AECHIE LOVELL. •'4— -^^ *^ ^ ARCHIE LOYELL. % l0tel. BY MRS EDWARDS, AUTHOR OF MIBS EOEEESTEK," " MOEAXS OF MATFAIE," ETC., ETC. g:^to €Wton* LONDON : TINSLEY BROTHERS, 18, CATHERINE ST., STRAND. 1867. [All Eights of Translation and Reproduction resei-ved.1 JOHN GUILDS AND SON, TUINTBRS CONTENTS. arc CHAP. I. A VAMPIRE BROOD II. THE HONOURABLE FREDERICK LOVELL III. BRUNE AUX YEUX BLEUS ... IV. ARCHIE... V. A CIGAR BY MOONLIGHT ... VI. ROBERT DENNISON^S SECRET VII. THE LODGING IN CECIL STREET VIII. "noblesse oblige" TX. LUCIA ... X. "my LIFE IS weary" XI. ADRIFT IN LONDON XII. "you have REJECTED ME " XIII. ON THE PIER Xrv. AT SEA XV. MR DURANT's GENEROSITY XVI. THE BRIDGE OF SIGHS XVII. "play, OR TAKE MISS?" ... XVIIT. AMONG THE PHILISTINES ... XIX. OLD LOVE AND NEW ! XX. CAPTAIN waters' SENSE OF DUTY ... XXI. Archie's confession 80:a PAGE 1 13 23 32 43 51 65 74 80 96 107 117 137 144 154 164 176 190 201 218 230 CONTENTS. CFL\r. PAGE XXII. A VAMPIRE "at HOME " ... ... ... 245 XXIII. LE RENARD PR^CHE AUX POULES ... ... 254 XXIV. FOUND DROWNED ... ... ... 260 XXV. DEAD rose-leaves! ... ... ... 267 XXVI. BY THE RIVER-SIDE ... ... ... 273 XXVII. "g. s. d." ... ... ... ... 282 XXVIII. WORKING UP A CASE ... ... ... 289 XXIX. durant's court ... ... ... 302 XXX. ARCHIE PAYS HER DEBT ... ... ... 316 XXXI. IN THE SECOND COLUMN OF " THE TIMES " ... 333 XXXII. THE LULL BEFORE THE STORM ... ... 344 XXXIII. FAREWELLS TO LUCIA ... ... ... 352 XXXIV. "fais ce que dois!" ... ... ... 368 XXXV. AWAKENING CONSCIENCE ... ... ... 376 XXXVL "WHERE IS SHE?" ... ... ... 386 XXXVII. "here!" ... ... ... ... 409 XXXVIII. Archie's ovation ... ... ... 414 XXXIX. IN THE DARK HOUR ... ... ... 422 XL. "advienne que pourra ! " ... ... 430 XLI. A GLIMPSE OF THE BLUE ... ... ... 438 AECHIE LOVELL. CHAPTER I. A VAMPIRE BROOD. It was a bright moonlight night, in the last week of July, 186 — , and half the population of Morteville-sur-Mer had turned out, as the fashion of Morteville-sur-Mer is, to walk upon the pier. Among the crowds of men and women thus occupied, and even at a time of year when Morteville is most thronged with sea- bathers from all parts of France, the preponderance of Enghsh people was unmistakable. Can you mistake for a moment the dress, the walk, the laugh, the voice of our compatriots? — espe- cially of that class of our compatriots who find it convenient to reside out of England and in such places as Morteville-sur-Mer? A few Britons of a different type there may have been there, — quiet, plainly-dressed people, — passing through Morteville on their way to Paris, and walking on the pier after dinner simply because better air was to be got there than in the stifling over-crowded hotels within the town. But these you would have passed without notice in the crowd. The mass of Britons, the mass Avho arrested your eye and your ear as they passed, were the English residents in the place — the actual Anglo population of Morteville-sur-Mer : some of them flashy and over-dressed ; others poor-looking, subdued, out-at-elbows ; but none wholly devoid of interest to the careful observer of his kind. For every one who lives in Morteville has a reason for doing so. And in the history of every one who has a ARCHIE LOVELL. recoson for living out of his country, there must, I think, be some- thing — some misfortune, some debt, some imbecility, oftentimes some crime — that may Aveli make us, who sit by our own firesides still, pause and meditate. " I don't believe their name is Wilson, at all," remarked Mrs Dionysius O'Eourke ; " and if you recollect right, my dear Mrs ^Malone}', I said so to you from the first. I believe he's a Trant — one of Lord Mortemaine's sons — away in hiding from liis creditors ; indeed O'Eourke says he can swear to having seen the man's face in Homburg three years ago, and then his name was Smithett. He, he, he ! " and Mrs O'Eourke, being the possessor of six hundred a-year, and so a magnate in Morteville, her laugh was instantly echoed among the little knot of familiar and congenial spirits by whom she was at this moment surrounded. " I've nothing to say against the poor unfortunate man himself," chimed in the shrill voice of old Mrs Maloney, the INIrs Candour of the community. " Indeed, I think every one must pity him, poor creature, with the life he leads at home between those dread- ful women. But as to his daughter ! — as to Miss Archie Wilson ! " And Candour threw up her eyes, and clasped her aged hands, as one might do who possessed all the details — but would not— no, no, no ! for worlds would not reveal them — of an erring fellow- creature's sins. ** Miss Wilson is really growing very pretty," said another voice ; a man's this time. " Who would have thought a year ago she would turn out such a line-looking girl 1 " "Oh, I think her lovely, lovely!" exclaimed an enthusiastic impulsive yoimg being of about four-and-thirty. '' Such beautiful eyes, and such a sweet mouth and teeth, Captain Waters ! Poor, poor little Archie ! " " The speaker \vas ISIiss Augusta ]\Iarks, — Gussy Marks, as she ■was commonly called among her friends ; at once the professional toad-eater general, and the literary or intellectual element of Morteville. On what ground this young creature founded her relationship with the literature of her country was never clearly made out. She referred vaguely herself, it was understood, to the Saturday Rcvieiv ; but her more intimate friends professed them- selves to be in possession of data regarding a romance once contri- A VAMPIRE BROOD. 3 buted by her to the Brompton Herald, or Penny Houseliold Guide, under the title of " Lucile, or the Duke's Victim : a Eevelation from Life." Whether this was true or false ; whether the revelation was printed or allowed to remain in manuscript, Gassy Marks an- nounced ^herself, and all Morteville spoke of her, as a literary character. If she had written Vanity Fair, could she have done more ? If you can attain a reputation without work, who is the gainer? Only in one respect the somewhat impalpable nature of her profession made itself disagreeably felt. Gussy remained poor ; and had to work hard for her daily dinner by fetching and carry- ing news about from house to house, and generally flattering all sach persons — there were not very many in Morteville — as W'ould not only receive poor Gussy's attentions, but let her take their value out afterwards in solid eating and drinking. Amusing Miss Gussy Marks undoubtedly was. She was bitterly spiteful ; and to strangers, when they first settle in a dull place like Morteville, bitter inveterate spite, even when it is unseasoned by a grain of wit, is better than no entertainment at all. But she was not capable, as in their different fashions were Mesdames O'Rourke and Maloney, of boldly killing any man's reputation outright. Some of Mrs O'Eourke's falsehoods were sudden, almost justifiable homicides. Gussy's carefully-worded equivocations were deliberate, cold-blooded murders,; murders with malice afore- thought. She belonged to the class who whisper about versions, more or less blackened, of other people's vilifications ; who supply all missing links in other people's evidence ; who are " sure they heard so somewhere — not from you, dearest Mrs Blank 1 Then from some one else, for I know 1 never thought so." The vilest, the most cowardly class of all, in short. The assassin runs some risk ; the wretch who hovers round till the deed is done, and then warily begins to mangle the helpless corpse of the slain, none. " Such an agreeable companion ! sach unfailing spirits ! " all new-comers to Morteville pronounced as Miss Marks prostrated herself in tarn at their feet. Then, as the months passed, the new- comer's door would gradually open less freely to Gussy; and the women of the family would speak of her as " a very amusing person for a time ; but — ; " and the men make short cuts down the nearest street whenever they met her ; and poor Gussy have to B 2 4 ARCHIE LOVELL. fall back for intimacy on her old patronesses — the O'Eourke-and- !Maloney coalition— and any such stray birds as she might chance occasionally to pick up at their houses. On this especial evening, and at this moment, when Archie "Wilson's ill-doings are being brought forward for the purpose of moral animadversion, a whole group of the notabilities or typical people of Morteville are assembled beneath the lighthouse at the extreme end of the pier : inter alia, Mrs Dionysius O'Eourke, Mr Montacute and his daughters, the literary element, Captain Waters, and old Mrs Maloney — a majority of ladies, as is generally the case, the Englishmen iu Morteville not affecting much appearance in public. They play cards of a morning, play them of an after- noon, play them of an evening (very well they play too : don't sit down here at loo or ecarte unless you are tolerably sure of your game) ; and the two or three men, who happen at the present moment to be absent from the club, puff away helplessly at their cigars, and listen, without offering any observations of their own, while the women talk. Let me take a rapid sketch of one or two of these people before Miss Archie "Wilson's character is submitted to the scalpel. A Dieu ne plaise that they should hold any place save in this first or introductory scene of my story ! a Dieu ne plaise that I should essay to paint a finished picture of one of them ! But a few brief outlines my pen must with repugnance trace : first, to make you understand what manner of people these are who speak ; secondly, to show you in what kind of social atmosphere Archie Wilson herself — the unconscious subject of their moral vivisection — had spent the last two years of her child's life. Mrs Dionysius O'Eourke — on account of her great size as well as her high position in society, I feel that I must give her pre- cedence over her friends — was a lady of about, say, fifty-five, and of considerable social experience; had been thrice married — ("Let us say married ! Ah, yes — married ! " Mrs ]\Ialoney would remark Avith bitter irony during the half-yearly period when these two potentates invariably passed each other without bowing in tlie street) — and had resided in every place of easy resort on the Con- tinent. In all that Mrs O'Eourke ever told respecting the past, the first husband was dropped altogether ; the second, Colonel A VAMPIRE BROOD. O Morier, or as she, in her vain attempts to lisp down the native Tipperary, called it, ^'Mawyer," brought into extraordinary preemiiience, save on one occasion, well remembered by the Maloney, when a family called Morier really came to Morteville, and when Mrs O'Eourke never mentioned their name nor came outside her door during the six weeks of their stay. The third and present one, Mr Dionysius O'Eourke, seemed to be viewed both by his wife and by her friends in the light of a butler — an hypothesis that O'Eourke himself supported by the assumption of all those broad and generous views in regard to the consumption of liquor which butlers generally hold. To judge by the number of dukes and duchesses she talked of, Mrs O'Eourke had mixed in excellent society all her life ; and barrinsr the adventitious circumstances of seventeen stone of solid flesh, the ineradicable Tipperary, and an undue tendency to gor- geous yellow satin and birds of strange plumage in the matter of dress, she was really an entertaining, and, on the theory of Joe Gargery, a fine figure of a woman. She took away everybody's character, certainly ; but who should know better than Mrs O'Eourke how easy it is for people to live and be happy without that ? And she gave and enj oyed good dinners, and not worse wine than was commonly current in Morteville. How could any one say that Mrs Maloney's infamous stories of bygone days were correct? Would not an open house, a real butler (as well as O'Eourke), and six-hundred a-year, insure popularity in other places as well as Morteville-sur-Mer 1 Mrs Maloney, Mrs O'Eourke's closest ally and most implacable enemy, was of a totally difi'erent build ; for whereas Mrs O'Eourke had been wicked and prosperous, and gone into a comfortable mass of human flesh and blood, Mrs Maloney had been wicked and grown lean upon it ; and in that one fact of being in a Banting or anti-Banting state lies much philosophy. Indeed it is not certain that, for moral classification, the whole of humanity might not broadly be divided into these two sections, — the fat, the lean ; the jovial, the ascetic. There were softening moments, weaknesses of the flesh, in Mrs O'Eoui-ke, as in all fat, food-loving creatures. At a certain tempered stage of fulness, one point short of surfeit or inebriety — in the interval, for instance, between dinner and the 6 ARCHIE LOVELL. last glass of hot brandy-and-water before bed-time — she would as soon have called you a good fellow as a bad one ; but no eating or drinking ever mollified Mrs Maloney's flinty soul or softened a line upon her bird-like hatchet-face. She could never overcome her sickening spite against the human race for persisting still in being young and handsome and happy, as she had once been. She de- tested people for being wicked, because she had no longer the temptation to be wicked herself; she detested them for being good, because she had never known the meaning of good while she lived. When Mrs Dionysius O'Eourke went to the Morteville balls, all the little Frenchmen would run about her, in sheer amazement at her undraped bulk. " Hold, Alphonse ! hast thou seen the English mamma ! But 'tis rather an exhibition for a museum than a ball-room. Une Jdp- popotame qui se decolUte comme ga ! " From old Mrs Maloney's corpse-like face and anatomical neck and arms, bared as only utter fleshlessness can ever bare itself, men of all nations turned away with horror. She was not even curious. Occasionally, indeed, she would drag into her meshes some unfledged boy who thought it savoured of manliness to ape precocious cjTiicism, or some hoary-headed roue who would fain hear the vices imputed to others which he no longer had it in his power .to commit. And then was INfrs Maloney in her glory. Then she almost felt that in the possession of a tongue like hers resides compensation for being old and loveless and unbeautiful. Then was youth vilified and age dishonoured ; then were beauty and love and faith, and all the fairness and the nobleness of our common humanity, disfigured by the vitriol flung from tliat black heart, until her listener — however foolish, however world -hardened — would turn away with a shudder from the blasphemies of those lips that had once been fresh and young, and that children's kisses had blest. Look at the pictured impersonations in which the old painters' fancies used to embody all that men conceive of when they use the word fiend — the malignant, the impious, the hopeless — and you will see Maloney ; she who thirty years before had been, if fame spoke true, the beauty and the toast of one of the most brilliant, the most genial-hearted cities in the kingdom. A VAMPIRE BROOD. 7 If priest or parson would have let lier mount into his pulpit, show her withered face, and vent her impotent rage against the life she had made vile use of, there had been a sermon to keep women pure and men honourable. The Spartans turned their drunken slaves to some account. Can we, with all our science, find no use for the scum, the dregs of our society 1 Is our chil- dren's love of honour, of virtue, of truth, of courage — of the crown of all these, charity — to be taaght by written books alone? Seated between these two women — I pass over Mr O'liourke, a poor little man weighing about as much as any one of his wife's limbs, and at this particular moment, as usual, not by any means moie pleasant company for all the brandy he had taken since his dinner — seated between Mesclames O'Eourke and Maloney was Captain Waters, one of the head dandies or clothes-wearing men of Morteville. Captain Waters was perhaps eight-and-twenty, perhaps eight- and-forty. Certain effete and obliterated human faces seem of texture too putty-like for time's finger to mark them with any last- ing indentation. Captain Waters had one of these faces. He had pale hair, pale eyes, pale cheeks, pale girlish hands, a pale coat, a pate hat, and an eye-glass ; the last the most distinctive feature about him. Who was Captain Waters ? l^o one knew. What service had he been in 1 What were his means of living % N^o one knew. It was faintly believed that he was a married man ; one of those stray atoms of matrimony that do float about on the surface of Anglo-Continental life. It was believed also that some one thought they had once seen him in Italy robbing a church with the Garibaldians. It was generally admitted that he played the best game of ecarte in Morteville. As far as voice and manner went. Captain Waters Fas a gentleman; only an occasional rest- lessness of manner, a proneness to change any conversation as soon as ib trenched too nearly on his own personal history, betraying the class of professional adventurers to which he belonged. He said he was related — very possibly it was true — to more than one great English family, and that nothing but a change in the Cabinet was needed for him to obtain one of the foreign diplomatic appoint- ments for which his perfect command of Continental languages fitted him. In the mean time, he was economizing abroad, that is 8 ARCHIE LOVELL. to say, wearing good clothes, living at one of the best hotels in the place ; flirting desperately with young ladies ; getting dinners out of old ones ; and generally winning the money of any men who were well-born enough to become Captain Waters's com- panions — he detested vulgar people — and to walk arm-in-arm with him on the Morteville Pier. Captain Waters was spiteful; as spiteful to the full as Mes- dames O'Eourke and Maloney. But while theirs was heartfelt, malignant spite — the work of artists who put their hearts into what they fabricated — Captain Waters's was dilettanteism. Every- thing, even the trouble of pulKng characters to pieces, bored or seemed to bore him. Nothing, including every possible moral de- pravity or deformity, surprised him. Eaising his eye-glass up a quarter of an inch, taking his cigarette languidly in his little blue- veined hand, and smiling barely enough to show his even teeth, he would just throw in a word, a delicate finishing touch, when the other common assassins had done their work. You may imagine Avhat the word would be to appreciative hearers. A plat, dressed by the hand of a cordon bleu, crowning some repast of high-seasoned coarser dishes — savoury and tasteful perhaps in their way, but lacking that quintessence of flavour which only education and re- finement knows how to prepare for the palate of civilized man. The last noticeable person in the group was Miss Gu&sy Marks, a few of whose moral characteristics we have already considered. The personnel of this young person, had she flourished thirty years ago, might have justified her claims in the matter of literature ; for thirty years ago, women who wrote were, we learn, considered in this country somewhat in the light of monsters — women only in their invincible inferiority of brain ; but otherwise unsexed by the mere attempt to raise themselves above their samplers. Miss IMarks had a high bare forehead, a flat head, beetling eyebrows, great bird- like eyes and nose, a splendid development of animalism about the lower part of the face, and a moustache ! Yes, a moustache ! Why should I euphemize? A moustache such as many a fledgling ensign would incur his year's debts in advance to possess. The last new-comers to Morteville — consequently the last new chance of dinner that Miss Marks was seeking to propitiate — were Mr and the two Miss Montacutes, by whose side she now stood. A VAMPIRE BROOD. 9 Eegarding them there is little to say. The Miss Montacutes were pretty girls, who talked a good deal of grand married sisters, and their regret at having to come to such a slow place as Morteville for poor mamma's health. And Mr Montacute was a man who had formerly been rich and now was poor, and who had spent a great deal of his time in Continental jails, and already was meditating as to how much was likely to be garnered out of the Morteville shop- keepers before he should run away. Yet once Mr Montacute had kept open house and given money with a free hand to those who asked for it, and had brought up his lads to call dishonour by its right name. Look at his face now, — the set hard mouth, the eyes that won't meet yours ; listen to the bullying tone in which he talks to his wife and daughters, and say if professional insolvency can be pleasant work to a man who was bred a gentleman ? Say if he too might not add some comments to that unwritten sermon of which I spoke just now 1 "Poor little Archie Wilson!" repeated Miss Marks, with unction ; "if some one would only take the chUd up, something might be made of her yet." "I should think somebody would be quite sure to take her up,'' suggested Captain Waters, in the intervals of making a fresh cigarette. " You need not be uneasy on that score, Miss Marks." " Captain Waters, you are too bad," cried Mrs Maloney, while Mrs O'Rourke chuckled, and the Miss Montacutes remarked demurely how plainly you could see the light-house on the opposite coast. " Of course it's all very amusing for you gentlemen, but for the ladies in the place — and young ladies especially — I say it's most embarrassing. Why, really now. Miss Montacute, you mustn't be shocked, but I do think it right to put you on your guard" — only Mrs Maloney called it 'gu'iard.' "What do you suppose I saw last night from my window '? " E"o one's imagination was equal to the emergency. Captain Waters looked up at the sky and smiled. " Well, then, you must know, Mr Montacute, my lodgings is just opposite to the Wilsons', Eoo d'Artois — and 'twas a moonlight night, as this may be, and everything as distinct as possible — and about eleven, or half-past, I sat down by my window to think a httle" — «he sighed piously, — "before retiring to rest, when what 10 ARCHIE LOVELL. should come out from the "Wilsons' parlour-window but a man's figure ! " The whole company repeated, as one man, the word " window ! " "Yes, -window!" exulted Mrs Maloney, warming to her work. " If it had been by the door no one would have been more willing than myself to give her the benefit of the doubt, for of course the Dormers live on the first, and the old Countess d'Eu on the second ; and it is possible, though extremely unlikely, that this person might have been unconnected with the Wilsons. But no, it was from their window it appeared. They live on the rez-de-chausse, Mr Montacute. Not that I blame them for that, poor creatures ; but with Mrs Wilson wearing a silk-velvet cloak, and Archie, to my own knowledge, seven pairs of boots since Christmas, economy it is not. A man's figure, dressed in a short paletot, a wideawake hat, and smoking a cigar! l:^ow comes the point of the story. That figure was Miss Archie Wilson herself ! " Horror on all sides ; even Captain Waters languidly interested. ''And dressed — like a man?" ejaculated Gussy Marks plain- tively ; dressed quite like a man, my dear Mrs Maloney ? " " Well, no," explained IMaloney, " the miserable girl wore some kind of dark skirt, which indeed betrayed her to me — that and her hair, which, although it was tucked up, I could see the bright red in the moonlight ; but for the rest of her figure dressed as I tell you — a man's paletot, a wideawake hat, and smoking a cigar. She paraded up and down the pavement for some time, her hands in her pockets, her hat stuck on one side, and no more ashamed of herself, my dear, than any of us are now ! Indeed, the way she stared up at me was so offensive that T rose at last and shut down my window, and saw no more of the disgusting spectacle. We may form our own conclusions," sniffed Mrs Maloney, virtuously, — " we may form our own conclusions as to what should make a young girl assume such a disguise, and steal away from her father's house at midnight. Whatever Christian charity has bid me do hitherto, 1 feel my duty to society leaves me only one course now — I shall treat Miss Archie Wilson with the Iwtomhar at once ; and I think every other well-conducted woman " — Captain Waters's cigarette made him cough — " should do tlie same." Though Mrs Maloney had lived much abroad, her mastery of A VAMPIRE BROOD. 11 Frpncli idiom ^'as still precarious ; hence one of her favourite ex- pressions was that of treating people with the Jiotombar, which fanciful compound she emphasized much as she might have done the word tomahawk, or any other deadly weapon of attack. " But perhaps it was all done as a joke," hazarded the prettiest Miss Montacute, who was too young and innocent to be shocked. " When Tom's at home, Lizzie and I often dress up in his hat and coat — don't we, Lizzie?" " Yes, but you don't go out into the streets in male dress, dear Miss Montacute," put in old Gussy Marks persuasively. " Of that I am quite sure. This poor neglected child, Archie, possibly — possibly does these things in ignorance ; but still " — Gussy mused or pretended to muse — "it is confirmatoiy of what I told you I had seen, Mrs O'Rourke, is it not 1 " "And what have you seen, Miss Marks'?" inc^uired Captain "Waters, when Mrs O'Eourke had croaked forth her little contri- bution of venom. " Don't let us lose one scrap of evidence against this unhappy and misguided young person." "My scrap of evidence, then," answered Gussy, growing sud- denly tart, — " my scrap of evidence, Captain Waters, is, that Archie goes out on these moonlight expeditions to meet Mr Durant, — nothing more." "To meet Mr Durant?" repeated Waters, really opening his eyes now, and flinging the end of his cigarette into the sea — ''the man who is staying at my hotel ? " There was something to be interested in at last. Is^ot a wretched little girl's reputation, but the possibility of detaining in Morteville a young man so excessively fond of staking high, and so excess- ively ignorant of all the finer intricacies of ecarte, as l^ilr Durant. They had played together now for five nights ; and after deducting the necessary loss incurred by Waters on the first night of the match, Mr Durant was about one hundred and twenty pounds to the bad. What a deics ex machind it would be if any little flirt- ation should turn up and make the young man linger about this place ! As the vision of Archie's fair girlish face rose before him, Captain Waters felt himself quite soften. Poor pretty little thing ! If these old women's stupid scandals were to get about and reach the father's ears, the whole thing might be stopped at once. 12 ARCIIIE LOVELL. " I happen to know that Durant has been quietly at home every midnight since he has been in the place, Miss Marks. I don't know whether ISIiss Archie Wilson went out to meet him or not." Now, Gussy Marks hated Captain Waters from her soul : first, because, following a fixed rule he had in regard of ugly (penniless) women, he never looked in her face when he spoke to her ; se- condly, because his superior powers of pleasing had been the means of ousting her from more than one !Morte\alle house, where before his advent she had been wont to drop in, as of right, at dinner- time. "You may have any opinions you like, Captain Waters, but you will not prevent me, and others with me, from having ours- If Archie Wilson talks to Mr Durant for an hour together over the back-garden wall of a morning, as I have seen with my own eyes, it is not very scandalous, I think, to assume that she attires herself as Mrs Maloney saw her do, to meet Mr Durant at night." " Over the back-garden wall ? Miss Wilson talks to this Mr What-d'^ye-call-him over the back-garden wall *? Well, really now we may call it a Providence that the whole thing has come to light ; and just before this public ball, where we shall all meet her too ! In these foreign places I say one can't be too careful as to the women one associates with." And Mrs Maloney cast up her eyes to heaven, as though rendering a mental thanksgiving for the providential escape she had had in the way of moral contamination. " I don't say that I'd go so far as to cut Mr Wilson, as he calls himself ; but as to the girl Archie, I do say that it's a duty we owe to society and to each other to — " " Good-night, ^Irs Maloney," cried a girl's voice close beside her ear. " I hope, now, you're none the worse for sitting up so late last night. It was lovely in the moonlight, wasn't it 1 " A child's face, — bright, saucy, unfearing, — looked back at Mrs ^Maloney for a moment ; then the girl broke into a laugh, — a clear merry laugh, — that startled more than one group of foreigners out of their conventional deconmi, and Miss Archie Wilson disap- peared in the crowd. For one minute the people who had been talking of her did show sufficient humanity to be guiltily silent. Then, " She has gone down to the sands, — she has gone alone to the sands ! " cried A VAMPIRE BROOD. 13 old Gussy Marks, who was the first to rally. " And a gentleman with her, — yes, a gentleman with her ! " All the group of friends turned their heads eagerly in the direc- tion Gussy pointed out, and by the aid of the brilliant moonlight detected a slight childish figure running down one of the flights of steps that connects the MorteYille pier with the sands. A minute later, another — and a man's figure was at her side ; and all the heads were bent eagerly forward in anticipation of the dreadful and notorious scene they were about to witness. But Morteville to-night was destined to be disappointed of a scandal ; and a sort of groan passed through the group of friends as they discovered their mistake. The man proved to be no other than Archie Wil- son's father. "A blind!" cried Mrs Maloney, with the resolute tone of a Christian determined not to be done out of her righteous indigna- tion. "Archie Wilson put on her new hat to walk on the sands with her father ! Wait till midnight, and look through my win- dow, if you want to judge of Miss Wilson's innocence ! To remind me to my very face of what I'd seen ! Dark as it is, she must have seen that I treated her with the liotomhar that she deserved. Little wretch ! " And then the company breaking up into couples, as they re- sumed their walk, the characters of each other, as well as of Miss Archie Wilson, began to be demolished. Let us leave them here, and for ever, to their work ! CHAPTEE IL THE HONOURABLE FREDERICK LOVELL. Will no one \mte for us the Lives of Unsuccessful Men 1 The brothers of the poets, the first cousins of the painters, the god- mothers and godfathers of the novelists, — enterprising writers of biography have shown us these and all other relations of great men 14 ARCHIE LOVELL. from their cradles to their graves. And still the human beings nearer to greatness still, — the men who have not succeeded, — find no historian. "He started with eigh teen-pence in his pocket," we are ac- customed to read of the one successful man out of ten thousand. "Eighteen-pencc in his pocket, a habit of early rising, strict re- ligious principles, and a taste for arithmetic ; and died worth half a million," All right for him, — the one sheep garnered into the great fold of success ; but what account have we of the rest of the shadowy host for whose prudence, whose patience, whose religious principles, whose arithmetic even, no market ever came 1 If there is any law that governs the secret of human success, we have signally failed as yet in discovering its mode of operation. Patience certainly goes a very short way towards attaining it — the great majority of men and women seem to be intensely patient at failure during all their wasted sixty or seventy years of life ; and as to great ability, look at some of the best-2:)aid, and yet the shallowest charlatans in the world's history ! Some years ago a Frenchman wrote a book, showing that unsuc- cessful men of ability are destined by every law, moral and phy- siological, to become the progenitors of successful ones. Given a father whose life has been spent in a series of intellectual failures, and you will most likely see a son in whom these inchoate tendencies shall assume the shape men worship as success. All the arguments of the book I have forgotten, but I must confess the Frenchman's theory, true or false, struck me at the time as a pleasant one. It assigns to us some use, — to us who have invested our little capital to our best, who have striven as manfully as the most successful among tliem all, and yet have made no mark upon the age. We represent the sterile year when nature is readjusting her forces, the field which next spring shall be green with corn, the orchard which next autumn shall be bowed down with fruit. !More consolatory, at least, to view our failure so, — as the result of jjliysical laws out of our reach at present ; more consolatory, I say, to believe there is an average of successful men to each fifty years, and that it is ac- cident whether our fathers' failures are stepping-stones for us, or our own stepping-stones for our sons. Looking over our chest of unpublished M8S., or our gallery of unsold pictures, or our scheme THE HONOURABLE FREDERICK LOVELL. 15 for national defence (that the government was mad enough to reject), or our electric-telegraph improvement, which hroke down only through one error ('rectified next week by Smith, who made twenty-five thousand pounds), — shall we not face these our past failures with better temper if we take the Frenchman's view of the subject, than if, as all biographies of successful Britons seem to bid us do, we believe that ^Ye have failed because we deserved to fail] We have had our dreams of greatness, — we have thought of inven- tions that should benefit mankind, have known bitter wintry morn- ings and sultry noons, have sacrificed and suffered and come to grief. But that we have missed the palm is no absolute reason why the saints who do wear it should deny that our feet once stood, even as theirs did, beside the stake. The Honourable Frederick Lovell, at present known in Morte- ville under the name of Wilson, was an instance of thorough painstaking, patient, and absolute failure. In an age when one hundred and nine thousand copies of the second Solomon's poems have been sold, why, I ask myself, did Frederick Lovell's never meet with success'? They were commonplace, verbose, aff'ected, strained, moral, and enormously bulky. And still the second Solomon was taken, and poor Frederick Lovell left. " To be a poet," says Mr Carlyle, " a man must have an insight into the eternal veracities." Frederick Lovell for years had never wearied of repeating this axiom and applying it to himself. Do you understand its meaning, reader ? Do I understand it 1 We think we do, perhaps ; and Frederick Lovell thought he did. Who shall say what mysterious flaw in his power of judgment made him to err so egregiously ? Wliere are we to draw the border-line that confined him, as it confines hundreds of painstaking men like him, to such intolerable mediocrity 1 Until Macaulay told the world that Eobert Montgomery's writings bore the same relation to poetry which a Turkish carpet bears to a picture, the world looked upon that arch-impostor as one of the master-spirits of the age. But the wildly-inverted metaphors, the quivering fire-clouds, the racing hurricanes, the galloping white waves, the earth dashing into eternity, of Frederick Lovell scarcely found a critic who would condemn them. And here and there in his writings were thoughts — unstolen ones too — to which all the Montgomerys, all the second IC ARCHIE LOVELL. Solomons, could never have given utterance. The man was not a poet ; yet on rare occasions you felt that he came painfully, pathe- tically near to one. Fools and wise men are not two separate nations, with a sea rolling between them, but neighbours each of a common border-land ; and in this border-land are many whose nationality it is sometimes hard to decide upon. Frederick Lovell possessed many gifts that certainly put him far away from the category of fools. He was laborious to a degree ; he loved his art, or what to him stood for art ; he honestly strove to study nature and reproduce her, both with his pen and brush — for the poor fellow painted pictures as bulky as his poems. He was as im- measurably remote from being a fool as he was from being an artist — nay, further, I would fondly like to think. And still, looking at his pictures and reading his verses, the human heart that loved him most — a child's — knew that they were not, and never would be, works of art. All the ingredients were there, like the colours in the Turkey carpet ; the glow of genius, that should fuse and mould them into one harmonious whole, was utterly and for ever wanting. In his social relations Mr Lovell had failed as much as in his artistic ambition. He started in life, as there seemed every pro- bability of his ending it, mth an invincible repugnance to accept that belief which most men, wise or fools, have mastered by tlie age of nine, namely, that two and two make four. Money, or the saving or the utilizing of money, nay, the enjoyment of money, seemed a subject altogether beyond Frederick Lovell's grasp. On his twenty-first birthday he came into twenty tliousand pounds ; on his twenty -fifth, five thousand out of this sum remained. He had not been very vicious or very extravagant, he thought. He had travelled about, and bought pictures, and enjoyed artistic society, and seen his friends at his table ; and it was a very great pity that so little could be done upon a moderate income. What would it be best to do with the five thousand pounds that yet remained ? Marry, perhaps. When any excessively poor man desires to multiply his poverty by two, there is always some excessively poor young woman ready to assist him in working out this little sum of social jiritlimetic. Just at this juncture Frederick Lovell might, if he had possessed ordi- THE HONOURABLE FREDERICK LOVELL. 17 nary sense, have settled himself with, bread to his mouth for life ; his first cousin, the Lady Olivia Carstairs, with fifteen thousand pounds of her o^vn, and only five years older than himself, being willing to become his wife. He told his family he would do everything they all thought right; and promised the following Monday to make Lady Olivia a formal offer of marriage. But on the Sunday that intervened, a girl with long eye-lashes sat two pews before him in church, and Frederick Lovell thought how pleasant it would be to go and live in Eome and study and become an artist in earnest, with such a face as that to haunt his painting-room and inspire his dreams. He married her ; went to Eome and studied ; and at the end of a year found himself a widower, in the possession of a little daughter, three thousand pounds capital, and a great many art studies, that no one but himself thought much of, in his painting- room. The marriage — what there was of it — had turned out more happily than most marriages in which the first foundations are long eye-lashes. Both of them had off'ended the whole of their relations by marrying each other ; and no letters, save Mr Lovell's old bills, had ever followed them from England ; and they had had no society ; and had spent a great deal more money than they could aiford. But they had been happy. Happy for twelve months, — fifty-two weeks, — three-hundred and sixty -five days! LHad Frederick Lovell done so very badly with his life, I wonder ? " And I would run away with you, just the same again, Fred," the girl said on her death-bed, with her arms round his neck, and the child, a fortnight old, lying beside her. "Yes, I would, if I knew this was to be the end of it. "We should have grown more economical in time, and you would have been a great artist, dear, — I/know it. Will you be so Avithout me, I wonder, Fred 1 " t- — -Kg ; that he never could be. But if he had had in him the materials of a greater man, perhaps he would not have wept for her loss so grievously and so long. Grief, in the true artistic nature, embodies itself, perforce, like every other emotion, in art ; and, depend upon it, as soon as Goethe began to seek for con- solation in " Egmont," the composition of that marvellous poem worked off some at least of the edge of his passion for Lili. Fred- 18 ARCHIE LOVELL. crick Lovell hail sufficient concentrativeness to suffer more pro- foundl}' than couinion men, but not force of will enough to raise himself, as men following a genuine vocation do, above his misery. He wandered about in Italy with the child, spending his money and doing no work, for a great many months ; then came back to England, and thought he might as well read for orders and be a priest. It was the best resolution he ever made in his life ; for there were several nice little livings in the Lovell family, and Lady Olivia, unappropriated still, had an immense love for clergymen and parish domination. As a priest he could have worked what stood to him for poetry into very good sermons, and have painted altar-pieces, and stained glass for windows — the poor fellow was very High Church, and quite earnest and sincere in his religious beliefs — and possibly have succeeded in imposing all his labours as works of high art upon an agricultural population. But when do the round men fall into the round grooves of life ? Essayists and reviewers hold livings ; aild men like Frederick Lovell paint pictures and aspire to understand the Eternal Veracities. On the very eve of respectability, his ordination over, and an encouraging letter from Lady Olivia lying on his table, some wandering artist he had known abroad came to visit Mr Lovell in his London lodg- ings : and two days later he was a Bohemian on the face of the earth again. His friend had described Dresden and the com- munity of artists there, and the facilities for study and the cheap- ness of living, in terms too glowing for Frederick Lovell's heart to withstand ; and in a fortnight he was installed, with his little daughter, on a third story in the Dresden Market-place, really for once living cheap, and happier than he had yet felt since his wife's death. He could not write poetry ; but I think Mr Lovell's life at this period was almost an unwritten poem. It Avas an absurdity for the man to devote himself to an ambition he could never attain, to spend his days in making copies which any student of eighteen in the Government schools could have done better, and his nights in Avriting tomes of verses that no publisher would ever accept. Still over all one intense, unselfish, never-wearying love shone, and made the life noble. No woman ever tended her first-born child more THE HONOURABLE FREDERICK LOVELL. 19 tenderly tlian did Mr Lovell his little motherless daughter. She was two years old now, — a sturdy, forward child ; already Yv^alking and talking in her fashion, and perfectly cognisant that the great awkward male creature she lived with was, at once, her " Josh " and her humble slave. When she hurt herself in any way, she beat him. Mr Lovell was an immense angular man, over six feet high. '\Vlien he refused her anything, she drooped her head im- mediately, and pretended to be sick ; an appeal that never failed to bring him to abject and instant submission to her wishes. It was Miss Lovell's habit to wake between five and six in the morning ; and Mr Lovell, who sat up habitually late at night Avi'iting or drawing, was constantly roused from his bed by a pair of tiny, but neither irresolute nor weak, hands at this hour, be- cause " Artie de Mark sehen will," as the child in her broken patois worded it. He never rebelled after a certain morning when the child had cried herself white and sick at being refused ; and the good German wives, early abroad at their own marketings, would look mth wet eyes after the English widower with his black clothes and solemn face, and Archie in his arms, all afiush with delight, and making her slave stop before every fresh basket ■of fruit that they passed. One day, when the child was nearly three years old, her hands and face were fever-parched, and for the first time in her life she refused to eat. The solitary German servant of the household threw up her apron over her face, and said the worthy Lord was going to take the child back to Himself. She had seen two chil- dren of her sister's in brain-fever, and, at first, they too had flushed faces, and refused food like the Fraulein, and both of them died. In an agony of mute horror Mr Lovell rushed away to the English physician then living in Dresden, and conveyed to him by looks, rather than words, that liis child was dying. "Hangs her head — won't eat — skin hot?" said the doctor. '"Mr Lovell, the child is sickening for the measles. Half the children in Dresden have got measles in its mildest form. Couldn't have it at a better time of the year. ]^o Englishwoman to be with her '? Well, let us see now whom you could have, — Miss Curtis ? You don't know her ? — no matter. Miss Curtis is always ready to nurse anybody. I'll get her to go to you before night." c 2 20 ARCHIE LOVELL. By niglit Miss Curtis was at Archie's bedside, where she re- mained for a fortniglit. The child was very ill indeed, and wilful, as all strong impetuous children are, under her sufferings ; and Avhen ]\rr Lovell, helpless in his tortures of fear, watched Miss Curtis bathing his idol's hot eyes, or sponging her hot hands, and sootliing her in those thousand ways with which only a woman's hand can soothe a suffering child, he felt that he could have fallen down and kissed the very hem of her dingy old black-silk gown. As Archie got better, she clung tenaciously to her new friend. Miss Curtis knew lots of things that Archie did not know. Miss Curtis could deftly create a bird, enclosed "within bars and sitting on a perch, out of a sheet of paper. Miss Curtis could paint a boy on one side of a card and a gate on the other, and when you twisted the card round by means of a piece of silk, the boy was sitting astride on the gate — whistling, Miss Curtis averred, and Archie believed ; could make life-like sweeps out of one of Mr Lovell's old waistcoats, with teeth stitched in white silk, and real brushes, cut off the cat's back, in their hands. " What shall I ever do without Miss Curtis ? " Mr Lovell thought one day, as he watched her sitting beside Archie darning through a great basket of the child's socks — a branch of domestic economy much neglected by the servant-girl — and keeping her amused with stories at the same time. " There's scarlatina, chicken-pox, whoop- ing-cough, and God knows what besides that the baby may have ; how am I to brino; her through it all alone 1 "Would she ever haA'e struggled through these dreadful measles without INIiss Cur- tis to nurse her 1 " Youth, beauty, money would, I verily believe, not have made Frederick Lovell unfaithful to his buried love. He Avas not un- faithful to her noAv. For her child's sake he married Miss Curtis. She was a plain little dowdy woman, a good many years older than himself, a lady by birth and education, with eighty pounds a- year to live on ; and when Mr Lovell asked her to be his wife, she could really scarcely gasp out " yes," in her bewilderment and gratitude. "You Avill find her a treasure — a treasure, my dear sir," re- marked her relative the English chaplain, with whom till now she liad been living, and who was naturally joyful at transferring her THE HONOURABLE FREDERICK LOVELL. 21 to other hands. " A good wife cometh of the Lord. Would it be requiring too much that my dear cousin's little money should be strictly settled upon herself? " It was a long time before Mr Lovell could become accustomed to the special seal of Divine approbation that had been set upon him. He loved beauty in women, and Elizabeth his wife was j)lain and wizened ; he loved silence, and she babbled, chiefly of duchesses, from morning till night ; he loved sohtude, and he was never alone. Only, as years wore on, and as Archie did take all manner of childish complaints — through all of which her step- mother nursed her faithfully, and as Archie grew to be a great girl, and Mrs Lovell, to the best that was in her, educated her and made her work at her needle and attended her in her walks abroad, and saw to the lengthening of her frocks, and told her what was right and w^hat was wrong for young girls to do, Mr Lovell ceased to ask himself if he had done wrong in marrying again. He could not have brought up the girl without a woman of some kind to help him ; and companions or governesses would have required a salary, and very hkely have struck for marriage just as Archie was beginning to like them. And besides these consider- ations — love, and all pertaining to love, wholly and for ever gone — Mr Lovell, in his mania for art, possessed a triple armour against all the small annoyances of life, even a second Avife like his wife Elizabeth. A mania is a pleasure raised within the sacred regions of the ideal, and so put beyond the reach of common loss or disappoint- ment. Powerless to create himself, the faculty of admiration — the faculty, nay, let me say the rare genius of comprehension, the sole gift which can enable an inferior man- to stand at the side of great artists — was Mr Lovell' s. As years wore on, and as the fact of his own want of success became just a part of his every-day life, he only grew more and more confirmed in his admiration for the success of others, and gradually, a transition not uncommon in men of this character, into a dealer on a small scale in different works of art. On leaving Dresden, when Archie was about six or seven years of age, he returned once more to Rome ; and here he had his head- quarters until about two years before the present time. He believed 22 ARCHIE LOVELL. himself all this time to bo an unhappy man. He knew that the blue Roman sky shone over the six feet of earth where all the best part of himself lay buried. He knew that the present Mrs Lovell was feebly irritating to him ; that he had alienated himself utterly from every tie at home ; that the age was passing on, while he neither with pen nor brush had made the faintest indentation upon it ; finally, that year by year he seemed to grow more hopelessly foolish in regard of money, both in the getting and the spending. But still in that soft climate, and ever pursuing his own art-studies or his beloved hricbraequerie, living a Bohemian hfe among the Bohemians of all the Italian cities in turn, his temperament was too essentially an artistic one to allow him to be a very miserable man. ''Third son of Lord Lovell," his wife would say, when deploring her husband's evil Avays with any sympathizing Englishwoman who came across her path — "third son of Lord Lovell, and con- nected on his mother's side with the Carstairs ; and several de- lightful livings in the family, if he had only chosen to keep to his profession. And here we live, my dear madam, wandering like felons among Papists and foreigners, and all his beautiful literary talents, that might have won him a name in the pulpit, thrown away. If Archie had only been a boy, as thej^ christened her, one of these livings might be kept in the family 3^et." "Yes, if I had only been a boy," Archie would chime in at this point of her stepmother's lamentations, — " if I Avere only a boy, I'd be an artist, like what papa meant to be ; or an actor, or musician, or something of that kind ; and make a name for us all yet." The poor child had been brought m^ among artists and musicians, and things of that kind ; and her ideas of reputation, as of a great many other subjects, were much more artistic than conventional ones. BRUNE AUX YEVX BLEUS. 23 CHAPTEE III. BRUNE AUX TEUX BLEUS. Just as the Morteville gossips were returning from their evening amusement on the pier, two young men. Englishmen, issued forth arm-in-arm from the Couronne d'Argent, the principal hotel of the place. The younger of these men was Gerald Durant, Captain Waters's "good thing" at ecarte, the admirer that Morteville tongues had ascribed to Miss Archie Wilson ; the elder was Mr Eobert Den- nison, his hrst cousin, now on his way back to London after a fortnight in Paris, and at the present moment trying, or seeming to try, to persuade Gerald Durant to start with him to-morrow morning by the first boat for Eolkestone. " If there was anything to make you stop in this disgusting hole I would not ask you, Gerald. But as by your own account you don't knoYv^ a creature to speak to, and are losing twenty pounds regularly to that scoundrel Waters at ecarte, I can't see why you should be obstinate in spoiling my party for me." Gerald Durant hesitated. " I believe I should do better to go," he said, after a minute or two; "but as to my absence spoiling your party, the thing's absurd. Markham or Drury would come in a moment, and are as ready, either or both of them, to lose their money at loo as I am ; anybody in the world you like to ask, in short — except Sholto." " Markham is out of to\AT:i ; and Lady Lavinia, as you know, never lets that wretched little Drury for a second out of her sight ; for Sholto I have no taste — I never had a taste for children. As to losing your money, my dear boy" — Dennison's manner grew genially warm and pleasant — "I don't exactly see the point of the remark. The last time we played loo at my chambers you may remember you landed more than seventy pounds of my money." " Well, well, I'll go then," said Gerald, in the tone of a man who would rather do anything than be bored to explain why he didn't do it. " It will be better so, I daresay ; but I think if you 24 ARCHIE LOVELL. liad seen the face -which has been the cause of my lingering on here, you would better appreciate my intention of going away." " Cause ! There is a pretty face in it then, after all 1 " " Do you think I should poison myself daily at a Morteville table- d'hote for the pleasure of losing twenty pounds a night to Captain Waters at ecarte 1 " replied Gerald. " Of course there is a pretty face in it ; and of course if I stayed I should come to grief, as I always do." " As you always do ! " remarked Dennison witli a laugh. " Gerald, by the way that reminds me — although it really is get- ting no laughing matter — what is Maggie Hall doing 1 I have been wanting to ask you this long time. Sir John and all of them are beginning to feel their position awkward." ''Who?" " Maggie Hall, the pretty dairy-maid from Heathcotes. My dear boy, why sliouid you try to have secrets with me ? " but his tone was not thoroughly collected as he spoke. " I think you have asked me about Maggie Hall before, Eobert," answered Gerald, coldly; ''and I told you then that I knew no- thing whatever of her. I never had anything to say to Maggie save in the way of friendship ; and you, better than any other man, ought to know it." And he dropped his friend's arm — they were at the entrance to the pier now, — and walking a step or two aside, gazed intently away across the moonlit sands. In the far distance the shadows of two figures — a man and a girl — cut the path of rippling light that fell across the water and Gerald Durant's face. He knew them to be Arcliio and her father in a second, and began to vacil- late again. How fau' the pure girlish face must be looking now ! If he v^aited he could easily contrive to meet her somewhere on their way home, steal a word half in play with her as he had done before, and ask her to meet him once more (every mistake in Gerald's life was prefaced by those fatal words, **once more") at that broken garden-wall to-morrow. Why should he give way always to Dennison 1 He knew very well that he was wanted as a fifth and as a loser at loo ; that Dennison cared no more for his society than he did for the society of any stranger he might sec for the first time, who would stake his money un calculatingly. He BRUNE AUX YEUX BLEUS. 25 had taken Dennison's advice times enough in his life, and when- ever he had done so had repented it. Besides, the easy assump- tion of superiority in his cousin's last remark had nettled Gerald excessively. Clever as Eobert Dennison was, he overshot his mark sometimes. Gerald Durant was his inferior in will and in hrain ; but Gerald was the last man living to like to have the sense of his own inferiority thrust upon him. ShoAv the hand of iron for a moment, and these weak natures rebel from the touch that they would be unconscious of under the silken glove. "The steamer starts at eleven sharp," remarked Dennison pre- sently ; "you will be able for once to get up early, Gerald, eh?" " Well, yes, I daresay I shall — if I go," answered Gerald ; and then he took out his cigar-case, struck a light, and leaning lazily against the parapet of the pier, began to smoke. Dennison came beside him and laid his hand kindly on his shoulder. " I see how it all is, Gerald," he remarked carelessly, " and I shall say no more about it. Come or stay just as suits your fancy in the morning. Sir John will be glad enough to see you when you do come, you may be very sure. The poor old man is hotter than ever about your standing for L — • — ; and there is no doubt now as to the nearness of the coming election. Parliament has already got nearer to the end of its prescribed term than usual ; and if through any extraordinary vitality, or to serve any special policy of the premier, it should survive the autumn, next May for certain must see it legally terminated. "What a career is before you, Gerald," he added, affectionately, "if you could only bring yourself to care about it in earnest !~an heiress as devoted as Lucia destined for you from her cradle ; an uncle as lenient as Sir John, bent, whether you will or no, upon bringing you into public life." And while he talked thus Mr Dennison laid his hand within his companion's arm, and gradually led him back into good-temper — no very difficult matter with a man so facile as Gerald — as they strolled slowly onward down the pier. Let me speak to you of these two men's appearance as they walk together thus. Of Eobert Dennison's first. A stranger seeing them in any position side by side would say that Mr Dennison must take precedence in all things, even to the chronicling of the colour of his eyes and the length of his whiskers. His whiskers 26 ARCHIE LOVELL. were, I believe, ■what struck you most -when you looked at him. They were irreproachable whiskers, — jet black, without one brown or red hair among them ; mathematically corrrect in growth ; long^ glossy, tliick. Men of weak, frivolous character are prone to vacil- lation in the fashion of tlicir whiskers or beards, kSix months in Egypt, a year in Vienna, will upset all the foregone conclusions of these purposeless creatures' lives, and send them back to London, regenerate. But from the time when Mr Dennison first attained man's estate till now — and he was past thirty — the cut and length of his whiskers had remained inviolate. All young women in the housemaid line of life who looked at Robert Dennison pronounced him a very fine gentleman indeed. Such critics are not always bad judges. He was a very fine gentleman; over six feet in liis stockings, broad-shouldered, deep-voiced, large-limbed. His head was of the bullet-shape, more often seen in Frenchmen than our- selves ; his complexion sallow-olive, his nose small, his teeth short, square, and white almost to singularity. So far the catalogue reads favourably. JN'ow for the features which really constitute a human fiice (the rest are but adjuncts), — the lips and eyes, Mr Dennison had lips that made some fastidious natures shrink away with name- less repugnance only to look at them : full lips, dark in colour, set as granite ; the under one slightly projecting, and supported by a heavy coarse-hewn chin. And his eyes Avere of the worst hue a man's eyes can ever be — black. Through all the infinite grada- tions of other colours, — through brown, or gray, or green, or (the colour for the gods) blue, — the human soul, whatever there may be of it, shows forth. Only with these black inscrutable orbs does a man look at his fellow-creatures as through a mask. Eobert Den- nison's eyes were incapacitated, simply by their colour, from giving any softer expression. The broadest sunlight could scarcely evoke a tawny ray from their sombre depths. If you looked at them with closest scrutiny, you could never discern the pupil from the iris; and 'tis precisely in this, — in the shifting colour, in the quick reflection of light, in the sudden dilatation or contraction of the pupil, — that all expression of passion exists. Those who had seen Dennison under the influence of rage — a rare occurrence with him — asserted that his eyes could take a red lurid light, the reverse of agreeable to look at. At all other times they served BRUNE AUX YEUX BLEUS. 27 him, as lie was wont in his genial manner to confess, better than any other pair of eyes in the world could have done — they told no secrets of their master. To an archbishop or an orange-girl, tO' a judge upon the bench or a beggar, those eyes {occM neri, Jieri e muti) would have looked with precisely the same hard unflinching expression. And Mr Dennison was quite right : they suited him. Gerald Durant was a slight, boyish-looking man of live-and- twenty, with hair of the bright chestnut colour you see surround- ing Raphael's softest faces ; a fair complexion, that flushed like a girl's as he spoke ; and long silky flaxen moustache and Avhiskers. When he was without his hat (he had taken it off" just now, as he stood watching Archie and her father upon the distant sands), the first thing you noticed in him was his beautiful brow. For a moment — until you saw it was a woman's beauty, not a man's — you Avould have called that forehead, with its low-growing hair, its delicate mouldings, its marble whiteness, intellectual. For a moment,' then, you saw the absence of all the ruggedness, all the force that in a man is intellect. In his youth, a man mth a head like this will give promise of great things, and at five-and-thirty he will be living in a villa at Eichmond still. His eyes were gray ; great speaking eyes, that softened and changed colour if a Avoman took his hand, or a burst of music smote his ear. His nose and mouth were of the cast Vandyke has taught us to identify with our weakest race of kings ; and his chin — at once the characteristic, the index of every face — was characterless. For the rest, his make, although slight, was far from effeminate. Intense desire of excitement was Gerald Durant's master-passion ; and he was wise enough to know that field-sports, alternating with tlie life of cities, are the most epicurean sort of excitement that a civilized man can take. As a boy, he had been stroke-oar of one of the boats and captain of the eleven at Eton : in later years he had been openly called the boldest rider to hounds in her Majesty's Guards. And any man who is a good rider, and who can handle an oar well, will have his chest well developed. His graceful hands were far too brown and manly-looking to allow a suspicion of dandyism, and his dress was plain and English almost to afl'ectation. At the present moment (and while Robert Dennison, with a high hat, lavender gloves, swell boots, and frock-coat, looked ready for a wedding). 28 AltCHlK LOVELL. Gerald was in a brown A-elveteen morning suit, a spun-silk shirt, a Tyrolean hat, and gloveless. " The Guards only dress when they are on duty," he had answered, wlien Dennison had chaffed him as to his style of costume. " In Bond Street I do what you are doing now ; at all other times I suit myself." And notinfT what the undress really was, — how becoming in its picturesque Bohemianism, how studied in every detail of its seem- ing carelessness, — Mr Dennison had smiled, but not with his lips at the answer. All the weakness of Gerald Durant's character lay in it ; and nothing yielded Mr Dennison more intense satisfaction than analyzing any new trait of Aveakness in the men he called his friends. Towards the middle of the pier they were joined by Waters, who had freed himself from his Morteville associates the moment he saw the two Englishmen approaching. Dennison had already made his acquaintance that day at the table-d'hote, and began talking to him at once with the kindly tone of encouragement which for some years past it had been his habit to show to all the men or women who preyed upon his cousin Gerald. "For a few weeks this must be an anmsing life to lead, Captain Waters, especially to any one who makes cosmopolitan human nature his study, as 1 have no doubt you do. I have been on the pier twenty minutes, and have already seen queerer specimens of Britons — male and female — than I ever did during the last fort- night on the Boulevards ; and that is saying a good deal." *'Well, they certainly are a tolerably shady lot," answered Waters, with a shrug of his shoulders ; " the residents in the place especially. People a shade too bad in character for the Channel Islands — and without ready-money enough to take them to Flor- ence — settle down in ^Morteville ; and a pretty subsidiary stratum they make. The fun is to see them pulling each other to pieces. Women without a shred of reputation between them sitting in judgment on a little girl like this Archie Wilson, as I have heard old O'Eourkc, Maloney, and Company doing during the last half hour." At the name of Archie, Gerald Durant turned liis face quickly towards Waters, and ]lol)ert Dennison noted the gesture. "Who is O'Koiirke, and Avhat is Archie, Captain Waters?" he EUU^'E AUX YEUX BLEUS. 2^ asked. " I have rather a fancy when I travel of picking up little everyday hits of watering-place scandal." " O'Eourke is a decently-snccessful fifth-class adventuress, who manages to keep herself at the head of the Morteville society. Archie is the daughter of an unconunonly shady Englishman, called Wilson, who has been living here for the last year ; she is the prettiest girl in the place ; and divides her time equally be- tween running about on the trottoir and smoking cigarettes at an open window late of an evening ; a very nice little girl, in short. ]!^othing but laziness has made me neglect her up to the present time." And Captain Waters smiled significantly. He was implying even a blacker falsehood than he told. Archie Wilson's time was not divided between the trottoir and the consumption of tobacco, although the girl did occasionally walk about the Morteville streets, and in the course of her life had pretended to smoke about half-a- dozen of her own father's cigarettes. On Captain Waters she would have looked (as he knew) with about as much favour as on one of the waiters at the Couronne dArgent. But what is a trifling state- ment involving a young girl's fame to a gentleman of his profession in the prosecution of business 1 Gerald Durant must be detained at Morteville, and according to his lights he (Waters) was doing his best to detain him there. "And what opinion does the Morteville world pass upon this young person % " Durant asked, after a moment or two. " Do they hit her harder than you do, Waters j or are the trottoir and the tobacco-smoke the worst things that can be brought against her 1 " " Oh, as to that," cried Waters, jauntily, but he did not thoroughly understand Durant's tone, " if you come to facts, I daresay the little girl is about the honestest of the whole lot. She runs about alone all day long, and makes eyes at all the men she meets ; but what can you expect from a child brought up in such a way as she is, and in such places as these % " "And she is handsome, doubtless !" suggested Dennison; "as all the other women fall foul of her." " Handsome"? Well, no. She'll be a very well-made woman — ■ good hands and feet, and a fine waist, and all that ; but lanky at present, and sunburnt." 30 AECHIE LOVELL. " I differ from, you entirely, Captain Waters," interrupted Gerald Durant. " I know Miss Wilson slightly ; and I think she's A'ery handsome ; one of the most handsome girls I ever saw in my life." " Oh, I beg your pardon, Durant," cried Waters, laughing. He had a trick of calling men by their names at once, however stu- diously they gave him his title of " Captain " in return. " If I had known that you were an acquaintance of Mademoiselle Archie, I would have been more discreet. Well, she is a very pretty little girl, and not a bit faster, I daresay, although less careful, than her neighbours. Of course, as you have the pleasure of knowing Miss Wilson, you will stop for the public ball to-morrow night 1 If you do, you should tell me now, and I will get you a ticket. IsoiLe by strict right are issued after to-day. — That is the time," he added carelessly to Dennison, " to see all our Morteville world at its best. If you care for seeing shady British nature in its full-dress, you ought to stay yourself and go to it." The hint was carelessly enough thrown out ; but it worked as Waters hoped and intended it should work upon Gerald Durant. The fancy rose before him in a moment of Archie ; not a little girl running wild as he had seen her hitherto, but flushed, and radiant, and coquettish, in a light ball-dress — a w^oman, not a child. He felt the slight lithe figure yielding in his arms as he danced with her. He saw the mocking face turned up again with its bewitching nameless charm to his. What did it matter Avhether his cousin Lucia fretted a little at his absence or not 1 What did it matter if, for a short time longer, he let things take their course as best they might, without let or hindrance of his? The in- toxication of a new fancy was in fact upon him. And it was no custom of Gerald Durant's to cast away the chance of any new emotion for the sake of graver and less pleasant interests. " You are sure about this ball on Tuesday, I suppose 1 " he said to Waters when, half-an-hour later, they were separating at the entrance to the hotel. "I mean, you are sure that all the English Avill be going to it." " I know that all the O'Rourke set will go," answered Waters ; " also Miss Wilson and her mother ; for I heard it discussed this •eveninir." BRUNE AUX YEUX BLEUS. 31 " Oh, well, you may get me a ticL'et for it, then. T believe I will stop and see the shady Britons in the full-dress that you speak of." " And I am to bear your excuses to Sir John and Lucia 1 " re- marked Dennison, when Waters left them. " Grerald, when will y^ou cease, I wonder, to run about after every pair of foolish eyes that chance to meet you in the street ? " Durant looked up quickly at his cousin's face ; but its express- ion was more calmly unmoved than ever in the brilliant moonlight. "With so much at stake, my dear boy," he went on persua- sively, '' how can you allow another week to pass without show- ing yourself at home? T can assure you the time has past for looking upon Sir John's suspicions as a laughing matter. I had a letter from him the day before I. left Paris, and really his fierce messages to you are — " " Matters that concern me, and me alone," interrupted Gerald, with his boyish laugh. " I can understand Sir John being savage under the combined influences of gout and of his own most ridiculous mistake ; but why should you be so careful about me, 7non cousin? I can't hurt you, whatever I do; indeed, I've often thought what a pity it is I don't go utterly to the bad at once, and leave you to a quiet walk over. You're a much better man than I am in business ; and you've got settled political views, wliich constituents like ; and altogether you'd make a vastly steadier heir for Sir John than I ever shall. How about trying it on 1 I am going to stop here. Most probably I'll get into some mess or other with Mcllle Archie. How about your taking the initiative, and . suggesting to the home-powers that Mr Eobert Dennison would be a much more fitting person to receive the intended honours than his scapegrace cousin, Gerald Durant ? It's worth thinldng of, eh?" To have our own cherished intentions suddenly put into words by the man one purposes to wrong is not a pleasant experience. Eobert Dennison was neither weak nor sensitive, nor a conscien- tious man in the ordinary sense of the word ; but he was (like most men off the boards of trans]3ontine theatres) human ; and an . ansAver came by no means fluently from his lips. "I — I am the last man living, my dear Gerald — the last man 32 ARCHIE LOAELL. living to supplant you with Sir John ; and as to Lucia, I helieve our dislike for each other is tolerably mutual. AVhat could put such a preposterous idea into your head ? " ..." lirune aux yeux bleus ! Why, I do believe it is Archie again," was Gerald's answer. " Yes, there she goes, following the old man up from the pier. If the child hasn't a walk ! Eobert, tell me if you ever saw a better one among the handsomest women, in Seville 1 Why, from here you could swear to the foot she must have. No woman ever walks like that who hasn't a foot arched,, small, and lirm withal, like a Spanish woman's — * Si je vous le disais, pourtant, que je vous aime, Qui sait, brune aux yeux bleus, ce que vous en diriez ? ' I shall run the risk at all events;" and in another moment, but Avith an innocent, indolent air, not at all that of a human creature in pursuit of anything, Gerald Durant was following the steps, at about twenty yards* distance, of the two figures he had pointed out to Dennison. When he had progressed a few steps, he turned and saw that liis cousin was still watching him. " Good-night, Eobert," he cried, cheerily ; " good-bye, if I don't see you again ; give my love to Lucia ; and say I shall certainly be back at the end of the week. * Si je vous le disais qu'une douce folic A fait de moi votre ombre et m' attache u vos pieds ? ' " And he went on singing half-aloud De Musset's immortal song, — Lucia, his constituency, Sir John, his debts, his hopes — every- thing else forgotten — until he had followed Archie to within twenty yards of her own house. CHAPTER IV. ARCHIE. She was a tall slip of a girl, with a waist that you could span ;. lon,c,f-limbed, and with enough of childishness about her still to give her that nameless grace that never quite comes back to any ARCHIE. ' 33 woman in her fall maturity. In her best black silk — the second dress she had had of Tegulation length — and a bonnet, walking demurely by her father's side to church, Archie Lovell looked a grown-up young lady ; in her sailor-hat and gingham suit, running wild about the Morteville beach of a morning, she looked a child, and a very wicked child too. Her hair (that Mrs Maloney called red) was always, save under the Sunday bonnet, left to hang upon her shoulders, as girls of twelve wear it in England — Mr Lovell averring that it was a sin to let paddings, or pins, or artifice of any kind come near it ; and I think he was right. I»[ow that lime- and lemon-juice blanche our Avomen's hair, and that auricomus and other fluids bring it back to yellow or red, one gets sceptical on the subject of gold-tinted locks ; but Archie's were of a hue that all the artistes in London could never so much as imitate : nut-brown in shade, red-gold in sunshine, supple, plenteous, ex- quisitely soft, rich, and " kiss-worthy," to use the word of some old poet, always. Her face was a charming one — sunburnt almost to the darkness of her hair, with coal-black pencilled brows, small nose, rather more inclining to retrousse than the girl herself liked ; a mouth too large for a heroine, but excellent for a woman — having white short teeth ; the perfection of colouring ; and that square cut about the corners of the lips that renders any mouth at once passionate and intellectual — the mouth of a poet. Her hands were browner ever than her face, but small, strong, and delicately modelled ; and her eyes % — ah, here was the crowning fascination of the whole. With dark eyes Archie would have been a pretty sparkling brunette, probably — such a woman as you admire for an evening, and then lose among all the other women of the same colour in your memory ; but once see Archie Lovell's blue eyes shining from that brown face, and eyes and face sunk in on your remembrance for ever. They were blue to singularity, like some of those Italian eyes that occasionally startle you just on this side of the Apennines : sapphire-blue to their very depths, with crystal- clear iris ; and thick lashes — rich, black, and curling up, as you see sometimes on a young child. Could those eyes soften or fill with passion, or were exquisite form and colour all their beauty ? No one knew. Archie was a child till last Thursday ; and all the expressions her face had worn as yet had been intensely childish 34 ARCHIE I.OVELL. \ Olios : rage, when anything vexed herself or her father ; pleasure over a new frock ; mischievous delight at " taking rises " out of her simple stepmother ; and saucy devil-may-carishness — (I have searched in vain for a loftier expression, but everything heroic is so out of place in speaking of Archie), — saucy devil-may-carish- ness towards the whole of the Anglo- Morteville population — the female portion of it especially — at all times and seasons when she came across their path. Till last Thursday. Last Thursday she made the acquaintance of Gerald Durant. He was walking — bored, and trying to kill the hours that hung wearily before the boat sailed — along one of the back-streets of the town, when suddenly he came upon the vision of Archie's face, — a vision destined to haunt his memory through many an after year. She was perched up, not in a wholly lad3'-like position, on a villanous broken wall that bounded the garden of their landlady's house ; no hat on, the wonderful hair hanging loose down her shoulders ; a striped blue-and-white shirt, confined round the waist by a strap like a boy's ; and a parapher- nalia of oil-paints beside her on the wall ; for, in her way, Archie had painted ever since she could stand alone. For some minutes she was unconscious of Durant's approach, and worked quietly on at the dead colouring of her sketch, while he stood and fell in love with her. Then he came nearer ; and she saw and nodded to him. He was dressed in the same velveteen sui>t and mountaineer's hat that you have seen him in on the pier ; and Archie, unversed in Guardsmen, took him in full faith for a Wanderbursch, and wished him good day in patois German, — a language that she had learnt beautifully three years before among the mountains of Tyrol. He answered in excellent Anglo-Hanoverian, and the girl's cosmopolitan ear told her in a second he was an Englishman. She looked at his hands next ; saw he was no Wanderbursch — and blushed crimson 1 'No, reader. In the course of this story I will not once write conventionalities respecting Archie. She blushed not one shade, but began to laugh at the pronunciation, excellent though it was, of the stranger's German ; and three minutes later Gerald had seen her sketch, and was standing chatting to her as freely as if they had just been introduced and waltzed together for the first I AUCHIE. 35 time at a ball, or undergone any other formal introduction, witliin the sacred precincts of propriety and social decorum. They talked on for an hour or more, Archie ever and anon put- ting in a stroke or two at her unfinished sketch (it was during this time, no doubt, that Gussy Marks espied them) ; then a French honne appeared at the back-door of the house, who shouted out to mademoiselle across the length of the garden that dinner was served ; and Durant bowed himself away. He was as much epris as he had ever been in his. life. His nature had become a good deal Erench by frequent residences in Paris and other Galilean influences, and French words best describe many of his moods. !Not really in love of course — do Guardsmen ever fall in love ? — not flattered, not struck with the desire of hunt- ing down a credit-giving quarry, as was generally the case in Mr Durant's flirtations — but epris. Those blue eyes, that lithe and graceful form, had won his sense of beauty. That unabashed tongue — so childish, yet so keenly shrewd — had stimulated as much intellectual zest as it was in him to feel about a woman. Who and what was this girl, dressed like a boy, painting like an artist, talking like a well-born woman of five-and-twenty, and look- ing like a lovely child of sixteen ? — this young person whose speech would not have discredited a duchess, but who sat perched on the wall of a Morteville back-street, and who nodded and talked to the first stranger who passed her in the road ? He went back to his hotel, told his valet to unpack his things, and in the evening amused himself by losing his money at ecarte to Captain Waters. The next morning early he was on the sands ; and Miss Lovell was there also, with her father. She looked at him as she passed, and he raised his hat — Mr Lovell doing the same mechanically, and without as much as looking at him ; and Durant's vanity Avas Vv^ounded on the spot. The girl did not look conscious, nor the father distrustful. What a fool he had been to think for ten minutes of the stupid little bourgeoise, — a blue-eyed pert young woman, who doubtless planted herself daily on that wall with the express purpose of flirting with any barber or bagman who might chance to pass along the street ! He walked back to his hotel ; told his valet to rejDack his port- D 2 36 ARCHIE LOVELL. manteau at once, and tlicn — then on his way to the pier met Archie (on her road home for a forgotten sketch-book), and stopped and talked to licr once more. She was looking her best — ^better than she had done the day before — in a fresh white dress, skirt and jacket alike, a sailor-hat bound with a bit of blue ribbon, neat peau-de-Suode gloves, perfect little laced boots, and a bunch of honeysuckle in her breast. Gerald got leave to carry her book for her (told his long-suffering valet, whom he passed upon the pier, hot with indignation, to take back his things to the hotel), and when he left Miss Lovell within fifty yards of her father on the beach, had made up his mind, as much as he ever made up his mind, to look upon it as a settled affair that he should lose liis head about her. This was two days ago. He had seen her and walked with her on the sands more than once since ; and Archie was a child no longer. She was not a whit in love with Mr Durant, — her heart was as unstirred really as a moorland pool, upon whose surface the imaged flitting clouds give a semblance of agitation ; but she had received the deference — ^had listened to the implied flatteries of a man learned in the science of woman-pleasing, and her imagination, her vanity, her zest in life, her life itself, had got a new and delicious stimulus. She was a child no longer ! The Rue d'Artois was dead silent as Mr Lovell and his daugh- ter entered their house ; and when a few minutes later Gerald, his cigar in his mouth, passed carelessly up the street under the shadow of the opposite houses, he could hear Miss Archie's voice, clear and ringing on the silent night-air. Mr Lovell's apartment was on the rez-de-chaussce. The M^ndows and shutters were wide open, and the light of a lamp upon the supper-table showed the family-group with perfect distinctness to any passer-by who chose to look at them from the street. — Mrs Lovell prim and upright at one end of the table; Mr Lovell's stooping form and pro-occupied face at the other. Close beside him, radiant in her wliite dress and with her shining hair, Archie ; and walking familiarly about, attending on them, Jeanneton, the great good-humoured French peasant woman, who formed the cook, housemaid, and butler of the Honourable Frederick Lovell's present establishment. ARCHIE. 37 ' *' Fifteen francs is certainly an enormous price," said Miss Lovell, addressing her stepmotlier with that air of intense indignation seldom seen in women, save where apparel is concerned, — " but they would be the making of the whole dress. A plain white tarlatan is the best taste in the world for me, — I want notliing ' better ; but then the adjuncts should be perfect. My gloves I'm sure of, for I tried them on early this morning, when my hands were cold ; and my wreath will do. But my — no ; I don't like to think of it even, — they would make such an addition." " When I was a girl black slippers were very much worn with white dresses," said Mrs Lovell ; " and very nice they used to look. I was at a ball given by the Honourable Mr Eawston, of Eaby Castle ; and the three ladies Vernon were there in white gauze — " " And black shoes ! " interrupted Archie, pertly. " Yes, Bet- tina, that is all very well, but I'm not one of the ladies Vernon — I'm Archie Wilson ; and all the old Morteville ladies hate me ; and I wish — yes, I do — to' be the prettiest girl at the ball. And if I could have these — well, it's no use talldng of it — but if I could, it would just make the difference in my whole dress. I wonder whether M. Joubert w^ould take fourteen francs if I offered it to him — money down % " " Money down, my dear ! " cried Mr Lovell, waking up sud- denly. " What is it that you are talking of? Money down ! My dear Archie, whatever you do, never fall into any of these horrible innovations. Money down ! " " It would be a great innovation if we were to put it into prac- tice," cried Archie, who evidently was accustomed to make her opinions known in the household. "But for once in my life, father, I do wish I could pay ready-cash. That cruel wretch of an old Joubert, why should he refuse credit any more than any other tradesman 1 And the only ones that fit me in the place ! — I declare I've half a mind to pawn my ear-rings, and have them. Better be without trinkets of any kind than wear black shoes and u white dress. I hate the thought of it ! " and turning up her animated face across her shoulder, — all of which pantomime Gerald was watching, — Miss LoveU here communicated her grief in French to Jeanneton, who immediately broke forth in a loud chorus of indignation and sympathy. Why, even at a ball at the Marie she 38 ARCHIE LOVELL. (Jeanneton) had worn white shoes. Black shoes and a white dress for mademoiselle at mademoiselle's first ball, monsieur ! And Jeanneton extended her clasped hands dejirecatingly towards mon- sieur, as though he were a monster of domestic tyranny about to force his innocent child into a convent, or a marriage of convenience. " Mademoiselle's first ball ! " reiterated Jeanneton, imjDloringly. "But why? — but what do you all mean? AVhy should not the child have these black boots 1 " " White ! white ! white ! " cried Archie, immensely excited. "AVell, then, white boots, if she wishes them. Are not white boots the correct thing for young women to wear at balls 1 " he continued, addressing Mrs Lovell : " if they are, let her have them by all means. Poor little Archie ! " And he stretched his arm out and stroked her hair caressingly. If Archie had expressed a wish for a set of diamonds and a white satin dress, Mr Lovell Avould have said, " let her have them ; " and the girl shot a quick look of sapient intelligence towards her stepmother. '" Don't enlighten him," the look said : " don't tell him our reputation is so bad M. Joubert won't let me have a pair of white satin slippers on credit — don't tell him we have only just francs enough to last out next week, and that by dint of some- what short dinners towards the close of it." Then aloud, "Ah, dear papa, you never deny me anything," she said; "and you'll see if I won't do you credit to-morrow evening — shoes and all. I do hope the young men will pay me attention," she added, quit- ting the subject of money now that her father had roused liimself enough to take part in it. "I only know three ; and that's not many to look to for twenty-one dances, is it ? Even if they all ask me twice — which one can't be sure of — there's six, and fifteen to sit out. Bettina, I hope I sha'n't sit out fifteen dances." " "Well, my dear, I hope not ; but there's never any saying, — men are so capricious. I remember once when I was young — " "Ah, but that was very different. The Marquis of Tweedle never asked you at all after dancing nine times running Avith you the night before ; but people like M. Gounod are not likely to be capricious. Do you think I could calculate with certainty on M. Gounod asking me three times now ? " M. Gounod was a little French doctor — a bachelor of forty— ARCHIE. 39 greatly souglit after by all the female population of Morteville ; and Mrs Lovell answered that she thought A.rchie might certainly rely on a dance "with him — a dance perhaps at the end of the evening. As to thinking he could dance with little girls before midnight, with the Maire's two daughters, and the Sous-prefet's wife, and all his influential patients, in the room, it was absurd ; unless, indeed, they went very early, and he gave her a quadrille before the other ladies had arrived. "A pleasant prospect for me ! " cried Archie, with a real tremor in her voice, and real tears rising in her eyes ; " and after lying awake for nights and nights thinking of this ball, and how jealous I would make old Gussy Marks and all of them by my successes ! If — if " but the supposition lapsed into silence ; " if Mr Durant would only stay and go to it," was what she thought ; but for about the first time in her life she felt a shyness at putting her thought into words. ''If little Willy Montacute asks me, I'll dance away haK the night with him, at all events," she finished, — after a minute or two. "Anything would be better than sitting by and seeing other people enjoy themselves." And then Miss Lovell took a vigorous heap oi fricandeau of veal, a goodly pile of salad, an addition of cherry compote (she was quite cosmopolitan in her taste for sauces), a gigantic slice of the loaf, and began her supper. Gerald watched her robust appetite with admiration. The 3'oung person he could least love on the earth — her he was engaged to marry — had, before men, a trick of dallying with her food, which exasperated him singularly. What did girls go in for when they abstained from food 1 Intellectual charms 1 — the cleverest people eat the most. Physical ones *? — to be handsome, the frame of any animal must be well nourished. I^o such illogical hnman creature was before him now ; but a young woman eating her supper as heartily as a man — ay, and helping herself ever and anon to fresh condiments, and finally to more veal and another trench of bread ; and, as I have said, Mr Durant's admiration increased enormously as he watched her. When the supper-table was at length cleared by Jeanneton, !Mrs Lovell reminded her step-daughter in a very serious tone what day of the week it was. 40 ARCH IK LOVEl.L. "Sunday evening, Archie, my dear, — Sunday evening, you know." " Well, Eettina, what of it ! Jeanneton may clear the things away on Sunday evening, mayn't she, without sin 1 " " Archie dear, for shame ! A young girl should never use words of that sort. You know on Sunday evening I always like to attend to our services. We shall have just time for a good quiet reading now before bed-time." "Not to-night. Bettina, — not to-night," said the girl, gravely, and coming so abruptly to the window that Durant half thought she must have caught a glimpse of his figure before he drew away quickly into deeper shadow. " It isn't that I dislike the readings," she added, in a voice that utterly disarmed poor little foolish Bettina ; " when I'm in the mood, T like them better than any- thing else, I do ; but I'm not in the mood to-night ; and I won't pretend to read David's grand old Avords, and all the time be thinking of white-satin shoes and M. Joubert, and my chances of partners at the ball. A cigarette and a walk by moonlight would be much more suitable to my present state of mind." "Not a cigarette, Archie, — not a cig — " "Bettina, child, please go to bed, and don't mind me. If I think a cigarette would do me good, I shall smoke one, you ma}^ be sure. Now, good night." "Well, then, Archie, don't put on — you know what I mean. It was very well for once, but you are getting too old for these tricks now ; and let Jeanneton sit at the window, at all events." And then, having apologized away her lecture into simple acquiescence, as usual, Mrs Lovell lit her bed-candle and went away ; and Archie and her father were left alone. He came up and put his arm round her shoulder. A great gaunt man Durant could see he was, in the moonlight, with narrow stooping shoulders, white delicate hands, and a pale absent-looking, intellectual face. " Arcliie, my love, Bettina is right — don't go out again as you did last night." " 0, papa, it was such fun ! — and knowing all the stories the old ladies would make up ; and it was only your coat and hat, papa, after all." ARCHIE. 41 " But still it pained me, Archie, — it pained me when yon told us of it." " I won't do it then. I'll never do it again." Very quick and decided she said this. "Poor little papa, you have quite enough to trouble you without me." And Mr Gerald Durant, who was not over-hurdened with house- hold affections, felt oddly at seeing her take her father's hand and hold it tenderly up against her cheek. " If you like, I'll go up at once and help Bettina with the read- ing," she added, after a minute or two. ''Well, well — that's quite another thnig," answered Mr Lovell. "Bettina is a most admirable woman. I'm sure you and I owe her everything, Archie ; but her theology is — well, let us say her weakest point — a thing to be accepted, not argued about. To per- sist in Dissenting manuals, as she does, when all the noblest works of our Church are open to her ! Iso, Archie, I must say I do not care how often you miss poor Bettina's readings." The theological difference between her father and his wife had been long patent to Archie ; and from the time she was six years old she had known how to make discreet use of them on occasion. "And you'll make me a cigarette or two before you go 1 " (Mr Lovell had a sanctum in which he always spent the early hours of the night.) "Ah, do, papa ; it's so jolly to sit here and smoke in the moonlight." " Bnt you don't like it, Archie 1" said Mr Lovell, as he took out his tobacco and prepared mechanically to obey her. " I can tell by your face, miss, you don't really like your cigarettes a bit." "Well — like?^' answered Archie, reflectively ; "like? — no. I don't suppose I do like the taste, any more than I like the feel of a bonnet ; but still I'm quite ready to wear a bonnet on Sunday. It's the ideas of things, I believe, not the things themselves, that are nice — don't you think so, papa ? " "Yes, Arcliie," he answered, quietly. "And 'tis in the pursuit of the * ideas of things,' not of things themselves, that men's lives waste away — like mine." " 0, father ! — waste away ? " " Waste away, child — and leave no trace, either for bad or good, as they waste." ^ 42 ARCHIE LOVELL. Archie was silent ; and gave a long and wistful look at her father's face. Vaguely it came into her head to speculate whether this was truth indeed that he had spoken ; whether a life spent in dreams does not, in the very things left undone, leave as palpable a record of itself — more palpable oftentimes — than a life of acti\dty and work ] But she made no answer. A sort of instinct told her that it was better ]\Ir Lovell should believe his failures to be harm- less ones at least. And, with their money frittered away, herself and her education neglected, their position — ay, and at times the common comforts of life — gone too, the poor child, with premature womanly tact, had long since learnt to be silent whenever Mr Lovell sentimentalized about himself and his failures. " You will have finished ' Troy ' in a few weeks, papa ; and then there will be no more talk of failure. I am certain, quite certain, you will get a good price for it in London." " Troy " was an enormous and very ambitious landscape, that Mr Lovell had been working at for years. It was a wonderful combination of such red, purple, and green, as nature never painted yet upon the face of creation ; but dear to Mr Lovell's heart as ever "Carthage" was to Turner, or, perhaps a juster simile, as " The Banishment of Aristides " to poor Haydon. To Archie this picture was like a brother or sister. It had grown with her growth — every great event of her life, since she was a child of seven, seemed, in one way or another, to be con- nected with "Troy ;" and now that it was within a fcAV weeks of completion, when the artist himself said that more thought, more finish, could not be given to this masterpiece of his life, his daughter's heart fevered tumultuously over its prospects of success or of failure. Childish though the girl was in most other things, in everything pertaining to money her life had already forced her to be wise. Mr Lovell estimated (who shall say by Avhat tariiOf ?) that "Troy" must fetch five hundred guineas at least. Five hun- dred guineas would enable them to pay off the creditors from whom they had run away — for Mr Lovell in his heart was honest still — to cast aside this incognito that Archie detested so cordially, and to start afresh. (Starting afresh was a process they had passed through — hitherto by the sacrifice of capital — about every year since her birth.) Yes ; and suppose " Troy " did not sell 1 Sup- ARCHIE. 43 pose the picture-buyers in London did not think those marvellous ruby purples more like to nature than Archie in her inmost heart did here in Morteville-sur-Mer ? Long after her father had left her, Miss Lovell stood pondering these things ; the cigarettes still lying upon the window-sill, the ball, the white satin shoes, Mr Durant himself, forgotten ; and when suddenly a figure emerged into the light close before her, for a second or two she did not even recognize him. " Miss Lovell, I am afraid I have startled you," he remarked, as she drew instinctively away from the window, and half hid herself behind the curtain. " Ah, Mr Durant ! is it you 1 "Well, for a moment I certainly did not know you, I was far away from Morteville — just then — day-dreaming, as I've a dreadful habit of doing." And then she held out her hand — that little bit of a sunburnt hand, Avhose modelled proportions were already so graven upon Gerald's me- mory — and gave it him. Affairs were progressing, thought Mr Durant ;' the girl had never shaken hands mth him before. The papa and mamma re- tire, and mademoiselle, surprised in a pretty 2^ose in the moonlight, gave her hand to him, and returned his pressure heartily. !Now was the time to begin serious love-making at once. Which conclusion shows that a Guardsman, weighted even with seven seasons' experience, may make desperate mistakes occasion- ally about matters wherein his own vanity is concerned. CHAPTER V. A CIGAR BY MOONLIGHT. Archie Lovell seated herself like a child upon the sill of the open window, leant forth her face full where Maloney, had she been there, could have seen it, and told Mr Durant at once, and without any reserve, that he might go on with his cigar while he talked to her. Mind it 1 — not a bit. Her father smoked all day and all night long. She had been brought up since she was a 44 ARCHIE LOVELL. baby among people who smoked. "Why Bettina, who looked upon a cigar as a capital crime once, had got actually to feel lonely without the smell of smoke now. " And who is Bettina 1 " asked Gerald, thinking that domestic confidences would be the kind of conversation most calculated to put the girl at her case mth him. " Bettina is my father's second wife," answered Archie promptly — " Elizabeth, really ; but he disliked the name so much, that a German friend thought of Bettina for him — and the most ill-used, long-suffering step-mother in the world. I was three when she came to us, — I am seventeen now ; and during these fourteen years I have turned every hair of her head from black to white. Poor little Bettina ! " " Are you so very wicked, then, Miss Wilson 1 " Gerald asked ; *' I should not have thought so, I am sure." " 0, I was an awfully wicked cliild, I think," answered Archie ; " and tlien I believe I really did take every disease under the sun — Bettina says so, at all events — also that I got into more accidents than any other child extant. ISTow, of course, it's different. There " are no more diseases, as she says, that I can take, and I am too careful and a great deal too fond of myself to get into accidents ; so really a good deal of the poor little woman's responsibility is taken away." The balls had broken in Durant's favour. He could open the first battery of flirtation in an easy orthodox fashion, and without the wearisome necessity of any more of those dreary family his- tories. " No other disorder that you can possibly take 1 I should hardly think that. Miss Wilson, at your age." "Well, of course, I don't mean cholera or the plague" ("You matter-of-fact young Briton ! " interpolated Archie mentally), ''but cliildish ailments — hooping-cough, measles, scarlet-fever, and all the rest of it. Do you understand now 1 " '* And you don't admit the possibility of any but bodily ailments, then 1 You don't recognize the existence of mental sufferings 1 — disappointed hopes, broken hearts — " " Oh, I've much too good a digestion for any nervous affection of that kind," she interrupted with a laugh. " Papa says I shall A CIGAU BY MOONLIGHT. 45 never knoTv anything alDOiit the usual griefs of civilized young women, as long as my magnificent appetite and digestion remain to me." If the fence was unconscious, it was none the less effective. Gerald saw that he was a great deal farther than he had thought from sentiment still, and resolved for the present to follow rather than lead. " Civilized young women ! Don't you consider yourself as be- longing to civilization, then 1 " '' Hardly, Mr Durant ; or only in the same sort of way that gipsies do. E'ow, look;" she just touched his sleeve with her hand, and leant her face forward confidentially to his ; " look here ; as long as I can remember anything, we've been living about in Italy, but never longer in any place than a year or so at a time. We have always been much too poor for any English people to want to know us, and my father's friends everywhere have been artists — artists, and actors, and musicians, and republicans, and all those sorts of men, you know. For the rest, we generally know our butcher and our baker — till our credit gets too bad for us to want to keep up the acquaintance — and occasionally the English parson, but not his wife or daughters, to bow to ; sometimes the doctor; and that's about the extent of our dealings with the Philistines. I've never been to school ; I haven't an accomplish- ment belonging to me, except dancing (which I learnt by instinct, 1 suppose) ; and I've scarcely known an English child to speak to since I was born. I^ow, am I civilized or not ? " " Very," answered Gerald laconically, and looking long at the refined high-bred face so close to him there, alone at this hour and by this light ; yet fenced round, divinely shielded, by its own un- consciousness of evil as few faces had ever seemed to him in London ball-rooms. " You have been in Eome, of course, among all the other Italian cities 1 " he remarked, as the girl returned his look with a thorough want of embarrassment, that to him was more singularly embarrassing than any shj^ness would have been. *' Yes, we actually lived in Eome for nearly two years once ; and we looked upon it as head-quarters, or home, all the time we were in Italy. It is home to papa, I think ; or more home than any- where else could ever be." 43 ARCHIE LOVELL. " Tlie Roman artist-life suited him, I suppose ? " "Ah, no, !Mi' Durant. His heart is in Rome — ^just that!" The colour ebbed up into Archie Lovcll's face ; her breast heaved. " Mamma is buried there, you know," she whispered, in a suddenly softened tone. " She was quite a girl when papa married her, and she died a year after their marriage. He has really never lifted up his head since. All his pictures and his poems — poor papa ! — even I myself, are nothing compared to her and that one year they lived together. I used to feel miserably jealous, !Mr Durant, at the number of hours he would spend sit- ting beside her grave in Rome ; and I hope I shall never go back there to be made jealous any more. All the years he has had me ought to be more to him than that one little year with her. And yet," she added in a minute, and with another subtle change of voice, " I can understand it all. I should feel the same myself. Mamma was everything to him." Here, then, was the subject of love fairly brought upon the carpet — the girl's own capacity, not for love only, but for passion- ate overwhelming love, openly acknowledged ; and still GeraJd Durant felt that he was as remote from intimacy with her as though the Alps divided them. ]^o woman, learned or unlearned, ever paved the way to facile flirtation by making such a declaration as this. The siege, if siege it were to be, must be a long one, end- ing possibly — already he estimated Archie truly enough to know this — not as his flirtations had ended hitherto, but in his own utter defeat and subjugation. If this girl's changeful wooing voice had once got fairly round his heart, — if those little hands once held him in absolute thrall, he knew himself, in some mad hour, to be quite capable of marrying her. And to marry any woman save the one destined for him would be, in his fettered position, simply to throw life up of his own free will. Lucia Durant he must take for his wife, no matter whether other faces were fairer to his sight, other voices sweeter to his ear. ]\Iarry ! Heaven, where was his imagination leading him 1 and what was this girl but a pretty precocious child, whom it was plea- sant to play at love-making with here in the moonlight, possibly dance half the night with at the Morteville ball to-morrow, and then go away and forget ] And he looked at her again, and saw A CIGAR BY MOONLIGHT. 47 that the child was prettier far than he had ever given her credit for, with her great blue eyes softening, half in tears, and the full- cut mouth trembling : thought, feeling — yes, dormant passion even — stirrinsf over all the flower-like childish face. " Your father is a happy man, Miss Archie, whatever else he has lost." "Why, please?" "He has got you." '' He has ; and a precious trouble and anxiety I have been to him," she answered,, going back abruptly to her usual manner. " How in the world did you know I was called Archie ? " " I — I — well, really I don't know. Did you never tell me so yourself?" He could not for bis life have brought his lips to say that Waters had spoken of her. " Perhaps. I don't remember. But however you heard it, once would be enough, I'm sure, to impress it on your mind. Did you ever hear such a name for a girl in your life before 1 ' Archie ! ' And it's not a diminutive, not a pet name ; I was christened it. Shall I tell you how 1 When I was five or six weeks old, my mother dead, and poor papa in his worst grief, some English ladies who lived in the house took it into their heads I ought to be christened, and teased him as to what my name was to be. He says he remembers he pushed a book of my mother's across the table, and said ' her name,' and left them. It had been a gift of her brother's, and had these words written in it : ' Pauline, from Archie.' Well, of course I don't know what these excellent women thought, or how they managed it, but at all events they chose the most Euglish of the two, and I was christened Archie instead of Pauline, as papa meant. Do you hate it ? " " On the contrary," answered Gerald, " I like the name in- finitely, because no woman I have known before has borne it." " I am glad of that. I think sometimes my name alone would set people against me, even if I didn't look so much hke a boy, and smoke cigarettes, and — " "Miss Wilson! you don't mean to tell me you smoke — actually smoke] ISTo, no. Impossible." " I assure you I do. Here are two cigarettes papa made for me just now. Are you shocked ? " 48 AKCniE LOYELL. "Fearfully." "What ! di'i yoii never see a young lady smoke in your life be- fore 1 " cried the girl, looking intensely amused. " ]N'ever," answered Gerald, with the air of a Quaker. " I have lived among good, demure, quiet young ladies, I can assure you — young ladies who have never seen a cigar, save by accident, and don't know the meaning of the Avord pipe." "Oh, dear, how good they must be, and not at all tiring to live with ! Is it one of their portraits you wear in that locket par hasard ? " making this unexpected home-thrust with the thorough audacity of a child; "if it is, show it me. I should like to see how good, demure, quiet young ladies look w^ho never saw a cigar, except by accident." Without a word, Gerald disengaged the locket from his chain, and Archie seized hold of it and ran off eagerly to the lamp. A strong magnifier of Mr Lovell's was lying on the table ; and after opening the locket and finding that it did contain a photograph, and a photograph of a girl's face, Archie examined it through the glass with eager attention. For a moment something in the ex- pression of the portrait repulsed her strongly ; then her artistic eye discerned the accurate statuesque proportions of the features, the classic cut of the small head, the soft moulding of the fair and stately neck ; and finally, Avith a sinking of the heart utterly be- yond her ow^n power of analyzation, she felt herself bound to ac- knowledge that this woman, Avhose portrait Gerald Durant wore on his breast, was beautiful. All Archie's foregone beliefs in herself seemed revolutionized at this moment. Accustomed to hear the open opinions of her father and his friends as to her looks, she had simply and gladly believed herself to be handsome — an hour ago had spoken with assurance of being the prettiest girl at the Morteville ball to-morrow. What did she seem in her own sight now? A wild gipsy child — a picturesque model perhaps, with bright tawny hair, a pair of blue eyes, and not another good feature in her face. Pretty 1 Why? this girl she was looking at was simply exquisitely fiuiltless. The line of face a delicate oval ; a small irreproachable nose ; a small irreproachable moutli ; hair so fiiir as to look fair even in a photo- graph, brought down low and with mathematical accuracy upon A CIGAR BY MOONLIGHT. 49 the forehead ; a slender throat, gracefully turned aside ; soft eye- lids, modestly downcast (perhaps because Miss Durant thought it decorous for her eyes to evince no expression in a portrait taken for her cousin, perhaps because the photographer knew that their want of colour would tell if he attempted them upraised) ; every line exquisitely faultless, in short. But it was not the beauty of the features alone — not the irre- proachable nose and mouth, and IMadonna-like downcast eyes ; it was the indefinable propriety — I search for and can lind no other ■word — of the whole picture, even to the narrow bit of velvet, from which a black cross depended precisely in the centre of the slender throat, that struck Archie with such a sense of pain. She had her- self been photographed by half the artists in Italy, but always in a wild unstudied attitude, Avith careless drapery, with hair unbound — as " Undine," as " Graziella," as a peasant child, a nymph, a con- tadina ; but ever, as she felt now, with new and bitter shame, as a "model." This was how an English girl of her age and of her birth ought to look in a picture. This was what a man like Gerald Durant meant when he spoke of good, demure, quiet yoimg ladies; and with a stiff, altered manner, that he was not slow to notice, she went back to the window and returned him his locket. " Your friend is A^ery beautiful, Mr Durant. There is not a fault in her face, and I should stifle if I lived in the same house with her. I thank you for showing me her picture." '^ Well, I suppose she is beautiful," answered Gerald, refastening the likeness coolly to his chain ; " beautiful as a statue, and as cold ! I always fancy my cousin Lucia — did I tell you she was my cousin 1 — must be like Eowena. You have read Ivanhoe ? " Yes, Archie had read Ivanhoe, and Paul and Virginia, and The ^N^ewcomes. They found them in some lodgings they had in Padua once ; and she remembered all about Eowena very well. '• The same kind of blonde, gentle, negative, unimpeachable woman," went on Gerald, looking away from Archie as he spoke. " Don't you remember feeling how much better poor Ivanhoe must have loved Eebecca in his heart 1 " " I remember that Ivanhoe married Eowena," answered Archie laconically. "It didn't matter much to Eebecca, after that, which he loved." E 50 ARCHIE LOYELL. And then there was a silence, — the first silence there had ever been yet between them ; broken at length by Miss Lovell trying to say something cold and formal about its being past eleven, and how she had promised Bettina not to stay up late to-night. "And I shall meet j'ou at the ball to-morrow]" asked Gerald, throwing av/ay the end of his cigar, and moving slightly nearer to his companion. " The ball ! ]\[r Durant, will you really be there 1 I can so glad : I thought you were going away to-morrow morning." And her face flushed all over with pleasure, like a cliild's unexpectedly entranced by the advent of a new toy. " Perhaps you will not be so glad to-morrow evening," Mr Durant remarked. " I rely upon your giving me a great many dances, ]\Iiss Wilson." "I — give you dances'? dance with you, do you mean? 0, thank you ! " Archie's eyes sparkled anew with delight. " Willy Montacute and M. Gounod are the only other dancers I can really depend upon," she added with her usual sincerity ; " and I don't want to sit out a single dance. I will dance with you as often as you ask me ; and I'll make Bettina go early, so that you won't be able to get engaged before you see me." And she let her hand rest in his at parting, and leant her head out, smiling, to look after him in the moonlight, and gave him a last salutation, full of meaning and friendliness, as he stopped and looked back at her before turning out of the Eue d'Artois. " Poor little girl ! " thought Gerald magnanimously, Avhen, five minutes later, he was standing smoking his last pipe outside the door of the hotel. " Rouse her jealousy, give her vanity a chance of gratifying itself, and she would be a woman, and as disappoint- ingly easy to win as all other women ! As lucky for her as for the duration of my own fancy for her, perhaps^ that I am going away so soon." " Give him dances ! " thought ]\Iiss Lovell, as she laid her head upon her pillow. " Why, of course I will — every dance on the list if he chooses. I like him. When you see him close, his dress is cleaner than most men's" (Archie had been brought up among foreign artists, remember). "Not too much brains in his head perhaps, but a handsome maJerisch face, — and just the height ROBERT DENNISON^S SECRET. 51 for a partner. I must have those white shoes of old Joubert's now. Mr Durant shall never tell his cousin that he danced with a girl in France who Avore black shoes and a white dress at a public ball. Fourteen franca ! If the old wretch would only take off one, I've got live francs in my purse already, and perhaps Bettina — " And then Miss Lovell was asleep. If her vanity was touched, her heart up to the present moment was most entirely unscathed ; more unscathed than the Guards- man's, if the truth must be told. CHAPTEE YI. ROBERT DENNISON S SECRET. " Maggie Hall ! Tell my nephew Gerald that I will no longer allow the mystery about this woman to rest. Tell him, also, that I desire to see him at once, and that this is the last opportunity of explanation he will be liliely to have with me." Maggie Hall. As Eobert Dennison walked up and down the breakfast salle next morning, waiting for Gerald to appear, and with his uncle's open letter in his hand, the name of IMaggie Hall ivould force itself with horrible obstinacy upon his mind. Already he felt that this woman, vfhom six months ago he had loved with blind unreasonable passion, was a barrier in his path, a blot upon his name, an incubus upon his whole future life : and every time he thought of her thus, an unspoken curse rose in Mr Den- nison's heart. Give this message to Gerald ; go home, and with well-varnished face assure Gerald's uncle and aflianced wife, as he had done before, that he hoped — nay, Avas sure — they did his cousin wrong, — that matters yet would not turn out so badly as they supposed ; keep Gerald, if possible, apart from them still on his return to London, — ay, and how long could all this wretched farce continue to be acted out 1 Would any woman, would Maggie least of all, with her uneducated mind, her suspicious wilful temper, consent to be kept out of sight, alone, and with a E 2 52 ARCHIE LOVEI,L. blackened character for ever? In one of the bursts of passion tluit had become so frequent of late, might slie not any day pro- claim to the world how low he, Mr Eobert Dennison, had stooped ? Low in that he had made her, an ignorant peasant-girl, his wife ; doubly, trebly low in that he had not rescued Gerald from the first suspicion of the dishonour (for dishonour he had now begun to think it) that was indeed his own ? Every man, I suppose, who ever did a bad deed has felt, on looking back to that deed, that he drifted into it originally by im- perceptible currents ; that, however it might have been later, the first beginnings of the evil were wrought by influences beyond and out of himself. Eobert Dennison felt this now. He was entangled in a labyrinth of present falsehood. His worldly pro- spects, his ambition, the things dearest to him in life, were in jeopardy ; everything as bad with him as it could be. And why — andhoAv'? Because a beautiful peasant-girl had been thrown across his path ; because this girl's passionate regard for him had won, first his pity, afterwards his love, and then, in a mo- ment of weakness, but of honour — this he never wearied of re- minding himself — he had made her his wife ! Could he help it if scandalous country tongues had fastened upon a wrong man with whom to associate this girl's disappearance ? Weighted as he was with the horrible reality, was it any very great guilt to allow his cousin to bear, for a few Aveeks or months, the imputation, only, of the mesalliance? Could he help it if, in the mean time,. Gerald's own people should look coldly on him? — if Gerald's pro- spects should really suffer a little through the imputation ? Whj^, the fellow was sure to be ruined some day. He had been walk- ing straight to ruin ever since he left school, years ago. A scandal more or less about such a man mattered nothing ; while an im- putation against a white immaculate repute like his, Robert Dennison's, would be death. And if only a few short years could l)e lived through quietly — if Gerald -svere once fairly where fools and spendthrifts ouglit to be — might not he be taken into Sir John's favour, come into Parliament, become his heir in the sight of the world ? Nay, with INIaggie educated, and the first fresh scandal as to her lowly birth forgotten, might not even this wretched marriage of his be " got over? " ROBERT DENNISON's SECRET. 5^ He "was deep in the speculation still, his eyes gloomily hent upon the floor as he paced mechanically up and doAvn the room, when Gerald himself, dehonnaire, merry, careless, the snatch of a French love-song on his lips, sauntered in at the door. And then Mr Dennison, after hastily putting his uncle's letter out of sight, walked straightway up to his cousin's side, and laying his hand heartily on his shoulder, bade him good-day. He had alwaj's had a kind of elder-brother manner with Gerald, and this duty that he was going to perform now made it more than ever necessary for him to assume it. From this point on, the story will, I hope, tell itself, without further need of retrogression ; but, for clearness, I should here describe Avith more detail than I have done the exact worldly position in which these two men — Robert Dennison and Gerald Durant — stood to each other. They were first cousins — Eleanor Dennison, Eobert Dennison's mother, having been a Miss Durant, and consequently equally near, as far as blood went, to old Sir John Durant, of Durant's Court, the present head of the family, and the relation to whom both of the young men had been taught to look for their advancement in the world. Equally near in blood, but, as Robert Dennison in bitterness of spirit Avas forced to confess, widely remote in their place witliin the old man's heart. Married to a woman Avho suited him, rich, the possessor of health and all other prosperity, the death of his only son in infancy had been the one bitter drop in Sir John Durant's cup. He had not felt the loss at the time more than other men feel such bereavements ; but every future year as it passed by, leaving him without prospect of another heir, made him feel how wide a blank that little baby's death had, indeed, left in his life ! At length, twelve years later, another child was born to him ; and in his intense joy at the sight of the little face — come, as he said, to gladden his old age — the unwelcome fact that this second child was only a girl was almost forgotten. His favourite brother had in those intervening years married and died, leaving a motherless boy, who at the time of Lucia's birth was five years of age, the inmate of Sir John Durant's childless house, and as near his heart as anything not actually belonging to himself could be. This boy was Gerald; and long before Lucia could 54 ARCHIE LOVELL. ■svr.lk alone, her father had finally made up his mind as to the fit- ness of marrying her to her cousin. " Failing this hoy, I will make Eohcrt my lieir," he would say to his wife, and ignoring the possibility of liis daughter's, not of the hoy's, death. " Yes ; Eohert should take the name of Durant, of course, and wc would marry her to him. Any way, my chil- dren's children shall hear the name of Durant, although Heaven has willed that our own son should he taken from us." Instead of failing, Gerald grew up strong and hearty ; and Lucia Durant, a poor, delicate, over-physicked little girl, struggled up also to maturity. It was just as settled a thing about their marriage still as it had been when one was two years of age and the other seven. jN'ot a word of love had certainly ever passed between them. In the first place, probably, because they did not love each other ; and in the second, because Lucia's mother was not a woman to countenance love-making, however legitimate, within her walls. " I never thought of such a thing until after I married your father," was what Lady Durant would say to her daughter. " De- monstrations of feeling during engagement are, in my opinion, j)erfectly unnecessar3^ Any well-feeling woman must grow to like her husband after marriage." And Lucia was quite of a nature to receive her mother's opinions on the subject of love as final. She was to be Gerald's wife when she was twenty-one ; Gerald was nicer than Eohert ; and she was quite content that her papa had decided upon him. She was glad when Gerald was at the Court, but not broken-hearted in his ab- sence ; and this was about as much feeling as Miss Durant had hitherto entertained in the matter. I3y hitherto I mean until within six months of the present time. Then occurred the disappearance of Maggie Hall, one of the dairy servants at the home farm of Durant Court ; and Gerald Durant, vaguely at first, but gradually Avitli more and more fre- quency, was named about tlie county as having in some way been cognisant of her flight. The very suspicion was a horrible blow to the quiet family at the Court. Old Sir John had looked with leniency upon all Gerald's shortcomings heretofore, seldom speak- ing of them even to his wife, and wlien he was forced to do so,. ■ROBERT DENNISON's SECRET. 55 ■using euphemisms which, of necessity disarmed Lady Diirant's in- dignation against her scapegrace nephew — no difficult matter, if truth must be told ; for, in spite of all her skin-deep prudery, of all lier theological orthodoxy, Lady Durant was a very woman in matters of affection, and held the prodigal son in her heart dearer immeasurably than Eobert Dennison, with all his prudence and all his virtue. But here was no young man's wildness, no thought- less extravagance, no evil that a few hundreds or thousands of pounds could, as in all former instances, set right. If Gerald had done this thing that vfas imputed to him, the old man felt that now, indeed, were his gray hairs to be brought with sorrow to the grave. And bitter and hard words did he use as he enjoined his daughter to hold no communication, save as a friend, with her cousin ; to banish from her breast the recollection that he had ever been her lover, until such time as he chose to prove his inno- cence before the world. And then Lucia Durant first began to feel, in spite of all the excellent education of nearly twenty-one years, that her heart did throb with some feelings of natural indecorous regard towards the man they had destined her to spend her life with. There was no passion, little outAvard energy in the girl's temperament ; but she possessed the quiet sort of obstinacy not unfrequent in very gentle, very seemingly submissive women ; and in those dull winter days, when the blow first fell, and while the old people mourned aloud, Lucia Durant used to sit, her eyes calmly bent over her em- broidery, steadfastly resolving that now her cousin Gerald had fallen into ill repute she Avould hold by him till death. She never really believed him to have played any part in Maggie's disappearance ; but, whatever she had believed, I fancy she would still have pleaded for him with her father. Her vrorld of men consisted solely of Eobert Dennison and Gerald. One of these two she knew was to be master of herself and of her money. And in the deep-rooted, stifling repugnance that Eobert's superhuman virtues had ever inspired her with, she almost felt as though she could have forgiven any earthly sin in the prodigal Gerald. Children brought up on admirable but artificial systems, as Lucia Durant had been, not unfrequently break out into this kind of instinctive rebellion when the time for action comes. 56 AKCHIE LOVELL. " And why don't we suspect Robert 1 " the poor child had once mustered courage to say, when her father had been summing uj), fearfully hard, against his absent nophow. " Robert was a great deal more attentive to Maggie Hall than Gerald. Robert went abroad too at that time. Robert can ouly give his word, as Gerald does, to prove his innocence." " But Robert is not a man to commit such an action," answered her father testily. He woidd have given half he possessed to know at that moment that IMaggie Hall was Robert's wife. " Robert may not have the soft manners that please foolish girls like you, Lucia. He does not read Tennyson in a nmrmuring voice, and quote Burke about the days of chivalry, and spend his life holding silk for young ladies to wind. But he is a plain upright man of honour ; he is more, he is a man of the world, and possesses the ambition that makes a man true to himself and to his family. Robert Dennison throw away his prospects for the sake of a dairy- girl's pretty face ! " the old man had added, in a tone which ex- pressed tolerably clearly what sort of affection he had for the plain upright man of honour who would risk neither his own prospects nor the fair name of his family. And Lucia Avas dutifully silent ; and, two days later, sent Gerald the photograph of herself that he now wore— and showed to other young ladies when requested — upon his watch-chain. "If she had loved me, she had certainly been less just," he re- marked lightly to Robert Dennison. ''The most convincing proof you can possibly have of a woman's indifference is, when she be- haves to you with generosity." The two young men were seated together at breakfast now ; and Robert Dennison with little difficulty had brought the subject round to Gerald's difficulties with the family at the Court. " Imagine any girl really loving a man — do the scoundrels pretend to say this is Lalitte? — really loving a man, and yet listening to reason, where another woman is in the case ! Not that I am sorry. Poor little Lucia ! the best thing for her, and for me too, is that she should not care for me overmuch." *' But you still adhere to the old idea of making her your wife ? " asked Dennison, with a quick scrutiny of his t;ousin's careless face. ROBERT DENNISON's SECRET. 57 "Adhere to the old idea! Why, what are you talkino- of, Robert 1 Of course I adhere to it. How can I do anythinn- hut marry Lucia? Three thousand a-year (and Lucia herself, poor diild!) will be pleasant adjuncts to the old place and the old name ; neither of which could Mr Gerald Durant keep up for one week, if he came into them without any other help than his own resources." "And you don't look upon Sir John's present temper as of con- sequence, then?" said Eobert Dennison. "You feel quite as sure of his consent to the marriage now as you did a year ago, before all this took place ? " " Quite," answered Gerald calmly. " If the old man had taken umbrage at any of the manifold sins of my youth, I might feel differently; but I don't even trouble myself to think of a sin I have not committed. Heroines never finally disappear, except through trap-doors at the Adelphi, now-a-days. 1 am as certain of Maggie Hall turning up and acquitting me with her own lips as I am of eating this piece of really excellent pie now." And as he spoke, Gerald conveyed a goodly portion of the pate de foie gras in question into his mouth. " I'm glad you take it all so quietly," remarked Dennison, with an uncomfortable smile. Was that last remark with respect to Maggie Hall a likely one to make him comfortable? "But still I must tell you, that if you were less indifferent in the matter, I think it might be better for you hereafter. I am an older man than you, Gerald ; and this I will say, I think appearances are deucedly against you with regard to Maggie Hall." Gerald laid down his knife and fork, and the blood rose up angrily into his fair thin-skinned temples. " Very well, Eobert. You said something like this to me on the pier last night, and now I'll tell you what I think. I think appearances are deucedly against you with regard to Maggie Hall." Eobert Dennison laughed genially. Once brought into the ter- ritory of bold falsehood, and this man felt himself more at home than in the delicate border-ground that separates falsehood from truth. " Appearances against me ! WeU, I like that. I certainly never expected to hear myself accused of a folly of this kind. 5S ARCHIE LOVELL. Without pretending to transcendental virtue, eloping with a milk- maid is decidedly not one of the pleasant vices into "which I should be likely to fall." " No, I don't think it i.^, under any ordinary circumstances," answered Gerald laconically. "It is, 1 confess, one of the last things I should have accused you of ; but unfortunately facts are stubborncr things tlian theories. You said appearances were deucedly against mo with regard to Maggie Hall, and I answered that I thought they were deucedly against you. I think so still, Eobert ; indeed, if we are going to speak the truth to each other, I may as well tell you I thought so from the first. You know as well as I do that I never admired ]\[aggie except as a man must admire every pretty woman, empress or millonaid, that he comes across ; and I know as well as you do that you admired her very differ- ently. Admired ! come, I may as well say the word out — that you were as head-over-ears in love with Maggie Hall as she was Avith you. I can say notliing stronger." " Gerald, really—" "Now, my dear fellow," cried Gerald, resuming his knife and fork, and his anger vanishing, as all his emotions had a trick of doing, in a moment, "don't let us spoil our breakfast by entering into any absurd discussion on the subject. You were in love with this young woman, and probably know pretty well where fihe is at this moment. I was not in love with her, and do not know where she is. Voild ! There is no more merit on one side than on the other. The whole thing resolves itself into a simple question of taste. Only don't let us go through tlie trouble of any useless mystifications when we are without an audience, as now." "I think, when you talk in this airy way, you forget one slightly important point of wliich I spoke just now," remarked Eobert Dennison ; but he kept his eyes on his plate as he said this. " Maggie Hall is reported to be married. Even with your catholic ideas in all things, you must allow that to be accused of having married her is serious." " Serious to him whom it concerns," answered Gerald, " but to me of most supreme unimportance. Maggie Hall is certain to turn up again ; if she is married, as report says, so much the ROBERT DENNISOn's SECRET. 59* "better for the man who has the happiness of possessing her. Any way, I shall be clear. "It's no use arguing with me," — he went on, as Eohert Dennison was about to speak, — " I'm just as great a fatalist as ever, and just as much convinced of the utter folly of attempting to hinder or forward any event of one's life. If 1 am to marry Lucia, I shall marry her. If I am to be disinherited, I shall be disinherited. The gods alone know which would be the happiest lot, but I can look forward equally cheerfully to either." And having now finished an admirable breakfast, Gerald Durant took out his cigar-case, and, retiring to an American lounging-chair beside the open Avindow, prepared for his morning's smoke. *' Don't tell Lucia that I stopped to dance with a little girl at a Morteville ball," he remarked, when the first few pulfs of his regalia had borne away his thoughts again to Archie. " Great as my faith in Lucia is, I think that is a trial to which no woman's constancy, no woman's long-suffering, should be exposed." Robert Dennison was still lino^grino- over the breakfast-table — it was one of his " principles " never to smoke in the forenoon — and at this moment had taken out, unremarked by Gerald, and w^as readinsi; as^ain his uncle's letter. "Tell Gerald that I will no longer allow the mystery about this woman to rest. Tell him also that I desire to see him at once, and that this is the last opportunity of explanation he will be likely to have with me." Should he deliver that message of his uncle's in its strict integrity ? Mr Dennison pondered. Honour bade him deliver it, certainly. "When he saw the old man next he would have to pledge his word that he had done so. But was it matter of cer- tainty that it was politic to himself to play thus with the cards upon the table ? He had hinted at the substance of his message, and Gerald had scoffed, in his usual fatalistic way, at its import- ance. Was there really need to do more? If Gerald heard the message itself, ten chances to one that, roused by its tone, he would obey Sir John's wishes on the spur of the moment ; and once face to face, in the present temper of both, Dennison knew enough of human nature to be sure that Gerald and Sir John Durant would be likely to come fatally near the truth in their suspicions. As his cousin seemed so happy running after this last CO ARCHIE LOVELL. fancy of his in Morteville, why liurry him away against his will? He confessed that he held it lolly for any man to attempt to hinder or forward a single event of his life. AVell, let him have the benclit of his own creed, and chase after butterflies when every serious interest of his life was trembling in the balance. He, Robert Dennison, had done his duty in hinting to him that lie ought to be in England. Did Sir John actually bind liim to show the message in black and white 1 and might not the delay even of a few more days possibly bring some good turn to him- self, if in the mean time the guilt oidy remained safely lodged upon the shoulders where it already lay ? At this point of his meditation Eobert Dennison returned the letter to his pocket, rose from the table, and came up to his cousin's side. " "WTiat were you saymg about dancing at a ball, Gerald? You don't mean to say, w^ith the thermometer at eiglity, that you are really going to a jNIorteville ball to-night 1 " " I mean not only to go, but to dance like a student at Mabille." " With the little girl you ran after in the moonlight last night 1 " " With the little girl I ran after in the moonlight last night." " Her name is — " " Her name is AVilson, Eobert. Are you arranging in your mind how to break these dreadful tidings to Lucia 1 " " I was envying you your delightful freshness of heart, Gerald. After eight — nine years — whatever it is — of such a life as yours, to find zest still in pretty little flirtations with good young ladies of seventeen ! " " I don't marry them, whatever else I do," said Gerald lightly, but looking up full and suddenly into his cousin's face. " Eobert, I've been thinking as well as you during the last five minutes, and I'll tell you the conclusion I've come to." "About — about what?" cried Dennison, with an afi'ectation of indifference — "about the cut of your next coat, or whether you will wear white gloves or lavender at tlie Morteville ball to-night ? " " 1^0 ; about neither, my friend. I have been thinking about Maggie Hall ; and tliat it would be a vast deal better for all of us, for me in particular, that the truth should be spoken at once. Maggie is your wife." Mr Dennison's dark face changed colour by the faintest shade ; ROBERT DENNISON's SECRET. 61 "but neither his eyes nor mouth betrayed token of emotion or sur- prise. " We spoke of this just now, Gerald, and finished with the sub- ject, I thought. Don't re-ojDen it, if you please." And he took out his watch, and added something about the punctual starting of the steamer. " The steamer goes at eleven," said Gerald. " You have half- an-hour still, and what I have to say won't take five minutes. Maggie is your wife, Eobert. She wrote to me, a week after your marriage, and told me all." " She — she never dared do it ! " cried Dennison. " Show me the letter — she never dared write to you, and make such a state- ment," he added quickly. " I cannot only show it you, but give it you," said Gerald quietly. " God knows I don't want to be in possession of it, or any other evidence of your secret. As to daring," he added, " I think she acted pretty much as most women would have done. You were taken suddenly ill in Paris, you may recollect; and knowing me better, or being less afraid of me than the rest of us, she wrote this letter. "What would you have her do, Eobert? Write and say that she was with you, but not your wife 1 Spartan generosity that ; not to be expected from any woman in the pre- sent age of the world." " And you obeyed the summons ? " asked Dennison ; but more to gain time than because he cared to hear the question answered. " jS^^o. Before I had time to start I got another note — you shall have tliem both — telKng me that you were better, and imploring me never to tell you — poor child ! — that she had written. Here they are, Eobert ; and I can tell you I shall feel a great deal more comfortable Avhen I have got rid of them, and of the secret too. Keeping things dark is not, and never has been, a forte of mine." And taking a porte-monnaie from his breast-pocket, Gerald opened it, and took out two little notes, which he handed over to his cousin. Yes : they were hers. ISTo mistake about that cramped, un- educated hand — those complicated, ill-worded sentences. And the first of them was signed, large and distinct, " Margaret Dennison." It was the first time Eobert had ever read that name — for in 62 ARCHIE LOVELL. Avriting to himself she knew too well to sign it in full — and a flush of mingled anger and shame rose up over his dark face, " Kow, mind, I don't want to know anything more than you choose to tell in the matter," cried Gerald. " The only thing I care about is, that I shouldn't be incriminated too deep ; and per- haps the time has come when something ought to be said. You're the man to say it, Robert. You must set me right — but in any way you like — with Sir John and the rest of them." " ^ind — and you've never said a word about it before, then 1 " exclaimed Dennison, stung horribly by this generosity from a man whose frivolous nature he had always, both to himself and to others, pretended to despise. " Can you ask mel Of course I have not. Of course you are the first and only person to whom I should think of opening my lips about it. I was awfully sorry, Robert — awfully sorry ; I don't mind confessing it ; for, after all, birth •however, there's no good talking now. And when first I heard that I was accused in the matter, I thought it might be all for the best to remain quiescent for a time — I mean until Sir John had at least accustomed himself to the idea of one of his nephews being Miss Hall's husband. It really isn't the same thing after all," he added, ignorant how cruel a blow his words inflicted upon Dennison ; " I mean as you were never meant to marry Lucia, or anything, there is not half such a weight of guilt on your shoulders as there would have been on mine ; indeed, I don't see what Sir John Durant or any other man has got to say at all on the subject of your marriage." " Assuming the marriage to be a fact," said Dennison qaietly ; but taking very good care to put the letters safely into his pocket as he spoke. "Assuming the marriage to be a fact !" repeated Gerald with emphasis. " You don't mean to tell me J am wrong in that as- sumiDtion ? " " I mean to thank you heartily for the way you have acted," was Robert Dennison's answer. " Whether Miss Hall's statement liad truth in it or not," he half laughed, " is a question that the future will decide. You believed it ; and you have behaved like the good generous fellow you always were, Gerald, and I shall -never forget it, come what may. For the rest, rely on my doing ROBERT DENNISON's SECRET. 63 all that ought to be done — all that perhaps I ought to have done long ago — as far as you are concerned. You will not bear me any ill-will for having tacitly joined in your condemnation hitherto 1 " " Ill-will, Eoberf? ISTot 1. I only know that you or any man must have been deucedly hard-placed before taking the trouble of trying to keep the thing secret at all." "And if — if I find that the only way to turn Sir John's sus- picions away from you is to compromise the girl herself, I may leave the matter as it is for a few days more, then 1 — till you re- turn, at all events ! You can understand, my dear Gerald, that — without for a moment admitting the truth of what these letters state — I may be in a position in which a single hasty step might do me an incalculable injury. "I think, as I said before, Robert, that you are in a position where plain-speaking would be the best for us all," answered Gerald. " But on one point you may feel thoroughly at your ease : I give you my honour to say no word of all this to Sir John, under whatever circumstances I may find myself, until you choose that it shall be known." And then, considerably to the relief of both, a servant came in with Monsieur's bill, and to announce that time was up ; and a few minutes later the cousins had shaken hands and parted. Eobert Dennison's grasp was more affectionately tight than usual as he said good-bye ; but his hand was as cold as death ; his voice had not its usual sound as he expressed some commonplace hope that Gerald might still return in time for his dinner-party to-morrow. A month later Gerald Durant looked back to this parting, and remembered bitterly the cold touch and altered voice ; remembered too the set expression of Eobert's face when, a minute or two afterwards, he had watched him drive away from the hotel. A month later ! "Wliat he did now was to congratulate himself heartily on being no longer bored by the possession of other people's secrets. Eobert was a scheming long-headed fellow, always worry- ing himself with some mystification or other for social ends, which to Gerald seemed simply valueless when attained. Possibly he was married to Maggie Hall; possibly not. Whichever way it was, there were evidently tedious schemes afoot for keeping every- thing dark, and telling one set of people one thing and one another ; 64 ARCHIE LOVELL. and he himself liad made an excellent escape by giving up his secret, and so washing his hands of all further trouble or responsi- bility. Si vous cvoycx que jc vais dire Qui j'ose aimer, Jc ne saui-ais, pour un empire, Vous la nommer." There was a piano in the room ; and the sweet vibrating melody of Fortunio's song having suddenly come into his head, Gerald went over to the instrument, struck a chord or two, and on the spot forgot IMargaret Hall and Eobert Dennison, and everything in the world belonging to them. He had an exquisitely musical voice ; and when he finished the little ballad his handsome delicate features were all a-glow under the influence of that imaginary love of which he had been singing. Then he lit another cigar, threw himself upon a sofa, and read the beginning and end of a new novel ; then went back to the piano, and Avhistled through a couple of set& of waltzes of his own composition, accompanying himself charm- ingly by ear, as his way Avas, Avithout seeming to know what he was playing; finally remembered it Avas eleven o'clock, jumped up, seized his hat, and ran out just in time to meet Miss Wilson coming back from her morning's Avalk on the sands. He was over head and ears in debt ; Avas at variance Avith the relation to Avhom he OAved everything and looked for everything, — on the eve, for aught he kncAv, of ruin of all kinds ; and he had just played the strongest card he possessed into the hands of an un- scrupulous adversary. And a little French song could send the tears into his eyes, and a novel amuse him, and looking into a pretty face make his pulse beat as pleasantly as if no such thing as death or falsehood or treachery existed in the Avorld. Are such natures to be called Avicked or Aveak, or only philoso- l^hical? AVhile Rome burnt, Kero distracted his thoughts Avith his violin. Perhaps Avhen his turn for rehabilitation comes we shall be taught to see how blithe and gentle and dehonnaire poor !N"ero really Avas, and make a hero of him. THE LODGING IN CECIL STREET. 65 CHAPTEE VII. THE LODGING IN CECIL STREET. At the window of a dingy lodging-house in one of the smaller streiets leading from the Strand to the Eiver a girl stood eagerly awaiting Robert Dennison on the day of his return from France. This girl was his wife. She was a strikingly beautiful woman, with great velvet-brown eyes, a colourless skin, but fine of texture and pure as marble ; jet-black hair, a throat upright and modelled like a statue's, and lips and teeth that alone would have made any woman lovely. Her figure, moulded on a large scale, and possibly promising over-stoutness for the future, was perfect at present in its full, free, youthful symmetry ; and her hands — well, many a duchess has not really small and well-formed hands; and time and cessation from work, and much wearing of gloves, might yet bring poor Maggie's up to respectable mediocrity. Looking at her altogether as she was now — yes, even after she spoke ; and you could detect the north-country burr upon her fresh well-pitched voice — she was a woman whose hand, with all its look of labour, a man might well take without shame and lead forward to the world as his wife. Eeauty, youth, health, so perfect as in itself to be a loveliness, and as loyal a heart as ever beat within a woman's breast, — these made up Maggie's dower. And Eobert Dennison put them in the balance against her one default of lowly birth, and cursed the hour in which he committed the exceeding, the ir- reparable mistake of having made her his wife. She was dressed in a clear white dress, as he liked best to see her ; with plain bands of black velvet round her throat and wrists ; her hair drawn straight from her broad forehead, and gathered in one large knot low on the neck ; a little bunch of country-flowers, the first extravagance she had committed during her husband's absence, in her breast, l^ever had she looked more fair, more re- mote from vulgarity ; never had she thrown her arms around his neck with more delighted love than when, after hours of patient watching for him, Mr Dennison at length arrived. "Robert! ah, Robert! I've been so lonely Avithout you; and F 6C) ARCHIE LOVELL. you've never written to me, except that one line yesterday, for a week ! "What have you been doing all this time away 1 " with the slight half-querulous tremour in her voice that when a man still loves a woman he thinks so charming, and when he has ceased to love her, so intensely boring. " Well, I've been doing a good many things," answered Mr Dennison, suffering her for a moment to pull his face down to her level and cover it with kisses ; then breaking away and throwing himself into the only comfortable chair the room possessed, — a chair purchased expressly, in fact, for Mr Dennison's comfort, — " spending a few days Avith a friend of yours, Mrs Dennison, for one." "A friend of mine, Robert?" She was too excited by his coming to notice the fearfully bad omen of his calling her '' Mrs Dennison." ''La, now, who could that have been? Some one from home ? " — the blood rushing up into her face at the thought. " yes, some one from home, in one sense ; however, we'll speak of that by and by. How have you been spending your time while I was away ? " He scrutinized her closely. *' You have taken to a very swell style of dress in my absence, at all events." " Swell? Me swell in my dress ! Why, it's only one of my old grenadines done up and trimmed afresh. I have not had a single new dress this summer, and I'm wearing my black-velvet hat still, Sundaj^s and all, Eobert." " What a dreadful hardship ! No wonder you wanted me to return. Why don't you ask me, as you're longing to do, Maggie, whether I have brought you a new bonnet, or what I have brought you from Paris ? " Before answering, she came close to him, knelt herself on a stool at his feet, and leant her cheek fondly against his knee as she looked up in his face. Instinct told her now that her husband was in one of his bad days ; and, like a dog who reads punishment in his master's eyes, she sought by caresses to turn -aside the hand in whose power it lay to smite her. *' Much I think of bonnets and fine clothes when you're not here, my darling. If you had seen how I've been the last fort- niglit, you wouldn't have said my head was running on the like of them." THE LODGING IN CECIL STREET. 67 " Ah ! And on ' tlie like ' of what has your head been running, may I inquire ? " " On you, Eobert, you, — and nothing else, — and wishing you back, and longing for the time when you'll not have to go away from me any more. 0, my dear," she broke out passionately, and catching one of his hands tight up against her heart, " if you knew how I hated this life I have to lead ! Moving from lodging to lodging, as if I'd done some shame I didn't want to have tracked ; and never speaking to a soul from v/eek's end to week's end, and knowing what the people at home must think of me ; and all when I ought to be at your side, Eobert, and known to your friends as your wife. I believe another month or two like this would drive me mad — indeed I do. I canH bear it." In the early rose-coloured time of their marriage, Dennison had hired a pretty little furnished house in St John's Wood for poor Maggie. Then, as his love cooled, he began to remember expense, and moved her into a lodging at Kensington ; then Mr Dennison fancying, or saying he fancied, that some one had seen and recog- nized her at the window, into a smaller lodging ; and so on — love cooling more and more — until she lived now in two rooms on the second floor of one of the meanest houses in Cecil Street, Strand. " If you don't like London lodgings, you should do as I've often wanted you — go into the country. It can't be any particular pleasure to me, you know, to see you in such a place as this." Something in his tone — something in the dead feel of the hand she cherished within her own — roused all the poor girl's miserable, never-dying suspicions in a moment. " There now ! " she cried. " A minute ago I longed for your coming more than I longed for you when you were my lover, Eobert ; and now T swear to God I only wish I was lying dead at your feet ! It's no pleasure for you to see me here ! It will never be any pleasure to you to see me anywhere ; for you're tired of me ; I know it all. I'm not a fine lady, with fine feelings like yours ; but I know how a man, if he was a prince, ought to treat his wife, and you don't treat me so. "Why, here you've been back all this time " (five minutes it was really), " and you've not kissed me of your own will ; you've not looked at me, hardly, yet, F 2 68 AKCHIE LOVELL. Robert, Robert, love rae again ! I didn't mean to complain ; I only "want you to love me better and come and see me more." And then she burst into tears ; not silent pearly tears, just staining her cheek, as you may read of some Lady Gwendoline in her silken boudoir, but good, honest, demonstrative tears, such as these uneducated women do shed when the passions of their kind call aloud for utterance. " Lord ! " groaned Dennison, taking his hand away from her, and putting it tight ovey his eyes — " scenes and tears — scenes and tears — before I have been here ten minutes, as usual ! " "You used to be so kind and good to me always when you came," she sobbed. " And you used to be so cheerful and good-tempered," retorted Dennison ; " not always crying and making these everlasting com- plaints as you do now. There's no good going on any longer with it at all. This kind of thing has been acted out millions of times by other men and women before us, and always with the same results. Why should w^e be an exception? Mad passion for six weeks, cooling passion for a fortnight, general weariness on both sides, a little neglect on one, a great many reproaches on the other. There -you have the story of the master-madness of most human beings' lives." Then Maggie rose from her place at her husband's feet, and struggled hard to keep her tears back from her eyes. " Robert," she remarked, tolerably calmly, ''it seems to me that talk like tliis might suit very well where a man had the power to get out of * this kind of thing ; ' and a girl would be a sorry fool indeed who would want to stay with him if she was free to go. But I am not free, you know ; I am your wife. You seem to forget that a little, when you run on about being tired of me." " No, by Heaven, T don't forget it ! " cried Dennison, with rising passion; "I don't forget it at all; and you've taken pretty good care other people sha'n't be in a position to do so. My cousin, Mr Gerald Durant, has told me all : how you sold me — betrayed me to my family in the first fortnight of my marriage. Not very likely that I should come here and be moved by your soft words and your deceitful kisses, when I had just been hearing such a sweet story as that." THE LODGING IN CECIL STREET. 69 She blenclied to the colour of ashes. Her limbs seemed to tremble under her weight. "I — I never meant to do you a harm, Eobert. You were ill ; and I didn't know who to go to in my fright, and so I wrote to Mr Gerald, and — " But she stopped, sick with terror, at the new expression that she read upon her husband's face. His black eyes were fixed upon her full ; the red light, that could at times illumine them, giving them a meaning such as they had never expressed to her before ; his lips were set into what by courtesy may be termed a smile ; and while he watched her he was keeping time gently upon the arm of the chair with the white jewelled fingers of his right hand. A sickening, a physical fear overcame her. She read she knew not what resolve upon that iron face ; and felt about as much power in herself to resist him as a dove might feel with the kite's talons alread}'- pressing upon her heart. " It's my only offence against you," she stammered at length ; the first, and I swear to you the last." " Of course," said Dennison, with quiet meaning ; " every ofi'ence a woman like you commits is the last, until a new tempta- tion comes. I'm quite aware of that, and also of how great a reliance can be played upon your oath, Maggie. Still, to prevent anything so disagreeable happening again, I've been thinking over a fresh plan with regard to your future life. Before I married you, I remember you saying you had a fancy to go to America — " '' Eobert!" " Hear me out, please ; and do try not to get up any more scenes." But he shifted away from the gaze of the large horror- struck eyes that were staring miserably at him from that white face. " I am not going to poison you, or shut you up in a mad- house ; so you needn't go in for any of the tears and shrieks of your favourite penny-Herald heroines. What I am going to pro- pose will be for your happiness and mine. I know of some excel- lent people just going out to Canada, and willing to take you with them, for a couple of years or so. You would lead a cheerful country life, instead of being moped up here in London lodgings ; you should hear from me constantly ; you should never have a hand's turn of work to do unless you chose it ; and — " *' I will not go." 70 ARCHIE LOVELL. " Ah ! I iL'isJi you would have the civility to hear me patiently till I have finished." " I "will not go. Why should I stand here and listen to more of your iuRults 1 " He shrugged his shoulders quietly. " When you take to that sort of language you, of course, have the advantage of me, Maggie. Still, it would be better, for your own sake, perhaps, if you would keep'yourself a little more com- posed." "I'm quite composed enough to know what ycu want, and what I mean to do." " And that is — ? I should really like to hear what your views for the future are." "Well, they vary, Robert, they vary. Sometimes, when the blackest times are on me, you know, I think I'll just walk away to the river and throw mj^self in, and be at rest." " Indeed ! That resolution, I am quite sure, passes away very quickly. Apres? I beg your pardon — what next?" " Well, next, when I think how it would please you to be rid of me, and how then you would be able to work free, as you'd like to, at getting Mr Gerald out of his uncle's favour " (for a moment Mr Dennison's fingers did not keep perfect time to that imaginary air he was playing), " then, I say, I think of quite a different way to act. You want to hear 1 " He nodded assent, the red glow becoming more visible in his eyes. "Then I think I'll just go straight down to the Court, and take my marriage-lines out and show them, and ask them to be my friends. The ladies would, I'll answer for it ; for they are too real ladies to feel that I shamed them, as common rich people would. And so would Sir John, in time. He doesn't love you enough to take your marriage to heart as he might have done if it had been Mr Gerald." If Maggie had known the world for fifty, instead of for one- and-twenty years, she could not have struck home with surer aim to the hard worldly heart of Robert Dennison than her simple peasant instincts had enabled her to do. Every word told. Her knowledge of his.dcsigns, scarcely whispered to his own conscience, THE LODGING IN CECIL STREET. 71 against Gerald; the term "common rich people" (Dennison's father had been a manufacturer) ; last, and sharpest, the bitter truth that Sir John would, with very little pain, get over his mesalliance — all stung him more acutely than any reproaches, however unjiist, however passionate, of his wife's had ever done before. "You had better have a care before you speak to me like this," he exclaimed under his breath, as he always spoke when he was really moved. " For your coarse suspicions of myself I don't care, except in as far as they remind me of my degradation in being married to a woman who could even admit them to her mind. For the rest, Maggie, take my advice ; don't you go to Durant's Court without me." "I may do that, and worse, if you say anything about sending me off to America again," she answered sullenly, but with a piteous quiver of the lips. " May I inquire what you mean by * and worse ' 1 It would be a pity for us in the least to misunderstand each other." " I mean that I may just walk straight to your chambers any day, and demand to stay there ; — you hear, Eobert, — demand to stay there. I mean that I may go to a lawyer, and tell him all my case, and see whether I haven't a right to live under your roof ^ow you know aU." He watched her slowly and calmly while she said this ; then he remarked, without any further sign of passion in his voice, " Yes ; now I know all. I felt long ago that I had been an idiot for marrying a peasant woman with a handsome face like yours ; but I credited you — on my soul I did, Maggie ! — ^with loving me at least. ISTow I see you as you are, — the worst kind of woman, I believe, that lives. You acted virtue to make me marry you ; you acted love as long as yoa thought love would pay. JN'ow that you find yourself in poor lodgings, and with bonnets running short, you come out in your true colours ; threaten me to go to law sooner than be robbed of a shilling that you. think your own. As you rightly remark, now I know all." She was an ignorant peasant woman ; he was quite correct there. But in her peasant heart were truth and justice, and in her peasant brain was sharp, honest conimon-sense. And his in- justice was too transparent to wound her. 72 ARCHIE LOVELL. " You say all that, but you tlon't mean it, Eobeit. My virtue, as you call it, was not play-acting — as I'm your wife, I wonder you like to think so ; — and my love wasn't ; and it is not money I want now. I want justice, and I'll have it." '' O, you will ? " " Yes, I will ! if not from you, from others. I swear that." •'Very well. 'Now listen to me, and to something else I'm going to swear." He got up and stood close to her, looking steadily down into her face. " I am not a weak man, as you know ; not at all likely to be turned from anything I once made up my mind to do ; and now I will tell you how I'm going to act about you. This proposal of going abroad you may or may not accept — " *' I will not accept it." ''Very well; then you will live elsewhere. That is a matter about which I can merely offer an opinion. You can, if you choose, stay here in London, or you can go into the country ; and as long as you remain quiet, and act as I tell you to act, I shall come and see you constantly, and try to make your life as little lonely as I can." The blood rushed to her foolish heart at the first approach to a kind word from his lips. Poor fellow ! had she not been too hard upon him a minute ago ? " I'm no blackguard, Maggie ; and in spite of your temper and reproaches, I do remember — remember, is it ever away from my mind? — that you are my wife. In a few years, possibly much sooner, I hope to have got on in my profession; very likel}^, through my uncle's interest, to be in Parliament — you see I tell you everything openly and above-board — and then, having educated yourself in the interval, my poor Maggie, we will acknowledge our marriage before the world. This, mind, is tlie future / look for- ward to, if you continue to obey me. Now for the other side. If you, directly or indirectly, make known our marriage to my uncle, I swear to yon this : from that moment you will be my wife no longer, save in name. You may be acknowledged by my family ; you may by law obtain the right of living under my roof — to- morrow, I've no doubt, if you set about it properly — and if you do, I swear — do you hear? — I swear that I will never take your THE LODGING IN CECIL STREET. 73 liaiid in mine, never look upon you, except as a stranger, again while 1 live. l^Tow we understand each other thoroughly, I think, and the happiness or the misery of our lives is in your hands." And JNIr Dennison took up his hat as if to go. For a minute she stood irresolute ; then she turned, faltered to him, and fell upon his breast. "I'll say nothing ; I'll never go near the Court, or near any of them ; I'll never wish to disobey you again, Robert. If I see Mr Gerald, and you tell me to, I'll say that it was a falsehood I wrote about my marriage. Only never look at me as you did then. !Never think the thought even of giving me up. Robert, I'd bear any shame with you sooner than to be called your wife be- fore men, and that you should look at me again as you did then ! " He had hit upon the right way of managing her at last. Robert Dennison felt that, and prided himself on his skill in diagnosis, as he sat, with limbs outstretched, comfortably smoking in a coupe of the express train some hours later, on his road to Staffordshire. The question was now, how to utilize his slave's new subjugation to the uttermost 1 Was it quite impossible that, instead of hindering, she might be brought to lend herself to the furtherance of his ambition ^ One thing was certain ; the letters she had written Gerald Durant lay in his, Robert Dennison's, desk. With his wife working for, not against him, what was to prove the marriage, even if Gerald, not a likely occurrence, should betray him to his uncle 1 It was a soft summer evening, the first evening in August ; and as the train bore Robert Dennison through the rich harvest-tinted fields, he was sensible of great enjoyment in the delicious country air, the golden landscape, the excellent flavour of his first-rate havannah. l!^o man of his stamp seems bad to himself while his plans look prosperous. Remorse, or what stands to such men for remorse, sets in with the first dark days of threatening discovery ; and no discovery at all seemed impending now. Maggie had been suddenly brought, by a little kind harshness, to a proper state of mind. Gerald Durant, in a fit of Quixotic generosity, had made over the game, for the present at least, into his own hands. What was there in either of these circumstances to disturb Mr Robert Dennison's conscience? 74 ARCHIE LOVELL. He enjoyed the fair evening landscape, the country air, the motion even of the train, with a keener relish than he had enjoyed anything for months ; and his dark face looked handsomer than usual, so gonial and wcll-pleascd was the expression it wore, when, just in time to obey the first dressing-bell, he arrived at Durant's Court. CHAPTEE YIII. "noblesse oblige." " Well, and what of Gerald 1 " asked Sir John Durant, when at length a somewhat silent dinner was finished, and Lady Durant and Lucia had left the uncle and nephew alone over their wine. "You found him out and gave him my message, as I desired, Eobertr' ''Yes, sir. I gave him your message," answered Dennison. "Indeed, I returned from Paris by Morteville instead of Havre, to do so." " Morteville ! Is Gerald there 1 " " He has been there for the last week or more, I believe." " Doing what, pray ? " Well, sir — " and Mr Dennison had the grace to hesitate. "Robert," cried the old man, "I desire that you will speak the honest truth to me. The time has past for you, or for any of us, to show any consideration in speaking of Gerald's actions. For Lucia's sake akme, I have a right to put these questions, and to require very plain speaking from you in reply." " Oh, don't think there's anything wrong going on," said Pobert, looking up with sudden animation. " Poor Gerald merely seems to be killing his time as usual. Ho has been travelling for a month in the Tyrol, I believe, and is now — well, if I must speak plainly, is now losing a good deal of money to some table d'hote acquaintance at (Scarte, every evening, and running about during the day-time after the last pretty face that has taken his fancy. ^Nothing more tbiin that, sir, on my word." NOBLESSE OBLIGE. 75 " Oh ! And what answer did he give to my message V It never wanted more than one word of Eobert Dennison's dispraise to make the old man secretly warm towards the absent prodigal. "You gave it him exactly in my words, I hope 1 " " I did. I had. your letter in my hand when I spoke to him." ""Well?" " Well, sir. I really don t think there are any grounds whatever for supposing Gerald is guilty of what you have suspected him— on my word, I do not. No man can look so happy, as he does, who was entangled in the miserable way you have feared." " Happy — looks happy, does he 1 That shows, at least, how much he cares for his ahenation from Lucia! Eobert, give me his answer, if you please. I want the precise message that Gerald returns to mine." " He told me that he is innocent, sir," said Dennison, shifting his eyes from his uncle's face as he spoke. "That he knows nothing of Maggie Hall, that he never saw her from the day of her disappearance till this." " And you believe this, on your honour, to be true, Eobert ? " "I do. I see no proof whatever against Gerald, more than against any other man." Mr Dennison helped himself to a bnnch of grapes, carefully selecting the muscatel, of which he was particu- larly fond, from the black Hamburg. " I see no positive proof against Gerald, and I don't know Avhy we should disbelieve his word." "And why has he taken no pains to come forward to prove this to me ? You are a lawyer, Eobert. Is it not commonly thought in law that, if a man makes no attempt to prove his innocence, it is tolerably strong presumptive evidence of his guilt 1 " " Certainly," answered Dennison ; " and there could be very little doubt as to the justice of the presumption, with regard to any ordinary man. But Gerald, in some things, is not at all an ordinary man. He is indolent by temperament, and is thoroughly and consistently a fatalist. If he is to be cleared, he is without any exertion or trouble of his OAvn ; if he is not — " " If he is not, and soon, too, he will be a beggar ! " cried Sir John Durant, "angrily. "If Gerald, with a suspicion like this hanging over him, chooses to philander away his time with worth- 76 ARCHIE LOVELL. less men and -women at Morteville, as all his life before has been spent, he may do so ; but when he wearies of them he shall not find Lucia's hand ready for his reward ! Of that I have quite made up my mind. That he has married this wretclied girl I do not, in my heart, believe. 'No, Robert, I do not. AVith all liis faults, Gerald is not a boy to bring such shame as that upon us. Whether he had any share in her flight, I decline even to think. What I have to do with is this, that he has been accused — he, my daugliter's promised husband — of having made a shameful marriage, and that he has allowed near upon seven months to pass without coming here openly, and telling me all. Yes, all, Eobert. Gerald knows what I have been to him, what I could forgive at this moment — ay, till seventy times seven — if he would come honestly forward and acquit himself of so foul a charge." "And — and if he could not thus acquic himself?" asked Den- nison, in a somewhat compressed voice. "As regards Lucia, I need not ask what your feelings must be towards him ; but would this marriage, supposing the worst to be true, be sufficient to make you cast the poor fellow off entirely? A lowly alliance is not necessarily a shameful one, sir." " Indeed. I am sorry to hear such an opinion from you, although I am willing to believe you actuated by good feeling towards Gerald in expressing it. If a nephew of mine, Eobert, was to marry Mar- garet Hall, or any woman in her class, I would from that day banish him from my heart, my house, and, which I dare say he would care much more for, from my will too. No one is more lenient to folly — ay, even to error, in a young man than myself. Dishonour I would never either forget or condone. Our family has not hitherto had blood like IMargaret Hall's in its veins." " The worse for our family," thought Robert, mentally compar- ing liUcia's sickly prettiness and the magnificent face and form he had parted from four or five hours ago ; then aloud : ''I suppose you are right, sir," he said. " I suppose a mesalliance is about the worst action, for himself and for others, that a man can commit. However," he went on, " I am glad to find that, like myself, you don't believe Gerald to be so deeply committed. Give him the benefit of the doubt still. Pride, delicacy, a hundred feelings we may not understand " (how unconsciously men utter epigrams about '' NOBLESSE OBLIGE." 77 themselves !) " may prevent him from coming forward to prove any- thing in such a matter. We don't even know Avhat his relations may really have been with Maggie Hall." But Robert Dennison had humanity enough in him to feel that these words, this implied calumny against this man and woman who were truest to him in the world, rather choked him in the utterance. " Eobert," answered Sir John, after a minute or two of silence, " I'm in no humour now to talk about Gerald's pride, and Gerald's delicacy. How low has not my pride been sunk during all these months 1 You are the nearest relation after Gerald that I have. I don't know why, save that he grew up here, I should say ' after ' him at all. You are as near to me as he is, and I'm now going to tell you the simple truth about all this. It has been my dream, you know, for that boy to marry Lucia. He must have the title, he must have the old house when I am gone, and it has been the hope of my life that Lucia should share them with him, and that her children should be born here, as my son's children would have been had he lived. Well, I begin to see that my dream has been a foolish one. Not for this one misunderstandincj — a misunder- standing that another month, another week, may heal. For this last misunderstanding itself, no ; but because this indifference of Gerald shows me in reality what the character of the man is whom I look upon as a son. 'Tis no use glozing it over, Eobert. For more than six months now Gerald has known himself to rest under this imputation, yet never has he come forward in an open, manly way either to refute or acknowledge the charge. Married to her, I do not believe he is, but every man and Avoman in the county be- lieves Gerald Durant, in some way, to have been cognizant of Margaret Hall's flight. And still Gerald Durant is the promised husband of my daughter. It shan't go on any more so ; my God, it shan't ! " he repeated, passionately. " I wrote him one letter, and he sent me, — well, he sent me what I felt to be a cursed flippant answer, affecting to treat the whole thing as a joke, and even saying — mark this, Eobert, even saying that if a member of the family had married Maggie, he thought it a disgrace that could be very easily got over. To have sacrificed worldly pros- pects for the woman one loves would be honour — ^hear that! 78 ARCHIE LOVELL. rallicr llian disgrace, with more liigh-flown rubbish about the girl's goodness and beauty and virtue than I care to tliink of ; " and the old man's face Hushed over with passion. "jN^ow, in reply to this last message sent through you, he coolly sends me word that he is innocent. Innocent ! when he ought to be here at Lucia's side, here sitting at my table proving his innocence ! And you tell me he is losing his money — my money would be nearer tlie mark — and running after disreputable acquaintances at Morteville. I'll have done with the lad — I'll have done with him ! " he exclaimed, now fairly worked up to white heat. " Thank God, he is not my only nephew, Eobert. I have you to look to yet to keep our family from utter disgrace and ruin. My poor litlle Lucia." In all his life Eobert Dennison had never seen Sir John Durant so moved. He was a well-preserved, handsome old man, with grey eyes that once had been soft and passionate, like Gerald's ; a fair receding forehead, but beautiful rather than intellectual in its contour ; refined patrician features ; and with only the fatal here- ditary weakness of mouth and chin to mar the face. A hot flush had risen over his cheek ; his lips trembled as he spoke. Kow, if ever, Eobert felt was the time for him to strike ; now, with the metal hot, Gerald away, and his own superior virtue and ability in such conspicuous pre-eminence. " As regards Margaret Hall, I can only repeat I believe Gerald to be innocent. As regards his behaviour to Lucia, I can't trust myself to speak. That is a subject on which Gerald and I have not agreed for a good many years. But there is another point on which I may, without disingenuousness to my cousin, speak openly. I should do so if Gerald were sitting here at table with us. It does grieve me bitterly to see Iiim so utterly indifferent to the public career which, through your interest, sir, he might enter upon, if he chose." The tone in which he said this was unmistakeably sincere ; much more so than the tone in which he had been speaking hitherto. Sir John Durant looked steadfastly at his strong, resolute brow and face, and the thought crossed him that he had hitherto done this otlier nephew of his injustice. The son of an unloved sister, and of a man whom he secretly despised for his "noblesse oblige." 79 want of birth, Eobert Dennison had never awakened any but the most lukewarm interest in his heart. Every hope, every ambition, the promise of every good thing, had been lavished on Gerald ; and now Gerald was a spendthrift and a prodigal, and this other lad was prudent, self-denying, steady ; a poor, albeit a rising barrister, living in his frugal Temple chambers, and trusting only to his own industry and his own brain for success. " It needs but for you to bring him forward," repeated Denni- son, after a minute or two, during which he had felt rather than seen his uncle's steadfast scrutiny of his face; "it needs but for you to bring him forward, and Gerald must be returned for L . I was speaking to Conyers about it only to-day, and he said the contest would be a nominal one. You and Lord Sandford together can bring in any man you choose to propose ; and if Gerald. . . But what is the use of talking about it ? " he interrupted himself, with unassumed bitterness. " Gerald has no more ambition now than he had when he was eleven, and retired — do you remember, sir? — ^from competing for a prize he was certain of, because he wished some other boy — his Damon of the minute ! — to get it. He never had ambition ; he never will have it. Ambition ! It is not in his nature to desire anything strongly." Sir John winced under the remark, then lapsed into silence — the little reminiscence of Gerald's childish folly not, perhaps, affecting his weaker nature quite in the way that it affected Mr Dennison — and, after a few minutes, rose from his chair, and proposed that they should join the ladies in the drawing-room. " But you are not angry, sir ? " cried Dennison, anxiously, as he jumped up, with the deferential promptness he always showed in obeying his uncle's smallest wishes. " You are not annoyed, I hope, at my having alluded to all this 1 " he repeated in a low tone, as they were on their way to the drawing-room. " You know it's an old ambition of mine to see our family represented in Parlia- ment, and I can't help feeling strongly about it at such a time as this." " Annoyed with you ! No, no," answered Sir John ; but he turned from his admirable, high-principled nephew as he spoke, and, looking through the open door of his daughter's morning- room, his eyes fell on a beautiful full-length portrait of the 80 ARCHIE LOVELL. prodigal ; the j^rodigal at nine years of age, •witli little Lucia Ly his side. " I was only wishing he was somewhat more like you, Robert," added the old man with a sigh. '' With your ambition and your standing, Gerald might have become anything he chose." " Say rather, with Gerald's personal qualities I miglit have be- come anything I chose, sir," Dennison answered quickly. " Am- bition and perseverance are very well, but brilliant natural gifts — a face and a manner like Gerald's — are worth all of them in the race of life. For one man or one woman who likes me, fifty like him. It has been so always, and it is just. I have only to be with him an hour myself to feel the fascination of his presence as much as any one." The real strength of Robert Dennison's character lay in his capacity for saying things like this. A common, coarse slanderer slanders indiscriminately. Dennison knew not only where to stop from reviling, but where to begin to be generous. And then he possessed the rare gift of seeming to feel what he said ! At this moment his voice shook, his face softened, and Sir John Durant felt that he had never cared for his sister's son so much in his life before. '' You're a good lad, Robert, and a generous one, and some day I'll prove to the world the high opinion I have of you ! '' And as he entered the drawing-room, one of his hands rested kindly •on his nephew's shoulder. With a quick, upraised glance from her embroidery, Lucia Durant noticed the unwonted familiarity, and knew that Gerald must be further off than ever from her father's heart. CHAPTER IX. LUCIA. The drawing-room at Durant's Court was a long low room, with mullioned windows, glazed still in the ancient style, witli small diamond-formed quarries, a heavily-carved ceiling, panelled walls, and tapestry-covered furniture that had served the Durants during LUCIA. 81 the last hundred years at least. Surrounded in the county by pottery lords far richer than themselves, pottery lords who con- verted their houses into amateur hazaars or show-rooms of every- thing costly and elaborate in modern upholstery, it was Lady Durant's vanity to keep the Court furnished simply as it was when she first came to it a bride, and when none of their rich neigli- bours had as yet risen above their native clay. No ornament in the hall save its dark groined roof, the shields of arms upon its walls, and one huge suit of tilting-armour — not bought in "Wardour Street, but that had been worn by a Durant of old, and had de- scended from father to son in the family since the time of Elizabeth. In the dining-room plain mahogany furniture, of a fashion to recall the parlour in which Squire Western used to sit and listen to his Sophia's harpsichord. In the bedchambers the faded blue or green or damask hangings, which had given to each its name for generations ; and in the drawing-room, as I have said, the same tapestrj^-covered chairs and couches as had been the mode when George the Tliird first became king. "No better furnished than a parsonage," the manufacturers* ladies thought, when by rare chance any of them came to be ad- mitted on a morning visit to Lady Durant. But then what a strange, what a potent atmosphere of home seemed, by virtue of its very plainness, to hang over all the silent, grave old house ! The manufacturers' wives were sensible of that, and for the life of them could not make out why the crimson-and-gold stained win- dows, the cast-iron balustrades, the velvets and silks and or-moulu, of their own Italian stucco palaces would always keep their show- room gloss, and steadfastly refuse to be invested with the look of home. The look which only a house wherein men have been born, and have loved and died, can ever wear. The one unpurchaseable quality that makes these quiet, unchanged old country houses dear, as are the faces of tried friends, to those who inherit and live in them. The angle of Durant's Court faced south and west. At every season of the year sun and light were in all its rooms. Close without, two giant cedars sent up their immemorial fragrance from the smooth-shorn lawn. All through the summer, roses and honeysuckles clustered at every open bedroom window. In winter, 82 ARCHIE LOVELL. the old-fashioned smell of dried rose-leaves and lavender made you think of summer still. The house lay somewhat low, and on no side commanded a view beyond its own densely-wooded grounds. It was shut out from all sounds save those of its own small world ; the very cawing of the crows was exclusive — the Court Eookery ! All the chancres, all the noise of the outer world touched it not. Year by year the same quiet servants went about the same routine of quiet duties, the same furniture stood in the rooms, the same smell of the roses mingled with the cedars in June, the same old portraits were lit up by the blazing wood-fires at Christmas. No- thing altered, nothing progressed there, save, within the last twenty years, one young girl's life. And even this had been so gentle a growth as scarce to bring about any vital change in the habits or customs of the house. At twenty, Lucia was a grown-up young woman, of course ; but save that she no longer had a governess, and that she wore long dresses instead of short ones, and sat up as late as her papa and mamma at night, her life, and the lives of all about her, went on very much the same as they had done when she was ten. It was an old joke of Gerald's, when he was a small boy, to say the Court was an enchanted palace sleeping for a hundred years, and that he would be the fairy prince bringing " love and pleasure, hope and pain," when he married Lucia, And little Lucia, Avith her doU in her arms, had laughed at the joke then. Latterly, the mention of their marriage had become much too solemn a thing to be spoken of in jest ; nay, even to be openly spoken of at aU. Lady Durant willed it so. It was very well when they were children ; but no gro\ATi-up girl should listen to any talk of love or marriage until such time as the trousseau must be got ready. And Lucia, quite calm on the subject, had answered, "All right, mamma, not tiU the trousseau must be got ready ; " while Gerald — well, Gerald, if truth is spoken, had acquiesced only too gladly in any abrogation of the duties of his courtsliip. As part and parcel of the dear old place, he liked Lucia. Liked her as he liked the house, the cedars, the good old wines, the slow old carriage-horses, and everything else enclosed within the boundaries of the Court. Love he never had felt, never could feel, towards her : no, nor the feeling which, in the world he fre- LUCIA. 83 <][uented, amongst the men lie associated with, is dignified by the name of love. Women of many grades and many nations had in- spired his qnickly-fired imagination long before he first saw Archie Lovell : Lucia never — Lucia, poor little Lucia — could awaken in him either sentiment or passion. She held something the place a man's favourite sister holds in his regard : scarcely that. A sister, to be a favourite one, must make herself your companion ; and this, up to the present time, Lucia had never done ; Lady Durant not holding favourable opinions of allowing a young girl to be the companion of any one save of her governess or her mother. jN'o woman of forty is thoroughly suited to begin, for the first time, to bring up a child's life. Lady Durant was more than forty when Lucia was born ; her husband was fifteen years older than herself ; and so the girl had grown up unnaturally staid and good, as the only child of elderly parents is almost sure to be. Lady Durant loved her devotedly, — more devotedly, perhaps, than some younger women love their daughters — but living so long in this shut-out existence, without children, save him whose few weeks of life had made her own so much more lonely, without companion- ship except her husband's, she had forgotten, too completely, the feelings of youth to become,, in any wise, the companion of her child. When she was a girl, she had been brought up according to the doctrine of Mrs Hannah More, and according to these doc- trines, a very little modified, she brought up her daughter. The geunine British idea of gravity being a virtue, -per se, was rooted deep in Lady Durant's heart. As a baby, Lucia had been duly impressed with the notion that she must never laugh out of season, must repeat solemn words solemnly, et cetera ; and as her high- pressure governesses made solemn teachings the main part of her education, the poor child, as time wore on, not onl}"- repeated solemn words, but all words in an unnaturally subdued tone, and with an unnaturally lengthy face. There was nothing stern, no- thing unwomanly in Lady Durant's character. She simply held that j)rosaic, rigid, coldly-methodical theory of human life, in which a recognition of our capacity either for keen pleasure, or of the sense of the ludicrous, has no place. The mother of sons, her character might have become tenderer, more catholic— for girls G 2 8-i ARCHIE LOVELL. she held mediocrity to be the beau-ideal of perfection ; and her daughter had certainly grown up the very incarnation of the prim^ rigid, imimaginative system in which she had been reared. Her face, as her photograph had told Archie Lovell, was sin- gularly correct, as far as mere feature went. Colour, life, vigour, were all that was wanting to make her beautiful. Of these she was bereft. The development of children, after all, depends as much upon physical as upon moral causes. If the Court had stood upon a breezy upland, the old parents and the want of companions, and the excellent training of Lady Durant even, would not have sufficed to quench the buoyancy out of Lucia's childhood. But the Court lay low — sheltered from every Avind of heaven — hemmed in by those glorious old trees, so favourable to the haunted peace of aris- tocracy, so antagonistic to the circulation of oxygen, which aris- tocratic and plebeian lungs appear to stand in need of alike ! And so, after many years' indecision whether she would grow up at all, Miss Durant, of Durant, grew up a weed, much after the pattern of the pale, scentless flowers that grew under the shadow of the cedars on the lawn. You could look at her now and feel logically certain as to what she could be at thirty, or forty, or sixty. A man marrying her might feel assured that he took to himself as spotless a heart as any English household could produce ; for the very ignorance of childhood was on Lucia still. But he must feel, also, that he could prophesy with accuracy concerning all the future years of his domestic life, and this to some men — to a man like Gerald especially — is a singularly depressing thought. Men of his temperament crave for amusement more, perhaps, than for any other possession. Lucia never could amuse any one. J^one of the little aberrations from the beaten track, which make a young, untutored girl so charming, were possible to her. No- thing that she said, nothing that she did, was ever unexpected. On mild platitudes she had been reared up ; uttering and enacting mild platitudes she would live and rear up her children after her. "Honest, fair, womanly," Gerald had often thought, when he watched his cousin's face, and looked onward to the life he would liave to spend with her ; fair, gentle, feminine, everything he ad- mired most in women, and a bore. And about the strongest LUCIA. 85 fiVersion of Mr Durant's easy, epicurean nature was summed up in that one word. Eobert Dennison had mentally compared Miss Durant with his wife, awhile since, when Sir John spoke of no blood like Margaret Hall's running in the Durant veins. The comparison returned to him with double force when he came into the drawing-room and saw Lucia sitting there : her delicate face bent down beside the lamp, her wax-like hands buried in her embroidery, the whole, still figure in its dead- white dress, looking very much like one of Mr Sandys' beautiful rose-and-alabaster heroines (just ready to have "snov/drop," or "pearl," or "lily," emblazoned in gold let- ters at her feet). And Mr Dennison, whose taste inclined towards robust, Juno-like beauty, rather than towards ethereal heroines, felt in his heart that his low-born wife was handsomer, yes, and nobler-looking too, than Miss Durant, of Durant, with all her pale refinement — all her studied grace ! She turned her head at his entrance, smiling the pretty smile that she had been taught from her babyhood to accord to people, whether she liked them or not, and Robert came and seated him- self by her side. "Busy, as usual, Lucia. What elaborate piece of work are you employed upon now 1 " " Nothing very elaborate, Robert ; only a crest and initials. Do you like them ? " and she put her work into his hands. " G. S. D." and the Durant crest. Then, all this elaboration of delicate stitching, these fine interpolations of lilliputian lace-work, were for Gerald ; and it was being worked under Lady Durant's own eyes. Robert Dennison returned the handkerchief to his cousin in a second. " 1 admire your skill, Lucia, but I do not admire embroidery and lace-work for men. I always think a man who wears em- broidery on his handkerchief ought to wear long, scented love- locks, and lace-ruffies at his wrists and throat, like one of the courtiers of Charles the Second." "WhyT' "To be thoroughly in keeping, Lucia." " But long hair and lace-rufiies are not the fashion now, and embroidered crests on handkerchiefs are." 80 ARCHIE LOVELL. "The fashion ! A man need not follow fashion, like a girl, you know." "Why not?" " Because his aim is not to please by his pretty face and hands as hers is, and ought to be." " Not by his pretty face, of course — pretty is never said of gen- tlemen — but by being handsome and well dressed. If I was a boy I woidd have well-made clothes, and good gloves and em- broidered handkerchiefs, as Gerald does." " And sit before the glass studying the fashion-books and the set of your ties, and whether lavender gloves or straw-colour be- came you most, I hope, Lucia?" said Eobert, with a laugh. " Oh, dear no, not if I was really a boy," answered Miss Durant, looking up into his face. " If I was really a boy, I suppose I should ride to hounds, and row, and play cricket, and be bra\'e like Gerald is." Of all persons in the world Eobert Dennison found his cousin Lucia the most difficult to get on with. To a man whose forte lies in half statements, implied detraction, delicate innuendo, no human creature is so embarrassing as one of these matter-of-fact people who- say "why?" to everything, and receive every statement made to them in its formal and literal melanin g. If he had said, " Gerald is an empty-headed fop, Gerald spends his time before the glass trying on neckties and deliberating as to the colour of kid gloves,'* Lucia, after some consideration, might have admitted the new idea to her mind. His covert allusions to cavaliers and lace-ruffles and fashion-books, reached her apprehension very much as they would have reached the apprehension of a child of six. And this un- compromising simplicity, this invincible slowness of comprehension, really served Lucia as largeness of heart serves wiser people. Want of imagination kept her true ; want of imagination made her just ; up to the mark of a child's truth and of a child's justice. "You should not be spoiling your eyes by lamp-light, Lucia,, with such a moon as that telling you to go out in the fresh air,"^ Mr Dennison remarked, after watching her quiet face for a minute or two. "Would it hurt you, do you think, to have a walk in the garden ? A night like this is rather a treat, you know, to a poor smoke-dried Londoner like me." Robert Dennison had. LUCIA. 87 reasons for wisliing to talk to Lucia confidentially ; and as lie was to leave the Court before any of them would be up next morning, he knew that this would be his only opportunity of seeing her alone. "Mamma, Eobert wishes me to go out with him — may I?" "What, at nine o'clock"? Well, Lucia never does go out so late, Eobert, on account of her throat ; but if there is no dew, and you keep on the gravel — " Dennison ran out through the window, and resting his hand down on the turf declared it to be as dry as the carpet ; and then Miss Durant, with a shawl pinned round her head, as though she had been a very rheumatic old woman, was allowed to go out for ten minutes, with strict injunctions to walk fast all the time, and Dennison, resolving to make the most of his time, drew her band mthin his arm and marched her far away at once from out of hearing of the old people. " Robert has improved," remarked Sir John, when the sound of their footsteps had died away ; " very much improved. Don't you think so, Jane ? " " Eobert Dennison looks in good health," answered Lady Du- rant's measured voice ; " but that I think he always did. ^Yhat does he say of Gerald 1 " " I don't mean improved in health," said Sir John, pettishly ; " I mean improved in manners, in bearing, in every way. Eobert is a young man who will make his way yet in the world, Lady Durant. You will see that." " I always thought he would make his way. Sir John, in his own walk of life. His father was a person, I believe, who made his way in the world — was he not "? " " His father ! Where is the good of talking in that way now. Lady Durant ? You know very well I disliked this lad's father, and I don't tliink it's generous — no, by God ! I don't think it's generous in you, Jane, to bring up the poor fellow's want of birth so constantly ! " "My dear Sir John— " "Oh, it's all very fine, and of course you said nothing really against him ; but I know your tone, and I know how you have felt all your life about Eobert. It would be well for us both, 88 ARCHIE LOYELL. Jane, if we had thought more of him, and a little less of that scapegrace, Gerald ; well for ourselves, and the honour of our family too." "Wlien Sir John Durant took up an obstinate fit, you might as well have sought to move him by argument as to transplant one of his own cedars by a touch of your hand. He had worked him- self into real anger towards Gerald this evening ; and Lady Du- rant saw that very little was needed to push him into real amity towards Dennison. " I don't know why you should say we have undervalued Eo- bert," she remarked, very quietly. " I, for one, have ever been alive to liis good, steady, hard-working qualities." " And have made him your favourite 1 taken him to jouv heart as a son 1 promised him your daughter's hand 1 You have done all this for Robert Dennison, have you not, Jane?" " iSTo, Sir John, I have not," answered Lady Durant, firmly ; *' neither have you. Eobert never has been, never can be, as near my heart as Gerald is. Gerald took the place to me of my own son, and whether he marries Lucia or not, he will hold it." And Lady Durant rose, and coming up close beside her husband's arm- chair, rested her hand down on his shoulder. She was a handsome woman, looking ten years younger than her age ; tall, upright, with the same pure cut features as Lucia, soft grey hair, braided low upon her foreliead, and teeth and hands that still were beautiful. With all her sectarian, narrow-minded foibles there was a certain old-fashioned honesty, a certain womanly refined grace about Lady Durant (rare, perhaps, to meet among some of the more liberal-minded London matrons of tlie present day), that invested her with a charm still in the eyes of the hus- band of her youth. The calm stagnant atmosphere that had failed to develop the young girl's nature seemed to have preserved that of the mature woman in more than ordinary freshness : and as Sir John Durant looked up into his wife's face now, something about its unwonted emotion, the unwonted sight of tears within her eyes, touched him strongly — these good simple country people, who in their old age couki still be moved by the expression of each other's faces ! " I don't ask you to love Robert Dennison, LUCIA. 89 Jane. I know, keenly enough, how dear Gerald still is to us both. All I Avant is, that we should be just." " In what way just, Sir John ? " " In not lavishing every good thing upon one lad to the exclu- sion of the other. We have gfven this house to be Gerald's home, we have promised to receive him as a son. That is enough. Enough, God knows ! when we consider the gratitude he shows us in return." " And what is this that you propose to do for Eobert, then 1 Tell me. I would rather you told me. I will oppose you in nothing that you decide to be wise and just, even if all our happi- ness — Lucia's most — has to be sacrificed to what yoic feel to be duty ! " Wise words — words which showed that, whatever Lady Durant's errors might be regarding the training of daughters, she thoroughly understood those smaller tactics of domination which make a clever woman a good wife. In five minutes she was mistress of all the vague projects respecting Eobert's advancement that had as yet vacillated across her husband's mind ; and in a quarter of an hour Sir John Durant had had his biscuit and half-tumbler of weak brandy-and-water, and was walking up to his bed, not over sorry to take his wife's advice, and defer further conversation with " poor Eobert " until his next visit to the Court — -until Gerald, at least, had returned to England, and had been allowed one more chance of vindicating himself. " But tell Eobert from me that I shall not forget our conversa- tion, Jane." The old man said this as his wife stood and duti- fully looked after him from the drawing-room door. " And say that I hope to see him again before long — he may bring Conyers down with him, if he can — and then we'll talk matters over more seriously. And just tell him, too, I have never stayed up later than nine since my last attack. It looks unkind to the lad to go away without wishing him good-bye." All of which Lady Durant very readily promised to do, and did, only with a shade less of cordiality in her manner than Eobert Dennison could have desired. Gain ascendency over his uncle he might, of that he felt 90 ARCHIE LOVELL. assured ; over Lady Durant possibly, in time and with unflagging tact and perseverance ; over Lucia never. With her hand resting on his arm, the moonlight shining on her face through the dark cloister of the overshadowing trees, here, in the old garden, where he had played with her any time ever since she could walk alone, Robert Dennison felt more embarrassed by this simple girl than he had ever felt by brow-beating judge or bullying brother bar- rister in his life. "You — you don't inquire after Gerald," he remarked, when they had walked to the farthest terrace in the garden — Lucia's terrace, as it was called — and when several commonplace remarks had met with nothing but the girl's accustomed quiet " yes " or "no." "But perhaps you don't loiow that I have seen him?" — pressing the hand, ever so gently and compassionately, that rested on his arm. " Yes, I know it. 1 heard from Gerald this morning." " Oh ! I did not know. Lucia, dear child, I must be candid I did not know that you and Gerald still kept up any correspond- ence." Lucia was silent. " In the present state of things between Sir John and Gerald, I must say, Lucia, that this surprises me." "Did papa tell you to say this, Eobert? Don't say it, please, unless he did. She dropped her hold of his arm, and looked up full at him as she spoke. " Your father did not tell me to speak to you, Lucia. It is my own interest in you and in Gerald that makes me do so ; however, I will say nothing unless you wish to hear it." " I don't wish to hear anything against Gerald, Robert ; that's all. I don't like you to tell tales of him now, any more than I used, years ago, when you were boys." " And when you were — what, Lucia 1 — a wise little old lady of ten or eleven, but just the same, as Gerald says, just the same dear little model of good sense and propriety that you are now at twenty-one." If he thought to pique her into anger, he was wholly unsuccess- ful. Gerald's opinion of her seemed to Lady Durant's daughter rather a compliment than otherwise. LUCIA. 91 "But I shall not be twenty-one till December the 16th. Gerald's birthday is in the same month, you know, ten days later. "Ah, yes, and he will be twenty-six. That is the time at which the marriage was to have taken place, if it had taken place at all, was it not 1 " " Of course, Eobert. "Wliy do you ask 1 " " I wanted to see if one of you, at least, bore any remembrance of the old engagement in mind." "Do you mean to tell me that Gerald does notT' Dennison was silent. "Do you mean to say that Gerald pretends to forget the old engagement, as you call it ? " But now Miss Durant's voice did tremble a little. Pride was the strongest feeling by far that she possessed ; and Robert Den- nison had at last succeeded in awakening it. "I mean this, Lucia," he answered, in a soothing voice, "that Gerald's whole way of living shows him not to be a marrying man. Would any one, any man of common sense, who intended to be married in six months' time, rest quietly under such an imputation as lies on poor Gerald now ? " "I don't believe the imputation. I don't believe a word about Gerald and Maggie Hall." "And your trust in him does you honour, Lucia, infinit©- honour! I did not question your good faith, remember, for a moment " (the girl's hand returned to his arm again), " but his. Has Gerald ever come forward and honestly sought to establisK his innocence to your father and to yon 1 If he has not, I repeat that he has not acted as any man with speedy intention of mar- riage in his heart must act." In the morning Eobert Dennison had first formed the idea of some day utilizing Gerald Durant's generosity to himself; had formed it ; then put it away from his mind with a feeling of self- abasement at having thought so vile a thing. And now, seven or eight hours later — so quickly do a man's steps acquire impetus upon the downward road, he was putting it into practice with scarce a qualm. Miss Durant's heart swelled bitterly as she list- ened to him. She knew, only too well, that Gerald had not openly come forward as he might have done ; that there had been. "92 ARCHIE LOVELL. evident evasion on his part whenever Lady Durant had pressed him for proofs of his innocence ; that he had acted, in short, not as a man Avould act in a case upon which the vital happiness of his life was at stake. "T don't suppose Gerald is what 'is called in love with me, ^Robert," and she turned her pale face far away in the moonlight ; " not in love as people are in novels and poetry, and all that. He knows we are to be married, and that every one looks upon it as settled, and so he just hasn't taken any trouble, I suppose, to set liimseK formally right with papa. I don't like it, mind," she added, " and I don't think Gerald has acted quite as he ought to have done, for my sake, but that's all the anger, all the malice, I shall ever feel against him. I knoiv Gerald has had no part at all in the disappearance of Maggie Hall." "Ah ! If I ever have a wife, Lucia, may she be possessed of a heart and of a faith like yours. Gerald's tardiness in asserting his innocence is, you think, no presumptive proof even of his guilt." " Please don't argue with me, Eobert, or say anything legal. I know Gerald has had nothing to do with Maggie Hall's disappear- ance." " May I ask why ? " " Because — Eobert, I don't know that mamma would like me to talk about this to you." " I am very sure she would, Lucia. I am very sure Lady Du- rant would judge my motives aright in having brought this subject forward." *'Very well, then, if you make me speak, I must. Gerald never once thought of Maggie in the way of admiration, because you — yes, you, Robert — Avere so in love Avith her yourself." The unexpectedness of the blow made Robert Dennison literally stagger. Was it possible — this was his first thought — that Gerald or that Maggie had betrayed him after all 1 "It is not a ver}^ flattering reason as far as I am concerned," went on Lucia, in her cliildish way ; " but then Gerald never has pretended ever not to flirt because he was engaged, and if that had been all I might have believed this story, as other people liave done. But Gerald would never have tried to rival you, never ! I •don't know why, but I feel it's a thmg he would not have done." LUCIA. 93 " And may I ask if Lady Diirant shares tliis idea of yonrs, my little wise Lucia 1 " asked Dennison, with a very sorry attempt at a laugh, as he spoke. "Mamma? Oh, no! At least, I should think not. But then mamma never speaks of anything of the kind. The wise idea is mine, and mine alone, Eobert ; but I am not a bit less sure that I am right, for all that." Dennison breathed freer again. The speech, after aU, had been only one of those terrible guesses at truth which Lucia's stupid, unimaginative mind seemed to have the mysterious knack of making ; a guess unfounded upon reason, and which the next idea that gained ingress into her small brain would dispossess." " I wish it were as you think, my dear little cousin ; but, glad as I should be to clear Gerald, I really must disclaim the honour you assign to me. I never even admired this Susan — no, Mary —Maggie Hall." " Susan — Mary — Maggie ! "Why, Eobert, you lived down at Heathcotes ! You were always running after Maggie at one time. You had not a word to say but about Maggie's figure and Maggie's- eyes ; and now you pretend you don't even remember her name !" The dark blood rose up on Dennison's face. " I did not know you listened to this sort of scandal, Lucia. I should have thought you, of all girls, were beyond the village on dits and the gossip of the servants' hall," he exclaimed, angrily. " I never heard anything from the servants, or in the village either. All that I heard was from you, and from poor Maggie herself." ITow Eobert Dennison knew well that Lucia, as a little girl, had been familiar with Maggie Hall. Lady Durant, who would let her associate with none of the children of their rich manufac- turing neighbours, having encouraged the child to be friendly, in a certain aristocratic, affable little way with all the tenants' chil- dren on her father's land. As Miss Durant, of Durant, grew to be a woman, her intimacy with the pretty dairy-maid had, of course, gradually subsided into a few kind words on one side, a humble curtsy and deferential answer on the other, Avhen they chanced to meet. Still, much of the old feeling of companionship had doubtless survived the days of outward familiarity; and £)4 ARCHIE LOVELL. Dennison trembled to think what confidence respecting himself might not, in some moment of unwonted condescension on Lucia's part, have been exchanged. " !Maggie was a vain, foolish girl," he remarked, coldly. " Wo- men of that class are always thinking every man above them in rank must be in love with them." "Maggie did not," answered Lucia. "And as to vanity, I wonder she was so little vain, considering how you all admired her. Why, I remember — let me see, it must be about a year ago — a few weeks before she w^ent away, there were j^ou and Mr Luttrell and Sir G-eorge Chester all wild about Maggie's good looks at once ! It's absurd for you to den}^ it, Robert, or to say that you were not for ever running down on some excuse or other to Heathcotes — all of you." " All of us ; yes, Lucia. All of us — Luttrell, Chester, Gerald, and myself — but chiefly Gerald ! " " jS"©, Eobert ; no, no, no," said Lucia, more firmly than he had ever known her to say anything in her life. " Gerald least of all. Gerald, in the way of attention or admiration, never." " I can only repeat, Lucia, that when I marry, I hope my wife will be possessed of a simple trusting heart like yours. The sub- ject is not one I can discuss more freely with you," added Robert Dennison, loftily, " and so we will leave it where it is." He most heartily wished, at that moment, that he had never gone near it at all. " I spoke to you in entire good faith, and with no thought but of your happiness, Lucia," he added, reproachfully ; "and you certainly have turned the tables upon me in a way I had no right to expect." "I have said what I think true, Robert, and I shall I:eep to it. Maggie Hall never thought of Gerald, never cared for him, except as she might have cared for papa or for any of us, and she did care for you. Why, I used to watch her face as she sat in the gallery at church, and Avhen you only walked up the aisle, she would turn white and red by turns ; and once when I met her in the park, not a week before she left, and I happened to mention you, she looked as if she could have f\Ulen to the ground with confusion. Nothing on earth will change me : Gerald knows no more about Maggie Hall's disappearance than I do." LUCIA. 95 Just at this moment, Lady Durant's tall figure appeared in the moonlight a few paces from where they stood ; and in another minute, much to her cousin's relief, Lucia was reminded of the falling dew and of her delicate throat, and sent off, like a little i?irl of six, to the house. Eobert Dennison was in no mood to re- commence the Maggie Hall controversy with another member of the family, but on their way back to the house he did vaguely at- tempt to sound Lady Durant on electioneering matters, and on Sir John's intentions respecting the candidate he meant to support in the coming struggle. " I know no more about it all than you do, dear Eobert," was Lady Durant's answer. " Your uncle is far, very far from strong :at present, and it would not surprise me if, after all, he should take no part whatever in the election. Politics have .never been his •vocation, as you know ; and, in spite of all the talk there has been about making Gerald stand, I have very much doubt, when it comes i;o the point, if your uncle or Gerald either will muster courage 'enough to go through the trouble of canvassing." " Trouble ! " repeated Dennison, bitterly. " Imagine any man thinking of trouble when the interests of all his future life are at stake. Indifferent as Gerald is, you surely do not hold so low an estimate of him as that." "Well," answered Lady Durant, evasively ; "my own opinion is that Gerald is a great deal too yoang, a great deal too unsettled in his beliefs, to think of pubhc life at present. In another five years, when he has come to your age, and I hope to your steadiness, Eobert, there may be some reason in talking of all this ; but I reaUy don't see how a boy who cannot yet legislate for himself, is to do any good to his country by attempting to legislate for others. Come in, Eobert " (they had reached the drawing-room window now), " unless you wish to smoke your cigar, and hear Lucia sing. I want you to tell me what you think of her voice, and what songs there are in this new opera you spoke of at dinner that would be likely to suit her." Eobert Dennison spent another hour in friendly chat with Lady Durant ; listened patiently to Lucia's songs ; gave grave opinions as to the disorders of Sesame the parrot ; drew a pretty Httle design for a new Sunday-school out of his own head ; and wrote down 96 ARCHIE LOVELL. with infinite attention the different commissions in china and wool- work that he was to execute for his dear aunt before his next visit to the Court. And still, in spite of all these amenities, and even of Lady Durant, a very rare event, tendermg a cold cheek for him to kiss at parting, when Mr Dennison was on his road back to London, next morning, it did not seem to him as though his journey into Staffordshire had been a thoroughly successful one. CHAPTEE X. "my life is weary. Reader, have yoa ever known what it was to be brought to bay with fortune, when you were living alone in a common London lodging 1 It is a condition of human . wretchedness the like of which cannot, I think, exist in the country. A new-ploughed field, a leafless forest, a snow-spread common, every dreariest country sight, could never surely equal the dreariness of this gTcat sea of human faces, the solitude of these Bable-tongued streets, the utter homelessness of these rooms, with their dingy furniture, their airless atmosphere, their inhumau landlady. Had that last interview of Eobert Dennison and his Avife taken place anywhere else in the world, IVIaggie might possibly have rallied after it. She was a girl, with all a girl's fresh springs of life in her heart still ; and who shall say that a sight of blue sky, a waft of garden-flowers, a word from a heai-ty country tongue, might not just then have been her salvation? But she got none of these, and she went straight to despair, as I shall show you. " If you betray me I swear I Avill never touch your hand, never look upon your face save as a stranger, again." The words rang in her tender heart as the burthen of an un- hallowed song will ring through and torture some pure soul in the delirium of brain-fever. The mask was off at last, and she saw her life bared before her ; her life, not as she wanted it to be, but as it was. Her occupation was gone. She would never, or not for "my life is weary/' 97 years, whicli at her age is the same as never, live with Robert openly "before men as his wife. In mnter evenings she would not share his fireside ; in winter nights her head Avould rest on a lonely pillow ; in long summer days like this she would have to drag thi^ough the hours without husband, or home, or work (the last, although she did not know it, the direst privation to her). She had no high ambition. She had married Eobert for love ; not because he was a gentleman. A nice little cottage with a garden, the household to look after, Eobert to love, children some day to nurse and work for, these, with perhaps the natural adjuncts of a very bright dress and bonnet for Sunday, had been the limits of her wildest dreams. They were over now. Eobert was not going to Kve with her. Eobert, of his own free will, had proposed that she should go away from England ; had threatened that if she be- trayed him, he would never look upon her face again. Her life, her hope, her desire had died by a solitary cruel blow ; as yours and as mine have done perhaps, ere now, reader ! and no kindly accident befell her, as in your case and in mine it may have done, to save her body from following the death of the soul. She sat in the place where he had left her all the evening, the evening during which he was eating his excellent dinner, drinking his excellent wine at the Court, blankly staring at the pattern of the paper on the opposite wall, and at one wretched daub of a picture that hung there, and seemed in some sort to force itself as a human companion upon her. This picture was a portrait in oils of a fair, full-blown woman of middle age, dressed in black satin, with a grand lace-collar, a brooch, watch-chain, and rings upon the fat fingers, that were crossed blandly in front of her ample waist, an aunt or mother of the landlady's probably. "Was she happy ? Maggie wondered vaguely. Had this woman had a husband who loved her and let her live under his roof? Had children kissed her face, children's arms clung around her neck ? "With a sicken- ing jealousy she felt sure, somehow, that these things had been so. Content was written on all that smooth face and corpulent figure. The woman had possessed what made her life good, or she would never, at forty-five, have had the heart to dress out in her best, and sit down and smirk and fold her hands before a por- trait-painter. 98 ARCHIE LOVET.L. " Fancy me, five-and-tAventy years on, wanting my faded face to be put in a picture I " tlie girl thought. " And now that I am twenty, there's no one that wants it — no one that wouldn't be glad over me the day I was put into my coffin and hid away. And I am handsomer than ever that woman could have been when she was young ! " And then she got up, for the first time since her liusband had left, and went and examined herself in the two feet of looking-glass that hung over the lire-place. It was a glass that, like others of its kind, lengthened and flat- tened the features, and gave a sickly green hue to the skin ; but when she had looked in it, in the white dress and Avith the flower in her breast, before Eobert came, Maggie had thought, in spite of all defects, what a pretty girl she was. She made no allowances for the glass noA\''. She saw a pale hard-lined face, Avithout beauty, without grace, without youth. This face was hers ; and the thought that she was not even handsome any longer, gave a sharp finishing blow to her heart — the sharpest blow, perhaps, that, in her present state, she could have received. Late in the evening the lodging-servant brought in her tea as usual. She was a slip-shod, gaunt-eyed child of sixteen, with a brain confused by constant bells and scoldings, and limbs pre- maturely exhausted by excessive work ; a poor, stealing, falsehood- telling little London slavey, but attached to Maggie because she was lenient as to cold meat, and had given her a faded Paris bonnet or two, and an old smart parasol. " Law, Miss, how dull you must be, sitting alone here ! If I'd a' known the gentleman were gone I'd a brought the tea-things up before. Wouldn't you like a slice of 'am with your tea now, miss 1 I can run over the ways in a minute and get a plate for you. Fourpence-halfpenny the quarter of a pound." The offer was not a disinterested one. Maggie, in her attempts to get away from the loathsome lodging cooking, had had plates of cut ham before ; on each of which occasions the half-starved girl, knoAving that the second-floor never "troubled" about her cut meat, had had what to her was a saturnalia of animal food on her way doAvn to the kitchen. But the hoarse voice that spoke, the eyes that looked at her from that dirty face, were human, and a choking sensation rose in Maggie's throat. Here was^ one person " MY LIFE IS WEARY. ' 99 -at least on tlie earth — this poor forlorn lodging-house drudge — Avho would not stand by hard-eyed, as every one else in London, in the world, would, and see her misery ! " I'm not hungry, Mary, thank you. I made a pretty good dinner. Just bring my bedroom candle up at once and" — she hesitated strangely as she said this — "you can eat the cold lamb for your own supper if yoii like. I shan't want it any more." When she was alone she drank a cup of tea, and then tried to put some bread between her hps. She could no more have swallowed it than have swallowed a stone ; it seemed hard and tasteless, quite unlike any food she had ever eaten in her Kfe, and something in this new sensation frightened her. Was she going to be ill, alone, here ?— to be ill and to die, perhaps, without seeing Eobert again; mthout letting the people "down home" know that she never had been a ^vicked girl, or disgraced them while she lived ! She went across to her window, seated herself, and looked wearily from behind the blind at such life as at this time of an August evening was to be seen in Cecil Street. If she could only tire herself sbe would sleep, she thought ; and, after she had slept, things might look different. And so she stayed on and on, until the city clocks chimed midnight, and till the aching heaviness of her eyes and brain made her hope that forgetfulness indeed was at hand. But it was not. When she had undressed herself — for the first time in her life not folding her clothes neat and trim, but leaving them lying on the floor, just as they fell from her — ^when she had undressed herself and laid her head down on her pillow, instead of sleep her sorrow came back to her with redoubled strength. This fact of no longer caring for herself made her realize how utterly she was uncared for by Eobert. Till to-night she had always liked the labour of brushing her hair ; did not he admire iti — telling her that its silky smoothness, its glossy black, were lovelier than aU the red-dyed, frizzled locks of fashionable ladies ; had hked to hang up her dress and speculate as to whether she could wear it one more day to " look fresh " or not ; had sat often half an hour or more trying this little bit of finery or that before the glass, and feehng a zest and pleasure in her good looks as she noted H 2 100 ARCHIE LOVELL. the eflfect of each. All tliis was over. He had ceased to love her. What good was her youth or her beauty ? What interest had she in her hair or dress, in anything, for the matter of that 1 A girl without a girl's vanities ; a wife without a wife's honour. This was to be her future life. !No use glozing it over. She was not to live with Robert. Unless she forfeited the last possibility of his love, she was never to tell the people down home that she was not living a life of shame. And then the burthen of all her misery, Eobert Dennison's last cruel threat, rang again and again through her heart. One, two, three o'clock struck ; and still her eyes had not closed. She was unused to sleeplessness, and, like the bitter taste of the bread, it frightened her. Could she do nothing to get sleep — one blessed hour of sleep — ten minutes — any sleep to stand between her and yesterday ? In the cupboard of her sitting-room, she remembered, there was a little bottle of laudanum that the landlady had once persuaded her to send for when she had face- ache. Perhaps if she drank some of it it might send her off, or make her forget herself, or ease her heart in some way. She got up, struck a light, and went and fetched the bottle from the ad- joining-room. " Laudanum — Poison," was all the information the label conveyed. People who buy laudanum generally understand the quantity of it that will suit their purpose. At all events the law of England does not require chemists to give them any more special information than that of " Poison." Maggie held the bottle up to the candle and wondered what was the quantity she ought to take. She had a profound instinctive horror, like all country people, against medicine, and was resolved not to take an over-dose. The rector's wife down home used to take a table- spoonful of some mixture of this colour for palpitation, she re- membered ; but she wouldn't take as much as a table-spoonful herself. She would try a tea-spoonful first, and if she didn't feel better, take more in half an hour. And so she measured out a tea- spoonful, she who had never had opium in any shape, never taken a narcotic or a stimulant stronger than elder wine, and put it to her lips. Had she swallowed it, the story of Mr Dennison's future life might have been a very different one : but the bitter vapid flavour "my life is weary." 101 of the laudanum made her leave more than a third in the spoon. She took in reality between thirty and forty drops perhaps; a powerful dose for her with her overwrought brain and exhausted frame ; then put out the light, laid her head do^vn tight upon her pillow, and resolved to force herself to sleep. And the mockery of sleep did, for a time, overcome her. When she had been still about a quarter of an hour a sort of stupor, for the first time that night, stole over her brain ; a delicious feel- ing of relaxation accompanied by ever so faint a sense of numb- ness, made her tightly-clasped hands fall asunder from her breast ; and she began to think, with an indescribable ecstatic joy, of the fresh green fields and shady lanes of Heathcotes. This lasted — who shall say how long ? she could not have told herself, when next morning she looked back upon the night, whether it was for a moment or for an hour : then, suddenly, a loud rumbling noise, some heavily-laden waggon going down the Strand already, though day was not yet breaking, brought her back with a start of con- sciousness to where she was, a semi-consciousness more horrible by far than all the hours before, when she had lain wide awake, and thinking with clear vision of her trouble. Bodily pain of the acutest form was added to her suffering now. Her mouth was parched and poison-tainted ; an iron hand seemed to clench her head ; every limb felt tortured by its position, and yet unable to move from it. It was a waking nightmare ; for awake she was : the light from the street-lamps, mixing already with some greyish oncoming of morning, fell upon the furniture around the room, and she saw it all distinctly. She was here in Cecil Street, and Eobert had been cruel to her — the eternal burthen here still ! and her life was spoilt, and she was not to have home or peace or honour for weary years. N'ot one sharp point blunted of her actual gTief! And then again, close following upon this, and horribly mingling with Cecil Street and the dingy furniture of her rooms, she saw the fields at Heathcotes, no longer green and fresh ; but parched, desert, stony. And she toiled through these fields long, seeking her herd in vain, and when at length she came upon them, they took fright and rushed away from her a space, and then turned and looked at her. And Daisy, and Star, and Flower, the dainty gentle beasts she had tended as if they had been her sisters, 102 ARCHIE LOVELL. were gentle no longer. They had hard ferocious eyes ; they had human faces ; they clianged into a crowd of men and women, a noisome cfowd on a London pavement, and she was among them, fainting, and alone, and crying for liobert ! And Eobert did not come. The hoarse din from the now-awakening streets, not the voice that should have soothed her, broke in on her dream again ; and then with a start she sprang from her pillow, and found that day — God! another fresh, happy, summer day — was shining in upon her face. The very thought of sleep had become too liideous for her to attempt to court it again. She got up, and with stiffened, aching limbs, tottered across the room to the window, opened it, and looked out, Five o'clock struck at this minute — the hour at which, summer and Avinter, 6he had left her bed at Heathcotes ; and suddenly all the scene upon which her little chamber window looked, rose up with vivid distinctness upon her memory. She saw it as it must be looking now on thi-s fair August morning. The sycamore that brushed her pane, and shaded haK the trim- kept flower-garden in front of the farm-house ; the laurel hedge and wicket-gate that bounded the garden from the road ; the village-green and the horse-pond ; the town- tree and the foot-worn space where the children played beneath its shade, — in fancy she could see it all ; could hear the cawing of the rooks in the distant woods of the Court ; the hearty voices of the harvesters as they started, their sickles slung across their shoulders, to their work. Her fancy showed her this : what did her senses show her in the flesh? Houses black with smoke, with gas, with all the nameless exhalations of London, barring the sky away not thirty feet from her window. In the street beneath, the following human beings : — A youngish-looking man, his face half deadly pale, half fever- flushed, walking along with slouching steps, and with no great- coat to hide his embroidered wine-stained linen, the remnant of a dandy's bouquet in his button-hole ; his well-cut but disordered evening clothes ; a man about whom it was safe to assert that his night had been spent in losing money — perchance higher things than money — and who was now carrying away with him the time- honoured fruit of such pleasure. Two wan-faced girls, with holes in their boots and mock roses in their hats, the elder of whom "my life is weary." 103 looked about seventeen. A man or woman, a human being at least, huddled in rags, drunk or asleep on the doorstep of an opposite house. Finally, and approaching the last-named object, doabtless to move it on from unconsciousness back to despair — a policeman. The morning, of course, had broken upon thousands of pure and happy lives in London on that second day of August. These were the lives on which Maggie chanced to see it dawn : the servants of sin : the waif and stray of the street : the mechanical wooden- faced representative of the law. Of each of the two fij^st classes she had only such acquaintance as an honest-nurtured country girl could have ; but scanty as was her real knowledge of life, one thing about these people was as distinctly patent to her at that moment as it was ever to the statesman or philanthropist who makes such subjects his study — their misery. Was the man in his evening dress a sensuaKst, a gambler, reaping only the rightful harvest he himself had sowed 1 Maggie neither knew nor reckoned. She had had one look of his bloodless face as he went along, and it was miserable. "Were those young girls — the age of Miss Lucia's eldest Sunday scholars at home — ^to be accounted sinners, or sinned against 1 She never thought about it. They were hollow-eyed and hoarse-voiced ; for she heard a sorry word from one of them as they passed : they were miserable. And the human animal crouched in rags that the policeman was already attempting, not too gently, to dislodge from its brutal sleep 1 Miserable, miserable. Where was providence 1 Where was God's mercy *? Had He for- gotten all these people 1 Was she to know for certain that He had not forgotten her '? Down home there was the little church still, and the minister's pitying voice to call back to rest all those who laboured and were heavy laden ; down home there were Miss Lucia and Lady Durant to speak to on Sundays, and Sir John himself to be the friend of every one who hungered, or who sinned. But home was shut against her : lost for ever, unless she regained it at the horrible price of losing Robert. And salvation out of Heathcotes, happiness without Robert, seemed alike impossible to her — nay, the very idea of alien consolation never even crossed her mind. All her nature was love. Common sense, hope, religion itself, had gone down in the crash that love had newly sustained. 104 ARCHIE LOVELL. During the day that followed food passed Maggie's lips twice. A mouthfal of bread loathingly swallowed for breakfast ; another smaller quantity with a cup of tea in the afternoon. She was no longer frightened at its bitter taste now. She had grown apathetic to the wan image, with lustreless eyes and bloodless cheeks, that looked at her from the glass as she moved about the room. If she was going to be ill, did it matter much? She would see Eobert once first ; of that she was resolved ; then lay her head down on the first stone she came to, and die. Death couldn't be very much worse than her sleep had been after she took the " stuff" last night. She hadn't been a bad girl ; she was not much afraid of death. Only — only she must see Eobert, kiss his lips again, and make him swear to tell them down in Staffordshire that she had been his wife, and had not brought disgrace on them while she lived. At about six o'clock she went to her bedroom, packed up all her clothes and trinkets, carefully labelling her boxes " Miss JNTeville," the name she went under, and then sent for the landlady and paid her her bill. She was going to leave England — ^this was the story she always told when she left her different lodgings — but was to spend a couple of days with a friend in another part of London first. Her boxes should be sent for, either to-night or to-morrow morning. This done she put on her shabby walking-things ; said good-bye to the servant, pressing her dirty hand lightly as she deposited in ifc a parting gift, and then left the house and walked slowly away towards the Temple. Her white forlorn face met with scanty notice in the streets : an occasional rude stare or jostle, perhaps, amidst the crowd of men hurrying westward from the city : but nothing so marked as to frighten her until she had nearly reached Temple Bar, when the following incident befell her : an incident almost laughable to write or read about, but that was fraught with intensest agony to her, coming at the time it did. In her hurry of going out she had taken small notice of how she dressed ; had put on her shawl awry perhaps ; or folded it so as to trail on the dusty pavement as she walked. Something, at all events, there was in her appearance — the dingy velvet hat in "my life is weary. 105 August, possibly — which attracted the notice of a small errand- boy of about eleven, who, an empty basket over his shoulder, was loitering at an eating-house window whistling the last street tune vehemently as she went by. Her eyes chanced to meet his ; and in a second he had twisted his features into a grimace, diabolically expressive of amusement and contempt : the genuine gamin's weapon of aggression all over the world. The blood rushed into Maggie's face, and her tormentor with delight saw that he had got hold of a bit of amusement. The girl had "risen," an accident that not once in a thousand times occurs to these urchins among a London crowd. What followed I hate to write of. He pursued, or more truly preceded, her by about two steps ; looking back into her face ; and ever and anon giving whoops or unearthly whistles, in that sort of ventriloquistic tone which long warfare with the police teaches to the whole gamin race. He asked slang questions about the poor black velvet hat, he put her through the whole jpeine forte et dure with which his education had acquainted him. In happier days Maggie would have been as callous as any woman living to the child's persecution — if indeed it amounted to persecution ; he was but indulging his instinct for sport, as anglers or hunstmen do, unmindful of his victim's pain. She was no carefully-nurtured lady, but a robust country peasant girl, ac- customed to keep a dozen rough farm-servants as much in their place as she liked ; but in her present state of bodily and mental abandonment, this child's conduct seemed like the last indignity that fortune could offer her. She had sunk so low that children mocked at her as she walked abroad in the streets ! Writhing under his jokes and grimaces, ever hoping that she had lost her tormentor in the crowd, and ever seeing his mocking face again just ahead of her, again she went on until she had passed Temple Bar. Then, suddenly, the thought struck her that she must be close to where Robert lived. What would he think of her arriving on foot and with soiled dress ; perhaps with this dreadful com- panion jibing at her even at his door. With an abrupt impulse she turned and spoke to him : " Where is the Temple, please ? I'm quite a stranger here." Her voice was hoarse and weak, and the words came falteringly from her dry lips. 106 ARCHIE LOVELL. " The Temple 1 why this be the Temple, in here to the right." With the first word his victim spoke the gamin had become human. He looked at the woman with a sort of pity. A human creature who could walk along the Strand and ask the way to the Temple was something removed from his experiences altogether. She wasn't drunk, he saw, nor an idiot ; the two phases of humanity most exquisitely ludicrous to a street-boy's perceptions ; perhaps, in spite of her shabby hat, she was a lady too grand to know her way, and ready and able to present halfpence to persons who should point it out. This last wild imagination was confirmed on the spot by the woman drawing out a purse from her pocket. She took a shilling from its scanty contents, and held it to him. " Get me a cab, child," she said, faintly. " I can go no farther." " It isn't thirty yards," said the boy, " nor twenty neither. I'll show you the way — ^just where you see the Bobby a-standing," He gazed at her in a sort of rapture. It was the first time in liis life he had possessed a shilling of his own ; and the vague fear struck him that if a cabman even were called upon the scene his unlawful gains might be wrested from him. " It ain't worth while to call a cab, it's only as for as that there Bobby," he repeated. " You come alonger me, and I'll show you the way, miss." The voice even of this child, who had hunted her down in her misery, had power to touch Maggie yet. It was a good sign that he spoke civilly to her, she thought. Could Eobert spurn her when even this little outcast of the street behaved humanely to her at last 1 — forgetting, poor heart, that the humanity had been purchased by a shilling 1 The foolish thought gave her failing limbs strength to totter on anew. The child, hiding his shilling cunningly in his brown hand, guided her past the " Bobby " to her destination, and in another five minutes Maggie stood, her breath coming in sobs, the cold dews standing thick around her whitened lips, at the door of her husband's chambers. ADRIFT IN LONDON. 107 CHAPTEE XI. ADRIFT IN LONDON. There were few things Eobert Dennison undertook which he did not do weU, Isut, perhaps, the giving of small dinnerrparties was the one thing in life he did best. No man better understood, than he, how to introduce his wines at exactly the proper moment; no man better understood — the ulterior object of the evening being loo — how to promote conviviality among his guests, and yet keep his own brain cool and collected, as a host's should be. His little dinner on the 2nd of August, his last party this season, promised to be an unusually successful one. Gerald Durant's place was to be filled up by another guileless Guardsman, young Sholto Mclver (a blue-eyed boy, to whose somewhat vacuous face Mr Dennison had taken one of his sudden kindly fancies), and the other three guests were all of them young men, and of the cheerful, open dis- position he best liked in his companions. " I don't care a bit about whether I win or lose," he was accus- tomed to say, with charming frankness, when play was discussed. " In fact, I care very little really about cards, as cards ; but when three or four men dine together, a game of loo serves to pass away the evening, and what I do like is to have fellows who will play pleasantly; one ill-tempered man spoils the enjoyment of the party." So on the present occasion there was not one ill-tempered man invited. AU were delightfully fresh in the belief that to take " miss," when first in hand, is a winning system of playing loo; also that Eobert Dennison was one of the best-hearted, most genial fellows living. And, in very good temper, Mr Dennison had seen to the arrangement of the table and the wines ; and now, just at the moment when his wife rang at the bell, was finishing dressing in the adjoining room ; whistling low to himself an air from Fidelio, but incorrectly — an ear for music was the one gift Eobert Dennison did not possess — as he gave the last finishing touch to his incom- parable whiskers, before putting on his coat. Maggie was announced to him vaguely, by his boy, as " a young 108 ARCHIE LOVELL. person ; " and expecting to see the lad from the confectioner's with the ice, or the girl from Covent Garden with the peaches for dessert, Mr Dennison, after a minute or two, walked good-humour- cdly into the dining-room, admiring the newly-shaped nails of his white hands, as he walked, and whistling, still out of tune, that air from Fidelio. Maggie had turned with her face away from the bright evening light, and for one moment after he entered he saw only the gilded outline of a woman's figure, stai^ding with her back to the window, and did not recognize her. She was about the height of the girl who brought his fruit and flowers from Covent Garden. " Half an hour late, again," he cried, in his kindly, condescend- ing way ; ''half an hour late, again. I suppose I must excuse you this time, but — Maggie ! " She had lifted her veil, and with a sudden movement was at his side. "Don't be angry, Robert ! please don't be angry — I shan't do it again, but I wearied so to see you ! " And she caught his hand, his cool, newly-washed hand, smelling of almond soap, and set off by stud and ring, and faultless linen, and held it tight between her own poor shabbily-gloved ones, then lifted it to her lips. "Don't be angry with me, Robert, now don't ! It is for the last time." Robert Dennison's face grew dark with passion. A man not at all a villain might well be enraged at such a visit, when any moment might bring three or four open-eyed bachelor friends into his chambers. But he kept his presence of mind and, instead of speaking at once, thought. What would be the quick- est way of getting rid of her ? To take care that no such visit should ever, by possibility, occur again would be to-morrow's work. In the first moment that he recognized her he decided about that. His task now was to get rid of her : noiselessly, good-humouredly, quickly ; above all, (juickly. "I don't want to be angry with you, Maggie, but really you ought not to have come here. Some men are coming to dine with me, and if you were to be seen, you know, it — " " It wouldn't matter much," she interrupted him, in a voice curiously unlike her own, and with a short, bitter laugh. "They don't know you are married, and you could easily explain my being ADRIFT IN LONDON. 109 here. They'd none of them be much struck hy my beauty, for certain ! The worst they could do would be to joke you a bit for your want of taste. Look at me, Eobert," turning her face sud- denly round to the light. " I'm not looking handsome to-day, am If Her pure, marble skin was salfron-hued j her bloodshot eyes had lost their brilliancy and their colour ; a strange drawn look about the mouth had oldened her by ten years from what she was when Dennison had seen her last. " You are looking very ill, Maggie — awfully iU ! This kind of thing won't do at all. You are fretting yourself to death, child, about nothing. I^ow, just let me send for a cab at once, and do you go home, like a good girl, and to-morrow — " He moved his hand out towards the bell, but she caught tight hold of it again. " If you send for a cab for me I won't go in it. Where am I to go to ? What do you mean by ' home 1- ' I've paid off the lodgings and left them. You may send for my things to-morrow, if you like ; and there is nowhere for me to stop but here. Eobert, will you let me stop here 1 It's my rightful place, you know." Then Eobert Dennison scrutinized his wife's face and way of speaking more closely, and a new suspicion overcame him — a horrible, a gross suspicion ; but remember, his mind was gross, unimaginative, unsympathetic, ever putting the coarsest, most common-place interpretation on the action of every man or woman with whom he had to deal. That saUow skin, this thick utter- ance, those lustreless eyes, those trembling hands ! How could he have been so blind as not to see the true state of the case at once 1 It was not a matter for argument or gentle treatment at all. This miserable girl had sought the usual refuge women of her birth do seek under their vulgar troubles ; this girl whom he had been madly in love with, his \\dfe, whom in another five minutes three or four of his friends would find in such a state as this in his chambers. " You will get into a cab in one minute's time, and you Avill go to your lodgings. Tell the people you have changed your mind, and must stop there another night, and to-morrow, to-morrow early, I shall see you." And with no very gentle force he took her hand from his, and rung the bell. 110 ARCHIE LOVELL. Maggie stood passive while lie ordered the boy to get a cab, " a four-wheeled cab immediately for this lady." Then, when tliey were alone, she came close to him again, and put her arm up round his neck. "I'm glad I've been here, dear," she whispered, unconscious of the repulsion of his face, " I'm glad I've seen you looking like this." She passed her hand half-frightened, half-ad- miring, over the silk facings of his dress-coat. " You Avere dressed so the first evening I ever began to think of you, Robert ; the evening that you walked down to the farm with the other gentle- men after dinner. You were the handsomest of them aU; and you joked me and asked me if I'd got a sweetheart ; and then, when the rest were gone — do you mind 1, — you stopped and talked to me over the laurel hedge ; and when you went away you asked me to walk next night by the plantation, and I went. Ah, I'm glad I've seen you, dear ! It has made me soft again. Eobert, I have always loved you. Mind that when I am gone." He sliifted uncomfortably from her clasp. The pure warm arm around his neck, the satin head upon his breast, her words, her gentleness, recalled to him Maggie in the days of his short-lived passion for her, and shamed him out of his base suspicion of a minute ago. But his eyes fell at this very moment upon the time-piece, and he saw that it wanted five minutes only to eight o'clock, and at eight o'clock his friends he knew would be in his room. " I don't know what you mean by 'gone,' Maggie. You are no more likely to die than I am ; and as to leaving in any other way, you told me pretty plainly yesterday your intentions about that." "And I'm of the same mind still, Eobert. Are you? Are you determined still you will not have me to live with you 1 " " ]\Iy dear girl, what is the use of discussing all this now ? We settled everything yesterday, very amicably indeed, as it seemed to me." " I see. I won't keci:> you any longer. I'll go away quietly at once, for fear your friends should come. How comfortably you live here, Robert ! " for the first time looking about her and ex- amining all the luxury of that bachelor room, its pictures, its velvet hangings, its divans, the perfect dinner equipage upon the table. " Jt ail looks so nice after — well, that don't matter now — ADRIFT IX LONDON. Ill I shan't go back there any more. Is this your bedroom in here ? Let me see it. I won't be a moment. I'd like to see every room you live in before I go." Eobert Dennison hesitated. Then it occurred to him that he had best humour her awhile, if only to keep her in her present temper, and he pushed open the door of his bedroom for his wife to enter. The chambers were small, in accordance ^Yith. Mr Den- nison's present modest means, and there was no room that he could use as a dressing-room ; so all his toilet appliances were, per force, in his bed-chamber. They were costly in the extreme, and neatly arranged, although he had just finished dressing, as if they came from a valet's hands. Maggie walked up to the table and ex- amined them curiously. " I remember this little bottle, Eobert ; you bought it for me in Paris. These ivory-handled brushes, and this, and this," and she pointed out one or two little trinkets, " you had upon our wedding tour. All the rest are new. I mean, I never saw them before. You have everything so nice — and lace, too, real lace, on your toilet-cover. Eobert, I'm glad I've seen how you live. I know now you could never have been happy in the poor way that would have been enough for me. I don't wonder so much that you didn't care to come and see me in the lodgings. I know now how ugly and dingy everything must have seemed to you. That dreadful room, with its bare floor, and the dark, dull paper." And indeed she shuddered at the thought of that mean garret in which her last miserable night had been passed. " I am a poor man, Maggie," said Eobert, suUenly ; for he be- gan to think that kindness was not the way to make her hurry her visit, "and I can keep you no better than I have done. The things you are so bitter about are things I had before my marriage. God knows there has not been much money for spending on use- less trumpery since." "]S^o, of course there has not," she answered, quickly; "and I don't want any of them. I want nothing any more. Eobert, dear, won't you say good-bye to me kindly ? " " Of course I wiU ; there, there, that will do. ^N'ow, be sensible, Maggie, and go back to your lodgings ; they are not at all bad lodgings in their way, and I'll come to-morrow, if I can, and — " 112 ARCHIE LOVELL. " You'll not find mc there, Eobert. I am going away. I am telling you no untruth." "How do you mean going away? I don't know what you mean, child." ISfr Dennison's lips trembled nervously. In that moment a glimmering, a horrible suspicion of the truth flashed across him, and his heart leaped. She had threatened him before in her fits of passion to make away with herself. How, if the threat he had so often sneered at had meaning in it after all. He did not dwell upon the thought. In the dark days to come he strove to say to himself that he had never really for one moment entertained it. But his heart leaped. This he knew right well. This haunted him — haunts his pillow still. His heart leaped. And he spoke no one tender word, gave no one kindly look of returning love, when a word or look of his might have brought Maggie back in a moment from the shadow of the dark valley to hope and to life ! " What I mean 1 K'o, Eobert, you needn't know ; you will know soon enough, perhaps. At all events, I shan't trouble you any more. After I have gone away you'll think of me kindly, dear, won't you 1 And if ever a day should come when you can say a word for me to them at home, you'll tell them I was an honest girl always, Eobert 1 Promise me that ! " " Of course, of course, Maggie. Everything Avill be set right some day. I told you so yesterday ; " and he took his watch out uneasily, and held open the door for her to go out. She stood silent for a moment, a bright flush rising up over her white face ; then she walked quickly across the room, laid her head down on Mr Dennison's fine lawn-covered pillow, and kissed it. "Eobert" — she had come to him again, and was looking straight into his eyes — " I'd have been a good wife to you. If ever you are free and marry a lady born, she'll not love you better than I did. If — if" — she was uttering her last hope, and it almost choked her in the utterance — " I don't ask you ; but, Eobert, if you would let me live with you, I think I coidd learn to be a lady yet." At this moment the time-piece in the next room struck eight. " Will you go, or will you not ? " exclaimed Mr Dennison, with ADRIFT IN LONDON. 113 savage emphasis. " I want you to leave the place quickly. Don't oblige me to make the servant a witness of this lovely scene." She slirank away instantly from him, like a beaten child ; never touched his hand, never sought his lips again, but walked across the sitting-room and out upon the stairs, and away from the house, without so much as turning back her head. Some dim hope, some human longing, at least, for life, had haunted her heart to the last. When she laid her head upon the pillow — that was its place by right — a flood of tears had been ready to flow forth and Ixeal the over-wrought brain. A kiss from Eobert's lips then, and she had cast herself at his feet, ready to be his slave for evermore, but instead of the kiss had come words crueller than a- blow — and she had obeyed them ! And life was over ; she knew it now. She had not another hope, not the shadow of a hope, left. Life was over. The cabman held open the door of his cab as he watched her come out ; but she passed on without even seeing him — on out of the Temple into Fleet Street again. The world had got quieter, it seemed to her, during the half-hour that she had been with Eobert. The light had faded somewhat; the crowd upon the pavement grown less dense. It would be easier to die now than when the world seemed so marvellously full of life — the sunshine gilding every human face that met her in the crowd ! easier still in another hour or two, when the light should have died away altogether, and the streets be more at rest, and the river flowing on dark and silent as she had so often watched it of a night from that bay-window of her lonely lodging in Cecil Street. She walked on, without feeling very tired now, and at last found herself standing among two or three hungry-looking wretches before the window of a pastry-cook's shop. There were some little three-cornered tarts upon a plate on the counter, and she thought she could eat one, and went in and bought it ; but the woman who gave her change stared at her, or Maggie thought so, and she felt too ashamed to sit down, and went out again. "You have left the tart," called out the woman; but she went on oat of the shop without turning. The smell of food had made her deadly sick, and she did not care to meet the woman's eves 114 ARCHIE LOVELL. again. If she could have a glass of "water, she thought, she could drink it ; but she had not courage to go into another shop. Peo- ple looked at her suspiciously, she began to feel. The last police- man she met turned his head after her, she was sure, when she had passed. She must get away into a quiet street, some street, if she could find it, near the river ; or upon a bridge — London Bridge, surely, could not be very far away — and crouch into a corner where no one would see her, and wait. "Wait for night and peace and rest, eternal rest, and forgetfulness of Eobert. Slie went on and on along Fleet Street, on up Ludgate Hill, and past St Paul's ; then, directed by a little girl of v/hom she took courage to ask the shortest way to the river, through a laby- rinth of the small streets or lanes intersecting that part of the city between Thames Street and the water — lanes made up of ware- houses and granaries, with a narrow track of road just wide enough for one waggon to pass, and with weird-looking galleries or gangways stretching across overhead. London, in these regibns, is wonderfully quiet at eight o'clock of a summer even- ing. Sometimes a whole lane, or block of warehouses and offices, would be closed, with scarce a single passer-by to break the silence ; and at last, in a certain narrow passage, more deserted even than the rest, the loneliness seemed so profound that Maggie took courage to creep inside a portico before an office and sit down. The river was quite close here ; she could hear the occasional dull splash of the tide ; could see the masts of the barges and funnels of the river-steamers passing up and down ; and she turned her head from the sight and bent it down on her lap. She wanted, she hungered to die ; and yet the sound of the river, the sight of the vessels, made her afraid. To die, in theory, had been easy enough ; but these brought before her the actual physical terrors of death. She took off her gloves, and held her bare hands before her face with a sort of feeling of comfort from their warm touch. She turned her head, as 1 have said, from the river. She felt that life — any life, life Avithout Eobert even — was sweet. If, at that moment, she could be back in her lodgings, she thought, how good it would be to see the servant-girl's face, and to have her supper, and go to her bed and sleep. Tlie close, dull rooms, the noisome food^ the ceaseless din from the streets ADRIFT IN LONDON. 115 without, were unutterably "better than what she had before her now. They were life. And if at this hour Maggie had sunk insensible, and a police- man had borne her to the nearest station-house, and the common- est bodily attention had been shown her, probably by next morn- ing all the darker dream of suicide would have passed away for ever. Instead of that good fortune I will tell you what befell her. A young girl threw up a ground-floor window, not many yards from Avhere she sat, and then put herself at a piano, just where Maggie could catch a glimpse of her figure, and sang. It was not a region in which you would, ordinarily, expect to hear operatic airs ; but here, as in all dull, airless city thoroughfares, some human beings were obliged to spend their lives, both winter and summer. This girl was the daughter of some poor clerk, or ware- house-keeper, perhaps ; whose one vanity had been in the child's boarding-school education, whose one extravagance was the child's piano. At all events, she sang ; and sang prettily ; with a tune- ful, touching voice, and modest grace ; and the melody she chose Avas the one dear to the school-girl heart in every country of Europe — '■'■ Robert ^ c'est toi qiiefaimey That song, so trite to the ear of civihzation, was like a key-note to the one golden period of Maggie's life. In Paris, Mr Dennison had taken her, a three days' bride, to the opera ; and Patti's voice had embodied for the English girl's ignorant heart all her yearning, voiceless passion for her own Eobert. She never heard the song before or since, but its melody had at once sunk deep into her re- membrance ; and after the first few bars she knew it now. ^^ Robert, c'est toi que f aimer Her husband had told her the meaning of the words, mth tenderest looks, with furtive hand-pressure, then, and here — a forlorn outcast in the London streets — they came back to her. " Robert, Robert ! " She waited until the girl had sung the first verse of her song ; then started up as if some lining thing had stung her, and hurried on her road again. Weak though she was, she had strength to get away quick from the exquisite pain that tune had the power to inflict upon her, and, in a minute or two, found herself by the water-side. She made her way down a long line of wharf, ever and anon stopping and I 2 IIG ARCHIE LOVELL. looking, with fascination rather than with horror, down into the river beneath ; then suddenly raising her head, she saw that she was close beneath the dark, massive arches of a bridge — London Bridge she thought it must be, for Eobert had taken her once to see the city, and she remembered that London Bridge lay in the position this did from St Paul's. It was now between nine and ten o'clock, and such wayfarers as darkness brings forth do^^Ti by the river, were congregating thickly upon the pavement. But Maggie heeded none of them. Women stared at her, but she felt no shame ; men spoke to her, and their words never reached her ears. She was insensible of the foul, tobacco-laden, spirit-charged atmosphere through which she had to struggle on. " Robert, Rohert 1 " this was all she heard ; this echo of the dead past wa& all from which she wanted to get away. She kept in the direction she had chosen as steadily as her fast-flagging strength would allow ; in a few more minutes had nearly climbed the steps that lead from the water-side up to the bridge, and then felt that a fresher, colder, purer air was blowing upon her face. The pavement on both sides of London Bridge was thronged with foot-passengers. One forlorn wretch like herself would never here, she felt, arrest the attention of any one : and so, after walk- ing along a fcAV paces irresolutely, she crept into the shadow of one of the recesses, and cowering down there, her head leaning against the wall, set herself to wait. "Wait until she knew not what 1 until the crowd had lessened, or the lamps paled, or the last In-ightness of evening had died out of the sky ! She suffered less now that she was quiet than she had done all day. Her head felt light and wandering, but not as it had done after she took the laudanum the night before. Kow past things came back to her unmixed mtli any consciousness of the present. The house at Heathcotes, the plantation where she had first met " Mr Eobert,'^ her place in the village choir, where he could see her from the squire's pew : then her three weeks of Paris, and carriages and theatres : lastly, Robert's bachelor rooms, with the beautiful dm- ner-service, and the lace upon the toilet-table, and the fine lawn- covered pillow, and the perfumed cold hand that she had kissed ! All came back to her, and painlessly. Misery, jifter a certain point, becomes its own aua3sthetic. The recollections of life, the "you HAVE IlEJECTED ME/' 117 prospects of death, were no longer more poignant to Maggie than they Avonld be to a man under the influence of chloroform. Eobert wanted her no longer ; and she had come here to die ; and it was good to rest in this dark corner, where no one could stare at her and guess her secret. This was about as much human emotion as it was now left to her to feel. CHAPTEE XII. YOU HAVE REJECTED ME.' The Morteville public ball was advertised in the Morteville Courant du Jour for nine o'clock. It was an understood thing, however, that no persons of fashion appeared in the rooms until half-past nine at the earliest, and Mrs Lovell, ever a slave to con- ventionality, determined, too, not to look as if they wanted to get all they could for their money, had ordered the carriage — a crazy fiacre, bespoken a fortnight beforehand, so scarce were even crazy fiacres in Morteville — to be at their door at twenty-five minutes precisely before ten. Ten minutes going to the Etablissement Avould bring it to the quarter ; they would then have five minutes to attend to their dresses in the cloak-room ; and at ten minutes before ten would enter the ball-room. They could not be wrong, for the Sous-prefet's carriage was ordered at exactly the same hour, and the Maire's also. But long before seven o'clock Archie Lovell was in her bed- Toom, not actually dressing — the putting on of her frock and "wreath could scarcely by possibility be made to last out two hours — but lingering over all the fresh delicious details of this, her first b)all toilet. Taking up her shoes (Mrs Lovell, by dint of heaven knows what household parsimony, had managed to purchase them for her), and making sure for the twentieth time that the Tosettes Avere firmly sewed on ; gazing at her gloves — she was afraid to do more than gaze at them, they were so delicate and white ; hovering round the diaphanous cloud of white drapery that lay 118 ARCHIE LOVELL. upon her little bed ; occasionally trying on her wreath with cautious fingers, and wondering whether it would look well a hair's-breadth higher or lower on her forehead; and finally leaning over and smelling a magnificent bouquet of white fiowers that had been left for her by " un monsieur, mais un petit monsieur tres tres comme 11 faut," as Jeanneton said, in the course of the afternoon. Most English gu-ls have had the edge of enjoyment taken off their first real ball, by all the children's parties, and half grown-up parties, to which they have gone smce they were babies. But no such premature dissipation had blunted Archie Lovell's keen in- stinct for pleasure. Dancing had come to her, as she told Mr Durant, by nature. All foreign servant-girls can dance ; and from the time she could walk alone she had danced, after a flishion of her own, with her bonnes ; also with the peasants, or with her father's artist-friends, at tlie out-of-door fetes in Italy which it was Mr Lovell's special pleasure to attend. Inside a ball-room she had never been. She had never worn white gloves and shoes ; had never had on a low dress ; never seen an artificial flower closer than on the altar of the Catholic churches till now. And she stood and gazed at them all — all this paraphernalia of the order of wo- manhood with which she was about to be invested ! with the same sort of reverence that a maiden knight of old might have felt wliile he watched his armour on the night before the accolade. When she looked down at the short linen dress and shabby shoes she had on, she almost pitied herself. How had she been hapjDy so long wliile jasmine wreaths and white grenadines, satin shoes and snowy Idd gloves, were worn by other girls and not by her? AVould it be possible — the thought chilled her — to put on the linen dress and shabby shoes to-morrow morning, and go on with the old daily dull routine as usual 1 A strange sense of the mys- tery, the inequality of life, smote her as it had never done before. The white shoes and gloves would be dirty to-morrow, tlie dress soiled, the flowers withered, and JMr Durant gone. On this first night of August she was to taste the fulness of eartlily enjoyment ; to be dressed in a Avliite dress six yards and a half in circumfer- ence ; to go to a ball ; to dance twenty-one dances, most of them with Mr Durant ; not to return perhaps till daybreak ; and then afterwards, for the rest of her existence — - "you have rejected me." 119 " Archie, child, you will never enjoy the ball if you think of it so much beforehand," broke in her stepmother's voice at this point of her reverie. " BaUs are doubtful pleasures at the best, and even if you move in the highest society — and it's likely indeed — you won't leave your seat twice. More than an hour you have been here, and now I find you looking at your dress still." " But if I am not to enjoy the ball, Bettina, how lucky I can enjoy looldng forward to it ! " answered Archie, with unconscious philosophy. " If I don't leave my place once, nothing can take away the j^leasure I have had in my imaginary successes. ^N'ow you, who are hopeless beforehand, and mean to be bored, accord- ing to your own account, when you get there, have not a single moment of compensation throughout the whole affair." , " Except when it is over," murmured Bettina, meeldy. " At my age, and in our position, gaiety can never be anything to me but a cross, selfishly speaking. When I was your age, Archie, and in the very highest county society, perhaps I used to look forward to a ball as eagerly as you do, but now — Jeanneton, foUe fille, que fais-tu avec ma robe 1 " she interrupted herself abruptly, as Jeanneton, bearing away her mistress's best dress from the kitchen, where it had been hanging by the fire, passed before Archie's door. " Prenez garde de ces grosses pieds de votre ! " — Mrs LoveU's French was still imperfect — " and tenez the chandelle di'oit. Archie, tell that idiotic woman in French to mind the grease. I wouldn't have a spot on my mauve moire for all I'm worth," This mauve moire was the dress Miss Curtis had worn on the day she led Mr Lovell to the altar. At that date it was termed violet ; but when the word mauve came into fashion Mrs Lovell called it mauve : and almost made Archie, who was simple then, believe, on the strength of the change, that it was a new dress. To bring it do^^m to an approximate fashionable length, velvet of a suitable colour had been added from time to time round the skirt ; but for the bodice alteration was impossible, dresses having been cut at the time of Miss Curtis's wedding with considerably tighter bodies and sleeves than a modern riding-habit. On aU great festivities Mrs Lovell wore the mauve moire, hanging it for a day beforehand by the fire, with faith in this process taking out creases and making it equal to new. She wore, in addition, on the pre- 120 ARCHIE LOVELL. sent occasion a white lace shawl and a pair of black satin shoes, all descended from the wedding ; a garnet necklace and earrings, and lappets of real point on her head. Archie had often been accorded glances at these treasures one by one and with solemn mystery, by her stepmother. She had never so much as imagined the possi- bility of their being brought out before the eyes of men all at once ; and when, after a lengthened absence, the two women met, dr(,'ssed, in the little salon, her admiration for Bettina knew no bounds. " In our different styles we shall be the two best-dressed women in the room, Bettina, depend upon it ! " she cried, with all a child's belief in everytliing and every one belonging to herself. " Your dress is perfect, now, perfect — and I don't mind saying so ! Paj)a," appealingly to Mr Lovell, who had come in, and was literally feasting his eyes on her — on his child, I mean, not his wife. " Isn't Bettina looking nice 1 Isn't the effect of the white lace over the mauve really beautiful 1 " " Beautiful ! " echoed Mr Lovell, absently, and never taking his eyes from the girl's face, "beautiful! and so like. I never knew how like till now. You see it, Bettina 1 " after a moment's pause. "Xay, nay — how should you] Your gown looks very well, my dear," — he had not called her ''my dear" three times since their marriage — "and you have dressed the child admirably. lavish little Taroni were here to make a sketch of her." "Indeed, I think little Taroni made quite sketches enough of me," cried Archie, petulantly, and dancing away to take another look at herself in the glass. "For once, papa, don't think of me as a model. To-night I am neither peasant, nymph, contadina, nor any other atelier lay-figure, but a human being ; and, which is more, a young lady. I can hardly believe it of myself though, yet." But although she disclaimed her father's compliment, Miss Lovell might in good truth have stood for a model at that moment — a model of Diana, of Hebe, of any impersonation in whose beauty youth, health, and freshness are supreme. Her evening ilress revealed a neck and arms not dazzlingly white, but of a fresh wax-Hke texture, and exceedingly shapely ; a neck and arms with no Juno-like proportions, for plumpness and dimples are not ex- ^'^YOU HAVE REJECTED ME." 121 actly what tlie mind connects witli the imperial goddess, "but girl- ish and graceful. Her hair, unbound, fell in silken plenty over her shoulders and far beneath her slender waist. A little round jasmine ^vreath was set coquettishly on one side of her head, and admirably suited her niignonne, sparkling face. No necklace round her throat ; no bracelets on her arms. The white dress — the little wreath — the natural flowers in her hand — were her sole adornments. She looked like what she was — a child playing for the first time at bemg grown up ; and a certain something not un- feminine, but unconventional, in her brusque way of jumping about in her fashionable skirts, heightened the suspicion that to be iron-clad and trained was a discipline to which time as yet had not accustomed her. "Enjoy yourself, child," said Mr Lovell, as at twenty minutes to ten he put her and Bettina into the carriage. " Show me your silk shoes quite worn out to-morrow morning." And then he stood, and by the dim light from the solitary lamp of the Eue d'Artois, watched the fiacre that bore her from his sight. Watched with the first vague jealousy of Archie he had ever known ; the jealousy every father living, however generous, however manly, must, I think, have felt at times for the child who is a child no more ; the jealousy which makes the last chapters of Jean Yaljean's life so touching a poem. Archie was his little one no longer. He thought of the old Dresden days, when he used to walk with her in his arms about the market in the early summer ' mornings. He thought of the broken patois of her baby voice, of the determined clasp of her baby hands ; and with a choking feel- ing at his breast went back to his study — to write something about Archie, or about the feelings of some other father at first seeing his sirl a woman ? l^o. If Frederick Lovell had ever described aiiy of the common things he himself felt or did, he might have been a poet. He went to pile up scores of inflated images about florid sunsets over meridian plains — the like of which he had never ex- perienced, and which, consequently, could never interest any other mortal being to read of. jNIeanwhile, Archie and Mrs Lovell arrived safely at the Etab- iissement, and after an interval — a breathless interval to Archie — of disrobing, made their way to the dancing-room. Was the Maire 122 ARCHIE l.O'S'ELT,. there? the Sous-prefet? Mr Durant himself? For a good many minutes Archie knew and saw nothing. A mist gathered hefore her eyes ; her hmbs felt heavy ; in spite of all her efforts, she knew that her lips trembled as she walked along. "Don't be shy, child. No one is looking at us or thinking of us,'' Bettina whispered to reassure her, and Archie answered, quite sincerely, that she was never less shy in her life. All she felt was delight, " and — and anxiety for a partner, Bettina," she added. " I shall never get over the shame if I sit out the first dance." She was for walking up and down the room, and so giving any male acquaintance who might be there a chance of coming up and inviting her to dance ; but Mrs Lovell, better versed in propriety, insisted upon sitting down at once. All the seats in the best position of the room were already filled, and so they had to take their places not far from the door, and somewhat hidden from general view by one of the pillars of the colonnade that ran round the room. Archie could have cried as she sat down. X)nce planted in this odious place, probably none of the young men would think of asking her to dance at all. The band struck up a waltz, and she watched men asking other girls to dance, and then, tra-la-la, tra-la-la, off they floated in a delicious melodious ■whirl that made her heart positively ache as she sat there, ex- cluded from its mazes. Just at that moment little Monsieur Gounod, one of the partners upon whom slie had depended, ap- peared through the doorway, resplendent ; his boots shining like looking-glass, his fierce moustache waxed and twisted up nearly to his eyes, a turned-down collar to show his throat, and a gor- geous expanse of open-work shirt, with pink silk gleaming under- neath : very nice, indeed, Archie thought Monsieur Gounod looked. And, instead of coming up to her, he went off straight to Madame the Maire — horrid little time-serving, fawning man — and madame, in spite of her forty years and her stalwart waist, smiled and bowed and attitudinized her assent, and then these two went off, tra-la-la, tra-la-la, like the rest ; and Archie Lovell remained sitting still. Would she have a better chance by standing up 1 When the interminable waltz was ended, and people were beginning to en- gage their partners for the next dance, a quadrille, Archie mada "you have rejected me." 123" this suggestion to Bettina, who, a great deal happier than her stepdaughter, was just then counting, with intense interest, the number of gores in Madame the Sous-prefet's skirt. " Stand up ? " yes, certainly ; there would be no impropriety in standing up for a minute or two. As to talking of a " better chance," it was absurd even to expect to dance yet. Not until all the ladies of conse- quence had danced, ought Archie to dream of a partner. And then Bettina fell, with vital eagerness, again to the measurement of Madame the Sous-prefet. If, as she believed, there were ten gores in her dress, it could have been made with fourteen yards ; and that arch-traitress Annette, the work-girl, had declared that, to her own certain knowledge, Madame the Sous-prefet always had sixteen yards in every dress she wore. Women like Mrs Lovell, I verily believe, enjoy a ball-room most. To young women it is an arena ; they are the actors, the matadors and the picadors in the fight. The vicissitudes of success and defeat have all to be borne by them — and with smiling faces ! The women who neither hope nor fear for themselves are the calm spectators ; and they derive edification — unintelligible to women under thirty, and to men of all ages, as the raptures of Spaniards at a bullfight are to the people of other countries — ^from every minute detail of the conflict before their eyes. Ten gores in the skirt ? Yes,- Annette must be an impostor ; for she said no dress could be made with an even number. And the front width just touching the ground ; not ridiculously short, half way up to the knees, as Annette de- clared was the last Paris fashion ! When Madame waltzed a"-ain, she would be able to see if the dress was lined — another point on wliich she had the gravest suspicions as regarded Annette. And all this time Archie's heart was beating so loud she thought it must be heard, and her cheeks were flushing, and her poor little teeth were set hard, to keep her mouth from trembling at the thought that another dance would begin and find her without a partner. However, standing up brought about better fortune after all. Just as -the sets were forming, and as Bettina whispered that it was undignified to keep any longer on her feet, up came young Willy Montacute — the third string of Archie's bow — and asked her to dance. Young Montacute was very young indeed, and very shy, and very plain to look upon — never mind, he was a 12i ARCHIE LOVELL. partner, and Archie went away with hini joyously. She was the more delighted to have secured him when, a minute later, there resounded that jiecidiar ostentatious rustling of silk, which only the movements of very under -bred English persons seem capable of creating, and the great Mrs O'Eourke, with old Maloney and suite, bridled and languished into the room. For worlds Miss Lovell would not have been found sitting out, partnerless, by her enemies ; and she felt quite grateful to Willy Montacute for having asked her, and smiled at him, and chattered to him, and danced pretty little steps of her own to the quadrille-music ; and only now and then looked eagerly to the door, whenever any new face appeared there, in the hope that it might be Mr Durant him- self come at last to dance with her ! When the quadrille was over, her jDartner asked her if she would take any refreshment. She was a great deal too much excited to require bodily sustenance, and was desperately afraid of touch- ing anything that could take the freshness from her gloves before Mr Durant had seen them. However, any risk would be better, she thought, than going back to her place by Bettina ; so she said "yes," and went with Master Montacute to the refreshment or ante-room, where they pretended to flirt, as they regaled them- selves on two glasses of sugar-and-water. Then they came back to the ball-room, and Willy Montacute inquired if he should take her to her place. " I'd like to ask you to dance this galop with me," he remarked, as Archie rather faintly assented, " only I dance so vilely, I don't like to try with any one but my sisters." " Oh, I dare say we should get on very well," said the girl, readily. " I'm not much of a dancer myself — I mean not much of a ball-room dancer — but I used to waltz a great deal out of doors, with different people in Ital}"-, and I generally managed to get on pretty well with all of them." Thus encouraged, young Master Montacute put his arm round her waist, and after one or two false starts, they got off. The youth had underrated his own powers ; he was by no meahs the worst style of bad dancer — having good wind, a tall figure, and just address enough to tread on the feet of other people, not of his partner. What he really wanted were nerve, firmness, and pluck ; ■and conscious of these deficiencies, he went at a pace, when once "you have rejected me." 125 off, that defied honest competition. If he slackened, he felt he might break down ; if he stopped, that he might not make so good a start ao-ain. O "You are not tired? You don't want to stop?" he gasped occasionally, as they jfled along; and Archie, too breathless to speak, told him each time, by a nod or shake of her head, that the pace pleased her. Xot till the music ceased did they stop ; and by tliis time Miss Lovell's cheeks were like damask roses, and her blue eyes were full of light, and her long hair was all tossed about — some of it clinging, indeed, aroimd young Montacute's arm — and her jasmine ^^Teath, which had fallen off in the course of one of their false starts, was hanging over her arm. " Just like a Bacchante," Mrs Maloney, who was standing near, pronounced her to be ; hiding away her own modest old eyes be- hind her fan the Avhile, for fear of contamination. The rooms Avere now filling fast ; and as Archie Lovell walked along, her singular beauty began to attract imiversal attention. She knew it, and mth delicious flutter, said to her heart that she would not have to sit out many more dances that night ; and she was right. Just as j^oung Montacute was leading her back to the corner where Bettina sat, a gentleman came up, his opera-hat under his arm, and with a profound bow, asked Miss Lovell, in excellent English, to allow him to put do^yn his name upon her card. He was a young Eussian prince at present staying in Morteville (iind coveted as a partner by every woman in the room), and Archie's face flushed up with delight. " I shall be very glad, indeed, to dance with you, but I have no card. There have only been two dances yet, and I danced both vdth the same partner." Willy Montacute volunteered at once, proud even of this vica- rious relation with aristocracy, to get her a card ; and while he was gone Miss Lovell stood and chatted with great unconcern to the young Eussian. If she had gone through half-a-dozen London seasons, she could not have looked and felt more entirely at her ease than she did at this moment ; the boldness of a child taking, in her, the place of acquired and conventional courage. Shaking her hair back across her shoulders, with her face upturned, her 126 ARCHIE LOVELL. head, o,s her trick was, a little on one side, she stood quietly talk- ing to the prince, as if she had been used to talk to princes all her life ; isolated, as it chanced, for the moment, from any other group ; with no fan to flutter — women's usual stay on such emer- gencies — and her bouquet calmly held and never raised, as an em- barrassed woman must have raised it, for one instant to her face. As she stood thus, G-erald Durant entered the ball-room. He had expected to see ]\Iiss Lovell looking prett}^ — in a somewhat school-girl style of prettiness ; ill-dressed probably, as women in the provinces invariably are, dancing violently with some young member of the Morteville bourgeoisie. He saw her a vision, with bright falling hair, with radiant eyes ; dressed in as faultless taste as though Elise had been her milliner; and with the handsomest -and best-born man in the room at her side. How well pleased she looked at this miserable little foreign nobleman's attentions ! How she showed her white teeth, and shook back her tav/ny locks, and turned her head aside, or shot glances at him from her blue eyes, just as she had done the day before at Mr Durant himself ! When young JMontacute brought the card, the Prince took it from Archie's hand and wrote liis name down for several dances — and as he asked for each, Miss Lovell smiled and gave a pleased nod of her head. If Gerald had only played at being in love with her before, he felt strongly that it would be play no longer now. They had met on equal ground at length. Archie was a Avoman to be won, not a cliild to be played Avith ; and there was a rival worthy of the effort to be distanced. The fairest woman living would scarcely have been worthy the trouble of winning to Mr Durant without that. He moved away among the crowd, so that Archie did not see him ; and when she had returned to T^frs Lovell, he stood close beside her chair before she knew that he was in the room. ''Miss AYilson, I suppose there is no use in my asking you to •dance 1 " Archie, in the seventh heaven of delight, was just showing Bet- tina her card with the Prince's hieroglyph wTitten no less than four times upon it. "I don't know how to pronounce his name, Pettina ! There are two zz's, you see, and a double f, and a capi- tal C, and no vowels to speak of ; however, that doesn't matter — *'you have rejected me.'* 127 lie is a prince. I don't care wliat else happens how Yes, Eettina, my wreath fell off, and you may keep it," throwing it down in her stepmother's lap. " I was without a wreath when he asked me to dance, and I am content ! " She was just in the middle of her triumph, and of this somewhat heartless speech, when Gerald's soft caressing voice — so unlike the Prince's little piping falsetto — interrupted her. " Mr Durant, I never knew you were here ! I shall be delight- ed." And she jumped up, not doubting for a moment that he meant to ask her for the next dance, and took his arm. "I hardly thought I had a chance," he remarked, as he led her away through the crowd. "When I came in and saw you giving all those dances to thafc Russian fellow, I never expected that I should get a single waltz. Confess you had forgotten me, and the dances we were to have had, until I came up and asked you." " Indeed I had not," answered Miss Lovell, feeling, guiltily, at tlie same time, how nearly he had guessed the truth ; " I had been wondering — oh, wondering whether you would ever come all the evening ! I mean ever since I have been here." " You have danced ever}^ time, of course ? " " Yes." How thankful she felt he had not seen her whirling -^vith Willy Montacute ! With her hand on Gerald Durant's arm, and with the Prince's name written four times over on her card, how miserable seemed her little triumph with poor Willy ! — how resolved she was to ignore him for the remainder of the night, and of her life! "I have danced, but I did not enjoy the dances much," she added, demurely. " They were not with the Russian, then 1 " " No. His are all to come." " I see. Miss Wilson, you have the rare virtue of sincerity." They had now reached the inner or dancing space of the room, and Archie, a great deal more keen for waltzing than for senti- mental flirtation, quitted Mr Durant's arm at once, and gathered her muslin skirts a little together with her right hand. She had come to the ball to dance twenty-one dances, and had no idea of losing unnecessary time. " Shall we really go through it ? " suggested Gerald, wJio had the natural prejudices of a bored Guardsman of five-and-twent}'- 128 ARCHIE LOVELL. against round dances. " I see a room looking doliglilfully cool and empty a"\vay to the right. I mean, don't you think by-and-by Ave shall find it less crowded for dancing ? " he added, in answer to the blank surprise of Archie's face. " By-and-by ? Yes, I dare say we shall ; but why lose a waltz now 1 Surely in London you dance in greater crowds than this 1 " The disappointment of her look and tone Avas unmistakable. ^Iv Durant saw that any man who aspired to Miss Lo veil's favour must make up his mind to dance himself thereinto ; and he heroically resolved to waltz, as he had said to Dennison, like a student, for the remainder of the night. "I'm so fond of dancing, and it's such a treat to me," she pleaded, as she rested her little hand upon his arm. "You must remember this is the first ball I have ever been at in my life, and you are my second partner. It's very different for you who have been having nothing but balls and pleasure all your life." She need not have apologized. Before they had gone half round the room, Gerald felt that he was enjoying this waltz as he had not enjoyed any dance for years. The floor w^as first-rate, the room not over-crowded, and his partner — perfection ! He had danced in his time w^ith excellent dancers of all nations and of all classes ; but this little girl suited him better than all. There was something contagious in her own irrepressible enjoyment ; in the verve, the buoyancy Avith wdiicli she moved. In London draw- ing-rooms, and at Mabille, at the Tuileries, and the Staffordshire county balls, the same feeling of non-amusement had been ever wont to oppress him. Young women might be beautiful, or ex- cellent dancers, or sought in vain by other people ; Grerald had invariably had the same feeling while he danced w^ith them — that a quiet flirtation in some dim-lighted conservatory would be better. But Archie's was the very poetry of waltzing; her flow- ing hair, her happy parted lips, her grace, her ahandon, divided her from every other woman with whom he had danced in all his life before. In a waltz, as in everything else, the girl's most potent charm for Gerald Durant was in this — her individuality. Tie had known women in classes hitherto, and each class, in turn, had bored him. In Archie, for the first time, he saw a girl who could divert him for any number of hours with her merry tongue > " YOU HAVE REJECTED ME." 129 who would let him smoke as he talked to her in the moonlight ; who would dance as she was dancing now, answering wdth a merry smile every little bit of nonsense he whispered, and still who was as removed as Lucia herself from the very detestation of his heart — ^fastness. No grisette could be more amusing than this child ; no countess more refined. And then her heart was as pure as her face ! Gerald Durant held no more exalted opinions of human nature than most men hold, to whom a plentiful supply of money and a commission in the Guards have been given at nineteen ; but this virtue may be put to his credit — he believed in women when- ever he met with one worthy of belief. And Archie's charm for him — the charm that was the key-stone to the rest, and without which she would not have been Archie, but one of a class — was her innocence. Smoking beside her in the moonlight, or here with his arm around her waist in a crowded ball-room, it was the same. There was always something cold in those blue eyes ; some girlish mocking ring in the httle laugh ; some lingering bloom of childhood on the red lips, that held him, as it were, very far away from her. Charm without a name ! Charm that if Eachel or Breidenbach could only distil, and label "Dew of the morning," or "Maiden Blush," and sell at five guineas a packed would fill their shops with fashionable ladies, I imagine, from morning till night. When the waltz was over, Archie had the honour of dancing a quadrille with the Prince, and very insipid she found him after Gerald. No well-bred Eussian or Frenchman is ever anything but insipid to an unmarried girl. Still, he was a prince, and Miss Lovell, for vanity's sake, enjoyed this quadrille exceedingly. Were not Mrs O'Eourke, and the Maloney, and poor Miss Marks, partnerless, looking on with wide-open eyes? Was not little Monsieur Gounod, from his distant bourgeois set, trying hard to attract her attention 1 Was not Bettioa standing on tiptoe, and nodding encouragement to her from afar 1 Was not Gerald Durant — ^liere lay the gist of the whole triumph — standing near in a door- way, speaking to no one, and watching her intently ? When the dance was over, and she had walked round the rooms on the Prince's arm, then stood in a conspicuous position eating an ice, while he waited deferentially upon her and held her bouquet, 130 ARCHIE LOVELL. Archie -wondered in lier heart whether life could ever bring back any happiness so intense as this 1 Every one who passed glancing at her with admiration — Monsieur the Prince humbly holding her flowers — Mr Durant still watching her from the door- way — ]\lr Durant's name \mtten, too many times to count, upon her card ! Could happiness like this be repeated often, and was — sudden as light flashed this thought upon her — was the feeling she had toward Mr Durant, or the Prince, anything resembling love ? If so, love was a very charming thing. If this fairy-scene of light and flowers ; these attentive, handsome partners, in their primrose gloves and silk-faced coats ; if this new, intoxicating sense of her own beauty were all, indeed, the inauguration of tlie great romance of life, how mucli better that romance was than she had imagined ! Ivanhoe at the feet of Eowena, Clive ISTewcome claim- ing Ethel at last, were situations that had hitherto touched her deeply. But how pale and prosaic Avere they compared with this ! She was certain Eowena never felt to Ivanhoe as she did to Mr Durant — no, the Prince — Mr Durant — which in the world Avas if? Ethel i^ewcome's love was very well in its Avay, but Ethel New- come went through dull, long years, away from Clive, and gave up the world, and took to school-teaching and district-visiting — while she — she would never give up the world or take to anything but balls, and pleasure, and beautiful dresses. She would marry one of her slaves, the Prince probably — and have a white silk and diamonds, and a pink silk and pearls, and she would give three balls a week, and go out to tliree, and let poor Mr Durant be the first on her list of partners sometimes, and— " Mademoiselle, will you accord me a dance 1 " said little Mon- sieur Gounod, obsequiously, at her elbow, just as the Prince was putting down her plate. ^'Mademoiselle has been so surrounded, I could not approach her sooner." Dancing Avith Monsieur Gounod was rather a descent from being a princess, and entertaining in sUks and diamonds three times a week ; but remembering that there might be future Morteville balls without princes, and- without Mr Durant, Ai'chie graciously gave him a dance very low down on her card (she smiled at the notion of Monsieur Adolphe Gounod's petitioning her for dances, and her condescending to give him one) ; and then Monsieur the Prince "you have rejected me." 131 handed her back, through the discomfited, neglected host of O'Eourke and Maloney, to Bettina's side. That enchanting evening waned at last ; alike for Archie as for the plainest, most unnoticed woman there, or for poor Bettina — every gore in every dress in the room exhausted — asleep in her chair. Miss Lovell had danced her four dances with the Prince, and knew now that she would never marry him ; also that his well-cut coat, and perfect gloves, and high-bred manner, were his greatest charms. And she had danced mth other young and well- looking partners, and knew that she cared for none of them as she did for Mr Durant, How much was it that she cared for him'? She asked herself this quite late in the evening, as they stood to- gether, her hand resting on his arm, and a sudden, odd, choked feeling in her throat was her answer. She liked him, for certain, more than she had ever liked any man, save one ; and that was years ago — a child's liking merely. Liked him, as in this wan- dering, vagabond life of theirs, it was scarcely possible she would like any one again. AVith a sudden revulsion of feeling she felt that she hated all foreigners, princes included ; hated artists ; hated the men her lot would and must lie among. What she shoold like would be an English home among English people ; the world that was Gerald's world ; the country that was his country. Was this love, or approaching love? She knew not. But Gerald knew there was a softer look than he had ever seen in her blue eyes ; a tremble in her voice whenever she spoke of the coming day — nay, the day that had already come and must divide them. "Let us leave off dancing now," he whispered to her. "We will return and have the last dance of all together ; but let us rest a little now. There are people Avalking ontside on the ter- race ; and the moon makes it as light as day. Let us go too." They went out together on the broad gravel promenade, a plateau that divides the Etablissement at Morteville from the shore, and walked at once to the end furthest from the ball-room. It was high tide ; and the calm glassy sea broke in monotonous cadence on the sands. In the extreme west the waning yellow moon lay close to the horizon ; the sky was white with stars above their head. K 2 132 ARCHIE LOVELL. " "Wliat a glorious sky!" cried Archie; and, all involuntarily, lier hand rested heavier on his arm. " Mr Durant, when you are in London, I wonder whether you will look hack, and think of to- night?" From any woman hut Archie the speech, would have heen a leading one ; and Gerald forgot that it was Archie who spoke, and in a second had carried her little gloved hand to his lips. " I shall never forget to-night, Miss Wilson — never while I live. As- to m}'' return to England," he added, tenderly, " there is no occa sion for me to go there at all, unless you bid me do so." She caught her hand away from him ; her heart heat violently ; a scorching blush rose into her face. A minute ago she liked Gerald so that she could have cried to say good-bye to him ; now she very nearly hated him. What right had he to kiss her hand — her hand that no man's lips but her father's had ever touched What right had he to bend his head down so close to her? '' I— I don't know what you mean, Mr Durant. How can it depend upo me whether you go or stay ? " And as she spoke she took off he: glove — the glove Gerald had kissed — and laid it down upon th( little stone wall that formed the boundary of the terrace. At this moment she might have been an excuse for any folly, any madness — with the moonlight turning her mass of waving hair to bronze, and whitening into snow the soft outline of her girlish throat and arms. A wild desire came upon Gerald to snatch her to his breast, then and there to give up Lucia, and con- tent himself, beggared, for the rest of his life with being the mas- ter and ruler of that face and of those blue eyes that were gleam- ing at him with so very little of subjection in their expression now. " I have offended you," he exclaimed, quickly. " Miss Wilson, tell me at least that I have not offended you hopelessly ? " " Offended ! JN'o, Mr Durant ; that is not the word." But she kept well away from him as she answered. " You have only sur- prised me. If it had been that Eussian Prince or Monsieur Gounod I should have cared less. All foreigners make ridiculous speeches, I believe, and kiss ladies' hands, and perform such antics. But you — an EngHshman ! No ; I did not expect it." "Antics? A man carried away by an impulse too strong for "you have rejected me." 133 him kisses a hand — a gloved hand ! — like yours ; and you call his impulse an antic 1 " " I do," with a burst of sudden passion, " unless — unless, of course, he cares about her ! " her voice changing as Gerald had once before heard it change, when she approached the subject of love. " And if he did care for her 1 " " Ah ! I know nothing about that, I mean — I mean — " and then she turned her face quite away from him, and was silent. Gerald was at her side in a moment. "Archie," he cried, "I do care for you ! I would give my life for you ! Will you ac- cept it?" He stood for a minute, not trying even to take hex hand again. Then Archie turned. Mr Durant could see her face full in the moonlight, and he knew that it looked less like a child's face than it had ever looked before. Her eyes were downcast; a little nervous tremble was about her lips. " Mr Durant, how am I to take this ? " she asked. A dozen Belgravian mothers in conclave could not have decided upon a better question than this, which Archie's untutored in- stinct taught her. " To — to take it ! " repeated Gerald, but not without hesitation. " Miss Wilson — Archie — can there be any way but one in which to interpret my admiration — my devotion 1 " Admiration, devotion, fine words, but that fell with a blank sound on Archie Lovell's ear. She was very young, she was thoroughly unhackneyed ; but every warm affection, every strong, honest, natural feeling lay dormant in that childish heart. Gerald's kiss shocked her by its abruptness, and for a moment she had felt outraged, frightened ; then, when he pleaded with her, when he said, tenderly, " I do care for you ; I would give my life for you," her heart seemed all at once to stir with a violent pulsa- tion, and she had stood irresolute (that was when he watched her lips tremble), simply waiting with a sort of fear for his next words, and for whatever new emotion should master her. "How am I to take this?" she asked mechanically, as she waited thus ; and then Mr Durant broke forth about admiration and devotion, and for him Archie Lovell's heart never beat as it 134 ARCHIE LOVELL. had beat in that one loud stroke again. By a hair's breadth only had she escaped loving him. But she had escaped it. The first false ring of his voice, the first stereotyped words of flattery, had saved her; and she was unconscious, both now and hereafter, what danger this was that she had run. "I interpret your admiration and devotion thus, Mr Durant. Here, in IMorteville, an uncivilized sort of girl, called Archie Wil- son, has made your time pass pleasantly to you. I know very well I have done that ; and when you get back to England you will think of her — well, kindly always, I hope ; but with about as much pain as Archie will think of you. Voila I Let us be friends. You wanted to see how much my head was really turned by all it has had put in it to-night. Have you a cigar? You may smoke it if you have." And with a little spring she perched herself on the wall, in the careless attitude in which Gerald had seen her on the day of their first meeting. " And your glove, Miss Wilson ? Is it to remain here % You don't want to touch it again, I suppose." " I don't want to put it on," said Archie, carelessly. " I can dance the last waltz very well without it, can't I % " " Oh, quite well," said Gerald, bitterly ; " or, if you choose, the dance can be given up. Anything rather than that you should be reminded of my folly." And he took up the glove (warm still, and bearing the print of her little hand) and tossed it into the next wave that broke upon the sand. He, Gerald Durant, the courteous, the debonnaire, had actually lost his temper, for almost the only time in his life, with a woman. The first thought that crossed Archie's mind was regret for the glove. Bettina had given four francs the pair for them, saying that if you got the best they would wear for two balls at least, and clean afterwards. She had meant to be cold, dignified, when she took the glove off and laid it down, to purify it as it were from Mr Durant's kiss ; but she had never meant ultimately to abandon a piece of property worth two francs. This was how the ball she had enjoyed so intensely was to end ! She and Gerald were fast becoming enemies. She could hear the notes of the last waltz already, and instead of dancing it, they v/ere quarrelling I "you have rejected me/ 135 here ; and then, as a pleasant J&nish to it all, she would have to drive home and be scolded by Bettina for having lost her glove. " And so you don't even care to dance with me again ] " she said, after a minute, and turning her face to Gerald. She was too proud directly to allade to the loss of her glove. '' So much for your devotion, Mr Durant ; it has not lasted long." "You have rejected me, Miss Wilson." " I rejected your fine speeches, not you. You know it." He did ; he knew that they had only been fine speeches ; that he had meant to fiirt desperately with poor little Archie ; not to marry her ; and that her delicate woman's instinct, not any worldly knowledge whatever, had made her value his declaration at its exact worth. Could he be angry with her long 1 Was she not, in truth, too good to be trifled with ? Should he mar the remem- brance of their brief acquaintance by parting from her in bitter- ness ? And did not the tears that glistened in the poor child's eyes even now tell him that at her heart, and in her simple way, she cared for him still ? " In spite of your cruelty to me, I shall always feel the same towards you, Miss Wilson. You may be very sure of that." "And we will dance the last dance together, then, after all?" " Of course we will, if you will only forgive me first. I shall be too utterly miserable, Archie, utJcss you forgive me ! " She not only forgave him, but held her hand to him in token of forgiveness ; and then they returned slowly along the terrace to the ball-room. Just as they got to the entrance-door, Miss Lovell drew back, and hesitated. "It looks strange, does it not, to dance with only one glove on ? How would it be, do you think, to take off the other too '? Better, eh 1 " "Yes, certainly better," said Gerald, "and as it wdll be quite useless to you, you may make it a present to me. I shall like to have something that was worn by you to-night." She took off her glove, touched in her inmost heart by his wish to possess it, and gave it him without a word. Gerald folded it reverently, put it in his breast-pocket (he has that little faded glove still — the only love relic kept from his youth), and then they went into the ball-room. It was almost cleared now, the band 136 ARCHIE LOVELL. was playing the " Faust Waltzes " deliciously — the bright moon- light, streaming in through the ojoen doors and windows, made the lamps pale as though it had been broad day. " It was too good to last," said Gerald, as the last notes died away, and while Archie's hand still rested on his shoulder. " For the lirst time in my life, I have found a ball too short." " And I, too," said Archie, " I think I should have liked that waltz to last for ever — except for Bettina." On their way home Bettina made inquiries as to her satin shoes. "In ribbons," answered Archie, laconically, and holding up a tiny ragged foot for her stepmother's inspection. "So much for Monsieur Joubert and his fifteen francs." " And yoiu? gloves 1 " "Lost." "Archie— lost!" " One of them fell in the sea, and one of my partners has the other. Oh, Bettina, don't scold," she cried, as Mrs Lovell was about to exclaim. " Better one ball like this, and my shoes in rags, and my gloves gone, than fifty stupid ones, and all my clothes in correct order. It was a heavenly ball, Bettina." " It has been a very expensive one," said Mrs Lovell, reckon- ing up on her fingers ; " fifteen francs the shoes ; four the gloves ; three the carriage — twenty-two francs, not counting the dress and wreath, which, of course, will come in again. It's no good talk- ing of expense, certainly, now that the folly has been committed ; Tnit there's one thing, Archie, I must say to you to-night, sleepy though I am." " What is it 1 " cried the girl, turning hot and then cold in a minute, and not knowing which of her own shortcomings Avas to be brought to light. " Well, Archie, it isn't ])erhaps a moral delinquency ; but after reposing confidence for eighteen months in a young woman, to find out that she is an impostor is not pleasant. Annette has told me a tissue of falsehoods from beginning to end. Fourteen yards of silk would make as handsome a dress as any in tliat room — and the Sous-prefet's wife had ten gores in her skirt. I said so from the first." ox THE PIER. 137 CHAPTEE XIII. ON THE PIER. "When Archie woke the next morning it seemed to her that she had aged by twenty years since yesterday. She had been a child then — she was a woman now ; had worn a ball-dress and white satin shoes ; and danced with a prince, and with Mr Durant, and had had Monsieur Gronnod, and a dozen other little Frenchmen, at her feet. Was she better for the change 1 For the first five minutes of waking, certainly not. There was a heavy weight above her eyes, and her mouth felt parched, and a listless, weary sensa- tion in all her frame, for the first time in her life, made her disin- clined to move. She lay quiet for a few minutes, thinking over every detail of the ball — ^wondering a little, too, whether she was so very much happier for having gone to it ; then suddenly recol- lected that she must get up and dress at once if she wished to be in time to see her father, who was going off with Bettina to Amiens by the eleven o'clock train. And half an hour later, fresh from her cold bath, and with her wet hair hanging over her shoulders, and her linen frock and her sailor's hat on, Archie, running from room to room, singing and laughing, and calling to Jeanneton for a "tartine" to eat by way of breakfast on her road to the station, was Archie again. The Lovells' visit to Amiens had been planned for some weeks past. Mr Lovell, wanting to attend a sale of hric-h-hrac that was to take place on this and the following day, and poor Eettina, for very economy's sake, determining to attend him. To prevent his bidding hundreds of francs for things that looked to her like rub- bish was beyond her power; indeed, experience had taught her recently that these were the solitary transactions in life wherein Mr Lovell did not fail, several of his later purchases of the kind having fetched double and treble their cost afterwards in Paris. But she could keep him straight in his domestic expenses. With- out her he would go to the dearest hotel in the place (this morn- ing's post had unfortunately brought him a quarter's remittance), ask any horrible Jew, or artist, or creature who took his fancy at 138 ARCHIE L(3VELL. tlio sale, back to dinner, and regale him with as much chablis or champagne as he chose to svvallow. AVith her he would be con- ducted to the mildly hospitable and rigidly dull roof of a certain Madame Bonnechose, wife of the Protestant pastor of Amiens, to whom Mrs Lovell had once shown attention in Morteville. And poor Mr Lovell, as biddable and sweet-tempered as a child in any- thing that merely involved his own personal discomfort, had meek- ly succumbed to the arrangement. "But I wish you were coming too, Archie," he said to his daughter, as she was standing on the platform waiting to see the train bear them out of the Morteville station. Mr and Mrs Bon- nechose are admirable people, Bettina says, but I should enjoy their society much more if you were with me. Take care of your- self without us, little one." " And look after Jeanneton," cried Bettina, putting her head out of the window after the train had moved. "Mind about the keys — and be sure to lock up everything by eight, and, Archie, if she wants to go out — " But here her voice was lost in a j)ro- longed and deafening shriek from the engine, and Archie could only nod and look ferociously determined, and otherwise express by pantomime, her determination to keep jealous watch and w^ard over Jeanneton till Bettina's return. She strolled back to the Eue d'Artois, thinking how slowly the time would pass till two o'clock, when she had promised — no, when she had told — Mr Durant she might possibly be Avalking on the pier just at the time the steamer he was going by should start. For she had confided to him all about the old people's Amiens ex- pedition, and Gerald, instead of crossing to Folkestone by the mail, had at once decided on waiting for an excursion-boat that was to go direct from Morteville to London that afternoon. When she got into the house, the first thing she saw w^as Jeanneton clearing away the breakfast things, and crying in sho^vy theatrical manner, as French servants do cry when they intend that you should notice their grief. Miss Lovell laughed aloud at once. Jean- neton's sorrows were well known to the household ; they aU arose from the ill-conduct of a certain Pierre, real or fabulous, with whom this young woman asserted herself to be sentimentally in love. ON THE PIEK. 139 " "What have you the matter with yon now, Jeanneton 1 "What neAV perfidy has Pierre been committing ? " "Ah, mademoiselle," wiping her eyes unceremoniously on the breakfast-cloth, " it's very well for mademoiselle to laugh. Made- moiselle has her balls, and her toilets, and her pleasures for her- self, while a poor girl like me — and it would have made no differ- ence to madame ; and to-day is his fete, and only two leagues from Morteville, and the tante is as active as a sparrow, and clean, but of a cleanness ! " "Which, being interpreted, signified that Jeanneton had wanted four-and-twenty hours of leave to attend her lover's fete in her native village ; that she had an aunt, active as a sparrow, willing to come and take her place in the kitchen, and that Bettina had thrown cold water on the whole scheme. As she wept and argued, and grew eloquent about " Pierre," Archie really began to believe in his existence, and to think that Bettina had been cruel. What harm would there be in her letting the girl go] ''If you would be sure to be back before papa and madame, Jeanneton, I don't see why you mightn't go. There's food enough in the larder for me till to-morrow, I suppose." " Ah, and if there is not the tante would go to market," Jean- neton broke forth ; " the tante would get mademoiselle a delicious chicken, the tante — " " Shall do nothing at all for me, Jeanneton, you may be sure," interrupted Archie, imperatively. "You may go, if you choose, but I'll have no horrible old tantes, chattering "till I'm wild, and breaking every cup and saucer we possess. And whatever you do, make up your mind about it quickly," she added. "I'm going for a walk myself at two o'clock, and if you choose to go I can take the door-key in my pocket." Jeanneton made a feeble show of regret at leaving her young- mistress all night alone ; then consoled herself with the remem- brance that the porter's wife was close at hand, and could be called whenever mademoiselle wished ; and finally, half an hour later walked off out of the house, in the very highest spirits, and in her holiday clothes. The pretty Morteville cap jauntily set on her smooth jet hair, a pair of silver rings, nearly as large as fine ladies wear them now in London, in her ears, a crucifix on her 140 ARCHIE LOVELL. throat, and her prayer-book neatly folded in a checked handker- cliief in her hand. Not that she "was going to attend the offices, but because a prayer-book was her insignia of full dress, without which she would have been no more complete than a young lady, even on days when there is neither rain nor sun, without her white parasol. It was a quarter to one now ; the excursion-steamer Avas adver- tised to leave the Morteville Eoads at two ; and Miss Lovell thought that, if she walked slowly, she would not be much too early if she got ready at once. How should she dress 1 She did not like to put on her very best things to walk about alone in. Her enemies would say that dancing with a prince had turned her head outright, if she put on her best black silk merely to walk down to the pier. Still, she would like Gerald to see her looking her best — her very best — before he returned to England and to Lucia ! She looked over her wardrobe with a melancholy sense of its deficiencies, such as she had never felt before. The black pilk — that was too good ; a gingham or two, very much washed out, and very short in the skirt ; and one checked muslin, hope- lessly dirty and tumbled : this was all. Her two white piques, the best frocks she possessed, she had worn, with reckless extra- vagance, during the past happy, prodigal Aveek, and they were both at the wash. And Gerald had said he always liked best to see her in white. As she remembered this, a sudden bold inspira- tion came across Miss Lovell's brain. She would wear the muslin skirt that had served as a slip to her ball-dress the night before. The audacity of the project almost daunted her at first. Bettina had declared that slip to be fine enough for a dress ; that it would wear clean four more balls at least ; and here was she going to put it on — clear Swiss muslin by daylight — and drag it through the dust and defilement of the Morteville streets. Dire necessities demand stringent measures. Archie vacillated and trembled be- fore she could bring herself to commit the desperate act ; once even took down the dirty checked muslin and half put it over her h(!ad ; then the thought of how she would look in that other skirt — fresh, white, long — a regular grown-up woman's dress — over- came her again. Should Mr Durant take away a last impression of Archie the tawny-haired child, the little model — the gipsy; or ON THE PIER. 141 of Archie as he had danced with her at the ball — a young lady in fair white muslin, " dressed like other people 1 " The magic of those four fatal words (which annually, statisti- cians tell us, are the ruin of thousands of people in all ranks) was too potent for Archie to withstand. She succumbed to the strongest temptation her life as yet had known ; put on the white skirt ; a high white jacket to match ; a little white scarf on her shoulders ; her sailor's hat, with a blue veil, the colour of her eyes, twisted round it ; and a pair of lemon-coloured gloves which Bettina had cleaned up a day or two before, vainly hoping they might be fresh enough to wear at the ball. "When she was dressed she ran into the salon, and stood up on a chair to see herself in the great glass. What a pretty girl she was ! How well white muslin suited her clear dark skin by daylight ! How she hoped every Enghshwoman in the place would meet her on her way to the pier ! Would anything improve her aj)pearance still 1 Yes, certainly; Bettina's best French grey parasol (a gift from dear Madame Bonnechose, who had it from her mamma in Paris, and thought it too worldly for her own use) ; and a flower, to make a spot of colour, in her Avaist-belt. The first dereliction from the narrow path seemed to have made any further enormity perfectly easy to Archie. She walked off to Bettina's room, coolly ab- stracted the parasol from its silver-paper wrappings ; then out into the garden, where she picked the last bright red Geant des Batailles that remained ; the standard rose-trees being the special property of the old Coimtess d'Eu on the second floor, and ever regarded, till this hour, with fear and trembling, by all the other inmates of the house. Then, having collected her spoils, she went back to the salon, perched herself on the chair to arrange the rose, and to pronounce herself a pretty girl again ; and two minutes later started forth, putting the door-key of the apartment in her pocket, for her walk. The Maloney was watching her, cat-like, from behind her cur- tain, and Archie looked up and nodded at the Avizened face with her sweetest smile ; and a little further down the street she met Mrs O'Rourke, sufi'ering visibly from the heat, and nodded to her likewise with perfectly good temper (with that muslin dress on she could have forgiven all her enemies at once) ; and coming 142 ARCHIE LOVELL. near the pier, she saw the Prince, and tried to throw down her eyelids demurely — as she had watched the great Paris ladies do — when he saluted her ; and then, twenty yards further, Gerald Durant met her. He had been waiting for her for an hour, he said ; and his eyes told Miss Lovell pretty plainly what he thought of her looks, now that she had come. They walked to the end of the pier, and Archie felt very melan- choly at the sight of the excursion-boat, which, with steam up, was moored at some distance out in the Poads. " You will start soon, Mr Durant. The people are already be- ginning tq go off in boats." Gerald took out his watch. " I shall go in a quarter of an hour — that is, if the vessel starts at the time advertised. I see my servant has taken the luggage off already. He is determined that I shall not change my mind this time, Miss Wilson." " There is not much temptation to make you change it," cried Arcliie, trying to speak gaily. "The heat and dust, and croAvds of excursionists and porters, are not likely to give yon a favour- able last impression of Morteville." For they were trying to talk polite commonplaces, as people who like each other invariably do on the eve of separation. " And you will have to walk back alone through it all," said Gerald. " Miss Wilson, let me see you back, at least to the other end of the pier. I shall have quite time enough to do that." " 1^0, thank you ; I prefer being here. I like seeing the people go off in the boats, and — and I mean to stop and see the very last of the steamer," added Archie, with sudden sincerity. At that moment a boat pulled round under the pier head, across which they were leaning, and the boatman stood up, his scarlet cap in his hand, and asked Gerald, in such English as the Morte- ville boatmen use, if he was going to the steamer. It was a clean, trim little boat, unlike most of the luggage-boats used for carrying passengers to the steamers ; and Arcliie looked down at it with wistful eyes. " What a nice boat, Mr Durant ! You had better engage it at once to take you on board." "There is plenty of time still, unless you wish to get rid of me," Gerald answered, his eyes fixed upon her face. ON THE PIER. 143 " But yon could row about a little first. I am sure it -would be a great deal pleasanter than waiting here in the sun." In after days, Gerald often soothed his conscience with tho recollection of this remark of Archie's. But for it — but for the childish whim that prompted it — he had never brought deeper pain than that of saying " Good-bye " to him into her life. He would no more have thought of asking her to accompany him to the steamer than of asking her to accompany him to England. But all through Gerald Durant's life, as through the lives of all weak men, there seemed to run a mysterious chain of accident that bound him, whether he Avilled or no, to the commission of every sort of foolish and unfortunate action. A fresh link in the chain had been supplied by Archie's last words ; and in a minute Gerald turned the new temptation to the very best account, as he always did. " It really would be much pleasanter. The sea is like glass, and I dare say the air is cool outside the harbour. You never go out in a small boat like this, I suppose?" "Oh yes, I do, very often," said the girl, promptly. "I row about often with papa; row with my hands, you understand; perhaps that is what makes them so bro^wn." " But you would not care to go now 1 . You would not go with- out your papa 1 You would be afraid ? " ' ' Afraid ! What of ? Being drowned ? " " Oh no. Miss Wilson, of— of— " Gerald's eyes feU ; he did not like to say, " of what people might think of you if you went." " Of hurting my dress, do you mean ? Good gracious, no ! I should enjoy it of all things, and if you didn't mind I should like just to run up into the steamer for a moment. I never was in a steamer but once, from Livorno to Civita Yecchia, and that's so long ago I scarcely recollect it now." In another minute the boat was hailed, and Miss Lovell, in high glee, ran down the slippery, weed-grown steps at the end of the pier, took the boatman's sun-bm^nt hand, jumped into the boat, Mr Durant following ; and then — then she found herself out alone with him on the transparent glassy sea, with MorteviUe, like a place in a dream, lying behind her ! 144 ARCHIE LOVELL. CHAPTER XIY. AT SEA. " How thorouglily I enjoy this ! " Archie cried, laying down Bettina's grand parasol in a pool of salt-water on one of the seats, and pushing her hat back a little from her forehead. " The ball was very well, but this is better. I think boating is better than anything else in the world, Mr Durant." Whatever Archie did was, while she did it, better than any- thing else in the world. Gerald looked at the girl, and actually sighed to think that these were his last ten minutes with her. How blank all would be without the bright face, the joyous voice, this evening ! How rosy life might be with this sweet contagion of enjoyment ever present ! How hard, in short, it would be to return to Lucia and to the Court after Archie Wilson and Morte- ville! " I can enjoy nothing heartily to-day. Miss Wilson. I am say- ing good-bye to you, you must remember." " And going back to London and all your London friends," she returned, quickly. " I shall miss you more to-morrow than you will miss me." To-morrow ! The word had a strange sort of knell in it just now. Was this happy intimacy, this bright interchange of youth- ful jests, fancies, hopes — all but love — to be indeed cold and dead for ever to-moiTow 1 They remained silent, both of them ; Archie's eyes fixed yearningly upon the dim white cliffs of England across the channel, and Gerald's upon her face. The boatman, mean- while, thinking, in perfect good faith, that they were fellow-pas- sengers bound for the Lord of the Isles, and hoping perhaps to be in time to pick up a second fare, pulled on straight for the steamer out in the Koads. " Nous voila / " he remarked aloud, almost, it seemed to Archie, before the measured fall of the sculls had sounded a score of times. " Monsieur and madame ought already to be on board." Gerald took out his watch and declared that there were still ten minutes to spare. " Would you really like to go on board, or AT SEA. 145 shall Ave remain as we are 1 " he added, to Archie. " I think this is much the pleasantest." " ISTo," said Miss Lovell, dreading, she scarcely knew why, to go through any more lonely farewells. " I should really like to go on board with you for a minute or two, unless you mind it. It will seem almost as if I had seen you part of the way." The boat was now alongside of the steamer, and a couple of stout English arms were already outstretched to help Archie up the companion-ladder. As Gerald was about to follow her the boatman took off his cap and demanded his fare, one franc each. " Oh, very well," said Gerald, "perhaps I may as well pay you at once. Two francs, and how much for mademoiselle's return] " He spoke in excellent French, as far as grammar went, but his accent, I suppose, had something alien about it ; something, at all events, that was alien to the ear of a Morteville boatman. To return 1 but nothing — nothing. There was nothing to pay for re- turning ; he meant with his empty boat. Gerald, however, tossed another franc into his hand. "Wait on this side," he cried, when he had run up on deck, and was looking down at the boatman's perplexed face, " we shall be off in five minutes." "Mais oui, monsieur, vous partirez dans cinq ininutes. Merci, monsieur, merci ma petite dame." And then, with a heightened opinion of Englishmen as regards their generosity rather than their sense, he quietly pulled off towards shore, and Gerald led Archie to the after part of the vessel. She was as much amused as a child with everything she saw on deck, and asked Gerald presently if she might go doAvn and see the cabin. " Well, if we have time," he answered, "although I don't think there is much you would care to see there. How long before we leave ^ " he called after the steward, who was passing at the mo- ment. "Five minutes, still. Well, then, we may run down and up again, Miss Wilson, but there Avill not be time for more." They went down, and the atmosphere of the cabin, Avitli ranges of human beings on all sides already preparing themselves for sea- sickness, did not make Archie Avish to linger there. As they came up the cabin-stairs the last bell rang. 146 ARCHIE LOVELL. "And you will only have just time to leave the vessel," said Gerald, taking her hand. " Miss Wilson, the moment for saying good-bye has come." " Good-bye, Mr Durant," she answered, in rather a choked voice. " Good-bye, and I hope some day we shall see each other again." He whisjDered another word or two of tender regret at parting, as he hurried her across to the gangway by which they had come on board ; then — Mr Durant stood aghast ! l^o boat was to be seen. He rushed across to the other side of the vessel, thinking that the boatman had mistaken his orders ; but nothing was to be discovered of liim. The boat that had brought the last pas- sengers was already half-way back to the harbour ; the steam up ; the captain in his place of command upon the bridge. " Good heavens, this will never do ! " cried Gerald, the whole seriousness of the situation breaking upon him far more vividly than it did on Archie, who stood quiet, and a little pale at saying good-bye, but without any misgiving as to her own return. " Stop here for one moment. Miss Wilson, while I see what can be done." He would have made his way, had it been possible, to speak to the captain at once ; but a tide of second-class excursionists, who were being driven forward by the steward, well-nigh pinned him to his place. He breasted the crowd manfully, and after two or three minutes' hard lighting had gained the point he strove for ; but these three minutes had been the loss of everything. The vessel was ah-eady in motion. He was lavish in his offers of money ; but the captain was inflexible. Cases of this kind were constantly occurring among excursion- ists, he said ; it might be as much as his command was worth to stop the vessel. K they had spoken sooner it might have been possible to lower one of the ship's boats, but nothing could be done now. They would stop in an hour or so at Calais, and the lady might disembark there if she chose. The Calais fetes were going on, and she would be able to get back by another excursion-steamer to i\Iorteville that afternoon. And this was the consolation Gerald had to bear back to Archie. For an instant after ho had told her in what position she stood, AT SEA. 147 Miss Lovell laughed aloud ; thinking to herself what excellent fun this mistake was. Then, to Gerald's horror, her lips trembled, and the great tears rushed up into her eyes. ''Away! I'll not go away to Calais!" she cried, passionately. *'That wicked boatman, to dare to leave me here. Oh, papa, papa! " And she stretched out imploring hands toAvards Morte- ville, already growing indistinct in the distance, while the tears not only gathered in her eyes, but rained down her cheeks. " I never meant it — you know I never meant it ! " she sobbed. " Oh, I wish papa was here. I wish I had never left papa." In his heart Gerald at this moment most devoutly wished it too. The society of the prettiest woman in the world would have been dearly purchased to him by scenes or tears or trouble of any kind. "It's an awful bore, Miss Wilson; I would have given anything for it not to have happened. But — ^well, crying can do no good, can it ? and the boat stops at Calais, after all." "And, after all, I shall be a hundred miles from home still," cried Archie, not without temper. " What good will Calais be to me 1 I won't go to Calais." She looked so pretty as she made this assertion, her cheeks flushed up with childish passion, and the tears standing on her long eyelashes, that Gerald could not but be touched. If women will cry, it is a great thing when they know how to do it with- out getting ugly ; and, if the worst came to the worst, it would indisputably be pleasant to have Miss Wilson's company — scenes and tears apart — as far as London. " You shall not go to Calais or anywhere else. Miss Wilson, unless you like it ; that is to say, if you don't land at Calais you must come on to London, for the boat stops nowhere else, and I will see you off, or come with you, if you'll let me, by the Folkestone mail, and. you will be home again early to-morrow morning." " In time to meet the twelve o'clock train from Amiens'?" " Certainly ; long before that." Gerald in reality knew nothing whatever about the hours of trains or steamers ; but he spoke authoritatively, as men generally do in default of accurate know- ledge, and Archie's face brightened. It was consolation, at least, to know that she might be home in time to meet her father — for the thought of him, far more than of herself, troubled her ; con- L 2 148 ARCHIE LOVELL. solation that, -whether she landed at Calais or went on to London, slie would certainly have time to get the silver-grey parasol back into its paper hcfore Bettina's return. And so, recovering her common sense, Miss Lovell dried away her tears, and even rallied her spirits, so far as to be very much amused, standing by Gerald's side, and looking at the different objects along the coast all the way from Morteville to Calais. Her adventures,, however, were not destined to end yet. As they neared the Calais pier, and when again they were talking of saying good-bye, Archie, to her horror, descried a whole crowd of Mortevilleites assembled there — Miss Marks, Captain Waters, all the Montacutes and others — Mortevilleites who had gone over for the morning to the Calais fetes, and who were now Avaiting for the steamer to take them home. It had been her glory hitherto to shock these people by her childish escapades ; but that was at Morteville, at her father's side. All her courage, all her sauciness, Avere gone with the sense of his protection ; and as the Lord of the Isles steamed up slowly alongside, she clung close to Gerald's side, her veil pulled down over her face, and her heart beating too thickly for her to say a word. The tide had risen sufficiently for them to come close in; and Captain Waters recognised Gerald Durant, and called out a few friendly remarks to him from the pier. What a vile boat to have chosen for his return to London. He (Waters) wished, whatever the boat, that he was going there too. Had been boring himself all the morning at this atrocious fete, and was waiting now for some disgusting little French steamer to take him back to Morteville, et cetera. At the sound of Waters's voice, Archie Lovell's heart beat thicker and thicker. *' Mr Durant, what must I do?" she Avhispered. '' Decide for me, please. Tell me how you think my father would wish me to act. If I land here, every one of these people will see me ; if 1 go on, and come back by Folkestone, as you said, there will be a chance, at least, of their knowing nothing about it, Avon't there 1" And she clung Avith frightened, imploring eagerness to his arm. And Gerald Durant hesitated - the passengers already coming on board ; every moment Avorth a year of common, life to Archie — liesitated ; pressed her trembling hand closer ; thought hoAV charm- AT SEA. 14& ing it Avould be to have her with him still ; how strangely fate seemed ever to bring Mm into temptation and mischance of every kind ; how — J^ay, but I need not record his thoughts in full. He was simply true to his irresponsible, vacillating nature : sen- timentalized when he should have acted ; thought of the pleasant spending of a summer's day, not of the child's life whose marring might depend so utterly upon his decision ; and in another five minutes the Lord of the Isles was on her course a2;ain — the 23ossibility of Archie Lovell's return gone. She stood silent until they were wholly out of sight of the peo- ple on the pier, then threw up her veil, and told Gerald, with a smile, that she felt quite brave now, and he need not be afraid of any more tears or tempers. For her father's sake, she added, she thought that she had done right to go on. It would have tortured him if the Morteville gossips had got up any stories about her going to Calais, and no doubt now she would be able to return home quietly before any of them were up to-morrow morning. How lucky that Jeanneton was safe away, and that she had the door-key in her own pocket ; and how pleasant it really was out here at sea ! " As I must go to London whether I like it or not, I may as well enjoy going to London — may I not, Mr Dujant? ;N"ow that everything is inevitable, and that I am sure I'll be home before papa, I feel what fun it really is to run away. (I tried to run away once in jS'apoli when I was little, but a fisher- man caught me, and gave me up to Eettina for two scudi.) And you — you look as miserable, Mr Durant, as if you were a con- spirator going to be caught and hung in chains the moment we arrive in London ! " '' I am not at all miserable, IMiss Wilson," answered Gerald, a little confusedly ; for the girl's desperate ignorance of evil did, now that it was too late, begin to awaken self-reproach in his heart — " I was only envying you your rare happiness of disposition. A Morteville ball, or a Morteville luggage boat, or a Morteville ex- cursion steamer — you can enjoy them all alike ! It is enough to make a man sad, you know, when he looks on at a child's amuse- ment, and remembers that he, alas ! is a child no longer." But although his conscience stung him sharply for a moment, before half an hour was over Gerald had ceased to think whether 150 ARCHIE LOVELL. he -was to "blame or not, and had returned to all his old delight in Archie's societ}'. His temperament always made him imperatively crave to be amused ; and Archie always amused him ! Their fel- low-passengers, French and English ; the dilFerent faces, as they grew white and grim, under the throes of on-coming sea-sickness ; every little ludicrous incident of the vo3'"age, her quick perception seized upon, and put, for his benefit, into quaint and graphic language. She was excellent company always ; but, above all, in travelling ; for, from the time she was a baby, her father had always encouraged her havard tongue at such times, and Archie had not been slow to profit by his leave to talk. How charming a winter's yachting in the Mediterranean, or a summer's sport in Norway, would be with such a companion, Gerald thought, as she chatted on : it was about the thousandth time that he had thought how charming some particular position of life would be with her ; Avhat a pity it was that all this fine sense of the ludicrous that made a woman so companionable was a missing sense in Lucia. Poor Lucia ! He had gone yachting with her once, he remembered, and she looked very green and plain, and cried because he would not attend on her when she was sea-sick, and wanted umbrellas and parasols and cloaks to be brought to her continually, under every fresh vicissitude of the complaint. Archie was not sick a bit. The healthy blood shone as bright through her clear skin on sea as on shore ; the sun was not too hot for her, or the wind too cold ; in fine, she enjoyed herself and made him do the same, just as she had done through all the happy hours that they had spent together during the past week. Was it possible that the whole affair might be a serious one? that destiny, not accident, had brought about this strange voyage? that in spite of Lucia — of every hope — of every promise of his life, this blue-eyed child was to be his fate after all? It was no time or place to talk sentiment now. A fresh breeze from the west began to blow as they neared the Foreland, and soon sea-sickness in all its Promethean forms was around them. " Could we get anywhere out of the way ? " Archie asked, as victim after victim fell before the rising breeze. " I don't feel ill a bit, but it certainly would be pleasanter if we could get away from all these people." AT SEA. 151 " We could go upon one of the paddle-boxes," answered Gerald, " only that you are much too thinly clad, Miss Wilson. But if you would not mind wearing one of my coats upon your shoulders, I'll tell Bennett to get you one, and then — " Just at this moment a stout motherly-looking old lady, who had been sitting near them all the voyage, tottered abruptly to her feet, and with the choking terseness characteristic of sea-sickness, entreated Gerald to help her to the cabin-stairs. " If you'd like my cloak, take it," she added, turning to Archie, as Gerald, with his prompt good-nature, steadied one leviathan arm between both his hands; "the cloak — on the seat there" — and the inmates of the cabin and the steward, fortunately ascending the stairs at the moment, heard the rest. ♦" Good old lady," cried Miss Lovell. " The very thing I Avanted ! See, Mr Durant, a scarlet cloak with a hood to it — home-made, evidently — and with the old lady's initials neatly marked on a bit of tape at the back." And then she put the cloak on — very pic- turesque and gipsy-like she looked in it — and ran up lightly, at Gerald's side, to the top of the nearest paddle-box. " I call this delicious," she cried, as the fresh air blew upon her face. ''If my hat did not com^ olf every minute, I should want nothing in the world. Mr Durant, you couldn't lend me a handkerchief to tie it on with, could you 1 " Gerald called to his valet, who happened to be close at hand — wonderful to say of a valet, not ill — and five minutes later the superb Mr Bennett handed to Miss Lovell an exquisitely em- broidered piece of cambric that he had taken from his master's valise for her use. " You don't mean to say that this is a handkerchief for your- self?" said Archie, as she examined it. "Why, it's fitter for a girl, much, than for a man. Such fine batiste, and so beautifully stitched in lilac, and this fine embroidered monogram in the corner ! Mr Durant, what a dandy you are ! " " A dandy without intending it," said Gerald, carelessly. He rather liked Lucia to call him a dandy, but hated the word from Archie's mocking lips, " I leave all such matters to Bennett. He filled a portmanteau full of these trumperies for me before we left Paris, but I have not looked at them yet. Take your hat off, Miss 152 AKCIIIE LOVELL. "VVilson, I "will hold it for you, and tie the handkerchief round your head — so. !N"ow, do you feel that you have everything in the world you want? You ought, I am sure." And Mr Durant looked long and admiringly at the mignonne, brown face so well set off by the coquettish head-dress and scarlet cloak, and back- ground of blue sky. "As far as dress is concerned, yes," answered Miss Lovell ; "but" — she hesitated, and wondered whether she was committing an impropriety ; then nature was too strong for her, and out the truth came, "but I wonder whether they give one dinner on board excursion-steamers. I am so hungry." Mr Bennett w^as called again in a moment, and a quarter of an hour later an excellent little impromptu pic-nic, consisting of chicken, ham, rolls, peaches, and champagne, was brought up on the paddle-box. Miss Lovell partook of it with hearty appetite that no accident could check, and which on the present occasion "was shar^^tened by the sea air ; and Gerald ate too, but by snatches ; and w^aited on Archie, steadying her plate and holding her tumbler, and laughing and jesting with her on her awkwardness every time that a lurch of the vessel made her clutch with her little brown hands at her chicken or her bread to prevent them rolling from her lap. And so the time fled by. When they had finished their meal they were already past the Foreland ; an advancing tide helped them quickly along up the river ; and at a few minutes after seven the distant chimneys and spires of the great city first rose before Archie Lovell's excited eyes. It was a glorious August evening, and as the vessel steamed slowly up to London Bridge, the city, under the magic toach of sunset, seemed transfigured from its accustomed smoke and black- ness into a veritable city of the saints ; a city of prophyry, amethyst, and gold. Eank above rank, far away over the west, lay serried hosts of crystalline, vermilion clouds, gradually dying into ether as they neared the delicate opal-green of the horizon. The Thames, not a volume of yellowisli-grey mud, but the Thames of Turner, broke under the arches of the bridge into a thousand burning, diamond- coloured flakes of light. Every barge-sail or steamer-funnel on the river glowed rosy-red ; every squalid house and wall along the quays had received some subtle hue of violet AT SEA. 153 or of amber to transmute its ugliness. Mast and cupola, dome and spire, river and wharf — the alchemy of sunset touched them all alike into beauty. And high above, for once not a heavy mass of smoke-coloured lead, rose St Paul's ; in Archie's sight a heaven- tinted dome bearing aloft the cross, a golden promise, a light, a hope to all the toiling restless city at its foot. Her heart beat as though with a new life. She had heard from Bettina that London was hideous, foggy, wicked ; she saw it a majestic city, a dream of golden sky and river, grand bridge, and stately wharf, and heaven-tinted dome. What must existence be here ! What noble lives must not men and women lead in such a place, compared to the lives they led in poor little towns like Morteville ! How she ho^^ed there would be time for her to see one London street — ah, yes, one would suffice ; with its brilliancy, and riches, and crowds of city-dressed people — before she had to start upon her journey home. In a sort of ecstasy she pressed her hand on Gerald's arm as they were standing on the deck, and made known this desire to him in a whisper. Cheapside, or Piccadilly, or Oxford Street, she said ; mentioning the few London names she knew. Anywhere would do ; but she w^ould give all she possessed (two francs and a half — poor Archie ! — and the door- key) to see one street, with the shops gas-lit, before she left. The request, and the hand-pressure, and the up-turned glance from the mignonne face, sent the blood to Gerald's heart. A stronger man than he was, might, perhaps, have lost his coolness a little at such an hour, and alone with such a companion as Archie ; and he stooped and whispered a few very sweet, very mad, words into the girl's ear ; words not absolutely disloyal as yet, not more disloyal than those he had already spoken when they stood together on the terrace by the sea at Morteville ; but words such as Lucia Durant, could she have heard them, would for very certain not have approved. Before Archie could answer, before she could even think how much or how little Gerald's answer meant, the steamer had stopped. At once a hoarse Babel of sounds — foreign sounds they seemed to her — greeted them from the wharf ; the pent-up tide of excursionists, all eager to land, and untroubled by luggage, bore them resistlessly on towards the crowded narrow gangway, and in 154 AKCHIE LOVELL. another minute Archie Lovcll's feet, for the first time in her life, rested upon English ground. CHAPTEE XY. MR DURAXT's generosity. " And I have got the old lady's cloak on still, Mr Durant ! What, in heaven's name, am I to do with it 1 " Gerald and Miss Lovell had been driven from the Thames pier to the London Bridge station, and were now waiting until a sublimely-indifferent clerk would condescend to give them information about the tidal train to Folkestone. " She told me, as we came up the river, I might wear it till we got to London ; and then in the hurry of landing I forgot all about her and her cloak and everything else. What ought I to do Avith it 1 " " Keep it, if it is worth an^i^hing ; leave it in the waiting-room if it is not," said Gerald, unhesitatingly. " I wonder, Miss Lovell, that you should ask any questions on such a point." " Well, it really is old — old ! and washed and mended," said Archie, falling at once into Gerald's easy morahty, "so it can't matter much to the owner whether it's lost or not. I'll just keep it on for the present, and then, if I find it too warm, leave it be- hind me somewhere. I would never like the prince, or M. Gounod, or any of my partners, to see me land on the Morteville pier in it." Only this last part of the remark Miss Lovell made to her- self, not aloud. The sublimely-indifierent clerk now imparted to them that the tidal train for Folkestone left at half-past ten ; in rather more than two hours, that was to say, from the present time. " And I can wait very well alone here at the station," said Archie, a little shyly ; " and it is really time for us to say good-bye. Mr Durant, I have given you so much trouble, and I am so much obliged to you for your kmdness ! " They had only talked common-places since that last whisper of Gerald's on board the steamer, and the girl turned her eyes away from him as she spoke. Mn durant's generosity. 155 " "Would you rather be without me, Miss Wilson 1 Say so, and I will go away at once." " I don't want to trouble you, Mr Durant. I think you must have had quite enough of me without waiting any longer here." " And if I have not had enough of you 1 If I want exceedingly to stay and be of some use to you to the last 1 " She smiled, holding down her face still, and Gerald, instead of going away, told his valet, who, observant and mystified, was waiting a few yards from where they stood, to get a cab and take his luggage home at once. "Without you, sirV' " Without me. I shan't be home till late. I am going to spend the evening at Mr Dennison's in the Temple, most likely." After which Mr Bennett went off, thankful, whatever happened, that he had at length got the luggage fairly in his own hands, and so could not by possibility be taken back to Morteville — a con- tingency he had several times speculated on as quite in the power of his master s companion to effect — and Mr Durant and Archie were alone. "Do I look mad, or foreign, or what?" she whispered, coming up close to Gerald's side. " These English people all stare at me so strangely as they go by." Her face was flushed with excitement ; her sailor's hat, as the wind had left it, a little on one side ; her long hair hanging over her neck and shoulders ; and this disarray, and her singular beauty, added perhaps to the fact of her being dressed in white muslin and a scarlet cloak, undoubtedly made her look different to the female British traveller ordinarily to be met with at this hour of the night at London stations. " Perhaps if we were to go to the waiting-room," suggested Gerald, " you would like to have tea or coffee, or something, and while they are getting it, you might — " " Make myself look human," interrupted Archie. " All right, only you need not have hesitated. The faces of the people as they go by tell me plainly enough the kind of monster they think me." And then she took Gerald's arm and tripped off with him down the long echoing passage that they were told led to the refreshment- room. Tripped with feet that seemed to tread on air, so happy 156 ARCHIE LOVELL. was she. The voyage liad been delightful enough, but these breathless after-adventui'es were better still ; these crowds of strangers, this foreign tongue — for to hear English spoken about her was foreign to Archie ; above all, the sense of being in Lon- don, and alone, without Bettina, without her father ! Once, years ago, in Florence, she had got out upon the roof of the six-storied house where they lodged, and gazed with intoxicated, wondrous delight upon the altered world at her feet. Something of the same delicious giddiness, the same sense of wrong-doing and danger, and intense excitement, all blent into one, was upon her now. Of coming to positive harm — harm from which all her future life should never thoroughly free her — she had no more fear than she had, as a child, of falling down and being killed upon the Florence pavement. In the refreshment-room a young person with an eighteen-inch waist, and shining black hair, a Vimj)tratnce, received \vith su- preme composure Gerald's modest command of tea for two, and then, more than ever ashamed of herself from a certain expression she had read in the superb young person's eyes, Miss Lovell found her way to the ladies' waiting-room. The typical occupants of ladies' waiting-rooms were there. A fierce old maid, sitting bolt upright by the table, guarduig eleven packages and a bird-cage, all of which she tried with a glare to clutch every time any one looked at her ; a farmer's daughter, on her way from Somerset to a situa- tion in Kent, who asked imbecile questions, and jumped up, with her face on fire, every time she heard a door open or a bell ring ; a stout lady, maternally occupied with a stout infant in a corner ; and a thin lady with six children, out of temper, two nurses, a baby, bottles, food, toys, and children's luggage of all kinds, filling up the remaining portions of the room. Every woman and child present stared up with open eyes at Archie ; the old maid by the table cl utched her parcels tight, and shook her head meaningly at le thin lady, as much as to say, " You see I was right, madam. ^0 knowing what sort of characters you may meet when you travel." \ "Dressing-room to the right," cried an austere personage, the presiding official of the place, who was sitting, Avith her hands be- fore her, on the only comfortable chair the room afforded ; and MR durant's generosity. 157 into the dressing-room Miss Lovell, more and more ashamed of herself, fled for refuge. There was a light from a gas-burner about twenty feet high, and a tall, dim looking-glass, and some very dark-complexioned water ; no towels, no soap : can railway com- panies be expected to care how ladies wash their carnal hands 1 — but provision for the spirit in the shape of large printed texts on placards round the Avails ; a Bible and Prayer-book on a little deal table ; also a missionary box. Miss Lovell dipped her face into water, and dried it on Mr Durant's fine lawn handkerchief, which she happened to have left in the pocket of the cloak ; pinned all her rebellious locks as tight and smooth as they would lie around her head ; put her sailor's hat on straight, arranged the old red cloak decorously, and pulled down her blue gauze veil close over her face. As she walked demurely back in this improved condition, she had the satisfaction of finding that the people stared at her some- what less. " Which shows that it was nothing but my hair that made me look odd ! " she remarked, seating herself opposite to Gerald, after ridding herself of her cloak and hat like a child, and tossing them down on a chair. " It's all very well to follow 23ai:)a's picturesque tastes in Morteville, but directly I come to England — I mean, if I ever come here — I shall take very good care to look like other people. ISTow, I wonder," abruptly, " Avhat your cousin Lucia would have thought if she had seen me a few minutes ago 1 " The mere suofsrestion made Gerald wince. What would Lucia — oO what would any one who knew Lucia — think of his companion at this moment ? She was looking prettier than ever ; her face aglow from its recent bath ; her bright wet hair negligently coiled round her head ; her little brown hands clasped together on the table, as she leaned forward to speak to him ; her blue eyes all alight with " animation as they looked full into his. Born and bred in Italy, this girl had in her A^ery nature something of the joyous, careless abandonment of the Avoraen of the south. ^ Her voice Avas musical alAvays, but she spoke out — I Avill not say loud — as EnglisliAvomen of pure race do not ; she gesticulated, eA^er so little, as she talked ; Avhen she laughed, she laughed with free expansion of the chest, Avith fullest shoAA^ng of the AA'-hite teeth. In the draAA^ing-room of a duchess Archie in an instant might have taken her stand as what 358 ARCHIE LOVELL. she was ; an English girl, gentle by birth, hut with some subtle inoculation of southern eagerness and passion in her veins, and a want of manner so thoro\igh as to be the very perfection of that which all artificial manner aims at — simpUcity. But the waiting- room of the South-Eastern terminus is not the drawing-room of a duchess ; and whether her hair hung down loosely over her shoulders, or was coiled in this bright broad coronet above her face, looks of admiration, a great deal too coarse for Gerald's taste to brook, continued to be cast on poor Archie from every pair of male eyes that approached her. "The English people are the worst-bred in the world," he re- marked ; so pointedly that a good old papa of fifty at a neighbour- ing table, who had been staring at them uninterruptedly for five minutes, immediately sank his head abashed into liis newspaper. " Foreigners live in public, and are accustomed to it from the time they are six years old. The true Briton, when he does leave his den, stares about him as if he was at a wild-beast show. Xow that we are going to eat," he added, laughing, for the girl began to look distressed in earnest, "we shall probably be found more in- teresting still. There is something peculiarly grateful to the citizen mind in watching curious animals feed. You v.dll have something to eat with your coffee 1 " Doubtfully this, for it was not three hours since they had dined, and Gerald was ignorant as to how many meals a school-girl's appetite could require a day. " Please. Nothing solid, though. Bread and butter, or brioche, or some fruit." The superb young person signified, with dignity, that bread and butter, brioche, and fruit, were things unknown to her. There were the refreshments that they saw upon the counter ; fossilized sausage-rolls, battered old sandwiches, lava-hued buiis strewn over with a cinderish deposit of cuiTants, and packages of Wother- spoon's lozenges ; and from these refreshments they could choose. " Bring some buns, then," said Gerald, pointing out Avhat ap- peared to him the least horrible object present ; and buns were Ijrought, and eaten by Archie — Mr Durant looking on in silent wonder and admiration ; and then the tea — very hot and very un- like tea — was drunk ; and Archie began to put on her gloves ; MR dijrant's generosity. 159 and their talk went round again to what they would do with the hour and a quarter they still had to spare. '' There would be no time, of course, to see anything 1 " said the girl ; but her voice made it a question. " I mean anything of the London streets and shops ? " " Well, I don't see why not," Gerald answered, taking out his watch, either because he wanted really to know the time, or be- cause he did not care just then to meet the fidl gaze of Archie's •eyes. " These hansom fellows go so quick, I think, if we were to take one, we might have time to get to the AVest End and back. Piccadilly, was it not, Miss Wilson, that you wished to see 1 " " Oh yes ; Piccadilly, or anywhere else," said Archie, to whom the words West End, Piccadilly, or hansom, all conveyed about the same meaning. "You know, of course, how much time we shall have. I'll do just as you think best." "You will. Miss Wilson?" "Yes, of course." " Then let us go." And they rose ; and while Gerald went to pay for the tea, xirchie remained before a glass that hung close beside the table, putting on her hat and arranging her collar, and smoothing back her hair — with all the little well-contented gestures that come so naturally to a pretty girl before a looking-glass — and thinking how pleasant this drive by gaslight would be, and how sorry — with a great pang this ! — how sorry she would be to part from Gerald at the end of it all. To part : to return to Morteville : and for him to go away and marry his cousin Lucia, and never think of her again while he lived ! When she got as far as this in her reflections, a mist swam l)e- fore Miss Lovell's eyes. She brushed her hand before them hastily, for she had a child's shame of tears yet, as well as a child's facility in shedding them ; and then, looking up into the glass again, she saw not only her own face reflected there, but a man's — and a man's she knew. The vision came upon her so quickly that instead of turning round at once, she continued for a full minute to gaze, spell-bound like one in a dream, into the glass. Where had she known that face ? In what country, at what time of her life, had those rough IGO ARCHIE LOVELL. features, that gentle kindly expression, been so familiar to her ? If her father's face had suddenly appeared above her shoulder, it could scarce have seemed more homo-like than did this one ; and still she could recall no name to Avhich it belonged. It was an English face ; and what Englishman had she ever known inti- mately in her life ? She was on the point of turning round when the stranger, whoever he was, moved away abruptly ; and when she did turn, three or four men were walking near her in different directions. Which of these could have been he who stood and looked at her'? She had not the slightest clue by which to divine. One of the men was in a grey overcoat, the rest were in dark clothes. This was all she could tell about them ; all probably that she would ever know about her vision. It must have been a chance likeness only that had startled her, she thought ; a likeness most probably to some German or Italian friend of her father's, who had held her on his knee when she was a child, and the re- membrance of whose face had slumbered in her memory till now. What a coward she must be that her heart should beat so quickly, the colour all die out of her cheek — she had watched it do so in the glass — for such an accident ! But accident or coincidence, whichever it was, the vision had wrought a singular and utter revulsion in Archie's feelings. The expression of that face she had seen was grave and pitying ; and in- stinctively the thought of it brought her father before her, and made her stop short, and reflect upon what all this was that she was doing. For the first time since she got clear of the Calais iner, she felt frightened, and wished she was at home. ■ Bettina had often told her that men were wicked and designing — good-looking, fashionable men the worst of all. How could she know tliat Mr Durant was not desperately wicked, in spite of his handsome face and pleading voice 1 Suppose she went away for this drive with him, and he did not bring her back in time, and she missed the train, and never reached Morteville next morning, and when her father and Bettina came back they would find Jeanneton crying under the portecocher, and tlic door locked, and herself, Archie, gone. At this dreadful picture her lips quivered, a choking feeling rose in her throat, and when Gerald came back and offered her his arm, she was too agitated and too afraid to trust her own voice MR durant's generosity. 161 to speak. So, interpreting her altered manner in tlie way most flattering to himself, he led her away through the station, whisper- ing a few encouraging words as they went, and pressing ever so slightly the little hand that he could feel was trembling nervously as it rested on his arm. When they were outside he bade her wait one moment while he ran to hail a cab from the stand, about twenty or thirty yards dis- tant, and then Miss Lovell spoke. " Please don't get a cab for me, Mr Durant, I w^ould rather not go, if you don't mind. I would rather wait here." From any other woman Gerald would have expected this change of mind, and have argued the point. From Archie he knew that it was earnest, not a feint ; and he remained dead silent. " I hope you won't think me silly to turn about so," she entreated him softly, " but when you were gone I began to recollect — about papa, you understand, and getting home — and I thought how dreadful it would be if I missed the train, JN'ow", you are not cross with me?" " Miss Wilson," he remarked, drily, " tell the whole truth. You are afraid to trust yourself with me." Her hand shifted uneasily on his arm. " I'm not afraid, Mr Durant, but — I don't know whether I ought. ]N^ow, I just ask you — supposing it wasn't you and me at all, do you thinlv I ought ? " ''To do what?" " To drive about with you, and — and run the chance of losing the train." " There need be no chance of losing it," he answered, promptly. "The question is, would you rather have an hour's drive through the cool streets, or remain in a suffocating waiting-room here 1 " " Well, then, you decide for me, please ! " She wanted desperately to see the shop- windows, and she felt how ungrateful it was, after all his kindness, to put so little trust in him. " If you promise me to be back in good time for the train — " "If I promise to do all that you wish, now and for ever, IMiss Wilson, will you come ? " An unwonted tremour was in his voice, and Archie Lovell's heart vibrated to it. In love with him she was not, had never M 162 ARCHIE LOVELL. been ; save, perhaps, for that second's space upon the terrace at ]\rorteville ; but she liked him, she admired him — shall I be understood if I say that she pitied him? She felt for him, in spite of his eight years' seniority, something as an elder sister might feel for a brother whom she loves, but cannot thoroughly believe in ; and standing here, alone with him now, her cheeks flushed crimson with shame, to f^l — even while her heart thrilled to his words — Iioav scanty was the trust she put in him, or in his promises. And this very distrust had well-nigh hurried Archie into trusting him ! It seemed so cruel to hold back from him now ; during the last short hour they would be together, to deny him in anything he asked of her. "I don't know about obeying me for ever, Mr Durant," and Gerald detected in a moment that her voice was not thoroughly steady. " There won't be much opportunity after to-night for you to obey or disobey me ; but now, if you really are sure — " The words died on Archie Lo veil's lips ; she drew her hand with a start from Gerald's arm. So close that he almost touched her as he passed, a man went quickly by them in the gaslight ; a tall, large-built man, in a grey overcoat, and with a certain square- set about the head and shoulders that convinced Archie, although she saw no feature of liis face, it was the same man who had looked across her shoulder into the glass. The same myst.erious influence he had exercised upon her then, returned, only with double, treble strength, across her mind. She Avould not go away with INIr Durant : she would wait here for the train that should take her back safely to her father and Bettina. " Are you frightened. Miss Wilson 1 Did that fellow touch you as he passed ? or do you know him, or what ? " Archie's eyes, wide open, continued to follow the stranger until he was out of sight, and then, and not till tlien, she spoke. *' I'm not frightened, Mr Durant, but startled. That man is some one I have known — I am certain of it — and I can't help fancying that he recognized me — " " Oh, not at aU likely," interrupted Gerald, lightly, " and if it were so, what matter? Now stay one moment here, while I cross the road and hail a cab." Instead of arguing any more, Archie diplomatically stole her ME, durant's generosity. 163 liand again witliin Ms arm. " Mr Durant," she said, softly, " why should we waste the time by driving, after all ? It's the last time we shall ever be together. Yes, the truth must be spoken at length, and we shall be far better able to tallt here than rattling over the streets of London in a fiacre. Take me for a walk over the great bridge there, and I shall like it better alone with you, than being shown all the fine streets and shops in the world." She held her face beseechingly up to his ; her voice came trembling, as it always did when she was moved ; and with some faint accent, some intonation rather, of Italian clinging to its sound. And then this change of mind was, by her Machiavellian instinctive art, rendered in itself so gracious, so sweet, to Grerald's vanity ! He felt he could not but concede to her all she wished ; nay, he could not but acknowledge tha.t she was too generous, too true, to be led into further folly. Corrupt Gerald Durant was not, nor cynical — although his easy nature led him into actions savour- ing of corruption, and of cjTiicism on occasions. What he most admired — consequently what he was himself good enough to recognize — in Archie, was her exceeding honesty, her untaught loyal frankness. And, call it epicureanism or virtue, he did at this moment feel that it was well that she should leave him thus ; well that he should be able to hang one unsullied portrait among the gallery of the women he had loved ! On the brink of every action — high or low, base or noble — Gerald Durant could be ever swerved aside by some sudden turn of sentiment like this. Sentimental, in reality, rather than passionate in love, it was in love-affairs, above all, that he was most prone to waver. A coarse selfish nature, like Robert Den- nison's, walks straight to its immediate gratification ; a refined selfish nature, like Gerald's, hesitates, stops short ; speculates whether occasionally a higher pleasure may not be found in abnegation! And though such men have not the materials in them for great heroes or for good lovers, their very weakness, somehow, makes them intensely lovable to people stronger than themselves ; and when, now and then, they do come to grief (and bring you to grief with them), you feel the whole guilt must, of necessity, belong to you, not them ; which, for the sake of their consciences, is charming. M 2 164 ARCHIE LOVELL. An accident, or Archie's uncompromising honesty, had saved them both ; and ah-eady Gerald's imagination was moved by the- ihonght of hi.s own generosity ; by the thought, too, that Archie woukl be always Archie — fair, pure, unsullied — in his recollection. Ten minutes ago, with the girl's blue eyes upraised to his, he had desired, as strongly as he ever desired anything in his life, to take her with him for that drive through London. The picturesqueness of the situation fired his fancy! — driving with this little half- foreign girl, in her sailor's hat and white dress, along the streets of London in a hansom ; listening to her childish talk about all she saw ; holding her hand furtively in his, probably ; and watch- ing the changed look on her face v/hen he began to tell her at last how much he cared for her. JSTo ; at this point the picturesque situation became commonplace, and he had not fully thought it out. Only, if a darkened life, if ruin, if despair, had chanced to ensue in after-times, Gerald Avould have looked back, and firmly believed, and made every one else believe with him, that he meant no wrong! Circumstances, picturesque circumstances, had been too strong for him : just that. CHAPTEE XYI. THE BRIDGE OF SIGHS. Archie put her hand within his arm and drew him a step to\vards her, or, as she meant it to be, towards London Bridge. That step was the first one in the direction of salvation. " It wuU be better than seeing shop-windows and streets," she said, repeating her last words. "I can imagine the London streets — I have driven througl] Amiens by gaslight — but I can't imagine what it is to stand at night upon a mighty bridge like that. Thank you," for he was walking obediently by her side now. " Mr Durant, how shall J ever thank you for all the kind- ness you have shown to me to-day 1 " I THE BRIDGE OF SIGHS. 165 " You won't thank me in the only way I want, Miss Wilson. I don't care for any other." " In what way shall I thank you, then 1 Tell me — I will do it." "jN'o, you will not. You cannot. The thing is over, impossi- hle. You will go back to Morteville, marry your Eussian prince, perhaps, and I — Miss Wilson," he interrupted himself, "I hope that you will write to me sometimes ? Write and tell me you got to the end of your journey safely, at all events." " I will send you a newspaper, Mr Durant " — Gerald had already found some excuse for giving her his address — "just to let you know I am safe ; but as to Avriting — " "As to writing?" " 1^0 ; it would be better not. When we have said ' Good-bye," we have said it. Our lives lie apart." " Miss Wilson — Archie, what a cruel speech ! " "A true one," she answered, quietly. "My father is a poor man, Mr Durant. A man — why should I mind telling you 1 — living a little under a cloud, poor papa ! and we ^WTite to no one. I don't know whether we shall live in Morteville any longer, or where we shall go even when we leave ; and papa and Bettina might not find it convenient that I should be writins; about, crivincr our address. JN'ow, you are not angry wdth me for refusing 1 " "1^0, Miss Wilson; I succumb to it as a necessity. It would be against every natural law^ that I should hear from you. Law- yers, duns, cousins, are the human beings who alw^ays remember to write. The people one cares for, never ! You wall remember me a month, if you are not amused, Archie ; tw^o days, if you are." The word " Archie " had fallen from his lips so naturally that Miss Lovell felt it would have been absurd, affected, for him not to use it. " Amused or not amused, I shall remember you," she said, simply. "I shall remember you while I live." " And some day come to remember me with contempt probably," said Gerald. " I fancy most people do that when they think my character over." Archie was silent. "You don't contradict me?" he persisted. "Some day, when you look back on all this as a thing of the past, you will remember me with contempt." 166 ARCHIE LOVELL. " With contempt, never ! " '' With what feeling, then 1 " " I