THE GIFT OF 
 
 WILLIAM G. KERCKHOFF 
 
 TO THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 AT LOS ANGELES 
 
 THE LIBRARY OF 
 FRIEDRICH KLUGE
 
 UNIVERSITY of CALIFORNIA 
 
 AT 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 LIBRARY
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING.
 
 NIGHT & MORNING 
 
 BY 
 
 THE RIGHT HON. LORD LYTTON 
 
 LONDON 
 GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND SONS 
 
 BROADWAY, LUDGATE HILL 
 GLASGOW, MANCHESTER, AND NEW YORK 
 
 1323S4
 
 LORD LYTTON'S NOVELS. 
 
 THE KNEBWORTH EDITION, complete in 28 volumes, handsomely 
 printed in Crcnun 8z>0, and bound in clath, price ,t, i8.r. the set. 
 
 Cheap Edition, price 21. 
 
 EUGENE ARAM. 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 PELHAM. 
 
 ERNEST MALTRAVER3. 
 ALICE. 
 
 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 
 THE CAXTONS. 
 DEVEREUX. 
 THE DISOWNED. 
 GODOLPHIN. 
 HAROLD. 
 PAUL CLIFPORD. 
 A STRANGE BTORY. 
 THE LAST OP THE BARONS. 
 LEILA, AND THE PILGRIMS ON 
 THE RHINE. 
 
 each volume, fancy boards. 
 LUCRETIA. 
 MY NOVEL. VOL. I. 
 MY NOVEL. ^ OL. 2. 
 RIENZL 
 WHAT WILL HE DO WITH IT? 
 
 VOL. i. 
 WHAT WILL HE DO WITH IT 7 
 
 VOL. 2, 
 
 ZANONI. 
 
 THE COMING RACE. 
 EENELM CHILLINGLY. 
 THE PARISIANS. VOL. i. 
 THE PARISIANS. VOL a. 
 FALKLAND AND ZICCL 
 PAUSANIAS THE SPARTAII.
 
 ftacff 
 
 Annex 
 
 ^ I (a 
 Al 
 
 TO THE 
 
 RIGHT HONOURABLE C. T. D'EYNCOURT, M.P. 
 THIS WORK, 
 
 V PART COMPOSED UNDER HIS HOSPITABLE ROOF, 
 
 |l ptbicatrb, 
 
 AS A SLIGHT MEMORIAL OF AFFECTIONATE FRIENDSHIP AJTT 
 8ZN-7BRK ESTEE1L 
 
 ENEBWOBTH,
 
 PREFACE 
 
 TO THE EDITION OF 1846. 
 
 has been written by critics, especially by those ia 
 Germany, (the native land of criticism,) upon the im- 
 portant question, whether to please or to instruct should be 
 the end of Fiction whether a moral purpose is or is not 
 in harmony with the un didactic spirit perceptible in the 
 higher works of the imagination : And the general result 
 of the discussion has been in favour of those who have 
 contended that Moral Design, rigidly so called, should be 
 excluded from the aims of the Poet ; that his Art should 
 regard only the Beautiful, and be contented with the indi- 
 rect moral tendencies, which can never fail the creation of 
 the Beautiful. Certainly, in fiction, to interest, to please, 
 and sportively to elevate to take man from the low pas- 
 sions, and the miserable troubles of life, into a higher 
 region, to beguile weary and selfish pain, to excite a 
 generous sorrow at vicissitudes not his own, to raise the 
 passions into sympathy with heroic struggles and to 
 admit the soul into that serener atmosphere from which it 
 rarely returns to ordinary existence, without some memory 
 or association which ought to enlarge the domain of thought 
 and exalt the motives of action ; Such, without other moral 
 result or object, may satisfy the Poet,* and constitute the 
 highest and most universal morality he can effect. But 
 subordinate to this, which is not the duty, but the necessity, 
 of all Fiction that outlasts the hour, the writer of imagina- 
 tion may well permit to himself other purposes and objects, 
 taking care that they be not too sharply defined, and tod 
 obviously meant to contract the Poet into the Lecturer 
 
 * I use the word Poet in its proper sense, as applicable to any writei 
 whether in verse or prose, who invents or create*.
 
 viii PREFACE. 
 
 the Fiction into the Homily. The delight in " Shylock" 
 is not less vivid for the Humanity it latently but profoundly 
 inculcates; the healthful merriment of the "Tartuffe" is 
 not less enjoyed for the exposure of the Hypocrisy it 
 denounces. We need not demand from Shakespeare or 
 from Moliere other morality than that which Genius un- 
 consciously throws around it the natural light which it 
 reflects; but if some great principle which guides ua 
 practically in the daily intercourse with men becomes in 
 the general lustre more clear and more pronounced we 
 gain doubly, by the general tendency and the particular 
 result. 
 
 Long since, in searching for new regions in the Art to 
 which I am. a servant, it seemed to me that they might be 
 found lying far, and rarely trodden, beyond that range of 
 conventional morality in which Novelist after Novelist 
 had entrenched himself amongst those subtle recesses in 
 the ethics of human life in which Truth and Falsehood 
 dwell undisturbed and unseparated. The vast and dark 
 Poetry around us the Poetry of Modern Civilisation and 
 Daily Existence, is shut out from us in much, by the 
 shadowy giants of Prejudice and Fear. He who would 
 arrive at the Fairy Land, must face the Phantoms. Be- 
 times, I set myself to the task of investigating the motley 
 world to which our progress in humanity has attained, 
 caring little what misrepresentation I incurred, what hos- 
 tility I provoked, in searching through a devious labyrinth 
 for the foot-tracks of Truth. 
 
 In the pursuit of this object, I am, not vainly, conscious 
 that I have had my influence on my time that I have 
 contributed, though humbly and indirectly, to the benefits 
 which Public Opinion has extorted from Governments and 
 Laws. While (to content myself with a single example) 
 the ignorant or malicious were decrying the moral of 
 " Paul Clifford," I consoled myself with perceiving [that 
 its truths had stricken deep that many, whom formal 
 essays might not reach, were enlisted by the picture and 
 the popular force of Fiction into the service of that large 
 and Catholic Humanity which frankly examines into the 
 causes of crime, which ameliorates the ills of society by 
 seeking to amend the circumstances by which they are 
 occasioned ; and commences the great work of justice to 
 mankind, by proportioning the punishment to the offence.
 
 PREFACE. IX 
 
 That work, I know, had its share in the wise and great 
 relaxation of our Criminal Code it has had its share in 
 results yet more valuable, because leading to more compre- 
 hensive reforms viz., in the courageous facing of the ills 
 which the mock decorum of timidity would shun to con- 
 template, but which, till fairly fronted, in the spirit of 
 practical Christianity, sap daily, more and more, the walls 
 in which blind Indolence would protect itself from restless 
 Misery and rampant Hunger. For it is not till Art has 
 told the unthinking that nothing (rightly treated) is too 
 low for its breath to vivify, and its wings to raise, that the 
 Herd awaken from their chronic lethargy of contempt, and 
 the Lawgiver is compelled to redress what the Poet has 
 lifted into esteem. In thus enlarging the boundaries of 
 the Novelist, from trite and conventional to untrodden 
 ends, I have seen, not with the jealousy of an Author, but 
 with the pride of an Originator, that I have served as a 
 guide to later and abler writers, both in England and 
 abroad. If at times, while imitating, they have mistaken 
 me, I am not answerable for their errors ; or if, more 
 often, they have improved where they borrowed, I am 
 not envious of their laurels. They owe me at least this, 
 that I prepared the way for their reception, and that 
 they would have been less popular and more mis- 
 represented, if the outcry which bursts upon the first 
 researches into new directions, had not exhausted its noisy 
 vehemence upon me. 
 
 In this Novel of "Night and Morning" I have had 
 various ends in "view subordinate, I grant, to the higher 
 and more durable morality which belongs to the Ideal, and 
 instructs us playfully while it interests, in the passions, 
 and through the heart. First to deal, fearlessly with 
 that universal unsoundness in social justice which makes 
 distinctions so marked and iniquitous between Vice and 
 Crime viz., between the corrupting habits and the violent 
 act which scarce touches the former with the lightest 
 twig in the fasces which lifts against the latter the edge 
 of the Lictor's axe. Let a child steal an apple in sport, 
 let a starveling steal a roll in despair, and Law conducts 
 them to the Prison, for evil commune to mellow them for 
 the gibbet. But let, a man spend one apprenticeship from 
 youth to old age in vice let him devote a fortune, perhaps 
 colossal, to the wholesale demoralisation of his kind and
 
 X PREFACE. 
 
 he may be surrounded with the adulation of the so-called 
 virtuou?, and be served upon its knee, by that Lackey 
 the Modern World! I say not that Law can or that Law 
 should, reach the Vice as it does the Crime ; but I say, 
 that Opinion may be more than the servile shadow of 
 Law. I impress not here, as in " Paul Clifford," a material 
 moral to work its effect on the Journals, at the Hustings, 
 through Constituents, and on Legislation ; I direct my- 
 self to a channel less active, more tardy, but as sure to 
 the Conscience that reigns, elder and superior to all Law, 
 in men's hearts and souls ; I utter boldly and loudly a 
 truth, if not all untold, murmured feebly and falteringly 
 before, sooner or later it will find its way into the judg- 
 ment and the conduct, and shape out a tribunal which 
 requires not robe or ermine. 
 
 Secondly In this work I have sought to lift the mask 
 from the timid selfishness which too often with us bears 
 the name of Respectability. Purposely avoiding all attrac- 
 tion that may savour of extravagance, patiently subduing 
 every tone and every hue to the aspect of those whom we 
 meet daily in our thoroughfares, I have shown in Robert 
 Beaufort the man of decorous phrase and bloodless action 
 the systematic self-server in whom the world forgive 
 the lack of all that is generous, warm, and noble, in order 
 to respect the passive acquiescence in methodical conven- 
 tions and hollow forms. And how common such men are 
 with us in this century, and how inviting and how neces- 
 sary their delineation, may be seen in this, that the 
 popular and pre-eminent Observer of the age in which we 
 live, has since placed their prototype in vigorous colours 
 upon imperishable canvas.* 
 
 There is yet another object with which I have identified 
 my tale. I trust that I am not insensible to such advan- 
 tages as arise from the diffusion of education really sound, 
 and knowledge really available ; for these, as the right of 
 my countrymen, I have contended always. But of late 
 years there has been danger that what ought to be an 
 important truth may be perverted into a pestilent fallacy. 
 Whether for rich or for poor, disappointment must ever 
 await the endeavour to give knowledge without labour, 
 and experience without trial. Cheap literature and popular 
 treatises do not in themselves suffice to fit the nerves of 
 Need I say that I alludp to the "Pecksniff" of Mr. Dickens?
 
 PREFACE. XI 
 
 man for the strife below, and lift his aspirations, in health- 
 ful confidence above. He who seeks to divorce toil from 
 knowledge deprives knowledge of its most valuable pro- 
 perty, the strengthening of the mind by exercise. Wo 
 learn what really braces and elevates us only in proportion 
 to the effort it costs ns. Nor is it in Books alone, nor in 
 Books chiefly, that we are made conscious of our strength as 
 Men ; Life is the great Schoolmaster, Experience the mighty 
 Volume. He who has made one stern sacrifice of self, has 
 acquired more than he will ever glean from the odds-and- 
 ends of popular philosophy : And the man, the least 
 scholastic, may be more robust in the power that is know 
 ledge, and approach nearer to the Arch- Seraphim, than 
 Bacon himself, if he cling fast to two simple maxims " Be 
 honest in temptation, and in Adversity believe in God." 
 Such moral, attempted before in " Eugene Aram," I have 
 enforced more directly here ; and out of such convictions I 
 have created hero and heroine, placing them in their pri- 
 mitive and natural characters, with aid more from life than 
 books from courage the one, from affection the other 
 amidst the feeble Hermaphrodites of our sickly civilisation ; 
 examples of resolute Manhood and tender Womanhood. 
 
 The opinions I have here put forth are not in fashion at 
 this day. But I have never consulted the popular any more 
 than the sectarian, Prejudice. Alone and unaided, I have 
 bewn out my way, from first to last, by the force of my 
 own convictions. The corn springs up in the field cen- 
 turies after the first sower is forgotten. Works may 
 perish with the workman ; but, if truthful, their results 
 arc in the works of others, imitating, borrowing, enlarging, 
 nnd improving, in the everlasting Cycle of Industry and 
 Thought. 
 
 KM.BWOETU. ISio.
 
 NOTE 
 
 TO THE PRESENT EDITION, 1851. 
 
 I HAVE notiiing to add to the preceding pages, written 
 six years ago, as to the objects and aims of this work ; 
 except to say, and by no means as a boast, that the work 
 lays claims to one kind of interest which I certainly never 
 desired to effect for it viz., in exemplifying the glorious 
 uncertainty of the Law. For, humbly aware of the /blunders 
 which Novelists not belonging to the legal profession are 
 apt to commit, when they summon to the denouement of 
 a plot the aid of a deity so mystei-ious as Themis, 
 I submitted to an eminent lawyer the whole case of 
 "Beaufort versus Beaufort," as it stands in this Novel, 
 And the pages which refer to that suit were not only 
 written from the opinion annexed to the brief I sent in, 
 but submitted to the eye of my counsel, and revised by 
 his pen. N.B. He was feed. Judge then my dismay 
 when I heard long afterwards that the late Mr. O'Connell 
 disputed the soundness of the law I had thus bought and 
 paid for! "Who shall decide when doctors disagree!" 
 All I can say is, that I took the best opinion that love or 
 money could get me : and I should add, that my lawyer, 
 unawed by the alleged ipsi dixit of the great Agitator (to 
 be sure, he is dead), still stoutly maintains his own views 
 of the question.* Let me hope that the right heir will live 
 long enough to come under the Statute of Limitations. 
 Possession is nine points of the law, and may Time give 
 the tenth. 
 
 * I have, however, thought it prudent so far to meet the objection sug- 
 gested by Mr. O'Connell, as to make a slight alteration in this edition, which 
 will probably prevent the objection, if correct, being of any material prac- 
 tical effect on the disposition of ttat visionary El Dorado The Beaufort 
 Property, 
 
 KJTEB WORTH.
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 BOOK I. 
 
 in mcincS StticnS Ser.jt 
 SBat tclj unt> tcfy ttjonkert' au 
 Unc t> Sugenb frotje SSnje 
 8ieji ic$ in ttS SSatetS auS." 
 
 SCHILLEB, #r Pilgrim. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER 
 
 " Now rests our vicar. They who knew him best, 
 Proclaim his life to have been entirely rest ; 
 Nor one so old has left this world of sin, 
 More like the being 11 that he entered in." CRABBE. 
 
 IN one of the Welsh counties is a small village called 
 
 A. . It is somewhat removed from the high road, and 
 
 is, therefore, but little known to those luxurious amateurs 
 of the Picturesque, who view Nature through the windows 
 of a carriage and four. Nor, indeed, is there anything, 
 whether of scenery or association, in the place itself, suffi- 
 cient to allure the more sturdy enthusiast from the beaten 
 tracks which tourists and guide-books prescribe to those 
 who search the Sublime and Beautiful amidst the mountain 
 homes of the ancient Britons. Still, on the whole, the 
 village is not without its attractions. It is placed in a 
 small valley, through which winds and leaps, down many 
 a rocky fall a clear, babbling, noisy rivulet, that affords 
 excellent sport to the brethren of the angle. Thither, 
 accordingly, in the summer season occasionally resort the 
 Waltons of the neighbourhood young farmers, retired 
 traders, with now and then a stray artist, or a roving 
 student from one of the universities. Hence the solitary
 
 14 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 hostelry of A , being somewhat more frequented, ia 
 
 also more clean and comfortable than could be reasonably 
 anticipated from the insignificance and remoteness of the 
 village. 
 
 At a time in which my narrative opens, the village 
 boasted a sociable, agreeable, careless, half-starved parson, 
 who never failed to introduce himself to any of the anglers 
 who, during the summer months, passed a day or two in 
 the little valley. The Rev. Mr. Caleb Price had been edu- 
 cated at the University of Cambridge, where he had con- 
 trived, in three years, to ran through a little fortune of 
 3500Z. It is true, that he acquired in return the art of 
 making milk-punch, the science of pugilism, and the repu- 
 tation of one of the best-natured, rattling, open-hearted 
 companions whom you could desire by your side in a 
 tandem to Newmarket, or in a row with the bargemen. 
 By the help of these gifts and accomplishments, he had 
 not failed to find favour, while his money lasted, with the 
 young aristocracy of the " Gentle Mother." And, though 
 the very reverse of an ambitious or calculating man, he had 
 certainly nourished the belief that some one of the hats or 
 tinsel gowns i.e., young lords or f ellow-com toners, with 
 whom he was on such excellent terms, and who supped 
 with him so often would do something for him in the way 
 of a living. But it so happened that when Mr. Caleb Price 
 had, with a little difficulty, scrambled through his degree, 
 and found himself a Bachelor of Arts and at the end of his 
 finances, his grand acquaintances parted from him to their 
 various posts in the State-Militant of Life. And, with the 
 exception of one, joyous and reckless as himself, Mr. Caleb 
 Price found that when Money makes itself wings, it flies 
 away with our friends. As poor Price had earned no 
 academical distinction, so he could expect no advancement 
 from his college ; no fellowship ; no tutorship leading here- 
 after to livings, stalls, and deaneries. Poverty began 
 already to stare him in the face, when the only friend 
 who, having shared his prosperity, remained true to his 
 adverse fate a friend, fortunately for him, of high con- 
 nexions and brilliant prospects succeeded in obtaining for 
 
 him the humble living of A . To this primitive spot 
 
 <he once jovial roisterer cheerfully retired contrived to live 
 contented upon an income somewhat less than he had 
 formerly given to his groom pi'oachcd very tliori sermons
 
 NIGHT AND MOILN'ING. 15 
 
 t,o a very scanty and ignorant congregation, some of whom 
 only understood Welsh did good to the poor and sick in 
 his own careless, slovenly way and, uncheered. or un- 
 vexed by wife and children, he rose in summer with tho 
 lark, and in winter went to bed at nine precisely, to save 
 coals and candles. For the rest, he was the most skilful 
 angler in the whole county ; and so willing to communicate 
 the results of his experience as to the most taking colour of 
 the flies, and the most favoured haunts of the trout that 
 he had given especial orders at the inn, that whenever any 
 strange gentleman came to fish, Mr. Caleb Price should bo 
 immediately sent for. In this, to be sure, our worthy 
 pastor had his usual recompense. First, if the stranger 
 were tolerably liberal, Mr. Price was asked to dinner at the 
 inn ; and, secondly, if this failed, from the poverty or the 
 churlishness of the obliged party, Mr. Price still had an 
 opportunity to hear the last news to talk about the Great 
 World in a word, to exchange ideas, and perhaps to get 
 an old newspaper, or an odd number of a magazine. 
 
 Now, it so happened that one afternoon in October, when 
 the periodical excursions of the anglers, becoming gradu- 
 ally rarer and more rare, had altogether ceased, Mr. Caleb 
 Price was summoned from his parlour, in which he had 
 been employed in the fabrication of a net for his cabbages, 
 by a little white-headed boy, who came to say there was a 
 gentleman at the inn who wished immediately to see him 
 a strange gentleman, who had never been there before. 
 
 Mr. Price threw down his net, seized his hat, and, in less 
 than five minutes, he was in the best room of the little 
 inn. 
 
 The person there awaiting him was a man who, though 
 plainly clad in a velveteen shoo ting- jacket, had an air and 
 mien greatly above those common to the pedestrian visitors 
 
 of A . He was tall, and of one of those athletic forms 
 
 in which vigour in youth is too often followed by corpu- 
 lence in ago. At this period, however, in the full prime of 
 manhood the ample chest and sinewy limbs, seen to full 
 advantage in their simple and manly dress could not fail 
 to excite that popular admiration which is always given to 
 strength in the one sex as to delicacy in the other. Tho 
 stranger was walking impatiently to and fro the small 
 apartment when Mr. Price entered ; and then, turning to 
 the clengyman a countenance hancjinme and striking, but
 
 16 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 yet more prepossessing from its expression of fronkuem 
 than from the regularity of its features, he stopped short, 
 held out his hand, and said, with a gay laugh, as he glanced 
 over the parson's threadbare and slovenly costume, " My 
 poor Caleb ! what a metamorphosis ! I should not have 
 known you again ! " 
 
 " What ! you ! Is it possible, my dear fellow ? how 
 glad I am to see you ! What on earth can bring you to 
 such a place ! No ! not a soul would believe me if I saidl 
 had seen you in this miserable hole." 
 
 " That is precisely the reason why I am here. Sit down, 
 Caleb, and we '11 talk over matters as soon as our landlord 
 has brought up the materials for " 
 
 " The milk-punch," interrupted Mr. Price, rubbing hia 
 hands. " Ah, that will bring us back to old times, indeed ! " 
 
 In a few minutes the punch was prepared, and after 
 two or three preparatory glasses, the stranger thus com- 
 menced : 
 
 " My dear Caleb, I am in want of your assistance, and, 
 above all, of your secrecy." 
 
 " I promise you both beforehand. It will make me 
 happy the rest of my life to think I have served my patron 
 my benefactor the only friend I possess." 
 
 " Tush, man ! don't talk of that : we shall do better for 
 you one of these days. But now to the point : I have come 
 here to be married married, old boy ! married ! " 
 
 And the stranger threw himself back in his chair, and 
 chuckled with the glee of a school-boy. 
 
 "Humph!" said the parson, gravely. " It is a serious 
 thing to do, and a /ery odd place to come to." 
 
 " I admit both propositions : this punch is superb. To 
 proceed. You know that my uncle's immense fortune is at 
 his own disposal ; if I disobliged him, he would be capable 
 of leaving all to my brother ; I should disoblige him irre- 
 vocably if he knew that I had married a tradesman's 
 daughter ; I am going to marry a tradesman's daughter 
 a girl in a million ! the ceremony must be as secret as pos- 
 sible. And in this church, with you for the priest, I do not 
 see a chance of discovery." 
 
 " Do you marry by licence ? " 
 
 " No, my intended is not of age ; and we keep the secret 
 even from her father. In this village you will mumble 
 over the Bans without one of your congregation ever
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 17 
 
 hiking heed of the name. I shall stay here a month for 
 the purpose. She is in. London, on a visit to a relation in 
 the city. The Bans on her side will be published with 
 equal privacy in a little church near the Tower, where my 
 name will be no less unknown than here. Oh, I've con- 
 trived it famously ! " 
 
 " But, my dear fellow, consider what yon risk." 
 
 ''I have considered all, and I find every chance in my 
 favour. The bride will arrive here on the day of our wed- 
 ding : my servant will be one witness ; some stupid old 
 Welshman, as antediluvian as possible I leave it to you to 
 select him shall be the other. My servant I shall dispose 
 of, and the rest I can depend on." 
 
 "But " 
 
 " 1 detest buts ; if I had to make a language, I would 
 not admit such a word in it. And now, before I run on 
 about Catherine, a subject quite inexhaustible, tell me, my 
 dear friend, something about yourself." 
 
 * * ' * * 
 
 ***** 
 
 Somewhat more than a month had elapsed since the 
 e.rrival of the stranger at the village inn. He had changed 
 his quarters for the Parsonage went out but little, and 
 then chiefly on foot-excursions among the sequestered hills 
 in the neighbourhood: he was therefore but partially 
 known by sight, even in the village ; and the visit of some 
 old college friend to the minister, though indeed it had 
 never chanced before, was not, in itself, so remarkable an 
 event as to excite any particular, observation. The Bans 
 had been duly, and half audibly, hurried over, after the 
 service was concluded, and while the scanty congregation 
 were dispersing down the little aisle of the church, when 
 one morning a chaise and pair arrived at the Parsonage. 
 A servant out of livery leaped from the box. The stranger 
 opened the door of the chaise, and, uttering a joyous ex- 
 clamation, gave his arm to a lady, who, trembling and 
 agitated, could scarcely, even with that stalwart support, 
 descend the steps. " Ah ! " she said, in a voice choked 
 with tears, when they found themselves alone in the little 
 parlour, "ah ! if you knew how I have suffered ! " 
 
 How is it that certain words, and those the homeliest, 
 which the hand writes and the eye reads as trite and com- 
 mon-place expressions. w lien si>ciis, convey so rrvh, su. 
 

 
 f NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 many meanings complicated and refined ? " Ab ! ii yon 
 knew how I have suffered ! " 
 
 When the lover heard these words, his gay countenance 
 foil ; he drew back his conscience smote him : in that 
 complaint was the whole history of a clandestine love, not 
 for both tha parties, but for the woman the painful secrecy 
 the remorseful deceit the shame the fear the sacri- 
 fice. She who uttered those words was scarcely sixteen. 
 It is an early age to leave Childhood behind for ever ! 
 
 " My own love ! you have suffered, indeed ; but it ia 
 over now." 
 
 " Over ! And what will they say of me what will they 
 think of me at home ? Over ! Ah ! " 
 
 " It is but for a short time ; in the course of Nature, my 
 uncle cannot live long : all then will be explained. Our 
 marriage once made public, all connected with you will be 
 proud to own you. You will have wealth, station a name 
 among the first in the gentry of England. But, above all, 
 you will have the happiness to think that your forbearance 
 for a time has saved me, and, it may be, our children, sweet 
 one ! from poverty and " 
 
 " It is enough," interrupted the girl ; and the expression 
 of her countenance became serene and elevated. " It is for 
 you for your sake. I know what you hazard : how much 
 I must owe you ! Forgive me, this is the last murmur you 
 shall ever hear from these lips." 
 
 An hour after these words were spoken, the marriage 
 ceremony was concluded. 
 
 " Caleb," said the bridegroom, drawing the clergyman 
 aside as they were about to re-enter the house, " you will 
 keep your promise, I know ; and you think I may depend 
 implicitly upon the good faith of the witness you have 
 selected?" 
 
 " Upon his good faith? no," said Caleb, smiling; "but 
 upon his deafness, his ignorance, and his age. My poor 
 old clerk ! he will have forgotten all about it before this 
 day three months. Now I have seen your lady, I no longer 
 wonder that you incur so great a risk. I never beheld so 
 lovely a countenance. You will be happy ! " And the 
 village priest sighed, and thought of the coming winter and 
 bis own lonely hearth. 
 
 " My dear friend, you have only seen her beauty it is 
 her least charm. Heaven knows how often I have made
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 19 
 
 love ; and this is the only woman I have ever really loved. 
 Caleb, there is an excellent living that adjoins my uncle's 
 house. The rector is old ; when the house is mine, you will 
 not be long without the living. We shall be neighbours, 
 Caleb, and then you shall try and find a bride for yourself. 
 Smith," and the bridegroom turned to the servant who 
 had accompanied his wife, and served as a second witness 
 to the marriage, " tell the post-boy to put-to the horses 
 immediately." 
 
 " Yes, sir. May I speak a word with you ? " 
 
 " Well, what ? " 
 
 " Your uncle, sir, sent for me to come to him, the day 
 before we left town." 
 
 "Aha! indeed!" 
 
 " And I could just pick up among his servants that ho 
 had some suspicion at least, that he had been making 
 inquiries and seemed very cross, sir." 
 
 " You went to him ? " 
 
 " No, sir, I was afraid. He has such a way with him ; 
 whenever his eye is fixed on mine, I always feel as if it 
 was impossible to tell a lie ; and and in short, I thought 
 it was best not to go." 
 
 "You did right. Confound this fellow ! " muttered the 
 bridegroom, turning away ; " he is honest, and loves me : 
 yet, if my uncle sees him, he is clumsy enough to betray 
 all. Well, I always meant to get him out of the way the 
 sooner the better. Smith ! " 
 
 "Yes, sir!" 
 
 " You have often said that you should like, if you had 
 some capital, to settle in Australia : your father is an 
 excellent farmer ; you are above the situation you hold with 
 me ; you are well educated, and have some knowledge of 
 agriculture ; you can scarcely fail to make a fortune as a 
 settler ; and if you are of the same mind still, why look 
 you, I have just 1000Z. at my bankers : you shall have half, 
 jf you like to sail by the first packet." 
 
 " Oh, sir, you are too generous." 
 
 "Nonsense no thanks I am more prudent than 
 generous ; for I agree with you that it is all up with me if 
 my uncle gets hold of you. I dread my prying brother, 
 too ; in fact, the obligation is on my side : only stay abroad 
 till I am a rich man, and my marriage made public, and 
 then you may ask of me what you will. It's agreed, then ; 
 
 c 2
 
 J!0 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 order the horses, we'll go round by Liverpool, and learn 
 about the vessels. By the way, my good fellow, I hope you 
 see nothing now of that good-for-nothing brother of yours? " 
 
 " No, indeed, sir. It's a thousand pities he has turned 
 out so ill ; for he was the cleverest of the family, and could 
 always twist me round his little finger." 
 
 " That's the very reason I mentioned him. If he learned 
 our secret, he would take it to an excellent market. Whore 
 is he ? " 
 
 " Hiding, I suspect, sir." 
 
 " Well, we shall put the sea between you and him ! So 
 now all's safe." 
 
 Caleb stood by the porch of his house as the bride and 
 bridegroom entered their humble vehicle. Though then 
 November, the day was exquisitely mild and calm, the sky 
 without a cloud, and even the leafless trees seemed to smile 
 beneath the cheerful sun. And the young bride wept no 
 more ; she was with him she loved she was his for ever. 
 She forgot the rest. The hope the heart of sixteen 
 spoke brightly ont through the blushes that mantled over 
 her fair cheeks. The bridegroom's frank and manly 
 countenance was radiant with joy. As he waved his hand 
 to Caleb from the window, the post-boy cracked his whip, 
 the servant settled himself on the dickey, the horses started 
 off in a brisk trot, the clergyman was left alone ! 
 
 To be married is certainly an event in life ; to marry 
 other people is, for a priest, a very ordinary occurrence ; 
 and yet, from that day, a great change began to operate in 
 the spirits and the habits of Caleb Price. Have you ever, 
 my gentle reader, buried yourself for some time quietly in the 
 lazy ease of a dull country life ? have you ever become 
 gradually accustomed to its monotony, and inured to ita 
 solitude ; and, just at the time when you have half -forgotten 
 the great world that mare magnum thai frets and roars in 
 the distance have you ever received in your calm retreat 
 some visitor, full of the busy and excited life which you 
 imagined yourself contented to relinquish ? If so, have 
 you not perceived, that, in proportion as his presence and 
 communication either revived old memories, or brought 
 before you new pictures of " the bright tumult " of that 
 existence of which your guest made a part, you began to 
 compare him curiously with yourself ; you began to feel 
 that what before was to rest, is now to rot ; that your years
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 21 
 
 are gliding from you unenjoyed and wasted ; that the con- 
 trast between the animal life of passionate civilisation, and 
 the vegetable torpor of motionless seclusion is one that, if 
 you are still young, it tasks your philosophy to bear, feel- 
 ing all the while that the torpor may be yours to your 
 grave ? And when your guest has left you, when you arc 
 again alone, is the solitude the same as it was before ? 
 
 Our poor Caleb had for years rooted his thoughts to his 
 village. His guest had been, like the Bird in the Fairy 
 Tale, settling upon the quiet branches, and singing so loudly 
 and so gladly of the enchanted skies afar, that, when it 
 flew away, the tree pined, nipped and withering in the sober 
 sun in which before it had basked contented. The guest 
 was, indeed, one of those men whose animal spirits exercise 
 upon such as come within their circle the influence and 
 power usually ascribed only to intellectual qualities. During 
 the month he had sojourned with Caleb, he had brought back 
 to the poor parson all the gaiety of the brisk and noisy 
 novitiate that preceded the solemn vow and the dull retreat 
 the social parties, the merry suppers, the open-handed, 
 open-hearted fellowship of riotous, delightful, extravagant, 
 thoughtless YOUTH. And Caleb was not a bookman not 
 a scholar ; he had no resources in himself, no occupation 
 but his indolent and ill-paid duties. The emotions, there- 
 fore, of the Active Man were easily aroused within him. 
 But if this comparison between his past and present life 
 rendered him restless and disturbed, how much more deeply 
 and lastingly was he affected by a contrast between his 
 own future and that of his friend ! not in those points 
 where he could never hope equality wealth and station 
 the conventional distinctions to which, after all, a man of 
 ordinary sense must sooner or later reconcile himself but 
 in that one respect wherein all, high and low, pretend to 
 the same rights rights which a man of moderate warmth 
 of feeling can never willingly renounce viz., a partner in 
 a lot, however obscure ; a kind face by a hearth, no matter 
 how mean it be ! And his happier friend, like all men full 
 of life, was full of himself full of his love, of his future, 
 of the blessings of home, and wife, and children. Then, 
 coo, the young bride seemed so fair, so confiding, and so 
 tender ; so formed to grace the noblest, or to cheer the 
 humblest home ! And both were so happy, so all in all 
 each to each other, as they left that barren threshold ! And
 
 22 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 the priest felt all tliis, as, melancholy and envious, he turned 
 from the door in that November day, to find himself 
 thoroughly alone. He now began seriously to muse upon 
 those fancied blessings which men wearied with celitacy see 
 springing, heavenward, behind the altar. A few weeks 
 afterwards a notable change was visible in the good man's 
 exterior. He became more careful of his dress, he shaved 
 every morning, he purchased a crop-eared Welsh cob ; arid 
 it was soon known to the neighbourhood, that the only 
 journey the cob was ever condemned to take was to tho 
 house of a certain squire, who, amidst a family of all ages, 
 boasted two very pretty marriageable daughters. That 
 was the second holyday-time of poor Caleb the love- 
 romance of his life : it soon closed. On learning the 
 amount of the pastor's stipend, the squire refused to receive 
 his addresses ; and, shortly after, the girl to whom he had 
 attached himself, made what the world calls a happy match : 
 and perhaps it was one, for I never heard that she regretted 
 the forsaken lover. Probably Caleb was not one of those 
 whose place in a woman's heart is never to be supplied. 
 The lady married, the world went round as before, the 
 brook danced as merrily through the village, the poor 
 worked on the week-days, and the urchins gambolled round 
 the grave-stones on the Sabbath, and the pastor's heart 
 was broken. He languished gradually and silently away. 
 The villagers observed that he had lost his old good- 
 humoured smile ; that he did not stop every Saturday even- 
 ing at the carrier's gate, to ask if there were any news 
 stirring in the town which the carrier weekly visited ; that 
 he did not come to borrow the stray newspapers that now 
 and then found their way into the village ; that, as he 
 sauntered along the brook-side, his clothes hung loose on 
 his limbs, and that he no longer " whistled as he went ; " 
 alas, he was no longer " in want of thought ! " By degrees, 
 the walks themselves were suspended ; the parson was no 
 longer visible : a stranger performed his duties. 
 
 One day, it might be some three years and more after the 
 fatal visit I have commemorated one very wild, rough 
 day in early March, the postman, who made the round of 
 the district, rung at the parson's bell. The single femalu 
 servant, her red hair loose on her neck, replied to the call. 
 " And how is the master ? " 
 " Very bad ; " and the gill wiped her eyes.
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 23 
 
 " He should leave you something handsome," remarked 
 the postman, kindly, as he pocketed the money for th<? 
 letter. 
 
 The Pastor was in bed the boisterous wind rattled down 
 the chimney and shook the ill-fitting casement in its rotting 
 frame. The clothes he had last worn were thrown care- 
 lessly about, unsmoothed, unbrushed ; the scanty articles of 
 furniture were out of their proper places : slovenly discom- 
 fort marked the death-chamber. And by the bedside 
 stood a neighbouring clergyman, a stout, rustic, homely, 
 thoroughly Welsh priest, who might have sat for the portrait 
 of Parson Adams. 
 
 " Here's a letter for you," said the visitor. 
 
 " For me ! " echoed Caleb, feebly. " Ah well is it not 
 very dark, or are my eyes failing ? " The clergyman and 
 the servant drew aside the curtains, and propped the sick 
 man up : he read as follows, slowly, and with difficulty : 
 
 "DEAR CALEB, At last I can do something for you. A 
 friend of mine has a living in his gift just vacant, worth, I 
 understand, from three to four hundred a year : pleasant 
 neighbourhood small parish. And my friend keeps the 
 hounds ! just the thing for you. He is, however, a very 
 particular sort of person wants a companion, and has a 
 horror of anything evangelical ; wishes, therefore, to see you 
 before he decides. If you can meet me in London, some 
 day next month, I'll present you to him, and I have no 
 doubt it will be settled. You must think it strange I never 
 wrote to you since we parted, but you know I never was a 
 very good correspondent ; and as I had nothing to com- 
 municate advantageous to you, I thought it a sort of insult 
 to enlarge on my own happiness, and so forth. All I shall 
 say on that score is, that I've sown my wild oats ; and that 
 you may take my word for it, there's nothing that can 
 make a man know how large the heart is, and how little 
 the world, till he comes home (perhaps after a hard day's 
 hunting) and sees his own fireside, and hears one dear 
 welcome ; and oh, by the way, Caleb, if you could but 
 see my boy, the sturdiest little rogue ! But enough of 
 th; 3. All that vexes me is, that I've never yet been able to 
 declare my marriage : my uncle, however, suspects nothing : 
 my wife bears up against all, like an angel as she is ; still, 
 in case of any accident, it occurs to me, now I'm wnting
 
 24 NIGUT AND MORNING. 
 
 to you, especially if you leave the place, that it may bo aa 
 ivell to send me an examined copy of the register. In those 
 remote places registers are often lost or mislaid ; and it may 
 be useful hereafter, when I proclaim the marriage, to clear 
 up all doubt as to the fact. 
 
 " Good-bye, old fellow, 
 
 "Yours most truly, &c. &c." 
 
 " It comes too late," sighed Caleb, heavily ; and the letter 
 fell from his hands. There was a long pause. " Close the 
 shutters," said the sick man, at last; " I think I could 
 sleep : and and pick up that letter." 
 
 With a trembling, but eager gripe, he seized the papei; 
 as a miser would seize the deeds of an estate on whicX 
 he has a mortgage. He smoothed the folds, looked com- 
 placently at the well-known hand, smiled a ghastly smile ! 
 and then placed the letter under his pillow, and sank 
 down : they left him alone. He did not wake for some 
 hours, and that good clergyman, poor as himself, was again 
 at his post. The only friendships that are really with us 
 in the hour of need, are those which are cemented by 
 equality of circumstance. In the depth of home, in the 
 hour of tribulation, by the bed of death, the rich and the 
 poor are seldom found side by side. Caleb was evidently 
 much feebler; but his sense seemed clearer than it had 
 been, and the instincts of his native kindness were the last 
 that left him. " There is something he wants me to do for 
 him," he muttered. " Ah ! I remember : Jones, will you 
 send for the parish register? It is somewhere in the vestry- 
 room, I think but nothing's kept properly. Better go 
 yourself 'tis important." 
 
 Mr. Jones nodded, and sallied forth. The register was 
 not in the vestry; the churchwardens knew nothing about 
 it ; the clerk a new clerk, who was also the sexton, and 
 rather a wild fellow had gone ten miles off to a wedding : 
 every place was searched ; till, at last, the book was found, 
 amidst a heap of old magazines and dusty papers, in the 
 parlour of Caleb himself. By the time it was brought to 
 him, the sufferer was fast declining ; with some difficulty 
 his dim eye discovered the place where, amidst the clumsy 
 pot-hooks of the parishioners, the large clear hand of hia 
 old friend, and the trembling characters of the bride, looked 
 forth, distinguished.
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 25 
 
 " Exit-act tliis for me, will you," said Caleb. 
 
 Mr. Jones obeyed. 
 
 " Now, just write above the extract : 
 
 " SIR, By Mr. Price's desire I send you the enclosed. 
 He is too ill to write himself. But he bids me say that bo 
 has never been quite the same man since yon left him ; 
 and that, if he should not get well again, still your kind 
 letter has made him easier in his mind." 
 
 Caleb stopped. 
 
 " Go on." 
 
 " That is all I have to say : sign jour name, and put the 
 address here it is. Ah, the letter (he muttered) must 
 not lie about ! If anything happen to me, it may get him 
 into trouble." 
 
 And as Mr. Jones sealed his communication, Caleb feebly 
 stretched his wan hand, and held the letter which had 
 " come too late " over the flame of the candle. As the 
 blazing paper dropped on the carpetless floor, Mr. Jones 
 prudently set thereon the broad sole of his top-boot, and 
 the maid servant brushed the tinder into the grate. 
 
 " Ah, trample it out : hurry it amongst the ashes. 
 The last as the rest," said Caleb, hoarsely. "Friend- 
 ship, fortune, hope, love, life a little flame, and then 
 and then " 
 
 " Don't be uneasy it's quite out ! " said Mr. Jones. 
 
 Caleb turned his face to the wall. He lingered till the 
 next day, when he passed insensibly from sleep to death. 
 As soon as the breath was out of his body, Mi-. Jones felt 
 that his duty was discharged, that other duties called him 
 home. He promised to return to read the burial-service 
 over the deceased, gave some hasty orders about the plain 
 funeral, and was turning from the room, when he saw the 
 letter he had written by Caleb's wish, still on the table. 
 " I pass the post-office I'll put it in," said he to the 
 weeping servant ; " and just give me that scrap of paper." 
 So he wrote on the scrap, "P.S. He died this morning at 
 half-past twelve, without pain. M. J. ;" and, not taking 
 the trouble to break the seal, thrust the final bulletin into 
 the folds of the letter, which he then carefully placed in 
 his vast pocket, and safely transferred to the post. And 
 (hat was all that the jovial and happy man, to whom t'ic 
 letter was addressed, ever heard of the last days of his 
 college friend.
 
 26 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 The living, vacant by the death of Caleb Price, was not 
 BO valuable as to plague the patron with many applications. 
 It continued vacant nearly the whole of the six months 
 prescribed by law. And the desolate parsonage was com- 
 mitted to the charge of one of the villagers, who had 
 occasionally assisted Caleb in the care of his little garden, 
 The villager, his wife, and half-a-dozen noisy, ragged chil- 
 dren, took possession of the quiet bachelor's abode. The 
 furniture had been sold to pay the expenses of the funeral, 
 and a few trifling bills ; and, save the kitchen and the two 
 attics, the empty house, uninhabited, was surrendered to 
 the sportive mischief of the idle urchins, who prowled 
 about the silent chambers in fear of the silence, and in 
 ecstacy at the space. The bedroom in which Caleb had 
 died was, indeed, long held sacred by infantine superstition. 
 But one day the eldest boy having ventured across the 
 threshold, two cupboards, the doors standing ajar, attracted 
 the child's curiosity. He opened one, and his exclamation 
 soon brought the rest of the children round him. Have 
 you ever, reader, when a boy, suddenly stumbled on that 
 El Dorado, called by the grown-up folks a lumber-room ? 
 Lumber, indeed ! what Virtu double-locks in cabinets is the 
 real lumber to the boy ! Lumber, reader ! to thee it was a 
 treasury ! Now this cupboard had been the lumber-room 
 in Caleb's household. In an instant the whole troop had 
 thrown themselves on the motley contents. Stray joints 
 of clumsy fishing-rods ; artificial baits ; a pair of worn-out 
 top-boots, in which one of the urchins, whooping and 
 shouting, buried himself up to the middle ; moth-eaten, 
 stained, and ragged, the collegian's gown relic of the dead 
 man's palmy time ; a bag of carpenter's tools, chiefly 
 broken ; a cricket-bat ; an odd boxing-glove ; a fencing- 
 foil, snapped in the middle ; and, more than all, some half- 
 finished attempts at rude toys : a boat, a cart, a doll's 
 house, in which the good-natured Caleb had busied him- 
 self for the younger ones of that family in which he had 
 found the fatal ideal of his trite life. One by one were 
 these lugged forth from their dusty slumber profane 
 hands struggling for the first right of appropriation. And 
 now, revealed against the wall, glared upon the startled 
 violators of the sanctuary, Avith glassy eyes and horrent 
 visage, a grim monster. They huddled back one upon 
 the other, pale and breathless, till the eldest, seeing that
 
 NIGHT AND MOllXINGt. 27 
 
 the creature moved not, took heart, approached 011 tip-too 
 twice receded, and twice again advanced, and finally 
 drew out, daubed, painted, and tricked forth in the semblance 
 of a griffin, a gigantic Kite ! 
 
 The children, alas ! were not old and wise enough to 
 know all the dormant value of that imprisoned aeronaut, 
 which had cost Caleb many a dull evening's labour the 
 intended gift to the false one's favourite brother. But they 
 guessed that it was a thing or spirit appertaining of right 
 to them ; and they resolved, after mature consultation, to 
 impart the secret of their discovery to an old wooden-legged 
 villager, who had served in the army, who was the idol of 
 all the children of the place, and who, they firmly believed, 
 knew everything under the sun, except the mystical arts of 
 reading and writing. Accordingly, having seen that the 
 coast was clear for they considered their parents (as the 
 children of the hard-working often do) the natural foes to 
 amusement they carried the monster into an old out- 
 house, and ran to the veteran to beg him to come up slily 
 and inspect its proper' 'es. 
 
 Three months af >or this memorable event, arrived the 
 new pastor a slin*, prim, orderly, and starch young man, 
 framed by naturt, and trained by practice to bear a great 
 deal of solitude and starving. Two loving couples had 
 waited to be married till his Reverence should arrive. The 
 ceremony performed, where was the registry-book ? The 
 vestry was searched the churchwardens interrogated ; the 
 gay clerk who, on the demise of his deaf predecessor, had 
 come into office a little before Caleb's last illness, had a 
 dim recollection of having taken the registry up to Mr. 
 Price at the time the vestry-room was white- washed. The 
 house was searched the cupboard, the mysterious cup. 
 board, was explored. "Here it is, sir !" cried the clerk; 
 and he pounced upon a pale parchment volume. The thin 
 clergyman opened it, and recoiled in dismay more than 
 three-fourths of the leaves had been torn out. 
 
 " It is the moths, sir," said the gardener's wife, who had 
 not yet removed from the house. 
 
 The clergyman looked round ; one of the children waa 
 trembling. " What have you done to this book, liMJo 
 one?" 
 
 " That book ? the hi ! hi ! " 
 
 " Speak the truth, and yon shan't be punished."
 
 28 If id; IT AND MORXIXO. 
 
 ' I did not know it was any harm hi ! hi ! * 
 
 ' Well, and " 
 
 'And old Ben helped us." 
 'Well?" 
 
 'And and and hi! hi! The tail of the kite, 
 sir! " 
 
 "Where is the kite?" 
 
 Alas ! the kite and its tail were long ago gone to that 
 undiscovered limbo, where all things lost, broken, vanished, 
 and destroyed ; things that lose themselves for servants 
 are too honest to steal ; things that break themselves for 
 servants are too careful to break ; find an everlasting and 
 impenetrable refuge. 
 
 " It does not signify a pin's head," said the clerk ; " the 
 parish must find a new 'un ! " 
 
 " It is no fault of mine," said the Pastor. " Arc my 
 chops ready ? " 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 " And soothed with idle dreams the frowning fate." CU.VT;BB. 
 
 " WHY does not my father come back ? what a time he 
 has been away ! " 
 
 " My dear Philip, business detains him : but ho will be 
 here in a few days perhaps, to-day ! " 
 
 " I should like him to see how much I am improved." 
 
 " Improved in what, Philip ? " said the mother, with a 
 smile. " Not Latin, I am sure ; for I have not seen you 
 open a book since you insisted on poor Todd's dismissal." 
 
 " Todd ! Oh, he was such a scrub, and spoke through 
 his nose : what could he know of Latin ? " 
 
 "More than you ever will, I fear, unless " and hero 
 
 there was a certain hesitation in the mother's voice, " un- 
 less your father consents to your going to school." 
 
 "Well, I should like to go to Eton! That's the only 
 school for a gentleman. I've heard my father say so." 
 
 " Philip, you are too proud." 
 
 "Proud! you often call me proud; but, then, you kiss 
 me when you do so. Kiss me now, mother." 
 
 The lady drew her son to her breast, put aside the 
 clustering hair from his forehead, and kissed him ; but the
 
 NIGHT AND MOKXIXG. 29 
 
 kiss was sad, and the moment after she pushed him away 
 gently, and muttered, unconscious that she was overheard, 
 
 " If, after all, my devotion to the father should wrong 
 the children ! " 
 
 The boy started, and a cloud passed over his brow ; but 
 he said nothing. A light step entered the room through 
 the French casements that opened on the. lawn, and 
 the mother turned to her youngest-born, and her eye 
 brightened. 
 
 " Mamma! mamma ! here is a letter for you. I snatched 
 it from John : it is papa's handwriting." 
 
 The lady uttered a joyous exclamation, and seized .the 
 letter. The younger child nestled himself on a stool at her 
 feet, looking up while she read it ; the elder stood apart, 
 leaning on his gun, and with something of thought, even 
 of gloom, upon his countenance. 
 
 There was a strong contrast in the two boys. The elder, 
 who was about fifteen, seemed older than he was, not only 
 from his height, but from the darkness of his complexion, 
 and a certain proud, nay imperious, expression upon 
 features that, without having the soft and fluent graces of 
 childhood, were yet regular and striking. His dark-green 
 shooting-dress, with the belt and pouch, the cap, with its 
 gold tassel set upon his luxuriant curls, which had the 
 purple gloss of the raven's plume, blended perhaps some- 
 thing prematurely manly in his own tastes, with the love 
 of the fantastic and picturesque which bespeaks the pre- 
 siding genius of the proud mother. The younger son had 
 scarcely told his ninth year ; and the soft, auburn ringlets, 
 descending half-way down the shoulders ; the rich and 
 delicate bloom that exhibits at once the hardy health and 
 the gentle fostering ; the large, deep-blue eyes ; the flexile 
 and almost effeminate contour of the harmonious features ; 
 altogether made such an ideal of childlike beauty as Law- 
 rence had loved to paint or Chantrey model. And the 
 daintiest cares of a mother, who, as yet, has her darling all 
 to herself her toy, her plaything were visible in the 
 large falling collar of finest cambric, and the blue velvet 
 dress with its filigree buttons and embroidered sash. 
 
 Both the boys had about them the air of those whom 
 Fate ushers blandly into life the air of wealth, and birth, 
 and luxury, spoiled and pampered as if earth had no thorn 
 for their feet, and, heaven not a wind to visit their young
 
 30 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 cheeks too roughly. The mother had been extremely 
 handsome ; and though the first bloom of youth was now 
 gone, she had still the beauty that might captivate new 
 love an easier task than to retain the old. Both her sons, 
 though differing from each other, resembled her : she had 
 the features of the younger ; and probably any one who 
 had seen her in her own earlier youth, would have recog- 
 nised in that child's gay yet gentle countenance, the mirror 
 of the mother when a girl. Now, however, especially 
 when silent or thoughtful, the expression of her face 
 was rather that of the elder boy ; the cheek, once so rosy, 
 was now pale, though clear, with something which time 
 had given, of pride and thought, in the curved lip and the 
 high forehead. One who could have looked on her in her 
 more lonely hours, might have seen that the pride had 
 known shame, and the thought was the shadow of tho 
 passions of fear and sorrow. 
 
 But now as she read those hasty, brief, but well- remem- 
 bered characters read as one whose heart was in her eyes 
 joy and triumph alone were visible in that eloquent 
 countenance. Her eyes flashed, her breast heaved ; and at 
 length, clasping the letter to her lips, she kissed it again 
 and again with passionate transport. Then, as her eyes 
 met the dark, enquiring, earnest gaze of her eldest born, 
 she flung her arms round him, and wept vehemently. 
 
 " What is the matter, mamma, dear mamma ? " said the 
 youngest, pushing himself between Philip and his mother. 
 
 " Your father is coming back, this day this very hour ; 
 
 and you yon child you Philip " Here sobs broke 
 
 in upon her words, and left her speechless. 
 
 The letter that had produced this effect ran as fol- 
 lows : 
 
 " To MRS. MORTON, Fernside Cottage. 
 
 " DEAREST KATE, My last letter prepared you for the 
 news I have now to relate my poor uncle is no more. 
 Though I had seen so little of him, especially of late years, 
 his death sensibly affected me; but I have at least the 
 consolation of thinking, that there is nothing now to pre- 
 vent my doing justice to you. I am the sole heir to his 
 fortune I have it in my power, dearest Kate, to offer yon 
 a tardy recompense for all you have put up with for my 
 sikc ; a sacred testimony to your long forbearance, your
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 81 
 
 unrcproachful love, your wrongs, and your devotion. 
 Our children, too my noble Philip ! kiss them, Kate 
 kiss them for mo a thousand times. 
 
 " I write in great haste the burial is just over, and my 
 letter will only serve to announce my return. My darling 
 Catherine, I shall be with you almost as soon as these lines 
 meet your eyes those dear eyes, that, for all the tears they 
 have shed for my faults and follies, have never looked tho 
 less kind. 
 
 " Yours, ever as ever, 
 
 " PHILIP BEAUFORT." 
 
 This letter has told its tale, and little remains to explain. 
 Philip Beaufort was one of those men of whom there are 
 many in his peculiar class of society easy, thoughtless, 
 good-humoured, generous, with feelings infinitely better 
 than his principles. 
 
 Inheriting himself but a moderate fortune, which was 
 three parts in the hands of the Jews before he was twenty- 
 five, he had the most brilliant expectations from his uncle ; 
 an old bachelor, who, from a courtier, had turned a misan- 
 thrope cold shrewd penetrating worldly sarcastic 
 and imperious ; and from this relation he received, 
 meanwhile, a handsome, and, indeed, munificent allowance. 
 About sixteen years before the date at which this narrative 
 opens, Philip Beaufort had " run off," as the saying is, with 
 Catherine Morton, then little more than a child a mother- 
 less child educated at a boarding-school to notions and 
 desires far beyond her station ; for she was the daughter 
 of a provincial tradesman. And Philip Beaufort, in the 
 prime of life, was possessed of most of the qualities that 
 dazzle the eyes, and many of the arts that betray the affec- 
 tions. It was suspected by some that they were privately 
 married : if so, the secret had been closely kept, and baffled 
 all the enquiries of the stern old uncle. Still there was 
 much, not only in the manner, at once modest and digni- 
 fied, but in the character of Catherine, which was proud 
 and high-spirited, to give colour to the suspicion. Beau- 
 i'ort, a man naturally careless of forms, paid her a marked 
 c\nd punctilious respect ; and his attachment was evidently 
 one, not only of passion, but of confidence and esteem. 
 Time developed in her mental qualities far superior to 
 those of Beaufort, and for thcso she had ample leisure of
 
 32 NIGHT AND MOLNLN'G. 
 
 Tultivation. To the influence derived from her mind and 
 person she added that of a frank, affectionate, and winning 
 disposition ; their children cemented the bond between 
 them. Mr. Beaufort was passionately attached to field- 
 sports. He lived the greater part of the year with 
 Catherine, at the beautiful cottage to which he had built 
 hunting stables that were the admiration of the county ; 
 and though the cottage was near London the pleasures of 
 the metropolis seldom allured him for more than a few 
 days generally but a few hours at a time ; and he 
 always hurried back with renewed relish to what he con- 
 sidered his home. 
 
 Whatever the connexion between Catherine and himself 
 (and of the true nature of that connexion, the Introductory 
 Chapter has made the reader more enlightened than the 
 world), her influence had, at least, weaned from all ex- 
 cesses, and many follies, a man who, before he knew her, 
 had seemed likely, from the extreme joviality and careless- 
 ness of his nature, and a 'very imperfect education, to con- 
 tract whatever vices were most in fashion as preservatives 
 against ennui. And if their union had been openly hal- 
 lowed by the church, Philip Beaufort had been universally 
 esteemed the model of a tender husband and a fond father. 
 Ever, as he became more and more acquainted with 
 Catherine's natural good qualities, and more and more 
 attached to his home, had Mr. Beaufort, with the gene- 
 rosity of true affection, desired to remove from her the 
 pain of an equivocal condition by a public marriage. But 
 Mr. Beaufort, though generous, was not free from tho 
 worldliness which had met him everywhere, amidst the 
 society in which his youth had been spent. His uncle, the 
 head of one of those families which yearly vanish from tho 
 commonalty into the peerage, but which once formed a 
 distinguished peculiarity in the aristocracy of England 
 families of ancient birth, immense possessions, at once 
 noble and untitled held his estates by no other tenure 
 than his own caprice. Though he professed to like Philip, 
 yet he saw but little of him. When the news of the illicit 
 connexion his nephew was reported to have formed reached 
 him, he at first resolved to break it off ; but observing that 
 Philip no longer gambled, nor run in debt, and had retired 
 from the turf to the safer and more economical pastimes of 
 tho field, he contented himself with enquiries which satis-
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 83 
 
 fied him that Philip was not married ; and perhaps he 
 thought it, on the whole, more prudent to wink at an error 
 that was not attended by the bills which had heretofore 
 characterised the human infirmities of his reckless nephew. 
 He took care, however, incidentally, and in reference to 
 some scandal of the day, to pronounce his opinion, not 
 upon the fault, but upm the only mode of repairing it. 
 
 " If ever," said he, t "d he looked grimly at Philip while 
 he spoke, " a gentleman were to disgrace his ancestry by 
 introducing into his family one whom his own sister could 
 not receive at her house, why, he ought to sink to her 
 level, and wealth would but make his disgrace the more 
 notorious. If I had an only son, and that son were booby 
 enough to do anything so discreditable as to marry beneath 
 him, I would rather have my footman for my successor. 
 You understand, Phil ! " 
 
 Philip did understand, and looked round at the noble 
 house and the stately park, and his generosity was not 
 equal to the trial. Catherine so great was her power 
 over him might, perhaps, have easily triumphed over his 
 more selfish calculations; but her love was too delicate ever 
 to breathe, of itself, the hope that lay deepest at her heart. 
 And her children ! ah ! for them she pined, but for them, 
 she also hoped. Before them was a long future, and she 
 had all confidence in Philip. Of late, there had been con- 
 uiderable doubts how far the elder Beaufort would realise 
 the expectations in which his nephew had been reared. 
 Philip's younger brother had been much with the old 
 gentleman, and appeared to be in high favour : this brother 
 was a man in every respect the opposite to Philip sober, 
 supple, decorous, ambitious, with a face of smiles and a 
 heart of ice. 
 
 But the old gentleman was taken dangerously ill, and 
 Philip was summoned to his bed of death. Robert, the 
 younger brother, was there also, with his wife (for he had 
 married prudently) and his children (he had two, a son 
 and a daughter). Not a word did the uncle say as to the 
 disposition of his property till an hour before he died. 
 And then, turning in his bed, he looked first at one ne- 
 phew, then at the other, and faltered out, 
 
 " Philip, you are a scapegrace, but a gentleman ! 
 Robert, you are a careful, sober, plausible man ; and it is 
 a great pity you were not in business ; yon would have 
 
 D
 
 8* NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 made a fortune ! you won't inherit one, though you think 
 it : I have marked you, sir. Philip, beware of your brother. 
 Now, let me see the parson." 
 
 The old man died ; the will was read ; and Philip suc- 
 ceeded to a rental of 20,OOOZ. a-year ; Robert, to a diamond 
 ring, a gold repeater, 5,OOOZ., and a curious collection of 
 bottled snakes. 
 
 CHAPTEE III. 
 
 " Stay, delightful Dream; 
 Let him within his pleasant garden walk ; 
 Give him her arm of blessings let them talk." CRABBE. 
 
 " THERE, Robert, there ! now you can see the new sta- 
 bles. By Jove, they are the completest thing in the three 
 kingdoms !" 
 
 " Quite a pile ! But is that the house ? You lodge 
 your horses more magnificently than yourself." 
 
 " But is it not a beautiful cottage ? to be sure, it owes 
 everything to Catherine's taste. Dear Catherine ! " 
 
 Mr. Robert Beaufort, for this colloquy took place be- 
 tween the brothers, as their britska rapidly descended the 
 hill, at the foot of which lay Fernside Cottage and its 
 miniature demesnes Mr. Robert Beaufort pulled his tra- 
 velling-cap over his brows, and his countenance fell, whe- 
 ther at the name of Catherine, or the tone in which the 
 name was uttered ; and there was a pause, broken by a 
 third occupant of the britska, a youth of about seventeen, 
 who sat opposite the brothers. 
 
 "And who are those boys on the lawn, uncle?" 
 
 *' Who are those boys ? " It was a simple question, but 
 it grated on the ear of Mr. Robert Beaufort it struck 
 discord at his heart. "Who were those boys? "as they 
 ran across the sward, eager to welcome their father home ; 
 the westering sun shining full on their joyous faces their 
 young forms so lithe and so graceful their merry laughter 
 vinging in the still air. " Those boys,'* thought Mr. Robert 
 Beaufort, " the sons of shame, rob mine of his inheritance." 
 The elder brother turned round at his nephew's question, 
 and saw the expression on Robert's face. He bit his lip, 
 and answered, gravelv
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 35 
 
 "Arthur, they are my children." 
 
 " I did not know you were married," replied Arthur, 
 bending forward to take a better view of his cousins. 
 
 Mr. Robert Beaufort smiled bitterly, and Philip's brow 
 grew crimson. 
 
 The carriage stopped at the little lodgt , Philip opened 
 the door, and jumped to the ground ; the brother and his 
 son followed. A moment more, and Philip was locked in 
 Catherine's arms, her tears falling fast upon his breast ; 
 his children plucking at his coat; and the younger one 
 crying, in his shrill impatient treble, " Papa ! papa ! you 
 don't see Sidney, papa ! " 
 
 Mr. Robert Beaufort placed his hand on his son's 
 shoulder, and arrested his steps, as they contemplated the 
 group before them. 
 
 "Arthur," said he, in a hollow whisper, "those children 
 are our disgrace and your supplanters ; they are bastards ! 
 bastards ! and they are to be his heirs ! " 
 
 Arthur made no answer, but the smile with which he 
 had hitherto gazed on his new relations vanished. 
 
 "Kate," said Mr. Beaufort, as he turned from Mrs. 
 Morton, and lifted his youngest- born in his arms, " this is 
 my brother and his son: they are welcome, are they 
 not?" 
 
 Mr. Robert bowed low, and extended his hand, with stiff 
 affability, to Mrs. Morton, muttering something equally 
 complimentary and inaudible. 
 
 The party proceeded towards the house. Philip and 
 Arthur brought up the rear. 
 
 "Do you shoot?" asked Arthur, observing the gun in 
 iiis cousin's hand. 
 
 " Yes. I hope this season to bag as many head as my 
 father: he is a famous shot. But this is only a single 
 barrel, and an old-fashioned sort of detonator. My father 
 must get me one of the new guns. I can't afford it 
 myself." 
 
 "I should think not," said Arthur, smiling. 
 
 "Oh, as to that," resumed Philip, quickly, and with a 
 heightened colour, " I could have managed it very well if I 
 had not given thirty guineas for a brace of pointers the 
 other day : they are the best dogs you ever saw." 
 
 " Thirty guineas ! " echoed Arthur, looking with naivt 
 surprise at the speaker ; " why, how old are you ? " 
 
 "2
 
 86 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 " Just fifteen last birth-day. Holla, John ! John Green ! " 
 cried the young gentleman in an imperious voice, to one of 
 the gardeners, who was crossing the lawn, " see that the 
 nets are taken down to the lake to-morrow, and that my 
 tent is pitched properly, by the lime-trees, by nine o'clock. 
 I hope you will understand me this time : Heaven knows 
 you take a deal of telling before you understand anything ! " 
 " Yes, Mr. Philip," said the man, bowing obsequioiisly ; 
 and then muttered, as he went off. " Drat the nat'rel ! he 
 speaks to a poor man as if he warn't flesh and blood." 
 
 ' Does your father keep hunters ? " asked Philip. 
 
 'No." 
 
 ' Why ? " 
 
 ' Perhaps one reason may be, that he is not rich enough." 
 
 ' Oh ! that 's a pity. Never mind, we '11 mount you, when- 
 ever you like to pay us a visit." 
 
 Young Arthur drew himself up, and his air, naturally 
 frank and gentle, became haughty and reserved. Philip 
 gazed on him, and felt offended ; he scarce knew why, but 
 from that moment he conceived a dislike to his cousin. 
 
 CHAPTEE IV. 
 
 " For a man is helpless and vain, of a condition so exposed to calamity 
 that a raisin is able to kill him : any trooper out of the Egyptian army 
 a fly can do it, when it goes on God's errand." JEREMY TAYLOR, On tfn 
 Deceitfulness of the Heart. 
 
 THE two brothers sat at their wine after dinner. Robert 
 sipped claret, the sturdy Philip quaffed his more generous 
 port. Catherine and the boys might be seen at a little dis- 
 tance, and by the light of a soft August moon, among the 
 shrubs and bosquets of the lawn. 
 
 Philip Beaufort was about five-and-forty, tall, robust, 
 nay, of great strength of frame and limb ; with a coun- 
 tenance extremely winning, not only from the comeliness 
 of its features, but its frankness, manliness, and good- 
 nature. His was the bronzed, rich complexion, the inclina- 
 tion towards embonpoint, the athletic girth of chest, which 
 denote redundant health, and mirthful temper, and sanguine 
 blood. Robert, who had lived the life of cities, was a year 
 younger than his brother ; nearly as tall, but pale, meagre, 
 etoopinct. *? with a careworn, anxious, hungry look.
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 37 
 
 which made the smile that hung upon his lips seem hollow 
 and artificial. His dress, though plain, was neat and 
 studied ; his manner, bland and plausible ; his voice, sweet 
 end low : there was that about him which, if it did not win 
 liking, tended to excite respect a certain decorum, a name- 
 less propriety of appearance and bearing, that approached a 
 little to formality : his every movement, slow and measured, 
 was that of one who paced in the circle that fences round 
 the habits and usages of the world. 
 
 "Yes," said Philip, "I had always decided to take this 
 step, whenever my poor uncle's death should allow me to 
 do so. You have seen Catherine, but you do not know 
 half her good qualities : she would grace any station ; and, 
 besides, she nursed me so carefully last year, when I broke 
 my collar-bone in that cursed steeple-chase. Egad, I am 
 getting too heavy, and growing too old, for such schoolboy 
 pranks." 
 
 " I have no doubt of Mrs. Morton's excellence, and I 
 honour your motives ; still, when you talk of her gracing 
 any station, you must not forget, my dear brother, that sho 
 will be no more received as Mrs. Beaufort than she is now 
 as Mrs. Morton." 
 
 " But I tell you, Robert, that I am really married to her 
 already ; that she would never have left her home, but on 
 that condition ; that we were married the very day we met 
 after her flight." 
 
 Egbert's thin lips broke into a slight sneer of incre- 
 dulity. 
 
 " My dear brother, you do right to say this any man in 
 your situation would say the same. But I know that my 
 uncle took every pains to ascertain if the report of a private 
 marriage were true." 
 
 " And you helped him in the search. Eh, Bob ? " 
 
 Bob slightly blushed. Philip went on. 
 
 " Ha, ha ! to be sure you did ; you knew that such a 
 discovery would have done for me in the old gentleman's 
 good opinion. But I blinded you both, ha, ha ! The fact 
 is, that we were married with the greatest privacy ; that 
 even now, I own, it would be difficult for Catherine herself 
 to establish the fact, unless I wished it. I am ashamed to 
 think that I have never even told her where I keep the 
 main proof of the marriage. I induced one witness to leave 
 the country, the other must be long since dead : my poor 
 
 132264
 
 38 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 friend, too, who officiated, is no more. Even the register, 
 Bob, the register itself, has been destroyed : and yet, not- 
 withstanding, I will prove the ceremony and clear up poor 
 Catherine's fame ; for I have the attested copy of the 
 register safe and sound. Catherine not married ! why, 
 look at her, man ! " 
 
 Mr. Robert Beaufort glanced at the window for a 
 moment, but his countenance was still that of one uncon- 
 vinced. 
 
 "Well, brother," said he, dipping his fingers in the 
 water-glass, " it is not for me to contradict you. It is a 
 very curious tale parson dead witnesses missing. But 
 still, as I said before, if you are resolved on a public 
 marriage, you are wise to insist that thei*e has been a 
 previous private one. Yet, believe me, Philip," continued 
 Robert, with solemn earnestness, "the world " 
 
 " D the world ! What do I care for the world ! 
 
 We don't want to go to routs and balls, and give dinners 
 to fine people. I shall live much the same as I have 
 always done ; only, I shall now keep the hounds they are 
 very indifferently kept at present and have a yacht ; and 
 engage the best masters for the boys. Phil wants to go to 
 Eton, but I know what Eton is : poor fellow ! his feelings 
 might be hurt there, if others are as sceptical as yourself. 
 I suppose my old friends will not be less civil, now I have 
 20,OOOZ. a-year. And as for the society of women, between 
 you and me, I don't care a rush for any woman but Cathe- 
 rine : poor Katty ! " 
 
 " Well, you are the best judge of your own affairs : yon 
 don't misinterpret my motives ? " 
 
 " My dear Bob, no. I am quite sensible how kind it is 
 in you a man of your starch habits and strict views, 
 coming here to pay a mark of respect to Kate (Mr. 
 Robert turned uneasily in his chair) even before you 
 knew of the private marriage, and I am sure I don't blame 
 you, for never having done it before. You did quite right 
 to try your chance with my uncle." 
 
 Mr. Robert turned in his chair again, still more uneasily, 
 and cleared his voice as if to speak. But Philip tossed 
 off his wine, and proceeded, without heeding his brother, 
 
 " And though the poor old man does not seem to have 
 liked you the better for consulting his scruples, yet we 
 must make up for the partiality of his will. Let me see
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 89 
 
 what, with your wife's fortune, you muster 20001. 
 a-year ? " 
 
 " Only 1500?., Philip, and Arthur's education is growing 
 expensive. Next year he goes to college. He is certainly 
 very clever, and I have great hopes " 
 
 " That he will do honour to us all so have I. He is a 
 noble young fellow : and I think my Philip may find a 
 great deal to learn from him, Phil is a sad, idle dog ; but 
 with a devil of a spirit, and sharp as a needle. I wish 
 you could see him ride. Well, to return to Arthur. Don't 
 trouble yourself about his education that shall be my 
 care. He shall go to Christ Church a gentleman-com- 
 moner, of course and when he is of age we'll get him 
 into parliament. Now for yourself, Bob. I shall sell the 
 town-house in Bei-keley Square, and whatever it brings 
 you shall have. Besides that, I'll add 1500?. a-year to 
 your 1500Z. so that's said and done. Pshaw ! brothers 
 should be brothers. Let's come out and play with the 
 boys!" 
 
 The two Beauforts stepped through the open casement 
 into the lawn. 
 
 '" You look pale, Bob all you London fellows do. As 
 for me, I feel as strong as a horse ; much better than when 
 I was one of your gay dogs straying loose about the 
 town ! 'Gad, I have never had a moment's ill health, 
 except from a fall now and then. I feel as if I should 
 live for ever, and that 's the reason why I could never 
 make a will." 
 
 " Have you never, then, made your will ? " 
 
 " Never as yet. Faith, till now, I had little enough to 
 leave. But now that all this great Beaufort property is at 
 my own disposal, I must think of Kate's jointure. By 
 Jove ! now I speak of it, I will ride to ***** to-morrow, 
 and consult the lawyer there both about the will and the 
 marriage. You will stay for the wedding ? " 
 
 " Why, I must go into shire to-morrow evening, to 
 
 place Arthur with his tutor. But I '11 return for the wed- 
 ding, if you particularly wish it : only Mrs. Beaufort is a 
 Woman of very strict " 
 
 " I do particularly wish it," interrupted Philip, gravely ; 
 " for I desire, for Catherine's sake, that you, my sole sur- 
 viving relation, may not seem to withhold your countenance 
 from an act of justice to her. And as for your wife, I
 
 40 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 fancy 1500Z. a-year would reconcile her to iny marrying 
 ut of the Penitentiary." 
 
 Mr. Robert bowed his head, coughed huskily, and said, 
 " I appreciate your generous affection, Philip." 
 
 The next morning, while the elder parties were still 
 over the breakfast-table, the young people were in the 
 grounds : it was a lovely day, one of the last of the luxu- 
 riant August and Arthur, as he looked round, thought he 
 had never seen a more beautiful place. It was, indeed, 
 just the spot to captivate a youthful and susceptible fancy. 
 The village of Fernside, though in one of the counties 
 adjoining Middlesex, and as near to London as the owner's 
 passionate pursuits of the field would permit, was yet aa 
 rural and sequestered as if an hundred miles distant froni 
 the smoke of the huge city. Though the dwelling was 
 called a cottage, Philip had enlarged the original modest 
 building into a villa of some pretensions. On either side 
 a graceful and well-proportioned portico, stretched veran- 
 dahs, covered with roses and clematis ; to the right ex- 
 tended a range of costly conservatories, terminating in 
 vistas of trellis-work which formed those elegant alleys 
 called rosaries, and served to screen the more useful 
 gardens from view. The lawn, smooth and even, was 
 studded with American plants and shrubs in flower, and 
 bounded on one side by a small lake, on the opposite bank 
 of which limes and cedars threw their shadows over the 
 clear waves. On the other side a light fence separated 
 the grounds from a large paddock, in which three or four 
 hunters grazed in indolent enjoyment. It was one of those 
 cottages which bespeak the ease and luxury not often 
 found in more ostentatious mansions an abode which, at; 
 sixteen, the visitor contemplates with vague notions of 
 poetry and love which, at forty, he might think dull and 
 d d expensive which, at sixty, he would pronounce to be 
 damp in winter, and full of earwigs in the summer. Master 
 Philip was leaning on his gun ; Master Sidney was chasing 
 a peacock butterfly ; Arthur was silently gazing on the 
 shining lake and the still foliage that drooped over its 
 surface. In the countenance of this young man there was 
 something that excited a certain interest. He was less 
 handsome than Philip, but the expression of his face waa 
 more prepossessing. There was something of pride in the 
 forehead ; but of good-nature, not unmixed with irresolu-
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 41 
 
 tion and weakness, in the curves of the mouth. He was 
 more delicate of frame than Philip ; and the colour of his 
 complexion was not that of a robust constitution. His 
 movements were graceful and self-possessed, and he had 
 his father's sweetness of voice. 
 
 " This is really beautiful ! I envy you, cousin Philip." 
 
 " Has not your father got a country-house ? " 
 
 "No : we live either in London or at some hot, crowded , 
 watering-place." 
 
 " Yes ; this is very nice during the shooting and hunting 
 season. But my old nurse says we shall have a much finer 
 place now. I liked this very well till I saw Lord Belville'a 
 place. But it is very unpleasant not to have the fines, 
 house in the county : aut Ccesar aut nulliis that's my 
 motto. Ah! do you see that swallow? I'll bet you a 
 guinea I hit it." 
 
 " No, poor thing ! don't hurt it." But ere the remon- 
 strance was uttered, the bird lay quivering on the ground. 
 
 " It is rust September, and one must keep one's hand 
 in," said Philip, as he reloaded his gun. 
 
 To Arthur this action seemed a wanton cruelty ; it was 
 rather the wanton recklessness which belongs to a wild boy 
 accustomed to gratify the impulse of the moment the 
 recklessness which is not cruelty in the boy, but which 
 prosperity may pamper into cruelty in the man. And 
 scarce had he reloaded his gun before the neigh of a young 
 colt came from the neighbouring paddock, and Philip 
 bounded to the fence. " He calls me, poor fellow ; you 
 shall see him feed from my hand. Bun in for a piece of 
 bread a large piece, Sidney." The boy and the animal 
 seemed to understand each other. " I see you don't like 
 horses," he said to Arthur. " As for me, I love dogs, horses 
 every dumb creature." 
 
 " Except swallows ! " said Arthur, with a half smile, and 
 ft little surprised at the inconsistency of the boast. 
 
 " Oh ! that is sport, all fair : it is not to hurt the swal- 
 low it is to obtain skill," said Philip, colouring ; and then, 
 as if not quite easy with his own definition, he turned away 
 abruptly. 
 
 " This is dull work suppose we fish. By Jove ! (he 
 had caught his father's expletive) that blockhead has pu( 
 the tent on the wrong side of the lake, after all. Holla, 
 you, sir 1 " and the unhappy gardener looked up from his
 
 42 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 flower-beds ; " what ails you ? I have a great mind to tell 
 my father of you you grow stupider every day. I told 
 you to put the tent under the lime-trees." 
 
 " We could not manage it, sir ; the houghs were in tlio 
 way." 
 
 " And why did not you cut the boughs, blockhead ? " 
 
 " I did not dare do so, sir, without master's orders," said 
 the man, doggedly. 
 
 " My orders are sufficient, I should think ; so none of 
 your impertinence," cried Philip, with a raised colour ; 
 and lifting his hand, in which he held his ramrod, he shook 
 it menacingly over the gardener's head, "I've a great 
 mind to " 
 
 " What's the matter, Philip ?" cried the good-humoured 
 voice of his father. " Fie ! " 
 
 " This fellow does not mind what I say, sir." 
 
 " I did not like to cut the boughs of the lime-trees with- 
 out your orders, sir," said the gardener. 
 
 " No, it would be a pity to cut them. You should con- 
 sult me there, Master Philip ; " and the father shook him 
 by the collar with a good-natured, and affectionate, but 
 rough sort of caress. 
 
 " Be quiet, father ! " said the boy, petulantly and proudly ; 
 " or," he added, in a lower voice, but one which showed 
 emotion, "my cousin may think you mean less kindly than 
 you always do, sir." 
 
 The father was touched : " Go and cut the lime-boughs, 
 John ; and always do as Mr. Philip tells you." 
 
 The mother was behind, and she sighed audibly. " Ah ! 
 dearest, I fear you will spoil him." 
 
 "Is he not your son ? and do we not owe him the more 
 respect for having hitherto allowed others to " 
 
 He stopped, and the mother could say no more. And 
 thus it was, that this boy of powerful character and strong 
 passions had, from motives the most amiable, been pam- 
 pered from the darling into the despot. 
 
 "And now, Kate, I will, as I told you last night, ride 
 over to ***** and fix the earliest day for our public 
 marriage : I will ask the lawyer to dine here, to talk about 
 the proper steps for proving the private one." 
 
 " Will that be difficult ? " asked Catherine, with natural 
 anxiety. 
 
 " No, for if you remember, I had the precaution to get
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 43 
 
 an examined copy of the register ; otherwise, I owu to 
 you, I should have been alarmed. I don't know what has 
 become of Smith. I heard some time since from his father 
 that he had left the colony ; and (I never told you before 
 it would have made you uneasy) once, a few years ago, 
 when my uncle again got it into his head that we might be 
 married, I was afraid poor Caleb's successor might, by 
 
 chance, betray us. So I went over to A myself, being 
 
 near it when I was staying with Lord C , in order ti 
 
 see how far it might be necessary to secure the parson ; 
 and, only think ! I found an accident had happened to the 
 register so, as the clergyman could know nothing, I kept 
 my own counsel. How lucky I have the copy ! No doubt 
 the lawyer will set all to rights ; and, while I am making 
 settlements, I may as well make my will. I have plenty 
 for both boys, but the dark one must be the heir. Does he 
 not look born to be an eldest son ? " 
 
 "Ah, Philip!" 
 
 " Pshaw ! one don't die the sooner for making a will. 
 Have I the air of a man in a consumption ! " and the 
 sturdy sportsman glanced complacently at the strength 
 and symmetry of his manly limbs. " Come, Phil, let's go 
 to the stables. Now, Robert, I will show you what is better 
 worth seeing than those miserable flower-beds." So say- 
 ing, Mr. Beaufort led the way to the court-yard at the 
 back of the cottage. Catherine and Sidney remained on 
 the lawn ; the rest followed the host. The grooms, of 
 whom Beaufort was the idol, hastened to show how well 
 the horses had thriven in his absence. 
 
 "Do see how Brown Bess has come on, sir : but, to be 
 sure, Master Philip keeps her in exercise. Ah, sir, he will 
 be as good a rider as your honour, one of these days." 
 
 " He ought to be a better, Tom ; for I think he '11 never 
 have my weight to carry. Well, saddle Brown Bess for 
 Mr. Philip. What horse shall I take ? Ah ! here 's my 
 old friend, Puppet ! " 
 
 "I don't know what's come to Puppet, sir; he's off his 
 feed, and turned sulky. I tried him over the bar yester- 
 day ; but he was quite restive like." 
 
 " The devil he was ! So, so, old boy, you shall go ovet 
 the six-barred gate to-day, or we'll know why." And Mr. 
 Beaufort patted the sleek neck of his favourite hunter 
 " Put the saddle on him, Tom."
 
 44 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 " Yes, your honour. I sometimes think he is hurt in 
 the loins somehow he don't take to his leaps kindly, and 
 he always tries to bite when we bridles him. Be quiet, 
 sir!" 
 
 " Only his airs," said Philip. " I did not know this, or 
 I would have taken Vn'm over the gate. Why did not you 
 tell me, Tom ? " 
 
 " Lord love you, sir ! because you have such a spurret ; 
 and if anything had come to you " 
 
 " Quite right : you are not weight enough for Puppet, 
 my boy ; and he never did like any one to back him but 
 myself. What say you, brother, will you ride with us ? " 
 
 " No, I must go to ***** to-day with Arthur. I have 
 engaged the post-horses at two o'clock ; but I shall be with 
 you to-morrow or the day after. You see his tutor expects 
 him ; and as he is backward in his mathematics, he has no 
 time to lose." 
 
 " Well, then, good-bye, nephew ! " and Beaufort slipped 
 a pocket-book into the boy's hand. " Tush ! whenever 
 you want money, don't trouble your father write to me 
 we shall be always glad to see you ; and you must teach 
 Philip to like his book a little better eh, Phil ? " 
 
 " No, father ; J shall be rich enough to do without 
 books," said Philip, rather coarsely; but then observing 
 the heightened colour of his cousin, he went up to him, 
 and with a generous impulse said, "Arthur, you admired 
 this gun ; pray accept it. Nay, don't be shy I can have 
 as many as I like for the asking : you 're not so well off, 
 you know." 
 
 The intention was kind, but the manner was so patron- 
 ising that Arthur felt offended. He put back the gun, and 
 said, drily, " I shall have no occasion for the gun, thank 
 you." 
 
 If Arthur was offended by the offer, Philip was much 
 iiore offended by the refusal. " As you like ; I hate pride," 
 said he ; and he gave the gun to the groom as he vaulted 
 into his saddle, with the lightness of a young Mercury. 
 " Come, father ! " 
 
 Mr. Beaufort had now mounted his favourite hunter 
 a large, powerful horse well known for its prowess in the 
 field. The rider trotted him once or twice through the 
 spacious yard. 
 
 "Nonsense Tom: no more hurt in the loins than I am.
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 45 
 
 Open tliat gate ; we will go across the paddook, and take 
 the gate yonder the old six-bar eh, Phil ?'* 
 
 " Capital ! to be sure ! " 
 
 The gate was opened the grooms stood watchful to see 
 the leap, and a kindred curiosity arrested Robert Beaufort 
 and his son. 
 
 How well they looked ! those two horsemen ; the ease, 
 lightness, spirit of the one, with the fine- limbed and fiery 
 steed that literally " bounded beneath him as a barb " 
 Beemingly as gay, as ardent, and as haughty as the boy- 
 rider. And the manly, and almost herculean, form, of the 
 elder Beaufort, which, from the buoyancy of its move- 
 ments, and the supple grace that belongs to the perfect 
 mastership of any athletic art, possessed an elegance and 
 dignity, especially on horseback, which rarely accompanies 
 proportions equally sturdy and robust. There was indeed 
 something knightly and chivalrous in the bearing of the 
 elder Beaufort in his handsome aquiline features, the 
 erectness of his mien, the very wave of his hand, as he 
 spurred from the yard. 
 
 " What a fine-looking fellow my uncle is ! " said Arthur, 
 with involuntary admiration. 
 
 " Ay, an excellent life amazingly strong ! " returned 
 the pale father, with a slight sigh. 
 
 " Philip," said Mr. Beaufort, as they cantered across the 
 paddock, " I think the gate is too much for you. I will 
 just take Puppet over, and then we will open it for you." 
 
 " Pooh, my dear father ! you don't know how I 'm im- 
 proved ! " And slackening the rein, and touching the 
 side of his horse, the young rider darted forward and 
 cleared the gate, which was of no common height, with an 
 ease that extorted a loud bravo from the proud father. 
 
 "Now, Puppet," said Mr. Beaufort, spurring his own 
 horse. The animal cantered towards the gate, and then 
 suddenly turned round with an impatient and angry snort. 
 " For shame, Puppet ! for shame, old boy ! " said the 
 sportsman, wheeling him again to the barrier. The horse 
 shook his head, as if in remonstrance ; but the spur vigor- 
 ously applied showed him that his master would not listen 
 to his mute reasonings. He bounded forward made at 
 the gate struck his hoofs against the top bar fell for- 
 ward, and threw his rider head foremost on the road 
 beyoi J The horse rose instantly jvvt so the master.
 
 46 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 The sou dismoanted, alarmed and terrified. His father 
 was speechless ! and blood gushed from, the mouth and 
 nostrils, as the head drooped heavily on the boy's breast. 
 The bystanders had witnessed the fall they crowded to 
 the spot they took the fallen man from the weak arms of 
 the son the head groom examined him with the eye of one 
 who had picked up science from his experience in such 
 casualties. 
 
 " Speak, brother ! where are you hurt ? " exclaimed 
 Robert Beaufort. 
 
 " He will never speak more ! " said the groom, bursting 
 into tears. "His neck is broken ! " 
 
 " Send for the nearest surgeon," cried Mr. Robert. 
 " Good God ! boy ! don't mount that devilish horse ! " 
 
 But Arthur had already leaped on the unhappy steed, 
 which had been the cause of this appalling affliction. 
 " Which way ? " 
 
 " Straight on to ***** only two miles every one 
 knows Mr. Powis's house. God bless you ! " said the 
 groom. 
 
 Arthur vanished. 
 
 " Lift him carefully, and take him to the house," said 
 Mr. Robert. " My poor brother ! my dear brother ! " 
 
 He was interrupted by a cry, a single shrill heart-break- 
 ing cry ; and Philip fell senseless to the ground. 
 
 No one heeded him at that hour no one heeded the 
 fatherless BASTARD. " Gently, gently," said Mr. Robert, as 
 ne followed the servants and their load. And he then 
 muttered to himself, and his sallow cheek grew bright, 
 and his breath came short : " He has made no will ! lie 
 never made a will ! " 
 
 CHAPTEE V. 
 
 w Constance. boy, then where art thou? 
 
 . . . What becomes of me?" King John. 
 
 IT was three days after the death of Philip Beaufort 
 for the surgeon arrived only to confirm the judgment of 
 the groom : In the drawing-room of the cottage, the win- 
 dows closed, lay the body, in its coffin, the lid not yet 
 nailed down. There, prostrate on the floor, tearless.
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 47 
 
 speechless, was the miserable Catherine ; poor Sidney, too 
 young to comprehend all his loss, sobbing at her side; 
 while Philip apart, seated beside the coffin, gazed ab- 
 stractedly on that cold rigid face, which had never known 
 one frown for his boyish follies. 
 
 In another room, that had been appropriated to the late 
 owner, called his study, sat Robert Beaufort. Everything 
 in this room spoke of the deceased. Partially separated 
 from the rest of the house, it communicated by a winding 
 staircase, with a chamber above, to which Philip had been 
 wont to betake himself whenever he returned late, and 
 wver- exhilarated, from some rural feast crowning a hard 
 ilay's hunt. Above a quaint old-fashioned bureau of 
 Dutch workmanship (which Philip had picked up at a sale in 
 the earlier years of his marriage) was a portrait of Cathe- 
 rine taken in the bloom of her youth. On a peg on the 
 door that led to the staircase, still hung his rough driving- 
 coat. The window commanded the view of the paddock, 
 in which the worn-out hunter or the unbroken colt grazed 
 at will. Around the walls of the " study" (a strange 
 misnomer!) hung prints of celebrated fox-hunts and re- 
 nowned steeple- chases : guns, fishing-rods, and foxes' 
 brushes, ranged with a sportman's neatness, supplied the 
 place of books. On the mantel-piece lay a cigar-case, a 
 well-worn volume on the Veterinary Art, and the last num- 
 ber of The Sporting Magazine. And in that room thus 
 witnessing of the hardy, masculine, rural life, that had 
 passed away sallow, stooping, town-worn, sat, I say, 
 Robert Beaufort, the heir-at-law, alone : for the very day 
 of the death he had remanded his son home with the letter 
 that announced to his wife the change in their fortunes, 
 and directed her to send his lawyer post-haste to the house 
 of death. The bureau, and the drawers, and the boxes 
 which contained the papers of the deceased, were open 
 their contents had been ransacked ; no certificate of the 
 private marriage, no hint of such an event ; not a paper 
 found to signify the last wishes of the rich dead man. 
 
 He had died, and made no sign. Mr. Robert Beaufort'* 
 countenance was still and composed. 
 
 A knock at the door was heard ; the lawyer entered. 
 
 " Sir, the undertakers are here, and Mr. Greaves ha? 
 ordered the bells to be rung : at three o'clock he will read 
 the service."
 
 48 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 " I am obliged to you, Blackwell, for taking these me- 
 lancholy offices on yourself. My poor brother ! it is so 
 sudden! But the funeral, you say, ought to take place 
 to-day ?" 
 
 " The weather is so warm," said the lawyer, wiping bis 
 forehead. As he spoke, the Death-bell was heard. 
 
 There was a pause. 
 
 " It would have been a terrible shock to Mrs. Morton if 
 she had been his wife," observed Mr. Blackwell. " But I 
 suppose persons of that kind have very little feeling. I 
 must say, that it was fortunate for the family, that the 
 event happened before Mr. Beaufort was wheedled into so 
 improper a marriage." 
 
 " It was fortunate, Blackwell. Have you ordered the 
 post-horses ? I shall start immediately after the funeral." 
 
 " What is to be done with the cottage, sir ? " 
 
 " You may advertise it for sale." 
 
 ' And Mrs. Morton and the boys ? " 
 
 "Hum we will consider. She was a tradesman's 
 daughter. I think I ought to provide for her suitably, 
 eh?" 
 
 " It is more than the world could expect from you, sir ; 
 it is very different from a wife." 
 
 " Oh, very ! very much so, indeed ! Just ring for a 
 lighted candle, we will seal up these boxes. And I think 
 I could take a sandwich. Poor Philip ! " 
 
 The funeral was over ; the dead shovelled away. What 
 a strange thing it does seem, that that very form which 
 we prized so charily, for which we prayed the winds to be 
 gentle^ which we lapped from the cold in our arms, from 
 whose footstep we would have removed a stone, should be 
 suddenly thrust out of sight an abomination that the 
 earth must not look upon a despicable loathsomeness, to 
 be concealed and to be forgotten ! And this same com- 
 position of bone and muscle that was yesterday so strong 
 which men respected, and women loved, and children clung 
 to to-day so lamentably powerless, unable to defend or 
 protect those who lay nearest to its heart ; its riches 
 forested from it, its wishes spat upon, its influence expiring 
 with its last sigh ! A breath from its lips making all thai 
 mighty difference between what it was and what it is ! 
 
 The post-horses were at the door as the funeral pro 
 cession returned to the house.
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 4fc 
 
 Mr. Robert Beaufort bowed slightly to Mrs. Morton, and 
 said, with his pocket-handkerchief still before his eyes 
 
 " I will write to you in a few days, ma'am ; you will find 
 that I shall not forget you. The cottage will be sold ; but 
 we sha'n't hurry you. Good-bye, ma'am ; good-bye, my 
 boys ;" and he patted his nephews on the head. 
 
 Philip winced aside, and scowled haughtily at hig uncle, 
 who muttered to himself, " That boy will come to no good ! " 
 Little Sidney put his hand into the rich man's, and looked 
 up, pleadingly, into his face. " Can't you say something 
 pleasant to poor mamma, Uncle Robert ? " 
 
 Mr. Beaufort hemmed huskily, and entered the britska 
 it had been his brother's : the lawyer followed, and they 
 drove away. 
 
 A week after the funeral, Philip stole from the house 
 into the conservatory, to gather some fruit for his mother ; 
 she had scarcely touched food since Beaufort's death. She 
 was worn to a shadow ; her hair had turned grey. Now 
 she had at last found tears, and she wept noiselessly but 
 unceasingly. 
 
 The boy had plucked some grapes, and placed them 
 carefully in his basket : he was about to select a nectarine 
 that seemed riper than the rest, when his hand was roughly 
 seized ; and the gruff voice of John Green, the gardener, 
 exclaimed, 
 
 "What are you about, Master Philip? you must not 
 touch them 'ere fruit ! " 
 
 " How dare you, fellow ! " cried the young gentleman, in 
 A tone of equal astonishment and wrath. 
 
 " None of your airs, Master Philip ! What I means is, 
 that some great folks are coming to look at the place to- 
 morrow ; and I won't have my show of fruit spoiled by 
 being pawed about by the like of you ; so, that's plain, 
 Master Philip ! " 
 
 The boy grew very pale, but remained silent. The gar- 
 dener, delighted to retaliate the insolence he had received, 
 continued 
 
 " You need not go for to look so spiteful, master ; you are 
 Hot the great man you thought you were ; you are nobodj 
 now, and so you will find ere long. So, march out, if you 
 please : I wants to lock up the glass." 
 
 As he spoke, he took the lad roughly by the arm ; but 
 Philip, the most irascible of mortals, was strong for hi
 
 5U NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 years, and fearless as a young lion. He caught up a 
 watering-pot, which the gardener had deposited while he 
 expostulated with his late tyrant, and struck the man 
 across the face with it so violently and so suddenly, thai 
 he fell back over the beds, and the glass crackled and 
 shivered under him. Philip did not wait for the foe to 
 recover his equilibrium ; but, taking up his grapes, and 
 possessing himself quietly of the disputed nectarine, quitted 
 the spot ; and the gardener did not think it prudent to 
 pursue him. To boys, under ordinary circumstances boys 
 who have buffeted their way through a scolding nursery, 
 a wrangling family, or a public school there would have 
 been nothing in this squabble to dwell on the memory or 
 vibrate on the nerves, after the first burst of passion : but 
 to Philip Beaufort it was an era in life ; it was the first 
 insult he had ever received ; it was his initiation into that 
 changed, rough, and terrible career, to which the spoiled 
 darling of vanity and love was henceforth condemned. 
 His pride and his self-esteem had incurred a fearful shock. 
 He entered the honse, and a sickness came over him ; his 
 limbs trembled ; he sat down in the hall, and, placing the 
 fruit beside him, covered his face with his hands and wept. 
 Those were not the tears of a boy, drawn from a shallow 
 source ; they were the burning, agonising, reluctant tears, 
 that men shed, wrung from the heart as if it were its blood. 
 He had never been sent to school, lest he should meet with 
 mortification. He had had various tutors, trained to show, 
 rather than to exact respect; one succeeding another, at 
 his own whim and caprice. His natural quickness, and a 
 very strong, hard, inquisitive turn of mind, had enabled 
 him, however, to pick up more knowledge, though of a 
 desultory and miscellaneous nature, than boys of his age 
 generally possess ; and his roving, independent, out-of-door 
 existence, had served to ripen his understanding. He had 
 certainly, in spite of every precaution, arrived at some, 
 though not very distinct, notion of his peculiar position ; 
 but none of its inconveniences had visited him till that day. 
 He began now to turn his eyes to the future ; and vague 
 and dark forebodings a consciousness of the shelter, the 
 protector, the station, he had lost in his father's death 
 crept coldly over him. While thus musing, a ring was 
 heard at the bell ; he lifted his head ; it was the postman 
 with a letter. Philip hastilv rwie, aud, averting his face,
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 51 
 
 on which the tears were not dried, took the letter ; and 
 then, snatching up his little basket of fruit, repaired to his 
 mother's room. 
 
 The shutters were half closed on the bright day oh, 
 what a mockery is there in the smile of the happy sun 
 when it shines on the wretched ! Mrs. Morton sat, or 
 rather crouched, in a distant corner ; her streaming eyes 
 fixed on vacancy ; listless, drooping ; a very image of deso- 
 late woe ; and Sidney was weaving flower-chains at her 
 feet. 
 
 "Mamma! mother!" whispered Philip, as he threw 
 his arms round her neck ; " look up ! look up ! my heart 
 breaks to see you. Do taste this fruit : you will die too, 
 if you go on thus ; and what will become of us of 
 Sidney ? " 
 
 Mrs. Morton did look up vaguely into- his face, and 
 strove to rfmile. 
 
 " See, too, I have brought you a letter ; perhaps good 
 news : shall I break the seal ? " 
 
 Mrs. Morton shook her head gently, and took the letter 
 alas ! how different from that one which Sidney had 
 placed in her hands not two short weeks since it was Mr. 
 Robert Beaufort's hand-writing. She shuddered, and laid 
 it down. And then there suddenly, and for the first time, 
 flashed across her the sense of her strange position the 
 dread of the future. What were her sons to be hence- 
 forth ? What herself ? Whatever the sanctity of her 
 marriage, the law might fail her. At the disposition of 
 Mr. Robert Beaufort the fate of three lives might depend. 
 She gasped for breath ; again took up the letter ; and hur- 
 ried over the contents : they ran thus : 
 
 " DEAR MADAM, Knowing that you must naturally bt 
 anxious as to the future prospects of your children and 
 
 fourself, left by my poor brother destitute of all provision, 
 take the earliest opportunity which it seems to me that 
 propriety and decorum allow, to apprise you of my inten- 
 tions. I need not say that, properly speaking, you can 
 have no kind of claim upon the relations of my late bro- 
 ther ; nor will I hurt your feelings by those moral reflec- 
 tions which at this season of sorrow cannot, I hope, fail 
 involuatarily to force themselves upon you. Without 
 more than this mere allusion to your peculiar connexion 
 
 2
 
 52 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 with my brother, I may, however, be permitted to add, 
 that that connexion tended very materially to separate him 
 from the legitimate branches of his family ; and in con- 
 sulting with them as to a provision for you and your 
 children, I find that, besides scruples that are to be re- 
 spected, some natural degree of soreness exists upon their 
 minds. Out of regard, however, to my poor Mother 
 (though I saw very little of him of late years), 1 am 
 willing to waive those feelings which, as a father and a 
 husband, you may conceive that I share with the rest of 
 my family. You will probably now decide on living with 
 some of your own relations ; and that you may not be 
 entirely a burden to them, I beg to say that I shall allow 
 you a hundred a year ; paid, if you prefer it, quarterly. 
 You may also select such articles of linen and plate as you 
 require for your own use. With regard to your sons, I 
 have no objection to place them at a grammar-school, and, 
 at a proper age, to apprentice them to any trade suitable 
 to their future station, in the choice of which your own 
 family can give you the best advice. If they conduct 
 themselves properly, they may always depend on my 
 protection. I do not wish to hurry your movements ; but 
 it will probably be painful to you to remain longer than 
 you can help in a place crowded with unpleasant recol- 
 lections ; and as the cottage is to be sold indeed, my 
 brother-in-law, Lord Lilburne, thinks it would suit him 
 you will be liable to the interruption of strangers to see 
 it ; and your prolonged residence at Fernside, you must be 
 sensible, is rather an obstacle to the sale. I beg to inclose 
 you a draft for 100Z. to pay any present expenses ; and to 
 request, when you are settled, to know where the first 
 quarter shall be paid. 
 
 " I shall write to Mr. Jackson (who, . I think, ia th 
 bailiff) to detail my instructions as to selling the crops, 
 &c., and discharging the servants ; so that you may have 
 no further trouble. 
 
 " I am, Madam, 
 
 " Your obedient Servant, 
 
 " ROBERT BEAUFORT. 
 
 " Berkeley Square, September 12th, 18 ." 
 
 The letter fell from Catherine's hands. Her grief wag 
 changed to indignation and scorn.
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 53 
 
 " The insolent!" she exclaimed, with flashing eyes. 
 " This to me ! to me ! the wife, the lawful wife of his 
 brother ! the wedded mother of his brother's children ! " 
 
 " Say that again, mother ! again again ! " cried Philip, 
 in aloud voice. " His wife ! wedded ! " 
 
 " I swear it," said Catherine, solemnly. " I kept the 
 secret for yonr father's sake. Now, for yours, the truth 
 must be proclaimed." 
 
 " Thank God ! thank God ! " murmured Philip, in a 
 quivering voice, throwing his arms round his brother, 
 " We have no brand on our names, Sidney." 
 
 At those accents, so full of suppressed joy and pride, 
 the mother felt at once all that her son had suspected and 
 concealed. She felt that beneath his haughty and way- 
 ward character there had lurked delicate and generous 
 forbearance for her ; that from his equivocal position his 
 very faults might have arisen ; and a pang of remorse for 
 her long sacrifice of the children to the father shot through 
 her heart. It was followed by a fear, an appalling fear, 
 more painful than the remorse. The proofs that were to 
 clear herself and them ! The words of her husband, that 
 last awful morning, rang in her ear. The minister dead ; 
 the witness absent ; the register lost ! But the copy of 
 that register ! the copy ! might not that suffice ? She 
 groaned, and closed her eyes as if to shut out the future : 
 then starting up, she hurried from the room, and went 
 straight to Beaufort's study. As she laid her hand on the 
 latch of the door, she trembled and drew back. But care 
 Cor the living was stronger at that moment than even 
 anguish for the dead : she entered the apartment ; she 
 passed with a firm step to the bureau. It was locked ; 
 Robert Beaufort's seal upon the lock : on every cupboard, 
 every box, every drawer, the same seal that spoke of rights 
 more valued than her own. But Catherine was not 
 daunted : she turned and saw Philip by her side ; she 
 pointed to the bureau in silence ; the boy understood the 
 appeal. He left the room, and returned in a few moments 
 with a chisel. The lock was broken : Tremblingly and 
 eagerly Catherine ransacked the contents; opened paper 
 after paper, letter after letter, in vain : no certificate, no 
 will, no memorial. Could the brother have abstracted the 
 fatal proof ? A word sufficed to explain to Philip what 
 she sought for; and Jws search was more minute than hers.
 
 54 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 Every possible receptacle for papers in that room, in the 
 whole house, was explored, and still the search was 
 fruitless. 
 
 Three hours afterwards they were in the same room in 
 which Philip had brought Robert Beaufort's letter to hia 
 mother. Catherine was seated, tearless, but deadly pale 
 with heartsickness and dismay. 
 
 " Mother," said Philip, " may I now read the letter ?" 
 
 " Yes, boy ; and decide for us all." She paused, and 
 examined his face as he read. He felt her eye was upon 
 him, and restrained his emotions as he proceeded. When 
 he had done, he lifted his dark gaze upon Catherine's 
 Watchful countenance. 
 
 " Mother, whether or not we obtain our rights, you will 
 still refuse this man's charity ? I am young a boy ; but 
 I am strong and active. I will work for you day and 
 night. I have it in me I feel it ; anything rather than 
 eating his bread." 
 
 " Philip ! Philip ! you are indeed my son ; your father's 
 son ! And have you no reproach for your mother, who so 
 weakly, so criminally, concealed your birthright, till, alas ! 
 discovery may be too late ? Oh ! reproach me, reproach 
 me ! it will be kindness. No ! do not kiss me ! I cannot 
 bear it. Boy ! boy ! if, as my heart tells me, we fail in 
 proof, do you understand what, in the world's eye, T am ; 
 what you are ? " 
 
 " I do ! " said Philip, firmly ; and he fell on his knees 
 at her feet. " Whatever others call you, you are a mother, 
 and I your son. You are, in the judgment of Heaven, my 
 father's Wife, and I his Heir." 
 
 Catherine bowed her head, and, with a gush of tears, 
 fell into his arms. Sidney crept up to her, and forced his 
 lips to her cold cheek. " Mamma ! what vexes you ? 
 Mamma, mamma ! " 
 
 " Oh, Sidney ! Sidney ! How like his father ! Look at 
 him, Philip ! Shall we do right to refuse him eren this 
 pittance ? Must he be a beggar too ? " 
 
 " Never a beggar," said Philip, with a pride that showed 
 tfhat hard lessons he had yet to learn. " The lawful sons 
 of a Beaufort were not born to beg their bread ? "
 
 NIGHT AND MOftNINtt. 55 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 ' The storm above, and frozen world below. 
 
 *** 
 
 The olive bough 
 
 Faded and cast upon the common wind, 
 And earth a doveless ark." LAMAN BLANCHAUD. 
 
 MR. ROBERT BEAUFORT was generally considered by the 
 world a very worthy man. He had never committed any 
 excess never gambled nor incurred debt nor fallen into 
 the warm errors most common with his sex. He was a 
 good husband a careful father an agreeable neighbour 
 rather charitable than otherwise, to the poor. He was 
 honest and methodical in his dealings, and had been known 
 to behave handsomely in different relations of life. Mr. 
 Robert Beaufort, indeed, always meant to do what was 
 right in the eyes of the world ! He had no other rule of 
 action but that which the world supplied : his religion waj> 
 decorum his sense of honour was regard to opinion. His 
 heart was a dial to which the world was the sun : when 
 the great eye of the public fell on it, it answered every 
 purpose that a heart could answer ; but when that eye was 
 invisible, the dial was mute a piece of brass and nothing 
 more. 
 
 It is just to Robert Beaufort to assure the reader that 
 he wholly disbelieved his brother's story of a private mar- 
 riage. He considered that tale, when heard for the first 
 time, as the mere invention (and a shallow one) of a man 
 wishing to make the imprudent step he was about to take 
 as respectable as he could. The careless tone of his brother 
 when speaking upon the subject his confession that of 
 Buch a marriage there were no distinct proofs, except a copy 
 of a register (which copy Robert had not found) made 
 his incredulity natural. He therefore deemed himself 
 under no obligation of delicacy, or respect, to a woman 
 through whose means he had very nearly lost a noble suc- 
 cession a woman who had not even borne his brother's 
 name a woman whom nobody knew. Had Mrs. Morton 
 been Mrs. Beaufort, and the natural sons legitimate chil- 
 dren, Robert Beaufort, supposing their situation of relative 
 power and dependence to have been the same, would have 
 behaved with careful and scrupulous generosity. The
 
 56 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 world would have said, " Nothing can be handsomer than 
 Mr. Robert Beaufort's conduct ! " Nay, if Mrs. Morton 
 had been some divorced wife of birth and connexions, he 
 would have made very different dispositions in her favour-, 
 he would not have allowed the connexions to call him 
 shabby. But here he felt that, all circumstances considered, 
 the world, if it spoke at all, (which it would scarcely think 
 it worth while to do,) would be on his side. AB artful 
 woman low-born, and, of course, low-bred who wanted 
 to inveigle her rich and careless paramour into marriage ; 
 what could be expected from the man she had sought to 
 injure the rightful heir ? Was it not very good in him 
 to do anything for her, and, if he provided for the children 
 suitably to the original station of the mother, did he not g& 
 to the very utmost of reasonable expectation ? He cer- 
 tainly thought in his conscience, such as it was, that he 
 had acted well not extravagantly, not foolishly ; but well. 
 He was sure the world would say so if it knew all : he was 
 not bound to do anything. He was not, therefore, pre- 
 pared for Catherine's short, haughty, but temperate reply 
 to his letter : a reply which conveyed a decided refusal of 
 bis offers asserted positively her own marriage, and the 
 claims of her children intimated legal proceedings and 
 was signed in the name of Catherine Beaufort. Mr. Beau- 
 fort put the letter in his bureau, labelled, " Impertinent 
 answer from Mrs. Morton, Sept. 14," and was quite con- 
 tented to forget the existence of the writer, until his 
 lawyer, Mr. Blackwell, informed him that a suit had been 
 instituted by Catherine. Mr. Robert turned pale, but 
 Blackwell composed him. 
 
 " Pooh, sir ! you have nothing to fear. It is but an 
 attempt to extort money : the attorney is a low practi- 
 tioner, accustomed to get up bad cases : they can make 
 nothing of it." 
 
 This was true : whatever the rights of the case, poor 
 Catherine had no proofs no evidence which could justify 
 a respectable lawyer to advise her proceeding to a suit. 
 She named two witnesses of her marriage one dead, the 
 other could not be heard of. She selected for the alleged 
 place in which the ceremony was performed a very remote 
 village, in which it appeared that the register had been 
 destroyed. No attested copy thereof was to be found, and 
 Catherine was stunned on hearing that, even if found, it
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 57 
 
 was doubtful whether it could be received as evidence, 
 unless to corroborate actual personal testimony. It so 
 happened that when Philip, many years ago, had received 
 n copy, he had not shown it to Catherine, nor mentioned 
 Mr. Jones's name as the copyist. In fact, then only three 
 years married to Catherine, his worldly caution had not 
 yet been conquered by confident experience of her gene- 
 rosity. As for the mere moral evidence dependent on the 
 publication of her bans in London, that amounted to no 
 
 proof whatever ; nor, on inquiry at A , did the Welsh 
 
 villagers remember anything further than that, some fifteen 
 years ago, a handsome gentleman had visited Mr. Price, 
 and one or two rather thought that Mr. Price had married 
 him to a lady from London ; evidence quite inadmissible 
 against the deadly, damning fact, that, for fifteen years, 
 Catherine had openly borne another name, and lived with 
 Mr. Beaufort ostensibly as his mistress. Her generosity 
 in this destroyed her case. Nevertheless, she found a low 
 practitioner, who took her money and neglected her cause ; 
 BO her suit was heard and dismissed with contempt. 
 Henceforth, then, indeed, in the eyes of the law and the 
 public, Catherine was an impudent adventurer, and her 
 sons were nameless outcasts. 
 
 And now, relieved from all fear, Mr. Robert Beaufort 
 entered upon the full enjoyment of his splendid fortune. 
 The house in Berkeley Square was furnished anew. Great 
 dinners and gay routs were given in the ensuing spring. 
 Mr. and Mrs. Beaufort became persons of considerable im- 
 portance. The rich man had, even when poor, been am- 
 bitious ; his ambition now centered in his only son. Arthur 
 had always been considered a boy of talents and promise 
 to what might he not now aspire? The term of his 
 probation with the tutor was abridged, and Arthur Beaufort 
 was sent at once to Oxford. 
 
 Before he went to the university, during a short pre- 
 paratory visit to his father, Arthur spoke to him of the 
 Mortons. 
 
 " What has become of them, sir? and what have you 
 done for them ? " 
 
 " Done for them !" said Mr. Beaufort, opening his eyes. 
 " What should I do for persons who have just been ha- 
 rassing me with the most unprincipled litigation ? My 
 Conduct to them has been too generous that is, all things
 
 58 N1UHT AND MORNING. 
 
 considered. But when yon are my age you will find 
 there is very little gratitude in the world, Arthur." 
 
 " Still, sir," said Arthur, with the good nature that be- 
 longed to him : " still, my uncle was greatly attached to 
 them ; and the boys, at least, are guiltless." 
 
 " Well, well ! " replied Mr. Beaufort, a little impatiently; 
 u I believe they want for nothing : I fancy they are with 
 the mother's relations. Whenever they address me in a 
 proper manner, they shall not find me revengeful or hard- 
 hearted; but, since we are on this topic," continued the 
 father, smoothing his shirt-frill with a care that showed 
 his decorum even in trifles, " I hope you see the results of 
 that kind of connexion, and that you will take warning by 
 your poor uncle's example. And now let us change th 
 subject ; it is not a very pleasant one, and, at your age, the 
 less your thoughts turn on such matters the better." 
 
 Arthur Beaufort, with the careless generosity of youth, 
 that gauges other men's conduct by its own sentiments, 
 believed that his father, who had never been niggardly to 
 himself, had really acted as his words implied ; and, en- 
 grossed by the pursuits of the new and brilliant career 
 opened, whether to his pleasures or his studies, suffered the 
 objects of his inquiries to pass from his thoughts. 
 
 Meanwhile, Mrs. Morton, for by that name we must still 
 call her, and her children, were settled in a small lodging 
 in a humble suburb ; situated on the high road between 
 Fernside and the metropolis. She saved from her hopeless 
 law-suit, after the sale of her jewels and ornaments, a 
 sufficient sum to enable her, with economy, to live respect- 
 ably for a year or two at least, during which time she 
 might arrange her plans for the future. She reckoned, as 
 a sure resource, upon the assistance of her relations ; but 
 it was one to which she applied with natural shame and 
 reluctance. She had kept up a correspondence with her 
 father during his life. To him, she never revealed the 
 secret of her marriage, though she did not write like a 
 person conscious of error. Perhaps, as she always said to 
 her son, she had made to her husband a solemn promise 
 never to divulge or even hint that secret until he himself 
 should authorise its disclosure. For neither he not 
 Catherine ever contemplated separation or death. Alas \ 
 how all of us, when happy, sleep secure in the dark 
 shadows, which ought to warn us of the sorrows that are
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 59 
 
 to come . Still Catherine's father, a man of coarse mind 
 and not rigid principles, did not take much to heart that 
 connexion which he assumed to be illicit. She was pro- 
 vided for, that was some comfort : doubtless Mr. Beaufort 
 would act like a gentleman, perhaps at last make her an 
 "lonest woman and a lady. Meanwhile, she had a fine 
 house, and a fine carriage, and fine servants ; and so far 
 from applying to him for money, was constantly sending 
 him little presents. But Catherine only saw, in his per- 
 mission of her correspondence, kind, forgiving, and trustful 
 affection, and she loved him tenderly : when he died, the 
 link that bound her to her family was broken. Her brother 
 succeeded to the trade ; a man of probity and honour, but 
 Somewhat hard and unamiable. In the only letter she had 
 received from him the one announcing her father's death 
 he told her plainly, and very properly, that he could not 
 countenance the life she led : that he had children growing 
 up that all intercourse between them was at an end, unless 
 she left Mr. Beaufort ; when, if she sincerely repented, he 
 would still prove her affectionate brother. 
 
 Though Catherine had at the time resented this letter as 
 unfeeling now, humbled and sorrow- stricken, she recog- 
 nised the propriety of principle from which it emanated. 
 Her brother was well off for his station she would explain 
 to him her real situation he would believe her story. She 
 would write to him, and beg him, at least, to give aid to 
 her poor children. 
 
 But this step she did not take till a considerable portion 
 *f her pittance was consumed till nearly three parts of a 
 year since Beaufort's death had expired and till sundry 
 warnings, not to be lightly heeded, had made her forbode 
 the probability of an early death for herself. From the 
 age of sixteen, when she had been placed by Mr. Beaufort 
 at the head of his household, she had been cradled, not in 
 extravagance, but in an easy luxury, which had not brought 
 with it habits of economy and thrift. She could grudge 
 anything to herself, but to her children his children, 
 whose every whim had been anticipated, she had not the 
 heart to be saving. She could have starved in a garret 
 had she been alone ; but she could not see them wanting a 
 comfort while she possessed a guinea. Philip, to do him 
 justice, evinced a consideration not to have been expected 
 from his early and arrogant recklessness. But Sidney,
 
 60 NIGHT AND MOKN1JNG. 
 
 who could expect consideration from snch a child ? What 
 could he know of the change of circumstances of the 
 value of money ? Did he seem dejected, Catherine would 
 steal out and spend a week's income on the lapful of toys 
 which she brought home. Did he seem a shade more pale 
 did he complain of the slightest ailment, a doctor must 
 be sent for. Alas ! her own ailments, neglected and un- 
 heeded, were growing beyond the reach of medicine. 
 Anxious fearfcd gnawed by regret for the past the 
 thought of famine in the future she daily fretted and 
 wore herself away. She had cultivated her mind during 
 her secluded residence with Mr. Beaufort, but she had 
 learned none of the arts by which decayed gentlewomen 
 keep the wolf from the door ; no little holiday accomplish- 
 ments, which, in the day of need, turn to useful trade ; no 
 water-colour drawings, no paintings on velvet, no fabrica- 
 tion of pretty gewgaws, no embroidery and fine needlework. 
 She was helpless utterly helpless ; if she had resigned 
 herself to the thought of service, she would not have had 
 the physical strength for a place of drudgery, and where 
 could she have found the testimonials necessary for a place 
 of trust ? A great change, at this time, was apparent in 
 Philip. Had he fallen, then, into kind hands, and under 
 guiding eyes, his passions and energies might have ripened 
 into rare qualities and great virtues. But perhaps, as 
 Goethe has somewhere said, "Experience, after all, is the 
 best Teacher." He kept a constant guard on his vehement 
 temper his wayward will ; he would not have vexed his 
 mother for the world. But, strange to say (it was a great 
 mystery in the woman's heart), in proportion as he became 
 more amiable, it seemed that his mother loved him less. 
 Perhaps she did not, in that change, recognise so closely 
 the darling of the old time ; perhaps the very weaknesses 
 and importunities of Sidney, the hourly sacrifices the child 
 entailed upon her, endeared the younger son more to her 
 from that natural sense of dependence and protection which 
 forms the great bond between mother and child ; perhaps, 
 too, as Philip had been one to inspire as much pride as 
 affection, so the pride faded away with the expectations 
 that had fed it, and carried off in its decay some of the 
 affection that was intertwined with it. However this be, 
 Philip had formerly appeared the more spoiled and 
 favoured of the two ; and now Sidney seemed all in all.
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 61 
 
 Thus, beneath the younger son's caressing gentleness, there 
 grew up a certain regard for self ; it was latent, it took 
 amiable colours ; it had even a certain charm and grace in 
 BO sweet a child, but selfishness i was not the less : in this 
 he differed from his brother. Philip was self-willed: 
 Sidney, self-loving. A certain timidity of character, en- 
 dearing perhaps to the anxious heart of a mother, made 
 this fault in the younger boy more likely to take root. For, 
 in bold natures, there is a lavish and uncalculating reck- 
 lessness which scorns self unconsciously : and though there 
 is a fear which arises from a loving heart, and is but 
 sympathy for others the fear which belongs to a timid 
 character is but egotism but, when physical, the regard 
 for one's own person : when moral, the anxiety for one's 
 own interests. 
 
 It was in a small room in a lodging-house in the suburb ot 
 H that Mrs. Morton was seated by the window, ner- 
 vously awaiting the knock of the postman, who was expected 
 to bring her brother's reply to her letter. It was, therefore, 
 between ten and eleven o'clock a morning in the merry 
 month of June. It was hot and sultry, which is rare in an 
 English June. A flytrap, red, white, and yellow, suspended 
 from the ceiling, swarmed with flies ; flies were on the 
 ceiling, flies buzzed at the windows ; the sofa and chairs of 
 horse-hair seemed stuffed with flies. There was an air of 
 heated discomfort in the thick, solid moreen curtains, in 
 the gaudy paper, in the bright-staring carpet, in the very 
 looking-glass over the chimney-piece, where a strip of 
 mirror lay imprisoned in an embrace of frame covered with 
 yellow muslin. We may talk of the dreariness of winter ; 
 and winter, no doubt, is desolate : but what in the world is 
 more dreary to eyes inured to the verdure and bloom of 
 Nature 
 
 " The pomp of groves and garniture of fields," 
 
 than a close room in a suburban lodging-house; the 
 sun piercing every corner; nothing fresh, nothing cool, 
 nothing fragrant to be seen, felt, or inhaled; all dust, 
 glare, noise, with a chandler's shop, perhaps, next door ? 
 Sidney, armed with a pair of scissors, was cutting the 
 pictuiuJ out of a story-book, which his mother had bought 
 him the day before. Philip, who, of late, had taken much 
 to rambling about the streets it may be, in hopes of
 
 62 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 meeting one of those benevolent, eccentric, elderly gentle- 
 men, he had read of in old novels, who suddenly come to 
 the relief of distressed virtue ; or, more probably, from the 
 restlessness that belonged to his adventurous temperament; 
 Philip had left the house since breakfast. 
 
 " Oh ! how hot this nasty room is ! " exclaimed Sidney, 
 abruptly, looking up from his employment. " Sha'n't \vo 
 ever go into the country again, mamma ? " 
 
 "Not at present, my love." 
 
 " I wish I could have my pony ; why can't I have my 
 pony, mamma?" 
 
 " Because because the pony is sold, Sidney." 
 
 "Who sold it?" 
 
 "Your uncle." 
 
 " He is a very naughty man, my uncle : is not he ? But, 
 can't I have another pony ? It would be so nice, this fine 
 weather ! " 
 
 " Ah ! my dear, I wish I could afford it : but you shall 
 have a ride this week ! Yes," continued the mother, as if 
 reasoning with herself, in excuse of the extravagance, " ho 
 does not look well : poor child ! he musi have exercise." 
 
 "A ride! oh! that is my own kind mamma!" ex- 
 claimed Sidney, clapping his hands. " Not on a donkey, 
 you know ! a pony. The man down the street, there, lets 
 ponies. I must have the white pony with the long tail. 
 But, I say, mamma, don't tell Philip, pray don't ; he would 
 be jealous." 
 
 " No, not jealous, my dear ; why do you think so ? " 
 
 " Because he is always angry when I ask you for any- 
 thing. It is very unkind in him, for I don't care if he has 
 a pony, too, only not the white one." 
 
 Here the postman's knock, loud and sudden, startled 
 Mrs. Morton from her seat. She pressed her hands tightly 
 to her heart, as if to still its beating, and went tremulously 
 to the door ; thence to the stairs, to anticipate the lumbering 
 step of the slipshod maid-servant. 
 
 " Give it me, Jane ; give it me ! " 
 
 " One shilling and eightpence charged double jf f/o 
 please, ma'am ! Thank you." 
 
 " Mamma, may I tell Jane to engage the pony ? " 
 
 "Not now, my love; sit down; be quiet: I I am not 
 well." 
 
 Sidney, who was affectionate and obedient, crept back
 
 FIGHT AND MORNING, 60 
 
 peaceably to the window, and, after a short, impatient sigh, 
 resumed the scissors and the story-book. I do not apologise 
 to the reader for the various letters I am obliged to lay 
 before him : for character often betrays itself more in 
 letters than in speech. Mr. Roger Morton's reply was 
 couched in these terms : 
 
 " DEAB CATHERINE, I have received your letter of the 
 14th inst., and write per return. I am very much grieved 
 to hear of your afflictions ; but, whatever you say, I cannot 
 think the late Mr. Beaufort acted like a conscientious man, 
 in forgetting to make his will, and leaving his little ones 
 destitute. It is all very well to talk of his intentions ; but 
 the proof of the pudding is in the eating. And it is hard 
 upon me, who have a large family of my own, and get my 
 livelihood by honest industry, to have a rich gentleman's 
 children to maintain. As for your story about the private 
 marriage, it may or not be. Perhaps you were taken in by 
 that worthless man, for a real marriage it could not be. 
 And, as you say, the law has decided that point ; therefore, 
 the less you say on the matter the better. It all comes to 
 the same thing. People are not bound to believe what 
 can't be proved. And even if what you say is true, you 
 are more to be blamed than pitied for holding your tongue 
 so many years, and discrediting an honest family as ours 
 has always been considered. I am sure my wife would not 
 have thought of such a thing for the finest gentleman that 
 ever wore shoe-leather. However, I don't want to hurt 
 your feelings ; and I am sure I am ready to do whatever is 
 right and proper. You cannot expect that I should ask you 
 to my house. My wife, you know, is a very religious 
 woman what is called evangelical ; but that's neither here 
 nor there : I deal with all people, churchmen and dis- 
 senters even Jews, and don't trouble my head much 
 about differences in opinion. I dare say there are many 
 ways to heaven ; as I said, the other day, to Mr. Thwaites, 
 our member. But it is right to say my wife will not hear 
 of your coming here ; and, indeed, it might do harm to my 
 business, for there are several elderly single gentlewomen; 
 who buy flannel for the poor at my shop, and they are very 
 particular ; as they ought to be, indeed : for morals are 
 very strict in this county, and particularly in this town, 
 whore we certainly do pay very high church-rates. Not
 
 t>* NIGHT AND MOENI1SG. 
 
 that I grumble ; for, though I am as liberal as any man, 1 
 am for an established church ; as I ought to be, since the 
 dean is my best customer. With regard to yourself I 
 inclose you 10?., and you will let me know when it is gone, 
 and I will see what more I can do. You say you are very 
 poorly, which I am sorry to hear ; but you must pluck up 
 your spirits, and take in plain work ; and I really think 
 you ought to apply to Mr. Robert Beaufort. He bears a 
 high character ; and, notwithstanding your lawsuit, which 
 I cannot approve of, I dare say he might allow you 40Z. or 
 50Z. a-year, if you apply properly, which would be the right 
 thing in him. So much for you. As for the boys poor, 
 fatherless creatures ! it is very hard that they should be 
 so punished for no fault of their own ; and my wife, who, 
 though strict, is a good-hearted woman, is ready and willing 
 to do what I wish about them. You say the eldest is near 
 sixteen, and well come on in his studies. I can get him a 
 very good thing in a light, genteel way. My wife's brother, 
 Mr. Christopher Plaskwith, is a bookseller and stationer, 
 
 with pretty practice, in R . He is a clever man, and 
 
 has a newspaper, which he kindly sends me every week ; 
 and, though it is not my county, it has some very sensible 
 views, and is often noticed in the London papers, as ' our 
 provincial contemporary.' Mr. Plaskwith owes me some 
 money, which I advanced him when he set up the paper ; 
 and he has several times most honestly offered to pay me, 
 in shares in the said paper. But, as the thing might break, 
 and I don't like concerns I don't understand, I have not 
 taken advantage of his very handsome proposals. Now 
 Plaskwith wrote me word, two days ago, that he wanted a 
 genteel, smart lad, as assistant and 'prentice, and offered 
 to take my eldest boy ; but we can't spare him. I write 
 to Christopher by this post ; and if your youth will run 
 down on the top of the coach, and inquire for Mr. Flask* 
 with the fare is trifling I have no doubt he will be 
 engaged at once. But you will say, ' There's the premium 
 to consider ! ' No such thing ; Kit will set off the pre- 
 mium against his debt to me ; so you will have nothing to 
 pay. 'Tis a very pretty business ; and the lad's education 
 will get him on ; so that's off your mind. As to the little 
 chap, I'll take him at once. You say he is a pretty boy ; 
 and a pretty boy is always a help in a linen-draper's shop. 
 He shall share and share with my own young folks ; and
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 65 
 
 Mrs . Morton will take care of his washing and morals. I 
 conclude (this is Mrs. M.'s suggestion) that he has had 
 the measles, cowpock, and hooping-cough, which please let 
 me know. If he behave well, which, at his age, we can 
 easily break him into, he is settled for life. So now you 
 have got rid of two mouths to feed, and have nobody to 
 think of but yourself, which must be a great comfort. 
 Don't forget to write to Mr. Beaufort ; and if he don't do 
 something for you, he's not the gentleman I take him for: 
 but you are my own flesh and blood, and shan't starve ; 
 for, though I don't think it right in a man in business to 
 encourage what's wrong, yet, when a person's down in the 
 world, I think an ounce of help is better than a pound of 
 preaching. My wife thinks otherwise, and wants to send 
 you some tracts ; but everybody can't be as correct as some 
 folks. However, as I said before, that's neither here nor 
 there. Let me know when your boy comes down, and also 
 about the measles, cowpock, and hooping-cough ; also if 
 all's right with Mr. Plaskwith. So now I hope you will 
 feol more comfortable ; and remain, 
 
 " Dear Catherine, 
 " Your forgiving and affectionate brother, 
 
 " ROGER MORTON. 
 Hiyh Street, N , /*m 13." 
 
 " P.S. Mrs. M. says that she will be a mother to your 
 little boy, and that you had better mend up all his linen 
 before you send him." 
 
 As Catherine finished this epistle, she lifted her eyes and 
 beheld Philip. He had entered noiselessly, and he remained 
 silent, leaning against, the wall, and watching the face of 
 his mother, which crimsoned with painful humiliation while 
 she read. Philip was not now the trim and dainty stripling 
 first introduced to the reader. He had outgrown his faded 
 sir.i of funereal mourning; his long-neglected hair hung 
 elf-like and matted down his cheeks ; there was a gloomy 
 look in his bright dark eyes. Poverty never botrays itself 
 more than in the features and form of Pride. It was evi- 
 dent that his spirit endured, rather than accommodated 
 itself to, his fallen state ; and, notwithstanding his soiled 
 and threadbare garments, and a haggardness that ill be- 
 oomcs the years of palmy youth, there was about, his whole
 
 66 NIGHT ANT/" MORNING. 
 
 mien and person a wild and savage grandeur more impres- 
 sive than his former ruffling arrogance of manner. 
 
 ""Well, mother," said he, with a strange mixture of 
 sternness in his countenance, and pity in his voice ; " well, 
 mother, and what says your brother ? " 
 
 " You decided for us once before, decide again. But I 
 need not ask yoti ; you would never " 
 
 "I don't know," interrupted Philip, vaguely; "let me 
 see what we are to decide on." 
 
 Mrs. Morton was naturally a woman of high courage 
 and spirit, but sickness and grief had worn down both ; 
 and though Philip was but sixteen, there is something in 
 the very nature of woman especially in trouble which 
 makes her seek to lean on some other will than her own. 
 She gave Philip the letter, and went quietly to sit down 
 by Sidney. 
 
 "Your brother means well," said Philip, when he had 
 concluded the epistle. 
 
 " Yes, but nothing is to be done ; I cannot, cannot send 
 poor Sidney to to " and Mrs. Morton sobbed. 
 
 " No, my dear, dear mother, no ; it would be terrible, 
 indeed, to part you and him. But this bookseller Plask- 
 with perhaps I shall be able to support you both." 
 
 " Why, you do not think, Philip, of being an apprentice ! 
 you, who have been so brought up you, who are so 
 proud ! " 
 
 " Mother, I would sweep the crossings for your sake ! 
 Mother, for your sake I would go to my uncle Beaufort 
 with my hat in my hand, for half-pence. Mother, I am 
 not proud I would be honest, if I can but when I see 
 you pining away, and so changed, the devil comes into me, 
 and I often shudder lest I should commit some crime 
 what, I don't know ! " 
 
 " Come here, Philip my own Philip my son, my hope, 
 my firstborn ! " and the mother's heart gushed forth in 
 all the fondness of early days. " Don't speak so terribly, 
 you frighten me ! " 
 
 She threw her arms round his neck, and kissed him 
 soothingly. He laid his burning temples on her bosom, 
 and nestled himself to her, as he had been wont to do, 
 after some stormy paroxysm of his passionate and way- 
 ward infancy. So there they remained their lips silent, 
 their hearts speaking to each other each from each taking
 
 NIGHT AN1> MORtflNO. 67 
 
 succour and holy strength till Philip rose, calm, 
 and with a quiet smile, " Good-bye, mother ; I will go at 
 once to Mr. Plaskwith." 
 
 " But you have no money for the coach-fare ; here, 
 Philip," and she placed her purse in his hand, from which 
 he reluctantly selected a few shillings. " And mind, if the 
 man is rude and you dislike him mind, you must not 
 subject yourself to insolence and mortification." 
 
 " Oh, all will go well, don't fear," said Philip, cheerfully, 
 and he left the house. 
 
 Towards evening he had reached his destination. The 
 shop was of goodly exterior, with a private entrance ; over 
 the shop was written, " Christopher Plaskwith, Bookseller 
 and Stationer : " on the private door a brass plate, in- 
 scribed with " R and * Mercury Office, Mr. Flask- 
 
 with." Philip applied at the private entrance, and was 
 shown by a " neat-handed Phillis " into a small office-room. 
 In a few minutes the door opened, and the bookseller 
 entered. 
 
 Mr. Christopher Plaskwith was a short, stout man, in 
 drab-coloured breeches, and gaiters to match ; a black 
 coat and waistcoat ; he wore a large watch-chain., with a 
 prodigious bunch of seals, alternated by small keys and 
 old-fashioned mourning-rings. His complexion was pale 
 and sodden, and his hair short, dark, and pleek. The 
 bookseller valued himself on a likeness to Buonaparte ; 
 ftnd affected a short, brusque, peremptory manner, which 
 he meant to be the indication of the vigorous and decisive 
 character of his prototype. 
 
 " So you are the young gentleman Mr. Roger Morten 
 recommends ? " Here Mr. Plaskwith took out a huge 
 pocket-book, slowly unclasped it, staring hard at Philip, 
 with what he designed for a piercing and penetrative 
 survey. 
 
 "This is the letter no! this .is Sir Thomas Champer- 
 down's order for fifty copies of the last Mercury, containing 
 his speech at the county meeting. Your age, young man ? 
 only sixteen ! look older ; that's not it that's not it 
 and this is it ! sit down. Yes, Mr. Roger Morton 
 recommends you a relation unfortunate circumstances 
 well educated hum ! Well, young man, what have you 
 to say for yourself ? " 
 
 " Sir ? " 
 
 r 1
 
 68 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 " Can you cast accounts ? know book-keeping P " 
 
 " I know something of algebra, sir." 
 
 " Algebra ! oh, what else ? " 
 
 " French and Latin." 
 
 " Hum ! may be useful. Why do you wear yonr hair 
 BO long ? look at mine. What 's your name ? " 
 
 "Philip Morton." 
 
 " Mr. Philip Morton, you have an intelligent countenance 
 I go a great deal by countenances. You know the 
 terms ? most favourable to you. No premium I settle 
 that with Roger. I give you board and bed find you? 
 own washing. Habits regular 'prenticeship only fivd 
 years ; when over, must not set up in the same town. I 
 will see to the indentures. When can you come ? " 
 
 " When you please, sir." 
 
 "Day after to-morrow, by six o'clock coach." 
 
 " But, sir," said Philip, " will there be no salary ? 
 something, ever so small, that I could send to my mother ? " 
 
 " Salary, at sixteen ? board and bed no premium ! 
 Salary, what for ? 'Prentices have no salary ! you will 
 have every comfort." 
 
 " Give me less comfort, that I may give my mother 
 nore ; a little money, ever so little, and take it out of my 
 hoard: I can do with one meal a day, sir." 
 
 The bookseller was moved : he took a huge pinchful of 
 snuff out of his waistcoat pocket, and mused a moment. 
 He then said, as he re-examined Philip 
 
 " Well, young man, I '11 tell you what we will do. You 
 shall come here first upon trial ; see if we like each other 
 before we sign the indentures ; allow you, meanwhile, five 
 shillings a week. If you show talent, will see if I and Roger 
 can settle about some little allowance. That do, eh ? " 
 
 "I thank you, sir, yes," said Philip, gratefully. 
 
 " Agreed, then. Follow me present you to Mrs. P." 
 
 Thus saying, Mr. Plaskwith returned the letter to the 
 po^Vet-book, and the pocket-book to the pocket; and, 
 putting his arms behind his coat tails, threw up his chin, 
 und strode through the passage into a small parlour, that 
 looked upon a small garden. Here, seated round the table 
 were a thin lady, with a squint (Mrs. Plaskwith), tw 
 little girls (the Misses Plaskwith), also with squints, and 
 pinafores ; a young man of three or four-and-twenty, in 
 Jiankeen trousers, a littlo tlw worse for washing, and a
 
 NIGHT AND MORNDTO. C9 
 
 black velveteen jacket and waistcoat. This young gentle- 
 rfiHn was very much freckled ; wore his hair, which was 
 dark and wiry, up at one side, down at the other ; had a 
 short thick nose ; full lips ; and, when close to him, smelt 
 of cigars. Such was Mr. Plimmins, Mr. Plaskwith's 
 factotum, foreman in the shop, assistant-editor to the Mer- 
 cury. Mr. Plaskwith formally went the round of the 
 introduction; Mrs. P. nodded her head; the Misses P. 
 nudged each other, and grinned ; Mr. Plimmins passed 
 his hand through his hair, glanced at the glass, and bowed 
 very politely. 
 
 " Now, Mrs. P., my second cup, and give Mr. Morton his 
 dish of tea. Must be tired, sir hot day. Jemima, ring 
 no, go to the stairs, and call out, ' More buttered toast.' 
 That's the shorter way promptitude is my rule in life, 
 Mr. Morton. Pray hum, hum have you ever, by chance, 
 studied the biography of the great Napoleon Buonaparte ?" 
 
 Mr. Plimmins gulped down his tea, and kicked Philir 
 under the table. Philip looked fiercely at the forema^ 
 and replied, sullenly, " No, sir." 
 
 " That *s a pity. Napoleon Buonaparte was a very great 
 man, very ! You have seen his cast ? there it is, on the 
 dumb waiter ! Look at it ! see a likeness, eh ? " 
 
 "Likeness, sir ? I never saw Napoleon Buonaparte." 
 
 " Never saw Mm ! No, jast look round the room. Who 
 does that bust put you in mind of ? who does it resemble ? " 
 
 Here Mr. Plaskwith rose, and placed himself in an atti- 
 tude ; his hand in his waistcoat, and his face pensively 
 inclined towards the tea-table. " Now fancy me at St. 
 Helena ; this table is the ocean. Now then, who is that 
 fast like, Mr. Philip Morton? " 
 
 " I suppose, sir, it is like you !" 
 
 " Ah, that it is ! strikes every one ! Does it not, Mrs. P., 
 does it not ? And when you have known me longer, yon 
 will find a moral similitude a moral, sir ! Straightfor- 
 ward short to the point bold determined ! " 
 
 " Bless me, Mr. P. ! " said Mrs. Plaskwith, very queru- 
 lously, " do make haste with your tea ; the young gentle- 
 man, I suppose, wants to go home, and the coach passes 
 in a quarter of an hour." 
 
 "Have you seen Kean in 'Richard the Third,' Mr. 
 Morton ? " asked Mr. Plimmins. 
 
 " I liave never seen a play."
 
 70 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 " Never seen a play ! How very odd ! " 
 
 " Not at all odd, Mr. Plimmins," said the stationer. 
 " Mr. Morton has known troubles so hand him the hot 
 toast." 
 
 Silent and morose, but rather disdainful than sad, Philip 
 listened to the babble round him, and observed the unge- ' 
 nial characters with which he was to associate. He cared 
 not to please (that, alas ! had never been especially his 
 Btudy) ; it was enough for him if he could see, stretching 
 to his mind's eye beyond the walls of that dull room, the 
 long vistas into fairer fortune. At sixteen, what sorrow 
 can freeze the Hope, or what prophetic fear whisper 
 " Fool " to the Ambition ? He would bear back into ease 
 and prosperity, if not into affluence and station, the dear 
 ones left at home. From the eminence of five shillings 
 a week, he looked over the Promised Land. 
 
 At length, Mr. Plaskwith, pulling out his watch, said, 
 " Just in time to catch the coach ; make your bow and be off 
 Smart 's the word ! " Philip rose, took up his hat, made 
 a stiff bow that included the whole group, and vanished 
 with his host. 
 
 Mrs. Plaskwith breathed more easily when he was gone. 
 
 " I never seed a more odd, fierce, ill-bred-looking young 
 man ! I declare I am quite afraid of him. What an eye 
 he has ! " 
 
 " Uncommonly dark ; what, I may say, gipsy-like," said 
 Mr. Plimmins. 
 
 " He ! he ! You always do say such good things, Plim- 
 mins. Gipsy- like ! he ! he ! So he is ! I wonder if he 
 can tell fortunes ? " 
 
 " He '11 be long before he has a fortune of his own to 
 tell. Ha ! ha ! " said Plimmins. 
 
 "He! he! how very good ! you are so pleasant, Plim- 
 mins." 
 
 While these strictures on his appearance were still going 
 on, Philip had already ascended the roof of the coach ; 
 and, waving his hand, with the condescension of old times, 
 to his future master, was carried away by the " Express " 
 in a whirlwind of dust. 
 
 " A very warm evening, sir," said a passenger seated at 
 his right ; puffing, while he spoke, from a short Gerrcan 
 pipe, a volume of smoke into Philip's face. 
 
 " Very warm. Be so good as to smoke into the face of
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 71 
 
 the gentleman on the other side of you," returned Philip, 
 petulantly. 
 
 " Ho, ho ! " replied the passenger, with a loud, powerful 
 laugh the laugh of a strong man. " You don't take to 
 the pipe yet ; you will by and by, when you have known 
 the cares and anxieties that I have gone through. A pipe ! 
 it is a great soother! a pleasant comforter! Bluo 
 devils fly before its honest breath ! It ripens the brain it 
 opens the heart ; and the man who smokes, thinks like a 
 sage and acts like a Samaritan ! " 
 
 Roused from his reverie by this quaint and unexpected 
 declamation, Philip turned his quick glance at his neigh- 
 bour. He saw a man, of great bulk, and immense physical 
 power broad-shouldered deep-chested not corpulent, 
 but taking the same girth from bone and muscle that a 
 corpulent man does from flesh. He wore a blue coat 
 frogged, braided, and buttoned to the throat. A broad- 
 brimmed straw hat, set on one side, gave a jaunty ap- 
 pearance to a countenance which, noth with standing itc 
 jovial complexion and smiling mouth, had, in repose, a bold 
 and decided character. It was a face well suited to the 
 frame, inasmuch as it betokened a mind capable of wield- 
 ing and mastering the brute physical force of body ; light 
 eyes of piercing intelligence; rough, but resolute and 
 striking features, and a jaw of iron. There was thought, 
 there was power, there was passion, in the shaggy brow, 
 the deep-ploughed lines, the dilated nostril, and the rest- 
 less play of the lips. Philip looked hard and gravely, and 
 the man returned his look. 
 
 "What do you think of me, young gentleman?" asked 
 the passenger, as he replaced the pipe in his mouth. " I 
 am a fine-looking man, am I not ? " 
 
 " You seem a strange one." 
 
 " Strange ! Ay, I puzzle you, as I have done, and shall 
 do, many. You cannot read me as easily as I can read 
 you. Come, shall I guess at your character and circum- 
 stances ? You are a gentleman, or something like it, by 
 birth ; that the tone of your voice tells me. You are poor, 
 devilish poor ; that the hole in your coat assures me. 
 You are proud, fiery, discontented, and unhappy ; all that 
 I see in your face. It was because I saw those signs that 
 I spoke to you. I volunteer no acquaintance with the 
 happy."
 
 72 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 " I dare say not ; for if you know all the unhnppy you 
 must have a sufficiently large acquaintance," returned 
 Philip. 
 
 " Your wit is beyond your years ! What is your calling, 
 if the question docs not offend you ?" 
 
 " I have none as yet," said Philip, with a slight sigh, 
 and a deep blush. 
 
 " More's the pity ! " grunted the smoker, with a long, 
 emphatic, nasal intonation. " I should have judged that 
 you were a raw recruit in the camp of the enemy." 
 
 " Enemy ! I don't understand you." 
 
 "In other words, a plant growing out of a lawyer's desk. 
 I will explain. There is one class of spiders, industrious, 
 hardworking octopedes, who, out of the sweat of their 
 brains, (I take it, by-the-bye, that a spider must have a 
 line craniological development,) make their own webs and 
 catch their flics. There is another class of spiders who 
 have no stuff in them wherewith to make webs ; they, 
 therefore, wander about, looking out for food provided by 
 the toil of their neighbours. Whenever they come to the 
 web of a smaller spider, whose larder seems well supplied, 
 they rush upon his domain pursue him to his hole eat 
 him up if they can reject him if he is too tough for their 
 maws, and quietly possess themselves of all the legs and 
 wings they find dangling in his meshes : these spiders T 
 call enemies the world calls them lawyers ! " 
 
 Philip laughed : " And who are the first class of 
 spiders ? " 
 
 " Honest creatures who openly confess that they live 
 npon flies. Lawyers fall foul upon them, under pretence 
 of delivering flies from their clutches. They are wonderful 
 blood-suckers these lawyers, in spite of all their hypocrisy. 
 Ha! ha! Ho! ho!" 
 
 And with a loud, rough chuckle, more expressive of 
 malignity than mirth, the man turned himself round, ap- 
 plied vigorously to his pipe, and sank into a silence which, 
 as mile after mile glided past the wheels, he did not seem 
 disposed to break. Neither was Philip inclined to be com- 
 municative. Considerations for his own state and prospects 
 swallowed up the curiosity he might otherwise have felt as 
 to his singular neighbour. He had not touched food sinco 
 the early morning. Anxiety had made him insensible to 
 hnngr, till he arrived at Mr. Plaskwith's ; and then,
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 73 
 
 feverish, sore, and sick at heart, the sight of the luxuries 
 gracing the tea-table only revolted him. He did not now 
 feel hunger, but he was fatigued and faint. For several 
 nights the sloep which youth can so ill dispense with had 
 been broken and disturbed ; and now, the rapid motion 
 of the coach, and the free current of a fresher and more 
 exhausting air than he had been accustomed to for many 
 months, began to operate on his nerves like the intoxica- 
 tion of a narcotic. His eyes grew heavy ; indistinct mists, 
 through which there seemed to glare the various squints 
 of the female Plaskwiths, succeeded the gliding road and 
 the dancing trees. His head fell on his bosom ; and thence, 
 instinctively seeking the strongest support at hand, inclined 
 towards the stout smoker, and finally nestled itself com- 
 posedly on that gentleman's shoulder. The passenger, 
 feeling this unwelcome and unsolicited weight, took the 
 pipe, which he had already thrice refilled, from his lips, 
 and emitted an angry and impatient snort; finding that 
 this produced no effect, and that the load grew heavier as 
 the boy's sleep grew deeper, he cried, in a loud voice, 
 " Holla ! I did not pay my fare to be your bolster, young 
 man ! " and shook himself lustily. Philip started, and 
 would have fallen sidelong from the coach, if his neighbour 
 had not griped him hard with a hand that could have kep 
 ,1 young oak from falling. 
 
 " Boose yourself ! you might have had an ugly tumble." 
 Philip muttered something inaudible, between sleeping 
 and waking, and turned his dark eyes towards the man; 
 \n that glance there was so much unconscious, but sad and 
 deep reproach, that the passenger felt touched and ashamed. 
 Before, however, he could say anything in apology or con- 
 ciliation, Philip had again fallen asleep. But this time, as 
 if he had felt and resented the rebuff he had received, he 
 inclined his head away from his neighbour, against the 
 edge of a box on the roof a dangerous pillow, from which 
 any sudden jolt might transfer him to the road below. 
 
 " Foor lad ! he looks pale ! " muttered the man, and he 
 knocked the weed from his pipe, which he placed gently in 
 his pocket. " Perhaps the smoke was too much for him 
 he seems ill and thin ? " and he took the boy's long lean 
 fingers in his own. " His cheek is hollow ! what do I 
 know but it may be with fasting ? Pooh ! I was a brute. 
 Hush, coachee, hushl don't talk so loud, and be d--d to
 
 74 NIGHT AND MOflNING. 
 
 you lie will certainly be off;" and the man soft)/ and 
 creepingly encircled the boy's waist with his huge arm, 
 " Now, then, to shift his head ; so so, that's right." 
 Philip's sallow cheek and long hair were now tenderly 
 lapped on the soliloquist's bosom. "Poor wretch! ho 
 Emiies ; perhaps he is thinking of home, and the butterflies 
 he ran after when he was an urchin they never corao 
 back, those days ; never never never ! I think tho 
 wind veers to the east; he may catch cold;" and with 
 that, the man sliding the head for a moment, and with the 
 tenderness of a woman, from his breast to his shoulder, 
 unbuttoned his coat (as he replaced the weight, no longer 
 unwelcome, in its former part), and drew the lappets 
 closely round the slender frame of the sleeper, exposing hU 
 own sturdy breast for he wore no waistcoat to the 
 sharpening air. Thus cradled on that stranger's bosom v 
 wrapped from the present, and dreaming perhaps while t. 
 heart scorched by fierce and terrible struggles with life and 
 sin made his pillow of a fair and unsullied future, slept 
 the fatherless and friendless boy. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 " Constance. My life, my joy, my food, my all the world, 
 My widow-comfort." King John. 
 
 AMIDST the glare of lamps the rattle of carriages the 
 lumbering of carts and waggons the throng, the clamour, 
 the reeking life and dissonant roar of London, Philip woke 
 from his happy sleep. He woke, uncertain and confused, 
 and saw strange eyes bent on him kindly and watchfully. 
 
 " You have slept well, my lad ! " said the passenger, in 
 the deep ringing voice which made itself heard above all 
 the noises round. 
 
 " And you have suffered me to incommode you thus ! " 
 said Philip, with more gratitude in his voice and look than, 
 perhaps, he had shown to any one out of his own family 
 since his birth. 
 
 "You have had but little kindness shown you, iny poor 
 boy, if you think so much of this." 
 
 "No all people were very kind to mo once. I did not 
 value it then." Here the coach rolled heavily down th& 
 dark arch of the ina-yard.
 
 NIGHT AND MOKNING. 75 
 
 " Take care of yourself, my boy ! You look ill ;" and in 
 the dark the man slipped a sovereign into Philip's hand. 
 
 " I don't want money. Though I thank you heartily all 
 the same; it would be a shame at my age to be a beggar. 
 But, can you think of an employment where I can make 
 something ? what they offer me is so trifling. I have a 
 mother and a brother a mere child, sir at home." 
 
 "Employment!" repeated the man; and as the coach 
 now stopped at the tavern door, the light from the lamp 
 fell full on his marked face. " Ay, I know of employment ; 
 but you should apply to some one else to obtain it for you ! 
 As for me, it is not likely that we shall meet again ! " 
 
 "I am sorry for that ! What and who are you ? " asked 
 Philip, with a rude and blunt curiosity. 
 
 "Me!" returned the passenger, with his deep laugh; 
 " Oh ! I know some people who call me an honest fellow. 
 Take the employment offered you, no matter how trifling 
 the wages keep out of harm's way. Good night to you ! " 
 
 So saying, he quickly descended from the roof, and, as 
 he was directing the coachman where to look for his carpet- 
 bag, Philip saw three or four well-dressed men make up to 
 him, shake him heartily by the hand, and welcome him 
 with great seeming cordiality. 
 
 Philip sighed. " He has friends," he muttered to himself ; 
 and, paying his fare, he turned from the bustling yard, and 
 took his solitary way home. 
 
 A week after his visit to R , Philip was settled on 
 
 his probation at Mr. Plaskwith's, and Mrs. Morton's health 
 was so decidedly worse, that she resolved to know her fate, 
 and consult a physician. The oracle was at first ambiguous 
 in its response. But when Mrs. Morton said firmly, " I 
 have duties to perform ; upon your candid answer rest my 
 plans with respect to my children left, if I die suddenly, 
 destitute in the world," the doctor looked hard in her 
 face, saw its calm resolution, and replied frankly, 
 
 " Lose no time, then, in arranging your plans ; life is 
 uncertain with all with you, especially; you may live 
 some time yet, but your constitution is much shaken I 
 fear there is water on the chest. No, ma'am no foe. 
 I will see you again." 
 
 The physician turned to Sidney, who played with his 
 watch-chain, aud smiled up in his face. 
 
 "And that child, sir?" said the mother, wistfully, foi^
 
 T6 NIGHT AND MOI1K1MJ. 
 
 getting the dread fiat pronounced against herself, " he ia 
 so delicate ! " 
 
 "Not at all, ma'am, a very fine little fellow ;" and the 
 doctor patted the boy's head, and abruptly vanished. 
 
 " Ah ! mamma, I wish you would ride I wish you would 
 take the white pony ! " 
 
 " Poor boy ! poor boy ! " muttered the mother ; " I must 
 not be selfish." She covered her face with her hands, 
 and began to think ! 
 
 Could she, thus doomed, resolve on declining her brother's 
 offer? Did it not, at least, secure bread and shelter to her 
 child ? "When she was dead, might not a tie, between tho 
 uncle and nephew, be snapped asunder ? Would he be as 
 kind to the boy as now when she could commend him with 
 her own lips to his care when she could place that precious 
 charge into his hands ? With these thoughts, she formed 
 one of those resolutions which have all the strength of self- 
 sacrificing 1 love. She would put the boy from her, her last 
 solace and comfort ; she would die alone, alone ! 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 '* Constance. "When I shall meet him in the court of hcaren, 
 I shall not know him." King John. 
 
 ONE evening, the shop closed and the business done, Mr. 
 Hoger Morton and his family sat in that snug and comfort- 
 able retreat which generally backs the ware-rooms of an 
 English tradesman. Happy often, and indeed happy, 13 
 that little sanctuary, near to, and yet remote from, the toil 
 and care of the busy mart from which its homely ease and 
 peaceful security are drawn. Glance down those rows of 
 silenced shops in a town at night, and picture the glad and 
 quiet groups gathered within, over that nightly and social 
 imi>( which custom has banished from the more indolent 
 tribe*,, who neither toil nor spin. Placed between the two 
 extremes of life, the tradesman, who ventures not beyond 
 his means, and sees clear books and sure gains, with enough 
 of occupation to give healthful excitement, enough of 
 fortune to greet each new-born child without a sigh, might 
 be envied alike by those above and those below hij stat/> 
 if the restless heart of man ever envied Content !
 
 NIGHT AND MOUX1NG. 77 
 
 "And so the little boy is not to come?" said Mrs. 
 Morton, as she crossed her knife and fork, and pushed 
 away her plate, in token that she had done supper. 
 
 "I don't know. Children, go to bed-, there there 
 that will do. Good night! Catherine does not say either 
 yes or no. She wants time to consider." 
 
 " It was a very handsome offer on our part ; some folks 
 never know when they are well off." 
 
 " That is very true, my dear, and you are a very sensible 
 person. Kate herself might have been an honest wom&n, 
 and, what is more, a very rich woman, by this time. She 
 might have married Spencer, the young brewer an excel- 
 lent man, and well to do ! " 
 
 " Spencer ! I don't remember him." 
 
 No : after she went off, he retired trom business, and left 
 the place. I don't know what's become of him. He wai 
 mightily taken with her, to be sure. She was uncommonly 
 handsome, my sister Catherine." 
 
 " Handsome is as handsome does, Mr. Morton," said the 
 vife, who was very much marked with the small-pox. 
 " We all have our temptations and trials ; this is a vale of 
 toars, and without grace we are whited sepulchres." 
 
 Mr. Morton mixed his brandy and water, and moved his 
 chair into its customary corner. 
 
 " You saw your brother's letter," said he, after a pause ; 
 "he gives young Philip a very good character." 
 
 " The human heart is very deceitful," replied Mrs. 
 Morton, who, by the way, spoke through her nose. " Pray 
 Heaven he may be what he seems ; but what's bred in the 
 bone comes out in the flesh." 
 
 "We must hope the best," said Mr. Morton, mildly; 
 and put another lump into the grog, my dear." 
 
 "It is a mercy, I'm thinking, that we didn't have the 
 other little boy. I dare say he has never even been taught 
 Vs catechism : them people don't know what it is to be a 
 mother. And, besides, it would have been very awkward, 
 Mr. M., we could never have said who he was : and I've 
 no doubt Miss Pryinall would have been very curious." 
 
 " Miss Pryinall be ! " Mr. Morton checked him- 
 self, took a large draught of the brandy and water, and 
 added, " Miss Pryinall wants to have a finger in everybody's 
 pie." 
 
 "But she buys a deal of flannel, ad does great (rood to
 
 78 NIGHT A:ND MORNING. 
 
 the town; it was she who found out that Airs. Giles vras 
 r.o better than she should be." 
 
 " Poor Mrs. Giles ! she came to the workhouse." 
 
 " Poor Mrs. Giles, indeed ! I wonder, Mr. Morton, that 
 you, a married man with a family, should say, poor Mrs. 
 Giles!" 
 
 " My dear, when people who have been well off come to 
 the workhouse, they may be called poor : but that's neither 
 here nor there; only, if the boy does come to us, we must 
 look sharp upon Miss Pryinall." 
 
 "I hope he won't come, it will be very unpleasant. 
 And when a man has a wife and family, the less he meddles 
 with other folks and their little ones, the better. For as 
 the Scripture says, 'A man shall cleave to his wife 
 and ' " 
 
 Here a sharp, shrill ring at the bell was heard, and Mrs. 
 Morton broke off into 
 
 ""Well! I declare! at this hour; who can that be? 
 And all gone to bed ! Do go and see, Mr. Morton." 
 
 Somewhat reluctantly and slowly, Mr. Morton rose; 
 and, proceeding to the passage, unbarred the door. A 
 brief and muttered conversation followed, to the great 
 irritability of Mrs. Morton, who stood in the passage the 
 candle in her hand. 
 
 " What is the matter, Mr. M. ? " 
 
 Mr. Morton turned back, looking agitated. 
 
 "Where's my hat? oh, here. My sister is coine, at the 
 inn." 
 
 " Gracious me! She does not go for to say she is ycney 
 sister? " 
 
 " No, no : here's her note calls herself a lady that's ill. 
 I shall be back soon." 
 
 "She can't come here she sha'n't come here, Mr. M. 
 I'm an honest woman she can't come here. You under- 
 stand " 
 
 Mr. Morton had naturally a stern countenance, stern to 
 every one but his wife. The shrill tone to which he was 
 so long accustomed jarred then on his heart as well as ear. 
 He frowned, 
 
 " Pshaw ! woman, you have no feeling ! " said he, and 
 walked out of the house, pulling his hat over his brows. 
 
 That was the only rude speech Mr. Morton had ever 
 made to his better half. She treasured it up in her heart
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 79 
 
 and memory; it was associated with the sister nud the 
 child ; and she was not a woman who ever forgave. 
 
 Mr. Morton walked rapidly through the still, moon-lit 
 streets, till he reached the inn. A club was held that night 
 in one of the rooms below ; and as he crossed the threshold, 
 the sound of " hip hip hurrah ! " mingled with the 
 stamping of feet and the jingling of glasses, saluted hia 
 entrance. He was a stiff, sober, respectable man, a man 
 who, except at elections he was a great politician mixed 
 in none of the revels of his more boisterous town's-men. 
 The sounds, the spot, were ungenial to him. He paused, 
 and the colour of shame rose to his brow. He was ashamed 
 to be there ashamed to meet the v desolate and, as he 
 believed, erring sister. 
 
 A pretty maid-servant, heated and flushed with orders 
 and compliments, crossed his path, with a tray full of 
 glasses. 
 
 " There's a lady come by the Telegraph ?" 
 
 " Yes, sir, up-stairs, No. 2, Mr. Morton." 
 
 Mr. Morton ! He shrunk at the sound of his own name. 
 "My wife's right," he muttered. "After all, this is more 
 unpleasant than I thought for." 
 
 The slight stairs shook under his hasty tread. He 
 opened the door of No. 2, and that Catherine, whom he 
 had last seen at her age of gay sixieen, radiant with bloom, 
 and, but for her air of pride, the model for a Hebe, that 
 Catherine, old ere youth was gone, pale, faded, the dark 
 Vair silvered over, the cheeks hollow, and the eye dim, 
 that Catherine fell upon his breast ! 
 
 "God bless you, brother! How kind to come! How 
 long since we have met!" 
 
 " Sit down, Catherine, my dear sister. You are faint 
 you are very much changed very. I should not have 
 known you." 
 
 " Brother, I have brought my boy ; it is painful to part 
 from him very very painful : but it is right, and God's 
 will be done." She turned, as she spoke, towards a littlo, 
 deformed, rickety dwarf of a sofa, that seemed to hide 
 itself in the darkest corner of the low, gloomy room ; and 
 Morton followed her. With one hand she removed the 
 shawl that she had thrown over the child, and placing the 
 fore-finger of the other upon her lips lips that smiled then 
 whispered, "We will not wake him, he i so
 
 8t> rflGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 tired. But I would not put hi to bed till you had seen 
 him." 
 
 And there slept poor Sidney, his fair cheek pillowed on 
 his arm ; the soft, silky ringlets thrown from the delicate 
 and unclouded brow; the natural bloom increased by 
 warmth arid travel ; the lovely face so innocent and hushed ; 
 the breathing so gentle and regular, as if never broken by 
 a sigh. 
 
 Mr. Morton drew his hand across his eyes. 
 
 There was something very touching in the contrast 
 between that wakeful, anxious, forlorn woman, and the 
 slumber of the unconscious boy. And in that moment, 
 what breast upon which the light of Christian pity of 
 natural affection, had ever dawned, would, even supposing 
 the world's judgment were true, have recalled Catherine's 
 reputed error ? There is so divine a holiness in the love 
 of a mother, that, no matter how the tie that binds her to 
 the child was formed, she becomes, as it were, consecrated 
 and sacred ; and the past is forgotten, and the world and 
 its harsh verdicts swept away, when that love aJone is 
 visible ; and the God, who watches over the little one, 
 sheds his smile over the human deputy, in whose tender- 
 ness there breathes His own ! 
 
 "You will be kind to him will you no?" said Mrs. 
 Morton, and the appeal was made with that trustful, almost 
 cheerful tone which implies, ' Who would not be kind to a 
 thing so fair and helpless?' "He is very sensitive and 
 very docile ; you will never have occasion to say a hard 
 word to him never ! you have children of your own, 
 brother ! " 
 
 "He is a beautiful boy beautiful. I will be a father 
 to him ! " 
 
 As he spoke, the recollection of his wife sour, queru- 
 lous, austere came over him, but he said to himself, " She 
 must take to such a child, women always take to beauty." 
 
 He bent down, and gently pressed his lips to Sidney's 
 fot-eJ<?a,d : Mrs. Morton replaced the shawl, and drew her 
 brother to the other end of the room. 
 
 " And now," she said, colouring as she spoke, " I must 
 Bee your wife, brother : there is so much to say about a 
 child that only a woman will recollect. Is she very good 
 tempered and kind, your wife? You know I ncvor sa-w 
 her ; you married after *f tar I left."
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 81 
 
 " She is a very worthy woman," said Mr. Morton, clear- 
 ing his throat, " and brought me some money ; she has a 
 will of her own as most women have ; but that's neither 
 here nor there she is a good wife as wives go ; and 
 prudent and painstaking I don't know what I should do 
 without her." 
 
 " Brother, I have one favour to request a great 
 favour." 
 
 " Anything I can do in the way of money ? " 
 
 " It has nothing to do with money. I can't live long 
 don't shake your head I can't live long. I have no 
 fear for Philip, he has so much spirit such strength of 
 character but that child ! I cannot bear to leave him 
 altogether : let me stay in this town I can lodge any- 
 where ; but to see him sometimes to know I shall be in 
 reach if he is ill let me stay here let me die here ! " 
 
 "You must not talk so sadly you are young yet 
 younger than I am I don't think of dying." 
 
 " Heaven forbid ! but " 
 
 " Well well," interrupted Mr. Morton, who began to 
 fear his f eelings would hurry him into some promise which 
 his wife would not suffer him to keep ; " you. shall talk to 
 Margaret, that is, Mrs. Morton I will get her to see 
 you yes, I think I can contrive that; and if you can 
 Arrange with her to stay, but, you see, as she brought the 
 money, and is a very particular woman " 
 
 " I will see her ; thank you thank you ; she cannot 
 refuse me." 
 
 " And, brother," resumed Mrs. Morton, after a short 
 pause, and speaking in a firm voice " and is it possible 
 that you disbelieve my story that you, like all the rest, 
 consider my children the sons of shame ? " 
 
 There was an honest earnestness in Catherine's voice, as 
 she spoke, that might have convinced many. But Mr. 
 Morton was a man of facts, a practical man a man who 
 believed that law was always right, and that the impro- 
 bable was never true. 
 
 He looked down as he answered, " I think yon have been 
 a very ill-used woman, Catherine, and that is all I can say 
 on the matter ; let us drop the subject." 
 
 " No ! I was not ill-used ; my husband yes, my hus- 
 band was noble and generous from first to last. It was 
 for the sake of his children's prospects for the expect*-
 
 82 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 tions they, through him, might derive from his proud 
 uncle, that he concealed our marriage. Do not blame 
 Philip do not condemn the dead." 
 
 " I don't want to blame anyone," said Mr. Morton, rather 
 angrily ; "I am a plain man a tradesman, and can only 
 go by what in my class seems fair and honest, which 1 
 can't think Mr. Beaufort's conduct was, put it how you 
 will ; if he marries you as you think, he gets rid of a wit- 
 ness, he destroys a certificate, and he dies without a will. 
 However, all that's neither here nor there. You do quite 
 right not to take the name of Beaufort, since it is an un- 
 common name, and would always make the story public. 
 Least said, soonest mended. Yor must always consider 
 that your children will be called natural children, and havfc, 
 their own way to make. No harm in that ! Warm day 
 for your journey." Catherine sighed, and wiped her eyes ; 
 she no longer reproached the world, since the son of her 
 own mother disbelieved her. 
 
 The relations talked together for some minutes on tho 
 past the present ; but there was embarrassment and con- 
 straint on both sides it was so difficult to avoid one sub- 
 ject ; and after sixteen years of absence, there is little left in 
 common, even between those who once played together 
 round their parents' knees. Mr. Morton was glad at last 
 to find an excuse in Catherine's fatigue to leave her. 
 " Cheer up, and take a glass of something warm before 
 you go to bed. Good night ! " these were his parting 
 words. 
 
 Long was the conference, and sleepless the couch, of Mr. 
 and Mrs. Morton. At first, that estimable lady positively 
 declared she would not and could not visit Catherine : (as 
 to receiving her, that was out of the question.) But she 
 secretly resolved to give up that point in order to insist 
 with greater strength upon another viz., the impossibility 
 of Catherine remaining in the town. Such concession for 
 the purpose of resistance being a very common and saga- 
 cious policy with married ladies. Accordingly, when sud- 
 denly, and with a good grace, Mrs. Morton appeared 
 affected by her husband's eloquence, and said, " Well, poor 
 thing ! if she is so ill, and you wish it so much, I will call 
 to-morrow," Mr. Morton felt his heart softened towards 
 the many excellent reasons which his wife urged against 
 allowing Catherine to reside in the town. He was a political
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 83 
 
 character he had many enemies ; the story of his seduced 
 sister, now forgotten, would certainly be raked up, it would 
 affect his comfort, perhaps his trade, certainly his eldest 
 daughter, who was now thirteen ; it would be impossible 
 then to adopt the plan hitherto resolved upon of passing 
 off Sidney as the legitimate orphan of a distant relation ; 
 it would be made a great handle for gossip by Miss Pry- 
 inall. Added to all these reasons, one not less strong 
 occurred to Mr. Morton himself, the uncommon and 
 merciless rigidity of his wife would render all the other v 
 women in the town very glad of any topic that would 
 humble her own sense of immaculate propriety. More* 
 over, he saw that if Catherine did remain, it would be a 
 perpetual source of irritation in his own home ; he was & 
 man who liked an easy life, and avoided, as far as possible, 
 all food for domestic worry. And thus, when at length 
 the wedded pair turned back to back, and composed them- 
 selves to sleep, the conditions of peace were settled, and 
 the weaker party, as usual in diplomacy, sacrificed to the 
 interests of the united powers. 
 
 After breakfast the next morning, Mrs. Morton sallied 
 out on her husband's arm. Mr. Morton was rather a 
 handsome man, with an air and look grave, composed, 
 severe, that had tended much to raise his character in the 
 town. Mrs. Morton was short, wiry, and bony. She had 
 won her husband by making desperate love to him, to say 
 nothing of a dower that enabled him to extend his business, 
 new-front, as well as new-stock, his shop, and rise into the 
 very first rank of tradesmen in his native town. He still 
 believed that she was excessively fond of him a common 
 delusion of husbands, especially when henpecked. Mrs. 
 Morton ivas, perhaps, fond of him in her own way ; for 
 though her heart was not warm, there may be a great deal 
 of fondness with very little feeling. The worthy lady was 
 now clothed in her best. She had a proper pride in show- 
 ing the rewards that belong to female virtue. Flowers 
 adorned her Leghorn bonnet, and her green silk gown 
 boasted four flounces, such, then, was, I am told, the 
 fashion. She wore, also, a very handsome black shawl, 
 extremely heavy, though the day was oppressively hot, and 
 with a deep border ; a smart sevigne brooch of yellow 
 topazes glittered in her breast ; a huge gilt serpent glared 
 from her waistband ; her hair, or more properly speaking her 
 
 G 2
 
 84 NIGHT AND MOKXiXQ. 
 
 front, was tortured into very tight curls, and her feet into 
 very tight half-laced boots, from which the fragrance of 
 new leather had not yet departed. It was this last inflic- 
 tion, for ilfaut souffrir pour etre belle, which somewhat yet 
 more acerbated the ordinary acid of Mrs. Morton's temper. 
 The sweetest disposition is ruffled when the shoe pinches ; 
 and it so happened that Mrs. Roger Morton was one of 
 those ladies who always have chilblains in the winter and 
 corns in the summer. 
 
 " So you say your sister is a beauty ? " 
 
 " Was a beauty, Mrs. M., was a beauty. People 
 alter." 
 
 " A bad conscience, Mr. Morton, is " 
 
 " My dear, can't you walk faster ? " 
 
 " If you had my corns, Mr. Morton, you would not talk 
 in that way !" 
 
 The happy pair sank into silence, only broken by sundry 
 " How d'ye do's ? " and " Good morning's ! " interchanged 
 with their friends, till they arrived at the inn. 
 
 " Let us go up quickly," said Mrs. Morton. 
 
 And quiet quiet to gloom, did the inn, so noisy over 
 night, seem by morning. The shutters partially closed to 
 keep out the sun the tap-room deserted the passage 
 smelling of stale smoke an elderly dog, lazily snapping 
 at the flies, at the foot of the staircase not a soul to be 
 seen at the bar. The husband and wife, glad to be unob- 
 served, crept on tiptoe up the stairs, and entered Cathe- 
 rine's apartment. 
 
 Catherine was seated on the sofa, and Sidney dressed, 
 like Mrs. Roger Morton, to look his prettiest, nor yet aware 
 of the change that awaited hio destiny, but pleased at the 
 excitement of seeing new friends, as handsome children 
 sure of praise and petting usually are stood by her side. 
 
 " My wife CatherMe," said Mr. Morton. Catherine 
 rose eagerly, and gft/ed searchingly on her sister-in-law '8 
 hard face. She shallowed the convulsive rising at her 
 heart as ehe gazc-d, and stretched out both her hands, not 
 so much to welcome as to plead. Mrs. Roger Morton drew 
 herself up, and then dropped a courtesy it was an invo- 
 luntary piece of good breeding it was extorted by tho 
 noble countenance, thn matronly mien of Catherine, dif- 
 ferent from what she had anticipated she dropped the 
 courtesy, and Catherine took her hand and pressed it.
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 8U 
 
 ** This is my son ;" she turned away her head. Sidney 
 advanced towards his protectress who was to be, and 
 Mrs. Roger muttered, 
 
 " Come here, my dear ! A fine little boy ! " 
 
 " As fine a child as ever I saw ! " said Mr. Morton, 
 heartily, as he took Sidney on his lap, and stroked down 
 his golden hair. 
 
 This displeased Mrs. Roger Morton, but she sat herself 
 down, and said it was " very warm." 
 
 " Now go to that lady, my dear," said Mr. Morton. " Is 
 she not a very nice lady ? -don't you think you shall like 
 her very much?" 
 
 Sidney, the best-mannered child in the world, went 
 boldly up to Mrs. Morton, as he was bid. Mrs. Mortou 
 was embarrassed. Some folks are so with other folk's 
 children : a child either removes all constraint from a 
 party, or it increases the constraint tenfold. Mrs. Morton, 
 however, forced a smile, and said, " I have a little boy at 
 home about your age." 
 
 " Have you ? " exclaimed Catherine, eagerly ; and as if 
 that confession made them friends at once, she drew a 
 chair close to her sister-in-law's, " My brother has told 
 you all?" 
 
 " Yes, ma'am." 
 
 " And I shall stay here in the town somewhere and 
 see him sometimes ? " 
 
 Mrs. Roger Morton glanced at her husband her hus- 
 band glanced at the door and Catherine's quick eyo 
 turned from one to the other. 
 
 " Mr. Morton will explain, ma'am," said the wife. 
 
 " E-hem ! Catherine, my dear, I am afraid that is out 
 of the question," began Mr. Morton, who, when fairly put 
 to it, could be business-like enough. " You see bygones 
 are bygones, and it is no use raking them up. But many 
 people in the town will recollect you." 
 
 " No one will see me no one, but you and Sidney." 
 
 " It will be sure to creep out ; won't it, Mrs. Morton ? " 
 
 " Quite sure. Indeed, ma'am, it is impossible. Mr. 
 Morton is so very respectable, and his neighbours yay so 
 much attention to all he does ; and then, if we ha\ e au 
 election in the autumn, you see, ma'am, he has a great 
 stake in the place, and is a public character." 
 
 "That's neither be*e nor there," said Mr. MorUu.
 
 86 NIGHT AFt> MORNIRfe. 
 
 " But I say, Catherine, can your little boy go into the other 
 room for a moment ? Margaret, suppose you take him and 
 make friends." 
 
 Delighted to throw on her husband the burden of ex- 
 planation, which she had originally meant to have all the 
 importance of giving herself in her most proper and 
 patronising manner, Mrs. Morton twisted her fingers into 
 the boy's hand, and, opening the door that communicated 
 with the bedroom, left the brother and sister alone. And 
 then Mr. Morton, with more tact and delicacy than might 
 have been expected from him, began to soften to Catherine 
 the hardship of the separation he urged. He dwelt prin- 
 cipally on what was best for the child. Boys were so 
 brutal in their intercourse with each other. He had even 
 thought it better to represent Philip to Mr. Plaskwith as a 
 more distant relation than he was ; and he begged, by-the- 
 bye,*that Catherine would tell Philip to take the hint. But 
 as for Sidney, sooner or later, he would go to a day-school 
 have companions of his own age if his birth were 
 known, he would be exposed to many mortifications so 
 much better, and so very easy, to bring him up as the 
 lawful, that is the legal, offspring of some distant relation. 
 
 " And," cried poor Catherine, clasping her hands, 
 " when I am dead, is he never to know that I was his 
 mother?" 
 
 The anguish of that question thrilled the heart of the 
 listener. He was affected below all the surface that 
 worldly thoughts and habits had laid, stratum by stratum, 
 over the humanities within. He threw his arms round 
 Catherine, and strained her to his breast, 
 
 " No, my sister my poor sister he shall know it when 
 he is old enough to understand, and to keep his own 
 secret. He shall know, too, how we all loved and prized 
 you once ; how young you were, how flattered and tempted ; 
 how you were deceived, for I know that on my soul I do 
 I know it was not your fault. He shall know, too, how 
 fondly you loved your child, and how you sacrificed, for 
 his sake, the very comfort of being near him. He shall 
 know it all all 1 " 
 
 " My brother my brother, I resign him I am content. 
 God reward you. I will go go quickly. I know you 
 will take care of him now." 
 
 " And you see," resumed Mr. Morton, re-settling him-
 
 NIGHT AND MGRMKG. 87 
 
 and wiping his eyes, " it is best, botweeu you au<3 me, 
 that Mrs. Morton should have her own way in this. She 
 is a very good woman very ; but it's prudent not to vex 
 her. You may come in now, Mrs. Morton." 
 
 Mrs. Morton and Sidney re-appeared. 
 
 " We have settled it all," said the husband. "When 
 can we have him ? " 
 
 "Not to-day," said Mrs. Roger Morton; "you see, 
 ma'am, we must get his bed ready, and his sheets well 
 aired : I am very particular." 
 
 "Certainly, certainly. Will he sleep alone? pardon 
 me." 
 
 " He shall have a room to himself," said Mr. Morton. 
 " Eh, my dear ? Next to Martha's. Martha is our par- 
 lour-maid very good-natured girl, and fond of children." 
 
 "Mrs. Morton looked grave, thought a moment, and 
 said, " Yes, he can have that room." 
 
 "Who can have that room ? " asked Sidney, innocently 
 
 " You, my dear," replied Mr. Morton. 
 
 "And where will mamma sleep? I must sleep near 
 mamma." 
 
 " Mamma is going away," said Catherine, in a firm 
 voice, in which the despair would only have been felt by 
 the acute ear of sympathy, "going away for a little 
 time : but this gentleman and lady will be very very kind 
 to you." 
 
 " We will do our best, ma'am," said Mrs. Morton. 
 
 And as she spoke, a sudden light broke on the boy'a 
 mind he uttered a loud cry, broke from his aunt, rushed 
 Vo his mother's breast, and hid his face there, sobbing 
 bitterly. 
 
 " I am afraid he has been very much spoiled," whispered 
 Mrs. Roger Morton. " I don't think we need stay longer 
 it will look suspicious. Good morning, ma'am : we 
 shall be ready to-morrow." 
 
 " Good-bye, Catherine," said Mr. Morton ; and he added, 
 as he kissed her, " Be of good heart, I will come up by my- 
 self and spend the evening with you." 
 
 It was the night after this interview. Sidney had gone 
 to his new home ; they had been all kind to him Mr. 
 Morton, the children, Martha the parlour-maid. Mrs. 
 Roger herself had given him a large slice of bread and 
 jam, but had looked gloomy all the rest of the evening ;
 
 88 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 because, like a dog in a strange place, he refused to eat. 
 His little heart was full, and his eyes, swimming with 
 tears, were turned at every moment to the door. But ho 
 did not show the violent grief that might have been ex- 
 pected. His very desolation, amidst the unfamiliar faces, 
 awed and chilled him. But when Martha took him to 
 bed, and undressed him, and he knelt down to say his 
 prayers, and came to the words, " Pray God bless dear 
 mamma, and make me a good child," his heart could con- 
 tain its load no longer, and he sobbed with a passion that 
 alarmed the good-natured servant. She had been used, 
 however, to children, and she soothed and caressed him, 
 and told him of all the nice things he would do, and the 
 nice toys he would have ; and at last, silenced, if not con- 
 vinced, his eyes closed, and, the tears yet wet on their 
 lashes, he fell asleep. 
 
 It had been arranged that Catherine should return horns 
 that night by a late coach, which left the town at twelve. 
 It was already past eleven. Mrs. Morton had retired to 
 bed ; and her husband, who had, according to his wont, 
 lingered behind to smoke a cigar over his last glass of 
 brandy and water, had just thrown aside the stump, and 
 was winding up his watch, when he heard a low tap at his 
 window. He stood mute and alarmed, for the window 
 opened on a back lane, dark and solitary at night, and, 
 :2rom the heat of the weather, the iron-cased shutter was 
 not yet closed ; the sound was repeated, and he heard a 
 faint voice. He glanced at the poker, and then cautiously 
 moved to the window, and looked forth, "Who's there ?" 
 
 " It is I it is Catherine ! I cannot go without seeing 
 my boy. I must see him I must, once more ! " 
 
 " My dear sister, the place is shut up it is impossible. 
 God bless me, if Mrs. Morton should hear you ! " 
 
 " I have walked before this window for hours I have 
 waited till all is hushed in your house, till no one, not 
 even a menial, need see the mother stealing to the bed of 
 her child. Brother, by the memory of our own mother, / 
 command you to let me look, for the last time, upon m^ 
 boy's face ! " 
 
 As Catherine said this, standing in that lonely street 
 darkness and solitude below, God and the stars above 
 there was about her a majesty which awed the listener 
 Though she was so near, her features were not very clearly
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 89 
 
 visible ; but her attitude her hand raised aloft the out- 
 line of her wasted, but still commanding, form, were more 
 impressive from the shadowy dimness of the ajr. 
 
 " Come round, Catherine," said Mr. Morton, after a 
 pause ; " I will admit you." 
 
 He shut the window, stole to the door, unbarred it 
 gently, and admitted his visitor. He bade her follow him ; 
 and. shading the light with his hand, crept up the stairs. 
 Catherine's step made no sound. 
 
 They passed, unmolested and unheard, the room in 
 which the wife was drowsily reading, according to her 
 custom, before she tied her nightcap and got into bed, a 
 chapter in some pious book. They ascended to the cham- 
 ber where Sidney lay ; Morton opened the door cautiously s 
 and stood at the threshold, so holding the candle, that its 
 light might not wake the child, though it sufficed to guide 
 Catherine to the bed. The room was small, perhaps close, 
 but scrupulously clean ; for cleanliness was Mrs. Roger 
 Morton's capital virtue. The mother, with a tremulous 
 hand, drew aside the white curtains, and checked her sobs 
 as she gazed on the young quiet face that was turned to- 
 wards her. She gazed some moments in passionate silence ; 
 who shall say, beneath that silence, what thoughts, what 
 prayers, moved and stirred ! Then bending down, with 
 pale, convulsive lips she kissed the little hands thrown so 
 listlessly on the coverlid of the pillow on which the head 
 lay. After this, she turned her face to her brother, with a 
 mute appeal in her glance, took a ring from her finger 
 a ring that had never till then left it the ring which 
 Philip Beaufort had placed there the day after the child 
 was born. " Let him wear this round his neck," said she, 
 and stopped, lest she should sob aloud, and disturb the 
 boy. In that gift she felt as if she invoked the father's 
 spirit to watch over the friendless orphan ; and then, 
 pressing together her own hands firmly, as we do in some 
 paroxysm of great pain, she turned from the room, de- 
 scended the stairs, gained the street, and muttered to hef 
 brother, "I am happy now ; peace be on these thresholds ! * 
 Before he could answer she was gone.
 
 90 NIGHT AND MOENLNO. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 'Thus things are strangely wrought, 
 
 While joyful Ma}' doth last ; 
 Take May in time when May is gone 
 The pleasant time is past." RICHARD Emv'AHns, 
 
 From the Paradise of Dainty l)ev'\r*i. 
 
 IT was that period of the year when, to those who look 
 on the surface of society, London wears its most radiant 
 smile ; when shops are gayest, and trade most brisk ; when 
 down the thoroughfares roll and glitter the countless 
 streams of indolent and voluptuous life ; when the upper 
 class spend, and the middle class make ; when the ball- 
 room is the Market of Beauty, and the club-house the 
 School for Scandal ; when the hells yawn for their prey, 
 and opera-singers and fiddlers creatures hatched from 
 gold, as the dung-flies from the dung swarm, and buzz, 
 and "fatten, round the hide of the gentle Public. In the 
 cant phrase, it was "the London season." And happy, 
 take it altogether, happy above the rest of the year, even 
 for the hapless, is that period of ferment and fever. It is 
 not the season for duns, and the debtor glides about with 
 a less anxious eye ; and the weather is warm, and the 
 vagrant sleeps, unfrozen, under the starlit portico ; and 
 the beggar thrives, and the thief rejoices f or the rankness 
 of the civilisation has superfluities clutched by all. And 
 out of the general corruption things sordid and things 
 miserable crawl forth to bask in the common sunshine 
 things that perish when the first autumn-winds whistle 
 along the melancholy city. It is the gay time for the heir 
 and the beauty, and the statesman and the lawyer, and tho 
 mother with her young daughters, and the artist with his 
 fresh pictures, and the poet with his new book. It is the 
 gay time, too, for the starved journeyman, and the ragged 
 outcast that with long stride and patient eyes follows, for 
 pence, the equestrian, who bids him go and be d d in 
 vain. It is a gay time for the painted harlot in a crimson 
 pelisse ; and a gay time for the old hag that loiters about 
 the thresholds of the gin-shop, to buy back, in a draught, 
 the dreams of departed youth. It is gay, in fine, as the 
 fulness of a vast city is ever gay for Vice as for Inno- 
 cence, for Poverty as for Wealth. And the wheels of every
 
 NIGHT AND MORNIAU. i 
 
 single destiny wheel on the merrier, no matter whether 
 they are bound to Heaven or to Hell. 
 
 Arthur Beaufort, the young heir, was at his father's 
 house. He was fresh from Oxford, where he had already 
 discovered that learning is not better than house and land. 
 Since the new prospects opened to him, Arthur Beaufort 
 was greatly changed. Naturally studious and prudent, 
 had his fortunes remained what they had been before his 
 uncle's death, he would probably have become a laborious 
 and distinguished man. But though his abilities were 
 good, he had not those restless impulses which belong to 
 Genius often not only its glory but its curse. The Golden 
 Rod cast his energies asleep at once. Good-natured to a 
 fault, and somewhat vacillating in character, he adopted 
 the manner and the code of the rich young idlers who were 
 his equals at College. He became, like them, careless, 
 extravagant, and fond of pleasure. This change, if it 
 deteriorated his mind, improved his exterior. It was a 
 change that could not but please women ; and of all women 
 iiis mother the most. Mrs. Beaufort was a lady of high 
 birth ; and in marrying her, Robert had hoped much from 
 the interest of her connexions ; but a change in the ministry 
 had thrown her relations out of power ; and, beyond her 
 dowry, he obtained no worldly advantage with the lady of 
 his mercenary choice. Mrs. Beaufort was a woman whom 
 a word or two will describe. She was thoroughly common- 
 place neither bad nor good, neither clever nor silly. She 
 was what is called well-bred ; that is, languid, silent, per- 
 fectly dressed, and insipid. Of her two children, Arthur 
 was almost the exclusive favourite, especially after he 
 became the heir to such brilliant fortunes. For she was 
 BO much the mechanical creature of the world, that even 
 her affection was warm or cold in proportion as the world 
 shone on it. Without being absolutely in love with her 
 husband, she liked him they suited each other ; and (in 
 pite of all the temptations that had beset her in their 
 earlier years, for she had been esteemed a beauty and 
 lived, as worldly people must do, in circles where examples 
 of unpunished gallantry are numerous and contagious,) her 
 conduct had ever been scrupulously correct. She had little 
 or no feeling for misfortunes with which she had never 
 come into contact ; for those with which she had such as 
 4he distresses of younger sons, or the errors of fashionable
 
 92 NIGHT AND MORNING, 
 
 women, or the disappointments of " a proper ambition " 
 she had more sympathy than might have been supposed, 
 and touched on them with all the tact of well-bred charity 
 and ladylike forbearance. Thus, though she was regarded 
 as a strict person in point of moral decorum, yet in society 
 she was popular as women, at once pretty and inoffensive, 
 generally are. 
 
 To do Mrs. Beaufort justice, she had not been privy to 
 the letter her husband wrote to Cathei'ine, although not 
 wholly innocent of it. The fact is, that Robert had never 
 mentioned to her the peculiar circumstances that made 
 Catherine an exception from ordinary rules the generoua 
 propositions of his brother to him the night before his 
 death ; and, whatever his incredulity as to the alleged 
 private marriage, the perfect loyalty and faith that Cathe- 
 rine had borne to the deceased, he had merely observed, 
 " I must do something. I suppose, for that woman : she 
 very nearly entrapped my poor brother into marrying her ; 
 and he would then, for what I know, have cut Arthur out 
 of the estates. Still, I must do something for her eh ? " 
 
 " Yes, I think so. What was she ? very low ? " 
 
 " A tradesman's daughter." 
 
 " The children should be provided for according to tho 
 rank of the mother ; that's the general rule in such cases : 
 and the mother should have about the same provision she 
 might have looked for if she had married a tradesman and 
 been left a widow. I dare say she was a very artful kind 
 of person, and don't deserve anything ; but it is always 
 handsomer, in the eyes of the world, to go by the general 
 rules people lay down as to money matters." 
 
 So spoke Mrs. Beaufort. She concluded her husband 
 had settled the matter, and never again recurred to it. 
 Indeed, she had never liked the late Mr. Beaufort, whom 
 she considered mauvais ton. 
 
 In the breakfast-room at Mr. Beaufort's, the mother and 
 son were seated ; the former at work, the latter lounging 
 by the window : they were not alone. In a large elbow- 
 chair sat a middle-aged man, listening, or appearing to 
 listen, to the prattle of a beautiful little girl Arthu, 
 Beaufort's sister. This man was not handsome, trot 
 there was a certain elegance in his air, and a certain 
 intelligence in his countenance, which made his appear- 
 ance pleasing. He had that kind of eye which is often
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 93 
 
 seen with red hair an eye of a reddish hazel, with 
 very long lashes ; the eyebrows were dark, and clearly 
 denned ; and the short hair showed to advantage the contour 
 of a small well-shaped head. His features were irregular ; 
 the complexion had been sanguine, but was now faded, and 
 a yellow tinge mingled with the red. His face was more 
 wrinkled, especially round the eyes which, when he 
 laughed, were scarcely visible than is usual even m men 
 ten years older. But his teeth were still of a dazzling white - 
 ness ; nor was there any trace of decayed health in hia 
 countenance. He seemed one who had lived hard, but who 
 had much yet left in the lamp wherewith to feed the wick. 
 At the first glance he appeared slight, as he lolled listlessly 
 in his chair almost fragile. But, at a nearer examination, 
 you perceived that, in spite of the small extremities and 
 delicate bones, his frame was constitutionally strong. 
 Without being broad in the shoulders, he was exceedingly 
 deep in the chest deeper than men who seemed giants by 
 his side ; and his gestures had the ease of one accustomed 
 lo an active life. He had, indeed, been celebrated in his 
 youth for his skill in athletic exercises, but a wound, re- 
 ceived in a duel many years ago, had rendered him lame 
 for life a misfortune which interfered with his former 
 habits, and was said to have soured his temper. This per- 
 sonage, whose position and character will be described 
 hereafter, was Lord Lilburne, the brother of Mrs. Beaufort. 
 
 " So, Camilla," said Lord Lilburne to his niece, as care- 
 /essly, not fondly, he stroked down her glossy ringlets, " you 
 don't like Berkeley Square as you did Gloucester Place." 
 
 " Oh, no ! not half so much ! You see I never walk out 
 in the fields,* nor make daisy-chains at Primrose Hill. 1 
 don't know what mamma means," added the child, in 
 whisper, " in saying we are better off here." 
 
 Lord Lilburne smiled, but the smile was a half sneer. 
 
 " You will know quite soon enough, Camilla ; the under- 
 standings of young ladies grow np very quickly on this 
 side of Oxford Street. Well, Arthur, and what are your 
 plans to-day ? " 
 
 " Why," said Arthur, suppressing a yawn, " I have 
 promised to ride out with a friend of mine, to see a horse 
 that is for ?ale, somewhere in the suburbs." 
 
 Now the Hejrent'n Park.
 
 94- NIGHT AND. MORNING. 
 
 As lie spoke, Arthur rose, stretched himself, looked in 
 the glass, and then glanced impatiently at the window. 
 
 " He ought to be here by this time." 
 
 " He ! who ? " said Lord Lilburn, " the horse or the 
 Other animal I mean the friend ? " 
 
 " The friend," answered Arthur, smiling, but colouring 
 while he smiled, for he half suspected the quiet sneer of 
 his uncle. 
 
 " Who is your friend, Arthur ? " asked Mrs. Beaufort, 
 looking up from her work. 
 
 " Watson, an Oxford man. By-the-bye, I must introduce 
 him to you." 
 
 " Watson ! what Watson ? what family of Watson ? 
 Some Watsons are good and some are bad," said Mrs. Beau- 
 fort musingly. 
 
 " Then they are very unlike the rest of mankind," 
 observed Lord Lilburne, drily. 
 
 " Oh ! my Watson is a very gentlemanlike person, I 
 assure you," said Arthur, half-laughing, "and you need 
 not be ashamed of him." Then, rather desirous of turning 
 the conversation, he continued, " So my father will be back 
 from Beaufort Court to-day." 
 
 " Yes ; he writes in excellent spirits. He says the rents 
 will bear raising at least ten per cent., and that the house 
 will not require much repair." 
 
 Here Arthur threw open the window. 
 
 " Ah, Watson ! how are you ? How d'ye do, Marsden ? 
 Danvers, too 1 that's capital ! the more the merrier ! I will 
 be down in an instant. But would you not rather come 
 in?" 
 
 " An agreeable inundation," murmured Lord Lilburne. 
 M Three at a time : he takes your house for Trinity College." 
 
 A loud, clear voice, however, declined the invitation ; the 
 Lorses were heard pawing without. Arthur seized his hat 
 and whip, and glanced to his mother and uncle, smilingly. 
 " Good-bye ! I shall be out till dinner. Kiss me, my pretty 
 Hilly ! " And as his sister, who had run to the window, 
 sickening for the fresh air and exercise he was about to 
 enjoy, now turned to him wistful and mournful eyes, the 
 kind-hearted young man took her in his arms, and whispered 
 while he kissed her, 
 
 " Get up early to-morrow, and we'll have such a nico 
 walk together."
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 95 
 
 Arthur was gone : his mother's gaze had followed hia 
 young and graceful figure to the door. 
 
 " Own that he is handsome, Lilburn. May I not say 
 more : has he not the proper air ? " 
 
 " My dear sister, your son will be rich. As for his air 
 he has plenty of airs, but wants graces." 
 
 " Then who could polish him like yourself ? " 
 
 " Probably no one. But had I a son which Heaven 
 forbid ! he should not have me for his Mentor. Place a 
 young man (go and shut the door, Camilla !) between 
 two vices women and gambling, if you want to polish hira 
 into the fashionable smoothness. Entre vous, the varnish 
 is a little expensive ! " 
 
 Mrs. Beaufort sighed. Lord Lilburne smiled. He had 
 a strange pleasure in hurting the feelings of others. Be- 
 sides, he disliked youth : in his own youth he had enjoyed 
 BO much that he grew sour when he saw the young. 
 
 Meanwhile Arthur Beaufort and his friends, careless of 
 the warmth of the day, were laughing merrily, and talking 
 gaily, as they made for the suburb of H . 
 
 " It is an out-of-the-way place for a horse, too," said 
 Sir Harry Danvers. 
 
 " But I assure you," insisted Mr. Watson, earnestly, 
 " that my groom, who is a capital judge, says it is the 
 cleverest hack he ever mounted. It has won several trot- 
 ting matches. It belonged to a sporting tradesman, now 
 done np. The advertisement caught me." 
 
 " Well," said Arthur, gaily, " at all events the ride is 
 delightful. What weather ! You must all dine with me 
 at Richmond to-morrow we will row back." 
 
 " And a little chicken hazard, at the M , afterwards," 
 
 said Mr. Marsden, who was an elder not a better man than 
 the rest a handsome, saturnine man who had just left 
 Oxford, and was already known on the turf. 
 
 "Any thing you please," said Arthur, making his horse 
 curvet. 
 
 Oh, Mr. Robert Beaufort ! Mr. Robert Beaufort ! could 
 /our prudent, scheming, worldly heart but feel what devil's 
 tricks your wealth was playing with a son who if poor had 
 been the pride of the Beauforts ! On one side of on* 
 pieces of gold we see the saint trampling down the dragon : 
 False emblem ! Reverse it on the coin ! In the real usp 
 of the gold, it is the dragon who tramples down the saint 1
 
 9(1 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 Bat on on ! the day is bright and your companions 
 merry ; make the best of your green years, Arthur Beaufort' 
 
 The young men had just entered the suburb of H , 
 
 and were spurring on four abreast at a canter. At that 
 time an old man, feeling his way before him with a stick, 
 for though not quite blind, he saw imperfectly, was 
 crossing the road. Arthur and his friends, in loud con- 
 verse, did not observe the poor passenger. He stopped 
 abruptly, for his ear caught the sound of danger it was 
 too late : Mr. Marsden's horse, hard-mouthed, and high- 
 stepping, came full against him. Mr. Marsden looked 
 down 
 
 "Hang these old men! always in the way," said he, 
 plaintively, and in the tone of a much-injured person, and, 
 with that, Mr. Marsden rode on. But the others who were 
 younger who were not gamblers who were not yet 
 grinded down into stone by the world's wheels the others 
 halted. Arthur Beaufort leaped from his horse, and the 
 old man was already in his arms ; but he was severely 
 hurt. The blood trickled from bis forehead ; he complained 
 of pain in his side and limbs. 
 
 " Lean on me, my poor fellow ! I will take you home. 
 Do you live far off ? " 
 
 " Not many yards. This would not have happened if I 
 had had my dog. Never mind, sir, go your way. It is 
 only an old man what of that ? I wish I had my dog." 
 
 " I will join you," said Arthur to his friends ; " my 
 groom has the direction. I will just take the poor old man 
 home, and send for a surgeon. I shall not be long." 
 
 " So like you, Beaufort: the best fellow in the world ! " 
 said Mr. Watson, with some emotion. "And there's 
 Marsden positively dismounted, and looking at his horse's 
 knees as if they could be hurt ! Here's a sovereign for 
 you, my man." 
 
 "And here's another," said Sir Harry ; " so that's settled. 
 Well, you will join us, Beaufort ? You see the yard yonder. 
 We'll wait twenty minutes for you. Come on, Watson."- 
 
 The old man had not picked up the sovereigns thrown 
 at his feet, neither had he thanked the donors. And on 
 his countenance there was a sour, querulous, resentful ex- 
 pression. 
 
 " Must a man be a beggar because he is run over, or 
 because he is half blind ? " said he, turning his dim., wan-
 
 KiGHT AKD MORNING. 07 
 
 dcring eyes painfully towards Arthur. "Well, I wish I 
 h&d my dog ! " 
 
 "I -will supply his place," said Arthur, soothingly. 
 " Come, lean on me heavier ; that's right. You are not 
 BO bad, eh?" 
 
 " Um ! the sovereigns ! it is wicked to leave them in 
 the kennel!" 
 
 Arthur smiled. " Here they are, sir." 
 
 The old man slid the coins into his pocket, and Arthur 
 continued to talk, though he got but short answers, and 
 those only in the way of direction, till at last the old man 
 stopped at the door of a small house, near the church- 
 yard. 
 
 After twice ringing the bell, the door was opened by a 
 middle-aged woman, whose appearance was above that of 
 a common menial ; dressed, somewhat gaily for her years, 
 in a cap seated very far back on a black toupet, and deco- 
 rated with red ribands, an apron made out of an Indian 
 silk handkerchief, a puce-coloured sarcenet gown, black 
 silk-stockings, long gilt earrings, and a watch at her girdle. 
 
 "Bless us and save us, sir! What IMS happened?" 
 exclaimed this worthy personage, holding up her hands. 
 
 "Pish! I am faint: let me in. I don't want your aid 
 any more, sir. Thank you. Good day ! " 
 
 Not discouraged by this farewell, the churlish tone of 
 which fell harmless on the invincibly sweet temper of 
 Arthur, the young man continued to assist the sufferer 
 aloe g the narrow passage into a little old-fashioned parlour; 
 and no sooner was the owner deposited on his worm-eaten 
 leather chair than he fainted away. On reaching the house, 
 Arthur had sent his servant (who had followed him with 
 the horses) for the nearest surgeon ; and while the Woman 
 was still employed, after taking off the sufferer's cravat, 
 in burning feathers under his nose, there was heard a sharp 
 ?ap and a shrill ring. Arthur opened the door, and ad- 
 mitted a smart little man in nankeen breeches and gaiters. 
 He bustled into the room. 
 
 "What's this bad accident tun run! Sad thing, 
 very sad. Open the window. A glass of water a towel. 
 So so : I see I see no fracture contusion. Help him 
 off with his coat. Another chair, ma'am ; put up his poor 
 legs. What age is he, ma'am ? Sixty-eight ! Too old to 
 bhed. TbAnkyou. How is it, sir? Poorly, to bo sure: 
 
 a
 
 88 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 will be comfortable presently faintish still? Soon pat 
 all to rights." 
 
 " Tray ! Tray ! Where's Tray ? Where's my dog, Mrs. 
 Boxer?" 
 
 " Lord, sir, what do you want with your dog now? He 
 is in the back-yard." 
 
 "And what business has my dog in the back-yard?" 
 almost screamed the sufferer, in accents that denoted no 
 diminution of vigour. " I thought as soon as my back was 
 turned my dog would be ill-used ! Why did I go without 
 my dog ? Let in my dog directly, Mrs. Boxer ! " 
 
 "All right, you see, sir," said the apothecary, turning to 
 Beaufort, " no cause for alarm very comforting that little 
 passion does him good set's one's mind easy. How did 
 it happen? Ah, I understand! knocked down might 
 have been worse. Tour groom (sharp fellow !) explained 
 in a trice, sir. Thought it was my old friend here by the 
 description. Worthy man settled here a many year- 
 very odd eccentric (this in a whisper). Came off in- 
 stantly: just at dinner cold lamb and salad. 'Mrs. 
 Perkins,' says I, ' if any one calls for me, I shall be at No. 
 4, Prospect Place.' Your servant observed the address, 
 sir. Oh, very sharp fellow ! See how the old gentleman 
 takes to his dog fine little dog what a stump of a tail ! 
 Deal of practice expect two accouchements every hour. 
 Hot weather for child-birth. So says I to Mrs. Perkins, 
 *If Mrs. Plummer is taken, or Mrs. Everat, or if old Mr. 
 Grub has another fit, send off at once to No. 4. Medical 
 men should be always in the way that's my maxim. 
 Now, sir, where do you feel the pain ? " 
 
 " In my ears, sir." 
 
 " Bless me, that looks bad. How long have you felt it ? " 
 
 " Ever since you have been in the room." 
 
 " Oh ! I take. Ha ! ha ! very eccentric very ! " mut- 
 tered the apothecary, a little disconcerted. " Well, let him 
 lie down, ma'am. I'll send him a little quieting draught 
 to be taken directly pill at night, aperient in the morning. 
 If wanted, send for me always to be found. Bless me, 
 that my boy Bob's ring ! Please to open the door, ma'am. 
 Know his ring very peculiar knack of his own. Lay ten 
 to one it is Mrs. Plummer, or, perhaps, Mrs. Everat her 
 ninth child in eight years in the grocery line. A woman 
 in a thousand, sir ! "
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 99 
 
 Here a thin boy, with very short coat-sleeves, and very 
 large hands, burst into the room with his mouth opan. 
 
 " Sir Mr. Perkins sir !" 
 
 "I know I know coming. Mrs, Plummer or Mrs. 
 Everat?" 
 
 "No, sir; it be the poor lady at Mrs. Lacy's; she be 
 taken desperate. Mrs. Lacy's girl has just been over to 
 the shop, and made me run here to you, sir." 
 
 " Mrs. Lacy's ! oh, I know. Poor Mrs. Morton ! Bad 
 case very bad must be off. Keep him quiet, ma'am. 
 Good day ! Look in to-morrow nine o'clock. Put a little 
 lint with the lotion on the head, ma'am. Mrs. Morton! 
 Ah! bad job that." 
 
 Here the apothecary had shuffled himself off to the street 
 door, when Arthur laid his hand on his arm. 
 
 " Mrs. Morton ! Did you say Morton, sir ? What kind 
 of a person is she very ill ? " 
 
 " Hopeless case, sir general break-up. Nice woman 
 quite the lady known better days, I'm sure." 
 
 " Has she any children sons ? " 
 
 " Two both away now fine lads quite wrapped up in 
 them youngest especially." 
 
 " Good heavens ! it must be she ill, and dying, and 
 destitute, perhaps," exclaimed Arthur, with real and 
 deep feeling ; " I will go with you, sir. I fancy that I 
 know this lady that (he added generously) I am related 
 to her." 
 
 "Do you? glad to hear it. Come along then; she 
 ought to have some one near her besides servants : not but 
 
 what Jenny, the maid, is uncommonly kind. Dr. , 
 
 who attends her sometimes, said to me, says he, ' It is the 
 mind, Mr. Perkins ; I wish we could get back her boys.' " 
 
 " And where are they ? " 
 
 " 'Prenticed out, I fancy. Master Sidney " 
 
 "Sidney!" 
 
 " Ah ! that was his name pretty name. D'ye know 
 Sir Sidney Smith? extraordinary man, sir! Master 
 Sidney was a beautiful child quite spoiled. She always 
 fancied him ailing always sending for me. 'Mr. Per- 
 kins,' said she, 'there's something the matter with my 
 child; I'm sure there is, though he won't own. it. He 
 has lost his appetite had a headache last night.' ' Nothing 
 the matter, ma'am,' says I, 'wish vou'd think more of 
 
 Jtl
 
 100 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 yourself.' These mothers are silly, anxious, poor creatures. 
 Nater, sir, nater wonderful thing nater ! Here we are." 
 And the apothecary knocked at the private door of a 
 milliner and hosier's shop. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 " Tfiy child shall live, and I will see it nourished." Titus Andronietu. 
 
 As might be expected, the excitement ard fatigue of 
 
 Catherine's journey to N had considerably accelerated 
 
 the progress of disease. And when she reached home, and 
 looked round the cheerless rooms, all solitary, all hushed' 
 Sidney gone, gone from her for ever ; she felt, indeed, as if 
 the last reed on which she had leaned was broken, and her 
 business upon earth was done. Catherine was not con- 
 demned to absolute poverty the poverty which grinds and 
 gnaws, the poverty of rags and famine. She had still left 
 nearly half of such portion of the little capital, realized by 
 the sale of her trinkets, as had escaped the clutch of the 
 law ; and her brother had forced into her hands a note for 
 20Z. with an assurance that the same sum should be paid 
 to her half-yearly. Alas ! there was little chance of her 
 needing it again ! She was not, then, in want of means 
 to procure the common comforts of life. But now a new 
 passion had entered into her breast the passion of the 
 miser ; she wished to hoard every sixpence as some little 
 provision for her children. What was the use of hei 
 feeding a lamp nearly extinguished, and which was fated 
 to be soon broken up and cast amidst the vast lumber- 
 house of Death ? She would willingly have removed into 
 a more homely lodging, but the servant of the house had 
 been so fond of Sidney so kind to him. She clung to one 
 familiar face on which there seemed to live the reflection 
 of her child's. But she relinquished the first floor for the 
 second ; and thero, day by day, she felt her eyes grow 
 heavier and heavier beneath the clouds of the last sleep. 
 Besides the aid of Mr. Perkins, a kind enough man in his* 
 Tvay, the good physician, whom she had before consulted^ 
 still attended her, and refused his fee. Shocked at per- 
 ceiving that she rejected every little alleviation of he* 
 condition, and wishing at least to procure for her last hour*
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 101 
 
 the society of one of her sons, he had inquired the address 
 of the elder ; and on the day preceding the one in which 
 Arthur discovered her abode, he dispatched to Philip the 
 following letter : 
 
 "SiR, Being called in to attend your mr ther in a lin- 
 gering illness, which I fear may prove fatal, I think it my 
 duty to request you to come to her as soon as you receive 
 this. Your presence cannot but be a great comfort to her. 
 The nature of her illness is such that it is impossible to 
 calculate exactly how long she may be spared to you ; but 
 I am sure her fate might be prolonged, and her remaining 
 days more happy, if she could be induced to remove into a 
 better air and a more quiet neighbourhood, to take more 
 generous sustenance, and, above all, if her mind could be 
 set more at ease as to your and your brother's prospects. 
 You must pardon me if I have seemed inquisitive ; but I 
 have sought to draw from your mother some particulars 
 as to her family and connexions, with a wish to represent 
 to them her state of mind. She is, however, very reserved 
 on these points. If, however, you have relations well to do 
 in the world, I think some application to them should be 
 made. I fear the state of her affairs weighs much upon 
 your poor mother's mind ; and I must leave you to judge 
 how far it can be relieved by the good feeling of any 
 persons upon whom she may have legitimate claims. At 
 all events, I repeat my wish that you should come to her 
 
 forthwith. " I am, &c. 
 
 " _____ 
 
 After the physician had dispatched this letter, a sudden 
 jtnd marked alteration for the worse took place in his 
 patient's disorder ; and in the visit he had paid that morn- 
 ing, he saw cause to fear that her hours on earth would be 
 much fewer than he had before anticipated. He had left 
 her, however, comparatively better; but two hours after 
 his departure, the symptoms of her disease had become 
 very alarming, and the good-natured servant girl, her sole 
 nurse, and who had, moreover, the whole business of the 
 other lodgers to attend to, had, as we have seen, thought 
 it necessary to summon the apothecary in the interval that 
 must elapse before she could reach the distant part of the 
 
 metropolis in which Dr. resided. 
 
 On entering the chamber, Arthur felt all the remorse,
 
 102 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 which of right belonged to his father, press heavily OK Ms 
 soul. What a contrast, that mean and solitary chamber, 
 and its comfortless appurtenances, to the graceful and 
 luxurious abode, where full of health and hope he had last 
 beheld her, the mother of Philip Beaufort's children ! He 
 remained silent till Mr. Perkins, after a few questions, re- 
 tired to send his drugs. He then approached the bed; 
 Catherine, though very weak and suffering much pain, 
 was still sensible. She turned her dim eyes on the young 
 man ; but she did not recognise his features. 
 
 " You do not remember me ?" said he, in a voice strug- 
 gling with tears : " I am Arthur Arthur Beaufort." 
 
 Catherine made no answer. 
 
 " Good Heavens ! Why do I see you here ? I believed 
 you with your friends your children ; provided for as 
 became my father to do. He assured me that you were so." 
 
 Still no answer. 
 
 And then the young man, overpowered with the feelings 
 of a sympathising and generous nature, forgetting for a 
 while Catherine's weakness, poured forth a torrent of in- 
 quiries, regrets, and self-upbraidings, which Catherine at 
 first little heeded. But the name of her children repeated 
 again and again, struck upon that chord which, in a wo- 
 man's heart, is the last to break ; and she" raised herself in 
 her bed, and looked at her visitor wistfully. 
 
 " Your father," she said, then " your father was unlike 
 my Philip : but I see things differently now. For me, all 
 bounty is too late ; but my children to-morrow they may 
 have no mother. The law is with you, but not justice ! 
 You will be rich and powerful ; will you befriend my 
 children ? " 
 
 " Through life, so help me Heaven ! " exclaimed Arthur, 
 falling on his knees beside the bed. 
 
 What then passed between them it is needless to detail ; 
 for it was little, save broken repetitions of the same prayer 
 and the same response. But there was so much truth and 
 earnestness in Arthur's voice and countenance, that Ca- 
 therine felt as if an angel had come there to administer 
 comfort. And when late in the day the physician entered, 
 he found his patient leaning on the breast of her young 
 visitor, and looking on his face with a happy smile. 
 
 The physician gathered enough from the appearance oj 
 Arthur and the gossip of Mr. Perkins, to conjecture that
 
 NIGHT AM) MORNING. 103 
 
 one o: the rich relations he had attributed to Catherine, 
 was arrived. Alas ! for her it was now indeed too late J 
 
 CHAPTEE XI. 
 
 u D'ye stand amazed ? Look o'er thy head, Maxuninian I 
 Look to the terror which overhangs thee." 
 
 BEAUMONT AND FLETCHEB, ; The Prephetett. 
 
 PHILIP had been five weeks in his new home : in another 
 week, he was to enter on his articles of apprenticeship. 
 With a stern, unbending gloom of manner, he had com- 
 menced the duties of his novitiate. He submitted to all 
 that was enjoined him. He seemed to have lost for ever 
 the wild and unruly waywardness that had stamped his 
 boyhood ; but he was never seen to smile he scarcely ever 
 opened his lips. His very soul seemed to have quitted him 
 with its faults ; and he performed all the functions of his 
 situation with the quiet listless regularity of a machine. 
 Only when the work was done and the shop closed, instead 
 of joining the family circle in the back-parlour, he would 
 stroll out in the dusk of the evening, away from the town, 
 and not return till the hour at which the family retired to 
 rest. Punctual in all he did, he never exceeded that hour. 
 He had heard once a- week from his mother ; and only on 
 the mornings in which he expected a letter, did he seem 
 restless and agitated. Till the postman entered the shop, 
 he was as pale as death his hands trembling his lips 
 compressed. When he read the letter he became com- 
 posed : for Catherine sedulously concealed from her son 
 the state of her health : she wrote cheerfully, besought 
 him to content himself with the state into which he had 
 fallen, and expressed her joy that in his letters he inti- 
 mated that content ; for the poor boy's letters were not less 
 considerate than her own. On her return from her bro- 
 ther, she had so far silenced or concealed her misgivings as 
 to express satisfaction at the home she had provided for 
 Sidney ; and she even held out hopes of some future, when, 
 their probation finished and their independence secured, 
 she might reside with her sons alternately. These hopes 
 redoubled Philip's assiduity, and he saved every shilling of 
 his weekly stipend ; and sighed as he thought that ia ano-
 
 104 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 ther week his term of apprenticeship would commence and 
 the stipend cease. 
 
 Mr. Plaskwith could not but be pleased on the whole 
 with the diligence of his assistant, but he was chafed and 
 irritated by the sullenness of his manner. As for Airs. 
 Plaskwith, poor woman ! she positively detested the taci- 
 turn and moody boy, who never mingled in the jokes of 
 the circle, nor played with the children, nor complimented 
 her, nor added, in short, anything to the sociability of the 
 house. Mr. Plimmins, who had at first sought to con- 
 descend, next sought to bully ; but the gaunt frame and 
 savage eye of Philip awed the smirk youth, in spite of 
 himself; and he confessed to Mrs. Plaskwith that he 
 should not like to meet "the gipsy," alone, on a dark 
 night ; to which Mrs. Plaskwith replied, as usual, " that 
 Mr. Plimmins always did say the best things in the 
 world!" 
 
 One morning, Philip was sent a few miles into the 
 country, to assist in cataloguing some books in the library 
 of Sir Thomas Champerdown that gentleman, who was 
 a scholar, having requested that some one acquainted with 
 the Greek character might be sent to him, and Philip being 
 the only one in the shop who possessed such knowledge. 
 
 It was evening before he returned. Mr. and Mrs. Plask- 
 with were both in the shop as he entered in fact, they 
 had been employed in talking him over. 
 
 " I can't abide him ! " cried Mrs. Plaskwith. " If you 
 choose to take him for good, I sha'n't have an easy moment. 
 I'm sure the 'prentice that cut his master's throat at 
 Chatham, last week, was just like him." 
 
 " Pshaw ! Mrs. P.," said the bookseller, taking a huge 
 pinch of snuff, as usual, from his waistcoat pocket. " I 
 myself was reserved when I was young ; all reflective people 
 are. I may observe, by the by, that it was the case with 
 Napoleon Buonaparte : still, however, I must own he is a 
 disagreeable youth, though he attends to his business." 
 
 '* And how fond of his money he is ! " remarked Mrs 
 Plaskwith : " he won't buy himself a new pair of shoes ! 
 quite disgraceful ! And did you see what a look he gave 
 Plimmins, when he joked about his indifference to his sole J 
 Plimmins always does say such good things ! " 
 
 " He is shabby, certainly," said the bookseller ; " but the 
 value of a book does not always depend on the binding."
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 105 
 
 " I hope lie is honest ! " observed Mrs. Plaskwith ; and 
 here Philip entered. 
 
 " Hum," said Mr. Plaskwith ; " you have Iiad a long 
 day's work : but I suppose it will take a week to finish ? " 
 
 " I am to go again to-morrow morning, sir : two dayg 
 more will conclude the task." 
 
 " There 's a letter for you," cried Mrs. Plaskwith ; " you 
 owes me for it." 
 
 " A letter ! " It was not his mother's hand it was a 
 strange writing he gasped for breath as he broke the seal. 
 It was the letter of the physician. 
 
 His mother, then, was ill dying wanting, perhaps, the 
 necessaries of life. She would have concealed from him 
 her illness and her poverty. His quick alarm exaggerated 
 the last into utter want; he uttered a cry that rang 
 through the shop, and rushed to Mr. Plaskwith. 
 
 " Sir, sir ! my mother is dying ! She is poor, poor 
 perhaps, starving ; money, money ! lend me money ! 
 ten pounds ! five ! I will work for you all my life for 
 nothing, but lend me the money ! " 
 
 " Hoity-toity ! " said Mrs. Plaskwith, nudging her hus- 
 band "I told you what would come of it: it will bo 
 'money or life ' next time." 
 
 Philip did not heed or hear this address ; but stood im- 
 mediately before the bookseller, his hands clasped wild 
 impatience in his eyes. Mr. Plaskwith, somewhat stupified, 
 remained silent. 
 
 " Do you hear me ? are you human ? " exclaimed 
 Philip, his emotion revealing at once all the fire of his 
 character. " I tell you my mother is dying ; I must go to 
 her ! Shall I go empty-handed ? Give me money ! " 
 
 Mr. Plaskwith was not a bad-hearted man ; but he was 
 a formal man, and an irritable one. The tone his shop-boy 
 (for so he considered Philip) assumed to him, before his 
 own wife, too (examples are very dangerous), rather exas- 
 perated than moved him. 
 
 " That 'a not the way to speak to your master : you 
 forget yourself, young man ! " 
 
 " Forget ! But, sir, if &Q has not necessaries if she ia 
 Jtarving ? " 
 
 " Fudge ! " said Mr. PlflJ^kwith. " Mr. Morton writes 
 me word that he has provided for your mothvr! Does nofc 
 to, Hannah ? "
 
 106 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 " More fool he, I 'm sure, with such a fine family of Lis 
 own ! Don't look at me in that way, young man ; I won't 
 take it that I won't ! I declare my blood friz to see 
 you!" 
 
 "Will you advance me money ? five pounds only five 
 pounds, Mr. Plaskwith?" 
 
 " Not five shillings ! Talk to me in this style ! not the 
 man for it, sir! highly improper. Come, shut up the 
 shop, and recollect yourself ; and, perhaps, when Sir 
 Thomas's library is done, I may let you go to town. You 
 can't go to-morrow. All a sham, perhaps ; eh, Hannah ? " 
 
 " Very likely ! Consult PHmmins. Better come away 
 now, Mr. P. He looks like a young tiger." 
 
 Mrs. Plaskwith quitted the shop for the parlour. Her 
 husband, putting his hands behind his back, and throwing 
 back his chin, was about to follow her. Philip, who had 
 remained for the last moment mute and white as stone, 
 turned abruptly ; and his grief taking rather the tone of 
 rage than supplication, he threw himself before his master, 
 and, laying his hand on his shoulder, said : 
 
 " I leave you do not let it be with a curse. I conjure 
 you, have mercy on me !" 
 
 Mr. Plaskwith stopped ; and had Philip then taken but 
 a milder tone, all had been well. But, accustomed from 
 childhood to command all his fierce passions loose within 
 him despising the very man he thus implored the boy 
 ruined his own cause. Indignant at the silence of Mr. 
 Plaskwith, and too blinded by his emotions to see that in 
 that silence there tvas relenting, he suddenly shook the 
 little man with a vehemence that almost overset him, and 
 cried : 
 
 " You, who demand for five years my bones and blood 
 my body and soul a slave to your vile trade do you deny 
 me bread for a mother's lips ? " 
 
 Trembling with anger and, perhaps, fear, Mr. Plaskwith 
 extricated himself from the gripe of Philip, and, hurrying 
 from the shop, said, as he banged the door : 
 
 " Beg my pardon for this to-night, or out you go to- 
 morrow, neck and crop ! Zounds ! a pretty pass the world 'a 
 come to! I don't believe a word about your mother. 
 Baugh ! " 
 
 Left alone, Philip remained for some moments struggling 
 with his wrath and agony. He then seized his hat, which
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 107 
 
 he had thrown off on entering pressed it over his brows 
 turned to quit the shop when his eye fell upon the til' 
 Plaskwith had left it open, and the gleam of the coin 
 struck his gaze that deadly smile of the arch tempter. 
 Intellect, reason, conscience all, in that instant, were 
 confusion and chaos. He cast a hurried glance round the 
 solitary and darkening room plunged his hand into the 
 drawer, clutched he knew not what silver or gold, as it 
 came uppermost and burst into a loud and bitter laugh. 
 That laugh itself startled him it did not sound like his 
 own. His face fell, and his knees knocked together his 
 hair bristled he felt as if the very fiend had uttered that 
 yell of joy over a fallen soul. 
 
 "No no no!" he muttered; " no, my mother, not 
 even for thee ! " And, dashing the money to the ground, 
 he fled, like a maniac, from the house. 
 
 At a later hour that same evening, Mr. Robert Beaufort 
 returned from his country mansion to Berkeley Square. 
 He found his wife very uneasy and nervous about the non- 
 appearance of their only son. Arthur had sent home his 
 groom and horses about seven o'clock, with a hurried 
 scroll, written in pencil on a blank page torn from his 
 pocket-book, and containing only these words : 
 
 " Don't wait dinner for me I may not be home for 
 some hours. I have met with a melancholy adventure. 
 You will approve what I have done when we meet." 
 
 This note a little perplexed Mr. Beaufort ; but, as he 
 was very hungry, he turned a deaf ear both to his wife's 
 conjectures and his own surmises, till he had refreshed 
 himself; and then he sent for the groom, and learned that, 
 after the accident to the blind man, Mr. Arthur had been 
 
 left at a hosier's in H . This seemed to him extremely 
 
 mysterious ; and, as hour after hour passed away, and 
 still Arthur came not, he began to imbibe his wife's fears, 
 which were now wound up almost to hysterics ; and just 
 at midnight he ordered his carriage, and taking with him 
 the groom as a guide, set off to the suburban region, 
 Mrs. Beaufort had wished to accompany him; but the 
 husband observing that young men would be young men, 
 and that there might possibly be a lady in the case, Mrs. 
 Beaufort, after a pause of thought, passively agreed that, 
 all things considered, she had better remain at home. No 
 lady of proper decorum likes to run the risk of finding
 
 108 NIGHT AND MOKNINO. 
 
 herself in a false position. Mr. Beaufort accordingly set 
 out alone. Easy was the carriage swift were the steeds- 
 and luxuriously the wealthy man was whirled along. Not 
 a suspicion of the true cause of Arthur's detention crossed 
 him ; but he thought of the snares of London of artful 
 females in distress; " a melancholy adventure " generally 
 implies love for the adventure, and money for the melan- 
 choly; and Arthur was young generous with a heart 
 and a pocket equally open to imposition. Such scrapes, 
 however, do not terrify a father when he is a man of the 
 world, so much as they do an anxious mother ; and, with 
 more curiosity than alarm, Mr. Beaufort, after a short 
 doze, found himself before the shop indicated. 
 
 Notwithstanding the lateness of the hour, the door to 
 the private entrance was ajar, a circumstance which 
 seemed very suspicious to Mr. Beaufort. He pushed it 
 open with caution and timidity a candle placed upon a 
 chair in the narrow passage threw a sickly light over the 
 flight of stairs, till swallowed up by the deep shadow from 
 the sharp angle made by the ascent. Robert Beaufort 
 stood a moment in some doubt whether to call, to knock, 
 to recede, or to advance, when a step was heard upon the 
 stairs above it came nearer and nearer a figure emerged 
 from the shadow of the last landing-place, and Mr. Beau- 
 fort, to his great joy, recognised his son. 
 
 Arthur did not, however, seem to perceive his father ; 
 and was about to pass him, when Mr. Beaufort laid his 
 hand on hid arm. 
 
 " What means all this, Arthur ? What place are you 
 in ? How you have alarmed us ! " 
 
 Arthur cast a look upon his father of sadness and 
 reproach. 
 
 " Father," he said, in a tone that sounded stern almost 
 commanding " I will show you where I have been ; follow 
 me nay, I say, follow." 
 
 He turned, without another word re- ascended the stairs; 
 and Mr. Beaufort, surprised and awed into mechanical 
 obedience, did as his son desired. At the landing-placo 
 of the second floor, another long- wicked, neglected^ 
 ghastly candle emitted its cheerless ray. It gleamed 
 through the open door of a small bedroom to the left, 
 through which Beaufort perceived the forms of two 
 women. One (it was the kindly maid-servant) was seated
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 106 
 
 on a chair, and weeping bitterly ; the other (it was a hire- 
 ling nurse, in the first and last day of her attendance) was 
 unpinning her dingy shawl before she lay down to take a 
 nap. She turned her vacant, listless face upon the two 
 men, put on a doleful smile, and decently closed the door. 
 
 " Where are we, I say, Arthur ? '' repeated Mr. Beau- 
 fort. Arthur took his father's handdrew him into a 
 room to the right and taking up the candle, placed it on 
 a small table beside a bed, and said, " Here, sir in the 
 presence of Death!" 
 
 Mr. Beaufort cast a hurried and fearful glance on the 
 still, wan, serene face beneath his eyes, and recognised in 
 that glance the features of the neglected and the once- 
 adored Catherine. 
 
 " Yes she, whom your brother so loved the mother of 
 his children died in this squalid room, and far from her 
 sons, in poverty, in sorrow ! died of a broken heart ! 
 Was that well, father ? Have you in this nothing to 
 repent?" 
 
 Conscience-stricken and appalled, the worldly man sank 
 down on a seat beside the bed, and covered his face with 
 his hands. 
 
 " Ay," continued Arthur, almost bitterly " ay, we, his 
 nearest of kin we, who have inherited his lauds and gold 
 we have been thus heedless of that gi-eat legacy your 
 brother bequeathed to us : the things dearest to him 
 the woman he loved the children his death cast, nameless 
 and branded, on the world. Ay, weep, father ; and white 
 you weep, think of the future, of reparation. I have 
 sworn to that clay to befriend her sons ; join you, who 
 have all the power, to fulfil the promise join in that vow: 
 and may Heaven not visit on us both the woes of this bed 
 of death!" 
 
 " I did not know I I " faltered Mr. Beaufort. 
 
 " But we should have known," interrupted Arthur, 
 mournfully. " Ah, my dear father ! do not harden your 
 heart by false excuses. The dead still speaks to you, and 
 commends to your care her children. My task here is 
 done : sir ! yours is to come. I leave you alone with 
 the dead." 
 
 So saying, the young man, whom the tragedy of the 
 scene had worked into a passion and a dignity above his 
 usual character, unwilling to trust himself farther to his
 
 110 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 emotions, turned abruptly from the room, fled rapidly 
 down the stairs, and left the house. As the carriage and 
 liveries of his father met his eye, he groaned ; for their 
 evidences of comfort and wealth seemed a mockery to the 
 deceased : he averted his face and walked on. N"or did he 
 heed nor even perceive a form that at that instant rushed 
 by him pale, haggard, breathless towards the house 
 which he had quitted, and the door of which he left open, 
 as he had found it open, as the physician had left it when 
 hurrying, ten minutes before the arrival of Mr. Beaufort, 
 from the spot where his skill was impotent. Wrapped in 
 gloomy thought, alone, and on foot at that dreary hour, 
 and in t-hat remote suburb the heir of the Beauforts 
 sought his splendid home. Anxious, fearful, hoping, the 
 outcast orphan flew on to the death-room of his mother. 
 
 Mr. Beaufort, who had but imperfectly heard Arthur's 
 parting accents, lost and bewildered by the strangeness of 
 his situation, did not at first perceive that he was left alone. 
 Surprised, and chilled by the sudden silence of the chamber, 
 he rose, withdrew his hands from his face, and again he 
 saw tbat countenance so mute and solemn. He cast his 
 gaze round the dismal room for Arthur ; he called his 
 name no answer came; a superstitious tremor seized 
 upon him ; his limbs shook ; he sunk once more on his 
 seat, and closed his eyes : muttering, for the first time, 
 perhaps, since his childhood, words of penitence and 
 prayer. He was roused from this bitter self-abstraction 
 by a deep groan. It seemed to come from the bed. Did 
 his ears deceive him ? had the dead found a voice ? He 
 started up in an agony of dread, and saw opposite to him 
 the livid countenance of Philip Morton ; the Son of the 
 Corpse had replaced the Son of the Living Man ! The dim 
 and solitary light fell upon that countenance. There, all 
 ihe bloom and freshness natural to youth seemed blasted ! 
 There, on those wasted features, played all the terrible 
 power and glare of precocious passions, rage, woe, scorn, 
 despair. Terrible is it to see upon the face of a Voy the 
 atorm and whirlwind that should visit only the strong 
 heart of a man ! 
 
 " She is dead ! dead ! and in your presence ! " shouted 
 Philip, with his wild eyes fixed upon the cowering uncle ; 
 " dead with care, perhaps with famine. And you have 
 come to look upon your work ! "
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. Ill 
 
 "Indeed," said Beaufort, deprecatingly, "I have but 
 just arrived : I did not know she had been ill, or in want, 
 upon my honour. This is all a a mistake : I I came 
 in search of of another " 
 
 "You did not, then, come to relieve her?" said Philip, 
 very calmly. "You had not learned her suffering and 
 distress, and flown hither in the hope that there was yet 
 time to save her ? You did not do this ? Ha ! ha ! why 
 did I think it?" 
 
 "Did any one call, gentlemen ?" said a whining voice 
 at the door ; and the nurse put in her head. 
 
 " Yes yes you may come in," said Beaufort, shaking 
 with nameless and cowardly apprehension ; but Philip had 
 flown to the door, and, gazing on the nurse, said, 
 
 " She is a stranger ! see, a stranger ! The son now has 
 assumed his post. Begone, woman ! " And he pushed her 
 away, and drew the bolt across the door. 
 
 And then there looked upon him, as there had. looked 
 upon his reluctant companion, calm and holy, the face of 
 the peaceful corpse. He burst into tears, and fell on his 
 knees so close to Beaufort that he touched him ; he took 
 up the heavy hand, and covered it with burning kisses. 
 
 " Mother ! mother ! do not leave me ! wake, smile once 
 more on your son ! I would have brought you money, but 
 I could not have asked for your blessing, then ; mother, I 
 ask it now ! " 
 
 " If I had but known if you had but written to me, my 
 4ear young gentleman but my. offers had been refused, 
 and " 
 
 " Offers of a hireling's pittance to her ; to her for whom my 
 father would have coined his heart's blood into gold ! My 
 father's wife ! his wife ! offers " 
 
 He rose suddenly, folded his arms, and facing Beaufort, 
 with a fierce determined brow, said, 
 
 " Mark me, you hold the wealth that I was trained from 
 my cradle to consider my heritage. I have worked with 
 these hands for bread, and never complained, except to my 
 own heart and soul. I never hated, and never cursed you 
 robber as you were yes, robber ! For, even were there 
 no marriage save in the sight of God, neither my father, 
 nor Nature, nor Heaven, meant that you should seize all, 
 and that there should be nothing due to the claims of 
 affection and blood. He was not the lesa my father, even
 
 112 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 if the Church, spoke not on my side. Despoiler of the 
 orphan, and derider of human lore, you are not the less a 
 robber, though the law fences you round, and men call you 
 honest ! But I did not hate you for this. Now, in the 
 presence of my dead mother dead, far from both her sons 
 now I abhor and curse you. You may think yourself 
 safe when you quit this room safe, and from my hatred ; 
 you may be so : but do not deceive yourself, the curse of 
 the widow and the orphan shall pursue it shall cling to 
 you and yours it shall gnaw your heart in the midst of 
 splendour it shall cleave to the heritage of your son! 
 There shall be a death-bed yet, beside which you shall see 
 the spectre of her, now so calm, rising for retribution fronv 
 the grave ! These words no, you never shall forget them 
 years hence they shall ring in your ears, and fieeze the 
 marrow of your bones ! And now begone, my father's 
 brother begone from my mother's corpse to your luxurious 
 home?" 
 
 He opened the door, and pointed to the stairs. Beaufort^ 
 without a word, turned from the room and departed. He 
 heard the door closed and locked as he descended the stairs: 
 but he did not hear the deep groans and vehement sobs in 
 which the desolate orphan gave vent to the anguish which 
 succeeded to the less sacred paroxysm of revenge and 
 vrath.
 
 BOOK II. 
 
 1 5ltenk mart's unb rourte Qftergcn 
 Slimmer, nimmet ftanb kty fhtt." 
 
 SCHILLEB : Der Pilgrim, 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 " Incubo. Look to the cavalier. What ails h ? 
 
 * * * 
 
 Hottest. And in such good clothes too !" 
 
 BEAUMOXT AND FLETCHER ; Zoveft Pilgrimag*. 
 
 '* Theod. I have a brother there my last hope ! 
 
 Thus aa you find me, without fear or wisdom, 
 
 I now am only child of Hope and Danger." Ibid. 
 
 TOE time employed by Mr. Beaufort in reaching his 
 home was haunted by gloomy and confused terrors. He 
 felt inexplicably as if the denunciations of Philip were to 
 visit less himself than his son. He trembled at the thought 
 of Arthur meeting this strange, wild, exasperated scatter- 
 ling perhaps on the morrow in the very height of his 
 passions. And yet, after the scene between Arthur and 
 himself, he saw cause to fear that he might not be able 
 to exercise a sufficient authority over his son, however 
 naturally facile and obedient, to prevent his return to the 
 house of death. In this dilemma he resolved, as is usual 
 with clererer men, even when yoked to yet feebler help- 
 mates, to hear if his wife had anything comforting or sen- 
 sible to say upon the subject. Accordingly, on reaching 
 Berkeley Square, he went straight to Mrs. Beaufort ; and 
 having relieved her mind as to Arthur's safety, related the 
 scene in which he had been so unwilling an actor. With 
 that more lively susceptibility which belongs to most 
 women, however comparatively unfeeling, Mrs. Beaufort 
 made greater allowance than her husband for the excite- 
 ment Philip had betrayed. Still Beaufort's description of 
 * u ~ dark menaces, the fierce countenance, the brigand-like 
 
 I
 
 114 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 form, of the bereaved son, gave her very considerable 
 apprehensions for Arthur, should the young men meet; 
 and she willingly coincided with her husband in the pro- 
 priety of using all means of parental persuasion or com- 
 mand to guard against such an encounter. But, in the 
 mean while, Arthur returned not, and new fears seized the 
 anxious parents. He had gone forth alone, in a remote 
 suburb of the metropolis, at a late hour, himself under 
 strong excitement. He might have returned to the house, 
 or have lost his way amidst some dark haunts of violence 
 and crime ; they knew not where to send, or what to sug^ 
 gest. Day already began to dawn, and still he came not. 
 At length, towards five o'clock, a loud rap was heard at the 
 door, and Mr. Beaufort, hearing some bustle in the hall, 
 descended. He saw his son borne into the hall from a 
 hackney-coach by two strangers, pale, bleeding, and appa- 
 rently insensible. His first thought was that he had been 
 murdered by Philip. He uttered a feeble cry, and sank 
 down beside his son. 
 
 " Don't be darnted, sir," said one of the strangers, who 
 seemed an artisan ; "I don't think he be much hurt. Tou 
 sees he was crossing the street, and the coach ran against 
 him ; but it did not go over his head ; it be only the stones 
 that makes him bleed so : and that's a mercy." 
 
 " A providence, sir," said the other man; "but Provi- 
 dence watches over us all, night and day, sleep or wake. 
 Hem ! We were passing at the time from the meeting 
 the Odd Fellows, sir and so we took him, and got him a 
 coach ; for we found his card in his pocket. He could not 
 speak just then ; but the rattling of the coach did him a 
 deal of good, for he groaned my eyes ! how he groaned ! 
 did not he, Burrows ? " 
 
 " It did one's heart good to hear him." 
 
 " Bun for Astley Cooper you go to Brodie. Good 
 Heavens ! he is dying. Be quick quick ! " cried Mr, Beau- 
 fort to his servants, while Mrs. Beaufort, who had now 
 gained the spot, with greater presence of mind had Arthtu 
 conveyed into a room. 
 
 " It is a judgment upon me," groaned Beaufort, rooted 
 to the stone of his hall, and left alone with the strangers. 
 
 "No, sir, it is not a judgment, it is a providence," said tho 
 more sanctimonious and better dressed of the two men : 
 " for, put the question, ^ it had been a judgment, the whee?
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING 1J5 
 
 would have gone over him ; but it didn't ; and, whether he 
 dies or not, I shall always say that if that's not a provi- 
 dence, I don't know what is. We have come a long way, 
 BIT ; and Burrows is a poor man, though I'm well to do." 
 
 This hint for money restored Beaufort to his recollec- 
 tion ; he put his purse into the nearest hand outstretched 
 to clutch it, and muttered forth something like thanks. 
 
 " Sir, may the Lord bless you ! and I hope the young 
 gentleman will do well. I am sure you have cause to be 
 thankful that he was within an inch of the wheel ; was not 
 he, Burrows? Well, it's enough to convert a heathen. 
 But the ways of Providence are mysterious, and that's the 
 truth of it. Good night, sir." 
 
 Certainly it did seem as if the curse of Philip was already 
 at its work. An accident almost similar to that which, in 
 the adventure of the blind man, had led Arthur to the clue 
 of Catherine, within twenty-four hours stretched Arthur 
 himself upon his bed. The sorrow Mr. Beaufort had not 
 relieved, was now at his own hearth. But there, were 
 parents and nurses, and great physicians and skilful sur- 
 geons, and all the army that combine against Death, and 
 there, were ease, and luxury, and kind eyes, and pitying 
 looks, and all that can take the sting from pain. And 
 thus, the very night on which Catherine had died, broken 
 down, and worn-out, upon a strange breast, with a feeless 
 doctor, and by the ray of a single candle, the heir to the 
 fortunes once destined to her son wrestled also with the 
 grim Tyrant, who seemed, however, scared from his prey 
 by the arts and luxuries which the world of rich men raises 
 up in defiance of the grave. 
 
 Arthur was, indeed, very seriously injured ; one of his 
 ribs was broken, and he had received two severe contusions 
 on the head. To insensibility succeeded fever, followed by 
 delirium. He was in imminent danger for several daya 
 If anything could console his parents for such an affliction, 
 it was the thought that, at least, he was saved from the 
 chance of meeting Philip. Mr. Beaufort, in the instinct of 
 that capricious and fluctuating conscience which belongs 
 to weak minds, which remains still, and drooping, and 
 lifeless, as a flag on a mast-head during the calm of pros- 
 gperity, but flutters, and flaps, and tosses when the wind 
 blows and the wave heaves, thought very acutely ?,nd 
 remorsefully of the condition of the Mortons, during the 
 
 * 2
 
 11 B NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 danger of his own son. So far, indeed, from bis anxiefcj 
 for Arthur monopolising all his care, it only sharpened his 
 charity towards the orphans ; for many a man becomes 
 Jevout and good when he fancies he has an immediate 
 interest in appeasing Providence. The morning after Ar- 
 thur's accident, he sent for Mr. Blackwell. He commis- 
 sioned him to see that Catherine's funeral rites were per- 
 formed with all due care and attention ; he bade him obtain 
 an interview with Philip, and assure the youth of Mr. 
 Beaufort's good and friendly disposition towards him, and 
 to offer to forward his views in any course of education he 
 might prefer, or any profession he might adopt ; and he 
 earnestly counselled the lawyer to employ all his tact and 
 delicacy in conferring with one of so proud and fiery a 
 temper. Mr. Blackwell, however, had no tacb or delicacy 
 to employ : he went to the house of mourning, forced his 
 way to Philip, and the very exordium of his harangue, 
 which was devoted to praises of the extraordinary gene- 
 rosity and benevolence of his employer, mingled with con- 
 descending admonitions towards gratitude from Philip, so 
 exasperated the boy, that Mr. Blackwell was extremely 
 glad to get out of the house with a whole skin. He, how- 
 ever, did not neglect the more formal part of his mission ; 
 but communicated immediately with a fashionable under- 
 taker, and gave orders for a very genteel funeral. He 
 thought after the funeral that Philip would be in a less 
 excited state of mind, and more likely to hear reason ; he, 
 therefore, deferred a second interview with the orphan till 
 after that event ; and, in the mean while, despatched a 
 letter to Mr. Beaufort, stating that he had attended to his 
 instructions ; that the orders for the funeral were given ; 
 but that at present Mr. Philip Morton's mind was a little 
 disordered, and that he could not calmly discuss the plans 
 for the future suggested by Mr. Beaufort. He did not 
 doubt, however, that in another interview all would be 
 arranged according to the wishes his client had so nobly 
 conveyed to him. Mr. Beaufort's conscience on this point 
 was therefore set at rest. 
 
 It wan a, dull, close, oppressive morning, upon which the 
 remains of Catherine Morton were consigned to the grave. 
 With the preparations for the funeral Philip did not inter- 
 fere ; he did not inquire by whose orders all that solemnity 
 of mutes, and coaches, and black plumes, and crape-bands,
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 117 
 
 was appointed. If his vague and undeveloped conjecture 
 ascribed this last and vain attention to Robert Beaufort, it 
 neither lessened the sullen resentment he felt against his 
 nncle, nor, on the other hand, did he conceive that he had 
 a right to forbid respect to the dead, though he might 
 reject service for the survivor. Since Mr. Blackwell's visit, 
 he had remained in a sort of apathy or torpor which seemed 
 to the people of the house to partake rather of indifference 
 than woe. 
 
 The funeral was over ; and Philip had returned to the 
 apartments occupied by the deceased ; and now, for the 
 first time, he set himself to examine what papei-s, &c., 
 she had left behind. In an old escritoire, he found, first, 
 various packets of letters in his father's handwriting, the 
 characters in many of them faded by time. He opened 
 few ; they were the earliest love-letters. He did not dart 
 to read above a few lines ; so much did their living tender- 
 ness and breathing, frank, hearty passion, contrast with 
 the fate of the adored one. In those letters, the very hear 
 of the writer seemed to beat ! Now both hearts alike were 
 stilled ! And GHOST called vainly unto GHOST ! 
 
 He came, at length, to a letter in his mother's hand, 
 addressed to himself, and dated two days before her death. 
 He went to the window and gasped in the mists of tho 
 sultry air for breath. Below, were heard the noises of 
 London ; the shrill cries of itinerant venders, the rolling 
 carts, the whoop of boys returned for a while from school ; 
 amidst all these rose one loud, merry peal of laughter, 
 which drew his attention mechanically to the spot whence 
 it came ; it was at the threshold of a public-house, before 
 which stood the hearse that had conveyed his mother's 
 coffin, and the gay undertakers, halting there to refresl' 
 themselves. He closed the window with a groan, retired to 
 the farthest corner of the room, and read as follows : 
 
 " Mi DEAREST PHILIP, When you read this, I shall be 
 no more. You and poor Sidney will have neither father 
 nor mother, nor fortune, nor name. Heaven is more just 
 than man, and in Heaven is my hope for you. You, Philip, 
 are already past childhood ; your nature is one formed, I 
 think, to wrestle successfully with the world. Guard 
 against your own passions, and you may bid defiance to 
 the obstacles that mil beset your path in life. And lately,
 
 lib NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 in our reverses, Philip, you have so subdued those passions, 
 BO schooled the pride and impetuosity of your childhood, 
 that I have contemplated your prospects with less fear than 
 I used to do, even when they seemed so brilliant. Forgive 
 me, my dear child, if I have concealed from you my state 
 of health, and if my death be a sudden and unlooked-for 
 shock. Do not grieve for me too long. For myself, my 
 release is indeed escape from the prison-house and the chain 
 from bodily pain and mental torture, which may, I fondly 
 hope, prove some expiation for the errors of a happier time. 
 For I did err, when, even from the least selfish motives, I 
 suffered my union with your father to remain concealed, 
 and thus ruined the hopes of those who had rights upon mo 
 equal even to his. But, O Philip ! beware of the first false 
 steps into deceit ; beware, too, of the passions, which do 
 not betray their fruit till years and years after the leaves 
 that look so green and the blossoms that seem so fair. 
 
 " I repeat my solemn injunction Do not grieve for me ; 
 but strengthen your mind and heart to receive the charge 
 that I now confide to you my Sidney, my child, your 
 brother ! He is so soft, so gentle ; he has been so dependent 
 for very life upon me, and we are parted now for the first 
 and last time. He is with strangers ; and and Philip, 
 Philip ! watch over him for the love you bear, not only to 
 him, but to me ! Be to him a father as well as a brother. 
 Put your stout heart against the world, so that you may 
 screen him, the weak child, from its malice. He has not 
 your talents nor strength of character ; without you he is 
 nothing. Live, toil, rise for his sake not less than your 
 own. If you knew how this heart beats as I write to you, 
 .if you could conceive what comfort I take for him from my 
 confidence in you, you would feel a new spirit my spirit 
 my mother-spirit of love, and forethought, and vigilance, 
 enter into you while you read. See him when I am gone 
 comfort and soothe him. Happily he is too young yet 
 to know all his loss ; and do not let him think unkindly of 
 me in the days to come, for he is a child now, and they may 
 poison his mind against me more easily than they can yours. 
 Think, if he is unhappy hereafter, he may forget how I 
 loved him, he may curse those who gave him birth. Forgive 
 me all this, Philip, my son, and heed it well. 
 
 " And now, where you find this letter, you will see a key ; 
 it opens a well in the bureau in which I have hoarded my
 
 NIGHT AND MOUSING. 119 
 
 little savings. You will see that I have not died in poverty. 
 Take what there is, young as yon are you may want it more 
 now than hereafter. But hold it in trust for your brother 
 as well as yourself. If he is harshly treated (and you will 
 go and see him, and you will remember that he would 
 writhe under what you might scarcely feel), or if they 
 overtask him (he is so yonng to work yet), it may find him 
 a home near you. God watch over and guard you both ! 
 You are orphans now. But HE has told even the orphans 
 to call him 'Father!" 
 
 "When he had read this letter, Philip Morton fell upon 
 his knees, and prayed. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 " His curse ! Dost comprehend what that word means ? 
 Shot from a fathers angry breath." 
 
 JAMES SHIRLEY : The Brothers. 
 
 " This term is fatal, and affrights me." Ibid. 
 
 " Those fond philosophers that magnify 
 Our human nature * * * 
 Conversed but little with the world they knew not 
 Tlie fierce vexation of community .'" Ibid. 
 
 AFTER he had recovered his self-possession, Philip opened 
 the well of the bureau, and was astonished and affected to 
 ind that Catherine had saved more than 100Z. Alas.! how 
 nuch must she have pinched herself to have hoarded this 
 little treasure ! After burning his father's love-letters, and 
 some other papers, which he deemed useless, he made up 
 a little bundle of those trifling effects belonging to the 
 deceased, which he valued as memorials and relics of her, 
 quitted the apartment, and descended to the parlour behind 
 the shop. On the way he met with the kind servant, and 
 recalling the grief that she had manifested for his mother 
 since he had been in the house, he placed two sovereigns in 
 her hand. " And now," said he, as the servant wept while 
 he spoke, " now I can bear to ask you what I have not 
 before done. How did my poor mother die ? Did she 
 
 guff er much ? or or 
 
 " She went off like a lamb, sir," said the girl, drying her
 
 120 NIGHT AtfD MORNING. 
 
 eyes. " You see the gentleman had been with her all the 
 day, and she was much more easy and comfortable in her 
 mind after he came." 
 
 " The gentleman ! Not the gentleman I found here ? " 
 
 " Oh, dear no ! Not the pale middle-aged gentlemao 
 nurse and I saw go down, as the clock struck two. But the 
 young, soft- spoken gentleman who came in the morning, 
 and said as how he was a relation. He stayed with her 
 till she slept ; and, when she woke, she smiled in his face 
 I shall never forget that smile for I was standing on 
 the other side, as it might be here, and the doctor was by 
 the window, pouring out the doctor's stuff in the glass ; 
 and so she looked on the young gentleman, and then looked 
 round at us all, and shook her head very gently, but did 
 not speak. And the gentleman asked her how she felt, and 
 she took both his hands and kissed them ; and then he put 
 his arms round and raised her up, to take the physic like, 
 and she said then, ' You will never forget them ? ' and ho 
 said, ' Never.' I don't know what that meant, sir ! " 
 
 " Well, well go en." 
 
 " And her head fell back on his buzzom, and she looked 
 
 BO happy ; and, when the doctor came to the bedside, 
 
 she was quite gone." 
 
 " And the stranger had my post ! No matter ; God 
 bless him God bless him. Who was he ? what was his 
 name ? " 
 
 "I don't know, sir ; he did not say. He stayed after the 
 doctor went, and cried very bitterly ; he took on more than 
 you did, sir." 
 
 "Ay." 
 
 " And the other gentleman came just as he was a-going, 
 and they did not seem to like each other ; for I heard him 
 through the wall, as nurse and I were in the next room, 
 speak as if he was scolding ; but he did not stay long." 
 
 " And has never been seen since ? " 
 
 " No, sir ! Perhaps missus can tell you more about him. 
 But won't you take something, sir ? Do you look so pale." 
 
 Philip, without speaking, pushed her gently aside, and 
 went slowly down the stairs. He entered the parlour, 
 where two or three children were seated, playing at 
 dominoes ; he despatched one for their mother, the mistress 
 of the shop, who came in, and dropped him a courtesy, with 
 a very grave, sad face, as was proper.
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 121 
 
 " I am going to leave your house, ma'am ; and A wish to 
 settle any little arrears of rent, &c." 
 
 " sir ! don't mention it," said the landlady ; and, as 
 she spoke, she took a piece of paper from her bosom, very 
 neatly folded, and laid it on the table. " And here, sir," 
 ehe added, taking from the same depository a card, " here 
 is the card left by the gentleman who saw to the funeral. 
 He called half an hour ago, and bade me say, with his com- 
 pliments, that he would wait on you to-morrow at eleven 
 o'clock. So I hope you won't go yet : for I think he means 
 to settle everything for you ; he said as much, sir." 
 
 Philip glanced over the card, and read, " Mr. George 
 Blackwell, Lincoln's Inn." His brow grew dark he let 
 the card fall on the ground, put his foot on it with a quiet 
 scorn, and muttered to himself, " The lawyer shall not 
 bribe me out of my curse ! " He turned to the total of the 
 bill not heavy, for poor Catherine had egularly defrayed 
 the expense of her scanty maintenance and humble lodging 
 paid the money, and, as the landlady wrote the receipt, 
 he asked, " Who was the gentleman the younger gentle- 
 man who called in the morning of the day my mother 
 died ? " 
 
 " Oh, sir ! I am so sorry I did not get his name. Mr. 
 Perkins said that he was some relation. Very odd he haa 
 never been since. But he'll be sure to call again, sir ; 
 you had much better stay here." 
 
 " No : it does not signify. All that he could do is done. 
 But stay, give him this note, if he should call." 
 
 Philip, taking the pen from the landlady's hand, hastily 
 wrote (while Mrs. Lacy went to bring him sealing-wax and 
 a light) these words : 
 
 " I cannot guess who you are : they say that you call 
 yourself a relation ; that must be some mistake. I knew 
 not that my poor mother had relations so kind. But, who- 
 ever you be, you soothed her last hours she died in your 
 arms ; and if ever years, long years hence we should 
 chance to meet, and I can do anything to aid another, mj 
 blood, and my life, and my heart, and my soul, all are 
 slaves to your will. If you be really of her kindred, I com- 
 mend to you my brother ; he is at , with Mr. Morton. 
 
 If you can serve him, my mother's soul will watch over you 
 as a guardian angel. Ad ior me, I ask no help from anv
 
 122 NIGHT AND MORNING 
 
 one : I go into the world and will carve out my own way. 
 So much do I shrink from the thought of charity from 
 others, that I do not believe I could bless you as I do now 
 if your kindness to me did not close with the stone upon 
 my mother's grave. 
 
 " PHILIP." 
 
 He sealed this letter, and gave it to the woman. 
 
 " Oh, by the by," said she, "I had forgot; the Doctor 
 said that if you would send for him, he would be most 
 happy to call on you, and give you any advice." 
 
 " Very well." " 
 
 " And what shall I say to Mr. Blackwell ? " 
 
 " That he may tell his employer to remember our last 
 interview." 
 
 With that Philip took up his bundle and strode from the 
 house. He went first to the churchyard, where his mother's 
 remains had been that day interred. It was near at hand, 
 a quiet, almost a rural, spot. The gate stood ajar, for there 
 was a public path through the churchyard, and Philip 
 entered with a noiseless tread. It was then near evening ; 
 the sun had broken out from the mists of the earlier day, 
 and the westering rays shone bright and holy upon the 
 solemn place. 
 
 " Mother! mother ! " sobbed the orphan, as he fell pros- 
 trate before that fresh green mound : " here here I have 
 come to repeat my oath, to swear again that I will be faith- 
 ful to the charge you have entrusted to your wretched son ! 
 And at this hour I dare ask if there be on this earth 
 one more miserable and foilorn ? " 
 
 As words to this effect struggled from his lips, a loud, 
 shrill voice the cracked, painful voice of weak age wrest- 
 ling with strong passion, rose close at hand. 
 
 " Away, reprobate ! thou art accursed ! " 
 
 Philip started, and shuddered as if the words were ad- 
 dressed to himself, and from the grave. But, as he rose on 
 his knee, and tossing the wild hair from his eyes, looked 
 confusedly round, he saw, at a short distance, and in the 
 shadow of the wall, two forms ; the one, an old man with 
 grey hair, who was seated on a crumbling wooden tomb, 
 facing the setting sun ; the other, a man apparently yet in 
 the v gour of life, who appeared bent as in humble suppli- 
 cation. The old man's hands were out-stretched over th
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 123 
 
 head of the younger, as if suiting terrible action to the 
 terrible words, and, after a moment's pause a moment, but 
 it seemed far longer to Philip there was heard a deep, 
 wild, ghastly howl from a dog that cowered at the old 
 man's feet ; a howl, perhaps of fear at the passion of his 
 master, which the animal might associate with danger. 
 
 " Father ! father ! " said the suppliant reproachfully, 
 "your very dog rebukes your curse." 
 
 " Be dumb ! My dog ! What hast thou left me on earth 
 but him ? Thou hast made me loathe the sight of friends, 
 for thou hast made me loathe mine own name. Thou hast 
 covered it with disgrace, thou hast turned mine old ago 
 into a by- word, thy crimes leave me solitary in the midst 
 of my shame ! " 
 
 4 ' It is many years since we met, father ; we may never 
 meet again shall we part thus ? " 
 
 " Thus, aha ! " said the old man, in a tone of withering 
 sarcasm : " I comprehend, you are come for money ! " 
 
 At this taunt the son started as if stung by a serpent ; 
 raised his head to its full height, folded his arms, and 
 replied, 
 
 " Sir, you wrong me : for more than twenty years I have 
 maintained myself no matter how, but without taxing 
 you and now, I felt remorse for having suffered you to 
 discard me, now, when you are old and helpless, and, I 
 heard, blind: and you might want aid, even from your 
 poor, good-for-nothing son. But I have done. Forget, 
 not my sins, but this interview. Repeal your curse, father, 
 I have enough on my head without yours ; and so let the 
 son at least bless the father who curses him. Farewell ! " 
 
 The speaker turned as he thus said, with a voice that 
 trembled at the close, and brushed rapidly by Philip, whom 
 he did not, however, appear to perceive ; but Philip, by the 
 last red beam of the sun, saw again that marked storm 
 beaten face which it was difficult, once seen, to forget, and 
 recognised the stranger, on whose breast he had slept the 
 uight of his fatal visit to B . 
 
 The old man's imperfect vision did not detect the de- 
 parture of his son, but his face changed and softened as the 
 latter strode silently through the rank grass. 
 
 "William!" he said at last, gently; "William!" and 
 the tears rolled down his furrowed cheeks ; " my son ! " 
 but that son was gone the old man listened for reply
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 uone canw. " He has left me poor William ! we stall 
 never meet again ; " and he sank once more on the old 
 tombstone, dumb, rigid, motionless an image of Time 
 Limself in his own domain of Graves. The dog crept 
 closer to his master, and licked his hand. Philip stood for 
 a moment in thoughtful silence : his exclamation of despair 
 had been answered as by his better angel. There was a 
 being more miserable than himself ; and the Accursed would 
 have envied the Bereaved ! 
 
 The twilight had closed in ; the earliest star the star of 
 Memory and Love, the Hesperus hymned by every poet 
 since the world began was fair in the arch of heaven, as 
 Philip quitted the spot, with a spirit more reconciled to the 
 future, more softened, chastened, attuned to gentle and 
 pious thoughts, than perhaps ever yet had made his soul 
 dominant over the deep and dark tide of his gloomy pas- 
 sions. He went thence to a neighbouring sculptor, and 
 paid beforehand for a plain tablet to be placed above the 
 grave he had left. He had just quitted that shop, in the 
 same street, not many doors removed from the house in 
 which his mother had breathed her last. He was pausing 
 by a crossing, irresolute whether to repair at once to the 
 home assigned to Sidney, or to seek some shelter in town 
 for that night, when three men who were on the opposite 
 side of the way suddenly caught sight of him. 
 
 " There he is there he is ; stop, sir ! stop ! " 
 
 Philip heard these words, looked up and recognised the 
 voice and the person of Mr. Plaskwith ; the bookseller was 
 accompanied by Mr. Plimmins and a sturdy, ill-favoured 
 stranger. 
 
 A nameless feeling of fear, rage, and disgust seized the 
 unhappy boy, and at the same moment a ragged vagabond 
 vhispered to him, " Stump it, my cove ; that's a Bow Street 
 runner." 
 
 Then there shot through Philip's mind the recollection 
 of the money he had seized, though but to dash away : waa 
 he now he, still to his own conviction, the heir of an 
 ancient and spotless name to be hunted as a thief ; or, at 
 the best, what right over his person and his liberty had he 
 given to his taskmaster ? Ignorant of the law the law 
 only seemed to him, as it ever does to the ignorant and the 
 friendless a Foe. Quicker than lightning these thoughts, 
 it takes so many words to describe, flashed through
 
 NIGHT AND MOKNING. 125 
 
 the storm and darkness of his breast ; and at the very fn 
 stant that Mr. Plimmins had laid hands on his shoulder 
 iiis resolution was formed. The instinct of self beat loud 
 at his heart. With a bound a spring that sent Mr Plim- 
 mins sprawling in the kennel, he darted across the road, 
 and fled down an opposite lane. 
 
 " Stop him ! stop !" cried the bookseller, and the officer 
 rushed after him with almost equal speed. Lane after 
 lane, alley after alley, fled Philip ; dodging, winding, 
 breathless, panting ; and lane after lane, alley after alley, 
 thickened at his heels the crowd that pursued. The idle 
 and the curious, and the officious, ragged boys, ragged 
 men, from stall and from cellar, from corner and from 
 crossing, joined in that delicious chase, which runs down 
 young Error till it sinks, too often, at the door of the gaol 
 or the foot of the gallows. But Philip slackened not his 
 pace ; he began to distance his pursuers. He was now in 
 a street which they had not yet entered a quiet street, 
 with few, if any, shops. Before the threshold of a better 
 kind of public-house, or rather tavern, to judge by its ap- 
 pearance, lounged two men ; and while Philip flew on, the 
 cry of " Stop him ! " had changed as the shout passed to 
 new voices, into " Stop the thief!' 1 that cry yet howled in 
 the distance. One of the loungers seized him : Philip, 
 desperate and ferocious, struck at him with all his force ; 
 but the blow was scarcely felt by that Herculean frame. 
 
 " Pish ! " said the man scornfully ; " I am no spy ; if 
 you run from justice, I would help you to a sign-post." 
 
 Struck by the voice. Philip looked hard at the speaker. 
 It was the voice of the Accursed Son. 
 
 " Save me ! you remember me ? " said the orphan, 
 faintly. 
 
 " Ah ! I think I do ; poor lad ! Follow me this way !" 
 
 The stranger turned within the tavern, passed the hall 
 through a sort of corridor that led into a back-yard which 
 opened upon a nest of courts or passages. 
 
 " You are safe for the present ; I will take yon where 
 you can tell me all at your ease See ! " As he spoke they 
 emerged into an open street, and the guide pointed to a 
 row of hackney-coaches. " Be quick get in. Coachman, 
 
 drive fast to ." Philip did not hear the rest of the 
 
 direction, 
 
 Our story returns to Sidney.
 
 126 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 CHAPTER in. 
 
 ** Nous vous mettrons a couvert. 
 Repondit le pot de fer : 
 Si quelque matiere dure 
 Vous menace d'aventure, 
 Entre deux je passerai, 
 Et du coup vous sauverai 
 * * * 
 
 Le pot de terre en Bonfire !" * LA FOXTAIXB. 
 
 " SIDNEY, come here, sir ! What have you been at ? you 
 have torn your frill into tatters ! How did you do this ? 
 Come, sir, no lies." 
 
 " Indeed, ma'am, it was not my fault. I just put my 
 head out of the window to see the coach go by, and a nail 
 caught me here " 
 
 " Why, you little plague ! you have scratched yourself 
 you are always in mischief. What business had you to 
 look after the coach ? " 
 
 " I don't know," said Sidney, hanging his head ruefully. 
 
 " La, mother ! " cried the youngest of the cousins, a 
 square-built, ruddy, coarse-featured urchin, about Sidney's 
 age, " La, mother, he never see a coach in the street when 
 we are at play but he runs arter it." 
 
 " After, not arter," said Mr. Roger Morton, taking the 
 pipe from his mouth. 
 
 " Why do you go after the coaches, Sidney ? " said Mrs. 
 Morton ; " it is very naughty ; you will be run over some 
 day." 
 
 *' Yes, ma'am," said Sidney, who during the whole col- 
 loquy, had been trembling from head to foot. 
 
 "'Yes, ma'am,' and 'no, ma'am:' you have no more 
 manners than a cobbler's boy." 
 
 "Don't tease the child, my dear; he is crying," said 
 Mr. Morton, more authoritatively than usual. " Come 
 here, my man ! " and the worthy uncle took him in his lap 
 jnd held his glass of brandy-and-water to his lips ; Sid- 
 uey, too frightened to refuse, sipped hurriedly, keeping hig 
 large eyes fixed on his aunt, as children do when they fear 
 a cuff. 
 
 * We, replied the Iron Pot, will shield you : should any hard substanot 
 menace you with danger, I'll intervene, and save yon from the shoelr 
 The Earthen Tut was the sufferer I
 
 AND MORNING. 127 
 
 " You spoil the boy more than you do your own flesh 
 and blood," said Mrs. Morton, greatly displeased. 
 
 Here Tom, the youngest-born before described, put his 
 mouth to his mother's ear, and whispered ioud enough to 
 be heard by all, " He runs arter the coach 'cause he 
 thinks his ma may be in it. Who's home-sick I should 
 like to know? Ba ! Baa!" 
 
 The boy pointed his finger over his mother's shoulder, 
 and the other children burst into a loud giggle. 
 
 " Leave the room, all of you, leave the room !" said 
 Mr. Morton, rising angrily and stamping his foot. 
 
 The children, who were in great awe of their father, 
 hnddled and hustled each other to the door ; but Tom, 
 who went last, bold in his mother's favour, popped his 
 head through the door- way, and cried, " Good-bye, little 
 home-sick ! " 
 
 A sudden slap in the face from his father changed hia 
 chuckle into a very different kind of music, and a loud 
 indignant sob was heard without for some moments after 
 the door was closed. 
 
 " If that's the way you behave to your children, Mr. 
 Morton, I vow you sha'n't have any more if I can help it. 
 Don't come near me don't touch me ! " and Mrs. Morton 
 assumed the resentful air of offended beauty. 
 
 " Pshaw ! " growled the spouse, and he reseated himself 
 and resumed his pipe. There was a dead silence. Sidney 
 crouched near his uncle, looking very pale. Mrs. Morton, 
 who was knitting, knitted away with the excited energy 
 of nervous irritation. 
 
 " Ring the bell, Sidney," said Mr. Morton. The boy 
 obeyed the parlour-maid entered. " Take Master Sidney 
 to his room ; keep the boys away from him, and give him 
 a large slice of bread and jam, Martha." 
 
 " Jam, indeed! treacle," said Mrs. Morton. 
 
 " Jam, Martha," repeated the uncle, authoritatively. 
 
 " Treacle ! " reiterated the aunt. 
 
 "Jam, I say!" 
 
 " Treacle, you hear : and for that matter, Martha has no 
 jam to give ! " 
 
 The husband had nothing more to say. 
 
 '' Good night, Sidney ; there's a good boy, go and 
 KISS yoiir aunt and make your bow; and I say, my 
 lad, don't mind those plagues. I'll talk to them to-
 
 128 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 morrow, that T will ; no one shall be unkind to yon in mv 
 
 It w w 
 
 house. 
 
 Sidney muttered something, and went timidly up to 
 Mrs. Morton. His look so gentle and subdued ; his eyes 
 full of tears ; his pretty mouth which, though silent, 
 pleaded so eloquently; his willingness to forgive, and his 
 wish to be forgiven, might have melted many a heart 
 harder, perhaps, than Mrs. Morton's. But there reigned 
 what are worse than hardness, prejudice and wounded 
 vanity maternal vanity. His contrast to her own rough, 
 coarse children grated on her, and set the teeth of her mind 
 on edge. 
 
 " There, child, don't tread on my gown : you are so 
 awkward : say your prayers, and don't throw off the 
 counterpane ! I don't like slovenly boys." 
 
 Sidney put his finger in his mouth, drooped, and va- 
 nished. 
 
 " Now, Mrs. M.," said Mr. Morton abruptly, and knock- 
 ing out the ashes of his pipe ; " now Mrs. M., one word for 
 all : I have told you that I promised poor Catherine to be 
 a father to that child, and it goes to my heart to see him 
 so snubbed. Why you dislike him I can't guess for the 
 life of me. I never saw a sweeter-tempered child." 
 
 " Go on, sir, go on : make your personal reflections on 
 your own lawful wife. They don't hurt me oh no, not at 
 all ! Sweet-tempered, indeed ; I suppose your own chil- 
 dren are not sweet-tempered ? " 
 
 " That's neither here nor there," said Mr. Morton : "my 
 own children are such as God made them, and I am very 
 well satisfied." 
 
 " Indeed you may be proud of such a family ; and to 
 think of the pains I have taken with them, and how I have 
 saved you in nurses, and the bad times I have had ; and 
 now, to find their noses put out of joint by that little mis- 
 chief-making interloper it is too bad of you, Mr. Morton ; 
 you will break my heart that you will ! " 
 
 Mrs. Morton put her handkerchief to her eyes and 
 sobbed. 
 
 The husband was moved : he got up and attempted to 
 her hand. " Indeed, Margaret, I did not mean to vex 
 
 you. 
 
 " And I who have been such a fa fai faithful wi wi 
 -mf e, and brought you such a deal of mon mon money,
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 129 
 
 and always stud stud studied your interests ; many's 
 the time when you have been fast asleep, that I have sat 
 up half the night men men mending the house linen ; 
 and you have not been the same man, Roger, since that 
 boy came ! " 
 
 " Well, well ! " said the good man, quite overcome, and 
 fairly taking her round the waist and kissing her ; " no 
 words between us ; it makes life quite unpleasant. If it 
 pains you to have Sidney here, I will put him to some 
 school in the town, where they'll be kind to him. Only, if 
 you would, Margaret, for i*y sake old girl ! come, now ! 
 there's a darling ! just be more tender with him. You 
 see he frets so after his mother. Think how little Tom 
 would fret if he was away from you ! Poor little Tom ! " 
 
 " La ! Mr. Morton,- you are such a man ! there's no 
 resisting your ways ! You know how to come over me, 
 don't you ? " 
 
 And Mrs. Morton smiled benignly, as she escaped from 
 his conjugal arms and smoothed her cap. 
 
 Peace thus restored, Mr. Morton refilled his pipe, and 
 the good lady, after a pause, resumed, in a very mild, con- 
 ciliatory tone, 
 
 "I'll tell you what it is, Roger, that vexes me with that 
 there child. He is so deceitful, and he does tell such 
 fibs!" 
 
 " Fibs ! that i a very bad fault," said Mr. Morton, 
 gravely. " That must be corrected." 
 
 " It was but the other day that I saw him break a pane 
 of glass in the shop ; and when I taxed him with it, he 
 denied it ; and with such a face ! I can't abide story- 
 telling." 
 
 " Let me know the next story he tells ; I'll cure him," 
 said Mr. Morton, sternly. " You know how I broke Tom 
 of it. Spare the rod, and spoil the child. And when I 
 promised to be kind to the boy, of course I did not mean 
 that I was not to take care of his morals, and see that he 
 grew up an honest man. Tell truth and shame the devil 
 that's my motto." 
 
 " Spoke like yourself, Roger ! " said Mrs. Morton, with 
 great animation. " But you see he has not had the ad- 
 vantage of such a father as you. I wonder your sister 
 don't write to you. Some people make a great fuss about 
 their feelings ; but out of sight out of mind."
 
 NIGHT AKD MORNING. 
 
 " I hope she is not ill. Poor Catherine ! she looked in 
 a very bad way when she w-as here," said Mr. Morton j 
 and he turned uneasily to the fireplace and sighed. 
 
 Here the servant entered with the supper- tray, and the 
 conversation fell upon other topics. 
 
 Mrs. Roger Morton's charge against Sidney was, alas ! 
 too true. He had acquired, under that roof, a terrible 
 habit of telling stories. He had never incurred that vice 
 with his mother, because then and there he had nothing to 
 fear ; now, he had everything to fear ; the grim aunt 
 even the quiet, kind, cold, austere uncle the apprentices 
 the strange servants and, oh ! more than all, those hard- 
 eyed, loud- laughing tormentors, the boys of his own age ! 
 Naturally timid, severity made him actually a coward; 
 and when the nerves tremble, a lie sounds as surely as, 
 when I vibrate that wire, the bell at the end of it will 
 ring. Beware of the man who has been roughly treated 
 as a child. 
 
 The day after the conference just narrated, Mr. Morton, 
 who was subject to erysipelas, had taken a little cooling 
 medicine. He breakfasted, therefore, later than usual 
 after the rest of the family ; and at this meal -pour lui 
 soulager he ordered the luxury of a muffin. Now it so 
 chanced, that he had only finished half the muffin, and 
 drunk one cup of tea, when he was called into the shop by 
 a customer of great importance, a prosy old lady, who 
 always gave her orders with remarkable precision, and 
 who valued herself on a character for affability, which she 
 maintained by never buying a penny riband without asking 
 the shopman how all his family were, and talking news 
 about every other family in the place. At the time Mr. 
 Morton left the parlour, Sidney and Master Tom were 
 therein, seated on two stools, and casting up division sums 
 on their respective slates a point of education to which 
 Mr. Morton attended with great care. As soon as his 
 father's back was turned, Master Tom's eyes wandered 
 from the slate to the muffin, as it leered at him from the 
 slop-basin. Never did Pythian sibyl, seated above the 
 bubbling spring, utter more oracular eloquence to her 
 priest, than did that muffin at least the parts of it yet 
 extant utter to the fascinated senses of Master Tom. 
 First he sighed ; then he moved round on his stool ; then 
 he got up ; then he peered at the muffin from a respectful
 
 NTOHT ND MORNING. 181 
 
 distance ; then he gradually approached, and walked 
 round, and round, and round it his eyes getting bigger 
 and bigger ; then he peeped through the glass-door into 
 the shop, and saAV his father busily engaged with the old 
 lady ; then he began to calculate and philosophise, per- 
 haps his father bad done breakfast ; perhaps he would not 
 come back at all ; if he came back, he would not miss 
 one corner of the muffin ; and if he did miss it, why 
 should Tom be supposed to have taken it ? As he thus 
 communed with himself, he drew nearer into the fatal 
 vortex, and at last, with a desperate plunge, he seized the 
 triangular temptation : 
 
 " And ere a man had power to say ' Behold! ' 
 The jaws of Thomas had devoured it up." 
 
 Sidney, disturbed from his studies by the agitation of his 
 companion, witnessed this proceeding with great and con- 
 scientious alarm. " Tom ! " said he, " what will your 
 papa say ?" 
 
 " Look at that ! " said Tom, putting his fist under 
 Sidney's reluctant nose. " If father misses it, you'll say 
 the cat took it. If you don't my eye ! what a wapping 
 I'll give you!" 
 
 Here Mr. Morton's voice was heard, wishing the lady 
 " Good morning ! " and Master Tom, thinking it better to 
 leave the credit of the invention solely to Sidney, whispered 
 " Say I'm gone up-stairs for my pockethanker," and 
 hastily absconded. 
 
 Mr. Morton, already in a very bad humour, partly at the 
 effects of the cooling medicine, partly at the suspension of 
 his breakfast, stalked into the parlour. His tea the 
 second cup already poured out was cold. He turned 
 towards the muffin, and missed the lost piece at a glance. 
 
 " Who has been at my muffin ? " said he, in a voice 
 that seemed to Sidney like the voice he had always sup- 
 posed an ogre to possess. " Have you, Master Sidney ? " 
 " N n no, sir ; indeed, sir ! " 
 " Then Tom has. Where is he ? " 
 " Gone up-stairs for his handkerchief, sir." 
 " Did he take my muffin ? Speak the truth ! " 
 " No, sir ; it was the it was the the cat, sir ! ** 
 " O you wicked, wicked boy !" cried Mrs. Morton, who 
 had followed her husband into the shop ; " the cat kittened 
 last night, and is locked TVD in the coal-cellar ! " 
 
 *. 2
 
 132 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 " Come here, Master Sidney ! 'No ! first go down, 
 Margaret, and see if the cat is in the cellar : it might 
 have got out, Mrs. M.," said Mr. Morton, just even in hia 
 wrath. 
 
 Mrs. Morton went, and there was a dead silence, ex- 
 cept indeed in Sidney's heart, which beat louder than a 
 clock ticks. Mr. Morton, meanwhile, went to a little cup- 
 board ; while still there, Mrs. Morton returned : the cat 
 was in the cellar the key turned on her in no mood to 
 eat muffins, poor thing ! she would not even lap her milk ' 
 Like her mistress, she had had a veiy bad time ! 
 
 " Now come here, sir ! " said Mr. Morton, withdrawing 
 himself from the cupboard, with a small horsewhip in hi. 4 
 hand, " I will teach you how to speak the truth in future 1 ' 
 Confess that you have told a lie ! " 
 
 " Yes, sir, it was a lie ! Pray pray forgive me ; but 
 Tom made me !" 
 
 " What ! when poor Tom is upstairs ? worse and worse ! " 
 said Mrs. Morton, lifting up her hands and eyes. " What 
 a viper ! " 
 
 " For shame, boy, for shame ! Take that and that 
 and that " 
 
 Writhing shrinking, still more terrified than hurt, the 
 poor child cowered beneath the lash. 
 
 " Mamma ! mamma ! " he cried at last, " Oh why 
 why did you leave me ?" 
 
 At these words Mr. Morton stayed his hand, the whip 
 fell to the ground. 
 
 " Yet it is all for the boy's good," he muttered. " There, 
 child, I hope this is the last time. There, you are not 
 much hurt. Zounds, don't cry so ! " 
 
 " He will alarm the whole street," said Mrs. Morton ; " I 
 never see such a child ! Here, take this parcel to Mrs. 
 Birnie's you know the house only next street, and dry 
 your eyes before you get there. Don't go through the 
 shop ; this way out." 
 
 She pushed the child, still sobbing with a vehemence 
 that she could not comprehend, through the private passage 
 into the street, and returned to her husband. 
 
 "You are convinced now, Mr. M. ?" 
 
 " Pshaw ! ma'am ; don't talk. But, to be sure, that's 
 Low I cured Tom of fibbing. The tea's as cold aa a 
 stone ! "
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 136 
 
 CHAPTEK IV. 
 
 " La bien nous le faisons : le mal c'est la Fortune. 
 On a toujours raison, le Destin toujours tort." * LA FONTAINE, 
 
 UPON the early morning of the day commemorated by 
 the historical events of our last chapter, two men were de- 
 posited by a branch coach at the inn of a hamlet about 
 ten miles distant from the town in which Mr. Roger Morton 
 resided. Though the hamlet was small, the inn was large, 
 for it was placed close by a huge finger-post that pointed 
 to three great roads : one led to the town before men- 
 tioned ; another, to the heart of a manufacturing district ; 
 and a third, to a populous seaport. The weather was fine, 
 and the two travellers ordered breakfast to be taken into 
 an arbour in the garden, as well as the basins and towels 
 necessary for ablution. The elder of the travellers ap- 
 peared to be unequivocally foreign ; you would have 
 guessed him at once for a German. He wore, what was 
 then very uncommon in this country, a loose, brown linen 
 House, buttoned to the chin, with a leathern belt, into which 
 were stuck a German meerschaum and a tobacco-pouch. 
 He had very long flaxen hair, false or real, that streamed 
 half way down his back, large light mustaches, and a 
 rough, sunburnt complexion, which made the fairness of 
 the hair more remarkable. He wore an enormous pair of 
 green spectacles, and complained much, in broken English, 
 of the weakness of his eyes. All about him, even to the 
 smallest minutiae, indicated the German; not only the 
 large muscular frame, the broad feet, and vast though well- 
 shaped hands, but the brooch evidently purchased of a 
 Jew in some great fair stuck ostentatiously and super- 
 fluously into his stock ; the quaint, droll-looking carpet' 
 bag, which he refused to trust to the boots ; and the great, 
 massive, dingy ring which he wore on his forefinger. The 
 other was a slender, remarkably upright and sinewy youth, 
 in a blue frock, over which was thrown a large cloak, a 
 travelling cap, with a shade that concealed all of the upper 
 part of his face, except a dark quick eye, of uncommon fire, 
 and a shawl handkerchief, which was equally useful in 
 
 * The Good, we effect ourselves ; the Evil is the handiwork of Fortune. 
 Mortals are always in the right, Destiny always in the wrong.
 
 184 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 concealing the lower part of the countenance. On de 
 scending from the coach, the German, with some difficulty, 
 made the ostler understand that he wanted a post-chaise 
 in a quarter of an hour ; and then, without entering the 
 house, he and his friend strolled to the arbour. While the 
 maid-servant was covering the table with bread, butter, 
 tea, eggs, and a huge round of beef, the German was busy 
 in washing his hands, and talking in his national tongue 
 to the young man, who returned no answer. But as soon 
 as the servant had completed her operations, the foreigner 
 turned round, and observing her eyes fixed on his brooch 
 with much female admiration, he made one stride to her. 
 
 "Der Teufel, my goot Madchen but you are von var 
 pretty vat you call it ; " and he gave her, as he spoke, so 
 hearty a smack that the girl was more flustered than nat- 
 tered by the courtesy. 
 
 " Keep yourself to yourself, sir ! " said she, very tartly, 
 for chamber-maids never like to be kissed by a middle- 
 aged gentleman when a younger one is by : whereupon the 
 German replied by a pinch, it is immaterial to state the 
 exact spot to which that delicate caress was directed. But 
 this last offence was so inexpiable, that the " madchen " 
 bounced off with a face of scarlet, and a " Sir, you are no 
 gentleman that's what you arn't ! " The German thrust 
 his head out of the arbour, and followed her with a loud 
 laugh ; then, drawing himself in again, he said, in quite 
 another accent, and in excellent English, " There, Master 
 Philip, we have got rid of the girl for the rest of the 
 morning, and that's exactly what I wanted to do women's 
 wits are confoundedly sharp. Well, did I not tell you 
 right, we have baffled all the bloodhounds ! " 
 
 "And here, then, Gawtrey, we are to part," said Phil ; ~ 
 mournfully. 
 
 " I wish you would think better of it, my boy," i'uvurned 
 Mr. Gawtrey, breaking an egg ; " how can you shift for 
 yourself no kith nor kin, not even that important machine 
 for giving advice called a friend no, not a friend, when I 
 am gone ? I foresee how it must end. [D it, salt 
 butter, by Jove !] " 
 
 " If I were alone in the world, as I have told you agaii* 
 and again, perhaps I might pin my fate to yours. But 
 my brother ! " 
 
 " There it is, always wrong when we act from our feel-
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 135 
 
 ings. My whole life, which some day or other I will tell 
 you, proves that. Your brother bah ! is he not very well 
 off with his own uncle and aunt ? plenty to eat and drink, 
 I dare say. Come, man, you must be as hungry as a 
 hawk a slice of the beef ? Let well alone, and shift for 
 yourself. What good can you do your brother ? " 
 
 " I don't know, but I must see him ; I have sworu it." 
 
 "Well, go and see him, and then strike across the coun- 
 try to me. I will wait a day for you, there now ! " 
 
 " But tell me first," said Philip, very earnestly, and fix- 
 ing his dark eyes on his companion, "tell me yes, I 
 must speak frankly tell me, you who would link my for- 
 tune with your own, tell me, what and who are you ? " 
 
 Gawtrey looked up. 
 
 " What do you suppose ? " said he. drily. 
 
 " I fear to suppose anything, lest I wrong you : but the 
 strange place to which you took me the evening on which 
 you saved me from pursuit, the persons I met there " 
 
 " Well-dressed, and very civil to you ? " 
 
 " True ! but with a certain wild looseness in their talk 
 
 that But I have no right to judge others by mere 
 
 appearance. Nor is it this that has made me anxious, and, 
 if you will, suspicious." 
 
 "What then ? " 
 
 " Your dress your disguise." 
 
 " Disguised yourself !" ha! ha! Behold the world's 
 charity ! You fly from some danger, some pursuit, dis- 
 guised you, who hold yourself guiltless I do the same, 
 and you hold me criminal a robber, perhaps a murderer 
 it may be ! I will tell yon what I am : I am a son of For- 
 tune, an adventurer ; I live by my wits so do poets and 
 lawyers, and all the charlatans of the world ; I am a char- 
 latan a chameleon. ' Each man in his time plays many 
 parts :' I play any part in which Money, the Arch-Mana- 
 ger, promises me a livelihood. Are you satisfied ? " 
 
 "Perhaps," answered the boy, sadly, "when I know 
 more of the world, I shall understand you better. Strange 
 strange, that you, out of all men, should have been kind 
 to me in distress ! " 
 
 " Not at all strange. Ask the beggar whom he gets the 
 most pence from the fine lady in her carriage the beau 
 smelling of Eau de Cologne? Pish ! the people nearest to 
 being beggars themselves keei) the beggar alive. Yolk
 
 136 NIGHT AND MORNING 
 
 were friendless, and the man who has all earth for a foe 
 befriends you. It is the "way of the world, sir, the way of 
 the world. Come, eat while you can, this time next year 
 jrou may have no beef to your bread." 
 
 Thus masticating and moralising at the same time, Mr. 
 Grawtrey at last finished a breakfast that would have asto- 
 nished the whole Corporation of London ; and then taking 
 out a large old watch, with an enamelled back doubtless 
 more German than its master he said, as he lifted up his 
 carpet-bag, " I must be off tempus fugit, and I must arrive 
 just in time to nick the vessels. Shall get to Ostend, 01 
 Rotterdam, safe and snug ; thence to Paris. How my 
 pretty Fan will have grown ! Ah, you don't know Fan 
 make you a nice little wife one of those days ! Cheer up, 
 man, we shall meet again. Be sure of it ; and hark ye, 
 that strange place, as you call it, where I took you, you 
 can find it again ? " 
 
 "Not!" 
 
 " Here, then, is the address. Whenever you want me, 
 go there, ask to see Mr. Gregg old fellow with one eye, 
 you recollect shake him by the hand just so you catch 
 the trick practise it again. N"o, the forefinger thus, that's 
 right. Say ' blater,' no more ' blater ;' stay, I will 
 write it down for you ; and then ask for William Guwtrey's 
 direction. He will give it you at once, without questions 
 these signs understood ; and if you want money for your 
 passage, he will give you that also, with advice into the 
 bargain. Always a warm welcome with me. And so take 
 care of yourself, and good bye. I see my chaise is at the 
 door." 
 
 As he spoke, Gawtrey shook the young man's hand with 
 cordial vigour, and strode off to his chaise, muttering, 
 " Money well laid out fee money ; I shall have Mm, aud, 
 Gad, I like him, poor devil ! "
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING 137 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 u He io a oonuing coachman tliat can turn well iu a narrow room." 
 Old Play : from LAMB'S Spedment. 
 
 " Here are two pilgrims, 
 And neither knows one footstep of the way." 
 
 HEY WOOD'S Duchess of Suffolk. Ibid. 
 
 THE chaise had scarce driven from the inn-door, when a 
 coach stopped to change horses on its last stage to tho 
 town to which Philip was bound. The name of the desti- 
 nation, in gilt letters on the coach-door, caught his eye, as 
 he walked from the arbour towards the road, and in a few 
 moments he 'was seated as the fourth passenger in the 
 " Nelson Slow and Sure." From under the shade of his 
 cap, he darted that quick, quiet glance, which a man who 
 hunts, or is hunted, in other words, who observes, or 
 shuns, soon acquires. At his left hand sat a young 
 woman in a cloak lined with yellow ; she had taken off her 
 bonnet and pinned it to the roof of the coach, and looked 
 fresh and pretty in a silk handkerchief, which she had tied 
 round her head, probably to serve as a nightcap during the 
 drowsy length of the journey. Opposite to her was a 
 middle-aged man of pale complexion, and a grave, pensive, 
 studious expression of face ; and vis-d-vis to Philip sat an 
 overdressed, showy, very good-looking man of about two 
 or three-and- forty. This gentleman wore auburn whiskers, 
 which met at the chin ; a foraging cap, with a gold tassel ; 
 a velvet waistcoat, across which, in various folds, hung a 
 golden chain, at the end of which dangled an eye-glass, 
 that from time to time he screwed, as it wore, into his right 
 eye ; he wore, also, a blue silk stock, with a frill much 
 crumpled ; dirty kid gloves, and over his lap lay a cloak 
 lined with red silk. As Philip glanced towards this per- 
 sonage, the latter fixed his glass also at him, with a scruti- 
 nising stare, which drew fire from Philip's dark eyes. The 
 man dropped his glass, and said in a half provincial, half 
 haw-haw tone, Like the stage-exquisite of a minor theatre, 
 " Pawdon me, and split legs ! " therewith stretching him- 
 self between Philip's limbs, in the approved fashion ox 
 inside passengers. A young man in a white great-oaat 
 now came to the door with a glass of warm sherry and 
 water.
 
 ISM NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 " You must take this you must now ; it will keep the 
 cold out," (the day was broiling,) said he to the young 
 woman. 
 
 " Gracious me ! " was the answer, " but I never drink 
 wine of a morning, James ; it will get into my head." 
 
 "To oblige me!" said the young man, sentimentally; 
 whereupon the young lady took the glass, and looking very 
 kindly at her Ganymede, said, " Tour health ! " and sipped, 
 and made a wry face then she looked at the passengers, 
 tittered, and said, " I can't bear wine ! " and so, very slowly 
 and daintily, sipped up the rest. A silent and expressive 
 squeeze of the hand, on returning the glass, rewarded the 
 young man, and proved the salutary effect of his pre- 
 scription. 
 
 " All right ! " cried the coachman : the ostler twitched 
 the cloths from the leaders, and away went the " Nelson 
 Slow and Sure," with as much pretension as if it had 
 meant to do the ten miles in an hour. The pale gentleman 
 took from his waistcoat-pocket a little box containing gum- 
 arabic, and having inserted a couple of morsels between 
 his lips, he next drew forth a little thin volume, which 
 from the manner the lines were printed was evidently 
 devoted to poetry. 
 
 The smart gentleman, who since the episode of the 
 sherry and water had kept his glass fixed upon the young 
 lady, now said, with a genteel smirk, " That young 
 gentleman seems very auttentive, miss ! " 
 
 " He is a very good young man, sir, and takes great care 
 of me." 
 
 " Not your brother, miss, eh ? " 
 
 "La, sir! why not?" 
 
 "No faumily likeness noice-looking fellow enough! 
 But your oiyes and mouth ah, miss ! " 
 
 Miss turned away her hed, and uttered with pert 
 vivacity, 
 
 " I never likes compliments, sir ! But the young man 
 is not my brother." 
 
 " A sweetheart, eh ? Oh fie, miss ! Haw ! haw ! " 
 and the auburn whiskered Adonis poked Philip in tho 
 knee with one hand, and the pale gentleman in the rib? 
 with the other. The latter looked up, and reproachfully ; 
 the former drew in his legs, and uttered an angry 
 ejaculation.
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 139 
 
 " Well, sir, there is no harm in a sweetheart, is there ?" 
 
 " None in the least, ma'am ; I advoise yon to double the 
 dose. We often hear of two strings to a bow. Dann't 
 yon think it would be noicer to have two beaux to your 
 Htring?" 
 
 As he thus wittily expressed himself, the gentleman took 
 off his cap, and thrust his fingers through a very curling 
 and comely head of hair ; the young lady looked at him 
 with evident coquetry, and said, " How you do run on, you 
 gentlemen ! " 
 
 " I may well run on, miss, as long as I run aufter you," 
 was the gallant reply. 
 
 Here the pale gentleman, evidently annoyed by being 
 talked across, shut his book up, and looked round. His 
 eye rested on Philip, who, whether from the heat of the 
 day or from the forgetf ulness of thought, had pushed his 
 cap from his brows ; and the gentleman, after staring at 
 him for a few moments with great earnestness, sighed so 
 heavily that it attracted the notice of all the passengers. 
 
 " Are you unwell, sir ? " asked the young lady, com- 
 passionately. 
 
 " A little pain in my side, nothing more ! " 
 
 " Chaunge plauces with me, sir," cried the Lothario, 
 officiously. "Now do!" The pale gentleman, after a 
 short hesitation, and a bashful excuse, accepted the pro- 
 posal. In a few moments the young lady and the beau 
 were in deep and whispered conversation, their heads 
 turned towards the window. The pale gentleman con- 
 tinued to gaze at Philip, till the latter, perceiving the 
 notice he excited, coloured, and replaced his cap over his 
 face. 
 
 " Are you going to N ? " asked the gentleman, in a 
 
 gentle, timid voice. 
 
 "Yes!" 
 
 " Is it the first time you have ever been there ? " 
 
 " Sir ! " returned Philip, in a voice that spoke surprise 
 and distaste at his neighbour's curiosity. 
 
 "Forgive me," said the gentleman, shrinking back; 
 " but you remind me of of a family I once knew in the 
 town. Do you know the the Mortons ?" 
 
 One in Philip's situation, with, as he supposed, the 
 officers of justice in his track, (for Gawtrey, for reasons of 
 his own, rather encouraged than, allayed his fears,) might
 
 HO fflGET AND MORNING. 
 
 well be suspicions. He replied therefore shortly, "I im 
 quite a stranger to the town," and ensconced himself in 
 the corner, as if to take a nap. Alas ! that answer was 
 one of the many obstacles he was doomed to build up 
 between himself and a fairer fate. 
 
 The gentleman sighed again, and never spoke more to 
 the end of the journey. When the coach halted at the inn, 
 the same inn which had before given its shelter to poor 
 Catherine, the young man in the white coat opened the 
 door, and offered his arm to the young lady. 
 
 " Do you make any stay here, sir ? " said she to the bean, 
 as she unpinned her bonnet from the roof. 
 
 " Perhaps so : I am waiting for my phe-a-ton, which my 
 faellow is to bring down, tanking a little tour." 
 
 " We shall be very happy to see you, sir," said the young 
 lady, on whom the phe-a-ton completed the effect pro- 
 duced by the gentleman's previous gallantries; and 
 with that she dropped into his hand a very neat card, on 
 which was printed, "Wavers and Snow, Staymakers, 
 High Street." 
 
 The beau put the card gracefully into his pocket leaped 
 from the coach nudged aside his rival of the wfrite coat, 
 and offered his arm to the lady, who leaned on it affec- 
 tionately as she descended. 
 
 " This gentleman has been so perlite to me, James," said 
 she. James touched his hat ; the bean clapped him on the 
 shoulder, "Ah! yon are not a hauppy man, are you? 
 Oh no, not at all a hauppy man! Good day to you! 
 Guard, that hat-box is mine ! " 
 
 While Philip was paying the coachman, the bean passed, 
 end whispered him 
 
 " Recollect old Gregg anything on the lay here don't 
 spoil my sport if we meet ! " and bustled off into the inn, 
 whistling " God save the king ! " 
 
 Philip started, then tried to bring to mind the faces 
 which he had seen at the " strange place," and thought he 
 recalled the features of his fellow-traveller. However, he 
 did not seek to renew the acquaintance, but inquired the 
 way to Mr. Morton's house, and thither he now proceeded. 
 
 He was directed, as a short cut, down one of those narrow 
 passages at the entrance of which posts are placed, as an 
 indication that they are appropriated solely to foot-pas- 
 sengers. A dead white wall, which screened the garden
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 141 
 
 of the physician of the place, ran on one side ; u high f eno? 
 to a nursery-ground was on the other; the passage wat 
 lonely, for it was now he hour when few persons walk 
 either for business or pleasure in a provincial town, and no 
 sound was heard save the fall of his own step on the broad 
 flag- stones. At the end of the passage in the main street 
 to which it led, he saw already the large, smart, showy 
 shop, with the hot sun shining full on the gilt letters that 
 conveyed to the eyes of the customer the respectable name 
 of " Morton," when suddenly, the silence was broken by 
 choked and painful sobs. He turned, and beneath a compo 
 portico, jutting from the wall, which adorned the physician's.- 
 door, he saw a child seated on the stone steps weeping bit 
 terly a thrill shot through Philip's heart ! Did he recog 
 nize, disguised as it was by pain and sorrow, that voice ? 
 He paused, and laid his hand on the child's shoulder: 
 " Oh, don't don't pray don't I am going, I am indeed ! " 
 cried the child, quailing, and still keeping his hands clasped 
 before his face. 
 
 " Sidney ! " said Philip. The boy started to his feet, 
 uttered a cry of rapturous joy, and fell upon his brother's 
 breast. 
 
 " Philip ! dear, dear Philip ! you are come to take 
 me away back to my own own mamma ; I will be so 
 good, I will never tease her again, never, never ! I have 
 been so wretched ! " 
 
 " Sit down, and tell me what they have done to you," 
 said Philip, checking the rising heart that heaved at his 
 mother's name. 
 
 So, there they sat, on the cold stone under the stranger's 
 porch, these two orphans : Philip's arm round his brother's 
 ^raist, Sidney leaning on his shoulder, and imparting to 
 ;-\m perhaps with pardonable exaggeration all the suf- 
 tcrings he had gone through ; and, when he came to that 
 morning's chastisement, and showed the wale across the 
 little hands which he had vainly held up in supplication, 
 Philip's passion shook him from limb to limb. His impulse 
 was to march straight into Mr. Morton's shop and gripe 
 him by the throat ; and the indignation he betrayed en- 
 couraged Sidney to colour yet more highly the tale of his 
 wrongs and pain. 
 
 When he had done, and clinging tightly to his brothers 
 broad chest, said,
 
 142 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 "But never mind, Philip; now we will go home t* 
 mamma." 
 
 Philip replied, 
 
 " Listen to me, my dear brother. We cannot go back 
 to our mother. I will tell you why, later. We are alone 
 in the world we two ! If you will come with me God 
 help you ! for you will hare many hardships : we shall 
 have to work and drudge, and you may be cold and hungry, 
 and tired, very often, Sidney, very, very often ! But you 
 know that, long ago, when I was so passionate, I never 
 was wilfully unkind to you ; and I declare now, that I 
 would bite out my tongue rather than it should say a harsh 
 word to you. That is all I can promise. Think well. 
 Will you never miss all the comforts you have now ? " 
 
 " Comforts ! " repeated Sidney, ruefully, and looking at 
 the wale over his hands. " Oh ! let let let me go with 
 you : I shall die if I stay here. I shall, indeed indeed ! " 
 
 " Hush ! " said Philip ; for at that moment a step was 
 heard, and the pale gentleman walked slowly down the 
 passage, and started, and turned his head wistfully as he 
 looked at the boys. 
 
 When he was gone, Philip rose. 
 
 " It is settled, then," said he, firmly. " Come with me 
 at once. You shall return to their roof no more. Come, 
 quick : we shall have many miles to go to-night.'* 
 
 CHAPTEK VI. 
 
 " He comes 
 
 Yet careless what he brings ; his one concern 
 Is to conduct it to the destined inn; 
 And having dropp'd the expected bag, pass on -> 
 To him indifferent whether grief or joy." 
 
 COWPER : Description of the Pcstman. 
 
 THE pale gentleman entered Mr. Morton's shop; and 
 looking round him, spied the worthy trader showing shawls 
 to a young lady just married. He seated himself on 
 stool, and said to the bowing foreman 
 " I will wait till Mr. Morton is disengaged." 
 The young lady having closely examined seven shawls, 
 and declared they were beautiful, said, " she would thinV
 
 NIGHT AND MORNINO. 143 
 
 of it," and walked away. Mr. Morton now approached the 
 stronger. 
 
 " Mr. Morton," said the pale gentleman j " you are very 
 little altered. You do not recollect me ? " 
 
 " Bless me, Mr. Spencer ! is it really you ? Well, what 
 a time since we met ! I am very glad to see you. And 
 what brings you to N ? Business ? " 
 
 " Yes, business. Let us go within." 
 
 Mr. Morton led the way to the parlour, where Master 
 Tom, reperched on the stool, was rapidly digesting the 
 plundered muffin. Mr. Morton dismissed him to play, and 
 the pale gentleman took a chair. 
 
 "Mr. Morton," said he, glancing over his dress, "you 
 see I am in mourning. It is for your sister. I never got 
 the better of that early attachment never." 
 
 "My sister ! Good Heavens ! " said Mr. Morton, turning 
 very pale; "is she dead? Poor Catherine! and I not 
 know of it ! When did she die ? " 
 
 " Not many days since ; and and " said Mr. Spencer, 
 greatly affected, " I fear in want. I had been abroad for 
 some months : on my return last week, looking over the 
 newspapers (for I always order them to be filed), I read the 
 short account of her lawsuit against Mr. Beaufort, some 
 time back. I resolved to find her out. I did so through 
 the solicitor she employed : it was too lato ; I arrived at 
 her lodgings two days after her her burial. I then deter- 
 mined to visit poor Catherine's brother, and learn if any. 
 thing could be done for the children she had left behind." 
 
 " She left but two. Philip, the elder, is very comfort- 
 ably placed at R ; the younger has his home with me ; 
 and Mrs. Morton is a moth that is to say, she takes great 
 pains with him. Ehem ! And my poor poor sister ! " 
 
 " Is he like his mother ? " 
 
 " Very much, when she was young poor dear Cathe- 
 rine!" 
 
 " What age is he P " 
 
 "About ten, perhaps; I don't know exactly; much 
 younger than the other. And so she's dead ! " 
 
 "Mr. Morton, I am an old bachelor" (here a sickly 
 smile crossed Mr. Spencer's face) ; " a small portion of my 
 fortune is settled, it is true, on my relations ; but the rest 
 is mine, and I live within my income. The elder of these 
 boys is probably old enough to begin to take care of him-
 
 144 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 self. But, the younger perhaps you have a family of yots* 
 own, and can spare him ? " 
 
 Mr. Morton hesitated, and twitched up his trousers. 
 
 "Why," said he, "this is very kind in you. I don't 
 know we'll see. The boy is out now ; come and dine with 
 us at two pot- luck. Well, so she is no more ! Heigho ! 
 Meanwhile, I'll talk it over with Mrs. M." 
 
 " I will be with you," said Mr. Spencer, rising. 
 
 "Ah!" sighed Mr. Morton, "if Catherine had but 
 married you, she would have been a happy woman." 
 
 " I would have tried to make her so," said Mr. Spencer, 
 as he turned away his face and took his departure. 
 
 Two o'clock came ; but no Sidney. They had sent to 
 the place whither he had been despatched ; he had never 
 arrived there. Mr. Morton grew alarmed ; and, when Mr. 
 Spencer came to dinner, his host was gone in search of the 
 truant. He did not return till three. Doomed that day 
 to be belated both at breakfast and dinner, this decided 
 him to part with Sidney whenever he should be found. 
 Mrs. Morton was persuaded that the child only sulked, and 
 would come back fast enough when he was hungry. Mr. 
 Spencer tried to believe her, and ate his mutton, which waa 
 burnt to a cinder ; but, when five, six, seven o'clock came, 
 and the boy was still missing, even Mrs. Morton agreed 
 that it was high time to institute a regular search. The 
 whole family set off different ways. It was ten o'clock 
 before they were re-united ; and then, all the news picked 
 up was, that a boy, answering Sidney's description, had 
 been seen with a young man in three several parts of the 
 town ; the last time at the outskirts, on the highroad to- 
 wards the manufacturing districts. These tidings so far 
 relieved Mr. Morton's mind that he dismissed the chilling 
 fear that had crept there, that Sidney might have drowned 
 himself. Boys will drown themselves sometimes ! The 
 description of the young man coincided so remarkably with 
 the fellow-passenger of Mr. Spencer, that he did not doubt 
 it was the same ; the more so when he recollected having 
 seen him with a fair-haired child under the portico ; and, 
 yet more, when he recalled the likeness to Catherine that 
 had struck him in the coach, and caused the inquiry that 
 had roused Philip's suspicion. The mystery was thus 
 made clear Sidney had fled with his brother. Nothing 
 more, however, cotild be done that night. The next morn-
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 145 
 
 mg, active measures should be devised ; and when the 
 morning came, the mail brought to Mr. Morton the twi 
 following letters. The first was from Arthur Beaufort. 
 
 " SIR, I have been prevented by severe illness from 
 writing to you before. I can now scarcely hold a pen ; but 
 the instant my health is recovered I shall be with you at 
 
 " On her deathbed, the mother of the boy under your 
 charge, Sidney Morton, committed him solemnly to me. 1 
 make his fortunes my care, and shall hasten to claim him at 
 your kindly hands. But the elder son, this poor Philip, 
 who has suffered so unjustly, for our lawyer has seen 
 Mr. Plaskwith, and heard the whole story; what has 
 become of him ? All our inquiries have failed to track 
 him. Alas, I was too ill to institute them myself while it 
 was yet time. Perhaps he may have sought shelter with 
 you, his uncle : if so, assure him that he is in no danger 
 from the pursuit of the law, that his innocence is fully 
 recognised ; and that my father and myself implore him 
 to accept our affection. I can write no more now ; but in 
 a few days I shall hope to see you. 
 
 " I am, sir, &c., 
 
 "ARTHUR BEAPFORT." 
 
 ** Berkeley Square." 
 
 The second letter was from Mr. Plaskwith, and ran 
 thus : 
 
 "DEAR MORTON, Something very awkward has hap- 
 pened, not my fault, and very unpleasant for me. Youi 
 relation, Philip, as I wrote you word, was a pains-taking 
 lad, though odd and bad mannered, for want, perhaps, 
 poor boy ! of being taught better ; and Mrs. P. is, you 
 know, a very genteel woman women go too much by 
 manners so she never took much to him. However, to 
 the point, as the French emperor used to say : one evening 
 he asked me for money for his mother, who. he said, was 
 ill, in a very insolent way : I may say threatening. It was 
 in my own shop, and before Plimmins and Mrs. P. ; I was 
 forced to answer with dignified rebuke, and left the shop 
 When I returned, he was gone, and some shillings four- 
 teen I think, and three sovereigns evidently from the till, 
 on the floor. Mrs. P oad Mr. Plimmins were 
 
 L
 
 146 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 very mucli frightened ; thought it was clear I was robbed, 
 and that we were to be murdered. Plimmius slept below 
 that night, and we borrowed butcher Johnson's dog. No- 
 thing happened. I did not think I was robbed ; because 
 the money, when we came to calculate, was all right. I 
 know human nature : he had thought to take it, but re- 
 pented quite clear. However, I was naturally very 
 angry, thought he'd come back again meant to reprove 
 him properly waited several days heard nothing of him 
 grew uneasy would not attend longer to Mrs. P. ; for, 
 as Napoleon Buonaparte observed, ' women are well in theil 
 way, not in ours.' Made Plimmins go with me to town 
 hired a Bow Street runner to track him out cost me 
 1Z. Is. and two glasses of brandy and water. P^or Mrs. 
 Morton was just buried quite shocked ! Suddenly saw 
 the boy in the streets. Plimmins rushed forward in the 
 kindest way was knocked down hurt his arm paid 
 2s. 6d. for lotion. Philip ran off, we ran after him could 
 not find him. Forced to return home. Next day, a law- 
 yer from a Mr. Beaufort Mr. Greorge Blackwell, a 
 gentleman-like man called. Mr. Beaufort will do any- 
 thing for him in reason. Is there anything more / can 
 do ? I really am very uneasy about the lad, and Mrs. P. 
 and I have a tiff about it : but that's nothing thought I 
 had best write to you for instructions. 
 
 " Yours truly. 
 
 " C. PLASKWITH. 
 
 "P.S. Just open my letter to say, Bow Street officer 
 just been here has found out that the boy has been seen 
 with a very suspicious character : they think he has left 
 London. Bow Street officer wants to go after him very 
 expensive : so now you can decide." 
 
 Mr. Spencer scarcely listened to Mr. Plaskwith's letter, 
 but of Arthur's he felt jealous. He would fain have been 
 the only protector to Catherine's children ; but he was the 
 lost man fitted to head the search, now so necessary to 
 prosecute with equal tact and energy. 
 
 A soft-hearted, soft-headed man, a confirmed vale- 
 tudinarian, a day-dreamer, who had wasted away his life 
 in dawdling and maundering over Simple Poetry, and sigh- 
 ing over his unhappy attachment ; no child, no babe, wa,3 
 more thoroughly helpless than Mr. Spencer.
 
 NIGHT AND MORXTXtt. 147 
 
 The task of investigation devolved, therefore, on Mr. 
 Morton, and he went about it in a regular, plain, straight- 
 forward way. Hand-bills were circulated, constables em- 
 ployed, and a lawyer, accompanied by Mr. Spencer, 
 despatched to the manufacturing districts : towards which 
 the orphans had been seen to' direct their path. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 " Give the gentle Soutn 
 fet leave to court those sails." 
 
 BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER: Beggar i But\ 
 " Cut your cloth, sir, 
 According to your calling." Ibid. 
 
 MEANWHILE the brothers were far away, and He who 
 feeds the young ravens made their paths pleasant to their 
 feet. Philip had broken to Sidney the sad news of their 
 mother's death, and Sidney had wept with bitter passion. 
 But children, what can they know of death ? Their tears 
 over graves dry sooner than the dews. It is melancholy 
 to compare the depth, the endurance, the far-sighted, 
 anxious, prayerful love of a parent, with the inconsiderate, 
 frail, and evanescent affection of the infant, whose eyes the 
 hues of the butterfly yet dazzle with delight. It was the 
 night of their flight, and in the open air, when Philip (his 
 rtrms round Sidney's waist) told his brother-orphan that 
 they were motherless. And the air was balmy, the skies 
 filled with the effulgent presence of the August moon ; the 
 corn-fields stretched round them wide and far, and not a 
 leaf trembled on the beech-tree beneath which they had 
 sought shelter. It seemed as if Mature herself smiled 
 pityingly on their young sorrow, and said to them, " Grieve 
 not for the dead: I, who live for ever, I will be your 
 mother!" 
 
 They crept, as the night deepened, into the warmer 
 sleeping-place afforded by stacks of hay, mown that summer 
 and still fragrant. And the next morning the birds woke 
 them betimes, to feel that Liberty, at least, was with them, 
 and to wander with her at will. 
 
 Who in his boyhood has not felt the delight of freedom 
 and adventure? to have the world of woods and sward 
 him to escape restriction to lean, for the first 
 
 L 2
 
 148 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 time, on hio own resources to rejoice in the wild font 
 manly luxury of independence to act the Crusoe and to 
 fancy a Friday in every footprint an island of his own in 
 eveiy field ? Yes, in spite of their desolation, their loss, 
 of the melancholy past, of the friendless future, the orphans 
 were happy happy in their youth their freedom their 
 love their wanderings in the delicious air of the glorious 
 August Sometimes they came upon knots of reapers lin- 
 gering in the shade of the hedgerows over their noon- day 
 meal ; and, grown sociable by travel, and bold by safety, 
 they joined and partook of the rude fare with the zest of 
 fatigue and youth. Sometimes, too, at night, they saw, 
 gleam afar and red by the wood-side, the fires of gipsy 
 tents. But these, with the superstition derived from old 
 nursery tales, they scrupulously shnnned, eyeing them with 
 a mysterious awe! What heavenly twilights belong to 
 that golden month! the air so lucidly serene, as the 
 purple of the clouds fades gradually away, and up soars, 
 broad, round, intense, and luminous, the full moon which 
 belongs to the joyous season ! The fields then are greener 
 than in the heats of July and June, they have got back 
 the luxury of a second spring. And still, beside the paths 
 of the travellers, lingered on the hedges the clustering 
 honeysuckle the convolvulus glittered in the tangles of 
 the brake the hardy heath -flower smiled on the green 
 waste. 
 
 And ever, at evening, they came, field after field, upon 
 those circles which recall to children so many charmed 
 legends, and are fresh and frequent in that month the 
 Fairy Rings ! They thought, poor boys ! that it was a 
 good omen, and half fancied that the Fairies protected 
 them, as in the old time they had often protected the deso- 
 late and outcast. 
 
 They avoided the main roads, and all towns, with suspi- 
 cious care. But sometimes they paused, for food and rest, 
 at the obscure hostels of some scattered hamlet : though, 
 more often, they loved to spread the simple food they pur- 
 chased by the way, under some tb ick tree, or beside a stream 
 through whose limpid waters thoy could watch the trout 
 glide and play. And they often preferred the chance- 
 shelter of a haystack, or a shed, i o the less romantic repose 
 offered by the small inns they 'alone dared to enter. They 
 went in this much by the face and voice of the host or
 
 AND MORNING. 149 
 
 hostess. Once only Philip had entered a town, on the 
 second day of their flight, and that solely for the purchase 
 of ruder clothes, and a change of linen for Sidney, with 
 some articles and implements of use necessary in their pre- 
 sent course of shift and welcome hardship. A wise precau- 
 tion ; for, thus clad, they escaped suspicion. 
 
 So journeying, they consumed several days ; and, having 
 taken a direction quite opposite to that which led to the 
 manufacturing districts, whither pursuit had been directed, 
 they were now in the centre of another county in the 
 neighbourhood of one of the most considerable towns of 
 England ; and here Philip began to think their wanderings 
 ought to cease, and it was time to settle on some definite 
 course of life. He had carefully hoarded about his person, 
 and most thriftily managed, the little fortune bequeathed 
 by his mother. But Philip looked on this capital as a 
 deposit sacred to Sidney ; it was not to be spent, but kept 
 and augmented the nucleus for future wealth. Within 
 the last few weeks his character was greatly ripened, and 
 his powers of thought enlarged. He was no more a boy, 
 he was a man : he had another life to take care of. He 
 resolved, then, to enter the town they were approaching, 
 and to seek for some situation by which he might maintain 
 both. Sidney was veiy loath to abandon their present 
 roving life ; but he allowed that the warm weather could 
 not always last, and that in winter the fields would be less 
 pleasant. He, therefore, with a sigh, yielded to his brother's 
 reasonings. 
 
 They entered the fair and busy town of one day 
 
 at noon ; and, after finding a small lodging, at which he 
 deposited Sidney, who was fatigued with their day's walk, 
 Philip sallied forth alone. 
 
 After his long rambling, Philip was pleased and struck 
 with the broad bustling streets, the gay shops the evi- 
 dences of opulence and trade. He thought it hard if he 
 could not find there a market for the health and heart of 
 sixteen. He strolled slowly and alone along the streets, 
 till his attention was caught by a small corner-shop, in the 
 window of which was placed a board, bearing this in- 
 scription : 
 
 "OFFICE FOR EMPLOYMENT. RECIPROCAL ADVANTAGE. 
 " Mi*. Joiin Olttmp'e bureau opan every day, from teu till
 
 150 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 four. Clerks, servants, labourers, &c., provided -with suit- 
 able situations. Terms moderate. N.B. The oldest esta- 
 blished office in the town. 
 
 " Wanted, a good cook. An under gardener." 
 
 What he sought was here ! Philip entered, and saw a 
 short, fat man with spectacles, seated before a desk, poring 
 upon the well-filled leaves of a long register. 
 
 " Sir," said Philip, " I wish for a situation ; I don't care 
 what." 
 
 " Half-a-crown for entry, if you please. That's right. 
 Now for particulars. Hum! you don't look like a ser- 
 vant!" 
 
 " No ; I wish for any place where my education can be of 
 use. I can read and write ; I know Latin and French ; I 
 can draw; I know arithmetic and summing." 
 
 " Very well; very genteel young man prepossessing ap- 
 pearance (that's a fudge !) highly educated ; usher in a 
 school eh ? " 
 
 " What you like." 
 
 11 References ? " 
 
 " I have none." 
 
 " Eh ! none ! " and Mr. Clump fixed his spectacles full 
 upon Philip. 
 
 Philip was prepared for the question, and had the sense 
 to perceive that a frank reply was his best policy. " The 
 fact is," said he, boldly, " I was well brought up ; my father 
 died ; I was to be bound apprentice to a trade I disliked ; I 
 left it, and have now no friends." 
 
 "If I can help you, I will," said Mr. Clump, coldly. 
 " Can't promise much. If you were a labourer, character 
 might not matter ; but educated young men must have a 
 character. Hands always more useful than head. Edu- 
 cation no avail now-a-days ; common, quite common. Call 
 again on Monday." 
 
 Somewhat disappointed and chilled, Philip turned from 
 the bureau ; but he had a strong confidence in his own 
 resources, and recovered his spirits as he mingled with the 
 throng. He passed, at length, by a livery- stable, and 
 paused, from old associations, as he saw a groom in the 
 mews attempting to manage a young, hot horse, evidently 
 unbroken. The master of the stables, in a green short 
 jacket, and top-boots, with a long whip in his hand- wn*
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 151 
 
 standing by, with one or two men who looked like horse- 
 dealers. 
 
 " Come off, clumsy ! you can't manage that 'ere fine 
 hanimal," cried the liveryman. " Ah ! he's a lamb, sir, if 
 he were backed properly. Bat I has not a man in the 
 yard as can ride, since Will died. Come off, I say, lubber ! " 
 
 But to come off, without being thrown off, was more 
 easily said than done. The horse was now plunging as if 
 Juno had sent her gad-fly to him ; and Philip, interested 
 and excited, came nearer and nearer, till he stood by the 
 side of the horse-dealers. The other ostlers ran to the help 
 of their comrade, who, at last, with white lips and shaking 
 knees, found himself on terra firma ; while the horse, snort- 
 ing hard, and rubbing his head against the breast and arms 
 of the ostler who held him tightly by the rein, seemed to 
 ask, in his own way, "Are there any more of you ? " 
 
 A suspicion that the horse was an old acquaintance 
 crossed Philip's mind ; he went up to him, and a whito 
 spot over the left eye confirmed his doubts. It had been a 
 foal reserved and reared for his own riding ; one that, in 
 his prosperous days, had ate bread from his hand, and 
 followed him round the paddock like a dog ; one that he 
 had mounted in sport, without saddle, when his father's 
 back was turned; a friend, in short, of the happy lang 
 syne ; nay, the very friend to whom he had boasted his 
 affection, when, standing with Arthur Beaufort under the 
 summer sky, the whole world seemed to him full of friends. 
 He put his hand on the horse's neck, and whispered, " Soho ! 
 So, Billy ! " and the horse turned sharp round with a quick 
 joyous neigh. 
 
 " If you please, sir," said Philip, appealing to the livery- 
 man, " I will undertake to ride this horse, and take him 
 over yon leaping-bar. Just let me try him." 
 
 " There's a fine-spirited lad for yon ! " said the livery- 
 man, much pleased at the offer. " Now, gentlemen, did I 
 not tell you that 'ere hanimal had no vice if he was properly 
 managed ? " 
 
 The horse-dealers shook their heads. 
 
 " May I give him some bread first ? " asked Philip ; and 
 the ostler was despatched to the house. Meanwhile tho 
 animal evinced various signs of pleasure and recognition, 
 as Philip stroked and talked to him ; and, finally, when he 
 ate the bread from the young man's hand, the whole yard
 
 152 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 seemed in as much delight a*id surprise as if they had wit- 
 nessed one of Monsieur Van Amburgh's exploits. 
 
 And now, Philip, still caressing the horse, slowly and 
 cautiously mounted ; the animal made one bound half- 
 across the yard a bound which sent all the horse-dealers 
 into a cornei' and then went through his paces, one after 
 the other, with as much ease and calm as if he had been 
 broke in at Mr. Fozard's to carry a young lady. And when 
 he crowned all by going thrice over the leaping-bar, and 
 Philip, dismounting, threw the reins to the ostler, and 
 turned triumphantly to the horse-dealer, that gentleman 
 slapped him on the back, and said, emphatically, " Sir, you 
 aie a man ! and I am proud to see you here." 
 
 Meanwhile the horse-dealers gathered round the animal ; 
 looked at his hoofs, felt his legs, examined his windpipe, 
 and concluded the bargain, which, but for Philip, would 
 have been very abruptly broken off. When the horse was 
 led out of the yard, the liveryman, Mr. Stubmore, turned to 
 Philip, who, leaning against the wall, followed the poor 
 animal with mournful eyes. 
 
 " My good sir, you have sold that horse for me that 
 you have ! Anything as I can do for you ? One good turn 
 deserves another. Here's a brace of shiners." 
 
 " Thank you, sir ! I want no money, but I do want some 
 employment. I can be of use to you, perhaps, in your 
 establishment. I have been brought up among horses all 
 my life." 
 
 " Saw it, sir ! that's very clear. I say that 'ere horse 
 knows you ! " and the dealer put his finger to his nose. 
 " Quite right to be mum ! He was bred by an old customer 
 of mine famous rider ! Mr. Beaufort. Aha ! that's where 
 you knew him, I 'spose. Were you in his stables ? " 
 
 "Hem I knew Mr. Beaufort well." 
 
 " Did you ? You could not know a better man. Well, 
 I shall be very glad to engage you, though you seem by 
 your hands to be a bit of a gentleman eh ? Never mind ; 
 don't want you to groom ! but superintend things. D'ye 
 know accounts, eh ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 "Character?" 
 
 Philip repeated to Mr. Stubmore the story he had im- 
 parted to Mr. Clump. Somehow or other, men who live 
 much with horses, are always more lax iu their notions than
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 153 
 
 the rest of mankind. Mr. Stubmore did not seem to grow 
 more distant at Philip's narration. 
 
 " Understand you perfectly, my man. Brought up with 
 them 'ere fine creturs, how could you nail your nose to a 
 desk ? I'll take you without more palaver. What's your 
 name ? " 
 
 "Philips." 
 
 " Come to-morrow and we'll settle about wages. Sleep 
 here ? " 
 
 " No. I have a brother whom I must lodge with, and 
 for whose sake I wish to work. I should not like him to be 
 at the stables he is too young. But I can come early every 
 day, and go home late." 
 
 " Well, just as you like, man. Good day." 
 
 And thus, not from any mental accomplishment not 
 from the result of his intellectual education, but from the 
 mere physical capacity and brute habit of sticking fast on 
 his saddle, did Philip Morton, in this great, intelligent, 
 gifted, civilised, enlightened community of Great Britain, 
 find the means of earning his bread without stealing it. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 44 Don Salluste (sounanf). Je paiie 
 
 Que vous ne pensiez pas a moi ? " Ruy Bleu. 
 
 " Don Salluste. Cousin ! 
 
 '* Don Cesar. De vos bienfaits je n'aurai nulle envie, 
 Tant que je trouverai vivant ma libre vie."* Ibid. 
 
 PHILIP'S situation was agreeable to his habits. His great 
 courage and skill in horsemanship were not the only quali- 
 fications useful to Mr. Stubmore : his education answered 
 an useful purpose in accounts, and his manners and ap- 
 pearance were highly to the credit of the yard. The cus- 
 tomers and loungers soon grew to like Gentleman Philips, 
 as he was styled in the esta.blishm.ent. Mr. Stubmore 
 conceived a real affection for him. So passed several 
 weeks ; and Philip, in this humble capacity, might have 
 worked or.t his destinies in peace and comfort, but for a 
 new cause of vexation that arose in Sidney. This boy was 
 
 * Don Sallust (smiling). I'll lay a wager you wont think of me ? 
 
 Don SalltMt. Cousin ! 
 
 Don Cctsar. I covet not your favours, so but I lead an independent lift*.
 
 154 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 all in all to his brother. For him he had resisted thfe 
 hearty and joyous invitations of Gawtrey (whose gay man- 
 ner and high spirits had, it must be owned, captivated liia 
 fancy, despite the equivocal mystery of the man's avoca- 
 tions and condition) ; for him he now worked and toiled, 
 cheerful and contented ; and him he sought to save from 
 all to which he subjected himself. He could not bear that 
 that soft and delicate child should ever be exposed to the 
 low and menial associations that now made up his own 
 life to the obscene slang of grooms and ostlers to their 
 coarse manners and rough contact. He kept him, there- 
 fore, apart and aloof in their little lodging, and hoped in 
 time to lay by, so that Sidney might ultimately be restored, 
 if not to his bright original sphere, at least to a higher 
 grade than that to which Philip was himself condemned. 
 But poor Sidney could not bear to be thus left alone to 
 lose sight of his brother from daybreak till bed-time to 
 have no one to amuse him ; he fretted and pined away : 
 all the little inconsiderate selfishness, uneradicated from his 
 breast by his sufferings, broke out the more, the more he 
 felt that he was the first object on earth to Philip. Philip, 
 thinking he might be more cheerful at a day-school, tried 
 the experiment of placing him at one where the boys were 
 much of his own age. But Sidney, on the third day, came 
 back with a black eye, and he would return no more. 
 Philip several times thought of changing their lodging for 
 one where there were young people. But Sidney had taken 
 a fancy to the kind old widow who was their landlady, 
 and cried at the thought of removal. Unfortunately, the 
 old woman was deaf and rheumatic ; and though she bore 
 teasing ad libitum, she could not entertain the child long 
 on a stretch. Too young to be reasonable, Sidney could 
 not, or would not, comprehend why his brother was so long 
 away from him ; and once he said, peevishly, 
 
 " If I had thought I was to be moped up so, I would not 
 have left Mrs. Morton. Tom was a bad boy, but still it 
 was somebody to play with. I wish I had not gone away 
 with you ! " 
 
 This speech cut Philip to the heart. What, then, he 
 had taken from the child a respectable and safe shelter 
 the sure provision of a life and the child now reproached 
 him ! When this was said to him, the tears gushed from 
 his eyes.
 
 KIGHT AND MORNING. 15S 
 
 "God forgive me, Sidney," said he, and turned away. 
 
 But then Sidney, who had the most endearing ways 
 with him, seeing his brother so vexed, ran up and kissed 
 him, and scolded himself for being naughty. Still the 
 words were spoken, and their meaning rankled deep. 
 Philip himself, too, was morbid in his excessive tenderness 
 for this boy. There is a certain age, before the love for 
 the sex commences, when the feeling of friendship is almost 
 a passion. You see it constantly in girls and boys at 
 school. It is the first vague craving of the heart after the 
 master food of human life Love. It has its jealousies, 
 and humours, and caprices, like love itself. Philip was 
 painfully acute to Sidney's affection, was jealous of every 
 particle of it. He dreaded lest his brother should ever be 
 torn from him. 
 
 He would start from his sleep at night, and go to Sid- 
 ney's bed to see that he was there. He left him in the 
 morning with forebodings he returned in the dark with 
 fear. Meanwhile the character of this young man, so 
 sweet and tender to Sidney, was gradually becoming more 
 hard and stern to others. He had now climbed to the post 
 of command in that rude establishment; and premature 
 command in any sphere tends to make men unsocial and 
 imperious. 
 
 One day Mr. Stubmore called him into his own counting- 
 house, where stood a gentleman, with one hand in his coat- 
 pocket, the other tapping his whip against his boot. 
 
 " Philips, show this gentleman the brown mare. She is 
 a beauty in harness, is not she ? This gentleman wants a 
 match for his pheaton." 
 
 " She must step very hoigh," said the gentleman, turn- 
 ing round : and Philip recognised the beau in the stage- 
 coach. 
 
 The recognition was simultaneous. The beau nodded, 
 then whistled, and winked. 
 
 " Come, my man, I am at your service," said he. 
 
 Philip, with many misgivings, followed him across the 
 yard. The gentleman then beckoned him to approach. 
 
 " You, sir, moind I never peach setting up here in 
 the honest line ? Dull work, honesty, eh ? " 
 
 " Sir, I really don't know you." 
 
 " Daun't you recollect old Gregg's, the evening you came 
 there with jolly Bill Gawtrey ? Recollect that, eh ? "
 
 156 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 Philip was mute. 
 
 " I was among the gentlemen in the back-parlour who 
 shook you by the hand. Bill's off to France, then. I am 
 tauking the provinces. I want a good horse the best in 
 the yard, moind ! Cutting such a swell here ! My name 
 is Captain de Burgh Smith never moind yours, my fine 
 faellow. Now then, out with your rattlers, and keep your 
 tongue in your mouth." 
 
 Philip mechanically ordered out the brown mare, which 
 Captain Smith did not seem much to approve of ; and, 
 aftei glancing round the stables with great disdain of the 
 collection, he sauntered out of the yard without saying 
 more to Philip, though he stopped and spoke a few sen- 
 tences to Mr. Stubmore. Philip hoped he had no design 
 of purchasing, and that he was rid, for the present, of so 
 awkward a customer. Mr. Stubmore approached Philip. 
 
 " Drive over the greys to Sir John," said he: " My lady 
 wants a pair to job. A very pleasant man, that Captain 
 Smith. I did not know you had been in a yard before 
 says you were the pet at Elmore's, in London. Served 
 him many a day. Pleasant gentlemanlike man ! " 
 
 " Y e s ! " said Philip, hardly knowing what he said, 
 and hurrying back into the stables to order out the 
 greys. 
 
 The place to which he was bound was some miles dis- 
 tant, and it was sunset when he returned. As he drove 
 into the main street, two men observed him closely. 
 
 " That is he ! I am almost sure it is," said one. 
 
 " Oh ! then it's all smooth sailing," replied the other. 
 
 " But, bless my eyes ! you must be mistaken ! See 
 whom he's talking to now ? " 
 
 At that moment Captain de Burgh Smith, mounted on 
 the brown mare, stopped Philip. 
 
 " Well, you see, I've bought her, hope she'll turn out 
 well. What do you really think she's worth ? Not to buy, 
 but to sell ? " 
 
 *' Sixty guineas." 
 
 " Well, that's a good day's work ; and I owe it to yo* 
 The old faellow would not have trusted me if you had not 
 served me at Elmore's ha ! ha ! If he gets scent and 
 looks shy at you, my lad, come to me. I'm at the Stai 
 Hotel for the next few days. I want a tight faellow like 
 you, and you shall have a fair percentage. I'm none of
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 157 
 
 your stingy ones. I say, I hope this devil is quiet ? She 
 cocks up her ears dawmnably ! " 
 
 " Look you, sir ! " said Philip, very gravely, and rising 
 up in his break ; "I know very little of you, and that little 
 is not much to your credit. I give you fair warning, that 
 I shall caution my employer against you." 
 
 " Will you, my fine faellow ? then take care of your- 
 self." 
 
 " Stay, and if you dare utter a word against me," said 
 Philip, with that frown to which his swarthy complexion 
 and flashing eyes gave an expression of fierce power be- 
 yond his years, " you will find that, as I am the last to care 
 for a threat, so I am the first to resent an injury ! " 
 
 Thus saying, he drove on. Captain Smith affected a 
 cough, and put his brown mare into a canter. The two 
 men followed Philip as he drove into the yard. 
 
 " What do you know against the person he spoke to ? " 
 said one of them. 
 
 " Merely that he is one of the cunningest swells on this 
 side the Bay," returned the other. " It looks bad for your 
 young friend." 
 
 The first speaker shook his head and made no reply. 
 
 On gaining the yard, Philip found that Mr. Stubmore 
 had gone out, and was not expected home till the next day. 
 He had some relations who were farmers, whom he often 
 visited ; to them he was probably gone. 
 
 Philip, therefore, deferring his intended caution against 
 Jhe gay captain till the morrow, and musing how the 
 eaution might be most discreetly given, walked homeward, 
 ^e had just entered the lane that led to his lodgings, when 
 he saw the two men I have spoken of on the other side of 
 the street. The taller and better-dressed of the two left 
 his comrade, and crossing over to Philip, bowed, and thus 
 accosted him, 
 
 " Fine evening, Mr. Philip Morton. I am rejoiced to see 
 you at last. You remember me Mr. Blackwell, Lincoln's 
 Inn?" 
 
 " What is your business ? " said Philip, halting, and 
 speaking short and fiercely. 
 
 " Now don't be in a passion, my dear sir, now don't. 
 I am here on behalf of my clients, Messrs. Beaufort, sen. 
 and jun. I have had such work to find you ! Dear, dear ! 
 but you are a sly one ! Ha ! ha ! Well, you see we bavr
 
 IbS NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 settled that little affair of Plaskwith's for you (might- have 
 been ugly), and now I hope you will " 
 
 " To your business, sir ! What do you want with 
 me?" 
 
 " Why, now, don't be so quick ! "Tis not the way to do 
 business. Suppose you step to my hotel. A glass of 
 wine, now, Mr. Philip ! We shall soon understand each 
 other." 
 
 " Out of my path, or speak plainly ! " 
 
 Thus put to it, the lawyer, casting a glance at his stout 
 companion, who appeared to be contemplating the sunset 
 on the other side of the way, came at once to the marrow 
 of his subject. 
 
 " Well, then, well, my say is soon said. Mr. Arthur 
 Beaufort takes a most lively interest in you ; it is he who 
 has directed this inquiry. He bids me say that he shall 
 be most happy yes, most happy to serve you in any- 
 thing ; and if you will but see him, he is in the town, I am 
 sure you will be charmed with him most amiable young 
 man ! " 
 
 " Look you, sir," said Philip, drawing himself up : 
 " neither from father, nor from son, nor from one of that 
 family, on whose heads rest the mother's death and the 
 orphans' curse, will I ever accept boon or benefit with 
 them, voluntarily, I will hold no communion ; if they force 
 themselves in my path, let them beware ! I am earning 
 my bread in the way I desire I am independent I want 
 them not. Begone ! " 
 
 With that, Philip pushed aside the lawyer and strode on 
 rapidly. Mr. Blackwell, abashed and perplexed, returned 
 to his companion. 
 
 Philip regained his home, and found Sidney stationed at 
 the window alone, and with wistful eyes noting the flight 
 of the grey moths, as they darted to and fro, across the dull 
 shrubs, that, variegated with lines for washing, adorned 
 the plot of ground which the landlady called a garden. 
 The elder brother had returned at an earlier hour than 
 usual, and Sidney did not at first perceive him enter. 
 When he did he clapped his hands, and ran to him. 
 
 " This is so good in you, Philip. I have been so dull 
 you will come and play now ?" 
 
 " With all my heart where shall we play ? " said Philip, 
 with a cheerful smile.
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 159 
 
 " Oh, in the garden ! it's such a nice time for hide and 
 seek." 
 
 " But is it not chill and damp for you ? " said Philip. 
 
 " There now ; you are always making excuses. I see 
 yon don't like it. I have no heart to play now." 
 
 Sidney seated himself and pouted. 
 
 " Poor Sidney ! you must be dull without me. Yes, let 
 oa play ; but put on this handkerchief ; " and Philip took 
 off his own cravat and tied it round his brother's neck and 
 kissed him. 
 
 Sidney, whose anger seldom lasted long, was reconciled ; 
 and they went into the garden to play. It was a little 
 spot, screened by an old moss-grown paling, from the 
 neighbouring garden on the one side, and a lane on the 
 other. They played with great glee till the night grew 
 darker and the dews heavier. 
 
 "This must be the last time," cried Philip. "It is my 
 turn to hide." 
 
 " Very well ! Now, then." 
 
 Philip secreted himself behind a poplar ; and as Sidney 
 searched for him, and Philip stole round and round the 
 tree, the latter, happening to look across the paling, saw 
 the dim outline of a man's figure in the lane, who appeared 
 watching them. A thrill shot across his breast. These 
 Beauforts, associated in his thoughts with every ill omen 
 and augury, had they set a spy upon his movements ? He 
 remained erect and gazing at the form, when Sidney dis- 
 covered, and ran up to him, with his noisy laugh. 
 
 As the child clung to him, shouting with gladness, Philip, 
 unheeding his playmate, called aloud and imperiously to 
 the stranger, 
 
 " What are you gaping at ? Why do you stand watch- 
 ing us ? " 
 
 The man muttered something, moved on, and dis- 
 appeared. 
 
 " I hope there are no thieves here ! I am so much 
 afraid of thieves," said Sidney, tremulously. 
 
 The fear grated on Philip's heart. Had he not himself, 
 perhaps, been judged and treated as a thief? He said 
 nothing, but drew his brother within ; and there, in their 
 little room, by the one poor candle, it was touching and 
 beautiful to see these boys the tender patience of the 
 elder lending itself to every whim of tho younger nov
 
 160 NIGHT AND MORNING 
 
 building houses with cards now telling stories of fairy 
 and knight errant the sprightliest he conld remember 01 
 invent. At length, as all was over, and Sidney was un- 
 dressing for the night, Philip, standing apart, said to him, 
 in a mournful voice, 
 
 " Are you sad now, Sidney ? " 
 
 " No ! not when you are wi+h me but that is so 
 seldom." 
 
 " Do you read none of the story-books I bought for 
 you ? " ' 
 
 " Sometimes ! but one can't read all day." 
 
 " Ah ! Sidney, if ever we should part, perhaps you will 
 love me no longer ! " 
 
 "Don't say so," said Sidney. "But we shan't part, 
 Philip ? " 
 
 Philip sighed, and turned away as his brother leaped 
 into bed. Something whispered to him that danger was 
 near ; and as it was, could Sidney grow up, neglected and 
 uneducated, was it thus that he was to fulfil his trust ? 
 
 CHAPTEK IX. 
 
 " But oh, what storm was in that mind ! " CRABBE : Ruth. 
 
 WHILE Philip mused, and his brother fell into the happy 
 sleep of childhood, in a room in the principal hotel of the 
 town sat three persons, Arthur Beaufort, Mr. Spencer, and 
 Mr. Blackwell. 
 
 "And so," said the first, "he rejected every overture 
 from the Beauforts ?" 
 
 " With a scorn I cannot convey to you ! " replied the 
 lawyer. " But the fact is, that he is evidently a lad of low 
 habits ; to think of his being a sort of helper to a horse- 
 dealer ! I suppose, sir, he was always in the stables in his 
 father's time. Bad company depraves the taste very soon, 
 but that is not the worst. Sharp declares that the man he 
 was talking with, as I told you, is a common swindler. 
 Depend on it, Mr. Arthur, he is incorrigible ; all we can do 
 is to save the brother." 
 
 " It is too dreadful to contemplate ! " r^d Arthur, who 
 still ill and languid, reclined on a sofa 
 
 " It i. indeed," said Mr. Spencer : " I am sore I should
 
 'UGHT AND MORNING. 161 
 
 cot know what to do -with such a character; but the other 
 poor child, it would be a mercy to get hold of him." 
 
 " Where is Mr. Sharp ?" asked Arthur. 
 
 "Why," said the lawyer, "he has followed Philip at a 
 distance to find out his lodgings, and learn if his brother 
 is with him. Oh ! here he is ! " and Blackwell's companion 
 in the earlier part of the evening entered. 
 
 " I have found him out, sir," said Mr. Sharp, wiping 
 his forehead. " What a fierce 'un he is ! I thought he 
 would have had a stone at my head ; but we, officers, are 
 used to it ; we does our duty, and Providence makes our 
 heads unkimmon hard ! " 
 
 " Is the child with him ? " asked Mr. Spencer. 
 
 " Yes, sir." 
 
 " A little, quiet, subdued boy ? " asked the melancholy 
 inhabitant of the Lakes. 
 
 " Quiet ! Lord love you ! never heard a noisier little 
 urchin ! There they were, romping and rouping in the 
 garden, like a couple of gaol birds." 
 
 " You see," groaned Mr. Spencer, " he will make that 
 poor child as bad as himself." 
 
 "What shall us do, Mr. Blackwell?" asked Sharp, who 
 longed for his brandy-and- water. 
 
 " Why, I was thinking you might go to the horse-dealer 
 the first thing in the morning ; find out whether Philip is 
 really thick with the swindler ; and, perhaps, Mr. Stubmore 
 may have some influence with him, if, without saying who 
 be is " 
 
 " Yes," interrupted Arthur, " do not expose his name." 
 
 " You could still hint that he ought to be induced to 
 listen to his friends and go with them. Mr. Stubmore 
 may be a respectable man, and " 
 
 " I understand," said Sharp ; " I have no doubt as how 
 I can settle it. We learns to know human natur in our 
 pcrfession ; 'cause why, we gets at its blind side. Good 
 night, gentlemen ! " 
 
 " You seem very pale, Mr. Arthur ; you had better go 
 
 bed : you promised your father, you know." 
 
 " Yes, I am not well ; I will go to bed ; " and Arthur 
 
 se, lighted his candle, and sought his room. 
 
 " I will see Philip to-morrow," he said to himself ; " he 
 will listen to me." 
 
 The conduct of Arthur Beaufort in executin the chare
 
 162 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 he had undertaken, had brought into full light all the 
 tnost amiable and generous part of his character. As soon 
 as he was sufficiently recovered, he had expressed so much 
 Anxiety as to the fate of the orphans, that to quiet him his 
 father was forced to send for Mr. Blackwell. The lawyer 
 
 had ascertained, through Dr. , the name of Philip's 
 
 employer at B . At Arthur's request he went down 
 to Mr. Plaskwith ; and arriving there the day after the 
 return of the bookseller, learned those particulars with 
 which Mr. Plaskwith's letter to Roger Morton has already 
 made the reader acquainted. The lawyer then sent for 
 Mr. Sharp, the officer before employed, and commissioned 
 him to track the young man's whereabout. That shrewd 
 functionary soon reported that a youth every way answer- 
 ing to Philip's description, had been introduced the night 
 of the escape by a man celebrated, not indeed for robberies, 
 or larcenies, or crimes of the coarser kind, but for address 
 in all that more large and complex character which comes 
 under the denomination of living upon one's wits, to a 
 polite rendezvous frequented by persons of a similar pro- 
 fession. Since then, however, all clue of Philip was lost. 
 But though Mr. Blackwell, in the way of his profession, 
 was thus publicly benevolent towards the fugitive, he did 
 not the less privately represent to his patrons, senior and 
 junior, the very equivocal character that Philip must be 
 allowed to bear. Like most lawyers, hard upon all who 
 wander from the formal tracks, he unaffectedly regarded 
 Philip's flight and absence as proofs of a very reprobate 
 disposition ; and this conduct was greatly aggravated in 
 his eyes by Mr. Sharp's report, by which it appeared that 
 after his escape Philip had so suddenly, and, as it were, so 
 naturally, taken to such equivocal companionship. Mr. 
 Robert Beaufort, already prejudiced against Philip, viewed 
 matters in the same light as the lawyer ; and the story of 
 his supposed predilections reached Arthur's ears in so dis- 
 torted a shape, that even he was staggered and revolted: 
 still Philip was so young Arthur's oath to the orphans' 
 mother so recent and if thus early inclined to wrong 
 'ourses, should not eveiy effort be made to lure him back 
 co the straight path ? With these views and reasonings, 
 as soon as he was able, Arthrj? himself visited Mrs. Lacy, 
 and the note from Philip, which the good lady put into 
 his hands, affected him deeply, and confirmed all his pro-
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 163 
 
 vions resolutions. Mrs. Lacy was very anxious to get at 
 his name ; but Arthur, having heard that Philip had 
 refused all aid from his father and Mr. Blackwell, thought 
 that the young man's pride might work equally against 
 himself, and therefore evaded the landlady's curiosity. 
 He wrote the next day the letter we have seen, to Mr. 
 Roger Morton, whose address Catherine had given to him ; 
 and by return of post came a letter from the linen-draper 
 narrating the flight of Sidney, as it was supposed with his 
 brother. This news so excited Arthur, that he insisted on 
 
 going down to N at once, and joining in the search. 
 
 His father, alarmed for his health, positively refused ; and 
 the consequence was an increase of fever, a consultation 
 with the doctors, and a declaration that Mr. Arthur was 
 in that state that it would be dangerous not to let him 
 have his own way. Mr. Beaufort was forced to yield, and 
 with Blackwell and Mr. Sharp accompanied his son to 
 
 N . The inquiries, hitherto fruitless, then assumed a 
 
 more regular and business-like character. By little and 
 little they came, through the aid of Mr. Sharp, upon the 
 right clue, up to a certain point. But here there was a 
 double scent : two youths answering the description, had 
 been seen at a small village ; then there came those who 
 inserted that they had seen the same youths at a seaport 
 in one direction ; others, who deposed to their having 
 taken the road to an inland town in the other. This had 
 induced Arthur and his father to part company. Mr. 
 Beaufort, accompanied by Roger Morton, went to the sea- 
 oort ; and Arthur, with Mr. Spencer and Mr. Sharp, more 
 ^rtunatc, tracked the fugitives to their retreat. As for 
 M . Beaufort, senior, now that his mind was more at ease 
 about his son, he was thoroughly sick of the whole thing ; 
 greatly bored by the society of Mr. Morton ; very much 
 ashamed that he, so respectable and great a man, should 
 be employed on such an errand; more afraid of, than 
 pleased with, any chance of discovering the fierce Philip ; 
 and secretly resolved upon slinking back to London, at the 
 first reasonable excuse. 
 
 The next morning Mr. Sharp entered betimes Mr. Stnb- 
 more's counting-house. In the yard he caught a glimpse 
 of Philip, and managed to keep himself unseen by that 
 young gentleman. 
 
 "Mr. Stubmore, I think ?" 
 
 i 2
 
 164 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 " At your service, sir." 
 
 Mr. Sharp shut the glass door mysteriously, and lifting 
 up the corner of a green curtain that covered the panes, 
 beckoned to the startled Stubrnore to approach. 
 
 "You see that 'ere young man in the velveteen jacket ? 
 you employs him ? " 
 
 " I do, sir ; he's my right hand." 
 
 "Well, now, don't be frightened, but his friends aro 
 arter him. He has got into bad ways, and we want you to 
 give him a little good advice." 
 
 " Pooh ! I know he has run away, like a fine- spirited lad 
 as he is ; and as long as he likes to stay with me, they as 
 conies after him may get a ducking in the horse-trough ! *" 
 
 " Be you a father ? a father of a family, Mr. Stubmore ? " 
 said Sharp, thrusting his hands into his breeches pockets, 
 swelling out his stomach, and pursing up his lips with 
 great solemnity. 
 
 " Nonsense ! no gammon with me ! Take your chaff to 
 the goslings. I tells you I can't do without that ere lad. 
 Every man to himself." 
 
 "Oho!" thought Sharp, " I must change the tack." 
 " Mr. Stubmore," said he, taking a stool, " you speaks like 
 a sensible man. No one can reasonably go for to ask a gen- 
 tleman to go for to inconvenience his- self. But what do 
 you know of that 'ere youngster ? Had you a carakter 
 with him?" 
 
 "What's that to you?" 
 
 " Why, it's more to yourself, Mr. Stubmore ; he is but 
 a lad, and if he goes back to his friends they may take 
 care of him, but he got into a bad vjet afore he come 
 here. Do you know a good-looking chap with whiskers, 
 who talks of his pheaton, and was riding last night on a 
 brown mare ? " 
 
 " Y e s ! " said Mr. Stubmore, growing rather pale, 
 t! and I knows the mare, too. Why, sir, I sold him that 
 mare ! " 
 
 " Did he pay you for her ? " 
 
 "Why, to be sure, he gave me a cheque on Coutts." 
 
 " And you took it ! My eyes ! what a flat ! " Hero Mr- 
 Sharp closed the orbs he had invoked, and whistled with 
 that self- hugging delight which men invariably feel wheD 
 another man is taken in. 
 
 Mr. Stubmore became evidently nervoif
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 1G5 
 
 " Why, what now ; you don't think I'm done ? I did 
 not let him have the mare till I went to the hotel, found 
 nc was cutting a great dash there, a groom, a pheaton, and 
 a fine horse, and as extravagant as the devil ! " 
 
 " Lord ! O Lord ! what a world this is ! What does 
 he call his-self ? " 
 
 "Why, here's the cheque George Frederick de de 
 Burgh Smith." 
 
 " Put it in your pipe, my man, put it in your pipe 
 not worth a d ! " 
 
 " And who the deuce are you, sir ? " bawled out Mr. Stub- 
 more, in an equal rage both with himself and his guest. 
 
 " I, sir," said the visitor, rising with great dignity, " I, 
 sir, am of the Great Bow Street Office, and my name is John 
 Sharp ! " 
 
 Mr. Stubmore nearly fell off his stool, his eyes rolled in 
 his head, and his teeth chattered. Mr. Sharp perceived 
 the advantage he had gained, and continued 
 
 " Yes, sir ; and I could have much to say against that 
 chap, who is nothing more or less than Dashing Jerry, 
 as has ruined more girls and more tradesmen than any lord 
 in the land. And so I called to give you a bit of caution ; 
 for, says I to myself, 'Mr. Stubmore is a respectable 
 man.'" 
 
 " I hope I am, sir," said the crest-fallen horse- dealer ; 
 " that was always my character." 
 
 " And the father of a family ? " 
 
 " Three boys and a babe at the buzzom," said Mr. Stub- 
 more, pathetically. 
 
 " And he sha'n't be taken in if I can help it! That 'ero 
 young man as I am arter, you sec, knows Captain Smith 
 ha ! ha ! smell a rat now eh ? " 
 
 " Captain Smith said he knew him the wiper and 
 that's what made me so green." 
 
 " Well, we must not bo hard on the youngster : 'cause 
 why, he has friends as is gemmen. But you tell him to 
 go back to his poor dear relations, and all shall be for- 
 given ; and say as how you won't keep him ; and if he 
 don't go back, he'll have to get his livelihood without a 
 carakter ; and use your influence with him like a man and 
 a Christian, and what's more, like the father of a family 
 Mr. Stubmore with three boys and a babe at the buzzom, 
 5Tou won't keep him now ? "
 
 166 X10HT AND MORNING. 
 
 " Keep him ! I have had a precious escape. I'd hotter 
 go and see after the mare." 
 
 " I doubt if you'll find her : the Captain caught a sight 
 of nie this morning. Why, he lodges at our hotel ! He's 
 off by this time ! " 
 
 "And why the devil did you let him go ? " 
 
 " 'Cause I had no writ agin him ! " said the Bow Street 
 officer ; and he walked straight out of the counting-office, 
 satisfied that he had " done the job." 
 
 To snatch his hat to run to the hotel to find that 
 Captain Smith had indeed gone off in his phaeton, bag and 
 baggage, the same as he came, except that he had now two 
 horses to the phaeton instead of one having left with the 
 landlord the amount of his bill in another cheque upon 
 Coutts was the work of five minutes with Mr. Stubmore. 
 He returned home, panting and purple with indignation 
 and wounded feeling. 
 
 " To think that chap, whom I took into my yard like a 
 son, should have connived at this ! 'Taint the money 
 'tis the willany that 'flicts me ! " muttered Mr. Stubmore, 
 as he re-entered the mews. 
 
 Here he came plump upon Philip, who said, 
 
 " Sir, I wished to see you, to say that you had better 
 take care of Captain Smith." 
 
 " Oh, you did, did you, now he's gone ? 'sconded off to 
 America, I dare say, by this time. Now look ye, young 
 man: your friends are after you, I won't say anything 
 agin you ; but you go back to them I wash my hands of 
 you. Quite too much for me. There's your week, and 
 never let me catch you in my yard agin, that's all ! " 
 
 Philip dropped the money which Stubmore had put into 
 his hand. " My friends ! friends have been with you, 
 have they ? I thought so I thank them. And so you 
 part with me ? Well, you have been kind, very kind ; let 
 us part kindly ; " and he held out his hand. 
 
 Mr. Stubmore was softened he touched the hand held 
 out to him, and looked doubtful a moment ; but Captain 
 de Burgh Smith's cheque for eighty guineas suddenly roso 
 before his eyes. He turned on his heel abruptly, and said, 
 over his shoulder 
 
 "Don't go after Captain Smith (he'll come to the 
 gallows) ; mend your ways, and be ruled by your poor dour 
 relatives, whose hearts you are breaking."
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 167 
 
 " Captain Smith ! Did my relations tell you ?" 
 
 " Yes yes they told me all that is, they sent to tell 
 me ; so you see I'm d d soft not to lay hold of you. But, 
 perhaps, if they be gemmen, they'll act as sich, and cash 
 me this here cheque ! " 
 
 But the last words were said to air. Philip had rushed 
 from the yard. 
 
 With a heaving breast, and every nerve in his body 
 quivering with wrath, the proud, unhappy boy strode 
 through the gay streets. They had betrayed him then, 
 these accursed Beauforts ! they circled his steps with 
 schemes to drive him like a deer into the snare of their 
 loathsome charity ! The roof was to be taken from his 
 head the bread from his lips so that he might fawn at 
 their knees for bounty. " But they shall not break my 
 spirit, nor steal away my curse. No, my dead mother, 
 never ! " 
 
 As he thus muttered, he passed through a patch of waste 
 land that led to the row of houses in which his lodging 
 was placed. And here a voice called to him, and a hand 
 was laid on his shoulder. He turned, and Arthur Beau- 
 fort, who had followed him from the street, stood behind 
 him. Philip did not, at the first glance, recognise his 
 cousin. Illness had so altered him, and his dress was so 
 different from that in which he had first and last beheld 
 him. The contrast between the two young men was re- 
 markable. Philip was clad in the rough garb suited to bis 
 late calling a jacket of black velveteen ill-fitting and ill- 
 fashioned, loose fustian trousers, coarse shoes, his hat set 
 deep over his pent eyebrows, his raven hair long and 
 neglected. He was just at that age when one with strong 
 features and robust frame, is at the worst in point of appear- 
 ance the sinewy proportions not yet sufficiently fleshed, 
 and seeming inharmonious and undeveloped ; precisely in 
 proportion, perhaps, to the symmetry towards which they 
 insensibly mature : the contour of the face sharpened from 
 the roundness of boyhood, and losing its bloom without 
 yet acquiring that relief and shadow which make the ex- 
 pression and dignity of the masculine countenance. Thus 
 accoutred, thus gaunt, and uncouth, stood Morton. Arthur 
 Beaufort, always refined in his appearance, seemed yet more 
 BO from the almost feminine delicacy which ill-health 
 threw over his pale complexion and graceful figure ; tkit
 
 168 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 sort of unconscious elegance which belongs to the dress of 
 the rich when they are young seen most in mtnutijB nol 
 observable, perhaps, by themselves marked forcibly and 
 painfully the distinction of rank between the two. That 
 distinction Beaufort did not feel; but at a glance it was 
 visible to Philip. 
 
 The past rushed back on him. The sunny lawn the 
 gun offered and rejected the pride of old, much less 
 haughty than the pride of to-day. 
 
 " Philip," said Beaufort, feebly, " they tell me you will 
 not accept any kindness from me or mine. Ah ! if you 
 knew how we have sought you ! " 
 
 " Knew ! " cried Philip, savagely, for that unlucky sen- 
 tence recalled to him his late interview with his employer, 
 and his present destitution. " Knew ! And why have 
 you dared to hunt me out, and halloo me down ? why 
 must this insolent tyranny, that assumes the right over 
 these limbs and this free will, betray and expose me and 
 my wretchedness wherever I turn ? " 
 
 "Tour poor mother " began Beaufort! 
 
 " Name her not with your lips name her not ! " cried 
 Philip, growing livid with his emotions. " Talk not of the 
 mercy the forethought a Beaufort could show to her 
 and her offspring ! I accept it not I believe it not. Oh, 
 yes ! you follow me now with your false kindness ; and 
 why ? Because your father your vain, hollow, heartless 
 father " 
 
 " Hold ! " said Beaufort, in a tone of such reproach, 
 that it startled the wild heart on which it fell ; " it is my 
 "ather you speak of. Let the son respect the son." 
 
 " No no no ! I will respect none of your race. I tell 
 you, your father fears me. I tell you, that my last words 
 to him ring in his ears ! My wrongs ! Arthur Beaufort, 
 when you are absent I seek to forget them ; in your ab- 
 horred presence they revive they " 
 
 He stopped, almost choked with his passion ; but con- 
 tinued instantly, with equal intensity of fervour : 
 
 "Were yon tree the gibbet, and to touch your hand 
 could alone save me from it, I would scorn your aid. Aid ! 
 the very thought fires my blood and nerves my hand. Aid ! 
 Will a Beaufort give me back my birthright restore mj 
 dead mother's fair name ? Minion ! sleek, dainty, luxu- 
 rious minion ! out of my path! You have my fortune,
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 169 
 
 ny station, my rights ; I have but poverty, and hate, and 
 disdain. I swear, again and again, that you shall not 
 purchase these from me." 
 
 " But, Philip Philip," cried Beaufort, catching his arm ; 
 " hear one hear one who stood by your " 
 
 The sentence that would have saved the outcast from 
 the demons that were darkening and swooping round his 
 soul, died upon the young Protector's lips. Blinded, 
 maddened, excited, and exasperated, almost out of hu- 
 manity itself, Philip fiercely brutally swung aside the 
 enfeebled form that sought to cling to him, and Beaufort 
 fell at his feet. Morton stopped glared at him with 
 clenched hands and a smiling lip, sprung over his prostrate 
 form, and bounded to his home. 
 
 He slackened his pace as he neared the house, and looked 
 behind ; but Beaufort had not followed him. He entered 
 the house, and found Sidney in the room, with a coun- 
 tenance so much more gay than that he had lately worn, 
 that, absorbed as he was in thought and passion, it yet did 
 not fail to strike him. 
 
 "What has pleased you, Sidney ? " 
 
 The child smiled. 
 
 "Ah! it is a secret I was not to tell you. But I'm 
 sure you are not the naughty boy he says you are." 
 
 " He ! who ? " 
 
 " Don't look so angry, Philip : you frighten me ! " 
 
 " And you torture me. "Who could malign one brother 
 to the other ? " 
 
 " Oh ! it was all meant very kindly there's been such a 
 nice, dear, good gentleman here, and he cried when he saw 
 me, and said be knew dear mamma. Well, and he has 
 promised to take me home with him and give mo a pretty 
 pony as pretty as pretty oh, as pretty as it can be got ! 
 And he is to call again and tell me more : I think he is a 
 fairy, Philip." 
 
 " Did he say that he was to take me, too, Sidney ? " said 
 3!orton, seating himself, and looking veiy pale. At that 
 question, Sidney hung his head. 
 
 "No, brother he says you won't go, and that you are a 
 bad boy and that you associate with wicked people and 
 that you want to keep me shut up here and not let any one 
 be good to me. But I told him I did not believe that yea. 
 indeed, I told him so."
 
 170 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 And Sidney endeavoured caressingly to withdrew the 
 
 hands that his brother placed before his face. 
 
 Morton started up, and walked hastily to and fro the 
 room. "This," thought he, "is another emissary of the 
 Beauforts perhaps the lawyer : they will take him from 
 me the last thing left to love and hope for. I will foil 
 them." " Sidney," he said aloud ; " we must go hence to- 
 day, this very hour nay, instantly." 
 
 " What ! away from this nice, good gentleman ? " 
 
 " Curse him ! yes, away from him. Do not cry it is of 
 no use you must go." 
 
 This was said more harshly than Philip had ever yefc 
 spoken to Sidney ; and when he had said it, he left the 
 room to settle with the landlady, and to pack up their 
 scanty effects. In another hour, the brothers had turned 
 their backs on the town. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 " I'll carry tbcc 
 la Sorrow's arms to welcome Misery." 
 
 HEYWOOD'S Duchess of Stiffdk. 
 
 " Who's here besides foul weather? " 
 
 SHAKSPEAIIE : Lear. 
 
 THE sun was as bright, and the sky as calm during thia 
 journey of the orphans, as in the last. They avoided, as 
 before, the main roads, and their way lay through land- 
 scapes that might have charmed a Gainsborough's eye. 
 Autumn scattered its last hues of gold over the various 
 foliage, and the poppy glowed from the hedges, and the 
 wild convolvuluses, here and there, still gleamed on the 
 way-side with a parting smile. 
 
 At times, over the sloping stubbles, broke the sound of 
 the sportsman's gun ; and ever and anon, by stream and 
 sedge, they startled the shy wild fowl, just come from the 
 far lands, nor yet settled in the new haunts too soon to be 
 invaded. 
 
 But there was no longer in the travellers the same hearts 
 that had made light of hardship and fatigue. Sidney was 
 no longer flying from a harsh master, and his step was not 
 elastic with the energy of fear that looked behind, and of
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING; 171 
 
 hope that smiled before. He was going a toilsome, weary 
 journey, lie knew not why nor whither ; just, too, when he 
 had made a friend, whose soothing words haunted his 
 childish fancy. He was displeased with Philip, and in 
 sullen and silent thoughtfulness slowly plodded behind 
 him ; and Morton himself was gloomy, and knew not where 
 in the world to seek a future. 
 
 They arrived at dusk at a small inn, not so far distant 
 from the town they had left as Morton could have wished ; 
 but the days were shorter than in their first flight. 
 
 They were shown into a small sanded parlour, which 
 Sidney eyed with great disgust ; nor did he seem more 
 pleased with the hacked and jagged leg of cold mutton, 
 which was all that the hostess set before them for supper. 
 Philip in vain endeavoured to cheer him up, and ate to set 
 him the example. He felt relieved when, under the aus- 
 pices of a good-looking, good-natured chambermaid, Sidney 
 retired to rest, and he was left in the parlour to his own 
 meditations. Hitherto it had been a happy thing for 
 Morton that he had had some one dependent on him ; that 
 feeling had given him perseverance, patience, fortitude, and 
 hope. But now, dispirited and sad, he felt rather the 
 horror of being responsible for a human life, without seeing 
 the means to discharge the trust. It was clear, even to 
 his experience, that he was not likely to find another em- 
 ployer as facile as Mr. Stubmore ; and wherever he went, 
 he felt as if his Destiny stalked at his back. He took out 
 his little fortune and spread it on the table, counting it 
 over and over ; it had remained pretty stationary since bis 
 service with Mr. Stubmore, for Sidney had swallowed up 
 the wages of his hire. While thus employed, the door 
 opened, and the chambermaid, showing in a gentleman, 
 said, " We have no other room, sir." 
 
 " Very well, then, I'm not particular ; a tumbler of 
 braundy and water, stiffish, cold without, the news- 
 paper and a cigar : You'll excuse smoking, sir ? " 
 
 Philip looked up from his hoard, and Captain de Burgh 
 Smith stood before him. 
 
 "Ah! " said the latter, "well met!" And closing tho 
 door, he took off his great coat, seated himself near Philip 
 and bent both his eyes with considerable wistfulness on 
 the neat rows into which Philip's bank-notes, sovereigns, 
 and shillings, were arrayed.
 
 172 NIGHT AND MORXIXG. 
 
 "Pretty little sum for pocket money; caush in hand 
 goes a great way, properly invested. You must have been 
 very lucky. Well, so I suppose you are surprised to see 
 me here without my pheoton ? " 
 
 " I wish I had never seen yon at all," replied Philip, 
 nncourteously, and restoring his money to his pocket; 
 " your fraud upon Mr. Stubmore, and your assurance that 
 you knew me, have sent me adrift upon the world." 
 
 " What's one man's meat is another man's poison," said 
 the captain, philosophically : "no use fretting, care killed 
 a cat. I am as badly off as you ; for, hang me, if there 
 was not a Bow Street runner in the town. I caught his 
 eye fixed on me like a gimblet : so I bolted went to 
 
 N , left my pheaton and groom there for the present, 
 
 and have doubled back, to bauffle pursuit, and cut across 
 the country. You recollect that noice girl we saw in the 
 coach ; 'gad, I served her spouse that is to be a praetty 
 trick ! Borrowed his money under pretence of investing 
 it in the New Grand Anti-Dry- Rot Company ; cool hun- 
 dred it's only just gone, sir." 
 
 Here the chambermaid entered with the brandy and 
 water, the newspaper, and cigar, the captain lighted the 
 last, took a deep sup from the beverage, and said, gaily : 
 
 " Well, now, let us join fortunes ; we are both, as you 
 say, 'adrift.' Best way to staund the breeze is to unite 
 the caubles." 
 
 Philip shook his head, and, displeased with his com- 
 panion, sought his pillow. He took care to put his money 
 under his head, and to lock his door. 
 
 The brothers started at day-break ; Sidney was even 
 more discontented than on the previous day. The weather 
 was hot and oppressive ; they rested for some hours at 
 noon, and in the cool of the evening renewed their way. 
 Philip had made up his mind to steer for a town in the 
 thick of a hunting district, where he hoped his equestrian 
 capacities might again befriend him ; and their path now 
 lay through a chain of vast dreary commons, which gave 
 them at least the advantage to skirt the road-side unob- 
 served. But, somehow or other, either Philip had been 
 misinformed as to an inn where he had proposed to pass 
 the night, or he had missed it ; for the clouds darkened, 
 and the sun went down, and no vestige of human habita- 
 tion was disecrrible. Sidney, foot-sore and querulous,
 
 NIGHT AND MOEtflXG. 173 
 
 began to weep, and declare that he could stir no further ; 
 and while Philip, whose iron frame defied fatigue, com- 
 passionately paused to rest his brother, a low roll of thunder 
 broke upon the gloomy air. " There will be a storm," said 
 he, anxiously. " Come on pray, Sidney, come on." 
 
 " It is so cruel in yon, brother Philip," reph'ed Sidney, 
 sobbing. " I wish I had never never gone with you.' 
 
 A flash of lightning, that illuminated the whole heavens, 
 lingered round Sidney's pale face as he spoke ; and Philip 
 threw himself instinctively on the child, as if to protect him 
 even from the wrath of the unshelterable flame. Sidney, 
 hushed and terrified, clung to his brother's breast ; af ber a 
 pause, he silently consented to resume their journey. But 
 now the storm came near and nearer to the wanderers. 
 The darkness grew rapidly more intense, save when the 
 lightning lit np heaven and earth alike with intolerable 
 lustre. And when at length the rain began to fall in mer- 
 ciless and drenching torrents, even Philip's brave heart 
 failed him. How could he ask Sidney to proceed, when 
 they could scarcely see an inch before them? all that 
 could now be done was to gain the high-road, and hope for 
 some passing conveyance. With fits and starts, and by the 
 glare of the lightning, they attained their object ; and stood 
 at last on the great broad Thoroughfare, along which, since 
 the day when the Roman carved it from the waste, Misery 
 hath plodded, and Luxury rolled, their common way. 
 
 Philip had stripped handkerchief, coat, vest, all to shelter 
 Sidney ; and he felt a kind of strange pleasure through the 
 dark, even to hear Sidney's voice wail and moan. But 
 that voice grew more languid and faint it ceased Sid- 
 ney's weight hung heavy heavier on the fostering arm. 
 
 " For heaven's sake, speak ! speak, Sidney ! only one 
 word I will carry you in my arms ! " 
 
 " I think I am dying," replied Sidney, in a low murmur ; 
 " I am so tired and worn out, I can go no further I must 
 lie here." And he sunk at once upon the reeking grass 
 beside the road. At this time the rain gradually relaxed, 
 the clouds broke away a grey light succeeded to the dark- 
 ness the lightning was more distant ; and the thunder 
 rolled onward in its awful path. Kneeling on the ground, 
 Philip supported his brother in his arms, and cast his plead- 
 ing eyes upward to the softening terrors of the sky. A 
 *r, a solitary star 4roke out for one moment, as if to
 
 174 NIGHT AND MORNING 
 
 smile comfort upon him, and then vanished. But lo ! in 
 the distance there suddenly gleamed a red, steady light, 
 like that in. some solitary window ; it was no will-o'-the- 
 wisp, it was too stationary human shelter was then nearer 
 than he had thought for. Pie pointed to the light, and 
 whispered, " Bouse yourself, one struggle more it cannot 
 be far off." 
 
 " It is impossible I cannot stir," answered Sidney ; and 
 a sudden flash of lightning showed his countenance, ghastly, 
 as if with the damps of Death. What could the brother 
 do ? stay there, and see the boy perish before his eyes ? 
 leave him on the road, and fly to the friendly light ? The 
 last plan was the sole one left, yet he shrunk from it in 
 greater terror than the first. Was that a step that he heard 
 across the road? He held his breath to listen a form 
 became dimly visible it approached. 
 
 Philip shouted aloud. 
 
 "What now ? " answered the voice, and it seemed fami- 
 liar to Morton's ear. He sprang forward ; and putting his 
 face close to the wayfarer, thought to recognize the features 
 of Captain de Burgh Smith. The captain, whose eyes were 
 yet more accustomed to the dark, made the first overture. 
 
 " Why, my lad, it is you then! 'Gad, you froightened 
 me!" 
 
 Odious as this man had hitherto been to Philip, he wag 
 as welcome to him as daylight now ; he grasped his hand, 
 "My brother a child is here, dying, I fear, with cold 
 and fatigue, he cannot stir. Will you stay with him sup- 
 port him but for a few moments, while I make to you 
 light ? See, I have money plenty of money ! " 
 
 " My good lad, it is very ugly work staying here at this 
 hour : still where's the choild ? " 
 
 " Here, here ! make haste, raise him ! that's right ! God 
 bless you ! I shall be back ere you think me gone." 
 
 He sprang from the road, and plunged through the heatli 
 the furze, the rank glistening pools, straight towards the 
 light as the swimmer towards the shore. 
 
 The captain, though a rogue, was human ; and wlu n 
 life an innocent Hie is at stake, even a rogue's heart 
 rises up from its weedy bed. He muttered a few oaths, it 
 is true, but he held the child in his arms ; and, taking out 
 a little tin case, poured some brandy down Sidney's throat; 
 and then, hy way of company, down his own. The cordial
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 175 
 
 revived the boy ; lie opened his eyes, and said, '' I think I 
 can go on now, Philip." 
 
 "We must return to Arthur Beaufort. He was naturally, 
 though gentle, a person of high spirit and not without pride. 
 He rose from the ground with bitter, resentful feelings and 
 a blushing cheek, and went his way to the hotel. Here ho 
 found Mr. Spencer just returned from his visit to Sidney. 
 Enchanted with the soft and endearing manners of his lost 
 Catherine's son, and deeply affected with the resemblance 
 the child bore to the mother as lie had seen her last at tho 
 gay and rosy age of fair sixteen, his description of the 
 younger brother drew Beaufort's indignant thoughts from 
 the elder. He cordially concurred with Mr. Spencer in 
 the wish to save one so gentle from the domination of one 
 so fierce ; and this, after all, was the child Catherine had 
 most strongly commended to him. She had said little of 
 the elder ; perhaps she had been aware of his ungracious 
 and untractable nature, and, as it seemed to Arthur Beau- 
 fort, his predilections for a coarse and low career. 
 
 " Yes," said he, " this boy, then, shall console me for 
 the perverse brutality of the other. He shall indeed 
 drink of my cup, and eat of my bread, and be to me as a 
 brother." 
 
 " What ! " said Mr. Spencer, changing countenance, 
 " you do not intend to take Sidney to live with you ? I 
 meant him for my son my adopted son." 
 
 " No ; generous as you are," said Arthur, pressing his 
 hand, " this charge devolves on me it is my right. I am 
 the orphan's relation his mother consigned him to me. 
 But he shall be taught to love you not the less." 
 
 Mr. Spencer was silent. He could not bear the thought 
 or losing Sidney as an inmate of his cheerless home, a 
 tender relic of his early love. From that moment ho 
 began to contemplate the possibility of securing Sidney to 
 himself, unknown to Beaufort. 
 
 The plans both of Arthur and Spencer were interrupted 
 by the sudden retreat of the brothers. They determined 
 to depart different ways in search of them. Spencer, as 
 the more helpless of the two, obtained the aid of Mr. 
 Sharp ; Beaufort departed with the lawyer. 
 
 Two travellers, in a hired barouche, were slowly dragged 
 by a pair of jaded posters along the commons I have just 
 described.
 
 176 NIGHT AND MOKNTXG. 
 
 " I tliink," said one, " that the storm is very much 
 abated ; heigho ! what an unpleasant night ! " 
 
 " Unkimmon ugly, sir," answered the other; "and an 
 awful long stage, eighteen miles. These here remote 
 places are quite behind the age, sir quite. However, I 
 think we shall kitch them now." 
 
 " I am very much afraid of that eldest boy, Sharp. Ho 
 seems a dreadful vagabond." 
 
 " You see, sir, quite hand in glove with Dashing Jerry ; 
 met in the same inn last night preconcerted, you may bo 
 quite sure. It would be the best day's job I have dono 
 this many a day to save that 'ere little fellow from being 
 corrupted. You sees he is just of a size to be useful to 
 these bad karakters. If they took to burglary, he would 
 be a treasure to them slip him through a plane of glass 
 like a ferret, sir." 
 
 " Don't talk of it, Sharp," said Mr. Spencer, with a 
 groan ; " and recollect, if we get hold of him, that you are 
 not to say a word to Mr. Beaufort." 
 
 " I understand, sir ; and I always goes with the gemmau 
 who behaves most like a gemman." 
 
 Here a loud halloo was heard close by the horses' 
 heads. 
 
 " Good heavens, if that is a footpad ! " said Mr. Spencer, 
 shaking violently. 
 
 " Lord, sir, I have my barkers with me. Who's there?" 
 
 The barouche stopped a man came to the window. 
 
 " Excuse me, sir," said the stranger ; " but there is a 
 poor boy here so tired and ill that I fear he will never 
 reach the next town, unless you will koindly give him a, 
 lift." 
 
 " A poor boy !" said Mr. Spencer, poking his head over 
 the head of Mr. Sharp. " Where ? " 
 
 " If you would just drop him at the King's Awrms it 
 would be a chaurity," said the man. 
 
 Sharp pinched Mr. Spencer on the shoulder. " That's 
 Dashing Jerry ; I'll get out." So saying, he opened the 
 door, jumped into the road, and presently re-appeared 
 with the lost and welcome Sidney in his arms. "Ben't 
 this the boy ? " he whispered to Mr. Spencer ; and, taking 
 the lamp from the carriage, he raised it to the child's faca 
 
 " It is ! it is ! God be thanked ! " exclaimed the worth y 
 man.
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 177 
 
 " Will yon leave him at the Bang's Awrms ? we shal) 
 Se there in an hour or two," cried the Captain. 
 
 " We ! Who's we ?" said Sharp, gruffly. 
 
 " Why, myself .xnd the choild's brother." 
 
 " Oh ! " said Sharp, raising the lantern to his own face ; 
 " you knows me, I think, Master Jerry ? Let me kitch 
 you agin, that's all. And give my compliments to your 
 'sociate, and say, if he prosecutes this here hurchin any 
 more, we'll settle his bizness for him ; and so take a hint 
 and make yourself scarce, old boy ! " 
 
 With that Mr. Sharp jumped into the barouche, and 
 bade the postboy drive on as fast as he could. 
 
 Ten minutes after this abduction, Philip, followed by 
 two labourers, with a barrow, a lantern, and two blanket^ 
 returned from the hospitable farm to which the light had 
 conducted him. The spot where he had left Sidney, and 
 which he knew by a neighbouring milestone, was vacant ; 
 he shouted an alarm, and the Captain answered from the 
 distance of some threescore yards. Philip came to him. 
 " Where is my brother ? " 
 
 " Goae away in a barouche and pair. Devil take me if 
 I understaund it." And the Captain proceeded to give a 
 confused account of what had passed. 
 
 " My brother ! my brother ! they have torn thee from 
 me, then ! " cried Philip, and he fell to the earth insen- 
 sible. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 u Vous me rendrez mon frere ! " 
 
 CASIMBU DELAVIONE : Lea Enfans d" Edoitarct. 
 
 ONE evening, a week after this event, a wild, tattered, 
 haggard youth knocked at the door of Mr. Robert 
 Beaufort. 
 
 The porter slowly presented himself. 
 
 " Is your master at home ? I must see him instantly." 
 
 " That's more than you can, my man ; my master does 
 not see the like of you this time of night," replied the 
 porter, eyeing the ragged apparition before him, with great 
 disdain. 
 
 * You shall restore me my brother !
 
 178 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 " See rnp, he must and stall," replied the young man ; 
 and as the porter blocked up the entrance, he grasped his 
 collar with a hand of iron, swung him, huge as he was, 
 aside, and strode into the spacious hall. 
 
 " Stop ! stop ! cried the porter, recovering himself, 
 1 James ! John ! here's a go ! " 
 
 Mr. Robert Beaufort had been back in town several days. 
 Mrs. Beaufort, who was waiting his return from his club, 
 was in the dining-room. Hearing a noise in the hall, she 
 opened the door, and saw the strange grim figure I havo 
 described, advancing towards her. " Who arc you ? " sh 
 said ; " what do you want ? " 
 
 " I am Philip Morton. Who are you ? " 
 
 " My husband," said Mrs. Beaufort, shrinking into the 
 parlour, while Morton followed her and closed the door, 
 " my husband. Mr. Beaufort, is not at home." 
 
 " You are Mrs. Beaufort, then ! Well, you can under- 
 stand me. I want my brother. He has been basely reft 
 from me. Tell mo where he is, and I will forgive all. 
 Restore him to me, and I will bless you and yours." And 
 Philip fell on his knees and grasped the train of her gown. 
 
 " I know nothing of your brother, Mr. Morton," cried 
 Mrs. Beaufort, surprised and alarmed. " Arthur, whom 
 we expect every day, writes us word that all search for 
 him has been in vain." 
 
 " Ha ! you admit the search ? " cried Morton, rising and 
 clenching his hands. " And who else but you or yours 
 tvould have parted brother and brother ? Answer me 
 inhere he is. No subterfuge, madam : I am desperate ! " 
 
 Mrs. Beaufort, though a woman of that worldly coldness 
 and indifference, which, on ordinary occasions, supply the 
 place of courage, was extremely terrified by the tone and 
 mien of her rude guest. She laid her hand on the bell ; 
 but Morton seized her arm, and, holding it sternly, said, 
 while his dark eyes shot fire through the glimmering room, 
 *' I will not stir hence till you have told me. Will you 
 reject my gratitude, my blessing ? Beware ! Again, where 
 have you hid my brother ? " 
 
 At that instant the door opened, and Mr. Robert Beau- 
 fort entered. The lady, with a shriek of joy, wrenched 
 herself from Philip's grasp, and flew to her husband. 
 
 " Save me from this rrffioii ' " she said, with an hyste* 
 rical sob.
 
 NIGHT AKD MORNING. 179 
 
 Mr. Beaufort, who had heard from Blackwell strange 
 accounts of Philip's obdurate perverseness, vile associates, 
 and unredeemable character, was roused from his usual 
 timidity by the appeal of his wife. 
 
 " Insolent reprobate ! " he said, advancing to Philip ; 
 "after all the absurd goodness of my son and myself; 
 after rejecting all our offers, and persisting in your miser- 
 able and vicious conduct, how dare you presume to force 
 yourself into this house ? Begone, or I will send for the 
 constables to remove you ! " 
 
 " Man, man," cried Philip, restraining the fury that 
 shook him from head to foot, " I care not for your threats 
 I scarcely hear your abuse your son, or yourself, has 
 stolen away my brother : tell me only where he is ; let me 
 see him once more. Do not drive me hence, without one 
 word of justice, of pity. I implore you on my knees I 
 implore you yes, I, I implore you, Robert Beaufort, to 
 have mercy on your brother's son. Where is Sidney ? " 
 
 Like all mean and cowardly men, Robert Beaufort 
 was rather encouraged than softened by Philip's abrupt 
 humility. 
 
 " I know nothing of your brother ; and if this is not all 
 some villanous trick which it may be I am heartily 
 rejoiced that he, poor child ! is rescued from the contami- 
 nation of such a companion," answered Beaufort. 
 
 " I am at your feet still ; again, for the last time, 
 clinging to you a suppliant : I pray you to tell me the 
 truth." 
 
 Mr. Beaufort, more and more exasperated by Morton's 
 forbearance, raised his hand as if to strike ; when, at that 
 moment, one hitherto unobserved one who, terrified by 
 the scene she had witnessed but could not comprehend, 
 had slunk into a dark corner of the room, now came 
 from her retreat: And a child's soft voice was heard, 
 saying, 
 
 " Do not strike him, papa ! let him have his brother ! " 
 
 Mr. Beaufort's arm fell to his side : kneeling before him, 
 and by the outcast's side, was his own young daughter ; 
 she had crept into the room unobserved, when her father 
 entered. Through the dim shadows, relieved only by the 
 red and fitful gleam of the fire, he saw her fair meek face 
 looking up wistfully at his own, with tears of excitement, 
 and perhaps of pity for children have a quick insight 
 
 s 2
 
 180 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 into the reality of grief in those not far removed from 
 their own years glistening in her soft eyes. Philip looked 
 round bewildered, and he saw that face which seemed to 
 him, at such a time, like the face of an angel. 
 
 " Hear her ! " he murmured : "oh, hear her ! For her 
 sake, do not sever one orphan from, the other ! " 
 
 "Take away that child, Mrs. Beaufort," cried Robert, 
 angrily. "Will you let her disgrace herself thus? And 
 you, sir, begone from this roof ; and when you can approach 
 me with due respect, I will give you, as I said I would, the 
 means to get an honest living ! " 
 
 Philip rose; Mrs. Beaufort had already led away her 
 daughter, and she took that opportunity of sending in the 
 servants : their forms filled up the doorway. 
 
 " "Will you go ? " continued Mr. Beaufort, more and 
 more emboldened, as he saw the menials at hand, " or shall 
 they expel you ? " 
 
 " It is enough, sir," said Philip, with a sudden calm and 
 dignity that surprised and almost awed his uncle. " My 
 father, if the dead yet watch over the living, has seen and 
 heard you. There will come a day for justice. Out of my 
 path, hirelings ! " 
 
 He waved his arm, and the menials shrunk back at his 
 tread, stalked across the inhospitable hall, and vanished. 
 
 When he had gained the street, he turned and looked 
 up at the house. His dark and hollow eyes, gleaming 
 through the long and raven hair that fell profusely over 
 his face, had in them an expression of menace almost pre- 
 ternatural, from its settled calmness ; the wild and untu- 
 tored majesty which, through rags and squalor never 
 deserted his form, as it never does the forms of men in 
 whom the will is strong and the sense of injustice deep ; 
 the outstretched arm ; the haggard, but noble features ; 
 the bloomless and scathed youth, all gave to his features 
 and his stature an aspect awful in its sinister and voiceless 
 wrath. There he stood a moment, like one to whom woe 
 and wrong have given a Prophet's power, guiding the eye 
 of the unforgetful Fate to the roof of the Oppressor. Then 
 zlowly, and with a half smile, he turned away, and strode 
 through the streets till he arrived at one of the narrow 
 lanes that intersect the more equivocal quarters of the 
 huge city. He stopped at the private entrance of a small 
 pawnbroker's shop ; the dor was opened by a slips hod
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 181 
 
 boy ; he ascended the dingy stairs till he came to the 
 second floor ; and there, in a small back room, he found 
 Captain de Burgh Smith, seated before a table with a 
 couple of candles on it, smoking a cigar, and playing at 
 cards by himself. 
 
 " Well, what news of your brother, Bally Phil ? " 
 
 " None : they will reveal nothing." 
 
 " Do you give him up ? " 
 
 " Never ! My hope now is in you." 
 
 " "Well, I thought you would be driven to come to mo, 
 and I will do something for you that I should not loike to 
 do for myself. I told you that I knew the Bow Street 
 runner who was in the barouche. I will find him out 
 Heaven knows that is easily done ; and, if you can pay 
 well, you will get your news." 
 
 " You shall have all I possess, if you restore my brother. 
 See what it is, one hundred pounds it was his fortune. 
 It is useless to me without him. There, take fifty now, 
 and if " 
 
 Philip stopped, for his voice trembled too much to allow 
 Him farther speech. Captain Smith thrust the notes into 
 his pocket, and said, 
 
 " We'll consider it settled." 
 
 Captain Smith fulfilled his promise. He saw the Bow 
 Street officer. Mr. Sharp had been bribed too high by the 
 opposite party to tell tales, and he willingly encouraged 
 the suspicion that Sidney was under the care of the Beau- 
 forts. He promised, however, for the sake of ten guineas, 
 to procure Philip a letter from Sidney himself. This was 
 all he would undertake. 
 
 Philip was satisfied. At the end of another week, Mr. 
 Sharp transmitted to the Captain a letter, which he, in his 
 turn, gave to Philip. It ran thus, in Sidney's own sprawl- 
 ing hand : 
 
 " DEAR BROTHER PHILIP, I am told you wish to know 
 how I am, and therfore take up my pen, and asure yon 
 that I write all out of my own head. I am very Com- 
 fortable and happy much more so than I have been since 
 poor deir mama died; so I beg you won't vex yourself 
 about me : and pray don't try and Find me out, For I 
 would not go with you again for the world. I am so much 
 better Off here. I wish you would be a good boy, and
 
 182 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 leave off your Bad ways ; for I am sure, as every one says, 
 I don't know what would have become of me if I had staid 
 with you. Mr. [the Mr. half scratched out] the gen- 
 tleman I am with, says if you turn out Properly, he will 
 be a friend to you, Too ; but he advises you to go, like a 
 Good boy, to Arthur Beaufort, and ask his pardon for the 
 past, and then Arthur will be very kind to you. I send 
 you a great Big sum of 201., and the gentleman says he 
 would send more, only it might make you naughty, and 
 set up. I go to church now every Sunday, and read good 
 books, and always pray that God may open your eyes. I 
 have such a Nice pony, with such a long tale. So no more 
 at present from your affectionate brother. 
 
 " SIDNEY MORTON. 
 
 " Oct. 8, 18. 
 
 " Pray, pray don't come after me Any more. You know 
 I neerly died of it, but for this deir good gentleman I am 
 with." ' 
 
 So this, then, was the crowning reward of all his suffer- 
 ings and all his love. There was the letter, evidently Tin- 
 dictated, with its errors of orthography, and in the child's 
 rough scrawl ; the serpent's tooth pierced to the heart, and 
 left there its most lasting venom. 
 
 " I have done with him for ever," said Philip, brushing 
 away the bitter tears. " I will molest him no farther ; 1 
 care no more to pierce this mystery. Better for him as it 
 is he is happy ! Well, well, and I I will never care for 
 a human being again." 
 
 He bowed his head over his hands ; and when he rose, 
 his heart felt to him like stone. It seemed as if Conscience 
 herself had fled f -">m his soul on the wings of departed 
 Love. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 Bui you have found the mountain.' s top there eit 
 On the calm flourishing head of it ; 
 And whilst with wearied steps we upward go, 
 See Us and Clouds helow." COWLEY. 
 
 IT was true that Sidney was happy in his new home, and 
 fchither we must now trace him. 
 On reaching the town where the travellers in the barouche
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 had been requested to leave Sidney, " The King's Arms " 
 was precisely the inn eschewed by Mr. Spencer. While 
 the horses were being changed, he summoned the surgeon 
 of the town to examine the child, who had already much 
 recovered ; and by stripping his clothes, wrapping him in 
 warm blankets, and administering cordials, he was per- 
 mitted to reach another stage, so as to baffle pursuit that 
 night ; and in three days Mr. Spencer had placed his new 
 cnarge with his maiden sisters, a hundred and fifty miles 
 from the spot where he had been found. He would not 
 take him. to his own home yet. He feared the claims of 
 Arthur Beaufort. He artfully wrote to that gentleman, 
 stating that he had abandoned the chase of Sidney in 
 despair, and desiring to know if he had discovered him ; 
 and a bribe of 300Z. to Mr. Sharp, with a candid exposition 
 of his reasons for secreting Sidney reasons in which the 
 worthy officer professed to sympathise secured the dis- 
 cretion of his ally. But he would not deny himself thb 
 pleasure of being in the same house with Sidney, and wai 
 therefore for some months the guest of his sisters. At 
 length he heard that young Beaufort had been ordered 
 abroad for his health, and he then deemed it safe to trans- 
 fer his new idol to his Lares by the lakes. During this 
 interval the current of the younger Morton's life had 
 indeed flowed through flowers. At his age the cares of 
 females were almost a want as well as a luxury, and the 
 sisters spoiled and petted him as much as any elderly 
 nymphs in Cytherea ever petted Cupid. They were good, 
 xcellent, high-nosed, flat-bosomed spinsters, sentimentally 
 fond of their brother whom they called " the poet," and 
 dotingly attached to children. The cleanness, the quiet, 
 the good cheer of their neat abode, all tended to revive and 
 invigorate the spirits of their young guest, and every one 
 there seemed to vie which should love him the most. Still 
 his especial favourite was Mr. Spencer : for Spencer never 
 went out without bringing back cakes and toys ; and 
 Spencer gave him his pony ; and Spencer rode a little 
 crop-eared nag by his side ; and Spencer, in short, was 
 associated with his every comfort and caprice. He told 
 them his little history ; and when he said how Philip had 
 left him alone for long hours together, and how Philip had 
 forced him to his last and nearly fatal journey, the old 
 maids groaned, and the old bachelor sighed, and they all
 
 1S4 NIGHT AND MOUSING. 
 
 cried in a breath, that "Philip was a very wicked boy." 
 It was not only their obvious policy to detach him from hig 
 brother, but it was their sincere conviction that they did 
 right to do so. Sidney began, it is true, by taking Philip's 
 part ; but his mind was ductile, and he still looked back 
 with a shudder to the hardships he had gone through : and 
 so-by little and little he learned to forget all the endearing 
 and fostering love Philip had evinced to him ; to connect 
 his name with dark and mysterious fears ; to repeat thanks- 
 givings to Providence that he was saved from him ; and to 
 hope that they might never meet again. In fact, when 
 Mr. Spencer learned from Sharp that it was through Cap- 
 tain Smith, the swindler, that application had been mad? 
 by Philip for news of his brother, and having also learned 
 before, from the same person, that Philip had been impli- 
 cated in the sale of a horse, swindled, if not stolen, ho 
 saw every additional reason to widen the stream that 
 flowed between the wolf and the lamb. The older Sidney 
 grew, the better he comprehended and appreciated the 
 motives of his protector for he was brought up in a 
 formal school of propriety and ethics, and his mind natu- 
 rally revolted from all images of violence or fraud. Mr. 
 Spencer changed both the Christian and the surname 
 of his protege, in order to elude the search whether of 
 Philip, the Mortons, or the Beauforts, and Sidney passed 
 for his nephew by a younger brother who had died in 
 India. 
 
 So there, by the calm banks of the placid lake, amidst 
 the fairest landscapes of the Island Garden, the youngest 
 born of Catherine passed his tranquil days. The monotony 
 of the retreat did not fatigue a spirit which, as he grew 
 up, found occupation in books, music, poetry, and the 
 elegances of the cultivated, if quiet, life within his reach. 
 To the rough past he looked back as to an evil dream, in 
 which the image of Philip stood dark and threatening. 
 His brother's name, as he grew older, he rarely mentioned ; 
 and if he did volunteer it to Mr. Spencer, the bloom on hig 
 cheek grew paler. The sweetness of his manners, his fair 
 face and winning smile, still continued to secure him love, 
 and to screen from the common eye whatever of selfishness 
 yet lurked in his nature. And, indeed, that fault in so 
 serene a career, and with friends so attached, was seldom 
 called into action. So thus was he severed from both the
 
 NIGHT AND MORMXG 18J 
 
 protectors, Arthur and Philip, to whom poor Catherine had 
 bequeathed him. 
 
 By a perverse and strange mystery, they, to whom the 
 charge was most intrusted, were the very persons who 
 were forbidden to redeem it. On our death-beds when we 
 think we have provided for those we leave behind should 
 ire lose the last smile that gilds the solemn agony, if we 
 sould look one year into the Future ? 
 
 Arthur Beaufort, after an ineffectual search for Sidney, 
 heard, on returning to his home, no unexaggerated narra- 
 tive of Philip's visit, and listened, with deep resentment, to 
 his mother's distorted account of the language addressed 
 to her. It is not to be surprised that, with all his romantic 
 generosity, he felt sickened and revolted at violence that 
 seemed to him without excuse. Though not a revengeful 
 character, he had not that meekness which never resents. 
 He looked upon Philip Morton as upon one rendered incor- 
 rigible by bad passions and evil company. Still Catherine's 
 last bequest, and Philip's note to him the Unknown Com- 
 forter, often recurred to him, and he would have willingly 
 yet aided had Philip been thrown in his way. But as it 
 was, when he looked around, and saw the examples of that 
 charity that begins at home, in which the world abounds, 
 he felt as if he had done his duty ; and prosperity having, 
 though it could not harden his heart, still sapped the habits 
 of perseverance, so by little and little the image of the 
 dying Catherine, and the thought of her sons, faded from 
 his remembrance. And for this there was the more excuse 
 after the receipt of an anonymous letter, which relieved all 
 his apprehensions on behalf of Sidney. The letter was 
 short, and stated simply that Sidney Morton had found a 
 friend who would protect him throughout life ; but who 
 would not scruple to apply to Beaufort if ever he needed 
 his assistance. So one son, and that the youngest and the 
 best-loved, was safe. And the other, had he not chosen 
 his own career ? Alas, poor Catherine ! when you fancied 
 that Philip was the one sure to force his way into fortune, 
 and Sidney the one most helpless, how ill did you judge of 
 the human heart ! It was that very strength in Philip's 
 nature which tempted the winds that scattered the blos 
 soms, and shook the stem to its roots ; while the lighter 
 and frailer nature beiit to the gale, and bore transplanting 
 to a happier soil. If a parent read these pages, let him
 
 186 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 pause and think well on the characters of his children ; let 
 him at once fear and hope the most for the one whose pas 
 sions and whose temper lead to a struggle with the world. 
 That same world is a tough wrestler, and has a bear's gripe 
 for the poor. 
 
 Meanwhile, Arthur ""Beaufort's own complaints, which 
 grew serious and menaced consumption, recalled hig 
 thoughts more and more every day to himself. He was 
 compelled to abandon his career at the University, and to 
 seek for health in the softer breezes of the South. His 
 parents accompanied him to Nice ; and when, at the end 
 of a few months, he was restored to health, the desire of 
 travel seized the mind and attracted the fancy of the 
 young heir. His father and mother, satisfied with his 
 -ecovery, and not unwilling that he should acquire the 
 polish of Continental intercourse, returned to England; 
 and young Beaufort, with gay companions and munificent 
 income, already courted, spoiled, and flattered, commenced 
 his tour with the fair chines of Italy. 
 
 So, dark mystery of the Moral World ! so, unlike the 
 order of the External Universe, glide together, side by 
 side, the shadowy steeds of NIGHT AND MOKNING. Examine 
 life in its own world ; confound not that world, the inner 
 one, the practical one, with the more visible, yet airier and 
 less substantial system, doing homage to the sun, to whose 
 throne, afar in the infinite space, the human heart has no 
 wings to flee. In life, the mind and the circumstance give 
 the true seasons, and regulate the darkness and the light. 
 Of two men standing on the same foot of earth, the one 
 revels in the joyous noon, the other shudders in the soli- 
 tude of night. For Hope and Fortune the daystar is ever 
 shining. For Care and Penury, Night changes not with 
 the ticking of the clock, nor with the shadow on the dial. 
 Morning for the heir, night for the houseless, and God's 
 eye over both.
 
 BOOK HI. 
 
 ffmjt tagen mit tm 2Ccge ; 
 
 Streme Ijemmttn mctncn Stifl : 
 Utfret @c$lunfce taut' icty <Stege, 
 
 JBritcfen turc$ ten nrifttn 8htjj." 
 
 SCHILLER, -Der Pilgrim. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 a The knight of arts and industry, 
 
 And his achievements fair." 
 THOMSON'S Castle of Indolence : Explanatory Verse to Catilt II. 
 
 IN a popular and respectable, but not very fashionable 
 quartier in Paris, and in the tolerably broad and effective 
 
 locale of the Rue , there might be seen, at the time I 
 
 now treat of, a curious-looking building, that jutted outsemi- 
 circularly from the neighbouring shops, with plaster pilasters 
 and compo ornaments. The virtuosi of the quartier had 
 discovered that the building was constructed in imitation 
 of an ancient temple in Borne ; this erection, then fresh 
 and new, reached only to the entresol. The pilasters were 
 painted light green and gilded in the cornices, while, sur- 
 mounting the architrave, were three little statues one 
 held a torch, another a bow, and a third a bag ; they were 
 therefore rumoiired, I know not with what justice, to 
 be the artistical representatives of Hymen, Cupid, and 
 Fortune. 
 
 On the door was neatly engraved, on a brass plate, the 
 following inscription : 
 
 " MONSIEUR LOVE, ANGLAIS, 
 A L'ENTRESOL." 
 
 And if you had crossed the threshold and mounted tho 
 stairs, and gained that mysterious storey inhabited by Mon- 
 sieur Love, you would have seen, upon another door to the 
 right, another epigraph, informing those interested in the
 
 188 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 inquiry that the bureau of M. Love was open daily from 
 nine in the morning; M four in the afternoon. 
 
 The office of M. Love for office it was, and of a nature 
 not uufrequently designated in the " petites affiches " of 
 Paris had been established about six months; and whe- 
 ther it was the popularity of the profession, or the shape 
 of the shop, or the manners of M. Love himself, I cannot 
 pretend to say, but certain it is that the Temple of Hymen 
 as M. Love classically termed it had become exceed- 
 ingly in vogue in the Faubourg St. . It was rumoured 
 
 that no less than nine marriages in the immediate neigh- 
 bourhood had been manufactured at this fortunate office, 
 and that they had all turned out happily except one, ia 
 which the bride being sixty, and the bridegroom twenty. 
 four, there had been rumours o domestic dissension ; but 
 as the lady had been delivered, I mean of her husband, 
 who had drowned himself in the Seine, about a month 
 after the ceremony, things had turned out in the long run 
 better than might have been expected, and the widow was 
 so little discouraged, that she had been seen to enter the 
 office already a circumstance that was greatly to the 
 credit of Mr. Love. 
 
 Perhaps the secret of Mr. Love's success, and of the 
 marked superiority of his establishment in rank and popu- 
 larity over similar ones, consisted in the spirit and 
 liberality with which the business was conducted. He 
 seemed resolved to destroy all formality between parties 
 who might desire to draw closer to each other, and he hit 
 upon the lucky device of a table d'hdte, very well managed 
 and held twice a-week, and often followed by a soiree 
 dansante; so that, if they pleased, the aspirants to matri- 
 monial happiness might become acquainted without gene. 
 As he himself was a jolly, convivial fellow of much savoir 
 vivre, it is astonishing how well he made these entertain- 
 ments answer. Persons who had not seemed to take to 
 each other in the first distant interview grew extremely 
 enamoured when the corks of the champagne an exti-a 
 of course in the abonnement bounced against the wall. 
 Added to this, Mr. Love took great pains to know the 
 tradesmen in his neighbourhood ; and, what with his jokes, 
 his appearance of easy circumstances, and the fluency with 
 which he spoke the language, he became an universal 
 favourite Many persona who were uncommonly starch in
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 189 
 
 general, and who professed to ridicule the bureau, saw no- 
 tliing improper in dining at the table d'lidte. To those 
 who wished for secrecy he was said to be wonderfully dis- 
 creet ; but there were others who did not affect to conceal 
 their discontent at the single state : for the rest, the enter- 
 tainments were so contrived as never to shock the delicacy, 
 while they always forwarded the suit. 
 
 It was about eight o'clock in the evening, and Mr. Love 
 was still seated at dinner, or rather at dessert, with a party 
 of guests. His apartments, though small, were somewhat 
 gaudily painted and furnished, and his dining-room was 
 decorated d, la Turque. The party consisted first, of a rick 
 epicier, a widower, Monsieur Goupille by name, an eminent 
 man in the Faubourg ; he was in his grand climacteric, but stil\ 
 belhomme ; wore a very well- made peruque of light auburn, 
 with tight pantaloons, which contained a pair of very 
 respectable calves ; and his white neckcloth and his large 
 frill were washed and got up with especial care. Next to 
 Monsieur Goupille sat a very demure and very spare young 
 lady of about two-and-thirty, who was said to have saved 
 a fortune Heaven knows how in the family of a rich 
 English milord, where she had officiated as governess ; she 
 called herself Mademoiselle Adele de Courval, and was very 
 particular about the de, and very melancholy about her an- 
 cestors. Monsieur Goupille generally put his finger through 
 his peruque, and fell away a little on his left pantaloon when 
 he spoke to Mademoiselle de Courval, and Mademoiselle 
 de Courval generally pecked at her bouquet when she an- 
 swered Monsieur Goupille. On the other side of this 
 young lady sat a fine-looking fair man M. Sovolofski, a 
 Pole, buttoned up to the chin, and rather threadbare, 
 though uncommonly neat. He was flanked by a little fat 
 lady, who had been very pretty, and who kept a boarding- 
 house, or pension, for the English, she herself being English, 
 though long established in Paris. Rumour said she had 
 been gay in her youth, and dropped in Paris by a Russian 
 nobleman, with a very pretty settlement, she and tho 
 settlement having equally expanded by time and season : 
 she was called Madame Beavor. On the other side of the 
 table was a red-headed Englishman, who spoke very little 
 French ; who had been told that French ladies were pas- 
 sionately fond of light hair ; and who, having 2000Z. of 
 his own, intended to quadruple that sura by a prudent
 
 190 NIGHT AND MOHNING. 
 
 marriage Nobody knew what his family was, but hia 
 name was Higgiiis. His neighbour was an exceedingly 
 tall, large-boned Frenchman, with a long nose and a red 
 riband, who was much seen at Frascati's, and had served 
 under Napoleon. Then came another lady, extremelj 
 pretty, very piquante, and very gay, but past the premien 
 jeunesse, who ogled Mr. Love more than she did any of his 
 guests : she was called Rosalie Caumartm, and was at the 
 head of a large bon-bon establishment ; married, but her 
 husband had gone four years ago to the Isle of France, 
 and she was a little doubtful whether she might not bo 
 justly entitled to the privileges of a widow. Next to Mr. 
 Love, in the place of honour, sat no less a person than the 
 Vicomte de Vaudemont, a French gentleman, really well- 
 born, but whose various excesses, added to his poverty, 
 had not served to sustain that respect for his birth which he 
 considered due to it. He had already been twice married ; 
 once to an Englishwoman, who had been decoyed by the 
 title ; by this lady, who died in childbed, he had one son ; 
 a fact which he sedulously concealed from the world of 
 Paris by keeping the unhappy boy who was now some 
 eighteen or nineteen years old a perpetual exile in England. 
 Monsieur de Vaudemont did not wish to pass for more 
 than thirty, and he considered that to produce a son of 
 eighteen would be to make the lad a monster of ingratitude 
 by giving the lie every hour to his own father ! In spite 
 cf this precaution the Vicomte found great difficulty in 
 {getting a third wife especially as he had no actual land 
 and visible income ; was, not seamed, but ploughed up, 
 with the small-pox ; small of stature, and was considered 
 more than un peu Mte. He was, however, a prodigious 
 dandy, and wore a lace frill and embroidered waistcoat. 
 Mr. Love's vis-ct-vis was Mr. Birnie, an Englishman, a sort 
 of assistant in the establishment, with a hard, dry, parch- 
 ment face, and a remarkable talent for silence. The hosi 
 himself was a splendid animal ; his vast chest seemed to 
 occupy more space at the table than any four of his guests, 
 yet he was not corpulent or unwieldy ; he was dressed in 
 black, wore a velvet stock very high, and four gold studs 
 glittered in his shirt-front ; he was bald to the crown, 
 which made his forehead appear singularly lofty, and what 
 hair he had left was a little greyish and curled ; his face 
 Was shaved smoothly, except a close-clipped mustache;
 
 NIGHT ANB MOKN1NG. 191 
 
 and his eyes, though small, were bright and piercing. 
 Such was the party. 
 
 " These are the best bons-bons I ever ate," said Mr. 
 Love, glancing at Madame Caumartin. " My fair friends, 
 have compassion on the table of a poor bachelor." 
 
 " But you ought not to be a bachelor, Monsieur Lofe," 
 replied the fair Rosalie, with an arch look; "you who 
 make others marry, should set the example." 
 
 " All in good time," answered Mr. Love, nodding; "one 
 serves one's customers to so much happiness that one has 
 none left for oneself." 
 
 Here a loud explosion was heard. Monsieur Goupille 
 had pulled one of the bon-bon crackers with Mademoiselle 
 Adele. 
 
 " I've got the motto ! no Monsieur has it : I'm always 
 unlucky," said the gentle Adele. 
 
 The epicier solemnly unrolled the little slip of paper; 
 the print was very small, and he longed to take out his 
 spectacles, but he thought that would make him look old. 
 However, he spelled through the motto with some diffi- 
 culty : 
 
 " Comme elle fait soumettre un coeur, 
 En refusant son doux hommage, 
 On peut traiter la coquette en vainqueur ; 
 De la beaute modeste on cherit 1'esclavage." 
 
 " 1 present it to Mademoiselle," said he, laying tho 
 motto solemnly in Adele's plate, upon a little mountain of 
 chestnut-husks. 
 
 " It is very pretty," said she, looking down. 
 
 " It is very ct, propos," whispered the epicier, caressing 
 the peruque a little too roughly in his emotion. Mr. Love 
 gave him a kick under the table, and put his finger to his 
 own bald head, and then to his nose significantly. The 
 intelligent epicier smoothed back the irritated peruque. 
 
 "Are you fond of bons-bons, Mademoiselle Adele? I 
 feave a very fine stock at home," said Monsieur Groupille. 
 
 Mademoiselle Adele de Courval sighed " Helas ! they 
 remind me of happier days, when I was a petite, and my 
 dear grandmamma took me in her lap and told me ho~w 
 she escaped the guillotine : she was an e'migree, and you 
 know her father was a marquis." 
 
 * The coquette, \vho subjugates a heart, yet refuses its tender homage, 
 ae may treat as a conqueror : of modest beauty we cherish the shivery.
 
 192 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 The ep icier bowed and looked puzzled. He did not 
 quite see the connexion between the bons-tons and tho 
 guillotine. 
 
 " You are triste, Monsieur," observe Madame Beavor, 
 in rather a piqued tone, to the Pole, who had not said a 
 word since the rdti. 
 
 " Madame, an exile is always triste : I think of nay 
 pauvre pays" 
 
 " Bah ! " cried Mr. Love. " Think that there is no 
 exile by the side of a belle dame." 
 
 The Pole smiled mournfully. 
 
 " Pull it," said Madame Beavor, holding a cracker to 
 the patriot, and turning away her face. 
 
 " Yes, madame ; I wish it were a cannon in defence of 
 La Pologne." 
 
 With this magniloquent aspiration, the gallant Sovolof ski 
 pulled lustily, and then rubbed his fingers, with a little 
 grimace, observing, that crackers were sometimes danger- 
 ous, and that the present combustible was cVune force im- 
 mense. 
 
 " Helas ! J'ai cm jusqu'a ce jour 
 PouToir triompher de 1' amour," * 
 
 said Madame Beavor, reading the motto, " What do yon 
 say to that?" 
 
 " Madame, there is no triumph for La Pologne /" 
 Madame Beavor uttered a little peevish exclamation, 
 and glanced in despair at her red-headed countryman. 
 "Are you, too, a great politician, sir?" said she in 
 English. 
 
 " No, mem ! I'm all for the ladies." 
 " What does he say ? " asked Madame Caumartin. 
 " Monsieur Higgins est tout pour les dames" 
 " Tu be sure he is," cried Mr. Love; "all the English 
 are, especially with that coloured hair; a lady who likes a 
 passionate adorer should always many a man Avith gold- 
 coloured hair always. What do you say, Mademoiselle 
 Adele?" 
 
 " Oh, I like fair hair," said Mademoiselle, looking 
 bashfully askew at Monsieur Qoupille'speruque. " Grand- 
 mamma said her papa the marquis used yellow powder: 
 t Jiust have been very pifetfcy." 
 
 * Alas ! 1 believed until t day that I could triumph over love.
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 198 
 
 " Ratlier a la sucre d'orge,' 1 remarked the epicier, smiling 
 on the right side of his mouth, where his best teeth were. 
 
 Mademoiselle de Cottrval looked displeased. " I feai 
 you are a republican, Monsieur Goupille ? " 
 
 " I, mademoiselle ? No; I'm for the Restoration;" and 
 again the fyicier perplexed himself to discover the asso- 
 ciation of idea between republicanism and sucre d'orge. 
 
 "Another glass of wine. Come, another," said Mr. 
 Love, stretching across the Vicomte to help Madame 
 Caumartin. 
 
 " Sir," said the tall Frenchman with the riband, eyeing 
 the epicier with great disdain, " you say you are for the 
 Restoration I am for the Empire Moi I " 
 
 " No politics ! " cried Mr. Love. " Let us adjourn to the 
 talon" 
 
 The Vicomte, who had seemed supremely enmiye during 
 this dialogue, plucked Mr. Love by the sleeve as he rose, 
 and whispered petulantly, " I do not see any one here to 
 suit me, Monsieur Love none of my rank." 
 
 " Mon Dieu ! " answered Mr. Love : "point d' argent point 
 de Suisse. I could introduce you to a duchess, but then 
 the fee is high. There's Mademoiselle de Courval she 
 dates from the Carlo vingians." 
 
 " She is very like a boiled sole," answered the Vicomte, 
 with a wry face. " Still what dower has she ? " 
 
 " Forty thousand francs, and sickly," replied Mr. Love, 
 " but she likes a tall man, and Monsieur Groupille is " 
 
 " Tall men are never well made," interrupted the Vi- 
 brate, angrily ; and he drew himself aside as Mr. Love, 
 gallantly advancing, gave his arm to Madame Beavor, be- 
 cause the Pole had, in rising, folded both his own arms 
 across his breast. 
 
 " Excuse me, ma'am," said Mr. Love to Madame Beavor, 
 as they adjourned to the salon, " I don't think you manage 
 that brave man well." 
 
 "Mafoi-, comme il est ennuyeux avec sa Pologne," replied 
 Madame Beavor, shrugging her shoulders. 
 
 " True ; but he is a very fine-shaped man; and it is a 
 comfort to think that one will have no rival but his coun- 
 try. Trust me, and encourage him a little more ; I think 
 he would suit you to a T. ; ' 
 
 Here the attendant engaged for the evening announced 
 Monsieur and Madame Giraud ; whereupon there entered
 
 194 tflGHT AND MOEN1NQ. 
 
 a little little couple, very fair, very plump, and vcrj> 
 like each other. This was Mr. Love's show couple hi' 
 decoy ducks his last best example of match-making ; 
 they had teen married two montlis out of the bureau, and 
 were the admiration of the neighbourhood for their con- 
 jugal affection. As they were now united, they had ceased 
 to frequent the table d'hdte; but Mr. Love often invited 
 them after the dessert, pour encourager les autres. 
 
 "My dear friends," cried Mr. Love, shaking each by the 
 hand, " I am ravished to see you. Ladies and gentlemen, 
 I present to you Monsieur and Madame Giraud, the hap- 
 piest couple in Christendom ; if 1 had done nothing else 
 in my life but bring them together, I should not have lived 
 in vain ! " 
 
 The company eyed the objects of this eulogium with 
 great attention. 
 
 " Monsieur, my prayer is to deserve my bonheur," said 
 Monsieur Giraud. 
 
 " Cher ange ! " murmured Madame : and the happy pair 
 beated themselves next to each other. 
 
 Mr. Love, who was all for those innocent pastimes which 
 do away with conventional formality and reserve, now pro- 
 posed a game at " Hunt the Slipper," which was welcomed 
 by the whole party, except the Pole and the Vicomte ; 
 though Mademoiselle Adele looked prudish, and observed 
 to the epicier, " that Monsieur Lofe was so droll, but she 
 should not have liked her pauvre graiidmaman to see her." 
 
 The Vicomte had stationed himself opposite to Made- 
 moiselle de Courval, and kept his eyes fixed on her very 
 tenderly. 
 
 "Mademoiselle, I see, does not approve of such bourgeois 
 diversions," said he. 
 
 "No, monsieur," said the gentle Adele. "But I think 
 we must sacrifice our own tastes to those of the com- 
 pany." 
 
 " It is a very amiable sentiment," said the epicier. 
 
 " It is one attributed to grandmama's papa, the Marquis 
 de Courval. It has become quite a hackneyed remark 
 Bince," said Adele. 
 
 " Come, ladies," said the joyous Rosalie ; " I volunteer 
 my slipper." 
 
 " Asseycz-vow done said Madame Beavor to the Polo. 
 "Have you no games of this sort in Poland ? "
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 195 
 
 " Madame, La Pologne is no more," said the Pole. " But 
 with the swords of her brave " 
 
 "No swords here, if you please," said Mr. Love, patting 
 his vast hands on the Pole's shoulders, and sinking him 
 forcibly down into the circle now formed. 
 
 The game proceeded with great vigour and much laughter 
 from Rosalie, Mr. Love, and Madame Beavor, especially when- 
 over the last thumped the Pole with the heel of the slipper. 
 Monsieur Giraud was always sure that Madame Giraud 
 had the slipper about her, which persuasion on his part 
 gave rise to many little endearments, which are always s? 
 innocent among married people. The Vicomte and the 
 Spicier were equally certain the slipper was with Made* 
 inoiselle Adele, who defended herself with much more 
 energy than might have been supposed in one so gentle 
 The ep icier, however, grew jealous of the attentions of his 
 noble rival, and told him that he yene'd mademoiselle ; 
 whereupon the Vicomte called him an impertinent ; and the 
 tall Frenchman, with the red riband, sprung up and 
 said, 
 
 " Can I be of any assistance, gentlemen ? " 
 
 Therewith Mr. Love, the great peace-maker, interposed, 
 and, reconciling the rivals, proposed to change the game to 
 Colin Maillard, Anglice, "Blind Man's Buff." E-osalio 
 clapped her hands, and offered herself to be blindfolded. 
 The tables and chairs were cleared away ; and Madame 
 Beavor pushed the Pole into B/osalie's arms, who, having 
 felt him about the face for some moments, guessed him 
 to be the tall Frenchman. During this time Monsieur 
 p,nd Madame Giraud hid themselves behind the window- 
 curtain. 
 
 " Amuse yourself, mon ami" said Madame Beavor, to 
 the liberated Pole. 
 
 "Ah, madame," sighed Monsieur Sovolofski, "how can 
 I be gay ! All my property confiscated by the Emperor of 
 Russia ! Has La Pologne no Brutus ? " 
 
 " I think you are in love," said the host, clapping him on 
 tho back. 
 
 "Arc you quite sure," whispered the Pole to the match- 
 maker, "that Madame Beavor has vingt mille livres de 
 rentes ? " 
 
 " Not a sous less." 
 
 The Pole mused, and, glancing at Madame Beavc/r
 
 196 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 said, " And yet, madame, your charming gaiety consoles 
 me amidst all my suffering ;" upon which Madame Beavor 
 called him "flatterer," and rapped his knuckles with her 
 fan ; the latter proceeding the brave Pole did not seem to 
 like, for ho immediately buried his hands in his trowsers' 
 pockets. 
 
 The game was now at its meridian. Rosalie was un- 
 commonly active, and flew about here and there, much to 
 the harassment of the Pole, who repeatedly wiped his 
 forehead, and observed that it was warm work, and put 
 him in mind of the last sad battle for La Polor/ne. Mon- 
 sieur Goupille, who had lately taken lessons in dancing, 
 and was vain of his agility mounted the chairs and ta* 
 bles, as Rosalie approached with great grace and gravity. 
 It so happened that in these saltations, he ascended a stool 
 near the curtain behind which Monsieur and Madame 
 Giraud were ensconced. Somewhat agitated by a slight 
 flutter behind the folds, which made him fancy, on the 
 sudden panic, that Rosalie was creeping that way, the 
 epicier made an abrupt pirouette, and the hook on which 
 the curtains were suspended, caught his left coat-tail 
 
 " The fatal vesture left the unguarded side : " 
 
 just as he turned to extricate the garment from that di- 
 lemma, Rosalie sprung upon him, and naturally lifting her 
 hands to that height where she fancied the human face 
 divine, took another extremity of Monsieur Goupille's 
 graceful frame thus exposed, by surprise. 
 
 " I don't know who this is. Quelle drdle de visage ! " 
 muttered Rosalie. 
 
 "Mais, madame," faltered Monsieur Goupille, looking 
 greatly disconcerted. 
 
 The gentle Adele, who did not seem to relish this ad- 
 venture, came to the relief of her wooer, and pinched Ro- 
 salie very sharply in the arm. 
 
 " That's not fair. But I will know who this is," cried 
 Rosalie, angrily ; " you sha'n't escape ! " 
 
 A sudden and universal burst of laughter roused he* 
 suspicions she drew back and exclaiming "Mais, quelle 
 mauvaise plaisanterie ; c'est trop fort ! " applied her fair 
 hand to the place in dispute, with so hearty a good- will, 
 that Monsieur Goupille uttered a dolorous cry, and sprung
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 197 
 
 from the chair, leaving the coat-tail (the cause of all hia 
 woe) suspended upon the hook. 
 
 It was just at this moment, and in the midst of the ex- 
 citement caused by Monsieur Goupille's misfortune, that 
 the door opened, and the attendant re-appeared, followed 
 by a young man in a large cloak. 
 
 The new-comer paused at the threshold, and gazed 
 around him in evident surprise. 
 
 "Diable ! " said Mr. Love, approaching, and gazing hard 
 at the stranger. "Is it possible ? You are come at last ? 
 Welcome ! " 
 
 "But," said the stranger, apparently still bewildered, 
 " there is some mistake ; you are not " 
 
 " Yes, I am Mr. Love ! Love all the world over. How 
 is our friend Gregg ? told you to address yourself to Mr. 
 Love, eh ? Mum ! Ladies and gentlemen, an acquisi- 
 tion to our party. Fine fellow, eh ? Five feet eleven 
 without his shoes, and young enough to hope to be thrice 
 married before he dies. When did you arrive ? " 
 
 " To-day." 
 
 And thus, Philip Morton and Mr. William Gawtrey met 
 once more. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 " Happy the mrm who, void of care and strife, 
 In silken or in leathern purse retains 
 A splendid shilling I" The Splendid Shilling. 
 
 " And wherefore should they take or care for thought, 
 The unreasoning vulgar willingly obey, 
 And leaving toil and poverty behind, 
 Run forth by different ways, the blissful boon to find." 
 
 WEST'S Education 
 
 " POOR boy ! your stoiy interests me. The events aro 
 romantic, but the moral is practical, old, everlasting life, 
 boy, life. Poverty by itself is no such great curse ; that is, 
 if it stops short of starving. And passion by itself is a noble 
 thing, sir ; but poverty and passion together poverty and 
 feeling poverty and pride the poverty one is not born 
 to, but falls into ; and the man who ousts you out of 
 your easy chair, kicking you wita every turn he takes, as 
 he settles himself more comfortably why, there's no ro- 
 mance in that hard cvery-day life, sir ! Well, well : so
 
 198 NIGHT ASD MORNING. 
 
 sifter your Lrotlier's letter you resigned yourself to that 
 fellow Smith." 
 
 " No ; I gave him my money, not my soul. I turned 
 from his door, with a feAv shillings that he himself thrust 
 into my hand, and walked on I cared not whither out of 
 the town, into the fields till night came ; and then, just 
 as I suddenly entered on the high-road, many miles away, 
 the moon rose ; and I saw, by the hedge-side, something 
 that seemed like a corpse : it was an old beggar, in the last 
 state of raggedness, disease, and famine. He had laid 
 himself down to die. I shared with him what I had, and 
 helped him to a little inn. As he crossed the threshold, he 
 turned round and blessed me. Do you know, the moment 
 I heard that blessing, a stone seemed rolled away from my 
 heart. I said to myself, ' What then ! even I can be of 
 use to some one ; and I am better off than that old man, 
 for I have youth and health.' As these thoughts stirred ic 
 me, my limbs, before heavy with fatigue, grew light ; a 
 strange kind of excitement seized me. I ran on gaily, 
 beneath the moonlight, that smiled over the crisp, broad 
 road. I felt as if no house, not even a palace, were large 
 enough for me that night. And when, at last, wearied 
 out, I crept into a wood, and laid myself down to sleep, I 
 still murmured to myself, ' I have youth and health.' 
 But, in the morning, when I rose, I stretched out my 
 arms, and missed my brother ! .... In two or three days 
 I found employment with a farmer ; but we quarrelled 
 after a few weeks ; for once he wished to strike me : and 
 somehow or other, I could work, but not serve. Winter 
 had begun when we parted. Oh, such a winter! Then 
 then I knew what it was to be houseless. How I 
 lived for some months if to live it can be called it 
 would pain you to hear, and humble me to tell. At 
 last, I found myself again in London ; and one evening, 
 not many days since, I resolved at last for nothing 
 else seemed left, and I had not touched food for two 
 days to come to you." 
 
 " And why did that never occur to yon before ? " 
 
 "Because," said Philip, with a deep blush, "because I 
 trembled at the power over my actions and my future life 
 that I was to give to one, whom I was to bless as a bene- 
 factor, yet distrust as a guide." 
 
 " Well," said Love, or Gawtrey, with a singular mixture
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 199 
 
 of irony and compassion in his voice ; " and it was Lunger, 
 then, that terrified yon at last even more than I ? " 
 
 " Perhaps hunger, or perhaps rather the reasoning that 
 comes from hunger. I had not, I say, touched food for 
 two days ; and I was standing on that bridge, from which 
 on one side you see the palace of a head of the Church, on 
 the other the towers of the Abbey, within which the men I 
 have read of in history lie buried. It was a cold, frosty 
 evening, and the river below looked bright with the lamps 
 and stars. I leaned, weak and sickening, against the wall 
 of the bridge ; and in one of the arched recesses beside me 
 a cripple held out his hat for pence. I envied him ! he 
 had a livelihood ; he was inured to it, perhaps bred to it ; 
 he had no shame. By a sudden impulse, I, too, turned 
 abruptly round held out my hand to the first passenger, 
 and started at the shrillness of my own voice, as it cried 
 ' Charity.' " 
 
 Gawtrey threw another log on the fire, looked compla- 
 cently round the comfortable room, and rubbed his hands. 
 The young man continued, 
 
 " 'You should be ashamed of yourself . I've a great mind 
 to give you to the police,' was the answer, in a pert and 
 sharp tone. I looked up, and saw the livery my father's 
 menials had worn. I had been begging my bread from 
 Robert Beaufort's lackey ! I said nothing ; the man went 
 on to business on tiptoe, that the mud might not splash 
 above the soles of his shoes. Then, thoughts so black that 
 they seemed to blot out every star from the sky thoughts, 
 I had often wrestled against, but to which I now gave 
 myself up with a sort of mad joy seized me : and I re- 
 membered you. I had still preserved the address you gave 
 me ; I went straight to the house. Your friend, on naming 
 you, received me kindly, and without question, placed food 
 before me pressed on me clothing and money procured 
 me a passport gave me your address and now I an; 
 beneath your roof. Grawtrey, I know nothing yet of the 
 world, but the dark side of it. I know not what to deem 
 you but as you alone have been kind to me, so it is to 
 your kindness rather than your aid, that I now cling 
 
 your kind words and kind looks yet : " he stopped 
 
 short, and breathed hard. 
 
 " Yet you would know more of me. Faith, my boy, I 
 cannot tell you more at this moment. I believe, to spcaV
 
 200 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 fairly, I don't live exactly within the pale of the law, But 
 I'm not a villain ! I never plundered my friend and called 
 it play ! I never murdered my friend and called it 
 honour ! I never seduced my friend's wife and called it 
 gallantry ! " As Gawtrey said this, he drew the words 
 out, one by one, through his grinded teeth, paused, and 
 resumed more gaily, "I struggle Avith Fortune; voildi 
 tout ! I am not what you seem to suppose not exactly a 
 swindler, certainly not a robber ! But, as I before told 
 you, I am a charlatan, so is every man who strives to be 
 richer or greater than he is. I, too, want kindness as 
 much as you do. My bread and my cup are at your ser- 
 vice. I will try and keep you unsullied, even by the clean 
 dirt that now and then sticks to me. On the other hand, 
 youth, my young friend, has no right to play the censor ; 
 and you must take me as you take the world, without being 
 over-scrupulous and dainty. My present vocation pays 
 well ; in fact, I am beginning to lay by. My real name 
 and past life are thoroughly unknowi., and as yet unsus- 
 pected in this quartier ; for though I have seen much of 
 Paris, my career hitherto has passed in other parts of the 
 city ; and for the rest, own that I am well disguised ! 
 What a benevolent air this bald forehead gives me eh ? 
 True," added Gawtrey, somewhat more seriously, " if I saw 
 how you could support yourself in a broader path of life 
 than that in which I pick out my own way, I might say to 
 you, as a gay man of fashion might say to some sober strip- 
 ling nay, as many a dissolute father says (or ought to 
 say) to his son, ' It is no reason you should be a sinner, 
 because I am not a saint.' In a word, if you were we*l off 
 in a respectable profession, you might have safer acquaint- 
 ances than myself. But, as it is, upon my word as a plain 
 man, I don't see what you can do better." Gawtrey made 
 this speech with so much frankness and ease, that it seemed 
 greatly to relieve the listener, and when he wound up with 
 " What say you ? In fine, my life is that of a great school- 
 boy, getting into scrapes for the fun of it, and fighting his 
 way out as he best can ! Will you see how you like it ? " 
 Philip, with a confiding and grateful impulse, put his hand 
 into Gawtrey's. The host shook it cordially, and, without 
 Baying another word, showed his guest into a little cabinet 
 where there was a sofa-bed, and they parted for the night. 
 The new life upon which Philip Morton entered was so
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 201 
 
 odd, so grotesque, and so amusing, that at his age it was, 
 perhaps, natural that he should not be clear-sighted as to 
 its danger. 
 
 William Gawtrey was one of those men who are born to 
 exert a certain influence and ascendancy wherever they 
 may be thrown ; his vast strength, his redundant health, 
 had a power of themselves a moral as well as physical 
 power. He naturally possessed high animal spirits, beneath 
 the surface of which, however, at times, there was visible 
 a certain under-current of malignity and scorn. He had 
 evidently received a superior education, and could command 
 at will the manners of a man not unfamiliar with a politer 
 class of society. From the first hour that Philip had seen 
 
 him on the top of the coach on the R road, this man 
 
 had attracted his curiosity and interest ; the conversation 
 he had heard in the churchyard, the obligations he owed 
 to Gawtrey in his escape from the officers of justice, the 
 time afterwards passed in his society till they separated at 
 the little inn, the rough and hearty kindliness Gawtrey had 
 shewn him at that period, and the hospitality extended to 
 him now, all contributed to excite his fancy, and in 
 much, indeed very much, entitled this singular person to 
 his gratitude. Morton, in a word, was fascinated; this 
 man was the only friend he had made. I have not thought 
 it necessary to detail to the reader the conversations that 
 had taken place between them, during that passage of 
 Morton's life when he was before for some days Gawtrey's 
 companion ; yet those conversations had sunk deep in his 
 uiind. He was struck, and almost awed, by the profound 
 gloom which lurked under Gawtrey's broad humour a 
 gloom, not of temperament, but of knowledge. His views 
 of life, of human justice and human virtue, were (as, to be 
 Bure, is commonly the case with men who have had reason 
 to quarrel with the world) dreary and despairing; and 
 Morton's own experience had been so sad, that these opinions 
 were more influential than they could ever have been with 
 the happy. However in this, their second re-union, there 
 was a greater gaiety than in their first : and under his 
 host's roof Morton insensibly, but rapidly, recovered some* 
 thing of the early and natural tone of his impetuous and 
 ardent spirits. Gawtrey himself was generally a boon com- 
 panion; their society, if not select, was merry. When 
 their evenings were disengaged. Gawtrey was fond of
 
 202 NIGHT AXD MOEXIXG. 
 
 Haunting cafes and theatres, and Morton was his com- 
 panion ; Birnie (Mr. Gawtrey's partner) never accompanied 
 them. Refreshed by this change of life, the very person 
 of this yonng man regained its bloom and vigour, as a plant, 
 removed from some choked atmosphere and unwholesome 
 soil, where it had struggled for light and air, expands on 
 transplanting; the graceful leaves burst from, the long- 
 drooping boughs, and the elastic crest springs upward to 
 the sun in the glory of its young prime. If there was still 
 a certain fiery sternness in his aspect, it had ceased, at 
 least, to be haggard and savage, it even suited the character 
 of his dark and expressive features. He might not have 
 lost the something of the tiger in his fierce temper, but in 
 the sleek hues and the sinewy symmetry of the frame, he 
 began to put forth, also something of the tiger's beauty. 
 
 Mr. Birnie did not sleep in the house, he went home 
 nightly to a lodging at some little distance. We have said 
 but little about this man, for, to all appearance, there was 
 little enough to say ; he rarely opened his own mouth ex- 
 cept to Gawtrey, with whom Philip often observed him 
 engaged in whispered conferences, to which he was not 
 admitted. His eye, however, was less idle than his lips ; 
 it was not a bright eye, on the contrary, it was dull, and, 
 to the unobservant, lifeless, of a pale blue, with a dim film 
 over it the eye of a vulture ; but it had in it a calm, 
 heavy, stealthy watchfulness, which inspired Morton with 
 great distrust ana aversion. Mr. Birnie not only spoke 
 French like a native, but all his habits, his gestures, his 
 tricks of manner, were French ; not the French of good 
 society, but more idiomatic, as it were, and popular. He 
 was not exactly a vulgar person, he was too silent for that, 
 but he was evidently of low extraction and coarse breed- 
 ing ; his accomplishments were of a mechanical nature ; he 
 was an extraordinary arithmetician, he was a very skilful 
 chemist, and kept a laboratory at his lodgings ; he mended 
 his own clothes and linen with incomparable neatness. 
 Philip suspected him of blacking his own shoes, but that 
 was prejudice. Once he found Morton sketching horses' 
 heads -pour se d&sennuyer ; and he made some short criti- 
 cisms on the drawings, which showed him well acquainted 
 with the art. Philip, surprised, sought to draw him into 
 conversation ; but Birnie eluded the attempt, and ol>scrved 
 that he had once been an engraver.
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 203 
 
 Gawtrey himself did not seem to know much of tiie early 
 life of this person, or at least he did not seem to like much 
 to talk of him. The footstep of Mr. Birnie was gliding, 
 noiseless, and catlike ; he had no sociality in him enjoyed 
 nothing drank hard but was never drunk. Somehow 
 or other, he had evidently over Gawtrey an influence little 
 less than that which Grawtrey had over Morton, but it was 
 of a different nature : Morton had conceived an extraordi- 
 nary affection for his friend, while Grawtrey seemed secretly 
 to dislike Birnie, and to be glad whenever he quitted his 
 presence. It was, in truth, Gawtrey's custom when Birnio 
 retired for the night, to rub his hands, bring out the 
 punch-bowl, squeeze the lemons, and while Philip, stretched 
 on the sofa, listened to him, between sleep and waking, to 
 talk on for the hour together, often till day-break, with 
 that bizarre mixture of knavery and feeling, drollery and 
 sentiment, which made the dangerous charm of his 
 society. 
 
 One evening as they thus sat together, Morton, after 
 listening for some time to his companion's comments on 
 men and things, said abruptly, 
 
 " Grawtrey ! there is so much in you that puzzles me, so 
 much which I find it difficult to reconcile with your pre- 
 sent pursuits, that, if I ask no indiscreet confidence, I 
 should like greatly to hear some account of your early life. 
 It would please me to compare it with my own ; when I 
 am your age, I will then look back and see what I owed to 
 your example." 
 
 " My early life ! well you shall hear it. It will put you 
 on your guard, I hope, betimes against the two rocks of 
 youth love and friendship." Then, while squeezing tho 
 lemon into his favourite beverage, which Morton observed 
 he mad 3 stronger than usual, Gawtrey thus commenced 
 
 HISTOBY OF A QOOD-FOB-NOTHINO-
 
 204 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 " All his success must on himself depend, 
 He had no money, counsel, guide, or friend; 
 AVith spirit high, John learn'd the world to brave, 
 And in both senses was a ready knave." CRABBE. 
 
 "Mr grandfather sold walking-sticks and umbrellas in 
 the little passage by Exeter 'Change ; he was a man of 
 genius and speculation. As soon as he had scraped to- 
 gether a little money, he lent it to some poor devil with a 
 hard landlord, at twenty per cent., and made him take hall 
 the loan in umbrellas or bamboos. By these means he got 
 nis foot into the ladder, and climbed upward and upward, 
 till, at the age of forty, he had amassed 5000Z. He then 
 looked about for a wife. An honest trader in the Strand, 
 who dealt largely in cotton prints, possessed an only 
 daughter; this young lady had a legacy, from a great 
 aunt, of 3220Z., with a small street in St. Giles's, where the 
 tenants paid weekly (all thieves or rogues all, so their 
 rents were sure). Now my grandfather conceived a great 
 friendship for the father of this young lady ; gave him a 
 hint as to a new pattern in spotted cottons ; enticed him 
 to take out a patent, and lent him 7001. for the speculation, 
 applied for the money at the very moment cottons were at 
 their worst, and got the daughter instead of the money, 
 by which exchange, you see, he won 2520L, to say nothing 
 of the young lady. My grandfather then entered into 
 partnership with the worthy trader, carried on the patent 
 with spirit, and begat two sons. As he grew older, ambi- 
 tion seized him ; his sons should be gentlemen one was 
 sent to College, the other put into a marching regiment. 
 My grandfather meant to die worth a plum ; but a fever 
 he caught in visiting his tenants in St. Giles's prevented 
 him, and he only left 20,000?. equally divided between the 
 sons. My father, the College man " (here Gawtrey paused 
 a moment, took a large draught of the punch, and resumed 
 with a visible effort) " my father, the College man, was a 
 person of rigid principles bore an excellent character had 
 a great regard for the world. He married early and respect- 
 ably. I am the sole fruit of that union ; he lived soberly, hia 
 temper was harsh and morose, his home gloomy ; he was a 
 very severe father, and my mother died be-fore I was ten years
 
 NIGHT AN1 MORNING. 205 
 
 old. "When I was fourteen, a little old Frenchman came to 
 lodge tciih us ; he had been persecuted under the old regime 
 for being a philosopher; he filled my head with odd 
 crotchets which, more or less, have stuck there ever since. 
 At eighteen I was sent to St. John's College, Cambridge. My 
 father was rich enough to have let me go up in the higher 
 rank of a pensioner, but he had lately grown avaricious ; 
 he thought that I was extravagant ; he made me a sizar, 
 perhaps to spite me. Then, for the first time, those in- 
 equalities in life which the Frenchman had dinned into my 
 ears met me practically. A sizar ! another name for a 
 dog ! I had such strength, health, and spirits, that I had 
 more life in my little finger than half the fellow- commoners 
 genteel, spindle-shanked striplings, who might have 
 passed for a collection of my grandfather's walking-canes 
 had in their whole bodies. And I often think," con- 
 tinued Grawtrey, " that health and spirits have a great deal 
 to answer for ! When we are young we so far resemble 
 savages who are Nature's young people that we attach 
 prodigious value to physical advantages. My feats of 
 strength and activity the clods I thrashed and the 
 railings I leaped and the boat-races I won are they not 
 written in the chronicle of St. John's ? These achieve- 
 ments inspired me with an extravagant sense of my own 
 superiority, I could not but despise the rich fellows whom 
 I could have blown down with a sneeze. Nevertheless, 
 there was an impassable barrier between me and them a 
 sizar was not a proper associate for the favourites of for- 
 tune ! But there was one young man, a year younger than 
 myself, of high birth, and the heir to considerable wealth, 
 who did not regard me with the same supercilious insolence 
 as the rest ; his very rank, perhaps, made him indifferent 
 to the little conventional formalities which influence persons 
 who cannot play at football with this round world ; he wag 
 the wildest youngster in the university lamp-breaker 
 tandem-driver mob-fighter a very devil in short clever, 
 but not in the reading line small and slight, but brave as 
 a lion. Congenial habits made us intimate, and I loved 
 him like a brother better than a brother as a dog loves 
 his master. In all our rows I covered him with my body. 
 He had but to say to me, ' Leap into the t^ater,' and I 
 would not have stopped to pull off my coat. In short, I 
 loved him as a Droud man loves one who stands betwixi
 
 206 NIG FIT AND MORNING. 
 
 him and contempt, as an affectionate man loves one who 
 stands between him and solitude. To cut short a long 
 story : my friend, one dark night, committed an outrage 
 against discipline, of the most unpardonable character. 
 There was a sanctimonious, grave, old fellow of the College, 
 crawling homo from a tea-party ; my friend and another of 
 \iis set seized, blindfolded, and handcuffed this poor wretch, 
 jarried him, vi et armis, back to the house of an old maid 
 whom he had been courting for the last ten years, fastened 
 his pigtail (he wore a long one) to the knocker, and so 
 left him. You may imagine the infernal hubbub which 
 his attempts to extricate himself caused in the whole 
 street ; the old maid's old maid-servant, after emptying on 
 his head all the vessels of wrath she could lay her hand 
 to, screamed, ' Rape and murder ! ' The proctor and his 
 bull-dogs came up, released the prisoner, and gave chase 
 to the delinquents, who had incautiously remained near to 
 enjoy the sport. The night was dark and they reached the 
 College in safety, but they had been tracked to the gates. 
 For this offence I was expelled." 
 
 "Why, you were not concerned in it ? " said Philip. 
 
 " No ; but I was suspected and accused. I could have 
 got off by betraying the true culprits, but my friend's 
 father was in public life a stern, haughty, old statesman ; 
 my friend was mortally afraid of him the only person he 
 was afraid of. If I had too much insisted on my innocence, 
 I might have set inquiry on the right track. In fine, I 
 was happy to prove my friendship for him. He shook me 
 most tenderly by the hand on parting, and promised never 
 to forget my generous devotion. I went home in disgrace .- 
 I need not tell you what my father said to me : I do not think 
 he ever loved me from that hour. Shortly after this 
 my uncle, George Grawtrey, the captain, returned from 
 abroad ; he took a great fancy to me, and I left my father's 
 house (which had grown insufferable) to live with him. 
 He had been a very handsome man- a gay spendthrift ; 
 he had got through his fortune, and now lived on his wits 
 he was a professed gambler. His easy temper, his lively 
 humoiir, fascinated me; he knew the world well; and, 
 like all gamblers, was generous when the dice were lucky, 
 which, to tell you the truth, they generally were, with a 
 man who had no scruples. Though his practices were ;i 
 little suspected- they had never been discovered. Wo
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 20? 
 
 lived in an elegant apartment, mixed familiai-ly wich men 
 of various ranks, and. enjoyed life extremely. I brushed 
 off my college rust, and conceived a taste for expense : I 
 knew not why it was, but in my new existence every one 
 was kind to me ; and I had spirits that made me welcome 
 everywhere. I was a scamp but a frolicsome scamp and 
 that is always a popular character. As yet I was not dis- 
 honest, but saw dishonesty round me, and it seemed a very 
 pleasant, jolly mode of making money ; and now I again 
 fell into contact with the young heir. My college friend 
 was as wild in London as he had been at Cambridge ; bni 
 the boy-ruffian, though not then twenty years of age, had 
 grown into the man- villain." 
 
 Here Gawtrey paused, and frowned darkly. 
 
 " He had great natural parts, this young man much 
 wit, readiness, and cunning, and he became very intimate 
 with my uncle. He learned of him how to play the dice, 
 and to pack the cards he paid him 1000Z. for the know- 
 ledge!" 
 
 " How ! a cheat ? You said he was rich." 
 
 " His father was very rich, and he had a liberal allow- 
 ance, but he was very extravagant; and rich men love 
 gain as well as poor men do ! He had no excuse but the 
 grand excuse of all vice SELFISHNESS. Young as he was 
 he became the fashion, and he fattened upon the plunder 
 of his equals, who desired the honour of his acquaintance. 
 Now, I had seen my uncle cheat, but I had never imitated 
 his example ; when the man of fashion cheated, and made 
 a jest of his earnings and my scruples when I saw him 
 courted, nattered, honoured, and his acts unsuspected, 
 because his connexions embraced half the peerage, the 
 temptation grew strong, but I still resisted it. However, 
 my father always said I was born to be a good-for-nothing, 
 and I could not escape my destiny. And now I suddenly 
 fell in love you don't know what that is yet so much the 
 better for you. The girl was beautiful, and I thought she 
 loved me perhaps she did but I was too poor, so her 
 friends said, for marriage. We courted, as the saying is, 
 in the meanwhile. It was my love for her, my wish to 
 deserve her, that made me iron against my friend's ex- 
 ample. I was fool enough to speak to him of Mary to 
 present him to her : this ended in her seduction." (Again 
 Gawtroy paused, and breathed hard.) " I discovered the
 
 208 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 treachery I called out the seducer lie sneered and re- 
 fused to fight the lowborn adventurer. I struck him to 
 the earth and then we fought, I was satisfied by a ball 
 through my side ! but 7ie," added Grawtrey, . rubbing his 
 hands, and with a vindictive chuckle, " lie was a cripple 
 for life ! When I recovered, I found that my foe, whoso 
 sick chamber was crowded with friends and comforters, 
 had taken advantage of my illness to ruin my reputatior, 
 He, the swindler, accused me of his own crime : the 
 equivocal character of my uncle confirmed the charge. 
 Him, his own high-born pupil Avas enabled to unmask, and 
 his disgrace was visited on me. I left my bed, to find my 
 uncle (all disguise over) an avowed partner in a hell ; and 
 myself, blasted alike in name, love, past and future. And 
 then, Philip, then I commenced that career which I have 
 trodden since, the prince of good-fellows and good-for- 
 nothings ; with ten thousand aliases, and as many strings 
 to my bow. Society cast me off when I was innocent. 
 Egad, I have had my revenge on society since ! Ho ! 
 ho! ho!" 
 
 The laugh of this man had in it a moral infection. 
 There was a sort of glorying in its deep tone ; it was not 
 the hollow hysteric of shame and despair it spoke a san- 
 guine joyousness ! William Grawtrey was a man whose 
 animal constitution had led him to take animal pleasure in 
 all things : he had enjoyed the poisons he had lived on. 
 
 " But your father, surely your father " 
 
 " My father," interrupted Grawtrey, " refused me the 
 money (but a small sum) that, once struck with the 
 strong impulse of a sincere penitence, I begged of him, to 
 enable me to get an honest living in an humble trade : his 
 refusal soured the penitence it gave me an excuse for my 
 career and conscience grapples to an excuse as a drowning 
 wretch to a straw. And yet this hard father this cau- 
 tious, moral, money-loving man, three months afterwards, 
 suffered a rogue almost a stranger to decoy him into a 
 speculation that promised to bring him fifty per cent. : ho 
 invested in the traffic of usury what had sufficed to save a 
 hundred such as I am from perdition, and he lost it all ; it 
 was nearly his whole fortune ; but he lives and has his 
 luxuries still : he cannot speculate, but he can save : he 
 cared not if I starved, for he finds an hourly happiness in 
 starving himself "
 
 NIGHT ANI) MORNING. 
 
 " And your friend," said Pkilip, after a pause in which 
 liis young sympathies went dangerously with the excuse? 
 for his benefactor; "what has become of him, and tho 
 poor girl ? " 
 
 " My friend became a great man ; he succeeded to his 
 father's peerage a very ancient one and to a splendid 
 income. He is living still. Well, you shall hear about 
 tbe poor girl I We are told of victims of seduction dying 
 in a workhouse, or on a dunghill, penitent, broken-hearted, 
 and uncommonly ragged and sentimental ; it may be a 
 frequent case, but it is not the worst. It is worse, I think, 
 when the fair, penitent, innocent, credulous dupe becomes 
 in her turn the deceiver when she catches vice from the 
 breath upon which she has hung when she ripens, and 
 mellows, and rots away into painted, blazing, staring, whole- 
 sale harlotry when, in her turn, she ruins warm youth with 
 false smiles and long bills and wben worse worse than 
 all, when she has children, daughters perhaps, brought up 
 to the same trade, cooped, plumped, for some hoary lecher, 
 without a heart in their bosoms, unless a balance for 
 weighing money may be called a heart : Mary became 
 this ; and I wish to Heaven she had rather died in an hos- 
 pital ! Her lover polluted her soul as well as her beauty : 
 he found her another lover when he was tired of her. 
 When she was at the age of thirty-six, I met her in Paris, 
 with a daughter of sixteen. I was then flush with money, 
 frequenting salons, and playing the part of a fine gentle- 
 man ; she did not know me at first ; and she sought my 
 acquaintance. For yon. must know, my young friend,' 1 
 said Gawtrey, abruptly breaking off the thread of hia 
 narrative, " that I am not altogether the low dog you 
 might suppose in seeing me here. At Paris ah! you 
 don't know Paris there is a glorious ferment in society in 
 which the dregs are often uppermost ! I came here at the 
 Peace ; and here have I resided the greater part of each 
 year ever since. The vast masses of energy and life, 
 broken up by the great thaw of the Imperial system, 
 floating along the tide, are terrible icebergs for the vessel 
 of the state. Some think Napoleonism over its effects 
 are only begun. Society is shattered from one end to tho 
 other, and I laugh at the little rivets by which they think 
 to keep it together.* But to return, Paris, I say, is thn 
 
 This passage was written at a period when the dynasty of Loui 
 
 9
 
 210 NIGHT AND MOENING. 
 
 atmosphere for adventurers new faces and new men 
 are so common here that they excite no impertinent in- 
 quiry, it is so usual to see fortunes made in a day and 
 spent in a month ; except in certain circles, there is no 
 walking round a man's character to spy out where it wants 
 piercing ! Some lean Greek poet put lead in his pockets to 
 prevent being blown away ; put gold in your pockets, and 
 at Paris you may defy the sharpest wind in the world, 
 yea, even the breath of that old JBolus Scandal ! Well, 
 then, I had money no matter how I came by it and 
 health, and gaiety ; and I was well received in the coteries 
 that exist in all capitals, but mostly in France, where plea- 
 sure is the cement that joins many discordant atoms : here, 
 I say, I met Mary and her daughter, by my old friend 
 the daughter, still innocent, but, sacre ! in what an 
 element of vice ! We knew each other's secrets, Mary 
 and I, and kept them : she thought me a greater knave 
 than I was, and she intrusted to me her intention of 
 selling her child to a rich English marquis. On the 
 other hand, the poor girl confided to me her horror of 
 the scenes she witnessed and the snares that surrounded 
 her. What do you think preserved her pure from all 
 danger ? Bah ! you will never guess ! It was partly 
 because, if example corrupts, it as often deters, but prin- 
 cipally because she loved. A girl who loves one man 
 purely has about her an amulet which defies the advances 
 of the profligate. There was a handsome young Italian, an 
 artist, who frequented the house he was the man. I had to 
 choose, then, betweenmother and daughter : I chose the last." 
 
 Philip seized hold of Gawtrey's hand, grasped it warmly, 
 and the good-for-nothing continued, 
 
 " Do you know, that I loved that girl as well as I had 
 ever loved the mother, though in another way ; she was 
 what I fancied the mother to be; still more fair, more 
 graceful, more winning, with a heart as full of love as her 
 mother's had been of vanity. I loved that child as if she 
 had been my own daughter I induced her to leave her 
 mother's house I secreted her I saw her married to the 
 man she loved I gave her away, and saw no more of her 
 for several months." 
 
 "Why!" 
 
 Philippe seemed the most assured, and Napoleonism was indeed considered 
 wtinct.
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 211 
 
 " Boca-use I spent them in prison ! The young people 
 could not live upon air ; I gave them, what I had, and, in 
 order to do more, I did something which displeased the 
 police ; I narrowly escaped that time : but I am popular 
 very popular, and with plenty of witnesses, not over 
 scrupulous, I got off ! When I was released, I would not 
 go to see them, for my clothes were ragged : the police still 
 \vatched me, and I would not do tJtem harm in the world ! 
 Ay, poor wretches ! they struggled so hard : he could get 
 very little by his art, though, I believe, he was a cleverish 
 fellow at it, and the money I had given them could not 
 last for ever. They lived near the Champs Elysees, and 
 at night I used to steal out and look at them through the 
 window. They seemed so happy, and so handsome, and 
 so good; but he looked sickly, and I saw that, like all 
 Italians, he languished for his own warm climate. But 
 man is born to act as well as to contemplate," pursued 
 Gawtrey, changing his tone into the allegro ; " and I was 
 soon driven into my old ways, though in a lower line. I 
 went to London, just to give my reputation an airing, and 
 when I returned, pretty flush again, the poor Italian was 
 dead, and Fanny was a widow, with one boy, and enceinte 
 with a second child. So then I sought her again, for her 
 mother had found her out, and was at her with her devilish 
 kindness ; but Heaven was merciful, and took her away 
 from both of us : she died in giving birth to a girl, and her 
 last words were uttered to me, imploring me the adven- 
 turer the charlatan the good-for-nothing to keep her 
 child from the clutches of her own mother. Well, sir, I 
 did what I could for both the children ; but the boy was 
 consumptive, like his father, and sleeps at Pere -la- Chaise. 
 The girl is here you shall see her some day. Poor 
 Fanny ! if ever the devil will let me, I shall reform for her 
 sake ; meanwhile, for her sake I must get grist for the 
 mill. My story is concluded, for I need not tell you all of 
 my pranks of all the parts I have played in life. I have 
 never been a murderer, or a burglar, or a highway robber v 
 or what the law calls a thief. I can only say, as I said 
 before, I have livt i upon my wits, and they have been & 
 tolerable capital v the whole. I have been an actor, a 
 money-lender, a phj. .ician, a professor of animal magnetism, 
 (that was lucrative till it went out of fashion, perhaps it 
 will come in again ;) I have been a lawyer, a house-agent, 
 
 p 2
 
 12 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 a dealer in curiosities and china ; I have kept a hotel ; I 
 have set up a weekly newspaper ; I have seen almost every 
 tity in Europe, and made acquaintance with some of ita 
 gaols ; but a man who has plenty of brains generally falls 
 on his legs." 
 
 " And your father ! " said Philip ; and here he spoke to 
 Gawtrey of the conversation he had overheard in the 
 churchyard, but on which a scruple of natural delicacy tad 
 hitherto kept him silent. 
 
 "Well, now," said his host, while a slight blush rose to 
 his cheeks, "I will tell you, that though to my father's 
 sternness and avarice I attribute many of my faults, I yet 
 always had a> sort of love for him ; and when in London, I 
 accidentally heard that he was growing blind, and living 
 with an artful old jade of a housekeeper, who might send 
 him to rest with a dose of magnesia the night after she 
 had coaxed him to make a will in her favour. I sought 
 him out and But you say you heard what passed." 
 
 " Yes ; and I heard him also call you by name, when it 
 was too late, and I saw the tears on his cheeks." 
 
 "Did you?" will you swear to that?" exclaimed 
 Gawtrey, with vehemence : then shading his brow with 
 his hand, he fell into a reverie that lasted some moments. 
 
 " If anything happen to me, Philip," he said, abruptly, 
 " perhaps he may yet be a father to poor Fanny ; and if he 
 takes to her, she will repay him for whatever pain I may, 
 perhaps, have cost him. Stop ! now I think of it, I -will 
 write down his address for you never forget it there ! 
 It is time to go to bed." 
 
 Gawtrey's tale made a deep impression on Philip. Ho 
 fcras too young, too inexperienced, too much borne away 
 by the passion of the narrator, to see that Gawtrey had 
 less cause to blame Fate than himself. True, he had bees 
 unjustly implicated in the disgrace of an unworthy uncle, 
 but he had lived with that uncle, though ho knew him 
 to be a common cheat ; true, he had been betrayed by a 
 friend, but he had before known that friend to be a man 
 without principle or honour. But what wonder that an 
 ardent boy saw nothing of this saw only the good heart 
 that had saved a poor girl from vice, and sighed to relieve 
 a harsh and avaricious parent. Even the hints that Gaw- 
 trey unawares Let fall of practices scarcely covered by the 
 jovial phrase of "a great schoolbov's scrapes," either
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 213 
 
 escaped the notice of Philip, or were charitably construed 
 by him, in the compassion and the ignorance of a young, 
 hasty, and grateful heart. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 44 And the" s a stranger: 
 Women beware women." MIDDLETOV. 
 
 41 As we love our youngest children best, 
 So the last fruit of our affection, 
 Wherever we bestow it, is most strong ; 
 Since 'tis indeed our latest harvest- home, 
 Last merriment 'fore winter ! " 
 
 WEBSTER : DiviCs Law Ok^. 
 
 " I would fain know what kind of thing a man's heart is ? 
 I will report it to you : 'tis a thing framed 
 With divers corners ! " ROWLEY. 
 
 I HAVE said that Gawtrey's tale made a deep impression 
 or< Philip ; that impression was increased by subsequent 
 conversations, more frank even than their talk had hitherto 
 been. There was certainly about this man a fatal charm 
 which concealed his vices. It arose, perhaps, from the 
 perfect combinations of his physical frame from a health 
 which made his spirits buoyant and hearty under all cir- 
 cumstances and a blood so fresh, so sanguine, that it 
 could not fail to keep the pores of the heart open. , But he 
 was not the less for all his kindly impulses and generous 
 feelings, and despite the manner in which, naturally anxious 
 to make the least unfavourable portrait of himself to 
 Philip, he softened and glossed over the practices of his 
 life a thorough and complete rogue, a dangerous, des- 
 perate, reckless dare-devil ; it was easy to see when any- 
 thing crossed him, by the cloud on his shaggy brow, by 
 the swelling of the veins on the forehead, by the dilation 
 of the broad nostril, that he was one to cut his way through 
 every obstacle to an end, choleric, impetuous, fierce, 
 determined; such, indeed, were the qualities that made 
 him respected among his associates, as his more bland and 
 humorous ones made him beloved : he was, in fact, the 
 incarnation of that great spirit which the laws of the world 
 raise up against the world, and by which the world's 
 injustice, on a large scale, is awfully chastised ; on a small 
 scale, merely nibbled at and harassed, as the rat that gnawa
 
 214 . NIGHT AND MOKMNG. 
 
 the hoof of the elephant : The spirit which, on a vast 
 theatre, rises up, gigantic and sublime, in the heroes of 
 war and revolution in Mirabeaus, Marats, Napoleons ; 
 on a minor stage, it shows itself in demagogues, fanatical 
 philosophers, and mob- writers ; and on the forbidden 
 boards, before whose reeking lamps outcasts sit, at once 
 audience and actors, it never produced a knave more con- 
 summate in his part, or carrying it off with more buskined 
 dignity, than William Grawtrey. I call him by his ab- 
 original name ; as for his other appellations, Bacchus 
 himself had not so many ! 
 
 One day, a lady, richly dressed, was ushered by Mr. 
 Birnie into the bureau of Mr. Love, alias Grawtrey. Philip 
 was seated by the window, reading, for the first time, 
 the " Candide," that work, next to " Rasselas," the most 
 hopeless and gloomy of the sports of genius with mankind. 
 The lady seemed rather embarrassed when she perceived 
 Mr. Love was not alone. She drew back, and, drawing 
 her veil still more closely round her, said, in French, 
 
 " Pardon me, I would wish a private conversation." 
 
 Philip rose to withdraw, when the lady, observing him 
 with eyes whose lustre shone through the veil, said gently, 
 
 " Bat, perhaps, the young gentleman is discreet." 
 
 " He is not discreet, he is discretion ! my adopted son. 
 You may confide in him upon my honour you may, 
 madam ] " and Mr. Love placed his hand on his heart. 
 
 " He is very young," said the lady, in a tone of involun- 
 tary compassion, as, with a very white hand, she unclasped 
 the buckle of her cloak. 
 
 " He can the better understand the curse of celibacy," 
 returned Mr. Love, smiling. 
 
 The lady lifted part of her veil, and discovered a hand- 
 some mouth, and a set of small, white teeth ; for she, too, 
 smiled, though gravely, as she turned to Morton, and said 
 
 " You seem, sir, more fitted to be a votary of the templo 
 bhan one of its officers. However, Monsieur Love, let there 
 be no mistake between us ; I do not come here to form a 
 marriage, but to prevent one. I understand that Monsieur 
 the Vicomte de Vaudemont has called into request your 
 services. I am one of the Vicomte's family; we are all 
 anxious that he should not contract an engagement of the 
 strange, and, pardon me, unbecoming character, which 
 must stamp an union formed at a public office."
 
 NIGHT AND MORNIXG. 215 
 
 "I assure you, madam," said Mr. Lovo, with dignity, 
 " that we have contributed to the very first " 
 
 " Hon Dieu!" inteiTupted the lady, with much impa. 
 tionce, " spare me an eulogy on your establishment: I have 
 no doubt it is very respectable; and for grisettes and 
 fyiciers may do extremely well. But the Vicomte is a 
 man of birth and connexions. In a word, what he contem- 
 plates is preposterous. I know not what fee Monsieur 
 Love expects ; but if he contrive to amuse Monsieur do 
 Vaudemont, and to frustrate every connexion he proposes 
 to form, that fee, whatever it may be, shall be doubled. 
 Do you understand me ? " 
 
 " Perfectly, madam ; yet it is not your offer that will 
 bias me, but the desire to oblige so charming a lady." 
 
 " It is agreed, then ?" said the lady, carelessly; and a-9 
 she spoke, she again glanced at Philip. 
 
 "If madame will call again, I will inform her of my 
 plans," said Mr. Love. 
 
 " Yes, I will call again. Good morning !" As she rose 
 and passed Philip, she wholly put aside her veil, and 
 looked at him with a gaze entirely free from coquetry, but 
 curious, searching, and perhaps admiring the look that 
 an artist may give to a picture that seems of more value 
 than the place where he finds it would seem to indicate. 
 The countenance of the lady herself was fair and noble, 
 and Philip felt a strange thrill at his heart as, with a slight 
 inclination of her head, she turned from the room. 
 
 "Ah!" said Gawtrey, laughing, "this is not the first 
 time 1 have been paid by relations to break off the mar- 
 riages I had formed. Egad ! if one could open a bureau 
 to make married people single, one would soon be - a 
 Croesus! Well, then, this decides me to complete the 
 union between Monsieur Goupille and Mademoiselle de 
 Courval. I had balanced a little hitherto between the 
 epicier and the Vicomte. Now I will conclude matters. 
 13o you know, Phil, I think you have made a con- 
 quest?" 
 
 " Pooh ! " said Philip, colouring. 
 
 In effect, that very evening Mr. Love saw both tho 
 Spicier and Adele, and fixed the marriage-day. As Monsieur 
 Goupille was a person of great distinction in the Faubourg, 
 this wedding was one upon which Mr. Love congratulated 
 himself greatly ; and he cheerfully accepted an invitation
 
 216 NIGHT AND M011NIXG 
 
 fur himself ami liis partners to honour the noccs with their 
 presence. 
 
 A night or two before the day fixed for the marriage of 
 Monsieur Goupille and the aristocratic Adele, when Mr. 
 IBirnie had retired, Gawtrey made his usual preparations 
 for enjoying himself. But this time the cigar and the 
 punch, seemed to fail of their effect. Gawtrey remained 
 moody and silent : and Morton was thinking of the bright 
 eyes of the lady wlio was so much, interested against the 
 amours of the Vicomte de Vaudemont. 
 
 At last, Gawtrey broke silence, 
 
 "My young friend," said he, "I told you of my little 
 protegee; I have been buying toys for her this morning; 
 she is a beautiful creature : to-morrow is her birth-day 
 she will then be six years old. Biit but " here Gawtrey 
 sighed, "I fear she is not all right here," and he touched 
 his forehead. 
 
 " I should like much to see her," said Philip, not noticing 
 the latter remark. 
 
 "And you shall you shall come with me to-morrow. 
 Heigho ! I should not like to die, for her sake ! " 
 
 " Does her wretched relation attempt to regain her ? " 
 
 " Her relation ! No ; she is no more she died about 
 two years since ! Poor Mary ! I well, this is folly. But 
 Fanny is at present in a convent ; they are all kind to her, 
 but then I pay well; if I were dead, and the pay stopped, 
 again I ask, what would become of her, unless, as I 
 before said, my father ' ' 
 
 " But you are making a fortune now ? " 
 
 " If this lasts yes ; but I live in fear the police of this 
 cursed city are lynx-eyed : however, that is the bright side 
 of the question. 
 
 "Why not have the child with you, since you love her 
 so much ? She would be a great comfort to you." 
 
 " Is this a place for a child a girl ? " said Gawtrey, 
 stamping his foot impatiently. " I should go mad if I saw 
 that villainous deadman's eye bent upon her ! " 
 
 " You speak of Birnie. How can you endure him ? " 
 
 " When you are my age you will know why we enduro 
 what we dread why we make friends of those who else 
 would be most horrible foes : no, no nothing can deliver 
 me of this man but Death. And and " added Gawtrey, 
 turning pale, " I cannot murder a man who eats my bread.
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 2l7 
 
 There are stronger ties, my lad, than affection, that bind 
 nen, like galley-slaves, together. He who can hang yon 
 puts the halter round your neck and leads you by it like a 
 dog." 
 
 A shudder came over the young listener. And what 
 dark secrets, known only to those two, had bound, to a 
 man seemingly his subordinate and tool, the strong will 
 and resolute temper of William Gawtrey ? 
 
 "But, begone, dull care!" exclaimed Gawtrey, rousing 
 himself. " And, after all, Birnie is a nseful fellow, and 
 dare no more turn against me than I against him ! Why 
 don't you drink more ? 
 
 ' Oh ! have you e'er heard of the famed Captain Wattle? ' " 
 
 and Gawtrey broke out into a loud Bacchanalian hymn, 
 in which Philip could find no mirth, and from which the 
 songster suddenly paused to exclaim, 
 
 " Mind you say nothing about Fanny to Birnie ; my 
 secrets with him are not of that nature. He could not 
 hurt her, poor lamb ! it is true, at least, as far as I can 
 foresee. But one can never feel too sure of one's lamb, if 
 one once introduces it to the butcher ! " 
 
 The next day being Sunday, the bureau was closed, and 
 Philip and Gawtrey repaired to the convent. It was a 
 dismal-looking place as to the exterior ; but, within, there 
 was a large garden, well kept, and, notwithstanding the 
 winter, it seemed fair and refreshing, compared with the 
 polluted streets. The window of the room into which they 
 were shown looked upon the green sward, with walls 
 covered with ivy at the farther end. And Philip's own 
 childhood came back to him as he gazed on the quiet of 
 the lonely place. 
 
 The door opened an infant voice was heard, a voice of 
 glee of rapture ; and a child, light and beautiful as a 
 fairy, bounded to Gawtrey's breast. 
 
 Nestling there, she kissed his face, his hands, his clothes, 
 with a passion that did not seem to belong to her ago, 
 laughing and sobbing almost at a breath. 
 
 On his part, Gawtrey appeared equally affected; he 
 stroked down her hair with his huge hand, calling her all 
 manner of pet names, in a tremulous voice that vainly 
 struggled to be gay. 
 
 At length ho took the toys he had bronght with him
 
 218 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 from, his capacious pockets, and strewing them on tha 
 floor, fairly stretched his vast bulk along ; while the child 
 tumbled over him, sometimes grasping at the toys, and 
 then again returning to his bosom, and laying her head 
 there, looked up quietly into his eyes, as if the joy were too 
 much for her. 
 
 Morton, unheeded by both, stood by with folded arms. 
 He thought of his lost and ungrateful brother, and muttered 
 to himself, 
 
 " Fool ! when she is older, she will forsake him ! " 
 
 Fanny betrayed in her face the Italian origin of her 
 father. She had that exceeding richness of complexion 
 which, though not common even in Italy, is only to be 
 found in the daughters of that land, and which harmonised 
 well with the purple lustre of her hair, and the full, clear 
 iris of the dark eyes. Never were parted cherries brighter 
 than her dewy lips ; and the colour of the open neck and 
 the rounded arms was of a whiteness still more dazzling, 
 from the darkness of the hair and the carnation of the 
 glowing che.k. 
 
 Suddenly Fanny started from Gawtrey's arms, and run- 
 ning up to Morton, gazed at him wistfully, and said, in 
 French, 
 
 " Who are you ? Do you come from the moon ? I think 
 you do." Then stopping abruptly, she broke into a verse 
 of a nursery- song, which she chaunted with a low, listless 
 tone, as if she were not conscious of the sense. As she thus 
 sung, Morton, looking at her, felt a strange and painful 
 doubt seize him. The child's eyes, though soft, were so 
 vacant in their gaze. 
 
 " And why do I come from the moon ? " said he. 
 
 " Because you look sad and cross. I don't like you I 
 don't like the moon, it gives me a pain here ! " and she put 
 her hand to her temples. " Have you got anything for 
 Fanny poor, poor Fanny ? " and, dwelling on the epithet, 
 ehe shook her head mournfully. 
 
 "You are rich, Fanny, with all those toys." 
 
 " Am I ? everybody calls me poor Fanny everybody 
 but papa ; " and she ran again to Gawtrey, and laid her 
 head on his shoulder. 
 
 " She calls me papa ! " said Gawtrey, kissing her ; " you 
 hear it ? Bless her ! " 
 
 " And you never kiss anyone but Fanny you have no
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 219 
 
 other little girl?" said the child, earnestly, and A\ith a 
 look less vacant than that which had saddened Moiton. 
 
 "No other no nothing under heaven, and perhaps 
 above it, but you ! " and he clasped her in his arms. " But," 
 he added, after a pause " but mind me, Fanny, you must 
 like this gentleman. He will be always good to you : and 
 he had a little brother whom he was as fond of as I am 
 of you." 
 
 " No, I won't like him I won't like anybody but you 
 and my sister ! " 
 
 " Sister ! who is your sister ? " 
 
 The child's face relapsed into an expression almost of 
 idiotcy. " I don't know I never saw her. I hear her 
 sometimes, but I don't understand what she says. Hush ! 
 come here ! " and she stole to the window on tiptoe. 
 Gawtrey followed and looked out. 
 
 " Do you hear her, now ? " said Fanny. What does she 
 say?" 
 
 As the girl spoke, some bird among the evergreens 
 uttered a shrill, plaintive cry, rather than song, a sound 
 which the thrush occasionally makes in the winter, and 
 which seems to express something of fear, and pain, and 
 impatience. 
 
 "What does she say? can you tell me?" asked the 
 child. 
 
 " Pooh ! that is a bird ; why do you call it your sister ? " 
 
 " I don't know ! because it is because it- because I 
 don't know is it not in pain ? do something for it, papa ! " 
 
 Gawtrey glanced at Morton, whose face betokened his 
 deep pity, and creeping up to him, whispered, 
 
 " Do you think she is really touched here ? No, no, she 
 will outgrow it I am sure she will ! " 
 
 Morton sighed. 
 
 Fanny by this time had again seated herself in the middle 
 of the floor, and arranged her toys, but without seeming to 
 take pleasure in them. 
 
 At last Gawtrey was obliged to depart. The lay sister, 
 w ho had charge of Fanny, was summoned into the parlour, 
 and then the child's manner entirely changed, her face 
 grew purple she sobbed with as much anger as grief; 
 " She would not leave papa she would not go that sho 
 would not ! " 
 
 " It is always so," whispered Gawtrey to Morton, in an
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 abashed and apologetic voice. " It is so difficult to get 
 away from her. Just go and ta?k with her while I steal 
 out.'" 
 
 " Morton went to her, as she struggled with the patient, 
 good-natured sister, and began to soothe and caress her, 
 till she turned on him her large humid eyes, and said, 
 mournfully, 
 
 " To, es mediant, tu. Poor Fanny ! " 
 
 " But this pretty doll " began the sister. 
 
 The child looked at it joylessly, 
 
 " And papa is going to die ! " 
 
 " Whenever Monsieur goes," whispered the nun, " sho 
 always says that he is dead, and cries herself quietly to 
 sleep ; when Monsieur returns, she says he is come to life 
 again. Some one, I suppose, once talked to her about 
 death ; and she thinks when she loses sight of any one, 
 that that is death." 
 
 " Poor child ! " said Morton, with a trembling voice. 
 
 The child looked up, smiled, stroked his cheek with her 
 little hand, and said, 
 
 " Thank you ! Yes ! -poor Fanny ! Ah, he is going 
 see ! let me go too tu es mechant." 
 
 " But," said Morton, detaining her gently, " do you 
 know that you give him pain ? you make him cry by 
 showing pain yourself. Don't make him so sad ! " 
 
 The child seemed struck, hung down her head for a 
 moment, as if in thought, and then, jumping from Mor- 
 ton's lap, ran to Gawtrey, put up her pouting lips, and 
 said, 
 
 " One kiss more ! " 
 
 Gawtrey kissed her, and turned away his head. 
 
 " Fanny is a good girl ; " and Fanny, as she spoke, went 
 back to Morton, and put her little fingers into her eyes, as 
 if either to shut out Gawtrey's retreat from her sight, or 
 to press back her tears. 
 
 " Give me the doll now, sister Marie." 
 
 Morton smiled and sighed, placed the child, who strug- 
 gled no more, in the nun's arms, and left the room ; but aa 
 he closed the door, he looked back, and saw that Fanny 
 had escaped from the sister, thrown herself on the floor, 
 and was crying, but not loud. 
 
 " Is she not a little darling ? " said Gawtrey, as they 
 gained the street.
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 221 
 
 " She is, indeed, a most oeautiful child ! " 
 
 " And you will love her if I leave her penniless," said 
 Gawtrey abruptly. " It was your love for your mother 
 and your brother that made me like you from the first. 
 Ay," continued Gawtrey, in a tone of great earnestness, 
 " ay, and whatever may happen to me, I will strive and 
 keep you, my poor lad, harmless ; and what is better, inno- 
 cent even of such matters as sit light enough on my own 
 well-seasoned conscience. In turn, if ever you have the 
 power, be good to her, yes, be good to her ! and I won't 
 say a harsh word to you if ever you like to turn king's 
 evidence against myself." 
 
 " Gawtrey ! " said Morton, reproachfully, and almost 
 fiercely. 
 
 " Bah ! such things are ! But tell me honestly, do you 
 think shy is very strange very deficient ? " 
 
 " I have not seen enough of her to judge," answered 
 Morton, evasively. 
 
 " She is so changeful," persisted Gawtrey; "sometimes 
 you would say that she was above her age, she comes out 
 with such thoughtful, clever things ; then, the next moment, 
 she throws me into despair. These nuns are very skilful 
 in education ; at least, they are said to be so. The doctors 
 give me hope, too ; you see her poor mother was very un- 
 happy at the time of her birth, delirious, indeed, that 
 TOay account for it. I often fancy that it is the constant 
 excitement which her state occasions me, that makes me 
 love her so much ; you see she is one who can never shift 
 for herself. I must get money for her ; I have left a little 
 already with the superior, and I would not touch it to save 
 myself from famine ! If she has money, people will be 
 kind enough to her. And then," continued Gawtrey, "you 
 must perceive that she loves nothing in the world but me 
 me, whom nobody else loves ! Well well, now to the 
 shop again ! " 
 
 On returning home, the bonne informed them that a lady 
 had called, and asked both for Monsieur Love and th 
 young gentleman, and seemed much chagrined at missing 
 both. By the description, Morton guessed she was the 
 fair incognita, and felt disappointed at having lost tlia 
 interview.
 
 222 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 CHAPTEE V. 
 
 " ITie cursed carle was at his wonted trade, 
 Still tempting heedless men into his snare, 
 In witching wise, as I before have said ; 
 But when he saw, in goodly gear array'd, 
 The grave majestic knight approaching nigh, 
 His countenance fell." THOMSON : Castle of Indolent*. 
 
 THE morning rose that was to unite Monsieur Goupillo 
 with Mademoiselle Adele de Courval. The ceremony was 
 performed, and bride and bridegroom went through that 
 trying ordeal with becoming gravity. Only the elegant 
 Adele seemed more unaffectedly agitated than Mr. Love 
 could well account for ; she was very nervous in church, 
 and more often turned her eyes to the door than to the 
 altar. Perhaps she wanted to run away ; but it was either 
 too late or too early for that proceeding. The rite per- 
 formed, the happy pair and their friends adjourned to the 
 Cadran Bleu, that restaurant so celebrated in the festivities 
 of the good citizens of Paris. Here Mr. Love had ordered, 
 at the epicier's expense, a most tasteful entertainment. 
 
 " Sacre ! but you have not played the economist, Mon- 
 sieur Lofe," said Monsieur Goupille, rather querulously, 
 as he glanced at the long room adorned with artificial 
 flowers, and the table a cinquante couverts. 
 
 " Bah," replied Mr. Love, " you can retrench afterwards. 
 Think of the fortune she brought you." 
 
 " It is a pretty sum, certainly," said Monsieur Groupille, 
 "and the notary is perfectly satisfied." 
 
 "There is not a marriage in Paris that does me more 
 credit," said Mr. Love ; and he marched off to receive the 
 compliments and congratulations that awaited him among 
 such of the guests as were aware of his good offices. The 
 \ r icomte de Yaudemont was of course not present. He 
 had not been near Mr. Love since Adele had accepted the 
 e'picier. But Madame Beavor, in a white bonnet lined with 
 lilac, was hanging, sentimentally, on the arm of the Pole, 
 who looked very grand with his white favour; and Mr. 
 Higgins had been introduced, by Mr. Love, to a little dark 
 Creole, who wore paste diamonds, and had very languish- 
 ing eyes ; so that Mr. Love's heart might well swell with 
 satisfaction at the prospect of the various blisses to come, 
 which might owe their origin to his benevolence. In fact,
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 223 
 
 that archpriest of the Temple of Hymen was never more 
 great than he was that day ; never did his establishment 
 feem more solid, his reputation more popular, or his for- 
 tune more sure. He was the life of the party. 
 
 The banquet over, the revellers prepared for a dance. 
 Monsieur Goupille, in tights, still tighter than he usually 
 wore, and of a rich nankeen, quite new, with striped silk 
 stockings, opened the ball with the lady of a rich pdtissier 
 in the same Faubourg ; Mr. Love took out the bride. The 
 evening advanced ; and after several other dances of cere- 
 mony, Monsieur Goupille conceived himself entitled to 
 dedicate one to connubial affection. A country-dance was 
 called, and the epicier claimed the fair hand of the gentle 
 Adele. About this time, two persons, not hitherto per- 
 ceived, had quietly entered the room, and, standing near 
 the doorway, seemed examining the dancers, as if in search 
 for some one. They bobbed their heads up and down, to 
 and fro now stopped now stood on tiptoe. The one 
 was a tall, large- whiskered, fair- haired man ; the other, a 
 little, thin, neatly-dressed person, who kept his hand on 
 the arm of his companion, and whispered to him from time 
 to time. The whiskered gentleman replied in a guttural 
 tone, which proclaimed his origin to be German. The busy 
 dancers did not perceive the strangers. The bystanders 
 did, and a hum of curiosity circled round ; who could they 
 be ? who had invited them ? they were new faces in the 
 Faubourg perhaps relations to Adele ? 
 
 In high delight the fair bride was skipping down the 
 middle, while Monsieur Goupille, wiping his forehead with 
 care, admired her agility ; when, lo and behold ! the whis- 
 kered gentleman I have described abruptly advanced from 
 his companion, and cried 
 
 " La voild ! sacre tonnerre ! " 
 
 At that voice at that apparition, the bride halted ; sc 
 5-addenly indeed, that she had not time to put down both 
 feet, but remained with one high in the air, while the other 
 sustained itself on the light fantastic toe. The company 
 naturally imagined this to be an operatic flourish, which 
 called for approbation. Monsieur Love, who was thunder- 
 ing down behind her, cried, " Bravo ! " and as the well- . 
 grown gentleman had to make a sweep to avoid disturbing 
 her equilibrium, he casae full against the whiskered 
 and sent him off as a bat sends a ball
 
 224 SIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 " Mon Dleu ! " cried Monsieur Goupille. " Ma douce, 
 amie she has fainted away ! " And, indeed, Adele had 
 no sooner recovered her balance, than she resigned it oncu 
 more into the arms of the startled Pole, who was happily 
 at hand. 
 
 In the mean time, the German stranger, who had saved 
 himself from falling by coming ~"il.h his full force uponthj 
 toes of Mr. Higgins, again advanced, to the spot, and, nideb 
 seizing the fair bride by the arm, exclaimed, 
 
 " No sham if you please, madame speak ! What the 
 devil have you done with the money ? " 
 
 " Really, sir," said Monsieur Goupille, drawing up his 
 cravat, " this is very extraordinary conduct ! What have 
 you got to say to this lady's money ? it is my money now, 
 sir!" 
 
 " Oho ! it is, is it ? we'll soon see that. Approchez done, 
 Monsieur Favart, faites votre devoir.'"* 
 
 At these words the small companion of the stranger 
 slowly sauntered to the spot, while at the sound of his 
 name and the tread of his step, the throng gave way to 
 the right and left. For Monsieur Favart was one of the 
 most renowned chiefs of the great Parisian police a man 
 worthy to be the contemporary of the illustrious Vidocq. 
 
 " Calmez vous, messieurs ; do not be alarmed, ladies," said 
 this gentleman, in the mildest of all human voices ; and 
 certainly no oil dropped on the waters ever produced so 
 tranquillising an effect as that small, feeble, gentle tenor. 
 The Pole, in especial, who was holding the fair bride with 
 both his arms, shook all over, and seemed about to let his 
 burden gradually slide to the floor, when Monsieur Favart, 
 looking at him with a benevolent smile, said, 
 
 " Alia, mon brave 1 c'est toi. Bestez done. Restez, tenant 
 toujours la dame / " f 
 
 The Pole, thus condemned, in the French idiom, " always 
 to hold the dame," mechanically raised the arms he had 
 previously dejected, and the police officer, with an ap- 
 proving nod of the head, said, 
 
 " Son I ne bougez point, c'est fa f " J 
 
 Monsieur Goupille, in equal surprise and indignation to 
 
 * Approach, they., Monsieur Favart, and do your duty. 
 
 t Aha, my fine fellow! it's you. Stay, then. Stay, always holding the 
 
 t. 
 
 Good ! don't stir that'a il
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 22& 
 
 5ee his better half thus consigned, without any care to his 
 own marital feelings, to the arms of another, was about to 
 snatch her from the Pole, when Monsieur Favart, touching 
 him on the breast with his little finger, said, in the suavest 
 manner, 
 
 "Mon bourgeois, meddle not with what does not concern 
 you!" 
 
 " With what does not concern me ! " repeated Mon- 
 sieur Goupille, drawing himself up to so great a stretch 
 that he seemed pulling off his tights the wrong way. 
 " Explain yourself, if you please ! This lady is my 
 wife!" 
 
 " Say that again, that's all ! " cried the whiskered 
 stranger, in most horrible French, and with a furious 
 grimace, as he shook both his fists just under the nose of 
 the epicier. 
 
 " Say it again, sir," said Monsieur Groupille, by no means 
 daunted ; " and why should not I say it again ? That lady 
 is my wife ! " 
 
 " You lie ! she is mine /" cried the German ; and bend- 
 ing down, he caught the fair Adele from the Pole with as 
 little ceremony as if she had never had a great-grandfather 
 a marquis, and giving her a shako that might have roused 
 the dead, thundered out, 
 
 " Speak ! Madame Bihl ! Are yon my wife or not ? " 
 
 *' Monstre ! " murmured Adele, opening her eyes. 
 
 " There you hear she owns me ! " said the German, 
 appealing to the company with a triumphant air. 
 
 " C'est vrai ! " said the soft voice of the policeman. 
 " And now, pray don't let us disturb your amusements any 
 longer. We have & fiacre at the door. Remove your lady, 
 Monsieur Bihl." 
 
 " Monsieur Lofe ! Monsieur Lofe ! " cried, or rather 
 screeched the epicier, darting across the room, and seizing 
 the chef by the tail of his coat, just as he was half way 
 through the door, " come back ! Quelle mauvaise jlai- 
 santerie me faites-vous id ? * Did you not tell me that 
 lady was single ? Am I married or not ? Do I stand on 
 my head or my heels ? " 
 
 " Hush hush ! mon bon bourgeois I " whispered Mr. 
 Love ; "all shall be explained to-morrow ! " 
 
 ** Who is this gentleman P " asked Monsieur Favart, ap- 
 What scurvy trick IB thia you're playing me \ 
 
 Q
 
 JJ26 JN'IGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 preaching Mr. Love, who, seeing himself in for it, suddenly 
 jerked off the epicier, thrust his hands down into his 
 breeches pockets, buried his chin in his cravat, elevated 
 Lis eyebrows, screwed in his eyes, and puffed out his cheek, 
 so that the astonished Monsieur Groupille really thought 
 himself bewitched, and literally did not recognise the face 
 of the match-maker. 
 
 " Who is this gentleman ? " repeated the little officer, 
 standing beside, or rather below, Mr. Love, and looking so 
 diminutive by the contrast, that you might have fancied 
 that the Priest of Hymen had only to breathe to blow hira 
 away. 
 
 " Who should he be, monsieur ? " cried, with great pert- 
 ness, Madame Rosalie Caumartin, coming to the relief, with 
 the generosity of her sex. "This is Monsieur Lofe 
 Anglais celebre. What have you to say against him ?" 
 
 " He has got five hundred francs of mine ! " cried the 
 tyicier. 
 
 The policeman scanned Mr. Love, with great attention. 
 " So you are in Paris again ? Hein I vous jouez toujours 
 votre rdle I " f 
 
 "Mafoi!" said Mr. Love, boldly; " I don't understand 
 what monsieur means ; my character is well known go 
 and inquire it in London ask the Secretary of Foreign 
 Affairs what is said of me inquire of my Ambassador 
 demand of my " 
 
 " Votre passeport, monsieur ? " 
 
 " It is at home. A gentleman does not carry his pass- 
 port in his pocket when he goes to a ball ! " 
 
 " I will call and see it au revoir ! Take my advice and 
 leave Paris ; I think I have seen you somewhere ! " 
 
 " Yet I have never had the honour to many monsieur ! " 
 said Mr. Love, with a polite bow. 
 
 In return for his joke, the policeman gave Mr. Love one 
 look it was a quiet look, very quiet ; but Mr. Love seemed 
 uncommonly affected by it ; he did not say another word, 
 but found himself outside the house in a twinkling. Mon- 
 sieur Favart turned round and saw the Pole making him- 
 self as small as possible behind the goodly proportions of 
 Madame Beavor. 
 
 " What name does that gentleman go by ? " 
 
 y Sk vo lofski, the heroic Pole," cried Madame Beavor, 
 * You're alwayi acting your part.
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 227 
 
 with sundry misgivings at the unexpected cowardice of so 
 great a patriot. 
 
 " Hein I take care of yourselves, ladies. I have nothing 
 against that person this time. But Monsieur Latour has 
 served his apprenticeship at the galleys, and is no more a 
 Pole than I am a Jew." 
 
 " And this lady's fortune ! " cried Monsieur Goupille, 
 pathetically ; " the settlements are all made the notaries 
 all paid. I am sure there must be some mistake." 
 
 Monsieur Bihl, who had by this time restored his lost 
 Helen to her senses, stalked up to the epicier, dragging tho 
 lady along with him. 
 
 " Sir, there is no mistake ! But, when I have got the 
 money, if you like to have the lady you are welcome U 
 her." 
 
 " Monstre I " again muttered the fair Adele. 
 
 " The long and the short of it," said Monsieur Favart, 
 " is, that Monsieur Bihl is a brave gargon, and has been half 
 over the world as a courier." 
 
 " A courier ! " exclaimed several voices. 
 
 " Madame was nursery-governess tc an English milord. 
 They married, and quarrelled no harm, in that, mes amis ; 
 nothing more common. Monsieur Bihl is a very faithful 
 fellow; nursed his last master in an illness that ended 
 fatally, because he travelled with his doctor. Milord left 
 him a handsome legacy he retired from service, and fell 
 Si perhaps from idleness or beer. Is not that the story, 
 Monsieur Bihl ? " 
 
 " He was always drunk the wretch ! " sobbed Adele. 
 
 " That was to drown my domestic sorrows," said the 
 German; "and when I was sick in my bed, madame ran 
 off with my money. Thanks to monsieur, I have found 
 both, and I wish you a very good night." 
 
 " Danscz-vous toujours, mes amis," said the officer, bow- 
 ing. And following Adele and her spouse, the little man 
 left the room where he had caused, in chests so broad 
 and limbs so doughty, much the same consternation as that 
 which some diminutive ferret occasions in a burrow of 
 rabbits twice his size. 
 
 Morton had outstayed Mr. Love. But he thought it un- 
 necessary to linger long after that gentleman's departure ; 
 and, in the general hubbub that ensued, he crept out un- 
 perceived, and soon arrived at the bureau. He found Mr 
 
 Q 2
 
 228 NIGHT ANL> MORNING. 
 
 Love and Mr. Birnie already engaged in packing up their 
 effects. "Why when did you leave ? " said Morton to Mr, 
 Birnie 
 
 " I saw the policeman enter." 
 
 "And why the deuce did not you tell us?" said Gaw- 
 trey. 
 
 " Every man for himself. Besides, Mr. Love was dancing," 
 replied Mr. Birnie, with a dull glance of disdain. 
 
 " Philosophy," muttered Gawtrey, thrusting his dress- 
 coat into his trunk ; then suddenly changing his voice, 
 " Ha ! ha ! it was a very good joke after all own I did it 
 well. Ecod ! if he had not given me that look, I think I 
 should have turned the tables on him. But those d A 
 fellows learn of the mad doctors how to tame us. Faith, 
 my heart went down to my shoes yet I'm no coward ! " 
 
 " But, after all, he evidently did not know you," said 
 Morton; " and what has he to say against you. Your trade 
 is a strange one, but not dishonest. Why give up as 
 if " 
 
 "My young friend," interrupted Gawtrey, "whether the 
 officer comes after us or not, our trade is ruined : that in- 
 fernal Adele, with her fabulous grandma/man, has done for 
 as. Goupille will blow the temple about our ears. No 
 help for it eh, Birnie ? " 
 
 "None." 
 
 " Go to bed, Philip : we'll call thee at daybreak, for we 
 must make clear work before our neighbours open their 
 shutters." 
 
 Reclined, but half undressed, on his bed in the little 
 cabinet, Morton revolved the events of the evening. The 
 thought that he should see no more of that white hand 
 and that lovely mouth, which still haunted his recollection 
 as appertaining to the incognita, greatly indisposed him 
 towards the abrupt flight intended by Gawtrey, while (so 
 much had his faith in that person depended upon respect 
 for his confident daring, and so thoroughly fearless was 
 Morton's own nature) he felt himself greatly shaken in his 
 allegiance to the chief, by recollecting the effect produced 
 on his valour by a single glance from the instrument ol 
 law. He had not yet lived long enough to be aware that 
 men are sometimes the B-epresentatives of Things ; that 
 what the scytale was to the Spartan hero, a sheriff's writ 
 often is to a Waterloo medallist; that a Bow Street runnel
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 229 
 
 will enter the foullest den where Murder sits with his 
 fellows, and pick out his prey with the beck of his fore- 
 tinger. That, in short, the thing called LAW, once made 
 tangible and present, rarely fails to palsy the fierce heart 
 of the thing called CRIME. For Law is the symbol of all 
 mankind reared against One Foe the Man of Crime. Not 
 yet aware of this truth, nor, indeed, in the least suspecting' 
 Gawtrey of worse offences than those of a charlatanic and 
 equivocal profession, the young man mused over his pro- 
 tector's cowardice in disdain and wonder ; till, wearied 
 with conjectures, distrust, and shame at his own strange 
 position of obligation to one whom he could not respect, 
 he fell asleep. 
 
 When he woke, he saw the grey light of dawn that 
 streamed cheerlessly through his shutterless window, 
 struggling with the faint ray of a candle that Gawtrey, 
 shading with his hand, held over the sleeper. He started 
 up, and, in the confusion of waking and the imperfect 
 light by which he beheld the strong features of Gawtrey, 
 half imagined it was a foe who stood before him. 
 
 " Take care, man ! " said Gawtrey, as Morton, in this 
 belief, grasped his arm. "You have a precious rough 
 gripe of your own. Be quiet, will you ? I have a word to 
 say to you." Here Gawtrey, placing the candle on a chai^ 
 returned to the door and closed it. 
 
 " Look you," he said in a whisper, " I have nearly run 
 through my circle of invention, and my wit, fertile as it is, 
 can present to me little encouragement in the future 
 The eyes of this Favart, once on me, every disguise and 
 every double will not long avail. I dare not return to 
 London : I am too well known in Brussels, Berlin, and 
 Vienna " 
 
 " But," interrupted Morton, raising himself on his arm, 
 and fixing his dark eyes upon his host, "but you have told 
 me again and again that you have committed no crime, 
 why then be so fearful of discovery ? " 
 
 "Why," repeated Gawtrey, with a slight hesitation 
 which he instantly overcame, " why ! have not you your- 
 self learned that appearances have the effect of crimes ? 
 were yon not chased as a thief when I rescued you from 
 your foe the law ? are yon not, though a boy in years, 
 under an alias, and an exile from your own land ? And 
 how can you put these austere questions to me, who am
 
 230 NIGHT AND MOftNTNG. 
 
 growing grey in the endeavour to extract sunbeams from 
 cucumbers subsistence from poverty? I repeat that 
 there are reasons why I must avoid, for the present, the 
 great capitals. I must sink in life, and take to the pro- 
 vinces. Birnie is sanguine as ever: but he is a terribli 
 sort of comforter. Enough of that. Now to yourself : 
 our savings are less than you might expect; to be sure, 
 Birnie has been treasurer, and I have laid by a little for 
 Fanny, which I will rather starve than touch. There 
 remain, however, 150 napoleons, and our effects, sold at a 
 fourth their value, will fetch 150 more. Here is your 
 share. I have compassion on you. I told you I would 
 bear you harmless and innocent. Leave us, while yet 
 time." 
 
 It seemed, then, to Morton that Gawtrey had divined 
 his thoughts of shame and escape of the previous night ; 
 perhaps Gawtrey had : and such is the human heart, that, 
 instead of welcoming the very release he had half contem- 
 plated, now that it was offered him, Philip shrunk from it 
 as a base desertion. 
 
 " Poor Gawtrey ! " said he, pushing back the canvas 
 bag of gold held out to him, "you shall not go over the 
 world, and feel that the orphan you fed and fostered left 
 you to starve with your money in his pocket. When you 
 ugain assure me that you have committed no crime, you 
 again remind me that gratitude has no right to be severe 
 upon the shifts and errors of its benefactor. If you do not 
 conform to society, what has society done for me ? No ! I 
 will not forsake you in a reverse. Fortune has given you 
 a fall. What, then, courage, and .t her again ! " 
 
 These last words were said so heartily and cheerfully as 
 Morton sprung from the bed, that they inspirited Gawtrey, 
 who had really desponded of his lot. 
 
 "Well," said he, "I cannot reject the only friend lelt 
 me; and while I live . But I will make no profes- 
 sions. Quick, then, our luggage is already gone, and I 
 hear Birnie grunting the rogue's march of retreat." 
 
 Morton's toilette was soon completed, and the three 
 associates bade adieu to the bureau. 
 
 Birnie, who was taciturn and impenetrable as ever, 
 walked a little before as guide. They arrived, at length, 
 at a serrurier's shop, placed in an alley near the Porte St. 
 Denis. The serrurier himself, a tall, begrimed, black-
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 231 
 
 be.irded man, was taking the shutters from his shop as 
 they approached. He and Birnie exchanged silent nods ; 
 and the former, leaving his work, conducted them up a 
 very filthy flight of stairs to an attic, where a bed, two 
 stools, one table, and an old walnut-tree bureau, formed 
 the sole articles of furniture. Gawtrey looked rather rue- 
 fully round the black, low, damp walls, and said, in a 
 crest-fallen tone, 
 
 " We were better off at the Temple of Hymen. But get 
 us a bottle of wine, some eggs, and a fryingpan, by Jove, 
 I am a capital hand at an omelet ! " 
 
 The serrurier nodded again, grinned, and withdrew. 
 
 " Rest here," said Birnie, in his calm, passionless voice, 
 that seemed to Morton, however, to assume an unwonted 
 tone of command. " I will go and make the best bargain 
 I can for our furniture, buy fresh clothes, and engage our 
 places for Tours." 
 
 " For Tours ? " repeated Morton. 
 
 "Yes, there are some English there ; one can live where- 
 ever there are English," said Gawtrey. 
 
 " Hum ! " grunted Birnie, drily, and, buttoning up his 
 coat, he walked slowly away. 
 
 About noon he returned with a bundle of clothes, which 
 Gawirey, who always regained his elasticity of spirit wher- 
 ever there was fair play to his talents, examined with great 
 attention, and many exclamations of " Bon, c'est ga." 
 
 "I have done well with the Jew," said Birnie, drawing 
 from his coat pocket two heavy bags, " One hundred and 
 eighty napoleons. We shall commence with a good 
 capital." 
 
 " You are right, my friend," said Gawtrey. 
 
 The serrurier was then despatched to the best restaurant 
 in the neighbourhood, and the three adventurers made n 
 less Socratic dinner than might have been expected.
 
 332 tflGHT AND 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 " Then out again he flies to wing his mazy round." 
 
 THOMSON'S Castle of Indolent* 
 
 " Again he gazed, ' It is,' said he, ' the same ; 
 There sits he upright in his seat secure, 
 As one whose conscience is correct and pure.' " CRABB?.. 
 
 THE adventurers arrived at Tours, and established them 
 selves there in a lodging, without any incident worth nar 
 rating by the way. 
 
 At Tours, Morton had nothing to do but take his pleasure 
 and enjoy himself. He passed for a young heir ; Gawtrey 
 for his tutor a doctor in divinity ; Birnie for his valet. 
 The task of maintenance fell on Gawtrey, who hit off his 
 character to a hair ; larded his grave jokes with University 
 scraps of Latin ; looked big and well-fed ; wore knee- 
 breeches and a shovel hat ; and played whist with the skill 
 of a veteran vicar. By his science in that game, he nuwte, 
 at first, enough, at least, to defray their weekly expenses. 
 But, by degrees, the good people at Tours, who, under pre- 
 tence of health, were there for economy, grew shy of so 
 excellent a player; and though Gawtrey always swore 
 solemnly that he played with the most scrupulous honour, 
 (an asseveration which Morton, at least, implicitly believed,) 
 and no proof to the contrary was ever detected, yet a first- 
 rate card-player is always a suspicious character, unless the 
 losing parties know exactly who he is. The market fell 
 off, and Gawtrey at length thought it prudent to extend 
 their travels. 
 
 "Ah!" said Mr. Gawtrey, "the world now-a-days has 
 grown so ostentatious, that one cannot travel advanta- 
 geously without a post chariot and four horses." At length 
 they found themselves at Milan, which at that time was 
 one of the El Dorados for gamesters. Here, however, for 
 want of introductions, Mr. Gawtrey found it difficult to get 
 into society. The nobles, proud and rich, played high, but 
 were circumspect in their company ; the bourgeoisie, indus- 
 trious and energetic, preserved much of the old Lombard 
 shrewdness ; there were no tables d'hote and public reunions. 
 Gawtrey saw his little capital daily diminishing, with the 
 Alps at the rear, and Poverty in the van. At length, 
 always on the qui vive he contrived to make acquaintance
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 233 
 
 xth a Scotch family of great respectability. Ho effected 
 this by picking up a snuff-box which the Scotchman had 
 dropped in taking out his handkerchief. This politeness 
 paved the way to a conversation in which Gawtrey made 
 himself so agreeable, and talked with such zest of tho 
 Modern Athens, and the tricks practised upon travellers, 
 that he was presented to Mrs. Macgregor ; cards were in- 
 terchanged ; and, as Mr. Gawtrey lived in tolerable style, 
 the Macgregors pronounced him "a vara genteel mon." 
 Once in the house of a respectable person, Gawtrey con- 
 trived to turn himself round and round, till he burrowed a 
 hole into the English circle then settled in Milan. His 
 whist-playing came into requisition, and once more Fortune 
 smiled upon Skill. 
 
 To this house the pupil one evening accompanied the 
 tutor. When the whist party, consisting of two tables, 
 was formed, the young man found himself left out with an 
 old gentleman, who seemed loquacious and goodnatured, 
 and who put many questions to Morton, which he found it 
 difficult to answer. One of the whist tables was now in a 
 state of revolution, viz., a lady had cut out, and a gentleman 
 cut in, when the door opened, and Lord Lilburne was 
 announced. 
 
 Mr. Macgregor, rising, advanced with great respect to 
 this personage. 
 
 " I scarcely ventured to hope you would coom, Lord Lil- 
 burne, the night is so cold." 
 
 " You did not allow sufficiently, then, for the dullness o* 
 my solitary inn and the attractions of your circle. Aha ! 
 whist I see." 
 
 " You play sometimes ? " 
 
 " Very seldom, now ; -I have sown all my wild oats, and 
 even the ace of spades can scarcely dig them out again." 
 
 " Ha ! ha ! vara gude." 
 
 " I will look on ; " and Lord Lilburne drew bis chair to 
 the table, exactly opposite to Mr. Gawtrey. 
 
 The old gentleman turned to Philip. 
 
 " An extraordinary man, Lord Lilburne ; you have heard 
 of him, of course ? " 
 
 "No, indeed; what of him?" asked the young man, 
 rousing himself. 
 
 " What of him ? " said the old gentleman, with a smile ; 
 " why the newspapers, if yon ever read them, will tell you
 
 5134 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 enough of the elegant, the witty Lord Lilburne ; a man of 
 eminent talent, though indolent. He was wild in his youth, 
 as clever men often are ; but, on attaining his title and 
 fortune, and marrying into the family of the then premier, 
 he became more sedate. They say he might make a great 
 figure in politics if he would. Ho has a very high reputa- 
 tion very. People do say he is still fond of pleasure, but 
 that is &, common failing amongst the aristocracy. Morality 
 is only found in the middle classes, young gentleman. It 
 is a lucky family, that of Lilburne ; his sister, Mrs. Beau- 
 fort " 
 
 " Beaufort ! " exclaimed Morton, and then muttered to 
 himself, "Ah, true true, I have heard the name of Lil- 
 burne before." 
 
 " Do you know the Beauforts ? Well, you remember 
 how luckily Robert, Lilburne's brother-in-law, came into 
 that fine property just as his predecessor was about to 
 marry a " 
 
 Morton scowled at his garrulous acquaintance, and stalked 
 abruptly to the card table. 
 
 Ever since Lord Lilburne had seated himself opposite to 
 Mr. Gawtrey, that gentleman had evinced a perturbation 
 of manner that became obvious to the company. He grew 
 deadly pale, his hands trembled, he moved uneasily in his 
 seat, he missed deal, he trumped his partner's best diamond, 
 finally he revoked, threw down his money, and said, with 
 a forced smile, " That the heat of the room overcame him." 
 As he rose, Lord Lilburne rose also, and the eyes of both 
 met. Those of Lilburne were calm, but penetrating and 
 inquisitive in their gaze ; those of Gawtrey were like balls 
 of fire. He seemed gradually to dilate in his height, his 
 broad chest expanded, he breathed hard. 
 
 "Ah, Doctor," said Mr. Macgregor, " let me introduce 
 you to Lord Lilburne." 
 
 The peer bowed haughtily ; Mr. Gawtrey did not return 
 the salutation, but with a sort of gulp as if he were swal- 
 lowing some burst of passion, strode to the fire ; and then, 
 turning round, again fixed his gaze upon the new guest. 
 Lilburne, however, who had never lost his self -composure 
 at this strange rudeness, was now quietly talking with their 
 host. 
 
 " Your Doctor seems an eccentric man a little absent 
 learned, I suppose. Have you been to Como, yetp "
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING 235 
 
 Mr. Gawtrey remained by the fire beating the devil's 
 tattoo upon the chimney-piece, and ever and anon turning 
 his glance towards Lilburne, who seemed to have forgotten 
 his existence. 
 
 Both these guests stayed till the party broke np ; Mr. 
 Gawtrey apparently wishing to outstay Lord Lilburne ; for, 
 when the last went down stairs, Mr. Gawtrey, nodding to 
 his comrade, and giving a hurried bow to the host, de- 
 scended also. As they passed the porter's lodge, they 
 found Lilburne on the step of his carriage ; he turned his 
 head abruptly, and again met Mr. Gawtrey's eye ; paused 
 a moment, and whispered over his shoulder, 
 
 " So we remember each other, sir ? Let us not meet 
 again ; and, on that condition, bygones are bygones." 
 
 " Scoundrel ! " muttered Gawtrey, clenching his fists ; 
 but the peer had sprung into his carriage with a lightness 
 scarcely to be expected from his lameness, and the wheels 
 whirled within an inch of the eoi-disant doctor's right 
 pump. 
 
 Gawtrey walked on for some moments in great excite- 
 ment ; at length he turned to his companion : 
 
 " Do you guess who Lord Lilburne is ? I will tell yon 
 my first foe and Fanny's grandfather ! Now, note the 
 justice of Fate : Here is this man mark well this man 
 who commenced life by putting his faults on my own 
 shoulders ! From that little boss has f ungused out a 
 terrible hump. This man who seduced my affianced bride, 
 and then left her whole soul, once fair and blooming I 
 swear it with its leaves fresh from the dews of heaven, 
 one rank leprosy, this man who, rolling in riches, learned 
 to cheat and pilfer as a boy learns to dance and play the 
 fiddle, and (to damn me, whose happiness he had blasted) 
 accused me to the world of his own crime ! here is this 
 man who has not left off one vice, but added to those of 
 his youth the bloodless craft of tho veteran knave ; here 
 is this man, flattered, courted, great, marching through 
 lanes of bowing parasites to an illustrious epitaph and a 
 marble tomb, and I, a rogue too, if you will, but rogue for 
 my bread, dating from him my errors and my ruin ! I 
 vagabond outcast skulking through tricks to avoid 
 crime why the difference ? Because one is bom rich 
 and the other poor because he has no excuse for crime, 
 and therefore no one suspects him! "
 
 236 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 The wretched man (for at that moment he was wretched) 
 paused breathless from his passionate and rapid burst, and 
 before him rose in its marble majesty, with the moon full 
 upon its shining spires the wonder of Gothic Italy the 
 Cathedral Church of Milan. 
 
 " Chafe not yourself at the universal fate," said the 
 young man, with a bitter smile on his lips and pointing to 
 the cathedral, " I hare not lived long, but I have learned 
 already enough to knoAV this he who could raise a pile 
 like that, dedicated to heaven, would be honoured as a 
 saint ; he who knelt to God by the road-side under a hedge 
 would be sent to the house of correction as a vagabond ! 
 The difference between man and man is money, and will 
 be, when you, the despised charlatan, and Lilburne, the 
 honoured cheat, have not left as much dust behind you as 
 will fill a snuff-box.. Comfort yourself, you are in the 
 majority." 
 
 CHAPTEE VII. 
 
 4< A desert wild 
 
 Before them stretched bare, comfortless, and vast, 
 With gibbets, bones, and carcasses defiled." 
 
 THOMSON'S Castle of Indol-nct, 
 
 MR. Q-AWTEEY did not wish to give his foe the triumph 
 af thinking he had driven him from Milan ; he resolved 
 to stay and brave it out ; but when he appeared in public, 
 he found the acquaintances he had formed bow politely, 
 but cross to the other side of the way. No more invita- 
 tions to tea and cards showered in upon the jolly parson 
 He was puzzled, for people, while they shunned him, did 
 not appear uncivil. He found out at last that a report 
 was circulated that he was deranged ; though he could not 
 trace this rumour to Lord Lilburne, he was at no loss to 
 guess from whom it had emanated. His own eccentrici- 
 ties, especially his recent manner at Mr. Macgregor's, gave 
 confirmation to the charge. Again the funds began to 
 sink low in the canvas bags, and, at length, in despair 
 Mr. Gawtrey was obliged to quit the field. They returned 
 to France through Switzerland a country too poor for 
 gamesters ; and ever since the interview with Lilburne, a 
 great change had come over Gawtrey's gay spirit : he grew
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 237 
 
 moody and thoughtful, he took no pains to replenish the 
 common stock, he talked much and seriously to his young 
 friend of poor Fanny, and owned that he yearned to see 
 her again. The desire to return to Paris haunted him like 
 a fatality, he saw the danger that awaited him there, but 
 it only allured him the more, as the candle does the moth 
 whose wings it has singed. Birnie, who, in all their vicis- 
 situdes and wanderings, their ups and downs, retained the 
 same tacit, immoveable demeanour, received with a sneer the 
 orders at last to march back upon the French capital, " You 
 would never have left it, if you had taken my advice," he 
 said, and quitted the room. 
 
 Mr. Gawtrey gazed after him and muttered, " Is the die 
 then cast ? " 
 
 " What does he mean ? " said Morton. 
 
 " You will know soon," replied Gawtrey, and he followed 
 Birnie ; and from that time the whispered conferences 
 with that person, which had seemed suspended during 
 their travels, were renewed. 
 
 One morning, three men were seen entering Paris on 
 foot through the Porte St. Denis. It was a fine day in 
 spring, and the old city looked gay with its loitering pas- 
 sengers and gaudy shops, and under that clear blue exhila- 
 rating sky, so peculiar to France. 
 
 Two of these men walked abreast, the other preceded 
 them a few steps. The one who went first thin, pale, and 
 threadbare yet seemed to suffer the least from fatigue ; 
 he walked with a long, swinging, noiseless stride, looking 
 to the right and left from the corners of his eyes. Of the 
 iwo who followed, one was handsome and finely formed, 
 but of swarthy complexion, young, yet with a look of care ; 
 the other, of sturdy frame, leaned on a thick stick, and his 
 eyes were gloomily cast down. 
 
 " Philip," said the last, " in coming back to Paris I feel 
 that I am coming back to my grave ! " 
 
 " Pooh ! yon were equally despondent in our excursions 
 elsewhere." 
 
 "Because I was always thinking of poor Fanny, and 
 because because Birnie was ever at me with his horrible 
 temptation? ' "
 
 238 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 " Birnie ! I loathe the man! Will you never get rid 
 of him?" 
 
 " I cannot ! Hush ! he will hear us ! How unlucky 
 we have been ! and now without a sous in our pockets 
 here the dunghill there the gaol ! We are in his power 
 at last I " 
 
 " His power ! what mean you ? " 
 
 " What ho ! Birnie ! " cried Gawtrey, unheeding Mor- 
 bon's question. " Let us halt and breakfast : I am tired." 
 
 " You forget ! we have no money till we make it ! " 
 returned Birnie, coldly. " Come to the serrurier'e he 
 will trust us ! " 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 M Gaunt Beggary and Scorn with many hell-hounds more." 
 
 THOMSON'S Castle of Indolenot. 
 
 ** The other was a fell, despiteful fiend." Ibid. 
 
 " Your happiness behold ! then straight a wand 
 He waved, an anti-magic power that hath 
 Truth from illusive falsehood to command." Ibid. 
 
 44 But what for us, the children of despair, 
 Brought to the brink of hell what hope remains ? 
 RESOLVE, RESOLVE ! " Ibid. 
 
 IT may be observed that there are certain years in which 
 in a civilised country some particular crime comes into 
 vogue. It flares its season, and. then burns out. Thus 
 at one time we have Burking at another, Swingism 
 now, suicide is in vogue now, poisoning tradespeople in 
 apple- dumplings now, little boys stab each other with 
 penknives now, common soldiers shoot at their sergeants. 
 Almost every year there is one crime peculiar to it ; a sort 
 of annual which overruns the country, but does not bloom 
 again. Unquestionably the Press has a great deal to do 
 with these epidemics. Let a newspaper once give an. 
 account of some out-of-the-way atrocity that has tho 
 charm of being novel, and certain depraved minds fasten 
 to it like leeches. They brood over and revolve it the 
 idea grows up, a horrid phantasmalian monomania ; * and 
 
 * An old Spanish writer, treating of the Inquisition, has some very 
 striking remarks on the kind of madness which, whenever some terrible 
 notoriety is given to a particular offence, leads persons of distempered fancy 
 to accuse themselves of it. He observes that when the cnieltiei of the
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 239 
 
 all of a sudden, In a hundred different places, the one seed 
 sown by the leaden types springs up into foul flowering. 
 But if the first reported aboriginal crime has been attended 
 with impunity, how much more does the imitative faculty 
 cling to it. Ill-judged mercy falls, not like dew, but like a 
 great heap of manure, on the rank deed. 
 
 Now it happened that at the time I write of, or rather a 
 little before, there had been detected and tried in Paris 
 a most redoubted coiner. He had carried on the business 
 with a dexterity that won admiration even for the offence ; 
 and, moreover, he had served previously with some distinc- 
 tion at Austerlitz and Marengo. The consequence was that 
 the public went with instead of against him, and his sen- 
 tence was transmuted to three years' imprisonment by the 
 government. For all governments in free countries aspire 
 rather to be popular than just. 
 
 No sooner was this case reported in the journals, and 
 even the gravest took notice of it which is not common 
 with the scholastic journals of France, no sooner did it 
 make a stir and a sensation, and cover the criminal with 
 celebrity, than the result became noticeable in a very large 
 issue of false money. 
 
 Coining in the year I now write of was the fashionable 
 crime. The police were roused into full vigour : it became 
 known to them that there was one gang in especial who 
 cultivated this art with singular success. Their coinage 
 was, indeed, so good, so superior to all their rivals, that it 
 was often unconsciously preferred by the public to the real 
 mintage. At the same time they carried on their calling 
 vith such sjcresy, that they utterly baffled discovery. 
 
 An immense reward was offered by the bureau to any 
 one who would betray his accomplices, and Monsieur 
 Favart was placed at the head of a commission of inquiry. 
 This person had himself been a, faux monnoyer, and was an 
 adept in the art, and it was he who had discovered tho 
 redoubted coiner who had brought the crime into such 
 notoriety ; Monsieur Favart was a man of the most vigi- 
 lant acuteness, the most indefatigable research, and of a 
 courage which, perhaps, is more common than we suppose. 
 It is a popular error to suppose that courage means courage 
 
 Inquisition against the imaginary crime of sorcery were the most barbarouj 
 this singular frenzy led numbers to accuse themselves of sorcery. 'I hi 
 publication and celeority of the crime be$at the desire of the crime.
 
 240 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 in everything. Put a hero on board ship at a five-barred 
 ^ate, and if he is not used to hunting he will turn pale 
 Put a fox-hunter on one of the Swiss chasms, over which 
 the mountaineer springs like a roe, and his knees will 
 knock under him. People are brave in the dangers to 
 which they accustom themselves, either in imagination or 
 practice. 
 
 Monsieur Favart then was a man of the most daring 
 bravery in facing rogues and cut-throats. He awed them 
 with his very eye ; yet he had been known to have been 
 kicked down stairs by his wife, and when he was drawn 
 into the grand army, he deserted the eve of his first battle. 
 Such, as moralists say, is the inconsistency of man ! 
 
 But Monsieur Favart was sworn to trace the coiners, 
 and he had never failed yet in any enterprise he undertook. 
 One day he presented himself to his chief with a counte- 
 nance so elated, that that penetrating functionary said to 
 him at once, 
 
 " You have heard of our messieurs ! " 
 
 " I have : I am to visit them to-night." 
 
 " Bravo ! How many men will you take ? M 
 
 "From twelve to twenty to leave without on guard. 
 But I must enter alone. Such is the condition : an accom- 
 plice who fears his own throat too much to be openly a 
 betrayer, will introduce me to the house, nay, to the very 
 room. By his description, it is necessary I should know 
 the exact locale in order to cut off retreat ; so to-morrow 
 night I shall surround the beehive and take the honey." 
 
 " They are desperate fellows, these coiners, always ; 
 better be cautious." 
 
 " You forget, I was one of them, and know the 
 masonry." 
 
 About the same time this conversation was going on at 
 the bureau of' the police, in another part of the town 
 Morton and Gawtrey were seated alone. It is some weeks 
 since they entered Paris, and spring has mellowed into 
 summer. The house in which they lodged was in the 
 lordly quartier of the Faubourg St. Germain; the neigh- 
 bouring streets were venerable with the ancient edifices of 
 a fallen noblesse; but their tenement was in a narrow, 
 dingy lane, and the building itself seemed beggarly and 
 ruinous. The apartment was in an attic on the sixth 
 story, and the window, p^ced at the back of the -lane,
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING 241 
 
 looked upon another row of houses of a better description, 
 that communicated with one of the great streets of the 
 yuartier. The space between their abrde and their oppo- 
 site neighbours was so narrow that tht -am could scarcely 
 pierce between. In the height of sumivcr might be found 
 there a perpetual shade. 
 
 The pair were seated by the window. Gawtrey, well 
 dressed, smooth-shaven, as in his palmy time ; Morton, in 
 the same garments with which he had entered Paris, 
 weather-stained and ragged. Looking towards the case- 
 ments of the attic in the opposite house, Gawtrey said, 
 mutteringly, " I wonder where Birnie has been, and why 
 he is not returned: I grow suspicious of that man." 
 
 " Suspicious of what ? " asked Morton. " Of his honesty ? 
 Would he rob you ? " 
 
 " Rob me ! Humph perhaps ! But you see I am in 
 Paris, in spite of the hints of the police ; he may denounce 
 me." 
 
 " Why then suffer him to lodge away from you ?" 
 
 "Why ? because, by having separate houses, there are 
 two channels of escape. A dark night, and a ladder 
 thrown across from window to window, ho is with us, or 
 we with him." 
 
 " But wherefore such precautions ? You blind you 
 deceive me ; what have you done ? what is your employ- 
 ment now ? You are mute. Hark you, Gawtrey ! I have 
 pinned my fate to you I am fallen from hope itself. At 
 times it almost makes me mad to look back and yet you 
 do not trust me. Since your return to Paris you are 
 absent whole nights often days ; you are moody and 
 thoughtful yet, whatever your business, it seems to bring 
 you ample returns." 
 
 " You think that," said Gawtrey, mildly, and with a sort 
 of pity in his voice, " yet you refuse to take even the money 
 to change those rags." 
 
 " Because I know not how the money was gained. Ah ! 
 Gawtrey; I am not too proud for charity, but I am 
 for " 
 
 He checked the word uppermost in his thoughts, and 
 resumed, 
 
 "Yes; your occupations seem lucrative. It was but 
 yesterday Birnie gave me fifty napoleons, for which he 
 fttd you wifll*** change in silver."
 
 NIGHT AND MOKNINQ. 
 
 " Did he ? The ra,s Well ! and you got change 
 
 for them?" 
 
 " I know not why, but I refused." 
 
 " That was right, Philip. Do nothing that man tells you." 
 
 " Will you then trust me ? You are engaged in some 
 horrible traffic ! it may be blood ! I am no longer a boy 
 I have a will of my own I will not be silently and blinrHy 
 entrapped to perdition. If I march thither, it shall bu 
 with my own consent. Trust me, and this day, or we part 
 to-morrow." 
 
 " Be ruled. Some secrets it is better not to know." 
 
 "It matters not! I have come to my decision: I ask 
 yours." 
 
 Gawtrey paused for some moments in deep thought. 
 At last, he lifted his eyes to Philip, and replied, 
 
 "Well, then, if it must be. Sooner or later it must have 
 been so, and I want a confidant. You are bold, and will 
 not shrink. You desire to know my occupation will you 
 witness it to-night ? " 
 
 " I am prepared : to-night ! " 
 
 Here a step was heard on the stairs a knock at the 
 door and Birnie entered. 
 
 He drew aside Gawtrey, and whispered him, as usual, 
 for some moments. 
 
 Gawtrey nodded his head, and then said aloud, 
 
 " To-morrow we shall talk without reserve before my 
 young friend. To-night he joins us." 
 
 " To-night ! very well ! " said Birnie, with his cold 
 sneer. " He must take the oath ; and you, with your life, 
 will be responsible for his honesty ? " 
 
 "Ay! it is the rule." 
 
 " Good-bye, then, till we meet," said Birnie, and withdrew. 
 
 " I wonder," said Gawtrey, musingly and between hia 
 (rinded teeth, " whether I shall ever have a good fair shot 
 yt that fellow ? Ho ! ho ! " and his laugh shook the walls. 
 
 Morton looked hard at Gawtrey, as the latter now sunk 
 down in his chair, and gazed with a vacant stare, thai 
 seemed almost to partake of imbecility, upon the opposite 
 wall. The careless, reckless, jovial expression, which 
 usually characterised the features of the man, had for some 
 weeks given place to a restless, anxious, and at times fero- 
 cious aspect ; like the beast that first finds a sport while 
 the hounds are yet afar, and his limbs are yet strong, in
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 24b 
 
 the chase which marks him for his victim, but grows des- 
 perate with rage and fear as the day nears its close, and 
 the death-dogs pant hard upon his track : but at that mo^ 
 ment, the strong features, with their gnarled muscle and 
 iron sinews, seemed to have lost every sign both of passion 
 and the will, and to be locked in a stolid and dull repose. 
 At last he looked up at Morton, and said, with a smile like 
 that of an old man in his dotage, 
 
 " I'm thinking that my life has been one mistake ? I 
 had talents you would not fancy it but once I was 
 neither a fool nor a villain ! Odd, isn't it ? Just reach 
 me the brandy." 
 
 But Morton, with a slight shudder, turned and left the 
 room. 
 
 He walked on mechanically, and gained, at last, the 
 superb Quai that borders the Seine : there, the passengers 
 became more frequent; gay equipages rolled along; the 
 white and lofty mansions looked fair and stately in the 
 clear blue sky of early summer; beside him flowed the 
 sparkling river, animated with " x the painted baths that 
 floated on its surface : earth was merry and heaven serene : 
 his heart was dark through all : Night within Morning 
 beautiful without ! At last he paused by that bridge, 
 stately with the statues of those whom the caprice of timo 
 honours with a name ; for though Zeus and his gods be 
 overthrown, while earth exists will live the worship of 
 Dead Men ; the bridge by which you pass from the royal 
 Tuileries, or the luxurious streets beyond the Rue de 
 Rivoli, to the Senate of the emancipated People, and the 
 gloomy and desolate grandeur of the Faubourg St. Ger- 
 main, in whose venerable haunts the impoverished de- 
 scendants of the old feudal tyrants, whom the birth of the 
 Senate overthrew, yet congregate ; the ghosts of departed 
 powers proud of the shadows of great names. As the 
 English outcast paused midway on the bridge, and for the 
 first time lifting his head from his bosom, gazed around, 
 there broke at once on his remembrance that terrible and 
 fatal evening, when, hopeless, friendless, desperate, he had 
 begged for charity of his uncle's hireling, with all the 
 feelings that then (so imperfectly and lightly touched on 
 in his brief narrative to Grawtrey) had raged and blackened 
 in his breast, urging to the resolution he had adopted, 
 casting him on the omin*us friendship of the man whose
 
 244 NIGHT AND MORNINO. 
 
 guidance he even then had suspected and distrusted. The 
 pot in either city had had a certain similitude and corre- 
 spondence each with each : at the first, he had consummated 
 his despair of human destinies he had dared to forget 
 the Providence of God he had arrogated his fate to him- 
 self : by the first bridge he had taken his resolve ; by the 
 last he stood in awe at the result ! stood no less poor no 
 less abject equally in rags and squalor ; but was his crest 
 as haughty and his eye as fearless, for was his conscience 
 as free and his honour as unstained ? Those arches of 
 stone those rivers that rolled between, seemed to him 
 then to take a more mystic and typical sense than belongs 
 to the outer world they were the bridges to the Rivers of 
 his Life. Plunged in thoughts so confused and dim that 
 he could scarcely distinguish, through the chaos, the one 
 streak of light which, perhaps, heralded the reconstruction 
 or regeneration of the elements of his soul ; two passengers 
 halted, also, by his side. 
 
 " 5Tou will be late for the debate," said one of them to 
 the other. " Why do you stop ?" 
 
 " My friend," said the other, " I never pass this spot 
 without recalling the time when I stood here without a 
 sou, or, as I thought, a chance of one, and impiously medi- 
 tated self-destruction." 
 
 " You ! now so rich- so fortunate in repute and sta- 
 tion ! is it possible ? How was it ? A lucky chance ? 
 a sudden legacy ? " 
 
 " No : Time, Faith, and Energy the three Friends God 
 has given to the Poor ! " 
 
 The men moved on ; but Morton, who had turned his 
 face towards them, fancied that the last speaker fixed on 
 him his bright, cheerful eye, with a meaning look; and 
 when the man was gone, he repeated those words, and 
 hailed them in his heart of hearts as an augury from 
 above. 
 
 Quickly, then, and as if by magic, the former confusion 
 of his mind seemed to settle into distinct shapes of courage 
 and resolve. "Yes," he muttered; "I will keep this 
 night's appointment I will learn the secret of these men's 
 life. In my inexperience and destitution, I have suffered 
 myself to be led hitherto into a partnership, if not with 
 vice and crime, at least with subterfuge and trick. I 
 awake from my reckless boyhood my unworthy palter-
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 245 
 
 ings with, my better self. If Gawtrey be as I diead to find 
 him if he be linked in some guilty and hateful traffic 
 
 with that loathsome accomplice I will ." He paused, 
 
 for his heart whispered, " Well, and even so, the guilty 
 man clothed and fed thee /" "I will," resumed his 
 thought, in answer to his heart " I will go on my knees 
 to him to fly while there is yet time, to work beg starve 
 perish even rather than lose the right to look man in 
 the face without a blush, and kneel to his God without 
 remorse ! " 
 
 And as he thus ended, he felt suddenly as if he himself 
 were restored to the perception and the joy of the Nature 
 and the World around him ; the NIGHT had vanished from 
 his soul he inhaled the balm and freshness of the air he 
 comprehended the delight which the liberal June was scat- 
 tering over the earth he looked above, and his eyes were 
 suffused with pleasure, at the smile of the soft blue skies. 
 The MORNING became, as it were, a part of his own being ; 
 and he felt that as the world in spite of the storms is fair, 
 so in spite of evil God is good. He walked on he passed 
 the bridge, but his step was no more the same, he forgot 
 his rags. Why should he be ashamed ? And thus, in the 
 very flush of this new and strange elation and elasticity of 
 spirit, he came unawares upon a group of young men, 
 lounging before the porch of one of the chief hotels in that 
 splendid Rue de Rivoli, wherein Wealth and the English 
 have made their homes. A groom, mounted, was leading 
 another horse up and down the road, and the young men 
 were making their comments of approbation upon both the 
 horses, especially the one led, which was, indeed, of un- 
 common beauty and great value. Even Morton, in whom 
 the boyish passion of his earlier life yet existed, paused to 
 turn his experienced and admiring eye upon the stately 
 shape and pace of the noble animal, and as lie did so, a 
 name too well remembered came upon his ear. 
 
 " Certainly, Arthur Beaufort is the most enviable fellow 
 in Europe ! " 
 
 " Why, yes," said another of the young men ; " he has 
 plenty of money is good-looking, devilish good-aiaturod, 
 clever, and spends like a prince." 
 
 " Has the best horses ! " 
 
 " The best luck at roulette 1 " 
 
 " The prettiest girls in love with him 1 "
 
 246 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 " And no one enjoys life more. Ah ! here he is ! " 
 The group parted as a light, graceful figure came out ot 
 PV jeweller's shop that adjoined the hotel, and halted gaily 
 amongst the loungers. Morton's first impulse was to hurry 
 from the spot ; his second impulse arrested his step, and, a 
 little apart, and half-hid beneath one of the arches of the 
 colonnade which adorns the street, the Outcast gazed upon 
 the Heir. There was no comparison in the natural per- 
 sonal advantages of the two young men ; for Philip Morton, 
 despite all the hardships of his rough career, had now 
 grown up and ripened into a rare perfection of form and 
 feature. His broad chest, his erect hair, his lithe and 
 symmetrical length of limb, united, happily, the attributes 
 of activity and strength ; and though there was no delicacy 
 of youthful bloom upon his dark cheek, and though lines 
 which should have come later marred its smoothness with 
 the signs of care and thought, yet an expression of intelli- 
 gence and daring, equally beyond his years, and the evi- 
 dence of hardy, abstemious, vigorous health, served to 
 show to the full advantage the outline of features which, 
 noble and regular, though stern and masculine, the artist 
 might have borrowed for his ideal of a young Spartan 
 arming for his first battle. Arthur, slight to feebleness, 
 and with the paleness, partly of constitution, partly of gay 
 excess, on his fair and clear complexion, had features far 
 less symmetrical and impressive than his cousin : but what 
 then ? All that are bestowed by elegance of dress, the 
 refinements of luxurious habit, the nameless grace that 
 comes from a mind and a manner polished the one by 
 literary culture, the other by social intercourse, invested 
 the person of the heir with a fascination that rude Nature 
 alone ever fails to give. And about him there was a gaiety, 
 an airiness of spirit, an atmosphere of enjoyment, which 
 bespoke one who is in love with life. 
 
 "Why, this is lucky ! I'm so glad to see you all ! " said 
 Arthur Beaufort, with that silver-ringing tone, and charm- 
 ing smile, which are to the happy spring of man what its 
 music and its sunshine are to the spring of earth. " You 
 must dine with me at Verey's. I want something to rouse 
 me to-day ; for 1 did not get home from the Salon * till 
 four this morning." 
 
 * The most celebrated gaming-house in Paris in the day before gaming, 
 houses were suppressed by the well-directed energy of the government.
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 247 
 
 " Bat yon won ? H 
 
 " Yes, Marsdeu. Hang it ! I always win : I who conld 
 so well afford to lose : I'm quite ashamed of my luck ! " 
 
 "It is easy to spend what one wins," observed Mr. Mars- 
 den, seiitentiously ; " and I see you have been at the jewel- 
 ler's ! A present for Cecile ? Well, don't blush, my dear 
 fellow. What is life without women ? " 
 
 " And wine ? " said a second. 
 
 " And play ? " said a third. 
 
 " And wealth ? " said a fourth. 
 
 " And you enjoy them all ! Happy fellow ! " said a fifth. 
 
 The Outcast pulled his hat over his brows, and walked 
 away. 
 
 " This dear Paris ! " said Beaufort, as his eye carelessly 
 and unconsciously followed the dark form retreating 
 through the arches ; " this dear Paris ! I must make the 
 most of it while I stay ! I have only been here a few weeks, 
 and next week I must go." 
 
 " Pooh ! your health is better : you don't look like tho 
 same man." 
 
 " You think so really ? Still I don't know : the doctors 
 say that I must either go to the German waters the seasop. 
 is begun- 
 
 " Or what?" 
 
 " Live less with such pleasant companions, my dear fel- 
 low ! But as you say, what is life without - " 
 
 " Women ! " 
 
 "Wine!" 
 
 " Play ! " 
 
 "Wealth!" 
 
 "Ha! ha! 'Throw physic to the dogs: 111 none of 
 it!'" 
 
 And Arthur leaped lightly on his saddle, and as he rode 
 gaily on, humming the favourite air of the last opera, the 
 hoofs of his horse splashed the mud over a foot-passenger 
 halting at the crossing. Morton checked the fiery excla- 
 mation rising to his lips ; and gazing after the brilliant 
 form that hurried on towards the Champs Elysees; his 
 eye caught the statues on the bridge, and a voice, as of a 
 cheering angel, whispered again to his heart, " TIME, FAITH, 
 ENERGY ! " 
 
 The expression of his countenance grew calm at once, 
 and as be continued his rambles it was with a mind that,
 
 248 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 casting off the burdens of the past, looked serenely and 
 steadily on the obstacles and hardships of the future. We 
 have seen that a scruple of conscience, or of pride, not 
 without its nobleness, had made him refuse the impor- 
 tunities of Gawtrey for less sordid raiment ; the same feel- 
 ing made it his custom to avoid sharing the luxurious and 
 dainty food with which Gawtrey was wont to regale him- 
 self. For that strange man, whose wonderful felicity of 
 temperament and constitution rendered him, in all circum- 
 stances, keenly alive to the hearty and animal enjoyments 
 of life, would still emerge, as the day declined, from their 
 wretch; d apartment, and, trusting to his disguises, in which 
 indeed he possessed a masterly art, repair to one of the 
 better description of restaurants, and feast away his cares 
 for the moment. William Gawtrey would not have cared 
 three straws for the curse of Damocles. The sword over 
 his head would never have spoiled his appetite ! He had 
 lately, too, taken to drinking much more deeply than he 
 had been used to do the fine intellect of the man was 
 growing thickened and dulled ; and this was a spectacle 
 that Morton could not bear to contemplate. Yet so great 
 was Gawtrey 's vigour of health, that, after draining wine 
 and spirits enough to have despatched a company of fox- 
 hunters, and after betraying, sometimes in uproarious glee, 
 oometimes in maudlin self-bewailings, that he himself was 
 not quite invulnerable to the thyrsus of the god, he would 
 on any call on his energies, or especially before depart- 
 ing on those mysterious expeditions which kept him from 
 home half, and sometimes all, the night plunge his head 
 into cold water drink as much of the lymph as a groom 
 would have shuddered to bestow on a horse close his 
 eyes in a doze for half an hour, and wake, cool, sober, and 
 collected, as if he had lived according to the precepts of 
 Socrates or Cornaro ! 
 
 But to return to Morton. It was his habit to avoid as 
 much as possible sharing the good cheer of his companion ; 
 and now, as he entered the Champs Elysees, he saw a little 
 family, consisting of a young mechanic, his wife, and two 
 children, who, with that love of harmless recreation which 
 yet characterises the French, had taken advantage of a 
 holiday in the craft, and were enjoying their simple meal 
 under the shadow of the trees. Whether in hunger or in 
 envy, Morton paused and contemplated the happy group
 
 N10HT AND MORNING. 245 
 
 Along the road rolled the equipages and trampled the 
 steeds of those to whom all life is a holiday. There, was 
 Pleasure under those trees was Happiness. One of the 
 children, a little boy of about six years old, observing the 
 attitude and gaze of the pausing wayfarer, ran to him, and 
 holding up a fragment of a coarse kind of cake, said to 
 him winningly, "Take it I have had enough!" The 
 child reminded Morton of his brother his heart melted 
 within Him he lifted the young Samaritan in his arms, 
 and, as he kissed him, wept. 
 
 The mother observed and rose also. She laid her hand 
 on his own "Poor boy! why do you weep? can we 
 relieve you ? " 
 
 Now that bright gleam of human nature, suddenly 
 darting across the sombre recollections and associations of 
 his past life, seemed to Morton, as if it came from Heaven, 
 in approval and in blessing of his attempt at reconciliation 
 to his fate. 
 
 " I thank you," said he, placing the child on the ground, 
 and passing his hand over his eyes, " I thank you yes ! 
 Let me sit down amongst you." And he sat down, the 
 child by his side, and partook of their fare, and was merry 
 with them, the proud Philp ! had he not begun to dis- 
 cover the " precious jewel " in the " ugly and venomous " 
 Adversity ? 
 
 The mechanic, though a gay fellow on the whole, was 
 not without some of that discontent of his station which 
 is common with his class ; he vented it, however, not in 
 murmurs, but in jests. He was satirical on the carriages 
 and the horsemen that passed ; and lolling on the grass, 
 ridiculed his betters at his ease. 
 
 "Hush!" said his wife, suddenly ; " here comes Madame 
 de Merville;" and rising as she spoke, she made a re- 
 spectful inclination of her head towards an open carriage 
 that was passing very slowly towards the town. 
 
 " Madame de Merville ! " repeated the husband, rising 
 also, and lifting his cap from his head. " Ah ! I have 
 nothing to say against her /" 
 
 Morton looked instinctively towards the carriage, and 
 saw a fair countenance turned graciously to answer the 
 silent salutations of the mechanic and his wife a coun- 
 tenance that had long haunted his dreams, though of late 
 it had faded away beneath harsher thoughts the coun-
 
 *50 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 cenance of the stranger whom he had seen at the bureau of 
 Grawtrey, when that worthy personage had borne a more 
 mellifluous name. He started and changed colour: the 
 lady herself now seemed suddenly to recognise him ; for 
 their eyes met, and she bent forward eagerly. She pulled 
 the check-string the carriage halted she beckoned to 
 the mechanic's wife, who went up to the road-side. 
 
 " I worked once for that lady," said the man, with a 
 tone of feeling ; " and when my wife fell ill last winter 
 she paid the doctors. Ah, she is an angel of charity ani 
 kindness ! " 
 
 Morton scarcely heard this eulogium, for he observed, by 
 something eager and inquisitive in the face of Madame de 
 Merville, and by the sudden manner in which the me- 
 chanic's helpmate turned her head to the spot on which he 
 stood, that he was the object of their conversation. Once 
 more he became suddenly aware of his ragged dress, and 
 with a natural shame a fear that charity might be ex- 
 tended to him from her he muttered an abrupt farewell 
 to the operative, and, without another glance at the car- 
 riage, walked away. 
 
 Before he had got many paces, the wife however came 
 up to him, breathless. " Madame de Merville would speak 
 to you, sir ! " she said, with more respect than she had 
 hitherto thrown into her manner. Philip paused an in- 
 stant, and again strode on. 
 
 "It must be some mistake," he said, hurriedly: " I 
 have no right to expect such an honour." 
 
 He struck across the road, gained the opposite side, and 
 had vanished from Madame de Merville' s eyes, before the 
 woman regained the carriage. But still that calm, pale, 
 and somewhat melancholy face, presented itself before 
 him ; and as he walked again through the town, sweet and 
 gentle fancies crowded confusedly on his heart. On that 
 soft summer day, memorable for so many silent but mighty 
 events in that inner life which prepares the catastrophes of 
 the outer one ; as in the region, of which Virgil has sung, 
 the images of men to be born hereafter repose or glide 
 on that soft summer day, he felt he had reached the age 
 when Youth begins to clothe in some human shape its first 
 vague ideal of desire and love. 
 
 In such thoughts, and still wandering, the day wore 
 away, till be found himself in one of the lanes that sur
 
 N10HT AND MORNIKtf. 251 
 
 ronnd that glittering Microcosm of the vices, the frivolities, 
 the hollow show, and the real beggary of the gay City the 
 gardens and the galleries of the Palais Royal. Surprised 
 at the lateness of the hour, it was then on the stroke of 
 seven, he was abont to return homewards, when the loud 
 voice of Gawtrey sounded behind, and that personage, 
 tapping him on the back, said, 
 
 " Hollo, my young friend, well met ! This will be a 
 night of trial to you. Empty stomachs produce weak 
 nerves. Come along ! yon must dine with me. A good 
 dinner and a bottle of old wine come ! nonsense, I say 
 you shall come ! Vive la joie /" 
 
 While speaking, he had linked his arm in Morton's, and 
 hurried him on several paces in spite of his struggles ; but 
 just as the words Vive la joie left his lips, he stood still and 
 mute, as if a thunder-bolt had fallen at his feet; and 
 Morton felt that heavy arm shiver and tremble like a leaf. 
 He looked up, and just at the entrance of that part of the 
 Palais Royal in which are situated the restaurants of Verey 
 and Vefour, he saw two men standing but a few paces 
 before them, and gazing full on Gawtrey and him- 
 self. 
 
 " It is my evil genius," muttered Gawtrey, grinding his 
 teeth. 
 
 " And mine !" said Morton. 
 
 The younger of the two men thus apostrophised made a 
 step towards Philip, when his companion drew him back 
 
 and whispered, " What are you about Do you know 
 
 that young man ?" 
 
 " He is my cousin ; Philip Beaufort's natural son ! " 
 
 "Is he ? then discard him for ever. He is with the 
 most dangerous knave in Europe ! " 
 
 As Lord Lilburne for it was he thus whispered his 
 nephew, Gawtrey strode up to him ; and, glaring full in 
 his face, said in a deep and hollow tone, " There is a hell, 
 my lord, I go to drink to our meeting ! " Thus saying, 
 he took off his hat with a ceremonious mockery, and 
 disappeared within the adjoining restaurant, kept by 
 Vefour. 
 
 " A hell /" said Lilburne, with hia frigid smile ; " the 
 rogue's head runs upon gambling-houses ! " 
 
 " And I have suffered Philip again to escape me," said 
 Arthur, in self-reproach : for while Gawtrey had. addressed
 
 252 NTGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 Lord Lilburne, Morton had plunged back amidst the laby- 
 rinth of alleys. " How have I kept my oath ? " 
 
 " Gome ! your guests must have arrived by this time. 
 As for that wretched young man, depend upon it that he 
 is corrupted body and soul." 
 
 " But he is my own cousin." 
 
 "Pooh! there is no relationship in natural children: 
 besides, he will find yon out fast enough. Ragged claim- 
 ants are not long too proud to beg." 
 
 " Yon speak in earnest ?" said Arthur, irresolutely. 
 
 " Ay ! trust my experience of the world Allans I " 
 
 And in a cabinet of the very restaurant, adjoining that 
 in which the solitary Gawtrey gorged his conscience, Lil- 
 burne, Arthur, and their gay friends, soon forgetful of all 
 but the roses of the moment, bathed their airy spirits in 
 the dews of the mirthful wine. Oh, extremes of life ! 
 Oh, Night ! Oh, Morning ! 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 " Meantime a moving scene was open laid, 
 That lazar house." 
 
 THOMSON. Castle of Indolence. 
 
 IT was near midnight. At the mouth of the lane in 
 which Gawtrey resided there stood four men. Not far 
 distant, in the broad street at angles with the lane, were 
 heard the wheels of carriages and the sound of music. A 
 lady, fair in form, tender of heart, stainless in repute, was 
 receiving her friends ! 
 
 " Monsieur Favart," said one of the men to the smallest 
 of the four ; " you understand the conditions 20,000 
 francs and a free pardon ? " 
 
 " Nothing more reasonable it is understood. Still 1 
 confess that I should like to have my men close at hand. 
 I am not given to fear ; but this is a dangerous experi- 
 ment." 
 
 " You knew the danger beforehand and subscribed to 
 it ; you must enter alone with me, or not at all. Mark 
 you, the men are sworn to murder him who betrays them, 
 Not for twenty times 20,000 francs would I have them 
 know me as the informer. My life were not worth a day's
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 25S 
 
 purchase. Now, if you feel secure in your disguise, all is 
 safe. You will have seen them at their work you will 
 recognise their persons you can depose against them at 
 the trial I shall have time to quit France." 
 
 " Well, well ! as you please." 
 
 " Mind, you must wait in the vault with them till they 
 separate. We have so planted your men that whatever 
 street each of the gang takes in going home, he can be 
 seized quietly and at once. The bravest and craftiest of 
 all, who, though he has but just joined, is already their 
 captain ; him, the man I told you of, who lives in the house, 
 you must take after his return, in his bed. It is the sixth 
 story to the right, remember : here is the key to his door. 
 He is a giant in strength, and will never be taken alive if 
 tip and armed." 
 
 " Ah, I comprehend ! Gilbert ! " (and Favart turned to 
 one of his companions who had not yet spoken) "take 
 three men besides yourself, according to the directions 1 
 gave you, the porter will admit you, that's arranged. 
 Make no noise. If I don't return by four o'clock, don't 
 wait for me, but proceed at once. Look well to your 
 primings. Take him alive, if possible at the worst, dead. 
 And now mon ami lead on ! " 
 
 The traitor nodded, and walked slowly down the street. 
 Favart, pausing, whispered hastily to the man whom he 
 had called Gilbert, 
 
 " Follow me close get to the door of the cellar place 
 eight men within hearing of my whistle recollect the 
 picklocks, the axes. If you hear the whistle, break in ; if 
 not, I'm safe, and the first orders to seize the captain in his 
 room stand good." 
 
 So saying, Favart strode after his guide. The door of a 
 large, but illfavoured-looking house, stood ajar they en- 
 tered passed unmolested through a court-yard descended 
 some stairs ; the guide unlocked the door of a cellar, and 
 took a dark lantern from under his cloak. As he drew up 
 the slide, the dim light gleamed on barrels and wine-casks, 
 which appeared to fill up the space. Boiling aside one of 
 these, the guide lifted a trap-door, and lowered his lantern. 
 " Enter," baid he ; and the two men disappeared. 
 
 * * * * * 
 
 * * * 
 
 * * * *
 
 254 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 The coiners were at their work. A man, seated on a 
 stool before a desk, was entering accounts in a large book. 
 That man was William Grawtrey. While, Avith the rapid 
 precision of honest mechanics, the machinery of the Dark 
 Trade, went on in its several departments. Apart alone 
 at the foot of a long table, sat Philip Morton. The truth 
 had exceeded his darkest suspicions. He had consented to 
 take the oath not to divulge what was to be given to his 
 survey ; and, when led into that vault, the bandage was 
 taken from his eyes, it was some minutes before he could 
 fully comprehend the desperate and criminal occupations 
 of the wild forms amidst which towered the burly stature 
 of his benefactor. As the truth slowly grew upon him, he 
 shrunk from the side of Grawtrey ; but, deep compassion 
 for his friend's degradation swallowing up the horror of 
 the trade, he flung himself on one of the rude seats, and 
 felt that the bond between them was indeed broken, and 
 that the next morning he should be again alone in the 
 world. Still, as the obscene jests, the fearful oaths, that 
 from time to time rang through the vault, came on his eav, 
 he cast his haughty eye in such disdain over the groups, 
 that Gawtrey, observing him, trembled for his safety : 
 and nothing but Philip's sense of his own impotence, and 
 the brave, not timorous, desire not to perish by such hands, 
 kept silent the fiery denunciations of a nature still proud 
 and honest, that quivered on his lips. All present were 
 armed with pistols and cutlasses except Morton, who suf- 
 fered the weapons presented to him to lie unheeded on the 
 table. 
 
 "Courage, ines amis!" said Grawtrey, closing his book, 
 " Courage ! a few months more, and we shall have made 
 enough to retire upon, and enjoy ourselves for the rest of 
 the days. Where is Birnie ? " 
 
 " Did he not tell you ? " said one of the artisans, looking 
 up. "He has found out the cleverest hand in France, 
 the very fellow who helped Bouchard in all his five-franc 
 pieces. He has promised to bring him to-night." 
 
 "Ay, I remember," returned Gawtrey, "he told me this 
 morning, he is a famous decoy ! " 
 
 "I think so, indeed ! " quoth a coiner ; " for he caught 
 you, the best head to our hands that ever les industrielf 
 were blessed with sacreficlitre I " 
 
 "Flatterer!" said Gawtrey, coming from the desk t
 
 NIGHT AND MOllNING. 255 
 
 the table, and pouring out wine from one of the bottles into 
 a huge flagon " To your healths ! " 
 
 Hero the door slided back, and Birnie glided in. 
 
 "Where- is your booty, mon brave?" said Gawtrey. 
 " We only coin money ; you coin men, stamp with your 
 own seal, and send them current to the devil ! " 
 
 The coiners, who liked Birnie's ability (for the ci'devant 
 engraver was of admirable skill in their craft), bufc who 
 hated his joyless manners, laughed at this taunt, which 
 Birnie did not seem to heed, except by a malignant gleam 
 of his dead eye. 
 
 " If you mean the celebrated coiner, Jacques Giraumont, 
 he waits without. You know our rules. I cannot admit 
 him without leave." 
 
 "Bon! we give it, eh, messieurs?" said Gawtrey. 
 
 " Ay ay," cried several voices. " He knows the oath, 
 and will hear the penalty." 
 
 " Yes, he knows the oath," replied Birnie, and glided 
 back. 
 
 In a moment more he returned with a small man in a 
 mechanic's blouse. The new-comer wore the republican 
 beard and moustache, of a sandy grey his hair was the 
 same colour ; and a black patch over one eye increased the 
 ill-favoured appearance of his features. 
 
 " Diable ! Monsieur Giraumont ! but you are more 
 like Vulcan than Adonis ! " said Gawtrey. 
 
 " I don't know anything about Vulcan, but I know how 
 to make five-franc pieces," said Monsieur Giraumont, 
 doggedly. 
 
 "Are you poor?" 
 
 " As a church mouse ! The only thing belonging to a 
 church, since the Bourbons came back, that is poor ! " 
 
 At this sally, the coiners, who had gathered round the 
 table, uttered the shout with which, in all circumstance^ 
 Frenchmen receive a bon mot. 
 
 " Humph ! " said Gawtrey. " Who responds, with his 
 own life, for your fidelity ?" 
 
 " I," said Birnie. 
 
 " Administer the oath to him." 
 
 Suddenly four men advanced, seized the visitor, and 
 bore him from the vault into another one within. After a 
 few moments they returned. 
 
 " He has taken the oath and heard the penalty."
 
 B56 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 " Death to yourself, your wife, your son, and your grand- 
 Bon, if you betray us ! " 
 
 " I nave neither son nor grandson ; as for my wife, 
 Monsieur le Capitaine, you offer a bribe instead of a threat 
 when you talk of her death ! " 
 
 " Sacre ! but you will be an addition to our circle, mon 
 brave ! " said Gawtrey, laughing ; while again the grim 
 circle shouted applause. 
 
 " But I suppose you care for your own life." 
 
 " Otherwise I should have preferred starving to coming 
 here," answered the laconic neophyte. 
 
 " I have done with you. Your health ! " 
 
 On this the coiners gathered round Monsieur Giraumont, 
 shook him by the hand, and commenced many question^ 
 with a view to ascertain his skill. 
 
 " Show me your coinage first ; I see you use both the 
 die and the furnace. Hem ! this piece is not bad you 
 have struck it from an iron die ? right it makes the im- 
 pression sharper than plaster of Paris. But you take the 
 poorest and the most dangerous part of the trade in taking 
 the Home Market. I can put you in a way to make ten times 
 as much and with safety ! Look at this !" and Monsieur 
 Giraumont took a forged Spanish dollar from his pocket, 
 so skilfully manufactured that the connoisseurs were lost in 
 admiration "you may pass thousands of these all over 
 Europe, except France, and who is ever to detect you ? 
 5ut it will require better machinery than you have here." 
 
 Thus conversing, Monsieur Giraumont did not perceive 
 that Mr. Gawtrey had been examining him very curiously 
 and minutely. But Birnie had noted their chief's atten- 
 tion, and once attempted to join his new ally, when Gawtrey 
 laid his hand on his shoulder, and stopped him. 
 
 " Do not speak to your friend till I bid you, or " he 
 
 stopped short, and touched his pistols. 
 
 Birnie grew a shade more pale, but replied with his 
 usual sneer, 
 
 " Suspicious ! well, so much the better ! " and seating 
 himself carelessly at the table, lighted his pipe. 
 
 " And now, Monsieur Giraumont," said Gawtrey, as he 
 took the head of the table, " come to my right hand. A half 
 holiday in your honour. Clear these infernal instruments *, 
 and more- wine, tries amis I " 
 
 The party arranged themselves at the table. Among
 
 NIGHT AND MOEN7NO. 257 
 
 the desperate there is almost invariably a tendency to mirth. 
 A solitary ruffian, indeed is moody, but a gang of ruffians 
 are jovial. The coiners talked and laughed loud. Mr. 
 Birnie, from his dogged silence, seemed apart from the rest, 
 though in the centre. For in a noisy circle, a silent tongue 
 builds a wall round its owner. But that respectable per- 
 sonage kept his furtive watch upon Giraumont and Gawtrey, 
 who appeared talking together, very amicably. The younger 
 novice of that night, equally silent, seated towards the bottom 
 of the table, was not less watchful than Birnie. An uneasy, 
 undefinable foreboding had come over him since the en- 
 trance of Monsieur Giraumont ; this had been increased by 
 the manner of Mr. Grawtrey. His faculty of observation, 
 which was very acute, had detected something false in the 
 chief's blandness to their guest something dangerous in 
 the glittering eye that Gawtrey ever, as he spoke to 
 Giraumont, bent on that person's lips as he listened to his 
 reply. For, whenever William Grawtrey suspected a man, 
 he watched not his eyes but his lips. 
 
 Waked from his scornful reverie, a strange spell chained 
 Morton's attention to the chief and the guest, and he bent 
 forward, with parted mouth and straining ear, to catch 
 their conversation. 
 
 " It seems to me a little strange," said Mr. Gawtrey, 
 raising his voice so as to be heard by the party, "that a 
 coiner so dexterous as Monsieur Giraumont, should not be 
 known to any of us except our friend Birnie." 
 
 "Not at all," replied Giraumont ; " I worked only with 
 Bouchard and two others, since sent to the galleys. W<? 
 weie but a small fraternity everything has its commence- 
 ment." 
 
 " G'est juste : buvez done, cher ami ! " * 
 Tho wine circulated : Gawtrey began again, 
 "You have had a bad accident, seemingly, Monsieur 
 Giraumont, how did you lose your eye ? " 
 
 "In a scuffle with the gens d'armes the night Bouchard 
 was taken and I escaped : such misfortunes are on the 
 cards." 
 
 " (Test juste : buvez done, Monsieur Giraumont ! " f 
 Again there was a pause, and again Gawtrey's deep 
 roice was heard. 
 
 That's right : drink, then, dear friend. 
 
 t That'i right : drink, then, Monsieur Giraumoat
 
 258 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 " You wear a wig, I think, Monsieur Giraumoiit ? to 
 judge by your eyelashes your own hair has boon a hand. 
 somer colour." 
 
 " We seek disguise not beauty, my host ! and the police 
 have sharp eyes." 
 
 "C'est juste, buvez done vieux Renard ! when did we 
 two meet last ? " * 
 
 "Never, that I know of ! " 
 
 Ce n'est pas vrai ! biivez done, MONSIEUR 
 
 At the sound of that name the company started in dis- 
 may and confusion, and the police officer, forgetting himself 
 for the moment, sprung from his seat, and put his right 
 hand into his bl(mse. 
 
 " Ho, there ! treason ! " cried Gawtrey, in a voice of 
 thunder ; and he caught the unhappy mau by the throat. 
 
 It was the work of a moment. Morton, where he sat, 
 beheld a struggle he heard a death- cry. He saw the 
 huge form of the master-coiner rising above all the rest, 
 as cutlasses gleamed and eyes sparkled round. He saw 
 the quivering and powerless frame of the unhappy guest 
 raised aloft in those mighty arms, and presently it was 
 hurled along the table bottles crashing the board shaking 
 beneath its weight and lay before the very eyes of Morton, 
 a distorted and lifeless mass. At the same instant, Gawtrey 
 sprang upon the table, his black frown singling out from 
 the group the ashen, cadaverous face of the shrinking 
 traitor. Birnie had darted from the table, he was half 
 way towards the sliding door his face, turned over hi? 
 shoulder, met the eyes of the chief. 
 
 " Devil ; " shouted Gawtrey, in his terrible voice, whiob 
 the echoes of the vault gave back from side to side " di<? 
 I not give thee up my soul that thou mightest not compaat 
 my death ? Hark ye ! thus die my slavery and all ou7 
 secrets ! " The explosion of his pistol half swallowed uj 
 fche last word, and with a single groan the traitor fell or 
 the floor, pierced through the brain, then there was t 
 dead and grim hush as the smoke rolled slowly along the 
 roof of the dreary vault. 
 
 Morton sank back on his seat, and covered his face 
 
 * That's right : drink, then, old fox. 
 
 That's oot true : drink, then, Monsieur Fvart
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 259 
 
 his hands. The last seal on the fate of THE MAK OP CRIME 
 was set; the last wave in the terrible and mysterious tide 
 of his destiny had dashed on his soul to the shore whence 
 there is no return. Vain, now and henceforth, the humour, 
 the sentiment, the kindly impulse, the social instincts which 
 ^ad invested that stalwart shape with dangerous fascina- 
 Mon, which had implied the hope of ultimate repentance, 
 of redemption even in this world. The HOUR and the 
 CIRCUMSTANCE had seized their prey ; and the self-defence, 
 which a lawless career rendered a necessity, left the eternal 
 die of blood upon his doom ! 
 
 " Friends, I have saved you," said Gawtrey, slowly 
 gazing on the corpse of his second victim, while he re- 
 turned the pistol to his belt : " I have not quailed before 
 this man's eye " (and he spurned the clay of the officer as 
 he spoke with a revengeful scorn) " without treasuring up 
 its aspect in my heart of hearts. I knew him when he 
 entered knew him through his disguise yet faith, it was 
 a clever one ! Turn up his face and gaze on him now ; 
 he will never terrify us again, unless there be truth io 
 ghosts ! " 
 
 Murmuring .and tremulous, the coiners scrambled on the 
 table and examined the dead man. From this task Gaw- 
 trey interrupted them, for his quick eye detected, with the 
 pistols under the policeman's blouse, a whistle of metal of 
 curious construction, and he conjectured at once that 
 danger was yet at hand. 
 
 " I have saved you, I say, but only for the hour. This 
 deed cannot sleep see, he had help within call. The 
 police knew where to look for their comrade we are dis- 
 persed. Each for himself. Quick, divide the spoils! 
 Sauve qui peut ! " 
 
 Then Morton heard where he sat, his hands still clasped 
 before his face, a confused hubbub of voices, the gingle of 
 money, the scrambling of feet, the creaking of doors, all 
 was silent ! 
 
 A strong grasp drew his hands from his eyes. 
 
 "Your first scene of life against life," said Gawtrey*s 
 voice, which seemed fearfully changed to the ear that 
 heard it. "Bah! what would you think of a battle? 
 Come to our eyrie : the carcasses are gone." 
 
 Morton looked fearfully round the vault. He and Gaw- 
 trey were alone. His eyes sought the places where the 
 
 2
 
 260 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 dead had lain they were removed no vestige of the 
 deeds, not even a drop of blood. 
 
 " Come, take up your cutlass, come ! " repeated the voice 
 of the chief, as with his dim lantern, now th sole light of 
 the vault, he stood in the shadow of the doorway. 
 
 Morton rose, took up the weapon mechanically, and fol- 
 lowed that terrible guide, mute and unconscious, as a Soul 
 follows a Dream through the House of Sleep ! 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 " Bleep no more." Macbeth. 
 
 AFTER winding through gloomy and labyrinthine passages, 
 which conducted to a different range of cellars from those 
 entered by the unfortunate Favart, Gawtrey emerged at 
 the foot of a flight of stairs, which, dark, narrow, and in 
 many places broken, had been probably appropriated to 
 servants of the house in its days of palmier glory. By 
 these steps the pair regained their attic. Gawtrey placed 
 the lantern on the table and seated himself in silence. 
 Morton, who had recovered his self-possession and formed 
 his resolution, gazed on him for some moments, equally 
 taciturn ; at length he spoke, 
 
 " Gawtrey ! " 
 
 " I bade you not call me by that name," said the coiner ; 
 for we need scarcely say that in his new trade he had 
 assumed a new appellation. 
 
 " It is the least guilty one by which I have known you," 
 returned Morton, firmly. " It is for the last time I call 
 you by it ! I demanded to see by what means one to whom 
 t had entrusted my fate supported himself. I have seen" 
 continued the young man still firmly, but with a livid cheek 
 and lip, "and the tie between us is rent for ever. Interrupt 
 me not ! it is not for me to blame you. I have eaten of 
 your bread and drank of your cup. Confiding in you too 
 blindly, and believing that you were at least free from those 
 iark and terrible crimes for which there is no exp'iation, at 
 /east in this life my conscience seared by distress, my 
 very soul made dormant by despair, I surrendered myself 
 to one leading a career equivocal, suspicious, dishonourable 
 perhaps, but still not, as I believed, of atrocity and blood-
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 shed. I wake at the brink of the abyss my mother's 
 hand beckons to me from the grave ; I think I hear her 
 voice while I address you I recede while it is yet time 
 we part, and for ever ! " 
 
 Gawtrey, whose stormy passion was still deep upon hia 
 eoul, had listened hitherto in sullen and dogged silence, 
 with a gloomy frown on his knitted brow ; he now rose 
 with an oath, 
 
 " Part ! that I may let loose on the world a new traitor ! 
 Part ! when you have seen me fresh from an act that, once 
 whispered, gives me to the guillotine ! Part never ! at 
 least alive ! " 
 
 " I have said it," said Morton, folding his arms calmly ; 
 " I say it to your face, though I might part from you in 
 secret. Frown not on me, man of blood ! I am fearless as 
 yourself ! In another minute I am gone." 
 
 " Ah ! is it so ?" said Gawtrey ; and glancing round the 
 room, which contained two doors, the one, concealed by 
 the draperies of a bed, communicating with the stairs by 
 which they had entered, the other with the landing of the 
 principal and common flight: he turned to the former, 
 within his reach, which he locked, and put the key into his 
 pocket, and then, throwing across the latter a heavy swing 
 bar, which fell into its socket with a harsh noise, before 
 the threshold he placed his vast bulk, and burst into his 
 loud, fierce laugh, "Ho! ho! slave and fool, once mine, 
 you were mine body and soul for ever ! " 
 
 " Tempter, I defy you ! stand back ! " And, firm and 
 dauntless, Morton laid his hand on the giant's vest. 
 
 Gawtrcy seemed more astonished than enraged. He 
 looked hard at his daring associate, on whose lip the down 
 was yet scarcely dark. 
 
 " Boy," said he, " off ! do not rouse the devil in me again! 
 I could crush you with a hug." 
 
 " My soul supports my body, and I am armed," said 
 Morton, laying hand on his cutlass. " But you dare not 
 harm me, nor I you ; blood-stained as you are, you gave 
 me shelter and bread ; but accuse mo not that I will save 
 my soul while it is yet time ! Shall my mother have blessed 
 me in vain upon her death-bed ? " 
 
 Gawtrey drew back, and Morton, by a sudden impulse, 
 grasped his hand. 
 
 " Oh ! hear me hear me ! " he cried, with great emo*
 
 262 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 tion. " Abandon this horrible career ; you have been de- 
 coyed and betrayed to it by one who can deceive or terrify 
 you no more ! Abandon it, and I will never desert you. 
 For her sake for your Fanny's sake pause, like .me, 
 before the gulf swallow us. Let us fly ! far to the new 
 World to any land where our thews and sinews, our stout 
 hands and hearts, can find an honest mart. Men, desperate 
 as we are, have yet risen by honest means. Take her, you* 
 orphan, with us. We will work for her, both of us. Gaw- 
 trey ! hear me. It is not my voice that speaks to you it 
 is your good angel's ! " 
 
 Gawtrey fell back against the wall, and his chest heaved. 
 
 " Morton," he said, with choked and tremulous accents, 
 " go now ; leave me to my fate ! I have sinned against 
 you shamefully sinned. It seemed to me so sweet to 
 have a friend ; in your youth and character of mind there 
 was so much about which the tough strings of my heart 
 wound themselves, that I could not bear to lose you to 
 suffer you to know me for what I was. I blinded I de- 
 ceived you as to my past deeds ; that was base in me : but 
 I swore to my own heart to keep you unexposed to every 
 danger, and free from every vice that darkened my owa 
 path. I kept that oath till this night, when, seeing that 
 you began to recoil from me, and dreading that you should 
 desert me, I thought to bind you to me for ever by impli- 
 cating you in this fellowship of crime. I am punished, and 
 justly. Go, I repeat leave me to the fate that strides 
 nearer and nearer to me day by day. You are a boy still 
 I am no longer young. Habit is a second nature. Still 
 still I could repent I could begin life again. But re- 
 pose ! to look back to remember to be haunted night 
 and day with deeds that shall meet me bodily and face to 
 face on the last day " 
 
 "Add not to the spectres! Come fly this night this 
 hour!" 
 
 Gawtrey paused, irresolute and wavering, when at that 
 moment he heard steps on the stairs below. He started 
 as starts the boar caught in his lair and listened, pale and 
 breathless. 
 
 " Hush ! they are on us ! they come ! " as he whis- 
 pered, the key from without turned in the wards the door 
 shook. " Soft ! the bar preserves us both this way." 
 And the coiner crept to the door of the private stairs. He
 
 NIGHT AND MORNINO. 263 
 
 unlocked and opened it cautiously. A man sprang through 
 the aperture 
 
 " Yield ! you are my prisoner ! " 
 
 "Never!" cried Gawtrey, hurling back the intruder, 
 and clapping to the door, though other and stout men were 
 pressing against it with all their power. 
 
 " Ho ! ho ' Who shall open the tiger's cage? " 
 
 At both doors now were heard the sounds of voices. 
 " Open in the king's name, or expect no mercy ! " 
 
 " Hist ! " said Gawtrey. " One way yet the window 
 the rope." 
 
 Morton opened the casement Gawtrey uncoiled the 
 rope. The dawn was breaking ; it was light in the street^ 
 but all seemed quiet without. The doors reeled and shook 
 beneath the pressure of the pursuers. Gawtrey flung the 
 rope across the street to the opposite parapet : after two or 
 three efforts, the grappling-hook caught firm hold the 
 perilous path was made. 
 
 " On ! quick ! loiter not ! " whispered Gawtrey ; " you 
 are active it seems more dangerous than it is cling with 
 both hands shut your eyes. When on the other side 
 you see the window of Birnie's room, enter it descend 
 the stairs let yourself out, and you are safe." 
 
 " Go first," said Morton, in the same tone : " I will not 
 leave you now : you will be longer getting across than I 
 shall. I will keep guard till you are over." 
 
 " Hark ! hark ! are you mad ? You keep guard ! 
 what is your strength to mine ? Twenty men shall not 
 move that door, while my weight is against it. Quick, or 
 you destroy us both ! Besides, you will hold the rope for 
 me, it may not be strong enough for my bulk of itself. 
 Stay! -stay one moment. If you escape, and I fall 
 Fanny my father, he will take care of her, you remem- 
 ber thanks! Forgive me all ! Go ; that's right !" 
 
 With a firm pulse, Morton threw himself on that dread- 
 ful bridge ; it swung and crackled at his weight. Shifting 
 bis grasp rapidly holdwig his breath with set teeth 
 frith closed eyes he movd on he gained the parapet 
 he stood safe on the opposite side. And now, straining 
 his eyes across, he saw through the open casement into the 
 chamber he had just quitted. Gawtrey was still standing 
 against the door to the principal staircase, for that of the 
 two was the weaker and the more assailed. Presently
 
 264 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 the explosion of a firearm was heard ; they had ishot through 
 the panel. Gawtrey seemed wounded, for he staggered 
 forward, and uttered a fierce cry; a moment more, and he 
 gained the window he seized the rope he hung over the 
 tremendous depth ! Morton knelt by the parapet, holding 
 the grappling-hook in its place, with convulsive grasp, 
 and fixing his eyes, bloodshot with fear and suspense, on 
 the huge bulk that clung for life to that slender cord I 
 
 " Le voild! le voiltt!" cried a voice from the opposite 
 side. Morton raised his gaze from Gawtrey ; the casement 
 was darkened by the forms of the pursuers they had 
 burst into the room an officer sprung upon the parapet, 
 and Gawtrey, now aware of his danger, opened his eyes, 
 and, as he moved on, glared upon the foe. The policeman 
 deliberately raised his pistol Gawtrey arrested himself 
 from a wound in his side the blood trickled slowly and 
 darkly down, drop by drop, upon the stones below ; even 
 the officers of law shuddered as they eyed him his hair 
 bristling his cheek white his lips drawn convulsively 
 from his teeth, and his eye glaring from beneath the frown 
 of agony and menace in which yet spoke the indomitable 
 power and fierceness of the man. His look, so fixed so 
 intense so stern, awed the policeman ; his hand trembled 
 as he fired, and the ball struck the parapet an inch below 
 the spot where Morton knelt. An indistinct, wild, gurgling 
 sound half-laugh, half -yell of scorn and glee, broke from 
 Gawtrey's lips. He swung himself on near near 
 nearer a yard from the parapet. 
 
 "You are saved!" cried Morton; when at that moment 
 a volley burst from the fatal casement the smoke rolled 
 over both the fugitives a groan, or rather howl, of rage, 
 and despair, and agony, appalled even the hardiest on 
 whose ear it came. Morton sprung to his feet and looked 
 below. He saw on the rugged stones, far down, a dark, 
 formless, motionless mass the strong man of passion and 
 levity the giant who had played with life and soul, as an 
 infant with the baubles that it prizes and breaks was 
 what the Caesar and the leper alike are, when the clay is 
 without God's breath, what glory, genius, power, and 
 beauty, would be for ever and for ever, if there were no God! 
 
 "There is another!" cried the voice of one of the pur- 
 suers. "Fire!" 
 
 " Poor Gawtrey ! " muttered Philip. " I will fulfil your
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 285 
 
 last \vish ; " and scarcely conscious of the bullet that 
 whistled by him, he disappeared behind the parapet. 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 ' ' Gently moved 
 By the soft wind of whispering silks." DECKS*. 
 
 THE reader may remember that while Monsieur Favart 
 and Mr. Birnie were holding commune in the lane, the 
 sounds of festivity were heard from a house in the adjoin- 
 ing street. To that house we are now summoned. 
 
 At Paris, the gaieties of balls, or soirees, are, I believe, 
 very rare in that period of the year in which they are most 
 frequent in London. The entertainment now given was in 
 honour of a christening ; the lady who gave it, a relation 
 of the new-born. 
 
 Madame de Merville was a young widow : even before 
 her marriage she had been distinguished in literature; 
 she had written poems of more than common excellence ; 
 and being handsome, of good family, and large fortune, 
 her talents made her an object of more interest than they 
 might otherwise have done. Her poetry showed great 
 sensibility and tenderness. If poetry be any index to the 
 heart, you would have thought her one to love truly and 
 deeply. Nevertheless, since she married as girls in 
 France do not to please herself, but her parents, she 
 made a mariage de convenance. Monsieur de Merville was 
 a sober, sensible man, past middle age. Not being fond of 
 poetry, and by no means coveting a professional author for 
 his wife, he had during their union, which lasted four 
 years, discouraged his wife's liaison with Apollo. But her 
 mind, active and ardent, did not the less prey upon itself. 
 At the age of four-and-twenty she became a widow, with 
 an income large even in England for a single woman, and 
 at Paris constituting no ordinary fortune. Madame de 
 Merville, however, though a person of elegant taste, was 
 neither ostentatious nor selfish ; she had no children, and 
 she lived quit-Uy in apartments, handsome indeed, but not 
 more than adequate to the small establishment which 
 where, as on the Continent, the costly convenience of an 
 entire house is not usually incurrrd sufficed for her
 
 266 NIGHT AND MORNiMf. 
 
 retinue. She devoted at least half her income, which was 
 entirely at her own disposal, partly to the aid of her own 
 relations, who were not rich, and partly to the encourage- 
 ment of the literature she cultivated. Although she shrunk 
 from the ordeal of publication, her poems and sketches of 
 romance were read to her own friends, and possessed an 
 eloquence seldom accompanied with so much modesty. 
 Thus, her reputation, though not blown about the winds, 
 was high in her own circle, and her position in fashion and 
 in fortune made her looked up to by her relations as the 
 head of her family ; they regarded her as femme superieure, 
 ind her advice with them was equivalent to a command. 
 Eugenie de Merville was a strange mixture of qualities at 
 once feminine and masculine. On the one hand, she had 
 strong will, independent views, some contempt for the 
 world, and followed her own inclinations without servility 
 to the opinion of others ; on the other hand, she wai 1 
 susceptible, romantic, of a sweet, affectionate, kind dis- 
 position. Her visit to M. Love, however indiscreet, was 
 not less in accordance with her character than her charity 
 to the mechanic's wife ; masculine and careless where an 
 eccentric thing was to be done curiosity satisfied, or some 
 object in female diplomacy achieved womanly, delicate, 
 and gentle, the instant her benevolence was appealed to or 
 her heart touched. She had now been three years a widow, 
 and was consequently at the age of twenty-seven. Despite 
 the tenderness of her poetry and her character, her repu- 
 tation was unblemished. She had never been in love. 
 People who are much occupied do not fall in love easily ; 
 besides, Madame de Merville was refining, exacting, and 
 wished to find heroes where she only met handsome dandies 
 or ugly authors. Moreover, Eugenie was both a vain and 
 a proud person vain of her celebrity, and proud of her 
 birth. She was one, whose goodness of heart made her 
 always active in promoting the happiness of others. She 
 was not only generous and. charitable, but willing to serve 
 people by good offices as well as money. Everybody loved 
 her. The new-born infant, to whoso addition to the 
 Christian community the fete of this night was dedicated, 
 was the pledge of an union which Madame de Merville 
 bad managed to effect between two young persons, first 
 cousins to each other, and related to herself. There had 
 been scruples of parents to remove money matters to
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 2b7 
 
 adjust Eugenie had smoothed all. The husband and 
 wife, still lovers, looked up to her as the author, under 
 Heaven, of their happiness. 
 
 The gala of that night had been, therefore, of a nature 
 moro than usually pleasurable, and the mirth did not 
 eound hollow, but rung from the heart. Yet, as Eugenie 
 from time to time contemplated the young couple, whose 
 eyes ever sought each other so fair, so tender, and so 
 joyous as they seemed a melancholy shadow darkened 
 her brow, and she sighed involuntarily. Once the young 
 wife, Madame d'Anville, approaching her timidly, said, 
 
 " Ah ! my sweet cousin, when shall we see you as happj 
 as ourselves? There is such happiness," she added, inno- 
 cently and with a blush, " in being a mother ! that little 
 life all one's own it is something to think of every 
 hour ! " 
 
 " Perhaps," said Eugenie, smiling, and seeking to turn 
 the conversation from a subject that touched too nearly 
 upon feelings and thoughts her pride did not wish to re- 
 veal, " perhaps, it is you then who have made our cousin, 
 poor Monsieur de Vaudemont, so determined to marry ? 
 Pray, be more cautious with him. How difficult I have 
 found it to prevent his bringing into our family some one 
 to make us all ridiculous ! " 
 
 " True," said Madame d'Anville, laughing. " But then, 
 the Vicomte is so poor and in debt. He would fall in love, 
 not with the demoiselle but the dower. A propos of that, 
 how cleverly you took advantage of his boastful confession 
 to break off his liaisons with that bureau de mariage." 
 
 " Yes ; I congratulate myself on that manoeuvre. Un- 
 pleasant as it was to go to such a place (for, of course, I 
 could not send for Monsieur Love here), it would have 
 been still more unpleasant to have received such a Madame 
 de Vaudemont as our cousin would have presented to us. 
 Only think, he was the rival of an i-picier 1 I heard that 
 there was some curious denotlment to the farce of that 
 establishment ; but I could never get from Vaudemont the 
 particulars. He was ashamed of them, I fancy." 
 
 "What droll professions there are in Paris!" said 
 Madame d'Anville ; " as if people could not marry without 
 going to an office for a spouse as we go for a servant ! 
 And so the establishment is broken up ? And you never 
 again saw that dark, wild- looking boy who so struck your
 
 268 NIGHT AND MORNINO. 
 
 fancy, that you have taken him as the original for tho 
 Murillo sketch of the youth in that charming tale you read 
 to us the other evening. Ah ! cousin, I think you were a 
 little taken with him ; the bureau de manage had its 
 allurements for you as well as for our poor cousin ! " Tho 
 young mother said this laughingly and carelessly. 
 
 " Pooh ! " returned Madame de Merville, laughing also ; 
 but a slight blush broke over her natural paleness. " But 
 d propos of the Vicomte. You know how cruelly he has 
 behaved to that poor boy of his by his English wife 
 never seen him since he was an infant kept him at some 
 school in England ; and all because his vanity does not 
 like the world to know that he has a son of nineteen ! 
 Well, I have induced him to recal this poor youth." 
 
 "Indeed! and how?" 
 
 " Why," said Eugenie, with a smile, " he wanted a loan, 
 poor man, and I could therefore impose conditions by way 
 of interest. But I also managed to conciliate him to the 
 proposition, by representing that, if the young man were 
 good-looking, he might, himself, with our connexions, &c., 
 form an advantageous marriage ; and that in such a case, 
 if the father treated him now justly and kindly, he would 
 naturally partake with the father whatever benefits the 
 marriage might confer." 
 
 " Ah ! you are an excellent diplomatist, Eugenie ; and 
 you turn people's heads by always acting from your heart. 
 Hush, here comes the Vicomte ! " 
 
 " A delightful ball," said Monsieur de Yaudemont, ap- 
 proaching the hostess. "Pray, has that young lady yonder, 
 in the pink dress, any fortune ? She is pretty eh ? you 
 observe she is looking at me I mean at us ! " 
 
 " My dear cousin, what a compliment you pay to mar- 
 riage. You have had two wives, and you are ever on tho 
 qui vive for a third ! " 
 
 " What would you have me do ? we cannot resist the 
 overtures of your bewitching sex. Hum what fortune 
 has she ? " 
 
 " Not a sou ; besides she is engaged." 
 
 " Oh ! now I look at her she is not pretty not at all. 
 I made a mistake. I did not mean her. I meant the young 
 lady in blue." 
 
 " Worse and worse she is married already. Shall I 
 present yon ? "
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 269 
 
 " At, Monsieur de Vaudemont," said Madame d' Anville, 
 M have you found out a new bureau de manage ? " 
 
 The Vicomte pretended not to hear that question. But, 
 turning to Eugenie, took her aside, and said with an air in 
 which he endeavoured to throw a great deal of sorrow, 
 " You know, my dear cousin, that to oblige you, I con- 
 sented to send for my son, though, as I always said, it is 
 very unpleasant for a man like me in the prime of life to 
 hawk about a great boy of nineteen or twenty. People 
 soon say, ' Old Vaudemont and young Vaudemont.' How- 
 ever, a father's feelings are never appealed to in vain." 
 (Here the Vicomte put his handkerchief to his eyes, and 
 after a pause, continued,) " I sent for him, I even went 
 to your old bonne, Madame Dufour, to make a bargain for 
 her lodgings, and this day, guess my grief, I received a 
 letter sealed with black. My son is dead ! a sudden fever 
 it is shocking ! " 
 
 " Horrible ! dead ! your own son, whom you hardly 
 ever saw never since he was an infant ! " 
 
 " Yes, that softens the blow very much. And now yon 
 see I must marry. If the boy had been good-looking, and 
 like me, and so forth, why, as you observed, he might have 
 made a good match, and allowed me a certain sum, or we 
 could have all lived together." 
 
 "And your son is dead, and you come to a ball ! " 
 
 " Je suis philosophe," said the Vicomte, shrugging his 
 shoulders. "And, as you say, I never saw him. It saves 
 me seven hundred francs a-year. Don't say a word to any 
 one I sha'n't give out that he is dead, poor fellow ! Pray 
 be discreet : you see there are some ill-natured people who 
 might think it odd I do not shut myself up. I can wait till 
 Paris is quite empty. It would be a pity to lose any oppor- 
 tunity at present, for now, yon see, I must many ! " And 
 the philosopJie sauntered away.
 
 270 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 GUIOMAR. 
 
 " Those devotions I am to pny 
 Are written in my heart, not in tlii- book." 
 
 Enter RUTILIO. 
 
 ** I am pursued all the ports are stopped to). 
 Not any hope to escape behind, before me, 
 On either side, I am beset." 
 BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER: The Custom of thv 'fvitntry. 
 
 THE party were just gone it was already the peep of 
 day the wheels of the last carriage had died in the dis- 
 tance. 
 
 Madame de Merville had dismissed her woman, and was 
 seated in her own room leaning her head musingly on her 
 hand. 
 
 Beside her was the table that held her MSS. and a few 
 books, amidst which were scattered vases of flowers. On a 
 pedestal beneath the window was placed a marble bust of 
 Dante. Through the open door were seen in perspective 
 the rooms just deserted by her guests the lights still 
 burned in the chandeliers, and girandoles, contending with 
 the daylight that came through the half-closed curtains. 
 The person of the inmate was in harmony with the apart- 
 ment. It was characterised by a certain grace which, for 
 want of a better epithet, writers are prone to call classical 
 or antique. Her complexion, seeming paler than usual by 
 that light, was yet soft and delicate the features well cut, 
 but small and womanly. About the face there was that 
 rarest of all charms, the combination of intellect with 
 sweetness the eyes, of a dark blue, were thoughtful, per- 
 haps melancholy, in their expression ; but the long dark 
 lashes, and the shape of the eyes, themselves more long 
 than full, gave to their intelligence a softness approaching 
 to languor, increased, perhaps, by that slight shadow round 
 and below the orbs which is common with those who have 
 tasked too much either the mind or the heart. The con- 
 tour of the face, without being sharp or angular, had yet 
 lost a little of the roundness of earlier youth ; and the hand 
 on which she leaned was, perhaps, even too white, too 
 delicate, for the beauty which belongs to health ; but tile 
 throat auA bust were of exquisite symmetry.
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 271 
 
 u I am not happy," murmured Eugenic to herself ; " yet 
 I scarce know why. Is it really as we women of romance 
 have said till the saying is worn threadbare, that the destiny 
 of women is not fame but love ? Strange, then, that while 
 I have so often pictured what love should be, I have never 
 felt it. And now and now," she continued, half rising, 
 and with a natural pang, " now I am no longer in my first 
 youth. If I loved, should I be loved again ? How happy 
 that young pair seemed they are never alone ! " 
 
 At this moment, at a distance, was heard the report of 
 fire-arms again ! Eugenie started, and called to her ser- 
 vant, who, with one of the waiters hired for the night, was 
 engaged in removing, and nibbling as he removed, the re- 
 mains of the feast. " What is that, at this hour ? open 
 the window and look out! " 
 
 " I can see nothing, madame." 
 
 " Again that is the third time. Go into the street and 
 look some one must be in danger." 
 
 The servant and the waiter, both curious, and not willing 
 to part company, ran down the stairs, and thence into the 
 street. 
 
 Meanwhile Morton, after vainly attempting Birnie's 
 window, which the traitor had previously locked and 
 barred against the escape of his intended victim, crept 
 rapidly along the roof, screened by the parapet not only 
 from the shot but the sight of the foe. But just as he 
 gained the point at which the lane made an angle with the 
 broad street it adjoined, he cast his eyes over the parapet, 
 and perceived that one of the officers had ventured himself 
 to the fearful bridge : he was pursued detection and cap- 
 ture seemed inevitable. He paused and breathed hard. 
 He, once the heir to such fortunes, the darling of stich 
 affections ! he, the hunted accomplice of a gang of mis- 
 creants ! That was the thought that paralysed the dis- 
 grace, not the danger. But he was in advance of the 
 pursuer he hastened on he turned the angle he heard 
 a shout behind from the opposite side the officer had 
 passed the bridge : " it is but one man as yet," thought he, 
 and his nostrils dilated and his hands clenched as he glided 
 on, glancing at each casement as he passed. 
 
 Now as youth and vigour thus struggled against Law 
 
 for life, near at hand Death was busy with toil and disease. 
 
 In a miserable grabat, or Barret, mechanic, yet young,
 
 272 NIGHT ANU MORNING. 
 
 and stricken by a lingering malady contracted by the labour 
 of his occupation, was slowly passing from that world which 
 had frowned on his cradle, and relaxed not the gloom of 
 its aspect to comfort his bed of Death. Now this man had 
 married for love, and his wife had loved him ; and it was 
 the cares of that early marriage which had consumed him 
 to the bone. But extreme want, if long continued, eats up 
 love when it has nothing else to eat. And when people 
 are very long dying, the people they fret and trouble, begin 
 to think of that too often hypocritical prettiness of phrase 
 called "a happy release." So the worn-out and half- 
 famished wife did not care three straws for the dying hus- 
 band whom a year or two ago she had vowed to love and 
 cherish in sickness and in health. But still she seemed to 
 care, for she moaned, and pined, and wept, as the man's 
 breath grew fainter and fainter. 
 
 " Ah, Jean ! " said she, sobbing, " what will become of 
 me, a poor lone widow, with nobody to work for my 
 bread ? '* And with that thought she took on worse than 
 before. 
 
 " I am stifling," said the dying man, rolling round his 
 ghastly eyes. " How hot it is ! Open the window ; I 
 should like to see the light day-light once again." 
 
 " Hon Dieu ! what whims he has, poor man ! " muttered 
 the woman, without stirring. 
 
 The poor wretch put out his skeleton hand and clutched 
 his wife's arm. 
 
 " I sha'n't trouble you long, Marie ! Air air ! " 
 " Jean, you will make yourself worse besides, I shall 
 catch my death of cold. I have scarce a rag on, but I will 
 just open the door." 
 
 " Pardon me," groaned the sufferer ; "leave me, then." 
 Poor fellow ! perhaps at that moment the thought of 
 unkindness was sharper than the sharp cough which 
 brought blood at every paroxysm. He did not like her so 
 near him, but he did not blame her. Again, I say, poor 
 fellow! 
 
 The woman opened the door, went to the other side of 
 the room and sat down on an old box and began darning 
 an *>ld neck- handkerchief . The silence was soon broken by 
 tb " moans of the fast-dying man, and again he n? attered 
 as AC tossed to and fro, with baked white lips, 
 / Air!"
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 273 
 
 There was no resisting that prayer, it seemed so like the 
 last. The wife laid down the needle, put the handkerchief 
 "ound her throat, and opened the window. 
 
 " Do you feel easier now? " 
 
 " Bless you, Marie yes; that's good good. It puts 
 me in mind of old days, that breath of air, before we came 
 to Paris. I wish I could work for you now, Marie." 
 
 " Jean ! my poor Jean ! " said the woman, and the words 
 and the voice took back her hardening heart to the fresh 
 fields and tender thoughts of the past time. And she 
 walked up to the bed, and he leaned his temples, damp 
 with livid dews, upon her breast. 
 
 "I have been a sad burden to you, Marie: we should 
 not have married so soon ; but I thought I was stronger. 
 Don't cry; we have no little ones, thank God. It will be 
 much better for you when I am gone." 
 
 And so, word after word gasped out, he stopped sud- 
 denly and seemed to fall asleep. 
 
 The wife then attempted gently to lay him once more 
 on his pillow the head fell back heavily the jaw had 
 dropped the teeth were set the eyes were open and like 
 stone the truth broke on her ! 
 
 " Jean Jean ! My God, he is dead ! and I was unkind 
 to him at the last ! " With these words she fell upon the 
 corpse, happily herself insensible. 
 
 Just at that moment a human face peered in at tho 
 window. Through that aperture, after a moment's pause, 
 a young man leaped lightly into the room. He looked 
 round with a hurried glance, but scarcely noticed the forms 
 stretched on the pallet. It was enough for him that they 
 seemed to sleep, and saw him not. He stole across the 
 room, the door of which Marie had left open, and descended 
 the stairs. He had almost gained the court-yard into 
 wnich the stairs conducted, when he heard voices below 
 by the porter's lodge. 
 
 " The police have discovered a gang of coiners! " 
 
 "Coiners!" 
 
 " Yes, one has been shot dead ! I have seen his body in 
 the kennel : another has fled along the roofs a desperate 
 fellow ! "We were to watch for him. Let us go up- stairs 
 and get on the roof and look out." 
 
 By the hum of approval that followed this proposition, 
 Morton judged rightly that it had been addressed to sevo*
 
 274' NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 ral persons whom curiosity and the explosion of the pistols 
 had drawn from their beds, and who were grouped round 
 the porter's lodge. What was to be done ? to advance 
 was impossible : was there yet time to retreat ? it was at 
 least the only course left him; he sprang back up the 
 stairs; he had just gained the first flight when he heard 
 *teps descending; then, suddenly, it flashed across him 
 that- he had left open the window above that, doubtless, 
 by that imprudent oversight the officer in pursuit had 
 detected a clue to the path he had taken. What was to be 
 done ? die as Gawtrey had done ! death rather than the 
 galleys. As he thus resolved, he saw to the right the open 
 door of an apartment in which lights still glimmered in 
 their sockets. It seemed deserted he entered boldly and 
 at once, closing the door after him. Wines and viands 
 still left on the table ; gilded mirrors, reflecting the stern 
 face of the solitary intruder; here and there an artificial 
 flower; a knot of riband on the floor; all betokening the 
 gaieties and graces of luxurious life the dance, the revel, 
 the feast all this in one apartment ! above, in the same 
 house, the pallet the corpse the widow famine and 
 (voe! Such is a great city! such, above all, is Paris! 
 where, under the same roof, are gathered such antagonist 
 varieties of the social state ! Nothing strange in this ; it 
 is strange and sad, that so little do people thus neighbours 
 know of each other, that the owner of those rooms had a 
 heart soft to every distress, but she did not know the dis- 
 tress so close at hand. The music that had charmed her 
 guests had mounted gaily to the vexed ears of agony and 
 hunger. Morton passed the first room a second he came 
 to a third, and Eugenie de Merville, looking up at that 
 instant, saw before her an apparition that might well have 
 alarmed the boldest. His head was uncovered his dark 
 hair shadowed in wild and disorderly profusion the pale 
 face, and features, beautiful indeed, but at that moment of 
 fche beauty which an artist would impart to a young gla- 
 diator stamped with defiance, menace, and despair. The 
 disordered garb the fierce aspect the dark eyes, that 
 literally shone through the shadows of the room all con- 
 spired to increase the terror of soabrupt a presence. 
 
 " What are yon ? What do you. seek here?" said she, 
 falteringly, placing her hand on the bell as she spoke. 
 
 Upon that soft hand Morton laid, his own.
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 275 
 
 " I seek my life ! I am pursued ! I am at your inercy ! 
 I am innocent ! Can you save me ? " 
 
 As he spoke, the door of the outer room beyond was 
 heard to open, and steps and voices were at hand. 
 
 "Ah!" he exclaimed, recoiling as he recognised her face. 
 "And is it to you that I have fled ? " 
 
 Eugenie also recognised the stranger; and there was 
 something in their relative positions the suppliant, the 
 protectress that excited both her imagination and her 
 pity. A slight colour mantled to her checks her look was 
 gentle and compassionate. 
 
 " Poor boy! so young! " she said. " Hush ! " 
 
 She withdrew her hand from his, retired a few steps, 
 lifted a curtain drawn across a recess and pointing to an 
 alcove that contained one of those sofa-beds common in 
 French houses, added in a whisper, 
 
 " Enter you are saved." 
 
 Morton obeyed, and Eugenie replaced the curtain. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 GUIOMAK. 
 
 * Speak ! What are you ? " 
 
 BUTILIO. 
 
 **, Gracious woman, hear me. I am a stranger : 
 And in that I answer all your demands." 
 
 Custom of the Country. 
 
 EUGENIE replaced the curtain. And scarcely had she 
 done so, ere the steps in the outer room entered the chamber 
 where she stood. Her servant was accompanied by two 
 officers of the police. 
 
 "Pardon, madame," said one of the latter; "but we are 
 in pursuit of a criminal. We think he must have entered 
 this house through a window above while your servant was 
 in the street. Permit us to search ? " 
 
 "Without doubt," answered Eugenie, seating herself. 
 " If he has entered, look in the other apartments. I have 
 not quitted this room." 
 
 "You are right. Accept our apologies." 
 
 And the officers turned back to examine every corner 
 where the fugitive was not. For in that, the scouts of
 
 276 NIGHT AKD MORN1X&. 
 
 Justice resembled their mistress: when docs man's justice 
 look to the right place ? 
 
 The servant lingered to repeat the tale he had heard 
 the sight he had seen. When, at that instant, he saw the 
 curtain of the alcove slightly stirred. He uttered an ex- 
 clamation sprung to the bed his hand touched the 
 curtain Eugenie seized his arm. She did not speak; but 
 us he turned his eyes to her, astonished, he saw that 
 she trembled, and that her cheek was as white as marble. 
 
 "Madame," he said, hesitating, "there is some one 
 hid in the recess." 
 
 "There is! Be silent!" 
 
 A suspicion flashed across the servant's mind. The 
 pure, the proud, the immaculate Eugen.'e ! 
 
 "There is! and in madame's chamber!" he faltered 
 unconsciously. 
 
 Eugenie's quick apprehensions seized the foul thought. 
 Her eyes flashed her cheek crimsoned. But her lofty 
 and generous nature conquered even the indignant and 
 scornful burst that rushed to her lips. The truth! could 
 she trust the man? A doubt and the charge of the 
 human life rendered to her might be betrayed. Her colour 
 fell tears gushed to her eyes. 
 
 " I have been kind to you, Francois. Not a word! " 
 
 " Madame confides in me it is enough," said tho 
 Frenchman, bowing, with a slight smile on his lips; and 
 he drew back respectfully. 
 
 One of the police officers re-entered. 
 
 "We have done, madame, he is not here. Aha! that 
 curtain ! " 
 
 "It, is madame's bed," said Francois. "But I have 
 looked behind." 
 
 "I am most sorry to have disarranged you," said the 
 policeman, satisfied with the answer; " but we shall have 
 him yet." And he retired. 
 
 The last footsteps died away, the last door of the apart- 
 ments closed behind the officers, and Eugenie and her 
 servant stood alone gazing on each other. 
 
 "You may retire," said she, at last; and taking her 
 purse from the table, she placed it in his hands. 
 
 The man took it, with a significant look. 
 
 " Madame may depend on my discretion." 
 
 Eugenie was aloue again. Those words rang in her
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 27? 
 
 ear, Eugenie de Merville dependent on the discretion of 
 her lackey ! She sunk into her chair, and her excitement 
 succeeded by exhaustion, leaned her face on her hands, 
 and burst into tears. She was aroused by a low voice, she 
 looked up, and the young man was kneeling at her feet. 
 
 "Go go!" she said: "I have done for you all I can. 
 You heard you heard my own hireling, too ! At the 
 hazard of my own good name you are saved. Go ! " 
 
 " Of your good name ! " for Eugenie forgot that it was 
 looks, not words, that had so wrung her pride " Your 
 good name," he repeated : and glancing round the room 
 the toilette, the curtain, the recess he had quitted all that 
 bespoke that chastest sanctuary of a chaste woman, which 
 for a stranger to enter is, as it were, to profane her 
 meaning broke on him. " Your good name ! your hire- 
 ling ! No, madame, no ! " And as he spoke, he rose 
 to his feet. " Not for me, that sacrifice ! Your humanity 
 shall not cost you so dear. Ho, there ! I am the man you 
 seek." And he strode to the door. 
 
 Eugenie was penetrated with the answer. She sprung 
 to him she grasped his garments. 
 
 "Hush! hush! for mercy's sake! What would yoa. 
 do ? Think you I could ever be happy again, if the confi- 
 dence you placed in me were betrayed ? Be calm be 
 still. I knew not what I said. It will be easy to un- 
 deceive the man later when you are saved. And you 
 are innocent, are you not ?" 
 
 " Oh, madam," said Morton, " from my soul I say it, I 
 am innocent not of poverty wretchedness error 
 shame; I am innocent of crime. May Heaven bless you!" 
 
 And as he reverently kissed the hand laid on his arm, 
 there was something in his voice so touching, in his 
 manner something so above his fortunes, that Eugenie 
 was lost in her feelings of compassion, surprise, and some- 
 thing, it might be, of admiration in her .vonder. 
 
 "And, oh!" he said, passionately, gazing on her with 
 his dark, brilliant eyes, liquid with emotion, "you have 
 made my life sweet in saving it. You you of whom, 
 ever since the first time, almost the sole time, I beheld yon 
 I have so often mused and dreamed. Henceforth, what- 
 ever befal me, there will be some recollections that will 
 that " 
 
 He stopped short, for his heart was too full for words;
 
 278 NIGHT AND MORNItfG. 
 
 and the silence said more to Eugenie than if all the 
 eloquence of Rousseau had glowed upon his tongue. 
 
 " And who, and what are you? " she asked, after a pause. 
 
 " An exile an orphan an outcast ! I have no name ! 
 Farewell!" 
 
 " No stay yet the danger is not past. Wait till my 
 servant is gone to rest ; I hear him yet. Sit down sit 
 down. And whither would you go ?" 
 
 " I know not." 
 
 "Have you no friends?" 
 
 " None." 
 
 "No home?" 
 
 "None." 
 
 "And the police of Paris so vigilant!" cried Eugenie, 
 wringing her hands. " What is to be done ? I shall have 
 saved you in vain you will be discovered ! Of what 
 do they charge you ? Not robbery not " 
 
 And she, too, stopped short, for she did not dare to 
 breathe the black word " Murder ! " 
 
 " I know not," said Morton, putting his hand to his 
 forehead, " except of being friends with the only man who 
 befriended me and they have killed him ! " 
 
 " Another time you shall tell me all." 
 
 " Another time ! " he exclaimed, eagerly " sliall I see 
 yo-u again ? " 
 
 Eugenie blushed beneath the gaze and the voice of 
 
 jy- 
 
 " Yes," she said ; " yes. But I must reflect. Be calm 
 be silent. Ah ! a happy thought ! " 
 
 She sat down, wrote a hasty line, sealed, and gave it to 
 Morton. 
 
 " Take this note, as addressed, to Madame Dufour ; it 
 will provide you with a safe lodging. She is a person I 
 can depend on an old servant who lived with my mother, 
 and to whom I have given a small pension. She has a 
 lodging it is lately vacant I promised to procure her ,1 
 tenant go say nothing of what has passed. I will see 
 her, and arrange all. Wait ! hark ! all is still ! I will 
 go first, and see that no one watches you. Stop," (and she 
 threw open the window, and looked into the court.) " The 
 porter's door is open that is fortunate ! Huriy on, and 
 God be with you ! " 
 
 In a few minutes Morton was in the streets. It waa
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 279 
 
 still early the thoroughfares deserted none of the shops 
 yet open. The address on the note was to a street at 
 some distance, on the other side of the Seine. He passed 
 along the same Quai which he had trodden but a few hours 
 Bince he passed the same splendid bridge on which he had 
 stood despairing, to quit it revived he gained the Rue 
 Faubourg St. Honore. A young man in a cabriolet, on 
 whose fair cheek burned the hectic of late vigils and lavish 
 dissipation, was rolling leisurely home from the gaming- 
 house, at which he had been more than usually fortunate 
 his pockets were laden with notes and gold. He bent for- 
 wards as Morton passed him. Philip, absorbed in his 
 reverie, perceived him not, and continued his way. The 
 gentleman turned down one of the streets to the left, 
 stopped, and called to the servant dozing behind his cab- 
 riolet. 
 
 "Follow that passenger! quietly see where he lodges ; 
 be sure to find out and let me know. I shall go hom 
 without you." With that he drove on. 
 
 Philip, unconscious of the espionage, arrived at a small 
 house in a quiet but respectable street, and rang the bell 
 several times before at last he was admitted by Madame 
 Dufour herself, in her night-cap. The old woman looked 
 askant and alarmed at the unexpected apparition. But 
 the note seemed at once to satisfy her. She conducted him 
 to an apartment on the first floor, small, but neatly and 
 even elegantly furnished ; consisting of a sitting-room and 
 a bed-chamber, and said, quietly, 
 " Will they suit monsieur ? " 
 
 To monsieur they seemed a palace. Morton nodded 
 assent. 
 
 " And will monsieur sleep for a short time ? " 
 " Yes." 
 
 " The bed is well- aired. The rooms have only been 
 vacant three days since. Can I get you anything till your 
 luggage arrives ? " 
 " No." 
 
 The woman left him. He threw off hia clothes flung 
 himself on the bed and did not wake till noon. 
 
 When his eyes unclosed when they rested on that calm 
 fhambcr, with its air of health, and cleanliness, and com- 
 fort, it was long before he could convince himself that ha 
 was yet awake. He missed the loud, deep voice of Gaw-
 
 280 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 trey the smoke of the dead man's meerschaum the 
 gloomy garret the distained walls the stealthy whisper 
 of the loathed Birnie ; slowly the life led and the life 
 gone within the last twelve hours grew upon his strug- 
 gling memory. He groaned, and turned uneasily round, 
 when the door slightly opened, and he sprung up 
 fiercely, 
 
 " Who is there ? " 
 
 " It is only I, sir," answered Madame Dufour. " I have 
 been in three times to see if you were stirring. There is a 
 letter I believe for you, sir ; though there is no name to 
 it," and she laid the letter on the chair beside him. Did 
 it come from her the saving angel ? He seized it. Th 
 cover was blank ; it was sealed with a small device, as of 
 ring seal. He tore it open, and found four billets de banqw 
 for 1000 francs each, a sum equivalent in our money to 
 about 160Z. 
 
 "Who sent this, the the lady from whom I brought 
 the note?" 
 
 " Madame de Merville ? certainly not, sir," said Madame 
 Dufour, who, with the privilege of age, was now unscru- 
 pulously filling the water- jugs and settling the toiletbe- 
 table. " A young man called about two hours after you 
 had gone to bed ; and describing you, inquired if you 
 lodged here, and what your name was. I said you had 
 just arrived, and that I did not yet know your name. So 
 he went away, and came again half-an-hour afterwards 
 with this letter, which he charged me to deliver to you 
 safely." 
 
 "A young man a gentleman ? " 
 
 " No, sir ; he seemed a smart but common sort of lad." 
 For the unsophisticated Madame Dufour did not discover 
 in the plain black frock and drab gaiters of the bearer of 
 that letter the simple livery of an English gentleman's 
 groom. 
 
 Whom could it come from, if not from Madame de Mer- 
 ville ? Perhaps one of Gawtrey's late friends. A sus- 
 picion of Arthur Beaufort crossed him, but he indignantly 
 dismissed it. Men are seldom credulous of what they are 
 unwilling to believe ! What kindness had the Beauforts 
 hitherto shown him ? Left his mother to perish broken- 
 hearted stolen from him his brother, and steeled, in that 
 brother, the only heart wherein he had a right to look for
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 281 
 
 and love ! No, it must be Madame de Merville. 
 He dismissed Madame Dufour for pen and paper rose 
 wrote a letter to Eugenie grateful, but proud, and en- 
 closed the notes. He then summoned Madame Dufour, 
 and sent her with his despatch. 
 
 " Ah, madame," said the ci-devant bonne, when she found 
 herself in Eugenie's presence. " The poor lad ! how hand- 
 some he is, and how shameful in the Vicomte to let him 
 wear such clothes ! " 
 
 " The Vicomte ! " 
 
 " Oh, my dear mistress, you must not deny it. You 
 told me, in your note, to ask him no questions, but 1 
 guessed at once. The Vicomte told me himself that hn 
 should have the young gentleman over in a few days. You 
 need not be ashamed of him. You will see what a differ- 
 ence clothes will make in his appearance ; and I have taken 
 it on myself to order a tailor to go to him. The Vicomte 
 rmtst pay me." 
 
 " Not a word to the Vicomte as yet. We will surprise 
 him," said Eugenie, laughing. 
 
 Madame de Merville had been all that morning trying to 
 invent some story to account for her interest in the lodger, 
 and now how Fortune favoured her ! 
 
 " But is that a letter for me ? " 
 
 " And I had almost forgot it," said Madame Dufour, as 
 she extended the letter. 
 
 Whatever there had hitherto been in the circumstances 
 connected with Morton, that had roused the interest and 
 excited the romance of Eugenie de Merville, her fancy was 
 yet more attracted by the tone of the letter she now read. 
 For though Morton, more accustomed to speak than to 
 vmte French, expressed himself with less precision, and a 
 less euphuistic selection of phrase, than the authors and 
 elegans who formed her usual correspondents ; there was 
 an innate and rough nobleness a strong and profound 
 feeling in every line of his letter, which increased her sur- 
 prise and admiration. 
 
 "All that surrounds him all that belongs to him, is 
 strangeness and mystery ! " murmured she ; and she sat 
 down to reply. 
 
 When Madame Dufour departed with that letter, Eu- 
 genie remained silent and thoughtful for more than an 
 hour, Morton's letter before her ; and sweet, in thoir
 
 282 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 vndistmctness, were the recollections and the images thai 
 crowded on her mind. 
 
 Morton, satisfied by the earnest and solemn assurances 
 of Eugenie that she was not the unknown donor of the 
 sum she reinclosed, after puzzling himself in vain to form 
 any new conjectures as to the quarter whence it came, felt 
 that under his present circumstances it would be an absurd 
 Quixotism to refuse to apply what the veiy Providence to 
 whom he had anew consigned himself seemed to have sent 
 to his aid. And it placed him, too, beyond the offer of all 
 pecuniary assistance from one from whom he could least 
 have brooked to receive it. He consented, therefore, to all 
 that the loquacious tailor proposed to him. And it would 
 have been difficult to have recognised the wild and frenzied 
 fugitive in the stately and graceful form, with its young 
 beauty and air of well-born pride, which the next day sat 
 by the side of Eugenie. And that day he told his sad and 
 troubled story, and Eugenie wept : and from that day he 
 came daily; and two weeks happy, dreamlike, intoxicating 
 to both passed by ; and as their last sun set, he was 
 kneeling at her feet, and breathing to one to whom the 
 homage of wit, and genius, and complacent wealth, had 
 hitherto been vainly proffered, the impetuous, agitated, 
 delicious secrets of the First Love. He spoke, and rose to 
 depart for ever when the look and sigh detained him. 
 
 The next day, after a sleepless night, Eugenie de Mer- 
 ville sent for the Vicomte de Vaudemont. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 " A silver river small 
 In sweet accents 
 Its music vents ; 
 The warbling virginal 
 To which the merry birds do sing;, 
 Timed with stops of gold the silver string." 
 SIR RICHARD 
 
 ONE evening, several weeks after the events just com- 
 n ernorated, a stranger, leading in his hand a young child 
 entered the church-yard of H - . The sun had not long 
 set, and the short twilight of deepening summer reigned in 
 the tranquil skies ; you might still hear from the trees
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 283 
 
 above the graves the chirp of some joyous bird ; what 
 cared he, the denizen of the skies, for the dead that slept 
 below ? what did he value save the greenness and repose 
 of the spot, to him alike, the garden or the grave ! As 
 the man and the child passed, the robin, scarcely scared 
 by their tread from the long grass beside one of the mounds, 
 looked at them with its bright, blithe eye. It was a famous 
 plot for the robin the old church-yard ! That domestic 
 bird " the friend of man," as it has been called by the 
 poets found a jolly supper among the worms ! 
 
 The stranger, on reaching the middle of the sacred 
 ground, paused and looked round him wistfully. He then 
 approached, slowly and hesitatingly, an oblong tablet, on 
 which were graven, in letters yet fresh and new, these 
 words : 
 
 TO THE 
 
 MEMOKY OF ONE CALUMNIATED AND WRONGED, 
 
 THIS BURIAL-STONE IS DEDICATED 
 
 BY HER SON. 
 
 Such, with the addition of the dates of birth and death, 
 was the tablet which Philip Morton had directed to be 
 placed over his mother's bones ; and around it was set a 
 simple palisade, which defended it from the tread of the 
 children, who sometimes, in defiance of the beadle, played 
 over the dust of the former race. 
 
 " Thy son ! " muttered the stranger, while the child 
 stood quietly by his side, pleased by the trees, the grass, 
 the song of the birds, and recking not of grief or death, 
 " thy son ! but not thy favoured son thy darling thy 
 youngest born ; on what spot of earth do thine eyes look 
 down on hhn ? Surely in heaven thy love has preserved 
 the one whom on earth thou didst most cherish, from the 
 sufferings and the trials that have visited the less-favoured 
 outcast. Oh, mother mother! it was not his crime 
 uot Philip's that he did not fulfil to the last the trust 
 bequeathed to him ! Happier, perhaps, as it is ! And, 
 oh ! if thy memory be graven as deeply in my brother's 
 fieart as my own, how often will it warn and save him ! 
 That memory ! it has been to me the angel of my life ' 
 To thee to thce, even in death, I owe it, if, though erring, 
 I am not criminal, if I have lived with the lepers, and 
 am still undefiled ! " His lips then were silent -not bin 
 heart I
 
 284 NIGHT AKD MORNING. 
 
 After a few minutes thus consumed he turned to the 
 child, and said, gently and in a tremulous voice, " Fanny, 
 you have been taught to pray you will live near this spot, 
 will you come sometimes here and pray that you may 
 grow up good and innocent, and become a blessing to those 
 who love you ? " 
 
 " Will papa ever come to hear me pray ? " 
 
 That sad and unconscious question went to the heart of 
 Morton. The child could not comprehend death. He 
 had sought to explain it, but she had been accustomed to 
 consider her protector dead when he was absent from her, 
 and she still insisted that he must come again to life. And 
 that man of turbulence and crime, who had passed unre- 
 pentant, unabsolved, from sin to judgment : it was an 
 awful question " If lie should hear her pray ? " 
 
 " Yes ! " said he, after a pause, "yes, Fanny, there is a 
 Father who will hear you pray ; and pray to him to be 
 merciful to those who have been kind to yon. Fanny, you 
 and I may never meet again ! " 
 
 " Are you going to die too ? Mechant, every one dies to 
 Fanny ! " and, clinging to him endearingly, she put up her 
 lips to kiss him. He took her in his arms : and, as a tear 
 feD upon her rosy cheek, she said, " Don't cry, brother, for 
 Hove you." 
 
 "Do you, dear Fanny?' Then, for my sake, when you 
 come to this place, if any one will give you a few flowers, 
 scatter them on that stone. And now we will go to ono 
 whom you must love also, and to whom, as I have told 
 you, he sends you ; he who Come ! " 
 
 As he thus spoke, and placed Fanny again on the 
 ground, he was startled to see, precisely on the spot where 
 Ae had seen before the like apparition on the same spot 
 where the father had cursed the son, the motionless form 
 of an old man. Morton recognised, as if by an instinct 
 rather than by an effort of the memory, the person to 
 whom he was bound. 
 
 He walked slowly towards him ; but Fanny abruptly 
 left his side, lured by a moth that flitted duskily over the 
 graves. 
 
 " Your name, sir, I think, is Simon Grawtrey ? " sai<? 
 Morton. " I have come to England in quest of you." 
 
 " Of me ? " said the old man, half rising, and his oyes, 
 now completely blind, rolled vacantly over Morton's per-
 
 NIGHT AKD MOHNING. 285 
 
 son, " Of me ? for what ? Who arc you P 1 don't 
 know your voice ! " 
 
 " I como to you from your son ! " 
 
 " My son ! " exclaimed the old man, with great vehe- 
 mence, " the reprobate ! the dishonoured ! the in- 
 famous ! the accursed " 
 
 " Hush ! you revile the dead ! " 
 
 "Dead! " muttered the wretched father, tottering back 
 to the seat he had quitted, "dead!" and the sound of 
 his voice was so full of anguish, that the dog at his feet, 
 which Morton had not hitherto perceived, echoed it with a 
 dismal cry, that recalled to Philip the awful day in which 
 he had seen the son quit the father for the last time on 
 earth. 
 
 The sound brought Fanny to the spot ; and, with a 
 laugh of delight, which made to it a strange contrast, she 
 threw herself on the grass beside the dog and sought to 
 entice it to play. So there, in that place of death, were 
 knit together the four links iu the Great Chain ; lusty 
 and blooming life desolate and doting age infancy, yet 
 scarce conscious of a soul and the dumb brute, that has 
 no warrant of a Hereafter ! 
 
 " Dead ! dead ! " repeated the old man, covering his 
 sightless balls with his withered hands. " Poor William !" 
 
 " He remembered you to the last. He bade me seek 
 you out he bade me replace the guilty son with a thing 
 pure and innocent, as he had been had he died in his 
 cradle a child to comfort your old age ! Kneel, Fanny, I 
 have found you a father who will cherish you (oh ! you 
 will, sir, will you not ?) as he whom you may see no 
 more ! " 
 
 There was something in Morton's voice so solemn, that 
 it awed and touched both the old man and the infant ; and 
 Fanny, creeping to the protector thus assigned to her, 
 and putting her little hands confidingly on his knees, 
 said, 
 
 " Fanny will love yon if papa wished it. Kisg 
 Fanny." 
 
 "Is it his child his ! " said the blind man, sobbing. 
 " Come to my heart ; here here ! Grod, forgive 
 me!" 
 
 Morton did not think it right at that moment to un- 
 deceive him -vith regard to the poor child's tmo connexion
 
 286 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 with the deceased: and he waited in silence till Simon, 
 after a burst of passionate grief and tenderness, rose, and, 
 still clasping the child to his breast, said, 
 
 " Sir, forgive me ! I am a very weak old man I have 
 many thanks to give I have much too, to learn. My 
 poor son ! he did not die in want, did he ? " 
 
 The particulars of Gawtrey's fate, with his real name 
 and the various aliases he had assumed, had appeared in 
 the French journals, and been partially copied into the 
 English ; and Morton had expected to have been saved tho 
 painful narrative of that fearful death ; but the utter seclu- 
 sion of the old man, his infirmity, and his estranged habits, 
 had shut him out from the intelligence that it now de- 
 volved on Philip to communicate. Morton hesitated a 
 little before he answered, 
 
 " It is late now ; you are not yet prepared to receive this 
 poor infant at your home, nor to hear the details I have to 
 state. I arrived in England but to-day. I shall lodge in 
 the neighbourhood, for it is dear to me. If I may feel 
 sure, then, that you will receive and treasure this sacred 
 and last deposit bequeathed to you by your unhappy son, 
 I will bring my charge to you to-morrow, and we will then, 
 more calmly than we can now, talk over the past." 
 
 "You do not answer my question," said Simon, passion- 
 ately ; " answer that, and I will wait for the rest. They 
 call me a miser ! Did I send out my only child to starve ? 
 Answer that ! " 
 
 " Be comforted. He did not die in want ; and he has 
 even left some little fortune for Fanny, which I was to 
 place in your hands." 
 
 "And he thought to bribe the' old miser to be human! 
 Well well well ! I will go home." 
 
 " Lean on me ! " 
 
 The dog leapt playfully on his master as the latter rose, 
 and Fanny slid from Simon's arms to caress and talk to 
 the animal in her own way. As they slowly passed 
 through the churchyard Simon muttered incoherently to 
 himself for several paces, and Morton would not disturb, 
 since he could not comfort, him. 
 
 At last, he said abruptly, " Did my son repent ? " 
 
 " I hope," answered Morton, evasively, " that >**sd bia 
 life been spared, he would have amended ! " 
 
 " Tush, sir ! I arc past seventy ; we repent ! w& aever
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 28? 
 
 amend 1 " And Simon again sunk into his own dim and 
 disconnected reveries. 
 
 At length they arrived at the blind man's house. The 
 door was opened to them by an old woman of disagreeable 
 and sinister aspect, dressed out much too gaily for the 
 station of a servant, though such was her reputed capa- 
 city ; but the miser's affliction saved her from the chance 
 of his comment on her extravagance. As she stood in the 
 door-way with a candle in her hand, she scanned curi- 
 ously, and with no welcoming eye, her master's com- 
 panions. 
 
 " Mrs. Boxer, my son is dead ! " said Simon, in a hollow 
 voice. 
 
 " And a good thing it is, then, sir ! " 
 
 "For shame, woman ! " said Morton, indignantly. 
 
 " Hey-day ! sir ! Whom have we got here ? " 
 
 " One," said Simon, sternly, " whom you will treat with 
 respect. He brings me a blessing to lighten my loss. 
 One harsh word to this child, and you quit my house ! " 
 
 The woman looked perfectly thunderstruck; but, re- 
 covering herself, she said, whiningly, 
 
 " I ! a harsh word to anything my dear, kind master 
 cares for. And, Lord, what a sweet pretty creature it is ! 
 Come here, my dear ! " 
 
 But Fanny shrunk back, and would not let go Philip's 
 hand. 
 
 " To-morrow, then," said Morton ; and he was turning 
 away, when a sudden thought seemed to cross the old 
 tnan, 
 
 " Stay, sir, stay ! I I did my son say I was rich ? 
 I am very, very poor nothing in the house, or I should 
 have been robbed long ago ! " 
 
 " Your son told me to bring money, not to ask for 
 it!" 
 
 "Ask for it! No; but," added the old man, and a 
 gleam of cunning intelligence shot over his face, " but he 
 had got into a bad set. Ask ! Kb ! Put up the door- 
 chain, Mrs. Boxer ! " 
 
 It was with doubt and misgivings that Morton, the next 
 day, consigned the child, who had already nestled herself 
 into the warmest core of his heart, to the care of Simon. 
 Nothing short of that superstitious respect, which all men 
 owe to the wishes of the dead, would have made him
 
 288 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 select for her tliat asylum ; for Fate had now, in biighten* 
 ing his own prospects, given him an alternative in the 
 benevolence of Madame de Merville. But Gawtrey had 
 been so earnest on the subject, that he felt as if he had n<\ 
 right to hesitate. And was it not a sort of atonement to 
 any faults the son might have committed against the 
 parent, to place by the old man's hearth so sweet a 
 charge ? 
 
 The strange and peculiar mind and character of Fanny 
 made him, however, yet more anxious than otherwise he 
 might have been. She certainly deserved not the harsh name 
 of imbecile or idiot, but she was different from all other 
 children ; she felt more acutely than most of her age, but 
 she could not be taught to reason. There was something 
 either oblique or deficient in her intellect, which justified 
 the most melancholy apprehensions ; yet often, when some 
 disordered, incoherent, inexplicable train of ideas most 
 saddened the listener, it would be followed by fancies so 
 exquisite in their strangeness, or feelings so endearing in 
 their tenderness, that suddenly she seemed as much above, 
 as before she seemed below, the ordinary measure of infant 
 comprehension. She was like a creature to which Nature, 
 in some cruel but bright caprice, has given all that belongs 
 to poetry, but denied all that belongs to the common 
 understanding necessary to mankind ; or, as a fairy change- 
 ling, not, indeed, according to the vulgar superstition, 
 malignant and deformed, but lovelier than the children of 
 men, and haunted by dim and struggling associations of a 
 gentler and fairer being, yet wholly incapable to learn the 
 dry and hard elements which make up the knowledge of 
 actual life. 
 
 Morton, as well as he could, sought to explain to Simon 
 the peculiarities in Fanny's mental constitution. He 
 urged on him the necessity of providing for her careful 
 instruction, and Simon promised to send her to the best 
 school the neighbourhood could afford ; but, as the old 
 man spoke, he dwelt so much on the supposed fact that 
 Fanny was William's daughter, and with his remorse, or 
 affection, there ran so interwoven a thread of selfishness 
 and avarice, that Morton thought it would be dangerous 
 to his interest in the child to undeceive his error. Ho, 
 therefore, perhaps excusably enough, remained silent o" 
 'hat subject.
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 289 
 
 Gawtrey had placed with the superior of the convent, 
 together with an order to give up the child to any one who 
 should demand her in his true name, which he confided to 
 the superior, a sum of nearly 3001., which he solemnly 
 swore had been honestly obtained, and which, in all his 
 shifts and adversities, he had never allowed himself to 
 touch. This sum, with the trifling deduction made for 
 arrears due to the convent, Morton now placed in Simon's 
 hands. The old man clutched the money, which was for 
 the most in French gold, with a convulsive gripe; and 
 then, as if ashamed of the impulse, said, 
 
 4< But you, sir, will any sum that is, any reasonable 
 sum be of use to you ? " 
 
 " No ! and if it were, it is neither yours nor mine it is 
 hers. Save it for her, and add to it what you can." 
 
 While this conversation took place, Fanny had been 
 consigned to the care of Mrs. Boxer, and Philip now rose 
 to see and bid her farewell before he departed. 
 
 " I may come again to visit you, Mr. Gawtrey ; and I 
 pray Heaven to find that you and Fanny have been a 
 mutual blessing to each other. Oh, remember how your 
 son loved her!" 
 
 " He had a good heart in spite of all his sins. Poor 
 William ! " said Simon. 
 
 Philip Morton heard, and his lip curled with a sad and a 
 just disdain. 
 
 If, when at the age of nineteen, William Gawtrey had 
 quitted his father's roof, the father had then remembered 
 that the son's heart was good, the son had been alive 
 still, an honest and a happy man. Do ye not laugh, O ye 
 all-listening Fiends! when men praise those dead whose 
 virtues they discovered not when alive ? It takes much 
 marble to build the sepulchre how little of lath and 
 plaster would have repaired the garret ? 
 
 On turning into a small room adjoining the parlour in 
 which Gawtrey sat, Morton found Fanny standing gloomily 
 by a dull, soot-grimed window, which looked out on the 
 dead walls of a small yard. Mrs. Boxer-seated by a table, 
 was employed in trimming a cap, and putting questions to 
 Fanny in that falsetto voice of endearment in which people 
 not used to children are apt to address them. 
 
 " And so, my dear, they've never taught yon to read o 
 write ? You've been sadly neglected, poor thing! "
 
 290 NIGHT AND 
 
 "We must do our best to supply the deficiency," said 
 Morton, as he entered. 
 
 " Bless me, sir, is that you ? " and the gouvernanL 
 bustled up and dropped a low courtesy ; for Morton, 
 dressed then in the garb of a gentleman, was of a mien 
 and person calculated to strike the gaze of the vulgar. 
 
 " Ah, brother ! " cried Fanny, for by that name he had 
 taught her to call him ; and she flew to his side. " Come 
 away it's ugly there it makes me cold." 
 
 " My child, I told you, you must stay ; but I shall hope 
 to see you again some day. Will you not be kind to this 
 poor creature, ma'am ? Forgive me, if I offended you last 
 night, and favour me by accepting this to show that we 
 are friends." As he spoke, he slid his purse into the 
 woman's hand. " I shall feel ever grateful for whatever 
 you can do for Fanny." 
 
 " Fanny wants nothing from any one else ; Fanny wants 
 her brother." 
 
 " Sweet child ! I fear she don't take to me. Will you 
 like me, Miss Fanny ! " 
 
 "No! get along!" 
 
 " Fie, Fanny ! you remember you did not take to me 
 at first. But she is so affectionate, ma'am; she never 
 forgets a kindness." 
 
 " I will do all I can to please her, sir. And so she is 
 really master's grandchild ? " The woman fixed her eyes, 
 as she spoke, so intently on Morton, that he felt embar- 
 rassed, and busied himself, without answering, in caressing 
 and soothing Fanny, who now seemed to awake to the 
 affliction about to visit her : for though she did not weep 
 she very rarely wept her slight frame trembled her 
 eyes closed her cheeks, even her lips, were white and 
 her delicate hands were clasped tightly round the neck of 
 the one about to abandon her to strange breasts. 
 
 Morton was greatly moved. " One kiss, Fanny ! and do 
 not forget me when we meet again." 
 
 The child pressed her lips to his cheek, but the lips 
 were cold. He put her down gently ; she stood mute and 
 passive. 
 
 " Remember that he wished me to leave you here," 
 whispered Morton, using an argument that never failed. 
 " We must obey him : and so God bless you, Fanny ! " 
 
 He rose and retreated to the door', the child unclosed
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 291 
 
 her eyes, and gazed at him with a strained, painful, im- 
 ploring gaze : her lips moved, but she did not speak. 
 Morton could not bear that silent woe. He sought to 
 Bmile on her consolingly ; but the smile would not come. 
 He closed the door, and hurried from the house. 
 
 From that day Fanny settled into a kind of dreary, in- 
 animate stupor, which resembled that of the somnambulist 
 whom the maguetiser forgets to waken. Hitherto, with 
 all the eccentricities or deficiencies of her mind, had min- 
 gled a wild and airy gaiety. That was vanished. She 
 spoke little she never played no toys could lure her 
 even the poor dog failed to win her notice. If she was told 
 to do anything, she stared vacantly, and stirred not. She 
 evinced, however, a kind of dumb regard to the old blind 
 man ; she would creep to his knees, and sit there for hours, 
 seldom answering when he addressed her; but uneasy, 
 anxious, and restless, if he left her. 
 
 " Will you die too ? " she asked once ; the old man un- 
 derstood her not, and she did not try to explain. Early 
 one morning, some days after Morton was gone, they missed 
 her : she was not in the house, nor the dull yard where 
 she was sometimes dismissed and told to play told in 
 vain. In great alarm, the old man accused Mrs. Boxer of 
 having spirited her away ; and threatened and stormed so 
 loudly, that the woman, against her will, went forth to the 
 search. At last, she found the child in the churchyard, 
 standing wistfully beside a tomb. 
 
 " What do you here, you little plague ? " said Mrs. Boxer, 
 rudely seizing her by the arm. 
 
 " This is the way they will both come back some day ! 
 I dreamt so ! " 
 
 " If ever I catch you here again ! " said the housekeeper, 
 and, wiping her brow with one hand, she struck the child 
 with the other. Fanny had never been struck before. She 
 recoiled in terror and amazement ; and, for the first time 
 since her arrival; burst into tears. 
 
 " Come come, no crying ! and if you tell master, Fl] 
 beat you within an inch of your life ! " So saying, she 
 caught Fanny in her arms ; and, walking about, scolding 
 and menacing, till she had frightened back the child's 
 tears, she returned triumphantly to the house, and burst- 
 ing into the parlour, exclaimed, " Here's the little darling, 
 sir!" 
 
 vl
 
 292 NIGHT AND MORNING, 
 
 When old Simon learned where the child had been 
 found, he was glad ; for it was his constant habit, when- 
 ever the evening was fine, to glide out to that churchyard 
 bis dog his guide and sit on his one favourite spot 
 opposite the setting sun. This, not so much for the sanc- 
 tity of the place, or the meditations it might inspire, as be* 
 cause it was the nearest, the safest, and the loneliest spot, 
 in the neighbourhood of his home, where the blind man 
 could inhale the air, and bask in the light of heaven. 
 Hitherto, thinking it sad for the child, he had never taken 
 her with him : indeed, at the hour of his monotonous ex- 
 cursion, she had generally been banished to bed. Now 
 she was permitted to accompany him ; and the old map 
 and the infant would sit there side by side, as Age and 
 Infarcy rested side by side in the graves below. Tho first 
 symptom of childlike interest and curiosity that Fanny 
 betrayed was awakened by the affliction of her protector. 
 One evening, as they thus sat, she made him explain what 
 the desolation of blindness is. She seemed to comprehend 
 him, though he did not seek to adapt his complaints to her 
 understanding. 
 
 " Fanny knows," said she, touchingly ; "for she, too, ia 
 blind here ; " and she pressed her hands to her temples. 
 
 Notwithstanding her silence and strange ways, and al- 
 though he could not see the exquisite loveliness which 
 Nature, as in remorseful pity, had lavished on her outward 
 form, Simon soon learned to love her better than he had 
 ever loved yet : for they most cold to the child are often 
 dotards to the grandchild. For her even his avarice slept. 
 Dainties, never before known at his sparing board, were 
 ordered to tempt her appetite; toy-shops ransacked to 
 amuse her indolence. He was long, however, before he 
 could prevail on himself to fulfil his promise to Morton, 
 and rob himself of her presence. At length, however, 
 wearied with Mrs. Boxer's lamentations at her ignorance, 
 and alarmed himself at some evidences of helplessness, 
 which mado him dread to think what her future might be 
 when left alone in life, he placed her at a day-school in thb 
 suburb. Here Fanny, for a considerable time, justified the 
 harshest assertions of her stupidity. She could not even 
 keep her eyes two minutes together on the page from 
 which she was to learn the mysteries of reading; months 
 passod before sue mastered the alphabet, and, a month
 
 NIGHT. AND MORNING. 298 
 
 after, she had again forgot it, and the labour was renewed. 
 The only thing in which she showed ability, if so it might 
 be called, was in the use of the needle. The sisters of the 
 convent had already taught her many pretty devices in 
 this art., and when she found that at the school they were 
 admired that she was praised instead of blamed her 
 vanity was pleased, and she learned so readily all that they 
 could teach in this not unprofitable accomplishment, that 
 Mrs. Boxer slyly and secretly turned her tasks to account, 
 and made a weekly perquisite of the poor pupil's industry. 
 Another faculty she possessed, in common with persons 
 usually deficient, and with the lower species, viz. a most 
 accurate and faithful recollection of places. At first, Mrs. 
 Boxer had been duly sent morning, noon, and evening, to 
 take her to, or bring her from, the school ; but this was so 
 great a grievance to Simon's solitary superintendent, and 
 Fanny coaxed the old man so endearingly to allow her to 
 go and return alone, that the attendance, unwelcome to 
 both, was waved. Fanny exulted in this liberty ; and she 
 never, in going or in returning, missed passing through 
 the burial-ground, and gazing wistfully at the tomb from 
 which she yet believed Morton would one day reappear. 
 With his memory, she cherished also that of her earlier 
 and more guilty protector ; but they were separate feelings, 
 Which she distinguished in her own way, 
 
 " Papa had given her up. She knew that he would not 
 have sent her away, far far over the great water, if he 
 had meant to see Fanny again ; but her brother was forced 
 to leave her he would come to life one day, and then they 
 should live together ! " 
 
 One day, towards the end of autumn, as her school- 
 mistress, a good woman on the whole, but who had not yet 
 had the wit to discover by what chords to tune the instru- 
 ment, over which so wear^y she drew her unskilful hand 
 one day, we say, the schoolmistress happened to be dressed 
 for a christening party to which she was invited in the 
 suburb ; and, accordingly, after the morning lessons, the 
 pupils were to be dismissed to a holiday. As Fanny now 
 came last, with the hopeless spelling-book, she stopped 
 Suddenly short, and her eyes rested with avidity upon a 
 large bouquet of exotic flowers, with which the good lady 
 had enlivened the centre of the parted kerchief, whoso 
 yellow gauze modestly veiled that tender section of female
 
 294 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 beauty which poets have likened to hills of snow a chill- 
 ing simile ! It was then antnmn ; and field, and even 
 garden flowers were growing rare. 
 
 " Will you give me one of those flowers ? " said Fanny, 
 dropping her book. 
 
 " One of these flowers, child ! why ? " 
 
 Fanny did not answer ; but one of the elder and cleverer 
 girls said, 
 
 " Oh ! she comes from France, you know, ma'am, and 
 the Roman Catholics put flowers, and ribands, and things, 
 over the graves ; you recollect, ma'am, we were reading 
 yesterday about Pere-la- Chaise ? " 
 
 "Well! what then?" 
 
 " And Miss Fanny will do any kind of work for us if we 
 will give her flowers." 
 
 " My brother told me where to put them ; but these 
 jretty flowers, I never had any like them ; they may bring 
 him back again ! I'll be so good if you'll give me one, 
 only one ! " 
 
 " Will you learn your lesson if I do, Fanny ? " 
 
 " Oh ! yes ! Wait a moment ! " 
 
 And Fanny stole back to her desk, put the hateful book 
 resolutely before her, pressed both hands tightly on her 
 temples, Eureka 1 the chord was touched ; and Fanny 
 marched in triumph through half a column of hostile 
 double-syllables ! 
 
 From that day the schoolmistress knew how to stimulate 
 her, and Fanny learned to read : her path to knowledge 
 thus literally strewn with flowers ! Catherine, thy children 
 were far off, and thy grave looked gay ! 
 
 It naturally happened that those short and simple rhymes, 
 often sacred, which are repeated in schools as helps to 
 memory, made a part of her studies ; and no sooner had 
 the sound of verse struck upon her fancy than it seemed 
 to confuse and agitate anew all her senses. It was like 
 the music of some bi'eeze, to which dance and tremble all 
 the young leaves of a wild plant. Even when at the con- 
 vent she had been fond of repeating the infant rhymes 
 with which they had sought to lull, or to amuse her, but 
 now the taste was more strongly developed. She con- 
 founded, however, in meaningless and motley disorder, the 
 various snatches of song that came to her ear, weaving 
 them together in some form which she understood, but
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 295 
 
 which was jargon to all others ; and often, as she went 
 alone through the green lanes or the bustling streets, the 
 passenger would turn in pity and fear to hear her half 
 chant half murmur ditties that seemed to suit only a 
 wandering and unsettled imagination. And as Mrs. Boxer, 
 in her visits to the various shops in the suburb, took care 
 to bemoan her hard fate in attending to a creature so evi- 
 dently moon-stricken, it was no wonder that the manner 
 and habits of the child, coupled with that strange predi- 
 lection to haunt the burial-ground, which is not uncommon 
 with persons of weak and disordered intellect, confirmed 
 the character thus given to her. 
 
 So, as she tripped gaily and lightly along the thorough- 
 fares, the children would draw aside from her path, and 
 whisper, with superstitious fear mingled with contempt, 
 " It's the idiot girl ! " Idiot! how much more of heaven's 
 light was there in that cloud than in the rushlights that, 
 flickering in sordid chambers, shed on dull things the dull 
 ray esteeming themselves as stars ! 
 
 Months years passed Fanny was thirteen, when there 
 dawned a new era to her existence. Mrs. Boxer had never 
 got over her first grudge to Fanny. Her treatment of the 
 poor girl was always harsh, and sometimes cttnel. But 
 Fanny did not complain, and as Mrs. Boxer's manner to her 
 before Simon was invariably cringing and caressing, the old 
 man never guessed the hardships his supposed grandchild 
 underwent. There had been scandal some years back in 
 the suburb about the relative connexion of the master and 
 the housekeeper; and the flaunting dress of the latter, 
 something bold in her regard, and certain whispers that 
 her youth had not been vowed to Vesta, confirmed the 
 suspicion. The only reason why we do not feel sure that 
 the rumour was false is this, Simon Gawtrey had been 
 BO hard on the early follies of his son ! Certainly, at all 
 events, the woman had exercised great influence over the 
 miser before the arrival of Fanny, and she had done much 
 to steel his selfishness against the ill-fated William. And, 
 os certainly, she had fully calculated on succeeding to the 
 savings, whatever they might be, of the miser, whenever 
 Providence should be pleased to terminate his days. She 
 knew that Simon had, many years back, made his will in 
 her favour ; she knew that ho had not altered that will ; 
 he believed, therefore, that in spite of all his love for
 
 290 NIGHT AND 
 
 Fanny, he loved his gold so much more, that he could not 
 accustom himself to the thought of bequeathing it to 
 hands too helpless to guard the treasure. This had in 
 some measure reconciled the housekeeper to the intruder ; 
 whom, nevertheless, she hated as a dog hates another dog, 
 not only for taking his bone, but for looking at it. 
 
 But suddenly Simon fell ill. His age made it probable 
 he would die. He took to his bed his breathing grew 
 fainter and fainter he seemed dead. Fanny, all uncon- 
 scious, sat by his bedside as usual, holding her breath not to 
 waken him. Mrs. Boxer flew to the bureau she unlocked 
 it she could not find the will ; but she found three bags 
 of bright old guineas : the sight charmed her. She tumbled 
 them forth on the distaincd green cloth of the bureau 
 she began to count them ; and at that moment, the old 
 man, as if there were a secret magnetism between himself 
 and the guineas, woke from his trance. His blindness 
 saved him the pain that might have been fatal, of seeing 
 the unhallowed profanation ; biit he heard the chink of the 
 metal. The very sound restored his strength. But the 
 infirm are always cunning he breathed not a suspicion. 
 " Mrs. Boxer," said he, faintly, " I think I could take some 
 broth." Mrs. Boxer rose in great dismay, gently reclosed 
 the bureau, and ran down stairs for the broth. Simon 
 took the occasion to question Fanny ; and no sooner had 
 he learnt the operation of the heir- expectant, than he bade 
 the girl first lock the bureau and bring him the key, anr 1 
 next run to a lawyer, f(i*'hose address he gave her,) and 
 fetch him instantly. 
 
 With a malignant smile the old man took the broth from 
 his handmaid, " Poor Boxer, you are a disinterested 
 creature," said he, feebly ; " I think you will grieve 
 when I go." 
 
 Mrs. Boxer sobbed, and before she had recovered, the 
 lawyer entered. That day a new will was made ; and the 
 lawyer politely informed Mrs. Boxer that her services would 
 be dispensed with the next morning, when lie should bring 
 a nurse to the house. Mrs. Boxer heard, and took her 
 resolution. As soon as Simon again fell asleep, she crept 
 into the room led away Fanny locked her up in her own 
 chamber returned searched for the key of the bureau, 
 which she found at last under Simon's pillow possessed 
 herself of all she could lay her hands on and the next
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 2 07 
 
 morning she had disappeared for ever ! Simon's loss was 
 greater than might have been supposed; for, except a 
 trifling sum in the Savings' Bank, he, like many other 
 misers, kept all he had, in notes or specie, under his own 
 lock and key. His whole fortune, indeed, was far les.i 
 than was supposed : for money does not make money 
 unless it is put out to interest, and the miser cheated 
 himself. Such portion as was in bank-notes Mrs. Boxer 
 probably had the prudence to destroy ; for those numbers 
 which Simon could remember were never traced ; the gold, 
 who could swear to ? Except the pittance in the Savings' 
 Bank, and whatever might be the paltry worth of the house 
 he rented, the father who had enriched the menial to exile 
 the son was a beggar in his dotage. This news, however, 
 was carefully concealed from him by the advice of the 
 doctor, whom, on his own responsibility, the lawyer intro- 
 duced, till he had recovered sufficiently to bear the shock 
 without danger; and the delay naturally favoured Mrs. 
 Boxer's escape. 
 
 Simon remained for some moments perfectly stunned and 
 speechless when the news was broken to him. Fanny, in 
 alarm at his increasing paleness, sprang to his breast. He 
 pushed her away, " Go go go, child," he said ; " I 
 can't feed you now. Leave me to starve." 
 
 " To starve ! " said Fanny, wonderingly ; and she stole 
 away, and sat herself down as if in deep thought. She 
 then crept up to the lawyer as he was about to leave the 
 *oom, after exhausting his stock of commonplace consola- 
 tion ; and putting her hand in his, whispered, " I want to 
 fc.xlk to you this way : " She led him through the pass- 
 age into the open air. " Tell me," she said, " when poor 
 people try not to starve, don't they work ? " 
 
 " My dear, yes." 
 
 " For rich people buy poor people's work ? " 
 
 " Certainly, my dear ; to be sure." 
 
 " Very well. Mrs. Boxer used to sell my. work. Fanny 
 will feed grandpapa ! Gro and tell him never to say ' starve * 
 again." 
 
 The good-natured lawyer was moved. " Can you work, 
 indeed, my poor girl ? Well, put on your bonnet, and come 
 stud talk to my wife." 
 
 And that was the new era in Fanny's existence ! Her 
 Bchooling was stopped. But now life schooled her. Ne
 
 298 WIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 cessity ripened liei 1 intellect. And many a hard eye moist- 
 ened, as, seeing her glide with her little basket of fancy 
 work along the streets, still murmuring her happy and 
 birdlike snatches of nnconnected song men and children 
 alike said with respect, in which there was now no con- 
 tempt, " It's the idiot girl who supports her blind grand- 
 father !" 
 
 They called her idiot still !
 
 BOOK IV, 
 
 fyn ju cinem grcfien 2J?eere 
 
 ilriefe mici) feint r 2Bet(en tfef ; 
 QSor nut liegt'S in reciter Sfeere, 
 
 icty nicfyt tern 3ie(." 
 
 SCHILLER : Der Pilgrim. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 " Oh, that sweet f -learn of sunshine on the lake ! " 
 
 City of the Plague. 
 
 IF, reader, you have ever looked through a solar micro 
 ct'ope at the monsters in a drop of water, perhaps you have 
 wondered to yourself how things so terrible have been 
 hitherto unknown to yon you have felt a loathing at the 
 limpid element you hitherto deemed so pure you have half 
 fancied that you would cease to be a water-drinker ; yet, 
 the next day you have forgotten the grim life that started 
 before you, with its countless shapes, in that teeming glo- 
 bule ; and, if so tempted by your thirst, you have not shrunk 
 from the lying crystal, although myriads of the horrible 
 Unseen are mangling, devouring, gorging each other, in 
 the liquid you so tranquilly imbibe ; so is it with that 
 ancestral and master element called Life. Lapped in your 
 sleek comforts, and lolling on the sofa of your patent con- 
 science when, perhaps for the first time, you look through 
 the glass of science upon one ghastly globule in the waters 
 that heave around, that fill up, with their succulence, the 
 pores of earth, that moisten every atom subject to your 
 eyes, or handled by your touch yon are startled and dis- 
 mayed ; you say, mentally, " Can such things be ? I never 
 dreamed of this before ! I thought what was invisible to 
 me was non-existent in itself I will remember this dread 
 experiment." The next day the experiment is forgotten. 
 The Chemist may purify the Globule can Science make 
 pure the World ?
 
 800 NIGHT AND MOKNINO. 
 
 Turn we now to the pleasant surface, seen in the whole, 
 broad and fair to the common eye. Who would judge well 
 of God's great designs, if he could look on no drop pendent 
 from the rose-tree, or sparkling in the sun, without the help 
 of his solar microscope ? 
 
 It is ten years after the night on which William Grawtrey 
 perished : I transport you, reader, to the fairest scenes ii 
 England, scenes consecrated, by the only true pastoral 
 poetry we have known, to Contemplation and Repose. 
 
 Autumn had begun to tinge the foliage on the banks of 
 Winandermere. It had been a summer of unusual warmth 
 and beauty ; and if that year you had visited the English 
 lakes, you might, from time to time, amidst the groups of 
 happy idlers you encountered, have singled out two persons 
 for interest, or, perhaps, for envy. Two who might have 
 seemed to you in peculiar harmony with those serene and 
 soft retreats, both young both beautiful. Lovers you 
 would have guessed them to be ; but such lovers as Fletcher 
 might have placed under the care of his " Holy Shep- 
 herdess " forms that might have reclined by 
 
 M The virtuous well, about whose flowery banks 
 The nimble-footed fairies dance their rounds 
 By the pale moonshine." 
 
 For in the love of those persons there seemed a purity and 
 innocence that suited well their youth and the character of 
 their beauty. Perhaps, indeed, on the girl's side, love 
 sprung rather from those affections which the spring of 
 life throws upward to the surface, as the spring of earth 
 does its flowers, than from that concentrated and deep 
 absorption of self in self, which alone promises endurance 
 and devotion, and of which first love, or rather the first 
 fancy, is often less susceptible than that which grows out 
 of the more thoughtful fondness of maturer years. Yet he, 
 the lover, was of so rare and singular a beauty, that he 
 might well seem calculated to awaken, to the utmost, the 
 love which wins the heart through the eyes. 
 
 But to begin at the beginning. A lady of fashion had, 
 in the autumn previous to the year on which our narrative 
 re-opens, taken, with her daughter, a girl then of about 
 eighteen, the tour of the English lakes. Charmed by the 
 beauty of Winandermere, and finding one of the most com- 
 modious villas on its banks to be let, they had remained there 
 all the winter. In the early spring a severe illness had
 
 NIGHT AND MOI;NING. 301 
 
 seized tho elder lady, and finding herself, as she slowly 
 recovered, unfit for the gaieties of a London season, nor 
 unwilling, perhaps, for she had been a beauty in her day 
 to postpone for another year the debut of her daughter, she 
 had continued her sojourn, with short intervals of absence, 
 for a whole year. Her husband, a busy man of the world, 
 with occupation in London, and fine estates in the country, 
 joined them only occasionally, glad to escape the still beauty 
 of landscapes, which brought him no rental, and therefore 
 afforded no charm to his eye. 
 
 In the first month of their arrival at Winandermere, the 
 mother and daughter had made an eventful acquaintance 
 in the following manner. 
 
 One evening, as they were walking on their lawn, which 
 sloped to the lake, they heard the sound of a flute, played 
 with a skill so exquisite as to draw them, surprised and 
 spell-bound, to the banks. The musician was a young man, 
 in a boat, which he had moored beneath the trees of their 
 demesne. He was alone, or, rather, he had one companion, 
 in a large Newfoundland dog, that sat watchful at the 
 helm of the boat, and appeared to enjoy the music as much 
 as his master. As the ladies approached the spot, the 
 dog growled, and the young man ceased, though without 
 seeing the fair causes of his companion's displeasure. The 
 sun, then setting, shone full on his countenance as he 
 looked round ; and that countenance was one that might 
 have haunted the nymphs of Delos ; the face of Apollo, 
 not as the hero, but the shepherd not of the bow, but of 
 the lute not the Python-slayer, but the young dreamer by 
 shady places he whom the sculptor has portrayed leaning 
 idly against the tree the boy-god whose home is yet on 
 earth, and to whom the Oracle and the Spheres are still 
 unknown. 
 
 At that moment the dog leaped from the boat, and the 
 elder lady uttered a faint cry of alarm, which, directing 
 the attention of the musician, brought him also ashore. 
 He called off his dog, and Apologised, with a not ungraceful 
 mixture of diffidence and ease, for his intrusion. He was 
 not aware the place was inhabited it was a favourite 
 haunt of his he lived near. The elder lady was pleased 
 with his address, and struck with his appearance. There 
 was, indeed, in his manner that indefinable charm, whicb 
 is more attractive than mere personal appearance, and
 
 302 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 which can never be imitated or acquired. They parted, 
 however, without establishing any formal acquaintance. 
 A few days after, they met at dinner at a neighbouring 
 house, and were introduced by name. That of the young 
 man seemed strange to the ladies ; not so theirs to him. 
 He turned pale when he heard it, and remained silent and 
 aloof the rest of the evening. They met again and often ; 
 and for some weeks nay, even for months he appeared 
 to avoid, as much as possible, the acquaintance so auspi- 
 ciously begun ; but by little and little, the beauty of the 
 younger lady seemed to gain ground on his diffidence or 
 repugnance. Excursions among the neighbouring moun- 
 tains threw them together, and at last he fairly surren- 
 dered himself to the charm he had at first determined to 
 resist. 
 
 This young man lived on the opposite side of the lake, 
 in a quiet household, of which he was the idol. His life 
 had been one of almost monastic purity and repose ; his 
 tastes were accomplished, his character seemed soft and 
 gentle ; but beneath that calm exterior, flashes of passion 
 the nature of the poet, ardent and sensitive would 
 break forth at times. He had scarcely ever, since his 
 earliest childhood, quitted those retreats ; he knew nothing 
 of the world, except in books books of poetry and romance. 
 Those with whom he lived his relations, an old bachelor, 
 and the old bachelor's sisters, old maids seemed equally 
 innocent and inexperienced. It was a family whom the 
 rich respected, and the poor loved inoffensive, charitable, 
 and well off. To whatever their easy fortune might be, he 
 appeared the heir. The name of this young man was 
 Charles Spencer ; the ladies were Mrs. Beaufort, and 
 Camilla her daughter. 
 
 Mrs. Beaufort, though a shrewd woman, did not at first 
 perceive any danger in the growing intimacy between 
 Camilla and the younger Spencer. Her daughter was not 
 her favourite : not the object of her one thought or ambi- 
 tion. Her whole heart and soul were wrapped in her son 
 Arthur, who lived principally abroad. Clever enough 
 to be considered capable, when he pleased, of achieving 
 distinction, good-looking enough to be thought handsome 
 by all who were on the qui vive for an advantageous match, 
 good-natured enough to be popular with the society in 
 which he lived, scattering to and fro money without limit.
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 303 
 
 Arthur Beaufort, at the age of thirty, had established 
 one of those brilliant and evanescent reputations, which, 
 for a few years, reward the ambition of the fine gentleman. 
 It was precisely the reputation that the mother could ap- 
 preciate, and which even the more saving father secretly 
 admired, while, ever respectable in phrase, Mr. Robert 
 Beaufort seemed openly to regret it. This son was, I say, 
 everything to them ; they cared little, in comparison, for 
 their daughter. How could a daughter keep up the proud 
 name of Beaufort ? However well she might marry, it 
 was another house, not theirs, which her graces and beauty 
 would adorn. Moreover, the better she might marry, the 
 greater her dowry would naturally be, the dowry, to go 
 out of the family ! And Arthur, poor fellow ! was so ex- 
 travagant, that really he would want every sixpence. 
 Such was the reasoning of the father. The mother 
 reasoned less upon the matter. Mrs. Beaufort, faded and 
 meagre, in blonde and cachemere, was jealous of the charms 
 of her daughter ; and she herself, growing sentimental and 
 lachrymose as she advanced in life, as silly women often 
 do, had convinced herself that Camilla was a girl of no 
 feeling. 
 
 Miss Beaufort was, indeed, of a character singularly 
 calm and placid ; it was the character that charms men in 
 proportion, perhaps, to their own strength and passion. 
 She had been rigidly brought up her affections had been 
 very early chilled and subdued ; they moved, therefore, 
 now, with ease, in the serene path of her duties. She held 
 her parents, especially her father, in reverential fear, and 
 never dreamed of the possibility of resisting one of their 
 wishes, much less their commands. Pious, kind, gentle, 
 of a fine and never-ruffled temper, Camilla, an admirable 
 daughter, was likely to make no less admirable a wife ; 
 you might depend on her principles, if ever you could 
 doubt her affection. Few girls were more calculated to 
 inspire love. You would scarcely wonder at any folly, any 
 madness, which even a wise man might commit for her 
 sake. This did not depend on her beauty alone, though 
 sho was extremely lovely rather than handsome, and of 
 that style of loveliness which is universally fascinating : 
 the figure, especially as to the arms, throat, and bust, was 
 exquisite ; the mouth dimpled ; the teeth dazzling ; the 
 eyes of that velvet softness which to look on is to love.
 
 804 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 But her charm was in a certain prettiness of manner, an 
 exceeding innocence, mixed with the most captivating, 
 because unconscious, coquetry. With all this, there was a 
 freshness, a joy, a virgin and bewitching candour in her 
 voice, her laugh you might almost say in her very move- 
 ments. Such was Camilla Beaufort at that age. Such 
 she seemed to others. To her parents she was only a great 
 girl rather in the way. To Mrs. Beaufort a rival, to Mr. 
 Beaufort an incumbrance on the nroperty. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 * * "The moon 
 
 Saddening the solemn night, yet with that sadness 
 
 Mingling the breath of undisturbed Peace." 
 
 WILSON : City of the Plague. 
 
 * * " Tell me his fate. 
 Say that he lives, or say that he is dead : 
 But tell me tell me ! 
 ****** 
 
 I see him not some cloud envelopes him." IbiJ. 
 
 ONE day (nearly a year after their first introduction) as 
 with a party of friends Camilla and Charles Spencer were 
 riding through those wild and romantic scenes which lie 
 between the sunny Winandermere and the dark and sullen 
 Wastwater, their conversation fell on topics more personal 
 than it had hitherto done, for as yet, if they felt love, they 
 had never spoken of it. 
 
 The narrowness of the path allowed only two to ride 
 abreast, and the two to whom I confine my description were 
 ehe last of the little band. 
 
 " How I wish Arthur were here ! " said Camilla ; " I am 
 rare you would like him." 
 
 "Are you? He lives much in the world the world of 
 which I know nothing. Are we then characters to so it 
 each other ? " 
 
 "He is the kindest the best of human beings !" said 
 Camilla, rather evasively, but with more warmth than usually 
 dwelt in her soft and low voice. 
 
 " Is he so kind ? " returned Spencer, musingly. " Well, 
 rt may be so. And who would not be kind to you ? Ah ! 
 it is a beautiful connection tha> of brother and taster 1 
 never had a sister ! "
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 805 
 
 " Have yon then a brother ? " agked Camilla, in some 
 surprise, and turning her ingenuous eyes full on her com- 
 panion. 
 
 Spencer's colour rose rose to his temples : his voice 
 trembled as he answered "No; no brother! " then, speak- 
 ing in a rapid and hurried tone, he continued, " My life has 
 been a strange and lonely one. I am an orphan. I have 
 mixed with few of my own age : my boyhood and youth 
 have been spent in these scenes ; my education such as 
 Nature and books could bestow, with scarcely any guide or 
 tutor save my guardian the dear old man ! Thus the 
 world, the stir of cities, ambition, enterprise, all seem to 
 me as things belonging to a distant land to which I shall 
 never wander. Yet I have had my dreams, Miss Beaufort ; 
 dreams of which these solitudes still form a part but soli- 
 tudes not unshared. And lately I have thought that those 
 dreams might be prophetic. And you do you love the 
 world ? " 
 
 " I, like you, have scarcely tried it," said Camilla, with 
 a sweet laugh. " But I love the country better, oh ! far 
 better than what little I have seen of towns. But for you," 
 she continued, with a charming hesitation, "a man is so 
 different from us, for you to shrink from the world you, 
 so young and with talents too nay, it is true ! it seems to 
 me strange." 
 
 " It may be so, but I cannot tell you what feelings of 
 dread what vague forebodings of terror seize me if I carry 
 my thoughts beyond these retreats. Perhaps my good 
 guardian " 
 
 " Your uncle ? " interrupted Camilla. 
 
 " Ay, my uncle may have contributed to en- 
 gender feelings, as you say, strange at my age; but 
 still " 
 
 " Still what ! " 
 
 "My earlier childhood," continued Spencer, breathing 
 hard and turning pale, " was not spent in the happy home 
 I have now ; it was passed in a premature ordeal of suffer* 
 ing and pain. Its recollections have left a dark shadow on 
 my mind, and under that shadow lies every thought that 
 points towards the troublous and labouring career of other 
 men. But," he resumed after a pause, and in a deep, earnest, 
 almost solemn voice, " but, after all, is this cowardice or 
 wisdom y I find no monotony no tedium in this quiet
 
 306 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 life. Is there not a certain morality a certain religion in 
 the spirit of a secluded and country existence? In it wo 
 do not know the evil passions which ambition and strife are 
 said to arouse. I never feel jealous or envious of other 
 men ; I never know what it is to hate ; my boat, niy horse, 
 our garden, music, books, and, if I may dare to say so, tho 
 solemn gladness that comes from the hopes of another life, 
 these fill up every hour with thoughts and pursuits, 
 peaceful, happy, and without a cloud, till of late, when 
 when " 
 
 " When what ? " said Camilla, innocently. 
 
 "When I have longed, but did not dare to ask another 
 if to share such a lot would content her ! " 
 
 He bent, as he spoke, his soft blue eyes full upon the 
 blushing face of her whom he addressed, and Camilla 
 half smiled and half sighed, 
 
 " Our companions are far before us," said she, turning 
 away her face, " and see, the road is now smooth." She 
 quickened her horse's pace as she said this ; and Spencer, 
 too new to women to interpret favourably her evasion of 
 his words and looks, fell into a profound silence which 
 lasted during the rest of their excursion. 
 
 As towards the decline of day he bent his solitary 
 way home, emotions and passions to which his life had 
 hitherto been a stranger, and which, alas ! he had vainly 
 imagined a life so tranquil would everlastingly restrain, 
 swelled his heart. 
 
 " She does not love me," he muttered, half aloud ; " she 
 will leave me, and what then will all the beauty of the 
 landscape seem in my eyes ? And how dare I look up to 
 her ? Even if her cold, vain mother her father, the man, 
 they say, of forms and scruples, were to consent, would they 
 not question closely of my true birth and origin ? And if 
 the one blot were overlooked, is there no other ? His early 
 habits and vices, his I a brother's his unknown career 
 terminating at any day, perhaps, in shame, in crime, in 
 exposure, in the gibbet, will they overlook this ? " As he 
 spoke, he groaned aloud, and, as if impatient to escape him- 
 self, spurred on his horse and rested not till he reached the 
 belt of trim and sober evergreens that surrounded hi; 
 hitherto happy home. 
 
 Leaving his horse to find its way to the stables, thft 
 young man passed through rooms, which he found descried,
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 80? 
 
 to the lawn on the other side, which sloped to the smooth 
 waters of the lake. 
 
 Here, seated under the one large tree that formed the 
 pride of the lawn, over which it cast its shadow broad and 
 far, he perceived his guardian poring idly over an oft- read 
 book, one of those books of which literary dreamers are 
 apt to grow fanatically fond books by the old English 
 writers, full of phrases and conceits half quaint and half 
 sublime, interspersed with praises of the country, imbued 
 with a poetical rather than othodox religion, and adorned 
 with a strange mixture of monastic learning and aphorisms 
 collected from the weary experience of actual life. 
 
 To the left, by a green-house, built between the house 
 and the lake, might be seen the white dress and lean form 
 of the eldest spinster sister, to whom the care of the 
 flowers for she had been early crossed in love was con- 
 signed ; at a little distance from her, the other two wero 
 seated at work, and conversing in whispers, not to disturb 
 their studious brother, no doubt upon the nephew, who 
 was their all in all. It was the calmest hour of eve, and 
 the quiet of the several forms, their simple and harmless 
 occupations if occupations they might be called the 
 breathless foliage rich in the depth of summer; behind, 
 the old-fashioned house, unpretending, not mean, its open 
 doors and windows giving glimpses of the comfortable 
 repose within ; before, the lake, without a ripple and 
 catching the gleam of the sunset clouds, all made a 
 picture of that complete tranquillity and stillness, which 
 sometimes soothes and sometimes saddens us, according as 
 we are in the temper to woo CONTENT. 
 
 The young man glided to his guardian and touched his 
 shoulder, " Sir, may I speak to you ? Hush ! they need 
 not see us now ! it is only you I would speak with." 
 
 The elder Spencer rose; and, with his book still in his 
 hand, moved side by side with his nephew under the 
 shadow of the tree and towards a walk to the right, which 
 led for a short distance along the margin of the lake, 
 backed by the interlaced boughs of a thick copse. 
 
 " Sir! " said the young man, speaking first, and with a 
 visible effort, "your cautions have been in vain! I love 
 this girl this daughter of the haughty Beauf orts ! I love 
 her better than life I love her!" 
 
 "My poor boy/' said tho uncle tenderly, and with a
 
 308 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 simple fondness passing his arm over the speaker's shoul- 
 der, " do not think I can chide you I know what it is to 
 love in vain!" 
 
 "In vain! but why in vain?" exclaimed the younger 
 Spencer, with a vehemence that had in it something of 
 both agony and fierceness. " She may love me she shall 
 love me ! " and almost for the first time in his life, the 
 proud consciousness of his rare gifts of person spoke in his 
 kindled eye and dilated stature. "Do they not say that 
 Nature has been favourable to me ? What rival have I 
 here ? Is she not young ? And (sinking his voice till 
 it almost breathed like music) is not love contagious ?" 
 
 " I do not doubt that she may love you who would notF 
 but but the parents, will they ever consent?" 
 
 "Nay! " answered the lover, as with that inconsistency 
 common to passion, he now argued stubbornly against 
 those fears in another to which he had just before yielded 
 n himself, " Nay ! after all, am I not of their own blood ? 
 Do I not come from the elder branch ? Was I not 
 reared in equal luxury and with higher hopes ? And my 
 mother my poor mother did she not to the last maintain 
 our birthright her own honour? Has not accident or 
 law unjustly stripped us of our true station? Is it not 
 for us to forgive spoliation ? Am I not, in fact, the person 
 who descends, who forgets the wrongs of the dead 
 the heritage of the living ? " 
 
 The young man had never yet assumed this tone 
 bad never yet shown that he looked back to the history 
 connected with his birth with the feelings of resentment 
 and the remembrance of wrong. It was a tone contrary 
 to his habitual calm and contentment it struck forcibly 
 on his listener and the elder Spencer was silent for some 
 moments before he replied, " If you feel thus, (and it 
 is natural,) you have yet stronger reason to struggle 
 against this unhappy affection." 
 
 " I have been conscious of that, sir," replied the young 
 man, mournfully. " I have struggled ! and I say again 
 it is in vain! I turn, then, to face the obstacles! My 
 birth let us suppose that the Beauforts overlook it. Did 
 you not tell me that Mr. Beaufort wrote to inform you of 
 the abrupt and intemperate visit of my brother of his 
 determination never to forgive it ? I think I remember 
 eomf thing of this years ago,"
 
 NIGHT AND MOKN1NG. 1309 
 
 "It is true!" said the guardian; "and the conauct 
 of that brother is, in fact, the true cause why yon never 
 ought to reassume your proper name ! never to divulge 
 it, even to the family with whom you connect yourself by 
 marriage ; but, above all, to the Beauforts, who for that 
 cause, if that cause alone, would reject your suit." 
 
 The young man groaned placed one hand before his 
 eyes, and with the other grasped his guardian's arm con- 
 vulsively, as if to check him from proceeding farther; 
 but the good man, not divining his meaning, and absorbed 
 in his subject, went on, irritating the wound he had 
 touched. 
 
 " Reflect ! your brother in boyhood in the dying hours 
 of his mother, scarcely saved from the crime of a thief, 
 flying from a friendly pursuit with a notorious reprobate ; 
 afterwards implicated in some discreditable transaction 
 about a horse, rejecting all every hand that could sare 
 him, clinging by choice to the lowest companions and the 
 meanest habits, disappearing from the country, and last 
 seen, ten years ago the beard not yet on his chin with 
 that same reprobate of whom I have spoken, in Paris ; 
 a day or so only before his companion, a coiner a mur- 
 derer fell by the hands of the police ! You remember 
 that when, in your seventeenth year, you evinced some 
 desire to retake your name nay, even to refind that 
 guilty brother I placed before you, as a sad and terrible 
 duty, the newspaper that contained the particulars of the 
 death and the former adventures of that wretched accom- 
 plice, the notorious Gawtrey. And, telling you that Mr. 
 Beaufort had long since written to inform me that his own 
 son and Lord Lilburne had seen your brother in company 
 with the miscreant just before his fate nay, was, in all 
 probability, the very youth described in the account as 
 found in his chamber and escaping the pursuit I asked 
 you if you would now venture to leave that disguise that 
 shelter under which you would for ever be safe from the 
 opprobrium of the world from the shame that, sooner or 
 later, your brother must bring upon your name ! " 
 
 " It is true it is true ! " said the pretended nephew, in 
 a tone of great anguish, and with trembling lips which thft 
 blood had forsaken. " Horrible to look either to his past 
 or his future ! But but we have heard of him no more 
 uo one ever has learned his fite. Perhaps perhaps " (and
 
 310 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 he seemed to breathe more freely) " my IrotJi&r it no 
 more ! " 
 
 And poor Catherine and poor Philip had it come to 
 this ? Did the one brother feel a sentiment of release, of 
 joy, in conjecturing the death perhaps the death of vio 
 lence and shame of his fellow-orphan ? Mr. Spencer 
 shook his head doubtingly, but made no reply. The young 
 man sighed heavily and strode on for several paces in 
 advance of his protector, then, turning back, ho laid his 
 hand on his shoulder. 
 
 " Sir," he said in a low voice and with downcast eyes, 
 "you are right: this disguise this false name must be 
 for ever borne ! Why need the Beauforts, then, eve* 
 know who and what I am ? Why not as your nephew 
 nephew to one so respected and exemplary proffer my 
 claims and plead my cause ? " 
 
 " They are proud so it is said and worldly ; you 
 know my family was in trade still but " and here 
 Mr. Spencer broke off from a tone of doubt into that of 
 despondency, "but, recollect, though Mrs. Beaufort may 
 not remember the circumstance, both her husband and 
 her son have seen me have known my name. Will they 
 not suspect, when once introduced to you, the stratagem 
 that has been adopted ! Nay, has it not been from that 
 very fear that you have wished me to shun the ac- 
 quaintance of the family ! Both Mr. Beaufort and Arthur 
 saw you in childhood, and their suspicion once aroused, 
 they may recognise you at once ; your features are deve- 
 loped, but not altogether changed. Come, come! my 
 ff,dopted, my dear son, shake off this fantasy betimes : let 
 as change the scene : I will travel with you read with 
 you go where " 
 
 "Sir sir!" exclaimed the lover, smiting his breast, 
 " you are ever kind, compassionate, generous ; but do not 
 do not rob me of hope. I have never thanks to you 
 felt, save in a momentary dejection, the curse of my birth. 
 Now how heavily it falls ! Where shall I look for com- 
 fort?" 
 
 As he spoke, the sound of a bell broke over the trans- 
 lucent air and the slumbering lake : it was the bell that 
 every eve and morn summoned that innocent and pious 
 family to prayer. The old man's face changed as he beard 
 it changed from its customary indolent, absent, listless
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 311 
 
 aspect, into an expression of dignity, even of anima- 
 tion. 
 
 " Hark ! " he said, pointing upwards ; " Hark ! it chidea 
 yon. Who shall say, ' where shall I look for comfort ' whilo 
 God is in the Heavens ? " 
 
 The young man, habituated to the faith and observance 
 of religion, till they had pervaded his whole nature, bowed 
 his head in rebuke ; a few tears stole from his eyes. 
 
 " You are right, father," he said tenderly, giving em- 
 phasis to the deserved and endearing name. " I am com- 
 forted already ! " 
 
 So, side by side, silently and noiselessly, the young and 
 the old man glided back to the house. When they gained 
 the quiet room in which the family usually assembled, the 
 sisters and servants were already gathered round the table. 
 They knelt as the loiterers entered. It was the wonted 
 duty of the younger Spencer to read the prayers ; and, as 
 he now did so, his graceful countenance more hushed, his 
 sweet voice more earnest than usual, in its accents : who 
 that heard could have deemed the heart within convulsed 
 by such stormy passions ? Or was it not in that hour 
 that solemn commune soothed from its woe ? 0, bene- 
 ficent Creator ! thou who inspirest all the tribes of earth 
 with the desire to pray, hast thon not, in that divinest in- 
 stinct, bestowed on us the happiest of thy gifts ? 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 " Bertram, I mean the business is not ended, as fearing to hear of it 
 hereafter. 
 
 ***** 
 
 l< lit Soldier. Do yo i know this Captain Duniain ? " 
 
 All's Well that Ends Well. 
 
 ONE evening, some weeks after the date of the last 
 chapter, Mr. Robert Beaufort sat alone in his house in 
 Berkeley Square. He had arrived that morning from 
 Beaufort Court, on his way to Winandennere, to which 
 he was summoned by a letter from his wife. 
 
 That ear was an agitated and eventful epoch in Eng- 
 land ; and Mr. Beaufort had recently gone through the 
 bustle of an election not, indeed, contested ; for his popr
 
 812 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 larity and his property defied all rivalry in his own 
 county. 
 
 The rich man had just dined, and was seated in lazy 
 enjoyment by the side of the fire, which he had had lighted, 
 less for the warmth though it was then September than 
 for the companionship ; engaged in finishing his madeira, 
 and, with half -closed eyes, munching his devilled biscuits. 
 
 "I am sure," he soliloquised while thus employed,"! 
 don't know exactly what to do, my wife ought to decide 
 matters where the girl is concerned ; a son is another 
 affair that's the use of a wife. Humph ! " 
 
 "Sir," said a fat servant, opening the door, "a gentle- 
 man wishes to see you upon very particular business." 
 
 " Business at this hour ! Tell him to go to Mr. Black* 
 well." 
 
 " Yes, sir." 
 
 " Stay ! perhaps he is a constituent, Simmons. A^k him 
 if he belongs to the county." 
 
 "Yes, sir." 
 
 "A great estate is a great plague," muttered Mr. Beau- 
 fort ; " so is a great constituency. It is pleasanter, after 
 all, to be in the House of Lords. I suppose I could if I 
 wished ; but then one must rat that's a bore. I will 
 consult Lilburne. Humph ! " The servant re-appeared. 
 
 " Sir, he says he does belong to the county." 
 
 " Show him in ! What sort of a person ? " 
 
 " A sort of gentleman, sir ; that is," continued the butler, 
 mindful of five shillings just slipped within his palm by 
 the stranger, "quite the gentleman." 
 
 " More wine, then stir up the fire." 
 
 In a few moments the visitor was ushered into the 
 apartment. He was a man between fifty and sixty, but 
 still aiming at the appearance of youth. His dress evinced 
 military pretensions; consisting of a blue coat, buttoned 
 up to the chin, a black stock, loose trousers of the fashion 
 calledcossacks,andbrass spurs. Heworeawig, of greatluxu- 
 riance in curl and rich auburn in hue ; with large whiskers 
 of the same colour, slightly tinged with grey at the roots. 
 By the imperfect light of the room it was not perceptible 
 that the clothes were somewhat threadbare, and that the 
 boots, cracked at the side, admitted glimpses of no very 
 white hosiery within. Mr. Beaufort, reluctantly rising 
 from his repose and gladly sinking back to it, motioned to
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 818 
 
 a chair, and put on a doleful and doubtful semi-smile of 
 welcome. The servant placed the wine and glasses before 
 the stranger ; the host and visitor were alone. 
 
 " So, sir," said Mr. Beaufort, languidly, " you are from 
 
 shire ; I suppose about the canal, may I offer you a 
 
 glass of wine ? " 
 
 " Most hauppy, sir your health ! " and the stranger, with 
 evident satisfaction, tossed off a bumper to so complimentary 
 a toast. 
 
 " About the canal ? " repeated Mr. Beaufort. 
 
 " No, sir, no ! You parliament gentlemen must hauve a 
 vaust deal of trouble on your haunds very f oine property 
 I understaund yours is, sir. Sir, allow me to drink the 
 health of your good lady ! " 
 
 " I thank you, Mr. , Mr. , what did you say your 
 name was ? I beg you a thousand pardons." 
 
 "No offaunce in the least, sir; no ceremony with me 
 this is perticler good madeira ! " 
 
 " May I ask how I can serve you ? " said Mr. Beaufort, 
 struggling between the sense of annoyance and the fear to 
 be uncivil. " And pray, had I the honour of your vote in 
 the last election ? " 
 
 " No, sir, no ! It's mauny years since I have been in 
 your part of the world, though I was born there." 
 
 " Then I don't exactly see " began Mr. Beaufort, and 
 
 stopped with dignity. 
 
 " Why I call on you," put in the stranger, tapping his 
 boots with his cane ; and then recognising the rents, he 
 thrust both feet under the table. 
 
 " I don't say that ; but at this hour I am seldom at 
 leisure not but what I am always at the service of a con- 
 stituent, that is, a voter I Mr. , I beg your pardon, I 
 
 did not catch your name." 
 
 " Sir," said the stranger, helping himself to a third glass 
 of wine ; " here's a health to your young folk ! And now 
 to business." Here the visitor, drawing his chair nearer to 
 his host, assuming a more grave aspect, and dropping 
 something of his stilted pronunciation, continued, "You 
 had a brother ? " 
 
 "Well, sir," said Mr. Beaufort, with a very changed 
 countenance. 
 
 " And that brother had a wife ! " 
 
 Had a cannon gone off in the ear of Mr. Robert Beaufort)
 
 314 'nIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 it could not have shocked or stunned him. more than that 
 simple word with which his companion closed his sentence. 
 He fell back in his chair his lips apart, his eyes fixed on 
 the stranger. He sought to speak, but his tongue clove to 
 his mouth. 
 
 " That wife had two sons, born in wedlock ! " 
 
 " It is false ! " cried Mr. Beaufort, finding a voice at 
 length, and springing to his feet. " And who are you, sir ? 
 and what do you mean by " 
 
 " Hush ! " said the stranger, perfectly unconcerned, 
 and regaining the dignity of his haw-haw enunciation, 
 " better not let the servants hear auny thing. For my pawt, 
 I think servants hauve the longest pair of ears of auny 
 persons, not excepting jauckasses ; their ears stretch from 
 the pauntry to the parlour. Hush, sir! perticler good 
 madeira, this ! " 
 
 " Sir ! " said Mr. Beaufort, struggling to preserve, or 
 rather recover, his temper, " your conduct is exceedingly 
 strange : but allow me to say, that you are wholly misin- 
 formed. My brother never did marry ; and if you have 
 anything to say on behalf of those young men his natural 
 sons I refer you to my solicitor, Mr. Blackwell, of Lin- 
 coln's Inn. I wish you a good evening." 
 
 " Sir ! the same to you I won't trouble you auny 
 farther ; it was only out of koindness I called I am not 
 used to be treated so sir, I am in his maujesty's service 
 sir, you will f oind that the witness of the marriage is forth- 
 coming ; you will think of me then, and, perhaps, be sorry. 
 But I've done, ' Your most obedient humble, sir ! ' " And 
 the stranger, with a flourish of his hand, turned to the 
 door. 
 
 At the sight of this determination on the part of his 
 strange guest, a cold, uneasy, vague presentiment seized 
 Mr. Beaufort. There, not flashed, but rather froze, across 
 him the recollection of his brother's emphatic but disbe- 
 lieved assurances of Catherine's obstinate assertion of her 
 son's alleged rights rights which her lawsuit, undertaken 
 on her own behalf, had not compromised ; a fresh lawsuit 
 might be instituted by the son, and the evidence which had 
 been wanting in the former suit might be found at last. 
 With this remembrance and these reflections came a hor- 
 rible train of shadowy fears, witnesses, verdict, surrender, 
 spoliation arrears ruin !
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 315 
 
 The man, who had gained the door, turned back and 
 looked at him with a complacent, half-triumphant leer 
 fcpon his impudent, reckless face. 
 
 " Sir," then said Mr. Beaufort, mildly, " I repeat that 
 you had better see Mr Blackwell." 
 
 The tempter saw his triumph. " I have a secret to com- 
 municate, which it is best for you to keep snug. How 
 mauny people do you wish me to see about it ? Come, sir, 
 there is no need of a lawyer ; or, if you think so, tell him 
 yourself. Now or never, Mr. Beaufort." 
 
 " I can have no objection to hear anything you have to 
 say, sir," said the rich man, yet more mildly than before ; 
 and then added, with a forced smile, " though my rights 
 are already too confirmed to admit of a doubt." 
 
 Without heeding the last assertion, the stranger coolly 
 walked back, resumed his seat, and, placing both arms on 
 the table and looking Mr. Beaufort full in the face, thus 
 proceeded, 
 
 " Sir, of the marriage between Philip Beaufort and Cathe- 
 rine Morton there were two witnesses : the one is dead, the 
 other went abroad the last is alive still ! " 
 
 "If so," said Mr. Beaufort, who, not naturally deficient 
 in cunning and sense, felt every faculty now prodigiously 
 sharpened, and was resolved to know the precise grounds 
 for alarm, " if so, why did not the man it was a servant, 
 sir, a man-servant, whom Mrs. Morton pretended to rely 
 on appear on the trial? " 
 
 " Because, I say, he was abroad and could not be found ; 
 or, the search after him miscaurried, from clumsy manage- 
 ment and a lack of the rhino." 
 
 " Hum ! " said Mr. Beaufort " one witness one wit- 
 ness, observe, there is only one ! does not alarm me much. 
 It is not what a man deposes, it is what a jury believe, sir ! 
 Moreover, what has become of the young men ? They have 
 never been heard of for years. They are probably dead ; 
 if so, I am heir-at-law 1 " 
 
 "I know where one of them is to be found, at all 
 events." 
 
 " The elder ? Philip ? " asked Mr. Beaufort, anxiously, 
 and with a fearful remembrance of the energetic and vehe- 
 ment character prematurely exhibited by his nephew. 
 
 " Pawdon me ! I need not aunswer that question." 
 
 " Sir ! a lawsuit of this nature, against one in possession,
 
 316 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 is very doubtful, aud," added the rich, man drawing hira- 
 Belf up " and, perhaps, very expensive ! " 
 
 " The young man I speak of does not want friends, who 
 will not grudge the money." 
 
 " Sir ! " said Mr. Beaufort, rising and placing his back 
 to the fire " sir ! what is your object in this communica- 
 tion ? Do you come, on the part of the young man, to 
 propose a compromise ? If so, be plain ! " 
 
 " I come on my own pawt. It rests with you to say if 
 the young men shall never know it ! " 
 
 " And what do you want ? " 
 
 " Five hundred a-year as long as the secret is kept." 
 
 " And how can you prove that there is a secret, after 
 all?" 
 
 " By producing the witness, if you wish." 
 
 " Will he go halves in the 500Z. a-year ? " asked Mr. 
 Beaufort, artfully. 
 
 " That is moy affair, sir," replied the stranger. 
 
 "What you say," resumed Mr. Beaofort, "is so extra- 
 ordinary so unexpected, and still, to me, seems so im- 
 probable, that I must have time to consider. If you will 
 call on me in a week, and produce your facts, I will give 
 you my answer. I am not the man, sir, to wish to keep 
 any one out of his true rights, but I will not yield, on the 
 other hand, to imposture." 
 
 " If you don't want to keep them out of their rights, I'd 
 best go and tell my young gentlemen," said the stranger, 
 with cool impudence. 
 
 "I tell you I must have time," repeated Beaufort, dis- 
 concerted. " Besides, I have not myself alone to look to, 
 sir," he added, with dignified emphasis "I am a 
 father!" 
 
 " This day week I will call on you again. Good evening, 
 Mr. Beaufort ! " And the man stretched out his hand with 
 an air of amicable condescension. 
 
 The respectable Mr. Beaufort changed colour, hesitated, 
 and finally suffered two fingers to be enticed into the grasp 
 of the visitor, whom he ardently wished at that bourne 
 whence no visitor returns. 
 
 The stranger smiled, stalked to the door, laid his finger 
 on his lip, winked knowingly, and vanished, leaving Mr 
 Beaufort a prey to such feelings of uneasiness, dread, and 
 terror, as may be experienced by a man whom, on some
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 317 
 
 inch or frwt of slippery rock, the tides have suddenly 
 surrounded. 
 
 He remained perfectly still for some moments, and then 
 glancing round the dim and spacious room, his eyes took 
 in all the evidences of luxury and wealth which it betrayed. 
 Above the huge sideboard, that on festive days groaned 
 beneath the hoarded weight of the silver heirlooms of the 
 Beauforts, hung, in its gilded frame, a large picture of the 
 family seat, with the stately porticoes the noble park 
 the groups of deer ; and around the wall, interspersed here 
 and there with ancestral portraits of knight and dame, 
 long since gathered to their rest, were placed masterpieces 
 of the Italian and Flemish art, which generation after 
 generation had slowly accumulated, till the Beaufort Col- 
 lection had become the theme of connoisseurs and the study 
 of young genius. 
 
 The still room, the dumb pictures even the heavy side- 
 board, seemed to gain voice, and speak to him audibly. 
 He thrust his hand into the folds of his waistcoat, and 
 griped his own flesh convulsively ; then, striding to 
 and fro the apartment, he endeavoured to re-collect his 
 thoughts. 
 
 "I dare not consult Mrs. Beaufort," he muttered ; "no 
 no, she is a fool ! Besides she's not in the way. No 
 time to lose I will go to Lilburne." 
 
 Scarce had that thought crossed him than he hastened 
 to put it into execution. He rang for his hat and gloves, 
 and sallied out on foot to Lord Lilburne's house in Park 
 Lane, the distance was short, and impatience has long 
 strides. 
 
 He knew Lord Lilburne was in town, for that personage 
 loved London for its own sake ; and even in September he 
 would have said with the old Duke of Queensbury, when 
 some one observed that London was very empty " Yes ; 
 but it is fuller than the country." 
 
 Mr. Beaufort found Lord Lilburne reclined on a sofa, by 
 the open window of his drawing-room, beyond which the 
 early stars shone upon the glimmering trees and silver 
 turf of the deserted park. Unlike the simple dessert of 
 his respectable brother-in-law, the costliest fruits, the 
 richest wines of France, graced the small table placed 
 beside his sofa ; and as the starch man of forms and 
 method entered the room at one door, a rustling silk, that
 
 SJS NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 vanished through the aperture of another, seemed to betray 
 tokens of a tete-a-tete, probably more agreeable to Lilburne 
 than the one with which only our narrative is concerned. 
 
 It would have been a curious study for such men as lovo 
 to gaze upon the dark and wily features of human cha- 
 racter, to have watched the contrast between the recite* 
 and the listener, as Beaufort, with much circumlocution, 
 much affected disdain, and real anxiety, narrated the 
 singular and ominous conversation between himself and 
 his visitor. 
 
 The servant, in introducing Mr. Beaufort, had added to 
 the light of the room ; and the candles shone full on tho 
 face and form of Mr. Beaufort. All about that gentleman 
 was so completely in unison with the world's forms and 
 seemings, that there was something moral in the very 
 sight of him ! Since his accession of fortune, he had 
 grown less pale and less thin ; the angles in his figure 
 were filled up. On his brow there was no trace of younger 
 passion. No able vice had ever sharpened the expression 
 no exhausting vice ever deepened the lines. He was the 
 beau ideal of a county member, so sleek, so staid, so 
 business-like ; yet so clean, so neat, so much the gentle- 
 man. And now there was a kind of pathos in his grey 
 hairs, his nervous smile, his agitated hands, his quick and 
 uneasy transition of posture, the tremble of his voice. He 
 would have appeared to those who saw, but heard not, 
 The Good Man in trouble. Cold, motionless, speechless, 
 seemingly apathetic, but in truth observant, still reclined 
 on the sofa, his head thrown back, but one eye fixed on his 
 companion, his hands clasped before him, Lord Lilburno 
 listened ; and in that repose, about his face, even about his 
 person, might be read the history of how different a life 
 and character ! What native acuteness in the stealthy 
 eye ! What hardened resolve in the full nostril and firm 
 lips ! What sardonic contempt for all things in the intri- 
 cate lines about the mouth ! What animal enjoyment of 
 all things so despised in that delicate nervous system, 
 which, combined with original vigour of constitution, yet 
 betrayed itself in the veins on the hands and temples, the 
 occasional quiver of the upper lip ! His was the frame 
 &bove all others the most alive to pleasure deep-chested, 
 Compact, sinewy, but thin to leanness delicate in its tex- 
 ture and extremities, almost to effeminacy. The indiffer-
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 819 
 
 ence of the posture, the very habit of the dress not 
 slovenly, indeed, but easy, loose, careless seemed to speak 
 of the man's manner of thought and life his profound 
 disdain of externals. 
 
 Not till Beaufort had concluded did Lord Lilbnrne 
 change his position or open his lips ; and then, turning to 
 his brother-in-law his calm face, he said drily, 
 
 " I always thought your brother had married that 
 woman ; he was the sort of man to do it, Besides, why 
 should she have gone to law without a vestige of proof, 
 unless she was convinced of her rights ? Imposture never 
 proceeds without some evidence. Innocence, like a fool, 
 as it is, fancies it has only to speak to be believed. But 
 there is no cause for alarm." 
 
 " No cause ! And yet you think there was a marriage." 
 
 " It is quite clear," continued Lilburne, without heeding 
 this interruption, "that the man, whatever his evidence, 
 has not got sufficient proofs. If he had, he would go to 
 the young men rather than you : it is evident that they 
 would promise infinitely larger rewards than he could ex- 
 pect from yourself. Men are always more generous with 
 what they expect than with what they have. All rogues 
 know this. "Pis the way Jews and usurers thrive upon 
 heirs rather than possessors ; 'tis the philosophy of post- 
 obits. I dare say the man has found out the real witness 
 of the marriage, but ascertained also, that the testimony of 
 that witness would not suffice to dispossess you. He might 
 be discredited rich men have a way sometimes of dis- 
 crediting poor witnesses. Mind, he says nothing of the 
 lost copy of the register, whatever may bo the value of 
 that document, which I am not lawyer enough to say of 
 any letters of your brother avowing the marriage. Con- 
 sider, the register itself is destroyed the clergyman dead. 
 Pooh ! make yourself easy." 
 
 "True," said Mr. Beaufort, much comforted; "what a 
 memory you have ! " 
 
 " Naturally. Your wife is my sister I hate poor rela- 
 tions and I was therefore much interested in your acces- 
 sion and your lawsuit. No you may feel at rest on this 
 matter, so far as a successful lawsuit is concerned. The 
 next question is, Will you have a lawsuit at all ? and is it 
 worth while buying this fellow ? That I can't say unless 
 I see him myself "
 
 320 NIGHT AffT) MORNING. 
 
 " I -wish to Heaven you would 1 " 
 
 " Very willingly 'tis a sort of thing I like I'm fond 
 of dealing with rogues it amuses me. This day week ? 
 I'll be at your house your proxy ; I shall do better than 
 Blackwell. And since you say you are wanted at the 
 Lakes, go down, and leave all to me." 
 
 " A thousand thanks. I can't say how grateful I am. 
 You certainly are the kindest and cleverest person in the 
 world." 
 
 " You can't think worse of the world's cleverness and 
 kindness than I do," was Lilburne's rather ambiguous 
 answer to the compliment. " But why does my sister want 
 to see you ? " 
 
 " Oh, I forgot ! here is her letter. I was going to ask 
 your advice in this too." 
 
 Lord Lilburne took the letter, and glanced over it with 
 the rapid eye of a man accustomed to seize in everything 
 the main gist and pith. 
 
 "An offer to my pretty niece Mr. Spencer requires 
 no fortune his uncle will settle all his own (poor silly 
 old man !) All ! Why that's only 1000J. a-year. You 
 don't think much of this, eh ? How my sister can even 
 ask you about it puzzles me." 
 
 " Why you see, Lilburne," said Mr. Beaufort, rather em- 
 barrassed, " there is no question of fortune nothing to go 
 out of the family ; and, really, Arthur is so expensive ; and, 
 if she were to marry well, I could not give her less than 
 fifteen or twenty thousand pounds." 
 
 " Aha ! I see every man to his taste : here a daughter 
 there a dowry. You are devilish fond of money, Beau- 
 fort. Any pleasure in avarice, eh ? " 
 
 Mr. Beaufort coloured very much at the remark and the 
 question, and, forcing a smile, said, 
 
 "You are severe. But you don't know what it is to be 
 father to a young man." 
 
 " Then a great many young women have told me sad 
 fibs ! Bat you are right in your sense of the phrase. No, 
 I never had an heir apparent, thank Heaven ! No children 
 imposed upon me by law natural enemies, to count the 
 years between the bells that ring for their majority, and 
 those that will toll for my decease. It is enough for me 
 that I have a brother and a sister that my brother's son 
 will inherit **xy estates and that, in the meantime, he
 
 NIGHT AND MOKNING. 
 
 grudges me every tick in that clock. What then ? If he 
 had been my uncle, I had done the same. Meanwhile, I 
 see as little of him as good-breeding will permit. On the 
 face of a rich man's heir is written the rich man's memento 
 mori ! But revenons d nos moutons. Yes, if you give your 
 daughter no fortune, your death will be so much the more 
 profitable to Arthur ! " 
 
 " Really, you take such a very odd view of the matter," 
 said Mr. Beaufort, exceedingly shocked. " But I see you 
 don't like the marriage ; perhaps you are right." 
 
 " Indeed, I have no choice in the matter ; I never inter- 
 fere between father and children. If I had children my- 
 self, I will, however, tell you, for your comfort, that they 
 might marry exactly as they pleased I would never 
 thwart them. I should be too happy to get them out of 
 my way. If they married well, one would have all the 
 credit ; if ill, one would have an excuse to disown them. 
 As I said before, I dislike poor relations. Though if 
 Camilla lives at the Lakes when she is married, it is but .a 
 letter now and then ; and that's your wife's trouble, not 
 yours. But, Spencer what Spencer! what family? 
 Was there not a Mr. Spencer who lived at Winandermere 
 _ w ho " 
 
 " Who went with us in search of these boys, to be sure. 
 Very likely the same -nay, he must be so. I thought so 
 at the first." 
 
 " Gro down to the Lakes to-morrow. You may hear 
 something about your nephews ; " at that word Mr. Beaa- 
 fort winced. " 'Tis well to be forearmed." 
 
 "Many thanks for all your counsel," said Beaufort, 
 rising, and glad to escape ; for though both he and his wife 
 held the advice of Lord Lilburne in the highest reverence, 
 they always smarted beneath the quiet and careless stings 
 which accompanied the honey. Lord Lilburne was singular 
 in this, he would give to any one who asked it, but espe- 
 cially a relation, the best advice in his power ; and nono 
 gave better, that is, more worldly advice. Thus, without 
 the least benevolence, he was often of the greatest service ; 
 but he could not help mixing up the draught with as much 
 aloes and bitter-apple as possible. His intellect delighted 
 in exhibiting itself even gratuitously. His heart equally 
 delighted in that only cruelty which polished life leaves to 
 its tyrants towards their equals, thrusting pins into the
 
 322 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 feelings, and breaking self-love upon the wheel. But just 
 as Mr. Beaufort had drawn on his gloves and gained the 
 doorway, a thought seemed to strike Lord Lilburne, 
 
 " By-the-by," he said, "you understand that when I 
 promised I would try and settle the matter for you, I only 
 meant that I would learn the exact causes you have for 
 alarm oil the one hand, or for a compromise with this fellow 
 on the other. If the last be advisable, you are aware that 
 I cannot interfere. I might get into a scrape ; and Beau- 
 fort Court is not my property." 
 
 " I don't quite understand you." 
 
 " I am plain enough, too. If there is money to be given, 
 it is given in order to defeat what is called justice to keep 
 these nephews of yours out of their inheritance. Now, 
 should this ever come to light, it would have an ugly 
 appearance. They who risk the blame must be the persons 
 who possess the estate." 
 
 " If you think it dishonourable or dishonest " said 
 
 Beaufort, irresolutely. 
 
 "Ill never can advise as to the feelings ; I can only 
 advise as to the policy. If you don't think there ever was 
 a marriage, it may, still, be honest in you to prevent the 
 bore of a lawsuit." 
 
 " But if he can prove to me that they were mar- 
 ried?" 
 
 " Pooh ! " said Lilburne, raising his eyebrows with a 
 slight expression of contemptuous impatience; "it rests 
 on yourself whether or not he prove it to YOUR satisfac- 
 tion! For my part, as a third person, I am persuaded the 
 marriage did take place. But if I had Beaufort Court, my 
 convictions would be all the other way. You understand 
 I am too happy to serve you. But no man can be expected 
 to jeopardise his character, or coquet with the law, unlesc 
 it be for his own individual interest. Then, of course, he 
 must judge for himself. Adieu ! I expect some friends 
 foreigners Carlists to whist. You won't join them ? " 
 
 " I never play, you know. You will write to me at 
 Winandermere : and, at all events, you will keep off the 
 man till I return ? " 
 
 " Certainly." 
 
 Beaufort, whom the latter part of the conversation had 
 comforted far less than the former, hesitated, and turned 
 the door-handle three or four times ; but. glancing towards
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 323 
 
 his brother-in-law, he saw in that cold face so little sym- 
 pathy in the struggle between interest and conscience, that 
 he judged it best to withdraw at once. 
 
 As soon as he was gone, Lilburne summoned his valet, 
 who had lived with him many years, and who was his con- 
 fident in all the adventurous gallantries with which he still 
 enlivened the autumn of his life." 
 
 " Dykeman," said he, " you have let out that lady ? " 
 
 "Yes, my lord." 
 
 " I am not at home if she calls again. She is stupid ; 
 she cannot get the girl to come to her again. I shall trust 
 you with an adventure, Dykeman an adventure that will 
 remind you of our young days, man. This charming crea- 
 ture I tell you she is irresistible her very oddities bewitch 
 me. You must well, you look uneasy. What would you 
 say ? " 
 
 "My lord, I have found out more about her and 
 and " 
 
 "Well, well." 
 
 The valet drew near and whispered something in his 
 master's ear. 
 
 " They are idiots who say it, then," answered Lil- 
 burne. 
 
 "And," faltered the man, with the shame of humanity 
 on his face, " she is not worthy your lordship's notice a 
 poor " 
 
 " Yes, I kno-w she is poor ; and, for that reason, there 
 can be no difficulty, if the thing is properly managed. You 
 never, perhaps, heard of a certain Philip, king of Macedon ; 
 but I will tell you what he once said, as well as I can re- 
 member it : ' Lead an ass with a pannier of gold ; send the 
 ass through the gates of a city, and all the sentinels will 
 run away.' Poor ! where there is love, there is charity 
 also, Dykeman. Besides " 
 
 Here Lilburne's countenance assumed a sudden aspect of 
 dark and angry passion, he broke off abruptly, rose, and 
 paced the room, muttering to himself. Suddenly he stopped, 
 and put his hand to his hip, as an expression of pain again 
 altered the character of his face. 
 
 " The limb pains me still ! Dykeman I was scarce- 1 
 twenty-one when I became a cripple for life." He paused, 
 drew a long breath, smiled, rubbed his hands gently, and 
 added : " Never fear you shall be the ass ; and thus Philip 
 
 v 2
 
 824- NIGHT AND MORNING, 
 
 of Macedon begins to fill the pannier." And he tossed hig 
 purse into the hands of the valet, whose face seemed to lose 
 its anxious embarrassment at the touch of the gold. Lil- 
 burne glanced at him with a quiet sneer : " Go ! I will give 
 yon my orders when I undress." 
 
 " Yes! " he repeated to himself, " the limb pains me still. 
 But he died ! shot as a man would shoot a jay or a pole- 
 cat ! I have the newspaper still in that drawer. He died 
 in outcast a felon a murderer ! And I blasted his name 
 and I seduced his mistress and I am John Lord Lil- 
 burne ? " 
 
 About ten o'clock, some half-a-dozen of those gay lovers 
 of London, who, like Lilburne, remain faithful to its charms 
 when more vulgar worshippers desert its sunburnt streets 
 mostly single men mostly men of middle age dropped 
 in. And soon after came three or 'four high-born foreigners, 
 who had followed into England the exile of the unfortunate 
 Charles X. Their looks, at once proud and sad their 
 moustaches curled downward their beards permitted to 
 grow made at first a strong contrast with the smooth gay 
 Englishmen. But Lilburne, who was fond of Frencli 
 society, and who, when he pleased, could be courteous and 
 agreeable, soon placed the exiles at their ease ; and, in the 
 excitement of high play, all differences of mood and humour 
 speedily vanished. Morning was in the skies before they 
 sat down to supper. 
 
 " You have been very fortunate to-night, milord," said 
 one of the Frenchmen, with an envious tone of congratu- 
 lation. 
 
 "But, indeed," said another, who, having been several 
 times his host's partner, had won largely, " you are the finest 
 player, milord, I ever encountered." 
 
 "Always excepting Monsieur Deschapelles and * * * *," 
 replied Lilbume, indifferently. And, turning the conver- 
 sation, he asked one of the guests why he had not intro- 
 duced him to a French officer of merit and distinction ; 
 " With whom," said Lord Lilburne, " I understand that you 
 tire intimate, and of whom I hear your countrymen very 
 often speak." 
 
 " You mean Do Vaudemont. Poor fellow ! " said 
 middle-aged Frenchman, of a graver appearance than thcj 
 test. 
 
 "But why 'poor fellow,' Monsieur de Liancourt? "
 
 NIGHT AND MOltJVTNG. 325 
 
 " Ho was rising so high before the revolution. There 
 was not a braver officer in the army. But he is but a 
 soldier of fortune, and his career is closed." 
 
 " Till the Bourbons return," said another Carlist, playing 
 with his moustache. 
 
 " You will really honour me much by introducing me to 
 him," said Lord Lilburne. " De Vaudemont it is a good 
 name, perhaps, too, he plays at whist." 
 
 " But," observed one of the Frenchmen, " I am by no 
 means sure that he has the best right in the world to the 
 name. 'Tis a strange story." 
 
 " May I hear it ? " asked the host. 
 
 " Certainly. It is briefly this : There was an old 
 Vicomte de Vaudemont about Paris ; of good birth, but 
 extremely poor a mauvais sujet. He had already had 
 two wives, and run through their fortunes. Being old 
 and ugly, and men who survive two wives having a bad 
 reputation among marriageable ladies at Paris, he found it 
 difficult to get a third. Despairing of the noblesse, he 
 went among the bourgeoisie with that hope. His family 
 were kept in perpetual fear of a ridiculous mesalliance. 
 Among these relations was Madame de Merville, whom 
 you may have heard of." 
 
 " Madame de Merville ! Ah, yes ! Handsome, was she 
 not?" 
 
 " It is time. Madame de Merville, whose failing was 
 pride, was known more than one 3 to have bought off the 
 matrimonial inclinations of the amorous vicomte. Sud- 
 denly there appeared in her circles a very handsome young 
 man. He was presented formally to her friends as the 
 son of the Vicomte de Vaudemont by his second marriage 
 with an English lady, brought up in England, and now 
 for the first time publicly acknowledged. Some scandal 
 was circulated " 
 
 "Sir," interrupted Monsieur de Liancourt, very gravely, 
 " the scandal for such as all honourable men must stigmatise 
 and despise it was only to be traced to some lying lackej 
 a scandal that the young man was already tlio lover of a 
 woman of stainless reputation the very first day that he 
 entered Paris ! I answer for the falsity of that report. 
 But that report I own was one that decided not only 
 Madame de Merville, who was a sensitive too sensitive a 
 person, but my friend young Vaudemont, to a marriage,
 
 326 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 from the pecuniary advantages of which he was too high- 
 spirited not to shrink." 
 
 " Well," said Lord Lilburne, " then this young de 
 Vaudemont married Madame de Merville ? " 
 
 "No," said Liancourt, somewhat sadly, "it was not so 
 decreed ; for Vaudemont, with a feeling which belongs to a 
 gentleman, and which I honour, while deeply and gratefully 
 attached to Madame de Merville, desired that he might first 
 win for himself some honourable distinction before he 
 Claimed a hand to which men of fortunes so much higher had 
 aspired in vain. "I am not ashamed," he added, after a slight 
 pause," to say that I had been one of the rejected suitors, and 
 that I still revere the memory, of Eugenie de Merville. The 
 young man, therefore, was to have entered my regiment. 
 Before, however, he had joined it, and while yet in the full 
 flush of a young man's love for a woman formed to excite 
 the strongest attachment, she she " The French- 
 man's voice trembled, and he resumed with affected com- 
 posure, "Madame de Merville, who had the best and 
 kindest heart that ever beat in a human breast, learned 
 one day that there was a poor widow in the garret of the 
 hotel she inhabited who was dangerously ill without 
 ' medicine and without food having lost her only friend 
 and supporter in her husband some time before. In the 
 impulse of the moment, Madame de Merville herself at- 
 tended this widow caught the fever that preyed upon 
 her was confined to her bed ten days and died, as she 
 had lived, in serving others and forgetting self. And so 
 much, sir, for the scandal you spoke of ! " 
 
 "A warning," observed Lord Lilburne, "against ti-ifling 
 with one's health by that vanity of parading a kind heart, 
 which is called charity. If charity, mon cher, begins at 
 home, it is in the drawing-room, not the garret ! " 
 
 The Frenchman looked at his host in some disdain, bit 
 his lip, and was silent. 
 
 "But still," resumed Lord Lilburne, "still it is so pro- 
 bable that your old vicomte had a son ; and I can so per- 
 fectly understand why he did not wish to be embarrassed 
 with him as long as he could help it, that I do not under- 
 stand why there should be any doubt of the younger de 
 Vaudemont' s parentage." 
 
 "Because," said the Frenchman, who had first com- 
 menced the narrative, "because the young man refused 
 to take the legal steps to proclaim his birth and naturalise
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 327 
 
 himself a Frenchman ; because, no sooner was Madame de 
 Merville dead, than he forsook the father he had so newly 
 discovered forsook France and entered with some other 
 officers, under the brave * * * *, in the service of one of 
 the native princes of India." 
 
 " But, perhaps he was poor," observed Lord Lilburne. 
 " A father is a very good thing, and a country is a very 
 good thing, but still a man must have money ; and if your 
 father does not do much for you, somehow or other, your 
 country generally follows his example." 
 
 "My lord," said Liancourt, "my friend here has for- 
 gotten to say that Madame de Merville had by deed of gift 
 (though unknown to her lover) before her death, made 
 over to young Vaudemont the bulk of her fortune ; and 
 that, when he was informed of this donation, after her 
 decease, and sufficiently recovered from the stupor of his 
 grief, he summoned her relations round him, declared that 
 her memory was too dear to Him for wealth to console him 
 for her loss, and reserving to himself but a modest and 
 bare sufficiency for the common necessaries of a gentle- 
 man, he divided the rest amongst them, and repaired to 
 the East ; not only to conquer his sorrow by the novelty 
 and stir of an exciting life, but to carve out with his own 
 hand the reputation of an honourable and brave man. My 
 friend remembered the scandal Log buried he forgot the 
 generous action." 
 
 " Your friend, you see, my dear Monsieur de Lian- 
 court," remarked Lilburne, " is more a man of the world 
 than you are ! " 
 
 " And I was just going to observe," said the friend thus 
 referred to, " that that very action seemed to confirm the 
 rumour that there had been some little manoeuvring as to 
 this unexpected addition to the name of de Vaudemont ; 
 for if himself related to Madame de Merville, why have 
 such scruples to receive her gift ? " 
 
 " A very shrewd remark," said Lord Lilburne, looking 
 with some respect at the speaker ; " and I own that it is a 
 very unaccountable proceeding, and one of which I don't 
 think you or I would ever have been guilty. Well, and 
 the old vicomte ? " 
 
 " Did not live long ! " said the Frenchman, evidently 
 gratified by his host's compliment, "while Liancourt threw 
 himself back in his chair in grave displeasure. " The
 
 328 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 young man remained some years in India, and vrhen L* 
 returned to Paris, our friend here, Monsieur de Liancourt 
 (then in favour with Charles X.) and Madame de Merville'rf 
 relations took him up. He had already acquired a repu- 
 tation in this foreign service, and he obtained a place at 
 the court, and a commission in the king's guards. I allow 
 that he would certainly have made a career, had it not 
 been for the Three Days. As it is, you see him in London, 
 like the rest of us, an exile ! " 
 
 "And I suppose, without a sou." 
 
 " No, I believe that he had still saved, and even aug- 
 mented in India, the portion he allotted to himself from 
 Madame de Merville's bequest." 
 
 " Ai d if he don't play whist, he ought to play it," said 
 Lilburne. " You have roused my curiosity ; I hope you 
 will let me make his acquaintance, Monsieur de Liancourt. 
 I am no politician, but allow me to propose this toast, 
 ' Success to those who have the wit to plan, and the 
 strength to execute.' In other words, ' the Bight Divine! ' " 
 
 Soon afterwards the guests retired. 
 
 CHAPTEK IV. 
 
 " Jtos. Happily, lie's the second time coine to (hem." Hamlet. 
 
 IT was the evening after that in which the conversations 
 recorded in our last chapter were held ; evening in the 
 
 quiet suburb of H . The desertion and silence of the 
 
 metropolis in September had extended to its neighbouring 
 hamlets ; a village in the heart of the country could 
 scarcely have seemed more still ; the lamps were lighted, 
 many of the shops already closed, a few of the sober cou- 
 ples and retired spinsters of the place might, here and 
 there, be seen slowly wandering homeward after their 
 evening walk : two or three dogs, in spite of the prohibi- 
 tions of the magistrates placarded on the walls, (mani- 
 festoes which threatened with death the dogs, and predicted 
 more than ordinary madness to the public,) "Wire playing 
 in. the main road, disturbed from time to time JOs the slow 
 coach, plying between the city and the suburb, crawled 
 along the thoroughfare, or as the brisk mails whirled 
 rapidly by, announced by the cloudy dust and the guard's 
 lively horn. Gradually even these evidences of life ceased
 
 NIGHT AND MOttNlNG. 829 
 
 the eaunterers disappeared, the mails had passed, tho 
 dogs gave place to the later and more stealthy perambulc' 
 tions of their feline successors "who love tho moon." At 
 unfrequent intervals, the more important shops the linen- 
 drapers', the chemists', and the gin-palace still poured 
 out, across the shadowy road, their streams of light, from 
 windows yet unclosed: but with these exceptions, the 
 business of the place stood still. 
 
 At this time there emerged from a milliner's house (shop, 
 to outward appearance, it was not, evincing its gentility 
 anu ; ts degree above the Capelocracy, to use a certain 
 classical neologism, by a brass plate on an oak door, 
 whereon was graven, " Miss Semper, Milliner and Dress- 
 maker, from Madame Devy"), at this time, I say, and 
 from this house, there emerged the light and graceful form 
 of a young female. She held in her left hand a little 
 basket, of the contents of which (for it was empty) she 
 had apparently just disposed ; and, as she stepped across 
 the road, the lamp-light fell on a face in the first bloom of 
 youth, and characterised by an expression of child-like 
 innocence and candour. It was a face regularly and ex- 
 quisitely lovely, yet something there was in the aspect that 
 saddened you ; you knew not why, for it was not sad itself; 
 on the contrary, the lips smiled and the eyes sparkled. As 
 she now glided along the shadowy stroet with a light, 
 quick step, a man, who had hitherto been concealed by the 
 portico of an attorney's house, advanced stealthily, and 
 followed her at- a little distance. Unconscious that she 
 was dogged, and seemingly fearless or aii danger, the gir) 
 went lightly on, swinging her basket playfully to and fro, 
 and chaunting, in a low but musical tone, some verses, 
 that seemed rather to belong to the r"^ery than to that 
 age which the fair singer had attained. 
 
 As she came to an angle which the main street formed 
 with a lane, narrow and partially lighted, a policeman, 
 stationed there, looked hard at hei, and then touched his 
 bat with an air of respect, in which there seemed also a 
 little of compassion. 
 
 " Good night to you," said th=- girl, passing him, and 
 with a frank, gay tone. 
 
 " Shall I attend you home, Miss ? " said the man. 
 
 "What for? I am very well!" answered the ycung 
 woman, with tu accent and look of innocent surDrite.
 
 830 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 Just at this time the man, who had hitherto followed 
 her, gained the spot, and turned down the lane. 
 
 " Yes," replied the policeman ; " but it is getting dark, 
 Miss." 
 
 " So it is every night when I walk home, unless there's 
 a moon. Good-bye. The moon," she repeated to herself, 
 as she walked on, " I used to be afraid of the moon when I 
 was a little child ; " and then, after a pause, she murmured, 
 in a low chaunt, 
 
 " The moon, she is a wandering ghost, 
 
 That walks in penance nightly. 
 How sad she is, that wandering moon, 
 For all she shines so brightly ! 
 
 I watched her eyes when I was young, 
 
 Until they turned my brain, 
 And now I often weep to think 
 
 'Twill ne'er be right again." 
 
 As the murmur of these words died at distance down the 
 lane in which the girl had disappeared, the policeman, who 
 had paused to listen, shook his head mournfully, and said, 
 while he moved on, 
 
 " Poor thing ! they should not let her always go about 
 by herself ; and yet, who would harm her ? " 
 
 Meanwhile the girl proceeded along the lane, which was 
 skirted by small, but not mean houses, till it terminated in 
 a cross-stile, that admitted into a churchyard. Here hung 
 the last lamp in the path, and a few dim stars broke palely 
 over the long grass and scattered grave-stones, without 
 piercing the deep shadow which the church threw over a 
 large portion of the sacred ground. Just as she passed the 
 stile, the man, whom we have before noticed, and who had 
 been leaning, as if waiting for some one, against the pales, 
 approached, and said gently, 
 
 " Ah, Miss ! it is a lone place for one so beautiful as 
 you are to be alone. You ought never to be on foot." 
 
 The girl stopped, and looked full, but without any 
 in her eyes, into the man's face. 
 
 " Go away ! " she said, with a half-peevish, half- kindly 
 tone of command. " I don't know you." 
 
 " But I have been sent to speak to you by one who does 
 know you, Miss one who loves you to distraction he has 
 seen you before at Mrs. West's. He is so grieved to think 
 you should walk you, who ought, he says, to have every 
 luxury that he has sent his carriage for you. It is on the
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 331 
 
 other silc of the yard. Do come now;" and he laid his 
 baud, though very lightly, on her arm. 
 
 " At Mrs. "West's ! " she said ; and, for the first time, her 
 voice and look showed fear " Go away directly ! How 
 dare you touch me ! " 
 
 " But, my dear Miss, you have no idea how my employer 
 loves you, and how rich he is. See, he has sent you all 
 this money ; it is gold real gold. You may have what 
 you like, if you will but come. Now, don't be silly, Miss." 
 
 The girl made no answer, but, with a sudden spring, 
 passed the man, and ran lightly and rapidly along the path, 
 in -an opposite direction from that to which the tempter 
 had pointed, when inviting her to the carriage. The man, 
 surprised, b'at not baffled, reached her in an instant, and 
 caught hold of her dress. 
 
 " Stay ! you must come you must ! " he said, threaten- 
 ingly ; and, loosening his grasp on her shawl, he threw his 
 arm round her waist. 
 
 " Don't ! " cried the girl, pleadingly, and apparently 
 subdued, turning her fair, soft face upon her pursuer, and 
 clasping her hands. " Be quiet ! Fanny is silly ! No one 
 is ever rude to poor Fanny ! " 
 
 " And no one will be rude to you, Miss," said the man, 
 apparently touched ; " but I dare not go without you. Yon 
 don't know what you refuse. Come ; " and he attempted 
 gently to draw her back. 
 
 " No, no ! " said the girl, changing from supplication to 
 anger, and raising her voice into a loud shriek, " No ! I 
 will " 
 
 "Nay, then," interrupted the man, looking round 
 anxiously ; and, with a quick and dexterous movement, he 
 threw a large handkerchief over her face, and, as he held 
 it fast to her lips with one hand, he lifted her from tho 
 ground. Still violently struggling, the girl contrived tc 
 remove the handkerchief, and once more her shriek of terror 
 rang through the violated sanctuary. 
 
 At that instant a loud deep voice was heard, " Who 
 calls ? " And a tall figure seemed to rise, as from the 
 grave itself, and emerge from the shadow of the church. 
 A moment more, and a strong gripe was laid on the shoulder 
 of the ravisher. " What is this ? On God's ground, too ! 
 Release her, wretch ! " 
 
 The man, trembling, half wi^h anpe^titipTis half rr?th
 
 S32 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 bodily fear, let go his captive, who fell at once at the knees 
 of her do*',' erer. 
 
 "Don't yo-> hut* me, too," she said, as the tears rolled 
 down her eyed. " I am a good girl and my grandfather's 
 blind." 
 
 Th.e stranger bent down and raised her ; then looking 
 rr'und for the assailant with an eye whose dark fire shone 
 through the gloom, he perceived the coward stealing off. 
 He disdained to pursue. 
 
 "My poor child," said he, with that voice which the 
 strong assume to the weak the man to some wounded 
 infant the voice of tender superiority and compassion, 
 " there is no cause for fear now. Be soothed. Do you live 
 near ? Shall I see you home ? " 
 
 " Thank you ! That's kind. Pray do ! " And, with at- 
 infantine confidence she took his hand, as a child does that 
 of a grown-up person ; so they walked on together. 
 
 " And," said the stranger, " do you know that man ? 
 Has he insulted you before ? " 
 
 " No don't talk of him : ce me fait mal ! " And she 
 put her hand to her forehead. 
 
 The French was spoken with so French an accent, that, 
 in some curiosity, the stranger cast his eye over her plain 
 dress. 
 
 " You speak French well." 
 
 " Do I ? I wish I knew more words I only recollect a 
 few. When I am very happy or very sad they come into 
 my head. But I am happy now. I like your voice I liko 
 you. Oh ! I have dropped my basket ! " 
 
 " Shall I go back for it, or shall I buy you another ? " 
 
 " Another ! Oh, no ! come back for it. How kind you 
 are ! Ah ! I see it ! " and she broke away and ran forward 
 to pick it up. 
 
 When she had recovered it, she laughed she spoke to 
 it she kissed it. 
 
 Her companion smiled as he said, 
 
 " Some sweetheart has given you that basket it seema 
 but a common basket, too." 
 
 " I have had it oh, ever since since I don't know 
 how long ! It came with me from France it was full of 
 little toys. They are gone I am so sorry ! " 
 
 " How old are you? " 
 
 "1 don't know."
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 333 
 
 " My pretty one," said the stranger, with deep pity in 
 his rich voice, " your mother should not let you go out 
 alone at this hour." 
 
 " Mother ! mother ! " repeated the girl, in a tone of 
 surprise. 
 
 " Have you no mother ? " 
 
 " No I I had a father once. But he died, they say, I 
 did not see him die. I sometimes cry when I think that I 
 shall never, never see him again ! But," she said, changing 
 her accent from melancholy almost to joy, " he is to have 
 a grave here like the other girls' fathers a fine stone upon 
 it and all to be done with my money ! " 
 
 " Your money, my child ? " 
 
 " Yes ; the money I make. I sell my work and take the 
 money to my grandfather ; but I lay by a little every week 
 for a grave-stone for my father." 
 
 " Will the grave-stone be placed in that churchyard ? " 
 They were now in another lane ; and, as he spoke, tho 
 stranger checked her, and bending down to look into her 
 face, he murmured to himself, " Is it possible ? it must 
 be it must ! " 
 
 " Yes ! I love that churchyard my brother told me to 
 put flowers there ; and grandfather and I sit there in the 
 summer, without speaking. But I don't talk much, I like 
 singing better : 
 
 ' All things that good and harmless are, 
 
 Are taught, they say, to sin g 
 The maiden resting at her work, 
 
 The bird upon the wing ; 
 The little ones at church, in prayer, 
 
 The angels in the sky 
 The angels less when babes are born 
 
 Than when the aged die.' " 
 
 And unconscious of the latent moral, dark or cheering, 
 according as we estimate the value of this life, couched in the 
 concluding rhyme, Fanny turned round to the stranger, and 
 said, " Why should the angels be glad when the aged die ? " 
 
 " That they are released from a false, unjust, and mise- 
 rable world, in which the first man was a rebel, and tho 
 second a murderer ! " muttered the stranger between hi? 
 teeth, which he gnashed as he spoke. 
 
 The girl did not understand him : she shook her head 
 gently, and made no reply. A few moments, and sb.6 
 paused before a small house.
 
 834 NIGHT AND MORNINO. 
 
 " This is my home." 
 
 "'It is so," said her companion, examining the exterior o! 
 the house with an earnest gaze; " and your name is Fanny." 
 
 " Yes every one knows Fanny. Come in ; " and the 
 girl opened the door with a latch-key. 
 
 The stranger bowed his stately height n,s crossed 
 the low threshold and followed his guide into a little 
 parlour. 
 
 Before a table, on which burned dimly, and with tin- 
 heeded wick, a single candle, sat a man of advanced age ; 
 and as he turned his face to the door, the stranger saw that 
 he was blind. The girl bounded to his chair, passed her 
 arms round the old man's neck, and kissed his forehead ; 
 then nestling herself at his feet, and leaning her clasped 
 hands caressingly on his knee, she said, 
 
 " Grandpapa, I have brought you somebody you must 
 love. He has been so kind to Fanny." 
 
 " And neither of you can remember me ! " said the guest. 
 
 The old man, whose dull face seemed to indicate dotage, 
 half raised himself at the sound of the stranger's voice. 
 
 " Who is that ? " said he, with a feeble and querulous 
 voice. " Who wants me ? " 
 
 " I am the friend of your lost son. I am he who, ten 
 years ago, brought Fanny to your roof, and gave her to 
 your care your son's last charge. And you blessed your 
 son, and forgave him, and vowed to be a father to his 
 Funny." 
 
 The old man, who had now slowly risen to his feet, 
 trembled violently, and stretched out his hands. 
 
 " Come near near let me put my hands on your head. 
 I cannot see you ; but Fanny talks of you, and prays for 
 you ; and Fanny she has been an angel to me ! " 
 
 The stranger approached and half knelt as the old man 
 spread his hands over his head, muttering inaudibly. 
 Meanwhile Fanny, pale as death her lips apart an eager, 
 painful expression on her face looked inquiringly on the 
 *lark, marked countenance of the visitor, and creeping 
 towards him inch by inch, fearfully touched his dress 
 his arms his countenance. 
 
 " Brother," she said at last, doubtingly and timidly, 
 " Brother, I thought I could never forget you ! But you 
 are not like my brother ; you are older ; you are you 
 are ! no ! no ! you are not my brother ! "
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 83& 
 
 ' I am much changed, Fanny ; and you too ! " 
 
 He smiled as he spoke ; and the smile sweet and pity- 
 ing thoroughly changed the character of his face, which 
 was ordinarily stern, grave, and proud. 
 
 " I know you now ! " exclaimed Fanny, in a tone of wild 
 joy. " And you come back from that grave ! My flowers 
 have brought you back at last! I knew they would!, 
 Brother ! Brother ! " 
 
 And she threw herself on his breast and burst into paa- 
 sionate tears. Then, suddenly drawing herself back, she 
 Irtul her finger on his arm, and looked up at him beseech- 
 ingly. 
 
 " Pray, now, is he really dead ? He, my father ! he, 
 too, was lost like you. Can't he come back again as you 
 have done ? " 
 
 "Do you grieve for him still, then? Poor girl! " said 
 the stranger, evasively, and seating himself. Fanny con- 
 tinued to listen for an answer to her touching question ; 
 but finding that none was given, she stole away to a corner 
 of the room, and leaned her face on her hands, and seemed 
 to think till at last, as she so sat, the tears began to flow 
 down her cheeks, and she wept, but silently and unnoticed. 
 
 "But, sir," said the guest, after a short pause, "how i? 
 this ? Fanny tells me she supports you by her work. Are 
 you so poor, then ? Yet I left you your son's bequest ; 
 and you, too, I understood, though not rich, were not in 
 want ! " 
 
 " There was a curse on. my gold," said the old man, 
 sternly. " It was stolen from us." 
 
 There was another pause. Simon broke it. 
 
 " And you, young man how has it fared with you ? 
 You have prospered, I hope." 
 
 "lam as I have been for years alone in the world, 
 without kindred and without friends. But, thanks to 
 Heaven, I am not a beggar ! " 
 
 " No kindred and no friends ! " repeated the old man. 
 " No father no brother no wife no sister ! " 
 
 "None! No one to care whether I live or die," an- 
 swered the stranger, with a mixture of pride and sadness 
 in his voice. "But, as the song has it 
 ' I care for nobody no, not I, 
 For nobody cares for me ! ' " 
 
 There was a certain pathos in the mockery with whicb
 
 336 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 he repeated the homely lines, although, as he did, he 
 gathered himself up, as if conscious of a certain consolation 
 and reliance on the resources not dependent on others 
 which he had found in his own strong limbs and his own 
 Btout heart. 
 
 At that moment he felt a soft touch upon his hand, and 
 he saw Fanny looking at him through the tears that stilJ 
 flowed. 
 
 "Yon have no one to care for yon? Don't say so* 
 Come and live with us, brother ; we'll care for you. I 
 have never forgotten the flowers never! Do come! 
 Fanny shall love you. Fanny can work for three ! " 
 
 " And they call her an idiot ! " mumbled the old man, 
 with a vacant smile on his lips. 
 
 " My sister ! You shall be my sister ! Forlorn one 
 whom even Nature has fooled and betrayed ! Sister ! 
 We, both orphans! Sister!" exclaimed that dark, stern 
 man, passionately, and with a broken voice ; and he 
 opened his arms, and Fanny, without a blush or a thought 
 of shame, threw herself on his breast. He kissed her fore- 
 head with a kiss that was, indeed, pure and holy as a 
 brother's : and Fanny felt that he had left upon her cheek 
 a tear that was not her own. 
 
 " Well," he said, with an altered voice, and taking the 
 old man's hand, " What say you ? Shall I take up my 
 lodging with you ? I have a little money ; I can protect 
 and aid you both. I shall be often away in London or 
 elsewhere and will not intrude too much on you. But 
 you blind, and she (here he broke off the sentence 
 abruptly and went on) you should not be left alone. 
 And this neighbourhood, that burial-place, are dear to mo. 
 I, too, Fanny, have lost a parent ; and that grave " 
 
 He paused, and then added, in a trembling voice, "And 
 you have placed flowers over that grave ? " 
 
 " Stay with us," said the blind man ; " not for our sake, 
 but your own. The world is a bad place. I have been 
 long sick of the world. Yes! come and live near the 
 burial-ground the nearer you are to the grave, tbe safer 
 you are ; and you have a little money, you say ! " 
 
 " I will come to-morrow, then. I must return now. 
 To-morrow, Fanny, we shall meet again." 
 
 " Must you. go ? " said Fanny, tenderly. " But you will 
 come again ; you know I used to think every one died
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 333 
 
 vrhen he left me. I am wiser now. Yet still, when yon 
 do leave me, it is true that you die for Fanny ! " 
 
 At this moment, as the three persons were grouped, 
 c.ich had assumed a posture of form, an expression of face, 
 which a painter of fitting sentiment and skill wonfld have 
 loved to study. The visitor had gained the door ; and aa 
 he stood there, his noble height the magnificent strength 
 and health of his -manhood in its full prime contrasted 
 alike the almost spectral debility of extreme age and the 
 graceful delicacy of Fanny half girl, half child. There 
 was something foreign in his air and the half military 
 habit, relieved by the red riband of the Bourbon knight- 
 hood. His complexion was dark as that of a Moor, and 
 his raven hair curled close to the stately head. The 
 soldier-moustache thick, but glossy as silk shaded the 
 firm lip ; and the pointed beard, assumed by the exiled 
 Carlists, heightened the effect of the strong and haughty 
 features and the expression of the martial countenance. 
 
 But as Fanny's voice died on his ear, he half averted 
 that proud face ; and the dark eyes almost Oriental in 
 thoir brilliancy and depth of shade seemed soft and 
 humid. And there stood Fanny, in a posture of such un- 
 conscious sadness such childlike innocence ; her arms 
 drooping her face wistfully turned to his and a half 
 smile upon the lips, that made still more touching tho 
 tears not yet dried upon her cheeks. While thin, frail, 
 shadowy, with white hair and furrowed cheeks, the old 
 man fixed his sightless orbs on space ; and his face, usually 
 only animated from the lethargy of advancing dotage by a 
 certain querulous cynicism, now grew suddenly earnest, 
 and even thoughtful, afl Fanny spoke of Death I 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 " Ulyss. Time bath a wallet at his beck 
 Wherein he puts alms for oblivion. 
 1 * Perseverance, dear my lord, 
 Keeps honour bright." Troilus and CressitiG. 
 
 I HAVE not sought as would have been easy, by a little 
 ingenuity in the earlier portion of this narrative what- 
 ever source of vulgar interest might be derived from tho 
 mystery of names and person*. As in Charles
 
 NIGHT AND MOUSING, 
 
 reader is allowed at a glance to detect Sidney Morton, BO 
 in Philip de Vaudemont (the stranger who rescued Fanny ) 
 the reader at once recognises the hero of my tale ; but, 
 since neither of these young men has a better right to the 
 uame resigned than to the name adopted, it will be simpler 
 and more convenient to designate them by those appella- 
 tions by which they are now known to the world. In 
 truth, Philip de Vaudemont was scarcely the same being 
 as Philip Morton. In the short visit he had paid to the 
 elder Gawtrey, when he consigned Fanny to his charge, bo 
 had given no name ; and the one he now took (when, to 
 wards the evening of the next day, he returned to Simon's 
 house) the old man heard for the first time. Once more 
 sunk into his usual apathy, Simon did not express any 
 surprise that a Frenchman should be so well acquainted 
 with English he scarcely observed that the name wa3 
 French. Simon's age seemed daily to bring him more and 
 more to that state when life is mere mechanism, and the 
 soul, preparing for its departure, no longer heeds the tene- 
 ment that crumbles silently and neglected into its lonely 
 ilust. Vaudemont came with but little luggage, (for he 
 had an apartment also in London,) and no attendant, a 
 single horse was consigned to the stables of an inn at hand, 
 and he seemed, as soldiers are, more careful for the com- 
 forts of the animal than his own. There was but one 
 woman servant in the humble household, who did all the 
 ruder work ; for Fanny's industry could afford it. The 
 solitary servant and the homely fare sufficed for the simple 
 and hardy adventurer. 
 
 Fanny, with a countenance radiant with joy, took his 
 hand and led him to his room. Poor child ! with that in- 
 stinct of woman which never deserted her, she had busied 
 herself the whole day in striving to deck the chamber 
 according to her own notions of comfort. She had stolen 
 from her little hoard wherewithal to make some small pur- 
 chases, on which the Dowbiggin of the suburb had been 
 consulted. And what with flowers on the table, and a fire 
 at the hearth, the room looked cheerful. 
 
 She watched him as he glanced around, and felt disap- 
 pointed that he did not titter the admiration she expected. 
 Angry at last with the indifference which, in fact, as to 
 external accommodation, was habitual to him, r,he placked 
 bos sleeve, and said,
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 839 
 
 " Why don't you speak ? Is it not nice ? Fanny did 
 her best." 
 
 ' ' And a thousand thanks to Fanny ! It is all I could wish." 
 
 " There is another room, bigger than this, but the wicked 
 woman who robbed us slept there ; and besides, you said you 
 liked the churchyard. See ! " and she opened the window 
 and pointed to the church-tower rising dark against the 
 evening sky. 
 
 "This is better than all!" said Vaudemont; and lie 
 looked out from the window in a silent reverie, which Fanny 
 did not disturb. 
 
 And now he was settled ! From a career so wild, agi- 
 tated, and various, the adventurer paused in that humble 
 restiug-nook. But quiet is not repose obscurity is not 
 content. Often as, morn and eve, he looked forth upon 
 the spot, where his mother's heart, unconscious of love and 
 woe, mouldered away, the indignant and bitter feelings of 
 the wronged outcast and the son who could not clear the 
 mother's name, swept away the subdued and gentle melan- 
 choly into which time usually softens regret for the dead, 
 and with which most of us think of the distant past, and 
 the once joyous childhood ! 
 
 In this man's breast lay, concealed by his external calm, 
 those memories and aspirations which are as strong as 
 passions. In his earlier years, when he had been put to 
 hard shifts for existence, he had found no leisure for close 
 and brooding reflection upon that spoliation of just rights 
 that calumny upon his mother's name, which had first 
 brought the Night into his Morning. His resentment 
 towards the Beauforts, it is true, had ever been an intense 
 but a fitful and irregular passion. It was exactly in pro- 
 portion as, by those rare and romantic incidents which 
 Fiction cannot invent, and which Narrative takes with 
 diffidence from the great Store-house of Real Life his steps 
 had ascended in the social ladder that all which his child- 
 hood had lost all which the robbers of his heritage had 
 gained, the grandeur and the power of WEALTH above all, 
 the hourly and the tranquil happiness of a stainless name, 
 became palpable and distinct. He had loved Eugenie as 
 a boy loves for the first time an accomplished woman. He 
 regarded her, so refined so gentle so gifted, with the 
 feelings due to a superior being, with an eternal recollec- 
 tion of ^he ministering angel that had shone upon him 
 
 a
 
 34-0 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 wlicn lie stood on the dark abyss. She was the first 
 fchat had redeemed his fate the first that had guided 
 aright his path the first that had tamed the savage 
 at his breast : it was the young lion charmed by the eyes 
 of Una. The outline of his story had been truly given 
 at Lord Lilburne's. Despibe his pride, which revolted 
 from such obligations to another, and a woman which 
 disliked and struggled against a disguise which at once 
 and alone saved him from the detection of the past and the 
 terrors of the future he had yielded to her, the wise and 
 the gentle, as one whose judgment he could not doubt ; 
 and, indeed, the slanderous falsehoods circulated by the 
 lackey, to whose discretion, the night of Grawtrey's death, 
 Eugenie had preferred to confide her own honour, rather 
 than another's life, had (as Liancourt rightly stated) left 
 Philip no option but that which Madame de Merville deemed 
 the best, whether for her happiness or her good name. 
 Then had followed a brief season the holiday of his life 
 the season of young hope and passion, of brilliancy and 
 joy, closing by that abrupt death which again left him 
 lonely in the world. 
 
 When, from the grief that succeeded to the death of 
 Eugenie, he woke to find himself amidst the strange faces 
 and exciting scenes of an Oriental court, he turned with 
 hard and disgustful contempt from Pleasure, as an infidelity 
 to the dead. Ambition crept over him his mind hardened 
 as his cheek bronzed under those burning suns his hardy 
 trame, his energies prematurely awakened, his constitu- 
 tional disregard to danger, made him a brave and skilful 
 soldier. He acquired reputation and rank. But, as time 
 went on, the ambition took a higher flight he felt his 
 sphere circumscribed ; the Eastern indolence that filled up 
 the long intervals between Eastern action chafed a temper 
 never at rest : he returned to France : his reputation, 
 Liancourt's friendship, and the relations of Eugenie 
 grateful, as has before been implied, for the generosity 
 with which he surrendered the principal part of her dona- 
 tion opened for him a new career, but one painful and 
 galling. In the Indian court there was no question of his 
 birth one adventurer was equal with the rest. But in 
 Paris, a man. attempting to rise provoked all the sarcasm 
 of wit, all the cavils of party ; and in polished and civil 
 life, what valour has weapons ajwiinst a jest ? Thus, in
 
 N10HT AND MORNING 841 
 
 civilisation, all the passions that spring from humiliated 
 self-love and baffled aspiration again preyed upon his breast. 
 lie saw then, that the more he straggled from obscurity, the 
 more acute would become research into his true origin ; 
 and his writhing pride almost stung to death his ambition. 
 To succeed in Hfe by regular means was indeed difficult 
 for this man ; always recoiling from the name he bore 
 always strong in the hope yet to regain that to which he 
 conceived himself entitled cherishing that pride of country 
 which never deserts the native of a Free State, however 
 harsh a parent she may have proved ; and, above all, what- 
 ever his ambition and his passions, taking, from the very 
 misfortunes he had known, an indomitable belief in the 
 ultimate justice of Heaven ; he had refused to sever the 
 last ties that connected him with his lost heritage and his 
 forsaken land he refused to be naturalised to make the 
 name he bore legally undisputed he was contented to be 
 an alien. Neither was Vaudemont fitted exactly for that 
 crisis in the social world when the men of journals and talk 
 bustle aside the men of action. He had not cultivated 
 literature, he had no book-knowledge the world had been 
 his school, and stern life his teacher. Still, eminently 
 skilled in those physical accomplishments which men ad- 
 mire and soldiers covet, calm and self-possessed in manner, 
 of great personal advantages, of much ready talent and of 
 practised observation in character, he continued to breast 
 the obstacles around him, and to establish himself in the 
 favour of those in power. It was natural to a person so 
 reared and circumstanced to have no sympathy with what 
 is called the popular cause. He was no citizen in the state, 
 he was a stranger in the land. He had suffered, and 
 still suffered, too much from mankind, to have that philan- 
 thropy, sometimes visionary but always noble, which, in 
 fact, generally springs from the studies we cultivate, not 
 in the forum, but the closet. Men, alas ! too often lose 
 the Democratic Enthusiasm in proportion as they find 
 reason to suspect or despise their kind. And if there were 
 not hopes for the Future, which this hard, practical, daily 
 life does not suffice to teach us, the vision and the glory 
 that belong to the Great Popular Creed, dimmed beneath 
 the injustice, the follies, and the vices of the world as it is, 
 would fade into the lukewarm sectarianism of temporary 
 Party. Moreover, Vaudemout's habits of thought and
 
 842 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 reasoning -were those of the camp, confirmed by the sys- 
 tems familiar to him in the East : he regarded the populace 
 as a soldier enamoured of discipline and order usually 
 does. His theories, therefore, or rather his ignorance of 
 what is sound in theory, went with Charles the Tenth in 
 his excesses, but not with the timidity which terminated 
 those excesses by dethronement and disgrace. Chafed to 
 the heart, gnawed with proud grief, he obeyed the royal 
 mandates, and followed the exiled monarch : his hopes 
 overthrown, his career in France annihilated for ever. But 
 on entering England, his temper, confident and ready of 
 resource, fastened itself on new food. In the land whero 
 he had no name he might yet rebuild his fortunes. It was 
 an arduous effort an improbable hope ; but the words 
 heard by the bridge of Paris words that had often cheered 
 him in his exile through hardships and through dangers 
 which it is unnecessary to our narrative to detail yet 
 rung again in his ear, as he leaped on his native land 
 " Time, Faith, Energy." 
 
 While such his character in the larger and more distant 
 relations of life, in the closer circles of companionship many 
 rare and noble qualities were visible. It is true that he 
 was stern, perhaps imperious of a temper that always 
 struggled for command ; but he was deeply susceptible of 
 kindness, and if feared by those who opposed, loved by 
 those who served him. About his character was that mix- 
 ture of tenderness and fierceness which belonged, of old, 
 to the descriptions of the warrior. Though so little lettered, 
 Life had taught him a certain poetry of sentiment and 
 idea : More poetry, perhaps, in the silent thoughts that, in 
 his happier moments, filled his solitude, than in half tho 
 pages that his brother had read and written by the dream- 
 ing lake. A certain largeness of idea and nobility of im- 
 pulse often made him act the sentiments of which bookmen 
 write. With all his passions, he held licentiousness in 
 disdain ; with all his ambition for the yower of wealth, he 
 despised its luxury. Simple, masculine, severe, abstemious, 
 lie was of that mould in which, in earlier times, the success- 
 ful men of action have been cast. But to successful action, 
 circumstance is more necessary than to triumphant study. 
 
 It was to be expected that, in proportion as he had been 
 familiar with a purer and nobler life, he should look with 
 great and deep self-humiliation at his early association
 
 NIGHT AND MO UN ING. 318 
 
 with Gawtrey. He was in this respect more severe on 
 himself than any other mind ordinarily just and candid 
 would have been, when fairly surveying the circumstances 
 of penury, hunger, and despair, which had driven him to 
 Gawtrey 's roof, the imperfect nature of his early educa- 
 tion, the boyish trust and affection he had felt for his pro- 
 tector, and his own ignorance of, and exemption from, all 
 the worst practices of that unhappy criminal. But still, 
 when, with the knowledge he had now acquired, the man 
 looked calmly back, his cheek burned with remorseful 
 shame at his unreflecting companionship in a life of subter- 
 fuge and equivocation, the true nature of which, the boy 
 (so circumstanced as we have shown him) might be for- 
 given for not at that time comprehending. Two advan- 
 tages resulted, however, from the error and the remorse : 
 first, the humiliation it brought, curbed, in some measure, 
 a pride that might otherwise have been arrogant and un- 
 amiable ; and, secondly, as I have before intimated, his 
 profound gratitude to Heaven for his deliverance from the 
 snares that had beset his youth, gave his future the guide 
 of an earnest and heartfelt faith. He acknowledged in life 
 no such thing as accident. Whatever his struggles, whatever 
 his melancholy, whatever his sense of worldly wrong, he 
 never despaired ; for nothing now could shake his belief in 
 one directing Providence. 
 
 The ways and habits of Vaudemont were not at discord 
 with those of the quiet household in which he was now a 
 guest. Like most men of strong frames, and accustomed 
 to active, not studious pursuits, ho rose early ; and 
 usually rode to London, to come back late at noon to their 
 frugal meal. And if again, perhaps after the hour when 
 Fanny and Simon retired, he would often return to 
 London, his own pass-key readmitted him, at whatever 
 time he came back, without disturbing the sleep of the 
 household. Sometimes, when the sun began to decline, if 
 the air was warm, the old man would crawl out, leaning 
 on that strong arm, through the neighbouring lanes, ever 
 returning through the lonely burial-ground ; or when the 
 blind host clung to his fire-side, and composed himself to 
 sleep, Philip would saunter forth along with Fanny ; and 
 on the days when she went to sell her work, or select her 
 purchases, he always made a point of attending her. And 
 her check wore a flush of pride when she saw him carrying
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 her little basket, or waiting without, in musing patience, 
 while she performed her commissions in the shops. Though, 
 in reality, Fanny's intellect was ripening within, yet still 
 the surface often misled the eye as to the depths. It was 
 rather that something yet held back the faculties from 
 their growth, than that the faculties themselves were 
 wanting. Her weakness was more of the nature of tho 
 infants than of one afflicted with incurable imbecility. For 
 instance, she managed the little household with skill and 
 prudence ; she could calculate in her head as rapidly as 
 V audemont himself, the arithmetic necessary to her simple 
 duties; she knew the value of money, which is more than 
 some of ns wise folk do. Her skill, even in her infancy so 
 remarkable, in various branches of female handiwork, was 
 carried, not only by perseverance, but by invention and 
 peculiar talent, to a marvellous and exquisite perfection 
 Her embroidery, especially in what was then more rare 
 than at present, viz., flowers on silk, was much in request 
 among the great modistes of London, to whom it found its 
 way through the agency of Miss Semper. So that all this 
 had enabled her, for years, to provide every necessary 
 comfort of life for herself and her blind protector. And 
 her care for the old man was beautiful in its minuteness, 
 its vigilance. Wherever her heart was interested, there 
 never seemed a deficiency of mind. Vaudemont was 
 touched to see how much of affectionate and pitying re- 
 spect she appeared to enjoy in the neighbourhood, espe- 
 cially among the humbler classes even the beggar who 
 swept the crossings did not beg of her, but bade God bless 
 her as she passed; and the rude, discontented artisan 
 would draw himself from the wall and answer, with a 
 softened brow, the smile with which the harmless 0110 
 charmed his courtesy. In fact, whatever attraction she 
 took from her youth, her beauty, her misfortune, and her 
 affecting industry, was heightened, in the eyes of tho 
 poorer neighbours, by many little traits of charity and 
 kindness ; many a sick child had she tended, and many a 
 breadless board had stolen something from the stock set 
 aside for her father's grave. 
 
 " Don't you think," she once whispered to Vaudemont, 
 " that God attends to us more if we are good to those who 
 are sick and hungry ? " 
 
 " Certainly, we are taught to tlunk so."
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 315 
 
 "Well, I'll tell you a secret don't tell again. Grand- 
 papa once said that my father had done bad things ; now, 
 if Fanny is good to those she can help, I think that God 
 will hear her more kindly when she prays him to forgive 
 what her father did. Do you thiuk so too ? Do say you 
 are so wise ! " 
 
 " Fanny, you are wiser than all of us ; and I feel myself 
 better and happier when I hear you speak." 
 
 There were, indeed, many moments when Vaudemont 
 thought that her deficiences of intellect might have been 
 repaired, long since, by skilful culture and habitual com- 
 panionship with those of her own age ; from which com- 
 panionship, however, Fanny, even when at school, had 
 shrunk aloof. At other moments, there was something so 
 absent and distracted about her, or so fantastic and inco- 
 herent, that Vaudemont, with the man's hard, worldly eye, 
 read in it nothing but melancholy confusion. Neverthe- 
 less, if the skein of ideas was entangled, each thread in 
 itself was a thread of gold. 
 
 Fanny's great object her great ambition her one 
 hope was a tomb for her supposed father. Whether 
 from some of that early religion attached to the grave, 
 which is most felt in Catholic countries, and which she 
 had imbibed at the convent ; or from her residence so 
 near the burial-ground, and the affection with which she 
 regarded the spot ; whatever the cause, she had cherished 
 for some years, as young maidens usually cherish the 
 desire of the Altar the dream of the Gravestone. But 
 che hoard was amassed so slowly ; now old Gawtrey was 
 attacked by illness ; now there was some little difficulty in 
 the rent ; now some fluctuation in the price of work ; and 
 now, and more often than all, some demand on her charity, 
 which interfered with, an<3 drew from, the pious savings. 
 This was a sentiment in which her new friend sympathised 
 deeply ; for he, too, remembered that his first gold had 
 bought that humble stone which still preserved upon the 
 earth the memory of his mother. 
 
 Meanwhile, days crept on, and no new violence was 
 off sred to Fanny. Vaudemont learned, then, by little and 
 lifeUe and Fanny's account was very confused the nature 
 of the danger she had run. 
 
 It seemed that one day, tempted by the fineness of the 
 weather up the road that led from the suburb farttf r into
 
 846 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 the country, Fanny was stopped by a gentleman in a 
 riage, who accosted her, as she said, very kindly: and 
 after several questions, which she answered with her usual 
 unsuspecting innocence, learned her trade, insisted on pur- 
 chasing some articles of work which she had at the moment 
 in her basket, and promised to procure her a constant pur- 
 chaser, upon much better terms than she had hitherto 
 obtained, if she would call at the house of a Mrs. "West, 
 abotit a mile from the suburb towards London. This she 
 promised to do, and this she did, according to the address 
 he gave her. She was admitted to a lady more gaily dressed 
 than Fanny had ever seen a lady before, the gentleman 
 was also present, they both loaded her with compliments, 
 and bought her work at a price which seemed about to 
 realise all the hopes of the poor girl as to the gravestone 
 for William Gawtrey, as if his evil fate pursued that 
 wild man beyond the grave, and his very tomb was to be 
 purchased by the gold of the polluter ! The lady then 
 appointed her to call again ; but meanwhile, she met 
 Fanny in the streets, and while she was accosting her, it 
 fortunately chanced that Miss Semper the milliner passed 
 that way turned round, looked hard at the lady, used 
 very angry language to her, seized Fanny's hand, led her 
 away, while the lady slunk off ; and told her that the said 
 lady was a very bad woman, and that Fanny must never 
 speak to her again. Fanny most cheerfully promised this. 
 And, in fact, the lady, probably afraid, whether of the 
 mob or the magistrates, never again came near her. 
 
 " And," said Fanny, " I gave the money they had both 
 given to me to Miss Semper, who said she would send it 
 back." 
 
 "You did right, Fanny; and as you made one promise 
 to Miss Semper, so you must make me one never to stir 
 from home again without me or some other person. No, 
 no other person only me. I will give up everything else 
 to go with you." 
 
 "Will you? Oh, yes. I promise! I used to like going 
 alone, but that was before you came, brother." 
 
 And as Fanny kept her promise, it would have been a 
 bold gallant indeed who would have ventured to molest 
 her by the side ftf tiiat stately and strong protector
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 847 
 
 CHAPTEK VI. 
 
 ** Union. Each thing 's a thief : 
 
 The laws, your curb and whip, in their rough poorer 
 Have uncheck'd theft. 
 ***** 
 
 The sweet degrees that this brief world affords, 
 To such as may the passive drugs of it 
 Freely command." Timon of Athens. 
 
 ON the day and at the hour fixed for the interview with 
 jho stranger who had visited Mr. Beaufort, Lord Lilburno 
 was seated in the library of his brother-in-law ; and before 
 the elbow-chair, on which he lolled carelessly, stood our 
 old friend Mr. Sharp, of Bow Street notability. 
 
 " Mr. Sharp," said the peer, " I have sent for you to do 
 me a little favour. I expect a man here who professes to 
 give Mr. Beaufort, my brother-in-law, some information 
 about a lawsuit. It is necessary to know the exact value 
 of his evidence. I wish you to ascertain all particulars 
 about him. Be so good as to seat yourself in the porter's 
 chair in the hall ; note him when he enters, unobserved 
 yourself but as he is probably a stranger to you, note him 
 still more when he leaves the house ; follow him at a dis- 
 tance ; find out where he lives, whom he associates with, 
 where he visits, their names and directions, what his cha- 
 racter and calling are ; in a word, everything you can, 
 and report to me each evening. Dog him well, never lose 
 sight of him you will be handsomely paid. You under- 
 stand ? " 
 
 " Ah ! " said Mr. Sharp, " leave me alone, my lord. 
 Been employed before by your lordship's brother-in-law. 
 We knows what's what." 
 
 " I don't doubt it. To your post. I expect him everj 
 moment." 
 
 And, in fact, Mr. Sharp had only just ensconced himself 
 in the porter's chair when the stranger knocked at the 
 door in another moment he was shown in to Lord Lil- 
 burne. 
 
 " Sir," said his lordship, without rising, " be so good as 
 to take a chair. Mr. Beaufort is obliged to leave town 
 he has asked me to see you I am one of his family hia 
 wife is my sister you may be as frank witk me as with 
 him, more so, perhaps."
 
 348 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 "I beg the fauvour of your name ; oir,"said the stranger, 
 adjusting his collar 
 
 ' Yours first business is business." 
 ' Well, then, Captain Smith." 
 ' Of what regiment ? " 
 ' Half-pay." 
 
 ' lam Lord Lilburne. Tour name is Smith humph ! '' 
 added the peer, looking over some notes before him. ' 1 
 see it is also the name of the witness appealed to by Mrs. 
 Morton humph ! " 
 
 Afc this remark, and still more at the look which accom- 
 panied it, the countenance, before impudent and complacent, 
 of Captain Smith fell into visible embarrassment ; ho 
 cleared his throat and said, with a little hesitation, 
 " My lord, that witness is living ! " 
 
 " No doubt of it witnesses never die where property is 
 concerned and imposture intended." 
 
 At this moment the servant entered, and placed a littlo 
 note, quaintly folded, before Lord Lilburne. He glanced 
 at it in surprise opened, and read as follows, in pencil : 
 
 " MY LOED, I knows the man ; take caer of him ; he is 
 as big a roge as ever stept ; he was transported some three 
 year back, and unless his time has been shortened by the 
 Home, he's absent without leve. We used to call him 
 Dashing Jerry. That ere youngster we went arter, by 
 Mr. Bofort's wish, was a pal of his. Scuze the liberty I 
 take, "J. SHARP." 
 
 While Lord Lilburne held this effusion to the candle, 
 and spelled his way through it, Captain Smith, recovering 
 his self-composure, thus proceeded : 
 
 " Imposture, my lord ! imposture ! I really don't un- 
 derstand. Your lordship really seems so suspicious, that 
 it is quite uncomfortable. I am sure it is all the same to 
 me ; and if Mr. Beaufort does not think proper to see me 
 himself, why I'd best make my bow." 
 
 And Captain Smith rose. 
 
 " Stay a moment, sir. What Mr. Beaufort may yet do, 
 I cannot say ; but I know this, you stand charged of a very 
 grave offence, and if your witness or witnesses you may 
 have fifty, for what I care are equally guilty, so much 
 the worse for them."
 
 NTfiflT AND MORNING. 549 
 
 " My lord, I really don't comprehend." 
 
 "Then I will be more plain. I accuse yon of devising 
 an infamous falsehood for the purpose of extorting money. 
 Let yonr witnesses appear in court, and I promise that yon, 
 they, and the young man, Mr. Morton, whose claim they 
 set up, shall be indicted for conspiracy conspiracy, if ac- 
 companied (as in the case of your witnesses) with perjury, 
 of the blackest die. Mr. Smith, I know you ; and, before 
 ten o'clock to-morrow, I shall know also if you had his 
 majesty's leave to quit the colonies ! Ah ! I am plain 
 enough now, I see." 
 
 And Lord Lilburne threw himself back in his chair, and 
 coldly contemplated the white face and dismayed ex- 
 pression of the crest-fallen captain. That most worthy 
 nerson, after a pause of confusion, amaze, and fear, made 
 an involuntary stride, with a menacing gesture, towards 
 Lilburne ; the peer quietly placed his hand on the bell. 
 
 " One moment more," said the latter ; "if I ring this 
 bell, it is to place you in custody. Let Mr. Beaufort but 
 see you here once again nay, let him but hear another 
 word of this pretended lawsuit and you return to the 
 colonies. Pshaw ! Frown not at me, sir ! A Bow Street 
 officer is in the hall. Begone ! no, stop one moment, and 
 take a lesson in life. Never again attempt to threaten 
 people of property and station. Around every rich man is 
 a wall better not run your head against it." 
 
 " But I swear solemnly," cried the knave, with an em- 
 phasis so startling, that it carried with it the appearance of 
 truth, "that the marriage did take place." 
 
 " And I say, no less solemnly, that any one who swears 
 it in a court of law shall be prosecuted for perjury ! Bah ! 
 you are a sorry rogu< , after all ! " 
 
 And with an air of supreme and half-compassionate con- 
 tempt, Lord Lilburne turned away and stirred the fire. 
 Captain Smith muttered and fumbled a moment with his 
 gloves, then shrugged his shoulders and sneaked out. 
 
 That night Lord Lilburne again received his friends, 
 and amongst his guests came Vaudemont. Lilburne was 
 one who liked the study of character, especially the cha- 
 racter of men wrestling against the world. Wholly free 
 from every species of ambition, he seemed to reconcile him- 
 self to his npathy by examining into the disquietude, the 
 mortification, the heart's wear and tear, which are the 1^
 
 350 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 of the ambitious. Like the spider in his hole, he watched 
 with hungry pleasure the flies struggling in the web ; 
 through whose slimy labyrinth he walked with an easy 
 safety. Perhaps, one reason why he loved gaming was 
 less from the joy of winning than the philosophical com- 
 placency with which he feasted on the emotions of those 
 who lost ; always serene, and, except in debauch, always 
 passionless, Majendie, tracing the experiments of science 
 in the agonies of some tortured dog, could not be more 
 wrapt in the science, and more indifferent to the dog, than 
 Lord Lilburne, ruining a victim, in the analysis of human 
 passions, stoical in the writhings of the wretch whom he 
 tranquilly dissected. He wished to win money of Vaude- 
 mont to ruin this man, who presumed to be more gene- 
 rous than other people to see a bold adventurer submitted 
 to the wheel of the Fortune which reigns in a pack of 
 cards ; and all, of course, without the least hate to the 
 man whom he then saw for the first time. On the con- 
 trary, he felt a respect for Vaudemont. Like most worldly 
 men, Lord Lilburne was prepossessed in favour of those who 
 seek to rise in life : and like men who have excelled in 
 manly and athletic exercises, he was also prepossessed in 
 favour of those who appeared fitted for the same success. 
 
 Liancourt took aside his friend, as Lord Lilburne was 
 talking with his other guests : 
 
 " I need not caution you, who never play, not to commit 
 yourself to Lord Lilburne's tender mercies ; remember, he 
 is an admirable player." 
 
 "N"ay," answered Vaudemont, "I want to know this 
 man : I have reasons, which alone induce me to enter his 
 house. I can afford to venture something, because I wish 
 to see if I can gain something for one dear to me. And 
 for the rest (he muttered) I know him too well not to be 
 on my guard." With that he joined Lord Lilburne's 
 group, and accepted the invitation to the card-table. At 
 supper, Vaudemont conversed more than was habitual to 
 him ; he especially addressed himself to his host, and listened, 
 with great attention, to Lilburne's caustic comments upon 
 every topic successively started. And whether it was tho 
 art of De Vaudemont, or from an interest that Lord Lil- 
 burne took in studying what was to him a new character, 
 or whether that, both men excelling peculiarly in oil 
 masculine accomplishments, their conversation was of a
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 851 
 
 nature tliat was more attractive to themselves than to 
 others ; it so happened, that they were still talking 
 while the daylight already peered through the window- 
 curtains. 
 
 " And I have outstayed all your guests," said De Vaudc- 
 mont, glancing round the emptied room. 
 
 " It is the best compliment you could pay me. Anothei 
 night we can enliven our tete-&-tete with e'carte; though at 
 your age, and with your appearance, I am surprised, Mon- 
 sieur de Vaudemont, that you are fond of play : I should 
 have thought that it was not in a pack of cards that you 
 looked for hearts. But perhaps you are blase betimes of 
 the beau sexe." 
 
 "Yet your lordship's devotion to it is, perhaps, as great 
 now as ever ? " 
 
 " Mine ? no, not as ever. To different ages different 
 degrees. At your age I wooed ; at mine I purchase the 
 better plan of the two : it does not take up half so much 
 time." 
 
 " Your marriage, I think, Lord Lilburne, was not blessed 
 with children. Perhaps sometimes you feel the want of 
 them ? " 
 
 " If I did, I could have them by the dozen. Other ladies 
 have been more generous in that department than the late 
 Lady Lilburne, Heaven rest her ! " 
 
 "And," said Vaudemont, fixing his eyes with some 
 earnestness on his host, " if you were really persuaded 
 that you had a child, or perhaps a grandchild the mother 
 one whom you loved in your first youth a child affectionate, 
 beautiful, and especially needing your care and protection, 
 would you not suffer that child, though illegitimate, to 
 supply to you the want of filial affection ? " 
 
 " Filial affection, mon cher ! " repeated Lord Lilburne, 
 ** needing my care and protection ! Pshaw ! In other 
 words, would I give board and lodging to some young 
 vagabond who was good enough to say he was son to Lord 
 Lilburne ? " 
 
 " But if you were convinced that the claimant were your 
 son, or perhaps your daughter a tenderer name of the 
 two, and a more helpless claimant ? " 
 
 " My dear Monsieur de Vaudemont, you are doubtless a 
 man of gallantry and of the world. If the children whom 
 the law forces on one are, nine times out of ten, such
 
 352 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 damnable plagues, judge if one would father those whom 
 the law permits us to disown ! Natural children are tho 
 Farias of the world, and I am one of the Brahmans." 
 
 "But," persisted Vaudemont, " forgive me if I press the 
 question farther. Perhaps I seek from your wisdom a 
 guide to my own conduct ; suppose, then, a man had 
 loved, had wronged, the mother ; suppose that in the child 
 he saw one who, Avithout his aid, might be exposed to every 
 curse with which the Farias (true, the Farias /) of tho 
 world are too often visited, and who with his aid might 
 become, as age advanced, his companion, his nurse, his 
 comforter ' ' 
 
 "Tush! " interrupted Lilburne, with some impatience; 
 " I know not how our conversation fell on such a topic 
 but if you really ask my opinion in reference to any case 
 in practical life, you shall have it. Look you, then, Mon- 
 sieur de Vaudemont, no man has studied the art of happi- 
 ness more than I have ; and I will tell you the great secret 
 have as few ties as possible. Nurse ! pooh ! you or I 
 could hire one by the week a thousand times more useful 
 and careful than a bore of a child. Comforter ! a man of 
 mind never wants comfort. And there is no such thing as 
 sorrow while we have health and money, and don't care a 
 straw for anybody in the world. If you choose to love 
 people, tlieir health and circumstances, if either go wrong, 
 can fret you : that opens many avenues to pain. Never 
 live alone, but always feel alone. You think this unami- 
 able : possibly. I am no hypocrite, and, for my part, I never 
 affect to be anything but what I am John Lilburne." 
 
 As the peer thus spoke, Vaudemont, leaning against the 
 door, contemplated him with a strange mixture of interest 
 and disgust. "And John Lilburne is thought a great 
 man, and William Grawtrey was a great rogue. You don't 
 conceal your heart ? no, I understand. Wealth and 
 power have no need of hypocrisy : you are the man of vice 
 Gawtrey, the man of crime. You never sin against the 
 law he was a felon by his trade. And the felon saved 
 from vice the child, and from want the grandchild (your 
 flesh and blood) whom you disown : which will Heaven 
 consider the worse man ? No, poor Fanny ! I see I am 
 wrong. If he would own you, I would not give you up to 
 the ice of such a soul : better the blind man than the dead
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 85 S 
 
 "Well, Lord Lilburne," said De Vaudemont aloud, 
 shaking off his reverie, " I must own that your philo- 
 sophy seems to me the wisest for yourself. For a poor 
 man it might be different the poor need affection." 
 
 "Ay, the poor, certainly," said Lord Lilburne, with an 
 air of patronising candour. 
 
 "And I will own farther," continued De Vaudemont, 
 " that I have willingly lost my money in return for the 
 instruction I have received in hearing you converse." 
 
 " You are kind : come and take your revenge next 
 Thursday. Adieu." 
 
 As Lord Lilburne undressed, and his valet attended him, 
 he said to that worthy functionary 
 
 " So you have not been able to make out the name ot 
 the stranger the new lodger you tell me of ? " 
 
 " No, my lord. They only say he is a very fine-looking 
 man." 
 
 "You have not seen him ? " 
 
 " No, my lord. What do you wish me now to do ? " 
 
 "Humph! Nothing at this moment! you manage 
 things so badly, you might get me into a scrape. I never 
 do anything which the law, or the police, or even the 
 newspapers, can get hold of. I must think of some other 
 way humph ! I never give up what I once commence, 
 and I never fail in what I undertake ! If life had been 
 worth what fools trouble it with business and ambition 
 I suppose I should have been a great man with a very 
 bad liver ha ! ha ! I alone, of all the world, ever found 
 out what the world was good for ! Draw the certain*, 
 Dykeman." 
 
 A A
 
 354 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 " Org, "Welcome thou ice that sitt'st about his heart J 
 No heat can ever thaw thee ! " FORD : Broken Heart. 
 
 " Nearch. Honourable infamy ! " Ibid. 
 
 " Amyc. Her tenderness hath yet deserved no rigour, 
 So to be crossed by fate ! 
 
 Arm. You misapply, sir, 
 "With favour let me speak it, what Apollo 
 Hath clouded in dim sense ! " Ibid. 
 
 IF Vaudemont had fancied that, considering the age and 
 poverty of Simon, it was his duty to see whether Fanny's 
 not more legal, but more natural protector were, indeed, the 
 unredeemed and unmalleable egotist which Gawtrey had 
 painted him, the conversation of one night was sufficient to 
 make him abandon for ever the notion of advancing her 
 claims upon Lord Lilburne. But Philip had another motive 
 in continuing his acquaintance with that personage. The 
 sight of his mother's grave had recalled to him the image 
 of that lost brother over whom he had vowed to watch. 
 And, despite the deep sense of wronged affection with 
 which he yet remembered the cruel letter that had con- 
 tained the last tidings of Sidney, Philip's heart clung with 
 undying fondness to that fair shape associated with all the 
 happy recollections of childhood ; and his conscience as 
 well as his love asked him, each time that he passed the 
 churchyard, ' Will you make no effort to obey that last 
 prayer of the mother who consigned her darling to your 
 charge ? ' Perhaps, had Philip been in want, or had the 
 name he now bore been sullied by his conduct, he might 
 have shrunk from seeking one whom he might injure, but 
 could not serve. But though not rich, he had more than 
 enough for tastes as hardy and simple as any to which 
 soldier of fortune ever limited his desires. And he thought, 
 with a sentiment of just and noble pride, that the name 
 which Eugenie had forced upon him had been borne spot- 
 less as the ermine through the trials and vicissitudes he 
 had passed since he had assumed it. Sidney could give 
 him nothing, and therefore it was his duty to seek Sidney 
 out. Now, he had always believed in his heart that the 
 Beauforts were acquainted with a secret which he moro 
 and more pined to penetrate. He would, for Sidney's sake, 
 smother his hate to the Beauforts ; lie -would not reject
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 355 
 
 their acquaintance if thrown in his way ; nay, secure in 
 his change of name and his altered features, from all sus- 
 picion on their part, he would seek that acquaintance in 
 order to find his brother and fulfil Catherine's last com- 
 mands. His intercourse with Lilburne would necessarily 
 bring him easily into contact with Lilburne's family. And 
 in this thought he did not reject the invitations pressed 
 on him. He felt, too, a dark and absorbing interest in 
 examining a man who was in himself the incarnation of 
 the AVorld the "World of Art the World as the Preacher 
 paints it the hollow, sensual, sharp-witted, self-wrapped 
 WORLD the World that is all for this life, and thinks of no 
 Future and no God ! 
 
 Lord Lilburne was, indeed, a study for deep contempla- 
 tion. A study to perplex the ordinary thinker, and task 
 to the utmost the analysis of more profound reflection. 
 William Gawtrey had possessed no common talents; h& 
 had discovered that his life had been one mistake ; Lord 
 Lilburne's intellect was far keener than Gawtrey's, and he 
 had never made, and if he had lived to the age of Old 
 Parr, never would have made a similar discovery. He 
 never wrestled against a law, though he slipped through 
 all laws ! And he knew no remorse, for he knew no fear. 
 Lord Lilburne had married early, and long survived, a lady 
 of fortune, the daughter of the then Premier the best 
 match, in fact, of his day. And for one very brief period 
 of his life he had suffered himself to enter into the field of 
 politics the only ambition common with men of equal 
 rank. He showed talents that might have raised one so 
 gifted by circumstance to any height, and then retired at 
 once into his old habits and old system of pleasure. " I 
 wished to try," said he once, " if fame was worth one head- 
 ache, and I have convinced myself that the man who can 
 sacrifice the bone in his mouth to the shadow of the bone 
 in the water is a fool." From that time he never attended 
 the House of Lords, and declared himself of no political 
 opinions one way or the other. Nevertheless, the world 
 had a general belief in his powers, and Vaudemont re- 
 luctantly subscribed to the world's verdict. Yet he had 
 done nothing, he had read but little, he laughed at the 
 world to its face, and that last was, after ail, the main 
 secret of his ascendancy over those who were drawn into 
 his circle. That contempt of the world placed the world at
 
 356 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 his feet. His sardonic and polished indifference, his pro- 
 fessed code that there was no life worth caring for bnt hia 
 own life, his exemption from all cant, prejudice, and dis- 
 guise, the frigid lubricity with which he glided out of the 
 grasp of the Conventional, whenever it so pleased him, 
 without shocking the Decorums whose sense is in their ear, 
 and who are not roused by the deed but by the noise, all 
 this had in it the marrow and essence of a system triumphant 
 with the vulgar ; for little minds give importance to the 
 man who gives importance to nothing. Lord Lilburne's 
 authority, not in matters of taste alone, but in those which 
 the world calls judgment and common sense, was regarded 
 as an oracle. He cared not a straw for the ordinary baubles 
 that attract his order ; he had refused both an earldom and 
 the garter, and this was often quoted in his honour. But 
 you only try a man's virtue when you offer him something 
 that he covets. The earldom and the garter were to Lord 
 Lilburne no more tempting inducements than a doll or a 
 skipping-rope ; had you offered him an infallible cure for 
 the gout, or an antidote against old age, you might have 
 hired him, as your lackey, on your own terms. Lord Lil- 
 burne's next heir was the son of his only brother, a person 
 entirely dependent on his uucle. Lord Lilburne allowed 
 him 1000Z. a year, and kept him always abroad in a di- 
 plomatic situation. He looked upon his successor as a man 
 who wanted power, but not inclination, to become his 
 assassin. 
 
 Though he lived sumptuously and grudged himself 
 nothing, Lord Lilburne was far from an extravagant man : 
 he might, indeed, be considered close ; for he knew how 
 much of comfort and consideration he owed to his money, 
 and valued it accordingly ; he knew the best speculations 
 and the best investments. If he took shares in an Ameri- 
 can canal, you might be sure that the shares would soon be 
 double in value ; if he purchased an estate, you might be 
 certain it was a bargain. This pecuniary tact and success 
 necessarily augmented his fame for wisd.om. 
 
 He had been in early life a successful gambler, and some 
 cuspicions of his fair play had been noised abroad ; but, as 
 has been recently seen in the instance of a man of rank 
 equal to Lilburne's, though, perhaps, of less acute if more 
 cultivated intellect, it is long before the pigeon will turn 
 round upon a fakon of breed and mettle. The rumours.
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 357 
 
 indeed, were so vague as to carry with them no weight. 
 During the middle of his career, when in the full flush of 
 health and fortune, he had renounced the gaming-table. 
 Of late years, as advancing age made time more heavy, he 
 had resumed the resource, and with all his former goocj 
 luck. The money-market, the table, the sex, constituted 
 the other occupations and amusements with which Lord 
 Lilburne filled up his rosy leisure. 
 
 Another way by which this man had acquired reputation 
 for ability was this, he never pretended to any branch of 
 knowledge of which he was ignorant, any more than to any 
 virtue in which he was deficient. Honesty itself was never 
 more free from quackery or deception than was thia em- 
 bodied and walking VICE. If the world chose to esteem 
 him, he did not buy its opinion by imposture. No man 
 ever saw Lord Lilburne's name in a public subscription, 
 whether for a new church, or a Bible Society, or a dis- 
 tressed family, no man ever heard of his doing one 
 generous, benevolent, or kindly action, no man was ever 
 startled by one philanthropic, pious, or amiable sentiment 
 from those mocking lips. Yet, in spite of all this, John 
 Lord Lilburne was not only esteemed but liked by the 
 world, and set up in the chair of its Rhadamanthuses. In 
 a word, he seemed to Vaudemont, and he was so in reality, 
 a brilliant example of the might of Circumstance an in- 
 stance of what may be done in the way of reputation and 
 influence by a rich, well-born man, to whom the will a 
 kingdom is. A little of genius, and Lord Lilburne would 
 have made his vices notorious and his deficiencies glaring ; 
 * little of heart, and his habits would have led him into 
 lountless follies and discreditable scrapes. It was the lead 
 ind the stone that he carried about him, that preserved 
 his equilibrium, no matter which way the breeze blew. 
 But all his qualities, positive or negative, would have 
 availed him nothing without that position which enabled 
 him to take his ease in that inn, the world which pre- 
 sented, to avery detection of his want of intrinsic nobleness, 
 the irreproachable respectability of a high name, a splendid 
 mansion, and a rent-roll without a flaw. Vaudemont drew 
 comparisons between Lilburne and Grawtrey, and he com- 
 prehended at last, why one was a low rascal and the other 
 a great man. 
 
 Although it was but a few days after their first intro-
 
 858 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 deletion to each other, Vaudemont had been twice to Lord 
 Lilburne's, and their acquaintance was already on an easy 
 footing when one afternoon, as the former was riding 
 
 through the streets towards H , he met the peer, 
 
 mounted on a stout cob, which, from its symmetrical 
 strength, pure English breed, arid exquisite grooming, 
 showed something of those sporting tastes for which, in 
 earlier life, Lord Lilburne had been noted. 
 
 "Why, Monsieur de Vaudemont, "what brings you to 
 this part of the town? curiosity and the desire to ex- 
 plore ? " 
 
 " That might be natural enough in me ; but you, who 
 know London so well ; rather what brings you here ? " 
 
 "Why I am returned from a long ride. I have ha.f 1 
 symptoms of a fit of the gout, and been trying to keep it 
 off by exercise. I have been to a cottage that belongs to 
 me, some miles from town a pretty place enough by the 
 way you must come and see me there next month. I 
 shall fill the house for a battue! I have some tolerable 
 covers you are a good shot, I suppose ? " 
 
 " I have not practised, except with a rifle, for some 
 years." 
 
 " That's a pity ; for as I think a week's shooting once d<- 
 year quite enough, I fear that your visit to me at Fernside 
 may not be sufficiently long to put your hand in." 
 
 " Fernside ! " 
 
 " Yes ; is the name familiar to you ? " 
 
 " I think I have heard it before. Did your lordship 
 purchase or inherit it ? " 
 
 " I bought it of my brother-in-law. It belonged to his 
 brother a gay, wild sort of fellow, who broke his neck 
 over a six-barred gate ; through that gate my friend 
 Robert walked the same day into a very fine estate ! " 
 
 " I have heard so. The late Mr. Beaufort, then, left no 
 children ? " 
 
 " Yes ; two. But they came into the world in the 
 primitive way in which Mr. Owen wishes us all to come 
 too naturally for the present state of society, and Mr. Owen's 
 parallelogram was not ready for them. By the way, oiia 
 of them disappeared at Paris ; you never met with him, I 
 suppose ? " 
 
 " Under what name ? " 
 
 "Morton."
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 359 
 
 M Morton ! hem ! What Christian name ? " 
 
 " Philip." 
 
 " Philip ! no. But did Mr. Beaufort do nothing for the 
 young men ? I think I have heard somewhere that he 
 took compassion on one of them." 
 
 " Have you ? Ah, my brother-in-law is precisely one of 
 those excellent men of whom the world always speaks well. 
 No ; he would very willingly have served either or both 
 the boys, but the mother refused all his overtures and went 
 to law, I fancy. The elder of these bastards turned out a 
 sad fellow, and the younger, I don't know exactly where 
 he is, but no doubt with one of his mother's relations. 
 You seem to interest yourself in natural children, my dear 
 Vaudemont ? " 
 
 " Perhaps you have heard that people have doubted rl 
 were a natural son ? " 
 
 " Ah ! I understand now. But are you going ? I was 
 in hopes you would have turned back my way, and " 
 
 " You are very good ; but I have a particular appoint- 
 ment, and I am now too late. Good morning, Lord Lil- 
 burne." 
 
 Sidney with one of his mother's relations ! Returned, 
 perhaps, to the Mortons ! How, had he never before 
 chanced on a conjecture so probable ? He would go at 
 once! that very night he would go to the house from 
 which he had taken his brother. At least, and at the 
 worst, they might give him some clue. 
 
 Buoyed with this hope and this resolve, he rode hastily 
 
 to H , to announce to Simon and Fanny that he should 
 
 not return to them, perhaps, for two or three days. As he 
 entered the suburb, he drew up by the statuary of whom 
 he had purchased his mother's grave-stone. 
 
 The artist of the melancholy trade was at work in his 
 yard. 
 
 " Ho ! there ! " said Vaudemont, looking over the low 
 railing ; " is the tomb I have ordered nearly finished ? " 
 
 " Why, sir, as you were so anxious for despatch, and as 
 it would take a long time to get a new one ready, I thought 
 of giving you this, which is finished all but the inscription. 
 It was meant for Miss Deborah Primme -, out her nephew 
 and heir called on me yesterday to say, that as the poor 
 lady died worth less by 5000Z. than he had expected, he 
 thought a handsome wooden comb would do as well, if I
 
 360 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 could get rid of this for him. It is a beauty, sir. It will 
 look so cheerful " 
 
 " Well, that will do : and you can place it now where I 
 told you." 
 
 " In three days, sir." 
 
 " So be it." And he rode on, muttering, " Fanny, your 
 pious wist will be fulfilled. But flowers, will they suit 
 that stone ? " 
 
 He put up his horse, and walked through the lane to 
 Simon's. 
 
 As he approached the house, he saw Fanny's bright eyea 
 at the window. She was watching his return. She 
 hastened to open the door to him, and the world's wanderer 
 felt what music there is in the footstep, what summer there 
 is in the smile, of Welcome ! 
 
 "My dear Fanny," he said, affected by her joyous 
 greeting, " it makes my heart warm to see you. I have 
 brought you a present from town. When I was a boy, I 
 remember that my poor mother was fond of singing some 
 simple songs, which often, somehow or other, come back to 
 me, when I see and hear you. I fancy you would under- 
 stand and like them as well at least as I do for Heaven 
 knows (he added to himself) my ear is dull enough 
 generally to the jingle of rhyme." And he placed in her 
 hands a little volume of those exquisite songs in which 
 Burns has set Nature to music. 
 
 " Oh ! you are so kind, brother," said Fanny, with tears 
 swimming in her eyes, and she kissed the book. 
 
 After their simple meal, Vaudemont broke to Fanny and 
 Simon the intelligence of his intended departure for a few 
 days. Simon heard it with the silent apathy into which, 
 except on rare occasions, his life had settled. But Fanny 
 turned away her face and wept. 
 
 " It is but for a day or two, Fanny." 
 
 " An hour is very very long sometimes," said the girl, 
 shaking her head mournfully. 
 
 " Come, I have a little time yet left, and the air is mild, 
 you have not been out to-day, shall we walk " 
 
 "Hem!" interrupted Simon, clearing his throat, and 
 Deeming to start into sudden animation ; " had not you 
 better settle the board and lodging before you go ? " 
 
 " Oh, grandfather ! " cried Fanny, springing to her feet, 
 with such a blush upon her face.
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 361 
 
 "Nay, child," said Vaudemont, laughingly; "your 
 grandfather only anticipates me. But do not talk of board 
 and lodging ; Fanny is as a sister to me, and our purse is 
 in common." 
 
 " I should like to feel a sovereign just to feel it," 
 muttered Simon, in a sort of apologetic tone, that was 
 really pathetic ; and as Vaudemont scattered some coins on 
 the table, the old man clawed them up, chuckling and 
 talking to himself ; and, rising with great alacrity, hobbled 
 out of the room like a raven carrying some cunning theft 
 to its hiding-place. 
 
 This was so amusing to Vaudemont that he burst out 
 fairly into an incontrollable laughter. Fanny looked at 
 him, humbled and wondering, for some moments ; and 
 then, creeping to him, put her hand gently on his arm and 
 Baid, 
 
 " Don't laugh it pains me. It was not nice in grand- 
 papa ; but but, it does not mean anything. It it don't 
 laugh Fanny feels so sad ! " 
 
 " Well, you are right. Come, put on your bonnet, we 
 will go out." 
 
 Fanny obeyed; but with less ready delight than usual. 
 And they took their way through lanes over which 
 hung, still in the cool air, the leaves of the yellow 
 autumn. 
 
 Fanny was the first to break silence. 
 
 " Do you know," she said, timidly, " that people here 
 think me very silly ? do you think so, too ? " 
 
 Vaudemont was startled by the simplicity of the question, 
 and hesitated. Fanny looked up in his dark face anxiously 
 and inquiringly. 
 
 " Well," she said, " you don't answer ? " 
 
 " My dear Fanny, there are some things in which I could 
 wish you less childlike and, perhaps, less charming. Those 
 strange snatches of song, for instance " 
 
 "What ! do you not like me to sing? It is my way of 
 talking." 
 
 " Yes ; sing, pretty one ! But sing something that we 
 tan understand, sing the songs I have given you, if you 
 will. And now, may I ask why you put to me that 
 question ? " 
 
 " I have forgotten," said Fanny, absently, and looking 
 down.
 
 362 NIUrfT AND MORNING. 
 
 Now, at that instant, as Philip Vaudemont bent over tua 
 exceeding sweetness of that young face, a sudden thrill 
 shot through his heart, and he, too, became silent, and lost 
 in thought. Was it possible that there could creep into his 
 breast a wilder affection for this creature than that of 
 tenderness and pity ? He was startled as the idea crossed 
 him. He shrunk from it as a profanation as a crime 
 as a frenzy. He with his fate so uncertain and chequered 
 he to link himself with one so helpless he to debase the 
 very poetry that clung to the mental temperament of this 
 pure being, with the feelings which every fair face may 
 awaken to every coarse heart to love Fanny ! "No it was 
 impossible ! For what could he love in her but beauty, 
 which the very spirit had forgotten to guard ? And she 
 could she even know what love was ? He despised himself 
 for even admitting such a thought; and with that iron 
 and hardy vigour which belonged to his mind, resolved to 
 watch closely against every fancy that would pass the fairy 
 boundary which separated Fanny from the world of 
 women. 
 
 He was roused from this self-commune by an abrupt 
 exclamation from his companion. 
 
 " Oh ! I recollect now, why I asked you that question. 
 There is one thing that always puzzles me I want you to 
 explain it. Why does everything in life depend upon 
 money ? You see even my poor grandfather forgot how 
 
 good you are to us both, when when Ah! I don't 
 
 understand it pains it puzzles me ! " 
 
 " Fanny, look there no, to the left you see that old 
 woman, in rags, crawling wearily along : turn now to the 
 right you see that fine house glancing through the trees, 
 with a carriage-and-f our at the gates ? The difference 
 between that old woman and the owner of that house is 
 Money ; and who shall blame your grandfather for liking 
 Money ? " 
 
 Fanny understood ; and while the wise man thus mora- 
 lised, the girl, whom his very compassion so haughtily 
 contemned, moved away to the old woman to do her little 
 best to smooth down those disparities from which wisdom 
 and moralising never deduct a grain ! Vaudemont felt this 
 as he saw her glide towards the beggar; but when she 
 came bounding back to him, she had forgotten his dislike 
 to her songs, and was chaunting, in the glee of the heart
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 363 
 
 that a kind act had made glad, one of her own impromptu 
 melodies. 
 
 Vaudemont turned away. Poor Fanny had uncon 
 sciously decided his self-conquest: she guessed not what 
 passed within him, but she suddenly recollected what he 
 had said to her about her songs, and fancied him dis- 
 pleased. 
 
 "Ah! I will never do it again. Brother, don't turn 
 away ! " 
 
 " But we must go home. Hark ! the clock strikes seven 
 I have no time to lose. And you will promise me never 
 to stir out till I return ? " 
 
 " I shall have no heart to stir out," said Fanny, sadly ; 
 and then in a more cheerful voice, she added, "And I shall 
 sing the songs you like, before you come back again ! '* 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 " Well did they know that service all by rote; 
 
 Some singing loud as if they had complained, 
 Some with their notes another manner feigned." 
 
 CHAUCER : The Cuckoo and the Nightingale, modernised by 
 WORDSWORTH. HORNE'S Edition. 
 
 AND once more, sweet Winandermere, we are on the 
 banks of thy happy lake ! The softest ray of the soft clear 
 sun of early autumn trembled on the fresh waters, and 
 glanced through the leaves of the limes and willows that 
 were reflected distinct as a home for the Naiads beneath 
 the limpid surface. You might hear in the bushes the 
 young blackbirds trilling their first untutored notes. And 
 the graceful dragonfly, his wings glittering in the trans- 
 lucent sunshine, darted to and fro the reeds gathered here 
 and there in the mimic bays that broke the shelving marge 
 of the grassy shore. 
 
 And by that grassy shore, and beneath those shadowy 
 limes, sat the young lovers. It was the very place where 
 Spencer had first beheld Camilla. And now they were met 
 to say " Farewell ! " 
 
 " Oh, Camilla ! " said he, with great emotion, and eyea 
 that swam in tears, " be firm be true. You know how
 
 364 NIGHT AND 
 
 my whole life is wrapped up in your love. You go amidst 
 scenes where all will tetn.pt you to forget me. I linger 
 behind in those which are consecrated by your remem- 
 brance, which will speak to me, every hour of you. Ca- 
 milla, since you do love me you do do you not ? since 
 you have confessed it since your parents have consented 
 to our marriage, provided only that your love last (for of 
 mine there can be no doubt) for one year one terrible 
 year shall I not trust you as truth itself ? And yet how 
 darkly I despair at times ! " 
 
 Camilla innocently took the hands that, clasped together, 
 were raised to her, as if in supplication, and pressed them 
 kindly between her own. 
 
 " Do not doubt me never doubt nay affection. Has 
 not my father consented ? Reflect, it is but a year's 
 delay!" 
 
 " A year ! can you speak thus of a year a whole year ? 
 Not to see not to hear you for a whole year, except in 
 my dreams ! And, if at the end your parents waver ? 
 Your father I distrust him still. If this delay is but 
 meant to wean you from me, if, at the end, there are new 
 excuses found, if they then, for some cause or other not 
 now foreseen, still refuse their assent ? You may I not 
 still look to you ?" 
 
 Camilla sighed heavily ; and turning her meek face on 
 her lover, said, timidly, "Never think that so short a 
 time can make me unfaithful, and do not suspect that 
 my father will break his promise." 
 
 " But, if he does, you will still be mine." 
 
 " Ah, Charles, how could you esteem me as a wife if I 
 were to tell you I could forget I am a daughter ? " 
 
 This was said so touchingly, and with so perfect a free- 
 dom from all affectation, that her lover could only reply 
 by covering her hand with his kisses. And it was not till 
 after a pause that he continued passionately, 
 
 " You do but show me how much deeper is my love than 
 yours. You can never dream how I love you. But I do 
 not ask you to love me as well it would be impossible. 
 My life from my earliest childhood has been passed in 
 these solitudes ; a happy life, though tranquil and mono- 
 tonous, till you suddenly broke upon it. You seemed to 
 me the living form of the very poetry I had worshipped 
 so bright so heavenly I lover 1 you from the very first
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 365 
 
 moment that we met. I am not like other men of my age. 
 I have no pursuit no occupation nothing to abstract me 
 from your thought. And I love you so purely so de- 
 votedly, Camilla. I have never known even a passing 
 fancy for another. You are the first the only woman it 
 ever seemed to me possible to love. You are my Eve 
 your presence my paradise! Think how sad I shall be 
 when you are gone how I shall visit every spot your foot- 
 step has hallowed how I shall count every moment till 
 the year is past ! " 
 
 While he thus spoke, he had risen in that restless agita- 
 tion which belongs to great emotion ; and Camilla now 
 rose also, and said, soothingly, as she laid her hand on his 
 shoulder with tender but modest frankness, " And shall 
 I not also think of you ? I am sad to feel that you will 
 be so much alone no sister no brother ! " 
 
 " Do not grieve for that. The memory of you will be 
 dearer to me than comfort from all else. And you will be 
 true ! " 
 
 Camilla made no answer by words, but her eyes and her 
 colour spoke. And in that moment, while plighting eternal 
 truth, they forgot that they were about to part ! 
 
 Meanwhile, in a room in the house which, screened by 
 the foliage, was only partially visible where the lovers 
 stood, sat Mr. Robert Beaufort and Mr. Spencer. 
 
 " I assure you, sir," said the former, " that I am not 
 insensible to the merits of your nephew, and to the very 
 handsome proposals you make, still I cannot consent to 
 abridge the tune I have named. They are both very 
 young. What is a year ? " 
 
 " It is a long time when it is a year of suspense," said 
 the recluse, shaking his head. 
 
 " It is a longer time when it is a year of domestic dis- 
 eension and repentance. And it is a very true proverb, 
 ' Marry in haste and repent at leisure.' No ! If at the end 
 of the year the young people continue of the same mind, 
 and no unforeseen circumstances occur " 
 
 " No unforeseen circumstances, Mr. Beaufort ! that in 
 a new condition it is a very vague phrase." 
 
 " My dear sir, it is hard to please you. Unforeseen cir- 
 cumstances," said the wary father, with a wise look, 
 " means circumstances that we don't foresee at present. 
 I assure you that I have no intentio V trifle with you,
 
 566 NIGHT AND MORNING 
 
 and I shall be sincerely nappy in so respectable a con- 
 nexion." 
 
 " The young people may write to each other ? " 
 
 "Why, I'll consult Mrs. Beaufort. At all events, it 
 mnst not be very often, and Camilla is well brought up, 
 and will show all the letters to her mother. I don't much 
 like a correspondence of that nature. It often leads to 
 unpleasant results ; if, for instance " 
 
 "If what?" 
 
 " Why, if the parties change their minds, and my girl 
 were to marry another. It is not prudent in matters of 
 business, my dear sir, to put down anything on paper that 
 can be avoided." 
 
 Mr. Spencer opened his eyes. "Matters of business, 
 Mr. Beaufort ! " 
 
 " Well, is not marriage a matter of business, and a very 
 grave matter too? More lawsuits about marriage and 
 settlements, &c., than I like to think of. But to change 
 the subject. You have never heard anything more of those 
 young men you say ? " 
 
 " No," said Mr. Spencer, rather inaudibly, and looking 
 down. 
 
 "And it is your firm impression that the elder one, 
 Philip, is dead?" 
 
 " I don't doubt it." 
 
 " That was a very vexatious and improper lawsuit their 
 mother brought against me. Do you know that some 
 wretched impostor, who, it appears, is a convict broke 
 loose before his time, has threatened me with another, on 
 the part of one of those young men. You never heard 
 anything of it eh ? " 
 
 "Never, upon my honour." 
 
 "And, of course, you would not countenance so vil- 
 lainous an attempt ? " 
 
 " Certainly not." 
 
 " Because that would break off our contract at once. But 
 you are too much a gentleman and a man of honour. 
 Forgive me so improper a question. As for the younger 
 Mr. Morton, I have no ill-feeling against him. But the 
 elder ! Oh, a thorough reprobate ! a very alarming cha- 
 racter ! I could have nothing to do with any member 
 of the family while the elder lived ; it would only ex- 
 pose me to every species of insult and imposition. And
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 367 
 
 now I think we have left our young friends alone long 
 enough. 
 
 " But stay, to prevent future misunderstanding, I may 
 as well read over again the heads of the arrangement you 
 honour me by proposing. You agree to settle your fortune 
 after your decease, amounting to 23,OOOZ. and your house, 
 with twenty-five acres, one rood, and two poles, more or 
 less, upon your nephew and my daughter, jointly re- 
 mainder to their children. Certainly, without offence, in 
 a worldly point of view, Camilla might do better ; still, 
 you are so very respectable, and you speak so handsomely, 
 that I cannot touch upon that point ; and I own, that 
 though there is a large nominal rent-roll attached to Beau- 
 fort Court, (indeed, there is not a finer property in the 
 county,) yet there are many incumbrances, and ready 
 money would not be convenient to me. Arthur, poor 
 fellow, a very fine young man, sir, is, as I have told you 
 in perfect confidence, a little imprudent and lavish ; in 
 short, your offer to dispense with any dowry is extremely 
 liberal, and proves your nephew is actuated by no mer- 
 cenary feelings : such conduct prepossesses me highly in 
 your favour and his too." 
 
 Mr. Spencer bowed, and the great man rising, with a 
 stiff affectation of kindly affability, put his arm into the 
 uncle's, and strolled with him across the lawn towards the 
 lovers. And such is life love on the lawn and settle- 
 ments in the parlour ! 
 
 The lover was the first to perceive the approach of the 
 elder parties. And a change came over his face as he saw 
 the dry aspect, and marked the stealthy stride, of his 
 future father-in-law ; for, then, there flashed across him a 
 dreary reminiscence of early childhood; the happy evening 
 when, with his joyous father, that grave and ominous 
 aspect was first beheld ; and then the dismal burial, the 
 funereal sables, the carriage at^the door, and he himself 
 clinging to the cold uncle to ask him to say a word of 
 comfort to the mother who now slept far away. 
 
 "Well, my young friend," said Mr. Beaufort, patron- 
 isingly, "your good uncle and myself are quite agreed a 
 little time for reflection, that's all. Oh ! I don't think the 
 worse of you for wishing to abridge it. But papas must 
 be papas." 
 
 There was so little jocular about that sedate man, that hi^
 
 368 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 attempt at jovial good humour seemed harsh and grating 
 the hinges of that wily mouth wanted oil for a hearty 
 smile. 
 
 " Come, don't be faint-hearted, Mr. Charles. ' Faint 
 heart,' you know the proverb. You must stay and dine 
 with us. We return to-morrow to town. I should tell 
 YOU, that I received this morning a letter from my SOD 
 A.rthur, announcing his return from Baden, so we must 
 give him. the meeting a very joyful one you may guess. 
 We have not seen him these three years. Poor fellow ! he 
 says he has been very ill, and the waters have ceased to do 
 him any good. But a little quiet and country air at 
 Beaufort Court will set him up, I hope." 
 
 Thus running on about his son, then about his shooting 
 - about Beaufort Court and its splendours about parlia- 
 ment and its fatigues about the last French Revolution, 
 and the last English election about Mrs. Beaufort, and 
 her good qualities and bad health about, in short, every- 
 thing relating to himself, some things relating to the 
 public, and nothing that related to the persons to whom his 
 conversation was directed, Mr. Robert Beaufort wore away 
 half an hour, when the Spencers took their leave, promising 
 to return to dinner. 
 
 " Charles," said Mr. Spencer, as the boat, which the 
 young man rowed, bounded over the water towards their 
 quiet home ; " Charles, I dislike these Beauforts ! " 
 
 "Not the daughter?" 
 
 " No, she is beautiful, and seems good : not so handsome 
 
 as your poor mother, but who ever was ? " here 
 
 Mr. Spencer sighed, and repeated some lines from Shen- 
 stone. 
 
 " Do you think Mr. Beaufort suspects in the least who J 
 am?" 
 
 "Why, that puzzles me ; I rather think he does." 
 
 " And that is the cause of the delay ? I knew it." 
 
 " No, on the contrary, I incline to think he has some 
 kindly feeling to you, though not to your brother, and that 
 it is such a feeling that made him consent to your 
 marriage. He sifted me very closely as to what I knew oi 
 the young Mortons observed that you were very hand- 
 some, and that he had fancied at first that he had seen you 
 before." 
 
 "Indeed I"
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 369 
 
 " Yes : and looked hard at me while he spoke ; and Said 
 more than once, significantly, ' So his name is Charles ? ' 
 He talked about some attempt at imposture and litigation, 
 but that was, evidently, merely invented to sound me 
 about your brother whom, of course, he spoke ill of 
 impressing on me, three or four times, that he would never 
 have anything to say to any of the family while Philip 
 lived." 
 
 " And you told him," said the young man, hesitatingly, 
 and with a deep blush of shame over his face, " that you 
 
 were persuad that is, that you believed Philip was 
 
 was " 
 
 " Was dead ! Yes and without confusion. For the 
 more I reflect, the more I think he must be dead. At all 
 events, you may be sure that he is dead to us, that we shall 
 never hear more of him." 
 
 "Poor Philip!" 
 
 " Your feelings are natural ; they are worthy of your 
 excellent heart ; but remember, what would have become 
 of you if you had stayed with him ! " 
 
 " True," said the brother, with a slight shudder, " a 
 career of suffering crime perhaps, the gibbet! Ah! 
 what do I owe you ? " 
 
 The dinner-party at Mr. Beaufort's that day was con- 
 strained and formal, though the host, in unusual good 
 humour, sought to make himself agreeable. Mrs. Beau- 
 fort, languid and afflicted with headache, said little. The 
 two Spencers were yet more silent. But the younger sat 
 next to her he loved; and both hearts were full: and 
 in the evening, they contrived to creep apart into a corner 
 by the window, through which the starry heavens looked 
 kindly on them. They conversed in whispers, with long 
 pauses between each : and at times, Camilla's tears flowed 
 silently down her cheeks, and were followed by the false 
 smiles intended to cheer her lover. 
 
 Time did not fly, but crept on breathlessly and heavily. 
 And then came the last parting formal, cold before 
 witnesses. But the lover could not restrain his emotion, 
 and the hard father heard his suppressed sob, as he closed 
 the door. 
 
 It will now be well to explain the cause of Mr. Beau- 
 fort's heightened spirits, and the motive* of his conduct 
 with respect to his daughter's suitor.
 
 370 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 This, perhaps, can "be best done by laying before the 
 reader the following letters that passed between Mr. Bean- 
 fort and Lord Lilbnrne. 
 
 From LORD LTLBURNE to ROBERT BEAUFORT, ESQ., M.P. 
 
 " DEAR BEAUFORT, I think I have settled, pretty satis- 
 factorily, your affair with your unwelcome visitor. The 
 first thing it seemed to me necessary to do, was to learfc 
 exactly what and who he was, and with what parties that 
 could annoy you, he held intercourse. I sent for Sharp, 
 the Bow- street officer, and placed him in the hall to mark, 
 and afterwards to dog and keep watch on your new friend. 
 The moment the latter entered I saw at once, from his 
 dress and his address, that he was a ' scamp ; ' and 
 thought it highly inexpedient to place you in his power by 
 any money transactions. While talking with him, Sharp 
 sent in a billet containing his recognition of our gentleman 
 as a transported convict. 
 
 " I acted accordingly ; soon saw, from the fellow's 
 manner, that he had returned before his time ; and sent 
 him away with a promise, which you may be sure he 
 believes will be kept, that if he molest you farther, he 
 shall return to the colonies, and that if his lawsuit pro- 
 ceed, his witness or witnesses shall be indicted for con- 
 spiracy and perjury. Make your mind easy so far. For 
 the rest, I own to you that I think what he says probable 
 enough: but my object in setting Sharp to watch him, 
 is to learn what other parties he sees. And if there be 
 veally anything formidable in his proofs or witnesses, it is 
 ivith those other parties I advise you to deal. Never 
 transact business with the go-between, if you can with the 
 principal. Remember, the two young men are the persons 
 to arrange with after all. They must be poor, and there- 
 fore easily dealt with. For if poor, they will think a bird 
 in the hand worth two in the bush of a lawsuit. 
 
 " If, through Mr. Spencer, you can learn anything of 
 either of the young men, do so ; and try and open some 
 channel, through which you can always establish a commu- 
 nication with them, if necessary. Perhaps, by learning 
 their early history, you may learn something to put them 
 into your power.
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 371 
 
 " I have had a twinge of the gout this morning, and am 
 likely, I fear, to be laid up for some weeks. 
 
 " Yours truly, 
 
 " LILBDENB. 
 
 " P.S. Sharp has just been here. He followed the man 
 who calls himself ' Captain Smith ' to a house in Lambeth, 
 where he lodges, and from which he did not stir till mid- 
 night, when Sharp ceased his watch. On renewing it this 
 morning, he found that the captain had gone off, to what 
 place Sharp has not yet discovered. 
 
 " Burn this immediately." 
 
 From ROBERT BEAUFORT, ESQ., M.P., to the LORD LILBURNE. 
 
 " DEAR LILBURNE, Accept my warmest thanks for your 
 kindness ; you have done admirably, and I do not see that 
 I have anything further to apprehend. I suspect that 
 it was an entire fabrication on that man's part, and your 
 firmness has foiled his wicked designs. Only think, I have 
 discovered I am sure of it one of the Mortons ; and he, 
 too, though the younger, yet, in all probability, the solo 
 pretender the fellow could set up. You remember that the 
 child Sidney had disappeared mysteriously, you remember 
 also, how much that Mr. Spencer had interested himself ir 
 finding out the same Sidney. Well, this gentleman at the 
 Lakes is, as we suspected, the identical Mr. Spencer, and his 
 soi-disant nephew, Camilla's suitor, is assuredly no other 
 than the lost Sidney. The moment I saw the young man I 
 recognised him, for he is very little altered, and has a great 
 look of his mother in the bargain. Concealing my more 
 than suspicions, I, however, took care to sound Mr. 
 Spencer (a very poor soul), and his manner was so embar- 
 rassed as to leave no doubt of the matter ; but in asking 
 him what he had heard of the brothers, I had the satisfac- 
 tion of learning that, in all human probability, the elder is 
 dead : of this Mr. Spencer seems convinced. I also 
 assured myself that neither Spencer nor the young man 
 had the remotest connexion with our Captain Smith, nor 
 any idea of litigation. This is very satisfactory, you will 
 tllow. And now, I hope you will approve of what I have 
 done. I find that young Morton, or Spencer, as he is 
 called, is desperately enamoured of Camilla ; he seems 
 a meek, well-conditioned, amiable young man ; writes 
 
 ~i B 2
 
 372 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 poetry / in short, rather weak than otherwise. I have 
 demanded a year's delay, to allow mutual trial and reflec- 
 tion. This gives us the channel for constant information 
 which you advise me to establish, and I shall have the 
 opportunity to learn if the impostor makes any communi- 
 cation to them, or if there be any news of the brother. If 
 by any trick or chicanery (for I will never believe that 
 there was a marriage) a law-suit that might be critical or 
 hazardous can be cooked up, I can, I am sure, make such 
 terms with Sidney, through his love for my daughter, 
 as would effectively and permanently secure me from all 
 further trouble and machinations in regard to my property. 
 And if, during the year, we convince ourselves that, after 
 all, there is not a leg of law for any claimant to stand 
 on, I may be guided by other circumstances how far I 
 shall finally accept or reject the suit. That must depend 
 on any other views we may then form for Camilla ; and I 
 shall not allow a hint of such an engagement to get abroad. 
 At the worst, as Mr. Spencer's heir, it is not so very bad a 
 match, seeing that they dispense with all marriage portion, 
 &c. a proof how easily they can be managed. I have not 
 let Mr. Spencer see that I have discovered his secret, I can 
 do that or not, according to circumstances, hereafter; 
 neither have I said anything of my discovery to Mrs. B. or 
 Camilla. At present, ' least said soonest mended.' I 
 heard from Arthur to-day. He is on his road home, and 
 we hasten to town, sooner than we expected, to meet him. 
 He complains still of his health. We shall all go down to 
 Beaufort Court. I write this at night, the pretended unclb 
 and sham nephew having just gone. But though we start 
 to-morrow, you will get this a day or two before we arrive, 
 as Mrs. Beaufort's health renders short stages necessary. 
 I really do hope that Arthur, also, will not be an invalid, 
 poor fellow ! one in a family is quite enough ; and I find 
 Mrs. Beaufort's delicacy very inconvenient, especially in 
 moving about and in keeping up one's county connexions. 
 A young man's health, however, is soon restored. I am 
 very sorry to hear of your gout, except that it carries off 
 all other complaints. 1 am very well, thank Heaven ; in- 
 deed, my health has been much better of late years : 
 Beaufort Court agrees with me so well! The more I 
 reflect, the more I am astonished at the monstrous and 
 wicked impudence of that fellow to defraud a man ou*
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 373 
 
 of his own property ! You are quite right, certainly a 
 conspiracy. 
 
 " Yours truly, 
 
 "R. B. 
 
 " P.S. I shall keep a constant eye on the Spencers. 
 " Burn this immediately." 
 
 After he had written and sealed this letter, Mr. Beaufort 
 went to bed and slept soundly. 
 
 And the next day that place was desolate, and the board 
 on the lawn announced that it was again to be let. But 
 thither daily, in rain or sunshine, came the solitary lover, 
 as a bird that seeks its young in the deserted nest : Again 
 and again he haunted the spot where he had strayed with 
 the lost one, and again and again murmured his pas- 
 sionate vows beneath the fast-fading limes. Are those 
 vows destined to be ratified or annulled ? Will the absent 
 forget, or the lingerer be consoled ? Had the characters of 
 that young romance been lightly stamped on the fancy 
 where once obliterated they are erased for ever, or were 
 they graven deep in those tablets where the writing, even 
 when invisible, exists still, and revives, sweet letter by letter, 
 when the light and the warmth borrowed fron* the One 
 Bright Presence are applied to the faithful record ? There 
 is but one Wizard to disclose that secret, as all others, the 
 old Gravedigger, whose Churchyard is the Earth, whose 
 trade is to find burial-places for Passions that seemed 
 immortal, disinterring the ashes of some long-crumbling 
 Memory, to hollow out the dark bed of some new-perished 
 Hope ; He who determines all things, and prophesies 
 none, for his oracles are uncomprehended till the doom is 
 sealed: He who in the bloom of the fairest affection 
 detects the hectic that consumes it, and while the hymn 
 rings at the altar, marks witl his joyless eye the grave for 
 the bridal vow. Wherever is ihe sepulchre, there is thy 
 temple, melancholy TIMB I
 
 BOOK 
 
 * ttnb ju etne? StroinS eflaten 
 Kv-n id;, tcr nacfy 3Jiovijen flof)." 
 
 SCHILLER: Dsr Pilgrim,. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 " Per ambages et ministeria deorum." * FETRONIUS. 
 
 MR. ROGER MORTON was behind his counter one drizzling, 
 melancholy day. Mr. Roger Morton, alderman, and twice 
 mayor of his native town, was a thriving man. He had 
 grown portly and corpulent. The nightly potations of 
 brandy and water, continued year after year with mecha- 
 nical perseverance, had deepened the roses on his cheek. Mr. 
 Roger Morton was never intoxicated he " only made him- 
 self comfortable." His constitution was strong ; but, some- 
 how or other, his digestion was not as good as it might be. 
 He was certain that something or other disagreed with 
 him. He left off the joint one day the pudding another. 
 Now he avoided vegetables as poison and now he sub- 
 mitted with a sigh to the doctor's interdict of his cigar. 
 Mr. Roger Morton never thought of leaving off bhe brandy 
 and water : and he would have resented as the height of 
 impertinent insinuation any hint upon that score to a man 
 of so sober and respectable a character. 
 
 Mr. Roger Morton was seated for the last four years, 
 ever since his second mayoralty, he had arrogated to him- 
 self the dignity of a chair. He received rather than served 
 his customers. The latter task was left to two of his sons. 
 For Tom, after much cogitation, the profession of an apo- 
 thecary had been selected. Mrs. Morton observed, that it 
 was a genteel business, and Tom had always been a likely 
 lad. And Mr. Roger considered that it would be a great 
 
 * Through the mysteries and miristeiir^s of the gods.
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 375 
 
 comfort and a great saving to have his medical adviser in 
 his own son. 
 
 The other two sons, and the various attendants of the 
 shop, were plying the profitable trade, as customer after 
 customer, with umbrellas and in pattens, dropped into the 
 tempting shelter when a man, meanly dressed, and who 
 was somewhat past middle age, with a care-worn, hungry 
 face, entered timidly. He waited in patience by the 
 crowded counter, elbowed by sharp-boned and eager 
 spinsters and how sharp the elbows of spinsters are, no 
 man can tell who has not forced his unwelcome way 
 through the agitated groups in a linendraper's shop ! the 
 man, I say, waited patiently and sadly, till the smallest of 
 the shop-boys turned from a lady, who, after much sorting 
 and shading, had finally decided on two yards of lilac- 
 coloured penny riband, and asked, in an insinuating pro- 
 fessional tone, 
 
 " What shall I show you, sir? " 
 
 " I wish to speak to Mr. Morton. Which is he ? " 
 
 " Mr. Morton is engaged, sir. I can give you what you 
 want." 
 
 " No it is a matter of business important business." 
 
 The boy eyed the napless and dripping hat, the gloveless 
 hands, and the rusty neckcloth of the speaker ; and said, as 
 he passed his fingers through a profusion of light curls, 
 
 " Mr. Morton don't attend much to business himself 
 now ; but that's lie. Any cravats, sir ? " 
 
 The man made no answer, but moved where, near the 
 window, and chatting with the banker of the town (as the 
 banker tried on a pair of beaver gloves), sat still after 
 due apology for sitting Mr. Roger Morton. 
 
 The alderman lowered his spectacles as he glanced grimly 
 at the lean apparition that shaded the spruce banker, and 
 Baid, 
 
 "Do you want me, friend ? " 
 
 " Yes, sir, if you please ; " and the man took off hia 
 shabby hat, and bowed low. 
 
 " Well, speak out. No begging petition, I hope ? " 
 
 " No, sir ! Tour nephews " 
 
 The banker turned round, and in his turn eyed the new 
 comer. The linendraper started back. 
 
 " Nephews ! " he repeated, with a bewildered look. 
 " What does the man mean ? Wait a bit."
 
 376 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 " Oh, I've done ! " said the banker, smiling. " I am glad 
 to find we agree so well upon this question : I knew we 
 should. Our member will never suit us if he goes on in this 
 way. Trade must take care of itself. Good day to you ! " 
 
 " Nephews ! " repeated Mr. Morton, rising, and beckon- 
 ing to the man to follow him into the back parlour, where 
 Mrs. Morton sat casting up the washing bills. 
 
 " Now," said the husband, closing the door, " what do 
 you mean, my good fellow ? " 
 
 " Sir, what I wish to ask you is if you can tell me what 
 
 has become of of the young Beau , that is, of your 
 
 sister's sons. I understand there were two and I am told 
 that that they are both dead. Is it so ? " 
 
 " What is that to you, friend ? " 
 
 " An please you, sir, it is a great deal to them/" 
 
 " Yes ha ! ha ! it is a great deal to everybody whether 
 they are alive or dead ! " Mr. Morton, since he had been 
 mayor, now and then had his joke. " But really " 
 
 " Roger ! " said Mrs. Morton, under her breath 
 " Roger ! " 
 
 " Yes, my dear." 
 
 " Come this way I want to speak to you about this 
 bill." The husband approached, and bent over his wife. 
 
 " Who's this man ?" ' 
 
 " I don't know." 
 
 " Depend on it, he has some claim to make some bills, 
 or something. Don't commit yourself the boys are dead 
 for what we know ! " 
 
 Mr. Morton hemmed, and returned to his visitor. 
 
 " To tell you the truth, I am not aware of what has be- 
 come of the young men." 
 
 " Then they are not dead I thought not ! " exclaimed 
 the man, joyously. 
 
 " That's more than I can say. It's many years since I 
 lost sight of the only one I ever saw ; and they may be 
 both dead for what I know." 
 
 " Indeed ! " said the man. " Then you can give me no 
 kind of of hint like, to find them out ? " 
 
 " No. Do they owe you anything ? " 
 
 " It does not signify talking now, sir. I beg you* 
 pardon." 
 
 " Stay who are you ? " 
 
 " I am a very poor man, sir."
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 877 
 
 Mr. Morton recoiled. 
 
 " Poor ! Oh, very well very well. You have done with 
 me now. Good day good day. I'm busy." 
 
 The stranger pecked for a moment at his hat turned 
 the handle of the door peered under his grey eyebrows at 
 the portly trader, who, with both hands buried in his 
 pockets, his mouth pursed up, like a man about to say 
 " No " fidgeted uneasily behind Mrs. Morton's chair. He 
 sighed, shook his head, and vanished. 
 
 Mrs. Morton rang the bell the maid-servant entered. 
 
 " Wipe the carpet, Jenny ; dirty feet ! Mr. Morton, it's 
 a Brussels ! " 
 
 " It was not my fault, my dear. I could not talk about 
 family matters before the whole shop. Do you know, I'd 
 quite forgot those poor boys. This unsettles me. Poor Cathe- 
 rine ! she was so fond of them. A pretty boy that Sidney, 
 too. What can have become of them ? My heart rebukes 
 me. I wish I had asked the man more." 
 
 " More ! why, he was just going to beg." 
 
 " Beg yes very true ! " said Mr. Morton, pausing irre- 
 solutely ; and then, with a hearty tone, he cried out" And, 
 damme, if he had begged, I could afford him a shilling ! 
 I'll go after him." So saying, he hastened back through 
 the shop, but the man was gone the rain was falling 
 Mr. Morton had his thin shoes on he blew his nose, and 
 went back to the counter. Bat, there, still rose to his me- 
 mory the pale face of his dead sister ; and a voice mur- 
 mured in his ear, " Brother, where is my child ? " 
 
 " Pshaw ! it is not my fault if he ran away. Bob, go 
 and get me the county paper." 
 
 Mr. Morton had again settled himself, and was deep in a 
 trial for murder, when another stranger strode haughtily 
 into the shop. The new-comer, wrapped in a pelisse of 
 furs, with a thick moustache, and an eye that took in the 
 whole shop, from master to boy, from ceiling to floor, in a 
 glance, had the air at once of a foreigner and a soldier. 
 Every look fastened on him, as he paused an instant, and 
 then walking up to the alderman, said, 
 
 " Sir, you are doubtless Mr. Morton ? " 
 
 "At your commands, sir," said Bx>ger, rising involun. 
 tarily. 
 
 " A word with you, then, on business." 
 
 " Business ! " echoed Mr. Morton, turning rather pale,
 
 378 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 for he began to think himself haunted ; " anything in my 
 line, sir? I should be " 
 
 The stranger bent down his tall stature, and hissed into 
 Mr. Morton's foreboding ear, 
 
 " Your nephews ! " 
 
 Mr. Morton was literally dumb-stricken. Yes, he cer- 
 tainly was haunted ! He stared at this second questioner, 
 and fancied that there was something very supernatural and 
 unearthly about him. He was so tall, and so dark, and so 
 stern, and so strange. Was it the Unspeakable himself 
 come for the linendraper ? Nephews again ! The uncle of 
 the babes in the wood could hardly have been more startled 
 by the demand ! 
 
 " Sir," said Mr. Morton at last, recovering his dignity 
 and somewhat peevishly, "sir, I don't know why people 
 should meddle with my family affairs. I don't ask other 
 folks about their nephews. I have no nephew that I 
 know of." 
 
 " Permit me to speak to you, alone, for one instant." 
 
 Mr. Morton sighed, hitched up his trousers, and led the 
 way to the parlour, where Mrs. Morton, having finished the 
 washing bifls, was now engaged in tying certain pieces of 
 bladder round certain pots of preserves. The eldest Miss 
 Morton, a young woman of five or six- and- twenty, who was 
 about to be very advantageously married to a young gen- 
 tleman who dealt in coals and played the violin (for 
 
 N was a very musical town), had just joined her for 
 
 the purpose of extorting " The Swiss Boy, with varia- 
 tions," out of a sleepy little piano, that emitted a very 
 painful cry under the awakening fingers of Miss Margaret 
 Morton. 
 
 Mr. Morton threw open the door with a grunt, and the 
 stranger pausing at the threshold, the full flood of sound 
 (key C) upon which "the Swiss Boy" was swimming 
 along, " kine " and all, for life and death, came splash upon 
 him. 
 
 " Silence ! can't you ? " cried the father, putting one hand 
 to his ear, while' with the other he pointed to a chair ; and 
 as Mrs. Morton looked up from the preserves with that air 
 of indignant suffering with which female meekness up- 
 braids a husband's wanton outrage, Mr. Roger added, 
 shrugging his shoulders, 
 
 " My nephews again, Mrs. M. ! "
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 379 
 
 Miss Margaret turned round, and dropped a courtesy. 
 Mrs. Morton gently let fall a napkin over the preserves, 
 lind muttered a sort of salutation, as the stranger, taking 
 off his hat, turned to mother and daughter one of those 
 noble faces in which Nature has written her grant and 
 warranty of the lordship of creation. 
 
 " Pardon me," he said, " if I disturb you. But my 
 business will be short. I have come to ask you, sir, 
 frankly, and as one who has a right to ask it, what tidings 
 you can give me of Sidney Morton ? " 
 
 " Sir, I know nothing whatever about him. He was 
 taken from my house, about twelve years since, by his 
 brother. Myself, and the two Mr. Be^uforts, and 
 another friend of the family, went in search of them both. 
 My search failed." 
 
 " And theirs ? " 
 
 " I understood from Mr. Beaufort that they had not 
 been more successful. I have had no communication with 
 those gentlemen since. But that's neither here nor there. 
 In all probability, the elder of the boys, who, I fear, was 
 a sad character, corrupted and ruined his brother ; and, 
 by this time Heaven knows what and where they are." 
 
 " And no one has inquired of you since no one has 
 asked the brother of Catherine Morton, nay, rather of 
 Catherine Beaufort where is the child intrusted to your 
 care ? " 
 
 This question, so exactly similar to that which his super- 
 stition had rung on his own ears, perfectly appalled the 
 worthy alderman. He staggered back stared at the 
 marked and stern face that lowered upon him and at last 
 cried, 
 
 " For pity's sake, sir, be just ! What could I do for one 
 who left me of his own accord ? " 
 
 " The day you had beaten him like a dog. You see, Mr. 
 Morton, I know all." 
 
 " And what are you ? " said Mr. Morton, recovering his 
 English courage, and feeling himself strangely browbeaten 
 in his own house ; " What and who are you, that you tjhus 
 take the liberty to catechise a man of my character and 
 respectability ? " 
 
 " Twice mayor " began Mrs. Morton. 
 
 " Hush, mother ! " whispered Miss Margaret, " don't 
 work him up."
 
 580 NIGHT AND MORNOO. 
 
 " I repeat, sir, what are you ? " 
 
 " What am I ? your nephew ! Who am I ? Before 
 men, 1 bear a name that I have assumed, and not dis- 
 honoured before Heaven, I am Philip Beaufort ! " 
 
 Mrs. Morton dropped down upon her stool. Margaret 
 murmured " My cousin ! " in a tone tkat the ear of the 
 musical coal-merchant might not have greatly relished. 
 And Mr. Morton, after a long pause, came up with a frank 
 and manly expression of joy, and said, 
 
 " Then, sir, I thank Heaven, from my heart, that one of 
 my sister's children stands alive before me ! " 
 
 " And now, again, I I whom you accuse of having cor- 
 rupted and ruined him him for whom I toiled and worked 
 him, who was to me, then, as a last surviving son to 
 some anxious father I, from whom he was reft and robbed 
 I ask you again for Sidney for my brother ! " 
 
 " And again, I say, that I have no information to give 
 you that Stay a moment stay. You must pardon what 
 I have said of you before you made yourself known. I 
 went but by the accounts I had received from Mr. Beau- 
 fort. Let me speak plainly ; that gentleman thought, 
 right or wrong, that it would be a great thing to separate 
 your brother from you. He may have found him it must 
 be so and kept his name and condition concealed from us 
 all, lest you should detect it. Mrs. M., don't you think 
 o?" 
 
 " I'm sure I'm so terrified 1 don't know what to think," 
 said Mrs. Morton, putting her hand to her forehead, and 
 see-sawing herself to and fro upon her stool. 
 
 " But since they wronged you since you you seem so 
 very very ' ' 
 
 " Very much the gentleman," suggested Miss Margaret. 
 
 " Yes, so much the gentleman ; well off, too, I should 
 hope, sir," and the experienced eye of Mr. Morton glanced 
 at the costly sables that lined the pelisse " there can be 
 no difficulty in your learning from Mr. Beaufort all that 
 you wish to know. And pray, sir, may I ask, did you send 
 any one here to-day to make the very inquiry you have 
 made ? " 
 
 ' ' I ? No. What do you mean ? " 
 
 " Well, well sit down there may be something in al! 
 this that you may make out better than I can," 
 
 And as Philip obeyed, Mr. Morton, who was really and
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 381 
 
 honestly rejoiced to see his sister's son alive and apparently 
 thriving, proceeded to relate pretty exactly the conversa- 
 tion he had held with the previous visitor. Philip listened 
 earnestly and with attention. Who could this questioner 
 be ? Some one who knew his birth some one who sought 
 him out ? some one, who Good Heavens ! could it be 
 the long-lost witness of the marriage ? 
 
 As soon as that idea struck him, he started from kis 
 seat, and entreated Morton to accompany him in search of 
 the stranger. " You know not," he said, in a tone im- 
 pressed with that energy of will in which lay the talent of 
 his mind, " you know not of what importance this may 
 be to my prospects to your sister's fair name. If it 
 should be the witness returned at last ! Who else, of the 
 rank you describe, would be interested in such inquiries ? 
 Come ! " 
 
 " What witness ? " said Mrs. Morton, fretfully. " You 
 don't mean to come over us with the old story of the 
 marriage ? " 
 
 " Shall your wife slander your own sister, sir ? A mar- 
 riage there was God yet will proclaim the right and 
 the name of Beaufort shall be yet placed on my mother's 
 grave-stone. Come ! " 
 
 " Here are your shoes and umbrella, pa," cried Miss 
 Margaret, inspired by Philip's earnestness. 
 
 " My fair cousin, I guess," and as the soldier took her 
 hand, he kissed the unreluctant cheek turned to the door 
 Mr. Morton placed his arm in his, and the next moment 
 they were in the street. 
 
 When Catherine, in her meek tones had said, " Philip 
 Beaufort was my husband," Roger Morton had disbelieved 
 her. And now one word from the son, who could, in com- 
 parison, know so little of the matter, had almost sufficed 
 to convert and to convince the sceptic. Why was this? 
 Because Man believes the Strong 1
 
 382 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 '* Quid Vii'tus et quid Sapientia possit 
 
 CJtile proposuit nobis exemplar Ulyssem." HOB. 
 
 MEANWHILE the object of their search, on quitting Mr. 
 Morton's shop, had walked slowly and sadly on, through 
 the plashing streets, till he came to a public-house in the 
 outskirts and on the high road to London. Here he took 
 shelter for a short time, drying himself by the kitchen fire, 
 with the license purchased by f ourpennyworth of gin ; and 
 having learned that the next coach to London would not 
 pass for some hours, he finally settled himself in the ingle, 
 till the guard's horn should arouse him. By the same 
 
 coach that the night before had conveyed Philip to N , 
 
 had the very man he sought been also a passenger ! 
 
 The poor fellow was sickly and wearied out : he had 
 settled into a doze, when he was suddenly wakened by the 
 wheels of a coach and the trampling of horses. Not know- 
 ing how long he had slept, and imagining that the vehicle 
 he had awaited was at the door, he ran out. It was a 
 coach coming from London, and the driver was joking 
 with a pretty barmaid, who, in rather short petticoats, was 
 holding up to him the customary glass. The man, after 
 satisfying himself that his time was not yet come, was 
 turning back to the fire, when a head popped itself out of 
 the window, and a voice cried, " Stars and garters ! Will 
 so that's you ! " At the sound of the voice the man 
 halted abruptly, turned very pale, and his limbs trembled. 
 The inside passenger opened the door, jumped out with a 
 little carpet-bag in his hand, took forth a long leathern 
 purse from which he ostentatiously selected the coins that 
 paid his fare and satisfied the coachman, and then, passing 
 his arm through that of the acquaintance he had discovered, 
 led him back into the house. 
 
 "Will Will," he whispered, "you have been to the 
 Morton's. Never moind let's hear all. Jenny or Dolly, 
 or whatever your sweet praetty name is a private room 
 and a pint of brandy, my dear. Hot water and lots of the 
 grocery. That's right." 
 
 14 He has proposed to us Ulvsses as a useful example of how much m jy be 
 accomplished by Virtue and "Wisdom."
 
 NIGHT AND -MORNING. 
 
 And as soon as the pair found themselves, with the brandy 
 before them, in a small parlonr with a good fire, the last 
 comer went to the door, shnt it cautiously, flung his bag 
 under the table, took off his gloves, spread himself wider 
 and wider before the fire, until he had entirely excluded 
 every ray from his friend, and then suddenly turning so 
 that the back ntight enjoy what the front had gained, he 
 exclaimed, 
 
 " Damme, Will, you're a praetty sort of a broather to 
 give me the slip in that way. But in this world, every 
 man for his-self ! " 
 
 " I tell yon," said William, with something like decision 
 in his voice, " that I will not do any wrong to these young 
 men if they live." 
 
 "Who asks you to do a wrong to them? booby! 
 Perhaps I may be the best friend they may have yet ay, 
 or you too, though you're the ungratefullest whimsicallest 
 sort of a son of a gun that ever I came across. Come, help 
 yourself, and don't roll up your eyes in that way, like a 
 Muggletonian asoide of a Fye-Fye ! " 
 
 Here the speaker paused a moment, and with a graver 
 and more natural tone of voice proceeded. 
 
 " So yon did not believe me when I told you that these 
 brothers were dead, and you have been to the Morton's to 
 learn more ? " ' 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Well, and what have you learned ? " 
 
 " Nothing. Morton declares that he does not know that 
 they are alive, but he says also that he does not know that 
 they are dead." 
 
 " Indeed," said the other, listening with great attention ; 
 " and you really think that he does not know anything 
 about them ? " 
 
 " I do, indeed." 
 
 " Hum ! Is he a sort of man who would post down the 
 rhino to help the search ? " 
 
 " He looked as if he had the yellow fever when I said I 
 was poor," returned William, turning round, and trying 
 to catch a glimpse at the fire, as he gulped his brandy and 
 water. 
 
 " Then I'll be d d if I run the risk of calling. I have 
 done some things in this town by way of business before 
 now ; and though it's a long time ago, yet folks don't
 
 384 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 forget a haundsome man in a hurry especially if he has 
 done 'em ! Now, then, listen to me. You see, I have given 
 this matter all the 'tention in my power. ' If the lads bo 
 dead,' said I to you, ' it is no use burning one's fingers by 
 holding a candle to bones in a coffin. But Mr. Beaufort 
 need not know they are dead, and we'll see what we can 
 get out of him ; and if I succeeds, as I think I shall, you 
 and I may hold up our heads for the rest of our life.' Ac- 
 cordingly, as I told you, I went to Mr. Beaufort, and 
 'Gad, I thought we had it all our own way. But since I 
 -saw you last, there's been the devil and all. When I called 
 again, Will, I was shown in to an old lord, sharp as a 
 gimblet. Hang me, William, if he did not frighten me 
 out of my seven senses ! " 
 
 Here Captain Smith (the reader has, no doubt, already 
 discovered that the speaker was no less a personage) took 
 three or four nervous strides across the room, returned to 
 the table, threw himself in a chair, placed one foot on one 
 hob, and one on the other, laid his finger on his nose, and, 
 with a significant wink, said in a whisper "Will, he 
 knew I had been lagged ! He not only refused to hear all 
 I had to say, but threatened to prosecute persecute, hang, 
 draw, and quarter us both, if we ever dared to come out 
 with the truth." 
 
 " But what's the good of the truth if the boys are 
 dead ? " said William, timidly. 
 
 The Captain, without heeding this question, continued, 
 as he stirred the sugar in his glass, " Well, out I sneaked, 
 and as soon as I had got to my own door I turned round 
 and saw Sharp the runner on the other side of the way 
 I felt deuced queer. However, I went in, sat down, and 
 began to think. I saw that it was up with us, so far as 
 the old uns were concerned ; and now it might be worth 
 while to find out if the young uns really were dead." 
 
 " Then you did not know that after all ! I thought so. 
 Oh, Jerry ! " 
 
 " Why, look you, man, it was not our interest to take 
 their side if we could make our bargain out of the other. 
 'Cause why ? You are only one witness you are a good 
 fellow, but poor, and with very shaky nerves, Will. You 
 does not know what them big wigs are when a man's caged 
 in a witness-box they flank one up, and they flank one 
 4own, and they bully and bother, till one's like a horse at
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 3Sb 
 
 Astley's dancing on hot iron. If your testimony broke 
 down, why it would be all up with the case, and what then 
 would become of us? Besides," added the captain, with 
 dignified candour, " I have been lagged, it's no use denying 
 it ; I am back before my time. Inquiries about your re- 
 spectability would soon bring the bulkies about me. And 
 you would not have poor Jerry sent back to that d d low 
 place on t' other side of the Herring-pond, would you ? " 
 
 " Ah, Jerry ! " said William, kindly placing his hand in 
 his brother's, " you know I helped you to escape ; I left 
 all to come over with you." 
 
 " So you did, and you're a good fellow ; though as to 
 leaving all, why you had got rid of all first. And when 
 you told me about the marriage, did not I say that I saw 
 our way to a snug thing for lif e ? But to return to my 
 story. There is a danger in going with the youngsters. 
 But since, Will, since nothing but hard words is to be 
 got on the other side, we'll do our duty, and I'll find them 
 out, and do the best I can for us that is, if they be yet 
 above ground. And now I'll own to you that I think I 
 knows that the younger cue is alive." 
 
 "You do?" 
 
 " Yes ! But as he won't come in for anything unless his 
 brother is dead, we muot have a hunt for the heir. Now 
 I told you that, many years ago, there was a lad with me, 
 who, putting all things together seeing how the Beau- 
 forts came after him, and recollecting different things he 
 let out at the time I feel pretty sure is your old master's 
 Hopeful. I know that poor Will Gawtrey gave this lad 
 the address of old Gregg, a friend of mine. So after 
 watching Sharp off the sly, I went that very night, or 
 rather at two in the morning, to Gregg's house, and, after 
 brushing up his memory, I found that the lad had been to 
 him, and gone over afterwards to Paris in search of 
 Grawtrey, who was then keeping a matrimony shop. As I 
 was not rich enough to go off to Paris in a pleasant, gen- 
 tlemanlike way, I allowed Gregg to put me up. to a noice. 
 quiet, little bit of business. Don't shake your head all 
 safe a rural affair ! That took some days. You see i' 
 has helped to new rig me," and the captain glanced com- 
 placently over a very smart suit of clothes. " Well, on 
 my return I went to call on you, but you were flown. I 
 half suspected you might have gone to the mother's rela 
 
 o o
 
 3b6 NIGHT AND MOEX1XO. 
 
 tions here ; and I thought, at all events, that I could not 
 do better than go myself and see what thy knew of the 
 matter. From what you say I feel I had better now let 
 that alone, and go over to Paris at once; leave me alone to 
 find out. And faith, what with Sharp and the old lord, 
 the sooner 1 quit England the better." 
 
 " And you really think you shall get hold of them after 
 all ? Oh, never fear my nerves if I'm once in the right ; 
 it's living with you, and seeing yon do wrong, and hearing 
 you talk wickedly, that makes me tremble." 
 
 " Bother ! " said the captain, " you need not crow ovei 
 me. Stand up, Will ; there now, look at us two in the 
 glass! Why, I look ten years younger than you do. in 
 spite of all my troubles. I dress like a gentleman, as I 
 am ; I have money in rny pocket ; I put money in yours ; 
 without me you'd 'starve. Look you. you carried over a 
 little fortune to Australia you married you farmed you 
 lived honestly, and yet that d d shilly-shally disposition 
 of yours, 'ticed into one speculation to- day, and scared out 
 of another to-morrow, ruined you ! " 
 
 "Jerry! Jerry!" cried William, writhing; "don't 
 don't." 
 
 " But it's all true, and I wants to cure you of preaching. 
 And then, when yon were nearly run out, instead of 
 putting a bold face on it, and setting your shoulder to the 
 wheel, yon gives it up you sells what you have you bolts 
 over, wife and all, to Boston, because some one tells you 
 yon can do better in America you are out of the way 
 when a search is made for you years ago when you 
 could have benefited yourself and your master's family 
 without any danger to you or me nobody can find you ; 
 'cause why, you could not bear that your old friends in 
 England, or in the colony either, should know that you 
 were turned a slave-drirer in Kentucky. You kick up a 
 mutiny among the niggars by moaning over them, instead 
 of keeping 'em to it yon get kicked out yourself your 
 wife begs you to go back to Australia, where her relations 
 will do something for you you work your passage out, 
 looking as ragged as a colt from grass wife's uncle don't 
 like ragged nepb.ews-in-law wife dies broken-hearted 
 and you might be breaking stones on the roads with the 
 convicts, if I, myself a convict, had not taken compassion 
 on yon. Pon't cry, Will, it is all for your own good I
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 387 
 
 bates cant! Whereas I, my own master from eighteen, 
 never stooped* to serve any other have dressed like a 
 gentleman kissed the pretty girls drove my pheaton 
 6een in all the papers as ' the celebrated Dashing Jerry ' - 
 never wanted a guinea in my pocket, and even when lagged 
 at last, had a pretty little sum in the colonial bank to 
 lighten my misfortunes. I escape I bring you over and 
 here I am, supporting you, and, in all probability, the one 
 on whom depends the fate of one of the first families in 
 the country. And you preaches at me, do you ? Look 
 you, Will ; in this world, honesty's nothing without force 
 of character ! And so your health ! " 
 
 Here the captain emptied the rest of the brandy into his 
 glass, drained it at a draught, and, while poor William was 
 wiping his eyes with a ragged blue pocket-handkerchief, 
 rang the bell, and asked what coaches would pass that way 
 
 to , a seaport town, at some distance. On hearing 
 
 that there was one at six o'clock, the captain ordered the 
 best dinner the larder would afford to be got ready as soon 
 as possible ; and, when they were again alone, thus accosted 
 his brother, 
 
 ' " Now you go back to town here are four shiners for 
 you. Keep quiet don't speak to a soul don't put your 
 foot in it, that's all I beg, and I'll find out whatever there 
 is to be found. It is damnably out of my way embarking 
 
 at , but I had best keep clear of Lunnon. And I tell 
 
 you what, if these youngsters have hopped the twig, there's 
 another bird on the bough -that may prove a goldfinch 
 a/ter all ; Young Arthur Beaufort : I hear he is a wild, 
 expensive chap, and one who can't live without lots of 
 money. Now, it's easy to frighten a man of that sort, and 
 I sha'n't have the old lord at his elbow." 
 
 " But I tell you, that I only care for my poor master's 
 children." 
 
 " Yes ; but if they are dead, and by saying they are 
 alive, one can make old age comfortable, there's no harm 
 in it eh? " 
 
 " I don't know," said William, irresolutely. " But cer- 
 tainly it is a hard thing to be so poor at my time of life ; 
 and so honest a man as I've been, too ! " 
 
 Captain Smith went a little too far when he said that 
 "honesty's nothing without force of character." Still 
 Honesty has no business" to be helples8 and draggletailed ; 
 
 o c 2
 
 888 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 she must be active and brisk, and make use of her wits ; 
 or, though she keep clear of the prison, 'tis no very great 
 wonder if she iall on the parish. 
 
 CHAPTEK III. 
 
 Mitit. This Macilente, signior, begins to be more sociable on a sudden." 
 
 Every Man out of hi* ILuinour. 
 
 " Punt. Signior, you are sufficiently instructed. 
 Fast. Who, I, sir ? "Ibid. 
 
 AFTER spending the greater part of the day in vain in- 
 quiries and a vain search, Philip and Mr. Morton returned 
 to the house of the latter. 
 
 "And now," said Philip, " all that remains to be done is 
 this ; first, give to the police of the town a detailed de- 
 scription of the man ; and secondly, let us put an advertise- 
 ment both in the county journal and in some of the London 
 papers, to the effect, that if the person who called on you 
 will take the trouble to apply again, either personally or by 
 letter, he may obtain the information sought for. In 
 case he does, I will trouble you to direct him to - yes 
 to Monsieur de Vaudemont, according to this address." 
 
 "Not to you, then?" 
 
 "It is the same thing," replied Philip, drily. "You 
 have confirmed my suspicions, that the Beauforts know 
 something of my brother. What did you say of some othe/ 
 friend of the family who assisted in the search ? " 
 
 " Oh, a Mr. Spencer ! an old acquaintance of your 
 mother's." Here Mr. Morton smiled, but not being en- 
 couraged in a joke, went on, " However, that's neither 
 here nor there ; he certainly never found out your brother. 
 For I have had several letters from him at different times, 
 asking if any news had been heard of either of you." 
 
 And, indeed, Spencer had taken peculiar pains to deceive 
 the Mortons, whose interposition he feared little less than 
 that of the Beauforts. 
 
 " Then it can be of no use to apply to him," said Philip^ 
 carelessly, not having any recollection of the name of 
 Spencer, and therefore attaching little importance to th*
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 589 
 
 M Certainly, I should think not. Depend on it., Mr. Beau- 
 fort must know." 
 
 "True," said Philip. "And I have only to thank you 
 for your kindness, and return to town." 
 
 "But stay with us this day do let me feel that we are 
 friends. I assure you, poor Sidney's fate has been a load 
 on my mind ever since he left. You shall have the bed he 
 slept in, and over which your mother bent when she left 
 him and me for the last time." 
 
 These words were said with so much feeling, that the 
 adventurer wrung his uncle's hand, and said, " Forgive me, 
 I wronged you I will be your guest." 
 
 Mrs. Morton, strange to say, evinced no symptoms of 
 ill-humour at the news of the proffered hospitality. In 
 fact, Miss Margaret had been so eloquent in Philip's praise 
 during his absence, that she suffered herself to be favour- 
 ably impressed. Her daughter, indeed, had obtained a 
 sort of ascendancy over Mrs. M, and the whole house, ever 
 since she had received so excellent an offer. And more- 
 over, some people are like dogs they snarl at the ragged 
 and fawn on the well dressed. Mrs. Morton did not object 
 to a nephew de facto, she only objected to a nephew in 
 formd patvperis. The evening, therefore, passed more cheer- 
 fully than might have been anticipated, though Philip 
 found some difficulty in parrying the many questions put 
 to him on the past. He contented himself with saying, as 
 briefly as possible, that he had served in a foreign service, 
 and acquired what sufficed him for an independence ; and 
 then, with the ease which a man picks up in the great 
 world, turned the conversation to the prospects of the family 
 whose guest he was. Having listened with due attention 
 to Mrs. Morton's eulogies on Tom, who had been sent for, 
 and who drank the praises on his own gentility into a very 
 large pair of blushing ears, also, to her self-felicitationy 
 on Miss Margaret's marriage, item, on the service ren- 
 dered to the town by Mr. Roger, who had repaired the 
 town-hall in his first mayoralty at his own expense, item, 
 to a long chronicle of her own genealogy, how she had one 
 cousin a clergyman, and how her great-grandfather had 
 been knighted, item, io the domestic virtues of all her 
 children, item, to a confused explanation of the chastise- 
 ment inflicted on Sidney, which Philip cut short in the 
 middle; he asked, with .a smile, what had become of the
 
 890 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 Plaskwiths. " Oh ! " said Mrs. Morton, " my brother Kit 
 has retired from business. His son-in-law, Mr. Plimmins, 
 has succeeded." 
 
 " Oh, then, Plimmins married one of the young ladies ? " 
 
 " Yes, Jane she had a sad squint ! Tom, there is 
 nothing to laugh at, we are all as God made us, 
 'Handsome is as handsome does,' she has had thre 
 little uns ! " 
 
 " Do they squint too ? " asked Philip ; and Miss Mar- 
 garet giggled, and Tom roared, and the other young men 
 roared too. Philip had certainly said something very 
 witty. 
 
 This time Mrs. Morton administered no reproof; but 
 replied, pensively, 
 
 " Natur is very mysterious they all squint ! " 
 
 Mr. Morton conducted Philip to his chamber. There it 
 was, fresh, clean, unaltered the same white curtains, tho 
 same honeysuckle paper, as when Catherine had crept 
 across the threshold. 
 
 " Did Sidney ever tell you that his mother placed a ring 
 round his neck that night ? " asked Mr. Morton. 
 
 "Yes ; and the dear boy wept when he said that he had 
 slept too soundly to know that she was by his side that 
 last, last time. The ring oh, how well I remember it! 
 she never put it off till then ; and often in the fields for 
 we were wild wanderers together in that day often when 
 his head lay on my shoulder, I felt that ring still resting 01. 
 his heart, and fancied it was a talisman a blessing. Well, 
 well good night to you ! " And he shut the door on his 
 uncle, and was alone. 
 
 CHAPTEE IV. 
 
 'The Man of Law, * * * 
 And a great suit is like to be between them ' 
 
 BENJONSON; Staple of Neat. 
 
 ON arriving in London, Philip went first to the lodging 
 he still kept there, and to which his letters were directed ; 
 and, among some communications from Paris, full of the 
 politics and the hopes of the Carlists, he found the follow- 
 ing note from Lord Lilburne.
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 391 
 
 " DEAR SIR, When I met you the other day, I told you 
 I had been threatened with the gout. The enemy has now 
 taken possession of the field. I am sentenced to regimen 
 and the sofa. But as it is my rule in life to make afflictions 
 ns light as possible, so I have asked a few friends to take 
 compassion on me, and help me ' to shuffle off this mortal 
 coil,' by dealing me, if they can, four by honours. Any 
 time between nine and twelve to-night, or to-morrow night, 
 you will find me at home; and if you are not better 
 engaged, suppose you dine with me to-day or rather dine 
 opposite to me and excuse my Spartan broth. Yon will 
 meet (besides any two or three friends whom an impromptu 
 invitation may find disengaged) my sister, with Beaufort 
 md their daughter : they only arrived in town this morn- 
 ing, and are kind enough ' to nurse me,' as they call it, 
 that is to say, their cook is taken ill ! 
 
 "Yours, 
 
 " LlLBURNE. 
 " Park Lane, Sept. " 
 
 11 The Beauforts. Fate favours me I will go. The date 
 is for to-day." 
 
 He sent off a hasty line to accept the invitation, and 
 finding he had u few hours yet to spare, he resolved to 
 employ them in consultation with some lawyer as to the 
 chances of ultimately regaining his inheritance a hope 
 which, however wild, he had, since his return to his native 
 shore, and especially since he had heard of the strange 
 visit made to Roger Morton, permitted himself to indulge. 
 With this idea he sallied out, meaning to consult Liancourt, 
 who, having a large acquaintance among the English, 
 seemed the best person to advise him as to the choice of a 
 lawyer at once active and honest, when h suddenly 
 chanced upon that gentleman himself. 
 
 " This is lucky, my dear Liancourt. I was just going to 
 your lodgings." 
 
 " And I was coming to yours to know if you dine with 
 Lord Lilbume. He told me he had asked you. I have 
 just left him. And by the sofa of Mephistopheles, there 
 was the prettiest Margaret you ever beheld." 
 
 "Indeed! Who?" 
 
 " He called her his niece ; but I should doubt if he had 
 %ny relation on this side the Styx so human as a niece."
 
 392 NiGHT AND MORMXG. 
 
 " You seem to huve no great predilection for our host." 
 
 " My dear Vaudemont, between our blunt, soldierly 
 natures, and those wily, icj, sneering intellects, there is the 
 antipathy of the dog to the cat." 
 
 " Perhaps so on our side, not on his or why does he 
 invite us ? " 
 
 " London is emply, there is no one else to ask. We are 
 new faces, new minds to him. We amuse him more than 
 the hackneyed comrades he has worn out. Besides, lie 
 plays and you too. Fie on you ! " 
 
 " Liancourt, I had two objects in knowing that man, and 
 I pay the toll for the bridge. When I cease to want the 
 passage, I shall cease to pay the toll." 
 
 " But the bridge may be a draw-bridge, and the moat is 
 devilish deep below. Without metaphor, that man may 
 ruin you before you know where you are." 
 
 " Bah ! I have my eyes open. I know how much to 
 spend on the rogue, whose service I hire as a lackey's ; and 
 I know also where to stop. Liancourt," he added, after a 
 short pause, and in a tone deep with suppressed passion, 
 " when I first saw that man, I thought of appealing to his 
 heart for one who has a claim on it. That was a vain hope. 
 And then there came upon me a sterner and deadlier 
 thought the scheme of the Avenger! This Lilburne 
 this rogue whom the world sets up to worship mined, 
 body and soul ruined one whose name the world gibbets 
 with scorn ! Well, I thought to avenge that man. In his 
 own house amidst you all I thought to detect the sharper, 
 and brand the cheat ! " 
 
 "You startle me ! It has been whispered, indeed, that 
 Lord Lilburne is dangerous, but skill is dangerous. To 
 cheat ! an English gentleman ! a nobleman ! impos- 
 sible ! * 
 
 "Whether he do or not," returned Vaudemont, in a 
 calmer tone, " I have foregone the vengeance, because he 
 is " 
 
 44 Is what ? " 
 
 "No matter," said Vaudemont aloud, but he added to 
 himself, "Because he is the grandfather of Fanny!" 
 
 " You are very enigmatical to-day." 
 
 "Patience, Liancourt; I may solve all the riddles that 
 make up my life, yet. Bear with me a little longer. And 
 now can you help me to a lawyer ? a man experienced,
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 893 
 
 indeed, and of repute, but young, active, not overladen with 
 business ; I want his zeal and his time, for a hazard that 
 four monopolists of clients may not deem worth theii 
 devotion." 
 
 " I can recommend you, then, the very man you require. 
 I had a suit some years ago at Paris, for which English 
 witnesses were necessary. My avocat employed a solicitor 
 here whose activity in collecting my evidence gained my 
 cause. I will answer for his diligence and his honesty." 
 
 "His address?" 
 
 " Mr. Barlow somewhere by the Strand let me see 
 Essex yes, Essex street." 
 
 " Then good-bye to you for the present. You dine at 
 Lord Lilburne's, too ? " 
 
 " Yes. Adieu till then." 
 
 Vaudemont was not long before he arrived at Mr. Bar- 
 low's ; a brass-plate announced to him the house. He was 
 shown at once into a parlour, where he saw a man whom 
 lawyers would call young, and spinsters middle-aged viz., 
 about two-and- forty ; with a bold, resolute, intelligent 
 countenance, and that steady, calm, sagacious eye, which 
 inspires at once confidence and esteem. 
 
 Vaudemont scanned him with the look of one who has 
 been accustomed to judge mankind as a scholar does 
 books with rapidity because with practice. He had at 
 first resolved to submit to him the heads of his case with- 
 out mentioning names, and, in fact, he so commenced his 
 narrative ; but by degrees, as he perceived how much his 
 own earnestness arrested and engrossed the interest of 
 his listener, he warmed into fuller confidence, and ended 
 by a full disclosure, and a caution as to the prof oundest 
 secrecy in case, if there were no hope to recover his right- 
 ful name, he might yet wish to retain, unannoyed by 
 curiosity or suspicion, that by which he was not discredit- 
 ably known. 
 
 " Sir," said Mr. Barlow, after assuring him of the most 
 Scrupulous discretion, " sir, I have some recollection of 
 the trial instituted by your mother, Mrs. Beaufort " and 
 the slight emphasis he laid on that name was the most 
 grateful compliment he could have paid to the truth of 
 Philip's recital. " My impression is, that it was managed 
 in a very slovenly manner by her lawyer ; and some of his 
 oversights we may repair in a suit instituted by yourself.
 
 894 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 But it would be absurd to conceal from you the great diffi- 
 culties that beset us your mother's suit, designed to estab- 
 lish her own rights, was far easier than that which you 
 must commence viz., an action for ejectment against a 
 man who has been some years in undisturbed possession. 
 Of course, until the missing witness is found out, it would 
 be madness to commence litigation. And the question, 
 then, will be, how far that witness will suffice ? It is true, 
 that one witness of a marriage, if the others are dead, is 
 held sufficient by law. But I need not add, that that 
 witness must be thoroughly credible. In suits for real 
 property, very little documentary or secondary evidence, is 
 admitted. I doubt even whether the certificate of the 
 marriage on which in the loss or destruction of the re- 
 gister you lay so much stress, would be available in itself. 
 But if an examined copy, it becomes of the last importance, 
 for it will then inform us of the name of the person who 
 extracted and examined it. Heaven grant it may not have 
 been the clergyman himself who performed the ceremony, 
 and who, you say, is dead ; if some one else, we should then 
 have a second, no doubt credible and most valuable, witness. 
 The document would thus become available as proof, and, 
 I think, that we should not fail to establish our case." 
 
 " But this certificate, how is it ever to bo found ? I told 
 you we had searched everywhere in vain." 
 
 " True ; but you say that your mother always declared 
 that the late. Mr. Beaufort had so solemnly assured her, 
 even just prior to his decease, that it was in existence, that 
 I have no doubt as to the fact. It may be possible, but it 
 is a terrible insinuation to make, that if Mr. Robert Beau- 
 fort, in examining the papers of the deceased, chanced, upon 
 a document so important to him, he abstracted or destroyed 
 it. If this should not have been the case (and Mr. Robert 
 Beaufort's moral character is unspotted and we have no 
 right to suppose it), the probability is, either that it was 
 intrusted to some third person, or placed in some hidden 
 drawer or deposit, the secret of which your father never 
 disclosed. Who has purchased the house you lived in ? " 
 
 " Fernside ? Lord Lilburne. Mrs. Robert Beaufort's 
 brother." 
 
 " Humph ! probably, then, he took the furniture and 
 all. Sir, this is a matter that requires some time for close 
 consideration. "With your leave, I will not only insert in
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 395 
 
 the London papers an advertisement to the effect that you 
 suggested to Mr. Roger Morton (in case you should have 
 made a right conjecture as to the object of the man who 
 applied to him), but I will also advertise for the witness 
 himself. William Smith, you say, his name is. Did the 
 lawyer employed by Mrs. Beaufort send to inquire for him 
 in the colony ? " 
 
 " No ; I fear there could not have been time for that. 
 My mother was so anxious and eager, and so convinced of 
 the justice of her case " 
 
 " That's a pity ; her lawyer must have been a Bad dri- 
 reller." 
 
 " Besides, now I remember, inquiry was made of his 
 relations in England. His father, a farmer, was then alive ; 
 the answer was that he had certainly left Australia. His 
 last letter, written two years before that date, containing 
 a request for money, which the father, himself made a 
 bankrupt by reverses, could not give, had stated that he 
 was about to seek his fortune elsewhere since then they 
 had heard nothing of him." 
 
 " Ahem ! Well, you will perhaps let me know where 
 any relations of his are yet to be found, and I will look up 
 the former suit, and go into the whole case without delay. 
 In the meantime, you do right, sir if you will allow me 
 to say it not to disclose either your own identity or a 
 hint of your intentions. It is no use putting suspicion on 
 its guard. And my search for this certificate must be 
 managed with the greatest address. But, by the way 
 speaking of identity there can be no difficulty, I hope, in 
 proving yours." 
 
 Philip was startled. " Why, I am greatly altered." 
 
 " But probably your beard and moustache may contribute 
 to that change ; and doubtless, in the village where you 
 lived, there would be many with whom you were in suffi- 
 cient intercourse, and on whose recollection, by recalling 
 little anecdotes and circumstances with which no one but 
 yourself could be acquainted, your features would force 
 themselves along with the moral conviction that the man 
 who spoke to them could be no other but Philip Morton- 
 or rather Beaufort." 
 
 " You are right ; there must be many such. There wai 
 not a cottage in the place where T and my dogs were not 
 familiar and half domesticated."
 
 896 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 "All's right, so far, then. But, I repeat, we must not 
 
 be too sanguine. Law is not justice " 
 
 " But God is," said Philip ; and he left the room. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 ** Volpone, A little in a mist, but not dejected ; 
 Never but still myself." 
 
 BEN JONSON : Volpont, 
 
 u Peregrine. Am I enough disguised ? 
 Mer. Ay, I warrant you. 
 Per. Save you, fair lady." Ibid. 
 
 IT is an ill wind that blows nobody good. The ill wind 
 that had blown gout to Lord Lilburne, had blown Lord 
 Lilburne away from the injury he had meditated against 
 what he called " the object of his attachment." How com- 
 pletely and entirely, indeed, the state of Lord Lilburne's 
 feelings depended on the state of his health, may be seen 
 in the answer he gave to his valet, when, the morning after 
 the first attack of the gout, that worthy person, by way of 
 cheering his master, proposed to ascertain something as to 
 the movements of one with whom Lord Lilburne professed 
 to be so violently in love, " Confound you, Dykeman ! " 
 exclaimed the invalid, "why do you trouble me about 
 women when I'm in this condition ? I don't care if they 
 were all at the bottom of the sea! Reach me the colchi- 
 cum ! I must keep my mind calm." 
 
 Whenever tolerably well,. Lord Lilburne was careless of 
 his health ; the moment he was ill, Lord Lilburne paid 
 himself the greatest possible attention. Though a man of 
 firm nerves, in youth of remarkable daring, and still, 
 though no longer rash, of sufficient personal courage, he 
 Was by no means fond of the thought of death that is, of 
 his own death. Not that he was tormented by any reli- 
 gious apprehensions of the Dread Unknown, but simply 
 because the only life of which he had any experience 
 seemed to him a peculiarly pleasant thing. He had a sort 
 of instinctive persuasion, that John Lord Lilburne would 
 ttot be better off anywhere else. Always disliking solitude, 
 he disliked it more than ever when he was ill, and he 
 therefore welcomed the visit of his sister and the gentle 
 hand of his pretty niece. As for Beaufort, he bored the
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 397 
 
 sufferer; and when that gentleman on his arrival, shutting 
 ont his wife and daughter, whispered to Lilburne, "Any 
 more news of that impostor? " LUburne answered, peevishly, 
 " I never talk about business when I have the gout ! I 
 have set Sharp to keep a look-out for him, but he has 
 learned . nothing as yet. And now go to your club. You 
 are a worthy creature, but too solemn for my spirits just 
 at this moment. I have a few people coming to dine with 
 me, your wife will do the honours, and you can come iu 
 the evening;" 
 
 Though Mr. Robert Beaufort's sense of importance 
 swelled and chafed at this very unceremonious conge, he 
 forced a smile, and said, 
 
 . " Well, it is no wonder you are a little fretful with the 
 gout. I have plenty to do in town, and Mrs. Beaufort and 
 Camilla can come back without waiting for me." 
 
 " Why, as your cook is ill, and they can't dine at a club, 
 you may as well leave them here till I am a little better ; 
 not that I care, for I can hire a better nurse than either of 
 them." 
 
 "My dear Lilburne, don't talk of hiring nurses; cer- 
 tainly, I am too happy if they can be of comfort to you." 
 
 " No ! on second thoughts, you may take back your 
 wife, she's always talking of her own complaints, and 
 leave me Camilla : you can't want her for a few days." 
 
 " Just as you like. And you really think I have man- 
 aged as well as I could about this young man, eh ? " 
 
 " Yes yes ! And so yon go to Beaufort Court in a few 
 days?" 
 
 " I propose doing so. I wish you were well enough to 
 come." 
 
 " Um ! Chambers says that it would be a very good 
 air for me better than Fernside ; and as to my castle in 
 the north, I would as soon go to Siberia. Well, if I get 
 better, I will pay you a visit, only you always have such a 
 stupid set of respectable people about you. I shock them, 
 and they oppress me." 
 
 " Why, as I hope soon to see Arthur, I shall make it as 
 agreeable to him as I can, and I shall be very much 
 obliged to you if you would invite a few of your own 
 friends." 
 
 " Well, you are a good fellow, Beaufort, and I will take 
 you at your word ; and, since one good turn deserves ai*
 
 398 NIGHT AXD MOIINIXG. 
 
 other, I have now no scruple in telling you that 1 feel 
 quite sure that you will have no further annoyance from 
 this troublesome witness-monger." 
 
 " In that case," said Beaufort, " I may pick up a better 
 match for Camilla! Grood-bye, my dear Lilburne." 
 
 " Form and Ceremony of the world! " snarled the peer, 
 as the door closed on his brother-in-law, " ye make little 
 men very moral, and not a bit the better for being so ! " 
 
 It so happened that Vaudemont arrived before any of 
 the other guests that day, and during the half hour which 
 Dr. Chambers assigned to his illustrious patient, so that, 
 when he entered, there were only Mrs. Beaufort and 
 Camilla in the drawing-room. 
 
 Vaudemont drew back involuntarily, as he recognised 
 in the faded countenavice of the elder la \y, features asso- 
 ciated with one of the dark passages in his earlier life ; 
 but Mrs. Beaufort's gracious smile, and urbane, though 
 languid, welcome, sufficed to assure him that the recogni- 
 tion was not mutual. He advanced, and again stopped 
 short, as his eye fell upon that fair and still childlike form, 
 which had once knelt by his side and pleaded, with the 
 orphan, for his brother. While he spoke to her, many re- 
 collections, some dark and stern, but those, at least, con- 
 nected with Camilla, soft and gentle thrilled through his 
 heart. Occupied as her own thoughts and feelings necessarily 
 were with Sidney, there was something in Vaudemont's ap- 
 pearance his manner his voice, which forced upon Camilla 
 a strange and undefined interest : and even Mrs. Beaufort 
 vas roused from her customary apathy, as she glanced to 
 that dark and commanding face with soinething between 
 admiration and fear. Vaudemont had scarcely, however, 
 spoken ten words, when some other guests were announced, 
 and Lord Lilburne was wheeled in upon his sofa shortly 
 afterwards. Vaudemont continued, however, seated next 
 to Camilla, and the embarrasment he had at first felt, dis- 
 appeared. He possessed, when he pleased it, that kind of 
 eloqu 2nce which belongs to men who have scon much and 
 felt deeply, and whose talk has not been frittered down to 
 the commonplace jargon of the world. His very phrase- 
 ology was distinct and peculiar, and he had that rarest of 
 all charms in polished life, originality both of thought and 
 of manner. Camilla blushed, when she found at dinner 
 that he placed himself by her side. That evening De
 
 KIGHT AND MORNING. 399 
 
 Vaudemont excused himself from playing, but the table 
 was easily made without him, and still he continued to 
 converse with the daughter of the man whom he held as 
 bas worst foe. By degrees, he turned the conversation into 
 a channel that might lead him to the knowledge he 
 soiight. 
 
 " It was my fate," said hj, " once to become acquainted 
 with an intimate friend of the late Mr. Beaufort. Will you 
 pardon me if I venture to fulfil a promise I made to him, 
 and ask you to inform me what has become of a a that 
 is, of Sidney Morton ? " 
 
 "Sidney Morton! I don't even remember the name. 
 Oh, yes ! I have heard it," added Camilla, innocently, 
 and with a candour that showed how little she knew of the 
 secrets of the family; "he was one of two poor boys in 
 whom my brother felt a deep interest some relations to 
 my uncle. Yes yes ! I remember now. I never knew 
 Sidney, but I once did see his brother." 
 
 " Indeed ! and you remember " 
 
 " Yes ! I was very young then. I scarcely recollect what 
 passed, it was all so confused and strange, but I know that 
 I made papa very angry, and I was told never to mention 
 the name of Morton again. I believe they behaved very 
 ill to papa." 
 
 " And you never learned never ! the fate of either 
 of Sidney ? " 
 
 "Never!" 
 
 " But your father must know ? " 
 
 " I think not ; but tell me," said Camila, with girlish and 
 unaffected innocence, " I have always felt anxious to know, 
 what and who were those poor boys ? " 
 
 What and who were they ? So deep, then, was the stain 
 upon their name, that the modest mother and the decorous 
 father had never even said to that young girl, " They are 
 your cousins the children of the man in whose gold we 
 revel!" 
 
 Philip bit his lip, and the spell of Camilla's presence 
 neemed vanished. He muttered some inaudible answer, 
 turned away to the card table, and Liancourt took the chair 
 he had left vacant. 
 
 " And how does Miss Beaufort like my friend, Vaude- 
 mont ? I assure you that I have seldom seen him so alive 
 to the fascination of female beauty ? "
 
 400 NIGHT ANO MORNING. 
 
 " Oh ! " said Camilla, with her silver laugh, " your nation 
 spoils us for our own countrymen. You forget how little 
 we are accustomed to flattery." 
 
 "Flattery! what truth could flatter on the lips of an 
 exile ? But you don't answer my question what think 
 you of Vaudemont? Few are more admired. He is 
 handsome ! " 
 
 " Is he ? " said Camilla, and she glanced at Vaudemontv 
 as he stood at a little distance, thoughtful and abstracted. 
 Every girl forms to herself some untold dream of that which 
 she considers fairest. And Vaudemont had not the delicate 
 and faultless beauty of Sidney. There was nothing that 
 corresponded to her ideal in his marked features and lordly 
 shape ! But she owned, reluctantly to herself, that she had 
 seldom seen, among the trim gallants of everyday life, a 
 form so striking and impressive. The air, indeed, was pro- 
 fessional the most careless glance could detect the soldier. 
 But it seemed the soldier of an elder age or a wilder clime. 
 He recalled to her those heads which she had seen in the 
 .Beaufort Gallery and other Collections yet more celebrated 
 portraits by Titian of those warrior statesmen who lived 
 in the old Republics of Italy in a perpetual struggle with 
 their kind images of dark, resolute, earnest men. Even 
 whatever was intellectual in his countenance spoke, as in 
 those portraits, of a mind sharpened rather in active than 
 in studious life ; intellectual, not from the pale hues, the 
 worn exhaustion, and the sunken cheek of the bookman 
 and dreamer, but from its collected and stern repose, the 
 calm depth that lay beneath the fire of the eyes, and the 
 strong will that spoke in the close full lips, and the high 
 but not cloudless forehead. 
 
 And, as she gazed, Vaudemont turned round her eyes 
 fell beneath his, and she felt angry with herself that she 
 blushed. Vaudemont saw the downcast eye, he saw the 
 blush, and the attraction of Camilla's presence was restored. 
 He would have approached her, but at that moment Mr 
 Beaufort himself entered, and his thoughts went again into 
 a darker channel. 
 
 "Yes," said Liancourt, "you must allow Vaudemont 
 looks what he is a noble fellow and a gallant soldier. Did 
 you never hear of his battle with the tigress ? It made a 
 3ioise in India. I must tell it you as 1 have heard it." 
 
 And while Liancourt was narrating the adventure, what-
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING 401 
 
 ever it was, to wnich he referred, tlae curd-table \vas broken 
 up, and Lord Lilburne, still reclining on his sofa, lazily 
 introduced his brother-in-law to such of the guests as were 
 strangers to him Vaudemont among the rest. Mr. Beau- 
 fort had never seen Philip Morton more than three times ; 
 once at Fernside, and the other times by an imperfect light, 
 and when his features were convulsed by passion, and his 
 form disfigured by his dress. Certainly, therefore, had 
 Robert Beaufort even possessed that faculty of memory 
 which is supposed to belong peculiarly to kings and 
 princes, and which recals every face once seen, it might 
 have tasked the gift to the utmost to have detected, in the 
 bronzed and decorated foreigner to whom he was now pre- 
 sented, the features of the wild and long-lost boy. But still 
 some dim and uneasy presentiment, or some struggling and 
 painful effort of recollection, was in his mind, as he spoke 
 to Vaudemont, and listened to the cold, calm tone of his 
 reply. 
 
 " Who do you say that Frenchman is.? " he whispered t 
 his brother-in-law, as Vaudemont turned away. 
 
 " Oh ! a cleverish sort of adventurer^ a gentleman ; lie 
 plays. He has seen a good deal of the world he rather 
 amuses me different from other people. I think of asking 
 him to join our circle at Beaufort Court." 
 
 Mr. Beaufort coughed huskily, but not seeing any 
 reasonable objection to the proposal, and afraid of rousing 
 the sleeping hyaena of Lord Lilburne's sarcasm, he merely 
 said, 
 
 " Any one you like to invite : " and looking round for 
 some one on whom to vent his displeasure, perceived 
 Camilla still listening to Liancourt. He stalked up to her, 
 and, as Liancourt, seeing her rise, rose slso and moved 
 away, he said peevishly, " You will never learn to conduct 
 yourself properly; you are to be left here to nurse and 
 ttomfort your uncle, and not to listen to the gibberish, of 
 every French adventurer. Well, Heaven be praised, I have 
 a son ! girls are a great plague ! " 
 
 " So they are, Mr. Beaufort," sighed his wife, who had 
 just joined him, and who was jealous of the preference Lil- 
 burne had given to her daughter. 
 
 "And so selfish," added Mrs. Beaufort; "they only care 
 for their own amusements, and never mind how uncomfort- 
 able their parwata are for want of them." 
 
 D D
 
 402 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 " Oil ! dear mamma, don't say so let me go home with 
 you I'll speak to my uncle ! " 
 
 " Nonsense, child ! Come along, Mr. Beaufort ; " and 
 the affectionate parents went out arm in arm. They did 
 not perceive that Vaudemont had been standing close 
 behind them ; but Camilla, now looking up with tears in 
 her eyes, again caught his gaze : he had heard all. 
 
 "And they ill-treat her," he muttered: that divides her 
 from them! she will be left here I shall see her again." 
 
 As he turned to depart, Lilburne beckoned, to him. 
 
 " You do not mean to desert our table ? " 
 
 " No ; but I am not very well to-night to-morrow, if 
 you will allow me." 
 
 " Ay, to-morrow ; and if you can spare an hour in the 
 morning it will be a charity. You see," he added in a 
 whisper, " I have a nurse, though I have no children. D'ye 
 think that's love ? Bah! sir a legacy ! Goodnight." 
 
 " No no no ! " said Yaudemont to himself, as he 
 walked through the moonlight streets. "No! though my 
 Heart burns, poor murdered felon ! to avenge thy wrongs 
 and thy crimes, revenge cannot come from me he is 
 Fanny's grandfather and Camilla's uncle / " 
 
 And Camilla, when that uncle had dismissed her for the 
 night, sat down thoughtfully in her own room. The dark 
 eyes of Vaudemont seemed still to shine on her ; his voice 
 yet rung in her ear ; the wild tales of daring and danger 
 with which Liancourt had associated his name yet haunted 
 her bewildered fancy she started, frightened at her OWE 
 thoughts. She took from her bosom some lines that Sidney 
 had addressed to her, and, as she read and re-read, her 
 spirit became calmed to its wonted and faithful melancholy. 
 Vaudemont was forgotten, and the name of Sidney yet 
 murmured on her lips, when sleep came to renew the image 
 of the absent one, and paint in dreams the fairy land of a 
 happy Future !
 
 KIGHT AND MORNING. 403 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 * liing en, ye bells most pleasant is your chime ! " 
 
 WILSON : Ide of Palms. 
 
 " fairy child ! What can I wish for thee ? "Ibid. 
 
 VADDEMOXT remained six days in London without going 
 
 to H , and each of those days he paid a visit to Lord 
 
 Lilburne. On the seventh day, the invalid being much 
 better, though still unable to leave his room, Camilla 
 returned to Berkeley square. On the same day, Vaude- 
 mont went os.ce more to see Simon and poor Fanny. 
 
 As he approached the door, he heard from the window, 
 partially opened, for the day was clear and fine, Fanny's 
 sweet voice. She was chaunting one of the simple songs 
 she had promised to learn by heart; and Vaudemont, 
 though but a poor judge of the art, was struck and affected 
 by the music of the voice and the earnest depth of tho 
 feeling. He paused opposite the window and called her by 
 her name. Fanny looked forth joyously, and ran, as usual, 
 to open the door to him. 
 
 " Oh ; you have been so long away ; but I already know 
 many of the songs : they say so much that I always wanted 
 to say ! " 
 
 Vaudemont smiled, but languidly. 
 
 " How strange it is," said Fanny, musingly, " that there 
 should be so much in a piece of paper! for, after all," 
 pointing to the open page of her book, " this is but a piece 
 of paper, only there is life in it ! " 
 
 " Ay," said Vaudemont, gloomily, and far from seizing 
 the subtle delicacy of Fanny's thought her mind dwelling 
 upon Poetry and his upon Law, " ay, and do you know 
 that upon a mere scrap of paper, if I could but find it, may 
 depend my whole fortune, my whole happiness, all that I 
 care for in life ? " 
 
 " Upon a scrap of paper ? Oh ! how I wish I could find 
 it ? Ah ! you look as if you thought I should never be 
 wise enough for that ! " 
 
 Vaudemont, not listening to her, uttered a deep sigh. 
 Fanny approached him timidly. 
 
 " Do not sigh, brotner, I can't bear to licai you sigh. 
 You are changed. Have you, too. not been happy ? " 
 
 DOS
 
 4C4 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 " Happy, Fanny ! yes, lately very happy too happy ! *' 
 
 " Happy, have you ? . and J " the girl stopped short 
 
 her tone had been that of sadness and reproach, and she 
 "topped why she knew not, but she felt her heart sinK 
 within her. Fanny suffered him to pass her, and he went 
 straight to his own room. Her eyes followed him wistfully : 
 it was not his habit to leave her thus abruptly. The family 
 meal of the day was over; and it was an hour before 
 Vaudemont descended to the parlour. Fanny had put 
 aside the songs, she had no heart to recommence those 
 gentle studies that had been so sweet, they had drawn no 
 pleasure, no praise from him. She was seated idly and 
 listlessly beside the silent old man, who every day grew 
 more and more silent still. She turned her head as Vaude- 
 jmont entered, and her pretty lip pouted as that of a 
 neglected child. But he did not heed it, and the pout 
 vanished, and tears rushed to her eyes. 
 
 Vaudemont was changed. His countenance was thought- 
 ful and overcast. His manner abstracted. He addressed 
 a few words to Simon, and then, seating himself by the 
 window, leant his cheek on his hand, and was soon lost in 
 reverie. Fanny, finding that he did not speak, and after 
 stealing many a long and earnest glance at his motionless 
 attitude and gloomy brow, rose gently, and gliding to him 
 with her light step, said, in a trembling voice, 
 
 "Are you in pain, brother ? " 
 
 " No, pretty one ! " 
 
 " Then why won't you speak to Fanny ? Will you not 
 Walk with her ? Perhaps my grandfather will come too." 
 
 "Not this evening. I shall go out; but it will be 
 alone." 
 
 " Where ? has not Fanny been good ? I have not been 
 out since you left us. And the grave brother ! I sent 
 Sarah with the flowers but " 
 
 Vaudemont rose abruptly. The mention of the grave 
 brought back his thoughts from the dreaming channel into 
 which they had flowed. Fanny, whose very childishness 
 had once so soothed him, now disturbed ; he felt the want 
 of that complete solitude which makes the atmosphere of 
 growing passion : he muttered some scarcely audible 
 excuse, and c^nitted the house. Fanny saw him no more 
 'ihat evening. He did not return till midnight. But 
 Fanny did not slees till she heard his step on the stairs,
 
 AND MORNING. 405 
 
 and his chamber-door close : and when she did sleep, her 
 dreams were disturbed and painful. The next morning, 
 when they met at breakfast (for Vaudemont did not return 
 to London), her eyes were red and heavy, and her cheek 
 pale. And, still buried in meditation, Vaudemont's eye, 
 usually so kind and watchful, did not detect those signs of 
 a grief that Fanny could not have explained. After break- 
 fast, however, he asked her to walk out; and her face 
 brightened as she hastened to put on her bonnet, and take 
 her little basket, full of fresh flowers which she had already 
 sent Sarah forth to purchase. 
 
 "Fanny," said Vaudemont, as leaving the house, he saw 
 the basket on her arm, " to-day you may place some ot 
 those flowers on another tombstone! Poor child, what 
 natural goodness there is in that heart! what pity 
 that " 
 
 He paused. Fanny looked delightedly in his face. 
 
 " You were praising me you ! And what is a pity, 
 brother?" 
 
 While she spoke, the sound of the joy-bells was heard 
 near at hand. 
 
 " Hark ! " said Vaudemont, forgetting her question 
 and almost gaily " Hark ! I accept the omen. It is a 
 marriage peal ! " 
 
 He quickened his steps, and they .reached the church- 
 yard. 
 
 There was a crowd already assembled, and Vaudemont 
 and Fanny paused ; and, leaning over the little gate, looked 
 on. 
 
 " Why are these people here, and why does the bell ring 
 30 merrily ? " 
 
 " There is to be a wedding, Fanny." 
 
 " I have heard of a wedding very often," said Fanny, 
 with a pretty look of puzzlement and doubt, " but I don't 
 know exactly what it means. Will you tell me ? and the 
 bells, too ! " 
 
 " Yes, Fanny, those bells toll but three times for man ! 
 The first time, when he comes into the world ; the last 
 time, when he leaves it ; the time between, when he takes 
 to his side a partner in all the sorrows in all the joys that 
 yet remain to him ; and who, even when the last belj 
 announces his death to this earth, may yet, for ever and 
 ever, be his partner in that vovld to come that heaven,
 
 408 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 where they who are as innocent as yon, Fanny, may hopo 
 to live and to love each other in a land in which there aro 
 no graves ! " 
 
 "Andy's bell?" 
 
 " Tolls for that partnership for the wedding ! " 
 
 " I think I understand you ; and they who are to be 
 wed are happy ? " 
 
 " Happy, Fanny, if they love, and their love continue. 
 Oh ! conceive the happiness to know some one person 
 dearer to you than your own self some one breast into 
 which you can pour every thought, every grief, every joy ! 
 One person, who, if all the rest of the world were to 
 calumniate or forsake you, would never wrong you by a 
 harsh thought or an unjust word, who ;would cling to you 
 the closer in sickness, in poverty, in care, who would 
 sacrifice all things to you, and for whom you would 
 sacrifice all from whom, except by death, night or day, 
 you may be never divided whose smile is ever at your 
 hearth who has no tears while you are well and happy, 
 and your love the same. Fanny, such is marriage, if they 
 who marry have hearts and souls to feel that there is no 
 bond on earth so tender and so sublime. There is an 
 opposite picture ; I will not draw that ! And as it is, 
 Fanny, you cannot understand me ! " 
 
 He turned away : and Fanny's tears were falling like 
 rain upon the grass below ; he did not see them ! He 
 entered the churchyard ; for the bell now ceased. The 
 ceremony was to begin. He followed the bridal party 
 into the church, and Fanny, lowering her veil, crept after 
 him, awed and trembling. 
 
 They stood, unobserved, at a little distance, and heard 
 the service. 
 
 The betrothed were of the middle class of life, young, 
 both comely ; and their behaviour was such as suited the 
 reverence and sanctity of the rite. Vaudemont stood, 
 looking on intently, with his arms folded on his breast. 
 Fanny leant behind him, and apart from all, against one of 
 the pews. And still in her hand, while the priest was 
 solemnising Marriage, she held the flowers intended for the 
 Grave. Even to that MORNING hushed, calm, earnest, with 
 her mysterious and unconjectured heart her shape brought 
 a thought of NIGHT ! 
 
 When the ceremony was over when the bride fell on her
 
 NIGHT AND MOKNING. 407 
 
 mother's breast, and wept ; and then, when turning thence, 
 her eyes met the bridegroom's, and the tears were all smiled 
 away when, in that one rapid interchange of looks, spoke 
 all that holy love can speak to love, and with timid frank- 
 ness she placed her hand in his to whom she had just 
 rowed her life, a thrill went through the hearts of those 
 present. Vaudemont sighed heavily. He heard his sigh 
 echoed ; but by one that had in its sound no breath of 
 pain ; he turned ; Fanny had raised her veil ; her eyes met 
 his, moistened, but bright, soft, and her cheeks were rosy- 
 red. Vaudemont recoiled before that gaze, and turned 
 from the church. The persons interested retired to the 
 vestry to sign their names in the registry ; the crowd 
 dispersed, and Vaudemont and Fanny stood alone in the 
 burial-ground. 
 
 "Look, Fanny," said the former, pointing to a tomb that 
 stood far from his mother's (for those ashes were too 
 hallowed for such a neighbourhood). "Look yonder ; it is 
 a new tomb, Fanny, let us approach it. Can you read 
 what is there inscribed ? " 
 
 The inscription was simply this, 
 
 To W G 
 
 MAN SEES THE DKED 
 
 GOD THE CIRCUMSTANCE. 
 JUDGE NOT, THAT YE BE NOT JUDGED. 
 
 " Fanny, this tomb fulfils your pious wish : it is to the 
 memory of him whom you called your father. Whatevei 
 was his life here whatever sentence it hath received, 
 Heaven, at least, will not condemn your piety, if you 
 honour one who was good to you, and place flowers, how- 
 ever idle, even over that grave." 
 
 " It is his my father's and you have thought of thig 
 for me ! " said Fanny, taking his hand, and sobbing. " And 
 I have been thinking that you were not so kind to me aa 
 you were ! " 
 
 " Have I not been so kind to you ? nay, forgive me, I 
 am not happy." 
 
 " Not ?^ you said yesterday you had been too happy.*" 
 
 " To remember happiness is not to be happy, Fanny." 
 
 " That's true and " 
 
 Fanny stopped ; and, as she bent over the tomb, musing, 
 Vaudemont, willing to Icavo her undisturbed, and feeling
 
 408 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 bitterly how little his conscience could vindicate, though it 
 might find palliation for, the dark man who slept not there 
 retired a few paces. 
 
 At this time the new-married pair, with their witnesses, 
 the clergyman, &c., came from the vestry, and crossed the 
 path. Fanny, as she turned from the tomb, saw them, and 
 stood still, looking earnestly at the bride. 
 
 " What a lovely face ! " said the mother. " Is it yes it 
 is the poor idiot girl." 
 
 " Ah! " said the bridegroom, tenderly, " and she, Mary, 
 beautiful as she is, she can never make another as happy as 
 you have made me." 
 
 Vaudemont heard, and his heart felt sad. "Pool 
 Fanny! And yet, but for that affliction I might have 
 loved her, ere I met the fatal face of the daughter of my 
 foe! " And with a deep compassion, an inexpressible and 
 holy fondness, he moved to Fanny. 
 
 " Come, my child ; now let us go home." 
 
 " Stay," said Fanny " you forget." And she went to 
 strew the flowers still left, over Catherine's grave. 
 
 " Will my mother," thought Vaudemont, " forgive me, 
 if I have other thoughts than hate and vengeance for that 
 house which builds its greatness over her slandered name ? " 
 He groaned: And that grave had lost its melancholy 
 charm. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 " Of all men, I say, 
 
 That dare, for 'tis a desperate adventure, 
 "Wear on their free necks the yoke of women, 
 Give me a soldier." Knight of Malta. 
 
 * So lightly doth this little boat 
 Upon the scarce-touch'd billows float; 
 So careless doth she seem to be, 
 Thus left by herself on the homeless sea, 
 To lie there with her cheerful sail, 
 Till heaven shall send some gracious gale." 
 
 WILSON : Isle of Palmt. 
 
 VAUDEMONT returned that evening to London, and found 
 at his lodgings a note from Lord Lilburne, stating that aa 
 his gout was now somewhat mitigated, his physician had 
 recommended him to try change of air that Beaufort 
 Court was in one of the western counties, in a genial
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 409 
 
 climate that lie was therefore going thither the next day 
 for a short time that he had asked some of Monsieur de 
 Vaudemont's countrymen, and a few other friends, to 
 enliven the circle of a dull country-house that Mr. and 
 Mrs. Beaufort would be delighted to see Monsieur de Vaude- 
 mont also and that his compliance with their invitation 
 would be a charity to Monsieur de Vaudemont's faithful 
 and obliged, 
 
 LILBURNE. 
 
 The first sensation of Vaudemont on reading this effu- 
 sion was delight. " I shall see her," he cried ; " I. shall be 
 tinder the same roof ! " But the glow faded at once from 
 his cheek; The roof! what roof? Be the guest where 
 he held himself the lord ! be the guest of Robert Beau- 
 fort ! Was that all? Did he not meditate the deadliest 
 war which civilised life admits of the War of Law war 
 for name, property, that very hearth, with all its household 
 gods, against this man could he receive his hospitality ? 
 " And what then ! " he exclaimed, as he paced to and fro 
 the room, " because her father wronged me, and because 
 I would claim mine own must I therefore exclude from 
 my thoughts, from my sight, an image so fair and gentle ; 
 the one who knelt by my side, an infant, to that hard 
 man ? Is Hate so noble a passion that it is not to admit 
 one glimpse of Love ?-^-Love ! what word is that ? Let me 
 beware in time ! " He paused in fierce self-contest, and, 
 throwing open the window, gasped for air. The street in 
 which he lodged was situated in the neighbourhood of St. 
 James's ; and, at that very moment, as if to defeat all 
 opposition, and to close the struggle, Mrs. Beaufort's 
 barouche drove by, Camilla at her side. Mrs. Beaufort, 
 glancing up, languidly bowed ; and Camilla herself per- 
 ceived him, and he saw her change colour as she inclined 
 her head. He gazed after them almost breathless, till the 
 carriage disappeared ; and then, reclosing the window, he 
 eat down to collect his thoughts, and again to reason with, 
 himself. But still, as he reasoned, he saw ever before him 
 that blush and that smile. At last he sprang up, and a 
 noble and bright expression elevated the character of hia 
 face, " Yes, if I enter that house, if I eat that man's bread, 
 and drink of his cup, I must forego, not justice not what 
 is due to my mother's name but whatever belongs to hate
 
 410 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 and vengeance. If I enter that house and if Providence 
 permit me the means whereby to regain my rights, why, 
 she the innocent one she may be the means of saving 
 her father from ruin, and stand like an angel by that boun- 
 dary where justice runs into revenge ! Besides, is ifc not 
 my duty to discover Sidney ? Here is the only clue I shall 
 obtain." With these thoughts he hesitated no more he 
 decided : he would not reject this hospitality, since it 
 might be in his power to pay it back ten thousandfold. 
 "And who knows," he murmured again, "if Heaven, in 
 throwing this sweet being in my way, might not have de- 
 signed to subdue and chasten in me the angry passions I 
 have so long fed on ? I have seen her, can I now hate 
 her father ? " 
 
 He sent off his note accepting the invitation. When he 
 had done so, was he satisfied ? He had taken as noble and 
 as large a view of the duties thereby imposed on him as ho 
 well could take : but something whispered at his heart, 
 " There is weakness in thy generosity Darest thou love 
 the daughter of Robert Beaufort ? " And his heart had no 
 answer to this voice. 
 
 The rapidity with which love is ripened depends less 
 upon the actual number of years that have passed over the 
 soil in which the seed is cast, than upon the freshness of the 
 soil itself. A young man who lives the ordinary life of the 
 world, and who fritters away, rather than exhausts, his 
 feelings, upon a variety of quick succeeding subjects the 
 Cynthias of the minute is not apt to form a real passion 
 at the first sight. Youth is inflammable only when the 
 heart is young ! 
 
 There are certain times of life when, in either sex, the 
 affections are prepared, as it were, to be impressed with the 
 first fair face that attracts the fancy and delights the eye. 
 Such times are when the heart has been long solitary, and 
 when some interval of idleness and rest succeeds to periods 
 of harsher and more turbulent excitement It was pre- 
 cisely such a period in the life of Vaudemont. Although 
 his ambition had been for many years his dream, and his 
 sword his mistress, yet naturally affectionate, and suscep- 
 tible of strong emotion, he had often repined at his lonely 
 lot. By degrees, the boy's fantasy and reverence which 
 had wound themselves round the image of Eugenie, sub- 
 sided into that gentle and tender melancholy which, per-
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 4"H 
 
 haps, by weakening the strength of the sterner thoughts, 
 leaves us inclined, rather to receive, than to resist, a new 
 attachment; and on the verge of the sweet Memory 
 trembles the i vreet Hope. The suspension of his profes- 
 sion, his schemes, his struggles, his career, left his passions 
 unemployed. Yaudemont was thus unconsciously pre- 
 pared to love. As we have seen, his first and earliest 
 feelings directed themselves to Fanny. But he had so 
 immediately detected the danger, and so immediately re- 
 coiled from nursing those thoughts and fancies, without 
 which love dies for want of food, for a person to whom he 
 ascribed the affliction of an imbecility which would give to 
 such a sentiment all the attributes either of the weakest 
 rashness or of dishonour approaching to sacrilege that the 
 wings of the Deity were scared away the instant their very 
 shadow fell upon his mind. And thus, when Camilla rose 
 upon him, his heart was free to receive her image. Her 
 graces, her accomplishments, a certain nameless charm that 
 invested her, pleased him even more than her beauty ; the 
 recollections connected with that first time in which he had 
 ever beheld her, were also grateful and endearing ; the 
 harshness with which her parents spoke to her, moved his 
 compassion, and addressed itself to a temper peculiarly 
 alive to the generosity that leans towards the weak and the 
 wronged ; the engaging mixture of mildness and gaiety 
 with which she tended her peevish and sneering uncle, 
 convinced him of her better and more enduring qualities of 
 disposition and womanly heart. And even so strange and 
 contradictory are our feelings the very remembrance that 
 she was connected with a family so hateful to him made 
 her own image the more bright from the darkness that 
 surrounded it. For was it not with the daughter of his 
 foe that the lover of Verona fell in love at first sight ? An<J 
 is not that a common type of us all as if Passion delighted 
 in contradictions ? As the Diver, in Schiller's exquisite 
 ballad, fastened upon the rock of coral in the midst of the 
 gloomy sea, so we cling the more gratefully to whatever of 
 fair thought and gentle shelter smiles out to us in the 
 depths of Hate and Strife. 
 
 But, perhaps, Vaudemont would not so suddenly and so 
 ntterly have rendered himself to a passion that began, 
 already, completely to master his strong spirit, if he had 
 not, from Camilla's embarrassment, her timidity, her
 
 412 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 blushes, intoxicated himself with the belief that his feelings 
 were not unshared. And who knows not that such a belief, 
 once cherished, ripens our own love to o, development in 
 which hours are as years ? 
 
 It was, then, with such emotions as made him almost 
 insensible to every thought but the luxury of breathing the 
 same air as his cousin, which swept from his miud the 
 Past, the Future leaving nothing but a joyous, a breath- 
 less PRESENT on the Face of Time, that he repaired to 
 
 Beaufort Court. He did not return to H before he 
 
 went, but he wrote to Fanny a short and hurried line to 
 explain that he might be absent for some days at least, and 
 promised to write again, if he should be detained longer 
 than he anticipated. 
 
 In the meanwhile, one of those successive revolutiona 
 which had marked the eras in Fanny's moral existence, 
 took its date from that last time they had walked and con- 
 versed together. . 
 
 The very evening of that day, some hours after Philip 
 was gone, and after Simon had retired to rest, Fanny was 
 sitting before the dying fire in the little parlour in an atti- 
 tude of deep and pensive reverie. The old woman- servant, 
 Sarah, who, very different from Mrs. Boxer, loved Fanny 
 with her whole heart, came into the room, as was her wont 
 before going to bed, to see that the fire was duly out, and 
 all safe : and as she approached the hearth, she started to 
 see Fanny still up. 
 
 " Dear heart alive ! " she said ; "why, Miss Fanny, you will 
 catch your death of cold, what are you thinking about ? " 
 
 "Sit down, Sarah; I want to speak to you." Now, 
 though Fanny was exceedingly kind, and attached to 
 Sarah, she was seldom communicative to her, or indeed to 
 any one. It was usually in its own silence and darkness 
 that that lovely mind worked out its own doubts. 
 
 " Do you, my sweet young lady ? I'm sure anything I 
 
 can do " and Sarah seated herself in her master's great 
 
 chair, and drew it close to Fanny. There was no light in 
 the room but the expiring fire, and it threw upward a pal& 
 glimmer on the two faces bending over it, the one so 
 strangely beautiful, so smooth, so blooming, so exquisite in 
 its youth and innocence, the other withered, wrinkled, 
 meagre, and astute. It was like the Fairy and the Witch 
 together.
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 415 
 
 " Well," miss," said the crone, observing that, after a 
 considerable pause, Fanny was still silent, " Well " 
 
 " Sarah, I have seen a wedding ! " 
 
 " Have you? " and the old woman laughed. " Oh ! I 
 heard it was to be to-day ! young Waldron's wedding ! 
 Yes, they have been long sweethearts." 
 
 " Were you ever married, Sarah ? " 
 
 " Lord bless you, yes ! and a very good husband I had, 
 poor man ! But he's dead these many years ; and if you 
 had not taken me, I must have gone to the workhus." 
 
 " He is dead ! Wasn't it very hard to live after that, 
 Sarah ? " 
 
 " The Lord strengthens the hearts of widders ! " observed 
 Sarah, sanctimoniously. 
 
 " Did you marry your brother, Sarah ? " said Fanny, 
 playing with the corner of her apron. 
 
 " My brother ! " exclaimed the old woman, aghast. 
 " La ! miss, you must not talk in that way, it's quite 
 wicked and heathenish! One must not marry one's 
 brother ! " 
 
 " No ! " said Fanny, tremblingly, and turning very pale, 
 ?ven by that light. " No ! are you sure of that ? " 
 
 " It is the wickedest thing even to talk about, my dear 
 young mistress ; but you're like a babby unborn ! " 
 
 Fanny was silent for some moments. At length she 
 said, unconscious that she was speaking aloud, " But he is 
 Aot my brother, after all ! " 
 
 " Oh, miss, fie ! Are you lettiug your pretty head run 
 On the handsome gentleman? You, too, dear, dear! I 
 see we're all alike, we poor femel creturs ! You ! who'd 
 have thought it ? Oh, Miss Fanny ! you'll break your 
 heart if you goes for to fancy any such thing." 
 
 " Any what thing ? " 
 
 " Why, that that gentleman will marry you ! I'm sure, 
 thof he's so simple like, he's some great gentleman ! Thc-y 
 say his hoss is worth a hundred pounds ! Dear, dear ! 
 why didn't I ever think of this before ? He must be a 
 very wicked man. I see, now, why he comes here. I'll 
 speak to him, that I will ! a very wicked man ! " 
 
 Sarah was startled from her indignation by Fanny'g 
 rising suddenly, and standing before her in the flickering 
 twilight, almost like a shape transformed, so ">11 did she 
 eem, so stately, so dignified.
 
 4U NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 " Is it of him that yon are speaking ? " said she, in a voice 
 of calm but deep resentment " of him ! If so, Sarah, wo 
 two can live no more in the same house." 
 
 And these words were said with a propriety and col- 
 lectedness that even, through all her terror, showed at once 
 to Sarah how much they now wronged Fanny who bad 
 suffered their lips to repeat the parrot-cry of the " idiot 
 girl!" 
 
 " O ! gracious me ! miss ma'am I am so sorry I'd 
 rather bite out my tongue than say a word to offend you ; it 
 was only my love for you, dear innocent creature that you 
 are ! " and the honest woman sobbed with real passion as she 
 clasped Fanny's hand. " There have been so many young per- 
 sons, good and harmless, yes, even as you are, ruined. But 
 you don't understand me. Miss Fanny ! hear me ; I must try 
 and say what I would say. That man, that gentleman so 
 proud, so well-dressed, so grandlike, will never marry you, 
 never never. And if ever he says he does love you, and 
 you say you loves him, and you two don't marry, you will 
 be ruined and wicked, and die die of a broken heart ! ' ' 
 
 The earnestness of Sarah's manner subdued and almost 
 awed Fanny. She sunk down again in her chair, and suf- 
 fered the old woman to caress and weep over her hand for 
 some moments, in a silence that concealed the darkest and 
 most agitated feelings Fanny's life had hitherto known. 
 At length, she said, 
 
 " Why may he not marry me if he loves me ? he is not 
 my brother, indeed he is not ! I'll never call him so 
 again." 
 
 " He cannot marry you," said Sarah, resolved, with a 
 sort of rude nobleness, to persevere in what she felt to be 
 9, duty ; " I don't say anything about money, because that 
 does not always signify. But he cannot marry you, because 
 because people who are hedicated one way never marry 
 those who are hedicated and brought up in another. A 
 gentleman of that kind requires a wife to know oh to 
 know ever so much ; and you " 
 
 " Sarah," interrupted Fanny, rising again, but this time 
 with a smile on her face, " don't say anything moro about 
 it ; I forgive you, if you promise never to speak unkindly 
 of him again never never never, Sarah ! " 
 
 "But may I just tell him that that " 
 
 "That what?"
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 415 
 
 " That you are so young and innocent, and has no per- 
 tector like; and that if you -were to lore him it would be a 
 shame in him that it would ! " 
 
 And then (oh ! no, Fanny, there was nothing clouded 
 now in your reason !) and then the woman's alarm, the 
 modesty, the instinct, the terror came upon her ; 
 
 " Never ! never! I will not love him, I do not love him, 
 indeed, Sarah. If you speak to him, I will never look you 
 in the face again. It is all past all, dear Sarah ! " 
 
 She kissed the old woman ; and Sarah, fancying that 
 her sagacity and counsel had prevailed, promised all she 
 was asked ; so they went up-stairs together friends. 
 
 CHAPTER VIIL 
 
 " As the wind 
 
 Sobe, an uncertain sweetness comes from out 
 The orange-trees. 
 
 * * * * 
 
 Rise up, Olympia. She sleeps soundly. Ho ! 
 
 Stirring at last." 'BARRY CORNWAU,. 
 
 THE next day, Fanny was seen by Sarah counting the 
 little hoard that she had so long and so painfully saved for 
 her beneiactor's tomb. The money was no longer wanted 
 for that object. Fanny had found another ; she said nothing 
 to Sarah or to Simon. But there was a strange complacent 
 smile upon her lip as she busied herself in her work, that 
 puzzled the old woman. Late at noon came the postman's 
 nnwonted knock at the door. A letter ! a letter for Miss 
 Fanny. A letter ! the first she had ever received in her 
 life ! And it was from him ! and it began with " Dear 
 Fanny." Vaademont had called her " dear Fanny " a 
 hundred times, and the expression had become a matter of 
 course. But " Dear Fanny " seemed so very different when 
 it was written. The letter could not well be shorter, nor, 
 all things considered, colder. But the girl found no fault 
 with it. It began with " Dear Fanny," and it ended with 
 " yours truly." " Yours truly mine truly and how kind 
 to write at all ! " Now it so happened that Vaudemont, 
 having never merged the art of the penman into that rapid 
 scrawl into which people, who are compelled to write 
 hurriedly and constantly, degenerate, wrote a remarkably
 
 416 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 good hand, "bold, clear, symmetrical almosit too good a 
 hand for one who was not to make money by caligraphy. 
 And after Fanny had got the words by heart, she stole 
 gently to a cupboard and took forth some specimens of her 
 own hand, in the shape of house and work memoranda, and 
 extracts which, the better to help her memory, she had 
 made from the poem-book Vaudemont had given her. She 
 gravely laid his letter by the side of these specimens, and 
 blushed at the contrast ; yet, after all, her own writing, 
 through trembling and irresolute, was far from a bad or 
 vulgar hand. But emulation was now fairly roused within 
 her. Vaudemont, pre-occupied by more engrossing thoughts, 
 and, indeed, forgetting a danger which had seemed so 
 thoroughly to have passed away, drd not in his letter caution 
 Fanny against going out alone. She remarked this ; and 
 having completely recovered her own alarm at the attempt 
 that had been made on her liberty, she thought she was 
 now released from her promise to guard against a past and 
 imaginary peril. So after dinner she slipped out alone, and 
 went to the mistress of the school where she had received 
 her elementary education. . She had ever since continued 
 her acquaintance with that lady, who, kind-hearted, and 
 touched by her situation, often employed her industry, and 
 was far from blind to the improvement that had for some, 
 time been silently working in the mind of her old pupil. 
 
 Fanny had a long conversation with this lady, and she 
 brought back a bundle of books. The light might have 
 been seen that night, and many nights after, burning long 
 and late from her little window. And having recovered 
 her old freedom of habits, which Simon, poor man, did not 
 notice, and which Sarah, thinking that anything was better 
 than moping at home, did not remonstrate against, Fanny 
 went out regularly for two hours, or sometimes for even a 
 ionger period, every evening after old Simon had composed 
 himself to the nap that filled up the interval between dinner 
 and tea. 
 
 In a very short time a time that with ordinary stimu- 
 lants would have seemed marvellously short Fanny's hand- 
 writing was not the same thing ; her manner of talking 
 became different; she no longer called herself "Fanny 
 when she spoke ; the music of her voice was more quiet and 
 settled ; her sweet expression of face was more thoughtful ; 
 the eyes seemed to have deepened in their very colour ; *he
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 417 
 
 was no longer heard chaunting to herself as she tripped 
 along. The books that she nightly fed on had passed into 
 her mind ; the poetry that had ever unconsciously sported 
 ronnd her young years began now to create poetry in her- 
 self. Nay, it might almost have seemed as if that restless 
 disorder of the intellect, which the dullards had called 
 Idiotcy, had been the wild efforts, not of Folly, but of 
 GENIUS seeking to find its path and outlet from the cold 
 and dreary solitude to which the circumstances of her early 
 life had compelled it. 
 
 Days, even weeks, passed she never spoke of Vaude- 
 mont. And once, when Sarah, astonished and bewildered 
 by the change in her young mistress, asked, 
 " When does the gentleman come back ? " 
 Fanny answered, with a mysterious smile, " Not yet, I 
 hope, not quite yet ! " 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 M Thierry. I do begin 
 
 To feel an alteration in my nature, 
 And in his full-sailed confidence a shower 
 Of gentle rain, that falling on the fire 
 Hath quenched it. 
 
 * * 
 
 How is my heart divided 
 Between the duty of a son and love ! " 
 
 BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER : Thierry and Theodoret. 
 
 VAUDEMONT had now been a month at Beaufort Court. 
 The scene of a country-house, with the sports that enliven 
 it, and the accomplishments it calls forth, was one in which 
 he was well fitted to shine. He had been an excellent shot 
 as a boy ; and though long unused to the fowling piece, 
 had, in India, acquired a deadly precision with the rifle I 
 so that a very few days of practice in the stubbles and 
 covers of Beaufort Court made his skill the theme of the 
 guests and the admiration of the keepers. . Hunting began, 
 and this pursuit, always so strong a passion in the active 
 man, and which, to the turbulence and agitation of his half- 
 Earned breast, now excited by a kind of frenzy of hope and 
 fear, gave a vent and release was a sport in which he wa& 
 yet more fitted to excel. His horsemanship, his daring, 
 the stone walls he leaped, and the floods through which he 
 dashed furnished his companions with wondering tale an<? 
 
 >
 
 418 NIGHT AND MOKN1NG. 
 
 comment on their return home. Mr. Marsden, who, with 
 gome other of Arthur's early friends, had been invited to 
 Beaufort Court, in order to welcome its expected heir, and 
 who retained all the prudence which had distinguished him 
 of yore, when having ridden over old Simon he dismounted 
 to examine the knees of his horse ; Mr. Marsden, a skilful 
 huntsman, who rode the most experienced horses in tho 
 world, and who generally contrived to be in at the death, 
 without having leaped over anything higher than a hurdle, 
 suffering the bolder quadruped (in case what is called the 
 "knowledge of the country" that is, the knowledge of 
 gaps and gates failed him) to perform the more dangerous 
 feats alone, as he quietly scrambled over, or scrambled 
 through upon foot, and remounted the well- taught animal 
 when it halted after the exploit, safe and sound ; 
 Mr. Marsden declared that he never saw a rider with so 
 little judgment as Monsieur de Vaudemont, and that the 
 devil was certainly in him. 
 
 This sort of reputation, common-place and merely phy- 
 sical as it was in itself, had a certain effect upon Camilla ; 
 it might be an effect of fear. I do not say, for I do not 
 know, what her feelings towards Vaudemont exactly were. 
 As the calmest natures are often those the most hurried 
 away by their contraries, so, perhaps, he awed and dazzled 
 rather than pleased her ; at least, he certainly forced him- 
 self on her interest. Still she would have started in terror 
 if any one had said to her, " Do you love your betrothed 
 less than when you met by that happy lake ? " and her 
 heart would have indignantly rebuked the questioner. 
 The letters of her lover were still long and frequent ; hers 
 were briefer and more subdued. But then there was con- 
 straint in the correspondence it was submitted to her 
 mother. 
 
 Whatever might be Vaudemont's manner to Camilla 
 whenever occasion threw them alone together, he certainly 
 did not make his attentions glaring enough to be remarked. 
 His eye watched her rather than his lip addressed ; he kept 
 as much aloof as possible from the rest of her family, and 
 his customary bearing was silent even to gloom. But 
 there were moments when he indulged in a fitful exu- 
 berance of spirits, which had something strained and 
 unnatural. He had outlived Lord Lilburne's short liking ; 
 for since he had resolved no longer to keep watch, on that
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 419 
 
 Joble gamester's method of play, he played but little him- 
 self;- and Lord Lilburne saw that he had no chance of 
 mining him there was, therefore, no longer any reason to 
 like him. But this was not all ; when Vaudemont had 
 been at the house somewhat more than two weeks, Lilburne, 
 petulant and impatient, whether at his refusals to join the 
 card-table, or at the moderation with wtv.ch, when he did, 
 he confined his ill-luck to petty losses, one day limped up 
 to him, as he stood at the embrasure of the window, gazing 
 on the wide lands beyond, and said, 
 
 " Vaudemont, you are bolder in hunting, they tell me, 
 than you are at whist." 
 
 " Honours don't tell against one over a hedge ! " 
 
 " What do you mean ? " said Lilburne, rather haughtily. 
 
 Vaudemont was, at that moment, in one of those bitter 
 moods when the sense of his situation, the sight of the 
 usurper in his home, often swept away the gentler thoughts 
 inspired by bis fatal passion. And the tone of Lord Lil- 
 burne, and his loathing to the man, were too much for his 
 temper. 
 
 " Lord Lilburne," he said, and his lip curled, " if you had 
 been born poor, you would have made a great fortune 
 you play luckily." 
 
 " How am I to take this, sir ? " 
 
 " As you please," answered Vaudemont, calmly, but with 
 an eye of fire. And he turned away. 
 
 LUburne remained on the spot very thoughtful " Hum! 
 he suspects me. I cannot quarrel on such a ground the 
 suspicion itself dishonours me I must seek another." 
 
 The next day, Lilburne, who was familiar with Mr. Mars- 
 den (though the latter gentleman never played at the same 
 table), asked that prudent person, after breakfast, if he 
 happened to have his pistols with him. 
 
 " Yes ; I always take them into the country one may 
 as well practise when one has the opportunity. Besides, 
 sportsmen are often quarrelsome ; and if it is known that 
 one shoots well, it keeps one out of quarrels ! " 
 
 " Very true," said Lilburne, rather admiringly ; " I have 
 made the same remark myself when I was younger. I 
 have not shot with a pistol for some years. I am well 
 enough now to walk out with the help of a stick. Suppose 
 we practise for half-an-hour or so." 
 
 BBS
 
 420 NIGHT AND MORNINA- 
 
 " With all my heart," said Mr. Marsden 
 
 The pistols were brought, and they stiolled forth ; Lord 
 Lilburne found his hand out. 
 
 " As I never hunt now," said the peer, and he gnashed 
 his teeth, and glanced at his maimed limb ; " for though 
 lameness would not prevent my keeping my seat,, violent 
 exercise hurts my leg ; and Brodie says, any fresh accident 
 might bring on tic douloureux ; and as my gout does not 
 permit me to join the shooting parties at present, it would 
 be a kindness in you to lend me your pistols it would 
 while away an hour or so ; though, thank Heaven, m^ 
 duelling days are over ! " 
 
 " Certainly," said Mr. Marsden ; and the pistols were 
 consigned to Lord Lilburne. 
 
 Four days from the date, as Mr. Marsden, Vaudemont, 
 and some other gentlemen, were making for the covers, 
 they came upon Lord Lilburne, who, in a part of the park 
 not within sight or sound of the house, was amusing him- 
 self with Mr. Marsden's pistols, which Dykeman was at 
 hand to load for him. He turned round, not at all dis- 
 concerted by the interruption. 
 
 " You have no idea how I've improved, Marsden : just 
 see ! " and he pointed to a glove nailed to a tree. " I've hit 
 that mark twice in five times ; and every time I have gone 
 straight enough along the line to have killed my man." 
 
 " Ay, the mark itself does not so much signify," said 
 Mr. Marsden : "at least, not in actual duelling the great 
 thing is to be in the line." 
 
 While he spoke, Lord Lilburne's ball went a- third time 
 through the glove. His cold bright -eye turned on Vaude- 
 mont, as he said, with a smile, 
 
 " They tell me you shoot well with a fowling-piece, my 
 dear Vaudemont are you equally adroit with a pistol P " 
 
 " You may see, if you like ; but you talce aim, Lord Lil- 
 hurno; that would be of no use in English duelling. 
 Permit me." 
 
 He walked to the glove, and tore from it one of the 
 fingers, which he fastened separately to the tree, took the 
 pistol from Dykeman as he walked past him, gained the 
 spot whence to fire, turned at once round, without apparent 
 aim, and the finger fell to the ground. 
 
 Lilburne stood aghast. 
 
 *' That's wonderful ! " said Marsden ; " quite wonderful
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 421 
 
 Where the devil did you get such a knack ? for it is only 
 knack, after all ! " 
 
 " I lived for many years in a country where the practice 
 was constant, where all that belongs to rifle-shooting was a 
 necessary accomplishment a country in which man had 
 often to contend against the wild beast. In civilised 
 states, man himself supplies the place of the wild beast 
 bat we don't hunt him 1 Lord Lilburne," (and this was 
 added with a smiling and disdainful whisper,) " you must 
 practise a little more." 
 
 But disregardful of the advice, from that day Lord 
 Lilburne's morning occupation was gone. He thought no 
 longer of a duel with Vaudemont. As soon as the sports- 
 men had left him, he bade Dykeman take up the pistols, 
 and walked straight home into the library, where Robert 
 Beaufort, who was no sportsman, generally spent his 
 mornings. 
 
 He flung himself into an arm-chair, and said, as he 
 stirred the fire with unusual vehemence, 
 
 " Beaufort, I'm very sorry I asked you to invite Vaude- 
 mont. He's a very ill-bred, disagreeable fellow ! " 
 
 Beaufort threw down his steward's account-book, on 
 which he was employed, and replied, 
 
 " Lilburne, I have never had an easy moment since that 
 man has been in the house. As he was your guest, I did 
 not like to speak before, but don't you observe you must 
 observe how like he is to the old family portraits ? The 
 more I have examined him, the more another resemblance 
 grows upon me. In a word," said Robert, pausing aud 
 breathing hard, " if his name were not Vaudemont if his 
 history were not, apparently, so well known, I should say 
 I should swear, that it is Philip Morton who sleeps under 
 this roof ! " 
 
 " Ha ! " said Lilburne, with an earnestness that surprised 
 Beaufort, who expected to have heard his brother-in-law's 
 sneering sarcasm at his fears ; " the likeness you speak of 
 to the old portraits did strike me ; it struck Marsden, too, 
 the other day, as we were passing through the picture- 
 gallery; and Marsden remarked it aloud to Vaudemont. 
 I remember now that he changed countenance and made no 
 answer. Hush ! hush ! hold your tongue, let me think 
 let me think. This Philip yes yes I and Arthur saw 
 him with with Gawtrey in Paris "
 
 422 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 " Gawtrey ! " was that the name of the rogue he was said 
 to " 
 
 " Yes yes yes. Ah ! now I guess the meaning of those 
 looks those words," muttered Lilburne, between his teeth. 
 "This pretension to the name of Yaudemont was always 
 apocryphal the story always but half believed the in- 
 vention of a woman in love with him the claim on your 
 property is made at the very timt he appears in England. 
 Ha ! have yon a newspaper there ? give it me. No ! 'tis 
 not in this paper. Ring the bell for the file ! " 
 
 " What's the matter ? you terrify me ! " gasped out 
 Mr. Beaufort, as he rang the bell. 
 
 "Why! have you not seen an advertisement, repeated 
 several times within the last month ? " 
 
 " I never read advertisements ; except in the county 
 paper if land is to be sold." 
 
 " Nor I often ; but this caught my eye. John " (here the 
 servant entered), "bring the file of the newspapers. The 
 name of the witness whom Mrs. Morton appealed to was 
 Smith, the same name as the captain ; what was the Chris- 
 tian name ? " 
 
 " I don't remember." 
 
 " Here are the papers shut the door and here is the 
 advertisement : ' If Mr. William Smith, son of Jeremiah 
 Smith, who formerly rented the farm of Shipclale-Bury, 
 under the late Right Hon. Charles Leopold Beaufort (that's 
 your uncle), and who emigrated in the year 18 to Aus- 
 tralia, will apply to Mr. Barlow, Solicitor, Essex Street, 
 Strand, he will hear of something to his advantage.' " 
 
 " Good Heavens ! why did not you mention this to me 
 before ? " 
 
 " Because I did not think it of any importance. In the 
 first place, there might be some legacy left to the man, 
 quite distinct from your business. Indeed, that was the 
 probable supposition : or even if connected with the claim, 
 such an advertisement might be but a despicable attempt to 
 frighten you. Never mind don't look so pale after all, 
 this is a proof that the witness is not found that Captain 
 Smith is neither the Smith, nor has discovered where the 
 Smith is ! " 
 
 " True ! " observed Mr. Beaufort : " true very true ! " 
 
 "HumpH! " said Lord Lilburne, who was still rapidly 
 glancing over the file, " Here is another advertisement
 
 -NIGHT AND MORNING. 423 
 
 which I never saw before : this looks suspicions : ' If the 
 person who called on the of September, on Mr. Morton, 
 linendraper, &c., of N , will renew his application per- 
 sonally or by letter, he may now obtain the information he 
 sought for.' " 
 
 " Morton ! the woman's brother ! their uncle ! it is too 
 clear!" 
 
 "But what brings this man, if he be really Philip 
 Morton, what brings him here ? to spy or to threaten ? " 
 
 " I will get him out of the house this day." 
 
 " No no ; turn the watch upon himself. I see now ; he 
 is attracted by your daughter ; sound her quietly ; don't 
 tell her to discourage his confidences ; find out, if he ever 
 speaks of these Mortons. Ha ! I recollect he has spoken 
 to me of the Mortons, but vaguely I forget what. 
 Humph ! this is a man of spirit and daring watch him, I 
 say, watch him ! When does Arthur come back ? " 
 
 " He has been travelling so slowly, for he still complains 
 of his health, and has had relapses : but he ought to be in 
 Paris this week, perhaps he is there now. Good Heavens ! 
 he must not meet this man ! " 
 
 " Do what I tell you ! get out all from your daughter. 
 Never fear : he can do nothing against you except by law. 
 But if he really like Camilla " 
 
 " He ! Philip Morton the adventurer the -" 
 
 " He is the eldest soil : remember, you thought even of 
 accepting the second. He may find the witness he may 
 win his suit ; if he like Camilla, there may be a com- 
 promise." 
 
 Mr. Beaufort felt as if turned to ice. 
 
 " You think him likely to win this infamous suit, then?** 
 lie faltered. 
 
 " Did not you guard against the possibility by securing 
 the brother ? more worth while to do it with this man. 
 Hark ye ! the politics of private are like those of public 
 life, when the state can't crush a demagogue, it should 
 entice him over. If you can ruin this dog " (and Lilburne 
 stamped his foot fiercely, forgetful of the gout), "ruin 
 him! hang him! If you can't" (and here with a wry 
 face he caressed the injured foot), " if you can't ('sdeath, 
 what a twinge !) and he can ruin you, bring him into the 
 family, and make his secret ours ! I must go and lie down 
 I have over-excited myself."
 
 424 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 In great perplexity Beaufort repaired at once to Camilla. 
 His nervous agitation betrayed itself, though he smiled a 
 ghastly smile, and intended to be exceeding cool and col 
 lected. His questions, which confused and alarmed her, 
 soon drew out the fact that the very first time Vaudemont 
 had been introduced to her, he had spoken of the Mortons ; 
 and that he had often afterwards alluded to the subject, 
 and seemed at first strongly impressed with the notion 
 that the younger brother was under Beaufort's protection , 
 though at last he appeared reluctantly convinced of the 
 contrary. Robert, however agitated, preserved at least 
 enough of his natural slyness not to let out that he 
 suspected Vaudemont to be Philip Morton himself, for he 
 feared lest bis daughter should betray that suspicion to ita 
 object. 
 
 " But," he said, with a look meant to win confidence, " I 
 dare say he knows these young men. I should like myself 
 to know more about them. Learn all you can, and tell me, 
 and, I say I say, Camilla, he ! he ! he ! you have made 
 a conquest, you little flirt, you ! Did he, this Vaudemont 
 ever say how much he admired you ? " 
 
 " He ! never !" said Camilla, blushing, and then turning 
 pale. 
 
 " But he looks it. Ah ! you say nothing, then. Well, 
 well, don't discourage him ; that is to say, yes, don't dis- 
 courage him. Talk to him as much as you can, ask him 
 about his own early life. I've a particular wish to know 
 'tis of great importance to me." 
 
 " But, my dear father," said Camilla, trembling, and 
 
 thoroughly bewildered, " I fear this man, I fear I 
 * > > 
 
 Was she going to add, "I fear myself?" I know not; 
 but she stopped short, and burst into tears. 
 
 " Hang these girls !" muttered Mr. Beaufort, " always 
 crying when they ought to be of use to one. Go down, 
 dry your eyes, do as I tell you, get all you can from him. 
 Fear him! yes, I dare say she does!" muttered the poor 
 man, as he closed the door. 
 
 From that time what wonder that Camilla's manner to 
 Vaudemont was yet more embarrassed than ever: what 
 wonder that he put his own heart's interpretation on that 
 confusion. Beaufort took care to thrust her more often 
 than before in his way ; he suddenly affected a creeping,
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 425 
 
 fawning civility to Vandemont ; he was sure he was fond 
 of music ; what did he think of that new air Camilla was 
 so fond of ? He must be a judge of scenery, he who had 
 een so much : there were beautiful landscapes in the 
 neighbourhood, and, if he would forego his sports, Camilla 
 drew prettily, had an eye for that sort of thing, and was so 
 fond of riding. 
 
 Vaudemont was astonished at this change, but his 
 delight was greater than the astonishment. He began to 
 perceive that his identity was suspected ; perhaps Beaufort, 
 more generous than he had deemed him, meant to repay 
 every early wrong or harshness by one inestimable blessing. 
 The generous interpret motives in extremes ever too 
 enthusiastic or too severe. Vaudemont felt as if he had 
 wronged the wronger ; he began to conquer even his 
 dislike to Robert Beaufort. For some days he was thus 
 thrown much with Camilla; the questions her father 
 forced her to put to him, uttered tremulously and fearfully, 
 seemed to him proofs of her interest in his fate. His 
 feelings to Camilla, so sudden in their growth so ripened 
 and so favoured by the Sub-Ruler of the world CIRCUM- 
 STANCE might not, perhaps, have the depth and the calm 
 completeness of that One True Love, of which there are 
 many counterfeits, and which in Man, at least, possibly 
 requires the touch and mellowness, if not of time, at least 
 of many memories of perfect and tried conviction of the 
 faith, the worth, the value and the beauty of the heart 
 to which it clings ; but those feelings were, nevertheless, 
 strong, ardent, and intense. He believed himself beloved 
 he was in Elysium. But he did not yet declare the 
 passion that beamed in his eyes. No ! he would not yet 
 claim the hand of Camilla Beaufort, for he imagined 
 the time would soon come when he could claim it, not 
 as the inferior or the suppliant but as the lord of her 
 father's fate.
 
 428 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 " Here's something got amongst us ! " Knight of Malta. 
 
 Two or three nights after his memorable conversation 
 with Robert Beaufort, as Lord Lilburne was undressing, he 
 said to his valet, 
 
 " Dykeman, I am getting well." 
 
 " Indeed, my lord, I never saw your lordship look 
 better." 
 
 " There you lie. I looked better last year I looked 
 better the year before and I looked better and better 
 every year back to the age of twenty-one ! But I'm not 
 talking of looks, no man with money wants looks. I 
 am talking of feelings. I feel better. The gout is almost 
 gone. I have been quiet now for a month that's a long 
 time time wasted when, at my age, I have so little time to 
 waste. Besides, as you know, I am very much in love ! " 
 
 " In love, my lord ? I thought that you told me never to 
 speak of " 
 
 " Blockhead ! what the deuce was the good of speaking 
 about it when I was wrapped in flannels ! I am never 
 in love when I am ill who is ? I am well now, or nearly 
 so ; and I've had things to vex me things to make this 
 place very disagreeable ; I shall go to town, and before this 
 day week, perhaps, that charming face may enliven the 
 solitude of Fernsidc. I shall look to it myself now. I see 
 you're going to say something. Spare yourself the 
 trouble! nothing ever goes wrong if I myself take it in 
 hand." 
 
 The next day Lord Lilburne, who, in truth, felt himself 
 uncomfortable and gfrnein the presence of Vaudemont ; who 
 had won as much as the guests at Beaufort Court seemed 
 inclined to lose ; and who made it the rule of his life 
 to consult his own pleasure and amusement before any- 
 thing else, sent for his post-horses, and informed his 
 brother-in-law of his departure. 
 
 " And you leave me alone with this man just when I am 
 convinced that he is the person we suspected ! My dear 
 Lilburne, do stay till he goes." 
 
 "Impossible! I am between fifty and sixty every 
 moment is precious at that time of life. Besides, I've said
 
 NIGHT AKD MORNING. 427 
 
 all I can say ; rest quiet act on the defensive entangle 
 this cursed Vaudemont, or Morton, or whoever he be, 
 in the mesh of your daughter's charms, and then get rid of 
 him, not before. This can do no harm, let the matter turn 
 out how it will. Read the papers ; and send for Blackwell 
 if you want advice on any new advertisements. I don't 
 see that anything more is to be done at present. You can 
 write to me ; I shall be at Park Lane or Fernside. Take 
 cake of yourself. You're a lucky fellow you never have 
 the gout ! Good-bye." 
 
 And in half an hour Lord Lilburne was on the road to 
 London. 
 
 The departure of Lilburne was a signal to many others, 
 especially and naturally to those he himself had invited. 
 He had not announced to such visitors his intention of 
 going till his carriage was at the door. This might be 
 delicacy or carelessness, just as people chose to take it : 
 and how they did take it, Lord Lilburne, much too selfish 
 to be well-bred, did not care a rush. The next day half at 
 least of the guests were gone ; and even Mr. Marsden, who 
 had been specially invited on Arthur's account, announced 
 that he should go after dinner! he always travelled by 
 night he slept well on the road a day was not lost by. it. 
 
 "And it is so long since you saw Arthur," said Mr. 
 Beaufort, in remonstrance, " and I expect him every day." 
 
 "Very sorry best fellow in the world but the fact is, 
 that I am not very well myself. I want a little sea air ; I 
 shall go to Dover or Brighton. But I suppose you will 
 have the house full again about Christmas ; in that case I 
 shall be delighted to repeat my visit." 
 
 The fact was, that Mr. Marsden, without Lilburne's 
 intellect on the one hand, or vices on the other, was, like 
 that noble sensualist, one of the broken pieces of the great 
 iooking-glass " SELF." He was noticed in society, as 
 always haunting the places where Lilburne played at cards, 
 carefully choosing some other table, and as carefully 
 betting upon Lilburne'a side. The card-tables were now 
 broken up ; Vaudemont's superiority in shooting, and the 
 manner in which he engrossed the talk of the sportsmen , 
 displeased him. He was bored he wanted to be off and 
 off he went. Vaudemont felt that the time was come for 
 him to depart, too; but Bobert Beaufort who felt in 
 his society the painful fascination of the bird with the boa
 
 4-28 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 who hated to see him there, and dreaded to see him depart, 
 who had not yet extracted all the confirmation of his per- 
 suasions that he required, for Vaudemont easily enough 
 parried the artless questions of Camilla pressed him to 
 stay with so eager an hospitality, and made Camilla herself 
 falter out, against her will and even against her remon- 
 strances (she never before had dared to remonstrate 
 with either father or mother), " Could not you stay a few 
 days longer ? " that Vaudemont was too contented to 
 yield to his own inclinations ; and so for some little time 
 longer, he continued to move before the eyes of Mr. Beau- 
 fort stern, sinister, silent, mysterious like one of the 
 family pictures stepped down from its frame. Vaudemont 
 wrote, however, to Fanny, to excuse his delay ; and anxious 
 to hear from her as to her own and Simon's health, bade 
 her direct her letter to his lodging in London (of which he 
 gave her the address), whence, if he still continued to defer 
 his departure, it would be forwarded to him. He did not 
 do this, however, till he had been at Beaufort Court several 
 days after Lilburne's departure, and till, in facjb, two days 
 before the eventful one which closed his visit. 
 
 The party, now greatly diminished, were at breakfast, 
 when the servant entered, as usual, with the letter- bag. 
 Mr. Beaufort, who was always important and pompous in 
 the small ceremonials of life, unlocked the precious deposit 
 with slow dignity, drew forth the newspapers, which he 
 threw on the table, and which the gentlemen of the party 
 eagerly seized ; then, diving out one by one, jerked first a 
 letter to Camilla, next a letter to Vaudemont, and thirdly, 
 seized a letter for himself. 
 
 "I beg that there may be no ceremony, Monsieur de 
 Vandemont : pray excuse me and follow my example : 
 I see this letter is from my son ; " and he broke the seal. 
 
 The letter ran thus : 
 
 " MY DEAR FATHER, Almost as soon as yon receive this, 
 I shall be with yon. Ill as I am, I can have no peace till 
 I see and consult you. The most startling the most pain- 
 ful intelligence has just been conveyed to me. It is of a 
 nature not to bear any bnt personal communication. 
 " Your affectionate Son, 
 
 "ARTHUR BEAUFORT. 
 " Boulogne*
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 429 
 
 S. This will go by the same packet-boat that I 
 ehall take myself, and can only reach you a few hours be- 
 fore I arrive." 
 
 Mr. Beaufort's trembling hand dropped the letter he . 
 
 ? rasped the elbow of the chair to save him from falling, 
 b was clear ! the same visitor who had persecuted himself 
 had now sought his son ! He grew sick, his son might 
 have heard the witness might be convinced. His son 
 himself now appeared to him as a foe for the father 
 dreaded the son's honour! He glanced furtively round 
 the table, till his eye rested on Vaudemont, and his terror 
 was redoubled, for Vaudemont's face, usually so calm, was 
 animated to an extraordinary degree, as he now lifted it 
 from the letter he had just read. Their eyes met. Robert 
 Beaufort looked on 'him as a prisoner at the bar looks on 
 the accusing counsel, when he first commences his 
 harangue. 
 
 " Mr. Beaufort," said the guest, " the letter you have 
 given me summons me to London on important business, 
 and immediately. Suffer me to send for horses at your 
 earliest convenience." 
 
 " What's the matter ? " said the feeble and seldom-heard 
 voice of Mrs. Beaufort. " What's the matter, Robert ? 
 is Arthur coming ? " 
 
 " He comes to-day," said the father, with a deep sigh ; 
 and Vaudemont, at that moment rising from his half- 
 finished-breakfast, with a bow that included the group, and 
 with a glance that lingered on Camilla, as she bent over 
 her own unopened letter, (a letter from Winandermere, the 
 seal of which she dared not yet to break,) quitted the 
 room. He hastened to his own chamber, and strode to and 
 fro with a stately step the step of the Master then, 
 taking forth the letter, he again hurried over its contents. 
 They ran thus : 
 
 " DEAR SIR, At last the missing witness has applied to 
 me. He proves to be, as you conjectured, the same person 
 who had called on Mr. Roger Morton ; but as there are 
 some circumstances on which I wish to take your instruc- 
 tions without a moment's delay, I shall leave London by 
 the mail, and wait you at D (at the principal inn),
 
 480 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 which is, I understand, twenty miles, on the high road, 
 from Beaufort Court. 
 
 " I have the honour to be, sir, 
 " Yours, &c., 
 
 " JOHN BARLOW." 
 " Essex Street." 
 
 Vaudemont was yet lost in the emotions that this letter 
 aroused, when they came to announce that his chaise was 
 arrived. As he went down the stairs he met Camilla, who 
 was on the way to her own room. 
 
 " Miss Beaufort," said he, in a low and tremulous voice, 
 " in wishing you farewell I may not now say more. I 
 leave you, and, strange to say, I do not regret it, for I g<? 
 upon an errand that may entitle me to return again, and 
 speak those thoughts which are uppermost in my soul, even 
 at this moment." 
 
 He raised her hand to his lips as he spoke, and at that 
 moment Mr. Beaufort looked from the door of his own 
 room, and cried " Camilla." She was too glad to escape. 
 Philip gazed after her light form for an instant, and then 
 hurried down the stairs. 
 
 CHAPTEK XI. 
 
 " Longueville. What ! are you married, Beaufort ? 
 Beaufort. Ay, as fast 
 As words, and hands, and hearts, and priest, 
 Could make us." BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER : Noble Gentkman, 
 
 IN the parlour of the inn at D sat Mr. John Barlow. 
 
 He had just finished his breakfast, and was writing letters 
 and looking over papers connected with his various busi- 
 ness when the door was thrown open, and a gentleman 
 entered abruptly. 
 
 " Mr. Beaufort," said the lawyer, rising, " Mr. Philip 
 Beaufort for such I now feel you are by right though," 
 he added, with his usual formal and quiet smile, " not yet 
 by law ; and much very much, remains to be done to 
 make the law and the right the same ; I congratulate you 
 on having something at last to work on. I had begun to 
 despair of finding up our witness, after a month's adver-
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 431 
 
 tisicg ; and had commeneed other investigations, of which 
 I will speak to you presently, when yesterday, on my return 
 to town from, an errand on your business, I had the plea- 
 sure of a visit from William Smith himself. My dear sir, 
 do not yet be too sanguine. It seems that this poor fellow, 
 having known misfortune, was in America when the first 
 fruitless inquiries were made. Long after this he returned 
 to the colony, and there met with a brother, who, as I drew 
 from him, was a convict. He helped the brother to escape. 
 They both came to England. William learned from a dis- 
 tant relation, who lent him some little money, of the in- 
 quiry that had been set on foot for him ; consulted his 
 brother, who desired him to leave all to his management. 
 The brother afterwards assured him that you and Mr. Sidney 
 were both dead ; and it seems (for the witness is simple 
 enough to allow me to extract all), this same brother then 
 went to Mr. Beaufort, to hold out the threat of a lawsuit, 
 and to offer the sale of the evidence yet existing " 
 
 "And Mr. Beaufort?" 
 
 " I am happy to say, seems to have spurned the offer. 
 Meanwhile William, incredulous of his brother's report, pro- 
 ceeded to N , learned nothing from Mr. Morton, met his 
 
 brother again and the brother (confessing that he had de- 
 ceived him in the assertion that you and Mr. Sidney were 
 dead) told him that he had known you in earlier life, and 
 Bet out to Paris to seek you " 
 
 " Known me ? To Paris ? " 
 
 " More of this, presently. William returned to town, 1 living 
 hardly and penuriously on the little his brother bestowed 
 on him, too melancholy and too poor for the luxury of a 
 newspaper, and never saw our advertisement, till, as luck 
 would have it, his money was out ; he had heard nothing 
 further of his brother, and he went for new assistance to 
 the same relation who had before aided him. This relation, 
 to his surprise, received the poor man very kindly, lent him 
 what he wanted, and then asked him if he had not seen 
 our advertisement. The newspaper shown him contained 
 both the advertisements that relating to Mr. Morton's 
 visitor, that containing his own name. He coupled them 
 both together called on me at once. I was from town on 
 your business. He returned to bis own home ; the next 
 morning (yesterday morning) came a letter from hia 
 brother, which I obtained from him at last, and with pro-
 
 432 NIGHT A.NU MORNING. 
 
 mises that no harm should happen to the writer on account 
 of it." 
 
 Vaudemont took the letter and read as follows : 
 
 " DEAR WILLIAM, No go about the youngster I went 
 after: all researches -in vane. Paris develish expensive. 
 
 Never mind, I have sene the other the young B ; 
 
 different sort of fellow from his father very ill frightened 
 out of his wits will go off to the governor, take me with 
 him as far as Bullone. I think we shall settel it now. 
 Mind as I saide before, don't put your foot in it. I send 
 you a Nap in the Seele all I can spare. 
 
 " Yours, 
 
 " JEREMIAH SMITH. 
 
 " Direct to me, Monsieur Smith always a safe name 
 Ship Inn, Bullone." 
 
 " Jeremiah Smith Jeremiah ! " 
 
 " Do you know the name, then ? " said Mr. Barlow. 
 " Well ; the poor man owns that he was frightened at his 
 brother that he wished to do what is right that he 
 feared his brother would not let him that your father was 
 very kind to him and so he came off at once to me ; and 
 I was very luckily at home to assure him that the heir was 
 alive, and prepared to assert his rights. Now then, M* 
 Beaufort, we have the witness, but will that suffice us ? 1 
 fear not. Will the jury believe him with no other testi- 
 mony at his back ? Consider ! When he was gone I put 
 myself in communication with some officers at Bow Stref' , 
 about this brother of his a most notorious character, com- 
 monly called in the police slang Dashing Jerry " 
 
 " Ah ! Well, proceed ! " 
 
 " Your one witness, then, is a very poor, penniless man, 
 his brother, a rogue, a convict : this witness, too, is the 
 most timid, nuctuat/ng, irresolute fellow I ever saw : I 
 should tremble for his testimony against a sharp, bullying 
 lawyer. And that, sir, is all at present we have to look 
 to." 
 
 " I see I see. It is dangerous it is hazardous. But 
 truth is truth ; justice justice ! I will run the risk." 
 
 " Pardon me, if I ask, did you ever know this brother ? 
 were you ever absolutely acquainted with him in the 
 same house ? "
 
 NIGHT AND MORNTNO. 433 
 
 " Many years since years of early hardship and trial 
 E was acquainted with him what then ? " 
 
 " I am sorry to hear it," and the lawyer looked grave. 
 "Do you not see that if this witness is browbeat is dis- 
 believed, and if it can be shown that you, the claimant, was 
 forgive my saying it intimate with a brother of such a 
 character, why the whole thing might be made to look like 
 perjury and conspiracy. If we stop here it is an ugly 
 business ! " 
 
 " And is this all you have to say to me ? The witness 
 is found the only surviving witness the only proof 
 lever shall or ever can obt.<iii>, and you seek to terrify 
 me me too from using the means for redress 
 Providence itself vouchsafes me; Sir, I will not hear 
 you ! " 
 
 " Mr. Beaufort, you are impatient it is natural. But if 
 we go to law that is, should I have anything to do with 
 it, wait wait till your case is good. And hear me yet. 
 This is not the only proof this is not the only witness : 
 you forget that there was an examined copy of the register; 
 we may yet find that copy, and the person who copied it 
 may yet be alive to attest it. Occupied with this thought, 
 and weary of waiting the result of our advertisement, I 
 resolved to go into the neighbourhood of Fernside : 1 nckily, 
 there was a gentleman's seat to be sold in the village. I 
 made the survey of this place my apparent business. After 
 going over the house, I appeared anxious to see how far 
 some alterations could be made alterations to render it 
 more like Lord Lilburne's villa. This led me to request a 
 eight of that villa a crown to the housekeeper got me ad 
 mittance. The housekeeper had lived with your father 
 and been retained by his lordship. I soon, therefore, knew 
 which were the rooms the late Mr. Beaufort had princi- 
 pally occupied ; shown into his study, where it was pro- 
 bable he would keep his papers, I inquired if it were the 
 same furniture (which seemed likely enough from its age 
 and fashion) as in your father's time : it was so ; Lord lal- 
 bnrne had bought the house just as it stood, and, save a 
 few additions in the drawing-room, the general equipment 
 of the villa remained unaltered. You look impatient ! 
 I'm coming to the point. My eye fell upon an old-fashioned 
 bureau " 
 
 " But we searched every drawer in that bureau ! '* 
 
 v r
 
 484 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 " Any secret drawers ? " 
 
 " Secret drawers ! N"o ! there were no secret drawora 
 that I ever heard of ! " 
 
 Mr. Barlow rubbed his hands and mused a moment, 
 
 " I was struck with that bureau ; for my father had had 
 one like it. It is not English it is of Dutch manu- 
 facture." 
 
 " Yes, I have heard that my father bought it at a sale, 
 three or four years after his marriage." 
 
 " 1 learned this from the housekeeper, who was flattered 
 by my admiring it. I could not find out from her at what 
 sale it had been purchased, but it was in the neighbourhood 
 she was sure. I had now a date to go upon ; I learned, by 
 careless inquiries, what sales near Fernside had taken place 
 in a certain year. A gentleman had died at that date, 
 whose furniture was sold by auction. With great difficulty, 
 I found that his widow was still alive, living far up the 
 country : I paid her a visit ; and, not to fatigue you with 
 too long an account, I have only to say, that she not only 
 assured me that she perfectly remembered the bureau, but 
 that it had secret drawers and wells, very curiously con- 
 trived ; nay, she showed me the very catalogue in which 
 the said receptacles are noticed in capitals, to arrest the eye 
 of the bidder, and increase the price of the bidding. 
 That your father should never have revealed where he 
 stowed this document is natural enough, during the life of 
 his uncle ; his own life was not spared long enough to give 
 him much opportunity to explain afterwards, but I feel 
 perfectly persuaded in my own mind that unless Mr. 
 Robert Beaufort discovered that paper amongst the others 
 he examined in one of those drawers will be found all we 
 want to substantiate your claims. This is the more likely 
 from your father never mentioning, even to your mother 
 apparently, the secret receptacles in the bureau. Why else 
 such mystery ? The probability is that he received the 
 document either just before or at the time he purchased the 
 bureau, or that he bought it for that very purpose : and, 
 having once deposited the paper in a place he deemed 
 secure from curiosity accident, carelessness, policy, per- 
 haps", rather shame itself (pardon me) for the doubt of your 
 mother's discretion, that his secrecy seemed to imply, kept 
 him from ever alluding to the circumstance, even when the 
 intimacy of after-years made him more assured of your
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 435 
 
 mother's self-sacrificing devotion to his interests. At his 
 uncle's death he thought to repair all ! " 
 
 "And how, if that be true if that Heaven which haa 
 delivered me hitherto from so many dangers, has, in the 
 very secrecy of my poor father, saved my birthright from 
 the gripe of the usurper how, I say, is " 
 
 " The bureau to pass into our possession ? That is the 
 difficulty. But we must contrive it somehow, if all else fail 
 us ; meanwhile, as I now feel sure that there has been a 
 copy of that register made, I wish to know whether I 
 . should not immediately cross the country into Wales, and 
 see if I can find any person in the neighbourhood of A * * * 
 who did examine the copy taken : for, mark you, the said 
 copy is only of importance as leading us to the testimony 
 of the actual witness -who took it." 
 
 " Sir," said Vaudemont, heartily shaking Mr. Barlow by 
 the hand, " forgive my first petulance. I see in you the 
 very man I desired and wanted your acuteness surprises 
 and encourages me. Go to Wales, and Grod speed you ! " 
 
 " Very well ! in five minutes I shall be off. Meanwhile, 
 see the witness yourself ; the sight of his benefactor's son 
 will do more to keep him steady than anything else. 
 There's his address, and take care not to give him money. 
 And now I will order my chaise the matter begins to 
 look worth expense. Oh ! I forgot to say that Monsieur 
 Liancourt called on me yesterday about his own affairs. 
 He wishes much to consult you. I told him you would 
 probably be this evening in town, and he said he would 
 wait you at your lodging." 
 
 " Yes I will lose not a moment in going to London, and 
 visiting our witness. And he saw my mother at the altar ! 
 My poor mother Ah, how could my father have doubted 
 her ! " and as he spoke, he blushed for the first time with 
 shame, at that father's memory. He could not yet con- 
 ceive that one so frank, one usually so bold and open, could 
 for years have preserved from the woman who had sacri- 
 ficed all to him, a secret to her so important ! That was, 
 in fact, the only blot on his father's honour a foul and a 
 grave blot it was. Heavily had the punishment fallen on 
 those whom the father loved best ! Alas, Philip had not 
 yet learned what terrible corrupters are the Hope and the 
 Fear of immense Wealth ay, even to men reputed the 
 most honourable, if they have been reared and pampered 
 
 v 2
 
 436 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 in the belief that wealth, is the Arch blessing of life! 
 Bightly considered, in Philip Beaufort's solitary meanness 
 lay the vast moral of this world's darkest truth ! 
 
 Mr. Barlow was gone. Philip was about to enter his 
 own chaise, when a dormeusc-and-four drove up to the inn- 
 door to change horses. A young man was reclining, at his 
 length, in the carriage, wrapped in cloaks, and with a 
 ghastly paleness the paleness of long and deep disease 
 upon his cheeks. He turned his dim eye with, perhaps, a 
 glance of the sick man's envy on that strong and athletic 
 iorm, majestic with health and vigour, as it stood beside 
 the more humble vehicle. Philip did not, however, notice 
 the new arrival ; he sprang into the chaise, it rattled on, 
 and thus, unconsciously, Arthur Beaufort and his cousin 
 had again met. To which was now the Night to which, 
 the Morning ? 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 "SaJcam. Let my men guard the walls. 
 Syana. And mine the temple." The Island Princess. 
 
 WHILE thus eventfully the days and the weeks had 
 passed for Philip, no less eventfully, so far as the inner life 
 is concerned, had they glided away for Fanny. She had 
 feasted in quiet and delighted thought on the consciousness 
 that she was improving that she was growing worthier of 
 him that he would perceive it on his return. Her manner 
 was more thoughtful, more collected less childish, in 
 short, than it had been. And yet, with all the stir and 
 flutter of the aroused intellect, the charm of her strange 
 innocence was not scared away. She rejoiced in the ancient 
 liberty she had regained of going out and coming back 
 when she pleased ; and as the weather was too cold ever to 
 tempt Simon from his fireside, except, perhaps, for half-an- 
 hour in the forenoon, so, the hours of dusk, when he .least 
 missed her, were those which she chiefly appropriated for 
 stealing away to the good schoolmistress, and growing 
 wiser and wiser every day in the ways of God and the 
 learning of His creatures. The schoolmistress was not a 
 Drilliant woman. Nor was it accomplishments of which 
 Vanny stood in need, so much as the opening of her thought*
 
 NIGHT AND MOKfrlNG. 43) 
 
 and mind by profitable books and rational conversation. 
 Beautiful as were all her natural feelings, the schoolmistress 
 nad now little difficulty in educating feelings up to the 
 dignity of principles. 
 
 At last, hitherto patient under the absence of one never 
 absent from her heart, Fanny received from him the letter 
 he had addressed to her two days before he quitted Beau- 
 fort Court ; another letter a second letter a letter to 
 excuse himself for not coming before a letter that gave her 
 an address, that asked for a rsply. It was a morning oi 
 unequalled delight, approaching to transport. And then 
 the excitement of answering the letter the pride of show- 
 ing how she was improved, what an excellent hand she now 
 wrote ! She shut herself up in her room : she did not go 
 out that day. She placed the paper before her, and, to her 
 Astonishment, all that she had to say vanished from her 
 mind at once. How was she even to begin ? She had al- 
 ways hitherto called him " Brother." Ever since her con- 
 versation with Sarah, she felt that she could not call him 
 that name again for the world no, never ! But what 
 should she call him what could she call him ? He signed 
 himself "Philip." She knew that was his name. She 
 thought it a musical name to utter, but to write it ! No ! 
 Tome instinct she could not account for seemed to whisper 
 that it was improper presumptuous, to call him "Dear 
 Philip." Had Burns' songs the songs that unthinkingly 
 he had put into her hand, and told her to read songs that 
 comprise the most beautiful love-poems in the world had 
 they helped to teach her some of the secrets of her own 
 heart ? And had timidity come with knowledge ? Who 
 shall say who guess what passed within her ? Nor did 
 Fanny herself, perhaps, know her own feelings : but write 
 the words " Dear Philip " she could not. And the whole of 
 that day, though she thought of nothing else, she could not 
 even get through the first line to her satisfaction. The next 
 morning she sat down again. It would be so unkind if she 
 did not answer immediately : she must answer. She placed 
 his letter before her she resolutely began. But copy after 
 copy was made and torn. And Simon wanted her and 
 Sarah wanted her and there were bills to be paid ; and 
 dinner was over before her task was really begun. But after 
 dinner she began in good earnest. 
 
 " How kind in you to write to me " (the difficulty of any
 
 438 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 name was dispensed with by adopting none), "and towisn, 
 to know about nay dear grandfather ! He is much the same, 
 but hardly ever walks out now, and I have had a good dea\ 
 of time to myself. I think something will surprise you, and 
 make you smile, as you used to do at first, when you come 
 back. You must not be angry with me that I have gone 
 out by myself very often every day, indeed. I have been 
 so safe. Nobody has ever offered to be rude again to 
 Fanny" (the word 'Fanny' was here carefully scratched 
 out with a penknife, and me substituted). " But you shall 
 know all when you come. And are you sure you are well 
 quite quite well ? Do you never have the headaches you 
 complained of sometimes ? Do say this ! Do you walk 
 out every day ? Is there any pretty churchyard near you 
 now ? Whom do you walk with ? 
 
 " I have been so happy in putting the flowers on the two 
 graves. But I still give yours the prettiest, though the 
 other is so dear to me. I feel sad when I come to the last, 
 but not when I look at the one I have looked at so long. 
 Oh, how good you were ! But you don't like me to thank 
 you." 
 
 " This is very stupid ! " cried Fanny, suddenly throwing 
 down her pen ; " and I don't think I am improved at all ; " 
 and she half cried with vexation. Suddenly a bright idea 
 crossed her. In the little parlour where the schoolmistress 
 privately received her, she had seen among the books, and 
 thought at the time how useful it might be to her if ever 
 she had to write to Philip, a little volume entitled, " The 
 Complete Letter Writer." She knew by the title-page that 
 it contained models for every description of letter no 
 doubt it" would contain the precise thing that would suit 
 the present occasion. She started up at the notion. She 
 would go she could be back to finish the letter before post- 
 time. She put on her bonnet left the letter, in her haste, 
 open on the table and, just looking into the parlour in her 
 way to the street-door, to convince herself that Simon was 
 asleep, and the wire-guard was on the fire, she hurried to 
 the kind schoolmistress. 
 
 One of the fogs that in autumn gather sullenly over 
 London and its suburbs covered the declining day with pre 
 mature dimness. It grew darker and darker as she pro- 
 ceeded, but she reached the house in safety. She spent a 
 quarter of an hour in timidly consulting hear friend about
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 489 
 
 all kind of letters except the identical one that she in tended 
 to write, and having had it strongly impressed on her mind 
 that if the letter was to a gentleman at all genteel, she 
 ought to begin "Dear Sir," and end with "I have the 
 honour to remain ; " and that he would be everlastingly 
 offended if she did not in the address affix " Esquire " to his 
 name (that was a great discovery), she carried off the 
 precious volume, and quitted the house. There was a wall 
 that, bounding the demesnes of the school, ran for some 
 short distance into the main street. The increasing fog, 
 here, faintly struggled against the glimmer of a single 
 lamp at some little distance. Just in this spot, her eye was 
 caught by a dark object in the road, which she could 
 scarcely perceive to be a carriage, when her hand waa 
 seized, and a voice said in her ear, 
 
 " Ah ! you will not be so cruel to me, I hope, as you were 
 to my messenger ! I have come myself for you." 
 
 She turned in great alarm, but the darkness prevented 
 her recognising the face of him who thus accosted her. 
 
 " Let me go ! " she cried, " let me go ! " . 
 
 " Hush ! hush ! No no ! Come with me. You shall 
 have a house carriage servants ! You shall wear silk 
 gowns and jewels ! You shall be a great lady ! " 
 
 As these various temptations succeeded in rapid course 
 each new struggle of Fanny, a voice from the coach-box 
 said, in a low tone, 
 
 "Take care, my lord, I see somebody coming perhaps a 
 policeman ! " 
 
 Fanny heard the caution, and screamed for rescue. 
 
 " Is it so ? " muttered the molester. And suddenly 
 Fanny felt her voice checked her head mantled her light 
 form lifted from the ground. She clung- she struggled 
 it was in vain. It was the affair of a moment : she felt 
 herself borne into the carriage the door closed the 
 stranger was by her side, and his voice said, 
 
 " Drive on, Dykeman. Fast ! fast ! " 
 
 Two or three minutes, which seemed to her terror as 
 nges, elapsed, when the gag and the mantle were gently 
 removed, and the same voice (she still could not see her 
 companion) said, in a very mild tone, 
 
 " Do not alarm yourself ; there is no cause, indeed 
 there is not. I would not have adopted this plan had 
 there been any other any gentler one. But I could not
 
 440 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 call at your own house-^ I knew no other where to meet 
 you. This was the only course left to me indeed it was. 
 I made myself acquainted with your movements. Do not 
 blame me, then, for prying into your foosteps. I watched 
 for you all last nightyou did not come out. I was in 
 despair. At last I find you. Do not be so terrified: I 
 will not even touch your hand if you do not wish it." 
 
 As he spoke, however, he attempted to touch it and was 
 repulsed with an energy that rather disconcerted him. The 
 poor girl recoiled from him into the farthest corner of 
 that prison in speechless horror in the darkest confusion 
 of ideas. She did not weep she did not sob but her 
 trembling seemed to shake the very carriage. The man 
 continued to address, to expostulate, to pray, to soothe. 
 His manner was respectful. His protestations that he 
 would not harm her for the world were endless. 
 
 " Only just see the home I can give you ; for two days 
 for one day. Only just hear how rich I can make you and 
 your grandfather, and then, if you wish to leave me, you 
 shall." 
 
 More, much more, to this effect, did he continue to pour 
 forth, without extracting any sound from Fanny but gasps 
 as for breath, and now and then a low murmur, 
 
 " Let me go, let me go ! My grandfather, my blind 
 grandfather! " 
 
 And finally tears came to her relief, and she sobbed with 
 a passion that alarmed, and perhaps even touched her com- 
 panion, cynical and icy as h.e was. Meanwhile the carriage 
 seemed to fly. Fast as two horses, thorough-bred, and 
 almost at full speed, could go, they were whirled along, 
 till about an hour, or even less, from the time in which she 
 had been thus captured, the carriage stopped. 
 
 "Are we here already ? " said the man, putting 1 IB head 
 out of the window. "Do then as I told you. Not to 
 the front door ; to my study." 
 
 In two minutes more the carriage halted again before a 
 building, which looked white and ghostlike through the 
 mist. The driver dismounted, opened with a latch-key & 
 window-door, entered for a moment to light the candles in 
 a solitary room from a fire that blazed on the hearth, re- 
 appeared, and opened the carriage-door. It was with a 
 difficulty for which they were scarcely prepared that they 
 were enabled to get Fanny from the carriage. No soft
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 441 
 
 words, no whispered prayers cotdd draw her forth ; and it 
 was with no trifling address, for her companion sought to 
 be as gentle as the force necessary to employ would allow 
 that he disengaged her hands from the window- frame, the 
 lining, the cushions, to which they clung ; and at last bore 
 her into the house. The driver closed the window again 
 as he retreated, and they were alone. Fanny then cast a 
 wild, scarce conscious glance over the apartment. It was 
 small and simply furnished. Opposite to her was an old- 
 fashioned bureau, one of those quaint, elaborate monu- 
 ments of Dutch ingenuity, which, during the present 
 century, the audacious spirit of curiosity- vendors has trans* 
 planted from their native receptacles, to contrast, with 
 grotesque strangeness, the neat handiwork of Gillow and 
 Seddon. It had a physiognomy and character of its own 
 this fantastic foreigner ! Inlaid with mosaics, depict- 
 ing landscapes and animals ; graceless in form and fashion, 
 but still picturesque, and winning admiration, when more 
 closely observed from the patient defiance of all rules of 
 taste which had formed its cumbrous parts into one pro- 
 fusely ornamented and eccentric whole. It was the more 
 noticeable from its total want of harmony with the other 
 appurtenances of the room, which bespoke the tastes of the 
 plain English squire. Prints of horses and hunts, fishing- 
 rods and fowling-pieces, carefully suspended, decorated 
 the walls. Not, however, on this notable stranger from 
 the sluggish land, rested the eye of Fanny. That, in 
 her hurried survey, was arrested only by a portrait placed 
 over the bureau the portrait of a female in the bloom 
 of life ; a face so fair, a brow so candid, an eye so pure, a 
 lip so rich in youth and joy that as her look lingered on 
 the features Fanny felt comforted, felt as if some Irving 
 protectress were there. The fire burned bright and merrily; 
 a table spread as for dinner, was drawn near it. To any 
 other eye but Fanny's the place would have seemed a 
 picture of English comfort. At last her looks rested OD 
 her companion. He had thrown himself, with a long sigh, 
 partly of fatigue, partly of satisfaction, on one of the 
 chairs, and was contemplating her as she thus stood and 
 gazed, with an expression of mingled curiosity and admi- 
 ration : she recognised at once her first, her only per- 
 secutor. She recoiled, and covered her face with her 
 hands. The man approached her :
 
 f42 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 " Do hot hate me, Fanny, do not turn away. Believe 
 me, though I have acted thus violently, here all violence 
 will cease. I love you, but I will not be satisfied till you 
 love me in return. I am not young, and I am not hand- 
 some, but I am rich and great, and I can make those whom 
 I love happy, so happy, Fanny ! " 
 
 But Fanny had turned away, and was now busily em- 
 ployed in trying to re-open the door at which she had 
 entered. Failing in this, she suddenly darted away, opened 
 the inner door, and rushed into the passage with a loud 
 cry. Her persecutor stifled an oath, and sprung after and 
 arrested her. He now spoke sternly, and with a smile and 
 a frown at once : 
 
 " This is folly ; come back, or you will repent it ! I 
 have promised you, as a gentleman as a nobleman, if you 
 know what that is, to respect you. But neither will I 
 myself be trifled with nor insulted. There must be no 
 screams ! " 
 
 His look and his voice awed Fanny in spite of her 
 bewilderment and her loathing, and she suffered herself 
 passively to be drawn into the room. He closed and bolted 
 the door. She threw herself on the ground in one corner, 
 and moaned low but piteously. He looked at her musingly 
 for some moments, as he stood by the fire, and at last went 
 to the door, opened it, and called " Harriet " in alow voice. 
 Presently a young woman, of about thirty, appeared, neatly 
 but plainly dressed, and of a countenance that, if not very 
 winning, might certainly be called very handsome. He 
 drew her aside fora few moments and a whispered conference 
 was exchanged. He then walked gravely up to Fanny : 
 
 " My young friend," said he, " I see my presence is too 
 much for you this evening. This young woman will attend 
 you will get you all you want. She can tell you, too, 
 that I am not the terrible sort of person you seem to 
 suppose. I shall see you to-morrow." So saying, he 
 tinned on his heel and walked out. 
 
 Fanny felt something like liberty, something like joy, 
 again. She rose, and looked so pleadingly, so earnestly, 
 so intently into the woman's face, that Harriet turned 
 away her bold eyes abashed ; and at this moment Dyke* 
 man himself looked into the room. 
 
 " You are to bring us in dinner here yourself , uncle ; and 
 then go to my lord in the drawing-room."
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 443 
 
 Dykeman looked pleased, and vanished. Then Harriet 
 came tip and took Fanny's hand, and said, kindly, 
 
 " Don't be frightened. I assure yon, half the girls in 
 London wonld give I don't know what to be in your place. 
 My Lord never will force yon to do anything yon don't 
 like it's not his way ; and ho 's the kindest and best man, 
 and so rich ; he does not know what to do with his 
 money ! " 
 
 To all this Fanny made bnt one answer, she threw 
 herself suddenly upon the woman's breast, and sobbed 
 out, 
 
 " My grandfather is blind, he cannot do without me he 
 will die die. Have you nobody you love, too ? - Let me 
 go let me out ! What can they want with me ? I never 
 did harm to any one." 
 
 " And no one will harm you ; I swear it ! " said Harriet, 
 earnestly. " I see you don't know my Lord. But here's 
 the dinner, come and take a bit of something, and a glass 
 of wine." 
 
 Fanny could not touch anything except a glass of water, 
 and that nearly choked her. ' But at last, as she recovered 
 her senses, the absence of her tormentor the presence of a 
 ivoman the solemn assurances of Harriet that, if she did 
 not like to stay there, after a day or two she should go 
 back, tranquillised her in some measure. She did not heed 
 the artful and lengthened eulogiums that the she-tempter 
 then proceeded to pour forth upon the virtues, and the 
 love, and the generosity, and, above all, the money of my 
 lord. She only kept repeating to herself, " I shall go back 
 in a day or two." At length, Harriet, having ate and 
 drank as much as she could by her single self, and growing 
 wearied with efforts from which so little resulted, proposed 
 to Fanny to retire to rest. She opened a door to the right 
 of the fireplace, and lighted her up a winding staircase to 
 a pretty and comfortable chamber, where she offered to 
 help her to undress. Fanny's complete innocence, and her 
 utter ignorance of the precise nature of the danger that 
 awaited her, though she fancied it must be very great and 
 very awful, prevented her quite comprehending all that 
 Harriet meant to convey by her solemn assurances that she 
 should not be disturbed. But she understood, at least, 
 that she was not to see her hateful gaoler till the next 
 morning ; and when Harriet, wishing her " good night,"
 
 444 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 showed her a bolt to her door, she was less terrified at the 
 thought of being alone in that strange place. She listened 
 till Harriet's footsteps had died away, and then, with a 
 beating heart, tried to open the door ; it was locked from 
 without. She sighed heavily. The window ? alas ! when 
 she had removed the shutter, there was another one barred 
 from without, which precluded all hope there ; she had no 
 help for it but to bolt her door, stand forlorn and amazed 
 at her own condition, and, at last, falling on her knees, to 
 pray, in her own simple fashion, which since her recent 
 visits to the schoolmistress had become more intelligent 
 and earnest, to Him from whom no bolts and no bars can 
 exclude the voice of the human heart. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 " In te omnis domus inclinata recumbit." * 
 
 LOED LILBURNE, seated before a tray in the drawing-room, 
 was finishing his own solitary dinner, and Dykeman was 
 standing close behind him, nervous and agitated. The 
 confidence of many years between the master and the ser- 
 vant the peculiar mind of Lilburne, which excluded him 
 from all friendship with his own equals had established 
 between the two the kind of intimacy so common with the 
 tioble and the valet of the old French regime ; and indeed 
 in much, Lilburne more resembled the men of that day and 
 land, than he did the nobler and statelier being which be- 
 longs to our own. But to the end of time, whatever is at 
 once vicious, polished and intellectual, will have a common 
 likeness. 
 
 " But, my lord," said Dykeman, " just reflect. This 
 girl is so well known in the place ; she will be sure to be 
 missed ; and if any violence is done to her, it's a capital 
 crime, my lord a capital crime. I know they can't hang 
 a great lord like you, but all concerned in it may " 
 
 Lord Lilburne interrupted the speaker by " Give mo 
 some wine and hold your tongue! " Then, when he had 
 emptied his glass, he drew himself nearer to the 
 
 * On thee the whole bouse rests confidingly.
 
 NIGHT A1TO MORNIN3. 445 
 
 warmed Ms hands, mused a moment, and turned round to 
 his confidant : 
 
 "Dykeman," said he, "though you're an ass and a 
 coward, and you don't deserve that I should be so conde- 
 scending, I will relieve your fears at once. I know the 
 law better than you can, for my whole life has been spent 
 in doing exactly as I please, without ever putting myself 
 in the power of LAW, which interferes with the pleasures 
 of other men. You are right in saying violence would be 
 a capital crime. Now the difference between vice and 
 crime is this : Vice is what parsons write sermons against, 
 Crime is what we make laws against. I never committed 
 a crime in all my life, at an age between fifty and sixty 
 I am not going to begin. Vices are safe things ; I may 
 have my vices like other men : but crimes are dangerous 
 things illegal things things to be carefully avoided. 
 Look you," (and here the speaker, fixing his puzzled 
 listener with his eye, broke into a grin of sublime mockery), 
 ** let me suppose you to be the World that cringing valet 
 of valets, the WORLD! I should say to you this, 'My 
 dear World, you and I understand each other well, we 
 are made for each other, I never come in your way, nor 
 you in mine. If I get drunk every day in my own room, 
 that's vice, you can't touch me ; if I take an extra glass 
 for the first time in my life, and knock down the watch- 
 man, that's a crime which, if I am rich, costs me one pound 
 perhaps five pounds ; if I am poor, sends me to the tread- 
 mill. If I break the hearts of five hundred old fathers, by 
 buying with gold or flattery the embraces of five hundred 
 young daughters, that's vice, your servant, Mr. World ! 
 If one termagant wench scratches my face, makes a noise, 
 ind goes brazen-faced to the Old Bailey to swear to her 
 shame, why that's crime, and my friend, Mr. World, pulls 
 a hemp-rope out of his pocket.' Now, do you understand? 
 Yes, I repeat," he added, with a change of voice, " I never 
 committed a crime in my life, I have never even been 
 accused of one, never had an action of crim. con. of seduc- 
 tion against me. I know how to manage snch matters 
 better. I was forced to carry off this girl, because I had no 
 other means of courting her. To court her is all I mean 
 to do now. I am perfectly aware that an Action for vio- 
 lence, as you call it, would be the more disagreeable, be- 
 cause of the very weakness of intellect which the girl ia
 
 446 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 said to possess, and of which report I don't believe a word. 
 I shall, most certainly, avoid every the remotest appearance 
 that could be so construed. It is for that reason that no 
 one in the house shall attend the girl except yourself and 
 your niece. Your niece I can depend on, I know ; I have 
 been kind to her ; I have got her a 'good husband ; I stall 
 get her husband a good place; I shall be godfather to 
 her first child. To be sure, the other servants will know 
 there's a lady in the house, but to that they are accus- 
 tomed ; I don't set up for a Joseph. They need know no 
 more, unless you choose to blab it out. Well, then, sup- 
 posing that at the end of a few days, more or less, without 
 any rudeness on my part, a young woman, after seeing a 
 few jewels, and fine dresses, and a pretty house, and being 
 made very comfortable, and being convinced that her 
 grandfather shall be taken care of without her slaving her- 
 self to death, chooses of her own accord to live with me, 
 where's the crime, and who can interfere with it ? " 
 
 " Certainly, my lord, that alters the case," said Dyke- 
 man, considerably relieved. " But still," he added, anx- 
 iously, " if the inquiry is made, if before all this is settled, 
 it is found out where she is ? " 
 
 " Why then no harm will be done no violence will be 
 committed. Her grandfather, drivelling and a miser, 
 you say, can be appeased by a little money, and it will 
 be nobody's business, and no case can be made of it. Tush ! 
 man ! I always look before I leap ! People in this world 
 are not so charitable as you suppose. What more natural 
 then that a poor and pretty girl not as wise as Queen 
 Elizabeth should be tempted to pay a visit to a rich lover! 
 All they can say of the lover is, that he is a very gay man 
 or a very bad man, and that's saying nothing new of me. 
 But I don't thick it will be found out. Just get me that 
 stool ; this has been a very troublesome piece of business- 
 rather tired me. I am not so young as I was. Yes, Dyke- 
 man, something which that Frenchman Vaudemont, or 
 Vaut-rien ; or whatever his name is, said to me once, has a 
 certain degree of truth. I felt it in the last fit of the gout, 
 when my pretty niece was smoothing my pillows. A nurse, 
 as we grow older, may be of use to one. I wish to make 
 this girl like me, or be grateful to me. I am meditating 
 a longer and more serious attachment than usual, a com- 
 panion ! "
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 447 
 
 " A companion, my lord, in that poor creature ! so igno- 
 rant so uneducated ! " 
 
 " So much the better. This world palls upon me," said 
 Lilburne, almost gloomily. " I grow sick of the miserable 
 quackeries of the piteous conceits that men, women, and 
 children, call ' knowledge.' I wish to catch a glimpse of 
 nature before I die. This creature interests me, and that 
 is something in this life. Clear those things away, and 
 leave me." 
 
 "Ay ! " muttered Lilburne, as he bent over the fire alone, 
 " when I first heard that that girl was the granddaughter 
 of Simon Gawtrey, and, therefore, the child of the man 
 whom I am to thank that I am a cripple, I felt as if love 
 to her were a part of that hate which I owe to him ; a 
 segment iu the circle of my vengeance. But now, poor 
 child ! I forget all this. I feel for her, not passion, but 
 what I never felt before, affection. I feel that if I had 
 such a child, I could understand what men mean when 
 they talk of the tenderness of a father. I have not one 
 impure thought for that girl not one. But I would give 
 thousands if she could love me. Strange ! strange ! in all 
 this I do not recognise myself ! " 
 
 Lord Lilburne retired to rest betimes that night ; he 
 slept sound ; rose refreshed at an earlier hour than usual ; 
 and what he considered a fit of vapours of the previous 
 night was passed away. He looked with eagerness to an 
 interview with Fanny. Proud of his intellect, pleased in 
 any of those sinister exercises of .it, which the code and 
 habits of his life so long permitted to him, he regarded the 
 conquest of his fair adversary with the interest of a scien- 
 tific game. Harriet went to Fanny's room to prepare her 
 fco receive her host* and Lord Lilburne now resolved to 
 make his own visit the less unwelcome, by reserving for 
 his especial gift some showy, if not valuable, trinkets, which 
 for similar purposes never failed the depositories of the 
 villa he had purchased for his pleasures. He recollected 
 that these gewgaws were placed in the bureau in the study; 
 in which, as having a lock of foreign and intricate work- 
 manship, he usually kept whatever might tempt cupidity 
 in those frequent absences when the house was left guarded 
 but by two women servants. Finding that Fanny had not 
 yet quitted her own chamber, while Harriet went up to 
 attend and reason with her, he himself limped into the
 
 448 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 study below, unlocked the bureau, and was searching ia 
 the drawers, when he heard the voice of Fanny above, 
 raised a little as if in remonstrance or entreaty ; and he 
 paused to listen. He could not, however, distinguish what 
 was said ; and jn the meanwhile, without attending much 
 to what he was about, his hands were still employed in 
 opening and shutting the drawers, passing through the 
 pigeon-holes, and feeling for a topaz brooch, which he 
 thought could not fail of pleasing the unsophisticated eyes 
 of Fanny. One of the recesses was deeper than the rest ; 
 he fancied the brooch was there ; he stretched his hand 
 into the recess ; and, as the room was partially darkened 
 by the lower shutters from without, which were still un- 
 closed to prevent any attempted escape of his captive, he 
 had only the sense of touch to depend on ; not finding the 
 brooch, he stretched on till he came to the extremity of the 
 recess, and was suddenly sensible of a sharp pain ; the flesh 
 seemed caught as in a trap ; he drew back his finger with 
 sudden force and a half-suppressed exclamation, and he 
 perceived the bottom or floor of the pigeon-hole recede, as 
 if sliding back. His curiosity was aroused ; he again felt 
 warily and cautiously, and discovered a very slight ine- 
 quality and roughness at the extremity of the recess. He 
 was aware instantly that there was some secret spring ; be 
 pressed with some force on the spot, and he felt the board 
 give way ; he pushed it back towards him, and it slid sud- 
 denly with a whirring noise, and left a cavity below ex- 
 posed to his sight. He peered in, and drew forth a paper ; 
 he opened it at first carelessly, for he was still trying to 
 listen to Fanny. His eye ran rapidly over a few prelimi- 
 nary lines till it rested on what follows : 
 
 " Marriage. The year 18 
 
 "No. 83, page 21. 
 
 " Philip Beaufort, of this parish of A , and Catherine 
 
 Morton, of the parish of St. Botolph, Aldgate, London, 
 were married in this church by banns, this 12th day of 
 November, in the year one thousand eight hundred and 
 
 ,* by me, 
 
 " CALEB PRICE, Vicar. 
 
 This is according .to the form customary at the date at which the copy ww 
 made. There has since been an alteration.
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 443 
 
 ** This marriage was solemnised between us, 
 
 " PHILIP BEAUFORT. 
 " CATHERINE MORTON. 
 
 " In the presence of 
 
 " DAVID APREECB. 
 "WILLIAM SMITH. 
 
 " The above is a true copy taken from the registry of 
 
 marriages, in A parish, this 19th day of March, 18 , 
 
 by me. 
 
 " MORGAN JONES, Curate of C ." 
 
 Lord Lilburne again cast his eye over the lines prefixed 
 to this startling document, which, being those written at 
 Caleb's desire, by Mr. Jones to Philip Beaufort, we need 
 not here transcribe to the reader.* At that instant, Harriet 
 descended the stairs, and came into the room; she crept up 
 on tiptoe to Lilburne, and whispered, 
 
 " She is coming down, I think ; she does not know you 
 are here." 
 
 " Very well go ! " said Lord Lilbnrne. And scarce had 
 Harriet left the room, when a carriage drove furiously to 
 the door, and Robert Beaufort rushed into the study. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 " Gone, and none know it. 
 
 **** 
 
 How now ? What news, what hopes and steps discovered ! " 
 
 BEAUMONT AND FLETCHEB. : The Pilgrit*. 
 
 WHEN Philip arrived at his lodgings in town it was very 
 late, but he still found Liancourt waiting the chance of his 
 arrival. The Frenchman was full of his own schemes and 
 projects. He was a man of high repute and connexions ; 
 negociations for his recall to Paris had been entered into ; 
 he was divided between a Quixotic loyalty and ft rational 
 prudence ; he brought his doubts to Vaudemont. Occupied 
 as he was with thoughts of so important and personal a 
 nature, Philip could yet listen patiently to his friend, and 
 
 * Sepajr>*6.
 
 4-50 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 weigh witn him the pros and cons. And after having mu- 
 tually agreed that loyalty and prudence would both be best 
 consulted by waiting a little, to see if the nation, as the 
 Carlists yet fondly trusted, would soon, after its first fever, 
 offer once more the throne and the purple to the descendant 
 of St. Louis, Liancourt, as he lighted his cigar to walk 
 home, said, " A thousand thanks to you, my dear friend : 
 and how have you enjoyed yourself in your visit ? I am 
 not surprised or jealous that LillWne did not invite me, as I 
 do not play at cards, and as I have said some sharp things 
 to him." 
 
 " I fancy I shall have the same disqualifications for an- 
 other invitation," said Vaudemont, with a severe smile. " I 
 may have much to disclose to you in. a few days. At pre- 
 sent my news is still unripe. And have you seen anything 
 of Lilburne-, he left us some days since. Is he in 
 London? " 
 
 " Yes ; I was riding with our friend Henri, who wished 
 to try a new horse off the stones, a little way into the 
 country yesterday. We went through ***** and 
 H . Pretty places, those. Do you know them ? " 
 
 "Yes; I know H ." 
 
 " And just at dusk, as we were spurring back to town, 
 whom should I see walking on the path of the high-road 
 but Lord Lilburne himself ! I could hardly believe my 
 eyes. I stopped, and, after asking him about you, I could 
 not help expressing my surprise to see him on foot at such 
 a place. You know the man's sneer. ' A Frenchman so 
 gallant as Monsieur de Liancourt,' said he, ' need not be 
 surprised at much greater miracles ; the iron moves to the 
 magnet : I have a little adventure here. Pardon me, if I 
 ask you to ride on.' Of course I wished him good day ; 
 and a little farther up the road I saw a dark plain chariot, 
 no coronet, no arms, no footman only the man on the box, 
 but the beauty of the horses assured me it must belong to 
 Lilburne. Can you conceive such absurdity in a man of 
 that age and a very clever fellow, too ? Yet, how is it 
 that one does not ridicule it in Lilburne, as one would in 
 another man between fifty and sixty ? " 
 
 " Because one does not ridicule, one loathes him." 
 
 " No ; that's not it. The fact is, that one can't fancy 
 Lilburne old. His manner is young his eye is young. I 
 never saw ^v one wtt u *o much vitality. ' The bad heart
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 451 
 
 the good digestion' the twin secrets for wearing 
 well, eh ! " 
 
 " Where did you meet him not near H ? " 
 
 " Yes ; close by. Why ? Have you any adventure 
 there, too ? Nay, forgive me ; it was but a jest. Good 
 night!" 
 
 Vaudemont fell into an uneasy reverie : he could not 
 divine exactly why he should be alarmed ; but he woe 
 
 alarmed at Lilburne being in the neighbourhood of H . 
 
 It was the foot of the profane violating the sanctuary. An 
 undefined thrill shot through him, as his mind coupled 
 together the associations of Lilburne and Fanny ; but there 
 was no ground for forebodings. Fanny did not stir out 
 alone. An adventure, too pooh ! Lord Lilburne must be 
 awaiting a willing and voluntary appointment, most pro- 
 bably from some one of the fair but decorous frailties in 
 London. Lord Lilburne's more recent conquests were said 
 to be among those of his own rank ; suburbs are useful for 
 such assignations. Any other thought was too horrible to 
 be contemplated. He glanced to the clock ; it was three in 
 
 the morning. He would go to H early, even before he 
 
 sought out Mr. William Smith. With that resolution, and 
 even his hardy frame worn out by the excitement of the 
 day, he threw himself on his bed and fell asleep. 
 
 He did not wake till near nine, and had just dressed, and 
 hurried over his abstemious breakfast, when the servant of 
 the house came to tell him that an old woman, apparently 
 in great agitation, wished to see him. His head was stilJ 
 full of witnesses and law-suits ; and he was vaguely ex- 
 pecting some visitor connected with his primary objects, 
 when Sarah broke into the room. She cast a hurried, sus- 
 picious look round her, and then, throwing herself on her 
 knees to him, " Oh ! " she cried, " if you have taken 
 that poor young thing away, God forgive you. Let her 
 come back again. It shall be all hushed up. Don't ruin 
 her ! don't ! that's a dear, good gentleman ! " 
 
 " Speak plainly, woman, what do you mean ? " cried 
 Philip, turning pale. 
 
 A very few words sufficed for an explanation : Fanny's 
 disappearance the previous night; the alarm of Sarah at 
 her non-return ; the apathy of old Simon, who did not 
 comprehend what had happened, and quietly went to bed ; 
 the search Sarab had made during half the night ; the in* 
 
 a o 2
 
 452 MGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 telligence she had picked up, that the policeman, going his 
 rounds, had heard a female shriek near the school ; but that 
 all he could perceive through the mist was a carriage driv- 
 ing rapidly past him ; Sarah's suspicions of Vaudemoni 
 confirmed in the morning, when, entering Fanny's room, 
 she perceived the poor girl's unfinished letter with his own, 
 the clue to his address that the latter gave her ; all this, 
 ere she well understood what she herself was talking 
 about, Vaudemont's alarm seized, and the reflection 
 of a moment construed : The carriage ; Lilburne seen 
 lurking in the neighbourhood the previous day ; the 
 former attempt ; all flashed on him with an intolerable 
 glare. While Sarah was yet speaking, he rushed from 
 the house, he flew to Lord Lilburne's in Park-lane, he 
 composed his manner, he inquired calmly. His lordship 
 had slept from home ; he was, they believed, at Fernside : 
 
 Fernside ! H was on the direct way to that villa. 
 
 Scarcely ten minutes had elapsed since he heard the story 
 ere he was on the road, with such speed as the promise of a 
 guinea a mile could extract from the spurs of a young posfc- 
 boy applied to the flanks of London post-horses. 
 
 CHAPTEE XV. 
 
 " Ex humili magna ad fastigia rerun 
 
 Extollit." * JUTENAL. 
 
 WHEN Harriet had quitted Fanny, the waiting- woman, 
 craftily wishing to lure her into Lilburne's presence, had told 
 her that the room below was empty ; and the captive's mind 
 naturally and instantly seized on the thought of escape. After 
 a brief breathing pause, she crept noiselessly down the stairs, 
 and gently opened the door ; and at the very instant she 
 did so, Robert Beaufort entered from the other door ; she 
 drew back in terror, when, what was her astonishment in 
 hearing a name uttered that spell- bound her the last name 
 rihe could have expected to hear; for Lilburne, the in- 
 etant he saw Beaufort, pale, haggard, agitated, rush into 
 the room, and bang the door after him, could only suppose 
 that something of extraordinary moment had occurred with 
 regard to the dreaded guest, and cried : " You come about 
 
 * Fortune raises men from low estate to the very summit of prosperity,
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 453 
 
 Vandemont ! Something has happened about Vaudemorit ! 
 about Philip ! What is it ? Calm yourself." 
 
 Fanny, as the name was thus abruptly uttered, actually 
 thrust her face through the door ; but she again drew back, 
 and, all her senses preternaturally quickened at that name, 
 while she held the door almost closed, listened with her 
 whole soul in her ears. 
 
 The faces of both the men were turned from her, and 
 her partial entry had not been perceived. 
 
 " Yes," said Robert Beaufort, leaning his weight, as if 
 ready to sink to the ground, upon Lilburne's shoulder, 
 " Yes ; Vaudemont, or Philip, for they are one, yes, it i* 
 about that man I have come to consult you. Arthur has 
 arrived." 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 " And Arthur has seen the wretch who visited us, and 
 the rascal's manner has so imposed on him, so convinced 
 him that Philip is the heir to all our property, that he has 
 come over ill, ill I fear " (added Beaufort, in a hollow 
 voice,) " dying, to to " 
 
 " To guard against their machinations ? " 
 
 " No, no, no to say that if such be the case, neither 
 honour nor conscience will allow us to resist his rights. He 
 is so obstinate in this matter ; his nerves so ill bear reason- 
 ing and contradiction, that I know not what to do " 
 
 " Take breath go on." 
 
 " Well, it seems that this man found out Arthur almost 
 as soon as my son arrived at Paris that he has persuaded 
 Arthur that he has it in his power to prove the marriage 
 that he pretended to be very impatient for a decision that 
 Arthur, in order to gain time to see me, affected irresolu- 
 tion took him to Boulogne, for the rascal does not dare to 
 return to England left Him there ; and now comes back, 
 my own son, as my worst enemy, to conspire against me 
 for my property ! I could not have kept my temper if I 
 had stayed. But that's not all that's not the worst: 
 Vaudemont left me suddenly in the morning on the receipt 
 of a letter. In taking leave of Camilla he let fall hints 
 which fill me with fear. Well, I inquired his movements 
 
 as I came along ; he had stopped at D , had been 
 
 closeted for above an hour with a man whose name the 
 landlord of the inn knew, for it was on his carpet-bag 
 the name was Barlow. You remember the advertisements!
 
 454 NIGHT AND MOKNTNG. 
 
 Good Heavens ! what is to be done ? I would, not do any. 
 thing unhandsome or dishonest. But there never was a 
 marriage. I never will believe there was a marriage 
 never ! " 
 
 " There was a marriage, Robert Beaufort," said Lord 
 Lilburne, almost enjoying the torture he was about to 
 inflict ; " and I hold here a paper that Philip Vaudemont 
 f or so we will yet call him would give his right hand to 
 clutch for a moment. I have but just found it in a secret 
 cavity in that bureau. Robert, on this paper may depend 
 the fate, the fortune, the prosperity, the greatness of 
 Philip Vaudemont ; or his poverty, his exile, his ruin. 
 See ! " 
 
 Robert Beaufort glanced over the paper held out to him 
 dropped it on the floor and staggered to a seat. Lil- 
 burne coolly replaced the document in the bureau, and, 
 limping to his brother-in-law, said with a smile, 
 
 " But the paper is in my possession I will not destroy 
 it. No ; I have no right to destroy it. Besides, it would 
 be a crime ; but but if I give it to you, you can do with 
 it as you please." 
 
 " Lilburne, spare me spare me. I meant to be an 
 honest man. I I " And Robert Beaufort sobbed. 
 
 Lilburne looked at him in scornful surprise. 
 
 " Do not fear that J shall ever think worse of you ; and 
 who else will know it ? Do not fear me. No ; I, 
 too, have reasons to hate and to fear this Philip Vaude- 
 mont; for Vaudemont shall be his name, and not Beaufort, 
 in spite of fifty such scraps of paper ! He has known 
 a man my worst foe he has secrets of mine of my past 
 perhaps of my present : but I laugh at his knowledge 
 while he is a wandering adventurer ; I should tremble at 
 that knowledge if he could thunder it out to the world as 
 Philip Beaufort, of Beaufort Court! There, I am candid 
 with you. Now hear my plan. Prove to Arthur that his 
 visitor is a convicted felon, by sending the officers of justice 
 after him instantly off with him again to the Settlements. 
 Defy a single witness entrap Vaudemont back to France, 
 and prove him (I think I will prove him such I think so 
 with a little money and a little pains) prove him 
 the accomplice of William Gawtrey, a coiner and a mur- 
 derer ! Pshaw ! take yon paper. Do with it as you will^ 
 keep it give it to Artkur let Philip Vaudemont hare it,
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 455 
 
 and Philip Vaudemont will be rich and great, tile happiest 
 man between earth and paradise ! On the other hand, 
 come and tell me that you have lost it, or that I never gave 
 you such a paper, or that no such paper ever existed ; and 
 Philip Vaudemont may live a pauper, and die, perhaps 
 a slave at the galleys ! Lose it, I say lose it, and advise 
 with me upon the rest." 
 
 Horror-struck, bewildered, the weak man gazed upon 
 the calm face of the Master-villain, as the scholar of the 
 old fables might have gazed on the fiend who put before 
 him worldly prosperity here and the loss of his soul here- 
 after. He had never hitherto regarded Lilburne in hia 
 true light. He was appalled by the black heart that lay 
 bare before him. 
 
 " I can't destroy it I can't," he faltered out ; " and if I 
 did, out of love for Arthur, don't talk of galleys, of 
 vengeance I I " 
 
 " The arrears of the rents you have enjoyed will send 
 you to gaol for your life. No, no ; don't destroy the 
 paper." 
 
 Beaufort rose with a desperate effort ; he moved to the 
 bureau. Fanny's heart was on her lips; of this long 
 conference she had understood only the one broad point on 
 which Lilburne had insisted with an emphasis that could 
 have enlightened an infant ; and he looked on Beaufort as 
 an infant then ; On that paper rested Philip Vaudemonfs 
 fate happiness if saved, ruin if destroyed; Philip her 
 Philip ! And Philip himself had said to her once when 
 had she ever forgotten his words? and now how thoso 
 words flashed across her Philip himself had said to her 
 once, " Upon a scrap of paper, if I could but find it, may 
 depend my whole fortune, my whole happiness, all that 
 I care for in life." Robert Beaufort moved to the bureau 
 he seized the document he looked over it again, 
 hurriedly, and ere Lilburne, who by no means wished 
 to have it destroyed in his oion presence, was aware of his 
 intention he hastened with tottering steps to the hearth 
 averted his eyes, and cast it on the fire. At that instant 
 something white he scarce knew what, it seemed to him 
 as a spirit, as a ghost darted by him, and snatched 
 the paper, as yet uninjured, from the embers ! There was 
 a pause for the hundredth part of a moment : a gurgling 
 sound of astonishment and horror from Beaufort an
 
 NIGHT AND MOANING. 
 
 exclamation from Lilburne a* laugh from Fanny, au, hei 
 eyes flashing light, with a proud dilation of stature, with 
 the paper clasped tightly to her bosom, she turned her 
 looks of triumph from one to the other. The two men 
 were both too amazed, at the instant, for rapid measures. 
 But LiJburne, recovering himself first, hastened to her : 
 she eluded his grasp she made towards the door to 
 the passage : when Lilburne, seriously alarmed, seized her 
 arm ; 
 
 " Foolish child ! give me that paper ! " 
 
 " Never but with my life ! " And Fanny's cry for help 
 rang through the house. 
 
 " Then " .the speech died on his lips, for at that 
 
 instant a rapid stride was heard without a momentary 
 scuffle voices in altercation ; the door gave way as if a 
 battering ram had forced it ; not so much thrown forward 
 as actually hurled into the room, the body of Dykeman fell 
 heavily, like a dead man's, at the very feet of Lord Lilburne 
 and Philip Vaudemont stood in the doorway ! 
 
 The grasp of Lilburne on Fanny's arm relaxed, and the 
 girl, with one bound, sprung to Philip's breast. " Here, 
 here ! " she cried, " take it take it ! " and she thrust the 
 paper into his hand. " Don't let them have it read it 
 see it never mind me ! " But Philip, though his hand 
 unconsciously closed on the precious document, did mind 
 Fanny ; and in that moment her cause was the only one in 
 the world to him. 
 
 " Foul villain " he said, as he strode to Lilburne, while 
 Fanny still clung to his breast : " Speak ! speak ! is 
 she is she ? man man, speak ! you know what I would 
 day ! She is the child of your own daughter the grand- 
 child of that Mary whom you dishonoured the child 
 of the woman whom William Gawtrey saved from pollu- 
 tion ! Before he died, Gawtrey commended her to my 
 care! God of Heaven! speak! I am not too 
 late ! " 
 
 The manner, the words, the face of Philip left Lilburne 
 terror-stricken with conviction. But the man's crafty 
 ability, debased as it was, triumphed even over remorse for 
 the dread guilt meditated, over gratitude for the dread 
 guilt spared. He glanced at Beaufort at Dykeman, who 
 now, slowly recovering, gazed at him with eyes that seemed 
 starting from their sockets ; and lastly fixed his look on
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 457 
 
 p hilip himself. There were* three witnesses presence of 
 lind was his great attribute. 
 
 " And if, Monsieur de Vaudemont, I knew, or, at leasij 
 had the firmest persuasion that Fanny was my grandchild, 
 what then ? Why else should she be here ? Pooh, sir ! 1 
 am an old man." 
 
 Philip recoiled a step in wonder ; his plain sense was 
 baffled by the calm lie. He looked down at Fanny, who," 
 comprehending nothing of what was spoken, for all her 
 faculties, even her very sense of sight and hearing, were 
 absorbed in her impatient anxiety for him, cried out, 
 
 " No harm has come to Fanny none : only frightened. 
 Read ! Read ! Save that paper ! You know what you 
 Dnce said about a mere scrap of paper. Come away ! 
 Come!" 
 
 He did now cast his eyes on the paper he held. 
 That was an awful moment for Robert Beaufort even fox 
 Lilburne ! To snatch the fatal document from that gripe ! 
 They would as soon have snatched it from a tiger ! He 
 lifted his eyes they rested on his mother's picture ! Her 
 lips smiled on him ! He turned to Beaufort in a state of 
 emotion too exalting, too blest for vulgar vengeance for 
 vulgar triumph almost for words. 
 
 " Look yonder, Robert Beaufort look ! " and he pointed 
 to the picture. " Her name is spotless ! I stand again 
 beneath a roof that was my father's, the Heir of Beau- 
 fort! We shall meet before the justice of our country. 
 For you, Lord Lilburne, I will believe you : it is too 
 horrible to doubt even your intentions. If wrong had 
 ;hanced to her, I would have rent you where you 
 stand, limb from limb. And thank her " (for Lilburne 
 recovered at this language the daring of his youth, before 
 calculation, indolence, and excess had dulled the edge 
 of his nerves ; and, unawed by the height, and manhood, 
 and strength of his menacer, stalked haughtily up to him) 
 " and thank your relationship to her," said Philip, sink- 
 ing his voice into a whisper, " that I do not brand you as a 
 pilferer and a cheat! Hush, knave! hush, pupil of 
 George Grawtrey ! there are no duels for me but with men 
 of honour ! " 
 
 Lilburne now turned white, and the big word stuck in 
 his throat. In another instant, Fanny and her guardian had 
 quitted the house.
 
 458 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 " Dykeman," said Lord Lilburne, after a long silence, " 1 
 shall ask you another time how you came to admit that 
 impertinent person. At present, go and order breakfast 
 for Mr. Beaufort." 
 
 As soon as Dykeman, more astounded, perhaps, by his 
 lord's coolness than even by the preceding circumstances, 
 had left the study, Lilburne came up to Beaufort, who 
 seemed absolutely stricken as if by palsy, and touching 
 him impatiently and rudely, said, 
 
 "'Sdeath, man! rouse yourself! There is not a 
 moment to be lost ! I have already decided on what you 
 are to do. This paper is not worth a rush unless the curate 
 who examined it will depose to the fact. He is a curate 
 a Welsh curate ; you are yet Mr. Beaufort, a rich and 
 a great man. The curate, properly managed, may depose 
 to the contrary ; and then we will indict them all for 
 forgery and 'conspiracy. At the worst, you can, no doubt, 
 get the parson to forget all about it to stay away. His 
 
 address was on the certificate C . Go yourself into 
 
 "Wales, without an instant's delay. Then, having arranged 
 with Mr. Jones, hurry back, cross to Boulogne, and buy 
 this convict and his witness yes, buy them ! That, now, 
 is the only thing. Quick ! quick ! quick ! Zounds, 
 man ! if it were -my affair, my estate, I would not care 
 a pin for that fragment of paper ; I should rather rejoice 
 at it. I see how it could be turned against them ! Go ! " 
 
 " No, no ; I am not equal to it ! Will you manage 
 it ? will you ? Half my estate ! all ! Take it : but 
 save " 
 
 " Tut ! " interrupted Lord Lilburne, in great disdain. 
 " I am as rich as I want to be. Money does not bribe me, 
 I manage this ! I! Lord Lilburne. I! Why, if found 
 out, it is subornation of witnesses. It is exposure it 
 is dishonour it is ruin. What then ? You should take 
 the risk for you must meet ruin if you do not. I cannot. 
 J have nothing to gain ! " 
 
 " I dare not ! I dare not ! " murmured Beaufort, quite 
 spirit-broken. " Subornation, dishonour, exposure ! and 
 I, so respectable my character ! and my son against me, 
 too ! my son, in whom I lived again ? No, no ; let them 
 take all ! Let them take it ! Ha ! ha ! let them take it ! 
 Good day to you." 
 
 " Where are you going ? "
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 459 
 
 " I shall consult Mr. Blackwell, and I'll let you. know." 
 
 And Beaufort walked tremulously back to his carriage. 
 
 " Go to his lawyer ! " growled Lilburne. " Yes, if hia 
 lawyer can help him to defraud men lawfully, he'll defraud 
 them fast enough. That will be the respectable way of 
 doing it ! Um ! This may be an ugly business for me - 
 the paper found here if the girl can depose to what she 
 heard, and she must have heard something. No, I think 
 the laws of real property will hardly allow her evidence ; 
 and if they do Um! My granddaughter is it possible! 
 And Grawtrey rescued her mother, my child, from her 
 own mother's vices ! I thought my liking to that girl 
 different from any other I have ever felt : it was pure- it 
 was ! it was pity affection. And I must never see her 
 again must forget the whole thing ! And I am growing 
 old and I am childless and alone ! " He paused, almost 
 with a groan : and then the expression of his face changing 
 to rage, he cried out, " The man threatened me, and 
 I was a coward ! What to do ? Nothing ! The defensive 
 is my line. I shall play no more. I attack no one. Who 
 will accuse Lord Lilburne? Still, Robert is a fool. I 
 must not leave him to himself. Ho ! there ! Dykeman ! 
 the carriage ! I shall go to London." 
 
 Fortunate, no doubt, it was for Philip, that Mr. Beau- 
 fort was not Lord Lilburne. For all history teaches us 
 public and private history conquerors statesmen sharp 
 hypocrites, and brave designers yes, they all teach us how 
 mighty one man of great intellect and no scruple is against 
 the justice of millions ! The One Man moves the Mass is 
 inert. Justice sits on a throne. Roguery never rests, 
 Activity is the lever of Archimedes. 
 
 CHAPTER XVL 
 
 44 Quam multa injusta ac prava fiunt moribug." * Tctr- 
 
 . . . " Volat ambiguis 
 Mobilis alls Hora." f SENECA. 
 
 MB. ROBERT BEAUFORT sought Mr. Blackwell, and long, 
 rumbling, and disjointed was his narrative. Mr. Blackwell, 
 
 * How many unjust and yicious actions are perpetrated under the nam 
 of morals, 
 t The hour flies moving with doubtful wings.
 
 460 NIGHT AND MOENING. 
 
 after some consideration, proposed to set about doing the 
 very things that Lilburne had proposed at once to do. 
 But the lawyer expressed himself legally and covertly, so 
 that it did not seem to the sober sense of Mr. Beaufort at 
 all the same plan. He was not the least alarmed at what 
 Mr. Blackwell proposed, though so shocked at what 
 Lilburne dictated. Blackwell would go the next day into 
 Wales he would find out Mr. Jones he would sound 
 him ! Nothing was more common, with people of the 
 nicest honour, than just to get a witness out of the way ! 
 Done in election petitions, for instance, every day. 
 
 " True," said Mr. Beaufort, much relieved. 
 
 Then, after having done that, Mr. Blackwell would 
 return to town, and cross over to Boulogne to see this very 
 impudent person whom Arthur (young men were so apt to 
 be taken in !) had actually believed. He had no doubt he 
 could settle it all. Robert Beaufort returned to Berkeley 
 Square actually in spirits. 
 
 There he found Lilburne, who, on reflection, seeing that 
 Blackwell was at all events more up to the business 
 than his brother, assented to the propriety of the arrange- 
 ment. 
 
 Mr. Blackwell accordingly did set off the next day. 
 That next day, perhaps, made all the difference. Within 
 two hours from his gaining the document so important, 
 Philip, without any subtler exertion of intellect than the 
 decision of a plain, bold sense, had already forestalled both 
 the peer and the lawyer. He had sent down Mr. Barlow's 
 head clerk to his master in Wales with the document, and 
 a short account of the manner in which it had been 
 discovered. And fortunate, indeed, was it that the copy 
 Aad been found ; for all the inquiries of Mr. Barlow at 
 
 A had failed, and probably would have failed, without 
 
 such a clue, in fastening upon any one probable person to 
 have officiated as Caleb Price's amanuensis. The sixteen 
 hours' start Mr. Barlow gained over Blackwell enabled the 
 former to see Mr. Jones to show him his own hand- 
 writing to get a written and witnessed attestation from 
 which the curate, however poor, and however tempted,, 
 could never well have escaped (even had he been dishonest, 
 which he was not) of his perfect recollection of the fact of 
 making an extract from the registry at Caleb's desire, 
 though he owned he had quite forgotten the names he ex
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 46 J 
 
 fcracted till they were again placed before him. Barlow 
 took care to arouse Mr. Jones's interest in the case quitted 
 Wales hastened over to Boulogne saw Captain Smith, 
 and without bribes, without threats, but by plainly proving 
 to that worthy person that he could not return to England 
 nor see his brother without being immediately arrested ; 
 that his brother's evidence was already pledged on the side 
 of truth ; and that by the acquisition of new testimony 
 there could be no doubt that the suit would be successful 
 he diverted the captain from all disposition towards perfidy, 
 convinced him on which side his interest lay, and saw him 
 return to Paris, where very shortly afterwards he dis- 
 appeared for ever from this world, being forced into a duel, 
 much against his will (with a Frenchman whom he had 
 attempted to defraud), and shot through the lungs : 
 Thus verifying a favourite maxim of Lord Lilburne's, 
 viz. that it does not do, on the long run, for little men to 
 play the Great Game ! 
 
 On the same day that Blackwell returned, frustrated in 
 his half-and-half attempts to corrupt Mr. Jones, and not 
 having been able even to discover Mr. Smith, Mr. Bx>bert 
 Beaufort received notice of an Action for Ejectment to bo 
 brought by Philip Beaufort at the next Assizes. And, to 
 add to his afflictions, Arthur, whom he had hitherto 
 endeavoured to amuse by a sort of ambiguous shilly-shally 
 correspondence, became so alarmingly worse, that his 
 mother brought him up to town for advice. Lord Lilburne 
 was, of course, sent for ; and on learning all, his counsel 
 was prompt. 
 
 " I told you before that this man loves your daughter 
 See if you can effect a compromise. The law-suit will be 
 ugly, and probably ruinous. He has a right to claim six 
 years' arrears that is above 100,OOOZ. Make yourself his 
 father-in-law, and me his uncle-in- law ; and, since we 
 can't kill the wasp, we may at least soften the venom of 
 his sting." 
 
 Beaufort, still perplexed, irresolute, sought his son ; and, 
 for the first time, spoke to him frankly that is, frankly 
 for Robert Beaufort ! He owned that the copy of the 
 register had been found by Lilburne in a secret drawer. 
 He made the best of the story Lilburne himself furnished 
 him with (adhering, of course, to the assertion uttered or 
 insinuated to Philip) in regard to Fanny's abduction and
 
 462 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 interposition ; he said nothing of his attempt to destroy the 
 paper. Why should he ? By admitting the copy in court 
 if so advised he could get rid of Fanny's evidence 
 altogether; even without such concession, her evidence 
 might possibly be objected to or eluded. He confessed 
 that he feared the witness who copied the register and the 
 witness to the marriage were alive. And then he talked 
 pathetically of his desire to do what was right, his dread of 
 slander and misinterpretation. He said nothing of Sidney. 
 and his belief that Sidney and Charles Spencer were thft 
 same ; because, if his daughter were to be the instrument 
 for effecting a compromise, it was clear that her engage- 
 ment with Spencer must be cancelled and concealed. And 
 luckily Arthur's illness and Camilla's timidity, joined now 
 to her father's injunctions not to excite Arthur in his 
 present state with any additional causes of anxiety, 
 prevented the confidence that might otherwise have ensued 
 between the brother and sister. And Camilla, indeed, had 
 no heart for such a conference. How, when she looked on 
 Arthur's glassy eye, and listened to his hectic cough, could 
 she talk to him of love and marriage? As to the 
 automaton, Mrs. Beaufort, Robert made sure of her 
 discretion. 
 
 Arthur listened attentively to his father's communication, 
 and the result of that interview was the following letter 
 from Arthur to his cousin : 
 
 " I write to you without fear of misconstruction ; for I 
 write to you unknown to all my family, and I am the only 
 one of them who can have no personal interest in the 
 struggle about to take place between my father and your- 
 self. Before the law can decide between you, I shall be 
 in my grave. I write this from the Bed of Death. Philip, 
 I write this J, who stood beside a deathbed more sacred 
 to you than mine I, who received your mother's last sigh. 
 And with that sigh there was a smile that lasted when the 
 sigh was gone : for I promised to befriend her children. 
 Heaven knows how anxiously I sought to fulfil that solemn 
 vow ! Feeble and sick myself, I followed you and your 
 brother with no aim, no prayer, but this, to embrace you 
 and say, ' Accept a new brother in me.' I spare you the 
 humiliation, for it is yours not mine, of recalling what 
 passed between us when at last we met. Yet, I still sought 
 to save, at least, Sidney, more especially confided to my
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 46S 
 
 care by his dying mother. He mysteriously eluded OUT 
 Bearch ; but we had reason, by a letter received from some 
 unknown hand, to believe him saved and provided for. 
 Again I met you at Paris. I saw you were poor. Judging 
 from your associate, I might with justice think you 
 depraved. Mindful of your declaration never to accept 
 bounty fr< m a Beaufort, and remembering with natural 
 resentment the outrage I had before received from you, I 
 judged it vain to seek and remonstrate with you, but I did 
 not judge it vain to aid. I sent you, anonymously, what 
 at least would suffice, if absolute poverty had subjected 
 you to evil courses, to rescue you from them if your heart 
 were so disposed. Perhaps that sum, trifling as it was, 
 may have smoothed your path and assisted your career. 
 And why tell you all this now ? To dissuade from assert- 
 ing rights you conceive to be just ? Heaven forbid ! If 
 justice is with you, so also is the duty due to your mother's 
 name. But simply for this : that in asserting such rights, 
 you content yourself with justice, not revenge that in 
 righting yourself, you do not wrong others. If the law 
 should decide for you, the arrears you could demand would 
 leave my father and sister beggars. This may be law it 
 would not be justice ; for my father solemnly believed him- 
 self, and had every apparent probability in his favour, the 
 true heir of the wealth that devolved upon him. This is 
 not all. There may be circumstances connected with the 
 discovery of a certain document that, if authentic, and 
 I do not presume to question it, may decide the contest so 
 far as it rests on truth ; circumstances which might seem 
 to bear hard upon my father's good name and faith. I do 
 not know sufficiently of law to say how far these could be 
 publicly urged, or, if urged, exaggerated and tortured by 
 an advocate's calumnious ingenuity. But again, I say, 
 justice, and not revenge ! And with this I conclude, 
 enclosing to you these lines, written in your own hand, and 
 leaving you the arbiter of their value. 
 
 " ARTHUR BEAUFORT." 
 
 The lines enclosed were these, a second time placed 
 before the reader : 
 
 " I cannot guess who you are. They say that you call 
 yourself a relation ; that must be some mistake. I knew
 
 4-64 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 not that my poor mother had relations so kind. But, whc* 
 ever you be, you soothed her last hours she died in you, 
 arms ; and if ever years, long years, hence we should 
 chance to meet, and I can do anything to aid another, my 
 blood, and my life, and my heart, and my soul, all are 
 slaves to your "will ! If you be really of her kindred, I 
 
 commend to you my brother; he is at with Mi 
 
 Morton. If you can serve him, my mother's soul will 
 watch over you as a guardian angel. As for me, I ask no 
 help from any one ; I go into the world, and will carve 
 out my own way. So much do I shrink from the thought 
 of charity from others, that I do not believe I could bless 
 you as I do now, if your kindness to me did not close with 
 the stone upon my mother's grave. 
 
 " PHILIP." 
 
 This letter was sent to the only address of Monsieur de 
 Vaudemont which the Beauforts knew, viz., his apartments 
 in town, and he did not receive it the day it was sent. 
 
 Meanwhile Arthur Beaufort's malady continued to gain 
 ground rapidly. His father, absorbed in his own more 
 selfish fears (though, at the first sight of Arthur, overcome 
 by the alteration of his appearance), had ceased to consider 
 his illness fatal. In fact, his affection for Arthur was 
 rather one of pride than love ; long absence had weakened 
 the ties of early custom. He prized him as an heir rather 
 than treasured him as a son. It almost seomed that, as 
 the Heritage was in danger, so the Heir became less dear : 
 this was only because he was less thought of. Poor Mrs. 
 Beaufort, yet but partially acquainted with the terrors of 
 her husband, still clung to hope for Arthur. Her affection 
 for him brought out from the depths of her cold and in- 
 significant character qualities that had never before been 
 apparent. She watched she nursed she tended him. 
 The fine lady was gone ; nothing but the mother was left 
 behind. 
 
 With a delicate constitution, and with an easy temper, 
 which yielded to the influence of companions inferior to 
 himself, except in bodily vigour and more sturdy will, 
 Arthur Beaufort had been ruined by prosperity. His 
 talents and acquirements, if not first-rate, at least far 
 above mediocrity, had only served to refine his tastes, not 
 to strengthen his mind. Hi" **uial>le impulses, his charm-
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 465 
 
 iug disposition, and sweet temper, had only served to make 
 him the dupe of the parasites that feasted on the lavish 
 heir. His heart, frittered away in the usual round of light 
 intrigues and hollow pleasures, had become too sated and 
 exhausted for the redeeming blessings of a deep and a . 
 noble love. He had so lived for Pleasure that he had 
 never known Happiness. His frame, broken by excesses 
 in which his better nature never took delight, he came 
 home to hear of ruin and to die ! 
 
 It was evening in the sick room. Arthur had risen 
 from the bed to which, for some days, he had voluntarily 
 taken, and was stretched on the sofa before the fire. 
 Camilla was leaning over him, keeping in the shade, that 
 he might not see the tears which she could not suppress. 
 His mother had been endeavouring to amuse him, as she 
 would have amused herself, by reading aloud one of the 
 light novels of the Hour ; novels that paint the life of the 
 higher classes as one gorgeous holyday. 
 
 " My dear mother," said the patient, querulously, " 1 
 have no interest in these false descriptions of the life I 
 have led. I know that life's worth. Ah ! had I been 
 trained to some employment, some profession ! had I 
 well it is weak to repine. Mother, tell me, you .have 
 seen Mons. de Vaudemont : is he strong and healthy ?" 
 
 " Yes ; too much so. He has not your elegance, dear 
 Arthur." 
 
 "And do you admire him, Camilla? Has no other 
 caught your heart or your fancy ? " 
 
 "My dear Arthur," interrupted Mrs. Beaufort, "you 
 forget that Camilla is scarcely out ; and of course a young 
 girl's affections, if she's well brought up, are regulated by 
 the experience of her parents. It is time to take the 
 medicine : it certainly agrees with you ; you have more 
 colour to-day, my dear, dear son." 
 
 While Mrs. Beaufort was pouring oat the medicine, the 
 door gently opened, and Mr. Robert Beaufort appeared ; 
 behind him there rose a taller and a statelier form, but 
 one which seemed more bent, more humbled, more agitated. 
 Beaufort advanced. Camilla looked up and turned pale. 
 The visitor escaped from Mr. Beaufort's grasp on his arm; 
 he came forward, trembling, he fell on his knees beside 
 Arthur, and seizing his hand, bent over it in silence: but 
 silence so stormy ! silence more impressive than all words :
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 his breast heaved, his whole frame shook. Arthur guessed 
 at once whom he saw, and bent down gently as if to raise 
 his visitor 
 
 " Oh ! Arthur ! Arthur ! " then cried Philip ; " forgive 
 me ! My mother's comforter my cousin: my brother ! 
 Oh ! brother, forgive me ! " 
 
 And as he half rose, Arthur stretched out his arms, and 
 Philip clasped him to his breast. 
 
 It is in vain to describe the different feelings that 
 agitated those who beheld ; the selfish congratulations of 
 Robert, mingled with a better and purer feeling ; the 
 stupor of the mother ; the emotions that she herself could 
 not unravel, which rooted Camilla to the spot. 
 
 " You own me, then, you own me ! " cried Philip. 
 " You accept the brotherhood that my mad passions once 
 rejected ! And you, too you, Camilla you who once 
 knelt by my side, under this very roof do you remember 
 me now ? Oh, Arthur ! that letter that letter ! yes, 
 indeed, that aid which I ascribed to any one rather than 
 k) yon made the date of a fairer fortune. I TP--JV have 
 owed to that aid the very fate that has preserved me till 
 now ; the very name which I have not discredited. No, 
 no ; do not think you can ask me a favour ; you can but 
 claim your due. Brother ! my dear brother ! " 
 
 CHAPTEE XVII. 
 
 " Warwick. Exceeding well! his cares are now all over." Heniy IV, 
 
 THE excitement of this interview soon overpowering 
 Arthur, Philip, in quitting the room with Mr. Beaufort, 
 asked a conference with that gentleman ; and they went 
 into the very parlour from which the rich man had once 
 threatened to expel the haggard suppliant. Philip glanced 
 round the room, and the whole scene came again before 
 him. After a pause, he thus began, 
 
 " Mr. Beaufort, let the Past be forgotten. We may 
 have need of mutual forgiveness, and I, who have so 
 wronged your noble son, am willing to suppose that I mis- 
 judged you. I cannot, it is true, forego this lawsuit." 
 
 Mr. Beaufort's face fell. 
 
 " I have no right to do BO. I wn the trustee of mj
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 467 
 
 father's honour and my mother's name : I must vindicate 
 both : I cannot forego this lawsuit. But when I once 
 bowed myself to enter your house then only with a hope, 
 tfhere now I have the certainty, of obtaining my heritage 
 it was with the resolve to bury in oblivion every senti 
 ment that would transgress the most temperate justice. 
 Now, I will do more. If the law decide against me, we 
 are as we were ; if with me, listen : I will leave you the 
 lands of Beaufort, for your life and your son's. I ask but 
 for me and for mine such a deduction from your wealth as 
 will enable me, should my brother be yet living, to provide 
 for him ; and (if you approve the choice, which out of 
 all earth I would desire to make) to give whatever belongs 
 to more refined or graceful existence than I myself care 
 for, to her whom I would call my wife. Robert Beau- 
 fort, in this room I once asked you to restore to me the 
 only being I then loved : I am now again your suppliant ; 
 and this time you have it in your power to grant my 
 prayer. Let Arthur be, in truth, my brother : give me, if 
 t prove myself, as I feel assured, entitled to hold the name 
 my father bore, give me your daughter as my wife ; give 
 me Camilla, and I will not envy you the lands I am will- 
 ing for myself to resign ; and if they pass to my children, 
 those children will be your daughter's ! " 
 
 The first impulse of Mr. Beaufort was to grasp the hand 
 held out to him ; to pour forth an incoherent torrent of 
 praise and protestation, of assurances that he could not 
 hear of such generosity, that what was right was right, 
 that he should be proud of such a son-in-law, and much 
 more to the same key. And in the midst of this, it sud- 
 denly occurred to Mr. Beaufort, that if Philip's case were 
 really as good as he said it was, he could not talk so coolly 
 of resigning the property it would secure him for the term 
 of a life (Mr. Beaufort thought of his own) so uncommonly 
 good, to say nothing of Arthur's. At this notion, he 
 thought it best not to commit himself too far ; drew in as 
 artfully as he could, until he could consult Lord Lilburne 
 and his lawyer ; and recollecting also that he had a great 
 deal to manage with respect to Camilla and her prior 
 attachment, he began to talk of his distress for Arthur, 
 of the necessity of waiting a little before Camilla was 
 spoken to, while so agitated about her brother, of the 
 exceedingly strong case which his lawyer advised him he 
 
 u fl 2
 
 468 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 possessed not but what lie would rather rest the matter 
 on justice than law and that if the law should be with 
 him, he would not the less (provided he did not force his 
 daughter's inclinations, of which, indeed, he had no fear) 
 be most happy to bestow her hand on his brother's nephew, 
 with such a portion as would be most handsome to all 
 parties. 
 
 It often happens to us in this world, that when we com( 
 with our heart in our hands to some person or other, 
 when we pour out some generous burst of feeling s 
 enthusiastic and self-sacrificing, that a bystander would call 
 us fool and Quixote ; it often, I say, happens to us, to find 
 our warm self suddenly thrown back upon our cold self ; 
 to discover that we are utterly uncomprehended, and that 
 the swine who would have munched up the acorn does not 
 know what to make of the peaii. That sudden ice which 
 then freezes over us, that supreme disgust and despair 
 almost of the whole world, which for the moment we con- 
 found with the one worldling they who have felt, may 
 reasonably ascribe to Philip. He listened to Mr. Beaufort 
 in ntter and contemptuous silence, and then replied only, 
 
 " Sir, at all events this is a question for law to decide. 
 If it decide as you think, it is for you to act ; if as I think, 
 it is for me. Till then I will speak to you no more of your 
 daughter, or my intentions. Meanwhile, all I ask is the 
 liberty to visit your son. I would not be banished from 
 his sick-room ! " 
 
 "My dear nephew ! " cried Mr. Beaufort, again alarmed, 
 * consider this house as your home." 
 
 Philip bowed and retreated to the door, followed obse- 
 quiously by his uncle. 
 
 It chanced that both Lord Lilburne and Mr. Blackwell 
 were of the same mind as to the course advisable for Mr. 
 Beaufort now to pursue. Lord Lilburne was not oidy 
 anxious to exchange a hostile litigation for an amicable law- 
 suit, but he was really eager to put the seal of relationship 
 upon any secret with regard to himself, that a man who 
 might inherit 20,OOOZ. a year a dead shot and a bold 
 tongue might think fit to disclose. This made him more 
 earnest than he otherwise might have been in advice as to 
 other people's aifairs. He spoke to Beaufort as a man of 
 the world to Blackwell as a lawyer. 
 
 " Pin the man down to his .creuerosity," said Lilbume,
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 469 
 
 H before lie gets the property. Possession makes a great 
 change in a man's value of money. After all, you can't 
 enjoy the property when you're dead : he gives it next to 
 Arthur, who is not married ; and if anything happen to 
 Arthur, poor fellow, why in devolving on your daughter's 
 husband and children, it goes in the light line. Pin him 
 down at once : get credit with the world for the most noble 
 and disinterested conduct, by letting your counsel state that 
 the instant you discovered the lost document, you wished 
 to throw no obstacle in the way of proving the marriage, 
 and that the only thing to consider is, if the marriage be 
 proved ; if so, you will be the first to rejoice, <fec. &c. You 
 know all that sort of humbug as well as any man ! " 
 
 Mr. Blackwell suggested the same advice, though in 
 different words after taking the opinions of three eminent 
 members of the bar ; those opinions, indeed, were not all 
 alike one was adverse to Mr. Robert Beaufort's chance of 
 success, one was doubtful of it, the third maintained that 
 he had nothing to fear from the action except, possibly, 
 the ill-natured construction of the world. Mr. Robert 
 Beaufort disliked the idea of the world's ill-nature, almost 
 as much as he did that of losing his property. And when 
 even this last and more encouraging authority, learning 
 privately from Mr. Blackwell, that Arthur's illness was of 
 a nature to terminate fatally, observed, " that a compromise 
 with a claimant, who was at all events Mr. Beaufort's 
 nephew, by which Mr. Beaufort could secure the enjoyment of 
 ehe estates to himself for life, and to his son for life also, should 
 not (whatever his probabilities of legal success) be hastily 
 rejected unless he had a peculiar affection for a very dis- 
 tent relation who, failing Mr. Beaufort's male issue and 
 Philip's claim, would be heir-at-law, but whose rights would 
 cease if Arthur liked to cut off the entail." Mr. Beaufort 
 at once decided. He had a personal dislike to that distant 
 heir-at-law ; he had a strong desire to retain the esteem of 
 the world ; he had an intimate conviction of the justice of 
 Philip's claim; he had a remorseful recollection of his 
 brother's generous kindness to himself ; he preferred to have 
 for his heir, in case of Arthur's decease, a nephew who 
 would marry his daughter, than a remote kinsman. And 
 should, after all, the lawsuit fail to prove Philip's right, he 
 was not sorry to have the estate in his own power by 
 Arthur's act in cutting off the entail. Brief; all these
 
 470 NIGHT AND MORNING, 
 
 reasons decided him. He saw Philip he spoke to Arthur 
 and all the preliminaries, as suggested above, were arranged 
 betweeii the parties. The entail was cut off, and Arthur 
 secretly prevailed upon his father, to whom, for the present, 
 the fee-simple thus belonged, to make a will, by which he 
 bequeathed the estates to Philip, without reference to the 
 question of his legitimacy. Mr. Beaufort felt his conscience 
 greatly eased after this action which, too, he could always 
 retract if he pleased ; and henceforth the lawsuit became 
 but a matter of form, so far as the property it involved was 
 concerned. 
 
 While these negociations went on, Arthur continued 
 gradually to decline. Philip was with him always. The 
 sufferer took a strange liking to this long-dreaded relation, 
 this man of iron frame and thews. In Philip there was so 
 much of life, that Arthur almost felt as if in his presence 
 itself there was an antagonism to death. And Camilla saw 
 thus her cousin, day by day, hour by hour, in that sick 
 chamber, lending himself, with the gentle tenderness of a 
 woman, to soften the pang, to arouse the weariness, to 
 cheer the dejection. Philip never spoke to her of love : 
 in such a scene that had been impossible. She over- 
 came in their mutual cares the embarrassment she had 
 before felt in his presence; whatever her other feelings, 
 she could not, at least, but be grateful to one so tender to 
 her brother. Three letters of Charles Spencer's had been, 
 in the afflictions of the house, only answered by a brief 
 line. She now took the occasion of a momentary and 
 delusive amelioration in Arthur's disease to write to him 
 more at length. She was carrying, as usual, the letter to 
 her mother, when Mr. Beaufort met her, and took the letter 
 from her hand. He looked embarrassed for a moment, and 
 bade her follow him into his study. It was then that 
 Camilla learned, for the first time, distinctly, the claims and 
 rights of her cousin ; then she learned also at what price 
 those rights were to be enforced with the least possible 
 injury to her father. Mr. Beaufort naturally put the caso 
 before her in the strongest point of the dilemma. He was 
 to be ruined utterly ruined ; a pauper, a beggar, if Camilla 
 did not save him. The master of his fate demanded his 
 daughter's hand. Habitually subservient to even a whim 
 of her parents, this intelligence, the entreaty, the command 
 with which it was accompanied, overwhelmed her. She
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 471 
 
 answered but by tears ; and Mr. Beaufort, assured of her 
 submission, left her, to consider of the tone of the letter he 
 himself should write to Mr. Spencer. He had sat down to 
 this very task when he was summoned to Arthur's room. 
 His son was suddenly taken worse : spasms that threatened 
 immediate danger, convulsed and exhausted him ; and when 
 these were allayed, he continued for three days so feeble 
 that Mr. Beaufort, his eyes now thoroughly opened to the 
 loss that awaited him, had no thoughts even for worldly 
 interests. 
 
 On the night of the third day, Philip, Robert Beaufort, 
 his wife, his daughter, were grouped round the death-bed 
 of Arthur. The sufferer had just wakened from sleep, and 
 he motioned to Philip to raise him. Mr. Beaufort started, 
 as by the dim light he saw his son in the arms of 
 Catherine's 1 and another Chamber of Death seemed, 
 shadow-like, to replace the one before him. Words, long 
 since uttered, knelled in his ear " There shall be a death- 
 bed yet beside which you shall see the spectre of her, now 
 so calm, rising for retribution from the grave ! " His blood 
 froze, his hair stood erect ; he cast a hurried, shrinking 
 glance round the twilight of the darkened room : and, with 
 a feeble cry, covered hi? white face with his trembling 
 hands ! But on Arthur's lips there was a serene smile ; he 
 turned his eyes from Philip to Camilla, and murmured, 
 " She will repay you ! " A pause, and the mother's shriek 
 rang through the room ! Robert Beaufort raised his face 
 from his hands His son was dead ! 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 ** Jul. And what reward do you propose ? 
 
 It must be my love." The DotMe Marriay. 
 
 WHILE these events, dark, hurried, and stormy, had 
 befallen the family of his betrothed, Sidney had continue*'' 
 his calm life by the banks of the lovely lake. After a 
 few weeks, his confidence in Camilla's fidelity overbore all 
 his apprehensions and forebodings. Her letters, though 
 constrained by the inspection to which they were submitted, 
 gave him inexpressible consolation and delight. He began, 
 however, early to fan.^y that there was a change in their
 
 472 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 tone. The letters seemed to shun the one subject to which 
 all others were as nought ; they turned rather upon the 
 guests assembled at Beaufort Court ; and why I know not, 
 for there was nothing in them to authorise jealousy the 
 /brief words devoted to Monsieur de Vaudemont filled him 
 with uneasy and terrible suspicion. He gave vent to these 
 feelings, as fully as he dared do, under the knowledge that 
 his letter would be seen ; and Camilla never again even 
 mentioned the name of Vaudemont. Then there was a 
 long pause ; then her brother's arrival and illness were 
 announced ; then, at intervals, but a few hurried lines ; 
 then a complete, long, dreadful silence; and lastly, with a 
 deep black border and a solemn black seal, came the 
 following letter from Mr. Beaufort : 
 
 " MY DEAR SIE, I have the unutterable grief to announce 
 to you and your worthy uncle the irreparable loss I have 
 sustained in the death of my only son. It is a month to- 
 day since he departed this life. He died, sir, as a Christian 
 should die humbly, penitently exaggerating the few 
 faults of his short life, but (and here the writer's 
 hypocrisy, though so natural to him was it, that he know 
 not that he was hypocritical ? fairly gave way before the 
 real and human anguish, for whirh there is no dictionary !) 
 but I cannot pursue this themu ! 
 
 " Slowly now awakening to the duties yet left me to dis- 
 charge, I cannot but be sensible of the material difference 
 in the prospects of my remaining child. Miss Beaufort is 
 how the heiress to an ancient name and a large fortune. 
 She subscribes with me to the necessity of consulting those 
 new considerations which so melancholy an event forces 
 upon her mind. The little fancy or liking (the 
 acquaintance was too short for more) that might naturally 
 spring up between two amiable young persons thrown 
 together in the country, must be banished from our 
 thoughts. As a friend, I shall be always happy to hear of 
 your welfare ; and should you ever think of a profession in 
 which I can serve you, you may command my utmost 
 interest and exertions. I know, my young friend, what 
 you will feel at first, and how disposed you will be to call 
 me mercenary and selfish. Heaven knows if that be really 
 my character! But at your age, impressions are easily 
 effaced ; and any experienced friend of the world will assure 
 you, that, in the altered circumstances of the case, T have
 
 NIGHT ANT MORNING. 47-1 
 
 no option. All intercourse and correspondence, of course, 
 cease with this letter, until, at least, we may all meet, 
 with no sentiments but those of friendship and esteem. 
 I desire my compliments to your worthy uncle, in which 
 Mrs. and Miss Beaufort join ; and I am sure you will bo 
 happy to hear that my wife and daughter, though still in 
 great affliction, have suffered less in health than I could 
 have ventured to anticipate. 
 
 " Believe me, dear Sir, 
 " Yours sincerely, 
 
 " ROBERT BEAUFORT." 
 " To C. SPENCER, Esq., Jan." 
 
 When Sidney received this letter, he was with Mf. 
 Spencer, and the latter read it over the young man's 
 shoulder, on which he leant affectionately. When they 
 came to the concluding words, Sidney turned round with 
 a vacant look and a hollow smile. "You see, Sir," he said, 
 "you see " 
 
 " My boy my son you bear this as you ought. Con- 
 tempt will soon efface " 
 
 Sidney started to his feet, and his whole countenance 
 was changed. 
 
 " Contempt! yes, for him! But for her she knows it 
 not^-she is no party to this I cannot believe it I will 
 
 not ! I I " and he rushed out of the room. He was 
 
 absent till nightfall, and when he returned, he endeavoured 
 to appear calm but it was in vain. 
 
 The next day brought him a letter from Camilla, written 
 unknown to her parents, short, it is true (confirming the 
 sentence of separation contained in her father's), and im- 
 ploring him not to reply to it, but still so full of gentle 
 and of sorrowful feeling, so evidently worded in the wish 
 to soften the anguish she inflicted, that it did more than 
 soothe it even administered hope. 
 
 Now, when Mr. Robert Beaufort had recovered the 
 ordinary tone of his mind, sufficiently to indite the letter 
 Sidney had just read, he had become fully sensible of the 
 necessity of concluding the marriage between Philip and 
 Camilla, before the publicity of the lawsuit. The action 
 for the ejectment could not take place before the ensuing 
 March or April. He would waive the ordinary etiquette 
 of time and mourning to arrange all before. Indeed b
 
 474 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 lived in hourly fear lest Philip should discover that he had 
 rival in his brother, and break off the marriage, with its 
 contingent advantages. The first announcement of such a 
 suit in the newspapers might reach the Spencers ; and il 
 the young man were, as he doubted not, Sidney Beaufort, 
 would necessarily bring him forward, and ensure the 
 dreaded explanation. Thus apprehensive and ever schem- 
 ing, Robert Beaufort spoke to Philip so much, and with 
 fiuch apparent feeling, of his wish to gratify, at the earliest 
 possible period, the last wish of his son, in the union now 
 arranged he spoke, with such seeming consideration and 
 good sense, of the avoidance of all scandal and misinter- 
 pretation in the suit itself, which suit a previous marriage 
 between the claimant and his daughter would show at 
 once to be of so amicable a nature, that Philip, ardently 
 in love as he was, could not but assent to any hastening of 
 his expected happiness compatible with decorum. As to 
 any previous publicity by way of newspaper comment, he 
 agreed with Mr. Beaufort in deprecating it. But then 
 came the question, What name was he to bear in the 
 interval ? 
 
 " As to that," said Philip, somewhat proudly, " when, 
 after my mother's suit in her own behalf, I persuaded her 
 not to bear the name of Beaufort, though her due and for 
 my own part, I prized her own modest name, which under 
 such dark appearances was in reality spotless as much as 
 the loftier one which you bear and my father bore ; so, I 
 shall not resume the name the law denies me till the law 
 restores it to me. Law alone can efface the wrong which 
 law has done me." 
 
 Mr. Beaufort was pleased with this reasoning (erroneous 
 though it was), and he now hoped that all would be safely 
 arranged. 
 
 That a girl so situated as Camilla, and of a character 
 not energetic or profound, but submissive, dutiful, and 
 timid, should yield to the arguments of her father, the 
 desire of her dying brother that she should not dare to 
 refuse to become the instrument of peace to a divided 
 family, the saving sacrifice to her father's endangered for- 
 tunes that, in fine, when, nearly a month after Arthur's 
 death, her father, leading her into the room where Philip 
 waited her footstep with a beating heart, placed her hand 
 faj his and Philip falling on his knees said, " May I hope
 
 NIGHT AND MORNltfG. 475 
 
 to retain this hand for life ? " she should falter out such 
 words as he might construe into not reluctant acquiescence ; 
 that all this should happen is so natural that the reader is 
 already prepared for it. But still she thought with bitter 
 and remorseful feelings of him thus deliberately and faith- 
 lessly renounced. She felt how deeply he had loved her 
 *he knew how fearful would be his grief. She looked sad 
 And thoughtful ; but her brother's death was sufficient in 
 Philip's eyes to account for that. The praises and grati- 
 tude of her father, to whom she suddenly seemed to become 
 an object of even greater pride and affection than eve* 
 Arthur had been the comfort of a generous heart, thaf 
 takes pleasure in the very sacrifice it makes the acquittal 
 z>f her conscience as to the motives of her conduct began, 
 however, to produce their effect. Nor, as she had lately 
 seen more of Philip, could she be insensible of his attach- 
 ment of his many noble qualities of the pride which 
 most women might have felt in his addresses, when his 
 rank was once made clear ; and as she had ever been of a 
 character more regulated by duty than passion, so one who 
 could have seen what was passing in her mind would have 
 had little fear for Philip's future happiness in her keeping 
 little fear but that, when once married to him, her affec- 
 tions would have gone along with her duties ; and that if 
 the first love were yet recalled, it would be with a sigh 
 due rather to some romantic recollection than some con- 
 tinued regret. Few of either sex are ever united to their 
 first love ; yet married people jog on, and call each other 
 "my dear" and "my darling" all the same! It might 
 be, it is true, that Philip would be scarcely loved with the 
 intenseness%ith which he loved; but if Camilla's feelings 
 were capable of corresponding to the ardent and impas- 
 sioned ones of that strong and vehement nature such 
 feelings were not yet developed in her : The heart of the 
 woman might still be half concealed in the vale of the 
 virgin innocence. Philip himself was satisfied he believed 
 that he was beloved : for it is the property of love, in a 
 large and noble heart, to reflect itself, and to see its own 
 image in the eyes on which it looks. As the Poet gives 
 ideal beauty and excellence to some ordinary child of Eve, 
 worshipping less the being that is than the being he 
 imagines and conceives so Love, which makes us all 
 poets for awhile, throws itp own divine light over a heart
 
 476 BT1GHT AND MORNING. 
 
 perhaps really cold; and becomes dazzled into the joy of a 
 false belief by the very lustre with which it surrounds its 
 object. 
 
 The more, however, Camilla saw of Philip, the more 
 gradually overcoming her former mysterious and super- 
 stitious awe of him) she grew familarised to his peculiar 
 cast of character and thought ; so the more she began to 
 distrust her father's assertion, that he had insisted on her 
 hand as a price a bargain an equivalent for the sacrifice 
 of a dire revenge. And with this thought carr.e another. 
 Was she worthy of this man ? was she not deceiving 
 him ? ought she not to say, at least, that she had known a 
 previous attachment, however determined she might be to 
 subdue it ? Often the desire for this just and hc-aourable 
 confession trembled on her lips, and as often was it checked 
 by some chance circumstance or some maiden fear. De- 
 spite their connexion, there was not yet between them that 
 delicious intimacy which ought to accompany the affiance 
 of two hearts and souls. The gloom of the house ; the 
 restraint on the very language of love imposed by a death 
 so recent, and so deplored, accounted in much for this 
 reserve. And for the rest, Robert Beaufort prudently left 
 them very few and very brief opportunities to be alone. 
 
 In the meantime, Philip (now persuaded that the Beau- 
 forts were ignorant of his brother's fate) had set Mr. 
 Barlow's activity in search of Sidney ; and his painful 
 anxiety to discover one so dear and so mysteriously lost, 
 was the only cause of uneasiness apparent in the brighten, 
 ing Future. While these researches, hitherto fruitless, 
 were being made, it so happened, as London began now to 
 refill, and gossip began now to revive, that a report got 
 abroad, no one knew how (probably from the servants) 
 that Monsieur de Vaudemont, a distinguished French 
 officer, was shortly to lead the daughter and sole heiress of 
 Robert Beaufort, Esq., M.P., to the hymeneal altar ; and 
 that report very quickly found its way into the London 
 papers : from the London papers it spread to the Provin- 
 cial it reached the eyes of Sidney in his now gloomy and 
 despairing solitude. Tho day that he read it, he disap- 
 peared.
 
 NIGHT AND MORN1NU. 477 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 * Jul. .... Good lady, love him ! 
 You have a noble and a honest gentleman 
 I ever found him so. . 
 
 Love him no less than I have done, and serve him, 
 And Heaven shall bless you you shall bless my ashes." 
 
 BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER: The ^Double Marn.iye. 
 
 \9 r B have been too long absent from Fanny ; it is time to 
 return to her. The delight she experienced when Philip 
 made her understand all the benefits, the blessings, that 
 her courage, nay, her intellect, had bestoAved upon him, the 
 blushing ecstasy with which she heard (as they returned 
 
 to H , the eventful morning of her deliverance, side by 
 
 side, her hand clasped in his, and often pressed to his grate- 
 ful lips) his praises, his thanks, his fear for her safety, his 
 joy at regaining her all this amounted to a bliss, which, 
 till then, she could not have conceived that life was capable 
 
 of bestowing. And when he left her at H , to hurry to 
 
 his lawyer's with the recovered document, it was but for 
 an hour. He returned and did not quit her for several 
 days. And in that time he became sensible of her astonish- 
 ing, and, to him, it seemed miraculous, improvement in 
 all that renders Mind the equal to Mind ; miraculous, for 
 he guessed not the Influence that makes miracles its com- 
 monplace. And now he listened attentively to her when 
 she conversed ; he read with her (though reading was never 
 much in his vocation), his unfastidious ear was charmed 
 with her voice, when it sang those simple songs ; and his 
 manner (impressed alike by gratitude for the signal service 
 rendered to him, and by the discovery that Fanny was no 
 longer a child, whether in mind or years), though not less 
 gentle than before, was less familiar, less superior, more 
 respectful, and more earnest. It was a change which raised 
 her in her own self-esteem. Ah, those were rosy days for 
 Fanny! 
 
 A less sagacious judge of character than Lilburne would 
 have formed doubts perhaps of the nature of Philip's 
 interest in Fanny. But he comprehended at once the fra- 
 ternal interest which a man like Philip might well take iu 
 a creature like Fanny, if commended to his care by a pro- 
 tector whose doom was so awful as that which had en-
 
 478 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 gulfed the life of William Gawtrey. Lilburne had some 
 thoughts at first of claiming her, but as he had no power 
 to compel her residence with him, he did not wish, on con- 
 sideration, to come again in contact with Philip upon 
 ground so full of humbling recollections as that still over- 
 shadowed by the images of Gawtrey and Mary. He con- 
 tented himf elf with writing an artful letter to Simon, stating 
 that from Fanny's residence with Mr. Gawtrey, and from 
 her likeness to her mother, whom he had only seen as a 
 child, he had conjectured the relationship she bore to him- 
 self ; and having obtained other evidence of that fact (he 
 did not say what or where), he had not scrupled to remove 
 her to his roof, meaning to explain all to Mr. Simon Gawtrey 
 the next day. This letter was accompanied by one from a 
 lawyer, informing Simon Gawtrey that Lord Lilburne would 
 pay 200Z. a year, in quarterly payments, to his order ; and 
 that he was requested to add, that when the young lady he 
 had so benevolently reared came of age, or married, an 
 adequate provision would be made for her. Simon's mind 
 blazed up at this last intelligence, when read to him, though 
 he neither comprehended nor sought to know why Lord 
 Lilburne should be so generous, or what that noble person's 
 letter to himself was intended to convey. For two days, 
 he seemed restored to vigorous sense ; but when he had 
 once clutched the first payment made in advance, the 
 touch of the money seemed to numb him back to his 
 lethargy ; the excitement of desire died in the dull sense of 
 possession. 
 
 And just at that time Fanny's happiness came to a close. 
 Philip received Arthur Beaufort's letter ; and now ensued 
 long and frequent absences ; and on his return, for about 
 an hour or so at a time, he spoke of sorrow and death ; 
 and the books were closed and the songs silenced. All 
 fear for Fanny's safety was, of course, over ; all necessity 
 for her work ; their little establishment was increased. 
 She never stirred out without Sarah ; yet she would rather 
 that there had been some danger on her account for him 
 to guard against, or some trial that h^ smile might soothe. 
 His prolonged absences began to prey upon her the books 
 ceased to interest no study filled up the dreary gap her 
 step grew listless her cheek pale she was sensible at last 
 that his presence had become necessary to her very life. 
 One day, he came tc the house earlier tV><*~ ^snal, and with
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 479 
 
 & much happier and serener expression of countenance 
 than he had worn of late. 
 
 Simon was dozing in his chair, with his old dog, now 
 scarce vigorous enough to bark, curled up at his feet. 
 Neither man nor dog was more as a witness to what was 
 spoken than the leathern chair, or the hearth-rug on which 
 they severally reposed. 
 
 There was something which, in actual life, greatly con- 
 tributed to the interest of Fanny's strange lot, but which, 
 in narration, I feel I cannot make sufficiently clear to the 
 reader. And this was her connexion and residence with 
 that old man. Her character forming, as his was com- 
 pletely gone ; here, the blank becoming filled there, the 
 page fading to a blank. It was the utter, total Deathli- 
 ness-in-Life of Simon, that, while so impressive to see, 
 renders it impossible to bring him before the reader, in his 
 full force of contrast to the young Psyche. He seldom 
 spoke often, not from morning till night ; he now seldom 
 stirred. It is in vain to describe the indescribable : let the 
 reader draw the picture for himself. And whenever (as I 
 sometimes think he will, after he has closed this book) he 
 conjures up the idea he attaches to the name of its heroine, 
 let him see before her, as she glides through the humble 
 room as she listens to the voice of him she loves as she 
 sits musing by the window, with the church spire just 
 nsible as day by day the soul brightens and expands 
 \rithin her still let the reader see within the same walls, 
 grey-haired, blind, dull to all feeling, frozen to all lif e, that 
 stony image o Time and Death ! Perhaps then he may 
 understand why they who beheld the real and the living 
 Fanny blooming under that chill and mass of shadow, felt 
 that her grace, her simplicity, her charming beauty, were 
 raised by the contrast, till they grew associated with 
 thoughts and images, mysterious and profound, belonging 
 not more to the lovely than to the sublime. 
 
 So there sat the old man ; and Philip, though aware of 
 his presence speaking as if he were alone with Fanny, 
 after touching on more casual topics, thus addressed 
 her: 
 
 " My true and my dear friend, it is to you that I shall 
 owe, not only my rights and fortune, but the vindication 
 of my mother's m emory. You have not only placed 
 flowers upon that grave-stone- **ut it is owing to
 
 480 NIGHT AND MUKNING. 
 
 under providence, that it will be inscribed at last with the 
 Kame which refutes all calumny. Young and innocent as 
 you now are, my gentle and beloved benefactress, you can- 
 not as yet know what a blessing it will be to me to engrave 
 that name upon that simple stone. Hereafter, when you 
 yourself are a wife, a mother, you will comprehend tho 
 service you have rendered to the living and the dead ! " 
 
 He stopped struggling with the rush of emotions that 
 overflowed his heart. Alas, THE DEAD ! what service can 
 we render to them ? what availed it now, either to the 
 dust below, or to the immortality above, that the fools and 
 knaves of this world should mention the Catherine whose 
 life was gone, whose ears were deaf, with more or less 
 respect ? There is in calumny that poison that, even 
 when the character throws off the slander, the heart 
 remains diseased beneath the effect. They say that truth 
 comes sooner or later ; but it seldom comes before the 
 soul, passing from agony to contempt, has grown callous 
 to men's judgments. Calumniate a human being in youth 
 adulate that being in age ; what has been the interval ?. 
 Will the adulation atone either for the torture, or the 
 hardness which the torture leaves at last ? And if, as in 
 Catherine's case, (a case, how common !) the truth come 
 too late if the tomb is closed if the heart you have 
 wrung can be wrung no more why the truth is as value- 
 less as the epitaph on a forgotten Name ! Some such con- 
 viction of the hollowness of his own words, when he spoke 
 of service to the dead, smote upon Philip's heart, and 
 stopped the flow of his words. 
 
 Fanny, conscious only of his praise, his thanks, and the 
 tender affection of his voice, stood still silent her eyes 
 downcast, her breast heaving. 
 
 Philip resumed, 
 
 " And now, Fanny, my honoured sister, I would thank 
 you for more, were it possible, even than this. I shall owe 
 to you not only name and fortune, but happiness. It is 
 from the rights to which you have assisted me, and which 
 will shortly be made clear, that I am enabled to demand a 
 hand I have long coveted the hand of one as dear to me 
 as you are. In a word, the time has, this day, been fixed, 
 when I shall have a home to offer to you and to this old man 
 when I can present to you a sister who will prize you a.s 
 I do : for I love you BO dearlv I owe you so much that
 
 NIGHT ANT) MORNING. 4- SI 
 
 even that home would lose half its smiles if you were not 
 there. Do you understand me, Fanny? The sister I 
 speak of will be my wife ! " 
 
 The poor girl who heard this speech of most cruel ten- 
 derness, did not fall, or faint, or evince any outward 
 emotion, except in a deadly paleness. She seemed like 
 one turned to stone. Her very breath forsook her for 
 some moments, and then came back with a long deep sigh. 
 She laid her hand lightly upon his arm, and said 
 calmly, 
 
 " Yes I understand we once saw a wedding You 
 are to be married I shall see yours ! " 
 
 " You shall ; and, later, perhaps, I may see your own. 
 I have a brother. Ah ! if I could but find him younger 
 than I am beautiful almost as you ! " 
 
 " You will be happy," said Fanny, sti 11 Calmly. 
 
 " I have long placed my hopes of happiness in such an 
 union ! Stay, where are you going ? " 
 
 " To pray for you, said Fanny, with a smile, in which 
 there was something of the old vacancy, and she walked 
 gently from the room. Philip followed her with moistened 
 eyes. Her manner might have deceived one more vain. 
 He soon after quitted the house, and returned to town. 
 
 Three hours after, Sarah found Fanny stretched on the 
 floor of her own room so still so white that, for some 
 moments, the old woman thought life was gone. She 
 recovered, however, by degrees; and, after putting her 
 hands to her eyes, and muttering some moments, seemed 
 much as usual, except that she was more silent, and that 
 her lips remained colonrless, and her hands cold like 
 atone. 
 
 CHAPTEE XX. 
 
 " Tee. Te see what follows. 
 Dtike.O gentle sir ! this shape again ! " The 
 
 THAT evening Sidney Beaufort arrived in London. It i* 
 *te nature of solitude to make the passions calm on the 
 surface agitated in the deeps. Sidney had placed his 
 whole existence in one object. When the letter arrived that 
 told him to hope no more, he was at first rather sensible at 
 
 i i
 
 482 rflGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 the terrible and dismal blank the " void abyss " to which 
 all his future was suddenly changed, than roused to vehe- 
 ment and turbulent emotion. But Camilla's letter had, aa 
 we have seen, raised his courage and animated his heart. 
 To the idea of her faith he still clung with the instinct of 
 hope in the midst of despair. The tidings that she was 
 absolutely betrothed to another, and in so short a time since 
 her rejection of him, let loose from all restraint his darkey 
 and more tempestuous passions. In a state of mind border- 
 ing upon frenzy, he hurried to London to seek her to see 
 her ; with what intent what hope, if hope there were he 
 himself could scarcely tell. But what man who has loved 
 with fervour and trust, will be contented to receive the 
 sentence of eternal separation except from the very lips of 
 the one thus worshipped and thus forsworn ? 
 
 T.^e day had been intensely cold. Towards evening the 
 snov> fell fast and heavily. Sidney had not, since a child, 
 been before in London; and the immense City, covered 
 with a wintry and icy mist, through which the hurrying 
 passengers and the slow-moving vehicles passed, spectre- 
 like, along the dismal and slippery streets opened to the 
 stranger no hospitable arms. He knew not a step of the 
 way he was pushed to and fro his scarce intelligible 
 questions impatiently answered the snow covered him 
 the frost pierced to his veins. At length a man, more 
 kindly than the rest, seeing that he was a stranger to Lon- 
 don, procured him a hackney-coach, and directed the driver 
 fco the distant quarter of Berkeley Square. The snow 
 balled under the hoofs of the horses the groaning vehicle 
 proceeded at the pace of a hearse. At length, and after a 
 period of such suspense, and such emotion, as Sidney never 
 in after-life could recall without a shudder, the coach 
 stopped the benumbed driver heavily descended the 
 sound of the knocker knelled loud through the muffled air 
 and the light from Mr. Beaufort's hall glared full upon 
 the dizzy eyes of the visitor. He pushed aside the porter, 
 and sprung into the hall. Luckily, one of the footmen 
 who had attended Mrs. Beaufort to the lakes recognised 
 him ; and, in answer to his breathless inquiry, said, 
 
 "Why, indeed, Mr. Spencer, Miss Beaufort is at home- 
 upstairs in the drawing-room, with master and mistress. 
 and Monsieur de Vaudemont ; but " 
 
 Sidney waited no more. He bounded up the stairs he
 
 NTOHT AND MORNING. 483 
 
 opened the first door that presented itself to him, and burst, 
 unannounced and unlocked for, upon the eyes of the group 
 seated within. He saw not the terrified start of Mr. Robert 
 Beaufort he heeded not the faint, nervous exclamation of 
 ftie mother he caught not the dark and wondering glance 
 of the stranger seated beside Camilla he saw but Camilla 
 herself, and in a moment he was at her feet. 
 
 " Camilla, I am here ! I, who love yon so I, who have 
 nothing in the world but you ! I am here to learn from 
 you, and you alone, if I am indeed abandoned if you are 
 indeed to be another's ! " 
 
 He had dashed his hat from his brow as he sprang for- 
 ward ; his long fair hair, damp with the snows, fell dis- 
 ordered over his forehead ; his eyes were fixed, as for life 
 and death, upon the pale face and trembling lips of Camilla. 
 Robert Beaufort, in great alarm, and well aware of the 
 fierce temper of Philip, anticipative of some rash and violent 
 impulse, turned his glance upon his destined son-in-law. 
 But there was no angry pride in the countenance he there 
 beheld. Philip had risen, but his frame was bent his 
 knees knocked together his lips were parted his eyes 
 were staring full upon the face of the kneeling man. 
 
 Suddenly Camilla, sharing her father's fear, herself half 
 rose, and with an unconscious pathos, stretched one hand, 
 as if to shelter, over Sidney's head, and looked to Philip. 
 Sidney's eyes followed hers. He sprang to his feet. 
 
 " What, then, it is true ! And this is the man for whom 
 I am abandoned ! But unless you you, with your own 
 lips, tell me that yon love me no more that you love an- 
 other I will not yield yon but with life." 
 
 He stalked sternly and impetuously up to Philip, who re- 
 coiled as his rival advanced. The characters of the two 
 men seemed suddenly changed. The timid dreamer seemed 
 dilated into the fearless soldier. The soldier seemed shrink- 
 ing quailing into nameless terror. Sidney grasped that 
 strong arm, as Philip still retreated, with his slight and 
 delicate fingers, grasped it with violence and menace ; and 
 frowning into the face from which the swarthy blood was 
 Beared away, said, in a hollow whisper, 
 
 " Do yon hear me ? Do you comprehend me ? I say, 
 that she shall not be forced into a marriage at which I yet 
 believe her heart rebels. My claim is holier than yours. 
 Renounce her, or win her but with my blood." 
 
 I I 2
 
 434 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 Philip did not apparently hear the words thus addressed 
 to him. His whole senses seemed absorbed in the one sensa 
 of sight. He continued to gaze upon the speaker, till his 
 eye dropped on the hand that yet griped his arm. And as 
 he thus looked, he uttered an inarticulate cry. He caught 
 the hand in his own, and pointed to a ring on the finger, 
 but remained speechless. Mr. Beaufort approached, and 
 began some stammered words of soothing to Sidney, but 
 Philip motioned him to be silent, and at last, as if by a 
 violent effort, gasped forth, not to Sidney, but to Beau- 
 fort, 
 
 " His name ? his name ? " 
 
 "It is Mr. Spencer Mr. Charles Spencer," cried Beau- 
 fort. " Listen to me, I will explain afl I " 
 
 " Hush, hush! " cried Philip ; and turning to Sidney, he 
 put his hand on his shoulder, and looking him full in the 
 face, said, 
 
 " Have you not known another name ? Are you not 
 yes, it is so it is it is ! Follow me follow ! " 
 
 And still retaining his grasp, and leading Sidney, who 
 was now subdued, awed, and a prey to new and wild sus- 
 picions, he moved on gently, stride by stride his eyes 
 fixed on that fair face his lips muttering till the closing 
 door shut both forms from the eyes of the three there 
 left. 
 
 It was the adjoining room into which Philip led his rival. 
 It was lit but by a small reading lamp, and the bright, 
 steady blaze of the fire ; and by this light they both con- 
 tinued to gaze on each other, as if spell-bound, in complete 
 silence. At last Philip, by an irresistible impulse, fell upou 
 Sidney's bosom, and clasping him with convulsive energy, 
 gasped out, 
 
 " Sidney ! Sidney ! my mother's son ! " 
 
 " What ! " exclaimed Sidney, struggling from the em- 
 brace, and at last freeing himself ; " it is you, then ! you, 
 my own brother ! You, who have been hitherto the thorn 
 in my path, the cloud in my fate ! You, who are now come 
 to make me a wretch for life ! I love that woman, and you 
 tear her from me ! You, who subjected my infancy to hard- 
 ship, and, but for Providence, might have degraded my 
 youth, by your example, into shame and guilt ! " 
 
 " Forbear ! forbear ! " cried Philip, with a voice so shrill 
 hi its agony, that it smote the hearts of those in the adjoin-
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 485 
 
 mg chamber like the shriek of some despairing soul. They 
 looked at each other, but not one had the courage to breat 
 upon the interview. 
 
 Sidney himself was appalled by the sound. He threw 
 himself on a seat, and, overcome by passions so new to him, 
 oy excitement so strange, hid his face, and sobbed as a 
 child. 
 
 Philip walked rapidly to and fro the room for some 
 moments; at length he paused opposite to Sidney, and 
 said, with the deep calmness of a wronged and goaded 
 spirit, 
 
 " Sidney Beaufort, hear me ! When my mother died, she 
 confided you to my care, my love, and my protection. In 
 the last lines that her hand traced, she bade me think less 
 of myself than of you ; to be to you as a father as well as 
 brother. The hour that I read that letter I fell on my 
 knees, and vowed that I would fulfil that injunction that 
 I would sacrifice my very self, if I could give fortune or 
 happinefs to you. And this not for your sake alone, Sidney; 
 no! but as my mother our wronged, our belied, our 
 
 broken-hearted mother! Sidney, Sidney! have you 
 
 no tears for her, too ? " He passed his hand over his 
 own eyes for a moment, and resumed: "But as our 
 mother, in that last letter, said to me, ' let my love pass into 
 your breast for him,' so, Sidney, so, in all that I could do 
 for you, I fancied that my mother's smile looked down upon 
 me, and that in serving you it was my mother whom I 
 obeyed. Perhaps, hereafter, Sidney, when we talk over 
 that period ol my earlier life when I worked for you, when 
 the degradation you speak of (there was no crime in it !) 
 was borne cheerfully for your sake, and yours the holiday 
 though mine the task perhaps, hereafter, you will do me 
 more justice. You left me, or were reft from me, and I gave 
 all the little fortune that my mother had bequeathed us, to 
 get some tidings from you. I received your letter that 
 bitter letter and I cared not then that I was a beggar, 
 since I was alone. Tou talk of what I have cost you you 
 
 talk ! and you now ask me to to merciful Heaven ! 
 
 ^et me understand you do you love Camilla ? Does she 
 love you? Speak speak explain what new agony 
 awaits me ? " 
 
 It was then that Sidney, affected and humbled, amidst 
 all his more selfish sorrows, by bis brother's language and
 
 486 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 manner, related, as succinctly as he could, the history of his 
 affection for Camilla, the circumstances of their engagement, 
 and ended by placing before him the letter he had received 
 From Mr. Beaufort. 
 
 In spite of all his efforts for self-control, Philip's anguish 
 was so great, so visible, that Sidney, after looking at his 
 working features, his trembling hands, for a moment, felt 
 all the earthlier parts of his nature melt in a flow of generous 
 sympathy and remorse. He flung himself on the breast 
 from which he had shrunk before, and cried, 
 
 " Brother, brother ! forgive me ; I see how I have 
 wronged you. If she has forgotten me, if she love you, 
 take her and be happy ! " 
 
 Philip returned his embrace, but without warmth, and 
 then moved away ; and, again, in great disorder, paced the 
 room. His brother only heard disjointed exclamations that 
 seemed to escape him unawares : " They said she loved me ! 
 Heaven give me strength ! Mother mother ! let me fulfil 
 my vow ! Oh, that I had died ere this ! " He stopped at 
 last, and the large dews rolled down his foienead 
 
 " Sidney ! " said he, " there is a mystery here that 1 
 comprehend not. But my mind now is very confused. If 
 she loves you if 1 is it possible for a woman to love tioo ? 
 Well, well, I go to solve the riddle : wait here ! " 
 
 He vanished into the next room, and for nearly half an 
 hour Sidney was alone. He heard through the partition 
 murmured voices ; he caught more clearly the sound of 
 Camilla's sobs. The particulars of that interview between 
 Philip and Camilla, alone at first (afterwards Mr. Robert 
 Beaufort was re-admitted), Philip never disclosed, nor 
 could Sidney himself ever obtain a clear account from Ca- 
 milla, who could not recall it, even years after, withoii.t 
 great emotion. But at last the door was opened, and Philip 
 entered, leading Camilla by the hand. His face was calm, 
 and there was a smile on his lips ; a greater dignity than 
 even that habitual to him was diffused over his whole per- 
 son. Camilla was holding her handkerchief to her eyes, 
 and weeping passionately. Mr. Beaufort followed them 
 with a mortified and slinking air. 
 
 " Sidney," said Philip, " it is past. All is arranged. 1 
 yield to your earlier, and therefore better, claim. Mr. Beau, 
 fort consents to your union. He will tell you, at some fitter 
 time, that our birthright is at last made clear, and that
 
 NIGHT AND MORNINCk 487 
 
 there is no blot on the name we shall hereafter bear 
 Sidney, embrace your bride I " 
 
 Amazed, delighted, and still half incredulous, Sidney 
 seized and kissed the hand of Camilla ; and as he then drew 
 her to his breast, she said, as she pointed to Philip, 
 
 " Oh ! if you do love me as you say, see in him the 
 
 generous, the noble " Fresh sobs broke off her speech, 
 
 but as Sidney sought again to take her hand, she whispered, 
 with a touching and womanly sentiment, " Ah ! respect 
 
 him : see ! " and Sidney, looking then at his brother, 
 
 saw, that though he still attempted to smile, his lip writhed, 
 and his features were drawn together, as one whose frame 
 is wrung by torture, but who struggles not to groan. 
 
 He flew to Philip, who, grasping his hand, held him back, 
 and said, 
 
 " I have fulfilled my vow ! I have given you up the only 
 blessing my life has known. Enough, you are happy, and 
 I shall be so too, when God pleases to soften this blow. 
 And now you must not wonder or blame me, if, though so 
 lately found, I leave you for awhile. Do me one kindness, 
 you Sidney you Mr. Beaufort. Let the marriage take 
 
 place at H , in the village church by which my mother 
 
 sleeps ; let it be delayed till the suit is terminated : by that 
 time I shall hope to meet you all to meet you, Camilla, as 
 I ought to meet my brother's wife ; till then, my presence 
 will not sadden your happiness. Do not seek to see me ; 
 do not expect to hear from me. Hist ! be silent, all of you ; 
 my heart is yet bruised and sore. O THOU," and here, 
 deepening his voice, he raised his arms, " Thou who hast 
 preserved my youth from such snares and such peril, whc 
 nast guided my steps from the abyss to which they wan- 
 dered, and beneath whose hand I now bow, grateful if 
 chastened, receive this offering, and bless that union' 
 Fare je welL"
 
 NIOHT AND MORNING. 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 Heaven's airs amid the harpstrings dwell, 
 
 And we wish they ne'er may fade ; 
 They cease ; and the soul is a silent cell, 
 
 Where music never played. 
 Dream follows dream through the long night-hours." 
 
 WILSON : The Past, a poem. 
 
 THE self-command which Philip had obtained for a 
 while, deserted him when he Avas without the house. His 
 mind felt broken up into chaos ; he hurried on, mechani 
 cally, on foot ; he passed street upon street, now solitary 
 and deserted, as the lamps gleamed upon the thick snow. 
 The city was left behind him. He paused not, till, breath- 
 less, and exhausted in spirit if not in frame, he reached the 
 churchyard where Catherine's dust reposed. The snow 
 had ceased to fall, but it lay deep over the graves ; the 
 yew-trees, clad in their white shrouds, gleamed ghost-like 
 through the dimness. Upon the rail that fenced the tomb 
 yet hung a wreath that Fanny's hand had placed there. 
 But the flowers were hid; it was a wreath of snow! 
 Through the intervals of the huge and still clouds, there 
 gleamed a few melancholy stars. The very calm of the 
 holy spot seemed unutterably sad. The Death of the year 
 overhung the Death of man. And as Philip bent over the 
 tomb, within and without all was ICE and NIGHT ! 
 
 For hours he remained on that spot, alone with his grief 
 and absorbed [in his prayer. Long past midnight Fanny 
 heard his step on the stairs, and the door of his chamber 
 close with unwonted violence. She heard, too, for some 
 time, his heavy tread on the floor, till suddenly all was 
 silent. The next morning, when, at the usual hour, Sarah 
 entered to unclose the shutters and light the fire, she was 
 startled by wild exclamations and wilder laughter. The 
 fever had mounted to the brain he was delirious. 
 
 For several weeks Philip Beaufort was in imminent 
 danger ; for a considerable part of that time he was un- 
 conscious ; and when the peril was past, his recovery was 
 elow and gradual. It was the only illness to which his 
 vigorous frame had ever been subjected : and the fever had 
 perhaps exhausted him more than it might have done one 
 in whose constitution the disease had encountered loss re-
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 489 
 
 Distance. His brother, imagining he had gone abroad, was 
 unacquainted with his danger. None tended his sick-bed 
 save the hireling nurse, the fee'd physician, and the un- 
 purchasable heart of the only being to whom the wealth 
 and rank of the Heir of Beaufort Court were as nothing. 
 Here was reserved for him Fate's crowning lesson, in the 
 vanity of those human wishes which anchor in gold and 
 power. For how many years had the exile and the outcast 
 pined indignantly for his birthright ! Lo ! it was won : 
 and with it came the crushed heart and the smitten frame. 
 As he slowly recovered sense and reasoning, these thoughts 
 struck him forcibly. He felt as if he were rightly punished 
 in having disdained, during his earlier youth, the enjoy- 
 ments within his reach. Was there nothing in the glorious 
 health the unconquerable hope the heart, if wrung, and 
 chafed, and sorely tried, free at least from t^,, direst 
 anguish of the passions, disappointed and jealous love ? 
 Though now certain, if spared to the future, to be rich, 
 powerful, righted in name and honour, might he not from 
 that sick-bed envy his earlier past ? even when with his 
 brother orphan he wandered through the solitary fields, 
 and felt with what energies we are gifted when we have 
 something to protect ; or when loving and beloved, he saw 
 life smile out to him in the eyes of Eugenie ; or when, 
 after that melancholy loss, he wrestled boldly, and breast 
 to breast with Fortune, in a far land, for honour and inde- 
 pendence ? There is something in severe illness, especially 
 if it be in violent contrast to the usual strength of the body, 
 which has often the most salutary effect upon the mind ; 
 which often, by the affliction of the frame, roughly wins us 
 from the too morbid pains of the heart ! which makes us 
 feel that, in mere LIFE, enjoyed as the robust enjoy it, God's 
 Great Principle of Good breathes and moves. We rise 
 thus from the sick-bed softened and humbled, and more 
 disposed to look around us for such blessings as we may 
 yet command. 
 
 The return of Philip, his danger, the necessity of ex- 
 ertion, of tending him, had roused Fanny from a state 
 which might otherwise have been permanently dangerous 
 to the intellect so lately ripened within her. With what 
 patience, with what fortitude, with what unutterable 
 thought and devotion, she fulfilled that best and holiest 
 woman's duty, let the man whose struggle with life and
 
 490 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 death has been blessed with the vigil that wakes and saves, 
 imagine to himself. And in all her anxiety and terror, she 
 had glimpses of a happiness which it seemed to her almost 
 criminal to acknowledge. For, even in his delirium, hei 
 voice seemed to have some soothing influence over him, 
 and he was calmer while she was by. And when at last he 
 was conscious, her face was the first he saw, and her name 
 the first which his lips uttered. As then he grew gradually 
 stronger, and the bed was deserted for the sofa, he took 
 more than the old pleasure in hearing her read to him; 
 which she did with a feeling that lecturers cannot teach. 
 And once, in a pause from this occupation, he spoke to her 
 frankly, he sketched his past history his last sacrifice. 
 And Fanny, as she wept, learned that he was no more 
 another's ! 
 
 It has been said that this man, naturally of an active 
 and impatient temperament, had been little accustomed to 
 seek those resources which are found in books. But some- 
 how in that sick chamber it was Fanny's voice the voice 
 of her over whose mind he had once so haughtily lamented, 
 that taught him how much of aid and solace the Herd of 
 Men derive from the Everlasting Genius of the Few. 
 
 Gradually, and interval by interval, moment by moment, 
 thus drawn together, all thought beyond shut out (for, 
 however crushing for the time the blow that had stricken 
 Philip from health and reason, he was not that slave to a 
 guilty fancy, that he could voluntarily indulge, that he 
 would not earnestly seek to shun all sentiments that 
 yet turned with unholy yearning towards the betrothed 
 >f his brother); gradually, I say, and slowly, camo 
 those progressive and delicious epochs which mark a re- 
 volution in the affectiona .- unspeakable gratitude, bro- 
 therly tenderness, the united strength of compassion and 
 respect that he had felt for Fanny seemed, as he gained 
 health, to mellow into feelings yet more exquisite and 
 deep. He could no longer delude himself with a vain 
 and imperious belief that it was a defective mind tha$ 
 his heart protected ; he began again to be sensible to 
 the rare beauty of that tender face more lovely, perhaps, 
 for the paleness that had replaced its bloom. The fanc^ 
 that he had so imperiously checked before before ho 
 saw Camilla, returned to him, and neither pride nor 
 honour had now the right to chase the soft wings away.
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 491 
 
 One evening, fancying himself alone, he fell into a profound 
 reverie ; he awoke with a start, and the exclamation, " Was 
 it true love that I ever felt for Camilla, or a passion, a 
 frenzy, a delusion ? " 
 
 His exclamation was answered by a sound that seemed 
 both of joy and grief. He looked up, and saw Fanny before 
 him ; the light of the moon, just risen, fell full on her 
 form, but her hands were clasped before her face ; he heard 
 her sob. 
 
 " Fanny, dear Fanny ! " he cried, and sought to throw 
 himself from the sofa to her feet. But she drew herself 
 away, and fled from the chamber silent as a dream. 
 
 Philip rose, and for the first time since his illness, walked, 
 but with feeble steps, to and fro the room. With what 
 different emotions from those in which last, in fierce and 
 intolerable agony, he had paced that narrow boundary ! 
 Returning health crept through his veins a serene, a kindly, 
 a celestial joy circumfused his heart. Had the time yet 
 come when the old Florimel had melted into snow ; when 
 the new and the true one, with its warm life, its tender 
 beauty, its maiden wealth of love, had risen before his 
 hopes? He paused before the window; the spot within 
 seemed so confined, the night without so calm and lovely, 
 that he forgot his still-clinging malady, and unclosed the 
 casement : the air came soft and fresh upon his temples, and 
 the church-tower and spire, for the first time, did not seem 
 to him to rise in gloom against the heavens. Even the 
 grave-stone of Catherine, half in moonlight, half in shadow, 
 appeared to him to wear a smile. His mother's memory 
 was become linked with the living Fanny. 
 
 " Thou art vindicated thy Sidney is happy," he mur- 
 mured : " to her the thanks ! " 
 
 Fair hopes, and soft thoughts busy within him, he re- 
 mained at the casement till the increasing chill warned him 
 of the danger he incurred. 
 
 The next day, when the physician visited him, he found 
 the fever had returned. For many days, Philip was again 
 in danger dull, unconscious even of the step and voice of 
 Fanny. 
 
 He woke at last as from a long and profound sleep ; 
 woke so refreshed, so revived, that he felt at once that some 
 great crisis had been past, and that at length he had strug- 
 gled back to the sunny shores of Life.
 
 492 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 By his bedside sat Liancourt, who, long alarmed at his 
 disappearance, had at last contrived, with the help of Mr. 
 Barlow, to trace him to Gawtrey's house, and had for 
 several days taken share in the vigils of poor Fanny. 
 
 While he was yet explaining all this to Philip, and con- 
 gratulating him on his evident recovery, the physician 
 entered to confirm the congratulation. In a few days the 
 invalid was able to quit his room, and nothing but change 
 of air seemed necessary for his convalescence. It was then 
 that Liancourt, who had for two days seemed impatient to 
 unburden himself of some communication, thus addressed 
 him ; 
 
 " My dear friend, I have learned now your story from 
 barlow, who called several times during your relapse ; and 
 who is the more anxious about you, as the time for the 
 decision of your case now draws near. The sooner you quit 
 this house the better." 
 
 " Quit this house ! and why ? Is there not one in this 
 house to whom I owe my fortune and my life ? " 
 
 " Yes ; and for that reason I say, ' Go hence : ' it is the 
 only return you can make her." 
 
 " Pshaw ! speak intelligibly." 
 
 " I will," said Liancourt, gravely. " I have been a 
 watcher with her by your sick-bed, and I know what you 
 must feel already : nay, I must confess that even the old 
 servant has ventured to speak to me. You have inspired 
 that poor girl with feelings dangerous to her peace." 
 
 " Ha ! " 'cried Philip, with such joy that Liancourt 
 frowned, and said, "Hitherto I have believed you too 
 honourable to " 
 
 " So you think she loves me ? " interrupted Philip. 
 
 " Yes ; what then ? You, the heir of Beaufort Court, 
 of a rental of 20,OOOZ. a year, of an historical name, 
 you cannot marry this poor girl ? " 
 
 " Well ! I will consider what you say, and, at all events, 
 I will leave the house to attend the result of the trial. Let 
 us talk no more on the subject now." 
 
 Philip had the penetration to perceive that Liancourt, 
 who was greatly moved by the beauty, the innocence, and the 
 unprotected position of Fanny, had not confined caution to 
 himself ; that with his characteristic well-meaning blunt- 
 ness, and with the licence of a man somewhat advanced in 
 years, he had spoken to Fanny herself : for Fanny now
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 493 
 
 seemed to shun Philip, her eyes were heavy, her mannei 
 vas embarrassed. He saw the change, but it did not grieve 
 him ; he hailed the omens which he drew from it. 
 
 And at last he and Liancourt went. He was absent 
 three weeks, during which time the formality of the 
 friendly lawsuit was decided in the plaintiff's favour ; and 
 the public were in ecstacies at the noble and sublime con- 
 duct of Mr. Robert Beaufort: who, the moment he had 
 discovered a document which he might so easily have 
 buried for ever in oblivion, voluntarily agreed to dispossess 
 himself of estates he had so long enjoyed, preferring con- 
 science to lucre. Some persons observed that it was re- 
 ported that Mr. Philip Beaufort had also been generous 
 that he had agreed to give up the estates for his uncle's 
 life, and was only in the meanwhile to receive a fourth of 
 the revenues. But the universal comment was, " He could 
 not have done less ! " Mr. Robert Beaufort was, as Lord 
 Lilburne had once observed, a man who was born, made, 
 and reared to be spoken well of by the world ; and it was a 
 comfort to him now, poor man, to feel that his character 
 was so highly estimated. If Philip should live to the age 
 of one hundred, he will never become so respectable and 
 popular a man with the crowd as his worthy uncle. But 
 does it much matter ? 
 
 Philip returned to H the eve before the day fixed for 
 
 the marriage of his brother and Camilla. 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 NWCTOJ Atthipre KCU 'Kftepa ttfytvorro. * HES. 
 
 THE sun of early May shone cheerfully over the quiet 
 suburb of H - . In the thoroughfares life was astir. It 
 was the hour of noon the hour at which commerce is 
 busy, and streets are full. The old retired trader, eyeing 
 wistfully the rolling coach or the oft-pausing omnibus, was 
 breathing the fresh and scented air in the broadest and 
 most crowded road, from which, afar in the distance, rose 
 the spires of the metropolis. The boy let loose from the 
 day-school was hurrying home to dinner, his satchel on his 
 
 * From Night, Sunshine and Dry aroe .'
 
 494 NIGHT AND MORNINd. 
 
 back : the ballad-singer was sending her cracked whine 
 through the obscurer alleys, where the baker's boy, with 
 puddings on his tray, and the smart maid- servant, de- 
 spatched for porter, paused to listen. And round the shops 
 where cheap shawls and cottons tempted the female eye, 
 many a loitering girl detained her impatent mother, and 
 eyed the tickets and calculated her hard-gained savings for 
 the Sunday gear. And in the corners of the streets steamed 
 the itinerant kitchens of the pie-men, and rose the sharp 
 cry, "All hot! all hot !" in the ear of infant and ragged 
 hunger. And amidst them all rolled on some lazy coach of 
 ancient merchant or withered maiden, unconscious of any 
 life, but that creeping through their own languid veins. 
 And before the house in which Catherine died, there 
 loitered many stragglers, gossips of the hamlet, subscribers 
 to the news-room hard by, to guess, and speculate, and 
 wonder why, from the church behind, there rose the merry 
 peal of the marriage bell ! 
 
 At length along the broad road leading from the gi'eat 
 city, there were seen rapidly advancing three carriages of 
 a very different fashion from those familiar to the suburb. 
 On they came ; swiftly they whirled round the angle that 
 conducted to the church ; the hoofs of the gay steeds ring- 
 ing cheerily on the ground ; the white favours of the serv- 
 vants gleaming in the sun. Happy is the bride the sun 
 shines on ! And when the carriages had thus vanished, 
 ttie scattered groups melted into one crowd, and took their 
 way to the church. They stood idling without in the 
 burial-ground ; many of them round the fence that guarded 
 from their footsteps Catherine's lonely grave. All in na- 
 ture was glad, exhilirating, and yet serene ; a genial fresh- 
 ness breathed through the soft air ; not a cloud was to be 
 seen in the smiling azure ; even the old dark yews seemed 
 happy in their everlasting verdure. The bell ceased, and 
 then even the crowd grew silent ; and not a sound was 
 heard in that solemn spot to whose demesnes are conse- 
 crr.ted alike the Birth, the Marriage, and the Death. 
 
 At length there came forth from the church-door tha 
 goodly form of a rosy beadle. Approaching the groups. 
 he whispered the better- dressed and commanded the ragged, 
 remonstrated with the old, and lifted his cane against th 
 young : and the result of all was, that the churchyard, not 
 without many a murmur and expostulation, was cleared,
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 495 
 
 and the crowd fell back in the space behind the gates of 
 the principal entrance, where they swayed and gaped and 
 chattered round the carriages, which were to bear away 
 the bridal party. 
 
 Within the chm-ch, as the ceremony was now concluded, 
 Philip Beaufort conducted, hand-in-hand, silently along 
 the aisle, his brother's wife. 
 
 Leaning on his stick, his cold sneer upon his thin lip. 
 Lord Lilbnrne limped, step by step with the pair, though a 
 little apart from them, glancing from moment to moment 
 at the face of Philip Beaufort, where he had hoped to read 
 a grief that he could not detect. Lord Lilburne had carefully 
 refrained from an interview with Philip till that day, and 
 he now only came to the wedding as a surgeon goes to an 
 hospital to examine a disease he had been told would be 
 great and sore : he was disappointed. Close behind, fol- 
 lowed Sidney, radiant with joy, and bloom, and beauty ; 
 and his kind guardian, the tears rolling down his eyes, 
 murmured blessings as he looked upon him. Mrs. Beaufort 
 had declined attending the ceremony her nerves were too 
 weak but, behind, at a longer interval, came Robert Beau- 
 fort, sober, staid, collected as ever to outward seeming ; 
 but a close observer might have seen that his eye had lost 
 its habitual complacent cunning, that his step was more 
 heavy, his stoop more joyless. About his hair there was a 
 something crest-fallen. The consciousness of acres had 
 passed away from his portly presence : he was no longer a 
 possessor ; but a pensioner. The rich man, who had decided 
 as he pleased on the happiness of others, was a cipher ; he 
 had ceased to have any interest : .n anything. What to him 
 the marriage of his daughter now ? Her children would 
 not be the heirs of Beaufort. As Camilla kindly turned 
 round, and through iiappy tears waited for his approach, 
 to clasp his hand, he forced a smile, but it was sickly and 
 piteous. He longed to creep away, and be alone. 
 
 ' My father ! " said Camilla, in her sweet low voice ; and 
 she extricated herself from Philip, and threw herself on his 
 breast. 
 
 " She is a good child," said Robert Beaufort, vacantly 
 and, turning his dry eyes to the group, he caught instinc* 
 tively at his customary common- places ; " And a good 
 child, Mr. Sidney, makes a good wife ! " 
 
 The clergyman bowed as if the compliment were ad-
 
 496 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 dressed to himself: he was the only man there whom 
 Robert Beaufort could now deceive. 
 
 " My sister," said Philip Beaufort, as once more leaning 
 on his arm, they paused before the church-door, " may 
 Sidney love and prize you as as I would have done ; and 
 believe me, both of you, I have no regret, no memory, that 
 wounds me now." 
 
 He dropped the hand, and motioned to her father to lead 
 her to the carriage. Then winding his arm into Sidney's, 
 he said, 
 
 " Wait till they are gone : I have one word yet with you. 
 Gro on, gentlemen." 
 
 The clergyman bowed, and walked through the church- 
 yard. But Lilburne, pausing and surveying Philip Beau- 
 fort, said to him, whisperingly, 
 
 " And so much for feeling the folly ! So much for 
 generosity the delusion ! Happy man! " 
 
 " I am thoroughly happy, Lord Lilburne." 
 
 " Are you? Then, it was neither feeling nor generosity; 
 and we were taken in ! Good day." With tnat he limped 
 slowly to the gate. 
 
 Philip answered not the sarcasm even by a look. For, 
 at that moment, a loud shout was set up by the mob 
 without they had caught a glimpse of the bride. 
 
 " Come, Sidney, this way," he said ; " I must not detain 
 you long." 
 
 Arm in arm they passed out of the church, and turned 
 to the spot hard by, where the flowers smiled up to them 
 from the stone on their mother's grave. 
 
 The old inscription had been effaced, and the name of 
 CATHERINE BEAUFORT was placed upon the stone. 
 
 "Brother," said Philip, "do not forget this grave: 
 years hence, wh^n children play around your own hearth. 
 Observe, the name of Catherine Beaufort is fresher on the 
 stone than the dates of birth and death the name was 
 only inscribed there to-day your wedding-day. Brother, 
 by this grave we are now indeed united." 
 
 " Oh, Philip ! " cried Sidney, in deep emotion, clasping 
 the hand stretched out to him ; "I feel, I feel how noble, 
 how great you are that you have sacrificed more than 
 I dreamed of " 
 
 " Hush ! " said Philip, with a smile. " No talk of this.
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 497 
 
 I am happier than you deem me. Go back now she waits 
 you." 
 
 " And you ? leave you ! alone ! " 
 
 " ISTot alone," said Philip, pointing to the grave. 
 
 Scarce had he spoken when, from the gate, came the 
 shrill, clear voice of Lord Lilburne, 
 
 " We wait for Mr. Sidney Beaufort." 
 
 Sidney passed his hand over his eyes, wrung the hand of 
 his brother once more, and in a moment was by Camilla's 
 side. 
 
 Another shout the whirl of the wheels the tramping 
 of feet the distant hum and murmur and all was still. 
 
 The clerk returned to lock up the church he did not 
 observe where Philip stood in the shadow of the wall and 
 went home to talk of the gay wedding, and inquire at what 
 hour the funeral of a young woman, his next-door neigh- 
 bour, would take place the next day. 
 
 It might be a quarter of an hour after Philip was thus 
 left nor had he moved from the spot when he felt his 
 sleeve pulled gently. He turned round and saw before 
 him the wistful face of Fanny ! 
 
 " So you would not come to the wedding ? " said he. 
 
 " No. But I fancied you might be here alone and 
 sad." 
 
 " And you will not even wear the dress I gave you ? " 
 
 " Another time. Tell me, are you unhappy ? " 
 
 " Unhappy, Fanny ! No ; look around. The very 
 burial-ground has a smile. See the laburnums clustering 
 over the wall, listen to the birds on the dark yews above, 
 and yonder see even the butterfly has settled upon Tier 
 grave ! I am not unhappy." As he thus spoke he looked 
 at her| earnestly, and, taking both her hands in his, drew 
 her gently towards him, and continued : " Fanny, do you 
 remember, that, leaning over that gate, I once spoke to 
 you of the happiness of marriage where two hearts are 
 united ? Nay, Fanny, nay, I must go on. It was here in 
 this spot, it was here that I first saw you on my return to 
 England. I came to seek the dead, and I have thought 
 since, it was my mother's guardian spirit that drew me 
 hither to find you the living ! And often afterwards, 
 Fanny, you would come with me here, when, blinded and 
 dull as I was, I came to brood and to repine, insensible 
 of the treasures even then perhaps within my reaclu But,
 
 498 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 best as it was : the ordeal through which I have passed has 
 made me more grateful for the prize I now dare to hope 
 for. On this grave your hand daily renewed the flowers. 
 By this grave, the link between the Time and the Eternity, 
 whose lessons we have read together, will you consent 
 to record our vows ? Fanny, dearest, fairest, tenderest, 
 best, I love you, and at last as alone you slioidd be loved ! 
 I woo you as my wife ! Mine, not for a season, but for 
 ever for ever, even when these graves are opened, and the 
 World shrivels like a scroll. Do you understand me ? do 
 you heed me? or have I dreamed that that " 
 
 He stopped short a dismay seized him at her silence. 
 Had he been mistaken in his divine belief ! the fear was 
 momentary : for Fanny, who had recoiled as he spoke, now 
 placing her hands to her temples, gazing on him, breathless 
 and with lips apart, as if, indeed, with great effort and 
 struggle her modest spirit conceived the possibility of the 
 happiness that broke upon it, advanced timidly, her face 
 suffused in blushes ; and, looking into his eyes, as if she 
 would read into his very soul, said, with an accent, the 
 intenseness of which showed that her whole fate hung on 
 his answer 
 
 " But this is pity ? they have told you that I in 
 
 short, you are generous you you Oh, deceive me 
 
 not ! Do you love her still ? Can you do you love the 
 humble, foolish Fanny ? " 
 
 "As God shall judge me, sweet one, I am sincere! 
 I have survived a passion never so deep, so tender, so 
 entire as that I now feel for you ! And, oh, Fanny, hear 
 Ahis true confession ! It was you you to whom my heart 
 < timed before I saw Camilla ! against that impulse I 
 struggled in the blindness of a haughty error ! " 
 
 Fanny uttered a low and suppressed cry of delight and 
 rapture. Philip passionately continued : 
 
 " Fanny, make blessed the life you have saved. Fate 
 destined us for each other. Fate for me has ripened your 
 sweet mind. Fate for you has softened this rugged heart. 
 We may have yet much to bear and much to learn. We 
 will console and teach each other ! " 
 
 He drew her to his breast as he spoke drew her tremb- 
 ling, blushing, confused, but no more reluctant ; and there, 
 by the GRAVE that had been so memorable a scene in their 
 common history, were murmured those vows in which all
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 499 
 
 fchis world knows of human happiness is treasured and 
 recorded love that takes the sting from grief, and faith 
 that gives eternity to love. All silent, yet all serene 
 around them! Abore, the heaven, at their feet, the 
 grave : For the love, the grave \ j -for the faith, the 
 heaven I 
 
 CHAPTER THE LAST. 
 
 "A labore reclinat otium." * HOBAT. 
 
 I FEEL that there is some justice in the affection the 
 general reader entertains for the old-fashioned and now 
 somewhat obsolete custom, of giving to him, at the close 
 of a work, the latest news of those who sought his 
 acquaintance through its progress. 
 
 The weak but well-meaning Smith, no more oppressed 
 by the evil influence of his brother, has continued to pass 
 his days in comfort and respectability on the income settled 
 on him by Philip Beaufort. Mr. and Mrs. Roger Morton 
 still live, and have just resigned their business to their 
 eldest son ; retiring themselves to a small villa adjoining 
 the town in which they had made their fortune. Mrs. 
 Morton is very apt, when she goes out to tea, to talk of her 
 dear deceased sister-in-law, the late Mrs. Beaufort, and of 
 her own remarkable kindness to her nephew when a little 
 boy. She observes that, in fact, the young men owe 
 everything to Mr. Roger and herself ; and, indeed, though 
 Sidney was never of a grateful disposition, and has not 
 been near her since, yet the elder brother, the Mr. Beau- 
 fort, always evinces his respect to them by the yearly 
 present of a fat buck. She then comments on the ups and 
 downs of life ; and observes that it is a pity her son Tom 
 preferred the medical profession to the church. Their 
 cousin, Mr. Beaufort, has two livings. To all thia 
 Mr. Roger says nothing, except an occasional "Thank 
 heaven, I want no man's help ! I am as well to do as my 
 neighbours. But that's neither here nor there." 
 
 There are some readers they wl.o do not thoroughly 
 
 Leisure unbeuUc iuelf from labour.
 
 501) NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 consider the truths of this life who will yet ask, " Bui 
 how is Lord Lilburne punished?" Punished? ay and 
 indeed, how ? The world, and not the poet, mus^ answer 
 that question. Crime is punished from without. If Vice 
 is punished, it must be from within. The Lilburnes of 
 this hollow world are not to be pelted with the soft roses 
 of poetical justice. They who ask why he is not punished, 
 may be the first to doff the hat to the equipage in which 
 my lord lolls through the streets ! The only offence he 
 habitually committed of a nature to bring the penalties of 
 detection, he renounced the moment he perceived there 
 was danger of discovery ! he gambled no more after 
 Philip's hint. He was one of those, some years after, most 
 bitter upon a certain nobleman charged with unfair play 
 one of those who took the accusation as proved ; and 
 whose authority settled all disputes thereon. 
 
 But, if no thunderbolt falls on Lord Lilburne's head if 
 he is fated still to eat, and drink, and to die on his bed, he 
 may yet taste the ashes of the Dead Sea fruit which his 
 hands have culled. He is grown old. His infirmities 
 increase upon him ; his sole resources of pleasure the 
 senses are dried up. For him there is no longer savour 
 in the viands, or sparkle in the wine, man delights him 
 not, nor woman neither. He is alone with Old Age, and in 
 sight of Death. 
 
 With the exception of Simon, who died in his chair not 
 many days after Sidney's marriage, Robert Beaufort is the 
 jnly one among the more important agents left at the last 
 scene of this history who has passed from our mortal stage. 
 After the marriage jf his daughter he for some time moped 
 and drooped. 
 
 But Philip learned from Mr. Blackwell of the will that 
 Robert had made previously to the lawsuit ; and by which, 
 had the lawsuit failed, his rights would yet have been pre- 
 served to him. Deeply moved by a generosity he could 
 not have expected from his uncle, and not pausing to in- 
 quire too closely how far it was to be traced to the influ- 
 ence of Arthur, Philip so warmly expressed his gratitude, 
 and so surrounded Mr. Beaufort with affectionate atten- 
 tions, that the poor man began to recover his self-respect, 
 began even to regard the nephew he had so long dreaded, 
 as a son, to forgive him for not marrying Camilla. And, 
 perhaps, to his astonishment, an act in his life for which
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 501 
 
 the customs of the world (that never favour natural ties 
 not previously sanctioned by the legal) would have rather 
 censured than praised, became his consolation ; and the 
 memory he was most proud to recall. He gradually re- 
 covered his spirits ; he was very fond of looking over that 
 will : he carefully preserved it : he even nattered himself 
 that it was necessary to preserve Philip from all possible 
 litigation hereafter; for if the estates were not legally 
 Philip's, why, then, they were his to dispose of as he 
 pleased. He was never more happy than when his suc- 
 cessor was by his side ; and was certainly a more cheerful 
 and, I doubt not, a better man during the few years in 
 which he survived the lawsuit than ever he had been 
 before. He died --still member for the county, and still 
 quoted as a pattern to county members in Philip's armfc v 
 and on his lips there was a smile, that even Lilburne would 
 have called sincere. 
 
 Mrs. Beaufort, after her husband's death, established 
 herself in London ; and could never be persuaded to visit 
 Beaufort Court. She took a companion, who more than 
 replaced, in her eyes, the absence of Camilla. 
 
 And Camilla Spencer Sidney. They live still by the 
 gentle Lake, happy in their own serene joys and graceful 
 leisure ; shunning alike ambition and its trials, action and 
 its sharp vicissitudes ; envying no one, covetous of nothing; 
 making around them, in the working world, something of 
 the old pastoral and golden holiday. If Camilla had at 
 ono time wavered in her allegiance to Sidney, her good and 
 pimple heart has long since been entirely regained by his 
 devotion ; and, as might be expected from her disposition, 
 she loved him better after marriage than before. 
 
 Philip had gone through severer trials than Sidney. 
 But, had their earlier fates been reversed, and that spirit, 
 in youth so haughty and self-willed, been lapped in ease 
 and luxury, would Philip now be a better or a happier 
 man ? Perhaps, too, for a less tranquil existence than his 
 brother, Philip yet may be reserved ; but, in proportion to 
 the uses of our destiny, do we repose or toil : he who never 
 knows pain knows but the half of pleasure. The lot of 
 whatever is most noble on the earth below falls not amidst 
 the rosy Gardens of the Epicurean. We may envy the 
 man who enjoys and rests ; but the smile of Heaven settles 
 rather on the front of him who labours and aspires.
 
 50 NIGHT AND MORNING. 
 
 And did Philip ever regret the circumstances that had 
 given him Fanny for the partner of his life ? To some 
 who take their notions of the Ideal from the conventional 
 rules of romance, rather than from their own perceptions 
 of what is true, this narrative would have been more 
 pleasing had Philip never loved but Fanny. But all that 
 had led to that love had only served to render it more en- 
 during and concentred. Man's strongest and worthiest 
 affection is his last is the one that unites and embodies 
 all his past dreams of what is excellent, the one from 
 which Hope springs out the brighter from former disap- 
 pointments the one in which the MEMORIES are the most 
 tender and the most abundant the one which, replacing 
 all others, nothing hereafter can replace. 
 
 And now, ere the scene closes, and the audience, whom 
 perhaps the actors may have interested for awhile, dis- 
 perse, to forget amidst the pursuits of actual life the 
 Shadows that have amused an hour, or beguiled a care, let 
 the curtain fall on one happy picture : 
 
 It is some years after the marriage of Philip and Fanny. 
 It is a summer's morning. In a small old-fashioned room 
 at Beaufort Court, with its casements open to the gardens, 
 stood Philip, having just entered; and near the window 
 sat Fanny, his boy by her side. She was at the mother's 
 hardest task the first lessons to the first-born child ; and 
 as the boy looked up at her sweet earnest face with a smile 
 of intelligence on his own, you might have seen at a glance 
 how well understood were the teacher and the pupil. Yes : 
 whatever might have been wanting in the Virgin to the 
 full development of mind, the cares of the mother had 
 supplied. When a being was born to lean on her alone 
 dependent on her providence for life then, hour after 
 hour, step after step, in the progress of infant destinies, 
 had the reason of the mother grown in the child's growth, 
 adapting itself to each want that it must foresee, and taking 
 its perfectness and completion from the breath of the New 
 Love! 
 
 The child caught sight of Philip and rushed to embrace 
 
 him. 
 
 " See ' " whispered Fanny, as she also hung upon him, 
 and strange recollections of her own mysterious childhood 
 crowded upon her, "see," whispered she, with a blusb
 
 NIGHT AND MORNING. 503 
 
 tialf of shame and half of pride, " the poor idiot girl is the 
 teacher of your child ! " 
 
 " And," answered Philip, " whether for child or mother, 
 what teacher is like Love ? " 
 
 Thus saying, he took the boy into his arms ; and, as he 
 bent over those rosy cheeks, Fanny saw, from the move- 
 ment of his lips and the moisture in his eyes, that he 
 blessed God. He looked up on the mother's face, he 
 glanced round on the flowers and foliage of the luxurious 
 summer, and again he blessed God : And without and 
 within, it was Light and MORNING 1 
 
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