their composure, in a situation that had set his heart 
 beating itself nearly out of his bosom. He acted the 
 scene over again, only much more adroitly, and concocted 
 speeches for past use, and was very hot and very cold 
 by turns. 
 
 I wish he could have heard what passed between the 
 sisters as soon as ever he was out of earshot. It would 
 have opened his eyes, and given him a little peep into 
 what certain writers call " the sex." 
 
 " Poor boy," murmured Josephine, '' he has gone away 
 unhappy." 
 
 "Oh, I dare say he hasn't gone far," replied Rose, 
 gayly. " / shouldn't if I was a boy." 
 
 Josephine held up her finger like an elder sister ; then 
 went on to say she really hardly knew why she had dis- 
 missed him. 
 
 " Well, dear," said Rose, dryly, " since you admit so 
 much, I must say I couldn't help thinking — while you 
 were doing it — we were letting ' the poor boy ' off ridicu- 
 lously cheap." 
 
 " At least I did my duty ? " suggested Josephine, 
 inquiringly. 
 
 " Magnificently ; you overawed even me. So now to 
 business, as the gentlemen say. Wliich of us two takes 
 him ? " 
 
 " Takes whom ? " inquired Josephine, opening her 
 lovely eyes. 
 
 *' Edouard," murmured Rose, lowering hers.
 
 WHITE LIES. 59 
 
 Josephine glared on tlie lovely minx with wonder and 
 comical horror. 
 
 "Oh! you shall have him," said Rose, "if you like. 
 You are the eldest, you know." 
 
 u Y{q ! " 
 
 " Do now ; to oblige me." 
 
 " For shame ! Rose. Is this you ? talking like that ! " 
 
 "Oh! there's no compulsion, dear; I never force 
 young ladies' inclinations. So you decline him ? " 
 
 " Of course I decline him." 
 
 "Then, oh, you dear, darling Josephine, this is the 
 prettiest present you ever made me," and she kissed her 
 vehemently. 
 
 Josephine was frightened now. She held Rose out at 
 arm's length with both hands, and looked earnestly into 
 her, and implored her not to play with fire. " Take 
 warning by me." 
 
 Rose recommended her to keep her pity for Monsieur 
 Riviere, " who had fallen into nice hands," she said. 
 That no doubt might remain on that head, she whispered 
 mysteriously, but with much gravity and conviction, " I 
 am an Imp ; " and aimed at Josephine with her fore- 
 finger to point the remark. For one second she stood 
 and watched this important statement sink into her 
 sister's mind, then set-to and gambolled elfishly round 
 her as she moved stately and thoughtful across the grass 
 to the chateau. 
 
 Two days after this a large tree was blown down in 
 Beaurepaire park, and made quite a gap in the prospect. 
 You never know what a big thing a leafy tree is till it 
 comes down. And this ill wind blew Edouard good ; for 
 it laid bare the chateau to his inquiring telescope. He 
 had not gazed above half an hour, when a female figure 
 emerged from the chateau. His heart beat. It was only 
 Jacintha. He saw her look this way and that, and pres
 
 60 WHFTK LIES. 
 
 ently Dard appeared, and slie sent him with his axe to 
 the fallen tree. Edouard watched him hacking away at 
 it. Presently his heart gave a violent leap ; for why ? 
 two ladies emerged from the Pleasaunce and walked 
 across the park. They came up to Dard, and stood look- 
 ing at the tree and Dard hacking it, and Edouard watched 
 them greedily. You know we all love to magnify her we 
 love. And this was a delightful way of doing it. It is 
 " a system of espionage " that prevails under every form 
 of government. How he gazed, and gazed, on his now 
 polar star; studied every turn, every gesture, with eager 
 delight, and tried to gather what she said, or at least the 
 nature of it. 
 
 But by and by they left Dard and strolled towards the 
 other end of the park. Then did our astronomer fling 
 down his tube, and come running out in hopes of inter- 
 cepting them, and seeming to meet them by some strange 
 fortuity. Hope whispered he should be blessed with a 
 smile ; perhaps a word even. So another minute and he 
 was running up the road to Beaurepaire. But his good 
 heart was doomed to be diverted to a much humbler 
 object than his idol ; as he came near the fallen tree he 
 heard loud cries for help, followed by groans of pain. 
 He bounded over the hedge, and there was Dard hanging 
 over his axe, moaning. " What is the matter? what is 
 the matter ? " cried Edouard, running to him. 
 
 « Oh ! oh ! cut my foot. Oh ! " 
 
 Edouard looked, and turned sick, for there was a gash 
 right through Dard's shoe, and the blood welling up 
 through it. But, recovering himself by an effort of the 
 will, he cried out, " Courage, my lad ! don't give in. 
 Thank Heaven there's no artery there. Oh, dear, it is a 
 terrible cut ! Let us get you home, that is the first 
 thing. Can you walk ? " 
 
 " Lord bless you, no ! nor stand neither without help."
 
 WHITE LIES. 6J 
 
 Edouai'd flew to the wheelbarrow, and, reversing it, 
 spun a lot of billet out. "Ye must not do that," said 
 Dard with all the energy he was capable of in his present 
 condition. " Why, that is Jacintha's wood." — " To the 
 devil with Jacintha and her wood too ! " cried Edouard, 
 " a man is worth mure than a fagot. Come, I shall 
 wheel you home : it is only just across the park." 
 
 With some difficulty he lifted him into the barrow. 
 Luckily he had his shooting-jacket on with a brandy- 
 flask in it: he administered it with excellent effect. 
 
 The ladies, as they walked, saw a man wheeling a 
 barrow across the park, and took no particular notice ; 
 but, as Riviere was making for the same point they were, 
 though at another angle, presently the barrow came near 
 enough for them to see Dard's head and arms in it. 
 Rose was the first to notice this. " Look ! look ! if he 
 is not wheeling Dard in the barrow now." 
 
 " Who ? " 
 
 " Can you ask ? Who provides all our excitement ? " 
 
 Josephine instantly divined there was something amiss. 
 " Consider," said she, " Monsieur Riviere would not 
 wheel Dard all across the park for amusement." 
 
 Rose assented; and in another minute, by a strange 
 caprice of fate, those Edouard had come to intercept, 
 quickened their pace to intercept him. As soon as he 
 saw their intention he thrilled all over, but did not 
 slacken his pace. He told Dard to take his coat and 
 throw it over his foot, for here were the young ladies 
 coming. 
 
 " What for ? " said Dard sulkily. " No ! let them see 
 what they have done with their little odd jobs : this is 
 iny last for one while. I sha'n't go on two legs again 
 this year." 
 
 The ladies came up with them. 
 
 " monsieur!" said Joseohine, '• what is the matter? "
 
 62 WHITE LIES. 
 
 *' We have met with a little accident, mademoiselle, 
 that is all. Dard has hurt his foot ; nothing to speak of, 
 but I thought he would be best at home." 
 
 Kose raised the coat which Riviere, in spite of Dard, 
 had flung over his foot. 
 
 " He is bleeding ! Dard is bleeding ! Oh, my poor 
 Dard. Oh ! oh ! " 
 
 " Hush, Rose ! " 
 
 " No, don't put him out of heart, mademoiselle. Take 
 another pull at the flask, Dard. If you please, ladies, I 
 must have him home without delay." 
 
 " Oh yes, but I want him to have a surgeon," cried 
 Josephine. " And we have no horses nor people to send 
 off as we used to have." 
 
 " But you have me, mademoiselle," said Edouard ten- 
 derly. " Me, who would go to the world's end for you." 
 He said this to Josephine, but his eye sought Rose. 
 " I'm a famous runner," he added, a little bumptiously ; 
 " I'll be at the town in half an hour, and send a surgeon 
 up full gallop." 
 
 " You have a good heart," said Rose simply. 
 
 He bowed his blushing, delighted face, and wheeled 
 Dard to his cottage hard by with almost more than 
 mortal vigor. Hoav softly, how nobly, that frolicsome 
 girl could speak ! Those sweet words rang in his ears 
 and ran warm round and round his heart, as he straight- 
 ened his arms and his back to the w^ork. When they 
 had gone about a hundred yards, a single snivel went off 
 in the wheelbarrow. Five minutes after, Dard was at 
 home in charge of his grandmother, his shoe off, his 
 foot in a wet linen cloth ; and Edouard, his coat tied 
 round the neck, squared his shoulders, and ran the two 
 short leagues out. He ran them in forty minutes, found 
 the surgeon at home, told the case, pooh-poohed that 
 worthy's promise to go to the patient presently, darted
 
 WHITE LIES. 63 
 
 into bis stable, saddled tbe borse, brougbt bim round, 
 saw tbe surgeon into tbe saddle, started bim, dined at 
 tbe restaurateur's, strolled back, and was in time to get 
 a good look at the chateau of Beaurepaire just as tbe 
 sun set on it. 
 
 Jacintba came into Dard's cottage that evening. 
 
 " So you have been at it, my man," cried she cheer- 
 fully and rather roughly, then sat down and rocked her- 
 self, with her apron over her bead. She explained this 
 anomalous proceeding to bis grandmother privately. "I 
 thought I would keep bis heart up anyway, but you see 
 I was not fit." 
 
 Next morning, as Riviere sat writing, be received an 
 unexpected visit from Jacintba. She came in with her 
 finger to her lips, and said, "You prowl about Dard's 
 cottage. They are sure to go and see bim every day, 
 and him wounded in their service." 
 
 " Ob, you good girl ! you dear girl ! " cried Edouard. 
 
 She did not reply in words, but, after going to the 
 door, returned and gave bim a great kiss without cere- 
 mon3^ " Dare say you know what that's for," said she, 
 and went off with a clear conscience and reddish cheeks. 
 
 Dard's grandmother had a little house, a little land, 
 a little money, and a little cow. She could just main- 
 tain Dard and herself, and her resources enabled Dard 
 to do so many little odd jobs for love, yet keep his main 
 organ tolerably filled. 
 
 " Go to bed, my little son, since you have got hashed," 
 said she. — " Bed be banged," cried he. " What good is 
 bed ? That's a silly old custom wants doing away with. 
 It weakens you : it turns you into train oil : it is tbe 
 doctor's friend, and tbe sick man's bane. Many a one 
 dies through taking to bed, that could have kept his 
 life if he bad kept his feet like a man. If I bad cut 
 myself in two I would not go to bed, — till I go to tbe
 
 6^4 WHITE LIES. 
 
 bed with a spade in it. No ! sit up, like Julius Cicsar; 
 and die as you lived, in your clothes : don't strip your- 
 self: let the old women strip you; that is their delight 
 laying out a chap ; that is the time they brighten up, the 
 old sorceresses." He concluded this amiable rhapsody, 
 the latter part of which was levelled at a lugubrious 
 weakness of his grandmother's for the superfluous em- 
 bellishment of the dead, by telling her it was bad 
 enough to be tied by the foot like an ass, without settling 
 down on his back like a cast sheep. " Give me the arm- 
 chair. I'll sit in it, and, if I have any friends, they will 
 show it now : they will come and tell me what is going 
 on in the village, for I can't get out to see it and hear 
 it, they must know that." 
 
 Seated in state in his granny's easy-chair, the loss of 
 which after thirty years' use made her miserable, she 
 couldn't tell why, le Sieur Dard awaited his friends. 
 
 They did not come. 
 
 The rain did, and poured all the afternoon. Night 
 succeeded, and solitude. Dard boiled over with bitter- 
 ness. " They are a lot of pigs then, all those fellows I 
 have drunk with at Bigot's and Simmet's. Down with 
 all fair-weather friends." 
 
 The next day the sun shone, the air was clear, and the 
 sky blue. " Ah ! let us see now," cried Dard. 
 
 Alas ! no fellow-drinkers, no fellow-smokers, came to 
 console their hurt fellow. And Dard, who had boiled 
 with anger yesterday, was now sad and despondent. 
 '' Down with egotists," he groaned. 
 
 About three in the afternoon came a tap at the door. 
 
 "Ah! at last," cried Dard: "come in!" 
 
 The door was slowly opened, and two lovely faces 
 appeared at the threshold. The demoiselles De Beaure- 
 paire wore a tender look of interest and pity when they 
 caught sight of Dard, and on the old woman courtesying
 
 WHITE LIES. 65 
 
 to them they courtesied to her and Dard. The next 
 moment they were close to him, one a little to his right, 
 the other to his left, and two pair of sapphire eyes with 
 the mild lustre of sympathy playing down incessantly 
 upon him. How was he ? How had he slept ? Was 
 he in pain ? "Was he in much pain ? tell the truth now. 
 Was there anything to eat or drink he could fancy ? 
 Jacintha should make it and bring it, if it was within 
 their means. A prince could not have had more solicitous 
 attendants, nor a fairy king lovelier and less earthly ones. 
 He looked in heavy amazement from one to the other. 
 Rose bent, and was by some supple process on one knee, 
 taking the measure of the wounded foot. When she first 
 approached it he winced : but the next moment he smiled. 
 He had never been touched like this — it was contact 
 and no contact — she treated his foot as the zephyr the 
 violets — she handled it as if it had been some sacred 
 thing. By the help of his eye he could just know she 
 was touching him. Presently she informed him he was 
 measured for a list shoe : and she would run home for 
 the materials. During her absence came a timid tap to 
 the door ; and Edouard Riviere entered. He was delighted 
 to see Josephine, and made sure Rose was not far off. 
 It was Dard who let out that she was gone to Beaure- 
 paire for some cloth to make him a shoe. This informa- 
 tion set Edouard fidgeting on his chair. He saw such a 
 chance as was not likely to occur again. He rose with 
 feigned nonchalance^ and saying, " I leave you in good 
 hands ; angel visitors are best enjoyed alone," slowly 
 retired, with a deep obeisance. Once outside the door, 
 dignity vanished in alacrity ; he flew off into the park, 
 and ran as hard as he could towards the chateau. He 
 was within fifty yards of the little gate, when sure 
 enough Rose emerged. They met; his heart beat vio- 
 lently. " Mademoiselle," he faltered.
 
 66 WHITE LIES. 
 
 "Ah! it is Monsieur Kiviere, I declare," said Rose, 
 coolly ; all over blushes though. 
 
 "Yes, mademoiselle, and I am so out of breath. 
 Mademoiselle Josephine awaits you at Dard's house." 
 
 " She sent you for me ? " inquired Rose, demurely. 
 
 "Not positively. But I could see I should please her 
 by coming for you ; there is, I believe, a bull or so about." 
 
 "A bull or two ! don't talk in that reckless way about 
 such things. She has done well to send you ; let us make 
 haste." 
 
 " But I am a little out of breath." 
 
 " Oh, never mind that ! I abhor bulls." 
 
 " But, mademoiselle, we are not come to them yet, and 
 the faster we go now the sooner we shall." 
 
 " Yes ; but I always like to get a disagreeable thing 
 over as soon as possible," said Rose, slyl}'. 
 
 '•Ah," replied Edouard, mournfully, "in that case let 
 us make haste." 
 
 After a little spurt, mademoiselle relaxed the pace of 
 her own accord, and even went slower than before. There 
 was an awkward silence. Edouard eyed the park bound- 
 ary, and thought, " Now what I have to say I must say 
 before we get to you;" and being thus impressed with 
 the necessity of immediate action, he turned to lead. 
 
 Rose eyed him and the ground, alternately, from under 
 her long lashes. 
 
 At last he began to color and flutter. She saw some- 
 thing was coming, and all the woman donned defensive 
 armor. 
 
 " Mademoiselle." 
 
 " Monsieur." 
 
 " Is it quite decided that your family refuse my ac- 
 quaintance, my services, which I still — forgive me — 
 press on you ? Ah ! Mademoiselle Rose, am I never to 
 have the happiness of — of — even speaking to you ? "
 
 WHITE LIES. 6T 
 
 "It seems so," said Rose, ironically. 
 
 "Have you then decided against me too?" 
 
 " I ? " asked Rose. " What have I to do with questions 
 of etiquette ? I am only a child : so considered at least." 
 
 " You a child — an angel like you ? " 
 
 " Ask any of them, they will tell you I am a child ; 
 and it is to that I owe this conversation, no doubt ; if 
 you did not look on me as a child, you would not take 
 this liberty with me," said the young cat, scratching 
 Avithout a moment's notice. 
 
 " Mademoiselle, do not be angry, I was wrong." 
 
 " Oh ! never mind. Children are little creatures with- 
 out reserve, and treated accordingly, and to notice them 
 is to honor them." 
 
 "Adieu then, mademoiselle. Try to believe no one 
 respects you more than I do." 
 
 " Yes, let us part, for there is Dard's house ; and I 
 begin to suspect that Josephine never sent you." 
 
 " I confess it." 
 
 "There, he confesses it. I thought so all along; ivhat 
 a dupe I have been ! " 
 
 " I will offend no more," said poor silly Edouard. 
 "Adieu, mademoiselle. May you find friends as sincere 
 as I am, and more to your taste ! " 
 
 " Heaven hear your prayers ! " replied the malicious 
 thing, casting up her eyes with a mock tragic air. 
 
 Edouard sighed; a chill conviction that she was both 
 heartless and empty fell on him. He turned away with- 
 out another word. She called to him with a sudden airy 
 cheerfulness that made him start. " Stay, monsieur, I 
 forgot — I have a favor to ask you." 
 
 " I wish I could believe that : " and his eyes brightened. 
 
 Rose stopped, and began to play with her parasol. 
 "You seem," said she softly, "to be pretty generous in 
 bestowing your acquaintance on strangers. I should be
 
 68 WHITE LIES. 
 
 glad if I might secure you for a dear friend of mine, Dr. 
 Aubertin. He will not discredit my recommendation; 
 and he will not make so many difficulties as we do ; shall 
 I tell you why ? Because he is really worth knowing. 
 In short, believe me, it will be a valuable acquaintance 
 for you — and for him," added she with all the grace of 
 the De Beaurepaires. 
 
 Many a man, inferior in a general way to Edouard 
 Riviere, would have made a sensible reply to this. Such 
 as, " Oh, any friend of yours, mademoiselle, must be wel- 
 come to me," or the like. But the proposal caught 
 Edouard on his foible, his vanity, to wit; and our foibles 
 are our manias. He was mortified to the heart's core. 
 " She refuses to know me herself," thought he, " but she 
 will use my love to make me amuse that old man." 
 His heart swelled against her injustice and ingratitude, 
 and his crushed vanity turned to strychnine. " Made- 
 moiselle," said he, bitterly and doggedly, but sadly, "were 
 I so happy as to have your esteem, my heart would over- 
 flow, not only on the doctor but on every honest person 
 around. But if I must not have the acquaintance I 
 value more than life, suffer me to be alone in the world, 
 and never to say a word either to Dr. Aubertin, or to any 
 human creature if I can help it." 
 
 The imperious young beauty drew herself up directly. 
 " So be it, monsieur ; you teach me how a child should 
 be answered that forgets herself, and asks a favor of a 
 stranger — a perfect stranger," added she, maliciously. 
 
 Could one of the dog-days change to mid-winter in a 
 second, it would hardly seem so cold and cross as Rose 
 de Beaurepaire turned from the smiling, saucy fairy of 
 the moment before. Edouard felt as it were a portcullis 
 of ice come down between her and him. She courtesied 
 and glided away. He bowed and stood frozen to the spot. 
 
 He felt so lonely and so bitter, he must go to Jacintha 
 for comfort.
 
 WHITE LIES. G9 
 
 He took advantage of the ladies being with Dar'"", and 
 marched boldly into the kitchen of Beaurepaire. 
 
 " Well, I never," cried Jacintha. " But, after all, why 
 not ? " 
 
 He hurled himself on the kitchen table (clean as china), 
 and told her it was all over. " She hates me now ; but 
 it is not my fault," and so poured forth his tale, and 
 feeling sure of sympathy, asked Jacintha whether it 
 was not bitterly unjust of Rose to refuse him her own 
 acquaintance, yet ask him to amuse that old fogy. 
 
 Jacintha stood with her great arms akimbo, taking it 
 all in, and looking at him with a droll expression of satir- 
 ical Avonder. 
 
 "Now you listen to a parable," said she. "Once 
 there was a little boy madly in love with raspberry 
 jam." 
 
 "A thing I hate." 
 
 " Don't tell rae ! Who hates raspberry jam ? He 
 came to the store closet, where he kneAv there were jars 
 of it, and — oh! misery — the door was locked. He 
 kicked the door, and wept bitterly. His mamma came 
 and said, ' Here is the key,' and gave him the key. And 
 what did he do ? Why, he fell to crying and roaring, and 
 kicking the door. ' I don't wa-wa-wa-wa-nt the key-ey-ey. 
 I wa-a-ant the jam — oh! oh! oh! oh!'" and Jacintha 
 mimicked, after her fashion, the mingled grief and ire of 
 infancy debarred its jam. Edouard wore a puzzled air, 
 but it was only for a moment; the next he hid his face 
 in his hands, and cried, " Fool ! " 
 
 " I shall not contradict you," said his Mentor. 
 
 " She was my best friend. Once acquainted with the 
 doctor, I could visit at Beaurepaire." 
 
 "Parbleuf" 
 
 " She had thought of a way to reconcile my wishes 
 with this terrible etiquette that reigns here."
 
 70 WHITE LIES. 
 
 " She thinks to more purpose than you do ; that is 
 clear." 
 
 " Nothing is left now but to ask her pardon, and to 
 consent ; I am off." 
 
 " No, you are not," and Jacintha laid a grasp of iron on 
 him. " Will you be quiet ? — is not one blunder a day 
 enough ? If you go near her now, she will affront you, 
 and order the doctor not to speak to you." 
 
 '' Jacintha ! your sex then are fiends of malice ? " 
 
 " While it lasts. Luckily with us nothing lasts very 
 long. Now you don't go near her till you have taken 
 advantage of her hint, and made the doctor's acquaint- 
 ance ; that is easy done. He walks two hours on the 
 east road every day, with his feet in the puddles and his 
 head in the clouds. Them's his two tastes." 
 
 " But how am I to get him out of the clouds and the 
 puddles ? " inquired Riviere half peevishly. 
 
 " How ? " asked Jacintha, with a dash of that con- 
 tempt uneducated persons generally have for any one 
 who does not know some little thing they happen to 
 know themselves. " How ? Why, with the nearest black- 
 beetle, to be sure." 
 
 '' A blackbeetle ? " 
 
 " Black or brown ; it matters little. Have her ready 
 for use in your handkerchief : pull a long face : and says 
 you — ' Excuse me, sir, I have the misfortune not to know 
 the Greek name of this merchandise here.' Say that, 
 and behold him launched. He will christen you the 
 beast in Hebrew and Latin as well as Greek, and tell 
 you her history down from the flood : next he Avill beg 
 her of you, and out will come a cork and a pin, and 
 behold the creature impaled. For that is how men love 
 beetles. He has a thousand pinned down at home — 
 beetles, butterflies, and so forth. When I go near the 
 rubbish with my duster he trembles like an aspen. I
 
 WHITE LIES. 71 
 
 pretend to be going to clean them, but it is only to see 
 the face he makes, for even a domestic must laugh now 
 and then — or die. But I never do clean them, for after 
 all he is more stupid than wicked, poor man : I have not 
 therefore the sad courage to make him wretched." 
 
 " Let us return to our beetle — what will his tirades 
 about its antiquity advance me ? " 
 
 " Oh ! one begins about a beetle, but one ends Heaven 
 knows where." 
 
 Riviere profited by this advice. He even improved on it. 
 In due course he threw himself into Aubertin's way. He 
 stopped the doctor reverentially, and said he had heard 
 he was an entomologist. Would he be kind enough to tell 
 him what was this enormous chrysalis he had just found? 
 
 "The death's head moth ! " cried Aubertin with enthu- 
 siasm — "the death's head moth ! a great rarity in this 
 district. Where found you this ? " Riviere undertook 
 to show him the place. 
 
 It was half a league distant. Coming and going he 
 had time to make friends with Aubertin, and this was 
 the easier that the old gentleman, who was a physiogno- 
 mist as well as ologist, had seen goodness and sensibility 
 in Edouard's face. At the end of the walk he begged 
 the doctor to accept the chrysalis. The doctor coquetted. 
 "That would be a robbery. You take an interest in 
 these things yourself — at least I hope so." 
 
 The young rogue confessed modestly to the sentiment 
 of entomology, but "the government worked him so 
 hard as to leave him no hopes of shining in so high a 
 science," said he sorrowfully. 
 
 The doctor pitied him. "A young man of your 
 attainments and tastes to be debarred from the everlast- 
 ing secrets of nature, by the fleeting politics of the day." 
 
 Riviere shrugged his shoulders. " Somebody must do 
 the dirty work/' said he, chuckling inwardly.
 
 72 WJIITE LIES. 
 
 The chrysalis went to Beaurepaire in the pocket of a 
 grateful man, who that same evening told the whole 
 party his conversation with young Riviere, on whom he 
 pronounced high encomiums. Kose's saucy eyes sparkled 
 with fun : you might have lighted a candle at one and 
 exploded a mine at the other; but not a syllable did she 
 utter. 
 
 The doctor proved a key, and opened the enchanted 
 castle. One fine day he presented his friend in the 
 Pleasaunce to the baroness and her daughters. 
 
 They received him with perfect politeness. Thus in- 
 troduced, and as he was not one to let the grass grow 
 under his feet, he soon obtained a footing as friend 
 of the family, which, being now advised by Josephine, 
 he took care not to compromise by making love to Kose 
 before the baroness. However, he insisted on placing 
 his financial talent at their service. He surveyed and 
 valued their lands, and soon discovered that all their 
 farms were grossly underlet. Luckily most of the leases 
 were run out. He prepared a new rent roll, and showed 
 it Aubertin, now his fast friend. Aubertin at his 
 request obtained a list of the mortgages, and Edouard 
 drew a balance-sheet founded on sure data, and proved 
 to the baroness that in able hands the said estate was 
 now solvent. 
 
 This was a great comfort to the old lady: and she 
 said to Aubertin, " Heaven has sent us a champion, a 
 little republican — with the face of an angel." 
 
 Descending to practice, Edouard actually put three of 
 the farms into the market, and let them at an advance 
 of twenty per cent on the expired leases. He brought 
 these leases signed ; and the baroness had scarcely done 
 thanking him, when her other secret friend. Monsieur 
 Perrin, was announced. Edouard exchanged civilities 
 with hini; and then retired to the Pleasaunce. There he
 
 WHITE LIES. 73 
 
 found both sisters, who were all tenderness and gratitude 
 to him. By this time he had learned to value Josephine : 
 she was so lovely and so good, and such a true womanly 
 friend to him. Even Rose could not resist her influence, 
 and was obliged to be kind to him, when Josephine was 
 by. But let Josephine go, and instead of her being 
 more tender, as any other girl would, left alone with her 
 lover, sauciness resumed its empire till sweet Josephine 
 returned. Whereof cometh an example ; for the said 
 Josephine was summoned to a final conference with the 
 baroness and Monsieur Perrin. 
 
 " Don't be long," said Rose, as Josephine glided away, 
 and (taking the precaution to wait till she was quite out 
 of hearing), "I shall be so dull, dear, till you come 
 back." 
 
 "I shall not though," said Edouard. 
 
 " I am not so sure of that. Now then." 
 
 " Now then, what ? " 
 
 "Begin." 
 
 " Begin what ? " 
 
 " Amusing me." And she made herself look sullen 
 and unamusable all over. 
 
 "I will try," said Riviere. "I'll tell you what they 
 say of you : that you are too young to love." 
 
 "So I am, much." 
 
 " No, no, no ! I made a mistake. I mean too young to 
 be loved." 
 
 " Oh, I am not too young for that, not a bit." 
 
 This point settled, she suggested that, if he could not 
 amuse her, he had better do the next best thing, and that 
 was, talk sense. 
 
 " I think I had better not talk at all," said he, " for 
 I am no match for such a nimble tongue. And then you 
 are so remorseless. I'll hold my tongue, and make a 
 sketch of this magnificent oak."
 
 74 WHITE LIES. 
 
 " Ay, do : draw it as it aj)peared on a late occasion : 
 with two ladies flying out of it, and you rooted with 
 dismay." 
 
 " There is no need ; that scene is engraved." 
 
 " Where ? in all the shops ? " 
 
 " No ; on all our memories." 
 
 ''Not on mine; not on mine. How terrified you 
 were — ha, ha ! and how terrified Ave should have been 
 if you had not. Listen: once upon a time — don't be 
 alarmed : it was long after Noah — a frightened hare 
 ran by a pond ; the frogs splashed in the water, smit 
 with awe. Then she said, ' Ah ha ! there are people in 
 the world I frighten in my turn ; I am the thunderbolt 
 of war.' Excuse my quoting La Fontaine : I am not in 
 ' Charles the Twelfth of Sweden ' yet. I am but a 
 child." 
 
 " And it's a great mercy, for when you grow up, you 
 will be too much for me, that is evident. Come, then, 
 Mademoiselle the Quizzer, come and adorn my sketch." 
 
 " Monsieur, shall I make you a confession ? You will 
 not be angry : I could not support your displeasure. I 
 have a strange inclination to walk up and down this 
 terrace while you go and draw that tree in the Pleas- 
 aunce." 
 
 " Resist that inclination ; perhaps it wall fly from 
 you." 
 
 " No ; you fly from me, and draw. I will rejoin you 
 in a few minutes." 
 
 " Thank you, I'm not so stupid. You will step in- 
 doors directly," 
 
 " Do you doubt my word, sir ? " asked she haughtily. 
 
 He had learned to obey all her caprices ; so he went 
 and placed himself on the west side of the oak and took 
 out his sketch-book, and worked zealously and rapidly. 
 He had done the outlines of the tree and was finish-
 
 WHITE LIES. 75 
 
 ing in detail a part of the liuge trunk, when his eyes 
 were suddedly dazzled : in the middle of the rugged 
 bark, deformed here and there with great wart-like 
 bosses, and wrinkled, seamed, and ploughed all over 
 with age, burst a bit of variegated color ; bright as a 
 poppy on a dungeon wall, it glowed and glittered out 
 through a large hole in the brown bark ; it was Rose's 
 face peeping. To our young lover's eye how divine it 
 shone ! None of the half tints of common flesh were 
 there, but a thing all rose, lily, sapphire, and soul. His 
 pencil dropped, his mouth opened, he was downright 
 dazzled by the glowing, bewitching face, sparkling with 
 fun, in the gaunt tree. Tell me, ladies, did she know, 
 even at that age, the value of that sombre frame to her 
 brightness ? The moment she found herself detected, 
 the gaunt old tree rang musical with a crystal laugh, 
 and out came the arch-dryad. "I have been there all 
 the time. How solemn you looked ! Now for the 
 result of such profound study." He showed her his 
 work ; she altered her tone. " Oh, how clever ! " she 
 cried, " and how rapid ! What a facility you have ! Mon- 
 sieur is an artist," said she gravely ; " I will be more 
 respectful," and she dropped him a low courtesy. " Mind 
 you promised it me," she added sharply. 
 
 " You will accept it, then ? " 
 
 " That I will, now it is worth having : dear me, I 
 never reckoned on that. Finish it directly," cried this 
 peremptory young person. 
 
 "First I must trouble you to stand out there near the 
 tree." 
 
 " Me ? what for ? " 
 
 "Because art loves contrasts. The tree is a picture 
 of age and gradual decay ; by its side then I must place 
 a personification of youth and growing loveliness." 
 
 She did not answer, but made a sort of defiant pirou-
 
 76 WHITE LIES. 
 
 ette, and went where she was hid, and stood there with 
 her back to the artist. '* That will never do," said he ; 
 " you really must be so good a,s to turn round." 
 
 " Oh, very well." And when she came round, behold 
 her color had risen mightily. Flattery is sweet. 
 
 This child of nature was delighted, and ashamed it 
 should be seen that she was. 
 
 And so he drew her, and kept looking off the paper at 
 her, and had a right in his character of artist to look 
 her full in the face ; and he did so with long lingering 
 glances. To be sure, they all began severe and business- 
 like with half-closed eyes, and the peculiar hostile 
 expression art puts on ; but then they always ended 
 open-eyed, and so fvill and tender, that she, poor girl, 
 who was all real gold, though sham brass, blushed and 
 blushed, and did not know which way to look not to be 
 scorched up by his eye like a tender ilower, or blandly 
 absorbed like the pearly dew. Ah, happy hour ! ah, 
 happy days of youth and innocence and first love ! 
 
 Trouble loves to intrude on these halcyon days. 
 
 The usually quiet Josephine came flying from the 
 house, pale and agitated, and clung despairingly to Rose, 
 and then fell to sobbing and lamenting piteously. 
 
 I shall take leave to relate in my own Avords what had 
 just occurred to agitate her so. When she entered her 
 mother's room, she found the baroness and Perrin the 
 notary seated watching for her. She sat down after the 
 usual civilities, and Perrin entered upon the subject that 
 had brought him. 
 
 He began by confessing to them that he had not over- 
 come the refractory creditor without much trouble ; and 
 that he had since learned there was another, a larger 
 creditor, likely to press for payment or for sale of the 
 estate. The baroness was greatly troubled by this com- 
 munication : the notary remained cool as a cucumber,
 
 "WHITE LIES. 77 
 
 and keenly observant. After a pause he went on to say 
 all this had caused him grave reflections. " It seems," 
 said he with cool candor, " a sad pity the estate should 
 pass from a family that has held it since the days of 
 Charlemagne." 
 
 " Now God forbid ! " cried the baroness, lifting her 
 eyes and her quivering hands to heaven. 
 
 The notary held the republican creed in all its 
 branches. " Providence, madame, does not interfere — 
 in matters of business," said he. "Nothing but money 
 can save the estate. Let us then be practical. Has any 
 means occurred to you of raising money to pay off these 
 incumbrances ? " 
 
 "No. What means can there be? The estate is 
 mortgaged to its full value : so they say, at least." 
 
 "And they say true," put in the notary quickly. 
 " But do not distress yourself, madame : confide in me." 
 
 " Ah, my good friend, may Heaven reward you." 
 
 "Madame, up to the present time I have no complaint 
 to make of Heaven. I am on the rise : here, mademoi- 
 selle, is a gimcrack they have given me ; " and he un- 
 buttoned his overcoat, and showed them a piece of 
 tricolored ribbon and a clasp. "As for me, I look to 
 ' the solid ; ' I care little for these things," said he, 
 swelling visibly, "but the world is dazzled by them. 
 However, I can show you something better." He took 
 out a letter. " This is from the Minister of the Interior 
 to a client of mine : a promise I shall be the next pre- 
 fect; and the present prefect — I am happy to say — is on 
 his death-bed. Thus, madame, your humble servant in 
 a few short months will be notary no longer, but prefect ; 
 I shall then sell my office of notary : and I flatter myself 
 when I am a prefect you will not blush to own me." 
 
 "Then, as now, monsieur," said the baroness politely, 
 "we shall recognize your merit. But" —
 
 78 WHITE LIES. 
 
 "I understand, madame : like me you look to 'the 
 solid.' Thus then it is ; I have money." 
 
 " Ah ! all the better for you." 
 
 " I have a good deal of money. But it is dispersed in 
 a great many small but profitable investments : to call it 
 in suddenly would entail some loss. Nevertheless, if 
 you and my young lady there have ever so little of that 
 friendly feeling towards me of which I have so much 
 towards you, all my investments shall be called in, and 
 two-thirds of your creditors shall be paid off at once. 
 A single client of mine, no less a man than the Com- 
 mandant Raynal, will, I am sure, advance me the remain- 
 ing third at an hour's notice ; and so Beaurepaire chateau, 
 park, estate, and grounds, down to the old oak-tree, shall 
 be saved ; and no power shall alienate them from you, 
 mademoiselle, and from the heirs of your body." 
 
 The baroness clasped her hands in ecstasy. 
 
 "But what are we to do for this ? " inquired Josephine 
 calmly, " for it seems to me that it can only be effected 
 by a sacrifice on your part." 
 
 "I thank you, mademoiselle, for your penetration in 
 seeing that I must make sacrifices. I would never have 
 told you, but you have seen it ; and I do not regret that 
 you have seen it. Madame — mademoiselle — those sac- 
 rifices appear little to me ; will seem nothing ; will never 
 be mentioned, or even alluded to after this day, if you, 
 on your part, will lay me under a far heavier obligation, 
 if in short " — here the contemner of things unsubstan- 
 tial reopened his coat, and brought his ribbon to light 
 again — " if you, madame, will accept me for your son- 
 in-law — if you, mademoiselle, will take me for your 
 husband." 
 
 The baroness and her daughter looked at one another 
 in silence. 
 
 "Is it a jest ? " inquired the former of the latter.
 
 "WHITE LIES. 79 
 
 "Can you think so? Answer Monsieur Perrin, He 
 has just done us a kind office, mother." 
 
 " I shall remember it. Monsieur, permit me to regret 
 that having lately won our gratitude and esteem, you 
 have taken this way of modifying those feelings. But 
 after all," she added with gentle courtesy, " we may well 
 put your good deeds against this — this error in judg- 
 ment. The balance is in your favor still, provided you 
 never return to this topic. Come, is it agreed?" The 
 baroness's manner was full of tact, and the latter sen- 
 tences were said with an open kindliness of manner. 
 There was nothing to prevent Perrin from dropping the 
 subject, and remaining good friends. A gentleman or a 
 lover would have so done. Monsieur Perrin was neither. 
 He said bitterly, " You refuse me, then." 
 
 The tone and the words were each singly too much for 
 the baroness's pride. She answered coldly but civilly, — 
 
 "I do not refuse you. I do not take an affront into 
 consideration." 
 
 " Be calm, mamma ; no affront whatever was intended." 
 
 " Ah ! here is one that is more reasonable," cried 
 Perrin. 
 
 "There are men," continued Josephine Avithout notic- 
 ing him, "who look to but one thing — interest. It was 
 an offer made politely in the way of business : decline it 
 in the same spirit ; that is what you have to do." 
 
 " Monsieur, you hear what mademoiselle says ? She 
 carries politeness a long way. After all it is a good 
 fault. "Well, monsieur, I need not answer you, since 
 Mademoiselle de Beaurepaire has answered you ; but I 
 detain you no longer." 
 
 Strictly a weasel has no business with the temper of 
 a tiger, but this one had, and the long vindictiveness 
 of a Corsican. " Ah ! my little lady, you turn me out 
 of the house, do you ? " cried he, grinding his teeth.
 
 80 WHITE LIES. 
 
 " Turn liim out of the house ? what a phrase ! where 
 has this man lived ? " 
 
 " A man ! " snarled Perrin, " whom none ever yet in- 
 sulted without repenting it, and repenting in vain. You 
 are under obligations to me, and you think to turn me 
 out ! You are at my mercy, and you think I will let 
 you turn me to your door ! In less than a month I will 
 stand here, and say to you, Beaurepaire is mine. Begone 
 from it ! " 
 
 When he uttered these terrible words, each of which 
 was like a sword-stroke to the baroness, the old lady, 
 whose courage was not equal to her strength, shrank 
 over the side of her arm-chair, and cried piteously — 
 " He threatens me ! he threatens me ! I am frightened ; " 
 and put up her trembling hands, for the notary's elo- 
 quence, being accompanied with abundance of gesture, 
 bordered upon physical violence. His brutality received 
 an unexpected check. Imagine that a sparrow-hawk had 
 seized a trembling pigeon, and that a royal falcon swooped, 
 and with one lightning-like stroke of body and wing, 
 buffeted him away, and sent him gaping and glaring and 
 grasping at pigeonless air with his claws. So swift and 
 majestic, Josephine de Beaurepaire came from her chair 
 with one gesture of her body between her mother and 
 the notary, who was advancing with arms folded in a 
 brutal, menacing way — not the Josephine we have seen 
 her, the calm languid beauty, but the demoiselle de 
 Beaurepaire — her great heart on fire — her blood up — 
 not her own only, but all the blood of all the De Beaure- 
 paires — pale as ashes with great wrath, her purple eyes 
 on fire, and her whole panther-like body full of spring. 
 " Wretch ! you dare to insult her, and before me ! Arri- 
 ere viiserahle ! or I soil my hand with your face." And 
 her hand was up with the word, up, up, higher it seemed 
 than ever a hand was raised before. And if he had
 
 WHITE LIES. 81 
 
 hesitated one moment, I really believe it would have 
 come down; not heavily, perhaps — the lightning is not 
 heavy. But there was no need. The towering threat 
 and the flaming eye and the swift rush buffeted the cai- 
 tiff away : he recoiled. She followed him as he went, 
 strong, for a moment or tico, as Hercules, beautiful and 
 terrible as Michael driving Satan. He dared not, or 
 could not stand before her : he writhed and cowered and 
 recoiled all down the room, while she marched upon him. 
 But the driven serpent hissed horribly as it wriggled 
 away. 
 
 " You shall both be turned out of Beaurepaire by me, 
 and forever; I swear it, parole de Perrin." 
 
 He had not been gone a minute when Josephine's 
 courage oozed away, and she ran, or rather tottered, into 
 the Pleasaunce, and clung like a drowning thing to Rose, 
 and, when Edouard took her hand, she clung to him. 
 They had to gather what had happened how they could : 
 the account was constantly interrupted with her sobs and 
 self-reproaches. She said she had ruined all she loved : 
 ruined her sister, ruined her mother, ruined the house of 
 Beaurepaire. Why was she ever born ? Why had she 
 not died three years ago ? (Query, what was the date 
 at which Camille's letters suddenly stopped ?) That 
 coward," said she, "has the heart of a fiend. He told 
 us he never forgave an affront ; and he holds our fate in 
 his hands. He will drive our mother from her home, 
 and she will die : murdered by her own daughter. After 
 all, why did I refuse him ? What should I have sacri- 
 ficed by marrying him ? Rose, write to him, and say — 
 say — I was taken by surprise, I — I" — a violent flood 
 of tears interrupted the sentence. 
 
 Rose flung her arms round her neck. "iSfy beautiful 
 Josephine marry that creature ? Let house and lands 
 go a thousand times sooner. I love my sister a thou- 
 G
 
 82 WHITE LIES. 
 
 sand times better than tlie walls of this or any other 
 house." 
 
 '•' Come, come," cried Edouard, " you are forgetting me 
 all this time. Do you really think I am the sort of man 
 to stand by with my hands in my pockets, and let her 
 marry that cur, or you be driven out of Beaurepaire ? 
 Neither, while I live." 
 
 " Alas ! dear boy," sighed Josephine, '' what can you 
 do ? " 
 
 '' I'll soon show you. From this hour forth it is a 
 duel between that Perrin and me. Now, Josephine — 
 Rose — don't you cry and fret like that : but just look 
 quietly on, and enjoy the fight, both of you." 
 
 Josephine shook her head with a sad smile : but Rose 
 delivered herself thus, after a sob, " La, yes ; I forgot : 
 we have got a gentleman now ; that's one comfort." 
 
 Edouard rose to the situation : he saw that Perrin 
 would lose no time ; and that every day, or even hour, 
 might be precious. He told them that the first thing he 
 must do for them was to leave the company he loved 
 best on earth, and run down to the town to consult Picard 
 the rival notary : he would be back by supper-time, when 
 he hoped they would do him the honor, in a matter of 
 such importance, to admit him to a family council. 
 
 Josephine assented with perfect simj^licity ; Rose Avith 
 a deep blush, for she was too quick not to see all the 
 consequences of admitting so brisk a wooer into a family 
 council. 
 
 It was a wet evening, and a sad and silent party sat 
 round a wood fire in the great dining-hall. The baroness 
 was almost prostrated by the scene with Perrin ; and a 
 sombre melancholy and foreboding weighed on all their 
 spirits, when presently Edouard Riviere entered briskly, 
 and saluted them all profoundly, and opened the proceed-
 
 "WHITE LIES. 83 
 
 ings with a little favorite pomposity. "Madame the 
 baroness, and you Monsieur Aubertin, who honor me with 
 your esteem, and you Mademoiselle de Beaurepaire, whom 
 I adore, and you Mademoiselle Rose, whom I hoped to 
 be permitted — you have this day done me the honor to 
 admit me as your adviser. I am here to lay my plans 
 before you. I believe, madame, I have already convinced 
 you that your farms are under-let, and your property 
 lowered in value by general mismanagement; this was 
 doubtless known to Perrin, and set him scheming. Well, 
 I rely on the same circumstance to defeat him. I have 
 consulted Picard and shown him the rent-roll and balance- 
 sheet I had already shown you. He has confessed that 
 the estate is worth more than its debts, so capitalists 
 can safely advance the money. To-morrow morning, 
 then, I ride to Commandant Raynal for a week's leave 
 of absence ; then, armed with Picard's certiiicate, shall 
 proceed to my uncle and ask him to lend the money. 
 His estate is very small compared with Beaurepaire, 
 but he has always farmed it himself. ' I'll have no go- 
 between,' says he, 'to impoverish both self and soil.' 
 He is also a bit of a misanthrope, and has made me one. 
 I have a very poor opinion of my fellow-creatures, very." 
 
 " Well, but," said Eose, " if he is all that, he will not 
 sympathize with us, who have so mismanaged Beaure- 
 paire. W^ill he not despise us ?" 
 
 Edouard was a little staggered, but Aubertin came to 
 his aid. 
 
 " Permit me, Josephine," said he. " Natural history 
 steps in here, and teaches by me, its mouth-piece. A 
 misanthrope hates all mankind, but is kind to every 
 individual, generally too kind. A philanthrope loves the 
 whole human race, but dislikes his wife, his mother, his 
 brother, and his friends and acquaintances. Misanthrope 
 is the potato : rough and repulsive outside, but good to
 
 84 WHITE LIES. 
 
 the core. Philanthrope is a peach : his manner all velvet 
 and bloom, his words sweet juice, his heart of hearts a 
 stone. Let me read Philanthrope's book, and fall into 
 the hands of Misanthrope." 
 
 Edouard admitted the shrewdness of this remark. 
 
 ''And so," said he, "my misanthrope will say plenty 
 of biting words, — which, by-the-by, will not hurt you, 
 who will not hear them, only me, — and then he'll lend 
 us the money, and Beaurepaire will be free, and I shall 
 have had a hand in it. Hurrah ! " 
 
 Then came a delicious hour to Edouard Riviere. Young 
 and old poured out their glowing thanks and praises 
 upon him till his cheeks burned like fire. 
 
 The baroness was especially grateful, and expressed a 
 gentle regret that she could see no way of showing her 
 gratitude except in words. " What can we do for this 
 little angel ? " said she, turning to Josephine. 
 
 " Leave that to me, mamma," replied Josephine, turn- 
 ing her lovely eyes full on Edouard, with a look the 
 baroness misunderstood directly. 
 
 She sat and watched Josephine and Edouard with 
 comical severity all the rest of the time she was there ; 
 and, when she retired, she kissed Rose affectionately, 
 but whispered her eldest daughter, " I hope you are not 
 serious. A mere boy compared with you." 
 
 "But such a sweet one," suggested Josephine, apolo- 
 getically. 
 
 " What will the world come to ? " said the baroness 
 out loud, and retreated with a sour glance at all of them 
 — except Rose. 
 
 She had not been gone five minutes when a letter came 
 by messenger to Edouard. It was from Picard. He read 
 it out. 
 
 " Perriii has been with me, to raise money. He wants it in 
 forty-eight houi-s. Promises good legal security. I have 
 agreed to try and arrange the matter for him."
 
 WHITE LIES. 86 
 
 They were all astonished at this. 
 
 " The double-faced traitor ! " cried Edouard. " Stay ; 
 wait a minute. Let us read it to an end." 
 
 "This promise is, of course, merely to prevent his going 
 elsewhere. At the end of the forty-eight hours I shall begin 
 to make difficulties. INIeantime, as Perrin is no fool, you had 
 better profit to the full by this temporary delay." 
 
 " Well done, Picard ! " shouted Edouard. " Notary cut 
 notary, /won't lose an hour. I'll start at five; Com- 
 mandant Raynal is an early riser himself." 
 
 Accordingly, at five he was on the road ; Raynal's 
 quarters lay in the direct line to his uncle's place. He 
 found the commandant at home, and was well received. 
 Raynal had observed his zeal, and liked his manners. He 
 gave him the week's leave, and kept him to breakfast, 
 and had his horse well fed. At eight o'clock Edouard 
 rode out of the premises in high spirits. At the very 
 gate he met a gaunt figure riding in on a squab pony. 
 It was Perrin the notary coming in hot haste to his friend 
 and employer, Commandant Raynal.
 
 WHITE LIES. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 After Edouard's departure, Josephine de Beaurepaire 
 was sad, and weighed down with presentiments. She 
 felt as soldiers sometimes feel who know the enemy is 
 undermining them ; no danger on the surface ; nothing 
 that can be seen, met, baffled, attacked, or evaded; in 
 daily peril, all the more horrible that it imitates perfect 
 serenity, they await the fatal match. She imparted her 
 misgivings to Aubertin ; but he assured her she exagger- 
 ated the danger. 
 
 " We have a friend still more zealous and active than 
 our enemy ; believe me, your depression is really caused 
 by his absence ; we all miss the contact of that young 
 heroic spirit; we are a body, and he its soul." 
 
 Josephine was silent, for she said to herself, ''Why 
 should I dash their spirits ? they are so happy and con- 
 fident." 
 
 Edouard had animated Rose and Aubertin with his 
 own courage, and had even revived the baroness. 
 
 It had been agreed between him and Picard that the 
 latter should communicate with Dr. Aubertin direct, 
 should anything fresh occur. And on the third day 
 after Edouard's departure, Picard sent up a private mes- 
 sage : "Perrin has just sent me a line to say he will not 
 trouble us, as he is offered the money in another quarter." 
 
 This was a heavy blow, and sent them all to bed more 
 or less despondent. 
 
 The next day brought a long letter from Edouard to 
 Rose, telling her he had found his uncle crusty at first ; 
 but at last with a little patience, and the co-operation of
 
 WHITE LIES. 87 
 
 Martha, his uncle's old servant, and his nurse, the old 
 boy had come round. They might look on the affair as 
 all but settled. 
 
 The contents of this letter were conveyed to the 
 baroness. The house brightened under it : the more 
 so that there was some hope of their successful cham- 
 pion returning in person next day. Meantime Perrin 
 had applied to Raynal for the immediate loan of a large 
 sum of money on excellent security. Raynal refused 
 plump. Perrin rode away disconsolate. 
 
 But the next day he returned to the charge with 
 another proposal : and the nature of this second pro- 
 posal we shall learn from events. 
 
 The day Edouard was expected opened deliciously. 
 It was a balmy morning, and tempted the sisters out 
 before breakfast. They strolled on the south terrace 
 with their arms round each other's waists, talking about 
 Edouard, and wondering whether they should really see 
 him before night. Rose owned she had missed him, and 
 confessed for the first time she was a proud and happy 
 girl. 
 
 " May I tell him so ? " asked Josephine. 
 
 " Not for all the world. Would you dare ? " 
 
 Further discussion of that nice point was stopped by 
 the baroness coming out, leaning on Dr. Aubertin. 
 
 Then — how we young people of an unceremonious age 
 should have stared — the demoiselles de Beaurepaire, inas- 
 much as this was their mother's first appearance, lowered 
 their fair heads at the same time like young poplars bow- 
 ing to the wind, and so waited reverently till she had 
 slightly lifted her hands, and said, " God bless you, my 
 children !" 
 
 It was done in a moment on both sides, but full of 
 grace and piety, and the charm of ancient manners. 
 
 " How did our dear mother sleep ? " inquired Josephine.
 
 88 WHITE LIES. 
 
 Aubertin interposed with a theory that she slept very well 
 indeed if she took what he gave her. 
 
 "Ay, z/, " suggested Rose, saucily. 
 
 " I slept," said the baroness, " and I wish I had not ; 
 for I dreamed an ugly dream." They all gathered round 
 her, and she told her dream. 
 
 " 1 thought 1 was with you all in this garden. I was 
 admiring the flowers and the trees, and the birds were 
 singing with all their might. Suddenly a dark cloud 
 came ; it cleared almost directly ; but flowers, trees, 
 sky, and birds were gone now, and I could see the 
 chateau itself no more. It means that 1 was dead. 
 An ugly dream, my children, an ugly dream." 
 
 " But only a dream, dear mother," said Rose : then 
 with a sweet, consoling smile, " See, here is your terrace 
 and your chateau," 
 
 "And here are your daughters," said Josephine ; and 
 they both came and kissed her to put their existence out 
 of doubt. "And here is your ^sculapius," said Aubertin. 
 "And here is your Jacintha." 
 
 " Breakfast, madame," said Jacintha. " Breakfast, 
 mesdemoiselles. Breakfast, monsieur : " dropping each 
 a distinct courtesy in turn. 
 
 " She has turned the conversation very agreeably," 
 said the baroness, and went in leaning on her old friend. 
 
 But the sisters lagged behind and took several turns 
 in silence. Rose was the first to speak. " How super- 
 stitious of you ! " 
 
 " I said nothing." 
 
 " No ; but you looked volumes at me while mamma 
 was telling her dream. For my part I feel sure love is 
 stronger than hate ; and we shall stay all our days in 
 this sweet place : and Josey ! am I not a happy girl 
 that it's all owing to him ! " 
 
 At this moment Jacintha came running; towards them.
 
 WHITE LIES. 89 
 
 They took it for a summons to breakfast, and moved to 
 meet her. But they soon saw she was almost as white 
 as her apron, and she came open-moutlied and wringing 
 her hands. " What shall 1 do ? what shall I do ? Oh, 
 don't let my poor mistress know ! " 
 
 They soon got from her that Dard had just come from 
 the town, and learned the chateau was sold, and the pro- 
 prietor coming to take possession this very day. The 
 poor girls were stupefied by the blow. 
 
 If anything, Josephine felt it worst, "It is my doing," 
 she gasped, and tottered fainting. Rose supported her : 
 she shook it off by a violent effort. "This is no time for 
 weakness," she cried, wildly ; " come to the Pleasaunce ; 
 there is water there. I love my mother. What will I 
 not do for her ? I love my mother." 
 
 Muttering thus wildly she made for the pond in the 
 Pleasaunce. She had no sooner turned the angle of the 
 chateau than she started back with a convulsive cry, and 
 her momentary feebleness left her directly ; she crouched 
 against the wall and griped the ancient corner-stone with 
 her tender hand till it powdered, and she spied with 
 dilating eye into the Pleasaunce, Rose and Jacintha pant- 
 ing behind her. Two men stood with their backs turned 
 to her looking at the oak-tree ; one an officer in full uni- 
 form, the other the human snake Perrin. Though the 
 soldier's back was turned, his off-handed, peremptory man- 
 ner told her he was inspecting the place as its master. 
 
 " The baroness ! the baroness ! " cried Jacintha, with 
 horror. They looked round, and the baroness was at 
 their very backs. 
 
 " What is it ? " cried she, gayly. 
 
 " Nothing, mamma." 
 
 "Let me see this nothing." 
 
 They glanced at one another, and, idle as the attempt 
 was, the liabit of sparing her prevailed, and they flung 
 themselves between her and the blow.
 
 90 WHITE LIES. 
 
 "Josephine is not well," said Rose. "She wants to 
 go in." Both girls faced the baroness. 
 
 " Jacintha," said the baroness, " fetch Dr. Aubertin. 
 There, I have sent her away. So now tell me, why do 
 you drive me back so ? Something has happened," and 
 she looked keenly from one to the other. 
 
 " mamma ! do not go that way : there are strangers 
 in the Pleasaunce." 
 
 " Let me see. So there are. Call Jacintha back that 
 I may order these people out of my premises." Joseph- 
 ine implored her to be calm. 
 
 " Be calm when impertinent intruders come into my 
 garden ? " 
 
 " Mother, they are not intruders." 
 
 " What do you mean ? " 
 
 "They have a right to be in our Pleasaunce. They 
 have bought the chateau." 
 
 " It is impossible. Me was to buy it for us — there is 
 some mistake — what man would kill a poor old woman 
 like me ? I will speak to this gentleman : he wears a 
 sword. Soldiers do not trample on women. Ah ! that 
 man." 
 
 The notary, attracted by her voice, was coming towards 
 her, a paper in his hand. 
 
 Raynal coolly inspected the tree, and tapped it with 
 his scabbard, and left Perrin to do the dirty work. The 
 notary took off his hat, and, with a malignant affectation 
 of respect, presented the baroness with a paper. 
 
 The poor old thing took it with a courtesy, the effect 
 of habit, and read it to her daughters as well as her 
 emotion permitted, and the language, which was as new 
 to her as the dialect of Cat Island to Columbus. 
 
 " Jean Raynal, domiciled by right, and lodging in fact at 
 the ChMeau of Beaurepaire, acting by the pursuit and diligence
 
 WHITE LIES. 91 
 
 of Master Perrin, notary ; I, Guillaume Le Gras, bailiff, give 
 notice to Josephine Aglae St. Croix de Beaurepaire, commonly 
 called the Baroness de Beaurepaire, having no known place of 
 abode " — 
 
 " Oh ! " 
 
 "but lodging wrongfully at the said Chateau of Beaurepaire, 
 that she is warned to decamp within twenty-four hours " — 
 
 " To decamp ! " 
 
 *' failing which that she will be thereto enforced in the manner 
 for that case made and provided with the aid of all the officers 
 and agents of the public force." 
 
 " Ah ! no, messieurs, pray do not use force. I am 
 frightened enough already. I did not know I was doing 
 anything wrong. I have been here thirty years. But, 
 since Beaurepaire is sold, I comprehend perfectly that I 
 must go. It is just. As you say, I am not in my own 
 house. I will go, gentlemen, I will go. Whither shall 
 I go, my children ? The house where you were born to 
 me is ours no longer. Excuse me, gentlemen — this is 
 nothing to you. Ah ! sir, you have revenged yourself 
 on two weak women — may Heaven forgive you ! " 
 
 The notary turned on his heel. The poor baroness, 
 all whose pride the iron law, with its iron gripe, had. 
 crushed into dismay and terror, appealed to him. "0 
 sir ! send me from the house, but not from the soil where 
 my Henri is laid ! is there not in all this domain a 
 corner where she who was its mistress may lie down and 
 die ? Where is the new haron, that I may ask this favor 
 of him on my knees ? " 
 
 She turned towards Eaynal and seemed to be going 
 towards him with outstretched arms. But Kose checked 
 her with fervor. " Mamma ! do not lower yourself. Ask 
 nothing of these wretches. Let us lose all, but not for- 
 get ourselves."
 
 92 WHITE LIES. 
 
 The baroness had not her daughter's spirit. Her very 
 person tottered under this blow. Josephine supported 
 her, and the next moment Aubertin came out and has- 
 tened to her side. Her head fell back ; wliat little strength 
 she had failed her ; she was half lifted, half led, into the 
 house. 
 
 Commandant Raynal was amazed at all this, and asked 
 what the deuce was the matter. 
 
 " Oh ! " said the notary, " we are used to these little 
 scenes in our business." 
 
 '' But I am not," replied the soldier. "You never told 
 me there was to be all this fuss." 
 
 He then dismissed his friend rather abruptly and strode 
 up and down the Pleasaunce. He twisted his mustaches, 
 muttered, and ^^ pested,''^ and was ill at ease. Accustomed 
 to march gayly into a town, and see the regiment, that 
 was there before, marching gayly out, or vice versa, and 
 to strike tents twice a quarter at least, he was little pre- 
 pared for such a scene as this. True, he did not hear all 
 the baroness's words, but more than one tone of sharp 
 distress reached him where he stood, and the action 
 of the whole scene was so expressive, there was little 
 need of words. He saw the tiotice given ; the dismay it 
 caused, and the old lady turn imploringly towards him 
 with a speaking gesture, and above all he saw her carried 
 away, half fainting, her hands clasped, her reverend face 
 pale. He was not a man of quick sensibilities. He did 
 not thoroughly take the scene in at first : it grew upon 
 him afterwards. 
 
 " Confound it," thought he, " I am the proprietor. They 
 all say so. Instead of which I feel like a thief. Fancy 
 her getting so fond of a place as all this." 
 
 Presently it occurred to him that the shortness of the 
 notice might have much to do with her distress. "These 
 notaries/' said he to himself, " understand nothing save
 
 WHITE LIES. 93 
 
 law : women have piles of baggage, and can't strike 
 tents directly the order comes, as we can. Perhaps if I 
 were to give them twenty -four da3^s instead of hours? — 
 hum ! " 
 
 With this the commandant fell into a brown study. 
 Now each of us has his attitude of brown study. One 
 runs about the room like hyena in his den ; another 
 stands stately with folded arms (this one seldom thinks 
 to the purpose) ; another sits cross-legged, brows lowered : 
 another must put his head into his hand, and so keep it 
 up to thinking mark : another must twiddle a bit of 
 string, or a key ; grant him this, he can hatch an epic. 
 This commandant must draw himself up very straight, 
 and walk six paces and back very slowly, till the problem 
 was solved : I suspect he had done a good bit of sentinel 
 work in his time. 
 
 Now whilst he was guarding the old oak-tree, for all 
 the world as if it had been the gate of the Tuileries or 
 the barracks, Josephine de Beaurepaire came suddenly 
 out from the house and crossed the Pleasaunce : her hair 
 was in disorder, her manner wild : she passed swiftly 
 into the park. 
 
 Raynal recognized her as one of the family ; and after 
 a moment's reflection followed her into the park with 
 the good-natured intention of offering her a month to 
 clear out instead of a day. 
 
 But it was not so easy to catch her : she flew. He 
 had to take his scabbard in his left hand and fairly run 
 after her. Before he could catch her, she entered the 
 little chapel. He came up and had his foot on the very 
 step to go in, when he was arrested by that lie heard 
 within. 
 
 Josephine had thrown herself on her knees and was 
 praying aloud: praying to the Virgin with sighs and 
 sobs and all her soul: wrestling so in prayer with a dead
 
 94 WHITE LIES. 
 
 saint as by a strange perversity men cannot or will not 
 wrestle with Him, who alone can hear a million prayers 
 at once from a million different places, — can realize and 
 be touched with a sense of all man's infirmities in a way 
 no single saint with his partial experience of them can 
 realize and be touched by them ; who unasked suspended 
 the laws of nature that had taken a stranger's only son, 
 and she a widow ; and wept at another great human 
 sorrow, while the eyes of all the great saints that stood 
 around it and Him were dry. 
 
 Well, the soldier stood, his right foot on the step and 
 his sword in his left hand, transfixed : listening gravely 
 to the agony of prayer the innocent young creature 
 poured forth within : — 
 
 " Madonna ! hear me : it is for my mother's life. 
 She will die — she will die. You know she cannot 
 live if she is taken away from her house and from this 
 holy place where she prays to you this many years. 
 Queen of Heaven ! put out your hand to us unfortu- 
 nates ! Virgin, hear a virgin : mother, listen to a child 
 who prays for her mother's life ! The doctor says she 
 will not live away from here. She is too old to wander 
 over the world. Let them drive us forth : we are young, 
 but not her, mother, oh, not her ! Forgive the cruel men 
 that do this thing ! — they are like those who crucified 
 your Son — they know not what they are doing. But 
 you, Queen of Heaven, you know all ; and, sweet mother, 
 if you have kind sentiments towards me, poor Josephine, 
 ah ! show them now : for you know that it was I who 
 insulted that wicked notary, and it is out of hatred to 
 me he has sold our beloved house to a hard stranger. 
 Look down on me, a child who loves her mother, yet 
 will destroy her unless you pity me and help me. Oh ! 
 what shall I say ? — what shall I do ? mercy ! mercy ! 
 for my poor mother, for me ! "
 
 WHITE LIES. 95 
 
 Here her \itterance was broken by sobs. 
 
 The soldier withdrew his foot quietly. Her words 
 had knocked against his very breast-bone. He marched 
 slowly to and fro before the chapel, upright as a dart, 
 and stiff as a ramrod, and actually pale : for even our 
 nerves have their habits; a woman's passionate grief 
 shook him as a cannon fired over his head could not. 
 
 Josephine little thought who was her sentinel. She 
 came to the door at last, and there he was marching 
 backwards and forwards, upright and stiff. She gave a 
 faint scream and drew back with a shudder at the sight 
 of their persecutor. She even felt faintish at him, as 
 women will in such cases. 
 
 Kot being very quick at interpreting emotion, Raynal 
 noticed her alarm, but not her repugnance ; he saluted 
 her with military precision by touching his cap as only 
 a soldier can, and said rather gently for him, " A word 
 with you, mademoiselle." 
 
 She replied only by trembling. 
 
 "Don't be frightened," said Kaynal, in a tone not 
 very reassuring. " I propose an armistice." 
 
 "I am at your disposal, sir," said Josephine, now 
 assuming a calmness that was belied by the long swell 
 of her heaving bosom, 
 
 " Of course you look on me as an enemy." 
 
 " How can I do otherwise, sir ? yet perhaps I ought 
 not. You did not know us. You just wanted an estate, 
 I suppose — and — oh ! " 
 
 " Well, don't cry ; and let us come to the point, since 
 I am a man of few words." 
 
 " If you please, sir. My mother may miss me." 
 
 "Well, I was in position on your flank when the 
 notary delivered his fire. And I saw the old woman's 
 distress." 
 
 " Ah, sir ! "
 
 96 WHITE LIES. 
 
 "When you eamo flying out I followed to say a good 
 word to you. I could not catch you. T listened while 
 you prayed to the Virgin. That was not a soldier-like 
 trick, you will say. I confess it." 
 
 " It matters little, sir, and you heard nothing I blush 
 for." 
 
 " No ! by St. Denis ; quite the contrary. Well, to the 
 point. Young lady, you love your mother." 
 
 " AVhat has she on earth now but her children's 
 love ? " 
 
 "■ Now look here, young lady, I had a mother ; I loved 
 her in my humdrum way very dearly. She promised me 
 faithfully not to die till I should be a colonel ; and she 
 went and died before I was a commandant, even ; just 
 before, too." 
 
 " Then I pity you," murmured Josephine ; and her 
 soft purple eye began to dwell on him with less repug- 
 nance. 
 
 " Thank you for that word, my good young lady," said 
 Raynal. " Now, I declare, you are the first that has said 
 that word to me about my losing the true friend, that 
 nursed me on her knee, and pinched and pinched to 
 make a man of me. I should like to tell you about her 
 and me." 
 
 "I shall feel honored," said Josephine, politely, but 
 with considerable restraint. 
 
 Then he told her all about how he had vexed her when 
 he was a boy, and gone for a soldier, though she was all 
 for trade, and how he had been the more anxious to see 
 her enjoy his honors and success. " And, mademoiselle," 
 said he, appealingly, "the day this epaulet was put on 
 my shoulder in Italy, she died in Paris. Ah ! how could 
 you have the heart to do that, my old woman ? " 
 
 The soldier's mustache quivered, and he turned away 
 brusquely, and took several steps. Then he came back
 
 WHITE LIES. 97 
 
 to Josephine, and to his infinite surprise saw that her 
 purple eyes were tliick with tears. " What ? you are 
 ■within an inch of crying for my mother, you who have 
 your own trouble at this hour." 
 
 " Monsieur, our situations are so alike, I may well 
 spare some little sympathy for your misfortune." 
 
 " Thank you, my good young lady. Well, then, to busi- 
 ness ; while you were praying to the Virgin, I was saying 
 a word or two for my part to her who is no more." 
 
 '' Sir ! " 
 
 "Oh! it was nothing beautiful like the things j'ou 
 said to the other. Can I turn phrases ? I saw her 
 behind her little counter in the Rue Quincampoix ; for 
 she is a woman of the people, is my mother. I saw 
 myself come to the other side of the counter, and I said, 
 'Look here, mother, here is the devil to pay about this 
 new house. The old woman talks of d3'ing if we take 
 her from her home, and the young one weeps and prays 
 to all the saints in paradise ; what shall we do, eh ? ' 
 Then I thought my old woman said to me, 'Jean, you 
 are a soldier, a sort of vagabond ; what do you want with 
 a house in France ? you who are always in a tent in 
 Italy or Austria, or who knows where. Have you the 
 courage to give honest folk so much pain for a caprice ? 
 Come now,' says she, ' the lady is of my age, say you, 
 and I can't keep your fine house, because God has willed 
 it otherwise ; so give her my place ; so then you can 
 fancy it is me you have set down at your hearth : that 
 will warm your heart up a bit, you little scamp,' said 
 my old woman in her rough way. She was not well- 
 bred like you, mademoiselle. A woman of the people, 
 nothing more." 
 
 '' She was a woman of God's own making, if she was 
 like that," cried Josephine, the tears now running down 
 her cheeks.
 
 98 WHITE LIES. 
 
 " Ah, that she was, she was. So between her and me 
 it is settled — what are you crying iov now? why, you 
 have won the day ; the field is yours ; your mother and 
 you remain ; I decamp." He whipped his scabbard up 
 with his left hand, and was going off without another 
 word, if Josephine had not stopped him. 
 
 " But, sir, what am I to think ? what am I to hope ? 
 it is impossible that in this short interview — and we 
 must not forget what is due to you. You have bought 
 the Estate." 
 
 " True ; well, we will talk over that, to-morrow ; but 
 being turned out of the house, that was the bayonet 
 thrust to the old lady. So you run in and put her heart 
 at rest about it. Tell her that she may live and die in 
 this house for Jean Raynal ; and tell her about the old 
 woman in the Rue Quincampoix." 
 
 '' God bless you, Jean Raynal ! " cried Josephine, 
 clasping her hands. 
 
 " Are you going ? " said he, peremptorily. 
 
 " Oh, yes ! " and she darted towards the chateau. 
 
 But when she had taken three steps she paused, and 
 seemed irresolute. She turned, and in a moment she 
 had glided to Raynal again and had taken his hand 
 before he could hinder her, and pressed two velvet lips 
 on it, and was away again, her cheeks scarlet at what 
 she had done, and her wet eyes beaming with joy. She 
 skimmed the grass like a lapwing; you would have 
 taken her at this minute for Rose, or for Virgil's Camilla ; 
 at the gate she turned an instant and clasped her hands 
 together, with such a look, to show Raynal she blessed 
 him again, then darted into the house. 
 
 "Aha, my lady," said he, as he watched her fly, 
 "behold you changed a little since you came out." He 
 was soon on the high road marching down to the town 
 at a great rate, his sword clanking, and thus ran his
 
 WHITE LIES. 99 
 
 thoughts : " This does one good ; you are right, my old 
 woman. Your son's bosom feels as warm as toast. 
 Long live the five-franc pieces ! And they pretend 
 money cannot make a fellow happy. They lie ; it is 
 because they do not know how to spend it." 
 
 Meantime at the chateau, as still befalls in emergen- 
 cies and trials, the master spirit came out and took its 
 real place. Eose was now the mistress of Beaurepaire ; 
 she set Jacintha, and Dard, and the doctor, to pack up 
 everything of value in the house. " Do it this moment ! " 
 she cried ; " once that notary gets possession of the 
 house, it may be too late. Enough of folly and helpless- 
 ness. We have fooled away house and lands ; our mov- 
 ables shall not follow them." 
 
 The moment she had set the others to work, she wrote 
 a single line to Riviere to tell him the chateau and lands 
 were sold, and would he come to Beaurepaire at once ? 
 She ran with it herself to Bigot's auberge, the nearest 
 post-office, and then back to comfort her mother. 
 
 The baroness was seated in her arm-chair, moaning 
 and wringing her hands, and Kose was nursing and 
 soothing her, and bathing her temples with her last drop 
 of eiui de Cologne, and trying in vain to put some of her 
 own courage into her, when in came Josephine radiant 
 with happiness, crying "Joy! joy! joy!" and told her 
 strange tale, with this difference, that she related her 
 own share in it briefly and coldly, and was more eloquent 
 than I about the strange soldier's goodness, and the 
 interest her mother had awakened in his heart. And 
 she told about the old woman in the Rue Quincampoix, 
 her rugged phrases, and her noble, tender heart. The 
 baroness, deaf to Rose's consolations, brightened up 
 directly at Josephine's news, and at her glowing face, as 
 she knelt pouring the good news, and hope, and comfort, 
 point blank into her. But Rose chilled them both.
 
 100 "WHITK LIES. 
 
 "It is a generous offer," said slie, "but one we cannot 
 accept. We cannot live under so great an obligation. 
 Is all the generosity to be on the side of this Bonapart- 
 ist ? Are we noble in name only ? What would our 
 father have said to such a proposal ? " 
 
 Josephine hung her head. The baroness groaned. 
 
 "No, mother," continued Rose: "let house and land 
 go, but honor and true nobility remain." 
 
 " What shall I do ? you are cruel to me. Rose." 
 
 " Mamma," cried the enthusiastic girl, " we need de- 
 pend on no one. Josephine and I have youth and 
 spirit." 
 
 "But no money." 
 
 "We have jjlenty of jewels, and pictures, and mov- 
 ables. We can take a farm." 
 
 " A farm ! " shrieked the baroness. 
 
 " Why, his uncle has a farm, and we have had recourse 
 to him for help : better a farmhouse than an almshouse, 
 though that almshouse were a palace instead of a 
 chateau." 
 
 Josephine winced and held up her hand deprecatingly. 
 The baroness paled : it was a terrible stroke of language 
 to come from her daughter. She said sternly, " There 
 is no answer to that. We were born nobles, let us die 
 farmers : only permit me to die first." 
 
 " Forgive me, mother," said Rose, kneeling. " I was 
 wrong ; it is for me to obey you, not to dictate. I speak 
 no more." And, after kissing her mother and Josephine, 
 she crept away, but she left her words sticking in both 
 their consciences. 
 
 "i7/s uncle," said the shrewd old lady. "She is no 
 longer a child; and she says his uncle. This makes me 
 half suspect it is her that dear boy — Josephine, tell me 
 the truth, which of you is it?" 
 
 "Dear mother, who should it be? they are nearly of
 
 WHITE LIES. 101 
 
 an age : and what man would not love our sweet Rose, 
 that had eyes or a heart ? " 
 
 The baroness sighed deeply ; and was silent. After 
 awhile she said, "The moment they have a lover, he 
 detaches their hearts from their poor old mother. She 
 is no longer what my Josephine is to me." 
 
 " Mamma, she is my superior. I see it more and more 
 every day. She is proud : she is just ; she looks at 
 both sides. As for me, I am too apt to see only what 
 will please those I love." 
 
 "And that is the daughter for me," cried the poor 
 baroness, opening her arms wide to her. 
 
 The next morning when they were at breakfast, in 
 came Jacintha to say the officer was in the dining-room 
 and wanted to speak with the young lady he talked to 
 yesterday. Josephine rose and went to him. " Well, 
 mademoiselle," said he gayly, " the old woman was right. 
 Here I have just got my orders to march : to leave France 
 in a month. A pretty business it would have been if I 
 had turned your mother out. So you see there is nothing 
 to hinder you from living here." 
 
 " In your house, sir ? " 
 
 " Why not, pray ? " 
 
 " Forgive us. But we feel that would be unjust to 
 you, humiliating to us : the poor are sometimes proud." 
 
 "Of course they are," said Raynal: "and I don't want 
 to offend your pride. Confound the house : wliy did I 
 go and buy it? It is no use to me except to give pain 
 to worthy people." He then, after a moment's reflection, 
 asked her if the matter could not be arranged by some 
 third party, a mutual friend. "Then again," said he, 
 " I don't know any friend of yours." 
 
 " Yes, sir," said Josephine ; " we have one friend, who 
 knows you, and esteems you highly." 
 
 She wanted to name Edouard ; but she hesitated, and
 
 102 WHITE LIES. 
 
 asked her conscience if it was fair to name him : and 
 while she blushed and hesitated, lo and behold a rival 
 referee hove in sight. Raynal saw him, suddenly opened 
 a window, and shouted, " Hallo ! come in here : you are 
 wanted." 
 
 Perrin had ridden up to complete the exodus of the De 
 Beaurepaires, and was strolling about inspecting the 
 premises he had expelled them from. 
 
 Here was a pretty referee ! 
 
 Josephine almost screamed — " What are you doing ? 
 that is our enemy, our bitterest enemy. He has only 
 sold you the estate to spite us, not for the love of you. 
 I had — we had — we mortified his vanity. It was not 
 our fault: he is a viper. Sir, pray, pray, pray be on 
 your guard against his counsels." 
 
 These words spoken with rare fire and earnestness car- 
 ried conviction : but it was too late to recall the invita- 
 tion. The notary entered the room, and was going to 
 bow obsequiously to Raynal, when he caught sight of 
 Josephine, and almost started. Raynal, after Josephine's 
 warning, was a little at a loss how to make him avail- 
 able ; and even that short delay gave the notary's one 
 foible time to lead him into temptation. " Our foibles 
 are our manias." 
 
 " So," said he, " you have taken possession, commandant. 
 These military men are prompt, are they not, mademoi- 
 selle ? " 
 
 "Do not address yourself to me, sir, I beg," said 
 Josephine quietly. 
 
 Perrin kept his self-command. "It is only as Com- 
 mandant Raynal's agent I presume to address so distin- 
 guished a lady : in that character I must inform you that 
 whatever movables you have removed are yours : those 
 we find in the house on entering we keep." 
 
 "Come, come, not so fast," cried Raynal ; "bother the 
 chairs and tables ! that is not the point."
 
 WHITE LIES. 103 
 
 "Commandant," said the notary with dignity, "have I 
 done anything to merit this ? have I served your inter- 
 ests so ill that you withdraw your confidence from me ? " 
 
 "No, no, my good fellow; but you exceed your powers. 
 Just now 1 want you to take orders, not give them." 
 
 "That is only just," said Perrin, "and I recall my 
 hasty remark : excuse the susceptibility of a professional 
 man, who is honored with the esteem of his clients ; and 
 favor me with your wishes." 
 
 " All right," said Raynal heartily. " Well, then — I 
 want mademoiselle and her family to stay here while 
 1 go to Egypt with the First Consul. Mademoiselle 
 makes difficulties ; it offends her delicacy." 
 
 " Comedy ! " said the notary contemptuously. 
 
 "Though her mother's life depends on her staying 
 here." 
 
 " Comedy ! " said Perrin. Raynal frowned. 
 
 " Her pride (begging her pardon) is greater than her 
 affection." 
 
 " Farce ! " 
 
 " I have pitched upon you to reconcile the two." 
 
 "Then you have pitched upon the wrong man," said 
 Perrin bluntly. He added obsequiously, "I am too 
 much your friend. She has been talking you over, no 
 doubt ; but you have a friend, an Ulysses, who is deaf 
 to the siren's voice. I will be no party to such a trans- 
 action. I will not co-operate to humbug my friend and 
 rob him of his rights." 
 
 If Josephine was inferior to the notary in petty 
 sharpness, she was his superior in the higher kinds of 
 sagacity ; and particularly in instinctive perception of 
 character. Her eye flashed with delight at the line 
 Perrin was now taking with Raynal. The latter speedily 
 justified her expectations : he just told Perrin to be off, 
 and send him a more accommodating notary.
 
 104 WHITE LIES. 
 
 '' A more accommodating notary ! " screamed Perrin, 
 
 stung to madness by this reproach, " There is not a 
 more accommodating notary in Europe. Ungrateful man ! 
 is this tlie return for all my zeal, my integrity, my 
 unselfishness ? Is there another agent in the world who 
 would have let such a bargain as Beaurepaire fall into 
 your hands ? It serves me right for deviating from the 
 rules of business. Send me another agent — oh !" 
 
 The honest soldier was confused. The lawyer's elo- 
 quence overpowered him. He felt guilty. Josephine 
 saw his simplicity, and made a cut with a woman's two- 
 edged sword. " Sir," said she coolly, " do you not see it 
 is an affair of money ? This is his way of saying, Pay 
 me handsomely for so unusual a commission." 
 
 " And I'll pay him double," cried Raynal, catching the 
 idea ; " don't be alarmed, I'll pay you for it." 
 
 " And my zeal, my devotion ? " 
 
 " Put 'em in figures." 
 
 *' And my prob — ? " 
 
 " Add it up." 
 
 " And my integ — ? " 
 
 " Add them together : and don't bother me." 
 
 " I see ! I see ! my poor soldier. You are no match 
 for a woman's tongue." 
 
 "Nor for a notary's. Go to h — , and send in your 
 bill ! " roared the soldier in a fury. " Well, will you go ? " 
 and he marched at him. 
 
 The notary scuttled out, with something between a 
 snarl and a squeak. 
 
 Josephine hid her face in her hands. 
 
 " What is the matter with you ? " inquired Raynal. 
 " Not crying again, surely ! " 
 
 "Me! I never cry — hardly. I hid my face because 
 I could not help laughing. You frightened me, sir," 
 said she: then very demurely, "I was afraid you were 
 going to beat him." .
 
 WHITE LIES. 105 
 
 "!N"o, no ; a good soldier never leathers a civilian if he 
 can possibly help it ; it looks so bad ; and before a lady ! " 
 
 " Oh, I would have forgiven you, monsieur," said 
 Josephine benignly, and something like a little sun 
 danced in her eye. 
 
 "Now, mademoiselle, since my referee has proved a 
 pig, it is your turn. Choose you a mutual friend." 
 
 Josephine hesitated. " Ours is so young. You know him 
 very well. You are doubtless the commandant of whom 
 I once heard him speak with such admiration : his name 
 is Riviere, Edouard Riviere." 
 
 " Know him ? he is my best officer, out and out." And 
 without a moment's hesitation he took Edouard's present 
 address, and accepted that youthful Daniel as their ref- 
 eree ; then looked at his watch and marched off to his 
 public duties with sabre clanking at his heels. 
 
 The notary went home gnashing his teeth. His sweet 
 revenge was turned to wormwood this day. Raynal's 
 parting commissions rang in his ear ; in his bitter mood 
 the want of logical sequence in the two orders disgusted 
 him. 
 
 So he inverted them. 
 
 He sent in a thundering bill the very next morning, 
 but postponed the other commission till his dying day. 
 
 As for Josephine, she came into the drawing-room 
 beaming with love and happiness, and after kissing both 
 her mother and Rose with gentle violence, she let them 
 know the strange turn things had taken. 
 
 And she whispered to Rose, " Only think, your Edouard 
 to be our referee ! " 
 
 Rose blushed and bent over her work ; and wondered 
 how Edouard would discharge so grave an office. 
 
 The matter approached a climax ; for, as the reader ia 
 aware, Edouard was hourly expected at Beaurepaire. 
 
 He did not come ; but it was not his fault. On receiv
 
 106 WHITE LIES. 
 
 ing Rose's letter he declined to stay another hour at his 
 uncle's. 
 
 He flung himself on his horse ; and, before he was well 
 settled on the stirrups, the animal shied violently at a 
 wheelbarrow some fool had left there ; and threw Edouard 
 on the stones of the courtyard. He jumped up in a 
 moment and laughed at Marthe's terror; meantime a 
 farm-servant caught the nag and brought him back to 
 his work. 
 
 But when Edouard went to put his hand on the saddle, 
 he found it would not obey him, " Wait a minute," said 
 he ; " my arm is benumbed." 
 
 " Let me see ! " said the farmer, and examined the limb 
 himself; "benumbed? yes; and no wonder. Jacques, 
 get on the brute and ride for the surgeon." 
 
 " Are you mad, uncle ? " cried Edouard. " I can't spare 
 my horse, and I want no surgeon ; it will be well directly." 
 
 " It will be worse before it is better." 
 
 " I don't know what you mean, uncle ; it is only numbed, 
 ah ! it hurts when I rub it." 
 
 " It is worse than numbed, boy ; it is broken." 
 
 " Broken ? nonsense : " and he looked at it in piteous 
 bewilderment : " how can it be broken ? it does not hurt 
 except when I touch it." 
 
 "It will hurt: I know all about it. I broke mine 
 fifteen years ago : fell off a haystack." 
 
 " Oh, how unfortunate I am ! " cried Edouard, piteously. 
 " But I will go to Beaurepaire all the same. I can have 
 the thing mended there, as well as here." 
 
 " You will go to bed," said the old man, quietly ; " that 
 is where yoiCll go." 
 
 " I'll go to blazes sooner," yelled the young one. 
 
 The old man made a signal to his myrmidons, whom 
 Marthe's cries had brought around, and four stout fellows 
 took hold of Edouard by the legs and the left shoulder
 
 WHITE LIES. 107 
 
 and carried him up-stairs raging and kicking ; and de- 
 posited him on a bed. 
 
 Presently he began to feel faint, and so more reason- 
 able. They cut his coat off, and put him in a loose 
 wrapper, and after considerable delay the surgeon came, 
 and set his arm skilfully, and behold this ardent spirit 
 caged. He chafed and fretted sadly. Fortitude was not 
 his forte. 
 
 It was tAvo days after his accident. He was lying on 
 his back, environed by slops and cursing his evil fate, 
 and fretting his soul out of its fleshly prison, when sud- 
 denly he heard a cheerful trombone saying three words 
 to Marthe, then came a clink-clank, and Marthe ushered 
 into the sickroom the Commandant Eaynal. The sick 
 man raised himself in bed, with great surprise and joy. 
 
 " commandant ! this is kind to come and see your 
 poor officer in purgatory." 
 
 " Ah," cried Eaynal, '' you see I know what it is. I 
 have been chained down by the arm, and the leg, and all : 
 it is deadly tiresome." 
 
 " Tiresome ! it is — it is — oh, dear commandant. Heaven 
 bless you for coming ! " 
 
 "Ta! ta! ta! I am come on my own business." 
 
 " All the better. I have nothing to do ; that is what 
 kills me. I'm eating my own heart." 
 
 '' Cannibal ! Well, my lad, since you are in that humor, 
 cheer up, for I bring you a job, and a tough one ; it has 
 puzzled me." 
 
 " What is it, commandant ? What is it ? " 
 
 "Well, do you know a house and a family called 
 Beaurepaire ? " 
 
 " Do I know Beaurepaire ? " 
 
 And the pale youth turned very red ; and stared with 
 awe at this wizard of a commandant. He thought he 
 was going to be called over the coals for frequenting a
 
 108 WHITE LIES. 
 
 disaffected family. "Well," said Kaynal, "I have been 
 and bought this Beaurepaire." 
 
 Edouard uttered a loud exclamatiou. " It was you 
 bought it ! she never told me that." 
 
 " Yes," said Raynal, " I am the culprit ; and we have 
 fixed on you to undo my work without hurting their pride 
 too much, poor souls ; but let us begin with the facts." 
 
 Then Raynal told him my story after his fashion. Of 
 course I shall not go and print his version ; you might 
 like his concise way better than my verbose ; and I'm 
 not here to hold up any man's coat-tails. Short as he 
 made it, Edouard's eyes were moist more than once ; and 
 at the end he caught Raynal's hand and kissed it. Then 
 he asked time to reflect ; " for," said he, " I must try and 
 be just." 
 
 " I'll give you an hour," said Raynal, with an air of 
 grand munificence. The only treasure he valued was 
 time. 
 
 In less than an hour Edouard had solved the knot, to 
 his entire satisfaction ; he even gave the commandant par- 
 ticular instructions for carrying out his sovereign decree. 
 Raynal received these orders from his subordinate with 
 that simplicity which formed part of his amazing charac- 
 ter, and rode home relieved of all responsibility in the 
 matter. 
 
 Commandant Raynal to Mademoiselle de Beaurepaike. 
 
 Mademoiselle, — Before I could find time to wa-ite to our 
 referee, news came in that he had just broken his arm ; — 
 
 " Oh ! oh, dear ! our poor Edouard ! " 
 
 And if poor Edouard had seen the pale faces, and 
 heard the faltering accents, it would have reconciled him 
 to his broken arm almost. This hand-grenade the com- 
 mandant had dropped so coolly among them, it was a 
 long while ere they could recover from it enough to read 
 the rest of the letter, —
 
 WHITE LIES. 109 
 
 so r rode over to him, and found him on his back, fretting for 
 want of something to do. I told him the whole story. He 
 undertook the business. I have received his instructions, and 
 next week shall be at his quarters to clear off his arrears of 
 business, and make acquaintance with all your family, if they 
 permit. 
 
 Rayxal. 
 
 As the latter part of this letter seemed to require a 
 reply, the baroness wrote a polite note, and Jacintha 
 sent Dard to leave it for the commandant at Eiviere's 
 lodgings. But first they all sat down and wrote kind 
 and pitying and soothing letters to Edouard. Need I 
 say these letters fell upon him like balm ? 
 
 They all inquired carelessly in their postscripts what 
 he had decided as their referee. He replied mysteriously 
 that they would know that in a week or two. Meantime, 
 all he thought it prudent to tell them was that he had 
 endeavored to be just to both parties. 
 
 ''Little solemn puppy," said Eose, and was racked with 
 curiosity. 
 
 Next week Eaynal called on the baroness. She received 
 him alone. They talked about Madame Eaynal. The 
 next day he dined with the whole party, and the com- 
 mandant's manners were the opposite of what the baron- 
 ess had inculcated. But she had a strong prejudice in 
 his favor. Had her feelings been the other way his 
 hnisqiierie would have shocked her. It amused her. If 
 people's hearts are with you, that for their heads ! 
 
 He came every day for a week, chatted with the baron- 
 ess, walked with the young ladies ; and when after work 
 he came over in the evening, Eose used to cross-examine 
 him, and out came such descriptions of battles and sieges, 
 such heroism and such simplicity mixed, as made the 
 evening pass delightfully. On these occasions the young 
 ladies fixed their glowing eyes on him, and drank in his
 
 110 WHITE LIES. 
 
 character as well as his narrative, in which were fewer 
 "I's" than in anything of the sort you ever read or 
 heard. 
 
 At length Kose contrived to draw him aside, and, hid- 
 ing her curiosity under feigned nonchalance, asked him 
 what the referee had decided. He told her that was a 
 secret for the present. 
 
 " Well, but," said Rose, " not from me. Edouard and 
 I have no secrets." 
 
 "Come, that's good," said Raynal. "Why, you are 
 the very one he warned me against the most ; said you 
 were as curious as Mother Eve, and as sharp as her 
 needle." 
 
 "Then he is a little scurrilous traitor," cried Rose, 
 turning very red. "' So that is how he talks of me behind 
 my back, and calls me an angel to my face ; I'll pay him 
 for this. Do tell me, commandant; never mind what 
 he says." 
 
 " What ! disobey orders ? " 
 
 " Orders ? to you from that boy ! " 
 
 " Oh ! " said Raynal, " for that matter, we soldiers are 
 used to command one moment, and obey the next." 
 
 In a word, this military pedant was impracticable, and 
 Rose gave him up in disgust, and began to call up a 
 sulky look when the other two sang his praises. For 
 the old lady pronounced him charming, and Josephine 
 said he was a man of crystal ; never said a word he did 
 not mean, and she wished she was like him. But the 
 baroness thought this was going a little too far. 
 
 "No, thank you," said she hastily; "he is a man, a 
 thorough man. He would make an intolerable woman. 
 A fine life if one had a parcel of women about, all blurt- 
 ing out their real minds every moment, and never smooth- 
 ing matters." 
 
 " Mamma, what a horrid picture ! " chuckled Rose.
 
 WHITE LIES. Ill 
 
 She then proposed that at his next visit they should 
 all three make an earnest appeal to him to let them 
 know what Edouard had decided. 
 
 But Josephine begged to be excused, feared it would 
 be hardly delicate ; and said languidly that for her part 
 she felt they were in good hands, and prescribed patience. 
 The baroness acquiesced, and poor Rose and her curiosity 
 were baffled on every side. 
 
 At last, one fine day, her torments were relieved with- 
 out any further exertion on her part. Jacintha bounced 
 into the drawing-room with a notice that the command- 
 ant wanted to speak to Josephine a minute out in the 
 rieasaunce. 
 
 " How droll he is," said Rose ; " fancy sending in for 
 a young lady like that. Don't go, Josephine ; how he 
 would stare." 
 
 "My dear, 1 no more dare disobey him than if I was 
 one of his soldiers." And she laid down her work, and 
 rose quietly to do what she was bid. 
 
 " Well," said Rose, superciliously, " go to your com- 
 manding officer. And, Josephine, if you are worth 
 anything at all, do get out of him what that Edouard 
 has settled." 
 
 Josephine kissed her, and promised to try. After the 
 Hrst salutation, there was a certain hesitation about 
 Raynal which Josephine had never seen a trace of in 
 him before ; so, to put him at his ease, and at the same 
 time keep her promise to Rose, she asked timidly if their 
 mutual friend had been able to suggest anything. 
 
 " What ! don't you know that I have been acting all 
 along upon his instructions ? " answered Raynal. 
 
 " 'No, indeed ! and you have not told us what he 
 advised." 
 
 " Told you ? why,^ of course not ; they were secret 
 instructions. 1 have obeyed one set, and now I come to
 
 112 WHITE LIES. 
 
 the other; and there is the difficulty, beiug a kind of 
 warfare 1 know nothing about." 
 
 " It must be savage warfare, then," suggested the lady 
 politely. 
 
 "Not a bit of it. Now, who would have thought I was 
 such a coward ? " 
 
 Josephine was mystified ; however, she made a shrewd 
 guess. " Do you fear a repulse from any one of us ? 
 Then, I suppose, you meditate some extravagant act of 
 generosity." 
 
 "Not I." 
 
 " Of delicacy, then." 
 
 " Just the reverse. Confound the young dog ! why is 
 he not here to help me ? " 
 
 " But, after all," suggested Josephine, " you have only 
 to carry out his instructions." 
 
 " That is true ! that is true ! but when a fellow is a 
 coward, a poltroon, and all that sort of thing." 
 
 This repeated assertion of cowardice on the part of 
 the living Damascus blade that stood bolt-upright before 
 her, struck Josephine as so funny that she laughed 
 merrily, and bade him fancy it was only a fort he was 
 attacking instead of the terrible Josephine ; whom none 
 but heroes feared, she assured him. 
 
 This encouragement, uttered in jest, was taken in 
 earnest. The soldier thanked her, and rallied visibly at 
 the comparison. " All right," said he, " as you say, it is 
 only a fort — so — mademoiselle ! " 
 
 " Monsieur ! " 
 
 " Hum ! will you lend me your hand for a moment ? " 
 
 " My hand ! what for ? there," and she put it out an 
 inch a minute. He took it, and inspected it closely. 
 
 " A charming hand ; the hand of a virtuouo woman ?" 
 
 " Yes," said Josephine as cool as a cucumber, too sub- 
 limely and absurdly innocent even to blush.
 
 WHITE LIES. 113 
 
 " Is it your own ? " 
 
 " Sir ! " She blushed at that, I can tell you. 
 
 " Because if it was, I would ask you to give it me. 
 (I've fired the first shot anyway.) " 
 
 Josephine whipped her hand off his palm, where it lay 
 like cream spilt on a trencher. 
 
 " Ah ! I see ; you are not free : you have a lover." 
 
 " No, no ! " cried Josephine in distress ; " I love 
 nobody but my mother and sister : I never shall." 
 
 '^ Your mother," cried Raynal ; " that reminds me ; he 
 told me to ask her ; by Jove, I think he told me to ask 
 her first ; " and Raynal up with his scabbard and was 
 making off. 
 
 Josephine begged him to do nothing of the kind. 
 
 " I can save you the trouble," said she. 
 
 " Ah, but my instructions ! my instructions ! " cried 
 the military pedant, and ran off into the house, and left 
 Josephine " planted there," as they say in France. 
 
 Raynal demanded a private interview of the baroness 
 so significantly and unceremoniously that Rose had no 
 alternative but to retire, but not without a glance of 
 defiance at the bear. She ran straight, without her 
 bonnet, into the Pleasaunce to slake her curiosity at 
 Josephine. That young lady was walking pensively, 
 but turned at sight of Rose, and the sisters came to- 
 gether with a clash of tongues. 
 
 "0 Rose! he has " — 
 
 " Oh ! " 
 
 So nimbly does the female mind run on its little beaten 
 tracks, that it took no more than those syllables for even 
 these innocent young women to coiunumicate that Raynal 
 had popped. 
 
 Josephine apologized for this weakness in a hero. 
 " It wasn't his fault," said she. " It is your Edouard 
 who set him to do it." 
 8
 
 114 WHITE LIES. 
 
 "My Edouartl? Don't talk in that horrid way: I 
 have no Edouard. You said ' no ' of course." 
 
 " Something of the kind." 
 
 " What, did you not say ' no ' phunp? " 
 
 " I did not say it brutally, dear." 
 
 " Josephine, you frighten me. I know you can't say 
 ' no ' to any one ; and if you don't say ' no ' plump to 
 such a man as this, you might as well say ' yes.' " 
 
 " Well, love," said Josephine, "you know our mother 
 will relieve me of this ; what a comfort to have a 
 mother ! " 
 
 They waited for Raynal's departure, to go to the bar- 
 oness. They had to wait a long time. Moreover, when 
 he did leave the chateau he came straight into the 
 Pleasaunce. At sight of him Rose seized Josephine 
 tight and bade her hold her tongue, as she could not say 
 " no " plump to any one. Josephine was far from rais- 
 ing any objection to the arrangement. 
 
 " Monsieur," said Rose, before he could get a word 
 out, " even if she had not declined, / could not con- 
 sent." 
 
 Raynal tapped his forehead reflectively, and drew 
 forth from memory that he had no instructions whatever 
 to ask her consent. 
 
 She colored high, but returned to the charge. 
 
 " Is her own consent to be dispensed with too ? She 
 declined the honor, did she not ? " 
 
 " Of course she did ; but this was anticipated in my 
 instructions. I am to be sure and not take the first two 
 or three refusals." 
 
 " Josephine, look at that insoleat boy : he has 
 found you out." 
 
 " Insolent boy ! " cried Raynal ; " why, it is the referee 
 of your own choosing, and as well behaved a lad as ever 
 I saw, and a zealous officer."
 
 WHITE LIES. 115 
 
 "My kind friends," put in Josephine with a sweet 
 languor, " I cannot let you quarrel about a straw." 
 
 " It is not about a straw," said Kaynal, " it is about 
 you." 
 
 " The distinction involves a compliment, sir," said 
 Josephine ; then she turned to Rose, " Is it possible you 
 do not see Monsieur Raynal's strange proposal in its true 
 light ? and you so shrewd in general. He has no per- 
 sonal feeling whatever in this eccentric proceeding : he 
 wants to make us all happy, especially my mother, with- 
 out seeming to lay us under too great an obligation. 
 Surely good-nature was never carried so far before ; ha, 
 ha ! Monsieur, I will encumber you with my friendship 
 forever, if you permit me, but farther than that I will 
 not abuse your generosity." 
 
 " Now look here, mademoiselle," began Raynal bluntly, 
 " I did start with a good motive at first, that there's no 
 denying. But, since I have been every day in your com- 
 pany, and seen how good and kind you are to all about 
 you, I have turned selfish ; and I say to myself, what a 
 comfort such a wife as you would be to a soldier ! Why, 
 only to have you to write letters home to, would be 
 worth half a fellow's pay. Do you know sometimes 
 when I see the fellows writing their letters it gives me 
 a knock here to think I have no one at all to write to." 
 
 Josephine sighed. 
 
 " So you see I am not so mighty disinterested. Now, 
 mademoiselle, you speak so charmingly, I can't tell what 
 you mean : can't tell whether you say ' no ' because you 
 could never like me, or whether it is out of delicac}', 
 and you only want pressing. So I say no more at pres- 
 ent : it is a standing offer. Take a day to consider. 
 Take two if you like. I must go to the barracks ; good- 
 day." 
 
 " Oh ! this must be put an end to at once," said Rose.
 
 116 WHITE LIES. 
 
 . " With all my lieart," replied Josephine ; "but how ? " 
 
 " Come to our mother, and settle that," said the im- 
 petuous sister, and nearly dragged the languid one into 
 the drawing-room. 
 
 To their surprise they found the baroness walking up 
 and down the room with unusual alacrity for a person of 
 her years. She no sooner caught sight of Josephine 
 than she threw her arms open to her with joyful vivacity, 
 and kissed her warmly. " My love, you have saved us. 
 I am a happy old woman. If I had all France to pick 
 from I could not have found a man so worthy of my 
 Josephine, He is brave, he is handsome, he is young, 
 he is a rising man, he is a good son, and good sons make 
 good husbands — and — I shall die at Beaurepaire, shall 
 I not, Madame the Commandante ? " 
 
 Josephine held her mother round the neck, but never 
 spoke. After a silence she held her tighter, and cried a 
 little. 
 
 " What is it ? " asked the baroness confidentially of 
 Rose, but without showing any very profound concern. 
 
 " Mamma ! mamma ! she does not love him." 
 
 " Love him ? She would be no daughter of mine if 
 she loved a man at sight. A modest woman loves her 
 husband only." 
 
 " But she scarcely knows INIonsieur Raynal." 
 
 '' She knows more of him than I knew of your father 
 when I married him. She knows his virtues and appre- 
 ciates them. I have heard her, have I not, love ? Es- 
 teem soon ripens into love when they are once fairly 
 married." 
 
 " Mother, does her silence then tell you nothing ? 
 Her tears — are they nothing to you ? " 
 
 " Silly child ! These are tears that do not scald. The 
 sweet soul weeps because she now for the first time sees 
 Bhe will have to leave her mother. Alas ! my eldest, it
 
 WHITE LIES. 117 
 
 is inevitable. Mothers are not immortal. While they 
 are here it is their duty to choose good husbands for 
 their daughters. My youngest, I believe, has chosen for 
 herself — like the nation. But for my eldest I choose. 
 We shall see which chooses the best. Meantime we 
 stay at Beaurepaire, thanks to my treasure here." 
 
 " Josephine ! Josephine ! you don't say one word," 
 cried Rose in dismay. 
 
 " What can I say ? I love my mother and I love you. 
 You draw me different ways. I want you to be both 
 happy." 
 
 " Then if you will not speak out I must. Mother, do 
 not deceive yourself : it is duty alone that keeps her 
 silent : this match is odious to her." 
 
 " Then we are ruined. Josephine, is this match odious 
 to you ? " 
 
 " Not exactly odious : but I am very, very indifferent." 
 
 " There ! " cried Rose triumphantly. 
 
 *• There ! " cried the baroness in the same breath, 
 triumphantly. " She esteems his character ; but his per- 
 son is indifferent to her : in other words, she is a modest 
 girl, and my daughter; and let me tell you. Rose, that 
 but for the misfortunes of our house, both my daughters 
 would be married as I was, without knowing half as 
 much of their husbands as Josephine knows of this brave, 
 honest, generous, filial gentleman." 
 
 *■' Well, then, since she will not speak out, I will. Pity 
 me : I love her so. If this stranger, whom she does not 
 love, takes her away from us, he will kill me. I shall 
 die; oh!" 
 
 Josephine left her mother and went to console Rose. 
 
 The baroness lost her temper at this last stroke of 
 opposition. " Now the truth comes out. Rose ; this is 
 selfishness. Do not deceive your'aoii — selfishness !" 
 
 "Mamma!"
 
 118 WHITE LIES. 
 
 "You are only waiting to leave me yourself. Yet 
 your eldest sister, forsooth, must be kept here for you, 
 — till then." She added more gently, " Let me advise 
 you to retire to your own room, and examine your heart 
 fairly. You will find there is a strong dash of egoism in 
 all this." 
 
 "If I do" — 
 
 " You will retract your opposition." 
 
 " My heart won't let me ; but I will despise myself, 
 and be silent." 
 
 And the young lady, who had dried her eyes the 
 moment she was accused of selfishness, walked, head 
 erect, from the room. Josephine cast a deprecating 
 glance at her mother. " Yes, my angel ! " said the 
 latter, "I was harsh. But we are no longer of one mind, 
 and I suppose never shall be again." 
 
 " Oh, yes, we shall. Be patient ! INIother — you shall 
 not leave Beaurepaire." 
 
 The baroness colored faintly at these four last words 
 of her daughter, and hung her head. 
 
 Josephine saw that, and darted to her and covered 
 her with kisses. 
 
 That day the doctor scolded them both. " You have 
 put your mother into a high fever," said he ; " here's a 
 pulse ; I do wish you would be more considerate." 
 
 The commandant did not come to dinner as usual. 
 The evening passed heavily ; their hearts were full of 
 uncertainty. 
 
 " We miss our merry, spirited companion," said the 
 baroness with a grim look at Eose. Both young ladies 
 assented with ludicrous eagerness. 
 
 That night Eose came and slept with Josephine, 
 and more than once she awoke with a start and seized 
 Josephine convulsively and held her tight. 
 
 Accused of egoism ! at first her whole nature rose in
 
 WHITE LIES. 119 
 
 arms against the charge : but, alter a while, coming as it 
 did from so revered a person, it forced her to serious self- 
 examination. The poor girl said to herself, " Mamma is 
 a shrewd woman. Am I after all deceiving myself ? 
 Would she be happy, and am I standing in the way ? " 
 In the morning she begged her sister to walk with her 
 in the park, so that they might be safe from interruption. 
 
 There, she said sadly, she could not understand her 
 own sister. " Why are you so calm and cold, while I 
 am in tortures of anxiety ? Have you made some resolve 
 and not confided it to your Rose ? " 
 
 " No, love," was the reply ; " I am scarce capable of a 
 resolution ; I am a mere thing that drifts." 
 
 " Let me put it in other words, then. How wall this 
 end ? " 
 
 " I hardly know." 
 
 " Do you mean to marry Monsieur Eaynal, then ? 
 answer me that." 
 
 " No ; but I should not wonder if he were to marry 
 me." 
 
 " But you said ' no.' " 
 
 " Yes, I said 'no ' once." 
 
 "And don't you mean to say it again, and again, and 
 again, till kingdom come ? " 
 
 "What is the use? you heard him say he would not 
 desist any the more, and I care too little about the mat- 
 ter to go on persisting, and persisting, and persisting." 
 
 " Why not, if he goes on pestering, and pestering, and 
 pestering ? " 
 
 " Ah, he is like you, all energy, at all hours ; but I 
 have so little where my heart is unconcerned : he seems, 
 too, to have a wish ! I have none either way, and my 
 conscience says 'marry him ! ' " 
 
 " Your conscience say marry one man when you love 
 another ? "
 
 120 WHITE LIES. 
 
 " Heaven forbid ! Hose, I love no one : I have loved ; 
 but now my heart is dead and silent ; only my conscience 
 says, ' You are the cause of all your mother's trouble ; 
 you are the cause that Beaurepaire was sold. Now you 
 can repair that mischief, and at the same time make a 
 brave man happy, our benefactor happy.' It is a great 
 temptation : I hardly know why I said ' no ' at all ; sur- 
 prise, perhaps — or to please you, pretty one." 
 
 Rose groaned : " Are you then worth so little that you 
 would throw yourself away on a man who does not love 
 you, nor want you, and is quite as happy single ? " 
 
 " No ; not happy ; he is only stout-hearted and good, 
 and therefore conte?it ; and he is a character that it would 
 be easy — in short, I feel my power here : I could make 
 that man happy ; he has nobody to write to even, when 
 he is away — poor fellow ! " 
 
 " I shall lose all patience," cried Rose ; *' you are at 
 your old trick, thinking of everybody but yourself: I let 
 you do it in trifles, but I love you too well to permit it 
 when the happiness of your whole life is at stake. I 
 must be satisfied on one point, or else this marriage 
 shall never take place : just answer me this ; if Camille 
 Dujardin stood on one side, and Monsieur Raynal on the 
 other, and both asked your hand, which would you 
 take ? " 
 
 " That will never be. Whose ? Not his whom I 
 despise. Esteem might ripen into love, but what must 
 contempt end in ? " 
 
 This reply gave Rose great satisfaction. To exhaust 
 all awkward contingencies, she said, '' One question more, 
 and I have done. Suppose Camille should turn out — be 
 not quite — what shall I say — inexcusable ? " 
 
 At this unlucky gush, Josephine turned pale, then red, 
 then pale again, and cried eagerly, " Then all the world 
 should not part us. Why torture me with such a ques-
 
 WHITE LIES. 121 
 
 tion ? Ah ! you have lieard something." And in a 
 moment the lava of passion burst wiklly through its thin 
 sheet of ice. " I was blind. This is why you would 
 save me from this unnatural marriage. You are break- 
 ing the good news to me by degrees. There is no need. 
 Quick — quick — let me have it. I have waited three 
 . years ; I am sick of waiting. Why don't you speak ? 
 Why don't you tell me ? Then I will tell you. He is 
 alive — he is well — he is coming. It was not he those 
 soldiers saw ; they were so far off. How could they tell ? 
 They saw a uniform but not a face. Perhaps he has 
 been a prisoner, and so could not write ; could not come : 
 but he is coming now. Why do you groan ? why do you 
 turn pale ? ah ! I see ; I have once more deceived myself. 
 I was mad. He I love is still a traitor to France and 
 me, and I am wretched forever. Oh ! that I were dead ! 
 oh ! that I were dead ! No ; don't speak to me : never 
 mind me ; this madness will pass as it has before, and 
 leave me a dead thing among the living. Ah ! sister, 
 why did you wake me from my dream ? I was drifting 
 so calmly, so peacefully, so dead, and painless, drifting 
 over the dead sea of the heart towards the living waters 
 of gratitude and duty. I was going to make more than 
 one worthy soul happy ; and seeing them happy, I 
 should have been content and useful — what am I now ? 
 — and comforted other hearts, and died joyful — and 
 3'oung. For God is good ; he releases the meek and 
 patient from their burdens." 
 
 With this came a flood of tears ; and she leaned against 
 a bough with her forehead on her arm, bowed like a 
 wounded lily. 
 
 "Accursed be that man's name, and my tongue if ever 
 I utter it again in your hearing ! " cried Rose, weeping 
 bitterly. " You are wiser than I, and every way better. 
 O my darling, dry your tears ! Here he comes : look ! 
 riding across the park." .
 
 122 WHITE LIES. 
 
 "Rose," cried Josephine, hastily, "I leave all to you. 
 Eeceive Monsieur Raynal, and decline his offer if you 
 think proper. It is you who love me best. My mother 
 would give me up for a house ; for an estate, poor dear." 
 
 " I would not give you for all the world." 
 
 " I know it. I trust all to you." 
 
 " Well, but don't go ; stay and hear what I shall say." 
 
 ''Oh, no ; that poor man is intolerable to me now. Let 
 me avoid his sight, and think of his virtues." 
 
 Rose was left alone, mistress of her sister's fate. She 
 put her head into her hands and filled with anxiety and 
 sudden doubt. 
 
 Like a good many more of us, she had been positive 
 so long as the decision did not rest with her. But with 
 power comes responsibility, with responsibility comes 
 doubt. Easy to be an advocate m re incertd ; hard to 
 be the judge. And she had but a few seconds to think 
 in ; for Raynal was at hand. The last thing in her mind 
 before he joined her was the terrible power of that base 
 Camille over her sister. She despaired of curing Joseph- 
 ine, but a husband might. There's such divinity doth 
 hedge a husband in innocent girls' minds. 
 
 " Well, little lady," began Raynal, " and how are you, 
 and how is my mother-in-law that is to be — or is not 
 to be, as your sister pleases ; and how is she ? have I 
 frightened her away ? There were two petticoats, and 
 now there is but one." 
 
 " She left me to answer you." 
 
 " All the worse for me : I am not to your taste." 
 
 " Do not say that," said Rose, almost hysterically. 
 
 " Oh ! it is no sacrilege. Not one in fifty likes me." 
 
 " But I do like you, sir." 
 
 "Then why won't you let me have your sister?" 
 
 "I have not quite decided that you shall not have 
 her," faltered poor Rose. She murmured on, "I dare
 
 WHITE LIES. 123 
 
 say you think me very unkind, very selfish ; but put 
 yourself in my place. I love my sister as no man can 
 ever love her, I know : my heart has been one flesh and 
 one soul with hers all my life. A stranger comes and 
 takes her away from me as if she was I don't know what ; 
 his portmanteau ; takes her to Egypt, oh ! oh ! oh ! " 
 
 Raynal comforted her. 
 
 " What, do you think I am such a brute as to take that 
 delicate creature about fighting with me ? why, the hot 
 sand would choke her, to begin. No. You don't take 
 my manoeuvre. I have no family ; I try 'or a wife that 
 will throw me in a mother and sister. You wiP live all 
 together the same as before, of course ; only you must 
 let me make one of you when I am at home. And how 
 often will that be ? Besides, I am as likely to be 
 knocked on the head in Egypt ab not ; you are worry- 
 ing yourself for nothing, lit le lady." 
 
 He uttered the last topic of consolation in a broad, 
 hearty, hilarious tone, like a trombone impregnated with 
 cheerful views of fate, 
 
 "Heaven forbid ! " cried Eose : "and i w'll, fo^ even 
 I shall pray for you now. What you will leave her at 
 home ? forgive me for not seeing all your worth : of 
 course I knew you were an angel, but I had no idea you 
 "were a duck. You are just the man for my sister. She 
 likes to obey : you are all for commanding. So you see. 
 Then she never thinks of herself . any other man but 
 you would impose on her good-nature ; but you are too 
 generous to do that. So you see. Then she esteems 
 you so highly. And one whom I esteem (between you 
 and me) has chosen you for her." 
 
 " Then say yes, and have done with it," suggested the 
 straightforward soldier, 
 
 " AVhy should I say ' no ? ' you will make one another 
 happy some day : you are both so good. Any other man
 
 124 WHITE LIES. 
 
 but you would tear her from me ; but you are too just, 
 too kind. Heaven will reward you. No ! I will. I will 
 give you Josephine : ah, my dear brother-in-law, it is the 
 most precious thing I have to give in the world." 
 
 " Thank you, then. So that is settled. Hum ! no, it 
 is not quite ; I forgot ; I have something for you to read ; 
 an anonymous letter. I got it this morning ; it says your 
 sister has a lover." 
 
 The letter ran to this tune : a friend who had observed 
 the commandant's frequent visits at Beaurepaire wrote 
 to warn him against traps. Both the young ladies of 
 Beaurepaire were doubtless at the new proprietor's serv- 
 ice to pick and choose from. But for all that each of 
 them had a lover, and though these lovers had their 
 orders to keep out of the way till monsieur should be 
 hooked, he migh'. be sure that if he married either, the 
 man of her heart would come on the scene soon after, 
 perhaps be present at th wedding. 
 
 In short, it was on'" of those poisoned arrows a coarse 
 vindictive coward can shoot. 
 
 It was ::he first anonymous letter Rose had ever seen. 
 It almost drove her mad on the spot. Eaynal was sorry 
 he had let her see it. 
 
 She turned red and white by turns, and gasped for 
 breath. 
 
 " Why am I not a man ? — why don't I wear a sword ? 
 I would pass it through this caitiff's heart. The cow- 
 ardly slave ! — the fiend ! for who but a fiend could slan- 
 der an angel like my Josephine ? Hooked ? Oh ! she 
 will never marry you if she sees this." 
 
 " Then don't let her see it : and why take it to heart 
 like that ?. I don't trust to the word of a man who owns 
 that his story is a thing he dares not sign his name to ; 
 at all events, I shall not put his word against yours. But 
 it is best to understand one another in time. I am a
 
 WHITE LIES. 125 
 
 plain man, but not a soft one. I should not be an easy- 
 going husband like some I see about : I'd have no wasps 
 round my honey ; if my wife took a lover I would not 
 lecture the woman — what is the use ? — I'd kill the vian 
 then and there, in-doors or out, as I would kill a snake. 
 If she took another, I'd send him after the first, and so 
 on till one killed me." 
 
 " And serve the wretches right." 
 
 " Yes ; but for my own sake I don't choose to marry 
 a woman that loves any other man. So tell me the plain 
 truth ; come." 
 
 Kose turned chill in her inside. " I have no lover," 
 she stammered. " I have a young fool that comes and 
 teases me : but it is no secret. He is away, but why ? 
 he is on a sickbed, poor little fellow ! " 
 
 "But your sister? She could not have a lover un- 
 known to you." 
 
 " I defy her. No, sir ; I have not seen her speak three 
 words to any young man except Monsieur Kiviere this 
 three years past." 
 
 " That is enough ; " and he tore the letter quietly to 
 atoms. 
 
 Then Kose saw she could afford a little more candor. 
 " Understand me ; I can't speak of what happened when 
 I was a child. But if ever she had a girlish attachment, 
 he has not followed it up, or surely I should have seen 
 something of him all these years." 
 
 "Of course. Oh! as for flirtations, let them pass: a 
 lovely girl does not grow up without one or two whisper- 
 ing some nonsense into her ear. Why, I myself should 
 have flirted no doubt ; but I never had the time. Bona- 
 parte gives you time to eat and drink, but not to sleep 
 or flirt, and that reminds me I have fifty miles to ride, 
 so good-by, sister-in-law, eh ? " 
 
 " Adieu, brother-in-law."
 
 126 WHITE LIES. 
 
 Left alone, Rose had some misgivings. She had equiv- 
 ocated with one whose upright, candid nature ought to 
 have protected him : but an enemy had accused Joseph- 
 ine ; and it came so natural to shield her. " Did he really 
 think I would expose my own sister ? " said she to her- 
 self, angrily. Was not this anger secret self-discontent? 
 
 "Well, love," said Josephine, demurely, "have you 
 dismissed him ? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 Josephine smiled feebly. " It is easy to say 'say no;' 
 but it is not so easy to say 'no,' especially when you feel 
 you ought to say 'yes,' and have no wish either way 
 except to give pleasure to others." 
 
 " But I am not such skim milk as all that," replied 
 Rose : " I have always a strong wish where you are con- 
 cerned, and your happiness. I hesitated whilst I was in 
 doubt, but I doubt no longer : I have had a long talk 
 with him. He has shown me his whole heart : he is the 
 best, the noblest of creatures : he has no littleness or 
 meanness. And then he is a thorough man ; I know 
 that by his being the very opposite of a woman in his 
 ways. Now you are a thorough woman, and so you will 
 suit one another to a T. I have decided : so no more 
 doubts, love ; no more tears ; no more disputes. We 
 are all of one mind, and I do think I have secured your 
 happiness. It will not come in a day, perhaps, but it 
 will come. So then in one little fortnight you marry 
 Monsieur Raynal." 
 
 " What ! " said Josephine, " you have actually settled 
 that ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " But are you sure I can make him as happy as he 
 deserves ? " 
 
 " Positive."
 
 WHITE LIES. 127 
 
 " I think so too ; still '' — 
 
 "It is settled, clear," said Rose soothingly. 
 
 *' Oh, the comfort of that I you relieve me of a weight ; 
 you give me peace. I shall have duties ; I shall do some 
 good in the "world. They were all for it but you before, 
 were they not ? " 
 
 "Yes, and now I am strongest for it of them all. 
 Josephine, it is settled." 
 
 Josephine looked at her for a moment in silence, then 
 said eagerly, " Bless you, dear Eose ; you have saved 
 your sister ; " then, after a moment, in a very different 
 voice, " Camille ! Camile ! why have you deserted 
 me ? " 
 
 And with this she fell to sobbing terribly. Rose wept 
 on her neck, but said nothing. She too was a woman, 
 and felt that this was the last despairing cry of love 
 giving up a hopeless struggle. 
 
 They sat twined together in silence till Jacintha came 
 to tell them it was close upon dinner-time ; so then they 
 hastened to dry their tears and wash their red eyes, for 
 fear their mother should see what they had been at, and 
 worry herself. 
 
 " Well, mademoiselle, these two consent ; but what do 
 you say ? for after all, it is you I am courting, and not 
 them. Have you the courage to venture on a rough 
 soldier like me ? "' 
 
 This delicate question was put point-blank before the 
 three ladies. 
 
 " Sir," replied Josephine timidly, " I will be as frank, 
 as straightforward as you are. I thank you for the 
 honor you do me." 
 
 Raynal looked perplexed. 
 
 " And does that mean 'yes ' or * no ' ? " 
 
 "Which you please," said Josephine, hanging her 
 sweet head.
 
 128 WHITE LIES. 
 
 The wedding was fixed for that day fortnight. 
 
 The next morning wardrobes were ransacked. The 
 silk, muslin, and laoe of their prosperous days were 
 looked out : grave discussions were held over each work 
 of art. Rose was active, busy, fussy. The baroness 
 threw in the weight of her judgment and experience. 
 
 Josephine managed to smile whenever either Rose or 
 the baroness looked at all fixedly at her. 
 
 So glided the peaceful days. So Josephine drifted 
 towards the haven of wedlock.
 
 WHITE LIES. 129 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 At Bayonne, a garrison town on the south frontier of 
 France, two sentinels walked lethargically, crossing and 
 recrossing before the governor's house. Suddenly their 
 official drowsiness burst into energy ; for a pale, grisly 
 man, in rusty, defaced, dirty, and torn regimentals, was 
 walking into the courtyard as if it belonged to him. 
 The sentinels lowered their muskets, and crossed them 
 with a clash before the gateway. 
 
 The scarecrow did not start back. He stopped and 
 looked down with a smile at the steel barrier the soldiers 
 had improvised for him, then drew himself a little up, 
 carried his hand carelessly to his cap, which was nearly in 
 viwo, and gave the name of an officer in the French army. 
 
 If you or I, dressed like a beggar who years ago had 
 stolen regimentals and worn them down to civil gar- 
 ments, had addressed these soldiers with these very 
 same words, the bayonets would have kissed closer, or 
 perhaps the points been turned against our sacred and 
 rusty person : but there is a freemasonry of the sword. 
 The light, imperious hand that touched that battered 
 cap, and the quiet clear tone of command told. The 
 sentinels slowly recovered their pieces, but still looked 
 uneasy and doubtful in their minds. The battered one 
 saw this, and gave a sort of lofty smile ; he turned 
 up his cuffs and showed his wrists, and drew himself 
 still higher. 
 
 The sentinels shouldered their pieces sharp, then 
 dropped them simultaneously with a clatter and ring 
 upon the pavement.
 
 130 WHITE LIES. 
 
 " Pass, captain." 
 
 The rusty figure rang the governor's bell. A servant 
 came and eyed him with horror and contempt. He gave 
 his name, and begged to see the governor. The servant 
 left him in the hall, and went up-stairs to tell his mas- 
 ter. At the name the governor reflected, then frowned, 
 then bade his servant reach him down a certain book. 
 He inspected it. " I thought so : any one with him ? " 
 
 " ISTo, your excellency." 
 
 ''Load my pistols, put them on the table, show him 
 in, and then order a guard to the door." 
 
 The governor was a stern veteran with a powerful 
 brow, a shaggy eyebrow, and a piercing eye. He never 
 rose, but leaned his chin on his hand, and his elbow on 
 a table that stood between them, and eyed his visitor 
 very fixedly and strangely. " We did not expect to see 
 you on this side the Pyrenees," said he gravely. 
 
 " Nor I myself, governor." 
 
 " What do you come for ? " 
 
 "A suit of regimentals, and money to take me to 
 Paris." 
 
 " And suppose, instead of that, I turn out a corporal's 
 guard, and bid them shoot you in the courtyard ? " 
 
 "It would be the drollest thing you ever did, all 
 things considered," said the other coolly, but bitterly. 
 
 The governor looked for the book he had lately con- 
 sulted, found the page, handed it to the rusty officer, 
 and watched him keenly : the blood rushed all over his 
 face, and his lip trembled ; but his eye dwelt stern yet 
 sorrowful on the governor. 
 
 " I have read your book, now read mine." He drew 
 off his coat and showed his wrists and arms, blue and 
 waled. " Can you read that, sir ? " 
 
 « No." 
 
 "All the better for you: Spanish fetters, general."
 
 WHITE LIES. 131 
 
 He showed a white scar on his shoulder. " Can you 
 read that ? This is what I cut out of it," and he handed 
 the governor a little round stone as big and almost as 
 regular as a musket-ball. 
 
 " Humph ! that could hardly have been fired from a 
 French musket." 
 
 " Can you read this ? " and he showed him a long cica- 
 trix on his other arm. 
 
 " Knife I think," said the governor. 
 
 "You are right, sir: Spanish knife. Can you read 
 this ? " and opening his bosom he showed a raw wound 
 on his breast. 
 
 " Oh, the devil ! " cried the governor. 
 
 The wounded man put his rusty coat on again, and 
 stood erect, and haughty, and silent. 
 
 The general eyed him, and saw his great spirit shining 
 through this man. The more he looked the less could 
 the scarecrow veil the hero from his practised eye. He 
 said there must be some mistake, or else he was in his 
 dotage ; after a moment's hesitation, he added, " Be 
 seated, if you please, and tell me what you have been 
 doing all these years." 
 
 " Suffering." 
 
 " Not all the time, I suppose." 
 
 " Without intermission." 
 
 " But what ? suffering what ? " 
 
 " Cold, hunger, darkness, wounds, solitude, sickness, 
 despair, prison, all that man can suffer." 
 
 " Impossible ! a man would be dead at that rate before 
 this." 
 
 "I should have died a dozen deaths but for one thing; 
 I had promised her to live." 
 
 There was a pause. Then the old soldier said gravely, 
 but more kindly, to the young one, " Tell me the facts, 
 captain " (the first time he had acknowledged his visitor's 
 military rank).
 
 132 WHITE LIES. 
 
 An hour had scarce elapsed since the rusty figure was 
 stopped by the sentinels at the gate, when two glittering 
 officers passed out under the same archway, followed by 
 a servant carrying a furred cloak. The sentinels pre- 
 sented arms. The elder of tliese officers was the gov- 
 ernor : the younger was the late scarecrow, in a brand- 
 new uniform belonging to the governor's son. He shone 
 out now in his true light ; the beau ideal of a patrician 
 soldier ; one would have said he had been born with a 
 sword by his side and drilled by nature, so straight and 
 smart, yet easy he was in every movement. He was like 
 a falcon, eye and all, only, as it were, down at the bottom 
 of the hawk's eye lay a dove's eye. That compound and 
 varying eye seemed to say, I can love, I can fight: I can 
 fight, I can love, as few of you can do either. 
 
 The old man was trying to persuade him to stay at 
 Bayonne, until his wound should be cured. 
 
 " No, general, I have other wounds to cure of longer 
 standing than this one." 
 
 " Well, promise me to lay up at Paris." 
 
 " General, I shall stay an hour at Paris." 
 
 " An hour in Paris ! Well, at least call at the War 
 Office and present this letter." 
 
 That same afternoon, wrapped in the governor's furred 
 cloak, the young officer lay at his full length in the 
 coupe of the diligence, the whole of which the governor 
 had peremptorily demanded for him, and rolled day and 
 night towards Paris. 
 
 He reached it worn with fatigue and fevered by his 
 wound, but his spirit as indomitable as ever. He went 
 to the War Office with the governor's letter. It seemed 
 to create some little sensation; one functionary came 
 and said a polite word to him, then another. At last to 
 his infinite surprise the minister himself sent down word 
 he wished to see him ; the minister put several questions
 
 WHITE LIES. 133 
 
 to him, and seemed interested in him and touched by his 
 relation. 
 
 " I think, captain, I shall have to send to you : where 
 do you stay in Paris ? " 
 
 " Nowhere, monsieur ; I leave Paris as soon as I can 
 find an easy-going horse." 
 
 " But General Bretaux tells me you are wounded." 
 
 "Not dangerously." 
 
 "Pardon me, captain, but is this prudent? is it just 
 to yourself and your friends ? " 
 
 "Yes, I owe it to those who perhaps think me dead." 
 
 " You can write to them." 
 
 "I grudge so great, so sacred a joy to a letter. No! 
 after all I have suffered I claim to be the one to tell her 
 I have kept my word : I promised to live, and I live." 
 
 ^'Her? then I say no more, only tell me what road 
 you take." 
 
 "The road to Brittany." 
 
 As the young officer was walking his horse by the 
 roadside about a league and a half from Paris, he heard 
 a clatter behind him, and up galloped an aide-de-camp 
 and drew up alongside, bringing his horse nearly on his 
 haunches. 
 
 He handed him a large packet sealed with the arms of 
 France. The other tore it open ; and there was his 
 brevet as colonel. His cheek flushed and his eye glit- 
 tered with jo}'. The aide-de-camp next gave him a par- 
 cel : " Your epaulets, colonel ! "We hear you are going 
 into the wilds where epaulets don't grow. You are to 
 join the army of the Rhine as soon as your wound is 
 well." 
 
 "' Wherever ray country calls me." 
 
 "Your address, then, colonel, that we may know where 
 to put our finger on a tried soldier when we want one." 
 
 " I am going to Beaurepaire."
 
 134 WHITE LIES. 
 
 " Beaurepaire ? I never heard of it." 
 
 '' Yoii never heard of Beaurepaire? it is in Brittany, 
 forty-five leagues from Paris, forty-three leagues and a 
 half from here." 
 
 " Good ! Health and honor to you, colonel." 
 
 " The same to you, lieutenant ; or a soldier's death." 
 
 The new colonel read the precious document across his 
 horse's mane, and then he was going to put one of the 
 epaulets on his right shoulder, bare at present : but he 
 reflected. 
 
 " No ; she should make him a colonel with her own 
 dear hand. He put them in his pocket. He would not 
 even look at them till she had seen them. Oh, how 
 happy he was not only to come back to her alive, but to 
 come back to her honored." 
 
 His wound smarted, his limbs ached, but no pain past 
 or present could lay hold of his mind. In his great joy 
 he remembered past suffering and felt present pain — 
 yet smiled. Only every now and then he pined for 
 wings to shorten the weary road. 
 
 He was walking his horse quietly, drooping a little 
 over his saddle, when another officer well mounted came 
 after him and passed him at a hand gallop with one 
 hasty glance at his uniform, and went tearing on like 
 one riding for his life. 
 
 "Don't I know that face ?" said Dujardin. 
 
 He cudgelled his memory, and at last he remembered 
 it was the face of an old comrade. At least it strongly 
 reminded him of one Jean Raynal who had saved his 
 life in the Arno, when they were lieutenants together. 
 
 Yes, it was certainly Raynal, only bronzed by service 
 in some hot country. 
 
 "Ah!" thought Camille; "I suppose I am more 
 changed than he is ; for he certainly did not recognize 
 me at all. Now I wonder what that fellow has been
 
 WHITE LIES. 135 
 
 doing all this time. What a hurry he was in ! a moment 
 more and I should have hailed him. Perhaps I may fall 
 in with him at the next town." 
 
 He touched his horse with the spur, and cantered 
 gently on, for trotting shook him more than he could 
 bear. Even when he cantered he had to press his hand 
 against his bosom, and often with the motion a bitterer 
 pang than usual came and forced the water from his 
 eyes ; and then he smiled. His great love and his high 
 courage made this reply to the body's anguish. And 
 still his eyes looked straight forward as at some object 
 in the distant horizon, while he came gently on, his hand 
 pressed to his bosom, his head drooping now and then, 
 smiling patiently, upon the road to Beaurepaire. 
 
 Oh ! if anybody had told him that in five days his 
 Josephine Avas to be married ; and that the bronzed 
 comrade, who had just galloped past him, was to marry 
 her! 
 
 At Beaurepaire they were making and altering wed- 
 ding-dresses. Eose was excited, and even Josephine took 
 a calm interest. Dress never goes for nothing with her sex. 
 The chairs and tables were covered, and the floor was 
 littered. The baroness was presiding over the rites of 
 vanity, and telling them what she wore at her wedding, 
 under Louis XV., with strict accuracy, and what we men 
 should consider a wonderful effort of memory, when the 
 Commandant Raynal came in like a cannon-ball, without 
 any warning, and stood among them in a stiff military 
 attitude. Exclamations from all the party, and then a 
 kind greeting, especially from the baroness. 
 " We have been so dull without you, Jean." 
 "And I have missed you once or twice, mother-in-law, 
 I can tell you. Well, I have got bad news ; but you 
 must consider we live in a busy time. To-morrow I 
 start for Egypt."
 
 136 WHITE LIES. 
 
 Loud ejaculations from the baroness and Rose. 
 Josephine put down her work quietly. 
 
 The baroness sighed deeply, and the tears came into 
 her eyes. " Oh, you must not be down-hearted, old lady," 
 shouted Raynal. " Why, I am as likely to come back 
 from Egypt as not. It is an even chance, to say the 
 least." 
 
 This piece of consolation completed the baroness's 
 unhappiness. She really had conceived a great affec- 
 tion for Raynal, and her heart had been set on the 
 wedding. 
 
 " Take away all that finery, girls," said she bitterly ; 
 " we shall not want it for years. 1 shall not be alive 
 when he comes home from Egypt. I never had a son — 
 only daughters — the best any woman ever had; but a 
 mother is not complete without a son, and I shall never 
 live to have one now." 
 
 " I hate General Bonaparte," said Rose viciously. 
 
 " Hate my general ? " groaned Raynal, looking down 
 with a sort of superstitious awe and wonder at the lovelj 
 vixen. " Hate the best soldier the world ever saw ? " 
 
 " What do I care for his soldiership ? He has put off 
 our wedding. For how many years did you say ? " 
 
 ''No; he has put it on." 
 
 In answer to the astonished looks this excited, he 
 explained that the wedding was to have been in a week, 
 but now it must be to-morrow at ten o'clock. 
 
 The three ladies set up their throats together. " To- 
 
 morrow 
 
 9 » 
 
 " To-morrow. Why, what do you suppose I left Paris 
 for yesterday ? left my duties even." 
 
 " What, monsieur ? " asked Josephine, timidly, " did 
 you ride all that way, and leave your duties merely to 
 marry me ? " and she looked a little pleased. 
 
 " You are worth a great deal more trouble than that/'
 
 WHITE LIES. 137 
 
 said Raynal simply. " Besides, I had passed my word, 
 and I always keep my word." 
 
 "So do I," said Josephine, a little proudly. "I will 
 not go from it now, if you insist ; but I confess to you, 
 that such a proposal staggers me ; so sudden — no pre- 
 liminaries — no time to reflect; in short, there are so 
 many difficulties that I must request you to reconsider 
 the matter." 
 
 " Difficulties," shouted Eaynal with merry disdain ; 
 " there are none, unless you sit down and make them ; 
 we do more difficult things than this every day of our 
 lives : we passed the bridge of Areola in thirteen min- 
 utes ; and we had not the consent of the enemy, as we 
 have yours — have we not ? " 
 
 Her only reply Avas a look at her mother, to which the 
 baroness replied by a nod ; then turning to Raynal, 
 " This empressement is very flattering ; but I see no 
 possibility : there is an etiquette we cannot altogether 
 defy : there are preliminaries before a daughter of Beau- 
 repaire can become a wife." 
 
 " There used to be all that, madam," laughed Raynal, 
 jmtting her down good-humoredly ; " but it Avas in the 
 days when armies came out and touched their caps to 
 one another, and went back into winter quarters. Then 
 the struggle was who could go slowest ; now the fight is 
 who can go fastest. Time and Bonaparte wait for nobody ; 
 and ladies and other strong places are taken by storm, 
 not undermined a foot a month as under Noah Quartorze : 
 let me cut this short, as time is short." 
 
 He then drew a little plan of a wedding campaign. 
 " The carriages will be here at 9 a.m.," said he ; " they 
 will whisk us down to the mayor's house by a quarter to 
 ten : Picard, the notary, meets us there with the marriage 
 contract, to save time ; the contract signed, the mayor 
 will do the marriage at qiiick step out of respect for me
 
 138 WHITE LIES. 
 
 — half an hour — quarter past ten ; breakfast in the same 
 house an hour and a quarter : — we mustn't hurry a wed- 
 ding breakfast — then ten minutes or so for the old fogies 
 to waste in making speeches about our virtues — my 
 watch will come out — my charger will come round — I 
 rise from the table — embrace my dear old mother — 
 kiss my wife's hand — into the saddle — canter to Paris 
 
 — roll to Toulon — sail to Egypt. But I shall leave a 
 wife and a mother behind me : they will both send me a 
 kind word now and then ; and 1 will write letters to you 
 all from Egypt, and when I come home, my wife and I 
 will make acquaintance, and we will all be happy to- 
 gether : and if I am killed out there, don't you go and 
 fret your poor little hearts about it ; it is a soldier's lot 
 sooner or later. Besides, you will find I have taken care 
 of you ; nobody shall come and turn you out of your 
 quarters, even though Jean Raynal should be dead; I 
 have got to meet Picard at Riviere's on that very busi- 
 ness — I am off." 
 
 He was gone as brusquely as he came. 
 
 " Mother ! sister ! " cried Josephine, " help me to love 
 this man." 
 
 " You need no help," cried the baroness, with enthusi- 
 asm, " not love him, we should all be monsters." 
 
 Raynal came to supper looking bright and cheerfuL 
 " No more work to-day. I have nothing to do but talk ; 
 fancy that." 
 
 This evening Josephine de Beaurepaire, who had been 
 silent and thoughtful, took a quiet opportunity, and 
 purred in his ear, " Monsieur ! " 
 
 " Mademoiselle ! " rang the trombone. 
 
 " Am I not to go to Egypt ? " 
 
 «No." 
 
 Josephine drew back at this brusque reply like a 
 sensitive plant. But she returned to the attack.
 
 "WHITE LIES. 139 
 
 " But is it not a wife's duty to be by her husband's 
 side to look after his comfort — to console him when 
 others vex him — to soothe him when he is harassed? " 
 
 " Her first duty is to obey him." 
 
 " Certainly." 
 
 " Well, when I am your husband, I shall bid you stay 
 with your mother and sister while I go to Egypt." 
 
 " I shall obey you." 
 
 He told her bluntly he thought none the worse of her 
 for making the offer ; but should not accept it. 
 
 Camille Dujardin slept that night at a roadside inn 
 about twelve miles from Beaurepaire, and not more than 
 six from the town where the wedding was to take place 
 next day. 
 
 It was a close race. 
 
 And the racers all unconscious of each other, yet 
 spurred impartially by events that were now hurrying 
 to a climax.
 
 140 WHITE LIES. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 The next day at sharp nine two carriages were at the 
 door. 
 
 But the ladies were not ready. Thus early in tlie 
 campaign did they throw all into disorder. For so nicely 
 had Raynal timed the several events that this threw him 
 all into confusion. He stamped backwards and forwards, 
 and twisted his mustaches, and swore. This enforced 
 unpunctuality was a new torture to him. Jacintha told 
 them he was angry, and that made them nervous and 
 flurried, and their fingers strayed wildly among hooks 
 and eyes, and all sorts of fastenings ; they were not 
 ready till half-past nine. Conscious they deserved a 
 scolding, they sent Josephine down first to mollify. She 
 dawned upon the honest soldier so radiant, so dazzling 
 in her snowy dress, with her coronet of pearls (an heir- 
 loom), and her bridal veil parted, and the flush of con- 
 scious beauty on her cheek, that instead of scolding her, 
 he actually blurted out, " Well ! by St. Denis it was 
 worth waiting half an hour for." 
 
 He recovered a quarter of an hour by making the 
 driver gallop. Then occasional shrieks issued from the 
 carriage that held the baroness. That ancient lady 
 feared annihilation : she had not come down from a 
 galloping age. 
 
 They drove into the town, drew up at the mayor's 
 house, were received with great ceremony by that func- 
 tionary and Picard, and entered the house. 
 
 When their carriages rattled into the street from the 
 north side, Colonel Dujardin had already entered it from
 
 WHITE LIES. 141 
 
 the south, and was riding at a foot's pace along the prin- 
 cipal street. The motion of his horse now shook him 
 past endurance. He dismounted at an inn a few doors 
 from the mayor's house, and determined to do the rest 
 of the short journey on foot. The landlord bustled 
 about him obsequiously. " You are faint, colonel ; you 
 have travelled too far. Let me order you an excellent 
 breakfast." 
 
 " No. I want a carriage ; have you one ? " 
 
 " I have two ; but, unluckily, they are both engaged 
 for the day, and by people of distinction. Commandant 
 Kaynal is married to-day." 
 
 "Ah! I wish him joy," said Camille, heartily. He 
 then asked the landlord to open the window, as he felt 
 rather faint. The landlord insisted on breakfast, and 
 Camille sat down to an omelet and a bottle of red wine. 
 Then he lay awhile near the window, revived by the air, 
 and watched the dear little street he had not seen for 
 years. He felt languid, but happy, celestially happy. 
 
 She was a few doors from him, and neither knew it. 
 
 A pen was put into her white hand, and in another 
 tnoment she had signed a marriage contract. 
 
 " Now to the church," cried the baroness, gayly. To 
 get to the church, they must pass by the window Camille 
 recrined at.
 
 142 WHITE LIES. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 "Oh! there's no time for that," said Raynal. And 
 as the baroness looked horrified and amazed, Picard 
 explained: "The state marries its citizens now, with 
 reason : since marriage is a civil contract." 
 
 " Marriage a civil contract ! " repeated the baroness. 
 "What, is it then no longer one of the holy sacraments ? 
 What horrible impiety shall we come to next ? Unhappy 
 France ! Such a contract would never be a marriage in 
 my eyes : and what would become of an union the 
 Church had not blessed ? " 
 
 "Madame," said Picard, "the Church can bless it still ; 
 but it is only the mayor here that can do it." 
 
 All this time Josephine was blushing scarlet, and 
 looking this way and that, with a sort of instinctive 
 desire to fly and hide, no matter where, for a week or so. 
 
 " Haw ! haw ! haw ! " roared Raynal ; " here is a pretty 
 mother. Wants her daughter to be unlawfully married 
 in a church, instead of lawfully in a house. Give me 
 the will ! " 
 
 " Look here, mother-in-law : I have left Beaurepaire 
 to my lawful wife." 
 
 " Otherwise," put in Picard, " in case of death, it 
 would pass to his heir-at-law." 
 
 "And he would turn you all out, and that does not 
 suit me. Now there stands the only man who can make 
 mademoiselle my lawful wife. So quick march, mon- 
 sieur the mayor, for time and Bonaparte wait for no 
 man." 
 
 " Stay a minute, young people," said the mayor.
 
 WHITE LIES. 143 
 
 "We should soothe respectable prejudices, not crush 
 them. Madam, 1 am at least as old as you, and have seen 
 many changes. I perfectly understand your feelings." 
 
 " Ah, monsieur ! oh ! " 
 
 " Calm yourself, dear madam ; the ease is not so bad 
 as you think. It is perfectly true that in republican 
 France the civil magistrate alone can bind French citi- 
 zens in lawful wedlock. But this does not annihilate 
 the religious ceremony. You can ask the Church's 
 blessing on my work ; and be assured you are not the 
 only one who retains that natural prejudice. Out of 
 every ten couples that I marry, four or live go to church 
 afterwards and perform the ancient ceremonies. And 
 they do well. For there before the altar the priest tells 
 them what it is not my business to dilate upon — the 
 grave moral and religious duties they have undertaken 
 along with this civil contract. The state binds, but the 
 Church still blesses, and piously assents to that " — 
 
 " From which she has no power to dissent." 
 
 "Monsieur Picard, do you consider it polite to inter- 
 rupt tlie chief magistrate of the place while he is explain- 
 ing the law to a citizen ? " 
 
 (This closed Picard.) 
 
 " I married a daughter last year," continued the 
 worthy mayor. 
 
 " What, after this fashion ? " 
 
 " I married her myself, as I will marry yours, if you 
 will trust me with her. And after I have made them 
 one, there is nothing to prevent them adjourning to the 
 church." 
 
 " I beg your pardon," cried Raynal, " there are two 
 things to prevent it : a couple that wait for no man : 
 Time and Bonaparte. Come, sir; marry us, and have 
 done with it." 
 
 The mayor assented. He invited Josephine to stand
 
 144 WHITE LIES. 
 
 before him. She trembled and wept a little : Kose clung 
 to her and wept, and the good mayor married the parties 
 off hand. 
 
 " Is that all ? " asked the baroness ; " it is terribly 
 soon done." 
 
 " It is done effectively, madam," said the mayor, with 
 a smile. " Permit me to tell you that his Holiness the 
 Pope cannot undo my work." 
 
 Picard grinned slyly, and whispered something into 
 Raynal's ear. 
 
 "Oh! indeed," said Raynal aloud and carelessly., 
 " Come, Madame Eaynal, to breakfast : follow us, the 
 rest of you." 
 
 They paired, and followed the bride and bridegroom 
 into the breakfast-room. 
 
 The light words Picard whispered were five in number. 
 
 Now if the mayor had not snubbed Picard just before, 
 he would have uttered those jocose but true words aloud. 
 There was no particular reason why he should not. And 
 if he had, — The threads of the web of life, how subtle 
 they are ! The finest cotton of Manchester, the finer 
 meshes of the spider, seem three-inch cables by compari- 
 son with those moral gossamers which vulgar eyes cannot 
 see at all, the " somethings, nothings," on w^hich great 
 fates have hung. 
 
 It was a cheerful breakfast, thanks to Eaynal, who 
 would be in high spirits, and would not allow a word of 
 regret from any one. Madame Raynal sat by his side, 
 looking up at him every now and then with innocent 
 admiration. A merry wedding breakfast. 
 
 But if men and women could see through the walls of 
 houses ! 
 
 Two doors off sat the wounded colonel alone, recruit- 
 ing the small remnant of his sore tried strength, that he
 
 WHITE LIES. 145 
 
 might struggle on to Beaurepaire, and lose in one moment 
 years of separation, pain, prison, anguish, martyrdom, 
 in one great gush of joy without compare. 
 
 The wedding breakfast was ended. The time was 
 drawing near to part. There was a silence. It was 
 broken by Madame Raynal. She asked Raynal very 
 timidly if he had reflected. " On what ? " said he. 
 
 *• About taking me to Egypt." 
 
 " No : I have not given it a thought since I said 
 ' no.' " 
 
 " Yet permit me to say that it is my duty to be by 
 your side, my husband." And she colored at this word, 
 being the first time she had ever used it. Raynal was 
 silent. She murmured on, " I would not be an encum- 
 brance to you, sir : I should not be useless. Gentlemen, 
 I could add more to his comfort than he gives me credit 
 for." 
 
 Warm assent of the mayor and notary to this hint. 
 
 " I give you credit for being an angel," said Raynal 
 warmly. 
 
 He hesitated. Rose was trembling, her fork shaking 
 in her poor little hand. 
 
 She cast a piteous glance at him. He saw it. 
 
 " You shall go with me next time," said he. " Let us 
 speak of it no more." 
 
 Josephine bowed her head. " At least give me some- 
 thing to do for you while you are away. Tell me what 
 I can do for my absent friend to show my gratitude, my 
 regard, my esteem." 
 
 " Well, let me think. I saw a plain gray dress at 
 Beaurepaire." 
 
 "Yes, monsieur. My gray silk, Rose." 
 
 " I like that dress." 
 
 " Do you ? Then the moment I reach home after lo» 
 10
 
 146 WHITE LIES. 
 
 iiig you I shall put it on, and it shall be my constant 
 wear. I see ; you are right ; gray becomes a wife whose 
 husband is not dead, but is absent, and alas ! in hourly 
 danger." 
 
 " Now look at that ! " cried Raynal to the company. 
 ''That is her all over : she can see six meanings where 
 another would see but one. I never thought of that, I 
 swear. I like modest colors, that is all. My mother 
 used to be all for modest wives wearing modest colors." 
 
 " I am of her mind, sir. Is there nothing more diffi- 
 cult you will be so good as give me to do ? " 
 
 "No; there is only one order more, and that Avill be 
 easier still to such a woman as you. I commit to your 
 care the name of Raynal. It is not so high a name as 
 yours, but it is as honest. I am proud of it : I am jeal- 
 ous of it. I shall guard it for you in Egypt : you guard 
 it in France for me." 
 
 " With my life," cried Josephine, lifting her eyes and 
 her hand to heaven. 
 
 Soon after this Raynal ordered his charger. 
 
 The baroness began to cry. " The j^oung people ma- 
 hope to see you again," said she ; " but there are two 
 chances against your poor old mother." 
 
 " Courage, mother ! " cried the stout soldier, " No, 
 no ; you won't play me such a trick : once is enough for 
 that game." 
 
 " Brother ! " cried Rose, " do not go without kissing 
 your little sister, who loves you and thanks you." He 
 kissed her. " Brave, generous soul ! " she cried, with 
 her arms round his neck. " God protect you, and send 
 you back safe to us ! " 
 
 " Amen ! " cried all present by one impulse, even the 
 cold notary. 
 
 Raynal's mustache quivered. He kissed Josephine 
 hastily on the brow, the baroness on both cheeks ; shook
 
 WHITE LIES. 147 
 
 the men's hands warmly but hastily, and strode out 
 without looking behind him. He was moved for once. 
 
 They all followed him to the door of the house. He 
 was tightening his horse's girths. He flung himself with 
 all the resolution of his steel nature into the saddle, and, 
 with one grand wave of his cocked hat to the tearful 
 group, he spurred away for Egypt.
 
 148 WHITE LIES. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 The baroness took the doctor a-shopping; she must buy 
 Rose a gray silk. In doing this she saw many other 
 tempting things. I say no more. 
 
 But the young ladies went up to Beaurepaire in the 
 other carriage, for Josephine wished to avoid the gaze of 
 the town, and get home and be quiet. The driver went 
 very fast. He had drunk the bride's health at the 
 mayor's, item the bridegroom's, the bridesmaid's, the 
 mayor's, etc., and " a spur in the head is worth two in 
 the heel," says the proverb. The sisters leaned back on 
 the soft cushions, and enjoyed the smooth and rapid 
 motion once so familiar to them, so rare of late. 
 
 Then Rose took her sister gently to task for having 
 offered to go to Egypt. She had forgotten her poor 
 sister. 
 
 " No, love," replied Josephine, " did you not see I 
 dared not look towards you ? I love 3'ou better than all 
 the world ; but this was my duty. I was his wife : I 
 had no longer a feeble inclination and a feeble disincli- 
 nation to decide between, but right on one side, wrong 
 on the other." 
 
 " Oh ! I know where your ladyship's strength lies : 
 my force is — in — my inclinations." 
 
 "Yes, Rose," continued Josephine thoughtfully, "duty 
 is a great comfort : it is so tangible ; it is something to 
 lay hold of for life or death ; a strong tower for the 
 weak but well disposed." 
 
 Rose assented, and they were silent a minute ; and 
 when she spoke again it was to own she loved a carriage.
 
 "WHITE LIES. 149 
 
 " How fast we glide ! Now lean back with me, and take 
 my hand, and as we glide shut your eyes and think : 
 whisper me all your feelings, every one of them." 
 
 " Well, then," said Josephine, half closing her eyes, 
 "in the first place I feel a great calm, a heavenly calm. 
 My fate is decided. No more suspense. My duties are 
 clear. I have a husband I am proud of. There is no 
 perfidy with him, no deceit, no disingenuousness, no 
 shade. He is a human sun. He will make me a better, 
 truer woman, and I him a happier man. Yes, is it not 
 nice to think that great and strong as he is I can teach 
 him a happiness he knows not as yet ? " And she smiled 
 with the sense of her delicate power, but said no more ; 
 for she was not the one to talk much about herself. 
 But Rose pressed her. "Yes, go on, dear," she said, 
 " I seem to see jouv pretty little thoughts rising out of 
 your heart like a bubbling fountain : go on." 
 
 Thus encouraged, Josephine thought on aloud, "And 
 then, gratitude ! " said she. " I have heard it said, or 
 read it somewhere, that gratitude is a burden : I cannot 
 understand that sentiment; wh}', to me gratitude is a 
 delight, gratitude is a passion. It is the warmest of all 
 the tender feelings I have for dear Monsieur Raynal. I 
 feel it glow here, in my bosom. I think I shall love him 
 as I ought long before he comes back." 
 
 " Before ? " 
 
 "Yes," murmured Josephine, her ej'es still half closed. 
 " His virtues will always be present to me. His little 
 faults of manner will not be in sight. Good Raynal ! 
 The image of those great qualities I revere so, perhaps 
 because I fail in them myself, will be before ni}^ mind ; 
 and ere he comes home I shall love him dearly. I'll tell 
 you one reason why I Avished to go home at once was — 
 no — you must guess." 
 
 "Guess ?" said Rose, contemptuously. "As if I did 
 not see it was to put on your gray silk."
 
 150 WHITE LIES. 
 
 Josephine smiled assent, and said almost with fervor, 
 " Good Raynal ! I feel prouder of his honest name than 
 of our noble one. And I am so calm, dear, thanks to 
 you, so tranquil ; so pleased that my mother's mind is at 
 rest, so convinced all is for the best, so contented with 
 my own lot ; so hap — py." 
 
 A gentle tear stole from beneath her long lashes. Rose 
 looked at her wistfully : then laid her cheek to hers. 
 They leaned back hand in hand, placid and silent. 
 
 The carriage glided fast. Beaurepaire was almost in 
 sight. 
 
 Suddenly Josephine's hand tightened on Rose's, and 
 she sat up in the carriage like a person awakened from a 
 strange dream. 
 
 " What is it ? " asked Rose. 
 
 " Some one in uniform." 
 
 "Oh, is that all ? Ah ! you thought it was a message 
 from Raynal." 
 
 "Oh! no! on foot — walking very slowly. Coming 
 this way, too. Coming this way ! " and she became 
 singularly restless, and looked round in the carriage. It 
 was one of those old chariots with no side windows, but 
 a peep hole at the back. This aperture, however, had a 
 flap over it. Josephine undid the flap with nimble 
 though agitated fingers ; and saw — nothing. The road 
 had taken a turn. " Oh," said Rose, carelessly, " for that 
 matter the roads are full of soldiers just now." 
 
 " Ay, but not of officers on foot." 
 
 Rose gave her such a look, and for the first time this 
 many a day spoke sternly to her, and asked her what on 
 earth she had to do with uniforms or officers except one, 
 the noblest in the world, her husband. 
 
 A month ago that word was almost indifferent to 
 Josephine, or rather she uttered it with a sort of mild 
 complacency. Now she started at it, and it struck chill
 
 WHITE LIES. 151 
 
 upon her. She did not reply, however, and the carriage 
 rolled on. 
 
 " He seemed to be dragging himself along." This was 
 the first word Josephine had spoken for some time. 
 " Oh, did he ? " replied Rose carelessly ; " well, let him. 
 Here we are, at home." 
 
 " I am glad of it," said Josephine, " very glad." 
 
 On reaching Beaurepaire she wanted to go up-stairs at 
 once and put on her gray gown. But the day was so 
 delightful that Rose begged her to stroll in the Pleasaunce 
 foi- half an hour and watch for their mother's return. 
 She consented in an absent way, and presently began to 
 walk very fast, unconscious of her companion. Rose 
 laid a hand upon her playfully to moderate her, and 
 found her skin burning. 
 
 " Why, what is the matter ? " said she, anxiously. 
 
 "Nothing, nothing," was the sharp reply. 
 
 " There's a fretful tone ; and how excited 3'ou look, 
 and feel too. Well, I thought you were unnaturally 
 calm after such an event." 
 
 " I only saw his back," said Josephine. " Did not you 
 see him ? " 
 
 " See who ? Oh, that tiresome oflScer. Why, how 
 much more are we to hear about him ? I don't believe 
 there ivas one." 
 
 At this moment a cocked hat came in sight, bobbing 
 up and down above the palings that divided the park 
 from the road. Josephine pointed to it without a word. 
 
 Rose got a little cross at being practically confuted, 
 and said coldly, " Come, let us go in ; the only cocked 
 hat we can see is on the way to Paris." 
 
 Josephine assented eagerly. But she had not taken 
 two steps towards the house ere she altered her mind, 
 and said she felt faint, she wanted air ; no, she should 
 stay out a little longer. "Look, Rose," said she, in a
 
 152 WHITE LIES. 
 
 strangely excited way, " what a shame ! They put all 
 manner of rubbish into this dear old tree : I will have 
 it all turned out." And she looked with feigned interest 
 into the tree : but her eyes seemed turned inward. 
 
 Rose gave a cry of surprise. " He is waving his hat 
 to me ! What on earth does that mean ? " 
 
 " Perhaps he takes you for me," said Josephine. 
 
 " Who is it ? What do you mean ? " 
 
 " It is he ! I knew his figure at a glance." And she 
 blushed and trembled with joy ; she darted behind the 
 tree and peered round at him unseen : turning round a 
 moment she found Rose at her back pale and stern. She 
 looked at her, and said with terrible simplicity, " Ah, 
 Rose, I forgot." 
 
 "Are you mad, Josephine? Into the house this 
 moment; if it is he, I will receive him and send him 
 about his business." 
 
 But Josephine stood fascinated, and pale as ashes ; for 
 now the cocked hat stopped, and a pale face with eyes 
 whose eager fire shone even at that distance, rose above 
 the palings. Josephine crouched behind Rose, and 
 gasped out, " Something terrible is coming, terrible ! 
 terrible ! " 
 
 " Say something hateful," said Rose, trembling in her 
 turn, but only with anger. " The heartless selfish traitor ! 
 He never notices you till you are married to the noblest 
 of mankind ; and then he comes here directly to ruin 
 your peace. No; I have altered my mind. He shall 
 not see you, of course ; but you shall hear him. I'll 
 soon make you know the wretch and loathe him as I do. 
 There, now he has turned the corner ; hide in the oak 
 while he is out of sight. Hide, quick, quick." Josephine 
 obeyed mechanically ; and presently, through that very 
 aperture whence her sister had smiled on her lover she 
 hissed out, in a tone of which one would not have
 
 WHITE LIES. 153 
 
 thought her capable, " Be wise, be shrewd ; find out -wlio 
 is the woman that has seduced him from me, and has 
 brought two wretches to this, I tell you it is some 
 wicked woman's doing. He loved me once." 
 
 " Not so loud ! — one word : you are a wife. Swear to 
 me you will not let him see you, come what may." 
 
 " Oh ! never ! never ! " cried Josephine with terror. 
 '' I would rather die. When you have heard what he 
 has to say, then tell him I am dead. No, tell him I 
 adore my husband, and went to Egypt this day with him. 
 Ah ! would to God I had ! " 
 
 "Sh! sh!" 
 
 " Sh ! " 
 
 Camille was at the little gate. 
 
 Rose stood still, and nerved herself in silence. 
 Josephine panted in her hiding-place. 
 
 Eose's only thought now was to expose the traitor to 
 her sister, and restore her peace. She pretended not to 
 see Camille till he was near her. He came eagerly towards 
 her, his pale face flushing with great joy, and his eyes 
 like diamonds. 
 
 "Josephine ! It is not Josephine, after all," said he. 
 " Why, this must be Rose, little Rose, grown up to a fine 
 lady, a beautiful lady." 
 
 "What do you come here for, sir?" asked Rose in a 
 tone of icy indifference. 
 
 "What do I come here for? is that the way to speak 
 to me ? but I am too happy to mind. Dear Beaurepaire ! 
 do I see you once again ! " 
 
 " And madame ? " 
 
 « What madame ? " 
 
 "Madame Dujardin that is or was to be." 
 
 "This is the first I have ever heard of her," said 
 Camille, gajly. 
 
 " This is odd, for we have heard all about it."
 
 154 WHITE LIES. 
 
 " Are you jesting ? " 
 
 "No." 
 
 "If I understand you right, you imply that I have 
 broken faith with Josephine ? " 
 
 " Certainly." 
 
 " Then you lie, Mademoiselle E-ose de Beaurepaire." 
 
 " Insolent ! " 
 
 "No. It is you who have insulted your sister as well 
 as me. She was not made to be deserted for meaner 
 women. Come, mademoiselle, affront me, and me alone, 
 and you shall find me more patient. Oh ! who would 
 have thought Beaurepaire would receive me thus ? " 
 
 " It is your own fault. You never sent her a line for 
 all these years." 
 
 " Why, how could I ? " 
 
 " Well, sir, the information you did not supply others 
 did. We know that you were seen in a Spanish village 
 drinking between two guerillas." 
 
 " That is true," said Camille. 
 
 " An honest French soldier fired at you. Why, he told 
 us so himself." 
 
 " He told you true," said Camille, sullenly. " The bullet 
 grazed my hand ; see, here is the mark. Look ! " She 
 did look, and gave a little scream ; but recovering herself, 
 said she wished it had gone through his heart. " Why 
 prolong this painful interview ? " said she ; " the soldier 
 told us all." 
 
 " I doubt that," said Camille. " Did he tell you that 
 under the table I was chained tight down to the chair I 
 sat in ? Did he tell you that my hand was fastened to 
 a drinking-horn, and my elbow to the table, and two 
 fellows sitting opposite me with pistols quietly covering 
 me, ready to draw the trigger if I should utter a cry ? 
 Did he tell you that I would have uttered that cry and 
 died at that table but for one thing, I had promised her 
 to live ? "
 
 WHITE LIES. 155 
 
 "Kot he; he told me nothing so incredible. Besides, 
 what became of you all these years ? You are a double 
 traitor, to your country and to her." 
 
 Camille literally gasped for breath. " You are a most 
 cruel young lady to insult me so,'' said he, and scalding 
 tears forced themselves from his eyes. 
 
 Eose eyed him with merciless scorn. 
 
 He fought manfully against this weakness, with which 
 his wound and his fatigue had something to do, as well 
 as Eose's bitter words ; and after a gallant struggle he 
 returned her her haughty stare, and addressed her thus : 
 " jVIademoiselle, I feel myself blush, but it is for you I 
 blush, not for myself. This is what ieca/»e of me. I went 
 out alone to explore ; I fell into an ambuscade ; I shot 
 one of the enemy, and pinked another, but my arm being 
 broken by a bullet, and my horse killed under me, the 
 rascals got me. They took me about, tried to make a 
 decoy of me as I have told you, and ended by throwing 
 me into a dungeon. They loaded me with chains, too, 
 though the walls were ten feet thick, and the door iron, 
 and bolted and double-bolted outside. And there for 
 months and years, in spite of wounds, hunger, thirst, and 
 all the tortures those cowards made me suffer, I lived, 
 because, Eose, I had promised some one at that gate there 
 (and he turned suddenly and pointed to it) that I would 
 come back alive. At last, one night, my jailer came to 
 my cell drunk. I seized him by the throat and throttled 
 him till he was insensible ; his keys unlocked my fetters, 
 and locked him in the cell, and I got safely outside. But 
 there a sentinel saw me, and fired at me. He missed me 
 but ran after me, and caught me. You see I was stiff, 
 confined so long. He gave me a thrust of his bayonet ; 
 1 flung my heavy keys fiercely in his face ; he staggered; 
 I wrested his piece from him, and disabled him." 
 
 «Ah!"
 
 156 WHITE LIES. 
 
 " I crossed the frontier in the night, and got to Bayonne ; 
 and thence, day and night, to Paris. There 1 met a reward 
 for all my anguish. They gave me the epaulets of a 
 colonel. See, here they are. France does not give these 
 to traitors, young lady." He held them out to her in 
 both hands. She eyed them half stupidly ; all her 
 thoughts were on the oak-tree hard by. She began to 
 shudder. Camille was telling the truth. She felt that ; 
 she saw it ; and Josephine was hearing it. " Ay ! look 
 at them, you naughty girl," said Camille, trying to be 
 jocose over it all with his poor trembling lip. He went 
 on to say that from the moment he had left dark Spain, 
 and entered fair France everybody was so kind, so sym- 
 pathizing. " They felt for the poor worn soldier coming 
 back to his love. All but you. Rose. You told me I 
 was a traitor to her and to France." 
 
 " I was told so," said Rose, faintly. She was almost 
 at her wits' end what to say or do. 
 
 "Well, are you sorry or not sorry for saying such a 
 cruel thing to a poor fellow ? " 
 
 " Sorry, very sorry," whispered Rose. She could not 
 persist in injustice, yet she did not want Josephine to 
 hear. 
 
 " Then say no more about it ; there's my hand. You 
 are not a soldier, and did not know what you were talk- 
 ing about." 
 
 " I am very sorry I spoke so harshly to you. But you 
 understand. How you look; how you pant. There, I 
 will show you I forgive you. These epaulets, dear, I 
 have never put them on. I said, no ; Josephine shall 
 put them on for me. I will take honor as well as happi- 
 ness from her dear hand. But you are her sister, and 
 what are epaulets compared with what she will give me ? 
 You shall put them on, dear. Come, then you will be 
 sure I bear no malice."
 
 ROSE . . . FASTEXED OX THE EPAULETS.
 
 WHITE LIES. 157 
 
 Rose, faint at heart, consented in silence, and fastened 
 on the epaulets. " Yes, Cauiille I " she cried, with sudden 
 terror, " think of glory, now ; nothing but glory." 
 
 "No one thinks of it more. But to-day how can I 
 think of it, how can I give her a rival ? To-day I am 
 all love. Rose, no man ever loved a human creature as 
 I love Josephine. Your mother is well, dear ? All are 
 well at Beaurepaire ? Oh, where is she all this time ? 
 in the house ? " He was moving quickly towards the 
 house; but Rose instinctively put out her hand to stop 
 him. He recoiled a little and winced. 
 
 " What is the matter ? " cried she. 
 
 " Nothing, dear girl ; you put your hand on my wound, 
 that is all. What is that noise in the tree ? Anybody 
 listening to us ? '' 
 
 "I'll see," said Rose, with all a woman's wit, and 
 whipped hastily round to hinder Camille from going. 
 She found Josephine white as death, apparently fainting, 
 and clutching at the tree convulsively with her nails. 
 Such was the intensity of the situation that she left her 
 beloved sister in that piteous state, and even hoped she 
 would faint dead away, and so hear no more. She came 
 back Avhite, and told Camille it was only a bird got into 
 the tree. "And to tliink you should be wounded," said 
 she, to divert his attention from the tree. 
 
 "Yes," said he, "and it is rather inflamed, and has 
 worried me all the way. You need not go telling 
 Josephine, though. They wanted me to stop and lay up 
 at Bayonne. How could I ? And again at Paris. How 
 could I ? They said, ' You will die.' — ' Not before I get 
 to Beaurepaire,' said I. I could bear the motion of a 
 horse no longer, so at the nearest town I asked for a car- 
 riage. Would you believe it? both his carriages were out 
 at a weddinff. 1 could not wait till they came back. I 
 had waited an eternity. I came on foot. I dragged my-
 
 158 WHITE LIES. 
 
 self along; the body was weak, but the heart was strong. 
 A little way from here my wound seemed inclined to 
 open. I pressed it together tight with my hand ; you 
 see I could not afford to lose any more blood, and so 
 struggled on. ' Die ? ' said I, ' not before Beaurepaire.' 
 And, Rose ! now I could be content to die — at her 
 feet ; for I am happy. Oh ! I am happy beyond words 
 to utter. What I have gone through ! But I kept my 
 word, and this is Beaurepaire. Hurrah ! " and his pale 
 cheek flushed, and his eye gleamed, and he waved his 
 hat feebly over his head, " hurrah ! hurrah ! hurrah ! " 
 
 " Oh, don't ! — don't ! — don't ! " cried Rose wild with 
 pity and dismay. 
 
 "How can I help? — I am mad with joy — hurrah! 
 hurrah ! hurrah ! " 
 
 " No ! no ! no ! no ! no ! " 
 
 " What is the matter ? " 
 
 " And must I stab you worse than all your enemies 
 have stabbed you ? " sighed Rose, and tears of womanly 
 pity now streamed down her cheeks. 
 
 Camille's mind began to misgive him. What was 
 become of Josephine ? she did not appear. He faltered 
 out, " Your mother is well ; all are well I hope. Oh, 
 where is she ? " and receiving no reply, began to tremble 
 visibly with the fear of some terrible calamity. 
 
 Rose, with a sister fainting close by, and this poor 
 lover trembling before her, lost all self-command, and 
 began to wring her hands and cry wildly. "Camille," she 
 almost screamed, " there is but one thing for you to do ; 
 leave Beaurepaire on the instant : fly from it ; it is no 
 place for you." 
 
 " She is dead," said Camille, very quietly. 
 
 When he said that, with an unnatural and monotonous 
 calm such as precedes deliberate suicide, it flashed in one 
 moment across Rose that it was much best he should 
 think so.
 
 "WHITE LIES. 159 
 
 She did not reply ; but she drooped her head and let 
 him think it. 
 
 " She would have come to me ere this if she was alive," 
 said he. " You are all in white : they mourn in white 
 for angels like her, that go to heaven, virgins. Oh ! I 
 was blind. You might have told me at once ; you see I 
 can bear it. What does it matter to one who loves as 
 1 love ? It is only to give her one more proof I lived 
 only for her. 1 would have died a hundred times but 
 for my promise to her. Yes, I am coming, love ; I am 
 coming." 
 
 He fell on his knees and smiled, and whispered, "I am 
 coming, Josephine, I am coming." 
 
 A sob and a moan as of a creature dying in anguish 
 answered him. 
 
 Kose screamed with terror when she heard it. 
 
 Camille rose to his feet, awestruck. *'That was her 
 voice, behind this tree," he whispered. 
 
 " No, no," cried Rose ; " it was me." 
 
 But at that moment a rustle and a rush was heard of 
 some one darting out of the tree. 
 
 Camille darted furiously round it in the same direc- 
 tion. Rose tried to stop him, but was too late. The 
 next moment Raynal's wife was in his arms.
 
 160 WHITE LIES. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 Josephine wrestled long and terribly with nature in 
 that old oak-tree. But who can so struggle forever ? 
 Anguish, remorse, horror, despair, and love wrenched 
 her to and fro ; and mysterious human heart ! gleams 
 of a mad fitful joy shot through her, coming quick as 
 lightning, going as quickly, and leaving the despair 
 darker. And then the fierce struggle of the soul to 
 make itself heard ! More than once she had to close her 
 mouth with her hand : more than once she seized her 
 throat not to cry out. But as the struggle endured, she 
 got weaker and weaker, and nature mightier and mightier. 
 And when the wounded hero fell on his knees so close to 
 her ; when he who had resisted death so bravely for her, 
 prepared to give up life calmly for her, her bosom rose 
 beyond all control : it seemed to fill to choking, then to 
 split wide open and give the struggling soul passage in 
 one gasping sob and heart-stricken cry. Could slie have 
 pent this in she must have died. 
 
 It betrayed her. She felt it had: so then came the 
 woman's instinct — flight: the coward's impulse — flight: 
 the chaste wife's inspiration — flight. She rushed from 
 her hiding-place and made wildly for the house. 
 
 But, unluckily, Camille was at that moment darting 
 round the tree : she ran right into the danger she meant 
 to flee. He caught her in his arms. He held her irresist- 
 ibly. " I have got her; I have got her," he shouted in wild 
 triumph. " No ! I will not let you go. Kone but God 
 shall ever take you from me, and he has spared you to 
 me. You are not dead : you have kept faith as I have :
 
 WHITE LIES. 161 
 
 you have lived. See ! look at me. I am alive, I am 
 well, I am happy. I told Rose that I suifered. If I had 
 suffered I should remember it. It is all gone at sight 
 of you, my love ! my love ! Oh, my Josephine ! my love ! " 
 
 His arm was firm round her waist. His glowing eyes 
 poured love upon her. She felt his beating heart. 
 
 All that passed in her then, what mortal can say ? 
 She seemed two women : that part of her which could not 
 get away from his strong arm lost all strength to resist, 
 it yielded and thrilled under his embrace, i^er bosom 
 heaving madly : all that was free writhed away from 
 him ; her face was averted with a glare of terroi-, and 
 both her hands put up between his eyes and it. 
 
 " You turn away your head, flose, she turns away. 
 Speak for me. Scold her ; for I don't know how to scold 
 her. No answer from either ; oh, what has turned your 
 hearts against me so ? " 
 
 " Camille," cried Rose — the tears streaming down her 
 cheeks — "my poor Camille! leave Beaurepaire. Oh, 
 leave it at once." 
 
 He turned towards her with a look of inquiry. 
 
 At that Josephine, like some feeble but nimble wild 
 creature on whom a grasp has relaxed, writhed away 
 from him and got free : '• Farewell ! Farewell ! " she 
 cried, in despair's own voice, and made swiftly for the 
 house. 
 
 Camille stood aghast, and did not follow her. 
 
 Now ere she had gone many steps who should meet 
 her right in front but Jacintha. 
 
 " Madame Raynal, the baroness's carriage is just in 
 sight. I thought you'd like to know." Then she bawled 
 proudly to Rose, " I was the first to call her madame ; " 
 and off went Jacintha convinced she had done something 
 very clever. 
 
 This blow turned those three to stone.
 
 162 WHITE LIES. 
 
 Josephine had no longer the power or the wish to fly. 
 " Better so," she thought, and she stood cowering. 
 
 The great passions that had spoken so loud were struck 
 dumb, and a deep silence fell upon the place. Madame 
 Raynal's quivering eye turned slowly and askant towards 
 Camille, but stopped in terror ere it could see him. For 
 she knew by this fearful stillness that the truth was 
 creeping on Camille. And so did Rose. 
 
 At last Camille spoke one word in a low whisper. 
 
 " Madame ? " 
 
 Dead silence. 
 
 " White ? both in white ? " 
 
 Rose came between him and Josephine, and sobbed 
 out, "Camille, it was our doing. We drove her to it. 
 sir, look how afraid of you she is. Do not reproach 
 her, if you are a man." 
 
 He waved her out of his way as if she had been some 
 idle feather, and almost staggered up to Josephine. 
 
 " It is for you to speak, my betrothed : are you mar- 
 ried ? " 
 
 The poor creature, true to her nature, was thinking 
 more of him than herself. Even in her despair it flashed 
 across her, " If he knew all, he too would be wretched 
 for life. If I let him think ill of me he may be happy 
 one day." She cowered the picture of sorrow and 
 tongue-tied guilt. 
 
 " Are you a wife ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 He winced and quivered as if a bullet had pierced 
 him. 
 
 " This is how I came to be suspected ; she I loved was 
 false." 
 
 " Yes, Camille." 
 
 "No, no ! " cried Rose ; "don't believe her : she never 
 suspected you. We have brought her to this, we alone."
 
 WHITE LIES. 163 
 
 " Be silent, Kose I oh, be silent ! " gasped Josephine. 
 
 " I lived for you : I would have died for you ; you 
 could not even wait for me." 
 
 A low moan, but not a word of excuse. 
 
 " What can I do for you now ? " 
 
 " Forget me, Camille," said she despairingly, doggedly. 
 
 " Forget you ? never, never ! there is but one thing 
 I can do to show you how I loved you: I will forgive 
 you, and begone. "VVhither shall I go ? whither shall I 
 go now ? " 
 
 "Camile, your words stab her." 
 
 " Let none speak but I," said Camille ; " none but 
 I have the right to speak. Poor weak angel that loved 
 yet could not wait: I forgive you. Be happy, if you 
 can ; I bid you be hap-py." 
 
 The quiet, despairing tones died away, and with them 
 life seemed to end to her, and hope to go out. He turned 
 his back quickly on her. He cried hoarsely, " To the 
 army ! Back to the army, and a soldier's grave ! " 
 Then with a prodigious effort he drew himself haughtily 
 up in marching attitude. He took three strides, erect 
 and fiery and bold. 
 
 At the next something seemed to snap asunder in the 
 great heart, and the worn body that heart had held up 
 so long, rolled like a dead log upon the ground with a 
 tremendous fall.
 
 164 WHITE LIES. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 The baroness and Aubertin were just getting out of 
 their carriage, when suddenly they heard shrieks of 
 terror in the Pleasaunce. They came with quaking 
 hearts as fast as their old limbs would carry them. 
 They found Rose and Josephine crouched over the body 
 of a man, an officer. 
 
 Rose was just tearing open his collar and jacket. 
 Dard and Jacintha had run from the kitchen at the 
 screams. Camille lay on his back, white and motion- 
 less. 
 
 The doctor was the first to come up. " Who ! what is 
 this ? I seem to know his face." Then shaking his 
 head, " Whoever it is, it is a bad case. Stand away, 
 ladies. Let me feel his pulse." 
 
 Whilst the old man was going stiffly down on one 
 knee, Jacintha uttered a cry of terror. " See, see ! his 
 shirt ! that red streak ! Ah, ah ! it is getting bigger 
 and bigger : " and she turned faint in a moment, and 
 would have fallen but for Dard. 
 
 The doctor looked. " All the better," said he firmly. 
 " I thought he was dead. His blood flows ; then I will 
 save him. Don't clutch me so, Josephine; don't cling 
 to me like that. Now is the time to show your breed : 
 not turn sick at the sight of a little blood, like that 
 foolish creature, but help me save him." 
 
 " Take him in-doors," cried the baroness. 
 
 " Into our house, mamma ? " gasped Rose ; "no, no." 
 
 " What," said the baroness, " a wounded soldier who 
 has fought for France ! leave him to lie and die outside
 
 WHITE LIES. 165 
 
 my door : wliat would my son say to that ? He is a 
 soldier himself." 
 
 Rose cast a hasty look at Josephine. Josephine's 
 eyes were bent on the ground, and her hands clenched 
 and trembling. 
 
 " Xow, Jacintha, you be off," said the doctor. " I 
 can't have cowards about him to make the others as bad. 
 Go and stew down a piece of good beef for him. Stew 
 it in red wine and water." 
 
 " That I will : poor thing ! " 
 
 " Why, I know him," said the baroness suddenly ; " it 
 is an old acquaintance, young Dujardin : you remember, 
 Josephine. I used to suspect him of a fancy for you, 
 poor fellow ! Why, he must have come here to see us, 
 poor soul." 
 
 " No matter who it is ; it is a man. Now, girls, have 
 3'ou courage, have you humanity ? Then come one on 
 each side of him and take hands beneath his back, while 
 I lift his head and Dard his legs." 
 
 " And handle him gently whatever you do," said Dard. 
 " I know what it is to be wounded." 
 
 These four carried the lifeless burden very slowly and 
 gently across the Pleasaunce to the house, then with 
 more difficulty and caution up the stairs. 
 
 All the while the sisters' hands griped one another 
 tight beneath the lifeless burden, and spoke to one 
 another. And Josephine's arm upheld tenderly but not 
 weakly the hero she had struck down. She avoided 
 Rose's eye, her mother's, and even the doctor's : one 
 gasping sob escaped her as she walked with head half 
 averted, and vacant, terror-stricken eyes, and her victim 
 on her sustaining arm. 
 
 The doctor selected the tapestried chamber for him as 
 being most airy. Then he ordered the women out, and 
 with Dard's help undressed the still insensible patient.
 
 166 WHITE LIES. 
 
 Josephine sat down on the stairs in gloomy silence, 
 her eyes on the ground, like one waiting for her death- 
 blow. 
 
 Rose, sick at heart, sat silent too at some distance. 
 At last she said faintly, " Have we done well ? " 
 
 " I don't know," said Josephine doggedly. Her eyes 
 never left the ground. 
 
 "We could not let him die for want of care." 
 
 " He will not thank us. Better for him to die than 
 live. Better for me." 
 
 At this instant Dard came running down. " Good 
 news, mesdemoiselles, good news ! the wound runs all 
 along; it is not deep, like mine was. He has opened 
 his eyes and shut them again. The dear good doctor 
 stopped the blood in a twinkle. The doctor says he'll 
 be bound to save him. I must run and tell Jacintha. 
 She is taking on in the kitchen." 
 
 Josephine, who had risen eagerly from her despairing 
 posture, clasped her hands together, then lifted up her 
 voice and wept. " He will live ! he will live ! " 
 
 When she had wept a long while, she said to Rose, 
 "Come, sister, help your poor Josephine." 
 
 " Yes, love, what shall we do ? " 
 
 "My duty," faltered Josephine. "An hour ago it 
 seemed so sweet," and she fell to weeping patiently 
 again. They went to Josephine's room. She crept 
 slowly to a wardrobe, and took out a gray silk dress, 
 
 " Oh, never mind for to-day," cried Rose. 
 
 " Help me. Rose. It is for myself as well ; to remind 
 me every moment T am Madame Raynal." 
 
 They put the gray gown on her, both weeping patiently. 
 It will be known at the last day, all that honest women 
 have suffered weeping silently in this noisy world. 
 
 Camille soon recovered his senses and a portion of his
 
 WHITE LIES. 167 
 
 strength : then the irritation of his wound brought on 
 fever. This in turn retired before the doctor's remedies 
 and a sound constitution, but it left behind it a great 
 weakness and general prostration. And in this state the 
 fate of the body depends greatly on the mind. 
 
 The baroness and the doctor went constantly to see' 
 him, and soothe him : he smiled and thanked them, but 
 his eager eyes watched the door for one who came not. 
 
 When he got well enough to leave his bed the largest 
 couch was sent up to him from the saloon ; a kind hand 
 lined the baron's silk dressing-gown for him Avarm and 
 soft and nice ; and he would sit or lie on his couch, or 
 take two turns in the room leaning upon Rose's shoulder, 
 and glad of the support ; and he looked piteously in her 
 eyes when she came and when she went. Rose looked 
 down ; she could do nothing, she could say nothing. 
 
 With his strength, Camille lost a portion of his pride : 
 he pined for a sight of her he no longer respected ; pined 
 for her, as the thirsty pine for water in Sahara. 
 
 At last one day he spoke out. " How kind you are to 
 me. Rose ! how kind you all are — but one." 
 
 He waited in hopes she would say something, but she 
 held her tongue. 
 
 "At least tell me why it is. Is she ashamed? Is she 
 afraid ? " 
 
 " Neither." 
 
 " She hates me : it is true, then, that we hate those 
 whom we have wounded. Cruel, cruel Josephine ! Oh, 
 heart of marble against which my heart has wrecked 
 itself forever ! " 
 
 " No, no ! She is anything but cruel : but she is 
 Madame Raynal." 
 
 " Ah ! I forgot. But have I no claim on her? Nearly 
 four years she has been my betrothed. Wliat have I 
 done ? Was I ever false to her ? I could forgive her
 
 168 WHITE LIES. 
 
 for what she has done to me, but she cannot forgive me. 
 Does she mean never to see me again ? " 
 
 "Ask yourself what good could come of it." 
 
 " Very well," said Camille, with a malicious smile. 
 " I am in her way. 1 see what she wants ; she shall 
 have it." 
 
 Rose carried these words to Josephine. They went 
 through her like a sword. 
 
 Rose pitied her. Rose had a moment's weakness. 
 
 " Let us go to him," she said ; " anything is better 
 than this." 
 
 "Rose, I dare not," was the wise reply. 
 
 But the next day early, Josephine took Rose to a door 
 outside the house, a door that had long been disused. 
 Nettles grew before it. She produced a key and with 
 great difficulty opened this door. It led to the tapestried 
 chamber, and years ago they used to steal up it and peep 
 into the room. 
 
 Rose scarcely needed to be told that she was to watch 
 Camille, and report to her. In truth, it was a mysteri- 
 ous, vague protection against a danger equally myste- 
 rious. Yet it made Josephine easier. But so unflinching 
 was her prudence that she never once could be prevailed 
 on to mount those stairs, and peep at Camille herself. 
 "I must starve my heart, not feed it," said she. And 
 she grew paler and more hollow-eyed day by day. 
 
 Yet this was the same woman who showed such feeble- 
 ness and irresolution when Raynal pressed her to marry 
 him. But then dwarfs feebly drew her this way and 
 that. Now giants fought for her. Between a feeble 
 inclination and a feeble disinclination her dead heart 
 had drifted to and fro. Now honor, duty, gratitude, — 
 which last with her was a passion, — dragged her one 
 way : love, pity, and remorse another. 
 
 Not one of these giants would relax his grasp, and
 
 WHITE LIES. 169 
 
 nothing yielded except her vital powers. Yes ; her tem- 
 per, one of the loveliest Heaven ever gave a human creat- 
 ure, was soured at times. 
 
 Was it a wonder ? There lay the man she loved 
 pining for her ; cursing her for her cruelty, and alter- 
 nately praying Heaven to forgive him and to bless her : 
 sighing, at intervals, all the day long, so loud, so deep, so 
 piteously, as if his heart broke with each sigh ; and 
 sometimes, for he little knew, poor soul, that any human 
 eye was upon him, casting aside his manhood in his 
 despair, and flinging himself on the very floor, and muf- 
 fling his head, and sobbing ; he a hero. 
 
 And here was she pining in secret for him who pined 
 for her ? "I am not a woman at all," said she, who was 
 all woman. "I am crueller to him than a tiger or any 
 savage creature is to the victim she tears. I must cure 
 him of his love for me ; and then die ; for what shall 
 I have to live for ? He weeps, he sighs, he cries for 
 Josephine." 
 
 Her enforced cruelty was more contrary to this woman's 
 nature than black is to white, or heat to cold, and the 
 heart rebelled furiously at times. As Avhen a rock tries 
 to stem a current, the water fights its way on more sides 
 than one, so insulted nature dealt with Josephine. Xot 
 only did her body pine, but her nerves were exasperated. 
 Sudden twitches came over her, that almost made her 
 scream. Her permanent state was utter despondency, 
 but across it came litful flashes of irritation ; and then 
 she was scarce mistress of herself. 
 
 Wherefore you, who find some holy woman cross and 
 bitter, stop a moment before you sum her up vixen and 
 her religion naught : inquire the history of her heart : 
 perhaps beneath the smooth cold surface of duties well 
 discharged, her life has been, or even is, a battle against 
 some self-indulgence the insignificant saint's very blood
 
 170 WHITE LIES, 
 
 cries out for : and so the poor tiling is cross, not because 
 she is bad, but because she is better than the rest of us ; 
 yet only human. 
 
 Now though Josephine was more on her guard with 
 the baroness than with Rose, or the doctor, or Jacintha, 
 her state could not altogether escape the vigilance of a 
 mother's eye. 
 
 But the baroness had not the clew we have ; and what 
 a diiference that makes ! How small an understanding, 
 put by accident or instruction on the right track, shall 
 run the game down ! How great a sagacity shall wander 
 if it gets on a false scent ! 
 
 "Doctor," said the baroness one day, "you are so 
 taken up with your patient you neglect the rest of us. 
 Do look at Josephine ! She is ill, or going to be ill. She 
 is so pale, and so fretful, so peevish, which is not in her 
 nature. Would you believe it, doctor, she snaps ? " 
 
 " Our Josephine snap ? This is new." 
 
 " And snarls." 
 
 " Then look for the end of the world." 
 
 " The other day I heard her snap Rose : and this 
 morning she half snarled at me, just because I pressed 
 her to go and console our patient. Hush ! here she is. 
 My child, I am accusing you to the doctor. I tell him 
 you neglect his patient : never go near him." 
 
 " I will visit him one of these days," said Josephine, 
 coldly. 
 
 " One of these days," said the baroness, shocked. "You 
 used not to be so hard-hearted. A soldier, an old comrade 
 of your husband's, wounded and sick, and you alone never 
 go to him, to console him with a word of sympathy or 
 encouragement." 
 
 Josephine looked at her mother with a sort of incredu- 
 lous stare. Then, after a struggle, she replied with a 
 tone and manner so spiteful and icy that it would have
 
 WHITE LIES. 171 
 
 deceived even us who know her had we heard it. " He 
 has plenty of nurses Avithout me." She added, almost 
 violently, " My husband, if he were wounded, would not 
 have so many, perhaps not have one." 
 
 With this she rose and went out, leaving them aghast. 
 She sat down in the passage on a window-seat, and 
 laughed hysterically. Eose heard her and ran to her. 
 Josephine told her what her mother had said to her. 
 Eose soothed her. " Never mind, you have your sister 
 who understands you : don't you go back till they have 
 got some other topic." 
 
 Eose out of curiosity went in, and found a discussion 
 going on. The doctor was fathoming Josephine, for the 
 benefit of his companion. 
 
 "It is a female jealousy, and of a mighty innocent 
 kind. We are so taken up with this poor fellow, she 
 thinks her soldier is forgotten." 
 
 " Surely, doctor, our Josephine would not be so unrea- 
 sonable, so unjust," suggested her mother. 
 
 "She belongs to a sex, be it said without offending 
 you, madame, among whose numberless virtues justice 
 does not fill a prominent place." 
 
 The baroness shook her head. " That is not it. It is 
 a piece of prudery. This young gentleman was a sort 
 of admirer of hers, though she did not admire him much, 
 as far as 1 remember. But it was four years ago ; and 
 she is married to a man she loves, or is going to love." 
 
 "Well, but, mamma, a trifling excess of delicacy is 
 surely excusable." This from Eose. 
 
 "]S"o, no; it is not delicacy; it is prudery. And when 
 people are sick and suffering, an honest woman should 
 take up her charity and lay down her prudery, or her 
 coquetry : two things that I suspect are the same thing 
 in different shapes." 
 
 Here Jacintha came in. '' Mademoiselle, here is the
 
 172 WHITE LIES. 
 
 colonel's broth ; Madame Raynal has flavored it for him, 
 and you are to take it up to him, and keep him company 
 while he eats it." 
 
 " Come," cried the baroness, " my lecture has not been 
 lost." 
 
 Rose followed Jacintha up-stairs. 
 
 Rose was heart and head on Raynal's side. 
 
 She had deceived him about Josephine's attachment, 
 and felt all the more desirous to guard him against any 
 ill consequences of it. Then he had been so generous to 
 her : he had left her her sister, who would have gone to 
 Egypt, and escaped this misery, but for her. 
 
 But on the other hand, 
 
 — Gentle j^ity 
 Tugged at her heai'tstrings with complaining cries. 
 
 This watching of Camille saddened even her. When 
 she was with him his pride bore him up : but when he 
 was alone as he thought, his anguish and despair were 
 terrible, and broke out in so many ways that often Rose 
 shrank in terror from her peep hole. 
 
 She dared not tell Josephine the half of what she 
 saw : what she did tell her agitated her so terribly : and 
 often Rose had it on the tip of her tongue to say, " Do 
 pray go and see if you can say nothing that will do him 
 good ; " but she fought the impulse down. This battle 
 of feeling, though less severe than her sister's, was con- 
 stant ; it destroyed her gayety. She, whose merry laugh 
 used to ring like chimes through the house, never laughed 
 now, seldom smiled, and often sighed. 
 
 Dr. Aubertin was the last to succumb to the deep 
 depression, but his time came : and he had been for a 
 day or two as grave and as sad as the rest, when one day 
 that Rose was absent, spying on Camille, he took the 
 baroness and Josephine into his confidence; and con- 
 descended finally to ask their advice.
 
 WHITE LIES. 173 
 
 " It is humiliating," said he, " after all my experience, 
 to be obliged to consult unprofessional persons. Forty 
 years ago I should have been too wise to do so. But 
 since then I have often seen science balHed and untrained 
 intelligences throw light upon hard questions : and your 
 sex in particular has luminous instincts and reads things 
 by flashes that we men miss Avith a microscope. Oar 
 dear Madame Kaynal suspected that plausible notary, 
 and to this day I believe she could not tell us why." 
 
 Josephine admitted as much very frankly. 
 
 " There you see," said the doctor. *' Well, then, you 
 must help me in this case. And this time I promise to 
 treat your art with more respect." 
 
 " And pray who is it she is to read now ? " asked the 
 baroness. 
 
 " Who should it be but my poor patient ? He puzzles 
 me. I never knew a patient so faint-hearted." 
 
 '' A soldier faint-hearted ! " exclaimed the baroness. 
 '' To be sure these men that storm cities, and fire cannon, 
 and cut and hack one another with so much spirit, are 
 poor creatures compared with us when they have to lie 
 quiet and suffer." 
 
 The doctor walked the room in great excitement. " It 
 is not his wound that is killing him, there's something 
 on his mind. You, Josephine, with your instincts do 
 help me : do pray, for pity's sake, throw off that sublime 
 indifference you have manifested all along to this man's 
 fate." 
 
 " She has not," cried the baroness, firing up. " Did I 
 not see her lining his dressing-gown for him ? and slie 
 inspects everything that he eats : do you not ? " 
 
 "Yes, mother." She then suggested in a faltering 
 voice that time would cure the patient, and time alone. 
 
 "Time! you speak as if time was a quality: time is 
 only a measure of events, favorable or unfavorable j it 
 kills as many as it cures."
 
 174 WHITE LIES. 
 
 "Why, you surely would not imply his life is in any 
 danger ? " This was the baroness. 
 
 " Madame, if the case was not grave, should I take this 
 unusual step ? I tell you if some change does not take 
 place soon, he will be a dead man in another fortnight. 
 That is all thne will do for him." 
 
 The baroness uttered an exclamation of pity and dis- 
 tress. Josephine put her hand to her bosom, and a 
 creeping horror came over her, and then a faintness. 
 She sat working mechanically, and turning like ice 
 within. After a few minutes of this, she rose with 
 every appearance of external composure and left the 
 room. In the passage she met Rose coming hastily 
 towards the salon laughing : the first time she had 
 laughed this many a day. Oh, what a contrast between 
 the two faces that met there — the one pale and horror- 
 stricken, the other rosy and laughing ! 
 
 " Well, dear, at last I am paid for all my trouble, and 
 yours, by a discovery ; he never drinks a drop of his 
 medicine ; he pours it into the ashes under the grate ; I 
 caught him in the fact." 
 
 "Then this is too much : I can resist no longer. Come 
 with me," said Josephine doggedly. 
 
 " Where ? " 
 
 "To him."
 
 WHITE LIES. 176 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 Josephine paused on the lauding, and laid her hand 
 on Eose's shoulder. It was so cold it made Rose shud- 
 der, and exacted a promise from her not to contradict 
 a word she should say to Camille. " I do not go to him 
 for my pleasure, but for his life," she said ; " I must 
 deceive him and save him ; and then let me lie down 
 and die." 
 
 " Oh, that the wretch had never been born ! " cried 
 Rose, in despair. But she gave the required promise, 
 and offered to go and tell Camille Josephine was coming 
 to visit him. 
 
 But Josephine declined this. "No," said she; "give 
 me every advantage ; I must think beforehand every 
 word I shall say ; but take him by surprise, coward and 
 doubleface that I am." 
 
 Rose knocked at the door. A faint voice said, " Come 
 in." The sisters entered the room very softly. Camille 
 sat on the sofa, his head bowed over his hands. A glance 
 showed Josephine that he was doggedly and resolutely 
 thrusting himself into the grave. Thinking it was only 
 Rose — for he had now lost all hope of seeing Josephine 
 come in at the door — he never moved. Some one glided 
 gently but rapidly up to him. He looked up. Josephine 
 was kneeling to him. 
 
 He lifted his head with a start, and trembled all over. 
 
 She whispered, " I am come to you to beg your pity ; 
 to appeal to your generosity ; to ask a favor ; I who 
 deserve so little of you." 
 
 "You have waited a long time," said Camille, agitated 
 greatly; "and so have I."
 
 176 WHITE LIES. 
 
 "Camille, you are torturing one who loved you once, 
 and who has been very weak and faithless, but not so 
 wicked as she appears." 
 
 " How am I torturing you ? " 
 
 <' With remorse ; do I not suffer enough ? Would 
 you make me a murderess ? " 
 
 " Why have you never been near me ? " retorted 
 Camille. " I could forgive your weakness, but not your 
 heartlessness." 
 
 " It is my duty. I have no right to seek your society. 
 If you really want mine, you have only to get well, and 
 60 join us down-stairs a week or two before you leave us." 
 
 " How am I to get Avell ? My heart is broken." 
 
 "Camille, be a man. Do not fling away a soldier's 
 life because a fickle, worthless woman could not wait for 
 you. . Forgive me like a man, or else revenge yourself 
 like a man. If you cannot forgive me, kill me. See, I 
 kneel at your feet. I will not resist you. Kill me." 
 
 " I wish I could. Oh ! if I could kill you with a look 
 and myself with a wish ! No man should ever take you 
 from me, then. We would be together in the grave at 
 this hour. Do not tempt me, I say ; " and he cast a ter- 
 rible look of love, and hatred, and despair upon her. 
 Her purple eye never winced ; it poured back tenderness 
 and aifection in return. He saw and turned away with 
 a groan, and held out his hand to her. She seized it and 
 kissed it. " You are great, you are generous ; you will 
 not strike me as a woman strikes ; you will not die to 
 drive me to despair." 
 
 " I see," said he, more gently, " love is gone, but pity 
 remains. I thought that was gone, too." 
 
 " Yes, Camille," said Josephine, in a whisper, " pity 
 remains, and remorse and terror at what I have done to 
 a man of whom I was never worthy." 
 
 " Well, madame, as you have come at last to me, and
 
 WHITE LIES. 177 
 
 even do me the honor to ask me a favor — I shall try — 
 if only out of courtesy — to — ah, Josephine ! Josephine ! 
 when did I ever refuse a-ou an^- thing ? " 
 
 At this Josephine sank into a chair, and burst out 
 crying. Camille, at this, began to cry too ; and the two 
 poor things sat a long way from one another, and sobbed 
 bitterly. 
 
 The man, weakened as he was, recovered his quiet 
 despair first. 
 
 " Don't cry so," said he. "■ But tell me what is your 
 will, and I shall obey you as I used before any one came 
 between us." 
 
 "Then, live, Camille. I implore you to live." 
 
 " Well, Josephine, since you care about it, I will try 
 and live. "Why did not you come before and ask me ? 
 I thought I was in your wa3^ I thought you wanted me 
 dead." 
 
 Josephine cast a look of wonder and anguish on 
 Camille, but she said nothing. She rang the bell, and, 
 on Jacintha coming up, despatched her to Dr. Aubertin 
 for the patient's medicine. 
 
 "Tell the doctor," said she, "Colonel Dujardin has let 
 fall the glass." While Jacintha was gone, she scolded 
 Camille gently. " How could you be so unkind to the 
 poor doctor who loves you so? Only think: to throw 
 away his medicines ! Look at the ashes ; they are wet. 
 Camille, are you, too, becoming disingenuous ? " 
 
 Jacintha came in with the tonic in a glass, and retired 
 with an obeisance. Josephine took it to Camille. 
 
 " Drink with me, then," said he, " or I will not toucli 
 it." Josephine took the glass. " I drink to your health, 
 Camille, and to your glory ; laurels to your brow, and 
 some faithful Avoman to your heart, who will make you 
 forget this folly : it is for her I am saving you." She 
 put the glass with well-acted spirit to her lips; but in 
 12
 
 178 WHITE LIES. 
 
 the very action a spasm seized her throat and almost 
 choked her; she lowered her head that he might not see 
 her face, and tried again ; but the tears burst from her 
 eyes and ran into the liquid, and her lips trembled over 
 the brim, and were paralyzed. 
 
 " No, no ! give it me ! " he cried ; " there is a tear of 
 yours in it." He drank off the bitter remedy now as if 
 it had been nectar. 
 
 Josephine blushed. 
 
 " If you wanted me to live, why did you not come here 
 before ? " 
 
 " I did not think you Avould be so foolish, so wicked, 
 so cruel as to do what 3'ou have been doing." 
 
 "Come and shine upon me every day, and you shall 
 have no fresh cause of complaint ; things flourish in the 
 sunshine that die in the dark : Rose, it is as if the sun 
 had come into my prison ; you are pale, but you are 
 beautiful as ever — more beautiful; what a sweet dress ! 
 so quiet, so modest, it sets off your beauty instead of 
 vainly trying to vie with it." With this he put out his 
 hand and took her gray silk dress, and went to kiss it as 
 a devotee kisses the altar steps. 
 
 She snatched it away with a shudder. 
 
 "Yes, you are right," said she; "thank you for notic- 
 ing my dress ; it is a beautiful dress — ha ! ha ! A dress 
 I take a pride in wearing, and always shall, I hope. I 
 mean to be buried in it. Come, Rose. Thank you, 
 Camille ; you are very good, you have once more prom- 
 ised me to live. Get well ; come down-stairs ; then you 
 will see me every da}', j'ou know — there is a temptation. 
 Good-by, Camille ! — are you coming. Rose ? What are 
 you loitering for ? God bless you, and comfort you, and 
 help you to forget what it is madness to remember ! " 
 
 With these wild words she literally fled ; and in one 
 moment the room seemed to darken to Camille.
 
 WHITE LIES. 179 
 
 Outside the door Josephine caught hold of Rose. 
 " Have I committed myself ? " 
 
 "Over and over again. Do not look so terrified; I 
 mean to me, but not to him. How blind he is ! and how 
 much better you must know him than I do to venture on 
 such a transparent deceit. He believes whatever you 
 tell him. He is all ears and no eyes. Yes, love, I 
 watched him keenly all the time. He really thinks it is 
 pity and remorse, nothing more. ]My poor sister, you 
 have a hard life to lead, a hard game to play ; but so far 
 you have succeeded ; yet could look poor Raynal in the 
 face if he came home to-day." 
 
 '^ Then God be thanked ! " cried Josephine. " I am as 
 happy to-day as I can ever hope to be. Xow let us go 
 through the farce of dressing — it is near dinner-time — 
 and then the farce of talking, and, hardest of all, the 
 farce of living." 
 
 From that hour Camille began to get better very 
 slowly, yet perceptibly. 
 
 The doctor, afraid of being mistaken, said nothing for 
 some days, but at last he announced the good news at 
 the dinner-table. " He is to come down-stairs in three 
 days," added the doctor. 
 
 But I am sorry to say that as Camille's body strength- 
 ened some of the worst passions in our nature attacked 
 him. Fierce gusts of hate and love combined overpow- 
 ered this man's high sentiments of honor and justice, 
 and made him clench his teeth, and vow never to leave 
 Beaurepaire without Josephine. She had been his four 
 years before she ever saw this interloper, and she should 
 be his forever. Her love would soon revive when they 
 should meet every day, and she would end by eloping 
 with him. 
 
 Then conscience pricked him, and reminded him how 
 and why Kayual had married her: for Rose had told him
 
 180 WHITE LIES. 
 
 all. Should he undermine an absent soldier, whose 
 whole conduct in this had been so pure, so generous, so 
 unselfish ? 
 
 But this was not all. As I have already hinted, he 
 was under a great personal obligation to his quondam 
 comrade Kaynal. Whenever this was vividly present to 
 his mind, a great terror fell on him, and he would cry 
 out in anguish, " Oh ! that some angel would come to 
 me and tear me by force from this place ! " And the 
 next moment passion swept over him like a flood, and 
 carried away all his virtuous resolves. His soul was in 
 deep waters ; great waves drove it to and fro. Perilous 
 condition, which seldom ends well. Camille was a man 
 of honor. In no other earthly circumstance could he 
 have hesitated an instant between right and wrong. 
 But such na,tures, proof against all other temptations, 
 have often fallen, and will fall, where sin takes the 
 angel form of her they love. Yet, of all men, they 
 should pray for help to stand ; for when they fall they 
 still retain one thing that divides them from mean 
 sinners. 
 
 Remorse, the giant that rends the great hearts which 
 mock at fear. 
 
 The day came in which the doctor had promised his 
 patient he should come down-stairs. First his comfort- 
 able sofa was taken down into the saloon for his use : 
 then the patient himself came down leaning on the 
 doctor's arm, and his heart palpitating at the thought of 
 the meeting. He came into the room ; the baroness was 
 alone. She greeted him kindly, and welcomed him. Rose 
 came in soon after and did the same. But no Josephine. 
 Camille felt sick at heart. At last dinner was announced ; 
 "She will surely join us at dinner," thought he. He 
 cast his eyes anxiously on the table ; the napkins were 
 laid for four only. The baroness carelessly explained
 
 WHITE LIES. 181 
 
 this to him as they sat down. "Madame Raynal dines 
 in her own room. I am sorry to say she is indisposed," 
 
 Camille muttered polite regrets : the rage of disap- 
 pointment drove its fangs into him, and then came the 
 heart-sickness of hope deferred. The next day he saw 
 her, but could not get a word Avith her alone. The 
 baroness tortured him another way. She was full of 
 Raynal. She loved him. She called him her son ; was 
 never weary of descanting on his virtues to Camille. 
 Not a day passed that she did not pester Camille to 
 make a calculation as to the probable period of his return, 
 and he was obliged to answer her. She related to him 
 before Josephine and Rose, how this honest soldier had 
 come to them like a guardian angel and saved the whole 
 famih". In vain he muttered that Rose had told him. 
 
 " Let me have the pleasure of telling it you my way," 
 cried she, and told it diffusely, and kept him writhing. 
 
 The next thing Avas, Josephine had received no letter 
 from him this month ; the first month he had missed. 
 In vain did Rose represent that he was only a few days 
 over his time. The baroness became anxious, communi- 
 cated her anxieties to Camille among the rest ; and, by a 
 torturing interrogatory, compelled him to explain to her 
 before Josephine and them all, that ships do not always 
 sail to a day, and are sometimes delayed. But oh ! he 
 winced at the man's name ; and Rose observed that he 
 never mentioned it, nor acknowledged the existence of 
 such a person as Josephine's husband, except when 
 others compelled him. Yet they were acquainted ; and 
 Rose sometimes wondered that he did not detract or 
 sneer. 
 
 " I should," said she ; " I feel I should." 
 
 "He is too noble," said Josephine, "and too wise. 
 For, if he did, I should respect him less, and my husband 
 more than I do — if possible."
 
 182 WHITE LIES. 
 
 Certainly Camille was not the sort of nature that 
 detracts, but the reason he avoided Raynal's name was 
 simply that his whole internal battle was to forget such 
 a man existed. From this dream he was rudely awakened 
 every hour since he joined the family, and the wound his 
 self-deceiving heart would fain have skinned over, was 
 torn open. But worse than this was the torture of being 
 tantalized. He was in company with Josephine, but never 
 alone. Even if she left the room for an instant, Rose 
 accompanied her and returned with her. Camille at last 
 began to comprehend that Josephine had decided there 
 should be no private interviews between her and him. 
 Thus, not only the shadow of the absent Raynal stood 
 between them, but her mother and sister in person, and 
 worst of all, her own will. He called her a cold-blooded 
 fiend in his rage. Then the thought of all her tender- 
 ness and goodness came to rebuke him. But even in 
 rebuking it maddened him. "Yes, it is her very 
 nature to love ; but since she can make her heart turn 
 whichever way her honor bids, she will love her hus- 
 band ; she does not now ; but sooner or later she will. 
 Then she will have children — (he writhed with anguish 
 and fury at this thought) — loving ties between him and 
 her. He has everything on his side. I, nothing but 
 memories she will efface from her heart. Will efface ? 
 She must have effaced them, or she could not have 
 married him." I know no more pitiable state of mind 
 than to love and hate the same creature. But when the 
 two feelings are both intense, and meet in an ardent 
 bosom, such a man would do well to spend a day or two 
 upon his knees, praying for grace divine. For he who 
 with all his soul loves and hates one woman is next door 
 to a maniac, and is scarcely safe an hour together from 
 suicide or even from homicide ; this truth the newspapers 
 tell us, by examples, every month ; but are wonderfully
 
 WHITE LIES. 183 
 
 little heeded, because newspapers do not, nor is it their 
 business to, analyze and dwell upon the internal feelings 
 of the despairing lover, whose mad and bloody act they 
 record. With such a tempest in his heart did Camille 
 one day wander into the park. And soon an irresistible 
 attraction drew him to the side of the stream that flowed 
 along one side of it. He eyed it gloomily, and wherever 
 the stagnant water indicated a deeper pool than usual he 
 stopped, and looked, and thought, " How calm and peace- 
 ful you are ! " 
 
 He sat down at last by the water-side, his eyes bent on 
 a calm, green pool. 
 
 It looked very peaceful ; and it could give peace. He 
 thought, oh ! what a blessing ; to be quit of rage, jeal- 
 ousy, despair, and life, all in a minute ! 
 
 Yet that was a sordid death for a soldier to die, who 
 had seen great battles. Could he not die more nobly 
 than that ? With this he suddenly felt in his pocket ; 
 and there sure enough fate had placed his pistols. He 
 had put them into this coat ; and he had not worn this 
 coat until to-day. He had armed himself unconsciously. 
 <' Ah ! " said he ; " it is to be ; all these things are pre- 
 ordained." (This notion of fate has strengthened many 
 a fatal resolution.) Then he had a cruel regret. To die 
 without a word ; a parting word. Then he thought to 
 himself, it was best so ; for perhaps he should have taken 
 her with him. 
 
 " Sir ! colonel ! " uttered a solemn voice behind him. 
 
 Absorbed and strung up to desperation as he was, this 
 voice seemed unnaturally loud, and discordant with 
 Camille's mood ; a sudden trumpet from the world of 
 small things. 
 
 It was Picard, the notary. 
 
 " Can you tell me where Madame Eaynal is ? " 
 
 "No. At the chateau, I suppose."
 
 184 "WHITE LIES. 
 
 " She is not there ; I inquired of the servant. She 
 was out. You have not seen her, colonel ? " 
 
 " Not I ; I never see her." 
 
 " Then perhaps I had better go back to the cliateau 
 and wait for her : stay, are you a friend of the family ? 
 Colonel, suppose I were to tell you, and ask you to 
 break it to Madame Raynal, or, better still, to the baron- 
 ess, or Mademoiselle Rose." 
 
 " Monsieur," said Camille coldly, " charge me with no 
 messages, for I cannot deliver them. / am go'aig another 
 ivayT 
 
 '' In that case, I will go to the chateau once more ; for 
 what I have to say must be heard." 
 
 Picard returned to the chateau wondering at the 
 colonel's strange manner. 
 
 Camille, for his part, wondered that any one could be 
 so mad as to talk to him about trifles ; to him, a man 
 standing on the brink of eternity. Poor soul, it was he 
 who was mad and unlucky. He should have heard what 
 Picard had to say. The very gentleness and solemnity 
 of manner ought to have excited his curiosity. 
 
 He watched Picard's retiring form. When he was out 
 of sight, then he turned round and resumed his thoughts 
 as if Picard had been no more than a fly that had buzzed 
 and then gone. 
 
 " Yes, I should have taken her with me," he said. He 
 sat gloomy and dogged like a dangerous maniac in his 
 cell ; never moved, scarce thought for more than half an 
 hour; but his deadly purpose grew in him. Suddenly 
 he started. A lady was at the style, about a hundred 
 yards distant. He trembled. It was Josephine. 
 
 She came towards him slowly, her eyes bent on the 
 ground in a deep reverie. She stopped about a stone's 
 throw from him, and looked at the river long and 
 thoughtfully ; then casting her eye around, she caught
 
 WHITE LIES. 185 
 
 sight of Camille. He watched her grimly. He saw her 
 give a little start, and half turn round ; but if this was 
 an impulse to retreat, it was instantl}^ suppressed ; for 
 the next moment she pursued her way. 
 
 Camille stood gloomy and bitter, awaiting her in silence. 
 He planted himself in the middle of the path, and said 
 not a word. 
 
 She looked him all over, and her color came and went. 
 
 " Out so far as this," she said kindly ; " and without 
 your cap." 
 
 He put his hand to his head, and discovered that he 
 was bareheaded. 
 
 " You will catch your death of cold. Come, let us go 
 in and get your cap." 
 
 She made as if she would pass him. He planted him- 
 self right before her. 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Camille!" 
 
 " Why do you shun me as if I was a viper ? " 
 
 " I do not shun you. I but avoid conferences that can 
 lead to no good ; it is my duty." 
 
 " You are very wise ; cold-hearted people can be wise." 
 
 " Am I cold-hearted, Camille ? " 
 
 " As marble." 
 
 She looked him in the face ; the water came into her 
 eyes ; after awhile she whispered, sorrowfully, " Well, 
 Camille, I am." 
 
 " But with all your wisdom and all your coldness," he 
 went on to say, "you have made a mistake; you have 
 driven me to madness and despair." 
 
 " Heaven forbid ! " said she. 
 
 " Your prayer comes too late ; you have done it." 
 
 " Camille, let me go to the oratory, and pray for you. 
 You terrify me." 
 
 "It is no use. Heaven has no mercy for me. Take
 
 186 WHITE LIES. 
 
 my advice ; stay where you are ; don't hurry ; for what 
 remains of your life you gave to pass with me, do you 
 understand that ? " 
 
 " Ah ! " And she turned pale, 
 
 " Can you read my riddle ? " 
 
 She looked him in the face. " I can read your eyes, 
 and I know you love me. I think you mean to kill me. 
 I have heard men kill the thing they love." 
 
 " Of course they do ; sooner than another should have 
 it, they kill it — they kill it." 
 
 " God has not made them patient like us women. 
 Poor Camille ! " 
 
 " Patience dies when hope dies. Come, Madame Ray nal, 
 say a prayer, for you are going to die." 
 
 " God bless you, Camille ! " said the poor girl, putting 
 her hands together in her last prayer. At this sweet 
 touch of affection, Camille hung his head, and sobbed. 
 Then suddenly lashing himself into fury, he cried, — 
 
 " You are my betrothed ! you talk of duty ; but you 
 forget your duty to me. Are you not my betrothed this 
 four years ? Answer me that." 
 
 " Yes, Camille, I was." 
 
 " Did I not suffer death a hundred times for you, to 
 keep faith with you, you cold-blooded traitress with an 
 angel's face ? " 
 
 "Ah, Camille ! can you speak so bitterly to me ? Have 
 I denied your right to kill me ? You shall never dis- 
 honor me, but you shall kill me, if it is your pleasure. 
 I do not resist. Why, then, speak to me like that; must 
 the last words I hear from your mouth be words of anger, 
 cruel Camille ? " 
 
 " I was wrong. But it is so hard to kill her I love in 
 cold blood. I want anger as well as despair to keep me 
 to it. Come, turn your head away from me, and all our 
 troubles shall end."
 
 WHITE LIES. 187 
 
 "No, Camille, let me look at you. Then you will be 
 the last thing I shall see on earth." 
 
 At this he hesitated a moment; then, with a fierce 
 stamp at what he thought was weakness, he levelled a 
 pistol at her. 
 
 She put up her hands with a piteous cry, " Oh ! not 
 my face, Camille ! pray do not disfigure my face. Here 
 — kill me here — in my bosom — my heart that loved 
 you well, when it was no sin to love you." 
 
 "I can't shoot you. I can't spill your blood. The river 
 will end all, and not disfigure your beauty, that has 
 driven me mad, and cost you, poor wretch, your life." 
 
 " Thank you, dear Camille. The water does not frighten 
 me as a pistol does ; it will not hurt me ; it will only kill 
 me." 
 
 " No, it is but a plunge, and you will be at peace for- 
 ever; and so shall I. Come, take my hand, Madame 
 Raynal, Madame Raynal." 
 
 She gave him her hand with a look of infinite love. 
 She only said, " My poor mother ! " That word did not 
 fall to the ground. It flashed like lightning at night 
 across the demented lover, and lighted up his egotism 
 (suicide, like homicide, is generally a fit of maniacal 
 egotism), even to his eyes blinded by fury. 
 
 "Wretch that I am," he shrieked. "Fly, Josephine, 
 fly ! escape this moment, that my better angel whispers 
 to me. Do you hear ? begone, while it is time." 
 
 " I will not leave you, Camille." 
 
 " I say you shall. Go to your mother and Rose ; go 
 to those you love, and I can pity ; go to the chapel and 
 thank Heaven for your escape." 
 
 " Yes, but not without you, Camille. I am afraid to 
 leave you." 
 
 " You have more to fear if you stay. Well, I can't 
 wait any longer. Stay, then, and live ; and learn from 
 me how to love Jean Raynal."
 
 188 WHITE LIES. 
 
 He levelled the pistol at himself. 
 
 Josephine threw herself on him with a cry, and seized 
 his arm. With the strength excitement lent her she got 
 the better, ^.nd all but overpowered him. But, as usual, 
 the man's strength lasted longer, and with a sustained 
 effort he threw her off ; then, pale and panting, raised 
 the pistol to take his life. This time she moved neither 
 hand nor foot ; but she palsied his rash hand with a word. 
 
 "No; I LOVE YOU."
 
 WHITE LIES. 189 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 There lie the dead corpses of those words on paper; 
 but my art is powerless to tell you how they were uttered, 
 those words, potent as a king's, for they saved a life. 
 
 They were a cry of terror and a cry of reproach and a 
 cry of love unfathomable. 
 
 The weapon shook in his hand. He looked at her with 
 growing astonishment and joy ; she at him fixedly and 
 anxiously, her hands clasped in supplication. 
 
 " As you used to love me ? " 
 
 ''More, far more. Give me the pistol. I love you, 
 dearest. I love you." 
 
 At these delicious words he lost all power of resist- 
 ance, she saw ; and her soft and supple hand stole in 
 and closed upon his, and gently withdrew the weapon, 
 and threw it into the water. " Good Camille ! now give 
 me the other." 
 
 " How do you know there is another ? " 
 
 "I know you are not the man to kill a woman and 
 spare yourself. Come." 
 
 "Josephine, have pity on me, do not deceive me ; pray 
 do not take this, my only friend, from me, unless you 
 really love me." 
 
 " I love you ; I adore you," was her reply. 
 
 She leaned her head on his shoulder, but with her 
 hand she sought his, and even as she uttered those loving 
 words she coaxed the weapon from his now unresisting 
 grasp. 
 
 "There, it is gone; you are saved from death — saved 
 from crime." And with that, the danger was over, she
 
 190 WHITE LIES. 
 
 trembled for the first time, and fell to sobbing hysteri- 
 cally. 
 
 He threw himself at her knees, and embraced them 
 again and again, and begged her forgiveness in a trans- 
 port of remorse and self-reproach. 
 
 She looked down with tender pity on him, and heard 
 his cries of penitence and shame. 
 
 "Rise, Camille, and go home with me," said she 
 faintly. 
 
 "Yes, Josephine." 
 
 They went slowly and in silence. Camille was too 
 ashamed and penitent to speak ; too full of terror too at 
 the abyss of crime from which he had been saved. The 
 ancients feigned that a virgin could subdue a lion ; per- 
 haps they meant that a pure gentle nature can subdue 
 a nature fierce but generous. Lion-like Camille walked 
 by Josephine's side with his eyes bent on the ground, the 
 picture of humility and penitence. 
 
 " This is the last walk you and I shall take together," 
 said Josephine solemnly, 
 
 " I know it," said he humbly. " I have forfeited all 
 right to be by your side." 
 
 "My poor, lost love," sighed Josephine, "will you 
 never understand me ? You never stood higher in my 
 esteem than at this moment. It is the avowal you have 
 forced from me that parts us. The man to whom I have 
 said ' I ' — must not remain beneath my husband's roof. 
 Does not your sense of honor agree with mine ? " 
 
 " It does," faltered he. 
 
 " To-morrow you must leave the chateau." 
 
 " I will obey you." 
 
 " What, you do not resist, you do not break my heart 
 by complaints, by reproaches ? " 
 
 " No, Josephine, all is changed. I thought you unfeel- 
 ing : I thought you were going to be happrj with him ; 
 that was what maddened me."
 
 WHITE LIES. 191 
 
 "I pray daily you may be happy, no matter how. 
 But you and I are not alike, dear as we are to one 
 another. Well, do not fear: I shall never be happy — 
 Avill that soothe you, Camille ? " 
 
 '' Yes, Josephine, all is changed ; the words you have 
 spoken have driven the fiends out of my heart. I have 
 nothing to do now but to obey, you to command : it is 
 your right. Since you love me a little still, dispose of 
 me. Bid me live : bid me die : bid me stay : bid me go. 
 I shall never disobey the angel who loves me, my only 
 friend upon the earth." 
 
 A single deep sob from Josephine was all the answer. 
 
 Then he could not help asking her why she had not 
 trusted him ? 
 
 " Why did you not say to me long ago, ' I love you, 
 but I am a wife ; my liusband is an honest soldier, 
 absent, and fighting for France : I am the guardian of 
 his honor and my own ; be just, be generous, be self- 
 denying; depart and love me only as angels love'? 
 Perhaps this might have helped me to show you that I 
 too am a man of honor." 
 
 " Perhaps I was wrong," sighed Josephine. " I think 
 I should have trusted more to you. But then, who 
 would have thought you could really doubt my love ? 
 You were ill ; I could not bear you to go till you were 
 well, quite well. I saw no other way to keep you but 
 this, to treat you with feigned coldness. You saw the 
 coldness, but not what it cost me to maintain it. Yes, 
 I was unjust ; and inconsiderate, for I had many furtive 
 joys to sustain me : I had you in my house under my 
 care — that thought was always sweet — I had a hand 
 in everything that was for your good, for your comfort. 
 I helped Jacintha make your soup and your chocolate 
 every day. I had the delight of lining the dressing- 
 gown you were to wear. I had always some little thing
 
 192 WHITE LIES. 
 
 or otlier to do for you. These kept me up : I forgot in 
 my selfishness that you had none of tliese supports, and 
 that I was driving you to despair. I am a foolish, disin- 
 genuous woman : I have been very culpable. Forgive 
 me!" 
 
 "Forgive you, angel of purity and goodness ? I alone 
 am to blame. What right had I to doubt your heart ? 
 I knew the whole story of your marriage ; I saw your 
 sweet pale face ; but I was not pure enough to compre- 
 hend angelic virtue and unselfishness. Well, I am 
 brought to my senses. There is but one thing for me 
 to do — you bade me leave you to-morrow." 
 
 " I was very cruel." 
 
 "No! not cruel, wise. But I will be wiser. I shall 
 go to-night." 
 
 "To-night, Camille ? " said Josephine, turning pale. 
 
 " Ay ! for to-night I am strong ; to-morrow I may be 
 weak. To-night everything thrusts me on the right 
 path. To-morrow everything will draw me from it. Do 
 not cry, beloved one ; you and I have a hard fight. We 
 must be true allies ; whenever one is weak, then is the 
 time for the other to be strong. I have been weaker 
 than you, to my shame be it said ; but this is my hour 
 of strength. A light from heaven shows me my path. 
 I am full of passion, but like you I have honor. You 
 are Raynal's wife, and — Raynal saved my life." 
 
 " Ah ! is it possible ? When ? where ? may Heaven 
 bless him for it ! " 
 
 " Ask him ; and say I told you of it — I have not 
 strength to tell it you, but I will go to-night." 
 
 Then Josephine, who had resisted till all her strength 
 was gone, whispered with a blush that it was too late to 
 get a conveyance. 
 
 " I need none to carry my sAvord, my epaulets, and 
 my love for you. I shall go on foot."
 
 WHITE LIES. 193 
 
 Josephine said nothing, but she began to walk slower 
 and slower. And so the unfortunate pair came along 
 creeping slowly with drooping heads towards the gate of 
 the Pleasaunce. There their last walk in this world 
 must end. Many a man and woman have gone to the 
 scaffold with hearts less heavy and more hopeful than 
 theirs. 
 
 " Dry your eyes, Josephine," said Camille with a deep 
 sigh. " They are all out on the Pleasaunce." 
 
 " Xo, I will not dry my eyes," cried Josephine, almost 
 violently. " I care for nothing now." 
 
 The baroness, the doctor, and Kose, were all in the 
 Pleasaunce : and as the pair came in, lo ! every eye was 
 bent on Josephine. 
 
 She felt this, and her eyes sought the ground : be- 
 numbed as she was with despondency, she began now to 
 dread some fresh stroke or other. 
 
 Camille felt doubly guilty and confused. How they 
 all look at us, he thought. Do they know what a villain 
 I have been ? He determined to slip away, and pack 
 up, and begone. However, nobody took any notice of 
 him. The baroness drew Josephine apart. And Rose 
 followed her mother and sister with eyes bent on the 
 ground. 
 
 There was a strange solemnity about them all. 
 
 Aubertin remained behind. But even he took no 
 notice of Camille, but walked up and down with his 
 hands behind him, and a sad and troubled face. Camille 
 felt his utter desolation. He was nothing to any of 
 them. He resolved to go at once, and charge Aubertin 
 with his last adieus to the family. It was a wise and 
 manly resolve. He stopped Aubertin in the middle of 
 his walk, and said in a faint voice of the deepest dejec- 
 tion, — 
 
 " Doctor, the time is come that I must once more
 
 194 WHITE LIES. 
 
 thank you for all your goodness to me, and bid you all 
 farewell." 
 
 " What, going before your strength is re-established ? " 
 said the doctor politely, but not warmly. 
 
 "I am out of all danger, thanks to your skill." 
 
 "Colonel, at another time I should insist upon your 
 staying a day or two longer ; but now I think it would 
 be unadvisable to press you to stay. Ah, colonel, you 
 came to a happy house, but you leave a sad one. Poor 
 Madame Raynal ! " 
 
 " Sir ! " 
 
 " You saw the baroness draw her aside." 
 
 " Y-yes." 
 
 "By this time she knows it." 
 
 " In Heaven's name what do you mean ? " asked 
 Camille. 
 
 "I forgot; you are not aware of the calamity that has 
 fallen upon our beloved Josephine ; on the darling of 
 the house." 
 
 Camille turned cold with vague apprehension. But he 
 contrived to stammer out, " No ; tell me ! for Heaven's 
 sake tell me." 
 
 The doctor thus pressed revealed all in a very few 
 words. " My poor friend," said he solemnly, " her hus- 
 band — is dead."
 
 WHITE LIES. 195 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 The baroness, as I have said, drew Josephine aside, 
 and tried to break to her the sad news : but her own grief 
 overcame her, and bursting into tears she bewailed the 
 loss of her son. Josephine was greatly shocked. Death ! 
 — Raynal dead — her true, kind friend dead — her bene- 
 factor dead. She clung to her mother's neck, and sobbed 
 Avith her. Presently she withdrew her face and suddenly 
 hid it in both her hands. 
 
 She rose and kissed her mother once more : and went 
 to her own room : and then, though there was none to 
 see her, she hid her wet, but burning, cheeks in her 
 hands. 
 
 Josephine confined herself for some days to her own 
 room, leaving it only to go to the chapel in the park, 
 Avhere she spent hours in prayers for the dead and in 
 self-humiliation. Her ''tender conscience" accused her- 
 self bitterly for not having loved this gallant spirit more 
 than she had. 
 
 Camille realized nothing at first; he looked all con- 
 fused in the doctor's face, and was silent. Then after 
 awhile he said, " Dead ? Raynal dead ? " 
 
 " Killed in action." 
 
 A red flush came to Camille's face, and his eyes went 
 down to the ground at his very feet, nor did he once raise 
 them while the doctor told him how the sad news had 
 come. "Picard the notary brought us the MoniteAir, and 
 there was Commandant Raynal among the killed in a 
 cavalry skirmish." With this, he took the journal from 
 his pocket, and Camille read it, with awe-struck, and
 
 196 WHITE LIES. 
 
 other feelings he would have been sorry to see analyzed. 
 He said not a word ; and lowered his eyes to the ground. 
 
 ''And now," said Aubertin, "you will excuse me. I 
 must go to my poor friend the baroness. She had a 
 mother's love for him who is no more : well she might." 
 
 Aubertin went away, and left Dujardin standing there 
 like a statue, his eyes still glued to the ground at his feet. 
 
 The doctor was no sooner out of sight, than Camille 
 raised his eyes furtively, like a guilty person, and looked 
 irresolutely this way and that : at last he turned and 
 went back to the place where he had meditated suicide 
 and murder ; looked down at it a long while, then looked 
 up to heaven — then fell suddenly on his knees : and so 
 remained till night-fall. Then he came back to the 
 chateau. 
 
 He whispered to himself, " And I am afraid it is too 
 late to go away to-night." He went softly into the saloon. 
 Nobody was there but Eose and Aubertin. At sight of 
 him Rose got up and left the room. But I suppose she 
 went to Josephine ; for she returned in a few minutes, 
 and rang the bell, and ordered some supper to be brought 
 up for Cclonel Dujardin. 
 
 " You have U' t dined, I hear," said she, very coldly. 
 
 " I was afraid "ou wtre gone altogether," said the doc- 
 tor : then turning to Pose, " He told me he was going 
 this evening. You had better stay quiet another day or 
 two," added he, kindly. 
 
 " Do you think so ? " said Camille, timidly. 
 
 He stayed upon these terms. And now he began to 
 examine himself. " Did I wish him dead ? I hope I 
 never formed such a thought ! I don't remember ever 
 wishing him dead." And he went twice a day to that 
 place by the stream, and thought very solemnly what a 
 terrible thing ungoverned passion is; and repented — 
 not eloquently, but silently, sincerely.
 
 WHITE LIES. 197 
 
 But soon his impatient spirit began to torment itself 
 again. Wiiy did Josephine shun him now ? Ah ! she 
 loved Eaynal now that he was dead. "Women love the 
 thing they have lost ; so he had heard say. In that case, 
 the very sight of him would of course be odious to her : 
 he could understand that. The absolute, unreasoning 
 faith he once had in her had been so rudely shaken by 
 her marriage with Eaynal, that now he could only believe 
 just so much as he saw, and he saw that she shunned him. 
 
 He became moody, sad, and disconsolate : and as Joseph- 
 ine shunned him, so he avoided all the others, and 
 wandered for hours by himself, perplexed and miserable. 
 After awhile, he became consciouo that he was under a 
 sort of surveillance. Rose de Beaurepaire, who had been 
 so kind to him when he was confined to his own room, 
 but had taken little notice of him since he came down, 
 now resumed her care of him, and evidently made it her 
 business to keep up his heart. She used to meet him 
 out walking in a mysterious way, and in short, be always 
 falling in with him and trying to cheer him up : with 
 tolerable success. 
 
 Such was the state of affairs when the party was 
 swelled and matters complicated by the arrival of one 
 we have lost sight of. 
 
 Edouard Riviere retarded his cure by an impatient 
 spirit : but he got well at last, and his uncle drove him 
 in the cabriolet to his own quarters. The news of the 
 house had been told him by letter, but, of course, in so 
 vague and general a way that, thinking he knew all, in 
 reality he knew nothing. 
 
 Josephine had married Raynal. The marriage was 
 sudden, but no doubt there was an attachment : he had 
 some reason to believe in sudden attachments. Colonel 
 Dujardin, an old acquaintance, liad come back to France 
 wounded, and the good doctor had undertaken his cure ;
 
 198 WHITE LIES. 
 
 tliis incident appeared neither strange nor any way im- 
 portant. What affected him most deejjly was the death 
 of Raynal, his personal friend and patron. But when 
 his tyrants, as he called the surgeon and his uncle, gave 
 him leave to go home, all feelings were overpowered by 
 liis great joy at the prospect of seeing Rose. He walked 
 over to Beaurepaire, his arm in a sling, his heart beating. 
 He was coming to receive the reward of all he had done, 
 and all he had attempted. " I will surprise them," 
 thought he. " I will see her face when I come in at the 
 door : oh, happy hour ! this pays for all." He entered 
 the house without announcing himself ; he went softly 
 up to the saloon ; t his great disappointment he found 
 no one but the baroness - she received him kindly, but 
 not with the warmth he expected. She was absorbed in 
 her new grief. He asked timidly after her daughters. 
 " Madame Raynal bears up, for the sake of others. You 
 will not, however, see her : she keeps her room. My 
 daughter Rose is taking a walk, I believe." After some 
 polite inquiries, and sympathy with his accident, the 
 baroness retired to indulge her grief, and Edouard thus 
 liberated ran in search of his beloved. 
 
 He met her at the gate of the Pleasaunce, but not alone. 
 She was walking with an officer, a handsome, command- 
 ing, haughty, brilliant officer. She was walking by his 
 side, talking earnestly to him. 
 
 An arrow of ice shot through young Riviere ; and then 
 came a feeling of death at his heart, a new symptom 
 in his young life. 
 
 The next moment Rose caught sight of him. She 
 flushed all over and uttered a little exclamation, and she 
 bounded towards him like a little antelope, and put out 
 both her hands at once. He could only give her one. 
 
 "Ah !" she cried with an accent of heavenly pity, and 
 took his hand with both hers.
 
 WHITE LIES. 199 
 
 This was like the meridian sun coming suddenly on a 
 cold place. He was all happiness. 
 
 When Josephine heard he was come her eye flashed, 
 and she said quickly, " I will come down to welcome him 
 — dear Edouard I " 
 
 The sisters looked at one another. Josephine blushed. 
 Kose smiled and kissed her. She colored higher still, 
 and said, " No, she was ashamed to go down." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 " Look at my face." 
 
 " I see nothing wrong with it, except that it eclipses 
 other people's, and I have long forgiven you that." 
 
 " Oh, yes, dear Rose : look what a color it has, and a 
 fortnight ago it was pale as ashes." 
 
 " Never mind ; do you expect me to regret that ? " 
 
 " Rose, I am a very bad woman." 
 
 " Are you, dear ? then hook this for me." 
 
 " Yes, love. But I sometimes think you would forgive 
 me if you knew how hard I pray to be better. Rose, I 
 do try so to be as unhappy as I ought ; but I can't, I 
 can't. My cold heart seems as dead to unhappiness as 
 once it was to happiness. Am I a heartless woman after 
 all?" 
 
 " Not altogether," said Rose dryly. " Fasten my 
 collar, dear, and don't torment yourself. You have suf- 
 fered much and nobly. It was Heaven's will : you 
 bowed to it. It was not Heaven's will that you should 
 be blighted altogether. Bow in this, too, to Heaven's 
 will : take things as they come, and do cease to try and 
 reconcile feelings that are too opposite to live together." 
 
 " All ! these are such comfortable words, Rose ; but 
 mamma will see this dreadful color in my cheek, and 
 what can I say to her ? " 
 
 " Ten to one it will not be observed ; and if it should, 
 I will say it is the excitement of seeing Edouard. Leave 
 all to me."
 
 200 WHITE LIES. 
 
 Josephine greeted Edouard most affectionately, drew 
 from him his whole history, and petted him and sympa- 
 thized with him deliciously, and made him the hero of 
 the evening. Camille, who was not naturally of a jeal- 
 ous temper, bore this very well at first, but at last he 
 looked so bitter at her neglect of him, that Rose took 
 him aside to soothe him. Edouard, missing the auditor 
 he most valued, and seeing her in secret conference with 
 the brilliant colonel, felt a return of the jealous pangs 
 that had seized him at first sight of the man ; and so 
 they played at cross purposes. 
 
 At another period of the evening the conversation 
 became more general ; and Edouard took a dislike to 
 Colonel Dujardin. A young man of twenty-eight nearly 
 always looks on a boy of twenty-one with the air of a 
 superior, and this assumption, not being an ill-natured 
 one, is apt to be so easy and so undefined that the 
 younger hardly knows how to resent or to resist it. But 
 Edouard was a little vain as we know ; and the Colonel 
 jarred him terribly. His quick haughty eye jarred him. 
 His regimentals jarred him : they fitted like a glove. 
 His mustache and his manner jarred him, and, worst of 
 all, his cool familiarity with Rose, who seemed to court 
 him rather than be courted by him. He put this act of 
 Rose's to the colonel's account, according to the custom 
 of lovers, and revenged himself in a small way by tell- 
 ing Josephine in her ear " that the colonel produced on 
 his mind the effect of an intolerable puppy." 
 
 Josephine colored up and looked at him with a moment- 
 ary surprise. She said quietly, " Military men do give 
 themselves some airs, but he is very amiable at bottom. 
 You must make a better acquaintance with him, and 
 then he will reveal to you his nobler qualities." — " Oh ! 
 I have no particular desire," sneered unlucky Edouard. 
 Sweet as Josephine was, this was too much for her : she
 
 WHITE LIES. 201 
 
 said nothing ; but she quietly turned Edouard over to 
 Aubertin, and joined Rose, and under cover of her had 
 a sweet timid chat with her falsely accused. 
 
 This occupied the two so entirely that Edouard was 
 neglected. This hurt his foible, and seemed to be so un- 
 kind on the very first day of his return that he made his 
 adieus to the baroness, and marched off in dudgeon 
 unobserved. 
 
 Rose missed him first, but said nothing. 
 
 When Josephine saw he was gone, she uttered a little 
 exclamation, and looked at Rose. Rose put on a mien 
 of haughty indifference, but the water was in her eyes. 
 
 Josephine looked sorrowful. 
 
 When they talked over everything together at night, 
 she reproached herself. " We behaved ill to poor Edou- 
 ard : we neglected him." 
 
 " He is a little cross, ill-tempered fellow," said Rose 
 pettishly. 
 
 " Oh, no ! no ! " 
 
 '•' And as vain as a peacock." 
 
 " Has he not some right to be vain in this house ? " 
 
 " Yes, — no. I am very angi*y with him. I won't 
 hear a word in his favor," said Rose pouting : then she 
 gave his defender a kiss. " Yes, dear," said Josephine, 
 answering the kiss, and ignoring the words, "he is a 
 dear ; and he is not cross, nor so very vain, poor boy ! 
 now don't you see what it was ? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 " Yes, you do, you little cunning thing : you are too 
 shrewd not to see everything." 
 
 "No, indeed, Josephine; do tell me, don't keep me 
 waiting : I can't bear that." 
 
 " Well, then — jealous ! A little." 
 
 " Jealous ? Oh, what fun ! Of Camille ? Ha ! ha 1 
 Little sroose ! "
 
 202 WHITE LIES. 
 
 " And," said Jose[)liine very seriously, "I almost think 
 lie would be jealous of any one that occupied your atten- 
 tion. I watched him more or less all the evening." 
 
 " All the better. I'll torment my lord." 
 
 " Heaven forbid you should be so cruel." 
 
 " Oh ! I will not make him unhappy, but I'll tease him 
 a little ; it is not in nature to abstain." 
 
 This foible detected in her lover, Kose was very gay 
 at the prospect of amusement it afforded her. 
 
 And I think I have many readers who at this moment 
 are awaiting unmixed enjoyment and hilarity from the 
 same source. 
 
 I wish them joy of their prospect. 
 
 Edouard called the next day : he wore a gloomy air. 
 Rose met this with a particularly cheerful one ; on this, 
 Edouard's face cleared up, and he was himself again; 
 agreeable as this was, Rose felt a little disappointed. 
 " I am afraid he is not very jealous after all," thought 
 she. 
 
 Josephine left her room this day and mingled once 
 more with the family. The bare sight of her was 
 enough for Camille at first, but after awhile he wanted 
 more. He wanted to be often alone with her; but sev- 
 eral causes co-operated to make her shy of giving him 
 many such opportunities : first, her natural delicacy, 
 coupled with her habit of self-denial ; then her fear of 
 shocking her mother, and lastly her fear of her own 
 heart, and of Camille, whose power over her she knew. 
 For Camille, when he did get a sweet word alone with 
 her, seemed to forget everything except that she was his 
 betrothed, and that he had come back alive to marry 
 her. He spoke to her of his love with an ardor and an 
 urgency that made her thrill with happiness, but at the 
 same time shrink with a certain fear and self-reproach. 
 Possessed with a feeling no stronger than hers, but
 
 WHITE LIES. 203 
 
 single, he did not compreliend the tumult, the trouble, 
 the daily contest in her heart. The wind seemed to 
 him to be always changing, and hot and cold the same 
 hour. Since he did not even see that she was acting in 
 hourly fear of her mother's eye, he was little likely to 
 penetrate her more hidden sentiments ; and then he had 
 not touched her key-note, — self-denial. 
 
 Women are self-denying and uncandid. Men are 
 self-indulgent and outspoken. 
 
 And this is the key to a thousand double misunder- 
 standings ; for believe me, good women are just as stupid 
 in misunderstanding men as honest men are in misun- 
 derstanding women. 
 
 To Camille, Josephine's fluctuations, joys, tremors, 
 love, terror, modesty, seemed one grand total, caprice. 
 The component parts of it he saw not ; and her caprice 
 tortured him almost to madness. Too penitent to give 
 way again to violent passion, he gently fretted. His 
 health retrograded and his temper began to sour. The 
 eye of timid love that watched him with maternal anx- 
 iety from under its long lashes saw this with dismay, 
 and Rose, who looked into her sister's bosom, devoted 
 herself once more to soothe him without compromising 
 Josephine's delicac}'. Matters were not so bad but what 
 a fine sprightly girl like Eose could cheer up a dejected 
 but manly colonel ; and Rose was generally successful. 
 
 But then, unfortunately, this led to a fresh mystifi- 
 cation. Riviere's natural jealousy revived, and found 
 constant food in the attention Rose paid Camille, a 
 brilliant colonel living in the house while he, poor 
 Avretch, lived in lodgings. The false position of all the 
 parties brought about some singular turns. I give from 
 their number one that forms a link, though a small one, 
 in my narrative. 
 
 One day Edouard came to tell Rose she was making
 
 204 WHITE LIES. 
 
 him unhappy ; he had her alone in tlie Pleasaunce ; she 
 received him with a radiant smile, and they had a charm- 
 ing talk, — a talk all about him: what the family owed 
 him, etc. 
 
 On this, his late jealousy and sense of injury seemed 
 a thing of three years ago, and never to return. So hard 
 it is for the loving heart to resist its sun. 
 
 Jaciutha came with a message from the colonel : 
 " Would it be agreeable to Mademoiselle Rose to walk 
 with him at the usual hour ? " 
 
 " Certainly," said Rose. 
 
 As Jacintha was retiring Edouard called to her to stop 
 a minute. 
 
 Then, turning to Rose, he begged her very cere- 
 moniously to reconsider that determination. 
 
 " What determination ? " 
 
 " To sacrifice me to this Colonel Dujardin." Still 
 politely, only a little grimly. 
 
 Rose opened her eyes. " Are you mad ? " inquired 
 she with quiet haiite^ir. 
 
 " Neither mad nor a fool," was the reply. " I love you 
 too well to share your regard with any one, upon any 
 terms ; least of all upon these, that there is to be a man 
 in the world at whose beck and call you are to be, and at 
 whose orders you are to break off an interview with me. 
 Perdition ! " 
 
 " Dear Edouard, what folly ! Can you suspect me of 
 discourtesy, as well as of — I know not what. Colonel 
 Dujardin will join us, that is all, and we shall take a 
 little walk with him." 
 
 "Not I. I decline the intrusion; you are engaged 
 with me, and I have things to say to you that are not fit 
 for that puppy to hear. So choose between me and him, 
 and choose forever." 
 
 Rose colored. " I should be very sorry to choose
 
 WHITE LIES. 205 
 
 either of you forever ; but for this afternoon I choose 
 you." 
 
 " Oh, thank you — my whole life shall prove my grati- 
 tude for this preference." 
 
 Rose beckoned Jacintha, and sent her with an excuse 
 to Colonel Dujardin. She then turned with an air of 
 mock submission to Edouard. " I am at monsieur's 
 orders^ 
 
 Then this unhappy novice, being naturally good- 
 natured, thanked her again and again for her condescen- 
 sion in setting his heart at rest. He proposed a walk, 
 since his interference had lost her one. She yielded a 
 cold assent. This vexed him, but he took it for gi'anted 
 it would wear off before the end of the walk. Edouard's 
 heart bounded, but he loved her too sincerely to be 
 happy unless he could see her happy too ; the malicious 
 thing saw this, or perhaps knew it by instinct, and by 
 means of this good feeling of his she revenged herself 
 for his tyranny. She tortured him as only a woman can 
 torture, and as even she can torture only a worthy man, 
 and one who loves her. In the course of that short walk 
 this inexperienced girl, strong in the instincts and 
 inborn arts of her sex, drove pins and needles, needles 
 and pins, of all sorts and sizes, through her lover's heart. 
 
 She was everything by turns, except kind, and nothing 
 for long together. She was peevish, she was ostenta- 
 tiously patient and submissive, she was inattentive to 
 her companion and seemingly wrapped up in contempla- 
 tion of absent things and persons, the colonel to wit ; 
 she was dogged, repulsive, and cold ; and she never was 
 herself a single moment. They returned to the gate of 
 the Pleasaunce. " Well, mademoiselle," said Riviere 
 very sadly, "that interloper might as well have been 
 with us." 
 
 "Of course he might, and you would have lost nothing
 
 206 WHITE LIES. 
 
 by permitting me to be courteous to a guest and an 
 invalid. If you had not played the tyrant, and taken 
 the matter into your own hands, I should have found 
 means to soothe your jeal — I mean your vanity ; but 
 you preferred to have your own way. Well, you have 
 had it." 
 
 " Yes, mademoiselle, you have given me a lesson ; you 
 have shown me how idle it is to attempt to force a young 
 lady's inclinations in anything." 
 
 He bade her good-day, and went away sorrowful. 
 
 She cut Camille dead for the rest of the day. 
 
 Next morning, early, Edouard called expressly to see 
 her. '' Mademoiselle Rose," said he, humbly, " I called 
 to apologize for the ungentlemanly tone of my remon- 
 strances yesterday." 
 
 '' Fiddle-dee," said Rose. " Don't do it again ; that is 
 the best apology." 
 
 " I am not likely to offend so again," said he sadly. " I 
 am going away. I am sorry to say I am promoted ; my 
 new post is ten leagues. He will have it all his ouui ^cay 
 now. But perhaps it is best. Were I to stay here, I 
 foresee you would soon lose whatever friendly feeling 
 you have for me," 
 
 " Am I so changeable ? I am not considered so," 
 remonstrated Rose, gently. 
 
 Riviere explained ; " I. am not vain," said he, with 
 that self-knowledge which is so general an attribute of 
 human beings ; " no man less so, nor am I jealous ; but 
 I respect myself, and I could never be content to share 
 your time and your regard with Colonel Dujardin, nor 
 with a much better man. See now ; he has made me 
 arrogant. Was I ever so before ? " 
 
 •' No ! no ! no ! and I forgive you now, my poor 
 Edouard." 
 
 " He has made you cold as ice to me."
 
 WHITE LIES. 207 
 
 "No! that was my own wickedness and spitefulness." 
 
 " Wickedness, spitefulness ! they are not in your 
 nature. It is all that wretch's doing." 
 
 Rose sighed, but she said nothing ; for she saw that 
 to excuse Camilla would only make the jealous one more 
 bitter against him. 
 
 " Will you deign to write to me at my new post ? once 
 a month ? in answer to ray letters ? " 
 
 " Yes, dear. But you will ride over sometimes to see 
 us." 
 
 " Oh, yes ; but for some little time I shall not be able. 
 The duties of a new post." 
 
 " Perhaps in a month — a fortnight ? " 
 
 " Sooner perhaps ; the moment I hear that man is out 
 of the house." 
 
 Edouard went away, dogged and sad ; Rose shut her- 
 self up in her room and had a good cry. In the after- 
 noon Josephine came and remonstrated with her. " You 
 have not walked with him at all to-day." 
 
 " No ; you must pet him yourself for once. I hate the 
 sight of him ; it has made mischief between Edouard 
 and me, my being so attentive to him. Edouard is 
 jealous, and I cannot wonder. After all, what right 
 have I to mystify him who honors me with his affec- 
 tion ? " 
 
 Then, being pressed with questions by Josephine, she 
 related to her all that had passed between Edouard and 
 her, word for word. 
 
 " Poor Camille ! " sighed Josephine the just. 
 
 " Oh, dear, yes ! poor Camille ! who has the power to 
 make us all miserable, and who does it, and will go on 
 doing it until he is happy himself." 
 
 "Ah ! would to Heaven I could make him as happy as 
 he deserves to be." 
 
 " You could easily make him much happier than that 
 And why not do it ? "
 
 208 WHITE LIES. 
 
 "0 Hose," said Josephine, shocked, "how can you 
 advise me so ? " 
 
 She then asked her if she thought it possible that 
 Camille could be ignorant of her heart. 
 
 "Josephine," replied Rose, angrily, "these men are 
 absurd : they believe only what they see, I have done 
 what I can for you and Camille, but it is useless. Would 
 you have him believe you love him, you must yourself be 
 kind to him ; and it would be a charitable action : you 
 would make four unhappy people happy, or, at least, put 
 them on the road; now they are off the road, and, by 
 what I have seen to-day, I think, if we go on so much 
 longer, it will be too late to try to return. Come, 
 Josephine, for my sake ! Let me go and tell him you 
 will consent — to all our happinesses. There, the crime 
 is mine." And she ran off in spite of Josephine's faint 
 and hypocritical entreaties. She returns the next minute 
 looking all aghast. " It is too late," said she. " He is 
 going away. I am sure he is, for he is packing up his 
 things to go. I spied through the old place and saw 
 him. He was sighing like a furnace as he strapped his 
 portmanteau. I hate him, of course, but I was sorry for 
 him. I could not help being. He sighed so all the 
 time, piteously." 
 
 Josephine turned pale, and lifted her hands in sur- 
 prise and dismay. 
 
 " Depend on it, Josephine, we are wrong," said Rose, 
 firmly : " these wretches will not stand our nonsense 
 above a certain time : they are not such fools. We are 
 mismanaging: one gone, the other going; both losing 
 faith in us." 
 
 Josephine's color returned to her cheek, and then 
 mounted high. Presently she smiled, a smile full of 
 conscious power and furtive complacency, and said 
 quietly, "He will not go."
 
 WHITE LIES. 209 
 
 Rose was pleased, but not surprised, to hear her sister 
 speak so confidently, for she knew her power ovei 
 Camille. "That is right," said she, "go to him, and say- 
 two honest words : ' I bid you stay.' " 
 
 "0 Rose! no!" 
 
 " Poltroon ! You know he would go down on his 
 knees, and stay directly." 
 
 "No: I should blush all my life before you and him. 
 I could not. I should let him go sooner, almost. Oh, 
 no ! I will never ask a man to stay who wishes to leave 
 me. But just you go to him, and say jNIadame Raynal is 
 going to take a little walk : will he do her the honor to 
 be her companion ? Not a word more, if you love me." 
 
 " I'll go. Hypocrite ! " 
 
 Josephine received Camille with a bright smile. She 
 seemed in unusually good spirits, and overflowing with 
 kindness and innocent affection. On this his high 
 gloomy brow relaxed, and all his prospects brightened 
 as by magic. Then she communicated to him a number 
 of little plans for next week and the week after. Among 
 the rest he was to go with her and Rose to Frejus. 
 "Such a sweet place : I want to show it you. You will 
 come ? " 
 
 He hesitated a single moment : a moment of intense 
 anxiety to the smiling Josephine. 
 
 " Yes ! he would come : it was a great temptation, he 
 saw so little of her." 
 
 " Well, you will see more of me now." 
 
 " Shall I see you every day — alone, I mean ? " 
 
 "Oh, yes, if you wish it," replied Josephine, in an 
 off-hand, indifferent way. 
 
 He seized her hand and devoured it with kisses. 
 
 "Foolish thing!" murmured she, looking down on 
 hira with ineffable tenderness. "Should I not be 
 14
 
 210 WHITE LIES. 
 
 always with you if 1 consulted my inclination? — let 
 me go." 
 
 " No ! consult your inclination a little longer." 
 
 " Must I ? " 
 
 " Yes ; that shall be your punishment." 
 
 *' For what ? What have I done ? " asked she with an 
 air of great innocence. 
 
 " You have made me happy, me who adore you," was 
 the evasive reply. 
 
 Josephine came in from her walk with a high color and 
 beaming eyes, and screamed, " Run, Rose ! " 
 
 On this concise, and to us not very clear instruction, 
 Rose slipped up the secret stair. She saw Camille come 
 in and gravely unpack his little portmanteau, and dispose 
 his things in the drawers with soldier-like neatness, and 
 hum an agreeable march. She came and told Josephine. 
 
 " Ah ! " said Josephine with a little sigh of pleasure, 
 and a gentle triumph in her eyes. 
 
 She had not only got her desire, but had arrived at it 
 her way, — woman's way, round about. 
 
 This adroit benevolence led to more than she bargained 
 for. She and Camille were now together every day : and 
 their hearts, being under restraint in public, melted 
 together all the more in their stolen interviews. 
 
 At the third delicious interview the modest Camille 
 begged Josephine to be his wife directly. 
 
 Have you noticed those half tame deer that come up 
 to you in a park so lovingly, with great tender eyes, and, 
 being now almost within reach, stop short, and with 
 bodies fixed like statues on pedestals, crane out their 
 graceful necks for sugar, or bread, or a chestnut, or a 
 pocket-handkerchief ? Do but offer to put your hand 
 upon them, away they bound that moment twenty yards, 
 and then stand quite still, and look at your hand and 
 you, with great inquiring, suspicious, tender eyes.
 
 WHITE LIES. 211 
 
 So Josephine started at Camille's audacious proposal. 
 "Never mention such a thing to me again: or — or, I 
 will not walk with you any more : " then she thrilled 
 with pleasure at the obnoxious idea, "she Camille's wife!" 
 and colored all over — with rage, Camille thought. He 
 promised submissively not to renew the topic : no more 
 he did till next day. Josephine had spent nearly the 
 whole interval in thinking of it ; so she was prepared to 
 put him down by calm reasons. She proceeded to do so, 
 gently, but firmly. 
 
 Lo and behold ! what does he do, but meets her with 
 just as many reasons, and just as calm ones: and urges 
 them gently, but firmly. 
 
 Heaven had been very kind to them : why should 
 they be unkind to themselves ? They had had a great 
 escape : why not accept the happiness, as, being persons 
 of honor, they had accepted the misery ? with many 
 other arguments, differing in other things, but agreeing 
 in this, that they were all sober, grave, and full of 
 common-sense. 
 
 Finding him not defenceless on the score of reason, 
 she shifted her ground and appealed to his delicacy. On 
 this he appealed to her love, and then calm reason was 
 jostled off the field, and passion and sentiment battled 
 in her place. 
 
 In these contests day by day renewed, Camille had 
 many advantages. 
 
 Rose, though she did not like him, had now declared 
 on his side. She refused to show him the least atten- 
 tion. This threw him on Josephine : and when Josephine 
 begged her to help reduce Camille to reason, lier answer 
 would be, — 
 
 " Hypocrite ! " with a kiss : or else she would say, with 
 a half comic petulance, " No ! no ! I am on his side. 
 Give him his own way, or he will make us all foui 
 miserable."
 
 212 WHITE LIES. 
 
 Thus Josephine's ally went over to the enemy. 
 
 And then this coy young lady's very power of resist- 
 ance began to give way. She had now battled for months 
 against her own heart : first for her mother ; then, in a 
 far more terrible conflict for Raynal, for honor and 
 purity ; and of late she had been battling, still against 
 her own heart, for delicacy, for etiquette, things very 
 dear to her, but not so great, holy, and sustaining as 
 honor and charity that were her very household gods : 
 and so, just when the motives of resistance were lowered, 
 the length of the resistance began to wear her out. 
 
 For nothing is so hard to her sex as a long steady 
 struggle. In matters physical, this is the thing the 
 muscles of the fair cannot stand ; in matters intellectual 
 and moral, the long strain it is that beats them dead. 
 
 Do not look for a Bacona, a Newtona, a Handella, a 
 Victoria Huga. 
 
 Some American ladies tell us education has stopped 
 the growth of these. 
 
 No ! mesdames. These are not in nature. 
 
 They can bubble letters in ten minutes that you could 
 no more deliver to order in ten days than a river can 
 play like a fountain. They can sparkle gems of stories : 
 they can flash little diamonds of poems. The entire sex 
 has never produced one opera nor one epic that mankind 
 could tolerate : and why ? these come by long, high- 
 strung labor. But, weak as they are in the long run of 
 everything but the affections (and there giants), they 
 are all overpowering while their gallop lasts. Fragilla 
 shall dance any two of you flat on the floor before four 
 o'clock, and then dance on till the peep of day. 
 
 Only you trundle off to your business as usual, and 
 could dance again the next night, and so on through 
 countless ages. 
 
 She who danced you into nothing is in bed, a human 
 jelly tipped with headache.
 
 WHITE LIES. 213 
 
 What did Josephine say to Rose one day ? " I am 
 tired of saying ' No ! no ! no ! no ! no ! ' forever and ever 
 to him I love." 
 
 But this was not all. She was not free from self- 
 reproach. Camille's faith in her had stood firm. Hers 
 in him had not. She had wronged him, first by believ- 
 ing him false, then by marrying another. One day she 
 asked his pardon for this. He replied that he had for- 
 given that ; but would she be good enough to make him 
 forget it ? 
 
 " I wish I could." 
 
 " You can. Marry me : then your relation to that man 
 will seem but a hideous dream. I shall be able to say, 
 looking at you, my wife, ' I was faithful : I suffered 
 something for her ; I came home : she loved me still ; 
 the proof is, she was my wife within three months of 
 my return.' " 
 
 When he said that to her in the Pleasaunce, if there 
 had been a priest at hand — . In a word, Josephine longed 
 to show him her love, yet wished not to shock her mother, 
 nor offend her own sense of delicacy ; but Camille cared 
 for nothing but his love. To sacrifice love and happi- 
 ness, even for a time, to etiquette, seemed to him to be 
 trifling with the substance of great things for the shadow 
 of petty things ; and he said so : sometimes sadly, some- 
 times almost bitterly. 
 
 So Josephine was a beleagured fortress, attacked with 
 one will, and defended by troops, one-third of which were 
 hot on the side of the besiegers. 
 
 When singleness attacks division, you know the result 
 beforehand. Why then should I spin words ? I will 
 not trace so ill-matched a contest step by step, sentence 
 by sentence : let me rather hasten to relate the one 
 peculiarity that arose out of this trite contest, where, 
 under the names of Camille and Josephine, the two
 
 214 WHITE LIES. 
 
 great sexes may be seen acting the whole world-wide 
 distich, — 
 
 " It's a man's part to try, 
 And a woman's to deny [for a while?]." 
 
 Finding her own resolutions oozing away, Josephine 
 caught at another person. 
 
 She said to Camille before Rose, — 
 
 " Even if I could bring myself to snatch at happiness 
 in this indelicate way — scarce a month after, oh ! " And 
 there ended the lady's sentence. In the absence of a 
 legitimate full stop, she put one hand before her lovely 
 face to hide it, and so no more. But some two minutes 
 after she delivered the rest in the form and with the 
 tone of a distinct remark, " No : my mother would never 
 consent." 
 
 " Yes, she would if you could be brought to implore 
 her as earnestly as I implore you." 
 
 "Now would she ? " asked Josephine, turning quickly 
 to her sister. 
 
 "No, never. Our mother would look with horror on 
 such a proposal. A daughter of hers to marry within a 
 twelvemonth of her widowhood ! " 
 
 " There, you see, Camille." 
 
 " And, besides, she loved Raynal so ; she has not for- 
 gotten him as we have, almost." 
 
 " Ungrateful creature that I am ! " sighed Josephine! 
 
 " She mourns for him every day. Often I see her eyes 
 suddenly fill ; that is for him. Josephine's influence with 
 mamma is very great : it is double mine ; but if we all 
 went on our knees to her, the doctor and all, she would 
 never consent." 
 
 " There you see, Camille : and I could not defy my 
 mother, even for you." 
 
 Camille sighed.
 
 "WHITE LIES. 215 
 
 "I see everything is against me, even my love: for 
 that love is too much akin to veneration to propose to 
 you a clandestine marriage."' 
 
 " Oh, thank you ! bless you for respecting as well as 
 loving me, dear Camille," said Josephine. 
 
 These words, uttered with gentle warmth, were some 
 consolation to Camille, and confirmed him, as they were 
 intended to do, in the above good resolution. He smiled. 
 
 " Maladroit ! " muttered Rose. 
 
 " Why maladroit ? " asked Camille, opening his eyes. 
 
 " Let us talk of something else," replied Rose, coolly. 
 
 Camille turned red. He understood that he had done 
 something very stupid, but he could not conceive what. 
 He looked from one sister to the other alternately. Rose 
 was smiling ironically, Josephine had her eyes bent 
 demurely on a handkerchief she was embroidering. 
 
 That evening Camille drew Rose aside, and asked for 
 an explanation of her " maladroit." 
 
 " So it was," replied Rose, sharply. 
 
 But as this did not make the matter quite clear, Camille 
 begged a little further explanation. 
 
 " Was it your part to make difficulties ? " 
 
 "No, indeed." 
 
 " Was it for you to tell her a secret marriage would 
 not be delicate ? Do you think she will be behind you 
 in delicacy ? or that a love without respect will satisfy 
 her ? yet you must go and tell her you respected her too 
 much to ask her to marry you secretly. In other words, 
 situated as she is, you asked her not to marry you at 
 all : she consented to that directly ; what else could you 
 expect ? " 
 
 ^^ Maladroit ! indeed," said Camille, "but I would not 
 have said it, only I thought " — 
 
 "You thought nothing would induce her to marry 
 secretly, so you said to yourself, *I will assume a virtue;
 
 216 WHITE LIES. 
 
 I will do a bit of cheap self-denial : decline to the sound 
 of trumpets what anotlier will be sure to deny me if I 
 don't — ha! ha!' — well, for your comfort, I am Vjy no 
 means so sure she might not have been brought to do 
 anything for you, except openly defy mamma : but now 
 of course " — 
 
 And here this young lady's sentence ended : for the 
 sisters, unlike in most, things were one in grammar. 
 
 Camille was so disconcerted and sad at what he had 
 done, that Rose began to pity him : so she rallied him a 
 little longer in spite of her pity : and then all of a sudden 
 gave him her hand, and said she would try and repair 
 the mischief. 
 
 He began to smother her hand with kisses. 
 
 " Oh ! " said she, " I don't deserve all that : I have a 
 motive of my own ; let me alone, child, do. Your un- 
 lucky speech will be quoted to me a dozen times. Never 
 mind." 
 
 Rose went and bribed Josephine to consent. 
 
 " Come, mamma shall not know, and as for you, you 
 shall scarcely move in the matter ; only do not oppose 
 me very violently, and all will be well." 
 
 "Ah, Rose!" said Josephine; "it is delightful — 
 terrible, I mean — to have a little creature about one 
 that reads one like this. What shall I do ? What shall 
 I do ? " 
 
 " Why, do the best you can under all the circumstances. 
 His wound is healed, you know ; he must go back to the 
 army ; j^ou have both suffered to the limits of mortal 
 endurance. Is he to go away unhappy, in any doubt 
 of your affection ? and you to remain behind with the 
 misery of self-reproach added to the desolation of 
 absence ? — think." 
 
 "It is cruel. But to deceive my mother !" 
 
 " Do not say deceive our mother ; that is such a 
 shocking phrase."
 
 WHITE LIES. 217 
 
 .Rose then reminded Josephine that their confessor 
 had told them a wise reticence was not the same thing 
 as a moral deceit. She reminded her, too, how often 
 they had acted on his advice and always with good 
 effect ; how many anxieties and worries they had saved 
 their mother by reticence. Josephine assented warmly 
 to this. 
 
 Was there not some reason to think they had saved 
 their mother's very life by these reticences ? Josephine 
 assented. "And, Josephine, you are of age; you are 
 your own mistress ; you have a right to marry whom you 
 please : and, sooner or later, you will certainly marry 
 Camille. 1 doubt whether even our mother could prevail 
 on you to refuse him altogether. So it is but a question 
 of time, and of giving our mother pain, or sparing her 
 pain. Dear mamma is old ; she is prejudiced. Why 
 shock her prejudices ? She could not be brought to 
 understand the case : these things never happened in 
 her day. Everything seems to have gone by rule then. 
 Let us do nothing to worry her for the short time she 
 has to live. Let us take a course between pain to her 
 and cruelty to you and Camille." 
 
 These arguments went far to convince Josephine : for 
 her own heart supported them. She went from her solid 
 objections to untenable ones — a great point gained. 
 She urged the difficulty, the impossibility of a secret 
 marriage. 
 
 Camille burst in here : he undertook at once to over- 
 come these imaginary difficulties. " They could be mar- 
 ried at a distance." 
 
 "You will find no priest who will consent to do such a 
 Avicked thing as marry us without my mother's knowl- 
 edge," objected Josephine. 
 
 "Oh! as to that," said Rose, "you know the mayoi 
 marries people nowadays."
 
 218 WHITE LIES. 
 
 " I will not be married again without a priest," said 
 Josephine, sharply. 
 
 " Nor I," said Camille. " I know a mayor who will do 
 the civil forms for me, and a priest who will marry me 
 in the sight of Heaven, and both will keep it secret for 
 love of me till it shall please Josephine to throw off this 
 disguise." 
 
 " Who is the priest ? " inquired Josephine, keenly. 
 
 "An old cure : he lives near Frejus : he was my tutor, 
 and the mayor is the mayor of Frejus, also an old friend 
 of mine." 
 
 " But what on earth will you say to them ? " 
 
 " That is my affair : I must give them some reasons 
 which compel me to keep my marriage secret. Oh ! I 
 shall have to tell them some fibs, of course." 
 
 " There, I thought so ! I will not have you telling 
 fibs ; it lowers you." 
 
 " Of course it does ; but you can't have secrecy without 
 a fib or two." 
 
 "Fibs that will injure no one," said Rose, majestically. 
 
 From this day Camille began to act as well as to talk. 
 He bought a light caleche and a powerful horse, and 
 elected factotum Dard his groom. Camille rode over to 
 Frejus and told a made-up story to the old cure and the 
 mayor, and these his old friends believed every word 
 he said, and readily promised their services and strict 
 secrecy. 
 
 He told the young ladies what he had done. 
 
 Rose approved. Josephine shook her head, and seeing 
 matters going as her heart desired and her conscience 
 did not quite approve, she suddenly affected to be next 
 to nobody in the business — to be resigned, passive, and 
 disposed of to her surprise by Queen Rose and King 
 Camille, without herself taking any actual part in their 
 proceedings.
 
 WHITE LIES. 219 
 
 At last the great day arrived on which Camille and 
 Josephine were to be married at Frejus. 
 
 Tlie mayor awaited them at eleven o'clock. The cure 
 at twelve. The family had been duly prepared for this 
 excursion by several smaller ones. 
 
 Rose announced their intention over night ; a part 
 of it. 
 
 "Mamma," said she, blushing a little, "Colonel 
 Dujardin is good enough to take us to Frejus to- 
 morrow. It is a long way, and we must breakfast 
 early or we shall not be back to dinner." 
 
 " Do so, my child. I hope you will have a fine day : 
 and mind you take plenty of wraps with you in case of 
 a shower." 
 
 At seven o'clock the next morning Camille and the 
 two ladies took a hasty cup of coffee together instead of 
 breakfast, and then Dard brought the caleche round. 
 
 The ladies got in, and Camille had just taken the reins 
 in his hand, when Jacintha screamed to him from the 
 hall, " Wait a moment, colonel, wait a moment ! The 
 doctor ! don't go without the doctor ! " And the next 
 moment Dr. Aubertin appeared with his cloak on his 
 arm, and, saluting the ladies politely, seated himself 
 quietly in the vehicle before the party had recovered 
 their surprise. 
 
 The ladies managed to keep their countenances, but 
 Dujardin's discomfiture was evident. 
 
 He looked piteously at Josephine, and then asked 
 Aubertin if they were to set him down anywhere in 
 particular. 
 
 " Oh, no ; 1 am going with you to Frejus," was the 
 quiet reply. 
 
 Josephine quaked. Camille was devoured with secret 
 rage : he lashed the horse and away they went. 
 
 It was a silent party. The doctor seemed in a reverie.
 
 220 WHITE LIES. 
 
 The others did not know what to think, much less to say. 
 Aubertin sat by Camille's side ; so the latter could hold 
 no secret communication with either lady. 
 
 Now it was not the doctor's habit to rise at this time 
 of the morning : yet there he was, going with them to 
 Frejus uninvited. 
 
 Josephine was in agony ; had their intention trans- 
 pired through some imprudence of Camille ? 
 
 Camille was terribly uneasy. He concluded the secret 
 had transpired through female indiscretion. Then they 
 all tortured themselves as to the old man's intention. 
 But what seemed most likely was, that he was with 
 them to prevent a clandestine marriage by his bare pres- 
 ence, without making a scene and shocking Josephine's 
 pride : and if so, was he there by his own impulse ? 
 No, it was rather to be feared that all this was done by 
 order of the baroness. There was a finesse about it that 
 smacked of a feminine origin, and the baroness was very 
 capable of adopting such a means as this, to spare her 
 own pride and her favorite daughter's. " The clandes- 
 tine " is not all sugar. A more miserable party never 
 Avent along, even to a wedding. 
 
 After waiting a long time for the doctor to declare 
 himself, they turned desperate, and began to chatter all 
 manner of trifles. This had a good effect : it roused 
 Aubertin from his reverie, and presently he gave them 
 the following piece of information : " I told you the other 
 day that a nephew of mine was just dead ; a nephew 
 I had not seen for many years. Well, my friends, I 
 received last night a hasty summons to his funeral." 
 
 "At Frejus?" 
 
 "No, at Paris. The invitation was so pressing, that 
 I was obliged to go. The letter informed me, however, 
 that a diligence passes through Frejus, at eleven o'clock, 
 for Paris. I heard you say you were going to Frejus ;
 
 WHITE LIES. 221 
 
 SO I packed up a few changes of linen, and my MS., my 
 work on entomology, which at my last visit to the capital 
 all the publishers were mad enough to refuse : here it is. 
 Aprojjos, has Jacintha put my bag into the carriage ? " 
 
 On this a fierce foot-search, and the bag was found. 
 Meantime, Josephine leaned back in her seat with a 
 sigh of thankfulness. She was more intent on not being 
 found out than on being married. But Camille, who was 
 more intent on being married than on not being found 
 out, was asking himself, with fury, how on earth they 
 should get rid of Aubertin in time. 
 
 Well, of course, under such circumstances as these the 
 diligence did not come to its time, nor till long after ; 
 and all the while they were waiting for it they were 
 failing their rendezvous with the mayor, and making 
 their rendezvous with the curate impossible. But, above 
 all, there was the risk of one or other of those friends 
 coming up and blurting all out, taking for granted that 
 the doctor must be in their confidence, or why bring 
 him. 
 
 At last, at half-past eleven o'clock, to their great 
 relief, up came the diligence. The doctor prepared to 
 take his place in the interior, when the conductor 
 politely informed him that the vehicle stopped there a 
 quarter of an hour. 
 
 " In that case I will not abandon my friends," said 
 the doctor, affectionately. 
 
 One of his friends gnashed his teeth at this mark of 
 affection. But Josephine smiled sweetly. 
 
 At last he was gone; but it wanted ten minutes only 
 to twelve. 
 
 Josephine inquired amiably, whether it would not be 
 as well to postpone matters to another day — meaning 
 forever. "My ardor is chilled," said she, and showed 
 symptoms of crying at what she had gone through.
 
 222 WHITE LIES. 
 
 Camille replied by lialf dragging them to the mayor. 
 That worthy received them with profound, though some- 
 what demure respect, and invited them to a table sump- 
 tuously served. The ladies, out of politeness, were 
 about to assent, but Camille begged permission to post- 
 pone that part until after the ceremony. 
 
 At last, to their astonishment, they were married. 
 Then, with a promise to return and dine with the mayor, 
 they went to the cure. Lo and behold ! he was gone to 
 visit a sick person. " He had waited a long time for 
 them," said the servant. 
 
 Josephine was much disconcerted, and showed a dispo- 
 sition to cry again. The servant, a good-natured girl, 
 nosed a wedding, and offered to run and bring his rever- 
 ence in a minute. 
 
 Presently there came an old silvery-haired man, who 
 addressed them all as his children. He took them to 
 the church, and blessed their union ; and for the first 
 time Josephine felt as if Heaven consented. They took 
 a gentle farewell of him, and went back to the mayor's 
 to dine ; and at this stage of the business Rose and 
 Josephine at last effected a downright simultaneous cry, 
 apropos of nothing that was then occurring. 
 
 This refreshed them mightily, and they glowed at the 
 mayor's table like roses washed with dew. 
 
 But oh ! how glad at heart they all were to find them- 
 selves in the carriage once more going home to Beaure- 
 paire. 
 
 Rose and Josephine sat intertwined on the back seat ; 
 Camille, the reins in his right hand, nearly turned his 
 back on the horse, and leaned back over to them and 
 purred to Rose and his wife with ineffable triumph and 
 tenderness. 
 
 The lovers were in E'ysium, and Rose was not a little 
 proud of her good management in ending all their
 
 WHITE LIEf?. 223 
 
 troubles. Their mother received them back with great, 
 and as they fancied, with singuhir, affection. She was 
 beginning to be anxious about them, she said. Then 
 her kindness gave these happy souls a pang it never 
 gave them before. 
 
 Since the above events scarce a fortnight had elapsed ; 
 but such a change ! Camille sunburnt and healthy, and 
 full of animation and confidence ; Josephine beaming 
 with suppressed happiness, and more beautiful than 
 Rose could ever remember to have seen her. For a soft 
 halo of love and happiness shone around her head ; a 
 new and indefinable attraction bloomed on her face. 
 She was a wife. Her eye, that used to glance furtively 
 on Camille, now dwelt demurely on him ; dwelt with a 
 sort of gentle wonder and admiration as well as affection, 
 and, when he came or passed very near her, a keen 
 observer might have seen her thrill. 
 
 She kept a good deal out of her mother's way ; for she 
 felt within that her face must be too happy. She feared 
 to shock her mother's grief with her radiance. She was 
 ashamed of feeling unmixed heaven. But the flood of 
 secret bliss she floated in bore all misgivings away. 
 The pair were forever stealing away together for hours, 
 and on these occasions Rose used to keep out of her 
 mother's sight, until they should return. So then the 
 new-married couple could wander hand in hand through 
 the thick woods of Beaurepaire, whose fresh green leaves 
 were now just out, and hear the distant cuckoo, and sit 
 on mossy banks, and pour love into one another's eyes, 
 and plan ages of happiness, and murmur their deep pas- 
 sion and their bliss almost more than mortal ; could do 
 all this and more, without shocking propriety. These 
 sweet duets passed for trios : for on their return Rose 
 would be out looking for them, or would go and meet 
 them at some distance, and all three would go up together
 
 224 WHITE LIES. 
 
 to the baroness, as from a joint excursion. And when 
 they went up to their bedrooms, Josephine would throw 
 her arms round her sister's neck, and sigh, "It is not 
 happiness, it is beatitude ! " 
 
 Meantime, the baroness mourned for Raynal. Her 
 grief showed no decrease. Rose even fancied at times 
 she wore a gloomy and discontented look as well ; but 
 on reflection she attributed that to her own fancy, or to 
 the contrast that had now sprung up in her sister's beam- 
 ing complacency. 
 
 Rose, when she found herself left day after day alone 
 for hours, was sad and thought of Edouard. And this 
 feeling gained on her day by day. 
 
 At last, one afternoon, she locked herself in her own 
 room, and, after a long contest with her pride, which, if 
 not indomitable, was next door to it, she sat down to 
 write him a little letter. Now, in this letter, in the 
 place devoted by men to their after-thoughts, by women 
 to their pretended after-thoughts ; i. e., to what they have 
 been thinking of all through the letter, she dropped a 
 careless hint that all the party missed him very much, 
 "even the obnoxious colonel, who, by-the-by, has trans- 
 ferred his services elsewhere. I have forgiven him that, 
 because he has said civil things about you." 
 
 Rose was reading her letter over again, to make sure 
 that all the principal expressions were indistinct, and 
 that the composition generally, except the postscript, 
 resembled a Delphic oracle, when there was a hasty foot- 
 step, and a tap at her door, and in came Jacintha, 
 excited. 
 
 "He is come, mademoiselle," cried she, and nodded 
 her head like a mandarin, only more knowingly ; then 
 she added, " So you may burn that." For her quick eye 
 had glanced at the table. 
 
 "Who is come ? " inquired Rose, eagerly.
 
 WHITE LIES. 225 
 
 " Why, your one ? " 
 
 " My one ? " asked the young lady, reddening, " my 
 what ? " 
 
 " The little one — Edouard — Monsieur Riviere." 
 
 " Oh, Monsieur Eiviere," said Rose, acting noncha- 
 lance. "Why could you not say so? you use such 
 phrases, who can conjecture what you mean ? I will 
 come to Monsieur Eiviere directly ; mamma will be so 
 glad." 
 
 Jacintha gone, Rose tore up the letter and locked up 
 the pieces, then ran to the glass. Etc. 
 
 Edouard had been so profoundly miserable he could 
 stand it no longer ; in spite of his determination not to 
 visit Beaurepaire while it contained a rival, he rode over 
 to see whether he had not tormented himself idly : 
 above all, to see the beloved face. 
 
 Jacintha put him into the salle a manger. "By that 
 you will see her alone," said the knowing Jacintha. He 
 sat down, hat and whip in hand, and wondered how he 
 should be received — if at all. 
 
 In glides Rose all sprightliness and good-humor, and 
 puts out her hand to him ; the which he kisses. 
 
 " How could I keep away so long ? " asked he vaguely, 
 and self-astonished. 
 
 "How indeed, and we missing you so all the time ! " 
 
 " Have you missed me ? " was the eager inquiry. 
 
 " Oh, no !" was the cheerful reply ; "but all the rest 
 have." 
 
 Presently the malicious thing gave a sudden start. 
 
 " Oh ! such a piece of news ; you remember Colonel 
 Dujardin, the obnoxious colonel ? " 
 
 No answer. 
 
 " Transferred his attentions. Fancy ! " 
 
 " Who to ? " 
 
 " To Josephine and mamma. But such are the mill-
 
 226 WHITE LIES. 
 
 taiy. He only wanted to get rid of you : this done 
 (through your want of spirit), he scorns the rich prize ; 
 so now I scorn him. Will you come for a walk ? " 
 
 "Oh, yes!" 
 
 " We will go and look for my deserter. I say, tell me 
 now ; cannot I write to the commander-in-chief about 
 this ? a soldier has no right to be a deserter, has he ? 
 tell me, you are a public man, and know everything 
 except my heart." 
 
 " Is it not too bad to tease me to-day ? " 
 
 " Yes ! but please ! I have had few amusements of 
 late. I find it so dull without you to tease." 
 
 Formal permission to tease being conceded, she went 
 that instant on the opposite tack, and began to tell him 
 how she had missed him, and how sorry she had been 
 anything should have occurred to vex their kind good 
 friend. In short, Edouard spent a delightful day, for 
 Rose took him one way to meet Josephine, who, she 
 knew, was coming another. At night the last embers of 
 jealousy got quenched, for Josephine was a wife now, 
 and had already begun to tell Camille all her little inno- 
 cent secrets ; and she told him all about Edouard and 
 Rose, and gave him his orders ; so he treated Rose with 
 great respect before Edouard ; but paid her no marked 
 attention; also he was affable to Riviere, who, having 
 ceased to suspect, began to like him. 
 
 In the course of the evening, the colonel also informed 
 the baroness that he expected every day an order to join 
 the army of the Rhine. 
 
 Edouard pricked his ears. 
 
 The baroness said no more than politeness dictated. 
 She did not press him to stay, but treated his departure 
 as a matter of course. Riviere rode home late in the 
 evening in high spirits. 
 
 The next day Rose varied her late deportment ; she
 
 WHITE LIES. 227 
 
 sang snatches of melody, going about the house ; it was 
 for all the world like a bird chirping. In the middle of 
 one chirp Jacintha interfered. " Hush, mademoiselle, 
 your mamma! she is at the bottom of the corridor." 
 
 " What was I thinking of ? " said Rose. 
 
 " Oh ! I dare say you know, madejnoiselle," replied the 
 privileged domestic. 
 
 A letter of good news came from Aubertin. That 
 summons to his nephew's funeral was an era in his 
 harmless life. 
 
 The said nephew was a rich man and an oddity ; one 
 of those who love to surprise folk, Moreovei", he had 
 no children, and detected his ne})hews and nieces being 
 unnaturally civil to him. " Waiting to cut me up," was 
 his generous reading of them. So with this he made a 
 will, and there defied, as far as in him lay, the laAvs of 
 nature ; for he set his wealth a-flowing backwards instead 
 of forwards ; he handed his property up to an ancestor, 
 instead of down to posterity. 
 
 All this the doctor's pen set down with some humor, 
 and in the calm spirit with which a genuine philoso})her 
 receives prosperity as well as adversity. Yet one natural 
 regret escaped him ; that all this wealth, since it was to 
 come, had not come a year or two sooner. 
 
 All at Beaurepaire knew what their dear old friend 
 meant. 
 
 His other news to them was that they might expect 
 him any moment. 
 
 So here was another cause of rejoicing. 
 
 "I am so glad," said Josephine. "Now, perhaps, he 
 will be able to publish his poor dear entomology, tliat 
 the booksellers were all so unkind, so unfeeling about." 
 
 I linger on the brink of painful scenes to observe that 
 a sweet and loving friendship, such as this was between 
 the good doctor and three persons of another sex, is one
 
 228 WHITE LIES, 
 
 of the best treasures of the human heart. Poverty had 
 strengthened it; yet now Avealth could not weaken it. 
 With no tie of blood it yet was filial, sisterly, brotherly, 
 national, chivalrous ; happy, unalloyed sentiment, free 
 from ups and downs, from heats and chills, from rivalry, 
 from caprice ; and, indeed, from all mortal accidents but 
 one — and why say one ? methinks death itself does but 
 suspend these gentle, rare, unselfish amities a moment, 
 then waft them upward to their abiding home.
 
 WHITE LIES. 229 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 It was a fair morning in June : the sky was a bright, 
 deep, lovely, speckless blue : the flowers and bushes 
 poured perfume, and sprinkled song upon the balmy air. 
 On such a day, so calm, so warm, so bright, so scented, 
 so tuneful, to live and to be young is to be happy. With 
 gentle hand it wipes all other days out of the memory ; it 
 smiles, it smells, it sings, and clouds and rain and biting 
 wind seem as far off and impossible as grief and trouble. 
 
 Camille and Josephine had stolen out, and strolled 
 lazily up and down close under the house, drinking the 
 sweet air, fragrant with perfume and melody ; the blue 
 sky, and love. 
 
 Eose was in the house. She had missed them ; but 
 she thought they must be near; for they seldom took 
 long walks early in the day. Meeting Jacintha on the 
 landing of the great staircase, she asked her where her 
 sister was. 
 
 " Madame Eaynal is gone for a walk. She has taken 
 the colonel with her. You know she always takes the 
 colonel out with her now." 
 
 " That will do. You can finish your work." 
 
 Jacintha went into Camille's room. 
 
 Rose, who had looked as grave as a judge while 
 Jacintha was present, bubbled into laughter. She even 
 repeated Jacintha's words aloud, and chuckled over 
 them. '' You know she always takes the colonel out 
 with her now — ha, ha, ha ! " 
 
 " Rose ! " sighed a distant voice. 
 
 She looked round, and saw the baroness at some dis-
 
 230 WHITE LIES. 
 
 tance in the corridor, coining slowly towards her, with 
 eyes bent gloomily on the ground. Rose composed her 
 features into a settled gravity, and went to meet her. 
 
 " I wish to speak with you," said the baroness ; " let 
 us sit down ; it is cool here." 
 
 Rose ran and brought a seat without a back, but well 
 stuffed, and set it against the wall. The old lady sat 
 down and leaned back, and looked at Rose in silence a 
 good while ; then she said, — 
 
 " There is room for you ; sit down, for I want to speak 
 seriously to you." 
 
 " Yes, mamma ; what is it ? " 
 
 " Turn a little round, and let me see your face." 
 
 Rose complied ; and began to feel a little uneasy. 
 
 " Perhaps you can guess what I am going to say to you ? " 
 
 " I have no idea." 
 
 " Well, I am going to put a question to you." 
 
 "With all my heart, dear mamma." 
 
 " I invite you to explain to me the most singular, the 
 most unaccountable thing that ever fell under my notice. 
 Will you do this for your mother ? " 
 
 " mamma ! of course I will do anything to please 
 you that I can ; but, indeed, I don't know what you 
 mean." 
 
 "I am going to tell you." 
 
 The old lady paused. The young one, naturally 
 enough, felt a chill of vague anxiety strike across her 
 frame. 
 
 "Rose," said the old lady, speaking very gently but 
 firmly, and leaning in a peculiar way on her words, while 
 her eye worked like an ice gimlet on her daughter's face, 
 "a little while ago, when my poor Raynal — our bene- 
 factor — was alive — and I was happy — you all chilled 
 my happiness by your gloom : the whole house seemed a 
 house of mourning — tell me now why was this."
 
 whitp: lies. 231 
 
 ''Mamma!" said Rose, after a moment's hesitation, 
 "we could hardly be gay. Sickness in the house ! And 
 if Colonel Raynal was alive, still he was absent, and in 
 danger." 
 
 " Oh ! then it was out of regard for him we were all 
 dispirited ? " 
 
 " Why, I suppose so," said Rose, stoutly ; but then 
 colored high at her own want of candor. However, she 
 congratulated herself that her mother's suspicion was 
 confined to past events. 
 
 Her self-congratulation on that score was short ; for 
 the baroness, after eying her grimly for a second or two 
 in silence, put her this awkward question plump. 
 
 "If so, tell me why is it that ever since that black day 
 when the news of his death reached us, the whole house 
 has gone into black, and has gone out of mourning ? " 
 
 "Mamma," stammered Rose, "what do you mean?" 
 
 "Even poor Camille, who was so pale and wan, has 
 recovered like magic." 
 
 " mamma ! is not that fancy ? " said Rose, piteously. 
 " Of what do you suspect me ? Can you think I am un- 
 feeling — ungrateful? I should not be v/oi<;' daughter." 
 
 "No, no," said the baroness, "to do you justice, you 
 attempt sorrow ; as you put on black. But, my poor 
 child, you do it with so little skill that one sees a horri- 
 ble gayety breaking through that thin disguise : you are 
 no true mourners : you are like the mutes or the under- 
 takers at a funeral, forced grief on the surface of your 
 faces, and frightful complacency below." 
 
 "Tra la! lal ! la! la! Tra la! la! Tra la! la!" 
 carolled Jacintha, in the colonel's room hard by. 
 
 The ladies looked at one another : Rose in great con- 
 fusion. 
 
 "Tra la! la! la! Tra lal ! lal! la! la! la!" 
 
 "Jacintha!" screamed Rose angrily.
 
 232 WHITE LIES. 
 
 '■ Hush ! not a word," said the baroness. " Why re- 
 monstrate with her ? Servants are but chameleons : 
 they take the color of those they serve. Do not cry. I 
 wanted your confidence, not your tears, love. There, I 
 will not twice in one day ask you for your heart: it 
 would be to lower the mother, and give the daughter 
 the pain of refusing it, and the regret, sure to come one 
 day, of having refused it. I will discover the meaning 
 of it all by myself." She went away with a gentle sigh ; 
 and Rose was cut to the heart by her words ; she re- 
 solved, whatever it might cost her and Josephine, to 
 make a clean breast this very day. As she was one of 
 those who act promptly, she Avent instantly in search of 
 her sister, to gain her consent, if possible. 
 
 Now, the said Josephine was in the garden walking 
 with Camille, and uttering a wife's tender solicitudes. 
 
 " And must you leave me ? must you risk your life 
 again so soon ; the life on which mine depends ? " 
 
 " My dear, that letter I received from headquarters 
 two days ago, that inquiry whether my wound was cured. 
 A hint, Josephine — a hint too broad for any soldier not 
 to take." 
 
 "Camille, you are very proud," said Josephine, with 
 an accent of reproach, and a look of approval. 
 
 " I am obliged to be. I am the husband of the proud- 
 est woman in France." 
 
 " Hush ! not so loud : there is Dard on the grass." 
 
 "Dard!" muttered the soldier with a word of mean- 
 ing. "Josephine," said he after a pause, and a little 
 peevishly, " how much longer are we to lower our voices, 
 and turn aAvay our eyes from each other, and be ashamed 
 of our happiness ? " 
 
 " Five months longer, is it not ? " answered Josephine 
 quietly. 
 
 " Five months longer ! "
 
 WHITE LIES. 233 
 
 Josephine was hurt at this, and for once was betrayed 
 into a serious and merited remonstrance. 
 
 " Is this just ? " said she. " Think of two months 
 ago : yes, but two months ago, you were dying. You 
 doubted my love, because it could not overcome my 
 virtue and my gratitude : yet you might have seen it 
 was destroying my life. Poor Raynal, my husband, my 
 benefactor, died. Then I could do more for you, if not 
 with delicacy, at least with honor; but no! words, and 
 looks, and tender offices of love were not enough, I must 
 give stronger proof. Dear Camille, I have been reared 
 in a strict school : and perhaps none of your sex can 
 know what it cost me to go to Frejus that day with him 
 I love." 
 
 " My own Josephine ! " 
 
 " I made but one condition : that you would not rob 
 me of my mother's respect : to her our hasty marriage 
 would appear monstrous, heartless. You consented to 
 be secretly happy for six months. One fortnight has 
 passed, and you are discontented again." 
 
 "Oh, no ! do not think so. It is every word true. I 
 am an ungrateful villain." 
 
 " How dare you say so ? and to me ! No ! but you 
 are a man." 
 
 " So I have been told ; but my conduct to you, sweet 
 one, has not been that of a man from first to last. Yet 
 I could die for you, with a smile on my lips. But when 
 I think that once I lifted this sacrilegious hand against 
 your life — oh ! " 
 
 "Do not be silly, Camille. I love you all the better 
 for loving me well enough to kill me. What woman 
 would not ? I tell you, you foolish thing, you are a 
 man : monseigneur is one of the lordly sex, that is 
 accustomed to have everything its own way. iSfy love, 
 in a world that is full of miserv, here are two that are
 
 234 WHITE LIES. 
 
 condemned to be secretly happy a few months longer : 
 a hard fate for one of your sex, it seems : but it is so 
 much sweeter than the usual lot of mine, that really I 
 cannot share your misery," and she smiled joyously. 
 
 "Then share my happiness, my dear wife," 
 
 " I do ; only mine is deep, not loud." 
 
 "Why, Dard is gone, and we are out of doors; will 
 the little birds betray us ? " 
 
 " The lower windows are open, and I saw Jacintha in 
 one of the rooms." 
 
 " Jacintha ? we are in awe of the very servants. 
 Well, if I must not say it loud I will say it often," and 
 putting his mouth to her ear, he poured a burning 
 whisper of love into it — " My love ! my angel ! my 
 wife ! my wife ! my wife ! " 
 
 She turned her swimming eyes on him. 
 
 " My husband ! " she whispered in return. 
 
 Rose came out, and found them billing and cooing. 
 " You must not be so happy, you two," said she authori- 
 tatively. 
 
 "How can we help it ? " asked Camille. 
 
 " You must and shall help it, somehow," retorted this 
 little tyrant. " Mamma suspects. She has given me 
 such a cross-examination, my blood runs cold. No, on 
 second thoughts, kiss her again, and you may both be as 
 happy as you like ; for I am going to tell mamma all, 
 and no power on earth shall hinder me." 
 
 "Rose," said Camille, "you are a sensible girl ; and I 
 always said so." 
 
 But Josephine was horrified. "What ! tell my mother 
 that within a month of my husband's death ? " — 
 
 " Don't say your husband," put in Camille wincing ; 
 " the priest never confirmed that union ; words spoken 
 before a magistrate do not make a marriage in the sight 
 of Heaven."
 
 WHITE LIES. 235 
 
 Josephine cut him short. " Amongst lionorable men 
 and women all oaths are alike sacred : and Heaven's eye 
 is in a magistrate's room as in a church. A daughter of 
 Beaurepaire gave her hand to him, and called herself his 
 wife. Therefore, she was his wife : and is his widow. 
 She owes him everything ; the house you are all living 
 in among the rest. She ought to be proud of her brief 
 connection with that pure, heroic spirit, and, when she 
 is so little noble as to disown him, then say that grati- 
 tude and justice have no longer a place among mankind." 
 
 "Come into the chapel," said Camille, with a voice 
 that showed he was hurt. 
 
 They entered the chapel, and there they saw some- 
 thing that thoroughly surprised them : a marble monu- 
 ment to the memory of Raynal. It leaned at present 
 against the wall below the place prepared to receive it. 
 The inscription, short, but emphatic, and full of feeling, 
 told of the battles he had fought in, including the last 
 fatal skirmish, and his marriage with the heiress of 
 Beaurepaire ; and, in a few soldier-like Avords, the 
 uprightness, simplicity, and generosity of his character. 
 
 They were so touched by this unexpected trait in 
 Camille that they both threw their arms round his 
 neck by one impulse. " Am 1 wrong to be proud of 
 him ? " said Josephine, triumphantly. 
 
 " Well, don't say too much to me," said Camille, look- 
 ing down confused. '- One tries to be good ; but it is 
 very hard — to some of us — not to you, Josephine ; and, 
 after all, it is only the truth that we have written on 
 that stone. Poor Raynal ! he was my old comrade ; he 
 saved me from death, and not a soldier's death — 
 drowning ; and he was a better man than I am, or ever 
 shall be. Now he is dead, I can say these things. If I 
 had said them when he was alive, it would have been 
 more to my credit."
 
 236 WHITE LIES. 
 
 They all three went back towards the house ; and on 
 the way Rose told them all that had passed between the 
 baroness and her. When she came to the actual details 
 of that conversation, to the words, and looks, and tones, 
 Josephine's uneasiness rose to an overpowering height ; 
 she even admitted that further concealment would be 
 very difficult. 
 
 "Better tell her than let her find out," said Rose. 
 " We must tell her some day." 
 
 At last, after a long and agitated discussion, Josephine 
 consented ; but Rose must be the one to tell. " So then, 
 you at least will make your peace with mamma," argued 
 Josephine, "and let us go in and do this before our 
 courage fails ; besides, it is going to rain, and it has 
 turned cold. Where have all these clouds come from ? 
 An hour ago there was not one in the sky." 
 
 They went, with hesitating steps and guilty looks, to 
 the saloon. Their mother was not there. Here was a 
 reprieve. 
 
 Rose had an idea. She would take her to the chapel, 
 and show her the monument, and that would please her 
 with poor Camille. "After that," said Rose, "I will 
 begin by telling her all the misery you have both gone 
 through ; and, when she pities you, then I will show her 
 it was all my fault your misery ended in a secret mar- 
 riage." 
 
 The confederates sat there in a chilly state, waiting 
 for the baroness. At last, as she did not come. Rose 
 got up to go to her. " When the mind is made up, it is 
 no use being cowardly, and putting off," said she, firmly. 
 For all that, her cheek had but little color left in it, 
 when she left her chair with this resolve. 
 
 Now as Rose went down the long saloon to carry out 
 their united resolve, Jacintha looked in ; and, after a 
 hasty glance to see who was present, she waited till
 
 WHITE LIES. 237 
 
 Rose came up to her, and then whipped a letter from 
 under her apron and gave it her. 
 
 " For my mistress," said she, with an air of mystery. 
 
 " Why not take it to her, then ? " inquired Rose. 
 
 " I thought you might like to see it first, mademoi- 
 selle," said Jacintha, with quiet meaning. 
 
 " Is it from the dear doctor ? " asked Josephine. 
 
 " La, no, mademoiselle, don't you know the doctor is 
 come home ? Why, he has been in the house near an 
 hour. He is with my lady." 
 
 The doctor proved Jacintha correct by entering the 
 room in person soon after ; on this Rose threw down the 
 letter, and she and the whole party were instantly 
 occupied in greeting him. 
 
 When the ladies had embraced him and Camille 
 shaken hands with him, they plied him with a thousand 
 questions. Indeed, he had not half satisfied their 
 curiosity, when Rose happened to catch sight of the 
 letter again, and took it up to carry to the baroness. 
 She now, for the first time, eyed it attentively, and the 
 consequence was she uttered an exclamation, and took 
 the first opportunity to beckon Aubertin. 
 
 He came to her ; and she put the letter into his hand. 
 
 He put up his glasses, and eyed it. " Yes ! " whispered 
 he, " it is from him." 
 
 Josephine and Camille saw something was going on ; 
 they joined the other two, with curiosity in their faces. 
 
 Rose put her hand on a small table near her, and 
 leaned a moment. She turned half sick at a letter com- 
 ing from the dead. Josephine now came towards lier 
 with a face of concern, and asked what was the matter. 
 
 The reply came from Aubertin. " My poor friends," 
 said he, solemnly, " this is one of those fearful things 
 that you have not seen in your short lives, but it has 
 been more than once my lot to witness it. The ships
 
 238 WHITK LIES. 
 
 tliat carry letters from distant countries vary greatly in 
 speed, and are subject to detaining accidents. Yes, this 
 is the third time I have seen a letter come written by a 
 hand known to be cold. The baroness is a little excited 
 to-day, I don't know from what cause. With your appro- 
 bation, Madame Kaynal, I will read this letter before I 
 let her see it." 
 
 " Read it, if you please." 
 
 " Shall I read it out ? " 
 
 "Certainly. There may be some wish expressed in 
 it ; oh, I hope there is ! " 
 
 Camille, from delicacy, retired to some little distance, 
 and the doctor read the letter in a low and solemn voice. 
 
 "]\Iy dear Mother, — I hope all are well at Beaurepah-e, 
 as I am, or 1 hope soon to be. 1 received a wound in our 
 last skirmish ; not a very severe one ; but it put an end to 
 my writing for some time." 
 
 " Poor fellow ! it was his death wound. Why, when 
 was this written ? — why," and the doctor paused, and 
 seemed stupefied : " why, my dears, has my memory 
 gone, or " — and again he looked eagerly at the letter 
 — " what was the date of the battle in which he was 
 killed ? for this letter is dated the 15th of May. Is it 
 a dream ? no ! this was written since the date of his 
 death." 
 
 "No, doctor," said Rose, "you deceive yourself." 
 " Why, what was the date of the Moniteur, then ? " 
 asked Aubertin, in great agitation. 
 
 " Considerably later than this," said Camille. 
 " I don't think so ; the journal ! where is it ? " 
 " My mother has it locked up. I'll run." 
 " No, Rose ; no one but me. Now, Josephine, do not 
 you go and give way to hopes that may be delusive. I
 
 WHITE LIES. 239 
 
 must see that journal directly. I will go to the baroness. 
 I shall excuse her less than you would." 
 
 He was scarcely gone when a cry of horror filled the 
 room, a cry as of madness falling like a thunderbolt on 
 a human mind. It Avas Josephine, who up to this had 
 not uttered one word. But now she stood, white as a 
 corpse, in the middle of the room, and wrung her hands. 
 " What have I done ? What shall I do ? It was the 
 3d of May. I see it before me in letters of fire ; the 3d 
 of May ! the 3d of May ! — and he writes the 15th." 
 
 "No! no!" cried Camille wildly. "It was long, 
 long after the 3d." 
 
 " It was the 3d of May," repeated Josephine in a 
 hoarse voice that none would have known for hers. 
 
 Camille ran to her with words of comfort and hope ; 
 he did not share her fears. He remembered about when 
 the Moniteur came, though not the very day. He threw 
 his arm lovingly round her as if to protect her against 
 these shadowy terrors. Her dilating eyes seemed fixed 
 on something distant in space or time, at some horrible 
 thing coming slowly towards her. She did not see 
 Camille approach her, but the moment she felt him she 
 turned upon him swiftly. 
 
 " Do you love me ? " still in the hoarse voice that had 
 so little in it of Josephine. " I mean, does one grain of 
 respect or virtue mingle in your love for me ? " 
 
 " What words are these, my wife ? " 
 
 "Then leave Raynal's house upon the instant. You 
 wonder I can be so cruel ? I wonder too ; and that I 
 can see my duty so clear in one short moment. But 
 I have lived twenty years since that letter came. Oh ! 
 my brain has whirled through a thousand agonies. And 
 I have come back a thousand times to the same thing; 
 you and I must see each other's face no more." 
 
 " Oh ! " cried Rose, " is there no way but this ? "
 
 240 WHITE LIES. 
 
 " Take care," she screamed, wildly, to her and Camille, 
 " I am on the verge of madness ; is it for you two to 
 thrust me over the precipice ? Come, now, if you are 
 a man of honor, if you have a spark of gratitude towards 
 the poor woman who has given you all except her fair 
 name — that she will take to the grave in spite of you all 
 — promise that you will leave Raynal's house this minute 
 if he is alive, and let me die in honor as I have lived." 
 
 " No, no ! " cried Camille, terror-stricken ; " it cannot 
 be. Heaven is merciful, and Heaven sees how happy 
 we are. Be calm ! these are idle fears ; be calm ! I say. 
 For if it is so I will obey you. I will stay ; I will go ; 
 I will die ; I will live ; I will obey you." 
 
 " Swear this to me by the thing you hold most sacred," 
 she almost shrieked. 
 
 " I swear by my love for you," was his touching reply. 
 
 Ere they had recovered a miserable composure after 
 this passionate outburst, all the more terrible as coming 
 from a creature so tender as Josephine, agitated voices 
 were heard at the door, and the baroness tottered in, fol- 
 lowed by the doctor, who was trying in vain to put some 
 bounds to her emotion and her hopes. 
 
 "Oh, my children ! my children ! " cried she, trembling 
 violently. " Here, Rose, my hands shake so ; take this 
 key, open the cabinet, there is the Moniteur. What is 
 the date ? " 
 
 The journal was found, and rapidly examined. The 
 date was the 20th of May. 
 
 " There ! " cried Camille. " I told you ! " 
 
 The baroness uttered a feeble moan. Her hopes died 
 as suddenly as they had been born, and she sank droop- 
 ing into a chair, with a bitter sigh. 
 
 Camille stole a joyful look at Josephine. She was in 
 the same attitude looking straight before her as at a 
 coming horror. Presently Rose uttered a faint cry, " The 
 battle was beforey _
 
 WHITE LIES. 241 
 
 "To be sure," cried the doctor. "You forget, it is not 
 the date of the paper we want, but of the battle it 
 records. For Heaven's sake, when was the battle ? " 
 
 "The 3d of May," said Josephine, in a voice that 
 seemed to come from the tomb. 
 
 Kose's hands that held the journal fell like a dead 
 weight upon her knees, journal and all. She whispered, 
 " It was the 3d of May." 
 
 " Ah ! " cried the baroness, starting up, " he may yet be 
 alive. He must be alive. Heaven is merciful ! Heaven 
 would not take my son from me, a poor old woman who 
 has not long to live. There was a letter ; where is the 
 letter ? " 
 
 " Are we mad, not to read the letter ? " said the doctor. 
 " I had it ; it has dropped from my old fingers when I 
 went for the journal." 
 
 A short examination of the room showed the letter 
 lying crumpled up near the door. Camille gave it to the 
 baroness. She tried to read it, but could not. 
 
 "' I am old," said she ; " my hand shakes and my eyes 
 are troubled. This young gentleman will read it to us. 
 His eyes are not dim and troubled. Something tells me 
 that when / hear this letter, I shall find out whether my 
 son lives. Why do you not read it to me, Camille?" 
 cried she, almost fiercely. 
 
 Camille, thus pressed, obeyed mechanically, and began 
 to read Raynal's letter aloud, scarce knowing what he 
 did, but urged and driven by the baroness. 
 
 " My dear Mother, — I hope all are well at Beaurepaire, 
 as I am, or I hope soon to be. I received a wound in our last 
 skirmish ; not a vei-y severe one, but it put an end to my writ- 
 ing for some time." 
 
 "Go on, dear Camille ! go on." 
 "The page ends there, madame." 
 16
 
 242 WHITE LIES. 
 
 The paper was thin, and Cainille, whose hand trembled, 
 had some difficulty in detaching the leaves from one 
 another. He succeeded, however, at last, and went on 
 reading and writhing. 
 
 " By the way, you must address your next letter to me as 
 Colonel Kaynal. I was promoted just before this last affair, 
 but had not time to tell you; and my wound stopped my writ- 
 ing till now." 
 
 " There, there ! " cried the baroness. " He was Colonel 
 Kaynal, and Colonel Raynal was not killed." 
 
 The doctor implored her not to interrupt. 
 
 "Go on, Camille. Why do you hesitate? what is the 
 matter ? Do for pity's sake go on, sir." 
 
 Camille cast a look of agony around, and put his hand 
 to his brow, on which large drops of cold perspiration, like 
 a death dew, were gathering; but driven to the stake on 
 all sides, he gasped on rather than read, for his eye had 
 gone down the page. 
 
 " A namesake of mine, Commandant Raynal," — 
 "Ah!" 
 " has not been — so fortunate. He " — 
 
 " Go on ! go on ! " 
 
 The wretched man could now scarcely utter Raynal's 
 words ; they came from him in a choking groan. 
 
 " he was killed, poor fellow ! while heading a gallant charge 
 ui)on the enemy''s flank." 
 
 He ground the letter convulsively in his hand, then it 
 fell all crumpled on the floor. 
 
 "Bless you, Camille !" cried the baroness, "bless you! 
 bless you ! I have a son still." 
 
 She stooped with difficulty, took up the letter, and,
 
 WHITE LIES. 243 
 
 kissing it again and again, fell on her knees, and thanked 
 Heaven aloud before them all. Then she rose and went 
 hastily out, and her voice was heard crying very loud, 
 '' Jacintha ! Jacintha ! " 
 
 The doctor followed in considerable anxiety for the 
 effects of this violent joy on so aged a person. Three 
 remained behind, panting and pale like those to whom 
 dead Lazarus burst the tomb, and came forth in a moment, 
 at a word. Then Camille half kneeled, half fell, at 
 Josephine's feet, and, in a voice choked with sobs, bade 
 her dispose of him. 
 
 She turned her head away. " Do not speak to me ; do 
 not look at me ; if we look at one another, we are lost. 
 Go ! die at your post, and I at mine." 
 
 He bowed his head, and kissed her dress, then rose 
 calm as despair, and white as death, and, with his knees 
 knocking under him, tottered away like a corpse set 
 moving. 
 
 He disappeared from the house. 
 
 The baroness soon came back, triumphant and gay. 
 
 " I have sent her to bid them ring the bells in the 
 village. The poor shall be feasted ; all shall share our 
 joy : my son was dead, and lives. Oh, joy ! joy ! joy !" 
 
 " Mother ! " shrieked Josephine. 
 
 " Mad woman that I am, I am too boisterous. Help 
 me. Rose ! she is going to faint ; her lips are white." 
 
 Dr. Aubertin and Rose brought a chair. They forced 
 Josephine into it. She was not the least faint ; yet her 
 body obeyed their hands just like a dead body. The 
 baroness melted into tears ; tears streamed from Rose's 
 eyes. Josephine's were dry and stony, and fixed on 
 coming horror. The baroness looked at her with anxiety. 
 " Thoughtless old woman ! It was too sudden ; it is too 
 much for my dear child; too much for me," and she 
 kneeled, and laid her aged head on her daughter's bosom,
 
 244 WHITE LIES. 
 
 saying feebly through her tears, " too much joy, too much 
 
 joy!" 
 
 Josephine took no notice of her. She sat like one 
 turned to stone looking far away over her mother's 
 head with rigid eyes fixed on the air and on coming 
 horrors. 
 
 Kose felt her arm seized. It was Aubertin. He too 
 was pale noAv, though not before. He spoke in a terrible 
 whisper to Rose, his eye fixed on the woman of stone 
 that sat there. 
 
 "Is THIS JOY ? " 
 
 Rose, by a mighty effort, raised her eyes and confronted 
 his full. " What else should it be ? " said she. 
 
 And with these words this Spartan girl was her sister's 
 champion once more against all comers, friend or foe.
 
 WHITE LIES. 245 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 Dr. Aubertin received one day a note from a publish- 
 ing bookseller, to inquire whether he still thought of 
 giving the world his valuable work on insects. The 
 doctor was amazed. " My valuable work ! Why, Rose, 
 they all refused it, and this person in particular recoiled 
 from it as if my insects could sting on paper." 
 
 The above led to a correspondence, in which the convert 
 to insects explained that the work must be published at 
 the author's expense, the publisher contenting himself 
 with the profits. The author, thirsting for the public, 
 consented. Then the publisher wrote again to say 
 that the immortal treatise must be spiced ; a little poli- 
 tics flung in : " Kothing goes down, else." The author 
 answered in some heat that he would not dilute things 
 everlasting with the fleeting topics of the day, nor defile 
 science with politics. On this his IVfentor smoothed 
 him down, despising him secretly for not seeing that a 
 book is a matter of trade and nothing else. It ended in 
 Aubertin going to Paris to hatch his Phoenix. He had 
 not been there a week, when a small deputation called on 
 him, and informed him he had been elected honorary 
 member of a certain scientific society. The compliment 
 was followed by others, till at last certain ladies, with 
 the pliancy of their sex, find out they had always secretly 
 cared for butterflies. Then the naturalist smelt a rat, or, 
 in other words, began to scent that entomology, a form 
 of idiocy in a poor man, is a graceful decoration of the 
 intellect in a rich one. 
 
 Philosopher without bile, he saw through this, and let
 
 246 WHITE LIES. 
 
 it amuse, not shock him. His own species, a singularly 
 interesting one in my opinion, had another trait in reserve 
 for him. 
 
 He took a world of trouble to find out the circum- 
 stances of his nephew's nephews and nieces : then he 
 made arrangements for distributing a large part of his 
 legacy among them. His intentions and the proportions 
 of his generosity transpired. 
 
 Hitherto they had been silent, but now they all fell- 
 to and abused him : each looking only to the amount of 
 his individual share, not at the sum total the doctor was 
 giving way to an ungrateful lot. 
 
 The donor was greatly amused, and noted down the 
 incident and some of the remarks in his commonplace 
 book, under the general head of " Bestiarium ; " and the 
 particular head of " Homo." 
 
 Paris with its seductions netted the good doctor, and 
 held him two or three months ; would have detained him 
 longer, but for alarming accounts the baroness sent of 
 Josephine's health. These determined him to return to 
 Beaurepaire ; and, must I own it, the announcement was 
 no longer hailed at Beaurepaire with universal joy as 
 heretofore. 
 
 Josephine Raynal, late Dujardin, is by this time no 
 stranger to my intelligent reader. I wish him to bring 
 his knowledge of her character and her sensibility to my 
 aid. Imagine, as the weary hours and days and weeks 
 roll over her head, what this loving woman feels for her 
 lover whom she has dismissed ; what this grateful wife 
 feels for the benefactor she has unwittingly wronged ; 
 but will never wrong with her eyes open ; what this lady 
 pure as snow, and proud as fire, feels at the seeming 
 frailty into which a cruel combination of circumstances 
 has entrapped her.
 
 WHITE LIES. 247 
 
 Put down the book a moment : shut your eyes : and 
 imagine this strange and complicated form of human 
 suffering. 
 
 Her mental sufferings were terrible ; and for some 
 time Eose feared for her reason. At last her agonies 
 subsided into a listlessness and apathy little less alarm- 
 ing. She seemed a creature descending inch by inch 
 into the tomb. Indeed, I fully believe she would have 
 died of despair: but one of nature's greatest forces 
 stepped into the arena and fought on the side of life. 
 She was affected with certain bilious symptoms that 
 added to Rose's uneasiness, but Jacintha assured her it 
 was nothing, and would retire and leave the sufferer 
 better. Jacintha, indeed, seemed now to take a particu- 
 lar interest in Josephine, and was always about her with 
 looks of pity and interest. 
 
 " Good creature ! " thought Rose, " she sees my sister 
 is unhappy : and that makes her more attentive and 
 devoted to her than ever." 
 
 One day these three were together in Josephine's 
 room. Josephine was mechauically combing her long 
 hair, when all of a sudden she stretched out her hand 
 and cried, " Rose ! " 
 
 Rose ran to her, and coming behind her saw in the 
 glass that her lips were colorless. She screamed to 
 Jacintha, and between them they supported Josephine 
 to the bed. She had hardly touched it when she fainted 
 dead away. " IVlamma ! mamma ! " cried Rose in her 
 terror. 
 
 " Hush ! " cried Jacintha roughly, " hold your tongue : 
 it is only a faint. Help me loosen her : don't make any 
 noise, whatever." They loosened her stays, and applied 
 the usual remedies, but it was some time before she 
 came-to. At last the color came back to her lips, then to 
 her cheek, and the light to her eye. She smiled feebly
 
 248 WHITE LIES. 
 
 on Jacintha and Rose, and asked if she had not been 
 insensible, 
 
 " Yes, love, and frightened us — a little — not much — 
 oh, dear ! oh, dear ! " 
 
 " Don't be alarmed, sweet one, I am better. And I 
 will never do it again, since it frightens you," Then 
 Josephine said to her sister in a low voice, and in the 
 Italian language, " I hoped it was death, my sister ; but 
 he comes not to the wretched," 
 
 " If you hoped that," replied Rose in the same lan- 
 guage, "you do not love your poor sister who so loves 
 you." 
 
 While the Italian was going on, Jacintha's dark eyes 
 glanced suspiciously on each speaker in turn. But her 
 suspicions were all wide of the mark, 
 
 " Now may I go and tell mamma ? " asked Rose. 
 
 "No, mademoiselle, you shall not," said Jacintha. 
 " Madame Raynal, do take my side, and forbid her," 
 
 " Why, what is it to you ? " said Rose, haughtily. 
 
 " If it was not something to me, should I thwart my 
 dear young lady ? " 
 
 " No. And you shall have your own way, if you will 
 but condescend to give me a reason." 
 
 This to some of us might appear reasonable, but not to 
 Jacintha : it even hurt her feelings. 
 
 " Mademoiselle Rose," she said, " when you were little 
 and used to ask me for anything, did I ever say to you, 
 * Give me a reason first ' ? " 
 
 " There ! she is right," said Josephine. " We should 
 not make terms Avith tried friends. Come, we will pay 
 her devotion this compliment. It is such a small favor. 
 For my part I feel obliged to her for asking it." 
 
 Josephine's health improved steadily from that day. 
 Her hollow cheeks recovered their plump smoothness, 
 and her beauty its bloom^ and her person grew more
 
 "WHITE LIES. 249 
 
 noble and statue-like than ever, and within she felt a 
 sense of indomitable vitality. Her appetite had for 
 some time been excessively feeble and uncertain, and 
 her food tasteless ; but of late, by what she conceived to 
 be a reaction such as is common after youth has shaken 
 off a long sickness, her appetite had been not only 
 healthy but eager. The baroness observed this, and it 
 relieved her of a large portion of her anxiety. One 
 day at dinner her maternal heart was so pleased with 
 Josephine's performance that she took it as a personal 
 favor. "Well done, Josephine," said she; "that gives 
 your mother pleasure to see you eat again. Soup and 
 bouillon : and now twice you have been to Eose for some 
 of that 2^ute, which does you so much credit, Jacintha." 
 
 Josephine colored high at this compliment. 
 
 " It is true," said she, " I eat like a pig ; " and, with a 
 furtive glance at the said pate, she laid down her knife 
 and fork, and ate no more of anything. The baroness 
 had now a droll misgiving. 
 
 "The doctor will be angry with me," said she : "he 
 will find her as well as ever." 
 
 " Madame," said Jacintha hastily, " when does the doc- 
 tor come, if I may make so bold, that I may get his 
 room ready, you know ? " 
 
 " Well thought of, Jacintha. He comes the day after 
 to-morrow, in the afternoon." 
 
 At night when the young ladies went up to bed, what 
 did they find but a little cloth laid on a little table in 
 Josephine's room, and the remains of the pate she had 
 liked. Rose burst out laughing. "Look at that dear 
 duck of a goose, Jacintha ! Our mother's flattery sank 
 deep : she thinks we can eat her jmtes at all hours of 
 the day and night. Shall I send it away ? " 
 
 "No," said Josephine, "that would hurt her culinary 
 pride, and perhaps her affection : only cover it up, dear,
 
 250 WHITE LIES. 
 
 for just now I am not in the humor : it rather turns 
 me." 
 
 It was covered up. The sisters retired to rest. In 
 the morning Rose lifted the cover and found the plate 
 cleared, polished. She was astounded. 
 
 The large tapestried chamber, once occupied by Camille 
 Dujardin, was now turned into a sitting-room, and it was 
 a favorite on account of the beautiful view from the 
 windows. 
 
 One day Josephine sat there alone with some work in 
 her hand ; but the needle often stopped, and the fair 
 head drooped. She heaved a deep sigh. To her sur- 
 prise it was echoed by a sigh that, like her own, seemed 
 to come from a heart full of sighs. 
 
 She turned hastily round and saw Jacintha. 
 
 Now Josephine had all a woman's eye for reading 
 faces, and she was instantly struck by a certain gravity 
 in Jacintha's gaze, and a flutter which the young woman 
 was suppressing with tolerable but not complete success. 
 
 Disguising the uneasiness this discovery gave her, she 
 looked her visitor full in the face, and said mildly, but a 
 little coldly, " Well, Jacintha ? " 
 
 Jacintha lowered her eyes and muttered slowly, — 
 
 " The doctor — comes — to-day," then raised her eyes 
 all in a moment to take Josephine off her guard ; but 
 the calm face was impenetrable. So then Jacintha 
 added, " to our misfortune," throwing in still more 
 meaning. 
 
 " To our misfortune ? A dear old friend — like him ? " 
 
 Jacintha explained. " That old man makes me shake. 
 You are never safe with him. So long as his head is 
 in the clouds, you might take his shoes off, and on he'd 
 walk and never know it; but every now and then he 
 comes out of the clouds all in one moment, without a 
 word of warning, and when he does his eye is on every-
 
 WHITE LIES. 251 
 
 thing, like a bird's. Then he is so old : ho has seen a 
 heap. Take my Avord for it, tlie old are more knowing 
 than the young, let them be as sharp as you like : the 
 old have seen everything. We have only heard talk of 
 the most part, with here and there a glimpse. To know 
 life to the bottom you must live it out, from the soup to 
 the dessert ; and that is what the doctor has done, and 
 now he is coming here. And Mademoiselle Rose will go 
 telling him everything ; and if she tells him half what 
 she has seen, your secret will be no secret to that old 
 man." 
 
 "My secret!" gasped Josephine, turning pale. 
 
 " Don't look so, madame : don't be frightened at poor 
 Jacintha. Sooner or later you vuist trust somebody 
 besides Mademoiselle Rose." 
 
 Josephine looked at her with inquiring, frightened 
 eyes. 
 
 Jacintha drew nearer to her. 
 
 " Mademoiselle, — I beg pardon, madame, — I carried 
 you in my arms when I was a child. When I was a girl 
 you toddled at my side, and held my gown, and lisped 
 my name, and used to put your little arms round my 
 neck, and kissed me, you would ; and if ever I had the 
 least pain or sickness your dear little face would turn as 
 sorrowful, and all the pretty color leave it for Jacintha ; 
 and now you are in trouble, in sore trouble, yet you turn 
 away from me, you dare not trust me, that would be cut 
 in pieces ere I would betray you. Ah, mademoiselle, 
 you are wrong. The poor can feel : they have all seen 
 trouble, and a servant is the best of friends where she 
 has the heart to love her mistress ; and do not I love 
 you ? Pray do not turn from her who has carried you 
 in her arms, and laid you to sleep upon her bosom, 
 many's and many's the time." 
 
 Josephine panted audibly. She held out her hand
 
 252 WHITE LIES. 
 
 eloquently to Jacintlia, but she turned her head away 
 and trembled. 
 
 Jacintha cast a hasty glance round the room. Then 
 she trembled too at what she was going to say, and the 
 effect it might have on the young lady. As for Joseph- 
 ine, terrible as the conversation had become, she made 
 no attempt to evade it : she remained perfectly passive. 
 It was the best way to learn how far Jacintha had pene- 
 trated her secret, if at all. 
 
 Jacintha looked fearfully round and whispered in 
 Josephine's ear, ''When the news of Colonel Raynal's 
 death came, you wept, but the color came back to your 
 cheek. When the news of his life came, you turned to 
 stone. Ah ! my poor young lady, there has been more 
 between you and that man than should be. Ever since 
 one day you all went to Frejus together, you were a 
 changed woman. I have seen you look at him as — as 
 a wife looks at her man. I have seen him " — 
 
 " Hush, Jacintha ! Do not tell me what you have seen : 
 oh ! do not remind me of joys I pray God to help me 
 forget. He was my husband, then ! — oh, cruel Jacintha, 
 to remind me of what I have been, of what I am ! Ah 
 me ! ah me ! ah me ! " 
 
 " Your husband ! " cried Jacintha in utter amazement. 
 
 Then Josephine drooped her head on this faithful 
 creature's shoulder, and told her with many sobs the 
 story I have told you. She told it very briefly, for it 
 was to a woman who, though little educated, was full of 
 feeling and shrewdness, and needed but the bare facts : 
 she could add the rest from her own heart and expe- 
 rience : could tell the storm of feelings through which 
 these two unhappy lovers must have passed. Her fre- 
 quent sighs of pity and sympathy drew Josephine on to 
 pour out all her griefs. When the tale was ended she 
 gave a sigh of relief.
 
 WHITE LIES. 253 
 
 " It might have been worse : I thought it was worse ; 
 the more fool I. I deserve to have my head cut off." 
 This was Jacintha's only comment at that time. 
 
 It was Josephine's turn to be amazed. " It could have 
 been worse ? " said she. " How ? tell me," added she 
 bitterly. " It would be a consolation to me, could I see 
 that." 
 
 Jacintha colored and evaded this question, and begged 
 her to go on, to keep nothing back from her. Josephine 
 assured her she had revealed all. Jacintha looked at 
 her a moment in silence. 
 
 " It is then as I half suspected. You do not know 
 all that is before you. You do not see why I am afraid 
 of that old man." 
 
 " Ko, not of him in particular." 
 
 " Nor why I want to keep Mademoiselle Rose from 
 prattling to him ? " 
 
 " No. I assure you Rose is to be trusted ; she is wise 
 — wiser than I am." 
 
 "You are neither of you wise. You neither of you 
 know anything. My poor young mistress, you are but a 
 child still. You have a deep water to wade through," 
 said Jacintha, so solemnly that Josephine trembled. " A 
 deep water, and do not see it even. You have told me 
 what is past, now I must tell you what is coming. 
 Heaven help me ! But is it possible you have no mis- 
 giving ? Tell the truth, now." 
 
 " Alas ! I am full of them ; at your words, at your 
 manner, they fly around me in crowds." 
 
 " Have you no one ? " 
 
 "No." 
 
 " Then turn your head from me a bit, my sweet young 
 lady ; I am an honest woman, though I am not so inno- 
 cent as you, and I am forced against my will to speak 
 my mind plainer than I am used to."
 
 254 WHITE LIES. 
 
 Then followed a conversation, to detail which might 
 anticipate onr story ; suffice it to say, that Hose, coining 
 into the room rather suddenly, found her sister weeping 
 on Jacintha's bosom, and Jacintha crying and sobbing 
 over her. 
 
 She stood and stared in utter amazement. 
 
 Dr. Aubertin, on his arrival, was agreeably surprised 
 at Madame Eaynal's appearance. He inquired after her 
 appetite. 
 
 " Oh, as to her appetite," cried the baroness, " that is 
 immense." 
 
 " Indeed ! " 
 
 "It was," explained Josephine, ''just when I began to 
 get better, but now it is as much as usual." This answer 
 had been arranged beforehand by Jacintha. She added, 
 "The fact is, we wanted to see you, doctor, and my 
 ridiculous ailments were a good excuse for tearing you 
 from Paris." — " And now we have succeeded," said 
 Eose, " let us throw off the mask, and talk of other 
 things ; above all, of Paris, and your eclat.'" 
 
 " For all that," persisted the baroness, " she was ill, 
 when I first wrote, and very ill too." 
 
 "Madame Raynal," said the doctor solemnly, "your 
 conduct has been irregular ; once ill, and your illness 
 announced to your medical adviser, etiquette forbade you 
 to get well but by his prescriptions. Since, then, you 
 have shown yourself unfit to conduct a malady, it be- 
 comes my painful duty to forbid you henceforth ever 
 to be ill at all, without my permission first obtained in 
 writing." 
 
 This badinage was greatly relished by Rose, but not at 
 all by the baroness, who was as humorless as a swan. 
 
 He stayed a month at Beaurepaire, then off to Paris 
 again : and being now a rich man, and not too old to
 
 WHITE LIES. 255 
 
 i3ujoy innocent pleasures, lie got a habit of running 
 backwards and forwards between the two places, spend- 
 ing a month or so at each alternatel}'. So the days 
 rolled on. Josephine fell into a state that almost defies 
 description ; her heart was full of deadly wounds, yet 
 it seemed, by some mysterious, half-healing balm, to 
 throb and ache, but bleed no more. Beams of strange, 
 unreasonable complacency would shoot across her; the 
 next moment reflection would come, she would droop 
 her head, and sigh piteously. Then all would merge in 
 a wild terror of detection. She seemed on the borders 
 of a river of bliss, new, divine, and inexhaustible : and 
 on the other bank mocking malignant fiends dared her 
 to enter that heavenly stream. The past to her was 
 full of regrets ; the future full of terrors, and empty of 
 hope. Yet she did not, could not succumb. Instead 
 of the listlessness and languor of a few months back, 
 she had now more energy than ever ; at times it mounted 
 to irritation. An activity possessed her : it broke out 
 in many feminine ways. Among the rest she was seized 
 with what we men call a cacoethes of the needle : " a 
 raging desire " for work. Her fingers itched for work. 
 She was at it all day. As devotees retire to pray, so she 
 to stitch. On a wet day she would often slip into the 
 kitchen, and ply the needle beside Jacintha : on a dry 
 day she would hide in the old oak-tree, and sit like a 
 mouse, and ply the tools of her craft, and make things 
 of no mortal use to man or woman ; and she tried little 
 fringes of muslin upon her white hand, and held it up 
 in front of her, and smiled, and then moaned. It was 
 winter, and Rose used sometimes to bring her out a thick 
 shawl, as she sat in the old oak-tree stitching, but 
 Josephine nearly always declined it. She was nearly 
 impervious to cold. 
 
 Then, her purse being better filled than formerly, she
 
 256 WHITE LIES. 
 
 visited the poor more than ever, and above all the young 
 couples; and took a warm interest in their household 
 matters, and gave them muslin articles of her own 
 making, and sometimes sniffed the soup in a young 
 housewife's pot, and took a fancy to it, and, if invited 
 to taste it, paid her the compliment of eating a good 
 plateful of it, and said it was much better soup than the 
 chateau produced, and, what is stranger, thought so : and, 
 whenever some peevish little brat set up a yell in its 
 cradle, and the father naturally enough shook his fist at 
 the destroyer of his peace, Madame Raynal's lovely face 
 filled with concern not for the sufferer but the pest, and 
 she flew to it and rocked it and coaxed it and consoled 
 it, till the young housewife smiled and stopped its mouth 
 by other means. And, besides the five-franc pieces she 
 gave the infants to hold, these visits of Madame Raynal 
 were always followed by oue from Jacintha with a 
 basket of provisions on her stalwart arm, and honest 
 Sir John Burgoyne peeping out at the corner. Kind and 
 beneficent as she was, her temper deteriorated consider- 
 ably, for it came down from angelic to human. Rose 
 and Jacintha were struck with the change, assented to 
 everything she said, and encouraged her in everything 
 it pleased her caprice to do. Meantime the baroness 
 lived on her son Raynal's letters (they came regularly 
 twice a month). Rose too had a correspondence, a con- 
 stant source of delight to her. Edouard Riviere was 
 posted at a distance, and could not visit her ; but their 
 love advanced rapidly. Every day he wrote down for 
 his Rose the acts of the day, and twice a week sent the 
 budget to his sweetheart, and told her at the same time 
 every feeling of his heart. She was less fortunate than 
 he ; she had to carry a heavy secret ; but still she found 
 plenty to tell him, and tender feelings too to vent on him 
 in her own arch, shy, fitful way. Letters can enchain
 
 WHITE LIES. 257 
 
 hearts ; it was by letters that these two found them- 
 selves imperceptibly betrothed. Their union was looked 
 forward to as certain, and not very distant. Rose was 
 fairly in love. 
 
 One day, Dr. Aubertin, coming back from Paris to 
 Beaurepaire rather suddenly, found nobody at home but 
 the baroness. Josephine and Rose were gone to Frejus ; 
 had been there more than a week. She was ailing 
 again ; so as Frejus had agreed with her once, Rose 
 thought it might again. " She would send for them 
 back directly." 
 
 " No," said the doctor, " why do that ? I will go over 
 there and see them." Accordingly, a day or two after 
 this, he hired a carriage, and went off early in the morn- 
 ing to Frejus. In so small a place he expected to find 
 the young ladies at once ; but, to his surprise, no one 
 knew them nor had heard of them. He was at a non- 
 plus, and just about to return home and laugh at himself 
 and the baroness for this wild-goose chase, when he fell 
 in with a face he knew, one Mivart, a surgeon, a young 
 man of some talent, who had made his acquaintance in 
 Paris. Mivart accosted him with great respect ; and, 
 after the first compliments, informed him that he had 
 been settled some months in this little town, and was 
 doing a fair stroke of business. 
 
 " Killing some, and letting nature cure others, eh ? " 
 said the doctor; then, having had his joke, he told 
 Mivart what had brought him to Frejus. 
 
 " Are they pretty women, your friends ? I think I 
 know all the pretty women about," said Mivart with 
 levity. "They are not pretty," replied Aubertin. 
 Mivart's interest in them faded visibly out of his coun- 
 tenance. " But they are beautiful. The elder might 
 pass for Venus, and the younger for Hebe." 
 
 " I know them then ! " cried he ; " they are patients 
 of mine."
 
 258 WHITE LIES. 
 
 The doctor colored. " Ah, indeed ! " 
 
 " In the absence of your greater skill," said Mivart, 
 politely ; " it is Madame Aubertin and her sister you are 
 looking for, is it not ? " 
 
 Aubertin groaned. " I am rather too old to be looking 
 for a Madame Aubertin," said he; "no; it is Madame 
 Raynal, and Mademoiselle de Beaurepaire." 
 
 Mivart became confidential. " Madame Aubertin and 
 her sister," said he, " are so lovely they make me ill to 
 look at them : the deepest blue eyes you ever saw, both 
 of them ; high foreheads ; teeth like ivory mixed with 
 pearl ; such aristocratic feet and hands ; and their arms 
 — oh!" and by way of general summary the young sur- 
 geon kissed the tips of his fingers, and was silent; lan- 
 guage succumbed under the theme. The doctor smiled 
 coldly. 
 
 Mivart added, " If you had come an hour sooner, you 
 might have seen Mademoiselle Rose ; she was in the 
 town." 
 
 " Mademoiselle Rose ? who is that ? " 
 
 " Why, Madame Aubertin's sister." 
 
 At this Dr. Aubertin looked first very puzzled, then 
 very grave. 
 
 " Hum ! " said he, after a little reflection, " where do 
 these paragons live ? " 
 
 " They lodge at a small farm ; it belongs to a widow ; 
 her name is Roth." They parted. Dr. Aubertin walked 
 slowly towards his carriage, his hands behind him, his 
 eyes on the ground. He bade the driver inquire where 
 the Widow Roth lived, and learned it was about half a 
 league out of the town. He drove to the farmhouse; 
 when the carriage drove up, a young lady looked out of 
 the window on the first floor. It was Rose de Beaure- 
 paire. She caught the doctor's eye, and he hers. She 
 came down and welcomed him with a great appearance
 
 WHITE LIES. 259 
 
 of cordiality, and asked him, with a smile, how he 
 found them out. 
 
 " From your medical attendant," said the doctor, dryly. 
 
 Rose looked keenly in his face. 
 
 " He said he was in attendance on two paragons of 
 beauty, blue eyes, white teeth and arms." 
 
 " And you found us out by that ? " inquired Rose, 
 looking still more keenly at him. 
 
 " Hardly ; but it was my last chance of finding 3-ou, 
 so I came. Where is IMadame Raynal ? " 
 
 ''Come into this room, dear friend. I will go and 
 find her." 
 
 Full twenty minutes was the doctor kept waiting, and 
 then in came Rose, gayly crying, "I have hunted her 
 high and low, and where do you think my lady was ? 
 sitting out in the garden — come." 
 
 Sure enough, they found Josephine in the garden, 
 seated on a low chair. She smiled when the doctor 
 came up to her, and asked after her mother. There was 
 an air of languor about her ; her color was clear, delicate, 
 and beautiful. 
 
 " You have been unwell, my child." 
 
 " A little, dear friend ; you know me ; always ailing, 
 and tormenting those I love." 
 
 " Well ! but, Josephine, you know this place and this 
 sweet air always set you up. Look at her now, doctor ; 
 did you ever see her look better ? See what a color. I 
 never saw her look more lovely." 
 
 " I never saw her look so lovely ; but I have seen her 
 look better. Your pulse. A little languid ? " 
 
 "Yes, I am a little." 
 
 " Do you stay at Beaurepaire ? " inquired Rose ; " if 
 so, we will come home." 
 
 "On the contrary, you will stay here another fort- 
 night," said the doctor, authoritatively.
 
 2G0 WHITE LIES. 
 
 "Prescribe some of your nice tonics for me, doctor," 
 said Josephine, coaxingly. 
 
 " No ! I can't do that ; you are in the hands of another 
 practitioner." 
 
 '' What does that matter ? You were at Paris." 
 
 " It is not the etiquette in our profession to interfere 
 with another man's patients." 
 
 '' Oh, dear ! I am so sorry," began Josephine. 
 
 " I see nothing here that my good friend Mivart is not 
 competent to deal with," said the doctor, coldly. 
 
 Then followed some general conversation, at the end 
 of which the doctor once more laid his commands on 
 them to stay another fortnight where they were, and 
 bade them good-by. 
 
 He was no sooner gone than Rose went to the door of 
 the kitchen, and called out, " Madame Jouvenel ! 
 Madame Jouvenel ! you may come into the garden 
 again." 
 
 The doctor drove away ; but, instead of going straight 
 to Beaurepaire, he ordered the driver to return to the 
 town. He then walked to Mivart's house. 
 
 In about a quarter of an hour he came out of it, look- 
 ing singularly grave, sad, and stern.
 
 WHITE LIES. 201 
 
 CHAPTER XVIT. 
 
 Edouard Riviere contrived one Saturday to work off 
 all arrears of business, and start for Beaurepaire. He 
 had received a very kind letter from Rose, and his long- 
 ing to see her overpowered him. On the road his eyes 
 often glittered, and his cheek flushed with expectation. 
 At last he got there. His heart beat : for four months 
 he had not seen her. He ran up into the drawing-room, 
 and there found the baroness alone ; she welcomed him 
 cordially, but soon let him know Rose and her sister 
 were at Frejus. His heart sank. Frejus was a long 
 way off. But this was not all. Rose's last letter was 
 dated from Beaurepaire, yet it must have been written 
 at Frejus. He went to Jacintha, and demanded an 
 explanation of this. The ready Jacintha said it looked 
 as if she meant to be home directly ; and added, with 
 cool cunning, " That is a hint for me to get their rooms 
 ready." 
 
 " This letter must have come here enclosed in another," 
 said Edouard, sternly. 
 
 " Like enough," replied Jacintha, with an appearance 
 of sovereign indifference. 
 
 Edouard looked at her, and said, grimly, " I will go to 
 Frejus." 
 
 "So I would," said Jacintha, faltering a little, but not 
 perceptibly; "you might meet them on the road, if so 
 be they come the same road ; there are two roads, you 
 know." 
 
 Edouard hesitated ; but he ended by sending Dard to 
 the town on his own horse, with orders to leave him at
 
 2G2 WHITE LIES. 
 
 the inn, and borrow a fresh horse. " I shall just have 
 time," said he. He rode to Frejus, and inquired at the 
 inns and post-office for Mademoiselle de Beaurepaire. 
 They did not know her ; then he inquired for Madame 
 Raynal. No such name known. He rode by the sea- 
 side upon the chance of their seeing him. He paraded 
 on horseback throughout the place, in hopes every 
 moment that a window would open, and a fair face shine 
 at it, and call him. At last his time was up, and he was 
 obliged to ride back, sick at heart, to Beaurepaire. He 
 told the baroness, with some natural irritation, what had 
 happened. She was as much surprised as he was. 
 
 "I write to Madame Raynal at the post-office, Frejus," 
 said she. 
 
 " And Madame Raynal gets your letters ? " 
 
 " Of course she does, since she answers them ; you 
 cannot have inquired at the post." 
 
 " Why, it was the first place I inquired at, and neither 
 Mademoiselle de Beaurepaire nor Madame Raynal were 
 known there." 
 
 Jacintha, who could have given the clew, seemed so 
 puzzled herself, that they did not even apply to her. 
 Edouard took a sorrowful leave of the baroness, and set 
 out on his journey home. 
 
 Oh ! how sad and weary that ride seemed now by 
 what it had been coming. His disappointment was 
 deep and irritating ; and ere he had ridden half way a 
 torturer fastened on his heart. That torture is suspi- 
 cion ; a vague and shadowy, but gigantic phantom that 
 oppresses and rends the mind more terribly than cer- 
 tainty. In this state of vague, sickening suspicion, he 
 remained some days : then came an affectionate letter 
 from Rose, who had actually returned home. In this 
 she expressed her regret and disappointment at having 
 missed him ; blamed herself for misleading him, but
 
 WHITE LIES. 263 
 
 explained that their stay at Frejus had been prolonged 
 from day to day far beyond her expectation. " The stu- 
 pidity of the post-office was more than she could account 
 for," said she. But, what went farthest to console 
 Edouard, was, that after this contretemjjs she never 
 ceased to invite him to come to Beaurepaire. Now, 
 before this, though she said many kind and pretty 
 things in her letters, she had never invited him to visit 
 the chateau ; he had noticed this. '•' Sweet soul," thought 
 he, "she really is vexed. I must be a brute to think 
 any more about it. Still " — 
 
 So this wound was skinned over. 
 
 At last, what he called his lucky star ordained that he 
 should be transferred to the very post his Commandant 
 Raynal had once occupied. He sought and obtained per- 
 mission to fix his quarters in the little village near Beau- 
 repaire, and though this plan could not be carried out 
 for three months, yet the prospect of it was joyful all 
 that time — joyful to both lovers. Kose needed this con- 
 solation, for she was very unhappy : her beloved sister, 
 since their return from Frejus, had gone back. The 
 flush of health was faded, and so was her late energy. 
 She fell into deep depression and languor, broken occa- 
 sionally by fits of nervous irritation. 
 
 She would sit for hours together at one Avindow 
 languishing and fretting. Can the female reader guess 
 which way that window looked ? 
 
 Kow, Edouard was a favorite of Josephine's ; so Rose 
 hoped he would help to distract her attention from those 
 sorrows which a lapse of years alone could cure. 
 
 On every account, then, his visit was looked forward 
 to with hope and joy. 
 
 He came. He was received with open arms. He took 
 up his quarters at his old lodgings, but spent his even- 
 ings and every leisure hour at the chateau.
 
 264 WHITE LIES. 
 
 He was very much in love, and showed it. He adhered 
 to Rose like a leech, and followed her about like a little 
 dog. 
 
 This would have made her very happy if there had 
 been nothing great to distract her attention and her 
 heart ; but she had Josephine, whose deep depression 
 and fits of irritation and terror filled her with anxiety ; 
 and so Edouard was in the way now and then. On these 
 occasions he was too vain to see what she was too polite 
 to show him offensively. 
 
 But on this she became vexed at his obtuseness. 
 
 " Does he think I can be always at his beck and call ? " 
 thought she. 
 
 " She is always after her sister," said he. 
 
 He was just beginning to be jealous of Josephine when 
 the following incident occurred : — 
 
 Rose and the doctor were discussing Josephine. 
 Edouard pretended to be reading a book, but he listened 
 to every word. 
 
 Dr. Aubertin gave it as his opinion that Madame Ray- 
 nal did not make enough blood. 
 
 " Oh ! if I thought that ! " cried Rose. 
 
 " Well, then, it is so, I assure you." 
 
 " Doctor," said Rose, " do you remember, one day you 
 said healthy blood could be drawn from robust veins and 
 poured into a sick person's ? " 
 
 " It is a well-known fact," said Aubertin. 
 
 " I don't believe it," said Rose, dryly. 
 
 " Then you place a very narrow limit to science," said 
 the doctor, coldly. 
 
 " Did you ever see it done ? " asked Rose, slyly. 
 
 "I have not only seen it done, but have done it 
 myself." 
 
 " Then do it for us. There's my arm ; take blood from 
 that for dear Josephine ! " and she thrust a white arm
 
 WHITE LIES. 265 
 
 out under his eye with such a Lohl movement and such 
 a look of fire and love as never beamed from common 
 eyes. 
 
 A keen, cold pang shot tlirough the human heart of 
 Edouard Riviere. 
 
 The doctor started and gazed at her with admiration : 
 then he hung his head. '' I could not do it. I love you 
 both too well to drain either of life's current." 
 
 Rose veiled her fire, and began to coax. " Once a 
 week ; just once a week, dear, dear doctor ; you know I 
 should never miss it. I am so full of that health, which 
 Heaven denies to her I love." 
 
 *' Let us try milder measures first," said the doctor. 
 " I have most faith in time." 
 
 " What if I were to take her to Frejus ? hitherto, the 
 sea has always done wonders for her." 
 
 " Frejus, by all means," said Edouard, mingling sud- 
 denly in the conversation ; " and this time I will go with 
 you, and then I shall find out where you lodged before, 
 and how the boobies came to say they did not know you." 
 
 Rose bit her lip. She could not help seeing then how 
 much dear Edouard was in her way and Josephine's. 
 Their best friends are in the way of all who have secrets. 
 Presently the doctor went to his study. Then Edouard 
 let fall a mock soliloquy. "■ I wonder," said he, dropping 
 out his words one by one, " whether any one will ever 
 love me well enough to give a drop of tlieir blood for 
 me." 
 
 "If you were in sickness and sorrow, who knows?" 
 said Rose, coloring up. 
 
 " I would soon be in sickness and sorrow if I thought 
 that." 
 
 " Don't jest with such matters, monsieur." 
 
 " I am serious. I wisli I was as ill as Madame Raynal 
 is, to be loved as she is."
 
 266 WHITE LIES. 
 
 " You must resemble her in some other things to be 
 loved as she is." 
 
 '' You have often made me feel that of late, dear Rose." 
 
 This touched her. But she fought down the kindly- 
 feeling. " I am glad of it," said she, out of perverseness. 
 She added after a while, " Edouard, you are naturally 
 jealous." 
 
 "Not the least in the world, Rose, I assure you. I 
 have many faults, but jealous I am not." 
 
 " Oh, yes, you are, and suspicious, too ; there is some- 
 thing in your character that alarms me for our happi- 
 ness." 
 
 " Well, if you come to that, there are things in your 
 conduct I could wish explained." 
 
 " There ! I said so. You have not confidence in me." 
 
 " Pray don't say that, dear Rose. I have every confi- 
 dence in you ; only please don't ask me to divest myself 
 of my senses and my reason." 
 
 " I don't ask you to do that or anything else for me ; 
 good-by, for the present." 
 
 " Where are you going now ? tic ! tic ! I never can get 
 a word in peace with you." 
 
 " I am not going to commit murder. I'm only going 
 up-stairs to my sister." 
 
 "Poor Madame Raynal, she makes it very hard for me 
 not to dislike her." 
 
 " Dislike my Josephine ? " and Rose bristled visibly. 
 
 " She is an angel, but I should hate an angel if it came 
 forever between you and me." 
 
 "Excuse me, she was here long before you. It is you 
 that came between her and me." 
 
 " I came because I was told I should be welcome," said 
 Edouard bitterly, and equivocating a little ; he added, 
 " and I dare say I shall go when I am told I am one too 
 many."
 
 WHITE LIES. 267 
 
 "Bad heart! who says you are one too many in the 
 house ? But you are too exigent, monsieur ; you assume 
 the husband, and you tease me. It is selfish ; can you 
 not see I am anxious and worried ? you ought to be kind 
 to me, and soothe me ; that is what I look for from you, 
 and, instead of that, I declare you are getting to be quite 
 a worry." 
 
 " I should not be if you loved me as I love you. I 
 give yoii. no rival. Shall I tell you the cause of all this ? 
 you have secrets." 
 
 "What secrets?" 
 
 " Is it me you ask ? am I trusted with them ? Secrets 
 are a bond that not even love can overcome. It is to 
 talk secrets you run away from me to Madame Raynal. 
 Where did you lodge at Frejus, Mademoiselle the Eeti- 
 cent?" 
 
 " In a grotto, dry at low water, Monsieur the Inquisi- 
 tive." 
 
 "That is enough : since you will not tell me, I will find 
 it out before I am a week older." 
 
 This alarmed Rose terribly, and drove her to extremi- 
 ties. She decided to quarrel. 
 
 " Sir," said she, " I thank you for playing the tyrant 
 a little prematurely ; it has put me on my guard. Let 
 us part ; you and I are not suited to each other, Edouard 
 Riviere." 
 
 He took this more humbly than she expected. " Part ! " 
 said he, in consternation ; " that is a terrible word to 
 pass between you and me. Forgive me ! I suppose I am 
 jealous." 
 
 "You are; you are actually jealous of my sister. 
 Well, I tell you plainly I love you, but I love my sister 
 better. I never could love any man as I do her ; it is 
 ridiculous to expect such a thing." 
 
 " And do you think I could bear to play second fiddle 
 to her all my life ? "
 
 2C8 WHITE LIES. 
 
 " I don't ask you. Go and j)lay first trumpet to some 
 other lady." 
 
 " You speak your wishes so plainly now, 1 have noth- 
 ing to do but to obey." 
 
 He kissed her hand and went away disconsolately. 
 
 Eose, instead of going to Josephine, her determination 
 to do which had mainly caused the quarrel, sat sadly 
 down, and leaned her head on her hand. " I am cruel. 
 I am ungrateful. He has gone away broken-hearted. 
 And what shall I do without him ? — little fool ! I love 
 him better than he loves me. He will never forgive me. 
 I have wounded his vanity ; and they are vainer than we 
 are. If we meet at dinner I will be so kind to him, 
 he will forget it all. No ! Edouard will not come to 
 dinner. He is not a spaniel that you can beat, and then 
 whistle back again. Something tells me I have lost him, 
 and if I have, what shall I do ? I will write him a note. 
 1 will ask him to forgive me." 
 
 She sat down at the table, and took a sheet of note- 
 paper and began to write a few conciliatory words. She 
 was so occupied in making these kind enough, and not 
 too kind, that a light step approached her unobserved. 
 She looked up and there was Edouard. She whipped the 
 paper off the table. 
 
 A look of suspicion and misery crossed Edouard's face. 
 
 Kose caught it, and said, " Well, am I to be affronted 
 any more ? " 
 
 "No, Kose. I came back to beg you to forget Avhat 
 passed just now," said he. 
 
 Rose's eye flashed ; his return showed her her power. 
 She abused it directly. 
 
 " How can I forget it if you come reminding me ? " 
 
 " Dear Eose, now don't be so unkind, so cruel — I have 
 not come back to tease you, sweet one. I come to know 
 what I can do to please you; to make you love me
 
 WHITE LIES. 2G9 
 
 again ? " and he was about to kneel graciously on one 
 knee. 
 
 " I'll tell you. Don't come near me for a month." 
 
 Edouard started up, white as ashes with mortification 
 and wounded love. 
 
 " This is how you treat me for humbling myself, when 
 it is you that ought to ask forgiveness." 
 
 " Why should I ask what I don't care about ? " 
 
 " What do you care about ? — except that sister of 
 yours ? You have no heart. And on this cold-blooded 
 creature I have wasted a love an empress might have 
 been proud of inspiring. I pray Heaven some man may 
 sport with your affections, yoa heartless creature, as you 
 have played with mine, and make you suffer what I suf- 
 fer now ! " 
 
 And with a burst of inarticulate grief and rage he 
 flung out of the room. 
 
 Kose sank trembling on the sofa a little while : then 
 with a mighty effort rose and went to comfort her sister. 
 
 Edouard came no more to Beaurepaire. 
 
 There is an old French proverb, and a wise one, "i?ie« 
 n^est certain que I'imprevu ; " it means you can make 
 sure of nothing but this, that matters will not turn as 
 you feel sure they will. And, even for this reason, you, 
 who are thinking of suicide because trade is declining, 
 speculation failing, bankruptcy impending, or your life 
 going to be blighted forever by unrequited love — don't 
 do it. Whether you are English, American, French, or 
 German, listen to a man that knows what is what, and 
 dorit do it. I tell you none of those horrors, when they 
 really come, will affect you as you fancy they will. The 
 joys we expect are not a quarter so bright, nor the troubles 
 half so dark as we think tliey will be. Bankruptcy 
 coming is one thing, come is quite another: and no heart
 
 270 WHITE LIES. 
 
 or life was ever really blighted at twenty years of age. 
 The love-sick girls that are picked out of the canal alive, 
 all, without exception, marry another man, have brats, 
 and get to screech with laughter when they think of 
 sweetheart No. 1, generally a blockhead, or else a black- 
 guard, whom they were fools enough to wet their clothes 
 for, let alone kill their souls. This happens invariably. 
 The love-sick girls that are picked out of the canal dead 
 have fled from a year's misery to eternal pain, from grief 
 that time never failed to cure, to anguish incurable. In 
 this world '' Rien n'est certain que Pimprevu." 
 
 Edouard and Rose were tender lovers, at a distance. 
 How much happier and more loving they thought they 
 should be beneath the same roof. They came together : 
 their prominent faults of character rubbed : the secret 
 that was in the house did its work : and altogether, they 
 quarrelled. LHmprev^i. 
 
 Dard had been saying to Jacintha for ever so long, 
 " When granny dies, I will marry you." 
 
 Granny died. Dard took possession of her little prop- 
 erty. Up came a glittering official, and turned him out ; 
 he was not her heir. Perrin, the notary, was. He had 
 bought the inheritance of her two sons, long since dead. 
 
 Dard had not only looked on the cottage and cow, as 
 his, but had spoken of them as such for years. The dis- 
 appointment and the irony of comrades ate into him. 
 
 " I will leave this cursed place," said he. 
 
 Josephine instantly sent for him to Beaurepaire. He 
 came, and was factotum with the novelty of a fixed salary. 
 Jacintha accommodated him with a new little odd job or 
 two. She set him to dance on the oak floors with a brush 
 fastened to his right foot ; and, after a rehearsal or two, 
 she made him wait at table. Didn't he bang the things 
 about : and when he brought a lady a dish, and she did 
 not instantly attend, he gave her elbow a poke to attract
 
 WHITE LIES. 271 
 
 attention : then she squeaked ; and he grinned at her 
 double absurdity in minding a touch, and not minding 
 the real business of the table. 
 
 But his wrongs rankled in him. He vented antique 
 l)hrases such as, '' I want a change ; " " This village is 
 the last place the Almighty made," etc. 
 
 Then he was attacked with a moral disease : affected 
 the company of soldiers. He spent his weekly salary 
 carousing with the military, a class of men so brilliant 
 that they are not expected to pay for their share of the 
 drink ; they contribute the anecdotes and the familiar 
 appeals to Heaven : and is not that enough ? 
 
 Present at many recitals, the heroes of which lost 
 nothing by being their own historians, Dard imbibed a 
 taste for military adventure. His very talk, which used 
 to be so homely, began now to be tinselled with big 
 swelling words of vanity imported from the army. I 
 need hardly say these bombastical phrases did not elevate 
 his general dialect : they lay fearfully distinct upon the 
 surface, " like lumps of marl upon a barren soil, encum- 
 bering the ground they could not fertilize." 
 
 Jacintha took leave to remind him of an incident 
 connected with warfare — wounds. 
 
 "Do you remember how you were down upon your 
 luck when you did but cut your foot ? Why, that is 
 nothing in the army. They never go out to fight but 
 some come back with arms off, and some with legs off, 
 and some with heads ; and the rest don't come back at 
 all : and how would you like that ? " 
 
 This intrusion of statistics into warfare at first cooled 
 Dard's impatience for the field. But presently the fight- 
 ing half of his heart received an ally in one Sergeant La 
 Croix (not a bad name for a military aspirant). This 
 sergeant was at the village waiting to march with the 
 new recruits to the Ehine. Sergeant La Croix was a
 
 272 WHITE LIES. 
 
 man who, by force of eloquence, could make soldiering 
 appear the most delightful as well as glorious of human 
 pursuits. His tongue fired the inexperienced soul with 
 a love of arms, as do the drums and trumpets and tramp 
 of soldiers, and their bayonets glittering in the sun. He 
 would have been worth his weight in fustian here, where 
 we recruit by that and jargon ; he was superfluous in 
 France, Avhere they recruited by force : but he was orna- 
 mental : and he set Dard and one or two more on fire. 
 Indeed, so absorbing was his sense of military glory, that 
 there was no room left in him for that mere verbal honor 
 civilians call veracity. 
 
 To speak plainly, the sergeant was a fluent, fertile, 
 interesting, sonorous, prompt, audacious liar : and such 
 was his success, that Dard and one or two more became 
 mere human fiction pipes — of comparatively small diam- 
 eter — irrigating a rural district with false views of mili- 
 tary life, derived from that inexhaustible reservoir. La 
 Croix. 
 
 At last the long-threatened conscription was levied : 
 every person fit to bear arms, and not coming under the 
 allowed exceptions, drew a number : and at a certain 
 hour the numbers corresponding to these were deposited 
 in an urn, and one-third of them were drawn in presence 
 of the authorities. Those men whose numbers were 
 drawn had to go for soldiers. Jacintha awaited the 
 result in great anxiety. She could not sit at home for 
 it ; so she went down the road to meet Dard, who had 
 promised to come and tell her the result as soon as 
 known. At last she saw him approaching in a discon- 
 solate way. " Dard ! speak ! are we undone ? are you 
 a dead man ? " cried she. '' Have they made a soldier 
 of you ? " 
 
 " No such luck : I shall die a man of all work," 
 grunted Dard.
 
 WHITE LIES. 273 
 
 "And you are sorry? you unnatural little monster! 
 you have no feeling for me, then." 
 
 " Oh, yes, I have ; but glory is No. 1 with me now." 
 
 " How loud the bantams crow ! You leave glory to 
 fools that be six feet high." 
 
 " General Bonaparte isn't much higher than I am, and 
 glory sits upon his brow. Why shouldn't glory sit upon 
 my brow ? " 
 
 "Because it would weigh you down, and smother j'ou, 
 you little fool." She added, "And think of me, that 
 couldn't bear you to be killed at any price, glory or no 
 glory." 
 
 Then, to appease her fears, Dard showed her his 
 number, 99 ; and assured her he had seen the last 
 number in the functionary's hand before he came away, 
 and it was sixty something. 
 
 This ocular demonstration satisfied Jacintha ; and she 
 ordered Dard to help her draw the water. 
 
 "All right," said he, "there is no immortal glory to be 
 picked up to-day, so I'll go in for odd jobs." 
 
 While they were at this job a voice was heard hallooing. 
 Dard looked up, and there was a rigid military figure, 
 with a tremendous mustache, peering about. Dard was 
 overjoyed. It was his friend, his boon-companion. 
 "Come here, old fellow," cried he, "ain't I glad to see 
 you, that is all ? " La Croix marched towards the pair. 
 "What are you skulking here for, recruit ninety -niue ?" 
 said he, sternly, dropping the boon-companion in the ser- 
 geant ; " the rest are on the road." 
 
 " The rest, old fellow ! what do you mean ? why, I was 
 not drawn." 
 
 " Yes, you were." 
 
 "No, I wasn't." 
 
 " Thunder of war, but I say you were. Yours was the 
 last number." 
 18
 
 274 WHITE LIES. 
 
 " That is an unlucky guess of yours, for I saw the last 
 number. Look here," and he fumbled in his pocket, and 
 produced his number. 
 
 La Croix instantly fished out a corresponding number. 
 
 " Well, and here you are ; this Avas the last number 
 drawn." 
 
 Dard burst out laughing. 
 
 "You goose !" said he, "that is sixty -six — look at it." 
 
 " Sixty-six ! " roared the sergeant ; " no more than 
 yours is — they are both sixty-sixes when you play 
 tricks with them, and turn them up like that ; but they 
 are both ninety-nines when you look at them fair." 
 
 Dard scratched his head. 
 
 "Come," said the corporal, briskly, "make up his 
 bundle, girl, and let us be off ; we have got our march- 
 ing orders ; going to the Rhine." 
 
 " And do you think that I Avill let him go ? " screamed 
 Jacintha. "No ! I will say one word to Madame Raynal, 
 and she will buy him a siibstitute directly." 
 
 Dard stopped her sullenly. "No ! I have told all in 
 the village that I would go the first chance : it is come, 
 and I'll go. I won't stay to be laughed at about this 
 too. If I was sure to be cut in pieces, I'd go. Give over 
 blubbering, girl, and get us a bottle of the best wine, 
 and while "we are drinking it, the sergeant and I, you 
 make up my bundle. I shall never do any good here." 
 
 Jacintha knew the obstinate toad. She did as she was 
 bid, and soon the little bundle was ready, and the two 
 men faced the wine ; La Croix, radiant and bellicose ; 
 Dard, crestfallen but dogged (for there was a little bit 
 of good stuff at the bottom of the creature) ; and Jacin- 
 tha rocking herself, with her apron over her head. 
 
 " I'll give you a toast," said La Croix. " Here's gun- 
 powder." 
 
 Jacintha promptly honored the toast with a flood of 
 tears.
 
 "WHITE LIES. 275 
 
 " Drop that, Jacintha," said Dard, angrily ; *' do you 
 think that is encouraging ? Sergeant, I told this poor 
 girl all about glory before you came, but she was not ripe 
 for it : say something to cheer her up, for I can't." 
 
 "I can," cried this trumpet of battle, emptying its 
 glass. "Attention, young woman." 
 
 " Oh, dear ! oh, dear ! yes, sir." 
 
 "A French soldier is a man who carries France in his 
 heart " — 
 
 "But if the cruel foreign soldiers kill him ? Oh ! " 
 
 " Why, in that case, he does not care a straw. Every 
 man must die ; horses likewise, and dogs, and donkeys, 
 when they come to the end of their troubles ; but dogs 
 and donkeys and chaps in blouses can't die gloriously ; 
 as Dard may, if he has any luck at all : so, from this 
 hour, if there was twice as little of him, be proud of him, 
 for from this time he is a part of France and her renown. 
 Come, recruit ninety-nine, shoulder your traps at duty's 
 call, and let us go forth in form. Attention ! Quick — 
 march ! Halt ! is that the way I showed you to march ? 
 Didn't I tell you to start from the left ? Now try again. 
 Quick — march ! left — right — left — right — left — right 
 
 — now you've — got it — drat ye, — keep it — left — right 
 
 — left — right — left — right." And with no more ado 
 the sergeant marched the little odd-job man to the wars. 
 
 Vive la France !
 
 276 WHITE LIES. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 Edouard, the moment his temper cooled, became very 
 sad. He longed to be friends again with Rose, but did 
 not know how. His own pride held him back, and so 
 did his fear that he had gone too far, and that his 
 offended mistress would not listen to an offer of recon- 
 ciliation from him. He sat down alone now to all his 
 little meals. No sweet, mellow voices in his ear after 
 the fatigues of the day. It was a dismal change in liis 
 life. 
 
 At last, one day, he received three lines from Josephine, 
 requesting him to come and speak to her. He went over 
 directly, full of vague hopes. He found her seated pale 
 and languid in a small room on the ground floor. 
 
 " What has she been doing to you, dear ? " began she 
 kindly. 
 
 " Has she not told you, Madame Raynal ? " 
 
 "No; she is refractory. She will tell me nothing, and 
 that makes me fear she is the one in fault." 
 
 " Oh ! if she does not accuse me, I am sure I will not 
 accuse her. I dare say I am to blame ; it is not her fault 
 that I cannot make her love me." 
 
 '' But you can. She does." 
 
 " Yes ; but she loves others better, and she holds me 
 out no hope it will ever be otherwise. On this one point 
 how can I hope for your sympathy; unfortunately for 
 me you are one of my rivals. She told me plainly she 
 never could love me as she loves you." 
 
 " And you believed her ? " 
 
 " I had good reason to believe hec"
 
 WHITE LIES. 277 
 
 Josephine smiled sadly. "Dear Edouavd," said she, 
 ''you must not attach so much importance to every word 
 we say. Does Rose at her age know ever^^thing ? Is she 
 a prophet ? Perhaps she really fancies she will alwaj^s 
 love her sister as she does now ; but you are a man of 
 sense ; you ought to smile and let her talk. When you 
 marry her you will take her to your own house ; she will 
 only see me now and then ; she will have you and your 
 affection always present. Each day some new tie between 
 you and her. You two will share every joy, every sorrow. 
 Your children playing at your feet, and reflecting the 
 features of both parents, will make you one. Your hearts 
 will melt together in that blessed union which raises 
 earth so near to heaven ; and then you will wonder you 
 could ever be jealous of poor Josephine, who must never 
 hope — ah, me ! " 
 
 Edouard, wrapped up in himself, mistook Josephine's 
 emotion at the picture she had drawn of conjugal love. 
 He soothed her, and vowed upon his honor he never 
 would separate Rose from her. 
 
 "Madame Raynal," said he, "you are an angel, and I 
 am a fiend. Jealousy must be the meanest of all senti- 
 ments. I never will be jealous again, above all, of you, 
 sweet angel. Why, you are my sister as well as hers, 
 and she has a right to love you, for I love you myself." 
 
 " You make me very happy when you talk so," sighed 
 Josephine. " Peace is made ? " 
 
 "Never again to be broken. I will go and ask her 
 pardon. What is the matter now ? " 
 
 For Jacintha was cackling very loud, and dismissing 
 with ignominy two beggars, male and female. 
 
 She was industry personified, and had no sympathy 
 with mendicity. In vain the couple protested, Heaven 
 knows with what truth, tluit they were not beggars, but 
 mechanics out of work. " March ! tramp ! " was Jacintha's
 
 278 WHITE LIES. 
 
 least word. She added, giving the rein to her imagina- 
 tion, " I'll loose the dog." The man moved away, tlie 
 woman turned appealingly to Edouard, He and Joseph- 
 ine came towards the group. She had got a sort of large 
 hood, and in that hood she carried an infant on her 
 shoulders. Josephine inspected it. " It looks sickly, 
 poor little thing," said she. 
 
 " What can you expect, young lady ? " said the woman. 
 " Its mother had to rise and go about when she ought to 
 have been in her bed, and now she has not enough to 
 give it." 
 
 " Oh, dear ! " cried Josephine. " Jacintha, give them 
 some food and a nice bottle of wine." 
 
 "That I will," cried Jacintha, changing her tone with 
 courtier-like alacrity. " I did not see she was nursing." 
 
 Josephine put a franc into the infant's hand ; the little 
 fingers closed on it with that instinct of appropriation, 
 which is our first and often our last sentiment. Josephine 
 smiled lovingly on the child, and the child seeing that 
 gave a small crow. 
 
 *' Bless it," said Josephine, and thereupon her lovely 
 head reared itself like a snake's, and then darted down 
 on the child ; and the young noble kissed the beggar's 
 brat as if she would eat it. 
 
 This won the mother's heart more than even the gifts. 
 
 " Blessings on you, my lady ! " she cried. '■ I pray the 
 Lord not to forget this when a woman's trouble comes on 
 you in your turn ! It is a small child, mademoiselle, but 
 it is not an unhealthy one. See." Inspection was offered, 
 and eagerly accepted. 
 
 Edouard stood looking on at some distance in amaze- 
 ment, mingled with disgust. 
 
 " Ugh ! " said he, when she rejoined him, "how could 
 you kiss that nasty little brat ? " 
 
 "Dear Edouard, don't speak so of a poor little innocent.
 
 WHITE LIES. 279 
 
 Who would pity them if we women did not ? It had 
 lovely eyes." 
 
 " Like saucers." 
 
 « Yes." 
 
 " It is no compliment when you are affectionate to any- 
 body ; you overflow with benevolence on all creation, like 
 the rose which sheds its perfume on the first-comer." 
 
 " If he is not going to be jealous of me next," whined 
 Josephine. 
 
 She took him to Rose, and she said, " There, whenever 
 good friends quarrel, it is understood they were both in 
 the wrong. Bygones are to be bygones ; and Avhen your 
 time comes round to quarrel again, please consult me 
 first, since it is me you will afflict." She left them 
 together, and went and tapped timidly at the doctor's 
 study. 
 
 Aubertin received her with none of that reserve she 
 had seen in him. He appeared both surprised and pleased 
 at her visit to his little sanctum. He even showed an 
 emotion Josephine was at a loss to account for. But 
 that wore oif during the conversation, and, indeed, gave 
 place to a sort of coldness. 
 
 " Dear friend," said she, " I come to consult you aboui 
 Rose and Edouard." She then told him what had hap- 
 pened, and hinted at Edouard's one fault. The doctor 
 smiled. "It is curious. You have come to draw my 
 attention to a point on which it has been fixed for some 
 days past. I am preparing a cure for the two young 
 fools; a severe remedy, but in their case a sure one." 
 
 He then showed her a deed, wherein he had settled sixty 
 thousand francs on Rose and her children. " Edouard," 
 said he, "has a good place. He is active and rising, and 
 with my sixty thousand francs, and a little purse of ten 
 thousand more for furniture and nonsense, they can marry 
 next week, if they like. Yes, marriage is a sovereign
 
 280 WHITE LIES. 
 
 medicine for both of these patients. She does not love 
 him quite enough. Cure : marriage. He loves her a 
 little too much. Cure : marriage." 
 
 " doctor ! " 
 
 " Can't help it. I did not make men and women. We 
 must take human nature as we find it, and thank God 
 for it on the whole. Have you nothing else to confide 
 to me ? " 
 
 " No, doctor." 
 
 " Are you sure ? " 
 
 "No, dear friend. But this is very near my heart," 
 faltered Josephine. 
 
 The doctor sighed ; then said gently, " They shall be 
 happy : as happy as you wish them." 
 
 Meantime, in another room, a reconciliation scene was 
 taking place, and the mutual concessions of two impetu- 
 ous but generous spirits. 
 
 The baroness noticed the change in Josephine's appear- 
 ance. 
 
 She asked Rose what could be the matter. 
 
 " Some passing ailment," was the reply. 
 
 "Passing? She has been so, on and off, a long time. 
 She makes me very anxious." 
 
 Rose made light of it to her mother, but in her own 
 heart she grew more and more anxious day by day. 
 She held secret conferences with Jacintha; that saga- 
 cious personage had a plan to wake Josephine from her 
 deathly languor, and even soothe her nerves, and check 
 those pitiable fits of nervous irritation to which she 
 had become subject. Unfortunately, Jacintha's plan 
 was so difficult and so dangerous, that at first even the 
 courageous Rose recoiled from it ; but there are dangers 
 that seem to diminish when you look them long in the 
 face.
 
 "WHITE LIES. 281 
 
 The whole party was seated in the tapestried room : 
 Jacintha was there, sewing a pair of sheets, at a respect- 
 ful distance from the gentlefolks, absorbed in lier work ; 
 but with both ears on full cock. 
 
 The doctor, holdivig his glasses to his eye, liad just 
 begun to read out the Moniteur. 
 
 The baroness sat close to him, Edouard opposite ; and 
 the young ladies each in her corner of a large luxurious 
 sofa, at some little distance. 
 
 '• ' The Austrians left seventy cannon, eight thousand men, 
 and three colors \\\)o\\ the field. Army of the North : General 
 Menard defeated the enemy after a severe engagement, taking 
 thirteen field-pieces and a quantity of ammunition.' " 
 
 The baroness made a narrow-minded remark. " That 
 is always the way Avith these journals," said she. " Aus- 
 trians ? Prussians ! when it's Egypt one wants to hear 
 about." — '•' No, not a word about Egypt," said the doc- 
 tor ; " but there is a whole column about the Rhine, 
 where Colonel Dujardin is — and Dard. If I was dicta- 
 tor, the first nuisance I would put down is small type." 
 He then spelled out a sanguinary engagement : '* eight 
 thousand of the enemy killed. "We have some losses to 
 lament. Colonel Dujardin " — 
 
 " Only wounded, I hope," said the baroness. 
 
 The doctor went coolly on. " At the head of the 24th 
 brigade made a brilliant charge on the enemy's flank, 
 that is described in the general order as having decided 
 the fate of the battle." 
 
 " How badly you do read," said the old lady, sharply. 
 "I thought he was gone; instead of that he has covered 
 himself with glory ; but it is all our doing, is it not, 
 young ladies ? We saved his life." 
 
 *^ We saved it amongst us, madame." 
 
 " What is the matter. Rose ? " said Edouard.
 
 282 WHITE LIES. 
 
 " Nothing : give me the salts, quick." 
 
 She only passed them, as it were, under her own nos- 
 trils ; then held them to Josephine, who was now ob- 
 served to be trembling all over. Rose contrived to make 
 it appear that this was mere sympathy on Josephine's 
 part. 
 
 " Don't be silly, girls," cried the baroness, cheerfully ; 
 " there is nobody killed that we care about." 
 
 Dr. Aubertin read the rest to himself. 
 
 Edouard fell into a gloomy silence and tortured him- 
 self about Camille, and Rose's anxiety and agitation. 
 
 By and by the new servant brought in a letter. It 
 was the long-expected one from Egypt. 
 
 "Here is something better than salts for you. A 
 long letter, Josephine, and all in his own hand ; so he is 
 safe, thank Heaven ! I was beginning to be uneasy again. 
 You frightened me for that poor Camille : but this is 
 worth a dozen Camilles ; this is my son ; I would give 
 my old life for him." — "My dear Mother — ('Bless 
 him ! '), my dear wife, and my dear sister — (' Well ! you 
 sit there like two rocks ! ') — We have just gained a bat- 
 tle — fifty colors. (' What do you think of that ? ') All 
 the enemy's baggage and ammunition are in our hands. 
 (' This is something like a battle, this one.') Also the 
 Pasha of Natolie. (' Ah ! the Pasha of Natolie ; an im- 
 portant personage, no doubt, though I never had the 
 honor of hearing of him. Do you hear? — you on the 
 sofa. My son has captured the Pasha of Natolie. He 
 is as brave as Caesar.') But this success is not one of 
 those that lead to important results ('Never mind, a 
 victory is a victory '), and I should not wonder if Bona- 
 parte was to dash home any day. If so, I shall go with 
 him, and perhaps spend a whole day with you, on my 
 way to the Rhine." 
 
 At this prospect a ghastly look passed quick as light- 
 ning between Rose and Josephine.
 
 White lies. 283 
 
 The baroness beckoned Josephine to come close to 
 her, and read her what followed in a lower tone of voice. 
 
 "■ Tell iny wife I love her more and more every day. 
 I don't expect as much from her, but she will make me 
 very happy if she can make shift to like me as well as 
 her family do." — " No danger ! What husband deserves 
 to be loved as he does ? I long for his return, that his 
 wife, his mother, and his sister may all combine to teach 
 this poor soldier what happiness means. We owe him 
 everything, Josephine, and if we did not love him, and 
 make him happy, we should be monsters ; now should 
 we not ? " 
 
 Josephine stammered an assent. 
 
 " Now you may read his letter : Jacintha and all," said 
 the baroness graciously. 
 
 The letter circulated. Meantime, the baroness con- 
 versed with Aubertin in quite an undertone. 
 
 " My friend, look at Josephine. That girl is ill, or 
 else she is going to be ill." 
 
 " Neither the one nor the other, madame," said Auber- 
 tin, looking her coolly in the face. 
 
 "But I say she is. Is a doctor's eye keener than a 
 mother's ? " 
 
 " Considerably," replied the doctor with cool and envi- 
 able effrontery. 
 
 The baroness rose. "Now, children, for our evening 
 walk. We shall enjoy it now." 
 
 " I trust you may : but for all that I must forbid the 
 evening air to one of the party — to Madame Raynal." 
 
 The baroness came to him and whispered, "That is 
 right. Thank you. See what is the matter with her, 
 and tell me." And she carried off the rest of the party. 
 
 At the same time Jacintha asked permission to pass 
 the rest of the evening with her relations in tlie village. 
 But why that swift, quivering glance of intelligenoe
 
 284 White lies. 
 
 between Jacintha and Rose de Beaurepaire when the 
 baroness said, " Yes, certainly " ? 
 
 Time will show. 
 
 Josephine and the doctor were left alone. Now Joseph- 
 ine had noticed the old people whisper and her mother 
 glance her way, and the whole woman was on her guard. 
 She assumed a languid complacency, and by way of 
 shield, if necessary, took some work, and bent her eyes 
 and apparently her attention on it. 
 
 The doctor was silent and ill at ease. 
 
 She saw he had something weighty on his mind. "The 
 air would have done me no harm," said she. 
 
 "Neither will a few words with me." 
 
 "Oh, no, dear friend. Only I think I should have 
 liked a little walk this evening." 
 
 " Josephine," said the doctor quietly, " when you were 
 a child I saved your life." 
 
 " I have often heard my mother speak of it. I was 
 choked by the croup, and you had the courage to lance 
 my windpipe." 
 
 " Had I ? " said the doctor, with a smile. He added 
 gravely, "It seems then that to be cruel is sometimes 
 kindness. It is the nature of men to love those whose 
 life they save." 
 
 " And they love you." 
 
 "Well, our affection is not perfect. I don't know which 
 is most to blame, but after all these years I have failed 
 to inspire you with confidence." The doctor's voice was 
 sad, and Josephine's bosom panted. 
 
 " Pray do not say so," she cried. " I would trust you 
 with my life." 
 
 " But not with your secret." 
 
 "My secret! What secret? I have no secrets." 
 
 " Josephine, you have now for full twelve months suf- 
 fered in body and mind, yet you have never come to me
 
 WHITE LIES. 285 
 
 for counsel, for comfort, for an old man's experience 
 and advice, nor even for medical aid." 
 
 " But, dear friend, I assure you " — 
 
 " We do not deceive our friend. We cannot deceive 
 our doctor." 
 
 Josephine trembled, but defended herself after the 
 manner of her sex. " Dear doctor," said she, " I love 
 you all the better for this. Your regard for me has 
 for once blinded your science. I am not so robust as 
 you have known me, but there is nothing serious the 
 matter with me. Let us talk of something else. Be- 
 sides, it is not interesting to talk about one's self," 
 
 "Very well; since there is nothing serious or interest- 
 ing in your case, we will talk about something that is 
 both serious and interesting." 
 
 " With all my heart ; " and she smiled with a sense of 
 relief. 
 
 But the doctor leaned over the table to her, and said 
 in a cautious and most emphatic whisper, " We will talk 
 
 about YOUR CHILD." 
 
 The work dropped from Josephine's hands : she turned 
 her face wildly on Aubertin, and faltered out, *' M — iuy 
 child ? " 
 
 " My words are plain," replied he gravely. " Your 
 
 CHILD." 
 
 When the doctor repeated these words, when Joseph- 
 ine looking in his face saw he spoke from knowledge, 
 however acquired, and not from guess, she glided down 
 slowly off the sofa and clasped his knees as he stood 
 before her, and hid her face in an agony of shame and 
 terror on his knees. 
 
 "Forgive me," she sobbed. "Pray do not expose me ! 
 Do not destroy me." 
 
 "Unhappy young lady," said he, "did you think you 
 had deceived me, or that you are lit to deceive any but
 
 286 WHITE LIES. 
 
 the blind ? Your face, your anguish after Colonel Du- 
 jardin's departure, your languor, and then your sudden 
 robustness, your appetite, your caprices, your strange 
 sojourn at Frejus, your changed looks and loss of health 
 on your return ! Josephine, your old friend has passed 
 many an hour thinking of you, divining your folly, fol- 
 lowing your trouble step by step. Yet you never invited 
 hira to aid you." 
 
 Josephine faltered out a lame excuse. If she had 
 revered him less she could have borne to confess to him. 
 She added it would be a relief to her to confide in him. 
 
 "Then tell me all," said he. 
 
 She consented almost eagerly, and told him — nearly 
 all. The old man was deeply affected. He murmured 
 in a broken voice, "■ Your story is the story of your sex, 
 self-sacrifice, first to your mother, then to Camille, now 
 to your husband." 
 
 " And he is well worthy of any sacrifice I can make," 
 said Josephine. " But oh, how hard it is to live ! " 
 
 " I hope to make it less hard to you ere long," said 
 the doctor quietly. He then congratulated himself on 
 having forced Josephine to confide in him. " For," said 
 he, "you never needed an experienced friend more than 
 at this moment. Your mother will not always be so 
 blind as of late. Edouard is suspicious. Jacintha is a 
 shrewd young woman, and very inquisitive." 
 
 Josephine was not at the end of her concealments : she 
 was ashamed to let him know she had made a confidant 
 of Jacintha and not of him. She held her peace. 
 
 " Then," continued Aubertin, " there is the terrible 
 chance of Raynal's return. But ere I take on me to 
 advise you, what are your own plans ? " 
 
 "/don't know," said Josephine helplessly. 
 
 "You — don't — know!" cried the doctor, looking at 
 her in utter amazement.
 
 WHITE LIES. 287 
 
 "It is the answer of a mad woman, is it not ? Doctor, 
 I am little better. My foot has slipped on the edge of 
 a precipice. I close my eyes, and let myself glide down 
 it. What will become of me ? " 
 
 "All shall be well," said Aubertin, "provided you do 
 not still love that man." 
 
 Josephine did not immediately reply : her thoughts 
 turned inwards. The good doctor was proceeding to con- 
 gratulate her on being cured of a fatal passion, when she 
 stopped him with wonder in her face. " Not love him ! 
 How can I help loving him ? I was his betrothed. I 
 wronged him in my thoughts. War, prison, anguish, 
 could not kill him; he loved me so. He struggled 
 bleeding to my feet; and could 1 let him die, after 
 all ? Could 1 be crueller than prison, and torture, and 
 despair?" 
 
 The doctor sighed deeply ; but, arming himself with 
 the necessary resolution, he sternly replied, "A woman 
 of your name cannot vacillate between love and honor; 
 such vacillations have but one end. I will not let you 
 drift a moral wreck between passion and virtue ; and 
 that is what it will come to if you hesitate now." 
 
 " Hesitate ! Who can say I have hesitated where my 
 honor was concerned ? You can read our bodies then, 
 but not our hearts. What ! you see me so pale, forlorn, 
 and dead, and that does not tell you 1 have bid Camille 
 farewell forever ? That we might be safer still 1 have 
 not even told him he is a father : was ever woman so 
 cruel as I am ? I have written him but one letter, and 
 in that I must deceive him. I told him 1 thought I 
 might one day be happy, if I could hear that he did not 
 give way to despair. I told him we must never meet 
 again in this world. So now come what will : show me 
 my duty and I will do it. This endless deceit bui-ns my 
 heart. Shall I tell my husband ? It will be but one
 
 288 WHITE LIES. 
 
 pang more, one blush more for me. But my mother ! " 
 and, thus appealed to. Dr. Aubertin felt, for the first 
 time, all the difficulty of the situation he had undertaken 
 to cure. He hesitated, he was embarrassed. 
 
 " Ah," said Josephine, " you see." Then, after a short 
 silence, she said despairingly, " This is my only hope : 
 that poor Raynal will be long absent, and that ere he 
 returns mamma will lie safe from sorrow and shame in 
 the little chapel. Doctor, Avhen a woman of my age 
 forms such wishes as these, I think you might pity her, 
 and forgive her ill-treatment of you, for she cannot be 
 very happy. Ah me ! ah me ! ah me ! " 
 
 " Courage, poor soul ! All is now in my hands, and I 
 will save you," said the doctor, his voice trembling in 
 spite of him. " Guilt lies in the intention. A more 
 innocent woman than you does not breathe. Two courses 
 lay open to you: to leave this house with Camille Du- 
 jardin, or to dismiss him, and live for your hard duty 
 till it shall please Heaven to make that duty easy (no 
 middle course was tenable for a day) ; of these two paths 
 you chose the right one, and, having chosen, I really 
 think you are not called on to reveal your misfortune, 
 and make those unhappy to whose happiness you have 
 sacrificed your own for years to come." 
 
 " Forever," said Josephine quietly. 
 
 " The young use that word lightly. The old have 
 almost ceased to use it. They have seen how few earthly 
 things can conquer time." 
 
 He resumed, " You think only of others, Josephine, 
 but I shall think of you as well. I shall not allow 
 your life to be wasted in a needless struggle against 
 nature." Then turning to Rose, who had glided into 
 the room, and stood amazed, " Her griefs were as many 
 before her child was born, yet her health stood firm. 
 Why ? because nature was on her side. Now she is
 
 WHITE LIES. 289 
 
 sinking into the grave. Why ? because she is defying 
 nature. Nature intended her to be pressing her child to 
 her bosom day and night; instead of that, a peasant 
 woman at Frejus nurses the child, and the mother pines 
 at Beaurepaire." 
 
 At this, Josephine leaned her face on her hands on 
 the doctor's shoulder. In this attitude she murmured to 
 him, "I have never seen him since I left Frejus." Dr. 
 Aubertin sighed for her. Emboldened by this, she 
 announced her intention of going to Frejus the very 
 next day to see her little Henri. But to this Dr. Auber- 
 tin demurred. " What, another journey to Frejus ?" said 
 he, " when the first has already roused Edouard's sus- 
 picions ; 1 can never consent to that." 
 
 Then Josephine surprised them both. She dropped 
 her coaxing voice and pecked the doctor like an irritated 
 pigeon. "Take care," said she, "don't be too cruel to 
 me. You see 1 am obedient, resigned. I have given up 
 all I lived for : but if I am never to have my little boy's 
 arms round me to console me, then — why torment me 
 any longer ? Why not say to me, ' Josephine, you have 
 offended Heaven ; pray for pardon, and die ' ? " 
 
 Then the doctor was angry in his turn. " Oh, go 
 then," said he, " go to Frejus ; you will have Edouard 
 Riviere for a companion this time. Your first visit 
 roused his suspicions. So before you go tell your mother 
 all ; for since she is sure to find it out, she had better 
 hear it from you than from another." 
 
 " Doctor, have pity on me," said Josephine. 
 
 " You have no heart," said Rose. " She shall see him 
 though, in spite of you." 
 
 " Oh, yes ! he has a heart," said Josephine : "he is my 
 best friend. He will let me see my boy." 
 
 All this, and the tearful eyes and coaxing yet trem- 
 bling voice, was hard to resist. But Aubertin saw clearly,
 
 290 WHITE LIES. 
 
 and stood firm. He put his handkerchief to his eyes a 
 moment: then took the pining young mother's hand. 
 " And, do you think," said he, " I do not pity you and 
 love your boy ? Ah ! he will never want a father whilst 
 I live ; and from this moment he is under my care. I 
 will go to see him ; I will bring you news, and all in 
 good time ; I will place him where you shall visit him 
 without imprudence ; but, for the present, trust a wiser 
 head than yours or Rose's; and give me your sacred 
 jiromise not to go to Frejus." 
 
 Weighed down by his good-sense and kindness, Joseph- 
 ine resisted no longer in words. She just lifted her 
 hands in despair and began to cry. It was so piteous, 
 Aubertin was ready to yield in turn, and consent to any 
 imprudence, when he met with an unexpected ally. 
 
 " Promise," said Rose, doggedly. 
 
 Josephine looked at her calmly through her tears. 
 
 "Promise, dear," repeated Rose, and this time with 
 an intonation so fine that it attracted Josejjhine's notice, 
 but not the doctor's. It was followed by a glance equally 
 subtle. 
 
 " I promise," said Josephine, with her eye fixed in- 
 quiringly on her sister. 
 
 For once she could not make the telegraph out : but 
 she could see it was playing, and that was enough. She 
 did what Rose bid her; she promised not to go to Frejus 
 without leave. 
 
 Finding her so submissive all of a sudden, he went on 
 to suggest that she must not go kissing every child she 
 saw. " Edouard tells me he saw you kissing a beggars 
 brat. The young rogue was going to quiz you about it 
 at the dinner-table ; luckily, he told me his intention, 
 and I would not let him. I said the baroness would be 
 annoyed with you for descending from your dignity — 
 and exposing a noble family to fleas — hush ! here he is."
 
 WHITE LIES. 291 
 
 " Tiresome ! " muttered Rose, " just when " — 
 
 Edouard came forward with a half-vexed face. 
 
 However, he turned it off into play. '' What have you 
 been saying to her, monsieur, to interest her so ? Give 
 me a leaf out of your book. I need it." 
 
 The doctor was taken aback for a moment, but at last 
 he said slyly, "I have been proposing to her to name the 
 day. She says she must consult you before she decides 
 that." 
 
 "Oh, you wicked doctor! — and consult him of all 
 people ! " 
 
 " So be off, both of you, and don't reappear before me 
 till it is settled." 
 
 Edouard's eyes sparkled. Rose went out with a face 
 as red as fire. 
 
 It was a balmy evening. Edouard was to leave them 
 for a week the next dcty. They were alone : Rose Avas 
 determined he should go away quite happy. Everything 
 was in Edouard's favor : he pleaded his cause warmly : 
 she listened tenderly : this happy evening her piquancy 
 and archness seemed to dissolve into tenderness as she 
 and Edouard walked hand in hand under the moon : a 
 tenderness all the more heavenly to her devoted lover, 
 that she was not one of those angels who cloy a man by 
 invariable sweetness. 
 
 For a little while she forgot everything but her com- 
 panion. In that soft hour he won her to name the day, 
 after her fashion. 
 
 "Josephine goes to Paris with the doctor in about 
 three weeks," murmured she. 
 
 "And you will stay behind, all alone ? " 
 
 "Alone ? that shall depend on you, monsieur." 
 
 On this Edouard caught her for the first time in his 
 arms. 
 
 She made a faint resistance.
 
 292 WHITE LIES. 
 
 " Seal me that promise, sweet one ! " 
 
 "No! no! — there!" 
 
 He pressed a delicious first kiss upon two velvet lips 
 that in their innocence scarcely shunned the sweet attack. 
 
 For all that, the bond was no sooner sealed after this 
 fashion, than the lady's cheek began to burn. 
 
 " Suppose we go in now ? " said she, dryly. 
 
 " Ah, not yet." 
 
 " It is late, dear Edouard." 
 
 And with these words something returned to her mind 
 with its full force : something that Edouard had actually 
 made her forget. She wanted to get rid of him now. 
 
 " Edouard," said she, " can you get up early in the 
 morning ? If you can, meet me here to-morrow before 
 any of them are up ; then we can talk without interrup- 
 tion." 
 
 Edouard was delighted. 
 
 « Eight o'clock ? " 
 
 " Sooner if you like. Mamma bade me come and read 
 to her in her room to-night. She will be waiting for me. 
 Is it not tiresome ? " 
 
 "Yes, it is." 
 
 " Well, we must not mind that, dear ; in three weeks' 
 time we are to have too much of one another, you know, 
 instead of too little." 
 
 " Too much ! I shall never have enough of you. I shall 
 hate the night which will rob me of the sight of you for 
 so many hours in the twenty-four." 
 
 " If you can't see me, perhaps you may hear me ; my 
 tongue runs by night as well as by day." 
 
 "Well, that is a comfort," said Edouard, gravely. 
 " Yes, little quizzer, I would rather hear you scold than 
 an angel sing. Judge, then, what music it is when you 
 say you love me ! " 
 
 " I love you, Edouard."
 
 WHITE LIES. 293 
 
 Edouard kissed her hand warmly, and then looked 
 irresolutelj' at her face. 
 
 " No, no ! " said she, laughing and blushing. " How 
 rude you are. Next time we meet." 
 
 " That is a bargain. But I won't go till you say you 
 love me again." 
 
 "Edouard, don't be silly. I am ashamed of saying 
 the same thing so often — I won't say it any more. 
 What is the use ? You know I love you. There, I have 
 said it : how stupid ! " 
 
 " Adieu, then, my wife that is to be." 
 
 " Adieu ! dear Edouard." 
 
 "■ My hus — go on — my hus — " 
 
 " My huswife that shall be." 
 
 Then they walked very slowly towards the house, and 
 once more Rose left quizzing, and was all tenderness. 
 
 " Will you not come in, and bid them ^ good-night ' ? " 
 
 " No, my own ; T am in heaven. Common faces — 
 common voices would bring me down to earth. Let me 
 be alone; — your sweet words ringing in my ear. I will 
 dilute you with nothing meaner than the stars. See how 
 bright they shine in heaven; but not so bright as you 
 shine in my heart." 
 
 "Dear Edouard, you flatter me, you spoil me. Alas! 
 why am T not more worthy of your love ? " 
 
 " More worthy ! How can that be ? " 
 
 Rose sighed. 
 
 "But T will atone for all. I will make you a better — 
 (here she substituted a full stop for a substantive) — 
 than you expect. You will see else." 
 
 She lingered at the door : a proof that if Edouard, at 
 that particular moment, had seized another kiss, there 
 would have been no very violent opposition or offence. 
 
 But he was not so impudent as some. He had been 
 told to wait till the next meeting for that. He prayed
 
 294 WHITE LIES. 
 
 Heaven to bless her, and so the affianced lovers parted 
 for the night. 
 
 It was about nine o'clock, Edonard, instead of return- 
 ing to his lodgings, started down towards the town, to 
 conclude a bargain with the innkeeper for an English 
 mare he Avas in treaty for. He wanted her for to-mor- 
 row's work ; so that decided him to make the purchase. 
 In purchases, as in other matters, a feather turns the 
 balanced scale. He sauntered leisurely down. It was a 
 very clear night; the full moon and the stars shining 
 silvery and vivid. Edouard's heart swelled with joy. 
 He was loved after all, deeply loved ; and in three short 
 weeks he was actually to be Rose's husband : her lord 
 and master. How like a heavenly dream it all seemed 
 — the first hopeless courtship, and now the wedding 
 fixed ! But it was no dream ; he felt her soft words still 
 murmur music at his heart, and the shadow of her velvet 
 lips slept upon his own. 
 
 He had strolled about a league when he heard the ring 
 of a horse's hoofs coming towards him, accompanied by 
 a clanking noise ; it came nearer and nearer, till it 
 reached a hill that lay a little ahead of Edouard ; then 
 the sounds ceased ; the cavalier was walking his horse 
 up the hill. 
 
 Presently, as if they had started from the earth, up 
 popped between Edouard and the sky, first a cocked hat 
 that seemed in that light to be cut with a razor out of 
 flint ; then the wearer, phosphorescent here and there ; 
 so brightly the keen moonlight played on his epaulets 
 and steel scabbard. A step or two nearer, and Edouard 
 gave a great shout ; it was Colonel Raynal. 
 
 After the first warm greeting, and questions and 
 answers, Raynal told him he was on his way to the 
 Rhine with despatches. 
 
 *' To the Rhine ? "
 
 WHITE LIES. 295 
 
 " I am allowed six days to get there. I made a calcu- 
 lation, and found I could give Beaurepaire half a day. 
 I shall have to make up for it by hard riding. You 
 know me ; always in a hurry. It is Bonaparte's fault 
 this time. He is always in a hurry too." 
 
 " Why, colonel," said Edouard, " let us make haste 
 then. Mind they go early to rest at the chateau." 
 
 " But you are not coming my way, youngster ? " 
 
 " Not coming your way ? Yes, but I am. Yours is a 
 face I don't see every day, colonel ; besides I would not 
 miss their faces, especially the baroness's and Madame 
 Raynal's, at sight of you ; and, besides," — and the 
 young gentleman chuckled to himself, and thought of 
 Rose's words, " the next time we meet ; " well, this will 
 be the next time. " May I jump up behind ? " 
 
 Colonel Raynal nodded assent. Edouard took a run, 
 and lighted like a monkey on the horse's crupper. He 
 pranced and kicked at this unexpected addition ; but the 
 spur being promptly applied to his flanks, he bounded 
 off with a snort that betrayed more astonishment than 
 satisfaction, and away they cantered to Beaurepaire, 
 without drawing rein. 
 
 '• There," said Edouard, *- 1 was afraid they would be 
 gone to bed ; and they are. The very house seems 
 asleep — fancy — at half-past ten." 
 
 '•That is a pity," said Raynal, "for this chateau is the 
 stronghold of etiquette. They will be two hours dress- 
 ing before they will come out and shake hands. I must 
 put my horse into the stable. Go you and give the 
 alarm." 
 
 " I will, colonel. Stop, first let me see whether none 
 of them are up, after all." 
 
 And Edouard walked round the chateau, and soon dis- 
 covered a light at one window, the window of the 
 tapestried room. Running round the other way he came
 
 296 WHITE LIES. 
 
 slap upon another light : this one was nearer the ground. 
 Al narrow but massive door, which he had always seen 
 not only locked but screwed up, was wide open ; and 
 through the aperture the light of a candle streamed out 
 and met the moonlight streaming in. 
 
 " Hallo ! " cried Edouard. 
 
 He stopped, turned, and looked in. 
 
 " Hallo ! " he cried again much louder. 
 
 A young woman was sleeping with her feet in the 
 silvery moonlight, and her head in the orange-colored 
 blaze of a flat candle, which rested on the next step 
 above of a fine stone staircase, whose existence was now 
 first revealed to the inquisitive Edouard. 
 
 Coming plump upon all this so unexpectedly, he quite 
 started. 
 
 " Why, Jacintha ! " 
 
 He touched her on the shoulder to wake her. Ko. 
 Jacintha was sleeping as only tired domestics can sleep. 
 He might have taken the candle and burnt her gown off 
 her back. She had found a step that fitted into the 
 small of her back, and another that supported her head, 
 and there she was fast as a door. 
 
 At this moment Eaynal's voice was heard calling him. 
 
 " There is a light in that bedroom." 
 
 '• It is not a bedroom, colonel ; it is our sitting-rooui 
 now. We shall find them all there, or at least the young 
 ladies ; and perhaps the doctor. The baroness goes to 
 bed early. Meantime I can show you one of our 
 dramatis personoe, and an important one too. She rules 
 the roost." 
 
 He took him mysteriously and showed him Jacintha. 
 
 Moonlight by itself seems white, and candlelight by 
 itself seems yellow ; but when the two come into close 
 contrast at night, candle turns a reddish flame, and 
 moonlight a bluish pleam.
 
 \\ 1 r '-^''mf^:-t 
 
 7 /-: 
 
 
 IT WAS COLONEL RAYNAL
 
 WHITE LIES. 297 
 
 So Jacintha, with her shoes in this celestial sheen, 
 and her face in that demoniacal glare, was enough to 
 knock the gazer's eye out. 
 
 "Make a good sentinel — this one," said Raynal — 
 "an outlying picket for instance, on rough ground, in 
 front of the enemy's riflemen." 
 
 " Ha ! ha ! colonel ! Let us see where this staircase 
 leads. I have an idea it will prove a short cut." 
 
 " Where to ? " 
 
 "To the saloon, or somewhere, or else to some of 
 Jacintha's haunts. Serve her right for going to sleep at 
 the mouth of her den." 
 
 "Forward then — no, halt! Suppose it leads to the 
 bedrooms ? Mind this is a thundering place for cere- 
 mony. We shall get drummed out of the barracks if we 
 don't mind our etiquette." 
 
 At this they hesitated ; and Edouard himself thought, 
 on the whole, it would be better to go and hammer at 
 the fi'ont door. 
 
 Now while they hesitated, a soft delicious harmony of 
 female voices suddenly rose, and seemed to come and 
 run round the walls. The men looked at one another in 
 astonishment ; for the effect was magical. The staircase 
 being enclosed on all sides with stone walls and floored 
 with stone, they were like flies inside a violoncello ; the 
 voices rang above, below, and on every side of the vibra- 
 ting walls. In some epochs spirits as hardy as Raynal's, 
 and wits as quick as Riviere's, would have fled then and 
 there to the nearest public, and told over cups how they 
 had heard the dames of Beaurepaire, long since dead, 
 holding their revel, and the conscious old devil's nest of 
 a chateau quivering to the ghostly strains. 
 
 But this was an incredulous age. They listened, and 
 listened, and decided the sounds came from up-stairs. 
 
 " Let us mount, and surprise these singing witches," 
 said Edouard.
 
 298 WHITE LIES. 
 
 "Surprise them! what for? It is not the enemy— ^ 
 for once. What is the good of surprising our friends ? " 
 
 Storming parties and surprises were no novelty and 
 therefore no treat to Raynal. 
 
 " It will be so delightful to see their faces at first sight 
 of you. colonel, for my sake ! Don't spoil it by 
 going tamely in at the front door, after coming at night 
 from Egypt for half an hour." 
 
 Raynal grumbled something about its being a childish 
 trick ; but to please Edouard consented at last ; only 
 stipulated for a light: "or else," said he, "we shall 
 surprise ourselves instead with a broken neck, going 
 over ground we don't know to surprise the natives — 
 our skirmishers got nicked that way now and then in 
 Egypt." 
 
 "Yes, colonel, I will go first with Jacintha's candle." 
 Edouard mounted the stairs on tiptoe. Raynal followed. 
 The solid stone steps did not prate. The men had 
 mounted a considerable way, when puff a blast of wind 
 came through a hole, and out went Edouard's candle. 
 He turned sharply round to Raynal. " Peste ! " said he 
 in a vicious whisper. But the other laid his hand on his 
 shoulder and whispered, " Look to the front." He looked, 
 and, his own candle being out, saw a glimmer on ahead. 
 He crept towards it. It was a taper shooting a feeble 
 light across a small aperture. They caught a glimpse of 
 what seemed to be a small apartment. Yet Edouard 
 recognized the carpet of the tapestried room — which 
 was a very large room. Creeping a yard nearer, he dis- 
 covered that it was the tapestried room, and that what 
 had seemed the further wall was only the screen, behind 
 which were lights, and two women singing a duet. 
 
 He whispered to Raynal, " It is the tapestried room." 
 
 "Is it a sitting-room ? " whispered Raynal. 
 
 " Yes ! yes ! Mind and not knock your foot against 
 the wood."
 
 WHITE LIES. 299 
 
 And Raynal went softly up and put his foot quietly 
 through the aperture, which he now saw was made by a 
 panel drawn back close to the ground ; and stood in the 
 tapestried chamber. The carpet was thick; the voices 
 favored the stealthy advance ; the floor of the old house 
 was like a rock ; and Edouard put his face through the 
 aperture, glowing all over with anticipation of the little 
 scream of joy that would welcome his friend dropping in 
 so nice and suddenly from Egypt. 
 
 The feeling was rendered still more piquant by a sharp 
 curiosity that had been growing on him for some minutes 
 past. For why was this passage opened to-night ? — he 
 had never seen it opened before. And why was Jacintha 
 lying sentinel at the foot of the stairs ? 
 
 But this was not all. Now that they were in the room 
 both men became conscious of another sound besides the 
 ladies' voices — a very peculiar sound. It also came from 
 behind the screen. They both heard it, and showed, by 
 the puzzled looks they cast at one another, that neither 
 could make out what on earth it was. It consisted of a 
 succession of little rustles, followed by little thumps on 
 the floor. 
 
 But what was curious, too, this rustle, thump — rustle, 
 thump — fell exactly into the time of the music; so 
 that, clearly, either the rustle thump was being played 
 to the tune, or the tune sung to the rustle thump. 
 
 This last touch of mystery inflamed Edouard's im- 
 patience beyond bearing : he pointed eagerly and merrily 
 to the corner of the screen. Raynal obeyed, and stepped 
 very slowly and cautiously towards it. 
 
 Rustle, thump! rustle, thump! rustle, thump! with 
 the rhythm of harmonious voices. 
 
 Edouard got his head and foot into the room without 
 taking his eye off Raynal. 
 
 Rustle, thump ! rustle, thump ! rustic, thump !
 
 300 WHITE LIES. 
 
 Rayual was iioav at the screen, and quietly put his 
 head round it, and his hand upon it. 
 
 Edouard was bursting with expectation. 
 
 No result. What is this ? Don't they see him ? 
 Why does he not speak to them ? He seems trans- 
 fixed. 
 
 Rustle, thump ! rustle, thump ; accompanied now for 
 a few notes by one voice only, Rose's. 
 
 Suddenly there burst a shriek from Josephine, so 
 loud, so fearful, that it made even Raynal stagger back 
 a step, the screen in his hand. 
 
 Then another scream of terror and anguish from Rose. 
 Then a fainter cry, and the heavy helpless fall of a 
 human body. 
 
 Raynal sprang forward whirling the screen to the 
 earth in terrible agitation, and Edouard bounded over it 
 as it fell at his feet. He did not take a second step. 
 The scene that caught his eye stupefied and paralyzed 
 him in full career, and froze him to the spot with amaze- 
 ment and strange misgivings.
 
 WHITE LIES. 301 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 To return for a moment to Eose. She parted from 
 Edouard, and went in at the front door: but the next 
 moment she opened it softly and watched her lover 
 unseen. "Dear Edouard!" she murmured: and then 
 she thought, "how sad it is that I must deceive him, 
 even to-night : must make up an excuse to get him from 
 me, when we were so happy together. Ah ! he little 
 knows how I shall welcome our wedding-day. When 
 once I can see my poor martyr on the road to peace and 
 content under the good doctor's care. And oh ! the hap- 
 piness of having no more secrets from him I love ! 
 Dear Edouard ! when once we are married, I never, 
 never, will have a secret from you again — I swear it." 
 
 As a comment on these words she now stepped cau- 
 tiously out, and peered in every direction. 
 
 "St — st!" she whispered. No answer came to this 
 signal. 
 
 Rose returned into the house and bolted the door in- 
 side. She went up to the tapestried room, and found the 
 doctor in the act of wishing Josephine good-night. The 
 baroness, fatigued a little by her walk, had mounted no 
 higher than her own bedroom, which was on the first 
 floor just under the tapestried room. Rose followed the 
 doctor out. "Dear friend, one word. Josephine talked 
 of telling Raynal. You have not encouraged her to do 
 that ? " 
 
 "Certainly not, while he is in Egypt." 
 
 " Still less on his return. Doctor, you don't know that 
 man. Josephine does not know him. But I do. He
 
 302 WHITE LIES. 
 
 would kill her if he knew. He would kill her that 
 minute. He would not wait : he would not listen to 
 excuses : he is a man of iron. Or if he spared her he 
 would kill Camilla: and that would destroy her by the 
 cruellest of all deaths ! My friend, I am a wicked, 
 miserable girl. I am the cause of all this misery ! " 
 
 She then told Aubertin all about the anonymous letter, 
 and what Raynal had said to her in consequence. 
 
 " He never would have married her had he known she 
 loved another. He asked me was it so. 1 told him a 
 falsehood. At least I equivocated, and to equivocate 
 with one so loyal and simple was to deceive him. I 
 am the only sinner : that sweet angel is the only sufferer. 
 Is this the justice of Heaven ? Doctor, my remorse is 
 great. No one knows what I feel when I look at my 
 work. Edouard thinks I love her so much better than I 
 do him. He is wrong : it is not love only, it is pity : it 
 is remorse for the sorrow I have brought on her, and the 
 wrong I have done poor Raynal." 
 
 The high-spirited girl was greatly agitated : and Auber- 
 tin, though he did not acquit her of all blame, soothed 
 her, and made excuses for her. 
 
 " We must not always judge by results," said he. 
 "Things turned unfortunately. You did for the best. 
 I forgive you for one. That is, I will forgive you if you 
 promise not to act again without my advice." 
 
 " Oh, never ! never ! " 
 
 "And, above all, no imprudence about that child. In 
 three little weeks they will be together without risk of 
 discovery. Well, you don't answer me." 
 
 Rose's blood turned cold. "Dear friend," she stam- 
 mered, " I quite agree with you." 
 
 "Promise, then." 
 
 "Not to let Josephine go to Frejus ? " said Rose 
 hastily. "Oh, yes! I promise."
 
 WHITE LIES. 303 
 
 "You are a good girl," said Aubertin. "You have a 
 will of your own. But you can submit to age and expe- 
 rience." The doctor then kissed her, and bade her fare- 
 well. 
 
 " I leave for Paris at six in the morning," he said, 
 "I will not try your patience or hers unnecessarily. 
 Perhaps it will not be three weeks ere she sees her 
 child under her friend's roof." 
 
 The moment Eose was alone, she sat down and sighed 
 bitterly. " There is no end to it," she sobbed despair- 
 ingly. " It is like a spider's web : every struggle to be 
 free but multiplies the fine yet irresistible thread that 
 seems to bind me. And to-night I thought to be so 
 happy ; instead of that, he has left me scarce the heart 
 to do what I have to do." 
 
 She went back to the room, opened a window, and put 
 out a white handkerchief, then closed the window down 
 on it. 
 
 Then she went to Josephine's bedroom-door : it opened 
 on the tapestried room. 
 
 "Josephine," she cried, "don't go to bed just yet." 
 
 " No, love. What are you doing ? I want to talk to 
 you. Why did you say promise ? and what did you 
 mean by looking at me so ? Shall I come out to 
 you ? " 
 
 " Not just yet," said Rose ; she then glided into the 
 corridor, and passed her mother's room and the doctor's, 
 and listened to see if all was quiet. While she was 
 gone Josephine opened her door; but not seeing Rose in 
 the sitting-room, retired again. 
 
 Rose returned softly, and sat down with her head in 
 her hand, in a calm attitude belied by her glancing eye, 
 and the quick tapping of her other hand upon the table. 
 
 Presently she raised her head quickly ; a sound had 
 reached her ear, — a sound so slight that none but a
 
 304 WHITE LIES. 
 
 high-strung ear could liave caught it. It was like 
 a mouse giving a single scratch against a stone wall. 
 Rose coughed slightly. 
 
 On this a clearer sound was heard, as of a person 
 scratching wood with the finger-nail. Rose darted to 
 the side of the room, pressed against the wall, and at 
 the same time put her other hand against the rim of 
 one of the panels and pushed it laterally ; it yielded, 
 and at the opening stood Jacintha in her cloak and 
 bonnet. 
 
 " Yes," said Jacintha, " under my cloak — look ! " 
 " Ah ! you found the things on the steps ? " 
 " Yes ! I nearly tumbled over them. Have you locked 
 that door ? " 
 
 " No, but I will." And Rose glided to the door and 
 locked it. Then she put the screen up between Joseph- 
 ine's room and the open panel : then she and Jacintha 
 were wonderfully busy on the other side the screen, 
 but presently Rose said, "This is imprudent; you must 
 go down to the foot of the stairs and wait till I call 
 you." 
 
 Jacintha pleaded hard against this arrangement, and 
 represented that there was no earthly chance of any one 
 coming to that part of the chateau. 
 
 " No matter ; I will be guarded on every side." 
 " Mustn't I stop and just see her happy for once ? " 
 "No, my poor Jacintha, you must hear it from my 
 lips." 
 
 Jacintha retired to keep watch as she was bid. Rose 
 went to Josephine's room, and threw her arms round 
 her neck and kissed her vehemently. Josephine returned 
 her embrace, then held her out at arm's length and looked 
 at her. 
 
 " Your eyes are red, yet your little face is full of joy. 
 There, you smile."
 
 WHITE LIES. 305 
 
 " I can't help that ; I am so happy." 
 
 " I am glad of it. Are you coming to bed ? " 
 
 "Not yet. I invite you to take a little walk with me 
 first. Come ! " and she led the way slowly, looking 
 back with infinite archness and tenderness. 
 
 " You almost frighten me," s?id Josephine ; " it is not 
 like you to be all joy when I am sad. Three whole 
 weeks more ! " 
 
 " That is it. Why are you sad ? because the doctor 
 would not let you go to Frejus. And why am I not sad ? 
 because I had already thought of a way to let you see 
 Edouard without going so far." 
 
 "Rose! O Rose! Rose!" 
 
 " This way — come ! " and she smiled and beckoned 
 with her finger, while Josephine followed like one under 
 a spell, her bosom heaving, her eye glancing on every 
 side, hoping some strange joy, yet scarce daring to hope. 
 
 Rose drew back the screen, and there was a sweet 
 little berceau that had once been Josephine's own, and in 
 it, sunk deep in snow-white lawn, was a sleeping child, 
 that lay there looking as a rose might look could it fall 
 upon new-fallen snow. 
 
 At sight of it Josephine uttered a little cry, not loud 
 but deep — ay, a cry to bring tears into the eye of the 
 hearer, and she stood trembling from head to foot, her 
 hands clasped, and her eye fascinated and fixed on the 
 cradle. 
 
 "My child under this roof ! What have you done ? " 
 but her eye, fascinated and fixed, never left the cradle. 
 
 "I saw you languishing, dying, for want of him." 
 
 "Oh, if anybody should come?" But her eye never 
 stirred an inch from the cradle. 
 
 " No, no, no ! the door is locked. Jacintha watches 
 below ; there is no dan — Ah, oh, poor sister ! " 
 
 For, as Rose was speaking, the young mother sprang 
 20
 
 306 WHITE LIES. 
 
 silently upon her child. You would have thought she 
 was going to kill him; her head reared itself again and 
 again like a crested snake's, and again and again and 
 again and again plunged down upon the child, and she 
 kissed his little body from head to foot with soft vio- 
 lence, and murmured, through her streaming tears, "My 
 child ! my darling ! my angel ! oh, my poor boy ! my 
 child ! ray child ! " 
 
 I will ask my female readers of every degree to tell 
 their brothers and husbands all the young noble did ; 
 how she sat on the floor, and had her child on her bosom ; 
 how she smiled over it through her tears; how she purred 
 over it ; how she, the stately one, lisped and prattled 
 over it; and how life came pouring into her heart 
 from it. 
 
 Before she had had it in her arms five minutes, her 
 pale cheek was as red as a rose, and her eyes brighter 
 than diamonds. 
 
 " Bless you. Rose ! bless you ! bless you ! in one 
 moment you have made me forget all I ever suffered in 
 my life." 
 
 " There is a cold draught," cried she presently, with 
 maternal anxiety; "close the panel, Rose." 
 
 " No, dear ; or I could not call to Jacintha, or she to 
 me; but I will shift the screen round between him and 
 the draught. There, now, come to his aunt — a darling ! " 
 
 Then Rose sat on the floor too, and Josephine put her 
 boy on aunt's lap, and took a distant view of him. But 
 she could not bear so vast a separation long. She must 
 have him to her bosom again. 
 
 Presently my lord, finding himself hugged, opened his 
 eyes, and, as a natural consequence, his mouth. 
 
 " Oh, that will never do," cried Rose, and they put 
 him back in the cradle with all expedition, and began to 
 rock it. Young master was not to be altogether ap-
 
 WHITE LIES. 307 
 
 peased even by that. So Rose began singing an old- 
 fashioned Breton chant or lullaby. 
 
 Josephine sang with her, and, singing, watched with a 
 smile her boy drop off by degrees to sleep under the 
 gentle motion and the lulling song. They sang and 
 rocked till the lids came creeping down, and hid the 
 great blue eyes ; but still they sang and rocked, lulling 
 the boy, and gladdening their own hearts ; for the quaint 
 old Breton ditty was tunable as the lark that carols over 
 the green wheat in April ; and the words so simple and 
 motherly, that a nation had taken them to heart. Such 
 songs bind ages together and make the lofty and the 
 low akin by the great ties of music and the heart. Many 
 a Breton peasant's bosom in the olden time had gushed 
 over her sleeping boy as the young dame's of Beaurepaire 
 gushed now — in this quaint, tuneful lullaby. 
 
 Now, as they kneeled over the cradle, one on each side, 
 and rocked it, and sang that ancient chant, Josephine, 
 who was opposite the screen, happening to raise her 
 eyes, saw a strange thing. 
 
 There was the face of a man set close against the side 
 of the screen, and peeping and peering out of the gloom. 
 The light of her candle fell full on this face; it glared at 
 her, set pale, wonder-struck, and vivid in the surround- 
 ing gloom. 
 
 Horror ! It was her husband's face. 
 
 At first she was quite stupefied, and looked at it with 
 soul and senses benumbed. Then she trembled, and put 
 her hand to her eyes ; for she thought it a phantom or a 
 delusion of the mind. No : there it glared still. Then 
 she trembled violently, and held out her left hand, the 
 fingers working convulsively, to Rose, who was still 
 singing. 
 
 But, at the same moment, the mouth of this face sud- 
 denly opened in a long-drawn breath. At this, Josephine
 
 308 WHITE LIES. 
 
 uttered a violent shriek, and sprang to her feet, with her 
 right hand quivering and pointing at tliat pale face set 
 in the dark. 
 
 Kose started up, and, wheeling her head round, saw 
 Raynal's gloomy face looking over her shoulder. She 
 fell screaming upon her knees, and, almost out of her 
 senses, began to pray wildly and piteously for mercy. 
 
 Josephine uttered one more cry, but this was the faint 
 cry of nature, sinking under the shock of terror. She 
 swooned dead away, and fell senseless on the floor ere 
 Raynal could debarrass himself of the screen, and get to 
 her. 
 
 This, then, was the scene that met Edouard's eyes. 
 
 His affianced bride on her knees, white as a ghost, 
 trembling, and screaming, rather than crying, for mercy. 
 And Raynal standing over his wife, showing by the 
 working of his iron features that he doubted whether she 
 was worthy he should raise her. 
 
 One would have thought nothing could add to the 
 terror of this scene. Yet it was added to. The baroness 
 rang her bell violently in the room below. She had 
 heard Josephine's scream and fall. 
 
 At the ringing of this shrill bell Rose shuddered like 
 a maniac, and grovelled on her knees to Raynal, and 
 seized his very knees and implored him to show some 
 pity. 
 
 " O sir ! kill us ! we are culpable " — 
 
 Dring ! dring ! dring ! dring ! dring ! pealed the baron- 
 ess's bell again. 
 
 "But do not tell our mother. Oh, if you are a man ! 
 do not ! do not ! Show us some pity. We are but 
 women. Mercy ! mercy ! mercy ! " 
 
 " Speak out then," groaned Raynal. " What does this 
 mean ? Why has my wife swooned at sight of me ? — 
 whose is this child ? "
 
 WHITE LIES. 309 
 
 "Whose?" stammered Kose. Till he said that, she 
 never thought there could be a doubt whose child. 
 
 Di'iug ! dring ! dring ! dring ! dring ! 
 
 " Oh, my God ! " cried the poor girl, and her scared 
 eyes glanced every way like some wild creature looking 
 for a hole, however small, to escape by. 
 
 Edouard, seeing her hesitation, came down on her 
 other side. *' Whose is the child, Kose ? " said he 
 sternly. 
 
 " You, too ? Why were we born ? mercy ! oh ! pray 
 let me go to my sister." 
 
 Dring ! dring ! dring ! dring ! dring ! went the terrible 
 bell. 
 
 The men were excited to fury by Rose's hesitation ; 
 they each seized an arm, and tore her screaming with 
 fear at their violence, from her knees up to her feet 
 between them with a single gesture. 
 
 " Whose is the child ? " 
 
 " You hurt me ! " said she bitterly to Edouard, and 
 she left crying and was terribly calm and sullen all in a 
 moment. 
 
 " Whose is the child ? " roared Edouard and Raynal, 
 in one raging breath. " Whose is the child ? " 
 
 " It is mine."
 
 310 WHITE LIES. 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 These were not words ; they were electric shocks. 
 
 The two arms that gripped Rose's arms were paralyzed, 
 and dropped off them ; and there was silence. 
 
 Then first the thought of all she had done with those 
 three words began to rise and grow and surge over her. 
 She stood, her eyes turned downwards, yet inwards, and 
 dilating with horror. 
 
 Silence. 
 
 Now a mist began to spread over her eyes, and in it 
 she saw indistinctly the figure of Raynal darting to her 
 sister's side, and raising her head. 
 
 She dared not look round on the other side. She 
 heard feet stagger on the floor. She heard a groan, too ; 
 but not a word. 
 
 Horrible silence. 
 
 With nerves strung to frenzy, and quivering ears, that 
 magnified every sound, she waited for a reproach, a curse ; 
 either would have been some little relief. But no ! a 
 silence far more terrible. 
 
 Then a step wavered across the room. Her soul was 
 in her ear. She could hear and feel the step totter, and 
 it shook her as it went. All sounds were trebled to her. 
 Then it struck on the stone step of the staircase, not like 
 a step, but a knell ; another step, another and another ; 
 down to the very bottom. Each slow step made her 
 head ring and her heart freeze. 
 
 At last she heard no more. Then a scream of anguish 
 and recall rose to her lips. She fought it down, for 
 Josephine and Raynal. Edouard was gone. She had
 
 WHITE LIES. 311 
 
 but her sister now, the sister she loved better than her- 
 self ; the sister to save whose life and honor she had this 
 moment sacriticed her own, and all a woman lives for. 
 
 She turned, with a wild cry of love and pity, to that 
 sister's side to help her; and when she kneeled down 
 beside her, an iron arm was promptly thrust out between 
 the beloved one and her. 
 
 "This is my care, madame," said Raynal, coldly. 
 
 There was no mistaking his manner. The stained one 
 was not to touch his wife. 
 
 She looked at him in piteous amazement at his ingrati- 
 tude. "It is well," said she. "It is just. I deserve 
 this from you." 
 
 She said no more, but drooped gently down beside the 
 cradle, and hid her forehead in the clothes beside the 
 child that had brought all this woe, and sobbed bitterly. 
 
 Then honest Raynal began to be sorry for her, in spite 
 of himself. But there was no time for this. Josephine 
 stirred ; and, at the same moment, a violent knocking 
 came at the door of the apartment, and the new servant's 
 voice, crying, "Ladies, for Heaven's sake, what is the 
 matter ? The baroness heard a fall — she is getting up 
 — she will be here. What shall I tell her is the matter?" 
 
 Raynal was going to answer, but Rose, who had started 
 up at the knocking, put her hand in a moment right 
 before his mouth, and ran to the door. " There is noth- 
 ing the matter ; tell mamma I am coming down to her 
 directly." She flew back to Raynal in an excitement 
 little short of frenzy. " Help me carry her into her own 
 room," cried she imperiously. Raynal obeyed by instinct; 
 for the fiery girl spoke like a general, giving the Avord of 
 command, with the enemy in front. He carried the true 
 culprit in his arms, and laid her gently on her bed. 
 
 "Now put it out of sight — take this, quick, man J 
 quick ! " cried Rose.
 
 312 WHITE LIES. 
 
 Kaynal went to the cradle. " Ah ! my poor girl," said 
 he, as he lifted it in his arms, "this is a sorry business; 
 to have to hide your own child from your own mother ! " 
 
 "Colonel Raynal," said Rose, "do not insult a poor, 
 despairing girl. C^est IdcheP 
 
 "I am silent, young woman," said Raynal, sternly. 
 " What is to be done ? " 
 
 "Take it down the steps, and give it to Jacintha. 
 Stay, here is a candle ; I go to tell mamma you are 
 come ; and. Colonel Raynal, I never injured you : if you 
 tell my mother you will stab her to the heart, and me, 
 and may the curse of cowards light on you ! — may " — 
 
 "Enough!" said Raynal, sternly. "Do you take me 
 for a babbling girl ? I love your mother better than you 
 do, or this brat of yours would not be here, /shall not 
 bring her gray hairs down with sorrow to the grave. I 
 shall speak of this villany to but one person ; and to 
 him I shall talk with this, and not with the idle tongue." 
 And he tapped his sword-hilt with a sombre look of 
 terrible significance. 
 
 He carried out the cradle. The child slept sweetly 
 through it all. 
 
 Rose darted into Josephine's room, took the key from 
 the inside to the outside, locked the door, put the key in 
 her pocket, and ran down to her mother's room ; her 
 knees trembled under her as she went. 
 
 Meantime, Jacintha, sleeping tranquilly, suddenly felt 
 her throat griped, and heard a loud voice ring in her ear; 
 then she was lifted, and wrenched, and dropped. She 
 found herself lying clear of the steps in the moonlight ; 
 her head was where her feet had been, and her candle 
 out. 
 
 She uttered shriek upon shriek, and was too fright- 
 ened to get up. She thought it was supernatural ; some 
 old De Beaurepaire had served her thus for sleeping on
 
 WHITE LIES. 313 
 
 her post. A struggle took place between her fidelity 
 and her superstitious fears. Fidelity conquered. Quak- 
 ing in every limb, she groped up the staircase for her 
 candle. 
 
 It was gone. 
 
 Then a still more sickening fear came over her. 
 
 What if this Avas no spirit's work, but a human arm — 
 a strong one — some man's arm ? 
 
 Her first impulse was to dart up the stairs, and make 
 sure that no calamity had befallen through her mistimed 
 drowsiness. But, when she came to try, her dread of 
 the supernatural revived. She could not venture without 
 a light up those stairs, thronged perhaps with angry 
 spirits. She ran to the kitchen. She found the tinder- 
 box, and with trembling hands struck a light. She came 
 back shading it with her shaky hands ; and, committing 
 her soul to the care of Heaven, she crept quaking up 
 the stairs. Then she heard voices above, and that 
 restored her more ; she mounted more steadily. Pres- 
 ently she stopped, for a heavy step was coming down. 
 It did not sound like a woman's step. It came further 
 down ; she turned to fly. 
 
 " Jacintha I " said a deep voice, that in this stone 
 cylinder rang like thunder from a tomb. 
 
 "Oh I saints and angels save me!" yelled Jacintha; 
 and fell on her knees, and hid her head for securit}'^ ; 
 and down went her candlestick clattering on the stone. 
 
 '* Don't be a fool ! " said the iron voice. " Get up and 
 take this." 
 
 She raised her head by slow degrees, shuddering. 
 
 A man was holding out a cradle to her ; the candle he 
 carried lighted up his face ; it was Colonel Raynal. 
 
 She stared at him stupidly, but never moved from her 
 knees, and the candle began to shake violently in her 
 hand, as she herself trembled from head to foot.
 
 314 WHITE LIES. 
 
 Then Raynal concluded she was in the plot; but, 
 scorning to reproach a servant, he merely said, " Well, 
 what do you kneel there for, gaping at me like that ? 
 Take this, T tell you, and carry it out of the house." 
 
 He shoved the cradle roughly down into her hands, 
 then turned on his heel without a word. 
 
 Jacintha collapsed on the stairs, and the cradle beside 
 her, for all the power was driven out of her body ; she 
 could hardly support her own weight, much less the 
 cradle. 
 
 She rocked herself, and moaned out, " Oh, what's this ? 
 oh, what's this ? " 
 
 A cold perspiration came over her whole frame. 
 
 " What could this mean ? What on earth had hap- 
 pened ? " 
 
 She took up the candle, for it was lying burning and 
 guttering on the stairs ; scraped up the grease with the 
 snuffers, and by force of habit tried to polish it clean 
 with a bit of paper that shook between her fingers ; she 
 did not know what she was doing. When she recovered 
 her wits, she took the child out of the cradle, and 
 wrapped it carefully in her shawl; then went slowly 
 down the stairs ; and holding him close to her bosom, 
 with a furtive eye, and brain confused, and a heart like 
 lead, stole away to the tenantless cottage, where Madame 
 Jouvenel awaited her. 
 
 Meantime, Rose, with quaking heart, had encountered 
 the baroness. She found her pale and agitated, and her 
 first question was, " What is the matter ? what have you 
 been all doing over my head ? " * 
 
 "Darling mother," replied Rose, evasively, "some- 
 thing has happened that will rejoice your heart. Some- 
 body has come home." 
 
 " My son ? eh, no ! impossible ! We cannot be so 
 happy."
 
 WHITE LIES. 315 
 
 "He will be with you directly." 
 
 The old lady now trembled with joyful agitation. 
 
 "In five minutes I Avill bring him to you. Shall you 
 be dressed ? I will ring for the girl to help you." 
 
 "But, Rose, the scream, and that terrible fall. Ah I 
 where is Josephine ? " 
 
 " Can't you guess, mamma ? Oh, the fall was only the 
 screen ; they stumbled over it in the dark," 
 
 "They! who?" 
 
 " Colonel Raynal, and — and Edouard. I will tell you, 
 mamma, but don't be angry,, or even mention it ; they 
 wanted to surprise us. They saw a light burning, and 
 they crept on tiptoe up to the tapestried room, where 
 Josephine and 1 were, and they did give us a great 
 fright." 
 
 " What madness ! " cried the baroness, angrily ; " and 
 in Josephine's weak state ! Such a surprise might have 
 driven her into a fit." 
 
 " Yes, it was foolish, but let it pass, mamma. Don't 
 speak of it, for he is so sorry about it." 
 
 Then Rose slipped out, ordered a fire in the salon, and 
 not in the tapestried room, and the next minute was at 
 her sister's door. There she found Ra3'nal knocking, 
 and asking Josephine how she was. 
 
 " Pray leave her to me a moment," said she. " I will 
 bring her down to you. Mamma is waiting for you in 
 the salon.'" 
 
 Raynal went down. Rose unlocked the bedroom-door, 
 went in, and, to her horror, found Josephine lying on 
 the floor. She dashed water in her face, and applied 
 every remedy ; and at last she came back to life, and its 
 terrors. 
 
 "Save me. Rose! save me — he is coming to kill me 
 — I heard him at the door," and she clung trembling 
 piteously to Rose.
 
 316 WHITE LIES. 
 
 Then Rose, seeing her terror, was almost glad at the 
 suicidal falsehood she had told. She comforted and 
 encouraged Josephine and — deceived her. (This was 
 the climax.) 
 
 " All is well, my poor coward," she cried ; " your fears 
 are all imaginary ; another has owned the child, and the 
 story is believed." 
 
 " Another ! impossible ! He would not believe it." 
 
 " He does believe it — he shall believe it." 
 
 Rose then, feeling by no means sure that Josephine, 
 terrified as she was, would consent to let her sister come 
 to shame to screen her, told her boldly that Jacintha had 
 owned herself the mother of the child, and that Raynal's 
 only feeling towards her was pity, and regret at having 
 so foolishly frightened her, weakened as she was by ill- 
 ness. " I told him you had been ill, dear. But how 
 came you on the ground ? " 
 
 " I had come to myself ; I was on my knees praying. 
 He tapped. I heard his voice. I remember no more. 
 I must have fainted again directly." 
 
 Rose had hard work to make her believe that her 
 guilt, as she called it, was not known ; and even then 
 she could not prevail on her to come down-stairs, until 
 she said, " If you don't, he will come to you." On that 
 Josephine consented eagerly, and with trembling fingers 
 began to adjust her hair and her dress for the interview. 
 
 All this terrible night Rose fought for her sister. She 
 took her down-stairs to the salon ; she put her on the 
 sofa ; she sat by her and pressed her hand constantly to 
 give her courage. She told the story of the surprise her 
 own way, before the whole party, including the doctor, 
 to prevent Raynal from being called on to tell it his way. 
 She laughed at Josephine's absurdity, but excused it on 
 account of her feeble health. In short, she threw more 
 and more dust in all their eyes.
 
 WHITE LIES. 317 
 
 But by the time when the rising sun came faintly in 
 and lighted the haggard party, where the deceived were 
 happy, the deceivers wretched, the supernatural strength 
 this young girl had shown was almost exhausted. She 
 felt an hysterical impulse to scream and weep: each 
 minute it became more and more ungovernable. Then 
 came an unexpected turn. Raynal after a long and tir- 
 ing talk with his mother, as he called her, looked at his 
 watch, and in a characteristic way coolly announced his 
 immediate departure, this being the first hint he had 
 given them that he was not come back for good. 
 
 The baroness was thunderstruck. 
 
 Rose and Josephine pressed one another's hands, and 
 had much ado not to utter a loud cry of joy. 
 
 Raynal explained that he was the bearer of despatches. 
 " I must be off : not an hour to lose. Don't fret, mother, 
 I shall soon be back again, if I am not knocked on the 
 head." 
 
 Raynal took leave of them all. When it came to Rose's 
 turn, he drew her aside and whispered into her ear, "Who 
 is the man ? " 
 
 She started, and seemed dum founded. 
 
 " Tell me, or I ask my wife." 
 
 " She has promised me not to betray me : I made her 
 swear. Spare me now, brother ; I will tell you all when 
 you come back." 
 
 " That is a bargain : now hear me swear : he shall 
 marry you, or he shall die by my hand." 
 
 He confirmed this by a tremendous oath. 
 
 Rose shuddered, but said nothing, onl}^ she thought 
 to herself, " I am forewarned. Never shall you know who 
 is the father of that child." 
 
 He was no sooner gone than the baroness insisted on 
 knowing what this private communication between him 
 and Rose was about.
 
 318 WHITE LIES. 
 
 "Oh," said Rose, "he was only telling me to keep up 
 your courage and Josephine's till he comes back." 
 
 This was the last lie the poor entangled wretch had to 
 tell that morning. The next minute the sisters, exhausted 
 by their terrible struggle, went feebly, with downcast eyes, 
 along the corridor and up the staircase to Josephine's 
 room. 
 
 They went hand in hand. They sank down, dressed 
 as they were, on Josephine's bed, and clung to one 
 another and trembled together, till their exhausted 
 natures sank into uneasy slumbers, from which each 
 in turn would wake ever and anon with a convulsive 
 start, and clasp her sister tighter to her breast. 
 
 Theirs was a marvellous love. Even a course of deceit 
 had not yet prevailed to separate or chill their sister 
 bosoms. But still in this deep and wonderful love there 
 were degrees : one went a shade deeper than the other 
 now — ay, since last night. Which ? why, she who had 
 sacrificed herself for the other, and dared not tell her, 
 lest the sacrifice should be refused. 
 
 It was the gray of the morning, and foggy, when 
 Raynal, after taking leave, went to the stable for his 
 horse. At the stable-door he came upon a man sitting 
 doubled up on the very stones of the yard, with his head 
 on his knees. The figure lifted his head, and showed 
 him the face of Edouard Riviere, white and ghastly : his 
 hair lank with the mist, his teeth chattering with cold 
 and misery. The poor wretch had walked frantically all 
 night round and round the chateau, waiting till Raynal 
 should come out. He told him so. 
 
 " But why didn't you ? — Ah ! I see. No ! you could 
 not go into the house after that. My poor fellow, there 
 is but one thing for you to do. Turn your back on herf 
 and forget she ever lived ; she is dead to you."
 
 WHITE LIES. 319 
 
 "There is something to be done besides that," said 
 Edouard, gloomily. 
 
 " What ? " 
 
 " Vengeance." 
 
 '•'That is my affair, young man. "When T come back 
 from the Rhine, she will tell me who her seducer is. 
 She has promised." 
 
 '' And don't yon see through that ? " said Edouard, 
 gnashing his teeth; "that is only to gain time: she 
 will never tell you. She is young in years, but old in 
 treachery." 
 
 He groaned and was silent a moment, then laying his 
 hand on Raynal's arm said grimly, "Thank Heaven, we 
 don't depend on her for information ! I know the villain." 
 
 Raynal's eyes flashed : " Ah ! then tell me this mo- 
 ment." 
 
 "It is that scoundrel Dujardin." 
 
 " Dujardin ! What do you mean ? " 
 
 " I mean that, while you were fighting for France, your 
 house was turned into a hospital for wounded soldiers." 
 
 "And pray, sir, to what more honorable use could they 
 put it ? " 
 
 "Well, this Dujardin was housed by you, was nursed 
 by your wife and all the family ; and in return has 
 seduced your sister, my affianced." 
 
 "I can hardly believe that. Camille Dujardin was 
 always a man of honor, and a good soldier." 
 
 " Colonel, there has been no man near the place but 
 this Dujardin. I tell you it is he. Don't make me tear 
 my bleeding heart out : must I tell you how often I 
 caught them together, how I suspected, and how she 
 gulled me ? blind fool that I was, to believe a woman's 
 words before my own eyes. I swear to you he is the 
 villain ; the only question is, which of us two is to kill 
 him."
 
 320 WHITE LIES. 
 
 "Where is the man ? " 
 
 "In the army of the Rhine." 
 
 "Ah ! all the better." 
 
 " Covered with glory and honor. Curse him ! oh, curse 
 him ! curse him ! " 
 
 "I am in luck. I am going to the Rhine." 
 
 "I know it. That is why I waited here all through 
 this night of misery. Yes, you are in luck. But you 
 will send me a line when you have killed him ; will you 
 not ? Then I shall know joy again. Should he escape 
 you, he shall not escape me." 
 
 "Young man," said Raynal, with dignity, "this rage 
 is unmanly. Besides, we have not heard his side of the 
 story. He is a good soldier ; perhaps he is not all to 
 blame : or perhaps passion has betrayed him into a sin 
 that his conscience and honor disapprove : if so, he must 
 not die. You think only of your wrong : it is natural : 
 but I am the girl's brother ; guardian of her honor and 
 my own. His life is precious as gold. I shall make him 
 marry her." 
 
 " What ! reward him for his villany ? " cried Edouard, 
 frantically. 
 
 "A mighty reward," replied Raynal, with a sneer. 
 
 "You leave one thing out of the calculation, monsieur," 
 said Edouard, trembling with anger, "that I will kill 
 your brother-in-law at the altar, before her eyes." 
 
 " Yoti leave one thing out of the calculation : that you 
 will first have to cross swords, at the altar, with me." 
 
 "So be it. I will not draw on my old commandant. 
 I could not ; but be sure I will catch him and her alone 
 some day, and the bride shall be a widow in her honey- 
 moon." 
 
 "As you please," said Raynal, coolly. "That is all 
 fair, as you have been wronged. I shall make her an 
 honest wife, and then you may make her an honest
 
 WHITE LIES. 321 
 
 widow. (This is what they call love, and sneer at me 
 for keeping clear of it.) But neither he nor you shall 
 
 keep my sister what she is now, a ," and he used a 
 
 word out of camp. 
 
 Edouard winced and groaned. " Oh ! don't call her by 
 such a name. There is some mystery. She loved me 
 once. There must have been some strange seduction." 
 
 "Now you deceive yourself," said Raynal. "I never 
 saw a girl that could take her own part better than she 
 can ; she is not like her sister at all in character. Not 
 that I excuse him ; it Avas a dishonorable act, an ungrate- 
 ful act to my wife and my mother." 
 
 "And to you." 
 
 "Now listen to me : in four days I shall stand before 
 him. I shall not go into a pet like you ; I am in earnest. 
 I shall just say to him, ^Dujardin, I know all ! ' Then if 
 he is guilty his face will show it directly. Then I shall 
 say, ' Comrade, you must marry her whom you have dis- 
 honored.' " 
 
 "He will not. He is a libertine, a rascal." 
 
 " You are speaking of a man you don't know. He will 
 marry her and repair the wrong he has done." 
 
 " Suppose he refuses ? " 
 
 " Why should he refuse ? The girl is not ugly nor old, 
 and if she has done a folly, he was her partner in it." 
 
 " But suppose he refuses ? " 
 
 Raynal ground his teeth. " Refuse ? If he does, I'll 
 run ray sword through his carcass then and there, and 
 the hussy shall go into a convent."
 
 322 WHITE LIK.S. 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 The French army lay before a fortified place near the 
 Rhine, which we will call Philipsburg. 
 
 This army knew Bonaparte by report only ; it was 
 commanded by generals of the old school. 
 
 Philipsburg was defended on three sides by the nature 
 of the ground; but on the side that faced the French 
 line of march there was only a zigzag wall, pierced, and 
 a low tower or two at each of the salient angles. 
 
 There were evidences of a tardy attempt to improve 
 the defences. In particular there was a large round 
 bastion, about three times the height of the wall ; but 
 the masonry was new, and the very embrasures were not 
 yet cut. 
 
 Young blood was for assaulting these equivocal forti- 
 fications at the end of the day's march that brought the 
 French advanced guard in sight of the place ; but the old 
 generals would not hear of it ; the soldiers' lives must 
 not be flung away assaulting a place that could be reduced 
 in twenty-one days with mathematical certainty. For at 
 this epoch a siege was looked on as a process with a cer- 
 tain result, the only problem was in how many days 
 would the place be taken ; and even this they used to 
 settle to a day or two on paper by arithmetic ; so many 
 feet of wall, and so many guns on the one side ; so many 
 guns, so many men, and such and such a soil to cut the 
 trenches in on the other : result, two figures varying from 
 fourteen to forty. These two figures represented the 
 duration of the siege. 
 
 For all that, siege arithmetic, right in general, has often
 
 WHITE LIES. 323 
 
 been terribly disturbed by one little incident, that occurs 
 from time to time ; viz., Genius mside. And, indeed, this 
 is one of the sins of genius ; it goes and puts out calcula- 
 tions that have stood the brunt of years. Archimedes 
 and Todleben were, no doubt, clever men in their way 
 and good citizens, yet one characteristic of delicate men's 
 minds they lacked — veneration ; they showed a sad dis- 
 respect for the wisdom of the ancients, deranged the cal- 
 culations which so much learning and patient thought 
 had hallowed, disturbed the minds of white-haired vet- 
 erans, took sieges out of the grasp of science, and plunged 
 them back into the field of wild conjecture. 
 
 Our generals then sat down at fourteen hundred yards' 
 distance, and planned the trenches artistically, and directed 
 them to be cut at artful angles, and so creep nearer and 
 nearer the devoted town. Then the Prussians, whose 
 hearts had been in their shoes at first sight of the French 
 shakos, plucked up, and turned not the garrison only but 
 the population of the town into engineers and masons. 
 Their fortifications grew almost as fast as the French 
 trenches. 
 
 The first day of the siege, a young but distinguished 
 brigadier in the French army rode to the quarters of 
 General Raimbaut, who commanded his division, and was 
 his personal friend, and respectfully tut firmly entreated 
 the general to represent to the commander-in-chief the 
 propriety of assaulting that new bastion before it should 
 become dangerous. " My brigade shall carry it in fifteen 
 minutes, general," said he. 
 
 " What ! cross all that open under fire ? One-half your 
 brigade would never reach the bastion." 
 
 " But the other half would take it." 
 
 "That is not so certain." 
 
 General Raimbaut refused to forward the young 
 colonel's proposal to headquarters. "I will not subject 
 you to two refusals in one matter," said he, kindly.
 
 324 WHITE LIES. 
 
 The young colonel lingered. He said, respectfully, 
 " One question, general, when that bastion cuts its teeth 
 will it be any easier to take than now ? " 
 
 " Certainly ; it will always be easier to take it from 
 the sap thai! to cross the open under fire to it, and take 
 it. Come, colonel, to your trenches ; and if your friend 
 should cut its teeth, you shall have a battery in your 
 attack that will set its teeth on edge. Ha ! ha ! " 
 
 The young colonel did not echo his chief's humor ; he 
 saluted gravely, and returned to the trenches. 
 
 The next morning three fresh tiers of embrasures 
 grinned one above another at the besiegers. The besieged 
 had been up all night, and not idle. In half these aper- 
 tures black muzzles showed themselves. 
 
 The bastion had cut its front teeth. 
 
 Thirteenth day of the siege. 
 
 The trenches were within four hundred yards of the 
 enemy's guns, and it was hot work in them. The enemy 
 had three tiers of guns in the round bastion, and on the 
 top they had got a long 48-pounder, which they worked 
 with a swivel joint, or the like, and threw a great roaring 
 shot into any part of the French lines. 
 
 As to the commander-in-chief and his generals, they 
 were dotted about a long way in the rear, and no shot 
 came as far as them ; but in the trenches the men began 
 now to fall fast, especially on the left attack, which faced 
 the round bastion. Our young colonel had got his heavy 
 battery, and every now and then he would divert the 
 general efforts of the bastion, and compel it to concen- 
 trate its attention on him, by pounding away at it till it 
 was all in sore places. But he meant it worse mischief 
 than that. Still, as heretofore, regarding it as the key 
 to Philipsburg, he had got a large force of engineers at 
 work driving a mine towards it, and to this he trusted 
 more than to breaching it j for the bigger holes he made
 
 WHITE LIES. 325 
 
 in it by day were all stopped at night by the towns- 
 people. 
 
 This colonel was not a favorite in the division to which 
 his brigade belonged. He was a good soldier, but a dull 
 companion. He was also accused of hautexir and of an 
 unsoldierly reserve with his brother officers. 
 
 Some loose-tongued ones even called him a milk-sop, 
 because he was constantly seen conversing with the 
 priest — he who had nothing to say to an honest soldier. 
 
 Others said, "No, hang it, he is not a milk-sop : he is 
 a tried soldier : he is a sulky beggar all the same." 
 Those under his immediate command were divided in 
 opinion about him. There was something about him 
 they could not understand. Why was his sallow face so 
 stern, so sad ? and why with all that was his voice so 
 gentle ? somehow the few words that did fall from his 
 mouth were prized. One old soldier used to say, "I 
 would rather have a word from our brigadier than from 
 the commander-in-chief." Others thought he must at 
 some part of his career have pillaged a church, taken the 
 altar-piece, and sold it to a picture-dealer in Paris, or 
 Avhipped the earrings out of the Madonna's ears, or ad- 
 mitted the female enemy to quarter upon ungenerous 
 conditions : this, or some such crime to which we poor 
 soldiers are liable : and now was committing the mistake 
 of remording himself about it. " Always alongside the 
 chaplain, you see ! " 
 
 This cold and silent man had won the heart of the 
 most talkative sergeant in the French army. Sergeant 
 La Croix protested with many oaths that all the best 
 generals of the day had commanded him in turn, and 
 that his present colonel was the first that had succeeded 
 in inspiring him with unlimited confidence. "He knows 
 every point of war — this one," said La Croix, "I heard 
 him beg and pray for leave to storm this thundering
 
 326 WHITE LIES. 
 
 bastion before it was armed : but no, the old muffs 
 would be wiser than our colonel. So now here we are 
 kept at bay by a ])lace that Julius Csesar and Cannibal 
 wouldn't have made two bites at apiece ; no more would 
 I if I was the old boy out there behind the hill." In 
 such terms do sergeants denote commanders-in-chief — ■ 
 at a distance. A voluble sergeant has more influence 
 with the men than the minister of war is perhaps 
 aware : on the whole, the 24th brigade would have fol- 
 lowed its gloomy colonel to grim death and a foot far- 
 ther. One thing gave these men a touch of superstitious 
 reverence for their commander. He seemed to them 
 free from physical weakness. He never sat doioi to 
 dinner, and seemed never to sleep. At no hour of the 
 day or night were the sentries safe from his visits. 
 
 Very annoying. But, after awhile, it led to keen 
 watchfulness : the more so that the sad and gloomy col- 
 onel showed by his manner he appreciated it. Indeed, 
 one night he even opened his marble jaws, and told Ser- 
 geant La Croix that a watchful sentry was an important 
 soldier, not to his brigade only, but to the whole army. 
 Judge whether the maxim and the implied encomium 
 did not circulate next morning, with additions. 
 
 Sixteenth day of the siege. The round bastion opened 
 fire at eight o'clock, not on the opposing battery, but on 
 the right of the French attack. Its advanced position 
 enabled a portion of its guns to rake these trenches 
 slant-wise : and depressing its guns it made the round 
 shot strike the ground first and ricochet over. 
 
 On this our colonel opened on them with all his guns : 
 one of these he served himself. Among his other war- 
 like accomplishments, he was a wonderful shot with a 
 cannon. He showed them capital practice this morning: 
 drove two embrasures into one, and knocked about a ton 
 of masonry oft" the parapet. Then taking advantage of
 
 WHITE LIES. 327 
 
 this, he served two of his guus with grape, and swept 
 the enemy off the top of the bastion, and kept it clear. 
 He made it so hot they could not work the upper guns. 
 Then they turned the other two tiers all upon him, and 
 at it both sides went ding, dong, till the guns were too 
 hot to be worked. So then Sergeant La Croix popped 
 his head up from the battery, and showed the enemy a 
 great white plate. This was meant to convey to them 
 an invitation to dine with the French army : the other 
 side of the table of course. 
 
 To the credit of Prussian intelligence be it recorded, 
 that this pantomimic hint was at once taken and both 
 sides went to dinner. 
 
 The fighting colonel, however, remained in the battery, 
 and kept a detachment of his gunners employed cooling 
 the guns and repairing the touch-holes. He ordered his 
 two cutlets and his glass of water into the battery. 
 
 Meantime, the enemy fired a single gun at long inter- 
 vals, as much as to say, " We had the last word." 
 
 Let trenches be cut ever so artfully, there will be a 
 little space exposed here and there at the angles. These 
 spaces the men are ordered to avoid, or whip quickly 
 across them into cover. 
 
 Now the enemy had just got the range of one of these 
 places with their solitary gun, and had already dropped 
 a couple of shot right on to it. A camp follower with a 
 tray, two cutlets, and a glass of water, came to this open 
 space just as a puff of white smoke burst from the bas- 
 tion. Instead of instantly seeking shelter till the shot 
 had struck, he, in his inexperience, thought the shot 
 must have struck, and all danger be over. He stayed 
 there mooning instead of pelting imder cover : the shot 
 (eighteen-pound) struck him right on the breast, knocked 
 him into spilikins, and sent the mutton cutlets flying. 
 
 The human fragments lay quiet, ten yards off. But a
 
 328 WHITE LIES. 
 
 soldier that wa:; eating his dinner kicked it over, and 
 jumped up at the side of "Death's Alley" (as it was 
 christened next minute), and danced and yelled with 
 pain. 
 
 "Haw! haw! haw!" roared a soldier from the other 
 side of the alley. 
 
 "What is that?" cried' Sergeant La Croix. "What 
 do you laugh at, Private Cadel ? " said he sternly, for, 
 though he was too far in the trench to see, he had heard 
 that horrible sound a soldier knows from every other, 
 the "thud" of a round shot striking man or horse. 
 
 " Sergeant," said Cadel, respectfully, " I laugh to see 
 Private Dard, that got the wind of the shot, dance and 
 sing, when the man that got the shot itself does not say 
 a word." 
 
 "The wind of the shot, you rascal!" roared Private 
 Dard : " look here ! " and he showed the blood running 
 down his face. 
 
 The shot had actually driven a splinter of bone out of 
 the sutler into Dard's temple. 
 
 " I am the unluckiest fellow in the army," remon- 
 strated Dard: and he stamped in a circle. 
 
 " Seems to me you are only the second unluckiest this 
 time," said a young soldier with his mouth full ; and, 
 with a certain dry humor, he pointed vaguely over his 
 shoulder with the fork towards the corpse. 
 
 The trenches laughed and assented. 
 
 This want of sympathy and justice irritated Dard. 
 "You cursed fools!" cried he. "He is gone where we 
 must all go — without any trouble. But look at me. I 
 am always getting barked. Dogs of Prussians ! they 
 pick me out among a thousand. I shall have a headache 
 all the afteruoon, you see else." 
 
 Some of our heads would never have ached again: but 
 Dard had a good thick skull.
 
 WHITE LIES. 329 
 
 Dard pulled out his spilikin savagely. 
 
 "I'll wrap it up in paper for Jacintha," said he. 
 •'Then that will learn her what a poor soldier has to 
 go through." 
 
 Even this consolation was denied Private Dard. 
 
 Corporal Coriolanus Gand, a bit of an infidel from 
 Lyons, Avho sometimes amused himself with the Breton's 
 superstition, told him with a grave face, that the splinter 
 belonged not to him, but to the sutler, and, though so 
 small, was doubtless a necessary part of his frame. 
 
 "If you keep that, it will be a bone of contention 
 between you two," said he; "especially at midnight. 
 He icill be always coming hack to you for it." 
 
 " There, take it away ! " said the Breton hastily, " and 
 bury it with the poor fellow." 
 
 Sergeant La Croix presented himself before the colonel 
 with a rueful face and saluted him and said, " Colonel, I 
 beg a thousand pardons ; your dinner has been spilt — a 
 shot from the bastion." 
 
 "iSTo matter," said the colonel. "Give me a piece of 
 bread instead." 
 
 La Croix went for it himself, and on his return found 
 Cadel sitting on one side of Death's Alley, and Dard with 
 his head bound up on the other. They had got a bottle 
 which each put up in turn wherever he fancied the next 
 round shot would strike, and they were betting their 
 afternoon rations which would get the Prussians to hit 
 the bottle first. 
 
 La Croix pulled both their ears playfully. 
 
 "Time is up for playing marbles," said he. ■ "Be 
 off, and play at duty," and he bundled them into the 
 battery. 
 
 It was an hour past midnight : a cloudy night. The 
 moon was u]), but seen only by fitful gleams. A calm, 
 peaceful silence reigned.
 
 330 WHITE LIES. 
 
 Dard was sentinel in the battery. 
 
 An officer going his rounds found the said sentinel flat 
 instead of vertical. He stirred him with his scabbard, 
 and up jumped Dard. 
 
 " It's all right, sergeant. Lord ! it's the colonel. I 
 wasn't asleep, colonel." 
 
 " I have not accused you. But you will explain what 
 you were doing." 
 
 " Colonel," said Dard, all in a flutter, " I was taking a 
 squint at them, because I saw something. The beggars 
 are building a wall, now." 
 
 " Where ? " 
 
 " Between us and the bastion." 
 
 '' Show me." 
 
 '' I can't, colonel ; the moon has gone in ; but I did 
 see it." 
 
 '' How long was it ? " 
 
 " About a hundred yards." 
 
 '' How high ? " 
 
 *' Colonel, it was ten feet high if it was an inch." 
 
 " Have you good sight ? " 
 
 " La ! colonel, wasn't I a bit of a poacher before I 
 took to the bayonet ? " 
 
 "Good! Now reflect. If you persist in this state- 
 ment, I turn out the brigade on your information." 
 
 "I'll stand the fire of a corporal's guard at break of 
 day if I make a mistake now," said Dard. 
 
 The colonel glided away, called his captain and first 
 lieutenants, and said two words in each ear, that made 
 them spring off their backs. 
 
 Dard, marching to an fro, musket on shoulder, found 
 himself suddenly surrounded by grim, silent, but deadly 
 eager soldiers, that came pouring like bees into the open 
 space behind the battery. The officers came round the 
 colonel.
 
 WHITE LIES. 331 
 
 " Attend to two things," said he to the captains. 
 "Don't fire till they are within ten yards: and don't 
 follow them unless I lead you." 
 
 The men were then told off by companies, some to the 
 battery, some to the trenches, some were kept on each 
 side Death's Alley, ready for a rush. 
 
 They were not all of them in position, when those 
 behind the parapet saw, as it were, something deepen the 
 gloom of night, some fourscore yards to the front: it 
 was like a line of black ink suddenly drawn upon a 
 sheet covered with Indian ink. 
 
 It seems quite stationary. The novices wondered what 
 it was. The veterans muttered — '•' Three deep." 
 
 Though it looked stationary, it got blacker and blacker. 
 The soldiers of the 24th brigade griped their muskets 
 hard, and set their teeth, and the sergeants had much 
 ado to keep them quiet. 
 
 All of a sudden, a loud yell on the right of the brigade, 
 two or three single shots from the trenches in that 
 direction, followed by a volley, the cries of wounded 
 men, and the fierce hurrahs of an attacking part3\ 
 
 Our colonel knew too well those sounds : the next 
 parallel had been surprised, and the Prussian bayonet 
 was now silently at work. 
 
 Disguise was now impossible. At the first shot, a 
 guttural voice in front of Dujardin's men was heard to 
 give a word of command. There was a sharp rattle and 
 in a moment the thick black line was tipped with glit- 
 tering steel. 
 
 A roar and a rush, and the Prussian line three deep 
 came furiously like a huge steel-pointed wave, at the 
 French lines. A tremendous wave of fire rushed out to 
 meet that wave of steel : a crash of two hundred muskets, 
 and all was still. Tlien yon could see through the black 
 steel-tipped line in a hundred frightful gaps, and the
 
 332 WHITE LIES. 
 
 ground sparkled with bayonets and the air rang with the 
 cries of the wounded. 
 
 A tremendous cheer from the brigade, and the colonel 
 charged at the head of his column, out by Death's 
 Alley. 
 
 The broken wall was melting away into the night. 
 The colonel wheeled his men to the right : one company, 
 led by the impetuous young Captain JuUien, followed 
 the flying enemy. 
 
 The other attack had been only too successful. They 
 shot the sentries, and bayoneted many of the soldiers in 
 their tents : others escaped by running to the rear, and 
 some into the next parallel. 
 
 Several, half dressed, snatched up their muskets, killed 
 one Prussian, and fell riddled like sieves. 
 
 A gallant officer got a company together into the place 
 of arms and formed in line. 
 
 Half the Prussian force went at them, the rest swept 
 the trenches : the French company delivered a deadly 
 volley, and the next moment clash the two forces 
 crossed bayonets, and a silent deadly stabbing match 
 was played : the final result of which was inevitable. 
 The Prussians were five to one. The gallant officer and 
 the poor fellows who did their duty so stoutly, had no 
 thought left but to die hard, when suddenly a roaring 
 cheer seemed to come from the rear rank of the enemy. 
 "France! France!" Half the 24th brigade came leap- 
 ing and swarming over the trenches in the Prussian rear. 
 The Prussians wavered. "France ! " cried the little party 
 that were being overpowered, and charged in their turn 
 with such fury that in two seconds the two French corps 
 went through the enemy's centre like paper, and their 
 very bayonets clashed together in more than one Prus- 
 sian body. 
 
 Broken thus in two fragments the Prussian corps
 
 WHITE LIES. 333 
 
 ceased to exist as a military force. The men fled each 
 his own way back to the fort, and many flung away their 
 muskets, for French soldiers were swarming in from all 
 quarters. At this moment, bang ! bang! bang! from the 
 bastion. 
 
 "They are firing on my brigade," said our colonel. 
 " Who has led his company there against my orders ? 
 Captain Neville, into the battery, and fire twenty rounds 
 at the bastion ! Aim at the flashes from their middle 
 tier." 
 
 "Yes, colonel." 
 
 The battery opened with all its guns on the bastion. 
 The right attack followed suit. The town answered, and 
 a furious cannonade roared and blazed all down both 
 lines till daybreak. Hell seemed broken loose. 
 
 Captain Jullien had followed the flying foe : but could 
 not come up with them : and, as the enemy had prepared 
 for every contingency, the fatal bastion, after first throw- 
 ing a rocket or two to discover their position, poured 
 showers of grape into them, killed many, and would 
 have killed more but that Captain Neville and his gun- 
 ners happened by mere accident to dismount one gun and 
 to kill a couple of gunners at the others. This gave the 
 remains of the company time to disperse and run back. 
 When the men were mustered, Captain Jullien and 
 twenty-five of his company did not answer to their 
 names. At daybreak they were visible from the trenches 
 lying all by themselves within eighty yards of the 
 bastion. 
 
 A flag of truce came from the fort : the dead were re- 
 moved on both sides and buried. Some Prussian officerg 
 strolled into the French lines. Civilities and cigars 
 exchanged : " Bo7i jour,^^ " Gooten daeg : " then at it 
 again, ding dong all down the line blazing and roaring. 
 
 At twelve o'clock the besiecred had got a man on horse-
 
 334 WHITE LIES. 
 
 back, on top of a hill, with colored flags in liis hand, 
 making signals. 
 
 " What are you up to now ? " inquired Dard. 
 
 "You will see," said La Croix, affecting mystery; he 
 knew no more than the other. 
 
 Presently off went Long Tom on the top of the Ijas- 
 tion, and the shot came roaring over the heads of the 
 speakers. 
 
 The flags were changed, and off went Long Tom again 
 at an elevation. 
 
 Ten seconds had scarcely elapsed when a tremendous 
 explosion took place on the French right. Long Tom 
 was throwing red-hot shot; one had fallen on a powder 
 wagon, and blown it to pieces, and killed two poor fel- 
 lows and a horse, and turned an artillery man at some 
 distance into a seeming nigger, but did him no great 
 harm ; only took him three days to get the powder out 
 of his clothes with pipe clay, and off his face with raw 
 potato-peel. 
 
 When the tumbril exploded, the Prussians could be 
 heard to cheer, and they turned to and fired every iron 
 spout they owned. Long Tom worked all day. 
 
 They got into a corner where the guns of the battery 
 could not hit them or him, and there was his long muzzle 
 looking towards the sky, and sending half a hundred- 
 weight of iron up into the clouds, and plunging down a 
 mile off into the French lines. 
 
 And, at every shot, the man on horseback made sig- 
 nals to let the gunners know where the shot fell. 
 
 At last, about four in the afternoon, they threw a forty- 
 eight-pound shot slap into the commander-in-chief's 
 tent, a mile and a half behind trenches. 
 
 Down comes a glittering aide-de-camp as hard as he 
 can gallop. 
 
 "Colonel Dujardin, what are you about, sir? Your
 
 WHITE LIES. 335 
 
 bastion has thrown a round shot into the commander- 
 in-chief's tent." 
 
 The colonel did not appear so staggered as the aide- 
 de-camp expected. 
 
 "Ah, indeed!" said he quietly. "I observed they 
 were trying distances." 
 
 "Must not happen again, colonel. You must drive 
 them from the gun." 
 
 " How ? " 
 
 " Why, where is the difficulty ? " 
 
 " If you will do me the honor to step into the battery, 
 I will show you," said the colonel. 
 
 "If you please," said the aide-de-camp stiffly. 
 
 Colonel Dujardin took him to the parapet, and began, 
 in a calm, painstaking way, to show him how and why 
 none of his guns could be brought to bear upon Long 
 Tom. 
 
 In the middle of the explanation a melodious sound 
 was heard in the air above them, like a swarm of Brob- 
 dingnag bees. 
 
 " What is that ? " inquired the aide-de-camp. 
 
 "What? I see nothing." 
 
 "That humming noise." 
 
 " Oh, that ? Prussian bullets. Ah, by-the-by, it is a 
 compliment to your uniform, monsieur; they take you 
 for some one of importance. Well, as I was observ- 
 ing " — 
 
 " Your explanation is sufficient, colonel ; let us get out 
 of this. Ha, ha ! you are a cool hand, colonel, I must 
 say. But your battery is a warm place enough : I shall 
 report it so at headquarters." 
 
 The grim colonel relaxed. 
 
 ''Captain," said he politely, "you shall not have rid- 
 den to my post in vain. Will you lend me your horse 
 for ten minutes ? "
 
 336 WHITE LIES. 
 
 "Certainly; and I will inspect your trenches mean- 
 time." 
 
 "Do so; oblige me by avoiding that angle; it is 
 exposed, and the enemy have got the range to an inch." 
 
 Colonel Dujardin slipped into his quarters ; of¥ with 
 his half-dress jacket and his dirty boots, and presently 
 out he came full fig, glittering brighter than the other, 
 with one French and two foreign orders shining on his 
 breast, mounted the aide-de-camp's horse, and away full 
 pelt. 
 
 Admitted, after some delay, into the generalissimo's 
 tent, Dujardin found the old gentleman surrounded by 
 his staff and wroth : nor was the danger to which he 
 had been exposed his sole cause of ire. 
 
 The shot had burst through his canvas, struck a table 
 on which was a large inkstand, and had squirted the 
 whole contents over the despatches he was writing for 
 Paris. 
 
 Now this old gentleman prided himself upon the neat- 
 ness of his despatches: a blot on his paper darkened 
 bis soul. 
 
 Colonel Dujardin expressed his profound regret. The 
 commander, however, continued to remonstrate. " I 
 have a great deal of writing to do," said he, " as you 
 must be aware ; and, when I am writing, I expect to be 
 quiet." 
 
 Colonel Dujardin assented respectfully to the justice 
 of this. He then explained at full length w^hy he could 
 not bring a gun in the battery to silence " Long Tom," 
 and quietly asked to be permitted to run a gun out of 
 the trenches, and take a shot at the offender, 
 
 " It is a point-blank distance, and I have a new gun, 
 with which a man ought to be able to hit his own ball 
 at three hundred yards." 
 
 The commander hesitated.
 
 WHITE LTES. 337 
 
 "I cannot have the men exposed." 
 
 " I engage not to lose a man — except him ^Yho fires 
 the gun.* He must take his chance." 
 
 "AVell, colonel, it must be done by volunteers. The 
 men must not be ordered out on such a service as that." 
 
 Colonel Dujardin bowed, and retired. 
 
 " Volunteers to go out of the trenches ! " cried Ser- 
 geant La Croix, in a stentorian voice, standing erect as 
 a poker, and swelling with importance. 
 
 There were fifty offers in less than as many seconds. 
 
 " Only twelve allowed to go," said the sergeant ; '' and 
 I am one," added he, adroitly inserting himself. 
 
 A gun was taken down, placed on a carriage, and 
 posted near Death's Alley, but out of the line of fire. 
 
 The colonel himself superintended the loading of this 
 gun ; and to the surprise of the men had the shot 
 weighed first, and then weighed out the powder himself. 
 
 He then waited quietl;^ a long time till the bastion 
 pitched one of its periodical shots into Death's Alley ; 
 but no sooner had the shot struck, and sent the sand 
 flying past the two lanes of ciirious noses, than Colonel 
 Dujardin jumped upon the gun and waved his cocked 
 hat. At this preconcerted signal, his battery opened 
 fire on the bastion, and the battery to his right opened 
 on the wall that fronted them ; and the colonel gave the 
 word to run the gun out of the trenches. They ran it 
 out into the cloud of smoke their own guns were belch- 
 ing forth, unseen by the enemy; but they had no sooner 
 twisted it into the line of Long Tom, than the smoke 
 was gone, and there they were, a fair mark. 
 
 '' Back into the trenches, all but one ! " roared 
 Dujardin. 
 
 And in they ran like rabbits. 
 . "Quick ! the elevation." 
 22
 
 338 WHITE LIES. 
 
 Colonel Dujardin and La Croix i-aised the muzzle to 
 the mark — hoo, hoo, hoo I ping, ping, ping ! came the 
 bullets about their ears. 
 
 " Away with you ! " cried the colonel, taking the 
 linstock from him. 
 
 Then Colonel Dujardin, fifteen yards from the trenches, 
 in full blazing uniform, showed two armies what one 
 intrepid soldier can do. He kneeled down and adjusted 
 his gun, just as he would have done in a practising 
 ground. He had a yjot shot to take, and a pot shot he 
 Avould take. He ignored three hundred muskets that 
 were levelled at him. He looked along his gun, adjusted 
 it, and re-adjusted it to a hair's breadth. The enemy's 
 bullets pattered upon it : still he adjusted it delicatel}'. 
 His men were groaning and tearing their hair inside at 
 his danger. 
 
 At last it was levelled to his mind, and then his move- 
 ments were as quick as they had hitherto been slow. 
 In a moment he stood erect in the half-fencing attitude 
 of a gunner, and his linstock at the touch-hole : a huge 
 tongue of flame, a volume of smoke, a roar, and the iron 
 thunderbolt was on its way, and the colonel walked 
 haughtily but rapidly back to the trenches ; for in all 
 this no bravado. He was there to make a shot ; not to 
 throw a chance of life away watching the effect. 
 
 Ten thousand eyes did that for him. 
 
 Both French and Prussians risked their own lives 
 craning out to see what a colonel in full uniform was 
 doing under fire from a whole line of forts, and what 
 would be his fate ; but when he fired the gun their 
 curiosity left the man and followed the iron thunderbolt. 
 
 For two seconds all was uncertain ; the ball was 
 travelling. 
 
 Tom gave a rear like a wild horse, his protruding 
 muzzle went up sky-high, then was seen no more, and a
 
 WHITE LIES. 339 
 
 ring of old iron and a clatter of fragments was heard on 
 the top of the bastion. Long Tom was dismounted. 
 Oh I the roar of laughter and triumph from one end to 
 another of the trenches ; and the clapping of forty thou- 
 sand hands that went on for full five minutes ; then the 
 Prussians, either through a burst of generous praise for 
 an act so chivalrous and so brilliant, or because they 
 would not be crowed over, clapped their ten thousand 
 hands as loudly, and thus thundering, heart-thrilling salvo 
 of applause answered salvo on both sides that terrible 
 arena. 
 
 That evening came a courteous and flattering message 
 from the commander-in-chief to Colonel Dujardin ; and 
 several officers visited his quarters to look at him ; they 
 went back disappointed. The cry was, " What a miser- 
 able, melancholy dog ! I expected to see a fine, dashing 
 fellow." 
 
 The trenches neared the town. Colonel Dujardin's 
 mine was far advanced ; the end of the chamber was 
 within a few yards of the bastion. Of late, the colonel 
 had often visited this mine in person. He seemed a 
 little uneasy about something in that quarter; but no 
 one knew what : he was a silent man. The third even- 
 ing, after he dismounted Long Tom, he received private 
 notice that an order was coming down from the com- 
 mander-in-chief to assault the bastion. He shrugged his 
 shoulders, but said nothing. That same night the colonel 
 and one of his lieutenants stole out of the trenches, and 
 by the help of a pitch-dark, windy night, got under the 
 bastion unperceived, and crept round it, and made their 
 observations, and got safe back. About noon down came 
 General Eaimbaut. 
 
 " Well, colonel, you are to liave your way at last. 
 Your bastion is to be stormed this afternoon previous to
 
 340 WHITE LIES. 
 
 the general assault. Why, how is this ? you don't seem 
 enchanted ? " 
 
 " I am not." 
 
 "Why, it was you who pressed for the assault." 
 
 '• At the right time, general, not the wrong. In .five 
 days I undertake to blow that bastion into the air. To 
 assault it now would be to waste our men." 
 
 General Raimbaut thouglit this excess of caution a 
 great piece of perversity in Achilles. They were alone, 
 and he said a little peevishly, — 
 
 "Is not this to blow hot and cold on the same thing?" 
 
 "Hio, general," was the calm reply. "Not on the 
 same thing. I blew hot upon timorous counsels ; I blow 
 cold on rash ones. General, last night Lieutenant Flem- 
 ing and I were under that bastion ; and all round it." 
 
 " Ah ! my prudent colonel, I thought we should not 
 talk long without your coming out in your true light. 
 If ever a man secretly enjoyed risking his life, it is you." 
 
 " No, general," said Dujardin looking gloomily down ; 
 " I enjoy neither that nor anything else. Live or die, 
 it is all one tome ; but to the lives of my soldiers I am 
 not indifferent, and never will be while I live. My 
 apparent rashness of last night was pure prudence." 
 
 Eaimbaut's eye twinkled with suppressed irony. "No 
 doubt ! " said he ; " no doubt ! " 
 
 The impassive colonel would not notice the other's 
 irony ; he went calmly on : — 
 
 " I suspected something ; I went to confute, or confirm 
 that suspicion. I confirmed it." 
 
 Eat ! tat ! tat ! tat ! tat ! tat ! tat ! was heard a drum. 
 Relieving guard in the mine. 
 
 Colonel Dujardin interrupted himself. 
 
 " That comes apropos," said he. " I expect one proof 
 more from that quarter. Sergeant, send me the sentinel 
 they are relieving."
 
 WHITE LIES. 341 
 
 Sergeant La Croix soon came back, as pompous as a 
 hen with one chick, predominating with a grand military 
 air over a droll figure that chattered with cold, and held 
 its musket in hands clothed in great mittens. Dard. 
 
 La Croix marched him up as if he had been a file ; 
 halted him like a file, sang out to him as to a file, stento- 
 rian and unintelligible, after the manner of sergeants. 
 
 " Private No. 4." 
 
 Dard. P-p-p-present ! 
 
 La Croix. Advance to the word of command, and 
 speak to the colonel. 
 
 The shivering figure became an upright statue directly, 
 and carried one of his mittens to his forehead. Then, 
 suddenly recognizing the rank of the gray-haired officer, 
 he was morally shaken, but remained physically erect, 
 and stammered, — 
 
 " Colonel ! — general ! — colonel ! " 
 
 '• Don't be frightened, my lad. But look at the general 
 and answer me." 
 
 "Yes! general! colonel!" and he levelled his eye 
 dead at the general, as he would a bayonet at a foe, 
 being so commanded. 
 
 "Now answer in as few syllables as you can." 
 
 " Yes ! general — colonel." 
 
 " You have been on guard in the mine." 
 • "Yes, general." 
 
 "What did you see there ? " 
 
 " Nothing ; it was night down there." 
 
 " What did you feel ? " 
 
 " Cold ! I — was — in — water — hugh I '* 
 
 " Did you hear nothing, then ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 "What?" 
 
 " Bum ! bum ! bum I " 
 
 " Are you sure you did not hear particles of earth fall 
 at the end of the trench ? "
 
 342 WHITE LIES. 
 
 " I think it did, and this (touching liis musket) sounded 
 of its own accord." 
 
 " Good ! you have answered well ; go." 
 
 " Sergeant, I did not miss a word," cried Dard, exult- 
 ing. He thought he had passed a sort of military college 
 examination. The sergeant was awe-struck and disgusted 
 at his familiarity, speaking to him before the great : he 
 pushed Private Dard hastily out of the presence, and 
 bundled him into the trenches. 
 
 " Are you countermined, then ? " asked General 
 Raimbaut. 
 
 "I think not, general ; but the whole bastion is. And 
 we found it had been opened in the rear, and lately half 
 a dozen broad roads cut through the masonry." 
 
 ■' To let in re-enforcements ? " 
 
 " Or to let the men run out in case of an assault. I 
 have seen from the first an able hand behind that part 
 of the defences. If we assault the bastion, they will 
 pick off as many of us as they can with their muskets ; 
 then they will run for it, and fire a train, and blow it and 
 us into the air." 
 
 " Colonel, this is serious. Are you prepared to lay this 
 statement before the commander-in-chief?" 
 
 " I am, and I do so through you, the general of my 
 division. I even beg you to say, as from me, that the 
 assault will be mere suicide — bloody and useless." 
 
 General Eaimbaut went off to headquarters in some 
 haste, a thorough convert to Colonel Dujardin's opinion. 
 Meantime the colonel went slowly to his tent. At the 
 mouth of it a corporal, who was also his body-servant, 
 met him, saluted, and asked respectfully if there were 
 any orders. 
 
 " A few minutes' repose, Fran9ois, that is all. Do not 
 let me be disturbed for an hour." 
 
 " Attention ! " cried Frau9ois. " Colonel wants to 
 sleep."
 
 "WHITE LIES. 348 
 
 The tent was sentinelled, and Dujardin was alone with 
 the past. 
 
 Then had the fools, that took (as fools will do) deep 
 sorrow for sullenness, seen the fiery soldier droop, and 
 his wan face fall into haggard lines, and his martial 
 figure shrink, and heard his stout heart sigh ! He took 
 a letter from his bosom : it was almost worn to pieces. 
 He had read it a thousand times, yet he read it again. 
 A part of the sweet sad words ran thus : — 
 
 •' We must bow. We can never be happy togetlier on 
 earth ; let us make Heaven our friend. This is still left us, — 
 not to blush for our love ; to do our duty, and to die." 
 
 "How tender, but how firm," thought Camille. "I 
 might agitate, taunt, grieve her I love, but I could not 
 shake her, Xo ! God and the saints to my aid ! they 
 saved me from a crime I now shudder at. And they 
 have given me the good chaplain : he prays with me, he 
 weeps for me. His prayers still my beating heart. Yes, 
 poor suffering angel ! I read your will in these tender, 
 but bitter, words : you prefer duty to love. And one 
 day you will forget me ; not yet awhile, but it will be 
 so. It wounds me when I think of it, but I must bow. 
 Your will is sacred. I must rise to your level, not drag 
 you to mine."' 
 
 Then the soldier that had stood between two armies in 
 a hail of bullets, and fired a master-shot, took a little 
 book of offices in one hand, — the chaplain had given it 
 him, — and fixed his eyes upon the pious words, and 
 clung like a child to the pious words, and kissed his 
 lost wife's letter, and tried hard to be like her he loved : 
 patient, very patient, till the end should come. 
 
 '^ Qui vive?'' cried the sentinel outside to a strange 
 officer. 
 
 " France," was his reply. He then asked the sentinel, 
 "Where is the colonel commanding the brigade ? "
 
 344 WHITE LIES. 
 
 The sentinel lowered his voice, " Asleep, my officer," 
 said he ; for the new-comer carried two epaulets. 
 
 " Wake him," said the officer in a tone of a man used 
 to command on a large scale. 
 
 Dujardin heard, and did not choose a stranger should 
 think he was asleep in broad day. He came hastily out 
 of the tent, therefore, with Josephine's letter in his 
 hand, and, in the very act of conveying it to his bosom, 
 found himself face to face with — her husband. 
 
 Did you ever see two duellists cross rapiers ? 
 
 How unlike a theatrical duel ! How smooth and quiet 
 the bright blades are ! they glide into contact. They are 
 polished and slippery, yet they hold each other. So 
 these two men's eyes met, and fastened : neither spoke : 
 each searched the other's face keenly. Raynal's counte- 
 nance, prepared as he was for this meeting, was like a 
 stern statue's. The other's face flushed, and his heart 
 raged and sickened at sight of the man, that, once his 
 comrade and benefactor, was now possessor of the woman 
 he loved. But the figures of both stood alike haughty, 
 erect, and immovable, face to face. 
 
 Colonel Raynal saluted Colonel Dujardin ceremoni- 
 ously. Colonel Dujardin returned the salute in the same 
 style. 
 
 "You thought I was in Egypt," said Raynal with grim 
 significance that caught Dujardin's attention, though he 
 did not know quite how to interpret it. 
 
 He answered mechanically, "Yes, I did." 
 
 "I am sent here by General Bonaparte to take a com- 
 mand," explained Raynal. 
 
 " You are welcome. What command ? " 
 
 " Yours." 
 
 "Mine?" cried Dujardin, his forehead flushing with 
 mortification and anger. " What, is it not enough that 
 you take my " — He stopped then.
 
 WHITE LIES. 345 
 
 "Come, colonel," said the other calmly, "do not be 
 unjust to an old comrade. I take your demi-brigade ; 
 but j-ou are promoted to Raimbaut's brigade. The ex- 
 change is to be made to-morrow." 
 
 " Was it then to announce to me my promotion you 
 came to my quarters ? " and Camille looked with a 
 strange mixture of feelings at his old comrade. 
 
 " That was the first thing, being duty, j'ou know." 
 
 "What ? have you anything else to say to me, then?" 
 
 " I have." 
 
 " Is it important ? for my own duties will soon demand 
 me." 
 
 " It is so important that, command or no command, I 
 should have come further than the Rhine to say it to 
 you." 
 
 Let a man be as bold as a lion, a certain awe still 
 waits upon doubt and mystery ; and some of this vague 
 awe crept over Camille Dujardin at Raynal's mysterious 
 speech, and his grave, quiet, significant manner. 
 
 Had he discovered something, and what? For Joseph- 
 ine's sake, more than his own, Camille was on his guard 
 directly. 
 
 Raynal looked at him in silence a moment. 
 
 "What ?" said he with a slight sneer, "has it never 
 occurred to you that I must have a serious word to say 
 to you ? First, let me put you a question : did they 
 treat you well at my house ? at the chateau de Beau- 
 repaire ? "' 
 
 " Yes," faltered Camille. 
 
 " You met, I trust, all the kindness and care due to a 
 wounded soldier and an officer of merit. It would 
 annoy me greatly if I thought you were not treated like 
 a brother in my house." 
 
 Colonel Dujardin writhed inwardly at this view of 
 matters. He could not reply in few words. This made 
 him hesitate.
 
 346 WHITE LIES. 
 
 His inquisitor waited, but, receiving no reply, went 
 on, "Well, colonel, have you shown the sense of grati- 
 tude we had a right to look for in return ? In a word, 
 when you left Beaurepaire, had your conscience nothing 
 to reproach you with ? " 
 
 Dujardin still hesitated. He scarcely knew what to 
 think or what to say. But he thought to himself, 
 " Who has told him ? does he know all ? " 
 
 "Colonel Dujardin, I am the husband of Josephine, 
 the son of Madame de Beaurepaire, and the brother of 
 Rose. You know very well what brings me here. Your 
 answer ? " 
 
 "Colonel Raynal, between men of honor, placed as 
 you and I are, few words should pass, for words are idle. 
 You will never prove to me that I have wronged you : I 
 shall never convince you that I have not. Let us there- 
 fore close this painful interview in the way it is sure to 
 close. I am at your service, at any hour and place you 
 please." 
 
 " And pray is that all the answer you can think of ? " 
 asked Raynal somewhat scornfully. 
 
 " Why, what other answer can I give you ? " 
 
 " A more sensible, a more honest, and a less boyish 
 
 , one. Who doubts that you can fight, you silly fellow ? 
 
 haven't I seen you ? I want you to show me a much 
 
 higher sort of courage : the courage to repair a wrong, 
 
 not the paltry valor to defend one." 
 
 " I really do not understand you, sir. How can I undo 
 what is done ? " 
 
 " Why, of course you cannot. And therefore I stand 
 here ready to forgive all that is past ; not without a 
 struggle, which you don't seem to appreciate." 
 
 Camille was now utterly mystified. Raynal continued, 
 " But of course it is upon condition that you consent to 
 heal the wound you have made. If you refuse — hum J 
 but you will not refuse."
 
 WHITE LIES. 347 
 
 " But what is it you require of me ? " inquired Camille 
 impatiently. 
 
 "Only a little common honesty. This is the case: 
 you have seduced a young lady." 
 
 '' Sir ! " cried Camille angrily. 
 
 " What is the matter ? The word is not so bad as the 
 crime, I take it. You have seduced her, and under cir- 
 cumstances — But we won't speak of them, because I 
 am resolved to keep cool. Well, sir, as you said just 
 now, it's no use crying over spilled milk ; you can't 
 unseduce the little fool ; so you must marry her." 
 
 " M — m — marry her ? " and Dujardin flushed all 
 over, and his heart beat, and he stared in Raynal's 
 face. 
 
 "Why, what is the matter again ? If she has played 
 the fool, it was with you, and no other man : it is not as 
 if she was depraved. Come, my lad, show a little 
 generosity ! Take the consequences of your own act — 
 or your share of it — don't throw it all on the poor feeble 
 woman. If she has loved you too much, you are the 
 man of all others that should forgive her. Come, what 
 do you say ? " 
 
 This was too much for Camille ; that Raynal should 
 come and demand of him to marry his own wife, for so 
 he understood the proposal. He stared at Raynal in 
 silence ever so long, and even when he spoke it was only 
 to mutter, "Are you out of your senses, or am I ?" 
 
 At this it cost Raynal a considerable effort to restrain 
 his wrath. However, he showed himself worthy of the 
 office he had undertaken. He contained himself, and 
 submitted to argue the matter. "Why, colonel," said 
 he, " is it such a misfortune to marry poor Rose ? She 
 is young, she is lovely, she has many good qualities, and 
 she would have walked straight to the eud of her days 
 but for you."
 
 348 WHITE LIES. 
 
 Now here was another surprise for Dujardin, another 
 mystification. 
 
 " Rose de Beaurepaire ? " said he, putting his hand to 
 his head, as if to see whether his reason was still there. 
 
 " Yes, Rose de Beaurepaire — Rose Dujardin that 
 ought to be, and that is to be, if you please." 
 
 " One word, monsieur : is it of Rose we have been 
 talking all this time ? " 
 
 Raynal nearly lost his temper at this question, and 
 the cold, contemptuous tone with which it was put ; but 
 he gulped down his ire. 
 
 " It is," said he. 
 
 " One question more. Did she tell you I had — 1 
 had " — 
 
 " Why, as to that, she was in no condition to deny she 
 had fallen, poor girl ; the evidence was too strong. She 
 did not reveal her seducer's name ; but I had not far to 
 go for that." 
 
 "One question more," said Dujardin, with a face of 
 anguish. "Is it Jos — is it Madame Raynal's wish I 
 should marry her sister ? " 
 
 " Why, of course," said Raynal, in all sincerity, 
 assuming that naturally enough as a matter of course ; 
 " if you have any respect for her feelings, look on me as 
 her envoy in this matter." 
 
 At this Camille turned sick with disgust ; then rage 
 and bitterness swelled his heart. A furious impulse 
 seized him to expose Josephine on the spot. He over- 
 came that, however, and merely said, "She wishes me to 
 marry her sister, does she ? very well then, I decline." 
 
 Raynal was shocked. " Oh," said he, sorrowfully, " I 
 cannot believe this of you ; such heartlessness as this is 
 not written in your face ; it is contradicted by your past 
 actions." 
 
 "I refuse," said Dujardin, hastily; and to tell the
 
 WHITE LIES. 349 
 
 truth, not sorry to inflict some pain on the honest soldier 
 who bad unintentionally driven the iron so deep into his 
 own soul. 
 
 " And I," said Raynal, losing his temper, " insist, in 
 the name of my dear Josephine " — 
 
 "Perdition!" snarled Dujardin, losing his self-com- 
 mand in turn. 
 
 " And of the whole family." 
 
 " And I tell you I will never marry her. Upon my 
 honor, never." 
 
 " Your honor ! you have none. The only question is 
 would you rather marry her — or die." 
 
 "Die, to be sure." 
 
 " Then die you shall." 
 
 "Ah !" said Dujardin ; "did I not tell you we were 
 wasting time ? " 
 
 "Let us waste no more then. When and where ?" 
 
 " At the rear of the commander-in-chief's tent; when 
 you like." 
 
 " This afternoon, then — at five." 
 
 « At five." 
 
 " Seconds ? " 
 
 " What for ? " 
 
 " You are right. They are only in the way of men 
 who carry sabres; and besides the less gossip the better. 
 Good-by, till five," and the two saluted one another with 
 grim ceremony; and Raynal turned on his heel. 
 
 Camille stood transfixed ; a fierce, guilty joy throbbed 
 in his heart. His rival had quarrelled with him, had 
 insulted him, had challenged him. It was not his fault. 
 The sun shone bright now upon his cold despair. An 
 hour ago life offered nothing. A few hours more, and 
 then joy beyond expression, or an end of all. Death 
 or Josephine ! Then he remembered that this very 
 Josephine wished to marry him to liose. Then he
 
 350 WHITE LIES. 
 
 remembered Raynal had saved his life. Cold chills 
 crossed his breaking heart. Of all that could happen to 
 him death alone seemed a blessing without alloy. 
 
 He stood there so torn with conflicting passions, that 
 he noted neither the passing hours nor the flying bullets. 
 
 He was only awakened from his miserable trance by 
 the even tread of soldiers marching towards him ; he 
 looked up and there were several officers coming along 
 the edge of the trench, escorted by a corporal's guard. 
 
 He took a step or two to meet them. After the usual 
 salutes, one of the three colonels delivered a large paper, 
 with a large seal, to Dujardin. He read it out to his 
 captains and lieutenants, who had assembled at sight of 
 the cocked hats and full uniforms. 
 
 " Attack by the ai-my to-morrow upon all the lines. Attack 
 of the bastion St. Andre this evening. The 22d, the 24th, and 
 12th brigades will furnish the contingents ; the operation will 
 be conducted by one of the colonels of the second division, to 
 1,6 appointed by General Raimbaut." 
 
 " Aha ! " sounded a voice like a trombone at the 
 reader's elbow. " I am just in the nick of time. When, 
 colonel, when ? " 
 
 " At five this evening. Colonel Raynal." 
 
 " There," said Raynal, in a half-whisper, to Dujardin ; 
 " could they choose no hour but that ? " 
 
 "Do not be uneasy," replied Dujardin, under his 
 breath. He explained aloud — " the assault wall not 
 take place, gentlemen ; the bastion is mined." 
 
 " What of that ? half of them are mined. We will 
 take our engineers in with us," said Raynal. 
 
 " Such an assault will be a useless massacre," 
 resumed Dujardin. "I reconnoitred the bastion last 
 night, and saw their preparations for blowing us to the 
 devil ; and General Raimbaut, at my request, is even
 
 WHITE LIES. 351 
 
 now presenting my remarks to the commander-in-chief, 
 and enforcing tlieni. There will be no assault. In a 
 day or two we shall blow the bastion, mines, and all into 
 the air." 
 
 At this moment Raynal caught sight of a gray-haired 
 officer coming at some distance. " There is General 
 Raimbaut," said he. " I will go and pay my respects to 
 him." General Raimbaut shook his hand warmly, and 
 welcomed him to the army. They were old and warm 
 friends. " And you are come at the right time," said he. 
 " It will soon be as hot here as in Egypt." 
 
 Raynal laughed and said all the better. 
 
 General Raimbaut now joined the group of officers, 
 and entered at once in the business which had brought 
 him. Addressing himself to Colonel Dujardin, first he 
 informs that officer he had presented his observations to 
 the commander-in-chief, who had given them the atten- 
 tion they merited. 
 
 Colonel Dujardin bowed. 
 
 "But," continued General Raimbaut, "they are over- 
 ruled by imperious circumstances, some of which he did 
 not reveal ; they remain in his own breast. However, on 
 the eve of a general attack, which he cannot postpone, 
 that bastion must be disarmed, otherwise it would be too 
 fatal to all the storming parties. It is a painful neces- 
 sity." He added, "Tell Colonel Dujardin I count greatly 
 on the courage and discipline of his brigade, and on his 
 own wise measures." 
 
 Colonel Dujardin bowed. Then he whispered in the 
 other's ear, " Both will alike be wasted." 
 
 The other colonels waved their hats in triumph at the 
 commander-in-chief's decision, and Raynars face showed 
 he looked on Dujardin as a sort of spoil-sport happily 
 defeated. 
 
 "Well, then, gentlemen," said General Raimbaut, "w&
 
 352 WHITE LIES. 
 
 begin by settling the contingents to be furnished by your 
 several brigades. Say, an equal number from each. The 
 sum total shall be settled by Colonel Dujardin, who has 
 so long and ably baffled the bastion at this post." 
 
 Colonel Dujardin bowed stiffly and not very graciously. 
 In his heart he despised these old fogies, compounds of 
 timidity and rashness. 
 
 " So, how many men in all, colonel ? " asked General 
 Raimbaut. 
 
 "The fewer the better," replied the other solemnly, 
 " since " — and then discipline tied his tongue. 
 
 " I understand you," said the old man. " Shall we say 
 eight hundred men ? " 
 
 " I should prefer three hundred. They have made a 
 back door to the bastion, and the means of flight at hand 
 will put flight into their heads. They will pick off some 
 of our men as we go at them. When the rest jump in 
 they will jump out, and" — He paused. 
 
 " Why, he knows all about it before it comes," said one 
 of the colonels naively. 
 
 " I do. I see the whole operation and its result be- 
 fore me, as I see this -hand. Three hundred men will 
 do." 
 
 "But, general," objected Raynal, "you are not begin- 
 ning at the beginning. The first thing in these cases is 
 to choose the officer to command the storming party." 
 
 " Yes, Raynal, unquestionably ; but you must be aware 
 that is a painful and embarrassing part of my duty, espe- 
 cially after Colonel Dujardin's remarks." 
 
 "Ah, bah!" cried Raynal. "He is prejudiced. He 
 has been digging a thundering long mine here, and now 
 you are going to make his child useless. We none of us 
 like that. But when he gets the colors in his hand, and 
 the storming column at his back, his misgivings will all 
 go to the wind, and the enemy after them, tinless he has
 
 WHAT HE WROTE RAN THUS,
 
 WHITE LIES. 353 
 
 been committing some crime, and is very vutch changed 
 from ivhat I knew him four years ago.'''' 
 
 " Colonel Raynal," said one of the other colonels, 
 politely but firmly, '"'pray do not assume that Colonel 
 Dujardin is to lead the column ; there are three other 
 claimants. General Raimbaut is to select from us four." 
 
 •' Yes, gentlemen, and in a service of this kind I would 
 feel grateful to you all if you would relieve me of that 
 painful duty." 
 
 " Gentlemen," said Dujardin, with an imperceptible 
 sneer, "the general means to say this: the operation is 
 so glorious that he could hardly without partiality assign 
 the command to either of us four claimants. "Well, then, 
 let us cast lots." 
 
 The proposal was received by acclamation. 
 
 " The general will mark a black cross on one lot, and 
 he who draws it wins the command." 
 
 The young colonels prepared their lots with almost 
 boyish eagerness. These fiery spirits were sick to death 
 of lying and skulking in the trenches. They flung their 
 lots into the hat. After them, who should approach the 
 hat, lot in hand, but Raynal. Dujardin instantly inter- 
 fered, and held his arm as he was in the act of dropping 
 in his lot. 
 
 "What is the matter? " said Raynal, sharply. 
 
 "This is our affair, Colonel Raynal. You have no 
 command in this army." 
 
 "I beg your pardon, sir, I have yours." 
 
 " Not till to-morrow." 
 
 "Why, you would not take such a pettifogging advan- 
 tage of an old comrade as that." 
 
 "Tell him the day ends at twelve o'clock," said one of 
 the colonels interested by this strange strife. 
 
 "Ah!" cried Raynal, triumphantly; "but no," said 
 he, altering his tone, " let us leave that sort of argument
 
 354 WHITE LIES. 
 
 to lawyers. I have come a good many miles to fight with 
 you, general ; and now you must decide to pay me this 
 little compliment on my arrival, or put a bitter affront 
 on me — choose ! " 
 
 While the old general hesitated, Camille replied, "Since 
 you take that tone there can be but one answer. You 
 are too great a credit to the French army for even an 
 apparent slight to be put on you here. The rule, I think, 
 is, that one of the privates shall hold the hat. — Hallo! 
 Private Dard, come here — there — hold this hat." 
 
 " Yes, colonel. — Lord, here is my young mistress's 
 husband ! " 
 
 " Silence ! " 
 
 And they began to draw, and, in the act of drawing, a 
 change of manner was first visible in these gay and 
 ardent spirits. 
 
 " It is not I," said one, throwing away his lot. 
 
 "Nor I." 
 
 " It is I," said Raynal ; then with sudden gravity, " I 
 am the lucky one." 
 
 And now that the honor and the danger no longer 
 floated vaguely over four heads, but had fixed on one, a 
 sudden silence and solemnity took the place of eager 
 voices. 
 
 It was first broken by Private Dard saying, with foolish 
 triumph, "And I held the hat for you, colonel." 
 
 " Ah, Eaynal ! " said General Eaimbaut, sorrowfully, 
 " it was not worth while to come from Egypt for this." 
 
 Raynal made no reply to this. He drew out his watch, 
 and said calmly, he had no time to lose ; he must inspect 
 the detachments he was to command. "Besides," said 
 he, " I have some domestic arrangements to make. Hither- 
 to on these occasions I was a bachelor, now I am married." 
 General Raimbaut could not help sighing. Raynal read 
 this aright, and turned to him, "A droll marriage, my
 
 WHITE LIES. 355 
 
 old friend ; I'll tell you all about it if ever I have the 
 time. It began with a purchase, general, and ends with 
 — with a bequest, which I might as well write now, and 
 so have nothing to think of but duty afterwards. Where 
 can I write ? " 
 
 "Colonel Dujardin will lend you his tent, I am sure." 
 
 "Certainly." 
 
 "And, messieurs," said Raynal, "if I waste time you 
 need not. You can pick me my men from your brigades. 
 Give me a strong spice of old hands." 
 
 The colonels withdrew on this, and General Raimbaut 
 walked sadly and thoughtfully towards the battery. 
 Dujardin and Raynal were left alone. 
 
 "This postpones our affair, sir." 
 
 " Yes, Raynal." 
 
 " Have you writing materials in your tent ? " 
 
 " Yes ; on the table." 
 
 " You are quite sure the bastion is mined, comrade ? " 
 
 This unexpected Avord and Raynal's gentle appeal 
 touched Dujardin deeply. It was in a broken voice he 
 replied that he was unfortunately too sure of it. 
 
 Raynal received this reply as a-sentence of death, and 
 without another word walked slowl}' into Dujardin's tent. 
 
 Dujardin's generosity was n\) in arms; he followed 
 Raynal, and said eagerly, "Raynal, for Heaven's sake 
 resign this command ! " 
 
 "Allow me to write to my wife, colonel," was the cold 
 reply. 
 
 Camille winced at this affront, and drew back a moment ; 
 but his nobler part prevailed. He seized Raynal by the 
 wrist. "You shall not affront me, you cannot aft'ront me. 
 You go to certain death I tell you, if you attack tliat 
 bastion." 
 
 "Don't be a fool, colonel," said Raynal: "somebody 
 must lead the men."
 
 356 WHITE LIES. 
 
 " Yes ; but not you. Who has so good a right to lead 
 them as I, their colonel ? " 
 
 " And be killed in my place, eh ? " 
 
 " I know the ground better than you," said Camille. 
 " Besides, who cares for me ? I have no friends, no 
 family. But you are married — and so many will mourn 
 if you " — 
 
 Raynal interrupted him sternly. " You forget, sir, 
 that Rose de Beaurepaire is my sister, when you tell me 
 you have no tie to life." He added, with wonderful 
 dignity and sobriety, " Allow me to write to my wife, 
 sir ; and, while I write, reflect that you can embitter an 
 old comrade's last moments by persisting in your refusal 
 to restore his sister the honor you have robbed her of." 
 
 And leaving the other staggered and confused by this 
 sudden blow, he retired into Dujardin's tent, and finding 
 writing materials on a little table that was there, sat 
 down to pen a line to Josephine. 
 
 Camille knew to whom he was writing, and a jealous 
 pang passed through him. 
 
 What he wrote ran thus, — 
 
 " A bastion is to be attacked at five. I command. Colonel 
 Dujardin proposed we should draw lots, and I lost. The ser- 
 vice is honorable, but the result may, I fear, give you some 
 pain. My dear wife. It is our fate. I was not to have time to 
 make you know, and perhaps love me. God bless you." 
 
 In writing these simple words, Raynal's hard face 
 worked, and his mustache quivered, and once he had to 
 clear his eye with his hand to form the letters. He, the 
 man of iron. 
 
 He who stood there, leaning on his scabbard and 
 watching the writer, saw this, and it stirred all that was 
 great and good in that grand though passionate heart of 
 his. 
 
 I
 
 WHITE LIES. 357 
 
 "Poor Raynal!" thought he, "j'ou were never like 
 that before on going into action. He is loath to die. 
 Ay, and it is a coward's trick to let him die. I shall 
 have her . but shall I have her esteem ? What will the 
 army say ? What will my conscience say ? Oh ! I feel 
 already it will gnaw my heart to death ; the ghost of 
 that brave fellow — once my dear friend, my rival now, 
 by no fault of his — will rise between her and me, and 
 reproach me with my bloody inheritance. The heart 
 never deceives; I feel it now whispering in my ear: 
 * Skulking captain, white-livered soldier, that stand be- 
 hind a parapet while a better man does your work ! you 
 assassinate the husband, but the rival conquers you.' 
 There, he puts his hand to his eyes. What shall I do? " 
 
 "Colonel," said a low voice, and at the same time a 
 hand was laid on his shoulder. 
 
 It was General Raimbaut. The general looked pale 
 and distressed. 
 
 " Come apart, colonel, for Heaven's sake ! One word, 
 while he is writing. Ah ! that was an unlucky idea of 
 yours." 
 
 " Of mine, general ? " 
 
 " 'Twas you proposed to cast lots." 
 
 " Good God ! so it was." 
 
 "I thought of course it was to be managed so that 
 Raynal should not be the one. Between ourselves, what 
 honorable excuse can we make ? " 
 
 " None, general." 
 
 "The whole division will be disgraced, and forgive me 
 if I say a portion of the discredit will fall on you." 
 
 "Help me to avert that shame then," cried Camille, 
 eagerly. 
 
 " Ah ! that I will : but how ? " 
 
 " Take your pencil and write — ' I authorize Colonel 
 Dujardin to save the honor of the colonels of the second 
 division.' "
 
 358 WHITE LIES. 
 
 The general hesitated. He had never seen an order 
 so worded. But at last he took out his pencil and wrote 
 the required order, after his own fashion ; i.e., in milk 
 and water: — 
 
 On account of the singular ability and courage with which 
 Colonel Dujardin has conducted the operations against the 
 Bastion St. Andre, a discretionary power is given him at the 
 moment of assault to carry into effect such measures, as, with- 
 out interfering with the commander-in-chiefs order, may sus- 
 tain his own credit, and that of the other colonels of the second 
 division. 
 
 Raimbaut, General of Division. 
 
 Camille put the paper into his bosom. 
 
 " Now, general, you may leave all to me. T swear to 
 you, Raynal shall not die — shall not lead this assault." 
 
 " Your hand, colonel. You are an honor to the French 
 armies. How will you do it ? " 
 
 " Leave it to me, general, it shall be done." 
 
 " I feel it will, my noble fellow : but, alas ! I fear not 
 without risking some valuable life or other, most likely 
 your own. Tell me ! " 
 
 "General, I decline." 
 
 " You refuse me, sir ? " 
 
 "Yes; this order gives me a discretionary power. I 
 will hand back the order at your command ; but modify 
 it I will not. Come, sir, you veteran generals have been 
 unjust to me, and listened to me too little all through 
 this siege, but at last you have honored me. This order 
 is the greatest honor that was ever done me since I wore 
 a sword.". 
 
 " My poor colonel ! " 
 
 "Let me wear it intact, and carry it to my grave." 
 
 " Say no more ! One word — Is there anything on 
 earth I can do for you, my brave soldier ? "
 
 ■WHITE lies: 359 
 
 " Yes, general. Be so kind as to retire to your quar- 
 ters; there are reasons why you ought not to be near 
 this post in half an hour." 
 
 " 1 go. Is there nothing else ? " 
 
 " Well, general, ask the good priest Ambrose, to pray 
 for all those who shall die doing their duty to their 
 country this afternoon." 
 
 They parted. General Kaimbaut looked back more 
 than once at the firm, intrepid figure that stood there 
 unflinching, on the edge of the grave. But he never took 
 his eye off Raynal, The next minute the sad letter was 
 finished, and Raynal walked out of the tent, and con- 
 fronted the man he had challenged to single combat. 
 
 I have mentioned elsewhere that Colonel Dujardin 
 had eyes strangely compounded of battle and love, of 
 the dove and the hawk. And these, softened by a noble 
 act he meditated, now rested on Raynal with a strange 
 expression of warmth and goodness. This strange gaze 
 struck Raynal, so far at least as this ; he saw it was no 
 hostile eye. He was glad of that, for his own heart was 
 calmed and softened by the solemn prospect before him. 
 
 " We, too, have a little account to settle before I order 
 out the men," said he, calmly, "and 1 can't give you a 
 long credit. I am pressed for time." 
 
 "Our quarrel is at an end. When duty sounds the 
 recall, a soldier's heart leaves private feuds. See ! I 
 come to you without anger and ill-will. Just now my 
 voice was loud, my manner, I dare say, offensive, and 
 menacing even, and that always tempts a brave fellow 
 like you to resist. But now, you see, 1 am harmless as 
 a woman. We are alone. Humbug to the winds ! I 
 know that you are the only man in this army fit to com- 
 mand a division. I know that when you say the assault 
 of that bastion is death, death it is. To the point then ; 
 now that my manner is no longer irritating, now that I
 
 360 WHITE LIES. 
 
 am going to die, Camille Dujardin, my old comrade, have 
 you the heart to refuse me ? am 1 to die unhappy ? " 
 
 "No; no: I will do whatever you like." 
 
 " You will marry that poor girl, then ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Aha ! did not I always say he was a good fellow ? 
 Clench the nail ; give me your honor." 
 
 " I give you my honor to marry her, if I live." 
 
 " You take a load off me ; may Heaven reward you. 
 In one hour those poor women, whose support I had 
 promised to be, will lose their protector ; but I give them 
 another in you. We shall not leave that family in tears, 
 Rose in shame, and your child without a name." 
 
 Dujardin stared at the speaker. What new and devil- 
 ish deception was this ? 
 
 " My child ! " he faltered. " What child ? " 
 
 " Ah," said Raynal, " what a fool I was ! That is the 
 first thing I ought to have told you. Poor little fellow ! 
 I surprised him in his cradle ; his mother and Josephine 
 were rocking him, and singing over him. Oh ! it was a 
 scene, I can tell you. My poor wife had been ill for 
 some time, and was so weakened by it, that I frightened 
 her into a fit, stealing a march on her that way. She 
 fainted away. Perhaps it is as well she did ; for I — I 
 did not know what to tliink ; it looked ugly ; but while 
 she lay at our feet insensible, I forced the truth from 
 Rose ; she owned the boy was hers." 
 
 While Raynal told him this strange story, Camille 
 turned hot and cold. First came a thrill of glowing joy ; 
 he had some clew to all this : he was a father; that child 
 was Josephine's and his ; the next moment he froze 
 Avithin. So Josephine had not only gulled her husband, 
 but him, too ; she had refused him the sad consolation 
 of knowing he had a child. Cruelty, calculation, and 
 baseness unexampled ! Here was a creature who could 
 
 1
 
 WHITE LIES. 361 
 
 sacrifice anything and anybody to her comfort, to the 
 peace and sordid smoothness of lier domestic life. She 
 stood between two men — a thing. Between two truths 
 — a double lie. 
 
 His heart, in one moment, turned against her like a 
 stone. A musket-bullet through the body does not turn 
 life to death quicker than Raynal turned his rival's love 
 to despair and scorn : that love which neither wounds, 
 absence, prison, nor even her want of constancy had pre- 
 vailed to shake. 
 
 " Out of my bosom ! " he cried — " out of it, in this 
 world and the next ! " 
 
 He forgot, in his lofty rage, who stood beside him. 
 
 " What ? — what ? " cried Raynal. 
 
 " No matter," said Camille ; " only I esteem yoii^ 
 Raynal. You are truth ; you are a man, and deserve a 
 better lot." 
 
 "Don't say that," replied Raynal, quite misunder- 
 standing him. " It is a soldier's end : I never desired 
 nor hoped a better : only, of course, I feel sad. You are 
 a happy fellow, to have a child and to live to see it, and 
 her you love." 
 
 " Oh, yes, I am very happy," replied the poor fellow, 
 his lip quivering. 
 
 " Watch over all those poor women, comrade, and 
 sometimes speak to them of me. It is foolish, but we 
 like to be remembered." 
 
 *' Yes ! but do not let us speak of that. Raynal, you 
 and I were lieutenants together; do you remember 
 saving my life in the Arno ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Then promise me, if you should live, to remember 
 not our quarrel of to-day, nor anything; but only those 
 early days, and this afternoon.^' 
 
 " I do."
 
 362 WHITE LIES. 
 
 " Your hand, comrade." 
 
 *' There, comrade, there." 
 
 They wrung one another's hands, and turned away 
 and hid their faces from each other, for their eyes were 
 moist. 
 
 "This won't do, comrade, I must go. I shall attack 
 from your position. So I shall go down the line, and 
 bring the men up. Meantime, pick me your detachment. 
 Give me a good spice of veterans. I shall get one word 
 with you before we go out. God bless you ! " 
 
 " God bless you, Raynal ! " 
 
 The moment Raynal was gone, Camille beckoned a 
 lieutenant to him, and ordered half the brigade to form 
 in a strong column on both sides Death's Alley. 
 
 His eye fell upon private Dard, as luck would have it. 
 "Come here," said he. Dard came and saluted. 
 
 " Have you anybody at Beaurepaire that would be 
 sorry if you were killed ? " 
 
 " Yes, colonel ! Jacintha, that used to make your 
 broth, colonel." 
 
 "Take this line to Colonel Eaynal. You Avill find 
 him with the 12th brigade." 
 
 He wrote a few lines in pencil, folded them, and Dard 
 went off with them, little dreaming that the colonel of 
 his brigade was taking the trouble to save his life, 
 because he came from Beaurepaire. Colonel Dujardin 
 then went into his tent, and closed the aperture, and 
 took the good book the priest had given him, and prayed 
 humbly, and forgave all the world. 
 
 Then he sat down, his head in his hands, and thought 
 of his child, and how hard it was he must die and never 
 see him. Then he lighted a candle, and sealed up his 
 orders of valor, and wrote a line, begging that they 
 might be sent to his sister. He also sealed up his 
 purse, and left a memorandum that the contents should
 
 WHITE LIES. 363 
 
 be given to disabled soldiers of his brigade upon their 
 being invalided. 
 
 Then he took out Josephine's letter. "Poor coward," 
 he said, "let me not be unkind. See, I burn your letter, 
 lest it should be found, and disturb the peace you prize 
 so highly. I, too, shall soon be at peace." He lighted 
 the letter, and dropped it on the ground : it burned 
 slowly away. He eyed it, despairingly. " Ay," said he, 
 " you perish, last record of an unhappy love : and even 
 so pass away my life ; my hopes of glory, and my dreams 
 of love ; it all ends to-day : at nine and twenty." 
 
 He put his white handkerchief to his eyes. Josephine 
 had given it him. He cried a little. 
 
 When he had done crying, he put his white handker- 
 chief in his bosom, and the whole man was transformed 
 beyond language to express. Powder does not change 
 more when it catches fire. He rose that moment and 
 went like a flash of lightning out of the tent. The next, 
 he came down between the lines of the strong column 
 that stood awaiting orders in Death's Alley. 
 
 " Attention ! " cried the sergeants ; " the colonel ! " 
 
 There was a dead silence, for the bare sight of that 
 erect and inspired figure made the men's bosoms thrill 
 with the certainty of great deeds to come : the light of 
 battle was in his eye. No longer the moody colonel, 
 but a thunderbolt of war, red-hot, and waiting to be 
 launched. 
 
 " Officers, sergeants, soldiers, a word with you ! " 
 
 La Croix. Attention ! 
 
 "Do you know what passed here five minutes ago?" 
 
 " The attack of the bastion was settled ! " cried a 
 captain. 
 
 " It was ; and who was to lead the assault ? do you 
 know that ? " 
 
 "No."
 
 364 WHITE LIES. 
 
 " A colonel from Egypt," 
 
 At that there was a groan from the men. 
 
 "With detachments from the other brigades" 
 
 " Ah ! " an angry roar. 
 
 Colonel Dujardin walked quickly down between the 
 two lines, looking with his fiery eye into the men's eyes 
 on his right. Then he came back on the other side, and, 
 as he went, he lighted those men's eyes with his own. 
 It was a torch passing along a line of ready gas-lights. 
 
 "The work to us !" he cried in a voice like a clarion 
 (it lired the hearts as his eye had fired the eyes) — 
 " The triumph to strangers ! Our fatigues and our 
 losses have not gained the brigade the honor of going 
 out at those fellows that have killed so many of our 
 comrades." 
 
 A fierce groan broke from the men. 
 
 " What ! shall the colors of another brigade and not 
 ours fly from that bastion this afternoon ? " 
 
 " No ! no ! " in a roar like thunder. 
 
 " Ah ! you are of my mind. Attention ! the attack is 
 fixed for five o'clock. Suppose you and I were to carry 
 the bastion ten minutes before the colonel from Egypt 
 can bring his men upon the ground." 
 
 At this there was a fierce burst of joy and laughter ; 
 the strange laughter of veterans and born invincibles. 
 Then a yell of exulting assent, accompanied by the 
 thunder of impatient drums, and the rattle of fixing 
 bayonets. 
 
 The colonel told off a party to the battery. 
 
 " Level the guns at the top tier. Fire at my signal, 
 and keep firing over our heads, till you see our colors on 
 the place." 
 
 He then darted to the head of the column, which in- 
 stantly formed behind him in the centre of Death's Alley. 
 
 "The colors! No hand but mine shall hold them 
 to-day."
 
 WHITE LIES. 365 
 
 They were instantly brought him : his left hand shook 
 them free in the afternoon sun. 
 
 A deep murmur of joy rolled out from the old hands 
 at the now unwonted sight. Out flashed the colonel's 
 sword like steel lightning. He pointed to the battery. 
 
 Bang ! bang ! bang ! bang ! went his cannon, and the 
 smoke rolled over the trenches. At the same moment 
 up went the colors waving, and the colonel's clarion voice 
 pealed high above all : — 
 
 " Twenty -fourth brigade — Forward ! " 
 
 They went so swiftly out of the trenches that they 
 were not seen through their own smoke until they had 
 run some sixty yards. As soon as they were seen, coming 
 on like devils through their own smoke, two thousand 
 muskets were levelled at them from the Prussian line. 
 It was not a rattle of small arms — it was a crash, and 
 the men fell fast : but in a moment they were seen to 
 spread out like a fan, and to offer less mark, and when 
 the fan closed again, it half encircled the bastion. It 
 was a French attack : part swarmed at it in front like 
 bees, part swept round the glacis and flanked it. They 
 were seen to fall in numbers, shot down from the embra- 
 sures. But the living took the place of the dead : and 
 the fight ranged evenly there. Where are the colors ? 
 Towards the rear there. The colonel and a hundred men 
 are fighting hand to hand with the Prussians, who have 
 charged out at the back doors of the bastion. Success 
 there, and the bastion must fall — both sides know this. 
 
 The colors disappeared. There was a groan from the 
 French lines. The colors reappeared, and close under 
 the bastion. 
 
 And now in front the attack was so hot, that often the 
 Prussian gunners were seen to jump down, driven from 
 their posts ; and the next moment a fierce hurrah from the 
 rear told that the French had won some great advantage
 
 366 WHITE LIES. 
 
 there. The fire slackening told a similar tale and pres- 
 ently down came the Prussian Hag-staff. That might be 
 an accident. A few moments of thirsting expectation, 
 and up went the colors of the 24th brigade upon the 
 Bastion St. Andre. 
 
 The French army raised a shout that rent the sky, and 
 their cannon began to play on the Prussian lines and 
 between the bastion and the nearest fort, to prevent a 
 recapture. 
 
 Sudden there shot from the bastion a cubic acre of 
 fire : it carried up a heavy mountain of red and black 
 smoke that looked solid as marble. There was a heavy, 
 sullen, tremendous explosion that snuffed out the sound 
 of the cannon, and paralyzed the French and Prussian 
 gunners' hands, and checked the very beating of their 
 hearts. Thirty thousand pounds of gunpowder were in 
 that awful explosion. War itself held its breath, and 
 both armies, like peaceable spectators, gazed wonder- 
 struck, terror-struck. Great hell seemed to burst through 
 the earth's crust, and to be rushing at heaven. Huge 
 stones, cannons, corpses, and limbs of soldiers, were seen 
 driven or falling through the smoke. Some of these last 
 came quite clear of the ruins, ay, into the French and 
 Prussian lines, that even the veterans put their hands to 
 their eyes. Raynal felt something patter on him from 
 the sky — it was blood — a comrade's perhaps. 
 
 The smoke cleared. Where, a moment before, the 
 great bastion stood and fought, was a monstrous pile of 
 blackened, bloody stones and timbers, with dismounted 
 cannon sticking up here and there. 
 
 And, rent and crushed to atoms beneath the smoking 
 mass, lay the relics of the gallant brigade, and their 
 victorious colors.
 
 WHITE LIES. 367 
 
 CHAPTER XXIL 
 
 A FEW wounded soldiers of the brigade lay still till 
 dusk. Then they crept back to the trenches. These 
 had all been struck down or disabled short of the bas- 
 tion. Of Jbhose that had taken the place no one came 
 home. 
 
 Raynal, after the first stupefaction, pressed hard and 
 even angrily for an immediate assault on the whole 
 Prussian line. Xot they. It was on paper tliat the 
 assault should be at daybreak to-morruw. Such leaders 
 as they were cannot inqjrovise. 
 
 Rage and grief in his heart, Raynal waited chafing in 
 the trenches till five minutes past midnight. He then 
 became commander of the brigade, gave his orders, and 
 took thirty men out to creep up to the wreck of the bas- 
 tion, and find the late colonel's body. 
 
 Going for so pious a purpose, he was rewarded by an 
 important discovery. The whole Prussian lines had been 
 abandoned since sunset, and, mounting cautiously on the 
 ramparts, Raynal saw the town too was evacuated, and 
 lights and other indications on a rising ground behind it 
 convinced him that the Prussians were in full retreat, 
 probably to effect that junction with other forces which 
 the assault he had recommended would have rendered 
 impossible. 
 
 They now lighted lanterns, and searched all over and 
 round the bastion for the poor colonel. In tlie roar of 
 the bastion they found many French soldiers, most of 
 whom had died by the bayonet. The Prussian dead had 
 all been carried olf.
 
 368 WHITE LIES. 
 
 Here they found tlie talkative Sergeant La Croix. 
 The poor fellow was silent enough now. A terrible sabre- 
 cut on the skull. The colonel was not there. Raynal 
 groaned, and led the way on to the bastion. The ruins 
 still smoked. Seven or eight bodies were discovered by 
 an arm or afoot protruding through the masses of masonry. 
 Of these some were Prussians ; a proof that some devoted 
 hand had fired the train, and destroyed both friend and 
 foe. 
 
 They found the tube of Long Tom sticking up, just as 
 he had shown over the battlements that glorious day, 
 with this exception, that a great piece was knocked off 
 his lip, and the slice ended in a long, broad crack. 
 
 The soldiers looked at this. " That is our bullet's 
 work," said they. Then one old veteran touched his cap, 
 and told Raynal gravely, he knew where their beloved 
 colonel was. " Dig here, to the bottom," said he. " He 
 lies hejieath his tvork." 
 
 Improbable and superstitious as this was, the hearts 
 of the soldiers assented to it. 
 
 Presently there was a joyful cry outside the bastion. 
 A rush was made thither. But it proved to be only 
 Dard, who had discovered that Sergeant La Croix's heart 
 still beat. They took him up carefully, and carried him 
 gently into camp. To Dard's delight the surgeon pro- 
 nounced him curable. For all that, he was three days 
 insensible, and after that unfit for duty. So they sent 
 him home invalided, with a hundred francs out of the 
 poor colonel's purse. 
 
 Eaynal reported the evacuation of the place, and that 
 Colonel Dujardin was buried under the bastion, and soon 
 after rode out of the camp. 
 
 The words Camille had scratched with a pencil, and 
 sent him from the edge of the grave, were few but 
 striking.
 
 WHITE LIES. 369 
 
 " A dead man takes you once more by the hand. My last 
 thought, thank God, is France. For her sake and mine, 
 Raynal, go for General Boxatarte. Tell him, from a 
 dying soldier, the Rhine is a river to these generals, but to 
 him a iield of glory. He will lay out our lives, not waste 
 them." 
 
 There was nothing to hinder Raynal from carrying out 
 this sacred request : for the 24th brigade had ceased to 
 exist : already thinned by hard service, it was reduced 
 to a lile or two by the fatal bastion. It was incor2)orated 
 with the 12th ; and Raynal rode heavy at heart to Paris, 
 with a black scarf across his breast.
 
 370 WHITE LIES. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 You see now into what a fatal entanglement two high- 
 minded young ladies were led, step by step, through 
 yielding to the natural foible of their sex — the desire 
 to hide everything painful from those they love, even at 
 the expense of truth. 
 
 A nice mess they made of it with their amiable 
 dishonesty. And pray take notice that after the first 
 White Lie or two, circumstances overpowered them, and 
 drove them on against their will. It was no small part 
 of all their misery that they longed to get back to truth 
 and could not. 
 
 We shall see presently how far they succeeded in that 
 pious object, for the sake of which they first entered 
 on concealments. But first a word is due about one of 
 the victims of their amiable, self-sacrificing lubricity. 
 Edouard Riviere fell in one night, from happiness and 
 confidence, such as till that night he had never enjoyed, 
 to deep and hopeless misery. 
 
 He lost that which, to every heart capable of really 
 loving, is the greatest earthly blessing, the woman he 
 adored. But worse than that, he lost those prime treas- 
 nres of the masculine soul, belief in human goodness, 
 and in female purity. To him no more could there be 
 in nature a candid eye, a virtuous ready-mantling cheek : 
 for frailty and treachery had put on these signs of virtue 
 and nobility. Henceforth, let him live a hundred years, 
 whom could he trust or believe in ? 
 
 Here was a creature whose virtues seemed to make 
 frailty impossible : treachery, doubly impossible : a creat-
 
 WHITE LIES. 371 
 
 ure whose very faults — for faults she had — had seemed 
 as opposite to treachery as her very virtues were. Yet 
 she was all frailty and falsehood. 
 
 He passed in that one night of anguish from youth to 
 age. He went about his business like a leaden thing. 
 His food turned tasteless. His life seemed ended. 
 Nothing appeared what it had been. The very land- 
 scape seemed cut in stone, and he a stone in the middle 
 of it, and his heart a stone in him. At times, across that 
 heavy heart came gushes of furious rage and bitter mor- 
 tification ; his heart was broken, and his faith was gone, 
 for his vanity had been stabbed as fiercely as his love. 
 " Georges Dandin ! " he would cry, " curse her ! curse 
 her!" But love and misery overpowered these heats, 
 and froze him to stone again. 
 
 The poor boy pined and pined. His clothes hung loose 
 about him ; his face was so drawn with suffering, you 
 would not have known him. He hated company. The 
 things he was expected to talk about ! — he with his 
 crushed heart. He could not. He would not. He 
 shunned all the world ; he went alone like a wounded 
 deer. The good doctor, on his return from Paris, called 
 on him to see if he was ill : since he had not come for 
 days to the chateau. He saw the doctor coming and 
 bade the servant say he was not in the village. 
 
 He drew down the blind, that he might never see the 
 chateau again. He drew it up again : he could not exist 
 without seeing it. " She will be miserable, too," he 
 cried, gnashing his teeth. " She will see whether she 
 has chosen well." At other times, all his courage, and 
 his hatred, and his wounded vanity, were drowned in his 
 love and its despair, and then he bowed his head, and 
 sobbed and cried as if his heart would burst. Quo 
 morning he was so sobbing with his head on the table, 
 when his landlady tapped at his door. He started up^ 
 and turned his head away from the door.
 
 372 WHITE LIES. 
 
 "A young woman from Beaurepaire, monsieur." 
 
 " From Beaurepaire ? " his heart gave a furious leap. 
 " Show her in." 
 
 He wiped his eyes and seated himself at a table, and, 
 all in a flutter, pretended to be the state's. 
 
 It was not Jacintha, as he expected, but the other 
 servant. She made a low reverence, cast a look of admi- 
 ration on him, and gave him a letter. His eye darted on 
 it : his hand trembled as he took it. He turned away 
 again to open it. He forced himself to say, in a tolera- 
 bly calm voice, " I will send an answer." 
 
 The letter was apparently from the baroness de Beau- 
 repaire ; a mere line inviting him to pay her a visit. It 
 was written in a tremulous hand. Edouard examined 
 the writing, and saw directly it was written by Rose. 
 
 Being now, naturally enough, full of suspicion, he set 
 this down as an attempt to disguise her hand. "So," 
 said he, to himself, " this is the game. The old woman is 
 to be drawn into it, too. She is to help to make Georges 
 Dandin of me. I will go. I will baffle them all. I will 
 expose this nest of depravity, all ceremony on the sur- 
 face, and voluptuousness and treachery below. God ! 
 who could believe that creature never loved me ! They 
 shall none of them see my weakness. Their benefactor 
 shall be still their superior. They shall see me cold as 
 ice, and bitter as gall." 
 
 But to follow him farther just now, would be to run 
 too far in advance of the main story. I must, therefore, 
 return to Beaurepaire, and show, amongst other things, 
 how this very letter came to be written. 
 
 When Josephine and Rose awoke from that startled 
 slumber that followed the exhaustion of that troubled 
 night, Rose was the more wretched of the two. She had 
 not only dishonored herself, but stabbed the man she 
 loved.
 
 WHITE LIES. 373 
 
 Josephine, on the other hand, was exhausted, but calm. 
 The fearful escape she had had softened down by con- 
 trast her more distant terrors. 
 
 She began to shut her eyes again, and let herself drift. 
 Above all, the doctor's promise comforted her : that she 
 should go to Paris with him, and have her boy. 
 
 This deceitful calm of the heart lasted three days. 
 
 Carefully encouraged by Rose, it was destroyed by 
 Jacintha. 
 
 Jacintha, conscious that she had betrayed her trust, 
 was almost heart-broken. She was ashamed to appear 
 before her young mistress, and, coward-like, wanted to 
 avoid knowing even how much harm she had done. 
 
 She pretended toothache, bound up her face, and never 
 stirred from the kitchen. But she was not to escape : 
 the other servant came down with a message : " Madame 
 Raynal wanted to see her directly." 
 
 She came quaking, and found Josephine all alone. 
 
 Josephine rose to meet her, and casting a furtive glance 
 round the room first, threw her arms round Jacintha's 
 neck, and embraced her with many tears. 
 
 " Was ever fidelity like yours ? how could you do it, 
 Jacintha ? and how can I ever repay it ? But, no ; it is 
 too base of me to accept such a sacrifice from any woman." 
 
 Jacintha was so confounded she did not know what to 
 say. But it was a mystification that could not endure 
 long between two women, who were both deceived by a 
 third. Between them they soon discovered that it must 
 have been Rose who had sacrificed herself. 
 
 "And Edouard has never been here since," said 
 Josephine. 
 
 " And never will, madarae." 
 
 "Yes, he shall ! there must be some limit even to my 
 feebleness, and my sister's devotion. You sliall take a 
 line to him from me. I will write it this mouient."'
 
 374 WHITE LIES. 
 
 The letter was written. But it was never sent. Rose 
 found Josephine and Jacintha together; saw a letter 
 was being written, asked to see it ; on Josephine's hesi- 
 tating, snatched it out of her hand, read it, tore it to 
 pieces, and told Jacintha to leave the room. She hated 
 the sight of poor Jacintha, who had slept at the very 
 moment when all depended on her watchfulness. 
 
 *' So you were going to send to hivi, unknown to me." 
 
 " Forgive me, Rose." Rose burst out crying. 
 
 " Josephine ! is it come to this ? Would you deceive 
 me?" 
 
 " You have deceived vie ! Yes ! it has come to that. 
 i kiiow all. I will not consent to destroy all I love." 
 
 She then begged hard for leave to send the letter. 
 
 Rose gave an impetuous refusal. "What could you 
 say to him ? foolish thing, don't you know him, and his 
 vanity ? When you had exposed yourself to him, and 
 showed him I had insulted him for you, do you think 
 he would forgive me ? No ! this is to make light of my 
 love — to make me waste the sacrifice I have made. I 
 feel that sacrifice as much as you do, more perhaps, and 
 I would rather die in a convent than waste that night of 
 shame and agony. Come, promise me, no more attempts 
 of that kind, or we are sisters no more, friends no more, 
 one heart and one blood no more." 
 
 The weaker nature, weakened still more by ill-health 
 and grief, was terrified into submission, or rather tem- 
 porized. "Kiss me then," said Josephine, "and love me 
 to the end. Ah, if I was only in my grave ! " 
 
 Rose kissed her with many sighs, but Josephine smiled. 
 Rose eyed her with suspicion. That deep smile ; what 
 did it mean ? She had formed some resolution. " She 
 \s going to deceive me somehow," thought Rose. 
 
 From that day she watched Josephine like a spy. 
 Confidence vp-as gone between them. Suspicion took its 
 place.
 
 WHITE LIES. 375 
 
 Rose was right in her misgivings. The moment 
 Josephine saw that Edouard's hajjpiness and Rose's 
 were to be sacrificed for her whom nothing couhl make 
 happy, the poor thing said to herself, ''I can dik." 
 
 And that was the happy thonght that made her smile. 
 
 The doctor gave her laudanum : he found she could 
 not sleep : and he thought it all-important that she 
 should sleep. 
 
 Josephine, instead of taking these small doses, saved 
 them all up, secreted them in a phial, and so, from the 
 sleep of a dozen nights, collected the sleep of death : and 
 now she was tranquil. This young creature that could not 
 bear to give pain to any one else, prepared her own death 
 with a calm resolution the heroes of our sex have not 
 often equalled. It was so little a thing to her to strike 
 Josephine. Death would save her honor, would spare 
 her the frightful alternative of deceiving her husband, 
 or of telling him she was another's. "Poor Raynal," 
 said she to herself, "it is so cruel to tie him to a woman 
 who can never be to him what he deserves. Rose would 
 then prove her innocence to Edouard. A few tears for 
 a weak, loving soul, and they would all be happy and 
 forget her." 
 
 One day the baroness, finding herself alone with Rose 
 and Dr. Aubertin, asked the latter what he thought of 
 Josephine's state. 
 
 "Oh, she was better : had slept last night without her 
 usual narcotic." 
 
 The baroness laid down her knitting and said, with 
 much meaning, " And I tell you, you will never cure her 
 body till you can cure her mind. My poor child has 
 some secret sorrow." 
 
 "Sorrow!" said Aubertin, stoutly concealing the utt 
 easiness these words created, " what sorrow ? "
 
 376 WHITE LIES. 
 
 "Oh, she has some deep sorrow. And so have you, 
 Rose." 
 
 " Me, mamma ! what do you mean ? " 
 
 The baroness's pale cheek flushed a little. " I mean," 
 said she, " that my patience is worn out at last ; I cannot 
 live surrounded by secrets. Raynal's gloomy looks when 
 he left us, after staying but one hour; Josephine ill 
 from that day, and bursting into tears at every word ; 
 yourself pale and changed, hiding an unaccountable sad- 
 ness under forced smiles — Now, don't interrupt me. 
 Edouard, who was almost like a son, gone off, without a 
 word, and never comes near us now." 
 
 *' Really you are ingenious in tormenting yourself. 
 Josephine is ill ! Well, is it so very strange ? Have 
 you never been ill ? Rose is pale ! you are pale, my 
 dear ; but she has nursed her sister for a month ; is it a 
 wonder she has lost color ? Edouard is gone a journey, 
 to inherit his uncle's property : a million francs. But 
 don't you go and fall ill, like Josephine ; turn pale, like 
 Rose ; and make journeys in the region of fancy, after 
 Edouard Riviere, who is tramping along on the vulgar 
 high road." 
 
 This tirade came from Aubertin, and very clever he 
 thought himself. But he had to do with a shrewd old 
 lady, whose suspicions had long smouldered; and now 
 burst out. She said quietly, " Oh, then Edouard is not 
 in this part of the world. That alters the case : where 
 is he ? " 
 
 " In Normandy, probably," said Rose, blushing. 
 
 The baroness looked inquiringly towards Aubertin. 
 He put on an innocent face and said nothing. 
 
 " Very good," said the baroness. " It's plain I am to 
 learn nothing from you two. But I know somebody who 
 will be more communicative. Yes : this uncomfortable 
 smiling, and unreasonable crying, and interminable whis*
 
 WHITE LIES. 377 
 
 pering ; these appearances of the absent, and disappear- 
 ances of the present; I shall know this very day what 
 they all mean." 
 
 " Really, I do not understand you." 
 
 " Oh, never mind ; I am an old woman, and I am in 
 my dotage. For all that, perhaps you will allov.' me two 
 words alone with my daughter," 
 
 "I retire, madame," and he disappeared with a bow to 
 her, and an anxious look at Rose. She did not need 
 this ; she clenched her teeth, and braced herself up to 
 stand a' severe interrogatory. 
 
 Mother and daughter looked at one another, as if to 
 measure forces, and then, instead of questioning her as 
 she had intended, the baroness sank back in her chair 
 and wept aloud. Rose was all unprepared for this. She 
 almost screamed in a voice of agony, " mamma ! 
 mamma ! God ! kill me where I stand for making 
 my mother weep ! " 
 
 " My girl," said the baroness in a broken voice, and 
 with the most touching dignity, " may you never know 
 what a mother feels who finds herself shut out from her 
 daughters' hearts. Sometimes 1 think it is my fault ; I 
 was born in a severer age, A mother nowadays seems 
 to be a sort of elder sister. In my day she was some- 
 thing more. Yet I loved my mother as well, or better 
 than I did my sisters. But it is not so with those I 
 have borne in my bosom, and nursed upon my knee." 
 
 At this Rose flung herself, sobbing and screaming, at 
 her mother's knees. The baroness was alarmed. "Come, 
 dearest, don't cry like that. It is not too late to take 
 your poor old mother into your confidence. What is 
 this mystery ? and Avhy this sorrow ? How comes it I 
 intercept at every instant glances that were not intended 
 for me ? Why is the very air loaded with signals and 
 secrecy ? (Rose replied only by sobs.) Is some deceit
 
 378 WHITE LIES. 
 
 going on? (Rose sobbed.) Am I to have no reply but 
 these sullen sobs ? will you really tell me nothing ? " 
 
 " I've nothing to tell," sobbed Rose. 
 
 "Well, then, will you do something for me ?" 
 
 Such a proposal was not only a relief, but a delight to 
 the deceiving but loving daughter. She started up cry- 
 ing, "Oh, yes, mamma; anything, everything. Oh, 
 thank you ! " In the ardor of her gratitude, she 
 wanted to kiss her mother ; but the baroness declined 
 the embrace politely, and said, coldly and bitterly, " I 
 shall not ask much ; I should not venture now "to draw 
 largely on your affection ; it's only to write a few lines 
 for me." 
 
 Rose got paper and ink with great alacrity, and sat 
 down all beaming, pen in hand. 
 
 The baroness dictated the letter slowly, with an eye 
 gimleting her daughter all the time. 
 
 " Dear — Monsleui- — RiviereJ'^ 
 
 The pen fell from Rose's hand, and she turned red and 
 then pale. 
 
 " What ! write to him ? " 
 
 " Not in your own name ; in mine. But perhaps you 
 prefer to give me the trouble." 
 
 " Cruel ! cruel ! " sighed Rose, and wrote the words as 
 requested. 
 
 The baroness dictated again, — 
 
 " Oblige me by co7ning here at your very earliest convert' 
 ience.'" 
 
 " But, mamma, if he is in Normandy," remonstrated 
 Rose, fighting every inch of the ground. 
 
 "Never you mind where he is," said the baroness. 
 " Write as I request." 
 
 " Yes, mamma," said Rose with sudden alacrity ; for 
 she had recovered her ready wit, and was prepared to 
 write anything, being now fully resolved the letter 
 should never go. ^
 
 WHITE LIES. 379 
 
 "Now sign my name." Rose complied. "There; 
 now fold it, and address it to his lodgings." Rose did 
 so ; and, rising with a cheerful air, said she would send 
 Jacintha with it directly. 
 
 She was half across the room when her mother called 
 her quietly back. 
 
 "No, mademoiselle," said she sternly. "You will 
 give me the letter. I can trust neither the friend of 
 twenty years, nor the servant that stayed by me in 
 adversity, nor the daughter I suffered for and nursed. 
 And why don't I trust you ? Because you have told me 
 a lie." 
 
 At this word, which in its coarsest form she had never 
 heard from those high-born lips till then, Rose cowered 
 like a hare. 
 
 "Ay, a lie,^^ said the baroness. " I saw Edouard Riviere 
 in the park but yesterday. I saw him. ]\Iy old eyes 
 are feeble, but they are not deceitful. I saw him. Send 
 my breakfast to my own room. I come of an ancient 
 race : I could not sit with liars ; I should forget courtesy ; 
 you would see in my face how thoroughly I scorn you 
 all." And she went haughtily out with the letter iu her 
 hand. 
 
 Rose, for the first time, was prostrated. Vain had been 
 all this deceit ; her mother was not happy ; was not 
 blinded. Edouard might come and tell her his story. 
 Then no j)ower could keep Josephine silent. The plot 
 was thickening ; the fatal net was drawing closer and 
 closer. 
 
 She sank with a groan into a chair, and body and 
 spirit alike succumbed. Rut that was only for a little 
 while. To this prostration succeeded a feverish excite- 
 ment. She could not, would not, look Edouard in the 
 face. She would implore Josephine to be silent ; and 
 she herself would fly from the chateau. But, if Joseph-
 
 380 WHITE LIES. 
 
 ine would not be silent? Why, then she would go 
 herself to Edouard, and throw herself upon his honor, 
 and tell him the truth. With this, she ran wildly up 
 the stairs, and burst into Josephine's room so suddenly, 
 that she caught her, pale as death, on her knees, with a 
 letter in one hand and a phial of laudanum in the othei.
 
 WHITE LIES. 381 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 Josephine conveyed the pliial into her bosom with 
 wonderful rapidity and dexterity, and rose to her feet. 
 But Rose just saw her conceal something, and resolved to 
 find out quietly what it was. So she said nothing about 
 it, but asked Josephine what on earth she was doing. 
 
 "I was praying." 
 
 " And what is that letter ? " 
 
 " A letter I have just received from Colonel Raynal." 
 
 Rose took the letter and read it. Raynal had written 
 from Paris. He was coming to Beaurepaire to stay a 
 month, and was to arrive that very day. 
 
 Then Rose forgot all about herself, and even what she 
 had come for. She clung about her sister's neck, and 
 implored her, for her sake, to try and love Raynal. 
 
 Josephine shuddered, and clung weeping to her sister 
 in turn. For in Rose's arms she realized more power- 
 fully what that sister would suffer if she were to die. 
 jSTow, while they clung together, Rose felt something 
 hard, and contrived just to feel it with her cheek. It 
 was the phial. 
 
 A chill suspicion crossed the poor girl. The attitude 
 in which she had found Josephine ; the letter, the look 
 of despair, and now this little bottle, which she had hid- 
 den. Why hide it? She resolved not to let Josephine 
 out of her sight ; at all events, until she had seen this 
 little bottle, and got it away from her. 
 
 She helped her to dress, and breakfasted with her in 
 the tapestried room, and dissembled, and put on gayety, 
 and made light of everything but Josephine'.s health.
 
 382 WHITE LIES. 
 
 Her efforts were not quite in vain. Josephine became 
 more composed ; and Rose even drew from her a half 
 promise that she would give Raynal and time a fair trial. 
 
 And now Rose was relieved of her immediate appre- 
 hensions for Josephine, but the danger of another kind, 
 from Edouard, remained. So she ran into her bedroom 
 for her bonnet and shawl, determined to take the strong 
 measure of visiting Edouard at once, or intercepting him. 
 While she was making her little toilet, she heard her 
 mother's voice in the room. This was unlucky ; she 
 must pass through that room to go out. She sat down 
 and fretted at this delay. And then, as the baroness 
 appeared to be very animated. Rose went to the keyhole, 
 and listened. Their mother was telling Josephine how 
 she had questioned Rose, and how Rose had told her an 
 untruth, and how she had made that young lady write to 
 Edouard, etc. ; in short, the very thing Rose wanted to 
 conceal from Josephine. 
 
 Rose lost all patience, and determined to fly through 
 the room and out before anybody could stop her. She 
 heard Jacintha come in with some message, and thought 
 that would be a good opportunity to slip out unmolested. 
 So she opened the door softly. Jacintha, it seemed, had 
 been volunteering some remark that was not well received, 
 for the baroness was saying, sharply, " Your opinion is 
 not asked. Go down directly, and bring him up here, to 
 this room." Jacintha cast a look of dismay at Rose, and 
 vanished. 
 
 Rose gathered from that look, as much as from the 
 words, who the visitor was. She made a dart after 
 Jacintha. But the room was a long one, and the baron- 
 ess intercepted her : " No," said i:he, gravely, " I cannot 
 spare you." 
 
 Rose stood pale and panting, but almost defiant. 
 " Mamma," said she, " if it is Monsieur Riviere, I mvst
 
 "WHITE LTES. 383 
 
 ask your leave to retire. And you liave neither love no'' 
 pity, nor respect for me, if you detain me." 
 
 " Mademoiselle ! " was the stern repl}^, " I forbid you 
 to move. Be good enough to sit there ; " with which the 
 baroness pointed imperiously to a sofa at the other side 
 of the room. '' Josephine, go to your room." Josephine 
 retired, casting more than one anxious glance over her 
 shoulder. 
 
 Kose looked this way and that in despair and terror; 
 but ended by sinking, more dead than alive, into the seat 
 indicated ; and even as she drooped, pale and trembling, 
 on that sofa, Edouard Riviere, worn and agitated, entered 
 the room, and bowed low to them all, without a word. 
 
 The baroness looked at him, and then at her daughter, 
 as much as to say, now I have got you ; deceive me now if 
 you can. " Rose, my dear," said this terrible old woman, 
 affecting honeyed accents, " don't you see Monsieur 
 Riviere ? " 
 
 The poor girl at this challenge rose with difficulty, and 
 courtesied humbly to Edouard. 
 
 He bowed to her, and stealing a rapid glance saw her 
 i:)allor and distress ; and that showed him she was not so 
 hardened as he had thought. 
 
 ''You have not come to see us lately," said the baroness, 
 quietly, "yet you have been in the neighborhood." 
 
 These words puzzled Edouard. Was the old lady all 
 in the dark, then ? As a public man he had already 
 learned to be on his guard ; so he stammered out, " That 
 he had been much occupied with public duties." 
 
 Madame deBeaurepaire despised this threadbare excuse 
 too much to notice it at all. She went on as if he had 
 said nothing. " Intimate as you were with us, you must 
 have some reason for deserting us so suddenly." 
 
 " I have," said Edouard, gravely. 
 
 " What is it ? "
 
 384 WHITE LIES.' 
 
 "Excuse mo," said Edouard, sullenly. 
 
 "'No, monsieur, 1 cannot. Tliis neglect, succeeding to 
 a somewhat ardent jmrsuit of my daughter, is almost 
 an affront. You shall, of course, withdraw yourself 
 altogether, if you choose. But not without an explana- 
 tion. This much is due to me ; and, if you are a gentle^ 
 man, you will not withhold it from me." 
 
 " If he is a gentleman ! " cried Rose ; " mamma, do 
 not you affront a gentleman, who never, never gave you 
 nor me any ground of offence. Why affront the friends 
 and benefactors Ave have lost by our own fault ? " 
 
 " Oh, then, it is all your fault," said the baroness. 
 " I feared as much." 
 
 " All my fault, all," said Rose ; then putting her pretty 
 palms together, and casting a look of abject supplication 
 on Edouard, she murmured, " my temper ! " 
 
 "Do not you put words into his mouth," said the 
 shrewd old lady. " Come, Monsieur Riviere, be a man^ 
 and tell me the truth. What has she said to you ? What 
 has she done ? " 
 
 By this time the abject state of terror the high-spirited 
 Rose was in, and her piteous glances, had so disarmed 
 Edouard, that he had not the heart to expose her to her 
 mother. 
 
 "Madame," said he, stiffly, taking Rose's hint, "my 
 temper and mademoiselle's could not accord." 
 
 " Why, her temper is charming : it is joyous, equal, 
 and gentle." 
 
 " You misunderstand me, madame ; I do not reproach 
 Mademoiselle Rose. It is I who am to blame." 
 
 " For what ? " inquired the baroness dryly. 
 
 " Eor not being able to make her love me." 
 
 " Oh ! that is it ! She did not love you ? " 
 
 "Ask herself, madame," said Edouard, bitterly. 
 
 "Rose/' said the baroness, her eye now beginning to
 
 "WHITE LIES. 385 
 
 twinkle, " were you really guilty of such a want of dis- 
 crimination ? Didn't you love monsieur ? " 
 
 Rose flung her arms round her mother's neck, and 
 said, "No, mamma, I did not love Monsieur Edouard," 
 in an exquisite tone of love, that to a female ear con- 
 veyed the exact opposite of the words. 
 
 But Edouard had not that nice discriminating ear. 
 He sighed deeply, and the baroness smiled. '■' You tell 
 me that ? " said she, " and you tire crying ! " 
 
 " She is crying, madame ? " said Edouard, inquiringly, 
 and taking a step towards them. 
 
 " Why, you see she is, you foolish boy. Come, I must 
 put an end to this ; " and she rose coolly from her seat, 
 and begging Edouard to forgive her for leaving him a 
 moment with his deadly enemy, went off with knowing 
 little nods into Josephine's room ; only, before she en- 
 tered it, she turned, and with a maternal smile discharged 
 this word at the pair. 
 
 "Babies!" 
 
 But between the alienated lovers was a long distress- 
 ing silence. Neither knew what to say ; and their 
 situation was intolerable. At last Rose ventured in a 
 timorous voice to say, " I thank you for your generosity. 
 But I knew that you would not betray me." 
 
 "Your secret is safe for me," sighed Edouard. "Is 
 there anything else I can do for you ? " 
 
 Rose shook her head sadly. 
 
 Edouard moved to the door. 
 
 Rose bowed her head with a despairing moan. It took 
 him by the heart and held him. He hesitated, then 
 came towards her. 
 
 " I see you are sorry for what you have done to me 
 who loved you so ; and you loved me. Oh ! yes, do not 
 deny it, Rose; there was a time you loved me. And that 
 makes it worse : to have given me such sweet hopes, only
 
 386 WHITE LIES. 
 
 to crush both them and me. And is not this cruel of 
 you to weep so and let me see your penitence — when it 
 is too late ? " 
 
 " Alas ! how can I help my regrets ? I have insulted 
 so good a friend." 
 
 There was a sad silence. Then as he looked at her, 
 her looks belied the charge her own lips had made against 
 herself. 
 
 A light seemed to burst on Edouard from that high- 
 minded, sorrow-stricken face. 
 
 " Tell me it is false ! " he cried. 
 
 She hid her face in her hands — woman's instinct to 
 avoid being read. 
 
 "Tell me you were misled then, fascinated, perverted, 
 but that your heart returned to me. Clear yourself of 
 deliberate deceit, and I Avill believe and thank you on my 
 knees." 
 
 " Heaven have pity on us both ! " cried poor Rose. 
 
 " Ou us ! Thank you for saying on us. See now, you 
 have not gained happiness by destroying mine. One 
 word — do you love that man? — that Dujardin?" 
 
 " You know I do not." 
 
 "1 am glad of that; since his life is forfeited ; if he 
 escapes my friend Raynal, he shall not escape me." 
 
 Rose uttered a cry of terror. " Hush ! not so loud. 
 The life of Camille ! Oh ! if he were to die, what would 
 become of — oh, pray do not speak so loud." 
 
 "Own then that you do love him," yelled Edouard; 
 *' give me truth, if you have no love to give. Own that 
 you love him, and he shall be safe. It is myself I will 
 kill, for being such a slave as to love you still." 
 
 Rose's fortitude gave way. 
 
 "I cannot bear it," she cried despairingly; "it is 
 beyond my strength; Edouard, swear to me you will 
 keep what I tell you secret as the grave ! "
 
 WHITE LIES. 387 
 
 "Ah!" cried Edouard, all radiant with hope, "I 
 swear." 
 
 "Then you are under a delirium. I have deceived, but 
 never wronged you; that unhappy child is not — Hush ! 
 Here she comes.'" 
 
 The baroness came smiling out, and Josephine's wan, 
 anxious face was seen behind her. 
 
 " Well," said the baroness, " is the war at an end ? 
 What, are we still silent ? Let me try then what I can 
 do, Edouard, lend me your hand." 
 
 While Edouard hesitated, Josephine clasped her hands 
 and mutely supplicated him to consent. Her sad face, 
 and the thought of how often she had stood his friend, 
 shook his resolution. He held out his hand, but slowly 
 and reluctantly. 
 
 "There is my hand," he groaned. 
 
 "And here is mine, mamma," said Rose, smiling to 
 please her mother. 
 
 Oh! the mixture of feeling, when her soft warm palm 
 pressed his. How the delicious sense baffled and mys- 
 tified the cold judgment. 
 
 Josephine raised her eyes thankfully to heaven. 
 
 While the young lovers yet thrilled at each other's 
 touch, yet could not look one another in the face, a clatter 
 of horses' feet was heard. 
 
 " That is Colonel Raynal," said Josephine, with un- 
 natural calmness. " I expected him to-day." 
 
 The baroness was at the side window in a moment. 
 
 " It is he ! — it is he! " 
 
 She hurried down to embrace her son. 
 
 Josephine went without a word to her own room. 
 Rose followed her the next minute. But in that one 
 minute she worked magic. 
 
 She glided up to Edouard, and looked him full in the 
 face : not the sad, depressed, guilty -looking humble Rose
 
 388 WHITK LIES. 
 
 of a moment before, but the old high-spirited, and some 
 what imperious girl. 
 
 " You have shown yourself noble this day. I am 
 going to trust you as only the noble are trusted. Stay 
 in the house till I can speak to you." 
 
 She was gone, and something leaped within Edouard's 
 bosom, and a flood of light seemed to burst in on him. 
 Yet he saw no object clearly : but he saw light. 
 
 Rose ran into Josephine's room, and once more sur- 
 prised her on her knees, and in the very act of hiding 
 something in her bosom. 
 
 '' What are you doing, Josephine, on your knees ? " 
 said she, sternly. 
 
 " I have a great trial to go through," was the hesita- 
 ting answer. 
 
 Rose said nothing. She turned paler. She is deceiv- 
 ing me, thought she, and she sat down full of bitterness 
 and terror, and, affecting not to watch Josephine, watched 
 her. 
 
 " Go and tell them I am coming, Rose." 
 
 " No, Josephine, I will not leave you till this terrible 
 meeting is over. We will encounter him hand in hand, 
 as we used to go when our hearts were one, and we de- 
 ceived others, but never each other." 
 
 At this tender reproach Josephine fell upon her neck 
 and wept. 
 
 " I will not deceive you," she said. " I am worse than 
 the poor doctor thinks me. My life is but a little candle 
 that a breath may put out any day." 
 
 Rose said nothing, but trembled and watched her 
 keenly. 
 
 " My little Henri," said Josephine imploringly, " what 
 would you do with him — if anything should happen to 
 me?" 
 
 " What would I do with him ? He is mine. I should
 
 WHITE LIES. 389 
 
 be his mother. Oh ! what words are these : my heart ! 
 my heart ! " 
 
 "No, clearest; some day 3-ou will be married, and owe 
 all the mother to your children ; and Henri is not ours 
 only : he belongs to some one I have seemed unkind to. 
 Perhaps he thinks me heartless. For I am a foolish 
 woman; I don't know how to be virtuous, yet show a 
 man my heart. But then he will understand me and for- 
 give me. Rose, love, you will write to him. He will 
 come to you. You will go together to the place where I 
 shall be sleeping. You will show him my heart. You 
 will tell him all my long love that lasted to the end. 
 You need not blush to tell him all. I have no right. 
 Then you will give him his poor Josephine's boy, and 
 you will say to him, ' She never loved but you : she 
 gives you all that is left of hei', her child. She only 
 prays you not to give him a bad mother.' " 
 
 Poor soul ! this was her one bit of little, gentle jeal- 
 ousy ; but it made her eyes stream. She would have 
 put out her hand from the tomb to keep her boy's father 
 single all his life. 
 
 " Oh ! my Josephine, my darling sister," cried Rose, 
 " why do you speak of death ? Do you meditate a 
 crime ? " 
 
 " No ; but it was on my heart to say it : it has done 
 me good." 
 
 "At least, take me to your bosom, my well-beloved, 
 that I may not see your tears." 
 
 " There — tears ? No, you have lightened my heart. 
 Bless you ! bless you ! " 
 
 The sisters twined their bosoms together in a long, 
 gentle embrace. You might have taken them for two 
 angels that flowed together in one love, but for their 
 tears. 
 
 A deep voice was now heard in the sitting-room.
 
 390 WHITE LIES. 
 
 Josephine and Rose postponed the inevitable one 
 moment more, by arranging their hair in the glass : then 
 they opened the door, and entered the tapestried room. 
 
 Raynal was sitting on the sofa, the baroness's hand in 
 his. Edouard was not there. 
 
 Colonel Raynal had given him a strange look, and 
 said, " What, you here ? " in a tone of voice that wa.s 
 intolerable. 
 
 Raynal came to meet the sisters. He saluted Joseph- 
 ine on the brow. 
 
 " You are pale, wife : and how cold her hand is." 
 
 " She has been ill this month past," said Rose inter- 
 posing. 
 
 " You look ill, too. Mademoiselle Rose." 
 
 "Never mind," cried the baroness joyously, "you will 
 revive them both." 
 
 Raynal made no reply to that. 
 
 " How long do you stay this time, a day ? " 
 
 "A month, mother." 
 
 The doctor now joined the party, and friendly greet- 
 ings passed between him and Raynal. 
 
 But ere long somehow all became conscious this was 
 not a joyful meeting. The baroness could not alone 
 sustain the spirits of the party, and soon even she began 
 to notice that Raynal's replies were short, and that his 
 manner was distrait and gloomy. The sisters saw this 
 too, and trembled for what might be coming. 
 
 At last Raynal said bluntly, "Josephine, I want to 
 speak to you alone." 
 
 The baroness gave the doctor a look, and made an 
 excuse for going down-stairs to her own room. As she 
 was going Josephine went to her and said calmly, — 
 
 " Mother, you have not kissed me to-day." 
 
 " There ! Bless you, my darling ! " 
 
 Raynal looked at Rose. She saw she must go, but she
 
 WHITE LIES. 391 
 
 lingered, and sought her sister's eye : it avoided her. 
 At that Rose ran to the doctor, who was just going out 
 of the door. 
 
 " Oh ! doctor," she whispered trembling, " don't go 
 beyond the door. I found her praying. My mind mis- 
 gives me. She is going to tell him — or something 
 worse." 
 
 " What do you mean ? " 
 
 " I am afraid to say all I dread. She could not be so 
 calm if she meant to live. Be near ! as I shall. She 
 has a phial hid in her bosom." 
 
 She left the old man trembling, and went back. 
 
 " Excuse me," said she to Raynal, " I only came to 
 ask Josephine if she wants anything." 
 
 " Xo ! — yes ! — a glass of ecni sucree.^' 
 
 Rose mixed it for her. While doing this she noticed 
 that Josephine shunned her eye, but Raynal gazed 
 gently and with an air of pity on her. 
 
 She retired slowly into Josephine's bedroom, but did 
 not quite close the door. 
 
 Raynal had something to say so painful that he shrank 
 from plunging into it. He therefore, like many others, 
 tried to creep into it, beginning with something else. 
 
 "Your health," said he, "alarms me. You seem sad, 
 too. I don't understand that. You have no news from 
 the Rhine, have you ? " 
 
 " Monsieur ! " said Josephine scared. 
 
 "Do not call me monsieur, nor look so frightened. 
 Call me your friend. I am your sincere friend." 
 
 " Oh, yes ; you always were." 
 
 " Thank you. You will give me a dearer title before 
 we part this time." 
 
 "Yes," said Josephine in a low whisper, and shud- 
 dered. 
 
 " Have you forgiven me frightening you so that 
 night ? "
 
 392 WHITE LIES. 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " It was a shock to me, too, I can tell you, I like the 
 boy. She professed to love him, and, to own the truth, 
 I loathe all treachery and deceit. If I had done a mur- 
 der, I would own it. A lie doubles every crime. But I 
 took heart ; we are all selfish, we men ; of the two sis- 
 ters one was all innocence and good faith ; and she was 
 the one I had chosen." 
 
 At these words Josephine rose, like a statue moving, 
 and took a phial from her bosom and poured the con- 
 tents into the glass. 
 
 But ere she could drink it, if such was her intention, 
 Raynal, with his eyes gloomily lowered, said, in a voice 
 full of strange solemnity, — 
 
 " I went to the army of the Rhine." 
 
 Josephine put down the glass directly, though without 
 removing her hand from it. 
 
 ''I see you understand me, and approve. Yes, I saw 
 that your sister would be dishonored, and I went to the 
 army and saw her seducer." 
 
 " You saw hvji. Oh, I hope you did not go and speak 
 to him of — of this ? " 
 
 " Why, of course I did." 
 
 Josephine resolved to know the worst at once. " May 
 I ask," said she, " what you told him ? " 
 
 " Why, I told him all I had discovered, and pointed 
 out the course he must take ; he must marry yovir sister 
 at once. He refused. I challenged him. But ere we 
 met, I was ordered to lead a forlorn hope against a 
 bastion. Then, seeing me go to certain death, the noble 
 fellow pitied me. I mean this is how I understood it all 
 at the time ; at any rate, he promised to marry Rose if 
 he should live." 
 
 Josephine put out her hand, and with a horrible smile 
 said, " I thank you ; you have saved the honor of our
 
 WHITE LIES. 393 
 
 family ; " and with no more ado, she took the glass in 
 her hand to drink the fatal contents. 
 
 But Raynal's reply arrested her hand. He said sol- 
 emnly, "Xo, I have not. Have you no inkling of the 
 terrible truth ? Do not fiddle with that glass : drink it, 
 or leave it alone ; for, indeed, I need all your attention." 
 
 He took the glass out of her patient hand, and with 
 a furtive look at the bedroom-door, drew her away to 
 the other end of the room ; " and," said he, " I could 
 not tell your mother, for she knows nothing of the girl's 
 folly ; still less Rose, for I see she loves him still, or 
 why is she so pale ? Advise me, now, Avhilst we are 
 alone. Colonel Dujardin was comparatively indifferent 
 to yoti. Will you undertake the task ? A rough soldier 
 like me is not the person to break the terrible tidings to 
 that poor girl." 
 
 " What tidings ? You confuse, you perplex me. Oh ! 
 what does this horrible preparation mean ? " 
 
 " It means he will never marry your sister ; he will 
 never see her more." 
 
 Then Raynal walked the room in great agitation, 
 which at once communicated itself to his hearer. But 
 the loving heart is ingenious in avoiding its dire mis- 
 givings. 
 
 "I see,'"' said she; " he told you he would never visit. 
 Beaurepaire again. He was right." 
 
 Raynal shook his head sorrowfully. 
 
 " Ah, Josephine, you are far from the truth. I was to 
 attack the bastion. It was mined by the enemy, and he 
 knew it. He took advantage of my back being turnea. 
 He led his men out of the trenches ; he assaulted toe 
 \)astion at the head of his brigade. He took it." 
 
 "Ah, it was noble; it was like him." 
 
 *'The enemy, retiring, blew the bastion into the air, 
 and Dujardin — is dead."
 
 394 WHITE LIES. 
 
 "Dead ! " said Josephine, in stupefied tones, as if the 
 word conveyed no meaning to her mind, benumbed anri. 
 stunned by the blow. 
 
 " Don't speak so loud," said Raynal ; " I hear the poor 
 girl at the door. Ay, he took my place, and is dead." 
 
 " Dead ! " 
 
 " Swallowed up in smoke and flames, overwhelmed 
 and crushed under the ruins." 
 
 Josephine's whole body gave way, and heaved like a 
 tree falling under the axe. She sank slowly to her 
 knees, and low moans of agony broke from her at inter- 
 vals. " Dead, dead, dead ! " 
 
 " Is it not terrible ? " he cried. 
 
 She did not see him nor hear him, but moaned out 
 wildly, " Dead, dead, dead ! " The bedroom-door was 
 opened. 
 
 She shrieked with sudden violence, " Dead ! ah, pity ! 
 the glass ! the composing draught." She stretched her 
 hands out wildly. Raynal, with a face full of concern, 
 ran to the table, and got the glass. She crawled on her 
 knees to meet it ; he brought it quickly to her hand. 
 
 " There, my poor soul ! " 
 
 Even as their hands met. Rose threw herself on the 
 '^up, and snatched it with fury from them both. She. 
 was white as ashes, and her eyes, supernaturally large, 
 glared on Raynal with terror. " Madman ! " she crieJ, 
 " would you kill her ? " 
 
 He glared back on her : what did this mean ? Theii 
 eyes were fixed on each other like combatants for life 
 and death; they did not see that the room was filling 
 with people, that the doctor was only on the other side 
 of the table, and that the baroness and Edouard were at 
 the door, and all looking wonderstruck at this strange 
 sight — Josephine on her knees, and those two facing each 
 other, white, with dilating eyes, the glass between them.
 
 WHITE LIES. 395 
 
 But what was that to the horror, when the next 
 moment the patient Josephine started, to her feet, and, 
 standing in the midst, tore her hair by handfuls, out of 
 her head. 
 
 " Ah, you snatch the kind poison from me ! " 
 
 " Poison ! " 
 
 " Poison ! " 
 
 " Poison ! " cried the others, horror-stricken. 
 
 " Ah ! you won't let me die. Curse you all ! curse 
 you ! I never had my own way in anything. I was 
 always a slave and a fool. I have murdered the man I 
 love — I love. Yes, my husband, do you hear ? the man 
 I love." 
 
 "Hush! daughter, respect my gray hairs." 
 
 " Your gray hairs ! You are not so old in years as I 
 am in agony. So this is your love, Rose ! Ah, you 
 won't let me die — won't you ? Then I'll do worse — 
 I'll tell. 
 
 *' He who is dead ; you have murdered him amongst 
 you, and I'll follow him in spite of you all — he was my 
 betrothed. He struggled wounded, bleeding, to my feet. 
 He found me married. News came of my husband's 
 death ; I married my betrothed." 
 
 " Married hira ! " exclaimed the baroness. 
 
 " Ah, my poor mother. And she kissed me so kindly 
 just now — she will kiss me no more. Oh, I am not 
 ashamed of marrying him. I am only ashamed of the 
 cowardice that dared not do it in face of all the world. 
 "We had scarce been happy a fortnight, when a letter 
 came from Colonel Raynal. He was alive. I drove my 
 true husband away, wretch that I was. None but bad 
 women have an atom of sense. I tried to do my duty 
 to my legal husband. He was my benefactor. I thought 
 it was my duty. Was it ? I don't know : I have lost 
 the sense of right and wrong. I turned from a living
 
 396 WHITE LIES. 
 
 creature to a lie.- He who liad scattered benefits on nie 
 and all this house ; he whom it was too little to love ; 
 he ought to have been adored : this man came here one 
 night to wife proud, joyous, and warm-hearted. He 
 found a cradle, and two women watching it. Now 
 Edouard, now monsieur, do you ^ee that life is impossible 
 to me 7 One bravely accused herself : she was innocent. 
 One swooned away like a guilty coward." 
 
 Edouard uttered an exclamation. 
 
 '' Yes, Edouard, you shall not be miserable like me ; 
 she was guilty. You do not understand me yet, my 
 poor mother — and she was so happy this morning — 
 / was the liar, the coward, the double-faced wife, the 
 miserable mother that denied her child. Now will you 
 let me die ? Now do you see that I can't and won't live 
 upon shame and despair ? Ah, Monsieur Raynal, my 
 dear friend, you were always generous : you will pity 
 and kill me. I have dishonored the name you gave me 
 to keep : I am neither Beaurepaire nor Raynal. Dp 
 pray kill me, monsieur — Jean, do pray release me from 
 my life ! " 
 
 And she crawled to his knees and embraced them, and 
 kissed his hand, and pleaded more piteously for death, 
 than others have begged for life. 
 
 Raynal stood like a rock : he was pale, and drew his 
 breath audibly, but not a word. Then came a sight 
 scarce less terrible than Josephine's despair. The bar- 
 oness, looking and moving twenty years older than an 
 hour before, tottered across the room to Raynal. 
 
 " Sir, you whom I have called my son, but whom I 
 will never presume so to call again, I thought I had 
 lived long enough never to have to blush again. I loved 
 you, monsieur 1 prayed every day for you. But she 
 who ^vas my daughter was not of my mind. Monsieur, 
 I have never knelt but to God and to my king, and 1 
 kneel to yoxx. : forgive us, sir, forgive us ! "
 
 WHITE LIES. 397 
 
 She tried to go down on her knees. He raised hei 
 with his strong arm, but he could not speak. She turned 
 on the others. 
 
 " So this is the secret you were hiding from me I 
 This secret has not killed you alL Oh ! I shall not live 
 under its shame so long as you have. Chateau of Beau- 
 repaire — nest of treason, ingratitude, and immodesty — 
 I loathe you as much as once I loved you. I will go and 
 hide my head, and die elsewhere." 
 
 " Stay, madame ! " said he, in a voice whose depth and 
 dignity was such that it seemed impossible to disobey it. 
 "It was sudden — I was shaken — but I am myself 
 again." 
 
 " Oh, show some pity I " cried Rose. 
 
 " I shall try to be just." 
 
 There was a long, trembling silence ; and during that 
 silence and terrible agitation, one figure stood firm 
 among those quaking, beating hearts, like a rock with 
 the waves breaking round it — the man of principle 
 among the creatures of impulse. 
 
 He raised Josephine from her knees, and placed her 
 all limp and powerless in an arm-chair. To her frenzy 
 had now succeeded a sickness and feebleness like unto 
 death. 
 
 " Widow Dujardin," said he, in a broken voice, " listen 
 to me." 
 
 She moaned a sort of assent. 
 
 " Your mistake has been not trusting me, I was your 
 friend, and not a selfish friend. I was not enough iu 
 love with you to destroy your happiness. Besides, I 
 despise that sort of love. If you had told me all, I 
 would have spared you this misery. By the present 
 law, civil contracts of marriage can be dissolved by 
 mutual consent." 
 
 At this the baroness uttered some sign of surprise
 
 398 WHITE LIES. 
 
 " Ah ! '■' continued Raynal, sadl}^, " you are aristocrats, 
 and cannot keep pace with the times. This very day 
 our mere contract shall be formally dis.solved. Indeed, 
 it ceases to exist since both parties are resolved to with- 
 draw from it So, if you married Dujardiu in a church, 
 you are Madame Dujardin at this moment, and his child 
 is legitimate. What does she say ? " 
 
 This question was to Eose, for what Josephine uttered 
 sounded like a mere articulate moan. But Rose's quick 
 ear had caught words, and she replied, all in tears, " My 
 poor sister is blessing you, sir. We all bless you." 
 
 " She does not understand my position," said Raynal. 
 He then walked up to Josephine, and leaning over her 
 arm, and speaking rather loud, under the impression 
 that her senses were blunted by grief, he said, " Look 
 here : Colonel Dujardin, your husband, deliberately, and 
 with his eyes open, sacrificed his life for me, and for his 
 own heroic sense of honor. 'Now, it is my turn. If 
 that hero stood here, and asked me for all the blood in 
 my body, I would give it him. He is gone; but, dying 
 for me, he has left me his widow and his child; they 
 remain under my wing. To protect them is my pride, 
 and my only consolation. I am going to the mayor to 
 annul our unlucky contract in due form, and make us 
 brother and sister instead. But," turning to the bar- 
 oness, " don't you think to escape me as your daughter 
 has done: no, no, old lady, once a mother, always a 
 mother. Stir from your son'« home if you dare ! " 
 
 And with these words, in speaking which his voice 
 had recovered its iron firmness, he strode out at the 
 door, superb in manhood and principle, and every eye 
 turned with wonder and admiration after him. Even 
 when he was gone they gazed at the door by which a 
 creature so strangely noble had disappeared. 
 
 The bgtT>ness was about to follow him without taking
 
 WHITE LIES. 399 
 
 any notice of Josephine. But Rose caught her by the 
 gown. " mother, speak to poor Josephine : bid her live." 
 
 The baroness only made a gesture of horror and dis- 
 gust, and turned her back on them both. 
 
 Josephine, who had tottered up from her seat at 
 Rose's words, sank heavily down again, and murmured, 
 "Ah! the grave holds all that love me now." 
 
 Rose ran to her side. ''Cruel Josephine ! what, do not 
 I love you ? Mother, Avill you not help me persuade her 
 to live ? Oh ! if she dies, I will die too ; you will kill 
 both your children." 
 
 Stern and indignant as the baroness was, yet these 
 words pierced her heart. She turned with a piteous, 
 half apologetic air to Edouard and Aubertin. "Gentle- 
 men," said she, "she has been foolish, not guilty. 
 Heaven pardons the best of us. Surely a mother may 
 forgive her child." And with this nature conquered 
 utterly ; and she held out her arms, wide, wide, as is a 
 mother's heart. Her two erring children rushed sobbing 
 violently into them ; and there was not a dry eye in the 
 room for a long time. 
 
 After this, Josephine's heart almost ceased to beat. 
 Fear and misgivings, and the heavy sense of deceit 
 gnawing an honorable heart, were gone. Grief reigned 
 alone in the pale, listless, bereaved widow. 
 
 The marriage was annulled before the mayor ; and, 
 three days afterwards, Raynal, by his influence, got the 
 consummated marriage formally allowed in Paris. 
 
 With a delicacy for which one would hardly have 
 given him credit, he never came near Beaurepaire till 
 all this was settled ; but he brought the document from 
 Paris that made Josephine the widow Dujardin, and her 
 boy the heir of Beaurepaire ; and the moment she was 
 really iVfadame Dujardin he avoided her no longer; and 
 he became a comfort to her instead of a tpwnr.
 
 400 WHITE LIES. 
 
 The dissolution of the marriage was a great tie between 
 them. So much that, seeing how much she looked up to 
 Raynal, the doctor said one day to the baroness, "If I 
 know anything of human nature, they will marry again, 
 provided none of you give her a hint which way her 
 heart is turning." 
 
 They, who have habituated themselves to live for 
 others, can suffer as well as do great things. Josephine 
 kept alive. A passion such as hers, in a selfish nature, 
 must have killed her. 
 
 Even as it was, she often said, " It is hard to live." 
 
 Then they used to talk to her of her boy. Would she 
 leave him — Camille's boy — without a mother? And 
 these words were never spoken to her quite in vain. 
 
 Her mother forgave her entirely, and loved her as 
 before. Who could be angry with her long ? The air 
 was no longer heavy Avith lies. Wretched as she was, 
 she breathed lighter. Joy and hope were gone. Sor- 
 rowful peace was coming. When the heart comes to 
 this, nothing but Time can cure ; but what will not 
 Time do ? What wounds have I seen him heal ! His 
 cures are incredible. 
 
 The little party sat one day, peaceful, but silent and 
 sad, in the Pleasaunce, under the great oak. 
 
 Two soldiers came to the gate. They walked feebly, 
 ior one was lame, and leaned upon the other, who was 
 \3Ae and weak, and leaned upon a stick. 
 
 ''Soldiers," said Raynal, "and invalided." 
 
 " Give them food and wine," said Josephine. 
 
 Rose went towards them ; but she had scarcely taken 
 three steps ere she cried out, — 
 
 " It is Dard ! it is poor Dard ! Come in, Dard, 
 come in." 
 
 Dard limped towards them, leaning upon Sergeant La
 
 WHITE LIES. 401 
 
 Croix. A bit of Dard's heel had been shot away, and of 
 La Cvoix's liead. 
 
 Rose ran to the kitchen. 
 
 " Jacintha, bring oi;t a table into the Pleasaunce, and 
 something for two guests to eat." 
 
 The soldiers came slowly to the Pleasaunce, and were 
 welcomed, and invited to sit down, and received with 
 respect ; for France even in that day honored the hum- 
 blest of her brave. 
 
 Soon Jacintha came out with a little round table in 
 her hands, and affected a composure which was belied by 
 her shaking hands and her gloAving cheek. 
 
 After a few words of homely welcome — not eloquent, 
 but very sincere — she went off again with her apron to 
 her eyes. She reappeared with the good cheer, and 
 served the poor fellows with radiant zeal. 
 
 '' What regiment ? " asked Raynal. 
 
 Dard was about to answer, but his superior stopped 
 him severely ; then, rising with his hand to his forehead, 
 he replied, with pride, "Twenty-fourth brigade, second 
 company. We were cut up at Philipsburg, and incorpo- 
 rated with the 12th." 
 
 Raynal instantly regretted his question ; for Josephine's 
 eye fixed on Sergeant La Croix with an expression words 
 cannot paint. Yet she showed more composure, real or 
 forced, than he expected. 
 
 *' Heaven sends him," said she. " My friend, tell me, 
 were you — ah ! " 
 
 Colonel Raynal interfered hastily. " Think what you 
 do. He can tell you nothing but what we know, not so 
 much, in fact, as we know; for, now I look at him, I 
 think this is the very sergeant we found lying insensible 
 under the bastion. He must have been struck before the 
 bastion was taken even." 
 
 "I was, colonel, I was. I remember nothing but
 
 402 WHITE LIES. 
 
 losing my senses, and feeling the colors go out of my 
 hand." 
 
 " There, you see, he knows nothing," said Eaynal. 
 
 "It was hot work, colonel, under that bastion, but it 
 was hotter to the poor fellows that got in. I heard all 
 about it from Private Dard here." 
 
 " So, then, it was you who carried the colors ? " 
 
 " Yes, I was struck down with the colors of the brigade 
 in my hand," cried La Croix. 
 
 " See how people blunder about everything ; they told 
 me the colonel carried the colors." 
 
 "Why, of course he did. You don't think our colonel, 
 the fighting colonel, would let me hold the colors of the 
 brigade so long as he was alive. No ; he was struck by 
 a Prussian bullet, and he had just time to hand the colors 
 to me, and point with his sword to the bastion, and down 
 he went. It was hot work, I can tell you. I did not 
 hold them long, not thirty seconds, and if we could know 
 their history, they passed through more hands than that 
 before they got to the Prussian flag-staff." 
 
 Raynal suddenly rose, and walked rapidly to and fro, 
 with his hands behind him. 
 
 "Poor colonel !" continued La Croix. "Well, I love 
 to think he died like a soldier, and not like some of my 
 poor comrades, hashed to atoms, and not a volley fired 
 over him. I hope they put a stone over him, for he was 
 the best soldier and the best general in the army." 
 
 " sir ! " cried Josephine, " there is no stone even to 
 mark the spot where he fell," and she sobbed despairingly. 
 
 " Why, how is this. Private Dard ? " inquired La Croix, 
 sternly. 
 
 Dard apologized for his comrade, and touching his own 
 head significantly told them that since his wound the 
 sergeant's memory was defective. 
 
 "Now, sergeant, didn't I tell you the colonel must
 
 WHITE LIES. 403 
 
 have got the better of his wound, and got into the bat- 
 tery ? " 
 
 " It's false, Private Dard ; don't I knoAV our colonel 
 better than that ? Would ever he have let those colors 
 out of his hand, if there had been an ounce of life left 
 in him ? " 
 
 "He died at the foot of the battery, I tell you." 
 
 "Then why didn't we find him ? " 
 
 Here Jacintha put in a word with the quiet subdued 
 meaning of her class. " I can't find that anybody ever 
 saw the colonel dead." 
 
 " They did not find him, because they did not look for 
 him," said Sergeant La Croix. 
 
 " God forgive you, sergeant ! " said Dard, with some 
 feeling. "!N"ot look for our colonel! We turned over 
 every body that lay there, — full thirty there were, — and 
 you were one of them." 
 
 " Only thirty ! Why, we settled more Prussians than 
 that, I'll swear." 
 
 " Oh ! they carried off their dead." 
 
 " Ay ! but I don't see why they should carry our colonel 
 off. His epaulets was all the thieves could do any good 
 with. Stop ! yet I do, Private Dard ; I have a horrible 
 suspicion. No, I have not ; it is a certainty. What ! 
 don't you see, ye ninny ? Thunder and thousands of 
 devils, here's a disgrace. Dogs of Prussians ! they have 
 got ouf colonel, they have taken him prisoner." 
 
 " Crod bless them ! " cried Josephine ; " God bless 
 the month that tells me so ! sir, I am his wife, his 
 poor heart-broken wife. You would not be so cruel as 
 to mock my despair. Say again that he may be alive, 
 pray, say it again ! " 
 
 "His wife! Private Dard, why didn't you tell me? 
 You tell me nothing. Yes, my pretty lady, I'll say it 
 again, and I'll prove it. Here is an enemy in full retreat,
 
 404 WHITE LIES. 
 
 would they encuinher themselves with the colonel ? If 
 he Avas dead, they'd have whipj)ed off his epaulets, and 
 left him there. Alive ? why not ? Look at me : I am 
 alive, and I was worse wounded than he was. They took 
 me for dead, you see. Courage, madame ! you will see 
 him again, take an old soldier's word for it. Dard, atten- 
 tion ! this is the colonel's wife." 
 
 She gazed on the speaker like one in a trance. 
 
 Every eye and every soul had been so bent on Sergeant 
 La Croix that it was only now Raynal was observed to 
 be missing. The next minute he came riding out of the 
 stable-yard, and went full gallop down the road. 
 
 "Ah !" cried Rose, with a burst of hope ; ''he thinks 
 so too ; he has hopes. He is gone somewhere for informa- 
 tion. Perhaps to Paris." 
 
 Josephine's excitement and alternations of hope and 
 fear were now alarming. Rose held her hand, and 
 implored her to try and be calm till they could see 
 Raynal. 
 
 Just before dark he came riding fiercely home. Joseph- 
 ine flew down the stairs. Raynal at sight of her forgot 
 all his caution. He waved his cocked hat in the air. 
 She fell on her knees and thanked God. He gasped 
 out, — 
 
 "Prisoner — exchanged for two Prussian lieutenants 
 — sent home — they say he is in France ! " 
 
 The tears of joy gushed in streams from her. 
 
 Some days passed in hope and joy inexpressible ; but 
 the good doctor was uneasy for Josephine. She was 
 always listening with supernatural keenness and start- 
 ing from her chair, and every fibre of her lovely person 
 seemed to be on the quiver. 
 
 Nor was Rose without a serious misgiving. Would 
 husband and wife ever meet ? He evidently looked on 
 her as Madame Raynal, and made it a point of honor to 
 keep away from Beaurepaire.
 
 WHITE LIES. 405 
 
 They had recourse to that ever-soothing influence — • 
 her child. Madame Jouvenel was settled in the village, 
 and Josephine visited her every day, and came back often 
 with red eyes, but always soothed. 
 
 One day Kose and she went to Madame Jouvenel, and, 
 entering the house without ceremony, found the^nurse 
 out, and no one watching the child. 
 
 " How careless ! " said Rose. 
 
 Josephine stopped eagerly to kiss him. But instead 
 of kissing him, she uttered a loud cry. There was a 
 locket hanging round his neck. 
 
 It was a locket containing some of Josephine's hair 
 and Camille's. She had given it him in the happy days 
 that followed their marriage. She stood gasping in the 
 middle of the room. Madame Jouvenel came running 
 in soon after. Josephine, by a wonderful effort over her- 
 self, asked her calmly and cunningly, — 
 
 " Where is the gentleman who put this locket round 
 my child's neck ? I want to speak with him." 
 
 Madame Jouvenel stammered and looked confused. 
 
 " A soldier — an oflficer ? — come, tell me ! " 
 
 " Woman," cried Rose, " why do you hesitate ? " 
 
 "What am I to do?" said Madame Jouvenel. "He 
 made me swear never to mention his coming here. He 
 goes away, or hides whenever you come. And since 
 Madame does not love the poor wounded gentleman, 
 what can he do better ? " 
 
 " Not love him ! " cried Rose : " why, she is his wife, his 
 lawful wedded wife ; he is a fool or a monster to run 
 away for her. She loves him as no woman ever loved 
 before. She pines for him. She dies for him." 
 
 The door of a little back room opened at these words 
 of Rose, and there stood Camille, with his arm in a sling, 
 pale and astounded, but great joy and wonder working 
 in his face.
 
 406 WHITE LIES. 
 
 Josephine gave a cry of love that made the other two 
 women weep, and in a moment they were sobbing for 
 joy upon eacli other's neck. 
 
 Away went sorrow, doubt, despair, and all they had 
 suffered. That one moment paid for all. And in that 
 momgnt of joy and surprise, so great as to be almost 
 terrible, perhaps it was well for Josephine that Camille, 
 weakened by his wound, was quite overcome, and nearly 
 fainted. She was herself just going into hysterics; but, 
 seeing him quite overcome, she conquered them directly, 
 and nursed, and soothed, and pitied, and encouraged him 
 instead. 
 
 Then they sat hand in hand. Their happiness stopped 
 their very breath. They could not speak. So Rose told 
 him all. He never owned why he had slipped away 
 when he saw them coming. He forgot it. He forgot 
 all his hard thoughts of her. They took him home in 
 the carriage. His wife would not let him out of her 
 sight. For years and years after this she could hardly 
 bear to let him be an hour out of her sight. 
 
 The world is wide ; there may be a man in it who can 
 paint the sudden bliss that fell on these two much suf- 
 fering hearts ; but I am not that man ; this is beyond 
 me ; it was not only heaven, but heaven after hell. 
 
 Leave we the indescribable and the unspeakable for a 
 moment, and go to a lighter theme. 
 
 The day Rose's character was so unexpectedly cleared, 
 Edouard had no opportunity of speaking to her, or a 
 reconciliation would have taken place. As it was, he 
 went home intensely happy. But he did not resume his 
 visits to the chateau. When he came to think calmly 
 over it, his vanity was cruelly mortified. She was in- 
 nocent of the greater offence ; but how insolently she 
 had sacrificed him, his love, and his respect, to another'a 
 interest.
 
 WHITE LIES. 407 
 
 More generous thoughts prevailed by degrees. And 
 one day that her pale face, her tears, and her remorse 
 got the better of his offended pride, he determined to 
 give her a good lecture that should drown her in penitent 
 tears ; and then end by forgiving her. For one thing 
 he could not be happy till he had forgiven her. 
 
 She walked into the room with a calm, dignified, stately 
 air, and before he could utter one word of his grave 
 remonstrance, attacked him thus : " You wish to speak 
 to me, sir. If it is to apologize to me, I will save your 
 vanity the mortification. I forgive you." 
 
 " You forgive me ! " cried Edouard furiously. 
 
 " No violence, if you please," said the lady with cold 
 hauteur. " Let us be friends, as Josephine and Raynal 
 are. We cannot be anything more to one another now. 
 You have wounded me too deeply by your jealous, sus- 
 picious nature." 
 
 Edouard gasped for breath, and was so far out-gen- 
 eralled that he accepted the place of defendant. ^' Wasn't 
 1 to believe your own lips ? Did not Colonel Raynal be- 
 lieve you ? " 
 
 "Oh, that's excusable. He did not know me. But 
 you were my lover ; you ought to have seen I was forced 
 to deceive poor Raynal. How dare you believe your 
 eyes, much more your ears, against my truth, against 
 my honor ; and then to believe such nonsense ? " Then, 
 with a grand assumption of superior knowledge, says 
 she, " You little simpleton, how could the child be mine 
 when I wasn't married at all ? " 
 
 At this reproach, Edouard first stared, then grinned. 
 " I forgot that," said he. 
 
 " Yes, and you forgot the moon isn't made of green 
 cheese. However, if I saw you very humble, and very 
 penitent, I might, perhaps, really forgive you — in time." 
 
 "No, forgive me at once. 1 don't understand youi
 
 408 WHITE LIES. 
 
 angelical, diabolical, incoiupreheiisible sex : who on earth 
 can ? forgive me." 
 
 "Oh! oh! oh! oh!" 
 
 Lo ! the tears that could not come at a remonstrance 
 were flowing in a stream at his generosity. 
 
 " What is the matter now ? " said he tenderly. She 
 cried away, but at the same time explained, — 
 
 " What a f — f — foolish you must be not to see that 
 it is I who am without excuse. You were my betrothed. 
 It was to you I owed my duty ; not my sister. I am a 
 wicked, unhappy girl. How you must hate me ! " 
 
 " I adore you. There, no more forgiving on either 
 side. Let our only quarrel be who shall love the other 
 best." 
 
 "Oh, I know how that will be," said the observant 
 toad. " You will love me best till you have got me ; and 
 then I shall love you best ; oh, ever so much." 
 
 However, the prospect of loving best did not seem 
 disagreeable to her ; for with this announcement she 
 deposited her head on his shoulder, and in that attitude 
 took a little walk with him up and down the Pleasaunce : 
 sixty times ; about eight miles. 
 
 These two were a happy pair. This wayward, but 
 generous heart never forgot her offence, and his forgive- 
 ness. She gave herself to him heart and soul, at the 
 altar, and well she redeemed her vow. He rose high in 
 political life : and paid the penalty of that sort of ambi- 
 tion; his heart was often sore. But by his own hearth 
 sat comfort and ever ready sympathy. Ay, and patient 
 industry to read blue-books, and a ready hand and brain 
 to write diplomatic notes for him, off which the mind 
 glided as from a ball of ice. 
 
 In thirty years she never once mentioned the servants 
 to him. 
 
 " Oh, let eternal honor crown her name ! "
 
 WHITE LIES. 409 
 
 It was only a little bit of heel that Dard had left in 
 Prussia. More fortunate than his predecessor (Achilles), 
 he got off with a slight but enduring limp. And so the 
 army lost him. 
 
 He married Jacintha, and Josephine set them up in 
 Bigot's (deceased) auberge. Jacintha shone as a landlady, 
 and custom flowed in. For all that, a hankering after 
 Beaurepaire was observable in her. Her favorite stroll 
 was into the Beaurepaire kitchen, and on all fetes and 
 grand occasions she was prominent in gay attire as a 
 retainer of the house. The last specimen of her homely 
 sagacity I shall have the honor to lay before you is a 
 critique upon her husband, which she vented six years 
 after marriage. 
 
 "My Dard," said she, "is very good as far as he goes. 
 What he has felt himself, that he can feel foi- : nobody 
 better. You come to him with an empty belly, or a 
 broken head, or all bleeding with a cut, or black and 
 blue, and yon shall find a friend. But if it is a sore 
 heart, or trouble, and sorrow, and no hole in your car- 
 cass to show for it, you had better come to ???e ; for you 
 might as well tell your grief to a stone wall as to my 
 man." 
 
 The baroness took her son Raynal to Paris, and there, 
 with keen eye, selected him a wife. She proved an ex- 
 cellent one. It would have been hard if she had not, for 
 the baroness with the severe sagacity of her age and sex, 
 had set aside as naught a score of seeming angels, before 
 she could suit herself with a daughter-in-law. At first 
 the Raynals very properly saw little of the Dujardins ; 
 but when both had been married some years, the recollec- 
 tion of that fleeting and nominal connection waxed faint, 
 while the memory of great benefits conferred on both 
 sides remained lively as ever in hearts so great, and
 
 410 WHITE LIES. 
 
 there was a warm, a sacred friendship between the two 
 houses — a friendship of the ancient Greeks, not of the 
 modern club-house. 
 
 Camille and Josephine were blessed almost beyond 
 the lot of humanity : none can really appreciate sunshine 
 but those who come out of the cold dark. And so with 
 happiness. For years they could hardly be said to live 
 like mortals : they basked in bliss. But it was a near 
 thing; for they but just scraped clear of life-long misery, 
 and death's cold ♦■ouch grazed them both as they went. 
 
 Yet they had heroic virtues to balance White Lies in 
 the great Judge's eye. 
 
 A wholesome lesson, therefore, and a warning may be 
 gathered from this story : and I know many novelists 
 who would have preached that lesson at some length in 
 every other chapter, and interrupted the sacred narrative 
 to do it. But when I read stories so mutilated, I think 
 of a circumstance related by Mr. Joseph Miller. 
 
 " An Englishman sojourning in some part of Scotland 
 was afflicted with many hairs in the butter, and remon- 
 strated. He was told, in reply, that the hairs and the 
 butter came from one source — the cow; and that the 
 just and natural proportions hitherto observed, could not 
 be deranged, and bald butter invented — for one. ' So 
 be it,' said the Englishman ; ' but let me have the butter 
 in one plate, and the hairs in another.' " 
 
 Acting on this hint, I have reserved some admirable 
 remarks, reflections, discourses, and tirades, until the 
 story should be ended, and the other plate be ready for 
 the subsidiary sermon. 
 
 And now that the proper time is come, that love of 
 intruding one's own wisdom in one's own person on the 
 reader, which has marred so many works of art, is in my 
 case restrained — first, by pure fatigue ; secondly, because 
 the moral of this particular story stands out so clear in
 
 WHITE LIES. 411 
 
 the narrative, that he who runs may read it without any 
 sermon at all. 
 
 Those who will not take the trouble to gather my 
 moral from the living tree, would not lift it out of my 
 dead basket : would not unlock their jaw-bones to bite 
 it, were I to thrust it into their very mouths.
 
 
 UNIVtRSITl OF CALIFORNIA
 
 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 A A 001 423 666 5