n*x 
 
 
 f\?f 
 
 [ikkin:-
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 RIVERSIDE
 
 ONLY A CLOD 
 
 % Bobd 
 
 BY THE AUTHOR OP 
 
 'LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET," "AURORA FLOYD" 
 
 ETC. ETC. ETC. 
 
 HmotT^p)i (Sbiticrn 
 
 LONDON 
 
 JOHN AND ROBERT MAXWELL 
 
 MILTON nOUSE, SHOE LANE, FLEET STREET 
 
 [_All rigMa reserved']
 
 10 
 
 OCTAYE DELEPlEPtEE, F.S.A., LLD. 
 
 AMD 
 
 HIS CHARMD^a WIFE, CHAELOITE 
 
 n EE1IE1IBIIA>X'E OF MA^ST PLEASANT HOXTES 
 PASSED •V7ITH IHfiJfc
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 I. 
 
 II. 
 III. 
 
 IV 
 
 V. 
 
 YI. 
 
 VII. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 IX. 
 
 X. 
 
 XI. 
 
 XII. 
 
 aIII. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 XV. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 XX. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 XXII. 
 
 XXllI. 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 XXV. 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 X.WIII. 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 XXX. 
 
 X\'XI. 
 
 X.X.XII. 
 
 XXXIII. 
 
 XXXIV. 
 
 XXXV. 
 
 X.WVI. 
 
 x.wvir. 
 
 XX -Will. 
 
 XXX IX. 
 
 XL 
 
 XLI. 
 
 XLII. 
 
 The M.iSTi:R 
 
 The man 
 
 TlMNGS OF HOME 
 
 TkeI'Etiilyn's lick . . . • 
 Coming iiome ...... 
 
 The e.vd of tiif. would . . . 
 
 M.1UKE Hillary's adokers . . . 
 
 At tue Chateau I'E Uuukbon 
 
 JCLIA DeSM0>1) makes HERSELF AGREEABLE 
 CoLTOXSLOUGH ..... 
 
 A VERY OLD STOKY ..... 
 A MODERN gentleman's DIARY . . 
 
 Caught in the toils .... 
 
 Very private theatricals . . . 
 A commercial crisis ..... 
 a drama that was acted behind tue scenes 
 Something like friendship . . . 
 
 Poor Francis 
 
 Mr. Hillary speaks nis mind . . , 
 
 An EXl'LANATION ..... 
 
 IIarcourt Lowther's welcome . . . 
 Taking it quietly .... 
 
 TiinNGS OF Susan 
 
 Francis Tredethlyn's disinterested advise 
 The road to ruin 
 
 A chilling RECO^■CILIATION . . . 
 
 Sekino a ghost ..... 
 
 "Oh, my Amy! mine no more I" . . 
 Kxtanglemknts in the web , . . 
 The two Antifholi .... 
 The diplomatist's policy .... 
 Hakcourt gatheus his first fruits . 
 Rosa's revelations ..... 
 The lady at Petersham . . . 
 
 \ HASTY RtCKoMNO ..... 
 
 Poor Frank's letter .... 
 kl.eanor drops in ul'on f1osa.mond . . 
 
 (ioNK ....... 
 
 Too latf. ....... 
 
 An ignominious failure ... 
 
 Susan's good ni;ws . . . • • 
 
 A PERFECT DNIoN 
 
 rAGE 
 
 5 
 
 n 
 
 14 
 
 17 
 2'J 
 32 
 42 
 50 
 53 
 62 
 
 cy 
 
 80 
 94 
 100 
 108 
 123 
 139 
 143 
 151 
 156 
 161 
 167 
 176 
 190 
 196 
 203 
 211 
 219 
 232 
 238 
 243 
 2.53 
 266 
 279 
 287 
 296 
 302 
 310 
 317 
 32-2 
 331 
 3U
 
 ONLY A CLOD. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE MASTEK. 
 
 Ensign Hahcourt Lowtiiee, of her Majesty's 51st Light In- 
 fantry, sat staring out into his garden at Port Arthur, -watching 
 a couple of convict gardeners — who were going about their 
 work with a monotonous and exasjaerating deliberation of move- 
 ment — and lamenting the evil fortune that had stationed him 
 in his present quarters. He had a great many troubles, this 
 elegant young ensign, who was, for the time bemg, destined to 
 bloom unseen, and waste the graces that ought to have adorned 
 Belgravia upon the desert air of the island of Tasmania. Ho 
 had, as he himself elegantly expressed it, no end of troubles. 
 First and foremost, liis cigar would not draw ; and as it was 
 the last of a case of choice cabanas, the calamity was not a 
 small one. Secondly, there had been a drought in fair Van 
 Diemen's Land for the last month or so. The verdure was 
 growing brown and leathery; the feathery masses of the tall 
 fern shrivelled at the edges like scorched paper ; the stiff foliage 
 of the cedars seemed to rattle as it shook in the dry, dust-laden 
 wind, and the thermometer stood at a hundred and ten in the 
 shade ; true, it might drop forty degrees or so at any moment, 
 with the uprising of a moist breeze from the sea, but, pending 
 the arrival of that auspicious moment, Mr. Lowther was in a 
 very bad temper. What had he done that he should be 
 stationed in a convict settlement, with no chance of any gain 
 or glory as compensation for his trials ; with no one to speak to 
 except a prosy old pohce-magistrate or a puritanical chaplain ; 
 with nothing better to look at than the eternal blue of the 
 ocean, or a whaling vessel anchored in the bay; with nothing 
 to hsten to except the clanking of hammers and banging of 
 timber and jingling of iron in the busy dockyard; with no 
 better enjoyment to hope for than a couple of days' quail-shoot- 
 ing or kangaroo-hunting in the interior ? 
 
 " If I'd been Desperate Bill the Burglar, or Slippery Steeve 
 the Smasher, I couldn't be much worse off," he muttered, as ho
 
 C Only a Clod. 
 
 pave up llic tinninTiagoaljlc cigar, and went across the room to a 
 tal'lo, uj'oii which there were some tolnicco-jars and meerschaum 
 j.i|'»'«. " Now, thin, Tredi'thlyn, are those boots ready ? " 
 
 This question was addresj-ed to an invisible some one, whose 
 low whi^^tHug of a jovial Irish air was audible from the adjoin- 
 ing room. 
 
 " Yes, captain," answered a cheery voice — the whistler had 
 broken ofi" m the middle of the " wild sweet briery fence that 
 around the tlowcrs of Erin dwells," — " yes, captain, quite ready." 
 
 "That's another aggravation," exclaimed Mr. Lowther, — 
 " the fellow will call me captain ; as if it wasn't an underhand 
 way of reminding me that for a poor devii like me there's no 
 chance of promotion." 
 
 " But you see you are captain here, Mr. Lowther," said the 
 whistler, emerging from the adjoining chamber with a pair 
 of newly -blacked Wellingtons in his hand; "you're captain, 
 major, colonel, general, and field-marshal, all in one here, with 
 seventv men imder your control, and any amount of convicts to 
 look after." 
 
 " If there's one thing in the world that's more excruciating 
 than another, it's that fellow's cheerfulness," cried Mr. Low- 
 ther. I can fancy the feeliii^s of an elegant young French 
 marquis of the vieille roche, a scion of the Mortemars or 
 Eirons, buried ahve in an undergroiuid cell in the Bastille, with 
 a Hvely commoner for liis comimnion — a cheerful hourqcois, who 
 
 {>retended to make Hght of his situation, and eat his mouldy 
 iread with a reUsh. " Now, then, Tredethlyn, where are the 
 boot-hooks ? That fellow always forgets something." 
 
 "That fellow," otherwise Francis Tredethlyn, was a tall, 
 stalwart private soldier, of some seven-and-twenty years of age, 
 •who had been honoured by an appointment to the post of valet 
 and butler to Ensign Harcourt Lowther. 
 
 If the stalwart soldier had not been blest with one of those 
 imperturViable Mark-Taplcy-hke tempers, which resemble the 
 patent elliptic springs of a crack coachbuilder's cairiage, and 
 can convej' the traveller unjolted and uninjured over the rough- 
 est roads in the journey of life, he might have found his position 
 as valet, major-domo, and occasional confidant to Harcourt 
 Lowther, far from the pleasantest berth to be had in thi« great 
 tempest-tossed vessel which we call the world. But Francis 
 Tredethlyn's serenity of disposition was proof against the most 
 wearisome burden a man is ever called upon to bear— the com- 
 panionship of a discontented fellow-creature, and all the variable 
 moods, from a feverish cynical kind of gaiety to a dreary and 
 ill-tempered gravity, which were engendered out of that perpe- 
 tual discontent. 
 But Frank Tredethlyn bore it all cheerfully ; with a manly,
 
 The Master, f 
 
 opcn-lieartecl clieerfulness "that liad no taint of sycopliancj. If 
 the young ensign wanted to talk to liim, well and good — he was 
 ready and willing to talk about any thing or every thing ; but 
 he had his own sentiments upon most subjects, which senti- 
 ments were of a very fast colour, and did not take any reflected 
 hue from Mr. Lowthcr's ai-istocratic opinions. 
 
 It is not to be supposed that Francis Tredcthlyn, private 
 soldier and valet, had any claims to intellectual equality with 
 his master. The private wrote a fair commercial hand, very 
 bold and big and resolutedooking ; could read aloud without 
 stumbling ignominiously over the long words; could cast up 
 accounts ; and, looking back at the history of the iiniversal 
 I^ast, saw glimmering faintly over a sea of darkness and oblivion 
 such beacon-lights as a Norman invasion ; a solemn meeting on 
 the flat turf of Runnymede ; a Reformation, with a good deal 
 of martyr-burning and head-chopping attendant thereupon ; a 
 fiery hook-nosed Dutch liberator, a Jacobite rebellion, and a 
 Reform BUI. Beyond these Umits the attainments of Mr. 
 Trcdethlyn did not extend ; and the ensign, when grambHng at 
 the general discomfort of his life, was apt to say that it was a 
 hard thing to be flung for companionsliip on a fellow who was 
 nothing but a boor and a clod. 
 
 Mr. Lowther treated his valet very much, as a spoiled child 
 treats her doll; sometimes it pleased him to be monstrously 
 cordial and famihar with his attendant, while at another time 
 he held Francis aloof by a haughty reserve of maimer, beyond 
 which barrier the other made no effort to penetrate. 
 
 " The fellow does possess that merit," Harcourt Lowther said 
 sometimes, " he knows how to keep his place." 
 
 The fact of the matter is, the valet was infinitely less de- 
 pendent upon his master's companionship than his master upon 
 his. There were a hundred ways in which Francis Tredethlyn 
 could amuse himself; and there was not a cloud in the sky, a 
 wave of the sea, a leaf in the garden, out of which he could 
 not take some scrap of pleasure, and which had not a deeper 
 and truer meaning for him than for the idle young officer who 
 lay yawning iijDon his nan'ow couch with his feet in the air, 
 and nothing better to do than to admire the shape of his boots, 
 obtained on credit from a confiding West-end tradesman. 
 Francis had that wide sympathy with his fellow-creatures which 
 is a special attribute of some men ; and was on the friendliest 
 possible terms with the two convict gardeners, both of whom 
 had achieved some renoAvn as the most incorrigible and exe- 
 crable specimens of the criminal class. Every dog in the little 
 settlement fawned upon Frank Tredetlilyn, and ran to rub his 
 head against his knees, and slaver his hand with its flapping 
 tongue. He had made a kennel for two or three cf these canino
 
 8 Only a Clod. 
 
 acquaintanocs in a shady corner of the big garden, much to the 
 disgUBt and annoyance of the ensigr., who only cared for such 
 dogs as are calculated to assist the sports of their lord and 
 master. Staghounds and bea'gles, foxhounds and harners, set- 
 ters, pointers, and retrievers, clever ratting Scotch temers, well- 
 bred and savage bulls, even little short-eared toy terriers, or 
 fa-mi-coloured and black-muzzled pugs, were all very weU 
 placed in the scheme of creation : but Mr. Lowther could find 
 no explanation for the existence of those mongrel creatures who 
 seem to have nothing to do in the world but to attach thern- 
 selves with slavish devotion to some bmtal master, or to he in 
 the most disreputable courts and alleys of a city in hot weather 
 and catch flies. 
 
 But, somehow or other, Francis Tredethlyn seemed generally 
 to do pretty much as he hkcd, in spite of mihtary despotism 
 and Mr. Harcourt Lowther. The dogs were unmolested in their 
 shady corner; and tiie ensign was so good as to say that a 
 httle aviary of wicker-work and wire, which Tredethlyn con- 
 structed in his leisure hours, and duly filled with tiny feathered 
 inhabitants, that kept up a faint twittering in the sunshine, was 
 an improvement to the cottage. Francis was very handy, and 
 could do wonders with a hammer and a handful of tin tacks ; 
 and was, indeed, altogether a great acquisition to his master, as 
 Mr. Corbett, the pohce-magistrate, sometimes remarked to 
 Ilarcourt Lowther. 
 
 " Yes," Harcourt answered, indifferently, "the fellow ia a cut 
 above most of his class. He is a Cornishman, it seems, and the 
 Bon of a small fiirmer in that land of Tre, Pol, and Pen ; and he 
 tells me that he has an old miser uncle who is supposed to be 
 pretematurally rich. Egad ! I wish I had such an uncle ! All 
 my uncles are misers for the matter of that ; but then, unluckily, 
 the poor devils are misers because they're pretematurally poor." 
 
 Mr. Lowther stood before the little looking-glass, in the sunny 
 window, admiring himself, while Francis Tredethlyn helped him 
 on with his coat. He was going to dine -^vdth Mr. Corbett the 
 magistrate, and to spend the evening in the society of Miss 
 Corbett, who had come out to the colony with the idea that 
 general officers and wealthy judges would be waiting on the 
 shore ready to conduct her from the pjlace of debarcation to the 
 hymeneal altar, and had been a httle soured by the disenchant- 
 ment which had too surely followed her arrival. She was a 
 gushing damsel of thirty-five, very tall and square, and of a 
 prevailing drab colour ; and she played ti'emendous variations 
 of shrill Scottish melodies on a piano which had been warranted 
 to preserve its purity of tone in any climate, but upon which 
 the nearest thine to an harmonious octave was a wild stretch of
 
 Tlie Master. 9 
 
 thirteen notes. Mr. Lowtlicr must have been very low in the 
 world when he had nothing better to do than to sit by Miss 
 Corbett's piano while she banged and rattled at the numerous 
 disguises under which "Kinloch of Ivinloch" appeared in a 
 fantasia of twelve pages, now prancing jauntily in triplets, now 
 rushing up and down the piano in chromatic scales, now scam- 
 pering wildly in double arpeggios, now banging himself out of 
 all knowledge in common chords, or wailing dismally in a hideous 
 minor. Fate had done its worst for Ensign Lowther, when he 
 had no better amusement than to lounge by the side of that ill- 
 used old instrument, staring reflectively at the thin places on 
 the top of Miss Corbett's drab-coloured head. 
 
 Harcourt Lowther stood before the glass admiring his hand- 
 some face, while liis valet brushed the collar of his coat. Well, 
 he had a right to admire himself! If Providence had treated 
 him badly, capricious Mother Nature, who, like any other 
 frivolous-minded parent, elects her prime favourites without 
 rhyme or reason, had been very bountiful to him in the matter 
 of an aquiline nose, a finely-modelled mouth and chin, and deep 
 womanish blue eyes, with a shimmer of gold on their lashes. 
 No one could deny Mr. Lowther's claim to be considered a re- 
 markably handsome man, an elegant young man, a very agree- 
 able and accomplished gentleman. The world, of course, had 
 nothing to do with that rougher edge of the ensign's character 
 which he turned to his valet Francis Tredethlyn in liis cottage 
 at Port Arthur. 
 
 He went out presently, swinging his thin cane, and whistling 
 all the triplets and cadences of an elaborate scena; he was an 
 amateur musician and an amateur artist, playing more or less 
 npon two or three different instruments, and painting more or 
 less in half-a-dozen different styles. He could ride across coun- 
 try to the astonishment of burly Leicestershire sq^iires, who 
 were inclined to think contemptuously of his small waist and 
 jretty blue eyes, his amber-tinted, jockey-club perfumed whis- 
 kers, trim tops, and unstained " pink." He was a good shot, and 
 , ong ago at Harrow had been renowned as a cricketer. He spoke 
 three or four modem languages, and had that dim recollection 
 of his classic studies which is sufficient for a man of the world 
 who knows how to make much out of little. He was altogether 
 a very accompKshed gentleman; but with him intellectual 
 pursuits were a means rather than an end, and he took very httle 
 pleasure in the society of books or bookmen. Ho wanted to be 
 m the world, foremost in the perpetual strife, amid the crash of 
 drums and trumpets, the roaring of cannon, and gHtter of em- 
 blazoned standards flaunting gallantly in the wind. He wanted 
 to be one of the conquerors in the iiniversal tournament, and to 
 ride up to the Queen of Beauty flushed and triumphant after
 
 10 Only a Clo3. 
 
 the strife, to be admii-ed and caressed. This is why the inaction 
 of his present existence was so utterly intolerable to him. 15 
 had a supreme belief in himself, and in the indisputable natiul 
 of his right to the best and brightest amongst earth's prizes 
 The time must be indeed out of joint in wliich there was nothing 
 better for such as he than a dreary convict settlement in the 
 island of Tasmania. 
 
 Unluckily, the time xvas out of joint. Robert Lowther, of 
 Lo^vthcr Hall, Hampshire, had given his younger son an aristo- 
 cratic name and a gentlemanly education; and then, having 
 nothing more to bestow upon him, had been forced to leave the 
 lad to tish for himself in the troubled waters of Hfe. The pros- 
 pects of the junior had always been more or less sacrificed to 
 those of the senior of Robert Lo^vther's two sons, and Harcoui-t 
 bore a hearty grudge against his father and his brother on this 
 account. Plainly told that he was to expect no more assistance 
 from the parent purse, the young man had elected to become a 
 barrister ; but after a three years' course of reading, in which 
 the cultivation of light literature and modem languages was 
 diversified by a slight sprinkling of legal study, he had grown 
 heartily sick of his shabbily-furnished third floor in Hare Court, 
 Temple, and had gladly accepted the price of a commission in 
 one of Her l^Iajesty's light infantiy regiments from an affec- 
 tionate maiden aunt, believing that the regiment would be 
 sijeeddy under orders for India, where gloiy and loot no doubt 
 awaited a dashing young soldier with a very high opinion of his 
 own merits. 
 
 Unha])pily for Mr. Lowther the regiment did not go to India ; 
 but he and his captain, with a detachment of seventy rank and 
 file, embarked at Deptfort on a misty morning in October, in 
 charge of 450 convicts bound for Hobart Town. At the time of 
 which I write the ensign had been nearly a twelvemonth in Van 
 Diemen's Land, and before him lay the prospect of another 
 dreaiy year which must elapse before there was much chance of 
 his seeing a change of quarters. There are some people who 
 take their troubles with a cheerful countenance and make the 
 best of a bad bargain ; but Mr. Lowther was not one of them. 
 He had begun to gnimblo before the convict sliip left Deptford ; 
 and he had gone on complaining, with very little intermission, 
 until to-day, and was likely so to continue until the end of the 
 chapter. Napoleon at St. Helena could scarcely have felt his 
 *xile more keenly ; nor could that fallen hero have more bitterly 
 resented the injustice of his fiite than Harcourt Osborne Lowther, 
 who believed that there must be something radically wrong in a 
 universe in which there was no provision of 40,000L or so a year 
 for an elegant young man with a perfect aquiline nose, a clear 
 ringing touch upon the piano, a trumpet tone on the flute, a
 
 The Man. 11 
 
 talent for taldng pen-and-ink portraits that wei'e cqnal to any- 
 thing of Count D'Orsay's, and an ii-rcproachablc taste in waist* 
 coats. 
 
 He went out now in very tolerable spirits ; first, because ho 
 had worked himself into a good temper by gi-umbhngto himself 
 and Tredethlyn all day ; secondly, because he was going to have 
 a good dinner and some rare old tawny jDort, wliich was the 
 boast of Mr. Corbett the magistrate; and thirdly, because ho 
 was going to be admired ; and in a Tasmanian settlement even 
 the worship of a young lady with bony fingers and drab-coloiired 
 eyes and hair is not altogether a despicable tribute. 
 
 " When I hear ' Kinloch of Kinloch' tortured out of all sem- 
 blance of himself upon that wretched piano, I let myself go 
 somehow or other," thought the ensign, " and I fancy myself 
 standing behind Maude Hillary's Broadwood in the long draw- 
 ing-room at Twickenham. Twickenham ! Shall I ever see 
 Twickenham agam, and Maude Hillary, and the twinkling light 
 upon the river, and the low branches of the chestnutu, the 
 sedgy banks, the lazy boats, the hghts up at the ' Star and 
 Garter' ghmmering across the dusky valley P Shall I ever see 
 that fair civiHsed land again ? or shall I die in tliis condemned 
 and accursed hole P — die, forgotten and unlamented, before I 
 have made any mark in the world ? " 
 
 CHAPTEE 11. 
 
 THE MAN. 
 
 While Mr. Lowther went to eat his dinner with the hospitable 
 magistrate, Francis Tredethlyn did his work briskly ; folding hia 
 master's coats and waistcoats, brushing boots, clearing away 
 httle heaps of cigar-ash, and picking up torn scraps of paper 
 and open books cast recklessly upon the floor by a reader who 
 was too badly disposed towards a world that had ill-treated him 
 to find the opinions of any author entirely to liis taste. 
 
 The soldier whistled that lively melody in praise of Erin's 
 daughters all the time, and achieved his task with the rapid 
 neatness of a male Cinderella specially endowed by some fairy 
 godmother ; and when Mr. Lowther's humble sitting-room and 
 bed-room were restored to perfect order, his valet retu-ed to his 
 own httle apartment, which was a shed-hke chamber at the 
 back of the cottage, and a kind of compromise between a dress- 
 ing-room and a wash-house. Here Mr. Tredethlyn made liis 
 toilet, which consisted of a rapid plunge of his head and throat 
 into a tub of cold water, some brisk operations with a cake of 
 yellow soap, accompanied by sputtering and whizzing noises of 
 an alarming character, a httle fierce rubbing down with a coarse
 
 12 Only a Clod. 
 
 towel, and the smart application of a stiff and implacable-loolnng 
 hair-brush. When tliis was done, Francis Tredethlyn put on 
 his jacket, and went out into the garden to smoke his pipe and 
 converse with the convicts. , , ,i. 
 
 Now that the gifts of nature had been enhanced by the 
 adornments of art, the ensign's valet was by no means a bad- 
 lookino- fellow. He was tall, broad-shouldered, and muscular in 
 build as a modem Hercules. His closely cut black hair revealed 
 the outhne of a well-shaped head well placed upon his shoulders. 
 Under his dark, almost gipsy-brown, sMn was a rich crimson 
 glow, which deepened or faded under the influence of any 
 powerful emotion. His nose was straight, but rather short, and 
 of no particular type ; but a sculptor would have told you there 
 was a special beauty about the curve of his full open nostnls, 
 and Honore de Balzac would have hiformed you that a man with 
 that kind of nostril is generally good for something_ in this 
 world. His forehead was low, stronger in the perceptive than 
 in the reflective organs ; his eyes were of a clear gi-ey, darkened 
 b-^ the shadow of thick black lashes. He was a handsome 
 soldier ; he would have made a handsome gladiator in the old 
 Koman days ; a noble-looking brigand, in the days when bi-igands 
 were chivalrous ; a dashing highwayman, in the age when Claude 
 Duval rode gaily to his death on Tyburn tree ; a glorious sport- 
 ing farmer down in Leicestershire to-day ; but no power upon 
 this earth could have transformed him into an elegant West-end 
 lounger, an accomplished dawdler in fashionable drawing-rooms, 
 or a "gentleman" in the modern acceptation of the word. 
 
 He went out into the garden now, to smoke his pipe of bird's- 
 eye and talk to the convict gardeners, who brightened at his 
 approach, and dehberately planted themselves in a convenient 
 position upon their spades, in order to converse with him. I 
 am sorry to say that he was as much at home in their society as 
 if they had been the most estimable of mankind, and that he 
 encouraged them to talk freely of their burglarious experiences 
 in the Old World. Was there not a smack of brigandage and 
 adventure in these experiences, and even a dash of (jhivalry, 
 according to the two men's own showing ? for they told stories of 
 encounters in which they shone out quite with heroic lustre 
 from their rooted objection to cut an elderly lady's throat, and 
 their gallant beaiing towards a high-minded young damsel who 
 had led them from room to room in her father's mansion, and 
 had pointed with her own fair hands to the whereabouts of the 
 family valuables. Francis Tredethlyn sat upon the trunk of a 
 fallen acacia, watching the lazy clouds in the still evening sky, 
 and smoking his pipe, long after the two convicts had stiiick 
 work and retired to their own quarters. He sat smoking and 
 p>iiBing ; thinking, as I suppose a man so banished must think,
 
 Tlie Man. 13 
 
 of that other far-awajr world wliicli he had left behind him ; and 
 which it seemed to him sometimes, in such still moments at) 
 these, that he should never see again. 
 
 " So far away, so veiy far away ! " he mused. " I wonder how 
 the httle village street upon the hiU is looking now P It's wintei 
 time now there, or getting towards winter time anyhow. I can 
 fancy it of an evening, with the Hghts twinkHng in the low shop 
 windows, the big castle-gate frowning down upon the poor httle 
 street ; the churchyard, where Susy and I have played, all dark 
 and lonesome in the winter night; and Susy herself — pretty 
 httle dark-eyed Susy— sitting by the heai-th in the big kitchen 
 at Tredethlyn, stitch, stitch, stitch, while the old man nods and 
 snores over his newspaper. Poor little Susy, what a hard Hfe it 
 is for her; and the old man as rich as that king of somewhere — 
 Croesus, don't they call him? — if his neighbours are to be 
 beheved. Poor httle Susy ! is she fond of me, I wonder p and 
 will she be pleased to maiTy me, if ever I'm able to go back, and 
 say, ' Susy, the best I could do, after running away and 'Usting, 
 was to save up money to buy my discharge, so that I might 
 comehome again to claim the old promise— for better for worse, 
 for richer or poorer' P We couldn't well be poorer than we 
 ehould be just at first ; for, of course, the old chap would turn 
 rusty, and cut Susy off with a shilling ; but who cares for that ? " 
 thought Francis Tredethlyn, snapping his fingers in the inde- 
 pendence of his spirit. " If Susy loves me, and I love Susy, 
 and we're both youn^ and strong and industrious, what's to pre- 
 vent us getting on m the woiid, without anybody's money to 
 help us ? " 
 
 _ The soldier smoked another pipe in a dreamy reverie, in which 
 his thoughts still hovered about one famihar spot in his native 
 country — a long, low, stone-built fai-mhouse, standing alone 
 upon a broad plateau of bare moorland, very dreary of aspect in 
 winter, — a dismal, ghastly-looking homestead, in which the 
 omamental had been sacrificed to the useful, — a gaunt, naked- 
 looking dwelling-place, upon whose decoration or improvement 
 a ten-poimd note had not been expended within the memory of 
 man, — a house which had gone down through three generations 
 of close-fisted, cross-grained owners, and which had grown 
 Tigher and drearier tinder the rule of each generation. 
 
 This was the habitation which stood as clearly out against the 
 vague background of Francis Tredethlyn's dreams as if it had 
 been palpably present upon the rising ground on the other side 
 of the bay. This was the house ; and ia the low narrow door- 
 way, fronting the desolate expanse of stunted brown grass, the 
 soldier saw the slender figure of a girl — a gu-1 with dark, gentle 
 eyes, and a quaker-like dress of coarse brown stuff, — a girl who 
 Btood with her hand shading her eyes, lookincf at the distant
 
 14 Only a Clod. 
 
 figure of an old man plodding Homeward in tlie winter twiUglit. 
 He had so often seen her thus, that it was only natm-al the 
 picture of her should present itself to his mind to-night, as hia 
 thoughts wandered homeward. He was so far away from thia 
 gii-1 and the familiar place in wliich she Hved, that it seemed 
 almost impossible to him that he could ever see her again, or 
 tread the well-known pathways along which he had so often 
 walked by her side. He thought of her almost as the dead may 
 think of the hving — if they do think of us. 
 
 " Poor Uttle Susy ! I wonder whether she loved me — whether 
 Bhe loves me still ? I wasn't hke some of youi- lovers, — I wasn't 
 one of your desperate fellows. I had no hot fits, or cold fits, or 
 jealous fits, or such Hke, and there are some folks that might say 
 I was never in love at all. But I was very fond of Susy — poor 
 little tender-hearted Susy ! I used to think of her, somehow, as 
 if she had been my httle sister. I think of her like that now." 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 TIDINGS or HOME. 
 
 It was late when Mr. Lowther came home from liis friend the 
 magistrate's. The faint flush that lighted ujj his face, and the 
 unwonted lustre of his eyes, bore testimony to the merits of 
 l\Ir. Corbett's ta^vny port. All Sandemann's choicest vintages 
 would not have tempted Harcourt Lowther to sit listening to a 
 prosy old magistrate's civil-service exjDeriences, in Eiu'oiDe ; but 
 on this side of the world a bottle of good wine and a tolerably 
 civihsed companion were not entii-ely to be despised. The ensign 
 was in a very good temper wheil he came into the little parlour, 
 where a swinging lamp burned brightly, and where a tobacco- 
 j"ar, a meerschaum, a case-bottle of Schiedam, a tumbler, and a 
 jug of water, were set upon the table ready for the master of 
 the domain. Mr. Lowther was in excellent temper, and incHned 
 to be especially civil to his valet. 
 
 " No Schiedam to-night, Tredetlilyn," he said, throwing him- 
 self into the wicker easy-chair, and stretcliing his feet upon a 
 smaller chair that stood opposite to liim ; " I've had a little too 
 miich of that old fellow's port. Dcalish good stuff' it is too, 
 if it hadn't a tendency to spoil a man's complexion, and con- 
 centrate itself in his nose. I'll take a pipe, though. Just give 
 me a light, will yon, Tredetlilyn ? " 
 
 He sat in a lazy attitude, with liis head thrown back against 
 the rail of the chair, and daintily arranged the stray shreds of 
 tobacco in the bowl of his pipe with the deHcate tip of his Httle 
 finger ; while the private lighted a long strip of folded paper 
 »nd handed it to hia master."
 
 tidings of Some. 15 
 
 " Oh, by tlie bye," muitorcd Mr. Lowtlicr, speaking with his 
 mouth shut upon the amber mouthpiece of his pipe, " I've got 
 Bome news for you, Tredethlyn. Just put your hand in my 
 coat-pocket, and take out the paper you'll find there. Goodness 
 knows what it means, — a legacy of fifty pounds or so, I suppose. 
 Anyhow, you're a lucky devil. I should be glad enough to get 
 even such a windfall as that ; but I never hear of anything to 
 my advantage." 
 
 Francis Tredethlyn had taken the paper from his master's 
 pocket by this tune ; it was an old copy of the " Times ; " and 
 he i^resented it to the ensign, but the other pushed it away 
 impatiently. 
 
 " I don't want it," he said ; " I think I read every line of it 
 ■while old Corbett was snoring after dinner. Look at the third 
 advertisement in the second column of the Supplement." 
 
 The soldier did as he was directed, and read the advertisement 
 aloud very slowly and in a tone of unmitigated wonder. 
 
 " Francis Tredethlyn, nephew of the late Ohver Tredethlyn, 
 of Tredethlyn Grange, near Landresdale, Cornwall. If the 
 above-mentioned will apply to Messrs. Krusdale and Scardon, 
 solicitors, 29, Yenilam Buildings, Gray's Inn, he will hear of 
 Bometliing to his advantage." 
 
 " The iate Ohver Tredctldyn ! " cried Francis, staring blankly 
 at the pajDcr ; " my uncle's dead, then ! " 
 
 " Was he ahve when you left England ? " asked the ensign. 
 
 " He was alive when I left Cornwall. Dead ! my uncle 
 Oliver?" the young man said, in a dreamy voice; "and I 
 pictured him to-night in my fancy, plodding home from the 
 outlying lands, as hale and stern and sturdy as ever. Dead ! 
 and he may have been dead ever so long, for all this tells me," 
 added Francis Tredethlyn, pointing to the advertisement. 
 
 " You were uncommonly fond of your uncle, I suppose, from 
 the way you talk of him," Mr. Lowther remarked, carelessly. 
 He was in good humour to-night, and ready to talk about any- 
 tliing, — inclmed to take almost an interest in the affans of 
 another man, and that man liis valet ! 
 
 " Fond of liim ! " exclaimed Francis Tredethlyn, " fond of 
 my uncle Oliver ! I don't think the creature ever lived that 
 was fond of him, or whose love he'd have cared to have. He 
 liked folks to obey him, and cut things as close as he wanted 'em 
 cut; but beyond that, he didn't care what they thought or 
 what they did. I suppose he did love his daughter though, after 
 a fashion, but it was a very hard fashion. No, sir, I wasn't par- 
 ticularly fond of my uncle Oliver Tredethlyn, but I'm struck all 
 of a heap by the news of his death coming upon me so sudden ; 
 and I'm thinking of the effect that it will have on my cousin 
 Susy, — she's all alone in the world now, — poor httle Susv ! "
 
 16 Only a Clod. 
 
 Tlie ensign looked up quickly. •' Susy ! " he said, " who th« 
 deuce is your cousin Susy ? " 
 
 " She's my uncle Oliver's only daughter, sir ; his only child ! 
 tx)0, for the matter of that. "We were engaged to be married* 
 sir ; hut things went wrong with me at home, and I ran away 
 and enlisted." 
 
 " Ah ! How long ago did all that happen P " 
 
 " Nearly five years, sir." 
 
 " And you've kept up some sort of a coiTespondence with 
 your cousin sin.'^e then, I suppose ? " 
 
 " Not I, sir ; her father wasn't the man to let her write a 
 letter that would cost a lump of money for postage, or to write 
 any letter to such a scamp as me, either; and poor Susy was 
 too close watched, and too obedient into the bargain, to writo 
 without his leave. I've written to her now and then, but I've 
 had no news from home since the day I left it, except this that 
 you've brought me to-night." 
 
 " And I suppose your uncle has left you a legacy ? " 
 
 " I suppose so, sir ; it isn't likely to be much anyhow, for I 
 never was any great favourite of his." 
 
 " You'd better Avi-ite to these lawyers, though. There's a 
 mail to-morrow ; bring out your desk, and write at once. 
 
 "Here, sir?" 
 
 " Yes, here." 
 
 Francis Tredethlyn hesitated for a moment, but seeing that 
 his master was resolute, he brought a clumsy old-fashioned 
 mahogany desk from his chamber at the back of the cottage, 
 and seated himself at a corner of the table with the desk before 
 him. He had placed himself at a very respectful distance from 
 Mr. Harcourt Lowther ; but that gentleman, having finished 
 his pipe, got up, and began to walk slowly up and down the 
 room, while his valet squared his elbows and commenced a labo- 
 rious inscription of his address at the top of the page. 
 
 " Tell them that you are Francis Tredethlyn, nephew of 
 Ohver Tredethlyn, and that you can bring forward plenty of 
 witnesses to prove your identity, and so on, as soon as you can 
 get back to England. I don't suppose they'll let you have your 
 legacy tin they see you. Ask them to tell you what the amount 
 is, at any rate." 
 
 Mr. Lowther did not confine himself to giving his valet these 
 hints upon the composition of his letter; he was good enough to 
 stand behind the young man's chair, and look over his shoulder 
 as he wrote ; but as Francis Trodethl^^n's penmanship was not 
 of a very rapid order, the ensign's eyes soon wandered from the 
 page, and straying to an open division of the desk, lighted on 
 something that looked Ukc a water- coloured sketch, covered with 
 >:ivcr paper.
 
 TredeOilyns LucJc. 17 
 
 " Why, you sly dog," he cried with a laugh, " you've got a 
 woman's picture in your desk ! " 
 
 Francis Tredetlilyn blushed and looked veiy sheepisli as he 
 took the little water- coloured sketch out of its silver-paper en- 
 velope and handed it submissively to his master. 
 
 "It's my cousin Susan's portrait, sir," he said; "it was 
 taken by a travelling artist, who came doNvn our way one sum- 
 mer. It isn't much of a likeness, but it pleases me to look at it 
 Bometimes, for I can fill up all that's wanting in the face out of 
 my own mind, and see my cousin smiUng at me, as if I was at 
 home again." 
 
 Mr. Lowther stood behind his servant's chair looking at the 
 portrait, while the soldier went on Avi-iting. It was not the work 
 of a very brilHant ai-tist ; there was none of those deliciously 
 careless touches, none of that transparent lightness, wliich a 
 clever painter's manij)ulation would have displayed. It was a 
 Btiif, laborious little portrait of a girl with hazel brown eyes and 
 smooth banded brown hair, and an innocent childish mouth, 
 rosy and fresh and smiling as a summer's morning in the 
 countiy. It was only the picture of a country girl, who seemed 
 to have looked shyly at the artist as he painted her. 
 
 " So that's your cousin Susy," said Mr. Lowther, laying the 
 picture down upon the table by Tredethlj'^n's elbow. " I shan't 
 stop while you address your letter, and I don't want anjr thing 
 more, so you can go to bed at once if you like. Good night." 
 
 The ensign took a candle from a little side-table as he spoke, 
 lighted it at the lamp above Tredethlyn's head, and went out of 
 the room. Francis finished his letter, and placed it on the 
 mantelpiece, where some letters of his master's were lying ready 
 for the next day's mail. He did not go to bed at once, though 
 it was late, and he was free to do so, but sat for some time with 
 his cousin Susan Tredethlyn's portrait in his hand, looking at 
 the girlish face, and thinking of the changes that had come to 
 pass in his old home. 
 
 " The old cliap was hard and stern with her, and her life was 
 a dull one, poor httle girl," thought the soldier; " and she'll 
 have a fine fortune, I supjjose, now he's gone ; but somehow I 
 don't hke to think of her left lonely in the world ; she's too 
 young and too pretty, and too innocent for that. Innocent ! 
 why, bless her j^oor tender little heart, I don't think she kuowa 
 there's such a thing as wickedness upon this earth." 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 tkedethlyn's luck. 
 
 Francis Tredetulyn had to wait a very long time before ther«» 
 could be any possibility of a letter f-'^m the Gray's Inn solicitors.
 
 1^ Onhj a Clod. 
 
 bnt lie enclured tlie delay -svitli perfect tranquillity of mind ; and 
 if cither of tlie two men seemed anxious for the arrival of the 
 letter, that man was Harcourt Lowther, and not Francis Tre- 
 dcthlyn. The ensign had a trick of allnding to liis servant's good 
 fortune whenever things went esi^ecially ill -n-ith himself. 
 
 " Here am I without a friend in the world to lend me a five- 
 pound note," he would remark, Impatiently, " and there are you 
 ■with a chance of a nice little legacy from that old uncle of yours. 
 I shouldn't wonder if you stand in for four or five hundred at 
 the least." 
 
 " I don't think it, sir," the valet always answered, coolly. 
 " I've heard our neighbours say, that what with farming, what 
 with mining, and dabbling a good bit with funds and railway 
 shares, and such-like, my uncle must be as rich as a Jew ; but 
 for all that, I don't look to be much better off for any tiling that 
 he'll have left me. I suppose he's left every tlung to my cousin 
 Susan, seeing that he had neither kith nor kin except her and 
 me. But somehow or other I can't imagine his parting with his 
 money to any one, even after his death. I almost fanc}'- that 
 he'd rather have tied it up, if he could, so that the interest upon 
 it would go on accumulating for ever and ever, thinking as he 
 might 2un-liai)S, being old and eccentric, that he'd have a kind of 
 satisfaction, even in his grave, from knowing that the money 
 was going on getting more and more, instead of being spent or 
 squandered." 
 
 Francis Tredethlyn did not make this remark in any spirit of 
 ill-nature ; he spoke like a man who states a plain fact. 
 
 " I dare say he was a regular old curmudgeon," ]Mr. Lowther 
 answered, " but he must leave his money to some one, and the 
 fact of these lawyers advertising for you is ample proof that he 
 must have left some of it to you." 
 
 Such a conversation as tliis occurred pretty frequently during 
 the long interval in which Francis Tredethhni waited for the 
 answer to his letter. Sometimes, when Harcourt Lowther was 
 in a very bad temper, he would accuse his attendant of having 
 grown [»roud and insolent and Inzy, since the advent of that 
 Times newspaper, which the ensign had borrowed from Islr. 
 Corbett; but every one of the accusations was as gi-oundless as 
 many other of the officer's complaints against pe.iple and things 
 in genoi'al. There was no change in Francis 'J'redethlyn : he 
 did his wDrk cheerfully and well, obej'Otl orders in a frank, 
 manly spirit, and behaved himself altogether in a most exem- 
 plary manner. 
 
 The time when a letter from England might be expected came 
 roimdatlast; but Francis Tredethlyn evinced no anxiety for 
 the an-Ival of the solicitors' ei)istle. A long season of drmight 
 had given way before a sudden downfall of rain, and Harcourt
 
 Tredi'Mijn's Lucie. 19 
 
 Lowtlirr, wholind jilaiuiod a couple of clays' kangaroo hunting, 
 ami liiul iiiadt; all ueccssaiy arrangements for the iierforniance 
 of liis duties by a gocjd-natnred and efficient colour- sergeant, 
 I'ound himself a prisoner in his cottage at Port Arthur, with 
 nothing to do but wait for a change in the weather. 
 
 It was very tiresome. The accomplished, light-hearted Har- 
 court Lowther, who could take life so pleasantly in the drawing- 
 rooms of T3'burrda or Belgravia, to whom a summer afternoon 
 amongst a group of fashionable gossips in the smoking-room oi 
 his favourite club was only too short, found this terrible Tasma- 
 nian day intolerably long. He had tried every available way of 
 getting rid of his time. He had sketched a little, and read a 
 little, and played the flute a little, and smoked a great deal, and 
 had relieved the c^ppression of his spirits by an incalculable 
 number of yawns, and a little occasional bad language. And 
 now, having exhausted all these resources, he stood with his 
 head leaning listlessly against the roughly finished sash of the 
 window, watching the convict labourers at work under the 
 heavy rain. He derived some faint ray of comfort from the 
 signs of these two men. At any rate, there were some jieople in 
 the world worse off thau liimself, — unlucky wretches who were 
 obliged to work in wet weather, and wear a hideous dress, and 
 eat coarse unpa^latable food, or food that appeared abominably 
 coarse and unpalatable in the eyes of Mr. llarcourt Lowther, 
 who had been known upon occasion to turn up his nose at the 
 culinary masterpieces of Soyer and FrancatelU. 
 
 "Why don't they kill themselves?" muttered the ensign; 
 " they could drive riisty nails into their veins, and make an end 
 of themselves somehow. There are plenty of poisonous things 
 in my garden that they might eat, and make a finish of their 
 lives that way; but they don't. They go on day after day 
 di-udging and toihng, and enduring their hves somehow or other. 
 I suppose they hope to get away some day. How ever should 1 
 bear my life if I didn't hope to get away — if I didn't hope it 
 would come to an end pretty soon P " 
 
 Mr. Lowther, having exhaiisted the jileasure to be derived 
 from a contemplation of the convicts, took to pacing up and 
 down the two rooms ; in the inner of which Francis Tredethlyn 
 was busy cleaning his master's guns. 
 
 Walking backwards and forwards, and backwards and for 
 wards, and passing the valet every time, Harcourt Lowther waa 
 fain to talk to him ; rather for the pleasure and relief of hearing 
 his own voice, than from any desire to be friendly towards hia 
 
 ^o can I 
 
 " No letter yet, Tredethlyn ? " he said. 
 
 " No, sir ; but it may come any day." 
 
 " And you wait for it as quietly as if a legacy, more or less,
 
 20 Only a Clod. 
 
 was nothing to you. I suppose if they send you a remittance, 
 you'll be -wanting to buy your discharge, and leiive this place; 
 and I shall have to get another sen-ant,— some awkward, igno- 
 rant boor, perhaps ? " 
 
 " 1 don't know about that, sir. There's plenty as good as me, 
 I dare say, among our fellows. Other folks may have been 
 brought up respectably, and taken to soldiering, like me. And 
 as for buying my discharge, I don't say but I should be glad to 
 do that, "if those lawyer people gave me the chance. I should 
 be glad to get back to England and see my litlle cousin Susy. 
 I always call her httle Susy, because I can't help thinking of 
 her as she was when I remember her first, when she and I were 
 boy and girl sweethearts together. I've thought of her a dea.l 
 since I got the news of her father's death, and I feel anxious 
 about her, somehow or other, when I fancy her left alone among 
 Btrangers," 
 
 Harconrt Lowther, always walking backwards and forwards 
 between the two rooms, was in the sitting-room when his servant 
 said this. He stopped to look out of the window again, and 
 there seemed to be a kind of dismal fascination for him in the 
 convicts, towards whom his eyes wandered in a moody, absent- 
 minded stare. 
 
 " And where do you expect to find her — your cousin, I mean 
 — when jow do go back to England ? " he asked presently. 
 
 " At the old farm, sir, to be sure. Where should I find her 
 but there ? Poor little soul ! she's never known any other home 
 but that, and isn't likely to leave it in a hun-y of her own free 
 will." 
 
 " Humph !" muttered the officer, " there's no calculating upon 
 the changes that take place in this world. I never expect to find 
 any thing as L left it when I return to a place or people that I've 
 been absent from for any length of time. I expect to find plenty 
 of changes when I get back to the civihsed world again. Do you 
 suppose the people there can afibrd to waste their time thinking 
 of wretched exiles here ? Life with them is utterly different 
 from what it is with ns. When I left England, I was engaged 
 to a beautiful girl with fifty thousand pounds or so for her for- 
 tune, — a girl who would have married me, and given me a grand 
 start in life, if it hadn't been for her father; but do you think I 
 expect to find her in the same mind when I go back ? Do you 
 thmk two years' absence won't act as a sponge, and wipe my 
 image out of her thoughts ? What has a beautiful, frivolous 
 creatm-e like that to do with constancy ? Every man who looks 
 at her falls over head and ears in love with her. She is fed upon 
 flattery and adulation. Is it probable, or natural, or even 
 possible that she will remember me ? " 
 
 It was not likely that Mr. Lcwther would ask this question of
 
 Tredetlihjn^ s Tinch. 81 
 
 his valet. He as"kf d it of himself, rather, in a peevish and com- 
 plaining spirit, and seemed to tind a dismal comfort in harping 
 on his wrongs and his miseries. 
 
 " I was a fool to think that Maude Hillary could be constant 
 to mc ! " he muttered, angrily. In his anger against a world 
 that had treated him so badly, he was angry with himself for 
 having been so much a fool as to expect better treatment. He 
 walked to a little looking-glass hanging over the mantelpiece, 
 and looked at his handsome face. Was it the face of a man who 
 was to have no place in the world? Were his many graces of 
 person, his charm of manner, his versatihty of mind, to serve for 
 nothing after all ? 
 
 " AVhcn I think of the fellows who get on in the world, I feel 
 inclined to make an end of all this by cutting my throat," ho 
 said, as he frowned at the image in the glass. 
 
 He felt the region of the jugular vein softly with the ends of 
 his fingers as he spoke, and wondered whether death by the 
 severance of that important artery was a very painful finish for 
 a man to make. He thought of how he might look if Francis 
 Tredethlyn, ihiding him late to rise one morning, broke into his 
 room and saw him lying m the sunny little chamber deluged 
 with blood and stone dead. He had been very religiously 
 brought up, amongst gentle, true-hearted women; but there 
 was no more pious compunction in his mind as he thought of 
 suicide than there might have been in the mind of an aboriginal 
 inhabitant of the Solomon Islands. He had a mother at home 
 — a mother who believed in him and idohzed him, to the dis- 
 paragement of all other creatures ; but no image of her grief 
 and despair arose between him and the scheme of a desperate 
 death. His thoughts travelled in a narrow circle, of wliich self 
 was the unchanging centre. 
 
 " I have heard of men making away with themselves on the 
 very eve of some event which would have made a complete 
 change in their fortunes," he thought presently. " I never read 
 the story of a suicide that did not se^m more or less the story of 
 a fool. No, my death shall never make a paragraph for a news- 
 paper. I must be very hard pushed when I come to that. Thia 
 place gives me the blue-devils, and everything looks black to me 
 out here. I wish Abel Janz Tasman and Captain Cook had 
 perished before ever they sighted this dismal land. I wish all 
 the lot of petty Dutch traders and navigators had come to an 
 untimely end before ever they discovered any one of these mi- 
 serable islands, which have been a jiaradise for convicts and 
 scoundrels, and a hell for gentlemen, during the last half- 
 eentury. How was I to know, when 1 bought a commission in 
 her Majesty's service, that the first stnge on the road to martial 
 glory was to be the post of head-gaoler at a settlement in the
 
 22 Onli/ a Clod. 
 
 AntipodcaP Tlio papers talk of a change in tlic transportation 
 Rystcni. a clunme that will rid Van Dieiuen's Land of its present 
 delii,'litt'al inhabitants; but no change is likely to come abontii) 
 my time. I shidl have to drag my chain (nit to the last link, 1 
 dare say. It's better to bo born lucky tluiu rich, says the pro- 
 verb ; but how about the poor devils who are neither rich nor 
 lucky?" . . 
 
 A rap on the little door, that opened ont of the sittmg-roora 
 on to a patch of garden which lay between the house and the 
 high road, startled Mr. Lowthcr out of his long reverie. 
 
 "It's the fellow with the letters," he cried; and before 
 Francis Trcdcthlyn co\ild emerge from the inner room, liis mas- 
 ter had opened the door, and had taken a little i>acket of letters, 
 newspapers, and magazines from the man who In-ought tlieui. 
 "One from my mother; one from — yes — from ]\faude, at last; 
 the Times, rnndi, JUdcknwod's, United Service, find the lawyer s 
 letter!— 'Francis Trcdethlyn, Esq.!" eh? The legacy must 
 be something more than five hundred, my man, or they'd hardly 
 dub you Esquire." 
 
 He tossed the letter over to his servant as he spoke, and 
 looked at the Cornislniian furtively, with something like envy 
 expressed in his look. Francis Tredethlyn received the lawyers' 
 epistle very coolly, and retired into the adjoining room to read 
 it, while his nuxster sat at the table in the parlour, tearing off 
 the llimsy enveloi)e of a letter with a hasty nervous hand. 
 
 •' From Maude ! " he muttered. " At last, my lady : at last, 
 at last ! " 
 
 The letter wag a very long one, written in a clear and bold 
 yet sufficiently fcuiininc hand, on shppery pink paper scented 
 with a perfunie that had survived an Australian voyage. The 
 contents of the letter must have been tolerably pleasing to 
 Harcourt lyowther, for he smiled as he read, and seemed to 
 forget all aboiit Francis Tredelhlyn's legacy. 
 
 " I miss you very much, though i)apa surrounds us with 
 gaiety ; indeed, I think we have been gayer than ever lately ; 
 and he never seems so happy as when our dear old lawn ia 
 crowiled with visittjrs. But 1 miss yon, Harcourt. in spite of 
 all the cruel insinuations in your last letter. The summer 
 evenings seem long and dreary when I think of you, so far 
 away, so nnhai)]iy, as your letters tell me you are, Harcourt, 
 though you are t()o nnselHsh to admit the truth in plain wordy. 
 I scarcely open tlie piano once iu a month, now thiit I have no 
 one to play conccrtante duets. I scarcely care for a new opera ; 
 for the men wlio come into our box bore me to death with tlu-ir 
 vapid talk, and I know that not one of them understands what 
 he talks about. I am not happy, Harcourt, though you taunt 
 me with my wealth and my position, and the ditfereuce between
 
 TrcdetJtli/u's Luck. 23 
 
 onr livos. I am not liappy, for onv fiitnvo socma to ji^row clarlvor 
 ami darker every day. I have meuiioneil you to my iUtlier 
 Bcvorjil times, and every time he seems more angry than the 
 last ; so now 1 feel that your name is tacitly tabooed ; and any 
 chance alhisicm to y(m from the lips of strangers makes me 
 tremble and turn cold. I have tried in vain to comprehendtho 
 reason of my father's aversion to any thought pi a marriage 
 between you and me. I have been so much a spoiled child, that 
 to be thwarted or opposed on any subject seems strange to me, 
 most of all when that suliject is so near my heart. I can 
 scarcely think that my dear father would allow any consideration 
 of fortune to stand in the way of happiness, and yet that is the 
 only consideration that can influence him, for I know that he 
 always liked and admired you. You must awhile be patient; 
 what I can do I will. And you must trust me, dear Ilarcourt, 
 and not pain me again as you have paine«i me by those unkind 
 doubts of my constancy. You know that money has never 
 been any consideration with lue ; and you ought to know that I 
 would willingly lose every penny of my fortune rather tluui 
 eacrificc my pixmiise to you." 
 
 "O yes; that's all very Avell ! " muttered _Mr. Lowther 
 peevishly, after having read iliis part of iliss Hillary's epistle 
 twice over; "but Lionel Hillary's daughter with fifty thou- 
 sand pounds or so, and without a penny, are two ver^r different 
 people. Not but what she's always a beautiful girl and a 
 charming girl ; but a man can have liis pick of charming and 
 beautiful girls, if that's all he wants to set him up in hfe. I 
 love her. Heaven knows ; and the sight of her writing sends a 
 thrill through my veins like the touch of her hand, or the tlut- 
 tering of her breath upon my cheek. But poverty makes a man 
 practical, and I think I never read a letter that had less of the 
 practical in it than this letter. It's a woman's epistle all oyer. 
 We must be patient, and wait till we're worn out by waiting, 
 and the engagement between us becomes a chain that binds us 
 both from better things, and the sound of each other's name 
 becomes a nuisance to us from its associations of trouble and 
 resi>onsil)ility. That's what a long engagement generally comes 
 to. If I'd distinguished myself in India, led a desperate charge 
 against orders, or taken the gate of an Affghan fortress, or done 
 something recldcss and mad-headed and lucky, and could have 
 gone back with a captaincy, and a dash of newspaper celebrity 
 about my name, I might have hoped that old Hillary, in a 
 moment of niaudhn after-dinner generosity, would have given 
 his consent to my marriage with Maude. But how am I_ to 
 present myself at Twickenham, and say, 'I have been taking 
 care of convicts for the last two years, — not particularly well, 
 for more convicts have escaped into the bush in my time than in
 
 24 Only a CM. 
 
 any other man's time, according to tlie reports, — and I have 
 come back to England with the same rank that I had when I 
 left, and \\\i\\ h'ss money than I took away Avith me' ? Can I 
 go to Lionel Hillary and say that? Is that the sort of argu- 
 ment wliich will induce a man to give me his daughter and her 
 fortune ? " 
 
 He went back to Miss Hillary's letter. It was only a frivo- 
 lous letter, after all; and it contained more intelligence about a 
 morning concert in Hanover Square, a regatta at Ryde, and a 
 pretei-naturally sagacious Skye-terrier, than was Ukely to bo 
 gratifying to a discontented exile at Port Arthur. But Mr. 
 Lowther was lain to content himself as he might with the pretty 
 girlish gossip. It Avas something, after all his grumbling, to 
 receive the assurance that he was not entirely forgotten by the 
 only daughter and sole heiress of one of the richest merchants 
 in the citj^ of London. 
 
 He looked up presently from his letter, to see Trancis Tre- 
 dethlyn standing in the doorway between the two rooms, pale 
 to the lips, and clutching at his throat as if he had some dif- 
 ficulty in breathing. 
 
 " What's the matter, man P " asked the ensign ; "hasn't the 
 old chap left you any money, after all.'' " 
 
 "It isn't that, sir," gasped the soldier; "there's money 
 enough and to spare. It's my cousin Susy ; that poor little 
 innocent creature, that was as pure as the apple-blossoms on 
 the gnarled old trees in the orchard when I left home. She's 
 done something, sir — something that turned her father against 
 her. She's gone away, sir, and no one knows where she's gone, 
 or what's come of her, or whether she's dead or alive. And 
 her father disinherited her, poor lost lamb; and — that'll tell 
 you all about the fortune, sir, if you want to know about it." 
 Francis Tredethlyn threw the lawyer's letter upon the table 
 before his master, and wallced away to the window — the same 
 window at which the ensign had stood looking out at the con- 
 victs half an hour before. 
 
 Harcourt Lowther read the lawyer's letter, at first with a 
 hstlcss, indifferent air, and then as eagerly as if he had been 
 reading his own death-warrant. It was a long letter, worded in 
 a very Ibrmal manner, but it set forth the fact that the fortune 
 left by Oliver Tredethlyn to his nephew Francis amounted to 
 BOmething over thirty thousand a year. 
 
 For some minutes after this fact had been made clear to him 
 Harcoui-t Lowther sat with the open letter before him, staring 
 at the lines. Then suddenly the blank stupor ujjon his face 
 gave way to a look of despair. The ensign flimg his head and 
 arms upon the table, and burst into tears. 
 
 *' I have been eating my own heart in this place for nearly
 
 TreJefJiIi/n's LiicTc. 25 
 
 two years," he sobbed, " and not one ray of ligbt — no, by the 
 heaven above me ! not one — has dawned upon my life ; and a 
 valet, a iirivate soldier, the fellow who scours my rooms and 
 blacks my boots, has thirty thousand a year left him ! " 
 
 There was somethincr so terrible in this hysterical outburst of 
 rage and envy, something so utterly piteous in this unmanly 
 revolt against another man's good fortune, that Francis Tre- 
 dfcthlyn forgot his owr trouble before the aspect of his master's 
 degradation. 
 
 " Don't, sir," he cried, " for God's sake, don't do that ! All 
 the riches in the world wouldn't pay a man for talcing on hke 
 that. If yon want money, you're welcome to borrow some of 
 mine as soon as ever I get the power to leud it. There's more 
 than I care to have, or could ever spend. You'll be welcome to 
 ■what you want, Mr. Lowther. I don't set much account upon 
 money, and I don't think I ever sbaU; and the thoughts of 
 this fortune don't give me half the pleasure I've felt in the gift 
 of a crown-piece loug ago, when I was a little lad. I suppose 
 it was because I thought then there was nothing in all the 
 world that five shillings wouldn't buy, and because I'm wiser 
 now, and know there are some thiugs a million of money can't 
 purchase. The news of this money has brought the thoughts 
 of my father and my mother back to me, Mr. Lowther. I'd 
 give every sixpence of it, if it coiikl bring back the past, and 
 pay out the baiUflTs man that was sitting by our kitchen-fire at 
 home when my mother lay ill up-stairs. But it can't do that. 
 My father and mother both died poor, and all this money 
 can't buy back one of the sorrowful days they spent in the old 
 farm, when things went from bad to worse, and debt and ruin 
 came down iipou us. I don't seem to care for the money, Mr. 
 Lowther ; I am dazed and bewildered, somehow, by the great- 
 ness of the sum, but I don't seem to care." 
 
 The ensign had calmed himself by this time. He got up and 
 brushed the tears from his eyes, real tears of rage, envy, morti- 
 fication, and despair. There was a faint blush upon his face, 
 the one evidence of his shame which he could not suj^press in a 
 moment, but all other evidences of feeling had passed away. 
 
 " You're a good fellow, Tredetlilyn," he said, " an excellent 
 simple-hearted fellow ; as simple-hearted as a baby, — for who 
 but a baby ever talked as you talk about this money ? and I 
 congratulate you upon your good luck. I see these lawyer fel- 
 lows send you a bill for a couple of hundred; that'll buy you 
 off here pleasantly, and get you back to England. My advice 
 to you is to get back as fast as ever you can, and enter into 
 possession of your property. It seems a complicated kind of 
 estate from what I can make out — mining property, and agricul- 
 tural property, and shai-es in half the speculations of modem
 
 26 On^y a Clod. 
 
 timOF!, — bnt it's a great estate, and that's all you want to know. 
 Go back ; and as soon as ever I can get away from this accursed 
 hole, I"ll look you up in London; and I — I vUl borrow a littlo 
 of that money you generously ofler, and I'll turn bear loader, 
 and show you what life is in the upper circle, to which thirty 
 thousand a year is the universal ' open sesame.' " 
 
 Tlie ensign slapped his hand upon liis scrv.ant's shoulder with 
 a jovial air, and spoke almost as gaily as if Oliver Tredethlyn'a 
 fortune was to be in some way or other a stroke of good luck 
 for himself. 
 
 "Thank you, s'.r," Francis answered, thdunhtfully, "you're 
 very good; but I don't care to force myself in among grand 
 folks because I'm rich enough to do as they do. I've got a task 
 before me, and it may be a long one." 
 
 " A task ! " 
 
 " Yes; I've got to look for my cousin." 
 
 "Your cousin, Susan Tredethlyn ! — the girl whose 2)orlrait 
 you showed me? " 
 
 " Yes, sir. All this money would have been hers, most likely, 
 if she hadn't done something to turn my uncle against her. I 
 can't foi-get that, you see, sir; and the first use I make of the 
 money will be to spend some of it in looking after her." 
 
 " Susan Tredc^tldyn," muttered llarcourt Lowther, — " Susan 
 Tredethlyn. That portrait you showed me was a very l)ad one, 
 for 1 haven't the least notion of what your cousin is like." 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 COMING HOME. 
 
 Wiif:N the jaded horses of the " Electric" coach from Falmouth 
 stojiped before the Crown Inn at Tjandresdale, in the county of 
 Cornwall, on the l^th of July, 1852, the landlord of the little 
 hostelry was somewhat startled by an event which was of very 
 rare occun-cnce in those parts. A passenger alighted from the 
 back of the coach, and demanded his iiortmantcau from the 
 giuird, — a passenger who, carrying his portmanteau as easily aa 
 if it had been a parcel of llinisy milliner's ware, walked straight 
 to the littlo inivate parlour opposite the bar, and ensconced 
 himself therein. 
 
 " I shall want my dii:ner, and a bed, Joseph Poiu-niHu," ho 
 said to the proprietor of the Crown. " You"d better see the 
 coach off, and then you can come and talk to me." 
 
 Mr. Penrvillin retired aghast and staring. 
 
 " I don't know who he is, Sarah," he remarked to a comely- 
 looking woman, who was sitting amongst a noble array of 
 shelves and bottles in a shady little bar that seemed a e:ood deal
 
 Coming Home. 27 
 
 too small fur suoTi a portly presence. " His name's as clean 
 pone out of my mind as if I'd never set eyes njion him ; but I 
 know liiin, and he knows me, Sarah, for he caJled me l)y my 
 name as glib as 3'ou })loase, and his face— Lord bless us and 
 save us ! — his face is as familiar to me as yourn." 
 
 The passenger who had surprised the Crown Inn from its lazy 
 tranquillity stood at the little window looking out at the coach. 
 The passenger was Francis Tredethlyn, lately a foot-soldier in 
 her IMajesty's service, now a gentleman of landed estate and 
 funded property ; but very little changed by the change in his 
 fortune. As he had been iudependent and fearless in the days 
 when he ruled his life by the orders of other men, so was ho 
 simiile and unpretending now in the hour of his sudden pros- 
 jicrity. What he had said to his master in the cottage at Port 
 Arthur in the first flush of his new fortunes aj^peared to bo 
 equally true of him now. lie did not seem to care about his 
 wealth. lie was in no way elated by a change of fortune which 
 would have sent some men into a madhouse. 
 
 " It seems to me, somehow, as if there was a kind of balance 
 kept up in this world between good and evil, like the debtor and 
 creditor sides of a ledger. I put down my uncle Oliver's for- 
 tune on one side, and it looks as if I was the luckiest fellow in 
 Christendom. But there's the loss of poor little Susy must go 
 down on the other side, and then the book looks altogether 
 different. The loss of her — yes, the loss — that's the word ! If 
 the earth had ojiened and swallowed her up, she couldn't seem 
 more lost to me than she is." 
 
 The passengers of the " Electric " had recruited themselvcg 
 by this time, and a fresh pair of horses had replaced the tired 
 animals who now stood steaming in the great stable-yard. The 
 coach rolled slowly off, along a road that lay straight before the 
 windows of the Crown — a road that crept under the steep slope 
 of a thickly wooded hill, defended by an old crumbling wall, 
 which, even in its decaj^ was grander and stronger than any 
 modern wall that ever girdled a modern gentleman's estate. 
 The dark-red brick wall, and all the sombre woods above it, be- 
 longed to the Marquis of Landrcsdale, upon whose mansion and 
 estate the little town or village of Landresdale was a kind of 
 dependant, the inhabitants being almost all of them supported 
 indirectly or directly by the i">atronage of the great man and 
 his household. By these simjjlo people the Cornish nobleman 
 was s]iokcn of with awe and reverence as the " Marquis ; " and 
 that the world held any other creature with a claim to that title 
 was a fact utterly ignored — it may be, even discredited — by the 
 ratepayers of Landresdale. Under the shadow of Landrcsdale 
 House they were born and lived; and in a church which was 
 only a kind of mausoleum for the departed nobles and dames *»f
 
 28 Only a Clod. 
 
 the house of Landrcsdale they worshipped every sabbath-day, 
 ■until in the minds of some hero-worshippers, the figure of tha 
 Marquis grew into a giant shape that blotted out all the world 
 beyond Landresdale. 
 
 "How familiar the old place seems to me, and yet how 
 strange ! " thought Francis Tredethlyn, as he stood at the win- 
 dow. " There's Jim Teascott the cobbler over the way, sitting 
 in the very same attitude he was in when I stopped at the 
 corner below to take my last look at Landresdale. But the 
 street seems as if it had dwindled and shrunk away into half 
 the size it used to be ; and I feel as strange — as strange as if 
 I'd been dead and buried, and had come to life again after folks 
 had forgotten all about me ; even the very seasons are all wrong, 
 somehow, to my minel, as they might seem to a man that had 
 been lying dead ever so loiig." 
 
 Francis Tredethlyn rubbed his broad palm across his forehpad, 
 as if to clear some kind of cloud away from his intellect. It was 
 scarcely strange that he should be confused and mystified by 
 the seasons. He had left autumnal clouds and wdnds in the 
 Antipodes ; and after a hundred days or so at sea, he found a 
 blazing July sky above his native land, and he felt as if he had, 
 somehow or other, been cheated out of a winter. He looked 
 at a little pocket-book, in which he had written some names 
 and addresses and other memoranda, and in which the initials 
 " S. T." occurred very often. Those initials meant Susan Tre- 
 dethlyn, and the memoranda in the i)ocket-book chiefly re- 
 lated to inquiries which Francis had made about his lost cousii^ 
 
 Those inquiries had resulted in very Httle information. The 
 lawyers had only been able to tell Francis the bare facts relat- 
 ing to his uncle's death ; how one day, when they least expected 
 to see the old man, he had suddenly presented himself at their 
 offices, very pale, very feeble, and with an awful somctlung, 
 which even they recognized as the sign-manual of the King of 
 TeiTors himself, imprinted on his haggard features : how he had 
 oeated himself quietly in his accustomed place, and had dictated 
 to them, deliberately and unflinchingly, the terras of a Avill, by 
 which he bequeathed every shilling he possessed to his nephew, 
 Francis Tredethlyn ; how, when i\\Qj, as in duty bound, remon- 
 strated with him about the injustice that such a will would 
 inflict upon his only daughter, a hideous frown had distorted 
 his face, and he had struck his clenched fist upon the office- 
 table, crying, with the most horrible imprecation ever uttered 
 in that i^lace, that no penny of liis getting should ever go to 
 save his daughter from rotting in a workhouse or stanung to 
 death on the king's highway; — he had said this, and in such a 
 manner as most efi'ectually to put an end to all remonstrance on 
 the part of his solicitors. This was all that the lawyers could
 
 Coming Home. 29" 
 
 tell Francis Tredetlilyn about liis cousin Susan; but they had 
 gone on to tell him how his uncle had insisted on leavinrr the 
 office alone and on foot; how he had walked the best ipartof the 
 way from Gray's Inn to an old-fashioned commercial inn in 
 the Borough, and how he had broken down at last, only a hun- 
 dred yards from his destination, and had fainted away on the 
 threshold of a chemist's shop, whence he had been carried to 
 his death-bed. This had happened on the oOth of June in the 
 preceding year; and this was all that the lawyers had to tell 
 Francis Tredetlilyn, over and above such intelligence as related 
 only to the extent and nature of the property bequeathed to 
 him by his late uncle. 
 
 But in Laudresdale the name of Ohver Tredethlyn was almost 
 as well known as that of the Marquis himself; and in Laudres- 
 dale Francis hoped to learn the true story of his cousin's fate. 
 He stood now looking out of the window into the rustic high- 
 way, as quiet in the summer evening calm as if it had been a 
 street in one of the buried cities of Italy, as peaceful in its 
 drowsy aspect as if no palpitating human heart had ever carried 
 its daily burden of care and sorrow along the narrow footways, 
 beneath the shadow of the peaked roofs and quaint abutting 
 upper stories. He stood looking out, and remembering himself 
 a boy in that old hill-side street ; he stood there now, wonder- 
 ing ahke at the past and the present, which by contrast seemed 
 both equally strange and unnatural ; he stood there in all the 
 flush and vigour of his youth, a tall, broad-shouldered, simple- 
 liearted soldier, with a fortune far exceeding the nan-ow limits 
 of his arithmetical powers, as ignorant of all the real world that 
 lay before liim as a little country lad who rides to town upon 
 the top of a load of hay and expects to find the streets paved 
 with gold, and the Queen dressed in her crown and robes, and 
 sitting on her throne with the ball and scej)tre in her hands for 
 ever and ever. 
 
 The landlord of the Crown came bustling in presently with a 
 wooden tray of knives and forks, and glasses and cruets, that 
 would have amply served for a dinner-party of half-a-dozen. 
 He laid the cloth with great ceremony, altliough with a certain 
 air of briskness inseparable from innkeeping, even in the laziest 
 and dullest village in all England; and he kej^t a furtive watch 
 upon his guest throughout all his operations, from the prepara- 
 tory polishing down of the mahogany table, to the final flourish 
 with which he removed a very large cover from a*very small 
 ru^mpsteak. 
 
 " I think I ought to know you, sir," he said, courteously, as 
 Francis Tredethlyn seated himself at the table. 
 
 "I thmk you ought, Joseph Penruflin; I think you ought 
 to remember Francis Tredethlyn, son of your old friend John
 
 I 
 
 30 OiiJi/ a Clod. 
 
 TrodciWyn, of Pen Gorboia, who was a litilo bit too friendly in 
 tliis liouso, pcvliaps, foi- his own prosperity." 
 
 " Francis Treilethlyn ! " cried the landlord, clapping his hand 
 \ipon his kneo, "Francis Tredethlyn! To be sure it is! To 
 think that I should forget a face that was once as familiar to 
 me as my own son's ! Francis Tredethlyn ! Why, I remember 
 
 ou a lad j^laying cricket on the green yonder with my own 
 .oys. And you've come into a very fine fortune, sir, I under- 
 stand; and I hope you will excuse the liberty, if I make so bold 
 as to wish you every happiness with it, Francis Tredethlyn. 
 Lord bless us and save us ! why, I can remember you a little 
 bit of a toddling child coming into Landresdale Church with 
 your motlier on a summer Sunday morning, as if it was yester- 
 day ! I ask pardon for being so bold and freo-lilce, but the sight 
 of your face takes me back to old times, and I'm apt to forget 
 myself." 
 
 J\Ir. Penruffin's mind was cunously divided between the memo- 
 ries of the past and his desire to be duly reverential to Francis 
 Tredethlyn's new fortunes. The young man smiled as he recog- 
 nized the influence of his newly acquired wealth at war with 
 the associations of his boyhood. lie had seen pretty much the 
 same thing in the office of Messrs* Krusdale and Scardon. He 
 was beginiung aheady to perceive that an income of thirty 
 thousand a year made a kind of barrier between himself and 
 poorer men, and that they regarded him with the same feeling 
 of mingled reverence and familiarity with which they would have 
 looked at a very ordinary statue seen across a wonderful screen 
 of virgin gold. 
 
 " And the sight of your face takes me back to old times, '^W. 
 PenrutHn," he said, with rather a mournful accent, " and I'd 
 freely give half this great fortune of mine if I could bring back 
 one of those summer Sunday mornings in the old church, and 
 Bce myself a little fellow again, trudging by my mother's side, 
 with a green-baize bag of prayer-books on my arm. I'd give five 
 thousand pounds for a silk-dress I saw in a Plymouth draper's 
 fifteen years ago, when I was too poor to do any thing but wish 
 for it, if my mother were alive to wear it. I used to think, when 
 I was a lad, of Avhat I'd buy for my mother out of the first five- 
 pound note I ever earned; and now I've got thirty thousand a 
 
 ear, and there's nothing upon all this earth that I can buy fo» 
 
 ei, except a gi-avestone to mark the B2)ot where she lies." 
 " Thirty j^housaud a year ! " muttered the landlord, iu an 
 undertone, which had just a tinge of disappointnumt in it. The 
 Landresdale iieoi)^ had given their imaginations free play sin'ce 
 the death of Oliver Tredethlyn, and the old man's fortune had 
 Bwelled into almost fabulous proportions with the lapse of time; 
 |o tliirty thousand didn't seem no very mnch, after all. There 
 
 I
 
 Coming Home. 81 
 
 had 1)0(''n an iMcn in Lamlrcsdalc that Francis Trctlctlilyn would 
 most likely Xmy up tlic iMan|uis"s estate ofl'-liand, and if practi- 
 cable make a handsome oiler I'or the purchase of the title. 
 
 *' I am sure, sir, your feelings do you credit," said Mr. Pen- 
 rulfin, after that brief sense of disappointment ; " I may say 
 very great credit," he added, with emphasis, — as if any display 
 of feeling from the possessor of thirty thousand a year were 
 Bpecially meritorious. " I suppose you have come down thia 
 way to survey your property, sir ; to look about you a little, 
 ell?" inquired the landlord of the Crown, when Francis had 
 finished his frugal dinner. 
 
 "Not I," the young man answered; "I scarcely know what 
 my property is yet, though the lawyers told nie a long rigmarole 
 about it. No, I've come on a very difFerent errand," he added 
 gravely. " Ton remember my cousin, Susan Tredethlyn, I 
 dare say ? I have come to look for her." 
 
 Joseph PenrufFin shook his head solemnly, and breathed a 
 long sigh that was almost a groan. 
 
 " If that's j^our errand here, sir, I'm afraid it isn't likely to be 
 a very fortunate one. Folks in Landresdale never expect to see 
 Susan Tredetldyn again; she went away from the farm four 
 years ago ; no one knows exactly where she went ; no one knows 
 vhy she went. There's your uncle's old servants, Mr. Tredethlyn, 
 of course they hiitjht have said something, if they'd Hked to it. 
 But yon may as well go and question the tombstones in Lan- 
 dresdale churchyard as question them. All I know, or all any- 
 body knows in this place is, that your cousin Susan went away 
 and never came back again ; and it stands to reason that she 
 must have done something very bad indeed, and made her father 
 very desperate against her, before the old man would have gone 
 and left all his money away from her — moaning no disrespect to 
 you, sir, but only looking at it in the light of human nature in 
 general," added the landlord, apologetically. 
 
 " I'll never believe that Susan Tredethlyn did any thing 
 wicked or unwomanly till her own lips tell me so," cried Francis, 
 bringing his hand heavily down on the table. " She may have 
 made my uncle desperate against her, tlinffs likely enough, for 
 he was always hard with her ; and when I think of Ids having 
 hoarded all this money, and remember the life my cousin Susan 
 used to lead, I can scarcely bring myself to believe that she waa 
 his own ilesh and blood. I'll never believe that she did any 
 thing \vi-ong. I'll never believe that she could grow to be any 
 thing difterent from what she was when I left home, — an inno- 
 cent, modest little creature, who was almost frightened of her 
 own pretty looks when she caught a sight of herself in a glass. 
 But I'm going up to the old house ; and if Martha DryscoU or 
 her husband know any thing of my lost cousin, I'll get the
 
 82 Onhj a Clod. 
 
 knowletlge from tlicm, tliough I liave to wring it out of their 
 wzcned old tlu-oats." 
 
 The young man rose as he said this, and toot liis hat and 
 stick from a chair near the window. Joseph Penruffin watched 
 him with something hke alarm npon his countenance. 
 
 " You'll sl':'ep here to-night, sir ? " he asked. 
 
 " Yes ; I'm going straight vq) to the Grange, and I don't 
 know how long I may be gone ; hut 111 come hack here to sleep. 
 I should scarcely fancy Ij'ing down in one of those dreary old 
 rooms ; I should expect to see the wandering spirit of my lost 
 coiisin come and look in at me from the darkness oxitsido my 
 window. No ; however late I may be, I'U come back here to 
 sleep." 
 
 " And 23erhaps you'd like some little trifle for supper, sir, having 
 made such an uncommon poor dinner," suggested the landlord, 
 — " a chicken and a little bit of grass, or a tender young duck 
 and a dish of peas ? " 
 
 But Francis Tredcthlyn was walking xx]) the little village 
 street out of earshot of these savoury suggestions before the 
 landlord had finished his sentence. 
 
 " I don't call that manners," muttered Mr. PenrufTm ; " but 
 I shall cook the chicken for ten o'clock, and chance it ; he can 
 afford to pay for it, whether he eats it or not. And I think, 
 taking into consideration old acquaintance and thirty thousand 
 a. year, it would only have been friendly in Francis Tredcthlyn 
 if he'd ordered a bottle of wine with his dinner." 
 
 CHAPTER YI. 
 
 THE END OP THE WORLD. 
 
 The sun was low when Francis Tredethl^-n left the Crown Inn, 
 and walked slowl}^ up the village street. The sun was low, and 
 already a crimson glory flickered here and there iipon the quaint 
 old casements. The young man walked slowly, looking about 
 liim with a half-doubtful, half-bewildered gaze, like a man who 
 Bees his native village in a dream. And indeed no village in 
 the vision of a sleeper could be more tranquil in its rustic repose 
 than this Cornish street, steep and stony, moi;nting to the 
 Bummit of a hill, upon whose top the great gates of Landresdale 
 loomed grim and stately, like the entrance to an ogre's castle in 
 fairyland. You climbed the steep little street; and you came 
 to the big gates of Landresdale ; and that was all. The village 
 ended here; and there was nothing for you to do liut to go back 
 again. It was like coming to the end of the world, and finding 
 a great Elizabethan door of ponderous oak and iron baiTcd 
 agabist any chaotic realm that might lie beyond our evcry-day
 
 Tlie E-nd of tie Worlcf. 88 
 
 earth. There may have been occasions — indeed, the inhahitanta 
 of Landresdiilo would have testified to iiiaiiy snch— on which 
 those ponderous doors swung open on their mighty hini^^es : but 
 the ignorant traveller, looking at them shut, found it dillinult to 
 realize the possibiUty of their ever being opened. They looked 
 like the doors of a mausoleum : which may open once in half a 
 century to admit the coifined dead, but can never be unclosed 
 for any meaner purpose. Grim towers flanked the stony arch 
 on either side, and two old rusty cannon displayed their iron 
 noses within the shadow of the towers, ready to fire a volley 
 down the hilly street whenever the simple folks of Landresdale 
 should evince any revolutionary tendencies. 
 
 To the right of the great gates there was a handsome wing 
 of solid masonry, whose Tudor windows opened upon a square 
 coiirtyard, where there were more cannon, and upon a prim, old- 
 fashioned garden, shut in by a high wall, and only visible to the 
 wanderer through the iron rails and arabesques of a lofty gate, 
 amidst whose scrollwork the arms of the Landresdales and Tre- 
 verbyns, the Courtenays and Polwheles, were interlaced and 
 entangled. 
 
 The' garden wall bounded the estate of Eashleigh Vyvyan 
 Trevannence, Marquis of Landresdale ; and beneath the shelter 
 of that old ivy-covered red brick wall lay the churchyard, quiet 
 and shadowy, dark with the dense foliage of great yew-trees, 
 thick with long tangled grass, that grew high amongst the 
 slanting headstones. Francis Tredethlyn stopped by the low 
 wooden gate, and leaning against the moss-grown pillar that 
 supported it, looked up at the square towers which seemed like 
 stony sentinels for ever keeping guard over the entrance to 
 Landresdale. The hght was red upon the corner window that 
 faced the western sky, but all the other casements stared blankly 
 and darkly out upon the graves in the churchyard, and the 
 empty village street, in which one woman, toiUng slowly up- 
 wards with a pitcher of water that slopped and trickled at 
 intervals upon the pavement, was the only living presence. 
 
 " The great gates look just the same as they used to look," 
 thought "Francis Tredethlyn. " When I was a boy, and read 
 fairy-tales, I always fancied that the enchanted castle the wan- 
 dering prince came to in the middle of a wood, or on the summit 
 of a great mountain, was like Landresdale, a castle standing all 
 alone in the middle of the way, with no road to the right nor to 
 the left, so that the prince must go in and ask shelter, though he 
 knew that harm would come of it, or else go back and lose all 
 the trouble of his journey. How I used to long to pull that 
 bell when I was a iad ! " thought _ Francis, looking at theiron 
 ring which swung from a massive chain on one side of the 
 archway.
 
 84 Onhj a Clod. 
 
 " But I've no need to dawdle liera," he thoiiglit, as he pxislied 
 the gate open and wont into the clmrchj^ard. " It seems as if 
 the nearer I get to the place where I am certain to hear the 
 trnth abont Susan, tlie more I dread hearing it." 
 
 The ignorant traveller who might turn away from the great 
 gates of Landrcsdale to descend the hill under the impression 
 that the county of Coniwall came to an abrupt termination 
 npon the threshold of the Marquis's domain, would have been 
 mistaken. There were other and higher lands, broad stretches 
 of hill and moorland, lying beyond the churchyard, to the right 
 of the quaint old garden and the (Jothic towers and casements : 
 and it was thitherward that Francis Tredethlyn directed his 
 steps. He crossed the churchyard, only pausing bricUy before 
 one tombstone, upon which the names of Sarah and John 
 Tredethlyn were cut, low down on the stone, at the bottom of a 
 long list of Tredetlilyns, who lay buried in that churchyard. 
 The young man let himself out of the solemn precinct by a 
 little rusty iron gate that opened on a broad expanse of coniinon 
 land sloiiing upward towards the western sky, and only broken 
 here and there by a cpuirry or a patch of water. 
 
 " It looks bleak and barren enough," thought Francis, with 
 a shudder ; " but it's hereabouts that my uncle Oliver picked 
 up a good bit of his money. The tin mines lie out yonder ; and 
 the stone quarry in the hollow there brought him in plenty, if 
 folks tell the triiUi." 
 
 Francis Tredethlyn might have echoed the boast of Helen 
 Macgregor had he chosen, and with stronger justification than 
 that lad}', for the earth uj^on Avhich he trod was not only his 
 native land but Ids own peculiar property, by virtue of certain 
 yellow-looking parchments imder the sign-manual of an Earl and 
 Baron of Landresdale who flourished in the reign of James I. 
 and by payment of an eccentric annual tribute in the shapo 
 of a young doe and a hundredweight of virgin tin. It was all 
 his own, this bleak waste land which Francis Tredethlyn, late 
 private soldier in her IMajesty's service, late valet to a capricious 
 master, now trod under his feet. Nor was it the less to be con- 
 sidered for its barrenness of aspect, for rich metals lay deep 
 below the heathery surface, in mines that were amongst the 
 oldest and most valuable in Cornwall. 
 
 But Francis Tredethlyn was in no wise elated or disturbed by 
 the ira])ortance of his possession. He had never felt any ardent 
 desire for wealth, and as yet he had not begun to realize its 
 manifold advantages. He saw the effect of his fortune upon 
 other men, and smiled at their weakness; but what had been 
 true of him in the first hour of his altered position was true of 
 him now, — he had no ]»ower either to realize or rejoice in the 
 extent of his riches.
 
 The End of tlic TT'urlJ. 35 
 
 He wallccd slowly across tlie barren moorlunil, always upward, 
 always inouuiinff towards a long ridge of western hill, behind 
 which two streaks of yellow light stn'tched low against tho 
 darkening sky,— a bleak, bare-looking hill, that seemed the very 
 end of tire world. It was upon this hillside that Tredethlyn 
 Grange had been bnilt four centuries ago, in the days when men 
 built Uieir l)t)uscs with a view to endurance; and it stood there 
 still, a long gray tenement of moss-grown stone, with narrow 
 casement windows, looking darkly out upon tlie twilight moor. 
 The larger portion of the old house had b(;(>n uninhabited during 
 the tenanlsliip of the Tredethlyns, who, in a spirit of economy, 
 had located themselves in tlie inferior rooms lying at one end of 
 the rambling mansion. It was in one of these rooms that a 
 light now twinkled faintly; and it was towards this end of the 
 house that Francis Tn'dcthlyn directed his steps. 'L'liere had 
 been a moat once on two sides of the house, bat caljbages now 
 grew uijon the sloping earth. There had been a garden once 
 before the Grange, and an old stone sun-dial still marked the 
 spot; but of all the trim llower-bcds and angular paths there 
 remained no vestige now. A lield of trefoil, bounded by a low 
 stone wall, lay beyond two broken pillars that had once sup- 
 ported a j)air of handsome gates ; and the sheep browsed close 
 beneath the dim latticed windows. 
 
 " It seems like the end of the world to me to-night," thought 
 Mr. Tredethlyn ; " and yet once it was conilbriable and lunup-liko 
 enough, when I sat with Susy of a night by the lire in tho 
 kitchen, while she darned the old man's gray worsted stockings. 
 And to think that he had such oceans of money all that time, 
 and yet seemed almost to grudge his only child every gown she 
 wore, and every bit of bread she put into her mouth." The 
 young man was close to the familiar threshold by this time. 
 He knocked at a low, narrrow door in the neighbourhood of tho 
 one dimly lighted window, and then drew back a few p)accs, 
 looking up at the old-fashioned casements. 
 
 " Tliis is the window of Susy's room," ho thought. " How 
 black and dark it looks to-night ! I remember coming up here 
 the night before I ran away to Falmouth to endist. I remember 
 standing }jy the low wall yonder, in the cold autumn night, 
 looking up at that very window. There was a light burning 
 then, and I thought of how I should see it burning just the same 
 when I came back, and how I'd throw a handful of earth uji at 
 the old window, and Susy would look out, startled and wonder- 
 ing, to find her faithful sweetheart come back to her from the 
 end of the world. And now it's this place that scenas like the 
 end of the world somehow, and I'm every bit as far from Susy 
 now as ever I was out yonder. 
 
 Tho duor was opened oidy a very little way, and a wi.num'a
 
 80 Onlij a Clod. 
 
 face, 80 hard and angular that it seemed ahnost to cut into the 
 dusky atmosphere, peered out at the traveller. 
 
 " What do you please to want, sir ? " she asked, suspiciously. 
 
 " I want to ask you a few questions, Martha Dryscoll. I've 
 come from the Anti])odes to ask them." 
 
 "Mr. Trcdethlyn !" cried the woman, opening the door to its 
 widest extent ; '" Mr. Francis Tredethlyn come home to his own 
 like a ghost in the night ! I make so bold as to bid yoii welcome, 
 sir. Your uncle's empty chair stands ready for you. The house 
 seems strange and lonesome without him." 
 
 It was not everybody'- who would have ascribed to Mr. Oliver 
 Tredethlyn the power to enliven any house with the smallest ray 
 of cheerfulness, or brighten any fireside with so much as the 
 faintest glimmer of light. But Llartha Dryscoll spoke in all 
 good faith. She had believed in her master, and had worked 
 for him, and pinched for him, and half-starved herself and other 
 people for his sake, throughout five-and-thirty years of th{ 
 dreariest and hardest hfe that woman ever endured. He ha^ 
 picked her \\\), starved and almost dying, upon a high i-oad near 
 one of his outlying famis, and had taken her from field-labour 
 and all its attendant pams, to be his housekeeper and — slave ; 
 and she had repaid this favour a thousandfold by a devotion 
 that knew no weariness, and a rigid economy that extended 
 itself to the saving of a grain of salt in the old spindle-legged 
 leaden saltcellars. 
 
 Oliver Tredethlyn had not been actuated by any Quixotic 
 motive in this eccentric choice of a servant. He took his house- 
 keeper from the wayside because he saw in her a stuff he had 
 vainly sought in the pampered menials who had hitherto 2:)re- 
 sented themselves to his notice. He had been attracted to Martha 
 in the first instance by her gaunt face and gaunter figure, which 
 would have been sufliciently alarming in one of King Frederick 
 "William's chosen grenadiers. He had been attracted stUl more 
 by her curt answers to his curt questions, in which she told him 
 that she had walked thirty miles that day before lying down, as 
 Bhe believed, to die ; that she had walked twenty miles the day 
 before, and five-and-twenty the day before that ; that she had 
 not tasted food for the last eight-and-forty hours ; and that she 
 had worked in the fields and lived upon an average of two-pcnco 
 a day ever since she could remember. 
 
 It was upon this that a bargain was struck between Oliver 
 Trcdethlyn, of Tredethlyn Grange, of the one j^art, and Martha 
 Blank, jNIartha Anj'body, of the other part, for the poor creature 
 had no knowledge of any special surname to which she might 
 lay claim. She had been called Carroty Jane in one jilace be- 
 cause her hair was red and her name was not J ane. She had 
 been called Gawky Bet, and Lanky Poll, at other places, on
 
 The Und of tie World. 87 
 
 account of her abnormal lieiglit ; but the name ,^lie had leceived 
 m the Union, wliere her earlier years had Ijeon j^asscd, waa 
 iRFartha, and it was tliis name which she herself recniriiised as her 
 legitimate ajipellation. She went home with Oliver Trcdcthljn 
 in one of his empty waggons, and ate her first spare meal in the 
 Grange kitchen before nightfall ; and from that hour nntil the 
 old man's death she served him well and faithfully. She lived 
 with him all the days of his bachelorhood, and resignedly united 
 herself to his bailiff when he commfinded her so to do. This 
 faithful creature welcomed Mr. Tredethlyn's wife when he took 
 it into his head to bring home a small tenant-farmer's pretty 
 daughter, who had been forced into a marriage with a man 
 whom she detested; and, faithful and untiring to the last, this 
 rough-handed, brawny-armed serv.iit watched by the young 
 wife's sick bed during those dull years in which she slowly 
 withered and faded, from a fresh, blooming girl, into a prema- 
 turely old woman, and so sank by lingering stages into an early 
 grave, leaving behind her one only child, whose infancy and 
 girlhood were brightened by no softer light than such as might be 
 shed from the grim, grenadier-hke affection of Martha Dryscoll. 
 
 Jonathan Dryscoll, the farm-bailiff whom Ohver Tredethlyn 
 Lad desired his housekeeper to marry, was ten years younger 
 than his wife, and was so poor and weak a creature morally and 
 physically in her hands, that he seemed at least half a century 
 her junior. If she told him to do anything, he did it. If she 
 told liim to think anything, he thought it ; or would have done 
 80, if the mental exercise had not been generally beyond the 
 scope of his faculties. He was as honest and faithful as Martha 
 herself; but if Martha had told him to go and fire all the ricks 
 on Oliver Tredethlyn's projoerty, he would have done it with the 
 blind trustfulness of a princess in a child's story-book, who obeys 
 the eccentric behests of a fairy godmother. That Martha Dry- 
 scoll could do anything wrong, or think anything wrong, was 
 an hypothesis which Jonathan her husband had never contem- 
 l^lated. Perhaps the pleasantest thing about tliis couple was 
 that there was no disagreeable evidence of Martha's authority. 
 Indeed, that worthy woman was most punctilious in respect to 
 her hege lord and husband, whom she always spoke of as " the 
 master." Jonathan obeyed and trembled, but the sceptre which 
 his wife wielded was an invisible one, and the chains that bound 
 her slave were as impalpable as if they had been fasliioned of 
 cobwebs. 
 
 Mart,ha Dryscoll was not renowned for her capacity of ex- 
 
 Eressing any species of emotion ; but some faint ray of pleasure 
 indled in her grim face as she conducted Francis Tredethlyn 
 through the kitchen to an apai'tment that had served as a kind 
 of state chamber for threp generations of his race. She set the
 
 38 Only a Clod. 
 
 canillf: on ilie polished mahogany iahle, and, folding her arms, 
 cnntoin)>l;ilod the new mastor of tlic Grana^e at hor Ic-isure. In 
 that dim light, in her quaint, scanty dress, with a brown back- 
 gi'onnd of oaken wainscot behind her, she looked lilce a quaint 
 figure in one of Jan Steeu's i^ictures, a hard-faced, angular 
 housewife, honest, laborious, and economical, with lier oar per- 
 petually open to the leaking of beer-barrels, or the boihng-over 
 of soujvkettles ; her eye ever on the alert to perceive waste or 
 destructi( m. 
 
 " I wish you welcome, Mr. Tredclhlyn," she said ; and then, 
 with sometliing like sadness in hor tone, " If the money ivas to 
 go away from her, better that it should go to you than to 
 strangers. I don't think that you'd turn your back upon her, 
 if she was to need your help ; would you now, Mr. Francis ? " 
 
 "Turn my back upon her!" cried the young man, — "turn 
 my back upon my cousin Susy ! Do you think I want the 
 money that ought to have been "hers ? With God's blessing, I 
 will go to the end of the world to find my poor little girl. But 
 tell lae — tell me all about it, Martha. I know you are a good 
 creature. I know you were fond of Susan, though you seemed 
 hard and stern, like the old man. Tell me all you know about 
 my lost cousin, and don't fear but I'll make good use of my 
 knowledge." 
 
 " It isn't much I have to tell, sir," answered the housekeeper, 
 very gravely. " You remember old I^Ir. Eestwick, of Pen Gor- 
 bold. Folks say that he's almost as rich as our master waa. 
 However it is, he and master were always fast friends ; and 
 when Mrs. Eestwick had been dead a little over a twelvemonth, 
 he ami master seemed to get friendlier than ever, and was always 
 laying their h(>ads together ahont somelliing, old Eestwick 
 hanging about this place, and sitting in our kitchen, and in thia 
 very room — for master made quite a fuss with the old man, and 
 would sit in the parlour on his account — all the summer time. 
 Miss Susan usen't to like the old man, but she daredn't say as 
 much, seeing as he was her father's friend. Heaven, as looks 
 down upon me, knows, Mr. Francis, than the real reason of old 
 Restwick jjottering about our place night after night never came 
 into my head, no more than if it had been so much Greek or 
 Latin. But one night — one quiet summer evening, after such a 
 day as to-day — the truth came out all at once; and it came 
 npon Susan Trcdpthlyn as it came upon me — like a thunder- 
 bolt. Can 3'ou guess what it was, Mr. Francis ? " 
 
 " No ! " exclaimed the young man, staring at Martha Dryscoll 
 with a bewildered expression on his face. 
 
 " Nor any o!ic else, Mr. Francis, that wasn't so wrapped up 
 in the love of his money that the veiy heart inside of him had 
 turned to etuff as hard as his golden guineas, or harder ; for
 
 The End of ilie World. m 
 
 there's Home Iciiul of furnace as will melt tliem, isn't tliert>, Mr. 
 Francis? On the iii<;lit I am lellini^ you of, my master told 
 iSiisau the meaning of old L'cstwick's visits. She was to marry 
 liim — poor, pretty young thing. IFe'd iironiise to make such 
 and sucli — settlements — I think master eiiUed 'em. and she'd be 
 mistress of Pen Clorl)old farm, and one of the richest wouuhi in 
 this ]iart of the country. The poor dear only gave one shriek, 
 ]\Ir. i^-ancis, ar.d fell down upon the floor at lier father's feet as 
 white and as quiet as a corpse." 
 
 "The liard-hearted villain!" cried Francis, pacmg up and 
 down the room ; " the ijii'erual villain ! " 
 
 " She didn't lie there long ; she wasn't let to do that. Mr. 
 Tredcthlyn hfted her up by the arm, and set her on her feet, 
 fierce and savag(!-like ; and when she opened her eyes, and 
 looked about her, all stupctied and bewildered, he began to talk 
 to her. It was cruel talk to hear from a lather to his child ; it 
 was a cruel sight to see her trembling and shivering, and only 
 held from falling by his hard hand clenched upon her arm. I 
 tried to interfere between them, Mr. Francis; but my master let 
 his daughter drojD into a chair, and pushed me out of the room. 
 Me and Jonathan was sleeping in the room over the stables then, 
 and Mr. Tredethlyn took me by the shoulders, and put me out 
 of the door that opens from the kitchen into the stone-yard at 
 back. I heard the door bolted against me, and I knew I could 
 be no help or comfort to that poor child all night. The door's 
 thick, but I could just hear Susan Tredethlyn's sobs now and 
 then, like as if they'd been blown towards me on the winds, and 
 her father's voice speaking loud and stern; I listened till all 
 seemed quiet, and I was in hopes his heart was softened towards 
 her. But when I got up at four o'clock next morning — for it 
 was harvest-time, and we were very busy — Susan Tredethlyn's 
 rciom was empty, and the front door was unlocked and unbolted. 
 She'd run away, Mr. Francis ; she'd let lierself out some time 
 in the night, and run away. There was a little scrap of a shawl 
 she used to wear hanging to the latch of the door. That was 
 bad news for me to tell my master, Mr. Francis ; but I had to 
 tell it. He turned white, and glared at me for a minute just 
 like a wild beast, and there was a choking, gurgling kind of noise 
 in his throat. But he was as quiet after that one minute as if 
 he had been made of iron. ' So much the better, INIrs. Dryscoll,' 
 he said, ' an undntiful daughter isn't worth the meat she eats.' " 
 
 " But he went after her," said Francis ; " surely he rnad« 
 some attempt to bring her back ? He didn't let a poor igno- 
 rant girl go out into the world without a friend — without a 
 sixpence?" 
 
 " She had a httle money, Mr. Francis. Her father had 
 given her a eovereign on her birthday every year for the last
 
 40 Only a Clod. 
 
 ten years, making her promise to save the money. She had 
 saved the money, for she had no chance to spend it, poor child ; 
 and she took that money with her, for when I looked ahont her 
 room I missed the Httle box she nsed to keep it in. As to look- 
 ing for her, Mr. Tredethlyn never stirred hand or foot to do it, 
 though I went on ni}' bended knees to him, begging and praying 
 of him to bring her back. As to me, Mr. Francis, I'm but a 
 poor ignorant countr3'Avoman, that never learned to read and 
 write tiU I was getting on for thirty ; but I got my husband to 
 go to Falmoutli with an advertisement for the county paper, 
 saying as ' S. T. was to remember she liad a true friend in M. D., 
 and was to be sure and write to her whenever she wanted help.' 
 I daredn't say more, sir ; and I think when master saw that 
 advertisement he knew what it meant, for he glared at me across 
 the paper, just as he glared at me when I told him his daughter 
 was gone." 
 
 " And he never relented — he never softened towards that pool 
 TinhapjDy girl r " 
 
 " For three years, sir, he never mentioned her name. Night 
 after night he'd sit and write, and make out his accounts, and 
 calculate his profits, and such-like, and he'd talk to me fast 
 enough about the business of the farm ; but he never spoke his 
 daughter's name. One day he got a letter directed in her hand. 
 I took it from the postman at Landresdale myself one afternoon 
 when I was down there marketing, and I wi-ote down the post- 
 mark that was on it, and that was all I ever knew of that 
 letter. When my master saw the hand, he came over all of a 
 tremble like, and there was something awful in the sight of that 
 stern old man trembling and shivering like as if he had been 
 stricken by the palsy ; but he got over it in a minute, and read 
 the letter, me watching him all the time. If his face had been 
 stone, it couldn't have told less. He crumialed up the letter and 
 put it in his j^ocket, and for three months he never spoke of that 
 nor of his daughter. Yet I knew somehow that he thought of 
 her ; for a kind of change came over him, and he seemed always 
 brooding, brooding, broodi-ig ; and he'd start up all of a sudden 
 when we was all sitting of a oi.o-ht quiet in this kitchen — he'd 
 start up as if he was going righl ^TS'ay, and thi?a heave a long 
 sigh, and sit down again. But he noT3r jwiid a ay thing about 
 what was in his thoughts, till one morning Ls •zzir^.o. to me, and 
 said very cpuetly, ' Pack me some clothes in a carpet-bag, Mrs. 
 Dryscoli. I'm going to London to look for my daughter.' My 
 husband and him went on foot down to Landresdale to catch 
 the Falmouth coach ; but our master never came back. The 
 next news as we heard of him, Mr. Francis, came to us a month 
 after he'd left. It was a letter from the lawyers, to say that 
 Mr. Oliver TredetLlyn was dead."
 
 TJie End of the World. 41 
 
 " And is that all ? " 
 
 •* Yes, Mr. Francis ; I can tell you no more. My master was 
 a £:ood master to me, and I served him faithfully, and worked 
 hard to save his money. But things have all seemed to come 
 before me in a new light since that night when I saw Susan 
 Tredethlyn fall white and cold at her father's feet, and him 
 without pity for her. It seems as if I'd been stone-blind up to 
 that time, Mr. Francis; and my eyes was opened all of a 
 sudden ; and I saw that we'd been all wicked heathens, makmg 
 an idol out of money that had never brought happiness or com- 
 fort to any living creature ; least of all to ourselves. I saw it all 
 at once that night, Mr. Francis, and I knew that our hves had 
 been wrong somehow." 
 
 IMartha DryscoU spoke very earnestly. She was a good 
 woman, after her own manner ; eager to do her duty to the 
 uttermost, grateful for small favours, faithful and afiectionate. 
 A noble heart beat in that grenadier-hke form, a gentle spirit 
 looked out of those hard gray eyes. She told the story of her 
 young mistress's flight with a soiTowful solemnity, undisturbed 
 by tears. Perhaps her hard childhood, her bitter youth, her 
 joyless middle life had dried up the source of that tender 
 womanly emotion ; for Martha DryscoU had never been seen by 
 hving witnesses to shed a tear. She unlocked a grim-looking 
 workbox, and took from it a Httle pocket-book, out of which she 
 tore a leaf. 
 
 " That's the name that was on the post-mark, Mr. Francis,' 
 ehe said, handing the paper to ]Mr. Tredethlyn. 
 The young man read the word Coltonslough, 
 " Coltonslough," he repeated, "I never heard of a place of 
 that name. But I'll find it, if it's the most obscure spot upon 
 the earth. God bless you, Martha DryscoU, for I believe you're 
 a good woman." 
 
 He held out his hand, and grasped the housekeeper's bony 
 fingers as he spoke. 
 
 •' We've been awaiting — me and the master — for orders from 
 you as to what we was to do, sir. We're ready to serve you 
 faithful, if you wau'ii our service ; but we're ready to leave the 
 old place, if we're any burden upon you. You'U be coming to 
 settle here, maybe P " 
 
 "No," answered Francis Tredethlyn, with something of a 
 Bhudder. " If I'd found Susan here, as I once thonght to find 
 her, I should have been glad enough to settle somewhere in 
 these parts. As it is, there's something m the place that gives 
 me the heartache, and I doubt if I shall evor come near rt 
 again. AVhatever wages you and your husband had in my 
 uncle's time shall be doubled from to-night, Mrs. DryscoU; and 
 if my cousin Susan is stiU alive, and should ever find her way
 
 42 Onh/ a Clod. 
 
 bade to Uiis ]ilaoc, I slimilJ like her to soe a Uglit buniing in 
 tlm old window, and to find a faithful friend ready to bid hei 
 welcome home." 
 
 Francis Tredothljii did not linger very long in the house 
 where a L^n-cat ]>art of his boyluidd had been spent. Martha's 
 hiisl)and ranie in presently, smelling' very stronj^ly of cowhouse 
 and stable, and the two would fain have given Mr. Tredcthlyn 
 a detailed ae(HMint of their stewardship : but the young man had 
 no heart to listen to them. AVhat did it matter to him that he 
 was the poorer liy the death of an Alderney cow on the pasture- 
 farm down in the valley, or the richer by a great sheep-shearing 
 season on the liill.'' He came home to find no creature of his 
 \Hh or kin. He stood as much alone in the world as Adam 
 I'ei'ore Eve was created to bear him company; and he felt very 
 desolate in spite of his thirty thousand a year. 
 
 He walked back to Landresdale across the bleak moorland 
 under the still summer night. Away in the distance he saw the 
 dark expanse of jjurple ocean melting imperceptibly into purple 
 sky : and vague and dim as that shadowy distance seemed the 
 unknown future that lay before him. He sle2")t at the Crown, 
 and left Landresdale early the next morning by the Falmouth 
 coach, journeying Londonward : but he had by no means aban- 
 doned his search for Susan Tredethlyn. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 MAUDE HILLAKY's ADOREKS. 
 
 From the bleak moorland on the Cornish hills, where no tree 
 can flourish, and where the sweeping breath of the salt sea- 
 breeze nips the tender verdure, and nuikes the quiet sheep wink 
 again as they look oceauward ; from the hilly district beyond 
 Landresdale, w,hich seems like the end of the world, and is at 
 any rate the finishing-point of this British Isk', to the valley of 
 the Thames, the sheltered and lovely hollow nestling under the 
 wooded heights about the Star-and-Garter, is aboiit as great a 
 change of scene as all England can afford. It is Hke the push- 
 ing away of some battered front scene which has done duty for 
 the blasted heath near Forres, whereon Macbeth met the witches, 
 since the days when Garrick himself represented the ambitions 
 Thane, to reveal a glimpse of fairyland fresh from the pencil of 
 Mr. Beverley, with sunlit cascades glimmering here and there 
 amongst the verdant valleys, and forest-trees refiected in the 
 calm bosom of a lake. 
 
 ]\Ir. Hillary's place lay in a sheltered bend of the river, nearer 
 to Isleworth than to Twickenham — a spot where the trees grew 
 thicker and the shadows fell darker on the quiet water, and the
 
 Maude JliUary's Adoren. 43 
 
 plash of onvs was loss often hoard, ihan hi<;'hor up the river, 
 J\Ir. liillary's hmiso and Air. llill;iry's fj^ardon seemed to have 
 nestled into the shadiest and most verdant nook alonLj th(; river- 
 bank. It was called the C'edars, and it was a very oM place, as 
 any place so called shonUl be. It was called the Cedars by 
 virtue of the f:irca.t trees whose spreading branches niade patches 
 of d(^nso shadow on the lawn; and not by the caprice of a 
 cockney builder, who christens his shelterless houses indiffe- 
 rently after the nobli'st trees of the forest. The house was an 
 old red-brick mansion, long and low and irregular; and there 
 is no kind of window invented for the admission of the light of 
 lieaven, and there is no species of blind devised by ingenious 
 artisan for the exclusion of that litcht when it becomes ob- 
 noxious, which did not adorn and diversify the glowing crimson 
 of the facade. Oriel windows and Tudor windows ; long French 
 windows of violet-sttiined glass, tiny diamond-paned casements, 
 and noble jutting-out bays ; windows with balconies, and win- 
 dows with verandahs; strij^ed linen blinds of crimson and white, 
 and Venetian shutters of dazzling green ; windows leading into 
 conservatories, and windows opening into aviaries, — all com- 
 bined to bewilder the eye of the stranger who stood upon the 
 lawn by the river looking np at Mr. Hillary's mansion. 
 
 PerhaiDS there never had been any where else so many flowers, 
 and birds, and gold-fish, and pet dogs, collected together in an 
 area of two acres and a half. Banks of particoloured blossoms 
 blazed in the sunshine on the lawn tier above tier, like the bon- 
 nets on the grand stand at Ascot on a Cup day ; marble basins 
 of limpid water and tiny trickling fountains twinkled and glit- 
 tered in evei'v direction ; fragile colonnades of delicate ironwork, 
 overhung with jasmine and clematis, honeysuckle and myrtle- 
 blossom, led away to bowery nooks upon the broad terrace by 
 the river; and what with the perfume of a million flowers, the 
 gurgling of blackbirds and thrushes, the carolling of skylarks, 
 the shrill whisthng of a grove of canaries, the cooing of tropical 
 love-birds, the screaming of paroquets, and the barking of half- 
 a-dozen excited lapdogs, the stranger, suddenly let loose in Mr. 
 Hillary's river-side Eden, was apt to yield himself up for the 
 moment to a state of confusion and bewildei'ment. 
 
 The place was in itself bewildering enough for the ordinary 
 mind ; without ]\Iiss Hillary— withoiit Miss Hillary ! But when 
 Miss Hillary came sailing out of a drawing-room window, with 
 diaphanous draperies of white and blue fluttering and spreading 
 round her, and with all manner of yellow, gold, and purple 
 enamel absurdities dangling at her wrists, and depending from 
 the loveliest throat and the pinkest ears in Christendom, — the 
 stranger who was not j^rovided with forty thousand a year and 
 a coronet, the which to lay at the feet of that adorable creature,
 
 44 Only a Clod. 
 
 was the wealcest of fools if he did not take to his heels there and 
 then, and fly from the Cedars, never to return thither. If he 
 Btaycd, he fully desen-ed his fate. If, looking at INIaude Hillary, 
 and knowing that he could never hope to win her for his own, 
 he did not straightway flee from th.it flowery paradise beside 
 the sunlit rivei', all after-agonies endured by his luckless heart 
 were only the natural consequence of his mad temerity. But 
 then, unhappily, there are so many mad men in the wtorld. 
 Homburg and Baden-Baden are dangerous places, but there are 
 crowds of deluded creatures who will haunt the dazzling halls of 
 the Kursaal, and the elegant saloons of M. Benazet, so long as 
 the fatal wheel revolves, and the croupier cries, " Make your 
 game, gentlemen; the game is made." What can be a more 
 absurd spectacle than a big blundering moth whirUng and flut- 
 tering about the flame of a candle? Yet the incineration of 
 moth A will not be accepted as a warning by moth B, though 
 he may be a witness of the sacriflce. Younger sons and brief- 
 less barristers, earning a fluctuating income by the exercise of 
 their talents in hght Uterature ; artists ; curates, hopeless of rich 
 preferment, — came, and saw, and were conquered. The man 
 ■who, being a bachelor and under thirty years of age, beheld Maude 
 Hillaiy, and did not fall in love wuth her, was made of sterner 
 stufi" than the rest of his race, and must have had in him the 
 material for a Cromwell or a RobespieiTe. He must have been 
 a ston}^ incorruptible, bilious creature, intended to hold iron 
 sway over his fellow-men ; he had no busiuess in the paradise 
 between Isleworth and Twickenham. 
 
 Shall I describe Maude Hillary as she sails across the lawn 
 this July morning ? I use the word ' sail,' as applied to this 
 young lady's movements, advisedly ; for there was a swimming, 
 undulating motion in her walk, which was apt to remind one 
 of a lovely white-sailed yacht gliding far out across an expanse 
 of serene blue water on a summer's day. Shall I describe her ? 
 No ; if I do, stern critics will tell me that she is a very common- 
 place young person after all, when it is only my description that 
 will be commonplace. Her complexion was specially fair and 
 bright ; but it was not because of her fair skin that she was 
 beautiful. Her features were delicate and harmonious ; but 
 those who admired her most could scarcely have told you whether 
 her nose was nearer to the Grecian or the Roman type ; whether 
 her forehead was low or high, her chin round or pointed. She 
 was be%vitching, rather than beautiful. For if Paris awarded 
 the apple on purely technical grounr's, a thousand lovely English 
 women might have disputed the prize with Maude Hillary. 
 But I think Paris would have wished to give her the apple, if 
 only for the pleasure of seeing her bright face li^ht uj) into new 
 radiance with the joy of her triumph; though m strict justice
 
 Maude Hillary 9 Adorers. 48 
 
 ho mi£?lit fcol himself oLIigcd to bestow tlio frait clsewlicre. 
 IVl ii!3 ilillai-y was bewitch ini,'; and people saw her, and fell in 
 love with her, and bowed tliemselves down at her feet, long 
 before they had time to find out that she was not so very 
 L»'antiful after all. 
 
 She came winding in and out among the flower-beds now, 
 and betook herself towards an open temple at one end of the 
 terrace by the river— a temple of slender marble columns, en- 
 twined with ivy and beautiful ephemeral parasites, whose gaudy 
 blossoms reheved the sombre green. Two gentlemen, who were 
 tl importing themselves with lawn Ijilliards, deserted that amuse- 
 ment and strolled over to the temple. They went slowly enough, 
 because they held it vulgar to be m a hurry, and they were very 
 young, and very much used up as to all the joys and sorrows 
 and excitements of tliis earth ; but they were over head and ears 
 in love with Miss Hillary notwithstanding. 
 
 She was' not alone. She never was alone. She had for her 
 constant associates from four to half-a-dozen pet dogs, and Miss 
 Juha Desmond, her companion. Miss Desmond was by no 
 means the despised companion so popular in three-volume novels. 
 She was a very dignified young lady, whose father had been a 
 3olonel in ever so many different armies. She was one of the 
 Desmonds of Castle Desmond, near Limerict, and there were 
 three peerages in her family, to say nothing of one extinct earl- 
 dom, forfeited by reason of high treason on the part of its pos- 
 3essor, the revival of which, for his own benefit, had been the 
 lifelong dream of Patrick Macuamara Ryan O'Brien Desmond, 
 until death let fall a curtain on that and many other fond delu- 
 sions which had survived unchanged and changeless to the last 
 in the eternal boyhood of an Irislunan's nature. 
 
 Julia was a very dignified young lady, and had been highly 
 educated in a Parisian convent, whence she had returned to the 
 south of Ireland to find the imj^ress of decay upon every object 
 iround her, from the grass-grown roofs of the cottages in the 
 lane below the castle-boundary to the shattered figure of the 
 brave old colonel. She returned in time to attend her father's 
 death-bed, to which Lionel Hillary, liis oldest friend and largest 
 creditor, was summoned by an imploring letter from the old 
 colonel. To Mr. Hillary the old man confided his penniless 
 daughter. He had nothing to leave her but a set of old-fasliioned 
 garnet ornaments which had belonged to her mother, and to 
 which he fondly alluded as the "fani'ly jools; " he had nothing 
 to leave her except this anticpie trumpery and his blessing ; but 
 he confided her to his largest creditor, having a vague impres- 
 sion that the largeness of the debt and the heavy interest he 
 would have given upon all the money lent him by his friend, 
 bad he ei-er lived to return the principal, laid Mr. Hillary under
 
 46 Onlt/ a Clod. 
 
 a land of obligation to him. However it was, the London mer- 
 chant promised to be a friend and protector to Julia Desmond; 
 and as soon as the colonel's funeral was over carried her back to 
 London with him. and established her in his own house, as the 
 companion of his daughter. A j'-ouncc lady more or less was of 
 httlo conscqviencc in such an establishment as the Cedars ; so 
 the merchant thought very lightly of what he did fur Misa 
 Desmond, and IVlaude Hillary was delighted to have a friend 
 who was to be her perpetual companion ; a friend who could 
 sing a good second to any duet, and was never out of time in 
 "Blow, gentle gales," whensoever a masculine visitor -wuth a 
 good bass organ was to be procured for the thii'd in that delicioua 
 glee. The two girls drove together, and walked together, and 
 rode together, ;iud played duets on one ]iiauo and on two 2)iauos, 
 era harp and piano; and went out tugctber to make water-col<»ur 
 sketches of tlieir favourite bends in the river, with very blue 
 water and very green willows, and a man in a scarlet jacket lazily 
 pushing a ferry-boat away from the shore, and a Newfoundland 
 dog, very black and white and spotty, lying on the bank. 
 
 Julia Desmond led a very jileasant life, and there were peoi)le 
 who said that the colonel's daughter was a most fortunate iierson ; 
 but for Julia herself there was just one drop in the cup wliich 
 was bitter enough to change the flavour of the entire draught. 
 She was liut Maude Hillary. That was Lliss Desmoud'a 
 grand grievance. She brootled over it sometimes when she 
 brushed her hair of a night before the big looking-glass in her 
 pretty chintz-curtained chamber at the Cedars. Maude had two 
 cheval glasses that swung upon hinges at each side of her 
 di'essiug-table, and Maude had her own maid to brush her hair; 
 but Juha was fain to smooth her own dark tresses. Miss 
 Desmond thought of her grievance very often of a night, when 
 she contemplated her face by the light of a pair of wax candles, 
 and pondered upon the events of the day. She was not Maude 
 Hillary. She was not sole heiress to one of tlie largest fortunes 
 — so ran the common rumour — ever won by City merchant. 
 She had not received half the attention that had been bestowed 
 upon Miss Hillary duriug that day. And if not, why not? 
 Was it because she was less good-looking ? Certainly not. Miss 
 Desmond was a handsome girl, with bold, striking features, and 
 her black eyes flashed indignation upon the other e3'es in the 
 glass at the mere thought of any personal superiority on the part 
 of Maude Hillary. Was it because she was less accomplished ? 
 No, indeed. Whose thumlis were the strongest and tlid most 
 execution in a fantasia by Tlialberg.'* Whose rig-ht little iinger 
 was clearest and steadiest in a jtrolonged shake ? Whose ligurea 
 in a water-colour sketch stood firmest on their legs ? Miss 
 Desmond's, of course- But Maude was rich, and Julia was poor ;
 
 Maude JliUari/'s AJorcrf. 47 
 
 and tlie meanness of ninnldud was testified by the alDsurd devo- 
 tion which they all exhibited for the heiress. JuHa was really 
 fond of ]\lau(le, and thought her tolerably pretty ^ bnt she did 
 not cmnprelu-nd the grand fact that Miss Hillary was one of the 
 most fascinatinpf of women, and that she herself was not. She 
 waa haTidsonie and stylish, and accomplished and well-bred; 
 but she was not bewitching. When Mande spoke in a friendly 
 manner to any mascnliiic acquaintance he wnsapt to be seized 
 with a mad iinpnlso that promi)ted him to kiss her there and 
 then, thoiigh eternal banishment from her divine presence wmdd 
 be his itnmcnliate doom. Even women had something of the 
 same feeling when iMiss Hillary talked to them; and jjerhapiS 
 this may Ijc attrilnited to the fact that her month was the best 
 and most expressive feature in her face. Such heavenly smiles, 
 Buch innocently and unconsciously bewitching variations of ex- 
 pres;-!iiin pUiyed perpetually ab(nit those lovely rosy lips, that 
 the harshest" womau-hater might have been betrayed into the 
 admission that amongst nature's numerous mistakes Maudo 
 Hillary's creation was an excusable one. Fortune-hunters, who 
 came with mercenary aspirations, remained to be sincere. Rich 
 young stockbrokers, who speculated amongst themselv(-s npoa 
 the extent of Lionel Hillaiy's wealth, would have gladly taken 
 Maude to wife, " ex everything." But Julia Desmond could not 
 understand all this, and she regarded her benefactor's daughter 
 as a feminine image of the golden calf, before which mercenary 
 mankind bowed down in servile worshi]i. 
 
 The two girls seated themselves in the little temple, and the 
 two worshippers came round and performed their homage. But 
 Miss Hillary had more to say to her dogs thau to the loungers 
 on the lawn. 
 
 "Good morning, Captain Masters.— Floss, you are the 
 naughtiest darhng. — Haven't I told you once before. Scrub, 
 that Honiton lace'is not good to eat ?— Papa has not come home 
 yet, I suppose, Mr. Somerset ?— That tiresome City makes a 
 kind of orphan of me, doesn't it, Julia? We never have papa 
 to go with us anywhere now, do we, Juha? — No, Peasblossom, 
 anytlung but a locket wifh papa's hair in it. ^ That mu,st 
 not be worried. — When are we to go to the fete, Captain 
 Masters ? " 
 
 The captain shrugged his shoulders. He was very young, 
 and held every thing upon earth, except Maude, in supreme 
 detestation and contcmjit. 
 
 " As from four to five is about the hottest jieriod in the entire 
 day, I believe the fvte is supposed to be at its best somewhere 
 between four and five," he said; "we manage these things sore- 
 markal)ly well in England." 
 
 " But as the Duke and Duchess are both I'reneh. I suppose
 
 48 Only a Clod. 
 
 tlie management of tlie fete at the Chateau de Bonrbon is Frcncli 
 too, isn't it? " asked Miss Desmond. 
 
 JMaude was occupied with a Scotch ten-ier, who was making 
 ferocious snaps at the jasmine trailing from the roof above her. 
 She would have made a charming subject for a modern Greuze, 
 with the dog held up in her hands, and the loose white muslin 
 sleeves falling back from those fair rounded arms in soft cloudy 
 folds. 
 
 " The Duke and Duchess are very charming," said Mr. So- 
 merset; "and when one thinks that if they had lived in seven- 
 teen ninety-three, instead of eighteen forty-eight, they'd have 
 been inevitably guillotined on the Place Louis Quinze, instead 
 of being comfortably settled in the neighbourhood of Isleworth, 
 one feels an extraordinary kind of interest in them as Uving 
 illustrations of improvement of the times. But, ajxirt from 
 that. Miss Hillary, don't you think the fete a bore? Don't you 
 think any charity fete more or less a bore? I can understand 
 people sending you a subscription Hst, and telling their man to 
 wait in your hall till you write a cheque for them ; but I can't 
 understand people choosing the hottest day in a hot summer to 
 parade about a garden, grinning and smirking at one another, 
 and giving exorbitant prices for things they don't want." 
 
 '* But you mean to go to the fete, Mr. Somerset?" 
 
 " Most decidedly, if I am to have the honour of going with 
 you — and Miss Desmond." 
 
 Miss Desmond, with one flash of her black eyes, exjiressed her 
 appreciation of the little pause that had preceded Mr. Somerset's 
 mention of her name. 
 
 " Yes, I siij^pose we are to take you with us," Maude answered, 
 with cruel carelessness. " Pai:)a said that if he were not home 
 at three, we were to go without him, and he would meet us at 
 the chateau, — and it's i3ast three now, I declare, Julia, and 
 we're not di-essed," added Miss Hillary, looking at her watch ; 
 " aud papa is always so jjarticular about punctuality. Wasn't 
 it Lord Nelson who won the battle of Trafalgar through always 
 being a quarter of an hour beforehand ? I almost wish the 
 French had beaten him, for then people couldn't have quoted 
 him against one perpetually. Will you order the carriage, Juliaj 
 dear? — or will you tell them about it, Mr. Somerset? The 
 landau, with the bays ; papa said the bays were to be used to- 
 day. — ISTow Julia, dear." 
 
 The two girls ran away to dress, and reappeared in about 
 twenty minutes; Julia very splendid in a golden-brown silk 
 dross, and a pale pink bonnet ; Miss Hillary in cloud-like gar- 
 ments of lace, or tulle, or areophane, that were esjDecially be- 
 coming to her tall slender figv;re and the fragile style of lier 
 beauty. Maude Hillary was a very extravagant young lady, and
 
 Maude Hillary's Adorers. 49 
 
 had carte llanche at Messra. Howell and James's, on whose 
 account lier father was wont to write heavy _ cheques at long 
 intervals, without any investigation of the items ; but ]\Iis$ 
 Hillary very seldom wore silk dresses, which are, after uU, about 
 the most economical thing a lady can wear. She aifected gauzy 
 fabrics, all festoons, and puffings and flounces, which were 
 thrown aside for the profit of her maid after the third time of 
 wearing, and ultimately figured in second-hand wardrobe reposi- 
 tories in the dreariest outskirts of Pimlicouia. Iudeed,_ one 
 devoted admirer of Miss Hillary, penetrating Vauxhall bridge- 
 wards from Eccleston Square, had been startled by the appari- 
 tion of his lovely partner at a recent ball danghng hmply, rose- 
 buds and all, from a peg in a dingy shop- window. 
 
 Maude was very extravagant ; but then how could she well be 
 otherwise? Her appreciation of "pounds" was very little 
 above that of Mr. Harold Skimpole. She very rarely had any 
 money; if she wanted shillings, she borrowed them — by the 
 handful— of the housekeeper at the Cedars. But, on the other 
 hand, she had unhmited credit almost everywhere. _ A beggar, 
 or one of the churchwardens of Isleworth, armed with a plate 
 after a charity-sermon, were about the only persons who ever 
 demanded ready money from her. She had a vague idea that 
 there was no limit to her father's wealth, and that she was to 
 have as much of it as she required for her own uses whenever 
 she married, if he approved of her marriage ; and if he did not 
 approve, she would not have the money, and would be poor, and 
 live in a pretty cottage somewhere in the neighbourhood of St. 
 John's Wood, without so much as a pair of ponies to drive in 
 the Park. She looked forward ver;^ vaguely to this sort of 
 thing, always beUeviug that the most indulgent of fathers would 
 come by-and-by to smile upon the penniless Harcourt Lowther, 
 and that everything would end happily, as it does in a comedy. 
 She sighed now and then, and told her contidaute, Juha, that 
 fihe was the most miserable of creatures when she thought of 
 poor dear Harcourt slaving himself to death in that dreadful 
 Van Diemen's Land ; but, on the whole, she bore her separation 
 from her affianced lover with considerable resignation. Was she 
 not by nature a bright and hopeful creature ? and had she not 
 from babyhood inhabited a kind of fairy circle, separated from 
 a4 the common outer world by a golden boundary, sheltered 
 from every rude breath of heaven bj a limitless canopy of bank- 
 notes F
 
 60 Only a Clod. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 AT THE CHATEAU DE BOURBON. 
 
 The cliriteaii in which some of the banished descendants of 
 Louis the Great had set up their household gods, in the shape of 
 a most exquisite collection of artistic treasures, was only a mile 
 or so distant from Mr. Hillary's house. It was an old red-brick 
 mansion hke Ihe Cedars; and, indeed, the banks of the Thames 
 seem specially lich in red-brick mansions of the Georgian period. 
 It was a noble old house, and had extended itself of late years 
 on cither side, until it was almost palatial of aspect. It was a 
 very pretty house, filled to overllowuig ^vith art-treasures, about 
 almost every one of which there hung a history as interesting 
 as the object itself. Eoyalty, the banished royalty of France, 
 inhabited that simple suburban mansion; and on the smooth 
 lawn, where the pemiants were Hying and the band playing, a 
 quiet-looking gentleman moved about among the visitors, whose 
 grave and noble face was the exact reproduction of another face, 
 to be seen in stained marble under a glass case withhi the man- 
 sion; the face of a gentleman who, in the course of an adven- 
 turous career, won some little distinction under the style and 
 title of Henry IV., King of France and Navarre. 
 
 It was almost like going back into the past I'or an hour or so 
 to lounge on that sunny lawn at Twickenham, so strange yet so 
 familiar were some of the names that were heard on the lips of 
 the crowd. There was a mournful kind of interest in those his- 
 toric titles ; and the aspect of the jDrctty flower-festooned mar- 
 quees, where elegant women were charging fabulous prices for 
 all manner of absurdities m the way of i3erhn wool, recalled the 
 image of tented plains and fields of cloth-of-gold, _ in the days 
 when the sons of St. Louis had other and more liigh- sounding 
 busmess in tliis world than such gentle works of charity as 
 occupied them pleasantly enough to-day. 
 
 Maude HUlary was in her glory in the gardens of the Chateau 
 de Bourbon. She had plenty of ready money, for once in a 
 way ; a crisp little bundle of five-pound notes, which her father 
 had brought from the City on the previous evening; and she 
 distribated her wealth freely among the fasliioufible stall-keepers, 
 loading herself and her attendant cavahers with -wax dolls and 
 Berlin-wool work, reticules, antimacassars, painted fire-screens, 
 bottles of toilet vinegar, and feather flowers. She knew a great 
 many people, and she was so bright and animated, and happy- 
 looking, that people who were utter strangers to her watched her 
 with a feeling of interest, and asked one another wlio she waa. 
 She was standing amidst a group of aristocratic acquaintance 
 upon the, terrace overlooking the river, when she cried out that
 
 At the Chdlcau de Bourhon. 61 
 
 her papa had arrived, aud ran away to meet him, leavhig Julia 
 Desmond and the two young men behind her. 
 
 " Au honr ailer yoiir time, papa," she said, putting both her 
 hands into his ; " and I've spent all my money, and I've bovight 
 these for you." She nourished a pair of gorgeously-endn-oidercd 
 slippers before his eyes, and then put her arm through his with 
 an air of proprietorship that was as charming as — every thing 
 else she did. 
 
 Liouel Hilary, Australian merchant, of Moorgatc Street, 
 London, was a handsome-looking man, tall, and stout, and dark, 
 with iron-grey hair and whiskers, and very uidikc his daughter 
 in every respect; for the happy brightness which was the 
 chief element of her beauty found no reflection in his face. He 
 looked very grave, and a little careworn ; and Maude, watching 
 him closely, said presently, 
 
 " I'm ai'raid you have one of yoiu' headaches again to-day, 
 papaP" 
 
 "Yes, my dear; I've been working rather hard this morning. 
 Let me introduce you to this gentleman, whom I have induced 
 to come and spend a little of his money for the benellt of the 
 Duchess's poor people." 
 
 This genllemau was Mr. Francis Tredethlyn, who had been 
 loitering a little in the rear of Lionel Hillary wliile the merchant 
 talked to his daughter. The two men had become accpiainted 
 with each other in the simplest possible manner. Amongst the 
 iroperty Francis Tredethlyn had inherited from his ixncle was a 
 undle of shares in a certain Australian insurance company of 
 which Mr. Hillary was a director. Francis, wanting to make 
 some inquiry about the shares, had been advised to go to Mr. 
 Hillary, and. had done so. He found the merchant very cordial 
 and friendly, — he had found a great many people in these dispo- 
 sitions towards him lately, — and with the frankness natural to 
 him had told a good deal of his story to that gentleman ; alwaya 
 avoiding any allusion to his cousin Susan. Lionel Hillary, 
 being much pleased with his manner, and being generally very 
 kind and hospitable to any young men who came in his way, 
 had oll'ered to drive his new acquaintance down to Twickenham. 
 
 " You must find London miserably dull at this time of year," 
 he said. " There's ■A.fi'te, or a fancy fair, or something of that 
 kind, our way. I'll drive you down, and you shall dine at my 
 place afterwards." 
 
 Thus it was tnat Francis Tredethlyn found himself upon the 
 lawn before the Chateau de Lourbon, makhig what he felt to be 
 a very awkward bow, and most heartily washing that some con- 
 vulsion of nature might oi)en a ready-made grave in the smooth 
 turf on which he stood, wherein he might hide himself from the 
 bright eyes of Miss Hillary. 
 
 I
 
 62 Only a Clod. 
 
 She spote to Hm in tlie easiest, fi-iendliest manner ; asked 
 him if he had ever been to the chateau before; if he hked a 
 fancy fair ; hoped he meant to spend ever so much money. 
 She opened her eyes very wide as she said this, and he saw 
 how blue they were, and then felt an actual blush kindUng under 
 his brown skin. Such a woman as this had never before walked 
 by his side, talking to him, and smiling at him. He answered 
 her animated inquiries as best he might, and found hunself 
 thinking of all manner of incongi-uous things, — of Maude Hil- 
 lary's blue eyes and point-lace parasol, of his own awkwardness 
 and ignorance, of the narrow points of her dove-coloured boots, 
 as they peeped from under her dress now and then, hke any- 
 thing in the world you like except Sir John Suckling's mice, of 
 the old farmhouse on the Cornish moorland, of httle Susy in a 
 •white dimity sun-bonnet. 
 
 He had never been in such a place before, mixing on equal 
 terms Avith well-dressed men and women, about most of whom 
 even he, in desj^ite of his ignorance, recognized a nameless some- 
 thing that stamped them as superior to the common run of well- 
 dressed peo]-)le. That in itself was enough to bewilder him. 
 He had never before seen such a woman as Maude Hillary ; and 
 even experienced young men from Government offices found 
 Maude Hillary bewildering. He felt terribly emban-assed and 
 out of place ; and after undergoing a sharp ordeal on the terrace, 
 where he was introduced to Miss Desmond, and the two young 
 men staying at the Cedars, he was not a little rejoiced to find 
 himself free for a few minutes, while Mr. Hillary and hia 
 daughter talked to a group of new arrivals. He strolled away 
 to the end of the ten-ace, and lounged upon the marble balus- 
 trade, looking down at a lane below — a kind of gorge cut through 
 two separate gardens, in which some of the common folks of 
 the neighbourhood were gathered, hstening to the music of the 
 band, and staring at the splendid line of carriages waiting for 
 the guests in the gardens above. 
 
 " 1 didn't think I was such a fool as to let my braina be 
 muddled hke this by a lot of line dresses and parasols, and 
 flower-beds, and the playing of a brass band," he thought ; 
 " they're flesh and blood, those people, I suppose, hke the rest 
 of us. She's flesh and blood, just as much as my mother that's 
 dead and gone, or poor httle Susy. But when_ I looked at her 
 just now, it seemed as if there was a hght shining all about her 
 Bomehow, that almost bhnded me. She spoke to me as prettily 
 and as kindly as she spoke to her father; and yet I felt more 
 afraid of her than if she had been my uncle Oliver, and^I a 
 little boy again, tumbling down his corn in the valley farm." 
 
 He moved a little way from the balustrade, and stood look- 
 ing rather sheepishly towards the group he had left, doubtful
 
 Julia makes herself Agreeable. 6S 
 
 wliethor he wag expected to rejoin them, oi* to stroll ahont by 
 himself, amusing liimscU' as he pleased, lie would have given 
 a great deal of money for the poorest treatise on etiquette which 
 would have told him as much as this ; and in the mean time he 
 hngored where he was, twirling a very big pair of lavender 
 gloves which he had bought — through the agency of Mr. 
 Hillary's groom, and with no reference to their adaptability to 
 his own hands — on the way down. 
 
 Lingering thus, doubtful of himself, and i^ainfully conscious 
 of being very much out of keeping with the scene around him, 
 he still thought of all manner of incongruous things; and 
 among other fancies one si^ecial thought, which could have had 
 no possible connection with the events of the day, kept surging 
 upwards on the troubled sea of his reflections. 
 
 "I never loved my cousin Susan," he thought; "I know now 
 that I never really loved my cousin Susan." 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 JTJLIA DESMOND MAKES HERSELF AGREEABLE. 
 
 Captain Masters drove Lionel Hillary's phaeton to the Cedars, 
 when the crowd in the sunny gardens before the Chateau de 
 Bourbon had dispersed, and only a few scattered groups still 
 lingered about the pleasant home of exiled royalty. Amongst 
 which loiterers might be observed some lively gentlemen of the 
 occasional-reporter species, who wanted to ascertain whether 
 there would not be something in the champagne and lobster- 
 salad way before the fete was finished. Captain Masters drove 
 his friend Mr. Somerset back to the Cedars in the mail-phaeton, 
 while Lionel Hillary and Francis Tredethlyn went home with 
 the ladies in the landau. 
 
 The man who had been a private soldier only a few 
 months before that day, and who had not yet been able to 
 realize the change made in liis position by the inheritance of 
 tliirty thousand a year, found himself oppressed by a strange 
 feeling as he sat in Miss Hillary's open carriage with his back 
 to the horses, surrounded by billows of silk and lace and muslin, 
 a surging sea of feminine draperies, from which a faint ijerfumo 
 was wafted towards him as the summer wind blew in his face. 
 It was not so much that he was ill at ease in that feminine pre- 
 sence, or in any way daunted by the fire of two pairs of hand" 
 some eyes. The feeling which oppressed liim was rather a sense 
 <)i unreality. He was like a child at a pantomime, who sees a 
 Btage-fairy for the first time, and cannot believe that the re- 
 eplendent creature is only flesh and blood. He looked at Maude 
 Hillarj, and thought of his cousin Susan's rosy checka and
 
 64 Only a CM. 
 
 brown hair shaded by the faniiliav dimity stiti -bonnet. There 
 wei-e men in the world who might asy.ire to riiaviy such a 
 creatnre as tliis Miss Hihary. ITe tried to imagine the sort of 
 man who might htt his eyes to that divinity; and there arose 
 in his mind the picture "of a grandiose creature with yellow 
 whiskers and a geranium in his button-hole. The aesthetic 
 element in Mr. Trcdethlyn's mind was as yet very imperfectly 
 developed; and his idea of a lover befitting ]\Iaude Hillary 
 leaned rather to the gaudy king's-pattern order of mankind. 
 
 The Austrahan merchant sat with his head leaning back 
 against the ciishions of the carriage and his eyesclosed. His 
 headache was, if auytliing, worse, he confessed, in answer^ to 
 Maude's anxious inquiries. He did not speak three times during 
 ■the homeward drive, and liis daughter rarely took her eyes from 
 his face. She was very fond of him, and displayed her affection 
 for him now as frankly as she had done when she had been a 
 little girl in a white frock, sitting on his knee after dinner, and 
 eating unwholesome fruits and confections out of his plate. 
 She watched him now with a tender anxiety in her face, and 
 seemed almost unconscious of the presence of the big soldier- 
 like individual with a bronzed countenance and close-cropped 
 black hair. Eut Francis Tredethlyn was not entirely neglected, 
 for Miss Desmond appeared determined to atone for Maude's 
 want of courtesy. She had heard the Cornishman's story from 
 Mr. Somerset, who had heard it from a gentleman whom he 
 described as " a fellow in the 11th Hussars ; " and the hand- 
 some Julia felt some little interest in the hero of the narrative. 
 An ignorant young man, a farmer's son, who has suddenly come 
 into a fortune of thirty thousand a year, is not the sort of per- 
 son to be met with every day. Julia remembered that dreary 
 ruin, that tall stone gaol on the bare hill beyond Limerick, 
 which sounded so well when casually alluded to as Castle Des- 
 mond ; but whose image chilled her as it rose, dismal and stony, 
 before lier mind's eye." She remembered the muddy roads, the 
 murderous ruts, the broad acres of irredeemable bog, the long 
 rank grass waving on the roofs of tumbledown stone cabins, the 
 gaunt pigs and gaunter peasantry; and a feeling that was not 
 altogether ignoble kindled a sudden flush upon her handsome 
 face, ■^\^^at could not be done for Castle Desmond and thost 
 ill-used peasantry by a chieftainess who should hav>" thirty thou- 
 sand a year at her command ! She fa?ncied herself i kind of fairy 
 queen, beneath whose wand pleasant homesteads might arise 
 on those desolate hills, and yellow cornfields spread a golden 
 mantle over the valleys now so bare and cm]-)ty. Miss Des- 
 mond's lot in Hfe was altogether exceptional, and the sentimental 
 dreams which come to some young women had no lodgment in 
 \ier brain. She looked her fate straight in the face, and waa
 
 Julia malccs herself Agreeable. 55 
 
 eager to malce tlio best of any opportunity that miglit fall in 
 her way. I'or the present she was very well off where she was ; 
 tliongh the worsship of the golden calf, as represented by Maude 
 Hillary, was a perpetual abomination to her. But she was 
 tolei-ably resigned to her present position at the Cedars. _ It 
 was only in the future that her life looked dark and threatening. 
 She must marry before Miss Hillary,— that was essential,— or 
 else she must resign herself to the miserable position of a com- 
 panion on sufferance, necessary to Maude, perhaps, but very 
 disagreeable to Maude's husband. 
 
 Under these circumstances, a cliance visitor at the Cedars 
 with thirty thousand a year for his fortune was not a person 
 to be disdainfully entreated even by the daughter of all the 
 Desmonds: so Julia was very kind to Francis Tredethlyn 
 during that brief homeward drive, asked liim all manner of 
 questions respecting his sentiments upon things in general and 
 the charity fcfo in particular, and flashed her handsome eyes 
 and wliite teeth upon him until he was almost dazzled by their 
 brightness. ]\tiss Desmond had very dark eyes — eyes that 
 seemed of a greenish hazel when yon saw them in repose,_but 
 which looked almost black when they sparkled athwart a fringe 
 of dusky lashes. She had dark eyes and very white teeth ; and 
 the distinguishing characteristic of her face was the contrast 
 between the darkness of one and the wliite glitter of the other. 
 Mr. Tredethlyn knew that the young lady was very handsome, 
 and that there W:is some condescension involved in her friendly 
 notice of him ; but liis eyes wandered away to_]\faude's fair face 
 and earnest blue eyes, and there was a suspicion of irrelevfmce 
 in some of his rephes to Miss Desmond's animated questions. 
 If he had been kss absent-minded, he might have seen that 
 young lady's white teeth close vengefuUy upon her lower lip aa 
 she turned fiom liim after one of those doubtful answers. _ 
 
 'J'he dinner at f he Cedars went off very quietly. Mr. Hillary 
 was silent, but hospitable, or at least as much so as a man can 
 be in these days ol Russian dinners and. vicarious fcospitality. 
 I'Vancis had lodged at a comfortable hotel in the regions of 
 Covent Garden since his return from Cornwall, and had in no 
 way altered his simple habits of life ; so he was _ not a little 
 puzzled by the array of glasses by the side of his plate, the 
 lumps of ice which an obsequious attendant dropped ever and 
 anon into his Moselle, the mysterious compounds in silver 
 dishes which he discovered suddenly at his elbow whenever he 
 was most abstracted by the novelty of the scene about him, 
 and the vision of Maude Hillary, sitting on the other side of 
 the round table in a cloud of white and blue. The dishes at 
 that wonderful feast seemed so many cuhnary conundrums to 
 Mr. Tredethlyn, and I fear that he made some very obvioua
 
 56 Only a Clod. 
 
 mistakes in the management of tlie spoons ancl forks perpetu- 
 ally thrust wpow him by the slcalthj^-footed retainers. But the 
 dinner was over at last, and Cnptniii ]\lastcrs opened the dining- 
 room door for the di'imrture of tlie ladies, while poor Francis 
 could only sit blankly staring like a countryman at a play. 
 Lionel Hillary did not Imger long over his wine ; he had some 
 pa]>ers to look at in his study, he said, and excused himself on 
 that ground, as well as on account of that obstinate headache 
 of his. The young men seemed very glad to be released from 
 the atmosphere of hothouse flowers and pine-apj^le, faintly 
 mingled with that odour of the bygone dinner which -will hang 
 round the most elegant dining-room, ventilate it as you wall. 
 "Was not Maude Hillary in the drawing-room, whence already 
 might be heard the sparkUng npple of arpeggio passages upon 
 the piano ? The two young loungers followed Mr. Hillary out 
 into the hall, and Francis went with them, uncomfortably con- 
 scious of disadvantages not to be outbalanced by the possession 
 of half a million or so in all manner of seven-per-cent-paying 
 investments. The young soldier blacking his master's boots 
 had been the easiest-mannered of mankind; but OUver Tre- 
 dethlyn's heir felt terribly embarrassed in Maude Hillary's 
 presence — only in her presence ; he was not at all abashed by 
 Miss Desmond's eyes and teeth, though all their contrastive 
 brightness was brought to bear ujion him. Maude was at the 
 piano, and Julia was bendmg over a stand of engravings. It 
 may be that she had not very long fallen into that graceful 
 attitude. "Wlien the three young men entered the room she 
 looked lip, and Mr. Tredethlyn meeting her friendly glance, and 
 being considerably at a loss what to do with himself, went over 
 to her, and found a comfortable haven in a low easy-chair near 
 the couch on which she was sitting. 
 
 " Ho you care much for Leech, Mr. Tredethlyn P " she asked^. 
 as she turned over the leaves of a portfolio reprinted from Pu»c/i. 
 
 The young man looked rather puzzled by this question. 
 
 " I don't care miich for them," he answered, frankly. " I 
 never had any but once, and that was in Van Diemen's Land, 
 ■when I had the fever, — fifteen of them on my temples, and that 
 was no joke, you know, Miss Desmond." 
 
 He was quite at his ease with Julia ; but he would not for 
 the world ha,ve been so confidential to Maude Hillary. Misa 
 Desmond laughed good-natoi-cdly. 
 
 " I don't mean those horrible creatures that they put on one'a 
 temples," she exclaimed, " but Mr. John Leech, the caricaturist. 
 You must have seen Punch, even in Van Diemen's Land? " 
 
 " Oh, yes ! my mas— superior officer used to get it from his 
 mother every mail." 
 
 He took the portfoUo from Misa Desmond, and tm-ned over
 
 Julia malces fierself Agreealle. 67 
 
 tlie leaves : but lie only stared absently at Mr. Lecch'a moat 
 brilliant performances, and his eyes wandered away every now 
 and then to the 2>iano, where Mnude llillary was skiniiuiiig 
 throngh the gems of a new opera and dallying Avith her two 
 adorers, deliciously nnconscious of their adoration. Had she not- 
 inhabited an atmosphere of universal admiration, and affection 
 ever since she had exhibited her pink cheeks and infantile ring- 
 lets in company with the seven-shilling Mai-ch peaches and five- 
 guinea pine-apples, after her father's pompous dinners, to be 
 admired by 2")onderous old City magnates in the pauses of solemn 
 discussions upon the rate of discount and the last grand crash 
 on the Stock Exchange ? 
 
 Julia Desmond, always observant — cursed, perhaps, with an 
 especial faculty for penetrating all unpleasant secrets lying 
 liidden under the many masks which society has invented for 
 the convenience of mankind — Miss Desmond, I say, was not 
 slow to perceive the Cornishman's j^reoccupation, nor slow tft 
 credit Miss Hillary with another item in that heavy account so 
 long standing between them. 
 
 " Even this country boor, with a great fortune of his own, 
 must pay his meed of homage to the millionaire's daughter," 
 thought Julia. " Is there some magical power in the possession 
 of money which imparts a kind of fascination to the possessor ?" 
 Colonel Desmond's daughter had felt some of the keenest stings 
 of i^overty, and it may be that she had grown to entertain an 
 exaggerated estimation of that golden dross wliich is so paltry a 
 thing when considei-ed in a pliilosophical sj^irit. She looked at 
 the young man sitting by her side ; and as she looked, a mystic 
 golden halo seemed to arise about him and surroiind him, until 
 he appeared almost hke an old picture of a saint, painted upon 
 a shadowless background of gold. Thirty thousand a year! 
 and he was young, handsome, manljs good-tempered-looking, or 
 even something more than this ; for there was a dasli of nobility 
 in his simple bearing wliich scarcely seemed to belong to tho 
 runaway son of a small farmer. The good old blood of the 
 Tredethlyns, once squires and landowners of some degree, waa 
 not dishonoured by the young man who had blacked Harcourt 
 Lowther's boots in Van Diemen's Land. He was not a gentle* 
 man after the manner of the nuieteenth century; he seemed 
 rather like a stalwart soldier of the past, simple and daring, 
 frank and generous. Juha, contemplating him always enframed 
 in the golden halo, saw that, with the advantage of a clever 
 woman's training, he might be made a very presentable creature; 
 in spite of that private-soldier story, wliich, after all, was spiced 
 with a certain flavour of romance.. 
 
 " People would say I married him for his money," thought 
 Miss Desmond; "but then they would say that if I married a
 
 58 Ojihj a Clod 
 
 Drovincial Ijanlcer with fifteen liimclrcd a year. Thirty thousand ! 
 thirty thousand a year ! — and he is not a man who would act 
 meanly in the mutter of a settlement — and he oonld bny the 
 Irish estate for a more song — and he might call himself Tre- 
 dethlyn Desmond." 
 
 ]\[aude Hillary's companion and friend had employed herself 
 for a very long time in the consideration of one grand subject — 
 her own destiny. For a long time sb.c had estimated every crea- 
 ture who came in her way by one unvarying gauge. Had he, or 
 had he not, any beaiing on that supreme question ? If the 
 answer were in the negative, Miss Desmond wasted no further 
 thought upon the useless creature. But if she saw in the 
 shadowy distance some possil ile combination of circumstances in 
 which the individnal luight become a thread, however ylightly 
 interwoven, in the faljric of her destiny, Julia expended her 
 brightest smiles and sweetest woi'ds for his gratification. 
 
 It was in no way strange, therefore, that the J'oung lady who 
 had given a good deal of attention to hare-brained young ensigns 
 and penniless young curates with nothing better than remote 
 expectations, should consider Mr. Tredetidyn worthy of her most 
 serious dehberation. The present, however, was no time fot 
 thought, — for were not the young man's eyes perpetually wan- 
 dering towards the slender figure under the hght of the mode- 
 rator lamp ? ]\Iiss Desmond felt there was no time to be lost. 
 Already the rich man had made liis election — already he had 
 em-oUed himself in the hst of Maude Hillary's victims. Another 
 woman, perceiving the state of affairs, might have resigned her- 
 self to the loss of tliis gi-and chance of winning a rich husband; 
 but Julia's courage was not so easily dashed. It rose, rather, 
 with the thought of contest. Had not her father been a grand 
 old freebooter, boasting of kingly blood in his battered old body, 
 and spilling it under the colours of every rebel army in modern 
 Europe? The Desmond spirit rose in Julia's breast as she saw 
 Francis Tredethlyn's wandering glances, half sheepish, half un- 
 conscious. 
 
 " I can set myself against her this time," she thought; " anij 
 the battle betiveen us will be a fair one. This man cannot be 9 
 fortune-hunter. "We meet on tolerably equal terms for once in 
 a way. Miss Hillary, and let us see who will win." 
 
 Julia's dark eyes flashed their brightest as she looked acrosl 
 all the width of the room to the radiant-looking girl at the 
 piano ; and then she turned them suddenly upon Francis Tre- 
 dethlyn, and began to talk to him. She began to talk to him, 
 and, more than this, she made liim hsten to her. iNfiss Desmond 
 was a brilliant talker. Slie possessed that wondrous faculty 
 vulgarly called the gift of the gab, — the power of talking about 
 everything and anything, or even about nothing, for the matter
 
 Julia malics herself Agreeable. 69 
 
 of tlmt; the powei* of rncliniiiiiicf a listeiior in spite of himself, 
 holdiii.!^' him prisoner when he IkkI rather 1)0 away, and yet not 
 detaining liim an altopetlier unwilhng pnsoner; — the power of 
 ialking- i^-norantly, withont socminq; to bo ignorant; specnlating 
 ideas and allnsions at a venture, and never betraying the shal- 
 lowness of their nature; assuming an interest in tlie most unin- 
 teresting subject, and never revealing the hoUowness of the 
 assumption,— a power, in short, which in its fascination seems 
 like a modern form of those classic philtres which Roman 
 maidens were wont to administer to eligible bachelors in the 
 days when l\ome was young. It may be said that Miss Des- 
 mond owed this faculty in some degree to her ]libernian an- 
 cestiy; but no suspicion of their native accent vulgarized her 
 discourse. Only a soiter and richer depth in her low voice be- 
 trayed her Celtic origin. 
 
 Julia began to talk to Francis Tredethlyn, and, in spite of 
 himself, lie listened, and was fain to withdraw his gaze from the 
 distant figure at the piano. She talked to him of a soldier's 
 life, jumping recklessly at conclusions, and taking it for granted 
 that he must needs possess some latent spark of military ardour, 
 which would blaze up into a flame under the fire of her entlui- 
 siasm. She talked to him of her father, and all those guerrilla 
 warfares in which he had won distinction. She talked of Don 
 Carlos, and Abd-el-Kader, and Garibaldi, whose name had not 
 then the glorious significance which it carries with it to-day. 
 She talked to him like a young Joan of Arc or an embryo 
 maid of Saragosa ; — and all that was briglitest in Mr. Tre- 
 dethlyu's nature kindled beneath her influence. Had Francis 
 beeii a stockbrolcer. Miss Desmond would have discoursed to 
 him of Lionel Kothschild, or Lafitte, or Mires ; and she would 
 have glowed mth JMst the same enthusiasm, though her theme 
 had been the Stock Exchange or the Bourse. 
 
 But in spite of himself Mr. Tredethlyn was pleased and in- 
 terested. His boyish yearning for a military career had been 
 very nearly trampled out of him during dreary years of march- 
 ings and counter-marchings, and sword-exercise, and barrack- 
 tyranny, with never the glimpse of a battle-field, or so much 
 as a brief skirmish with some chance enemy. But those fresh 
 
 {'•oung feelings all came back to him when Julia discoursed in 
 ow eloquent accents other father's foreign experiences. " Ah, 
 that was something like a military career!" thought the young 
 man. "It was such a Hfe that I hoped to lead when I ran 
 away from Landresdale ; and I thought I should come back a 
 general, with a cocked-hat and a great plume of feathers, as the 
 gardener's son does in the i")lay I saw once at Falmouth." 
 
 And then Francis Trcdethljni, being by nature candid as a 
 Bchoolboy newly come home for his holidays, opened his heart
 
 60 Only a Clod. 
 
 to Miss Desmond, and told her a good deal abont his lif(8L 
 Tliat dark chamber of Ms memory in which Susan's image 
 loomed through the sombre shadows he kept religiously sealed 
 from every curious eye. But on all other subjects he was very 
 communicative. He did not tell Julia that he liad been Mr. 
 Lowther's body-servant; for there was something in that estate 
 of servatude which had never been entirely pleasant to him, 
 gallantly as he had borne himself under its serious ordeals. 
 He had kuo-WTi poverty, he told Miss Desmond, in all its worst 
 bitterness, and had seen his mother and father die broken- 
 hearted, borne down by a load of petty debt and difficulty, 
 when the loan of a couple of hundred pounds would have saved 
 them. 
 
 " I felt altogether desperate one night. Miss Desmond," he 
 said, " when my poor mother was at her worst, and my fatheJ 
 sitting in the kitchen as helpless as a child, — almost daft, as 
 they say in the north. I felt desperate somehow, and I went 
 out of the house and ran all the way to Tredethlyn Grange, and 
 asked my uncle Oliver to lend me the money. He laughed in 
 my face, Miss Desmond, and told me he hadn't a five-pound 
 note in the house ; and I dare say he spoke the truth, for I think 
 he'd have gone half crazy at the thought of a sovereign lying 
 idle. I went back to the farm, and — my mother died the next 
 day." 
 
 He stopped, and sat for some minutes looking at Mr. Hillary's 
 Axminster carpet. Julia did not say anything. She was too 
 perfect a tactician not to know that anytliing she could say 
 must appear commonplace at such a moment. She only drew a 
 long breath, a kind of flutteruig sigh, expressive of the deepest 
 sympathy. 
 
 " My mother died. Miss Desmond," the young man went on ; 
 •* and my father was not slow to follow her. So, having no one 
 in the world to care for, except— except a cousin, who had been 
 like a sister to me, I ran away to Falmouth, and enlisted in a 
 foot regiment, thinking that 1 had but to pin a bunch of colours 
 in my hat and march straight off to some field of battle. I left 
 Cornwall, Miss Desmond ; but I never forgot that night before 
 my mother's death. I've tried to feel grateful to my uncle 
 Oliver for leaving me this fortune, but I can't. I ought to feel 
 grateful, I suppose ; but I can't. The memory of that night 
 sours me, somehow. Money seems such paltiy stuff', after all, 
 when 3'ou think that all the golden coin in this world can't 
 bring back one human creature from the grave." 
 
 " Ah, yes, indeed," Miss Desmond murmured, in her ten- 
 derest voice. 
 
 And then, being blest with a very lively imagination, she 
 found herself wondering whether, if wealth had been potent to
 
 Julia maTces herself Agreeable. 61 
 
 restore the dead, aud alio had hecn possessed with wealth, she 
 would have very much cared to awaken Patrick Maciiamara 
 Eyan O'lirieu Desmond from his qiuct shimberin a httle church- 
 yard beside the windiuy Shannon. The ohl soldier of fortune 
 was better in his grave perhajjs, Julia thought, iihilosophically. 
 She had begun to fight the battle of hfe on her own tactics, and 
 had no very great opinion of her late father's strategy. 
 
 " lie Avas very clever," she thought, with a tender remem- 
 brance of the Major's best manoeuvres ; " but then one so often 
 saw through liim. He always started with wrong premises, 
 and fancied everyone but himself was a fool : as if there coidd 
 be any merit in deceiving only stupid pcoijle." Miss Desmond 
 was always wise enough to remember that the larger art of talk- 
 ing well comprehends the smaller art of hsteuing gracefully. 
 She w-as not one of those obnoxious people who talk for the sake 
 of talking; and who, after ratthng on Avithout a full-stop 'for 
 half an hour at a stretch, will stare vacantly at you while you 
 recite to them some interesting adventure, evidently thinking of 
 what they mean to say next, and waiting for the chance of 
 cutting in. Juha Desmond talked with a purpose, — not because 
 she wanted to talk, but because she wished to please : and now 
 she listened to Francis Tredethlyn with an unfailing show of 
 sympathy and interest, that beguiled him on to tell her more 
 and more. She wound and insinuated herself into his confi- 
 dence as a beautiful serpentine creature winds itself into the 
 heart of an apparently impenetrable forest; and before the 
 evening was finished Mr. Tredethlyn found himself ahnost as 
 intimate with this splendid southern Irishwoman asif she had 
 been his sister. She had set liim completely at his ease ; so 
 that he no longer felt out of place in ]\Ir. Hillary's gorgeous 
 rooms : and when the merchant, coming into the drawing-room 
 at eleven o'clock, very pale and worn-looking, asked hkn to dine 
 at the Cedars on the following Sunday, Francis unhesitatingly 
 accepted the hivitation. He stole just one glance at Maude as 
 he did so ; but she was in the act of exhiljiting one of the newest 
 accomphshments of a mouse-coloured Skye terrier for the edifi- 
 cation of the two young loungers, and she was quite uncon- 
 scious of that shy look from Mr. Tredethlyn's eyes. He went 
 to her presently to wish her good-night, and the spell of her 
 gracious presence dazed and bewildered him, to the cost of tha 
 mouse-coloured terrier, upon whose silky paws he trampled iu 
 his embarrassment; and then, essaying to shake hands in a 
 gentlemanly manner, he forgot what a stalwart giant he was,and 
 squeezed the little hand that rested so lightly in his, until Maude's 
 fingers were wounded by the hoops, and clusters, and liearts, 
 and crescents of diamonds and opals which twinkled aud hashed 
 upon themi — for Miss Hillary had seen the Marchioness of Lou-
 
 62 Onlij a Clod. 
 
 doadorry's famous rings, and never wore any vtilgar mixture of 
 many-colouvod iowuls upon lier pretty white hands. Francis 
 lincrercd a httle 'after saying good-night, heli)less under the spell 
 of the enchantress, and then made his way somehow or otlier 
 out of the room. Ah ! surely uncle Ohver's money was not 
 such sordid dross, after all, when it was the golden key which 
 admitted hiiu to that pai-adise on the banks of the Thames. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 COLTONSLOTJGIL 
 
 Fkancis Tredetiilyn went hack to his hotel in Covent Garden 
 after that quiet dinner at the Cedars, and his mind was full of 
 the new images suggested Ijy that brief ghmpse of a life that 
 was strange "to him. lie hud lu'cn very much interested by 
 Miss Desmond, and he tried to believe that he preferred her to 
 Maude Hillary. Had she not been kinder to liim, more friendly 
 and familiar P and was it not reasonable that he should like her 
 the better of the two ? He was naturally of a grateful disposi- 
 tion, disposed to think meauly of his own merits ; and he attri- 
 buted all Miss Desmond's kindness to the purest promptings of 
 a benevolent dispositicm. The idea that the young lady had 
 regarded him from a si^eculative point of view, that she had 
 entertained any notion of possible marriage contracts and 
 settlements, by wliich she might acquire the use of liis thirty 
 thousand per annum, never for a moment entered Mr. Tredeth- 
 lyn's mind. He knew, in a general way, that he was admitted 
 to ]\Ir. Hillary's dramng-room because his money gave him a 
 kind of right to such society as that of the merchant's house- 
 hold ; but he never for a moment imagined that any one of these 
 dehghtful and higli-bred creatures could contemplate any con- 
 tingency by which his money might become of service to them. 
 Wealth and beauty, elegance and refinement, seemed to find 
 their natural home at the Cedars. Miss Desmond of course was 
 rich, hke Miss HiUar3^ 
 
 Francis counted the days which must elapse before that 
 delightful Saliliath to be spent by liim at the Cedars. Only 
 three days, and during those three days stern duty called him 
 away from London. Had he not declared himself ready to go 
 to the end of the world in search ol" Iris cousin Susan Tredetii* 
 lyn ? He felt ashamed even of tliat one wasted day on the 
 banks of the Th.ames. He had left his hotel in the morning, in- 
 tending to des]jatch his City busiue8«j with all possible speed, 
 and start immediately afterwards fur Coltonsiough. He had 
 found out all about Coltonsiough by means of all manner of 
 inquiries ; for it seemed rather an out-of-the-way place, known
 
 CuUonsloiif/li. 68 
 
 to very few people as yet. Indeed, Coltonslougli tarued out to 
 be a recently discovered watcrintr-place on the JOskcx. coast, a 
 place wliosc shores were supposed to be washed by the salt 
 waves of the ocean; but the waste of waters that rolled along 
 the muddy shores of Colton.slough was only an ocean in its hob- 
 bledehoyhood, and savourtnl too much of the Thames and Med- 
 way to be considered a full-grown sea. 
 
 To the traveller who has grown familiar with the centre of 
 Africa; to that bold ex])lorcr who has spent lonely d;iys and 
 nights amidst those darksome forests in which the Ibrgotten 
 cities of America lie buried ; to the j^risoner newly released from 
 solitary confuu^nent in the great prison-house of New York, ao 
 pleasantly entitled the Tombs — to one of these a newly disco- 
 vered watering-place may not ajjpear dull. He who has been 
 used to hear no more familiar voice than the distant cry of the 
 bittern, far away amongst the swamjiy wildernesses, may endure 
 Heme 15ay and live. The criminal who has uuderg(me a decade 
 of solitary conlluement in the Totnbs may possiljly survive a 
 month at Southend : but to tlie ordinary mind there is a modern 
 abomination of desolation lurking in the unfinished terraces of 
 a budding watering-place, or in a watering-place which has put 
 forth its tender blossoms in the way of bow-windowed recep- 
 tacles for the concentrated bleakness of perpetual east winds, 
 and has been blighted in the bud. 
 
 Coltonslough was very young ; it was in the most infantine 
 stage of watering-place existence. Speculative builders had 
 bought half-a-dozen plots of swamp and mud, and had erected 
 dismal rows of houses, which turned their backs upon one 
 another, and started off at right angles from one another, in 
 utter contempt for all uniformity. If the melancholy sojourner 
 at Coltonslough was of an active turn of mind, he was apt to 
 be tormented by a wild desire to pull doAvu and re-arrange those 
 straggling terraces, between which stretched hideous deserts of 
 waste ground, -svith here and there a lurking pitfall, whence 
 gravel, or sand, or clay, or chalk, had been dug by unknown 
 persons, who seemed always digging something or other out of 
 Coltonslough, whereby an appearance of volcanic disrui^tion 
 was imparted to a place whose chief merit had been its agree- 
 able flatness. 
 
 It was very young. A few straggling excursionists came on 
 the blazing summer Sundays, and prowled about the shore with 
 countenances expressive of supreme disappointment and disgust. 
 Half-a-dozen families of cockney children were wont to congre- 
 gate by the dismal waters every summer, provided with baskets 
 for the collection of shells — and there were no shells at Colton- 
 Blough, — and further provided -with wooden spades for the 
 underndning of sand — and tliere was no sand at that baby
 
 64 Only a Clod. 
 
 watering-place. Families did certainly come, beguiled by repre* 
 sentations of impossibly clieap provisions, tboiigli tbe place waa 
 in reality veiy expensive, for every tradesman was a monojjolist 
 on a small scale. Families came, but no family ever came a 
 second time to Coltonslotigli ; and it may be that, in the won- 
 derful scheme of the universe, this new-born watering-place was 
 not wdthout its sjDecial use ; inasmuch as it made people con- 
 tented with London. The inhabitant of Bermondsey, return* 
 ing to that locality after a sojourn at Coltonslough, found 
 beauties in some dismal street which until that hour had ap- 
 peared to his prosaic mind a street, and nothing more. The 
 denizen of Ratchtf Highway sat down amongst his household 
 gods well iDleased with a neighbourhood which, although not 
 Unobjectionable, was a p.iradise as compared -svith Coltonslough. 
 
 It was to this place of desolation that a newly-finished off- 
 shoot of the railway then known as the Eastern Counties con- 
 veyed Francis Tredethlyn. He went to look for his cousin 
 with no better clue to help him in his search than that one 
 word, "Coltonslough," copied from the post-mark of Susan'a 
 letter. 
 
 " But I won't be bafEed," the young man thought, as he sat 
 in the railway carriage thinking of the task that lay before 
 him. " Coltonslough may be a big place, but I'll question every 
 living creature in it before I'll give up the chance of fiaiding out 
 something about my cousin." 
 
 Luckily for Mr. Tredethlyn's chances, Coltonslough was a 
 very small place, and after walking backwards and forwards for 
 some quarter of an hour, before the emporium of the one 
 butcher ; the sohtaiy baker, who dabbled a httle in the fruit 
 and confectionery line ; and the single grocer, who was also a 
 linendraper, and beyond that a stationer, who had a side of 
 bacon hanging on one side of his door, and a piece of showy 
 cotton stuff upon the other, and who moreover was sole master 
 of the Coltonslough post-office, — Francis determined upon his 
 plan of action. He had thought of his cousin very constantly 
 m the few days before his visit to Mr. Hillary's mansion; he 
 had thought of her a great deal since then, though he had not 
 found it quite so easy to concentrate his ideas, by reason of a 
 certain bright face and slender figi-'.re all in a flutter of white 
 and blue, that would sometimes intrude themselves upon Lis 
 meditations. 
 
 Francis knew that his uncle's daughter had left Tredethljn 
 Grange with only a few sovereigns in her pocket, perhaps not 
 much more than enough to defray her journey to London. 
 Without mouey, -wutliout friends, she had lied from her home, 
 and had not jierished ; but had lived to write to her father from 
 tliis dismal watering-place of Coltonslough some years after her
 
 Coltomloug%» 65 
 
 flight. It was clear, iliereforo, that in the interim she mnst 
 have either been supimrted by the benevolence ot" strangers, or 
 she must have earned her own living. The last hypothesis waa 
 the more likely to be correct. Susan Tredcthlyn had been edu 
 cated to habits of industry, and had no doubt confronted tho 
 battle of life as fearlessly as any Tredethlyn should confront any 
 battle. 
 
 " Poor little girl ! she went out as a sei-vant, I dare say," 
 thought the young man. " She drudged and slaved for somj 
 hard mistress, perhaps, while her father was adding every daj 
 to the money that has come to me — to me — and he refused m< 
 a couple of hundred pounds the night my mother was dying." 
 
 Mr. Tredethlyn went in at the grocer's doorway. There was 
 ecarcely room enough for him to pass between the bacon and 
 the cotton stuft', which some aboriginal of Coltonslough would 
 some day transform into wearing apparel. The postmaster was 
 chopping some very sallow-hued lump- sugar m the dusky inner- 
 regions of the shop ; but he left off chopping, and advanced to 
 meet the stranger. 
 
 Francis Tredethlyn was no diplomatist; he was quite un- 
 skilled in that peculiar science known as beating about the bush; 
 so he began to make inquiries respecting his cousin with as 
 little i^reface as he would have employed had he been asking for 
 a pound of sugar. 
 
 " I'm a stranger to this jilace," he said, " and I want to ask 
 a few questions ; and I fancy, as you're postmaster, you must 
 be about the likeliest person to answer them." 
 
 The grocer rubbed his hands and smirked, in a manner that 
 was expressive of a general desire to do anytliing obliging — 
 of course with an eye to ultimate profit. 
 
 " A young woman — a relation of mine — left her home four 
 years ago this month. For nearly three years no one belonging 
 to her could discover where she was. At the end of that time 
 a letter was received from her, bearing the post-mark of this 
 place. I want to find out whether she is still here ; or, if not, 
 when she left. I have only just come back from Van Diemen's 
 Land, to find things changed in the place that was cnce my 
 home. So I'm groj^ing in the dark, you see, and shall be very 
 thankful to any one that'll lend me a helping hand." 
 
 Something in the frankness of his manner, the earnestness of 
 his face, went straight home to the heart of the Coltonslough 
 postmaster, who became less a tradesman, and more a man. 
 
 " It's rather puzzhng, you see, in the way you put it," he 
 said, scratching his nose meditatively. " You want a young 
 woman who wrote a letter — or leastways had a letter posted at 
 this place. But, lor' bless you, not being under Government 
 y'rself, you see, you've no notion of the dodges they're up to 
 
 B
 
 66 Onhj a Clod. 
 
 •when tliey want to throw any one ofF the scent h'ke with a post- 
 mark. You mnstirt fancy a person's in this place or in that 
 place, because you happen to get a letter from them with such 
 and such a post-mark. Why, I dessay I could get a letter 
 posted from Jericho to-morrow morning, if I only gave my mind 
 to it. AVhat might be the name of the young woman as you're 
 anxious to find ? " 
 
 " Her name is Tredethlyn," Francis answered, hopelessly ; 
 " but as she ran away from home, and most likely wanted to 
 hide herself from her relations, she may have changed her 
 name." 
 
 The postmaster mused for a few moments, and then shook 
 his head gravely. 
 
 " I nevCT heard of no Tredevillings in Coltonslongh," he said. 
 " The young person was independent in her circumstances, I 
 suppose ? " 
 
 " Oh no, indeed ! she had very little money when she left 
 home. She must have worked for her li\ang. I should think 
 it likely that she went out for a servant ; for she was a country- 
 bred girl, and had been used to a hard Ufe, though her father 
 was a very rich man." 
 
 A very rich man ! That part of the business sounded in- 
 teresting, and the grocer pricked up his ears. 
 
 " A country-bred young person," he repeated, "by the name 
 of Tredevillane. And what might be the date of the letter with 
 the Coltonslongh post-mark ? " 
 
 Francis did not know the exact date. He coidd only inform 
 the postmaster that the letter must have reached Cornwall 
 about eighteen months, or it might be rather less than eighteen 
 months, before the present time. 
 
 " Cornwall ! " cried the postmaster ; " then the country -bred 
 young woman was a Cornwall young woman? " 
 
 " Yes, my cousin, Susan Tredethlyn, was a Cornish woman." 
 
 " A Cornish woman, and by the name of Snsan ! Why, if 
 
 you'd put the date of the letter a good three years back instead 
 
 of a year and a half, I should have been able to lay_ my hand 
 
 upoiiy'r cousin there and then, in a manner of speaking." 
 
 " How so ? " 
 
 " Because I did know a young person that Hved with Mrs. 
 Bnrfield, in Trafalgar Terrace. But that young person left 
 Coltonslongh full three years ago, and I've never set eyes on 
 her since." 
 
 " But tell me all you know about her ! " exclaimed Francis, 
 almost breathless in his eagerness. "What %yas shc^^likei' 
 Why do you fancy that she was the girl I'm looking for?" 
 
 " Because, in the first place, she was Cornish. I'd noticed 
 that her talk was different somehow from that of the folks
 
 Coltonslovgli. 67 
 
 about here — thoiigli slic was as soft-spoken as aiiy lady Lrea 
 and born ; but one day she was standing in my shop, with the 
 children as she had care of,f talcing shelter from a storm— and a 
 regular pelter it was too — and she stood looking out to sea 
 through yonder half-glass door, which it were shut for the time 
 being, and I made some remark about the unpleasantness of 
 the weather, out of politeness like — for the young woman came 
 very often to my shop for groceries, and with lodgers' letters, — 
 Mrs. Burtield takes lodgers, and so forth; — but she looked at 
 me in a kind of absent way, and said ' Oh, I like it ! I hke 
 it ! ' ' You like the storm, Miss ? ' I exclaimed ; and then she 
 answered all of a sudden, ' Yes, I like to sec it. This place 
 doesn't seem so strange to me to-day as it generally does. I 
 have seen just such a storm as this from the moor on which my 
 father's house stands, and I could almost fancy I was at home 
 in Cornwall' " 
 
 " And that's how you found out she was a Cornish woman ? 
 I think you've about hit it, Mr. Sanders. I think the girl who 
 talked to you about the storm must have been my cousin, Susan 
 Tredethlyn." 
 
 " Her name %vas Susan," answered Mr. Sanders ; " I've heard 
 Mrs. Biiriicld's children call her so in this very shop. She 
 came to Coltonslough as governess to Mrs. Burfield's young 
 family." 
 
 " A governess ! " said Francis, with some shght sense of 
 rehef. " She was a governess, then, and not a servant? " 
 
 " Oh dear no ! Though Coltonslough being a very small 
 place, you see, sir, and most of the inhabitants being a good 
 deal dependent upon lodgers, which gives a kind of fluctuating 
 character to life, as yon may say, sir, a g-overness in Colton- 
 slough might not be looked upon exactly in the same light as 
 elsewhere. Or, to put it plainer, sir, a governess in Colton- 
 slough would not be expected to l)e pi-oud." 
 
 " Oh, I understand," Mr. Tredeihlyn answered, rather bitterly. 
 "Yes, my cousin was a genteel drudge, — not so well paid, per- 
 haps, as vulgar drudges, and rather harder worked." 
 
 " The young person was always genteel, sir, even to the 
 extent of wearing gloves, which "is not looked upon as indis- 
 pensable in Coltonslough; but in the matter of going errands 
 and opening the door, or carrying in a lodger's tea-tray, at a 
 push, she would not be expected to be proud." 
 
 " And she left three years ago ? " 
 
 " She did, sir." 
 
 The postmaster looked very grave as he said this, — so gi'ave 
 that Francis Tredethlyn could not fail to perceive that some- 
 thing worse than he had yet heard remained to be told. He 
 was not a man to diplomatize, nor yet to make any display of
 
 G8 Only a Clod. 
 
 his emotion; Lut tis breath came a little faster for a few 
 moments, and then he asked abrujitly, — - 
 
 " How did she leave ? " 
 
 Islr. Sanders hesitated a httle, and then said, with some em- 
 ban-assment, — 
 
 "AVhy, Coltonslough bein' a gossiping kind of a place, sir, 
 you're apt to hear ever so many different versions of the same 
 thing, and it isn't for me to say which is right and wliich is 
 wrong. I think, as it's a long story, sir, you'd better hear the 
 rights of it from Mrs. Burfield." 
 
 " A long story ! " repeated Francis Tredethlyn, in an under- 
 tone, — " a long story ! Ah, my poor little cousin — my poor ill- 
 used girl ! And it seems only a little wliile ago when we played 
 together in the churchyard at Landresdale, in the sunny hour 
 when they let us out of school." 
 
 It did seem to him but a very little while since he and his 
 cousin had sat side by side, under one of the big yew-trees in 
 Landresdale churchyard, dining ujDon some simjjle repast of 
 home-made bread and fat bacon, with a dessert of unripe apples, 
 in the drowsy sultriness of summer noontide. He sat for some 
 few minutes silently thinking of that departed time. The 
 memory of it seemed almost hke a sharp physical pain, now 
 that he knew that some great sorrow, some bitter woman's trial, 
 had come to bis cousin. A story about her — a long story! 
 What story should gossiping tongues have to tell of any woman, 
 except a history of suffering and wrong ? 
 
 He did not press the postmaster to tell him anything further : 
 but he said presently, in an altered voice — a voice that had lost 
 something of its power and riu<ring vibration, — 
 
 " I can get to see tliis Mrs. Burtield, I suppose ? " 
 
 " Yes, sir ; I make no doubt you can. She is a veiy genteel 
 person, is Mrs. Biirfield, which she have knoAvn better days, 
 and finds borself often a little drove like with her lodgers. JBer 
 house is Number 2, sir, in the Tirrace, Trafalgar Square, fronting 
 sideways, and rather slantin' hke, to the sea. You can see it, 
 sir, from where you stand." 
 
 Following the direction of the postmaster's extended fore- 
 finger, I'rancis Tredethlyn did see a row of unfinished-looking 
 houses, with the inevitable seaside bow-windows, staring out op 
 a patch of waste ground. Why these houses, and almost all thb 
 other houses at Coltonslough, should have slanted away from 
 the sea, obHging their occupants to look out upon the expanse 
 of waters in a sideways and sinister manner, when they might 
 have been built directly facing that single feature of attraction, 
 was a problem far beyond the comprehension of any visitor to 
 the infantine watering-place.
 
 A Very Old Story, 69 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 A VEllY OLD STORY. 
 
 Mrs, Bdrfielb was a pale-faced and pinclied-looldng person, 
 hollow-cheeked and spare of fignrc, who in these latter days 
 would have inspired a stranger with the idea that she was a 
 rigid disciplinarian of the school founded by Mr. Banting. She 
 looked as if all saccharine and fatty elements had been carefully 
 excluded from her food ; and yet, on the other hand, she had 
 none of the muscular energy which might be su]iposed to result 
 from a carnivorous habit. She was a depressing kind of woman, 
 with thin locks of whity-browu hair dangling upon each side of 
 her thin face, and thin garments hanging limply upon her scanty 
 figure, and a thin voice. There was something in Mrs. Burfield's 
 appearance wliich called up vague images of drizzly days, and 
 pattens, and washing done at home, and a man in the passage 
 clamorous for a water-rate, and all the most unpleasant associa- 
 tions of poverty. 
 
 She was a woman who prefaced every sentence she uttered 
 with a sigh. She sighed as she admitted to Mr Tredethlyn 
 that her name was Burlield. as if even that fact were in some 
 manner an affliction. She sighed as she told him, apologetically, 
 that the house was full of lodgers, so she must ask him to step 
 dowTi into the little sitting-room below stairs. And yet, as she 
 subsisted by the letting of lodgings, the crowded state of her 
 house should have been a cause for rejoicing. 
 
 Francis had some slight difficulty in conveying his long le^-s 
 down the narrow little staircase, in which there was a break- 
 neck corner, whence awkward maid-servants were wont to pre- 
 cipitate themselves headlong in company with an avalanche of 
 tea-things ; but he managed to find his way down somehow or 
 other, and was ushered into a little faded-looking underground 
 parlour, where all the furniture seemed to have undergone a pro- 
 longed course of Banting, and where the evidence of children's 
 habitation was untidily visible in every direction. The children 
 were all at school, however, Mrs. Burfield told Francis with an- 
 other sigh ; though, as she added directly afterwards that they 
 drove her next door to raving madness when they were at home, 
 thai fact need scarcely have depressed her. 
 
 " I liad a governess for them some time back," she said, im- 
 consciously approaching the subject of Mr. Tredethlyn's business 
 with her, " and the young person was very useful to me in many 
 ways ; but things have been so dull, and lodgers so uncertain, 
 and so^ close as to rent and kitchen fire, and such hke, that I 
 couldn't afford to engage another young person, if I could have
 
 70 Only a Clod. 
 
 found anyone aa reasonable and as ■willing as licr, which wasn't 
 likely." 
 
 Here Mrs. Biirfield si,ti;l)cd again, and to her surprise found 
 herself echoed by her visitor. 
 
 " It is about that person, the governess, that I have come to 
 inquire," sai<l Francis. "I have reason to believe — I may say 
 that I am almost sure — she is my cousin; very near and very 
 dear to me. Pray tell me all you can about her. I am a rich 
 man, and I am loolciug for my cousin, who has a better claim 
 than I have to the money that has lately come lo me. Pray 
 tell me everything; you shall not find me ungrateful. I will 
 make it well worth j-our while to help me in this matter." 
 
 It might be supposed that Mrs. Burfield, being ground into 
 the very dust by the iron heel of poverty, would briti,Titen a little 
 on hearing this promising speech : but she did nothing of the 
 kind; she only sighed rather more plaintively than usual, and 
 remarked somewhat irrelevantly that her boys were beginning to 
 grow up now, and the boots they knocked out, and the way they 
 wore their things at the knees and elbows, were something awful. 
 
 " Tell me all you can aboxit my cousin," urged Mr. Tredethlyn. 
 " Ah, you don't know how long I have been away from England, 
 and how eager I am to find that poor desolate girl. Pray tell 
 me all you know, and quickly." 
 
 " It's a long story," said Mrs. Burfield, in the very words 
 "used by the grocer — "it's a long story, and goodness knows the 
 rights or the wrongs of it ; but if you are her cousin, — and you 
 are, I suppose " 
 
 " I do not think there can be any doubt of it," Francis Tre- 
 dethlyn answered eagerly; "I do not think there can be any 
 doubt that the person of whom I have heard this morning was 
 my cousin, Susan Tredethlyn." 
 
 " The young person to whom I allude called herself Susan 
 Turner." 
 
 "Yes, yes. It is only natural she should change her name. 
 She left her home because she had been very much persecuted 
 there. She was no doubt afraid of being taken back, and waa 
 anxious to hide herself under a false name." 
 
 " If I had kno\vn that she had come to me imder a false 
 name, never would she have slept a night in this ho^ise," ex- 
 claimed Mrs. Burfield, with something between a sigh and a 
 ahudder. 
 
 " She was a good and honest girl, under whatever name she 
 came to you," answered Francis Tredethlyn ; " but pray teU 
 me the stoiy." 
 
 But Mrs. Burfield could not iuimediately comply with this 
 request; she had to go into the kitchen first, to see that "the 
 firl " was basting some mutton that was being roasted for a
 
 A Very Old Story. 11 
 
 very fastidious "front parlour," who had a rooted ohjcction to 
 bal'id meats; and then wlic had to cfo out into a little area, in 
 which tlie window looked out, and to hold jjarley with some per- 
 son above, who dropped her down divers loaves, and disputed 
 with her as to a certain " twopenny German " which had been 
 had, or had not been had, on the previous Tuesday. At last, 
 however, she was able to scat herself opposite poor Francis, and 
 to begin her story, from the narration of which she seemed to 
 derive a dismal kind of enjoyment. 
 
 "It's close upon seven years since my poor dear husband 
 died," Mrs. Burtield began ; and for some little time Francis 
 Tredetldyn was afraid that she was going to favour him with a 
 sketch of her own personal history rather than that story which 
 he was so eager to know. " It's close npon seven years, seven 
 years of toil and trouble for me, and up to that time I'd never 
 known what it was to want for anything in a nioderate way. 
 He was managing clerk in an insiirance office, sir, and was aa 
 fine a looking man as you need wish to see; but he was taken — 
 sudden— and I was left alone to provide for four young children. 
 Well, sir, I tried one thing and another, but being genteelly 
 brought up, things seemed to go harder with me than they_ go 
 with some people ; and at last an uncle, on my mother's side, 
 who is very wealthy, and lately retiretl from the patent chimney- 
 pot business, gave me enough to buy a little furniture and start 
 fresh down here. It's been a hard life, sir, but I shouldn't have 
 so much minded that if it hadn't been for the children. I 
 couldn't bear to see them running wild upon the shore, or play- 
 ing with vulgar, dirty children on the waste ground ; so, a httle 
 better than four years ago, I thought I'd try if I couldn't get a 
 person to take care of them, who'd be a kind of governess to 
 them, and would give me a helping hand with the house when 
 my lodgings werc'full, and wouldn't want above a few pounds a 
 year, just "to get herself a new gown once in a way, and so on. 
 "Well, sir, I inquired for such a person, but lor' ! you might just 
 as well inquire for anything you wanted on Robinson Crusoe's 
 island as at Coltonslough, unless it's queen's-taxes_ and poor- 
 rates ; and you can have plenty of them without asking. So at 
 last someone says to me — I think it was Mr. Sanders at the 
 post-office—' Wliy don't you advertise in the " Times," Mrs. 
 Burtield ? it'll cost you a trifle, but you are sure to get what 
 you want.' So the "long and the short of it was, I did advertise 
 for a genteel person who would undertake to teach yoiing clul- 
 dren, and make herself generally useful, in consideration of a 
 comfortalile home and a honorarium of ten pounds per annum. 
 Mr. Sanders advised me to put it in the light of a honorarium, 
 as he said it looked more that way. A young person from the 
 country preferred, I stated 'n the advertisement ; for the tldnga
 
 T2 OnJi/ a Clod. 
 
 tHat lodgers from London bring down with their luggage, and then 
 turn round upon you and object to the bedding, had quite set me 
 against Londoners. Well, sir, I got a good many answers, but 
 the best-written letter was signed Susan Turner. So I wrote to 
 Miss Turner — the address was at a little coffee-house near the 
 Great Western terminus — and I told her that if she liked to 
 come down to Coltonslough for an interview, I would be her 
 expenses one way. Well, she came, and I found her a very 
 pleasant- spoken, respectable-looking young person, and I took 
 to her at first sight to that degree that I allowed her to come to 
 toe without reference, she being at variance, as she told me, 
 with her relations in the country. 
 
 " She came to you at once, then?" 
 
 " Yes, she stayed with me there and then, not caring to go 
 back to London, the strangeness of which frightened her, she 
 said ; and she had no luggage, except a httle bit of a carpet-bag, 
 full of things, which she sent for next day ; and then by-and-by 
 the truth came out, that she'd run away from home. But she 
 had a couj^le of sovereigns, and she went out and bought herself 
 a few more things, and made herself as neat and comfoi"table as 
 she could. She didn't make much secret of how she'd left her 
 home, poor girl. Her father had wanted her to marry against her 
 own wishes, she said, and, in her fear of him, she had run away." 
 
 " Poor girl ! poor girl ! " 
 
 " Well, sir," sighed Mrs. Burfield, " we got on very comfort- 
 able for some months. I never met a young person more kind 
 or more willing. The children took to her as if she'd been their 
 own sister, and she was altogether the steadiest, most industrious 
 young 23erson. Things had gone joretty comfortable with me 
 that season ; and in the autumn, quite late, going on for Novem- 
 ber, when peojile don't expect to see a single lodger in all Colton- 
 slough, what should I hear, one afternoon, but the wheels of a 
 fly, and a tremendous double knock at my door ; and who should 
 I see when I opened it, but a tall, handsome-looking gentleman, 
 who walked straight into my ji^arlour, and took the rooms oif- 
 hand, and without so much as inquiring what the terms would 
 be, which, considering the haggling and beating down I'd been 
 accustomed to in the very best part of the season, seemed almost 
 like a dream." 
 
 Mrs. Burfield had warmed with her subject, and had refrained 
 for some time from the rehef of a sigh ; but she paused now to 
 indulge herself in a very heavy one, and then, after a general dis- 
 quisition upon the sorrows of a lodging-house keeper, went on, — ■ 
 
 " He really was one of the handsomest, easiest- spoken gen- 
 tlemen I ever met with, and he seemed to take away one's breath 
 almost ; he had such a dashing kind of way with him that, if 
 you'd have shut your eyes, you'd almost have fancied him on
 
 A Very Old Story, 73 
 
 horseback, galloping away for dear life. He seemed all upon 
 the prance, as it were, if I may use the observation. ' Now I 
 dare say you'll want references,' he said, ' and if so I can't 
 live you any without putting myself to more trouble than I 
 iare about. But you can have some rent in advance if that'll 
 Xo; and I've no end of luggage, if that'll do.' And then he 
 flung himself into one of the arm-chairs, and burst out 
 laugliing when it creaked and groaned, as it were, under him; 
 for lodgers have no more feeling for an unprotected female's 
 furniture than if they was so many Ojibbeway Indians — and 
 I can't deny that the parlour chairs were uncertain. But 
 I didn't mind the strange gentleman making game of them, 
 somehow, for he had such a pleasant way with him, and showed 
 his white teeth, and looked so handsome, that he seemed quite 
 to briirhten up the place. 
 
 " ' ^W41,' he said presently, ' can you guess why I came to 
 Coltonslough in the month of November ? ' And of course J 
 told him no, I couldn't, not having the pleasure of being 
 acquainted with him. Upon which he burst out laughing, 
 again. ' I came here,' he said, ' because I was told Colton- 
 stough was about the dullest place upon the surface of the 
 earth; and I mean to stay here till after Christmas. So you may 
 tell the man outside to bring in my luggage, and look sharp 
 about it.' Upon wliich the flyman brought in a couple of big 
 portmanteaus, and a gun-case, and a hat-box, and two of the 
 heaviest trunks that ever came into my passage. ' Books, ma'am, 
 books, every one of them, and all as heavy as lead,' said the young 
 gentleman, as the corners of the boxes went scratching and bump- 
 ing upon the 2:)aper, — and the way lodgers' boxes do scratch and 
 bump an unprotected female's paper is something awful. But for 
 all that I wasn't sorry to see plenty of luggage, though the books 
 might have been brickbats neatly packed in hay, as has been 
 known to happen in this very terrace. ' Well, ma'am,' saj^s the 
 gentleman, when his luggage had all been brought in and tho 
 Syman paid, ' now I can settle down comfortably. Do I look 
 as if I'd been plucked, do you think, ma'am ? ' he asked, looking 
 at me very hard, and sticking his hands deep down in his 
 pockets, which was one of those ways of his that I venture to 
 call prancing. I didn't quite catch his meaning, but Ithought 
 he alluded to something unpleasant; so I said, ' No, indeed, I 
 should think not.' ' But I have, ma'am,' he answered, looking 
 at me m a measuring sort of way, as if I'd been a five-barred 
 gate, and he was just going to fly clean over me; and that 
 measuring look of his was another of his galloping ways. ' But 
 T have been plucked, ma'am,' he said, ' as clean as any fowl that 
 they ever send you home from the poulterer's. I'm a feather- 
 leas biped, ma'am. So I've come down to Coltonslough, being,
 
 r4 Onltj a Clod. 
 
 as I understand, the dullest liolo npon the earth's cmst, and 1 
 mean to go in a perishcr.' A ' j^erisher' was his exi)ression. 
 ' And I mean to read like old boots ; so you may let your ser- 
 vant light me a lire, ma'am, and get me some chops; ibr I 
 suppose I must resign myself to an existence sustained upon 
 chops so long as I'm at Coltonslough.' " 
 
 Once more Mrs. Burfield stopped to take breath. Francia 
 Tredetlilyn listened in silence, with a moody iVuwn \\\M)n hia 
 face. Akeady he hated this man, of whose share in his cousin's 
 history he was yet ignorant. lie felt as we feel sometimes at a 
 play, when we see the villain first appear upon the stnge, and know 
 he is a villain, yet do not know what his special crime is to be. 
 
 " Well, sir, of all the pleasant lodgers that ever darkened a 
 widow's door, the plucked young gentleman was the plea- 
 santcst. He got up early, and went to his books and papers as 
 soon as he was dressed, and had chops and strong green tea for 
 breakfast; and he sat at his books all day, till it was too dark 
 for him to sit any longer, and then he went and strolled up and 
 down the Esplanade, smoking for an hour or so; and then he 
 came in and had more chops and cold brandy-aud-water for his 
 dinner, except when I took the libei-ty of roasting him a fowl, or 
 getting some other little nicety, just by way of variet;^ ; and 
 then, after dinner, he went to his books and papers again, and 
 sat up till very late, reading and writing and drinking strong 
 green tea." 
 
 " But my cousin Susan," cried Francis. He was getting 
 ini]iatient under this minute descrij^tion of the lodger's habits. 
 " What has all this to do with my cousin ? " 
 
 " I'm coming to that," Mrs. Burfield answered, with a sigh 
 that was more profound than usual. " You see, sir, it hap- 
 pened at this time, being the end of the season, and Colton- 
 slough as empty as it could be ; it happened that we were 
 without a servant; so myself and Susan Turner took it in turns 
 to wait upon the 3'oung gentleman. ISTot that I ever asked 
 her to do anything that you can call menial; but she'd take 
 him up his tea, and clear away his dinner things, and light his 
 candles for him, and such like; and knowing her to be a re- 
 spectable young woman, I didn't keep that sharp watch ovei 
 her that some folks might have done. If she stopped ten 
 minutes or so in his room, talking to him, I usen't to think 
 anything about it — you can hear almost every sound in these 
 houses, and it was quite pleasant to hear her soft voice and 
 his laugh ringing out every now and then. He wasn't the 
 sort of gentleman you could suspect of any harm, he had such 
 a happy kind of way with him, as if he was good friends with 
 himself and all the world. He lent Susan books — books of 
 poetry, with all sorts of pencil- writing upon the edges of them ;
 
 A Very Old Story. 75 
 
 and I used sometimes to fancy Susan cared more for the 
 pencil-writing than she did for the poetry itself; she'd sit and 
 poro over it so when the cliildron were gone to bed and wo 
 were alone in this room. Sometimes the plucked young gentle- 
 man would come do^v^^ here of an evening to fetch himself 
 another candle, or to tell us that he'd let his fire out, or some- 
 thuig of tliat kind; for he wasn't a bit proud ; and then, instead 
 of going 1 lack directly, he'd sit down and make _ himself as 
 much at home as if he had lived among us all his life; and Oh, 
 dear me, sir, how he would talk !— all about books and poetry, 
 and the foreign places he'd seen, and plays, and music, and 
 writers, and actors, and singers. lie seemed to know every- 
 thing in the Avorld. So, you see, one way and another, he saw 
 a good deal of Susan ; for I found out afterwards from the chil- 
 dren that when he went out in the dusk to smoke his cigar he 
 generally contrived to meet Susan, and then he'd walk with 
 her and the children till it was time for them to go indoors. 
 She was a good girl, and she wasn't the girl to throw herself 
 in his way. If they were much together, it was because he 
 followed her. I might have known the meaning of his sitting 
 iu this room for hours together of a night; but he had such a 
 natural way of doing everything that it threw one off one's 
 guard, somehow." 
 
 " The scoundrel ! " muttered Francis Tredethlyn, between his 
 clenched teeth. " But you haven't told me his name. I want 
 to know his name." 
 
 " He'd been with us more than a fortnight before ever I 
 asked liim what his name was, and then somehow or other 
 the question came up, and he said his name was Lesley — 
 Eobert Lesley; but somehow, looking back upon it after- 
 wards, it seemed to me as if he hesitated a little before ho 
 said the name. Well, things went on as comfortable as possi- 
 ble for more than two months, and then he went away, taking 
 all his luggage with him, and paying me very liberal for every- 
 thing he'd had, besides half-a-crown apiece to the children, 
 which at that time of year came very welcome ; and of course I 
 took it from them immediately to go towards their new boots. 
 He went away ; and as I thought, somehow, he'd had a kind ot 
 a liking for Susan, and Susan for him, I half expected the poor 
 girl would fret a little when he was gone ; but she didn't, and 
 looking at her sometimes as she sat at work opposite to me, I iised 
 to fancy there was a kind of happy smile like npon her face. 
 She'd been with me six months by this time, and I paid her the 
 little trifle that was diie; and what did she do "exf; day but go 
 out and spend ever so much iu toys and such-hke for tlie chil- 
 dren, which, as I told her, was very wrong, considering how 
 badly off she was foy clothes. But she made no answer, except
 
 76 Only a Clod, 
 
 to look at me with the same smile I'd seen so often on her face 
 since Mr. Lesley had gone." 
 
 *' Poor girl — poor, helpless, innocent girl ! " _ 
 The dark frown melted into a softer expression as Francis 
 Tredethlyn muttered these few broken words. He was no longer 
 thinking of the stranger — the nameless villain of this common 
 story. He was thinking of his coiisin Susy's innocent face, with 
 the smile of girlish trustfulness ujion it. 
 
 " One day, when Mr. Lesley had been gone a little better 
 than three weeks, a letter came for Susan — I'd need to notice 
 it, for it was the first she'd had since she'd been -svith me. 
 She ran upstairs directly she heard the postman's knock, and 
 took the letter from him with her own hands, and stopped to 
 read it in the passage. She was putting it in her pocket as 
 she came back into this room, and her cheeks were flushed aa 
 bright as two red roses ; but she didn't say a word about the 
 letter. All that afternoon she seemed in a kind of flutter, 
 and every now and then she would come all over in a tremble, 
 and drop her work in her lap. She was making some pina- 
 fores for the boys, and I said to her, ' Susan, what ever is the 
 matter ? ' but she turned it off" somehow, and nothing more was 
 said until after tea, when the children were safe out of the way, 
 and we were sitting alone together. Then I never did see any- 
 body so restless as she was, laymg her work down and taking 
 it up again, and fetching a book — one of the books he'd left 
 with her, — and opening and shutting it, and then pretending 
 to read, but all in the same restless way ; till at last she came 
 suddenly beliind my chair, and flung her arms round my neck, 
 and began to sob fit to break her poor loving heart. And it 
 was ever so long before she could get calm enough to say any- 
 thing ; but at last she cried out, ' Oh, Mrs. Burfield, I'm afraid 
 I'm very ungrateful ; you've been so good to me, and we've 
 been so happy together.' And so we had ; though I do tliink, 
 poor tender-hearted dear, she'd gone through as much on account 
 of the taxes as if she'd been the householder instead of me. 
 ' I'm going to leave you, Mrs. Burfield,' she said ; ' I'm going to 
 leave you, and the cliildren that love me so dearly. I'm going 
 away to be married to Mr. Lesley. I'm to go by the first train 
 to-morrow morning, and he's to meet me at the station, and 
 at eleven o'clock we're to be married.' 
 
 " You may guess how she -took my breath away when she 
 told me this. But I said, ' Oh, my dear, you can't mean to do 
 anything so mad as go alone to meet Mr. Leslej', which is 
 little better than a stranger to you? ' ' A_ stranger ! ' she cried 
 out, ' my darling Robert a stranger ! Oh, if you only knew how 
 noble he is, and how much he is going to give up to many a 
 poor girl like me!' And then she went on about him as if
 
 A Very Old Slorij. 77 
 
 he'd been something belter tlian a liuman creature ; ami having 
 always found liim so much tlie gentleman myself, and so open- 
 hearted and frank in all his ways, I could scarcely do othcrwiso 
 than beUeve her. But still I urged her all I could against trust- 
 ing him._ ' Don't go, my dear,' I said ; ' or, if you must go, let 
 me go with you.' But she blushed very red, and said, ' Oh, Mrs. 
 Burtield, the marriage is to be a secret, and I iiromiscd Kobert 
 again and again that I wouldn't say a word about it to you or 
 any living creature. Only you've been so good to me, and I 
 couldn't bear to go away without telling you the whole truth.' 
 And ui^on this I begged her still harder not to go away ; I told 
 her no good ever came out of secret marriages, and that there 
 was generally something underhand and false at the bottom of 
 them, that brought about all kinds of trouble and suffering 
 afterwards. And I told her how my Burfield married me pub- 
 licly in St. Pancras' Church, and would have his two sisters — 
 one in pink and one in blue — besides the ]\Iiss Parkinses, hig 
 first cousins, who were sweetly dressed in green and salmon, to 
 walk after me to the altar. But it was no more use talking to 
 Susan than if she'd been a stone statue, though she sat herself 
 on the little hassock at my feet, and kept crying one minute and 
 smiling the next, and talking abont her darling Eobert, and 
 kissing me, till I almost thought her brain was turned. It was 
 no use talking. ' I love him so dearly,' she said, ' and I know- 
 how noble and generous he is.' And that was her only argu- 
 ment; and long before daylight the next miorning she went 
 away by the early train ; and though my heart seemed bleeding 
 for her, I couldn't kiss her when she said good-bye, and I 
 couldn't go to the station to see her off. ' No, Susan,' I said, ' if 
 you must go, you must, and I've no power to keep you back ; but 
 I'll be neither act nor jiart in your going.' But I stood at my 
 window to see her go away, and I shall never forget the dark, 
 drizzly morning, -with streaks of gray like on one side of the 
 sky, and white sickly-looking stars on the other, and Susan 
 walking across the waste gi-ound all alone, with the rain driving 
 at her, and the wind beating at her, and a bit of a shabby 
 carpet-bag in her hand. It seemed so di-eadful to think she 
 was going to be married hke that." 
 
 " But she did go away ? " cried Francis. " She must hava 
 como back to you, then ; for the letter with the Coltonslough 
 post-mark reached her father less than eighteen months ago." 
 _ " I'm coming to that," answered Mrs. Burfield. " It's about 
 eighteen months ago that she came back to me, looking. Oh! so 
 changed, so Iwoken down, that I hadn't the heart to ask her any 
 questions. I could see that all had gone wrong, and I could 
 g^ess pretty well what kind of wrong it was. She never men- 
 tioned Mr. Lesley's name; and there was something in he»
 
 78 Only a Clod. 
 
 face tlmt soomocl to malce mo afraid to mention it myself. She 
 wantctl to lodge with ine, she said, and would pay me for her 
 lodgings. I conld sec that she wore a wedding-ring on her 
 finger, hut she had no other jewellery whatever. She waa 
 dressed in black, — black silk that had once been very handsome, 
 but which was rusty and shabby then. The first night she 
 came to me she sat up ver}' late writing, and in the morning she 
 went out with a letter in her hand. She was with me more 
 than two months ; but that was the last time I ever saw her 
 write. She used to be fond of reading ; but now she never took 
 np a book, though ]\Ir. Lesley had left a good many of his books 
 in the little chiffonier in the parlour, thinking to come back, as 
 he told me. She used to be fond of the children; but now 
 she never noticed them, and after a little while they seemed to 
 shrink away from her, as if she was strange to them somehow. 
 For hoTirs and days together she used to sit in the bow-window, 
 watching the road from the station, as if she exi")ected some one. 
 At dusk she would go out and walk \\'[)0\i the Esplanade, just at 
 the time that he used to walk with liis cigar. It w^as the duU 
 season, and there was no one to notice her. At last, aboiit the 
 middle of May, when the visitors began to come to Colton- 
 slongh, she told me one day that she must leave me. I said, 
 ' Was it on account of the lodgings ? ' because she knew I used 
 to raise the rent at that time of year, and I thought that 
 might be the cause of her wanting to go. But she said, ' Oh ! no, 
 no.' She had only had one purpose in stopping so long, and 
 that was in the hope of seeing some one, or getting an answer 
 to a letter she had written ; and now there was no longer any 
 hope of that. So I couldn't persuade her to stay an)^ longer, 
 do what I would, and she went away. She had friends in 
 London, she told mo, who had promised to put her in the way 
 of getting her own living somehow or other. I kissed hor this 
 time, willing enough, poor child, and I went with her to the 
 station ; and I thought her pale face looked almoat like a ghost's 
 as she waved her hand to me from the carriage -window." 
 
 " You're a good woman !" cried Mr. Tredethlyn, half crushing 
 Mrs. Burfield's skinny hands in his strong fingers, — "you're a 
 good woman, and yon did j'our best to befriencl that poor girl." 
 
 Mrs. Burfield sighed, and wiped her eyes -svith the corner of 
 a rusty black-silk apron. The world had been very hard for 
 iier ; but there was a gentle, womanly haven somewhere in her 
 breast, and Susan Tredethlyn had taken shelter there. 
 
 " She'd been gone a little over six weeks, when an old gentle- 
 man came one morning, and asked to see a girl called Susan. 
 Tliat's how he put it. He was very stern looking, and he threw 
 me all in a trendde, somehow, Avitli his ways ; but I asked liim 
 down here, and then, httlc by little, he made me teU him pretty
 
 A Very Old Story. 79 
 
 nearly all I've told ymi. I couldn't Iceep n,nytliTn;c; Tiack from 
 Jiini ; he put his questions so fierce and sudden ; and every time 
 I hesitated ever so little, he accused mo of prevaricating with 
 him, and trying to deceive him. I could see his eyes glaring at 
 me like coals of fire, and his face tin-ncd of a bluish white, so 
 that I was almost frightened he'd drop down in a fit. But 
 when he'd got all the story out of me, he stood up as straight 
 and stern as if he'd been only twenty years old, and said, ' No 
 man of my name ever kncAv what disgrace was until to-da}^ ; and 
 may the heaviest curse that ever fell upon a woman's head come 
 down upon my shameful daughter ! ' He stretched up his two 
 hands, — and I shall never forget him as he stood there vnih. his 
 white hair, and the bluish wliite of his face, and the dreadful 
 glare in his eyes. Then he put on his hat and walked out of 
 the house, taking no more notice of me than if I'd been a stock 
 or a stone. I heard the front door bang to after him ; and I 
 ran upstairs to the pai'lour window, and saw him walking away 
 towards the station ; and that's the last I saw of him." 
 
 " Can you remember iijJon what day this occurred ? " 
 
 " Yes, I can ; for I'd had the parlour lodgers leave me the 
 day before. It was the 29th of June." 
 
 The 20th of Jime ! and on the 30th Oliver Tredethlyn had 
 executed that will wliich made Francis master of thirty thou- 
 sand a year. The young man knew now why his uncle had left 
 him a great fortune, and found it still more difficult to feel very 
 grateful to his benefactor. 
 
 There was a long pause, during wliich ven,qx.ful thoughts had 
 their full way in the breast of Francis Tredethlyn. 
 
 " Can you tell me nothing more of this man," he said pre- 
 eently, — " this scoundrel, who called himself E-obert Lesley ? " 
 
 IsIys. Burfield only answered by a hopeless shake of her head. 
 
 "He left some books, you say. Was there none among them 
 that would give any clue to who or what he was ? " 
 
 Again ]\Irs. Bui'field shook her head. 
 
 " You're welcome to look at the books," she said ; " there's 
 plenty of pencil- wi'iting in them, but no name or address, — only 
 initials." 
 
 She knelt down before a little chiffonier in a corner by the 
 f replace, and took out a few volumes, some handsomely, some 
 shabbily bound, and j^laced them before Francis Tredethlyn. 
 
 Upon the handsomely-bound books the initials " R. L." ap- 
 peared in a gilded monogram. Four of the volumes were Ger« 
 man translations of some recondite classics ; but there was a 
 fifth upon which Llr. Tredethlyn fastened eagerly. It was a 
 small flat volume, bound in sheepskin, and fastened with a braaa 
 Vjck — a very superior kind of lock. On the cover was written 
 the one word " Journal."
 
 80 Onlij a Clod. 
 
 " Let mo Lave tliis book," he said ; " I'll give you a litmdred 
 pounds for it." 
 
 Mrs. Burfield's mouth opened with a spasmodic action, anf 
 for once in her life she forgot to sigh. 
 
 " A hundred pounds ! " 
 
 " A hundred — two, if you hlce. Haven't I told you that I'i| 
 a rich man ? and you've been kind to my cousin. I'll give yon 
 the money as a free gift, for the matter of that ; but I must 
 have this book. It's a journal — a book in which a man writes 
 a history of liis ovm life. An officer I knew in Van Diemen'a 
 Land used to write such a history by fits and starts. How do I 
 know what this may tell me about my cousin ? Let me have 
 it. I know the book isn't yours ; but there can be no such 
 thing as honour or faith to be kept with a man like that. Let 
 me have the book." 
 
 There was a good deal more said upon the matter ; lint the 
 end of it was that Francis Tredethlyn went back to London 
 with the sheepskin-covered volume in his pocket ; and Mrs. 
 Eurfield, retiring to rest after a heavy supper of cold meat and 
 cucumber, dreamt that she had inherited a million of money 
 from one of the Coltonslough tax-collectors. 
 
 CHAPTER XIL 
 
 A MODEBN gentleman's DIAUY. 
 
 Francis Tuedetitlyn went back to the hotel in Covent Garden 
 with the little sheepskin-covered volume appertaining to the 
 gentleman who called himself Robert Lesley, safely stowed in 
 his pocket. He went straight back to the hotel, ate his simple 
 dinner, drew the candles near him, and then, taking up a poker 
 from the hearth, made short work of the lock under which the 
 stranger had kept his secrets. All thought of those sunny 
 gardens and drawing-rooms at Twickenham, the glancing river, 
 the woody background, faded out of his mind for a time, and 
 gave place to one settled purjiose — the discovery of his missing 
 cousin's destroyer. 
 
 Yes, her destroyer! He had only been able to read Mrs 
 Burfield's story in one fashion. The solitary departure in the 
 chill light of a winter's morning, the haste and secrecy, the 
 lonely return long afterwards ; these things seemed to the 
 young man to point only to one conclusion ; — the simple Cornish 
 girl's faith had been betrayed by the man she had so implicitly 
 trusted. 
 
 In the little vclume l)efore him Francis Tredethlyn hoped to 
 find some further clue to that sad history. He seemed to take 
 ft savage pleasure in planishing the neat brazen lock, which he
 
 A Modern Gentleman's Diary. 81 
 
 ehatiered ■with a couple of vigorous blows from the handle of 
 the poker. 
 
 " I wonder whether, when a man's a villain, he writes that 
 down ? " thought Mr. Tredethlyn. " I can't fancy a scoundrel 
 putting the truth about himself even on paper; and if the truth 
 isn't here, I can't see how the book will help me. And yet 
 there must be secrets in it, too, or he'd never have had such a 
 lock as this. Mr. Lowther used to throw his journal about any 
 where, and I don't think he ever did anything that was parti- 
 cularly worth writing down." 
 
 The Cornishman began to turn over the volume very slowly, 
 looking at the pages cautiously, almost as if he expected to see 
 some venomous creature crawl out from between the leaves. 
 The first twenty pages of the book were filled with the records 
 of a college life, in which brief memoranda of study were inter- 
 Bpersed with boating slang and turf calculations. The name of 
 a certaiti Rosa, of the King's Head, appeared very often in these 
 earlier pages ; and there were little epigrams about Rosa, be- 
 speaking the easy-going morality of a Rochester or a Sedley, 
 rather than the pure sentiments of a Tennyson or a Longfellow. 
 Altogether there was a reckless, swaggering manner about the 
 book, which very well corresponded with Mrs. Burfield's de- 
 scription of the prancing stranger. 
 
 But the volume had no interest for Francis Tredethlyn until 
 he came to the twentieth page, where the name of Coltonslough 
 figured for the first time. 
 
 " Novemher 8. — The abomination of desolation, and just the 
 place for a fellow that wants to read hard and be delivered from 
 the society of his fellow-creatures ! Arrived yesterday after- 
 noon : found civil landlady, stereotyped sea- side accommodation ; 
 decrepit easy-chair, sHpi^ery horsehair cusliions ; no window- 
 curtains to speak of, and a great deal of unnecessary drapery 
 festooned about a rickety tent-bedstead ; wash-hand-stand one 
 size too large for a doll, and fifty sizes too small for any civilized 
 being ; shells and shepherdesses on the mantelpieces, and any 
 amount of blown-glass decanters on the sideboard. Dined on 
 chops, which were fried, soddened in their own grease. Must 
 epeak to the landlady to-morrow, and insist on gridiron. The 
 woman who would fry chops would tliiuk nothing of human 
 Bacrifices. A girl waited ujoon me, a good deal younger than 
 Rosa, and I think prettier — but we have changed all that, so I 
 didn't take particular notice of her. Read hard till after one, 
 and write this before retiring to my coiich, — flock, and lumjiy, 
 for I dug my knuckles into the counterijane while examining 
 the apartment. 
 
 "Novemher ^. — The girl, who is infinitely superior to Rosa, 
 brought me my breakfast. More chops, not fried, but soddened
 
 82 Only a Clod, 
 
 in relic of tlie dark ages entitled Dutch oven, for I inquired; 
 and underdone French rolls. Why, O i:)rovincial baker, ahvayg 
 underdone ? What grudge dost thou bear against thy fellow* 
 man that thou seekest insidiously to undermine his constitution 
 with thy clammy bread-stutfs P Girl, infinitely prettier than 
 Rosa, cleared away breakfast. Very shy, and only answers 
 polite inquiries in monosyllables. Asked if she was relation of 
 ■woman of house. No, no relation ; nursery governess to children. 
 Comes from some remote district in the west of England ; evi- 
 dently objects to be precise as to locality. Heard her go down 
 kitchen stuirt; with tea-things, and did not hear her rcascend 
 them. Conclude that the nursery is somewhere in the cellarnge. 
 Read hard all day. Smoke and stroll in the evening. La?idlady 
 waited on me at dinner. Dismal change, after monosyl]al)ic girl, 
 recalling Death's-head at Egyptian banquets, but not crowned 
 with flowers. More reading alter dinner, brandj^-and-water cold, 
 and now to bed. Have ordered mattress to be put over flock. 
 Sleeping on knobby surface all very well now and then, but not 
 for a permanence. Mem : To keep my ej'-e ujjon Lord Paisley's 
 'Blazing Tom,' for the Craven meeting. 
 
 " November 12. — No diary yesterday or the day before. Read 
 with German crib : wonderful fellows those Germans for first- 
 class translations of classic fogies. Wrote to H. C. to put a 
 pony on ' Blazing Tom.' Walked on the Esplanade in the after- 
 noon, and made the acquaintance of monosyllabic Cornish girl, 
 infinitely prettier than Rosa. Yes, I succeeded in breaking the 
 ice, with considerable trouble; for I never did seeanythmg femi- 
 nine so shy and frightened as this brown-eyed Coniish girl. 
 ' Her eye's dark charm,' &c. Well, there is something of the 
 gazelle m her eyes, something shrinking and fawn-like. I could 
 fancy the white doe of what's-its-name looking as she looked at 
 me yesterday. 
 
 "I went out for my smoke and stroll rather earlier than I 
 had intended. I saw the Cornish girl and three uncouth chil- 
 dren in rusty leather boots wending their way across the piece 
 of waste ground which forms the delicio^is prospect before my 
 »vindow. A nice, cool, gray afternoon, with a low yellow streak 
 on the western horizon ; a gray sea, melting into a gray sky, 
 with only just that one golden streak glimmering along the 
 edge of the waters ; the sort of afternoon that reminds one of 
 Tennyson's poetry. So I lighted my cigar, and went out for a 
 stroll. Perhaps I followed the monosyllabic girl. AVhat do I 
 know ? as that amiable French nuisance, who is jierpetually 
 quoted in newspaper leaders, remarked. Enough that I went, 
 found the Cornish girl, very shaljbily dressed, but unutteral)ly 
 pretty, strolling hstlessly up and down the paved walk beside 
 the sea. They call it the sea ; but. Oh for the roaring breakers
 
 A Modern Genthman's Diary. 88 
 
 of the Atlantic, or tlie long hoarse roar of the waves as the 
 Gei-man Ocean surges on broad yellow sands yonder, far away 
 in the North 1 
 
 " And so, having lighted my cigar, I strolled iip and down tho 
 Esplanade. Of course I began to talk to the children. If chil- 
 dren have any use in this world — which I have been frequently 
 inchned to doubt — surely it must be in this matter of f-erving as 
 a means of introduction to pretty nursemaids. The children and 
 I were intimate in no time ; the presuming little imps became, 
 of course, obnoxiously familiar ; and, like all go-betweens, were 
 very difficult to shake off when done with. But I got the Cor- 
 nish girl to talk at last. She is not stupid, only shy ; and she 
 told me a good deal, in a pretty, simple, girlish way, about her 
 native county, always keeping clear of all precise allusion to 
 locality, by the bye. She is very ]n-ctty,— I hc-d almost written 
 lovely, but that adjective can only be applied to a high-bred 
 beauty. She is extremely pretty, and that white doe of Rhyl- 
 ston (isn't it?) look in her eyes haunted me all last night while 
 I was reading. Yes, it was very pleasant, that stroll upon the 
 Esplanade. I threw away my first cigar, and forgot to light 
 another, though she would have allowed me to smoke, I dare 
 say. It was very pleasant, that cool gray sea, and the yellow 
 streak fading in the west, and the flat gray shore, and the gene- 
 rally Tennysonian aspect of everything. It was very_ much 
 better than the King's Arms, and a lot of fellows drinking no 
 end of Bass, and chaffing Rosa. I don't suppose this Cornish 
 girl knows what chaff means. I almost shudder when I think 
 of Rosa, with her big, round, black eyes, and the sticky httle 
 curls upon her forehead, and the tartan neck-ribbons, and great 
 yellow eamugs. And Oxonians have married Rosas before my 
 time, and have deservedly gone to the dogs thereupon. But 
 fifty thousand is your figure, my dear Robert, — fifty thousand, 
 <veU sounded, and no separate-use-and-maintenance humbug 
 either. Something in the commercial- widow line, I suppose you 
 ■will have to put up with, my poor Bob; but no greedy old 
 parent to interfere with the disposal of the money. The widow, 
 or the orphan, if a fifty thousand pounder, is the sort of article 
 for you, dear child. 
 
 "November 13. — She brought me my breakfast this moniing 
 — (what, is she she already ? Alas, poor Rosa !) — and I got her 
 to pour out my tea. I couldn't detain her long : she was so very 
 busy, she said, and seemed painfully anxious to get away. I 
 made her talk a httle. She has a nice low voice, — ' an excellent 
 thing,' <tc. ! Now Rosa had a \'ixenish way of speaking, that 
 always jarred upon me, even when I was deepest doAvn that pit 
 into which the fair barmaid's admirers cast themselves. Sh*^ — 
 the Cornish girl — is what people call a genteel young person,
 
 84 Only a Clod. 
 
 with wMte hands and a slim waist, and a nice way of doing her 
 hair, and puttincr on her collars and cuffs. Her name is JSusan 
 Turner, by the bye; and the children call her Susy. Could 
 anything sound more pastoral ? Susy. The name of Eosa was 
 always so painfully suggestive of nigger melodies. Another 
 cool gray afternoon, and another low yellow line across the sky ; 
 so I went out for my smoke at the same time as yesterday. 
 She was on the Esplanade with the children. She instructi 
 them in arithmetic, wi-iting, and elementary smatterings of his- 
 tor}^ geography, and grammar, after dinner, and then brings 
 them out for a walk till tea-time, after which they ' retire to 
 rest,' as the noveUsts have it, not without considerable rebel- 
 lious scuffling in the passage and on the stairs. That is the 
 order of the day. In the morning, I suspect, she is housemaid, 
 parlour-maid, needlewoman, or anything else that my landlady's 
 necessities oblige her to be. But she is always equally neat and 
 pretty ; and if she were only provided with that trifling httle 
 matter of fifty thousand or so in the elegant simplicity of the 
 three per cents, I should be decidedly incUued to fall in love with 
 her. Does one ever fall in love mth a fifty-thousand pounder, 
 by. the bye ? I rather think not. She — Susy — was not quite 
 BO shy this afternoon, and we talked a good deal. I offered to 
 lend her some books. I offered to lend Eosa books once, 
 when I was in the lowest depths of spooueyism, and was un- 
 happy about her grammar — those dreadful superfluous 'whiches,' 
 and intolerable ' as hows' ! — but Eosa rejected my literature, as 
 dry rubl)isli that gave her the horrors. I had lent her the 
 • Bride of Lammermoor.' My little Susy won't turu up that 
 innocent nose of hers at any sentimental story, I'll be bound. 
 I've found an odd volume of Byron, containing ' Parisina,' and 
 the ' Prisoner of Chillon,' and a lot of the ' To Thirza' business. 
 "N.B.— I find that I've called her my httle Susy] Pretty 
 well, as I've been onl}^ a week in the place. Am I going down 
 into another pit, I wonder — a deeper abyss than that into which 
 Eosa casts her victims ? Poor, pretty, fawn-eyed httle darling ! 
 Take care of yourself, my dear Eobert. Poor, friendless Susy ! 
 She couldn't well be tvorse o^' under any circumstances than she 
 is in this place, that's one blessing : the drudge of a mistress 
 who is herself a slave in the bondage of poverty. I went down 
 to the kitchen yesterday to get a fresh suj^ply of coals — these 
 people are ready to fall down and worsLip me because I'm not 
 proud, as they put it ; but there are numerous orders of pride, I 
 think, — and I saw their dinner. Such a poor bone of mutton ! 
 Poor little Susy ! how she would open her eyes at sight of the 
 Eichmond and Greenwich banquets that I have seen given to 
 persons as inferior to herself as — Hyperion to the other person. 
 What a frightful hindrance to original composition is that ab«»
 
 A Modern Gentleman's Diary. 85 
 
 minable habit of hackneyed quotation ! — the great newspaper* 
 mill going round three-hundrod-aud-thirteen times a year, and 
 only one little limited stock of quotations for all the leader- 
 writers. 
 
 " November 16. — Sunday, and a wet day : saw Susan start 
 for church in the morning with prayer-books and childi'en. 
 Strolled out with umbrella a little after twelve ; found church ; 
 unpleasant new building, smelling of damp stucco, and looking 
 like an editicc of soddened brown paper; waited in the porch, 
 patient as that young idiot in Arthur Pendenuis's poem, until 
 ray lady came out, and conducted her home in triumph under 
 my umbrella, while the awkward squad of children brought up 
 the rear under cover of the maternal gingham. She was 
 obliged to take my arm ; and as the walk from the church is 
 rather a long one, we got alarmingly intimate — when I say 
 alarmingly intimate, I mean that she has taken to blusliing 
 when I speak to her. That's the worst of these fawn-like girls ; 
 they will blush ! And when they're pretty, the blushes are so 
 bewitching. And when they don't happen to have fifty thou- 
 sand or so, what is a fellow to do ? Take to his heels, re])lies the 
 stern moralist, who has sown his own wild oats twenty years 
 ago, and is envious of the young scatterers of to-day. I caaie 
 to Coltonslough to read; and come what may, I shall stay 
 there till it's time to go back to St. B. In the meantime, 
 Susan is a brown-eyed angel — an angel who leads the life of a 
 low-bred dnidge, and for whom any possible change of circum- 
 stances mtost be a change for the better. 
 
 " Of course I cpiestioned her about the sermon as we walked 
 home. Take an interest in sermons, and women will believe in 
 you, though 3^ou were the veriest scoundrel that ever admired 
 Voltaire and considered the ' Pucelle ' his chrf-cVaiuvre. What 
 a little Puritan she is ! She has been to church twice every 
 Sunday ever since she can remember, she told me, and to 
 Sunday-school, and to all kinds of examinations and cross- 
 examinations in the vicar's parlour. I don't suppose she would 
 have floundered as I did, and come to grief over some of the 
 questions those old fogies at Oxford asked me about Biblical 
 history. She knows all about Saul, and David, and Jonathan, 
 and those everlasting wars with the Philistines, I dare say. She 
 is very pretty, lovely — yes, lovely, though not high-bred. I 
 sometimes fancy, though, that she must have decent blood in 
 her veins. I never saw a prettier little hand upon my arm thaa 
 that which rested there to-day, as I brought her home from, 
 church. If I were— something utterly different from what I 
 am, I would get my degree, go in for a country curacy, and 
 little Susy should be my wife. 'BiitnohJesse ohlige: which very 
 elastic aphorism means, in my case, that I must marry a rica
 
 86 Only a Clod. 
 
 woman, aiul hold my own in my native coiinty ■whenever the 
 rcin-nincf jiotentate is polite enough to retire to the dusky shades 
 wlutla'v all earthly sovereigns must go. 
 
 "Poor little Susan! pretty little Susan! When I am a 
 county magnate, laying down the law at the head of my table 
 in the great dining-room at the hall, shall I look hack and think 
 of these days, and smile at myself, rememhering that I could 
 be so foolish as to go out on a wet Sunday to escort a little 
 nursemaid along a damp clay road ? 
 
 " Read hard all the afternoon: dined on an elderly fowl fla- 
 voured with Dutch oven — a bird that must have known Col- 
 touLslough when the first bow-windowed house was a damp 
 brickwork skeleton, grim and open to the howling of the winds. 
 Head for some time after dinner, and let my fire out. Went 
 downstairs to hunt up matches and fii-ewood, and found my 
 landlady and Susan sitting opposite to each other at a little 
 table with one tallow-candle, reading pious compositions of an 
 evangelical tendency. They both seemed glad to see me ; so I 
 stopped and talked to them. Susan had read the ' Prisoner of 
 Chillon ; ' she read it last night, and cri-ed over it ' fearful,' my 
 landlady informed me ; so we were able to talk about the i)oem, 
 ^d I read two or three of the fugitive pieces aloud. I used to 
 be rather great at the debatiug-chib at 0., and I gave them the 
 ' Thyrzas ' and ' Day of my Destinys ' very strong. I could see 
 the tears shining in Susan's eyes before I'd finished. I used to 
 recite poetry to Rosa sometimes, when I'd been taking too much 
 Bass, and we stood in the moonlit porch at the King's Arms, 
 with the river, and the willows, and the towing-path all of a 
 sliimmer in the silvery light; but one is apt to get tired of 
 reciting sentimental poetry to a young person' who cries, 'Lor', 
 how funny ! ' at the close of some iiassionate verse. I remem- 
 ber thundering oi;t that grand anathema of Tom Moore's against 
 the Prince Regent, ' Go, deceiver, go ! ' and my Rosa asked me 
 naively what the gentleman had done that the other gentleman 
 sho^^ld use such bad language to him. No, Rosa, your strong 
 point was not intellect. In the matter of sticky curls and large 
 black eyes you are unsurpassed, but the sentimental element in 
 your nature may be represented by zero. 
 
 "November 'SOth. — ]\Lore blanks in my journal. I snid we 
 were growing alarmingly intimate ; such an intimacy is alarm- 
 ing to a fellow who came to Coltonslough Ijenton devoting him- 
 self to Aristotle and Ai-istophanes, iEschylus and Euripides, 
 and all that sort of people. Have been reading ' The Clouds ' 
 all this morning, but found a strange undercurrent of Susnn 
 Turner pervading that classic satire ; and I mean to go in and 
 win this time : those fellows at St. Boniface sha'n't be able to 
 laugh at my discomfiture a second time. Why were women
 
 A Modern Oentleman's Diary. 87 
 
 created for tlio tvoul.'le and confusion of the superior sex P I 
 thouglit I slinnld Le so sale at CoHonslough, remote from 
 Rosa, the DrlilaU of my youth ; and lo ! here is another Dchlali, 
 a thousand times more danq-crous — -a sliy, brown-eyed Ompliale, 
 for whose sake any intellectual PIcrcules on this earth would 
 meekly hold the distal!'. She is so pretty; and all those 
 modest, shrmking ways have such an unspeakable fascination 
 after a long course of llosa's sharp repartees, all redolent of the 
 bar and the beer-engines. I can never dissociate Rosa from the 
 smell of malt liquors and ardent sj^irits, M'ith just a faint sus- 
 picion of lemons and stale pork-j^ie. But there must be some- 
 thing extraordinary about this girl, for her vulgar surroundings 
 do not seem to vulgarize her. I don't mean that she is one of 
 nature's duchesses, or any humbug of that sort. I have no 
 belief in nature's nobility, and to my mind a duchess is a 
 person who has been cradled in Belgravia, whose long-clothes 
 were flounced with point cl'Alenr;on, and to whom the wrong 
 side of Temple Bar would be as strange as the centre of Africa. 
 I should by no means care to see my little Susy in a London 
 dra^ving-room ; but I can fancy her domiciled in some rustic 
 cottage in the lake district, a patient Wordsworthian little 
 handmaiden, waiting upon and worshipping her husband, and 
 getting him cosy breakfasts, with silvery trout broiled to per- 
 fection, and mushrooms newly-gathered from the neighbouring 
 plains. If I were only an embryo curate, with neither expecta- 
 tions nor ambitious desu-es, I scarcely think that I could find 
 
 a better wife than this simple gazelle-eyed maiden ; but 
 
 Oh, that terrible monosyllable! The history of all the world 
 seems made up of buts and its. 
 
 " My afternoon stroll upon the Esplanade has grown into an 
 estabhshed thing. Six23ence judiciously bestowed upon the 
 children despatches those young abominations scurrying over 
 the waste ground to an emporium which they call ' the shop,' 
 whence they return after an interval, embrowned and sticky 
 with the traces of ginger- bread and barley- sugar. In the mean- 
 while Susan and I are alone on that dreaiy Esplanade. What 
 is it Byron says about youth, and solitude, and the sea ? "Well, 
 that sort of thing is rather a dangerous combination ; and I 
 begin to think that if I want to redeem my character at St. B., 
 I shall be obliged to take myself and my bool. s n way from Col- 
 tonslough. ' Breathes there the wretch with soul so dead,' who 
 could sit in that dingy parlour, coaching himself in the classics, 
 while one of the prettiest girls in all the British dominions is 
 walking up and down the Esplanade opposite his window, and 
 thinking of him ? Yes, she thinks of me, and expects me, 
 when that yellow streak begins to glimmer in the west. I have 
 6een her head turned towards my window ; and then I pitch
 
 88 Only a Clod. 
 
 my friend Sophocles into the remotest corner, and go ont for 
 my afternoon stroll. 
 
 " Becemher 10. — Yes, the dismal confession must be wi-itten, 
 or the account between R. L. and self closed for ever. I am 
 in love — seriously, desperately, uni-easonably in love — with a 
 young person whose social status is something between that of 
 a parlour-maid and a nursery-governess. Could she be worse 
 off than she is now ? Could any tm-n in the wheel of fortune 
 leave her in a lower place than that she now occupies? 
 Scarcely ! I don't believe in those dismal histories which the 
 Minerva Press was wont to disseminate. Susan is just the 
 Bort of girl to fall on her feet. Those shy, sensitive creatures 
 always know how to take care of themselves, and often do re- 
 markably well in life. It's your dashing, high-spirited, strong- 
 minded girl who goes to the bad. Goodness knows I'm not a 
 bad-hearted fellow. I can't look at such a girl as Susan with- 
 out worrying myself about her future career. There's scarcely 
 any sacrifice I wouldn't make — short of the sacrifice of my own 
 prospects — in order to insure her welfare. Yes, the little 
 stranger, let into my dwelling unawares, has strung his bow 
 and twanged liis arrow home to my heart. I am really in love 
 this time. I used to feel savage with those St. B. fellows when 
 they talked nonsense to Eosa : but I think I should annihilate 
 the man who so much as looked at this girl. Yes ; I am pre- 
 pared to make any sacrifice — short of the destruction of my 
 iwn prospects. Ycvir really rich man, or your penniless beggar, 
 5an afford to make a fool of himself; but I stand just in that 
 niddle distance between the golden lands of plenty and the 
 sterile plains of poverty, in which a man miist needs be pecu- 
 liarly circumspt.ct. 
 
 " 17^//. — I have broken the ice at last. What a little 
 Puritan she is ! And yet I know that she loves me, with the 
 regular Haidee or Zuleika sort of devotion : would like to 
 kneel at my feet and offer me tiresome flowers, when I was 
 absorbed in the classic fogies, and all that sort of thing. A 
 long intci-v'iew on the Esplanade this afternoon. I beat the 
 ground with the greatest discretion ; for it would have been 
 the easiest thing in the world to frighten her. It must be a 
 marriage — a hond fide marriage, secret, of course. She won't 
 object to that. But upon the other point I can see she would 
 be inflexible. Those quiet people are always obstinate. Ay 
 di me, my pretty Susy, I fear that you and I must say Good- 
 bye. And I ani really over head and ears in that dismal pit. I 
 am most absurdly fond of her; that's the v/orst of it. Yes, 
 we must say Good-bye. The catechisms in the rector's parlour 
 and the Sunday-school have done their work, and Susan Turner 
 will be a drudge all her life rather than surrender those ridicu-
 
 A Modern Oentleman's Diary. 89 
 
 Ions prejudices -wliicli it is the fasliion to implant in tlie minds 
 of rnstic youth. Addlo, my pretty Susan. I cannot imagine 
 anythiiit^f more deliii,htlul than our cjuict walks in the cold 
 gray twilight; I Ciiniiot conceive any eyes — out of a ]\I.urillo — 
 so beantiFul as those brov. a orbs of yours — orbs is the proper 
 phrase, I tliink, when a fellow is sentimental ; — but the price 
 demanded is too heavy. One may buy gold in too dear a 
 market; and ten years hence, with blighted prospects, and 
 half-a-dozen children, I might grow tired of my white doe of 
 what's-its-name, and fancy a blue-eyed Greuze — how wonder- 
 ful that man was in his manipulations of violet-hued pupils 
 Bwimniing in enamelled whiteness ! — instead of my ]\Iurillo. 
 
 " 20^/;.. — I began to pack my books the day before yester- 
 day, and yet I linger. ' Tell me, my heart, if this be love ! ' 
 Not much doubt about it, I fear. But only a day or two more, 
 and then — and then good-bye, pretty puritanical Susan, with 
 your Sunday-school morality, and all that innate obstinacy 
 peculiar to c^uiet women. I shall have forgotten her in six 
 weeks, I dare say. But then that consolatory idea of the future 
 oblivion won't lessen the present anguish of parting. "We may 
 forget all about a gigantic triple-pronged carious tooth when 
 we turn our back upon the dentist's torture-chamber, but the 
 pang of extraction is none the less. I shall forget her, and 
 some other eyes will haunt me in my sleep ; but there must be 
 a long blank interval of weariness before the Lethean waters 
 can wash away that artless face. I have plumbed her simple 
 mind to its uttermost depths, and have found nothing like de- 
 ception or pretence. So we must part. I to go forth and do 
 my best at opening the great oyster; she to remain here as my 
 landlady's drudge and companion. Poor little thing ! I hope 
 she'll miss me when I go. I shouldn't like to think of her 
 enjoying a flirtation with some new lodger — a city clerk, who 
 would wear ready-made clothes bought somewhere in Shore- 
 ditch, and smoke cheaji Manillas. No, I shouldn't like tc 
 fancy her haj^py when I am gone. It wouldn't have been 
 pleasant to the Corsair to imagine Medora flirting with mer- 
 cantile mariners in his absence. 
 
 " 2\st. — I have packed all my books, except a few German 
 cribs. Perhaps it was as well, for my studies had grown very 
 desultory. How can a fellow read hard when there is a pretty 
 girl in the case, and he has been so j^rofound an idiot as to fall 
 m love with her? But 'it is written,' as the followers of the 
 prophet observe, and I must go. I have told Susan. AVe had 
 a very affecting interview yesterday. How the poor little girl 
 cried ! And I hate to see a woman cry; it's so excruciating to 
 the feelings of a good-hearted fellow ; and the prettiest woman's 
 nose is apt to get just a leetle red when ' the tears come trick-
 
 90 Only a Clod. 
 
 ling do'vm, down, down.' O 8nsan, that I sliovild quote that 
 familiar luallad of IjorJ Lovoll when 7. write of jonr soitow} 
 But I RuiiiKJSc there is something of tho fersiflcnr ir\ my nature, 
 for I don't often find myself very earnest about anything. 
 And so we walked up and down the Esjilanade; she crying, and 
 I talking. I flatter myself I t;ilkod rather well. There was 
 just that dash of excitement about the business which makes 
 a fellow talk well. But my eloquence was all of no avail ; 
 Alfred de Musset, Byron, George Sand, Rousseau, and Thomas 
 ]\Ioore, all combined, cannot j^revail against the tenets of the 
 Sunday-school; and so we are to part, * in silence and tears, 
 lialf broken-hearted, to sever,' &c., unless I were prepared to 
 sacrifice my prospects and put the fatal noose about my neck. 
 
 " Bah ! it would be too absurd, too utterly preposterous. 
 Such things have been, and have always resulted in i^retty 
 much the same way. Your poet Shelley gets expelled from 
 the University because he can't keep his convictions to himself, 
 marries a simple rustic maiden, grows tired of her, and falls in 
 love with someone else, whereon rustic maiden drowns herself, 
 whence unspeakable psdandre and confusion. 
 
 " January 2nd. — No, the tiling cannot be done ; the sacrifice 
 would be too great. The days of the Minei-va Press are past. 
 The yellow post-chaise, the lonely coiintry inn, the college 
 friend who is introduced in a surplice, and acts as clergyman 
 ■ — alas ! are not these exploded with the dark ages ? Wera 
 there ever any sucli marriages, I wonder? or were they only fig- 
 ments of the romancer's brain ? At any rate, anything of that 
 kind must be impossible nowadays. And then a man must be 
 a consummate scoundrel who could devise such a plot. I don't 
 pretend to the Sunday-school species of morality; but nemo 
 rrpente fait turii'issim'ns, as Juvenal has it. I am not so bad as 
 that. 
 
 " 5tJt. — She is very unhappy ; and how hard it seems to 
 leave her to this drudgery and desolation — Coltonslough, and 
 my landlady, and my landlady's children, all the year round ! 
 And she is just the ' creature not too bright or good,' &c. ; the 
 very woman of all others for a cottage in the lake districts, or a 
 Devonshire fishing-village, or any pretty out-of-the-way haven, 
 •where a man might take his rest. And yet I must leave her 
 here, bafllcd entirely by the Sunday-school precepts with which 
 her shallow mind has been imbued. I have no time to play the 
 Lovelace, and I don't want such a victory as his. I have had 
 tiresome letters from home. They will expect me to get my 
 degree; and I am free to confess that my reading since I have 
 been at Coltonslough has been the merest moonshine. Decidedly 
 I must leave this place by to-night's express. ' Better to die by 
 sudden shock,' &c. : and as for Susan, it is only a natural chap«
 
 A U 0(1 em Gentleman'' s Diary. 9' 
 
 U'Y in sucli a girl's history. She will break her heart, and the| 
 iiiiirry a small tradesman", who will !n:ive her a Paisley shawl aril 
 a black-silk gown to wear on Sundays. 
 
 " nth. Another day, and I am still here. I was awake all 
 last night, thinking of all manner of possibilities, or perhaps 
 impossibilities. The yellow post-chaise and the college friend 
 in a surplice are obsolete absurdities; but how about a marriage 
 before the Registrar ? Is there anything so very impossible in 
 a marriage before the Kegistrar, whicli shall not be, say, too 
 binding? A\niy not a marriage before the lle.gistrar, between 
 eight a'nd twelve in the forenoon, with open doors, in the pre- 
 sence of two witnesses, &c. P You walk into an office, very 
 much like any other office, and you see an official very much 
 like any other official, and there is a triHing formula, and a little 
 signing and countersigning, and so on, and the business is done. 
 But even about this there would be a good deal of trouble, and 
 the college friend would still be necessary, though not in a sur- 
 plice—and the witnesses — and the office. _ Is the game worth 
 the candle .P Ami really so desperately in love ? And then, 
 again, supposing the game worth the cost of illumination, these 
 sort of games are so apt to be dangerous ; and awkward stories 
 crop up against one in after-life ; with perhaps Chancery suits, 
 and so forth. No, it is too much trouble. It will be better for Susan 
 and 1 to shake hands, like sensible people, aTid say Good-bye. 
 
 " 7/./(,. — A very long talk with Susan. I told her that wo 
 must part ; our roads in life lying separate, and so on. Poor 
 child ! her grief was something very terrible. We had wandered 
 out to some lonely ground beyond the Esplanade, leaving those 
 abominable children to disport themselves as they pleased. We 
 sat down u]ion a little bank at the edge of a great ploughed 
 field, with the grey sea before us. The poor child sobbed as if 
 her heart would have broken. I am no deliberate Lovelace, but 
 I suppose I have in this instance pursued the prey with some- 
 thing of a Mexican trapper's intensity. I never meant to be in 
 earnest ; but have been di-ifted, as it were, by the chances of the 
 situation ; and people who let lodgings at dull watering-places 
 really should not employ such pretty parlour-maids. Poor, 
 tender-hearted little Susy ! I never thought she could have 
 grown so fond of me, or that a httle sentimental spouting, and 
 a few pretty speeches, could have gone so^ far. I should have 
 been a callous wretch if I had not been touched by her grief; 
 and I was inexpressibly touched ; so much so that I flung all 
 good resolutions to swell the general heap of paving material 
 for the halls of Pluto, and told my Susy that there was au 
 alternative for this miserable parting if shp would— trust me 
 — andconsent to a marriage before the Registrar. 
 
 " She will trust me. I explained to her the nature of the
 
 92 Only a Clod. 
 
 ceremonial I proposed, ami liow all nnnecessary pnbHcity and 
 the ruin of my prospects might be avoided thereby. And 
 then the poor little thing burst out with a whole string of 
 romantic protestations. 
 
 " Did she want me to sacrifice my prospects ? Oh no, no! Did 
 she want to be acknowledged before the world as my wife ? No, 
 a thousand times. She knew very well that she was too ignorant 
 and humbly educated to sujjport such an honour. She only 
 wanted to know herself that she was my wife, my own lawful 
 wife, united to me by the laws of heaven and earth. 
 
 " The laws of heaven and earth as administered in a Regis- 
 trar's office. I have cast pnidence to the winds, and am now 
 committ'^d to the step which I only dreamed of as a possibility 
 last night. I have a sort of foreboding that the business will 
 bring me into trouble ; but having gone so far now, am I to 
 recede ? And then I am really dusperately in love with this 
 Cornish girl. 
 
 " How is it to be done ? These things seem so simple when, 
 one contemplates them in a di-eamy reverie engendered by 
 tobacco-smoke. It will be rather a complicated business, I fear; 
 and the college friend, that is the grand question. Who is to 
 be the convenient college friend ? Perhaps I had better sleep 
 upon it. 
 
 " 8/./i. — After a world of serious consideration, I can think of 
 no one but my brother. He's a selfish beggar, who'd scarcely 
 wet the tips of liis fingers to save an entire ship's crew from 
 drowning ; but he owes me money, and ought to go through 
 fire and water to serve me. At any rate he is not troubled by 
 any scrupjles or compunctions of the Sunday-school order; and 
 then he's a clever fellow, and on the spot. I'll go up to town 
 to-morrow and sound liim about it." 
 
 Tliere was no more. The journal ended here ; and Francii 
 Tredethlyn sat staving at the last half-page, sorely puzzled as to 
 how he was to read that broken history. 
 
 That the lines before him had been written by a heartless 
 profligate he could scarcely doubt, little as he had been accus. 
 tomed to sit in judgment on his fellow-men. But he was slow 
 to understand the full measure of the writer's depravity. A 
 more subtle mind than his was required to read the hidden 
 meaning of that carelessly-written diary. Francis Tredethlyn 
 only understood that his cousin had fallen into the hands of a 
 selfish worldling, who had been fascinated by her pretty face, 
 but who set his own welfare and his own happiness before all 
 thou<i-ht of her love or sorrow. 
 
 " He meant to marry her," thought the young man ; '' thank 
 heaven for that. No matter how secret or clandestine the
 
 A Modern OentUman's Diary. 93 
 
 marrin gc may have been, it sliall be my task to find Susan, and 
 to make that marriage pubUc." 
 
 Mr. Trcdothljn went early the next day to Gray's Inn, 
 there to hold a solemn consultation with the chief of that firm 
 which had transacted all Oliver Trcdethlyn's legal affairs during 
 a period of some forty years. 
 
 To Mr. Kursdale, Francis told all tliat he had been able to 
 discover of his cousin Susan's history ; and to tlic lawyer's 
 hands he confided the manuscript volume surrendered to him 
 by Mrs. Burfield. 
 
 " You'll be able to make more out of it than I can, Mr. 
 Kursdale," he said. "Heaven knows I read it carefully; but I 
 can only understand that the man is a scoundrel, and that it 
 was my cousin's evil fortune to love him. I wonder how it is 
 that a simple innocent country girl always does fall in love with 
 a scoundrel, if he has only got a handsome face and a smooth 
 tongue P " 
 
 The next day was Saturday, and Francis Trcdethlvn'a 
 thoughts were strangely divided between the contemjilation of 
 his cousin's unknown wrongs, and the expectation of a day in 
 the sunny gardens and drawing-rooms at the Cedars. Late 
 in the evening there came a letter from Mr. Kursdale, the 
 solicitor, — 
 
 " Yourself and Another. 
 
 " Dear Sik, — After a very careful perusal of the MS. volume 
 intrusted to me by you yesterday, I regret to say that I can 
 only come to one conclusion respecting the intentions of the 
 writer. 
 
 " I believe that it was this person's design to involve Miss 
 Susan Trodethlyn in a fictitious marriage, which should be, in 
 fact, no marriage at all. 
 
 " A man-iage before the Eegistrar would have been as en- 
 tirely valid, if duly performed, as any religious solemnization. 
 
 " I conclude, therefore, that the writer of the MS. diary con- 
 templated a sham ceremony, in the presence of some person, 
 falsely representing himself to be the Superintendent Eegistrar. 
 
 " I much fear that your cousin's simplicity would render her 
 likely to be the dupe of any such plot. 
 
 " Should you wish to communicate with me further on this 
 Bubject, I shall be glad to wait upon you at any time you may 
 appoint. 
 
 *' I am, dear Sir, yours very obediently, 
 
 "James Kursdale." 
 
 •* A mock marriage ! " thought Francis Tredethlyn. " Yes ; 
 I understand it all now. There was an insolence in his m a nn er
 
 94 Only a Clod. 
 
 of wi-iting of my pretty Susy that stung me to tlie very heart. 
 No honest man ever wrote lilce that of any woman; tio man 
 would write like that of a woman whom he meant to make hia 
 wife." 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 CAtTGHT IN THE TOILS. 
 
 Francis Tredethltn spent the bright summer Sunday after« 
 noon and evening at the Cedars. Mr. Hillary generally filled 
 his house vni\\ company on the day of rest; and hard-wovking 
 commercial magnates, and lazy West-end loungers, were alike 
 glad to spend their Sabl)ath amongst the flower-beds and trel- 
 lised walks, under the shadow of black spreading cedars, or on 
 the terrace by the river. The merchant's house was only 
 another Star- and- Garter, where the menu was always irre- 
 proachable, and where one escaped that little bugbear so com- 
 mon to the close of all social entertainments, and known by the 
 vulgar name of "Bill." Mr. Tredethlyn found the house fuUot 
 strangers, and Miss Hillary very difficult of approach. He was 
 not allowed to feel embarrassed, however; for Julia Desmond 
 always happened to be in his neighbourhood, and he found her 
 society as charming as on the previous occasion. She was so 
 very handsome, and there was really something so bewildering 
 about her dark eyes, and white teetli, and fluent talk upon every 
 possible subject, that the young man — who had never been ac- 
 customed to the society of well-educated women — may be for- 
 given if he admired her. He admii-cd her, but not as he ad. 
 mired Maude Hillary. No thrill of half- fearful raptuie stii-red 
 his pulses as he stood by JuHa's side upon the moonht terrace, 
 looking down at the rippling water, darkened by the tremuloua 
 shadows of the trees ; but the faintest flutter of Maude's airy 
 flounces stirred his soul like a burst of music. 
 
 But she was only a beautiful, far-away creature, who never 
 cotild have any part \n liis destiny. He acknowledged this in 
 a half-despairing vay; and then resigned liimself to look at 
 her only now and. then from a distance, and to behold her 
 always surrounded by those elegant amber-whiskered loungers, 
 whose admiration of her loveliness never made them awkward 
 in her presence ; who could approach her without suffering 
 from a sudden determination of blood to the head ; who could 
 hover near her without trampHng half-a-yard of her laco 
 flounce to destruction iindcr the savage tread of a clumsy foot. 
 
 " Those fellows are flt to talk to her," he thought ; " they've 
 been brought up to it, I supjiose : but I'm better out of her 
 way ; for even if she sjieaks to me, I make a fool of myself 
 Bomehow, and feel as if I couldn't answer her. I get on better
 
 Cmifjht in the Tu'ds. 95 
 
 with Miss Desmond; slie's so Iciiid, and she doesn't seem to 
 mind my being awkward and stnpid." 
 
 Yes, Miss Desmond was very kind to the simple-hearted 
 Cornishman. So kind is Madame Arachne to a big blundering 
 blue-bottle fly that hovers ignorantly about the net she has 
 spread for him. Julia had angled very patiently for the last 
 two years in the great matrimonial fisheries, and had brought 
 several fish to land, only to lose her hook and leave them_ to 
 gasp and ]icrish on the bank when she discovered then: quality. 
 But now, for the first time, she knew she had a prey worthy her 
 skill and patience. She had taken good care to ascertain tliat 
 Francis Tredethlyn's thirty thousand a year was no mere fig- 
 ment of a gossii)'s brain, and she set herself delilteratcly to 
 work to will this prize so newly offered for competition in the 
 matrimonial market. Mr. Dillary_ nitcrestcd himself in the 
 young man's fortunes, and gave him some advice about the 
 management of some of his Uncle Oliver's numerous invest- 
 ments. This, of course, necessitated interviews at the mer- 
 chant's offices in Moorgate Street ; and no interview evei; came 
 to a close until Francis had received hospitable Mr. Hillary's 
 invitation to " run down " to Twickenham. 
 
 The young man seemed always running down to the Cedars. 
 He slept there sometimes, in a pretty chintz-curtained chamber, 
 all rosebuds and maplewood, and from whose jasmine-festooned 
 windows he looked out upon the river — the perpetual river, now 
 shimmering in the moonlight, now twdnkling and glancing iu 
 the sunsliine, but always "a thing of beauty and a joy" fortho 
 people who dwell upon its banks. 
 
 Yes, he was always riding down to the Cedars. He had de- 
 parted very little from his sim])le habits ; but he had bought a 
 couple of horses at Tattersall's— such horses as a man who 
 has been used to ride across wild moorland districts without 
 saddle or stiri-ups from his earhest bojdaood _ knows how to 
 choose. He ke^^t the horses at livery near liis hotel, and he 
 hired a smart young groom to attend to them, and even to ride 
 behind him on occasions. 
 
 Miss Hillary grew accustomed to the young man's presence, 
 and greeted him kindly when he came ; but f:hen she had so 
 many friends, such enthusiastic female adorers in crisp muslins, 
 who found the milhonaire's daughter the dearest darling in the 
 world, and were always eager to pour some new confidence into 
 her willing ears. She had so many friends, so many admirers, 
 that Francis Tredethlyn always found her more or less difficult 
 of approach. And in the meanwhile there was Miss Desmond 
 perpetually smiling upon him, and talking to him, and hateuing 
 to liiui. 
 
 So things went on very pleasantly for Mr. Tredethlyn, uutu
 
 96 Only a Clod. 
 
 one day his eyes were very suddenly opened to a fact that well, 
 nigh overpowered him. He was lounging on the terrace one 
 sunny afternoon, and, for a wonder, Juha Desmond was not by 
 his side. She had been summoned into the midst of a conclave 
 of pretty girls holding solemn discussion with Maude Hillary on 
 the lavr-n. Francis was looking down at the water, as it was his 
 habit to do, and thinking. He was leanmg against the balus- 
 trade of the teiTace, all amongst the foUage which had been so 
 bright when he had first come to the Cedars, but which was 
 brown and withered now : he was watching the dead leaves 
 slowly drifting in the wind, and drojjping one by one into the 
 water; and he was thinking of his cousin Susan. Nothing 
 had yet come of his search for her. Perhaps he had left the 
 matter too much in the hands of his la\vyers, trusting to their 
 legal acumen for the unravelment of the tangled skein. It may 
 be that he had been a Httle too much at the Cedars, absorbed 
 in the delights of a new existence. This afternoon, watching 
 the drifting leaves upon the river, the gold and crimson tints of 
 toutunin on the woodland and on the hill- side, Francis Tredeth- 
 lyn remembered how the time had shpped by him, and how 
 little nearer he was to the discovery of Susan Tredethlyn's fate 
 than when he had hstened to Martha's story in the dreary 
 Cornish grange, and had swora to go to the end of the world in 
 search of his cousin. There was some feeling of remorse in Ihs 
 mind as he thought of the past three months, the idle days 
 in that luxurious river-side retreat, the billiard-playing and cigar- 
 smoking, the pleasant rides to and fro in the dewy evenings, 
 with genial gentlemanhke companions, who thought him a good 
 fellow, and very rarely laughed at his ignorant simphcity. 
 
 He was roused from his reverie now by one of these young 
 men, Mr. Montagu Somerset, of the War-Office, the scion of a 
 noble house, the pi'esumptive heir to nothing a-j-ear, and one of 
 the most hoi:)elessly devoted of Maude Hillary's adorers. 
 
 " "Wliy, Tredethlyn," exclaimed the young man, without 
 removing a gigantic cigar from between his lips, " how dis- 
 mally you're staring at that water! It looks as if you were 
 contemx^lating felo de se, b' Jove. What's the row, old boy ? 
 and how do you happen to be alone ? Where's the fiancee ? " 
 
 " I — I was thinking of some family matters, not very 
 pleasant ones," Mr. Tredethlyn answered, simply, 
 
 *' But where's the future ?" 
 
 " The what .? " 
 
 " The future — Mrs. Francis Tredetlilyn that is to be — the 
 Desmond. Why, has the lovely Juha deserted her Frank? 
 Why, you dear, simjjle old baby, how you blush ! _ Is it a 
 crime to be in love with a handsome girl ? I only wish your 
 young affections had fixed themselves on one of my five sisters
 
 Cauglit in tlie Toils. 97 
 
 —all most amiable girls, but without so much as a fipoonful of 
 what our lively neighbours call iiotage." 
 
 Francis Trcd(>thlyn stared aghast at the young official. 
 
 " AVhy, you don't snj>posc — you don't think that I — that 
 Miss Desmond — that " 
 
 " You know those silversmiths on the Boulevards — no, you 
 don't know Paris, by the bye. Well, dear boy, there are Parisian 
 silversmiths who make a great display in their shop wiiichnvs 
 6y means of a concatenation of table- si:)Oons and a strong flare 
 of gas ; but I doubt if in all Paris there was ever such a notor 
 rious case of spoons as the present ; and I don't blame you, my 
 dear Tredethlyn. If I were not Alexander, I would be the 
 other person. If I were not madly and ho]ielessly in love with 
 blue-eyed Maude, I should fling myself at the feet of dark-eyed 
 JuUa: such teeth, and such a generally regal tournure, with 
 thirty-thousand a-year, ought to make a sensation. Frank, I 
 congratulate you ! Bless you, my boy, and be happy ! " Mr. 
 Somerset wrung his friend's hand with effusion. 
 
 " But, my dear Somerset— but, upon my word and honour," 
 cried ]\Ir. Tredethlyn, in extreme teiTor and perplexitjs " Miss 
 Desmond has been very kind to me; and feeling myself out of 
 
 {)lace here, I've been grateful for her kindness ; but, as I am an 
 lonest man, not one word has ever passed between us upon any 
 biit the commonest subjects; and I am sure that neither she 
 
 nor I have the slightest idea of " 
 
 " Oh, you haven't, eh P " asked Montagu Somerset, taking his 
 cigar from his mouth, and staring at it in a contemplative 
 manner, as he knocked away the ash ; " never mind about Miss 
 Desmond; you, haven't any idea of making her mistress of yoi;r- 
 self and your property, real and personal, eh ? You admire her 
 very much, and are very grateful to her for being civil to you, 
 and so on, but you have no idea of making her an offer of 
 marriage ? " 
 
 " No more than I have of making you such an offer." 
 " Then in that case," reislied Mr. Somerset delilieratoly, " all 
 I have to say is to this effect : look out for squalls ; when j-ou 
 are coasting on a shore renowned for its quicksands, you'd 
 better beware of any sti-ange light you may see ahead, for the 
 illumination generally means danger. When you meet with 
 such a girl as the Desmond, don't trifle with her. Of course it's 
 very pleasant to ride, and drive, and play billiards, and loiter 
 through a summer month or so with a handsome <nrl, meaninTf 
 nothing serious all the time ; and it is to be done with impunity, 
 if you are careful in your selection of the young lady. But I 
 don't think Julia Desmond is exactly the 6ort of girl j'ou shouM 
 try it on with. T'here are men in our place, apoplectic old 
 fogies in starched neckcloths and no end ox waistcoat, who 
 
 a
 
 98 Only a Clod. 
 
 Iniew tlie Desmo-nd's father; he was a south-of-Iroland man 
 and a notorious duellist. They say that Julia inherits his eyea 
 and teeth." 
 
 " But you don't mean to say that I've done Miss Desmond 
 any wrong ? " cried Francis. " How should I be otherwise than 
 grateful to her when she was kind to me, and set me at my ease 
 somehow, and made me feel a little less like an Ojibbeway 
 Indian suddenly let loose amongst fashionable people? How 
 should I imagine that she would think of me except as — as 
 Miss Hillary thinks of me ? " His voice grew low, and an in- 
 expressible change came over his whole manner as he mentioned 
 Maude Hillary's name. " They know my history, and that this 
 time last year I was a private in a foot regiment, with nothing 
 higher to liope for than an extra stripe upon my sleeve." 
 
 " Miss Hillary is one person and Miss Desmond is another," 
 ]\rr. Somerset replied, with just the least susjaicion of Jiaideiir. 
 " The lovely Julia's face is her fortune, you know, dear boy. 
 You ask me if you've been wrong ; and I tell you frankly, as 
 a gentleman, that I think you have. A man can't be exclusive 
 in his attentions to a woman withoiit other people perceiving 
 the fact, and forming their own conclusions thereupon. I know 
 everyone who comes here regards the matter as settled, and I 
 heard JMaude say the other day that she thought you a veiy 
 good fellow — she didn't say feUow, — and would be delighted to 
 see her dear Juha so pleasantly established." 
 
 "Did she say that?" cried Francis, with a dusky blush 
 kindling under his dark skin ; " did she speak well of me ? 
 And if — if she should think I have done Miss Desmond some 
 kind of wi'ong by usiu'ping her society and setting people talk- 
 ing about us — if sloe should think me mean or base " 
 
 Montagu Somerset interrapted Mr. Tredethlyn by a long 
 whistle. 
 
 " Oh ! the wind's in that quarter, is it ? " he exclaimed ; 
 " you're down in that list ; then in that case I've nothing more 
 to say. The river Hows at your feet, my dear friend; and I 
 dare say there's a rope for sale somewhere in the villages of 
 Twickenham or Isleworth." 
 
 The young man sauntered away, leaving Francis with his 
 arms folded on the balustrade, and his face darker than it had 
 been, even when he had thought remorsefully of his missing 
 cousin. 
 
 ]\Iiss Desmond had not made such veiy bad use of her time. 
 With consummate tact she had contrived to detain Francis 
 Tredethlyn at her side in all those pleasant walks, and drives, 
 and boating excursions, which made up a great i>art of life at 
 the Cedars ; and it had seemed that the young man, of his own 
 ©ption, devoted himself to Colonel Desmond's daughter. Julia
 
 Cavglit in tlie Toils. 99 
 
 6acl been clever enongli lo set the simple Cornisliman entirely 
 at his ease in her presence, and having clone that, all the rest 
 followed naturnlly enouL^'h. It was to Miss Desmond that 
 Francis Trcdcthlyn coniulod his opinions u^Don every snhject; it 
 was to Miss Desmond that he applied for enlightenment when 
 his ignorance fenced him about with cloud and darkness, and 
 seemed to shut him out from the peojDle round him. When tha 
 visitors at the Cedars were busy in the animated discussion ot 
 some new book whose name Francis had never heard, and whose 
 contents would have been utterly beyond his untrained under- 
 Btanding, Julia would cxjilain to liim the nature of the volume, 
 simplifying the subject with a dexterity that was all her own, but 
 never humiliating her comjjanion by any display of her own supe- 
 riority. If art was the subject of discussion, Juha insidiously 
 demonstrated to the Cornisliman the merits and demerits of any 
 piven picture. So Francis Tredethlyn had been considerably 
 benefited by three mouths of intimacy with a handsome and 
 accomplished woman, and he began to feel sometliing like a 
 well-dis2:>osed INIaori who had been admitted into famiUar inter- 
 course Avith a family of friendly settlers. 
 
 But all tliis time, in spite of handsome, dark-eyed Julia's 
 kindness, in spite of all the benefits to be derived from intimate 
 relations with such agreeable people as the guests who were 
 always to be found at Twickenham, the one charm that had held 
 the young man constant to the Cedars, — like some spell-bound 
 knig-ht in a fairy story, who cannot leave an enchanted castle, 
 though he knows that peril and ruin lurk within its walls, — the 
 one supreme influence that had taken possession of Francis 
 Tredethlyn had been the presence of Maude Hillary. From 
 first to last his faith had never wavered, but liis devotion had 
 been the servile worship of an idolater, who was prepai-ed to 
 find his divinity hard and merciless. No thought of ever being 
 anything nearer to Maude Hillary than he now was entered the 
 young man's mind. She was beautiful, amiable, loving, — for 
 nad he not seen her \di\\ her father ? She was all that is most 
 lovely and adorable in womankind : but she was not for him. In 
 her presence his ignorance and awkwardness seemed to weigh 
 him down to the very dust ; and yet she was never unkind to 
 him, or snperciUous, or insolent. She was only indifferent : but 
 Oh, the bitterness of her indifference ! the anguish of the slavish 
 worshi2:)per who jirostrates himself before his idol, and knows 
 all 1,he while that it is stone, and cannot have pity upon him ! 
 Again and again Francis Tredethlyn had determined that he 
 would come no more to the Cedars. He would call on Mr. 
 Hillaiy in the City some morning, and thank him for his hos- 
 pitable kindness; and then he would buy a commission in a 
 cavalry regiment newly ordered for Indian service.
 
 100 Only a Clod. 
 
 "Wby sliQiilJ. I be always coming hero?" he thought. 
 "They're all ■very good to me, the young swells. But I feel 
 awkward amongst them still ; and even if I could fall into their 
 ways, and make myself like them, which I can't, where would 
 be "the good ? I don't want to he a ' swell ; ' I should like to he 
 a soldier, vnth. a regiment of glorious fellows to call me captain ; 
 or a farmer, -^yith half a coviiity to ride oyer, and a thoiisand 
 sturdy labourers to take wages from me on a Saturday night; 
 or a merchant, like Mr. Hillary, with a small fleet of ships on. 
 the high seas. That sort of tiling would be hfe. But to dawdle 
 in a billiard-room; or lounge at Tattersall's, and buy a horse 
 one doesn't want, out of sheer idleness, and sell liim at a loss 
 three weeks afterwards ; or to go for a yachting excursion off 
 the Isle of "Wight, with men to do all the work, and nothing to 
 do one's self except he on one's back and smoke and drink; pale 
 ale all day long : I can't fancy such a Hfe as that. So, why 
 should I come here any more ? I can't fall naturally into these 
 peojjle's habits. I think sometimes that I was happier out 
 yonder, brushing the captain's clothes and talking to the con- 
 victs. What a fellow that Surly Bill was ! By Jove, that man 
 liad seen Hfe ! " 
 
 Mr. Tredethlyn, lounging perpetually in the gardens by the 
 river, conscious of his incapability of breaking the spell that 
 bound him, thought, with some touch of envy, of the brilliant 
 career of his late acquaintance, Sm-ly Bill the burglar. But now 
 the Cornishman had been all at once aroused from the pleasant 
 torpor which had crept u^Don him in this modern Castle of Indo- 
 lence. All that was most generous in the young man's nature 
 arose in revolt against the thought that he had wronged JuHa 
 Desmond. "It seems so hard that she should have set these 
 people talking about her by her kindness to an ignorant fellow 
 like me. It must do a girl harm to have her name bandied about 
 by an idle young fellow Hke Somerset. And she stands alone in 
 the world, too, with no father or brother to take her part. I 
 ought to have told that fellow to hold his tongue, and I will, too, 
 before I leave this house to-night. But this decides me, at anj" 
 rate. I've been here too much ; I'll buy a commission and go 
 out to India, and the law^'ers must look after poor Httle Susy." 
 
 CHAPTER XIY. 
 
 VERT PRIVATE TUEATHICALS. 
 
 The river was gray and dim in the twiHght by this time ; for 
 the first half of October was gone, and the dusky shadows 
 gathered early on Mr. Hillary's la\vn. Francis Tredethlyn found 
 the gardens deserted when, he left the terrace, and walked slowly
 
 Very Private Tlieatricah. 101 
 
 towards the lionse, where hghts were gleaming in- innumeraLlo 
 windows. The young man had only ridden do-\vn to Twicken- 
 ham that morning, and had no special engagement to dine at 
 the Cedai's. 
 
 "I'll go round to the stables at once," he thought, "and I 
 can call in Moorgate Street to-morrow, and tell Mr. Hillary that 
 I think of going abroad. Why should I see her again ? The 
 eight of her will only make me fooUsh, and keep me here in spite 
 of myself." 
 
 The lady thus vaguely alluded to was not Miss Desmond ; but 
 when Francis Tredethlyn entered Mr. Hillary's house by the first 
 open window that presented itself on the upper t«rrace, he found 
 himself in a little study much afiected by the ladies of the house- 
 hold, and came suddenly upon a female figure sitting alone in 
 the dark. 
 
 Something like a guilty pang shot through him as he recog- 
 nized that stately figure, even in the shadowy obscurity of the 
 unlighted room. In the next moment there was a rustling of 
 silk, and Miss Desmond had risen and was facing him in the 
 twilight. 
 
 " Yes, it is Mr. Tredethlyn," she said, presently. " "Wliat 
 have you been doing with yourself all the afternoon ? There has 
 been a grand discussion about some amateur theatricals, con- 
 cerning which Maude Hillary is absolutely bewitched, and wo 
 want you to act." 
 
 " I think you've got plenty of fellows who'll act better than 
 I can. Miss Desmond ; though I did try my hand at the busi- 
 ness once in Van Diemen's Land ; and I'd be glad to make 
 myself useful in any way that would please Miss Hillary, if it 
 was to dress myself as a footman and carry a tea-tray or a 
 scuttle of coals ; but I think I shall be leaving England before 
 the theatricals come off; in point of fact, I think I shall be 
 leaving England directly." 
 
 " Leaving England ! " 
 
 The expression of those two words could scarcely have been 
 more tragical than it was ; and yet for once in a way JMiss 
 Desmond was not acting. All in a moment she saw the fair 
 edifice which she had schemed to build for herself crumbUng 
 into ruin and chaos. 
 
 " Leaving England ! " she repeated, — " you think of leaving 
 England, Mr. Tredethlyn?" 
 
 She put her hands to her forehead with a little tragic ges- 
 ture : and Francis Tredethlyn wished that he had entered the 
 house by any other door or window than that which he had 
 chosen. 
 
 Julia's dismay was entirely real ; for the disappointment was 
 very bitter to this young lady j who had built up a fair future
 
 102 Onlt/ a Clod* 
 
 for herself on tlie foundation of Francis TredetWyn's •wealth. 
 The grim walls of Castle Desmond, the silver waters of the 
 Shannon, the green hill sides and lonely valleys, made them- 
 selves into a picture that shut out the dusky room, and then 
 melted into gray blankncss. She had meant to do such great 
 things with Francis Tredcthlyu's thirty thousand a year ! 
 
 The young man stood looking at her in as much embarrass- 
 ment as if he had been guilty of some wilful decejjtion. He 
 was so little of a coxcomb, that it was very diilicult for him to 
 imagine that his sudden departure could give pain to the bril- 
 liant JuHa. He was so entirely simple and true-hearted, that 
 no suspicion oi Miss Desmond's mercenary views had any place 
 in his mind. 
 
 There was a very brief pause, and then Julia niurmnred, in 
 clow, half-broken accents — 
 
 " You are really going away ? — but why ? " 
 
 " Oh, Miss Desmond, I scarcely like to tell you why ; and yet 
 it's not altogether on that accouut," answered Francis, vaguely. 
 " There are other reasons. I n • i not in my riglit place amongst 
 such people as I meet here, i'm a rough, uneducated fellow, 
 and idleness doesn't suit me. I want to be of some use in the 
 world. ^A'hy, I felt myself a better nuui out yonder, without 
 sixpence in my pocket, than I am to-day, in spite of Oliver 
 Tredethlyn's mone3^ So I mean to buy a commission and go 
 out to ludiy, where there's some fighting to be done." 
 
 " You are not telling me the truth, Mr. Tredethlyn. Th is is 
 not your real reason for running away from the Cedars, as if 
 the house were infected." 
 
 " My dear Miss Desmond, I — you have been so kind to me^ 
 you have made me feel so much at home here, where, but for 
 you, I must have felt myself so miserably out of place." 
 
 " Wliy should you be out of place amongst these people ? " 
 cried Julia, drawing up her head with a proud gesture, " un- 
 less," she murmured, in a thoughtful uudertone — •" unless 
 because these peo])le are so much beneath you." 
 
 Miss Desmond had entirely recovered herself by this time. 
 All at once, after sitting a long time at the table, playing her 
 cards with infinite tact and patience, — all at once she fourd 
 herself losing the game, and saw that only the boldest play 
 could help her. But Julia was ecpial to the situation. The 
 Becond of December had come upon her very suddenly; but she 
 did not despau" of triumphing by a coup cVetdt. 
 
 "Tell me the truth, Mr. Tredethlyn," she said, looking 
 Francis full in the face, with her eyes and teeth gleaming in 
 the twilight; "why are you going"to leave this house? Why 
 do you talk of hurrying away from England? " 
 
 •' Because — because — I have done you a wrong in absorbing
 
 Very Private TheatricaU. 103 
 
 BO nuicli of your society, Miss Desmond, and the people lient 
 have begun to mix your name with mine. I cannot bear that 
 you, -wlio are so superior to me, should be humiliated by such 
 an association ; especially when there is no fnuudatiou for their 
 talk," Francis Tredethlyn added, in considerable embarrass- 
 ment. 
 
 " Oh, I understand it all now," answered Julia, with an un- 
 utterable bitterness in her tone ; " you have been warned against 
 me, Mr. Tredethlyn. I am only a foi-tune-huiitress, and I 
 have been spreading my toils about your innocent footsteps, 
 and it is only by flight that you can save yourself. Oh, yes 1 " 
 she cried, with an ironical laugh, which seemed to ex])ress a 
 keener anguish than another woman's wildest sob, " i know 
 how these people talk ! " 
 
 " ]\liss Desmond, on my hononr 
 
 "JMr. Tredethlyn, on ■?»// honour, I know the world betb.T 
 than you do. If you had ilevoted yourself to any other woman 
 in this house, to any daughter of that mercantile aristocracy in 
 which Mr. Hillary rules supreme, no sneering comments Avould 
 have greeted your ear. But what am I— the daughter of the 
 Desmonds of "Desmond— amongst these people? What am I 
 but Maude Hillary's dependant and companion ? I am poor, 
 and I endure poverty in its most cruel bitterness; for I am 
 poor amongst the vulgar rich. Who can give me credit for 
 sincerity? who dare trust in my friendship? I am n well-bred 
 pauper, a fortune-huntress, an adventuress, a creature wnose 
 smiles are to l)e dreaded, whose society is to be avoided. O 
 Francis Tredethlyn," cried Julia, with a sudden shiver of agony, 
 which would have done credit to a Eachel, " I hnow so vjcll 
 what has been said to you. Go— go at once. You are wise to 
 accept the warning conveyed in these people's insolent insinua- 
 tions. Go— there is a gulf between you and me, for you are 
 rich and I am poor. JBeware of me even when I seem most 
 sincere. Remember that I am a pauper, and the descendant of 
 paupers — paupers who shed their blood and squandered their 
 fortunes in a losing cause; paupers who died for the love_ of 
 honour and loyally, two words that would seem the emptiest 
 Bounds to merchants and tradesmen. Oh, Mr. Tredethlyn, have 
 pity upon me, and go." 
 
 And then Miss Desmond broke down all at once into a burst 
 of hysterical sobbing, and stretching out her hand towards the 
 back of a -prie-dieK, diair standing near her, tottered as it she 
 would have fallen. She did not fall, however ; for before her 
 hand could reach the irric-diev,, Francis Tredethlyn' s strong 
 ai'in was round her. 
 
 "Miss Desmond," he cried, "Julia! why do you talk like 
 this? Do you think that any base thought about you ever
 
 104 Only a Clod. 
 
 entered my brain P Fortune-huntress, adventuress — did 1 
 ever wrong you in my inmost thouo^lits Ly sucli a name aa 
 that?" o J- 
 
 " No," answered Julia, softly. " You are too noble ; and yet 
 you may have been influenced by others. Why should you 
 think better of me than others think ? Yfhj should not you 
 too des^oise me ?" 
 
 Her voice was broken by sobs, and she was still supported by 
 Mr. Tredethlyn's arm. He felt that she was trembling violently. 
 He could just distinguish her handsome profile in the dusk, and 
 the tears glittering upon her dai-k lashes. 
 
 " Despise you, Julia ! you who are so superior to me ! Do 
 you forget what I am ? Have I not much greater reason to 
 fear your contempt.'^ And you talk of poverty, as if that were 
 so deep a suffering, while I am so rich, and care so little for my 
 money. Share it with me, Julia. I'm only a poor waif and 
 stray as it is ; but with such a woman as you for my wife I 
 might be of some good in the world. Heaven knows you are 
 welcome to my fortune, ]\Iiss Desmond. If you were a man, 
 and my comrade, I would say. Share it with me as my brother 
 and my friend. But you are a woman, and I can only say, Be 
 my wife. 
 
 Julia withdrew herself from the supporting arm, 
 
 "Ah, Mr. Tredethlyn," she said, in an icy kind of voice, 
 " this is the bitterest insult of all. The Desmouds do not marry 
 for money ; they only marry where they are beloved, and can 
 love again." 
 
 " How can I expect that you can love me ?" asked Francis. 
 " Do you think I can forget that I am an ignorant boor, sud- 
 denly thrown amongst people whose habits of hfe, whose very 
 thoughts, are strange to me ? " 
 
 " And you would marry a woman without so much as asking 
 for her love ? " 
 
 " I would ask for her friendship and her fidelity. I shouldn't 
 care to exact an uneven bargain, Miss Desmond ; and I doubt 
 if I could give much more myself," the young man answered, 
 rather coldly. But at the sound of a stifled sob from Julia he 
 changed his tone aU at once; a thousand generous nupulsea 
 were stirred in him by the aspect of her distress. He was 
 nothing more than a child in the hands of tliis brilliant young 
 Irishwoman. 
 
 " Dear Miss Desmond," he cried, " I seem destined to offend 
 and grieve yon. If you will share my fortune, if you will accept 
 my best friendship and fidelity, my whole hfe shall prove to you 
 how much I admire and respect you. If j'ou reject my offer, 1 
 can only say " 
 
 But Julia did not allow him to finish the sentence, which sho
 
 Yery Private TJieatricals. IOC 
 
 foresaw would be t-xiDi-essivc of complete resignation to her ad- 
 verse decision. 
 
 " Oh, Francis," she exclaimed, "you offer me yoxxr for time V* 
 There was something sublime in her contemptuous enunciation 
 of this last word. " You ask me to accept your friendship, 
 when I have been weak and mad enough to lq-ve you." She 
 was not Kachel any longer; she was Madame Dorval, all melt- 
 ing tenderness and womanly pathos. She covered her face with 
 her hands, and then, with something between a sob and a shud- 
 der, rushed suddenly from the room, and hurried along the dusky 
 staircase and passages to her own apartment. 
 
 The candles were hghted on the dressing-table; but there 
 was no intrusive handmaiden to annoy Miss Desmond by her 
 watchful glances, her mute interrogation. JuUa looked at her 
 reflection in the glass, and saw herself Hushed and triumphant, 
 with traces of tears upon her cheeks. 
 
 " And my eyes are really wet," she thought; " but then the 
 chance was such a good one, and so nearly lost. "What a good, 
 simple-hearted fellow he is ! and how happy any reasonable 
 woman miolit be with him — and thirty thousand a year ! _ Ah, 
 Maude Hillary! it was very pretty and childish and nice of 
 you, coming to wake me out of my sleep on your last birthday, 
 to show me the set of diamonds and opals papa had bribed 
 your maid to slip under your pillow before you awoke ; but 
 I will show you diamonds before long that shall make you 
 ashamed of that birthday trumpery." 
 
 Miss Desmond rolled her black hair into a great smooth 
 knot at the back of her head; and she put on a dress of that 
 fugitive golden yellow, in which there is an artful intermingling 
 of silvery sheen, and which milUners call maize— a bewilderingly 
 beautiful colour when seen in conjunction with a handsome 
 brunette. The loungers who dined at the Cedars that evening de- 
 clared that JuHa Desmond had never looked so siDlendid. Francis 
 Tredethlyn sat by her at dinner, and was near her all the even- 
 ing : and at night, when he found himself alone in the pretty 
 chintz-curtain chamber that he had so often occiipied of late, 
 the young man seated himself by one of the windows, and, 
 pushing open the sash, looked out at the quiet river rippling 
 softly under the stars. 
 
 " And she is to be my wife," he thought ; " she is very hand- 
 Bome, and I ought to be proud to thiidi that she can care for 
 
 euch a fellow as I. And yet " His head sank forward on Ida 
 
 folded arms, and the image of a beautiful creature smiled before 
 him in all the dazzling brightness of an opium-eater'sdream. 
 Francis Tredethlyn gave one long regretful sigh as he raised his 
 head, and looked moodily out at the distant woodland on the 
 other side of the river.
 
 106 Only a Clod. 
 
 " ^Vliat can it matter wtom I marry ?"_he asked himself, 
 bitterly; "^would site ever think of me, if I were to come 
 to this house eveiy day for ten years at a stretch ? A\Tiy, 
 her docfs arc more to her and dearer to her twenty times than I 
 am. And Juha Desmond loves me, and thinks me better than 
 those fellows with the yellow whiskers, who are always talking 
 of new books and new music. They please her ; but Julia 
 desjiises them. Am I such a wretch that I cannot be gi-atcful 
 for a sensiltlo woman's affection P I am grateful to her. I am 
 proud to think that she will be my wife. But I wish I was 
 back in Van Dicmen's Land, blacking the captain's boots, and 
 smoking shag tobacco mth Surly Bid the burglar." 
 
 After that dramatic little scene in the twiUght study at the 
 Cedars, everything went on velvet. Julia was triumphant; 
 ]\raude was delighted and sympathotic. AVhat could be more 
 ell arming or more proper than that Julia should marry a miin 
 with thirty thousand a year for his fortune ? The only hin- 
 drance to universal happiness in a very dclightfiil world was 
 the fact that so many people had to do iv if hout thirty thousand 
 a year, ]\Iiss Hillary'thought, whenever she gave her miud to 
 the study of political economy. 
 
 " And you %vill be so rich, dear Julia," Maude said, as she 
 kissed her friend ; " and if Harcourt aud I are very poor— as 
 we must be, unless papa gives his consent by-and-by — you'll 
 take us for a drive in the Park sometimes, won't you? And if 
 you give many parties in the season, I shan't be able to come to 
 them ; for you wouldn't like to see me always in the same dress 
 — like those poor peoj^le at the Union — and I shall be obliged 
 to get a set of black-lace flounces, like Ecder— you never saw 
 Eeder, my last German governess but one — and put them on 
 pink silk one day, and blue the next, and so on ; it's very trou- 
 blesome, and the flounces don't generally come straight ; but 
 then it looks as if one had so many dresses. Of course you'll 
 have boxes at hoth houses, Juha, and on the grand tier ? and 
 you'll buy a place in the country — and Oh, where do you mean 
 to live in town H" 
 
 Miss Desmond answered all these eager queries very de- 
 murely: Francis would make all arrangements for their future 
 hfe, she said; he had certainly promised her the two opera- 
 boxes ; he had made inquiries about the one house that was to 
 be let in Park Lane; and he was anxious to discover her fa- 
 vourite county before taking any steps towards the purchase of 
 an estate. 
 
 " But you know he is such a dear good fellow, and has such 
 a knack of guessing all my fancies, that really I never like to 
 euggost anything," Miss Desmond concluded, modestly. But,
 
 Very Private Tlieatricah. 107 
 
 Bomchow or other, without makuig Jiny very direct suggestions, 
 JuHa liad so contrived matters, that in a few weelcs her affianced 
 husband liad gratified many of the desires that had been smoul- 
 dering in her breast ever since tlic earliest dawn of girlliood. 
 
 Already tlie " family jools" of the Desmonds had been cou- 
 signed to the obhvion of one of Julia's shabbiest trunks, and 
 diamonds now twinkled on Miss Desmond's neck and arms, and 
 gleamed here and there in her black hair, when she came dovnx 
 to dinner in her maize silk dress. Her toilette-table was all of 
 a glitter with the rings she drew of!" her slim fingers when she 
 disrobed at night, before the looking-glass which had so often 
 reflected a gloomy, discontented face, but wliicli now only gave 
 back triumphant smiles. 
 
 She was an adventuress perhaps, and her triumph waa an 
 ignoble one ; but she was not altogether base. She was pre- 
 pared to be a good wife to the man whom she had brought to 
 her feet by foi'ce of feminine strategy. She did not love Francis 
 Tredethljn; and indeed she seemed to be made of a sterner 
 stuif than that out of which the women who can love are 
 fashioned. She did not love her affianced husband ; but she 
 meant to be as faitliful and devoted as the most loving wife in 
 Christendom. If she intended to raise herself \\\wn the plat- 
 form of her husband's wealth, she meant that he should mount 
 with lier. Already she had lifted him several stages on the 
 social ladder. From the very first her watchful care had saved 
 him from a hundred small solecisms, and in the more intimate 
 relationship of the last few weeks her refining influence had 
 been almost magical in its effects. The good old blood of the 
 Tredethlyns asserted itself, and Julia found her task an easy one. 
 
 " I don't want you to be like those Government clerks, and 
 magazine writers, and embr3^o Q.C.'s," she said to him some- 
 times. " I like you to bo big and deep-voiced and — just a little 
 clumsy. The Knights-Templars, and Crusaders, and that sort 
 of people, must have been clumsy on account of their armour. 
 I always fancy I hear the clank of spurs when j'ou come into a 
 room : and when you sit in Parliament you must be the soldier's 
 friend, you know, and make great speeches about rations, and 
 coiirt-martial verdicts, and discipline, and all that sort of thing; 
 and I shall come into the ladies' gallery, and strain my eyes by 
 peering at you through that horrible grating. You will look so 
 handsome with your head thrown a little liack, and your hand 
 m your waistcoat." 
 
 Now this kind of talk from a handsome woman, whom ho 
 knows to be infinitely his intellectual supeiior, can scarcely be 
 displeasing to the most strong-minded of men ; and, unluckily, 
 Francis Tredethlyu was not very strong-minded. He looked 
 down at liis JuUa mth a sheepish smile, and ack«<owlcdged her
 
 108 Only a Clod. 
 
 pretty flatteries in the lamest possible manner ; but when he 
 came to the Cedars next morning, he brought vnXh. him the 
 biggest emerald-headed serpent that he had been able to find 
 among the jewellers of the West End, and coiled it about hia 
 Julia's wrist. He was grateful to her for all her tender smiles 
 and pleasant speeches — all the more grateful, perhaps, because 
 of that uncomfortable knowledge of the cold void in his own 
 heart, where love for his promised wife should have been. So 
 he brought her all manner of costly tribute in the way of rings 
 and bracelets, and necklaces and head-gear; and he bought her 
 a throe-hiindred-guiriea hunter at Tattersall's, so that she 
 should no longer ride Maude Hillary's horses in the Twicken- 
 ham lanes. Sometimes, in spite of himself, even when Julia 
 was most agreeable, the thought came upon him that he would 
 only too gladly have given her the whole of his fortune if by 
 such a gift he might have freed himself from the promise that 
 bound him to her. 
 
 " But if I were free to-morrow, she would not care for me," 
 he thought, " and what would be the use of my liberty ? " 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 A COMMERCIAL CBISIS. 
 
 The private theatricals at the Cedars were postponed till Christ- 
 mas, and in the middle of November Mr. Hillary removed his 
 household to a big bow-mndowed habitation at the western end 
 of Brighton. Francis Tredethlyn followed, as in duty bound, 
 and spent a great portion of his hfe in hurrying to and fro 
 between London and Brighton by express trains. Never had a 
 better adorer done suit and service to a mistress. There were 
 no lovers' quarrels, no temporary estrangements between these 
 two people. A serene and cloudless sky heralded the coming 
 splendour of their union, and Maude declared again and again 
 that she had never seen such a model pair of lovers. 
 
 " Harcourt and I were always quaiTclUng, you know, Julia," 
 she said; " but then we were both such hombly jealous crea- 
 tures. I didn't like his turning over music for other girls; 
 though I suppose he was right, poor fellow, and a man must 
 either turn over music or shut himself from society altogether. 
 And he didn't like my going down to dinner with people in crack 
 cavalry regiments ; but I'm afraid we rather enjoyed ourselves 
 when we quarrelled, and I used to feel as if it would be the 
 easiest thing in the world to part from him for ever, and go 
 into a convent, or marry somebody I hated, or something of 
 that kind; and then directly we had parted, I used to get ao 
 BiUy and miserable, and used to "vrite him such penitent lettera^
 
 A Commercial Crisis. 109 
 
 taking all the blame upon myself, and making an idiot of him. 
 put it's so nice to see jow and IMr. Trodethlyn, and I'm sure 
 jie'll be tbe dearest husband in the Avorld, Julia, and you'll be 
 able to twist him round your little finger." 
 
 It was not with a feeling of unalloyed pleasure that Miss 
 Desmond accepted her friend's congratulations. She was quite 
 ready to admit that Francis Trcdethlyn was a model lover, and 
 promised to be the most submissive husband that ever bowed 
 himself before a clever wdfe's dominion. His presents were 
 munificent, his attention was unfaihng, his temper R.jrenely 
 even ; and yet there were times when Julia Desmond felt that 
 all was not quite as it should have been. 
 
 She had angled very successfully, and the fish she had landed 
 was a splendid jirize, victoriously snatched from all other 
 anglers ; but Oh, what a difference there is between that pool 
 deluded fish, entrapped out of the free waters by the cruel hook 
 of the angler, and tlie -willing bird which flies, of its own loving 
 imjiulse, to the breast where it fain would shelter ! 
 
 Julia Desmond knew that, in scaring a husband, she had 
 not won for herself a lover; and the knowledge pained and 
 humiliated her. It was a small thing that she should not love 
 Francis ; but it seemed very hard that Francis should not love 
 her. Her womanly tact would have stood in the place of aff'ec- 
 tion, and she would have been lavish in the expenditure of a 
 spurious coin, in the way of pretty words and tender looks, 
 which should have had all the glitter and some of the vibration 
 of the real mintage. But with Francis it was altogether differ- 
 ent. The young man had no power to simulate ; and there was 
 a deadly coldness in his wooing that chilled the proud Irish 
 gud's heart. 
 
 " Are they worth the hiimiliation ? " she thought sometimes, 
 when she contemplated her diamonds before the lighted glass 
 in her bedroom at Brighton. " They are very big and brilliant 
 and costly ; but I've seen myself look handsomer with a scrap 
 of scarlet ribbon twisted in my hair, than I look to-night with 
 all these stars and crosses and serpents flashing and twinkling 
 about me. And then, when I go do^vn stairs, I must go through 
 all the old stereotyjied business ; and when I thank him for 
 the flowers that he sent me tliis morning, he will look at me 
 with his cold eyes, and tell me he is j^leased to have given me 
 pleasure. AVhat is he but a clod — a mere clod, nothing but a 
 clod ? I ought to remember that ; and yet I am angry with 
 him because he does not love me. Why can I not be thankful 
 for my good fortune, and accept my future husband for what he 
 is, — a respectable, well-behaved ploughman, whom an accident 
 has endowed with thirty thousand a year .P " 
 
 Perhaps Miss Desmond did not particularly care to answer
 
 110 Only a Clod. 
 
 that question which she put to herself in so impatient a spirit. 
 And yet it was a question that might have been answered, had 
 she cared to fathom the lower deeps of her own mind. But 
 then there are questions which are better left unanswered. 
 "Why was she angry with Francis Tredethlyn for that passion- 
 less serenity of manner which was so nearly akin to indiffer* 
 ence? "Why? unless it was because in her own heart there 
 lurked the consciousness that the unpolished Cornishman tnight 
 have been a very different kind of lover ; and that beneath hig 
 cold exterior there were slumbering embers which might have 
 blazed into glory had one siK'cial torch been applied to them. 
 
 Yes, Julia knew this, and the knowledge was a perpetual 
 poison that embittered the wine of success. The pride of the 
 Desmonds had not been entirely trodden out beneath the iron 
 heel of poverty. This girl, who had not been too proud to set 
 herself to ensnare a rich husband, was yet proud enough to 
 feel the bitterness of her degradation. 
 
 " If he only loved me," she thotight, " I should feel that the 
 bargain was a fair one. But to know that, at best, he only 
 submits to the force of circumstances ! He has been drifted 
 into the position of a lover, and he performs the duties exacted 
 of him ; just like some non-dancing man who has been persuaded 
 to dance in order to fill the last place in a quadi-ille, and who 
 dawdles Hstlessly through the figures, and almost yawns in the 
 face of his partner. And yet I have seen him look at her until 
 the dull clay of which he is made seemed to change into a thing 
 of life and lire." 
 
 And then Miss Desmond was fain to turn to her new jewel- 
 case for consolation, and to beguile her mind from unpleasant 
 thoughts by the consideration of all those gi-and things that 
 may be done with thirty thousand a year. 
 
 If the young ladies of the household thought it a pleasant 
 thing to spend the brief November afternoons on that delightful 
 esplanade beside the sea, Mr. Hillary did not find a residence in 
 Brighton so entirely convenient. A great deal of his time was 
 Bpent in journeyings to and fro by the best and quickest express 
 train in England : and there were days when even the facilities 
 of a Brighton railway would not enable the merchant to take 
 his dinner in the society of his beautiful daughter and her com- 
 panion. There were occasions on which the two girls sat for a 
 wearisome hour or so, ti-ying vainly to amuse themselves by 
 some feminine occupation, or to beguile the time by some femi- 
 nine discourse, while the soup grew cold and the Brightonian 
 cook grew angry ; and then at last were fain to sit down at 
 nine o'clock, and make a dismal jiretcnce of dining without the 
 bead of the household. 
 
 " I sometimes think so much railway travelling must be bad
 
 A Commercial Crisis. Ill 
 
 for papa," ]\ran(le said. " I am afraid it must slialce him a 
 
 little; thon^li ridiiii,' in tlie l>riL;lit<)ii express is almost as Rood 
 as sittinj:^ in one's own room. 1 fancy jiapa has not looked so 
 well lately. I have begged him to see Mr. Desborough, our 
 Twiclcenham doctor, or some London physician ; but it's no 
 use, for he won't listen to me. I can't tell you how uneasy I 
 am about him, Jialia. He has had so many of his bad head- 
 aches lately ; and then he says the business in Moorgate Street 
 has been so heavy. Ah, Julia ! what is the good of being rich, 
 if papa must work as he does ? " 
 
 JVliss Desmond shrugged her shoulders. 
 
 " Business men seem scarcely to exist out of their oflices," 
 she said, rather scornfully. She always took care to let Maude 
 know that she looked down upon the Twickenham splendour 
 and its conunercial sources. " I dare say your papa will devote 
 himself to money-making as long as he lives." 
 
 " I sometimes think we might have been happier if we 
 had been poorer," Maude said, dreamily, by-and-by. " I can't 
 help fancying how we might have lived in some quiet country 
 place, in a low-roofed, old-fashioned cottage, with a garden all 
 round it and a churchyard close by, and the smell of cows and 
 the cooing of pigeons ; and then I need not have been separated 
 
 from y She did not iinish the sentence ; she was talkingto 
 
 herself rather than to Julia. Her face was beautified by an in- 
 expressible softness and tenderness as she murmured that broken 
 sentence. Her thoughts wandered back to the time in which 
 she and Harcourt Lowther had sworn eternal constancy, stand- 
 ing with their hands locked together in the dim summer 
 twilight, on the bank of the shadowy river. She thought of that 
 time, and all the freshness of feeling that had gone down with it 
 came back upon her suddenly, like a breath of air from a distant 
 ocean. How frivolous her life had been since then !— how 
 selfish and useless ! What a round of dress and decoration, and 
 hurry and weariness ! Harcourt Lowther's last letter was in 
 her pocket as shs sat musing despondently by the hired Brigh- 
 ton hearth ;— his last letter, a most melancholy epistle, full of 
 despairing lamentations about the bitterness of separation and 
 the hardships of Van Diemen's Land. And over and above all 
 these feminine perplexities which tormented poor loving Maude, 
 there seemed real cause for anxiety in the state of Mr. Hillary's 
 health. It was not that the merchant himself comijlained ; he 
 did not complain, and, indeed, appeared to resent any inquiries as 
 as to his state, even when those inquiries came from such a privi- 
 leged person as his only cliild. But every_ morning at the break- 
 fast-table, sitting opposite to her father in the bright sunlight, 
 Maude could see a darker shade under Mr. Hillary's _ eyes, a 
 more weary look about hia haggard face. She defied his anger
 
 112 Only a Clod. 
 
 very often, and pleaded earnestly witli him, imploring him to 
 consult a physician ; but his answer was always very much the 
 game. 
 
 " I am subject to this sort of headache ; my work in Moor- 
 gate Street is peculiarly hard just now. Pray do not trouble 
 yourself, Maude ; there is not the least occasion for any ua« 
 easiness about my health." 
 
 With such assurances as these Miss Hillary was compelled to 
 be satisfied. There had been an air of coldness, or almost dis- 
 l^leasure, in her father's manner to her lately, and Maude found 
 to her surprise that he was by no means pleased with the ma- 
 trimonial eno-agement that had arisen between Julia Desmond 
 And Francis Tredethlyn. 
 
 "Engaged to her!" the merchant exclaimed, when his 
 daughter carried him the news of Juha's conquest,—" en- 
 gaged to Julia Desmond ! Why, I fully believed that he came 
 to Twickenham on your account, Maude. I said nothing to you 
 about the matter, because girls have sometimes such absurd 
 notions, and I thought it better to let things take their course. 
 And so Juha has entrapped him, has she ? I ought to have 
 been on my guard against Eyan O'Brien Desmond's daughter." 
 
 " How can you talk like that, papa ? " cried Miss Hillary. 
 " I'm siu-e Julia and Mr. Tredethlyn are really in love with each 
 other, and dear Juha is jjerfectly disinterested. And then, if 
 Mr. Tredethlyn had been ever so much in love with me — and 
 I'm sure he never cared the least bit about me — how could you 
 suppose that I could ever dream of man-ying him ; when I — 
 when he's such a very common kind of person ? " 
 
 Harcourt Lowther's name had been almost trembling on ]\Iis3 
 Hillary's hps, but she had remembered her father's aversion to 
 that name, and had modified the conclusion of her sentence in 
 deference to his prejudice. 
 
 " A very common kind of person ! " repeated Lionel Hil- 
 laiy, in a thoughtful tone ; " yes, yes, my dear, I dare say he is, 
 I dare say he is. But I've seen women as beautiful as yo\i 
 married to commoner men than Francis Tredethlyn." 
 
 And then, after a brief silence, the merchant's manner changed 
 all of a sudden ; he took his daughter in his amis, and pressed 
 his lips upon her forehead with an almost passionate fondness. 
 
 " My darHng ! my darling ! " he cried, " do you think it 
 wouldn't please me to see you married to a man you could love ? " 
 
 Maude looked up into his face with a sweet smile upon her 
 own : her hjjs jDarted, and in the next moment Harcourt Low- 
 ther's name would have been spoken and his cause pleaded by 
 those innocent lips. But it seemed as if her father in a mannei 
 anticipated what she would have said ; for he put her from him 
 suddenly, and turned away with a faint shiver of pain.
 
 A Commercial Crisis. 118 
 
 "I am very sony to hear of this cnf^agcmcnt between Julia 
 and that j-oiinj^ man," he said, witli his lace averted from Ida 
 daui^hter, and liis hands nervously shuffling among the papers 
 on the table before him. " I am very much vexed. There, go, 
 Maude ; you don't understand, you can't understand. Go, my 
 dear; I'm busy." 
 
 No more than this had ever been said between the father and 
 daughter upon the subject of Miss Desmond's matrimonial 
 arrangements ; but Maude had been able to discover that her 
 father's vexation was not a matter of the moment, to be for- 
 gotten and done with after the first surprise of the announce- 
 ment. Lionel Hillary was tolerably gracious to Mr. Tredethlyn, 
 but his manner towards Juha changed altogether. There were 
 times when he scarcely took the trouble to conceal liis displea- 
 sure from that young lady herself. He would sit watching her 
 moodily when Francis Tredethlyn was by her side, and would 
 sometimes, when the conversation gave mm an opening, break 
 out into some cynical generaUty upon the husband-hunting 
 projiensities of modern young ladies. Francis was too simple- 
 mmded to comi^rehend the drift of these covert sneers; but 
 Juha understood her benefactor, and defied him with her bold 
 handsome eyes and her flasliing teeth. 
 
 "He wanted thirty thousand a jear for his daughter, I 
 suppose," she thought, when she pondered on Mr. Hillary'3 
 discourtesy. "What grasping, avaricious creatures these rich 
 people are ! " 
 
 Christmas was aj^proaching, and that festival period was to 
 be silent at the Cedars, to which place Maude Hillary was ten- 
 derly attached, despite her sentimental talk about i^overty and 
 a sim2:)le home deep down in the heart of rustic England. The 
 young ladies' portmanteaus had been packed ready for the de- 
 parture from Brighton, and Maude and Julia only waited for 
 Mr. Hillary to escort them on their homeward journey. H© 
 had not been so much with them during the last week or so of 
 their sojourn : and as Francis Tredethlyn only came backwards 
 and forwards with Mr. Hillary, the girls had been left by them- 
 selves, with no better occupation or amusement than the 
 reading of new books, the trying of new music, and a contem- 
 plation of the blusterous gray waves beating eternally before 
 their windows : for the weather had been cold and stormy of 
 late, and the deUcious esplanade had been deserted ; only an 
 occasional masculine wanderer, out for a " constitutional," 
 VufFeted the winds and strode in dismal loneliness along the 
 pavt'ment beneath Mr. Hillary's windows. 
 
 It was only natural, under these clrcumstiiiices, that ihe 
 young ladies should have grown weary of Bi-ightou. 'J'lioy luul 
 a close carriage at their disposal; but then di'iving through
 
 114 Only a Cflod. 
 
 perpetual tempest is not particularly agreeable even in a clos* 
 carriage. They went shoiDiDing in East Street two or three 
 times during the severe weather, and bought exjjensive mate- 
 rials for impossible complications of Berlin-wool work and gold 
 beads; and, experimentalizing with the same on their return 
 home, discovej-ed themselves at sea in a vdde ocean of jserplexity. 
 Thus it was that they grew very tired of Brighton, and wished 
 most earnestly for Mr. Hillary's coming. 
 
 " Oh, for the silvery ring of my own Broadwood ! " exclaimed 
 Maude, as she rose from a struggle with a German rendering 
 of " Polly, put the kettle on," in seven flats, and ten pages of 
 double arpeggios. " I wonder lolio makes the pianos for houses 
 that are let furnished ? I'm sure they must all be made by the 
 same man ; and I suppose it's a theory of his o\sti that makes 
 him always use damp wood, and put so much flannel into his 
 trebles. — I wish papa would come and take us home, Julia." 
 
 Miss Hillary expressed this wish at least twenty times in a 
 day ; and Julia echoed it, as if out of pure symi^athy. But Misa 
 Desmond was not a very sympathetic person, and she was really 
 anxious to get back to the nein-hbourhood of London aud Francis 
 Tredethlyn. Nearly a fortnight had passed since the Coruish- 
 man had been to Brighton, aud Julia was terribly conscious that 
 the link which united him to her was very fragile, and might be 
 broken by any unlucky hazard — unless, indeed, liis constancy 
 were sustained by a chivalrous sense of honour. She had as yet 
 had no opportunity of discovering his sentiments on this subject, 
 and she had a vague idea that a small farmer's son, who had 
 taken the Queen's shilling, would be unlikely to entertain the 
 same splendid notions of truth and loyalty that glowed iu the 
 breasts of his superioi's. 
 
 " I know that he's a very good fellow," JiiKa thought; "and 
 I don't suppose he would steal anything, or tell a deliberate 
 falsehood ; but I dare say he would think it no sin to throw me 
 over at the last moment if " 
 
 There was a point at which Miss Desmond's reveries always 
 stopped short. She did not care to think about that which 
 Francis Tredethlyn might like to do, even if he were free to do 
 as he liked. 
 
 Mr. Hillary came home very late upon the evening of an espe- 
 cially disagreeable day. He came down to Brighton by the mail 
 train, and arrived at the hired mraislon just as the two girls were 
 gathering together the gold beads and Berlin avooIs, jDreparatory 
 to going to bed. But though the merchant had been so much 
 longer away than usual, he seemed in no particular hurry to em- 
 brace his danohter; for instead of comlnii up to tlie di-awincr- 
 room, he walked straight to a dreary Uttle study at the back of 
 the hoixse. which had been set apart for his use.
 
 A Commercial Crisis. 115 
 
 Mandc lind heard tlic sonorous knock at tlic big street door, 
 and ilcw out of the drawing-room to greet the traveller. 
 
 " At last, dear papa ! " she cried. " We have been as dull and 
 dreary as a i)air of Marianas in a moated grange. Oh, yon dar- 
 ling papa ! I am so glad you have come ! Please take us home 
 to Twickenham: we've had such weather; we're as helpless and 
 miserable as those poor working people who go about singing 
 so dreadfully fiat when there's a hard frost. ' We are two lonely 
 single girls, and we've got no work to do !' " sang ]\Iiss Hillary, 
 witli the established nasal drawl, as she skipped down the stairs. 
 
 " Kiss me, you wet, cold, melancholy-looking papa," she said, 
 planting herself between Lionel Hillary and the door of hia 
 sanctum. 
 
 The merchant seemed in no very affectionate humour to-night. 
 He put his daughter aside without looking at her. His face waa 
 fixed and stern in expression, and its gloomy rigidity was in no 
 way relaxed as he spoke to Maude. 
 
 "AVhy are you up so late.P" he said. "I thought yon would 
 have gone to bed an hour ago. I don't want to be worried to- 
 night, Maude. I've some papers down here that want looking 
 into, and I've brought other papers with me. I may have to 
 sit up half the night, perhaps ; and, remember, I am not to bo 
 disturbed." 
 
 " But you will be ill, papa, if you work so hard." 
 
 " I shall not be ill, and I know what is best for myself. I 
 cannot and must not be annoyed to-night, Maude." 
 
 He went into his room, where the servant had already made 
 an illumination that would have been enough for a chapel or a 
 factory, by means of five flaring gas-burners ; but Maude fol- 
 lowed him, and was not to be put off even by the harsh words 
 that sounded so strangely in her ears. 
 
 "Papa," she remonstrated piteously, "I am sure that yon aro 
 ill, or that something has hapjocned." 
 
 ]\Ir. Hillary laid his hand ujjon his daughter's shoulder, and 
 put her out of the room, — very gently, but with a certain deter- 
 mination which was quite a new thing in his treatment of this 
 idolized and exacting Maude. 
 
 " I tell you, once more, that I am going to be — very busy, 
 and must not — be disturbed." He seemed tired, for the words 
 came slowly, as if the mere utterance of them were a painful 
 exertion. " Good night, my dear ; go to bed, and sleep peace- 
 fully. God bless yon, and take you into his keeping ! " 
 
 His maimer changed all in a moment as he said this, and he 
 cauglit her suddenly to his breast and kissed her passionately, 
 as he had done on that other day when they had talked of 
 Francis Tredethlyn. 
 
 But in the next nininent Maude found herself standing out-
 
 116 Only a Clod. 
 
 eide the closed door of her father's retreat, amazed and unhappy. 
 That sudden little gush of affection had been as perplexing to 
 her as Mr. Hillary's unusual sternness of manner. It was all 
 alike strange ; and vague fears agitated her as she went slowly 
 Tip-stairs to the big barren drawing-room, which looked very 
 little more home-like than a first-class waiting-room at a rail- 
 wa}' station. 
 
 Julia had disappeared, and the flaring gas-lamps illumined 
 a great barren desert of Brussels carpet and emptiness. Dear 
 Julia always remembered that her good looks were her only 
 dower, and took care not to waste them by late watching in 
 the glare of many gas-burners. Maude sighed as she looked 
 round the empty room, and then seated herself at a table 
 adorned with a gaudy cover that looked like a small Turkey 
 carpet. She took up the impossible Berhn-wool work, and the 
 gold beads, and set herself to the task of counting tiny dots 
 and squares on a coloiired paper pattern, with a view to dis- 
 covering where the Berlin-wool left off and the beads began. 
 But she was tired and imhappy, and the be^vildering dots and 
 squares made her head ache ; so she pushed away the work 
 presently, and roamed restlessly up and down the room : now 
 stopping by a table, and taking up a book, only to open it hap- 
 hazard and stare blankly at the pages ; now hugering by the 
 piano, noiselessly fingering the notes, and tormented with a wilcj 
 desire to dash into some blusterous march that should startlo 
 the slumbering household. 
 
 Her father had told her to go to bed. He was going to 
 work very late, and must on no account be disturbed. He had 
 worked late sometimes at Twickenham, but not often ; and on 
 those occasions Maude had gone to sleep hapi^ily enough, only 
 a little disturbed by the thought of " poor j^apa " toiling over 
 those cruel business documents. But to-night it was altogether 
 different. At the risk of incurring her father's anger, Miss 
 Hillary paced wearily up and down the desert of Brussels 
 carpet, waiting till she should hear the merchant's step on the 
 Btairs, and know that his night's work was over. 
 
 She waited, oppressed by a vague uneasiness, and wondering 
 why she was uneasy. Wliy was it that to-night the thought of 
 her father's toil mingled with all manner of strange fears and 
 misgivings ? She was usually so fiivolous, so aj^t to look 
 brightly out upon the sunnier aspects of the world around her ; 
 but to-night her heart seemed Hke a leaden weight in hel 
 breast. What was it ? why was it ? The cheaj) French clock 
 u\)on the chimney-piece struck some abnormal number between 
 twelve and twenty, and a distant church clock struck two ; but 
 etill Miss Hillary waited in vain for that expected step u^Don 
 the stair. Her father had said that he would be very late, but
 
 A Commercial Crisis. 117 
 
 §he had hoped that at the worst his work would be finished in 
 a couple of hours. Tlie time seemed so intolerably lonff to 
 Maude Hillary, roaming in a purposeless manner about that 
 big room, or standing in the bay--\vindow to listen to the hoarse 
 roaring of the waves, or sitting down to read for five minutes 
 together, but never once knowing what she was reading. 
 
 There had been so few troubles in her life, and looking back 
 at the smooth sunlit ways by wliich she had wandered from 
 childhood to womanhood, she was seized all at once with a fear 
 that there must be some great grief in store for her. It was 
 quite imi^ossible that she could have altogether withheld her- 
 self from some contemi^lation of that startling question as to 
 her right to be happy in a world where so many people were 
 miserable ; but the question had never intruded itself upon her 
 HO awfully as to-night. 
 
 " I have never had sickness, or death, or soitow near me," she 
 thought. " My mother died before I was conscious of her ex- 
 istence — as I think — and yet it seems strange that there can be 
 any time when a cliild is unconscious of a mother's presence, or 
 heedless of her loss. The worst trouble that I can remember is 
 my 2iarting from Harcourt ; and I have always hoped that all 
 would come right at last. But to-night— to-night I feel as if 
 there had been something sinful in my happiness. The sermons 
 I have heard at church never came home to me. I never felt 
 that I was a miserable, sinful creature, groping my way upon a 
 thorny path. I'm afraid I have been very wicked ; selfish and 
 idle, vain and frivolous." 
 
 Looking back at her life, Miss Hillary saw an existence of 
 Twickenham pleasure, water-parties, and pic-nics, Star-and- 
 Garter dinners, jDerjietual Parisian bonnets, and turquoise 
 bracelets, pet dogs, new novels, opera-boxes, and concert-tickets. 
 Perhaps she had never before watched and waited alone at these 
 still hours of the dead winter-night, and these unusual thoughts 
 may have been only the natural companions of her loneliness. 
 
 She looked at her watch a dozen times in an hour, and at 
 last, when it was nearly three o'clock, her patience was exhausted 
 all at once, and she resolved on going down to her father's 
 room. 
 
 " He will be very augiy with me for sitting up so late," she 
 thought, " but I cannot go to bed until I have seen him. It 
 will be better to see him ever so cross with me than not to see 
 him at all." 
 
 Having once arrived at this determination, Maude Hillary ran 
 down stairs and tapped hgiitly at her father's door. There was 
 no answer, and she rejaeated that timid tapping. Again there 
 was no answer, and she tried the handle of the door, intending to 
 ■teal softly in and surprise the merchant at his work. Buttho
 
 119 Only a Clod. 
 
 door wag locked, and her Lreatli grew tlxick with tlie sudden 
 
 opiaressitm caused hy some vaoiie terror. She lost all comuiaud 
 over herself, ami knocked loudly, calliaig iu a Iriglitenod voice, 
 " Papa! pajiai" 
 
 It ^va^ not so strange that she should be frightened. How 
 often she had heard of hard-working City nuignates suddenly 
 stricken down in the prime of life by some fell disease, unsus- 
 pected until that last fatal moment ! 
 
 A heavy footstep inside the little room reheved her of these 
 vaguely terrible fears. The door was opened, and Isir. Hillary 
 stood before her, very pale, very angry. " ]\Iaude ! how absurd 
 tliis is ! What have you been doing ? "Wliy have you been 
 sitting up?" 
 
 " Because somehow I couldn't go to bed while you were work- 
 ing down here, papa darling. I couldn't; I didn't want to wony 
 you or disobey you ; but I don't know what's the matter with 
 me to-night. AH manner of ridiculous tilings came into my head, 
 and I felt that I rti,ust see you before I went to sleep. Let me 
 come in, papa." 
 
 She pleaded so prettily, looking up in her father's face with 
 such tender devotion beaming in her OAvn, that Lionel Hillary 
 must have been something harder and sterner than the stoniest 
 of mercantile men if he had been deaf to her j^leading. 
 
 " Come in if you like, Maude," he said, with a weary sigh ; 
 " I am sorry that you disturbed me. I had very nearly finished 
 my work." 
 
 'I'lie littered mass of i:)apers that had been scattered on Mi. 
 Hillary's desk when Maude had left him were gone now, and 
 only a few neat little packets remained in their stead. But, 
 jolaccd conspicuously upon the desk, Maude perceived a big eu- 
 vehjpe with a great red seal, and lying near it a smaller envelope 
 also sealed. 
 
 The merchant had removed his neckcloth. He seemed to have 
 been working hard, for big drops of moisture stood upon hia 
 forehead. A great basket near his chair was filled to overflow- 
 ing with torn scraps of paper, and the shower of waste had fallen 
 far and wide, and lay like snow about the chair in wliich ]\Ir. Hil- 
 lary had been sitting. 
 
 " Now, ]\Iaude," he asked sternly, as his daughter followed 
 him into the room, " what is it that you want with me P " 
 
 " Why, to see you leave your work and go to bed, papa. You 
 don't know how late it is." 
 
 ^riie merchant smiled a grim smde, and 2">ointed to his watch, 
 which lay o\)Qn on the desk. 
 
 " I've been worldng against time, and I've kcjiit watch upon 
 every quarter of an hour," he said. 
 
 " But you have finished now, papa."
 
 A Commercial Crisis. 119 
 
 " Not qTiitc. I have very nearly iinislied — but not quite." 
 
 Miss Hillary slioolc licr head with a pretty petulant gesture. 
 Slie was not in the least afraid of her lather's anger now. She 
 had liecn so tortnr<-d liy dim and shadowy apprehensions, that 
 lier spirits rebounded suddenly now that she was by her father's 
 side, and she was bold enough to defy him. 
 
 " I shan't leave you any more to-night; papa. If yoii Imd all 
 the business of the Stock Exchange to transact, I wouldn't let 
 you sit up any longer, ruining your health by brooding over 
 those tiresome papers. Besides, your desk is quite clear ; you 
 Bcem to have done everything." 
 
 " No, I have not done everything." 
 
 Mr. Hillary had resumed his seat, and was staring absently 
 at the desk before him, where all things looked so neat and 
 orderly that Maude seemed justified in thinking that her father's 
 work was done. There was a row of drawers on each side of 
 the desk. One of them was open, and a bunch of keys hung 
 from the lock. A copy of the Tunes newspaper lay across the 
 top of this open drawer ; but as Miss Hillary hung about her 
 father, some portion of the silken flounces or furbelows of her 
 dress brushed against the paper, and it fell rustling to the 
 ground. Lionel Hillary turned suddenly with a look of alarm 
 du-ected towards the open drawer, and Maude, following hia 
 glance, saw something lying among the neat packets of letters 
 and papers, — something which had no business to be there; 
 Bometlung which seemed to realize a greater teiTor than any 
 that her fancy had shaped, however dimly, during those hours 
 of weary waiting in the room above. 
 
 The object which seemed so terrible to Maude Hillary was a 
 pistol — a small pistol, of very modern fashion, fresh and bright 
 from the hands of the gunmaker. Mr. Hillary was not a man 
 who affected the gunsmith's art, and Maude had never seen 
 such a weajion in her father's i)Ossession until to-night; — until 
 tJhis night, when vague fears respecting him had been so long 
 busy in her brain, only wanting a form into which to shape 
 themselves. 
 
 It seemed as if her frivolous girlhood left her all at once. It 
 (geemed as if that great terror, coming upon her with such 
 ghastly suddenness, transformed her into a woman — a woman 
 possessed of woman's highest attributes, fortitude, and self- 
 abnegation. She uttered no cry of alarm, no exclamation of 
 Burprise; but she suddenly closed and locked the drawer in 
 which the pistol lay, and di-opped the bunch of keys into her 
 pocket. Then kneeling down beside her father's chair, she put 
 ner arms tenderly about him, and laid her head upon his breast. 
 ^Ir. Hillary had grown veiy passive aU at once, and aat idly 
 staring at the table before him.
 
 120 Only a Clod. 
 
 "Papa," Maude said presently, in a lo-sv, pleading voic^ 
 " what is it ? tell me, confide in me. In whom should you trusty 
 if not in me P What is it, papa ? what does it mean ? '' 
 
 "It means — ruin!" the merchant answered, huskily. H6 
 did not turn towards his daughter, hut still sat staring blanhly 
 straight before him. " It means failure and ruin, Maude ; ruin 
 in its worst shape, its most hideous shape." 
 
 " You mean that we shall he poor, very poor — that we shall 
 have to leave Twickenham — that you will be a clerk perhaps in 
 some ofiice, and I a daily governess. I remember when the 
 Gordons failed, and poor Constance Gordon and her brothers 
 had to begin the world afresh, without money, and with very 
 little help from their old friends. Do you think I could not 
 bear as much as that, and be happy still, if you were vnih. 
 me ? Ah, papa, papa, do I seem to you such a helpless, useless 
 creature, that you shrink from trusting me at such a time 
 as this ? " Hysterical sobs rose in her throat, but she stifled 
 them, and went on talking to him in the same quiet tender 
 voice, and caressing liim as she talked. He submitted passively 
 enough to her caresses, but he seemed scarcely conscious of 
 them. 
 
 " Ti-ust me, papa ; tell me everything. Such troubles as these 
 seem so much less dreadful when once they have been freely 
 spoken of. I remember how Mr. Gordon kept everything hid- 
 den from his family as long as he could ; and Constance told me 
 that it seemed as if a great cloud was hanging over the house, 
 and there was sometliing in the atmosphere that stifled them all. 
 But when the crash came at last, theybore it bravely; and see 
 how well they have got on ever since, in a moderate way. _ Ah, 
 papa, you have brought me up like a spoiled child, or a princess 
 in a fairy tale ; and now that trouble has come to us, you think 
 I can't bear it. But I can, papa ; if you will only be brave, 
 your foolish, extravagant daughter will learn to be wise and 
 patient. I was getting very tired of Twickenham, papa ; and 
 shall be as happy as the day is long in a nice Uttle cottage in 
 some cheap suburb, where I can have pupils." 
 
 Lionel Hillary ought no doul^t to have been comforted by hia 
 daughter's tenderness ; but unhappily there are some wounds so 
 cruelly inflamed, that the gentlest appHcation the surgeon can 
 devise is apt to chafe and irritate them. Tlwj girl's talk jarred 
 upon the merchant's mind, and it was with a slaiver of pain that 
 he turned to her as she left off" speaking. 
 
 " Child, child ! " he exclaimed, fretfully, " you don't know 
 what you're talking of. Do you think it is snch an easy thing 
 to pass from one of the first positions in the City to a clerkship 
 and a cottage in the suburbs ? Do you think there is nothing 
 hetween such opposite couditions ? Do you suppose I have
 
 A Commercial Crisis. 121 
 
 only t() shut up my books, and wish my creditors good morning, 
 before I walk out of my office ! You talk and think like a child, 
 Maude. It is all verj; well for an old twaddler lil/e John Gor- 
 don, who suspends payment upon the first failure that affects 
 his stability, and who winds up his ali'airs with a dividend of 
 fifteen shillings in the ])ound, and the compliments and sym- 
 pathy of all Basinghall Street. No one will sympathize with 
 nuj fall, though more than I can count will suffer with me. I 
 am not a man to drop imder the first blow, Maude ; for nearly 
 three years I have been working a rotten ship, with the know- 
 ledge that nothing short of a miracle could save me from wreck. 
 The wreck has come. The world will call me a dishonest man, 
 because I waited for that miracle. I waited as the gambler 
 waits at the green table, hoping that the li^st risk would bring 
 me salvation. AVith me ruin means disgrace. I tell you, Maude, 
 before the month is out, there will be a j^anic in the City, and 
 men -will cry out that Lionel Hillary is a rogue and a swuidler. 
 There's not a man who ever dined at Twickenham that won't 
 use his knowledge of my home as a weapon against me. There's 
 not a bottle of wine I ever gave a friend whose price aad quality 
 will not be made a reproach against me. Oh ! I know how 
 people talk aboiit these things. Go away, child ! Your pre- 
 Bence only goads and irritates me. It reminds me that I might 
 have done better than I have done ; I might have been -wiser, 
 I might have saved something^my good name at least. I have 
 loved you so dearly, Maude, — Heaven only knows how dearly, 
 for I am no man of big words or sentimental jDhrases. And 
 now I leave you utterly destitute, the pauper child of a dis- 
 graced father." 
 
 " But you shall not leave me," cried Maude, with a sudden 
 energy that startled Lionel Hillary. " Papa, why do you insist 
 ■upon treating me as a child ? Why do you judge me by what I 
 have been, rather than by what I can be ? Why won't you trust 
 me ? why won't you talk to me as if I were a son, and had a 
 right to share your secrets ? You have told me the worst, and 
 you see I can bear to know it. I can endure even disgi-ace ; but 
 I cannot bear to lose you. Trust me, joapa. I will be patient 
 
 under any calanxity except " She was seized with a sudden 
 
 shivering, and clung to him with a convulsive force in the small 
 hands that entwned themselves about his arm. "You kno^v^ 
 what I mean, papa," she said. " Believe that I can bear any 
 tiling if you will be tine and brave and patient. And even yet 
 the miracle may come. Sometliing may hajjpen at the very 
 last, surely it may, to save your good name." 
 
 Mr. Hillary pressed liis daughter's hand in acknowledgment 
 of so much tenderness and devotion; but he shook his head 
 moodily as he answered her, "Nothing can happen to save me,
 
 122 Only a Clod. 
 
 unless twenty tlionsand ]iouncls dfop from the slcies between thia 
 and the 10th of January." 
 
 Twenty thousand pounds ! ]\[aude's thoughts flew to her 
 iewel-case, in obedience to the most universal of feminine in- 
 stincts. Twenty thousand pounds ! Alas for that birthday gift 
 of opals and diamonds, the turquoise rings and bracelets, the 
 emerald cross, the delicate pinlc coral, and all the fragile fan- 
 tastic toys of gold and enamel, bought in the dearest market of 
 elegant ^Yest-end dealers, who give three years' credit. Maude, 
 in all her ignorance, was wise enough to know that these things 
 would not reaUze one of the twenty thousands required by her 
 father. 
 
 "But there is Twickenham, papa," she said; "the Cedars 
 must be worth ever so many thousands." 
 
 "And is mortgaged to the full extent of its value," answered 
 Mr. Hillary. " Find me twenty thousand pounds, if you can, 
 Maude ; but don't worry me with frivolous suggestions. I tell 
 you that it is quite impossible for a woman to understand my 
 position. God help me! I scarcely understand it myself. I 
 only know that everythuig round me is so much rottenness, 
 and that the crash must come next month." 
 
 "But you will not think — of that — again 1" urged Maude, 
 pointing to the drawer. 
 
 "No; I'll wait to the tenth." 
 
 " For my sake ; Oh, papa, for my sake ! " 
 
 "No, child; not for your sake, but from a selfish, cowardly 
 chnging to hfe," cried Lionel Hillary, with sudden passion. " It 
 would be better for you, ten times better, if I were dead. The 
 thought of that was in my mind as I came do^vu here to-night, 
 until the noise of the engine almost seemed to thump out the 
 words, ' Better for her, better for her.' People would have mercy 
 upon you if I were dead, Maude ; even those who suifered by 
 me woiild be less bitter in their reproaches if I were dead. A 
 man can only break his heart once; and when the man is dead, 
 there is no mark for the arrows of justifiable reproach, or the 
 foul garden-stuflf and rotten eggs of malicious calumny." 
 
 "Papa, the helj^ may come; the twenty thousand pounds 
 may be found." 
 
 " No, cliild ; there was only one hope of that, and the hope is 
 gone." 
 
 For the first time that night ]\Ir. Hillai-y looked at his 
 daughter; she saw the look, an anxious scrutiny that sent a 
 chili through her heart. She did not ask laim what that one 
 hope had been. 
 
 " Papa, ti-ust in me, only trust in me ! " she cried ; " you do 
 not know of what I am capable for your sake — for your sake. 
 You don't know what I have suffered to-night, and how changed
 
 A Drama behind the Scenes. 123 
 
 I am by that snfTeriiig. Hope for a mirar^lo even, papa : keep 
 tliiiiga as sinooih as you can, and between this and the tenth the 
 twenty thousajid jiounds may be found. Only tell me one thing. 
 You don't want anyone to (I'lve you the money. If it were lent 
 to you, you could rej)ay it by-and-by ? " 
 
 " Yes ; with sutHcient time I could I'cpay it." 
 
 " Then hope for the miracle, papa. Ah ! you tliink me such 
 a child that you are almost angiy with me for telling you to 
 hope; but the Hon laughed at the mouse, I dare say." 
 
 Five minutes after this, Miss Hillary led her father to hia 
 room, and wished liim good night, cheerfully enough, upon the 
 threshold. But under that pretence of cheerfulness, cruel feai'S 
 and perjjlexities were torturing her mnocent heart. liuin, dis- 
 honour, disgrace; the misery of many homes besides that one 
 household on the bank of the river, — all these terrors had come 
 very suddenly iipon the girl who only that morning had been 
 imjKitient of the December weather and the dull gray sky. 
 
 She went to her room ; but only to sit Avitli the door open, 
 listening for any sound in her father's apartment, which waa 
 Aext her ovnx. She sat for nearly two hours shivering with 
 cold, and then crept softly to her father's room and opened 
 the door. The merchant was sleeping, peacefully enough to all 
 appearance, for his breathing was tranquil and regular; so 
 Maude went back to her room. It seemed the bitterest mockery 
 to go to bed ; but then IMiss Hillary's maid would have been 
 scandalized had she come at eight o'clock and found her mistress 
 still watching. Alas, poor Maude ; for the first time in her life 
 she had to submit to that most cruel social penance, entitled 
 '• keeping up appearances." She went to bed ; and though she 
 seemed to hear every hoiir, and half-hour, and quarter of an hour 
 chimed by the church clocks, she must have slept at some time 
 or other in that brief remainder of the night, or else how should 
 she have been tormented by those hideous dreams, in which she 
 was always wading through black morasses and turgid waters, 
 canying in her arms a great bag of gold, wliich she vainly 
 strove to convey to her father ? 
 
 CHAPTER XYI. 
 
 A DRAMA THAT WAS ACTED BEHIND THE SCENES. 
 
 Mr. Hii.i.ary escorted his daughter and Julia Desmond back 
 to Twickenham uj^on the day following that night-scene of 
 anguish and terror. They left Brighton rather late in the day, 
 and arrived at the Cedars when the early winter evening had 
 closed in upon the leatless avenues and groves about the old 
 bouse. Lights were burning cheei'ily in the long range of lower
 
 124 Only a Clod. 
 
 windows, and in the vestibule and inner hall ; and rare groups ol 
 stainless marble gleamed white against a background of bright 
 hothouse flowers. Deferential sei-vants came hurrying out as 
 the carnage drove up; and Miss Hillary, seeing her home in 
 all its accustomed brightness and comfort, felt a painful sense of 
 bewilderment. It was so ditHcult to reahze the force of that 
 calamity which had been so lately revealed to her : it was so 
 difficult to believe that all this sj^lendour was so much rottenness, 
 from which there was only one step to poverty and disgrace. 
 
 Mr. Hillary had visited his daughter's room very early upon 
 the morning after the terrible confidence between them, and had 
 impressed upon her the necessity of suppressing every evidence 
 of the knowledge that had come to her. 
 
 " I have been compelled to trust you, Maude," he said ; " and 
 you must prove yourself worthy of my confidence. Heaven 
 only knows how difficult it has been for me to keep the secreta 
 of my business during three years of reverses and misfortunes 
 such as rarely fall to the lot of a speculator. My only chance 
 of floating over this crisis lies in the meeting with some friend 
 who will lend me the money I want, without looking too closely 
 into the nature of the security I have to offer. But let the 
 state of my affiiirs once get wind, and all hope of retrieval 
 would be lost. Remember this, Maude : and, if you love me, 
 show a bright face to the world ; and above all, beware of Julia 
 Desmond. That young lady is a dangerous person, my dear ; 
 and the day may come when we shall have reason to regret 
 having given a shelter to old Desmond's destitute child." 
 
 " But Julia is a dear good girl, papa ; she would be very sorry 
 for ITS, I am sure," Maude pleaded, innocently. 
 
 " JuUa has contrived to feather her own nest so remarkably 
 well, that she would be very indifferent to any calamity that 
 coiild come to her friends," answered the practical man of the 
 world, who had been by no means pleased with Miss Desmond 
 since that young lady's conquest of Francis Tredethlyn. 
 
 Maude kissed her father, — ah, how passionately ! She clung 
 to him, as she remembered that long feverish dream of the pre- 
 vious night, and the gUttering something lying in the drawer; 
 ehe kissed him, and promised that his secrets should be guarded 
 more carefully than her own life. 
 
 " And the miracle may be accomphshed between this and the 
 tenth of January, papa," she said. 
 
 And then, as Lionel Hillary was about to leave his daughter's 
 room, she placed herself suddenly between him and the door, 
 and turned the key in the lock. He looked at her, surj^rised and 
 perplexed. 
 
 " Maude ! " 
 
 " Dearest father, you have trusted me, and you have exacted
 
 A Drama leliind the Scenes. 125 
 
 a promise from me," said ]\Iiss Hillary, with a qiiiet calmness 
 tliat was more impressive tlian any vehemence of manner ; " and 
 now I want yon to give me a promise, a very solemn promise, 
 my own dear father." 
 
 She put her hand upon his shoulder and kissed him once 
 more, clinging to him fondly, looking tenderly upward to his 
 pale careworn face. Then she took a bunch of keys from her 
 pocket and held them out before him. 
 
 " Yoa remember those keys, papa ; I am going to rctTirn 
 them to you ; but I want you to kneel down with me here, now, 
 when all that feverish excitement of last night has passed away; 
 I want you to j)romise me, as you hope for mercy and happiness 
 in a better world when this life is all gone by and done with, — 
 I want you to i^romise me that you will never again under any 
 circumstances, in any hour of ti'ial or temptation, think of that 
 dreadful alternative of which you thought last night. Oh, papa I 
 remember it is such a terrible sin even to think of it ; for we 
 can never do so until we have ceased to trust in God." 
 
 The simple words went straight to Lionel Hillary's heart — 
 that world-weary heart, in which there was but this one tender 
 quality of paternal love still left. No subtle arguments of 
 theologian or pliilosopher could have so deeply influenced him 
 as his daughter's gentle pleading. He knelt by her side, close 
 to a httle table, on which an open Testament was lying, and 
 pressing his lips npon the sacred page swore that he would 
 never again contemplate the sin which he had so nearly com- 
 mitted only a few hours before. 
 
 " It is a coward's remedy at the best," he said presently; 
 and then he took his daughter in his arms and looked down at 
 her tearful face with a mist before liis o^\^l eyes, which made 
 that bright young beauty seem blotted and dim. " My Maude, 
 my darling, surely Heaven must have created you to be my 
 guardian angel. I have not been a good man; I have been 
 too much of a speculator for the last few years, — a reckless 
 speculator, perhaps ; but when the demon of commercial hazard 
 had his grip strongest upon me, your image was always in my 
 mind. I wanted to leave yoii rich, secvu-e from all the troubles 
 of this world. I was a jioor man in my young days, Maude ; 
 and perhaps the bitterness of that eai-ly time may have taught 
 me to set too high a value npon wealth. Fortune came to mf 
 afterwards, almost as wonderfully as it comes to a prince in a 
 fairy tale; and some recklessness of spirit may have been 
 engendered in me by my own successes and by the times in 
 which I have lived." 
 
 " But, dear papa, you need not fear poverty for my sake," 
 ■aid Maude; " only trust in me, and when the time comes you 
 ehall find me ready to face it. My life has been very pleasant
 
 126 Only a Clod. 
 
 — too pleasant, I dare say, — I liave always felt tliat it was so 
 when the thought has come to me of all the pcoj^lo who suffer 
 in this world. But you know how the princess in the fairy tale, 
 who has never known a sorrow, goes out all at once into the 
 ofreat forest, more helpless and lonely than the poorest wood- 
 man's daughter, and yet no harm ever comes to the princess, 
 papa. If it will only please Heaven to spare your good name, 
 poverty will have no sting for me ; and if disgrace should come» 
 I will bear it for your sake, — I wiil bear it without a murmur 
 for your sake, papa." 
 
 She broke down just a little as she said this ; she could not 
 speak quite calmly of that most terrible loss of all — the loss of 
 her father's commercial honour. She reiiiembercd. very dimly, 
 long prosy discussions that she had heard at Mr. Hillary's 
 dinner-table, about men who had failed, and who had failed 
 through some dishonesty or recklessness of their own, and whose 
 downfall had involved the hard-won fortunes of others, making 
 a vast circle of ruin, spreading as the watery circle spreads when 
 you droj) a j^ebble into a tideless lake. 
 
 From this time it almost seemed as if a new life began for 
 Maude Hillary. No more careless idUng over new music, no 
 more eager commencements of expensive fancy-work that was 
 never to he finished ! After Miss Hillary's return to the Cedars, 
 anyone taking the trouble to watch her closely might have per- 
 ceived a wonderful alteration in her conduct — a change that was 
 almost a transformation in her very nature. When she opened 
 her piano now, it was for no idle trilling with fashionable diffi- 
 culties, no coquetting with shakes, and skipping of arpeggios. 
 She practised steadily, and for hours together. Might not the 
 time be very near at hand in which she would be called upon to 
 gird on her armoxu-, and join the ranks of the bread-wiimers ? 
 She thoiight of herself in a dingy Loudon street, somewhere in 
 the di-eary region between Holborn and the New Road — the 
 region which was once a fair expanse of pleasant meadow-land. 
 She thought of herself toiling as so many women toiled, leading 
 the same duU life from day to day ; and her courage did not fail 
 her even before that dismal picture. It was not likely that this 
 change in Maude Hillary could escape the notice of so observant 
 a young lady as Miss Desmond. Julia saw and wondered, but she 
 was far from guessing the real cause of Maude's unusual gravity. 
 
 "I suppose she is making herself uuliappy about Harcourt 
 Lowther," thought Miss Desmond. "These fortunate people 
 always contrive to find one crumpled leaf in their beds of rosea 
 She is making herself miserable about that handsome, worthlesB 
 soldier, and she thinks herself hardly used because she cannot 
 play at love in a cottage, with a rich mercantile father to pay 
 the expenses of the idyllic menage."
 
 A Drama leliind the Scenes. 127 
 
 This was liow Julia Desmond accounted for Maude's long 
 intervals of absent brooding, and that mclnncholy shadow whicn 
 settled on her face whenever she fancied herself unnoticed, and 
 for a while relaxed the heroic effbrt with which she tried to keep 
 her 23romise, and guard her father's secret. It was a very hard 
 struggle. All the young idlers, the government clerks, the brief- 
 less but hterary barristers, the rising artists Avho had naiTOwly 
 escaped making paljjable hits at the lloyal Academy, or at a 
 temple of art which they irreverently alluded to as the " British 
 Inst," all the accustomed Twickenham loungers flocked down to 
 the Cedars to keep their Christmas holidays in the house of a 
 gentleman whom they regarded as a sort of commercial ]\Iidas — 
 a Moorgate Street Fortuuatus, from whose inexhaustible cofieru 
 flowed the golden waters of i^erjjetual prosperity : and ]\Iaude 
 received all the old incense, and was fain to smile something like 
 the old smiles upon her worshippers ; Avliile her heart ached with 
 an unceasing jjain, and a hidden dread that was like a palpable 
 burden weighed for ever on her breast. 
 
 " Oh, if they knew— if they only knew ! " she thought. " They 
 court me because they think I am rich, perhaps ; but if they 
 only knew what an imi^osture all tliis splendour is — these lights 
 and flowers, and grapes and pines, and Sevres china and Vene- 
 tian glass, and all this long parade of dinner ! if they knew that 
 poverty and disgrace may come to us before the new year has 
 well begun!" Sometimes, in her utter weariness of spirit, some- 
 times when the social comedy seemed almost too hard to act. 
 Miss Hillary felt suddenly tempted to turn round upon her 
 admirers, and cry to them, — 
 
 " Why do you torment me with your hackneyed compUments P 
 I am not the daughter of a millionaire ; my father is only an 
 imprudent speculator, who is hovering on the verge of a black 
 abyss of bankruptcy and ruin. Go and offer your worship in 
 some solvent temple, and leave ine alone with my father and liis 
 Borrows." 
 
 This, or something akin to this. Miss Hillary was at times 
 sorely tempted to utter. But she kept her promise. She had 
 promised that no word or action of hers should betray the rotten- 
 ness of her father's position, and she kept a close watch upon 
 herself Her adoi*ers— who were by no means so mercenary as 
 she thought them — perceived that something was amiss with 
 their goddess ; but were far from associatmg anything so vulgar 
 as the state of the money-market with the lessened lustre of her 
 Bmihjs. 
 
 " She's engaged to some fellow in the army, and her father 
 won't let her maiTy him, and the fellow writes her Wdrrying 
 letters ; Miss Desmond told me as much," the loungers said on« 
 to another, when confiding in each other about Miss Hillary.
 
 128 Onlij a Clod. 
 
 Tlie brilliant Julia had taken care to let Maude's admirers 
 know that her heart had long been bestowed upon a remote 
 object ; but she did not go so far as to reveal the name of Miss 
 Hillary's chosen lover ; and Francis Tredethlyn had no susincion 
 that Maude Hillary and the beautiful heiress of whom his master 
 had so often spoken were one and the same person. He knew 
 nothing of this ; he only knew that jMaude seemed as remote 
 from his sphere as the distant stars that shone coldly upon liim 
 out of a steel-bhie winter sky when he looked from his window 
 at the Cedars. He spent his Christmas at the Cedars ; for Mr. 
 Hillary had been specially cordial and hospitable to bun of late, 
 and had resumed all his old gi-aciousuess of manner to Julia. _ 
 
 And the private theatricals, the elegant drawing-room exhibi- 
 tion of amateur histrionics, which Maude had planned so merrily 
 in the autumn, were to take place on the first night of the new 
 year — now, when the i^oor girl's heart was sinking under the 
 dull pain of that perpetual burden, that di-eary terror of the dis- 
 grace which might be so near. 
 
 She had told her father that a miracle might be wrought 
 before the 10th of January. Of what had she thought or 
 dreamed when she held out that hope? "What daring fancy 
 had been engendered out of the excitement, of the moment? 
 There are times when a woman feels capable of becoming a social 
 Joan of Arc, a bloodless Charlotte Corday ; but then the enthu- 
 siasm, the exaltation of the moment is so apt to pass lo Ith the 
 moment. There had been a vague but desperate intention lurk- 
 ing in Maude Hillary's mind when she had encouraged her 
 father by those hopeful speeches ; but the days were creeping 
 past, the new year was close at hand, and nothing had laeen 
 done. ISTotliing had been done ; and now Miss Hillary was tor- 
 mented all day long about these wonderful j^rivate theatricals, 
 which were to surpass every di-awing-room performance since 
 the days when the unhappy daughter of the Cassars played a 
 eouhrdte for the delight of that taciturn king and grandfather- 
 in-law who did not Uke to laugh. 
 
 All arrangements for the grand entertainment had been made 
 before Mr. Hillary's household removed to Brighton. The 
 play had been selected, the characters allotted to the indi- 
 viduals who were supposed, or who supposed themselves, to_ be 
 most fitted to play them ; but not without as much shuffling 
 and changing as the kings and queens undergo in a game of 
 cards. The drama finally chosen was the " Lady of Lyons," 
 selected, no doubt, on that grand principle in accordance with 
 which all amateurs go to work, i. e. because it is a pla;^ which 
 Bi^ecially requires accomplished actors in every one of its cha- 
 racters. Of course Maude was to be the rauliite. Was she 
 not sole daughter and heiress of the master of the house, at
 
 A Drama heldnd the Scenes. 129 
 
 whose expense all the business was to talce place P If she had 
 been rcd-liaireJ, or hump-baclceJ, or lame, the amateurs could 
 soarcely have done otherwise than choose her as tlie representa- 
 tive of the lovely Mademoiselle DeschajipcUes. But as she was 
 one of the fairest daui^^hters ever spoiled by a wealthy merchant, 
 she was really created for the jjart, as it seemed ; and she had 
 only to order her dresses and let down her sunny hair in the 
 classic disorder of the period, and she would be the loveliest 
 Pauline that ever won the simple heart of an aspiring young 
 gardener. But how about Claude ? At first every one of the 
 amateurs had desired to play Claude, and nothmg but Claude. 
 To wear that impossible velvet coat, with its lavish embroidery 
 of gold and spangles ; to snub Ilca.useani, and to patronize 
 Damas ; to flourish diamond snuff-boxes and rings, and filmy 
 ruffles of pouit d'Alen9on, which are so becoming to the unhappy 
 amateur, whose hands are apt to assume the rich purple huea 
 of raw beef under the inllucnce of extreme terror; to hold Mis3 
 Hillary in their arms, and cr3% " Oh, rajjture ! " in a ponderous 
 bass voice apparently situated somewhere in those martial jack- 
 boots, without which Claude would be less than Claude, — to do 
 all fhis seemed to the young men at the Cedars a gloiy and 
 delight which would be cheaply won by the cutting of one 
 another's throats in a cJiamp clos. 
 
 And then to what base hj^pocrisics these amateur actors 
 descended ! declaring to one another that, after all, Claude was 
 not such a great part ! Nay, indeed, was not the heroic gar- 
 dener something of a spoon, liable to provoke laughter if his 
 velvet coat failed to fit, or liis humble blouse looked too much 
 like a little boy's ijinafore? Claude might be a very fine part, 
 the amateurs argued to each other, in a regular theatre, where 
 there were the gallery fellows to applaud the long speeches, and 
 to stamj) their hob-nailed boots in the great situations, and all 
 that sort of thing, you know ; butyoiu" drawing-room audiences 
 are apt to laugh at strong sentiment; and, in sliort, for a pri- 
 vate pei'formance, Damas, or Bcauseant, or Glavls were tho 
 great parts. 
 
 So there was a good deal of chopping and changing, with 
 vengeful feehngs attendant thereupon ; and at last, after almost 
 all the privileged guests at the Cedars had made themselves 
 hoarse ui the endeavour to cultivate that bass voice and peculiar 
 melodioiis gurgle so often heard on the stage, and so rarely 
 heard of!" it ; after innumerable tryings-on of velvet coats and 
 cocked hats before cheval-glasses, — it transjnred all at once that 
 nobody wanted to play Claude Mclnottc. The noblest hearts 
 sank wth a sickly teiTor before the thought of all Twickenham 
 assembled in solemn conclave to hsten to those long speechea 
 with which tho peasant husband endeavours to appease the
 
 ISO Only a Clod. 
 
 natural anfjer of his bride. One by one tbe amateurs had madf 
 the awfid discovery, tliat after all there is some touch of art, 
 not to be learned in a day, even in the actor's trade. One by 
 one they had discovered that they lacked p^iysiqae for the 
 loading character; and that, after three acts or so of blank 
 verse, they were apt to become hoarse and roopy, and to break 
 ignominiously from that melodious bass gurgle into a treble 
 squeak. So it came about that there was no one to play Claude, 
 and Miss Hillary clasped her hands in anguish, and demanded 
 what was to become of her. All Twickenham and Hampton 
 Court, Richmond and Ham, and all sorts of people from town 
 invited to witness the "Lady of Lyons," and no Claude 
 Mclnotte ! One of the government clerks, who fancied himself 
 an embryo Buckstone, timidly suggested " Box and Cox" as a 
 fitting substitute for the drama ; but ]\Iiss Hillary turned from 
 him with disdain. " Box and Cox ! " she exclaimed, contemptu- 
 ously ; " why, my dresses are all ordered, and the white satin 
 for the wedding-dress is to be five-and-twenty shillings a yard. 
 I m}(st have some one for Claude." 
 
 And then at last it was discovered that Francis Tredethlyn, 
 who had volunteered to cany a tea-tray or a coal-scuttle, or to 
 announce a carriage, or to perform any ignominious part in the 
 drama for Miss Hillary's pleasure, — it Avas discovered all at once 
 that this young man was able to act. He was no untaught 
 Macready, no ready-made Kean ; but he was able to do what 
 the best of the government clerks and literary barristers failed 
 in doing ; he was able to roll out the melodious blank verse in a 
 big, deep voice, that never failed him to the end of the chapter. 
 The stage is almost as great a leveller as death himself, and on 
 that little platform at Twickenham uneducated Francis Tre- 
 dethlyn was quite as much at his ease as the well-]jred young 
 men about him : more at liis ease, for he was not so bent upon 
 distil iguisliing himself, and was indeed only eager to oblige Miss 
 Hillary. All this had hapi)ened before the autumn visit to 
 Brighton ; and now when JMaude returned to the Cedars she 
 found busy workmen making a perpetual hammering in the 
 apartment which had been chosen for the scene of the entertain- 
 ment. Mr. Hillary did everything in a superb manner; there 
 was to be uo pitiful contrivance of folding-doors festooned by 
 suburban carpenters, but accomplished pcojole from town had 
 come down to the Cedars, and a magnificent archway of white 
 and gold spanned the lofty billiard-room which the merchant 
 nad built at one end of his house. All the arrangements were 
 to be perfection ; the lighting of the small stage was to be a 
 miracle of art; the grouping of the furniture had been studied 
 by genre painters of no mean ]:)retensions. Poor Maude grew 
 gick at heart as she heard all these details discussed. She looked
 
 A Drama heJtijid the Scenes. 181 
 
 bark, and wonderotl, as she remembered wliat a frivolous creature 
 bIic hiid been only a few months ago, and how this amateur 
 dramatic performance had seemed a matter of supreme import- 
 ance to her; and now she repeated the words mechanically 
 during those long rehearsals, in the course of which the amateurs 
 liad so many angry disputations, and so cruelly victimized Mr. 
 Hillary's jyale sheny. 
 
 At last the new year began, and at ten o'clock upon the first 
 night in January long hues of carriages filled the avenue at the 
 Cedars, and the road outside the lodge-gates, until the neigh- 
 bourhood was luminous with flaring lamps that glared redly in 
 the winter darkness. People came from far and wide to see 
 Miss Hillary play Pauline, and to devour Mr. Gunter's supper, 
 though Miss Hillary's heart might be breaking, and the mer- 
 chant's head splitting with the weight of care that pressed just 
 now upon his overtaxed brain ! But people do get tlirough 
 these things somehow; and Lionel Hillary walked about his 
 drawing-rooms, loolcing supremely gentlemanly in a stiff cambric 
 cravat, and uttering mild common2->laces for the edification of 
 new arrivals. 
 
 People get through these things. Poor Maude's head ached 
 with a dull pain as her maid arrayed her in a dress of white silk, 
 showered with rosebuds, and flounced and looped with lace and 
 ribbon. Would any of this finery be paid for. Miss Hillary 
 wondered, as she saw her splendour reflected in the cheval-glass; 
 or was it altogether dishonesty and wickedness ? She shuddered 
 as she thought of this : but the entertainment of to-night was 
 only a part of the grand hypocrisy which might help to float 
 Mr. Hillary safely over the terrible crisis, and Maude determined 
 to be true to her promise. So she smiled at Julia Desmond, 
 when that young lady, who was to play Madame Deschajrpelles, 
 came to exhibit herself in powder and patches, and brocade and 
 diamonds, and with half the point-lace in South Ai;dley Street 
 bestowed upon her handsome person. Miss Desmond had con- 
 sented with amazing graciousness to perform the matronly role 
 allotted to her; but she had determined to look like a marquise 
 of the time of Louis Qninze, and she had despatched Francis 
 Tredethlyn on half-a-dozcn shopping expeditions, until that gen- 
 tleman was fain to wonder how a few ribbons, brocaded fabrics, 
 and yellow old lace flounces, could cost the big sums for which 
 he wrote cheques in favour of the West-end tradesmen to whom 
 Julia sent him. 
 
 The two girls admired each other's dresses, and the maid 
 joined in a perfect chorus of laudations with the young lady 
 who rvould play the ^Vidnw Mdnofte in a nine-guinea black 
 moire antique, and a point-lace cap and apron, and who kept 
 tnatcliing a manuscript copy of her part I'rom her pocket, and
 
 132 Only a Clod. 
 
 furtively gabLling its contents in dark corners. _ The girls ad. 
 mired eacb. otlier, and sailed down the broad staircase together, 
 and th^n went straight to a little ante-room, where half-a-dozen 
 gentlemen, in attitudes expressive of supreme mental agony, 
 were bending over half-a-dozen copies of the " Lady of Lyons," 
 and gabbling vehemently. 
 
 There is no occasion to describe this amateur performance at 
 the Cedars, inasmuch as it very closely resembled all other 
 imateur performances. Miss Hillary, stepi^ing on to a stage 
 jfor the first time, was, to say the least, not guife a Helen Faucit, 
 and was on the point of breaking down now and then in some 
 of her grand speeches ; but she looked so beautiful in her per- 
 plexity and confusion, that the elegant audience encouraged and 
 supported her by the gentlest tappmgs of spangled fans and 
 pattings of tight kid gloves. There were no tiresome boys in 
 the gallery to urge her to speak up ; no critical chimney-sweeps 
 to murmur their disapproval, or hint that she had better go 
 home and learn her part. There was only admiration for her 
 timid loveliness, and the soft music of her trennrlous voice. 
 
 Of course there were the usual number of dead pauses in the 
 drama, technically known as " stage-waits," the solemn silences 
 In which the actors stood still and looked imj^loringly at one 
 another, while the voices of amateur prompters — always mcitii;g 
 their victims to the iitterance of long speeches — were painfully 
 audible -throughout the assemblage. Mr. Tredethlyn rolled out 
 his blank verse with a sturdy courage that was worthy of aU 
 praise ; and if his hands were a httle red, and his blue-cotton 
 blouse slightly suggestive of Newgate Market, he had acted with 
 his brother soldiers in very rough amateur performances out in 
 Van Diemen's Land, and now and then some touch of natural 
 fire, some little bit of tender pathos, startled the well-bred 
 audience into applause. It may be that now and then Francis 
 Tredethlyn found himself carried away by the spirit of the 
 Bcene. Did not that romantic drama bear some hkeness to his 
 own story ? Tliis beautiful Pauline, this unapproachable being 
 whose lovely image filled the peasant's di-eams, who was she but 
 Maude Hillary herself? Perhaps if Miss Desmond had been 
 the Pauline, Francis might have seemed as cold and tame as 
 the rest of the Twickenham amateurs : but the eyes that looked 
 at him tenderly or reproachfully to-night, were the only eyes in 
 all the world that had the power to move liim deeply. He acted 
 well, therefore, as the dullest man will act sometimes under the 
 influence of some factitious excitement : and when the curtain 
 fell upon the final scene of happy and triumphant love, the 
 audience were loud in their praise of "that handsome-looking 
 Mr. Tredethlyn, who was just the very man for Claude Melnotte." 
 
 Then there was a final partmg ot the curtains and a shower
 
 A Drama behind the Scenes. 133 
 
 of bouquets, all in the orthodox style, and Maude felt perfumed 
 petals fluttering about her as she curtseyed to her indulgent 
 ftudience. 
 
 All through that last act she had surprised those well-bred 
 spectators out of their natural languor. The Pauline who had 
 been so tame and uriinij^assioned in the grand cottage scene, was 
 carried away by a strong tide of passionate feeling in that last 
 act, where the h.ilf broken-hearted daughter pleads for her in- 
 solvent father. Sobs almost choked Miss Hillary's utterance 
 more than once in this scejie ; and when at last her head lay for 
 a few moments on Francis Tredethlyn's breast, the young man's 
 martial decorations were wet with real tears. The sight of that 
 emotion moved him strangely, though he beheld in it nothing 
 more than the natural excitement of a highly sensitive organi- 
 zation. After the little ovaHon that came with the close of the 
 drama, ho followed Maude Hillary into the ante-room, where the 
 rest of the amateurs were discussing the night's business, and 
 flirting with the splendid Julia, and thence to an inner room, less 
 brilliantly lighted, and quite unoccupied. Beyond this inner 
 room there was another apartment — the study in which Fi-ancis 
 had follen an easy victim to the wiles of the Hibernian enchan- 
 tress — and it was to this room that Maude hurried, still followed 
 by Mr. Tredethlyn. 
 
 He had no business to follow her. He knew that very well. 
 His business was with Julia, who had acted Madame Deschap- 
 ■pellcs with wonderful spirit, and for whom the evening had been 
 one long triumph, inasmuch as her lace, and diamonds, and 
 brocade, and dark eyes, and white teeth, had been the subjects 
 of universal admiration. Mr. Tredethlj^n's business lay in that 
 brilliantly-lighted ante-chamber where Julia sat amongst the 
 government clerks, and bai-risters, and grand military dandies, 
 while an accompaniment of perpetually popping champagne- 
 corks mingled pleasantly with the noise of their laughter. Ho 
 knew this, and yet he followed Maude to the dimly-lighted 
 study, where the red glow of the fire flickered on the bindings 
 of the books and the frames of the pictures. He could not leave 
 oS being Claude Mclnotte all in a moment. The exaltation of 
 the mimic scene was still upon him. Just now he had been 
 carried quite away bj'- the influence of the poetic situation; and 
 when he flung down the sham money, which was to release the 
 merchant's daughter from her hated suitor, a warmer thrill of 
 triumph had stirred his breast than had ever been engendered 
 by the possession of Ohver Tredethlyn's thousands. 
 
 And now he could not fall back to his old position all at once. 
 Only a minute or two ago Maude Hillary had been sobbing on 
 his breast, — his bride, his wife ; and he half fancied he had some 
 kind of right to sympathize with her emotion. He stopped
 
 134 Only a Clod. 
 
 suddenly on the tliresliold of the study, quite unmanned by the 
 Bight of Mr. Hillary's daup^hter, half kneeling, half l.ying on the 
 ground, -^atli her face buried in the cushions of a sofa, and her 
 hands clasped in a despairing attitude above the fair tangled 
 hair that had so lately lain upon his breast. Her whole frame 
 was shaken by the vehemence of her sobs ; and before such a 
 picture as this it was scarcely strange if poor country-bred 
 Francis Tredethlyn quite forgot that he was not Claude Melnotte. 
 He bent over the prostrate girl, and laid his big fingers gently 
 upon one of those little bejewelled hands clasjsed so convulsively 
 above the fair head. 
 
 " Miss Hillary," he exclaimed, "dear !Miss Hillary, for pity's 
 sake, tell me what distresses you — what has happened — what is 
 wrong — or — I — I beg your pardon — you have over-fatigued 
 yourself, and you are hysterical ; let me send for your maid." 
 
 " Oh, no, no, no !" cried the girl, rising to her feet, and standing 
 before him, but with her face still hidden from liim, hidden by 
 her outspread hands and her dishevelled hair. 
 
 " Shall I call Julia ? she is in the room yonder." 
 
 " Oh, no ! I — I want to sjjeak to you, Mr. Tredethlyn ; stay 
 just a little, please. Ah ! it is so hard, so cruel, but the last 
 chance ! In all the world there is no one else who can save mo 
 — and my father — my poor, miserable, bankrupt father!" 
 
 Francis looked at Miss ffillary in comi^lete bewilderment. 
 Her father — her bankrupt father! Why, then she was still 
 thinking of the scene that was just finished, and the commercial 
 troubles of Monsieur Deschappelles ; which character, by the 
 way, had been enacted by a very young man of a sickly cast of 
 countenance, and an inclination to hang his head dejectedly 
 throughout the performance of the drama. It is a rule amongst 
 amateurs to assign the elderly and ineligible characters to the 
 youngest and meekest members of the company ; whereby Mon- 
 sieur Deschappelles is usually represented as a young person of 
 some nineteen summers, with flour in liis hair, dirty streaks, 
 supposed to represent wrinkles, upon his face, and a tendency 
 to squeakiness in his voice. 
 
 " I am sure you are over-fatigued, cvcr-excited by the play," 
 ■urged Francis ; " do let me call Julia." 
 
 " No !" cried Miss Hillary, dropping her hands from before her 
 face. " Oh, Mr. Tredethlyn," she exclaimed, almost passionately, 
 "can't 3'ou understand — can't you see that I am in earnest? 
 Do you tliink that scene just now would have made me cry aa 
 it did, if it had not reminded me of my own sorrow ? Mr. Tre- 
 dethlyn — I — I know you are a good man, that you would not be 
 slow to do a kindness for anyone who needed your help ; I know 
 that ; and I — I thought I should have courage to sj^eak to you, 
 but now the words won't come — I ^"
 
 A Drama hcJuiul the Scefies. 135 
 
 Her dry lips moved, l)ut made no sound. She clasped her 
 hands once more before her face. Heaven knows how desperate 
 was the effort that she made. It is not snch an easy matter 
 to borrow twenty thousand 2)0i"inds ; even thoui^h the borrower 
 may be young and beautiful, and accustomed to perpetual ado- 
 ration. 
 
 " Miss Hillary, you speak of help — needing help— from mn. 
 For mercy's sake, tell me how I can help you. Do you think 
 there is anything upon earth that would give me such pride 
 and delight as to be of service to you? " 
 
 The enthusiasm of the moment lighted \ip Francis Tre- 
 dethlyn's countcinmce like a sudden glow of summer sunshine. 
 Maude uncovered her face and looked at him, and saw at once 
 that her cause Avas gained ; her father's preserver was found. 
 She had not counted in vain upon Francis Tredethlyn. 
 
 "I want you to lend jjapa twenty thousand pounds," she 
 said ; " 1 know that he will repay you honourably. He has 
 some difficulties — terrible difficulties in his business, — but the 
 loan of twenty thousand pounds would smooth them all away. 
 I know that you are very, very rich, Mr. Tredethlyn, and that 
 vou can afford to lend such a sum of money, or I should never 
 have dared " 
 
 " You would not have dared, IMiss Hillary ? Oh, can you 
 doubt that I would give the last sixpence I have in the world, 
 the last drop of my heart's-blood, to save yon from one pang ? 
 Twenty thousand pounds! Take forty — fifty thousand — the 
 utrnost farthing of my fortune, if you will ; squander it — throw 
 it into the river yonder, if the waste of it can give you a 
 moment's pleasure. Oh, you don't know, you don't know how I 
 love you ! " 
 
 He had been acting Claude Melnntte, and the intoxication 
 of the sweet sentimental poetry was strong ujion him ; beyond 
 which it is just possible that he may have taken a little more 
 sparkhng Moselle in the course of his dramatic exertions than 
 can safely be taken by a young man of sanguine temperament. 
 All prudence, all power of reticence, left him in that moment. 
 and he dropped on his knees at Miss Hillary's feet, like a lover 
 in a stage-play. She was so beautiful — she seemed so far away 
 from hint even now, when her distress had brought her a httle 
 nearer than of old,— that this attitude of adoration seemed 
 quite natural to him, almost the only attitude in which ho 
 dared address her. 
 
 "Oh, if you knew how I love you," he cried, passionately, — 
 " if you could only believe or understand ! But I am so igno- 
 rant—so unworthy— so far beneath you ! " 
 
 ]\Iiss Hillary drew herself away from him with a gesture of 
 mingled surprise and disgust. 
 
 e
 
 136 Only a Clod. 
 
 " You dare to talk to me like this, and you are tlie affianced 
 husband of my friend ! " she cried. " 0, Mr. Trcdethlyn, you 
 take a very mean advantage of my father's difficulties and my 
 distress." 
 
 " Yes ! " answered Julia Desmond from the doorway. She 
 had been standing on the threshold for the last few momenta, 
 watching this interview behind the scenes. "Yes! it is alto- 
 gether mean and shameful, Maude Hillary. You have taken 
 a noble course, I think, when you fling your fathers debts upon 
 the man who was to be my husband, and coolly ask liim for the 
 trifling loan of twenty thousand pounds." She laughed bitterly 
 as she named the sum. " Twenty thousand pounds — and you 
 ask your friend's lover to turn money-lender ; and you bring 
 your tears and hysterical sobs, and a thousand pretty amateiir 
 dramatic devices to bear, in order to obtain what you want, and 
 all in the most childish innocence, of course. And then you 
 turn upon the man whom you have lured to yoMv feet by a 
 hundred tricks and artifices, and make a charming show of 
 surprise and indignation. Ah ! it is shameful, Maude Hillary 
 — mean and cruel and false ; and bitter shame shall come to 
 you for tliis night's work." 
 
 The Irishwoman was supei'b in her indignation. Those 
 flashing eyes and gUttering teeth, hereditary in the race of the 
 Desmonds, seemed to light her face with an infernri kind of 
 s^^lendour : such a splendour had many a fated victim seea 
 upon the countenance of the duelling Irish colonel, just before 
 he feU prone on some lonely field beside the Shannon. It waa 
 against Maude that the fuller fury of Juha Desmond's rage waa 
 directed, — against Maude, of whom she had always been jealous, 
 in whom she had continually found a triumphant rival. It 
 was only after that outburst of jealovis rage that Julia turned 
 upon her recreant lover. Francis had risen from his knees, and 
 stood a Uttle way from the two girls, with a dogged moodiness 
 upon his face: he was sobered by Maude's indignation and 
 Julia's passion, and he was dimly aware that he had acted hke 
 a scoundrel. 
 
 " As for you, Mr. Francis Tredethlyn," Miss Desmond said 
 presently, " I sui:)pose I have no need to tell you that all ia 
 over between us, and that I bitterly repent the humiliation my 
 own folly has brought upon me. I should have known how 
 much I risked when I stooped to regard a person whose code 
 of honour belongs to a diff'erent world from that in which I 
 have been reared. I suppose amongst your peoi^le it is the 
 fashion for a man to pledge himself to one woman and then 
 make love to another; but such is lioi the custom in the cir- 
 cles where the Desmonds have been used to be welcome. I 
 should have known what I had to expect when I came into
 
 A Drama leliind tJie Sceneg. 137 
 
 this house. I should have known what I had to anticipate 
 when I trusted in the truth and loyalty of a naan who is not a 
 gentleman." 
 
 Throughout this speech Julia's hands had Leen moving 
 rapidly, but with unfailing purpose, though they trembled a 
 httle all the while. One by one she had unfastened the dia- 
 mond ornaments that had glittered upon her head and wrists, 
 her throat and bosom ; and now the jawcls lay in a little heap 
 at the feet of Francis Tredethlyn. One by one she had thrown 
 them there during that passionate speech. She could not act 
 her play out. She had been unable to support the character 
 she had undertaken. The fiery blood of the Eyan O'Brien 
 Desmond had asserted itself in spite of all the promptings of 
 prudence, all the bitter schooling of exiDei'ience. It was very 
 dreadful to be poor and dependent; it would have been de- 
 hghtful to be mistress of thirty thousand a year : but JuUa 
 Desmond, coming to the threshold of the study, had heard 
 Maude's appeal for the twenty thousand pounds, and Francis 
 Trcdethlyn's impassioned avowal ; and patience and pohcy had 
 alike deserted her. Carried away by the impulse of the mo- 
 ment, she renounced everytliing. At last Francis Tredethlyn 
 opoke for himself. 
 
 " I know that I have acted very badly," he said. " I had 
 no right to speak; I never should have spoken but for that 
 play. I think I must have almost fancied myself that poor 
 gardener's son, who dared to worship the brightest creature 
 that ever crossed his pathway, and in an evil hour told her of 
 his madness. Ah, forgive me. Miss Hillary; do not hate or 
 despise me for what I said just nov?; let it jaass hke the play 
 in which we acted to-night. And you, JuHa — Miss Desmond, 
 I am not too proud to ask your forgiveness for the wrong I 
 have done you. I have been very guilty, and I accept your 
 reproaches in all their bitterness. But when I promised to be 
 your true and faithful husband, I only made a promise that I 
 am still prepared to fulfil. You will at least do me the justice 
 to remember that I did not profess any warmer feeling than 
 admiration and esteem." 
 
 " Your j astiiication is only a new insult, Mr. Tredethlyn," 
 Julia answered, coldl}^. " I wish you good night." 
 
 Her passion had been something terrible in its suppressed 
 vehemence some moments before ; but she was quite calm now. 
 She swept towards the door leading out into the corridor ; but 
 as she passed the merchant's daughter, she stopped, just long 
 enough to utter one brief sentence close in the yoimg lady's ear. 
 
 " You shall suffer for this, Miss Hillary," she said, — 
 
 She left the room ; but Maude followed her, crying " Julia I 
 JuUa!"
 
 138 Only a CM. 
 
 She hurried along the corridor and up the staircase, followmg 
 closely upon Mis8 Desmond; but when she reached that young 
 lady's room, the door was shut in her fiice, and only one answer 
 came to her almost piteous pleadiuj^^s for admission, — 
 
 " I have nothing to say to yoij, j\liss Hillary. I only regret 
 t(hat I must pass one more night in tliis house."_ 
 
 So Maude was obhged to go away in despair, and, meeting 
 her maid at the door of her own room, was informed^ that Mr. 
 Hillary had been inquiring for her, " ever so many times," the 
 maid said; " and I've been looking for you everywhere, Miss, to 
 know when you'd have your di-ess changed." 
 
 Yes, there was to be more changing of dresses before Maude's 
 work was done. She resigned herself with a sigh to the hands 
 of the young person who waited upon her ; and then ^yent down- 
 stairs, gorgeous in pink silk and crape puffings, and with a crown 
 of dewy rosebuds on her head, to receive the compliments and 
 congratulations of her father's friends, and to act her part in 
 that social di-ama which was quite as difficult a performance as 
 the " Lady of Lyons." 
 
 Francis Tredethlyn sat quite alone in the little diraly-lighte.l 
 study at the end of the long, rambling mansion, while ]\Ir. Hil- 
 lary's guests finished the evening with a little dancing, a great 
 deal of ilirting, and a perpetual sipping of sparkling wines, in 
 out-of-the-way corridors and lobbies, where there were hothouse 
 flowers and low chintz-covered ottomans, and an air of loneliness 
 conducive to flirtation. Francis Tredetlilyn sat alone, with 
 Julia's diamonds still lying at his feet, and brooded over his 
 position. He had outraged Maude, whom he adored. He had in- 
 jured Julia, to whom he was bound by every sentiment of honour 
 and good faith. No words can express the bitterness of his re- 
 morse as he sat pondering upon what he had done. " False_ to 
 my cousin Susan, false to Julia Desmond," he thought ; "nothing 
 but mischief has come to nie since I inherited that miserable 
 money. I have no right to be amongst these people. I never 
 should have come to this house, where lier presence has always 
 seemed to turn my brain." 
 
 He looked down at the diamonds lying on the carpet, and 
 smiled Ijitterly as he remembered how much money thoy rcpre- 
 Bented, — more than had been spent on Susan Trcdetldyn in all 
 the girl's joyless life— ten times more than would have restored 
 the young man's father to solvency and comfort, that time when 
 his uncle refused liira the loan of two hundred pounds. 
 
 He stooped and gathered together the fallen jewels. There 
 was a writing-table near him, with pens, and paper, and sealing- 
 wax, and all necessary implements. _ He selected a large sheet 
 of paper, and packed the diamonds into a parcel. But before
 
 Sometliing UJce Friendship. 139 
 
 eealirjg the packet he wrote a few lines on the margin of th« 
 paper, — 
 
 "Dear Miss Desmond, 
 " I beg yoii to retain the enclosed. Tlicy were given to you 
 as an evidence of my esteem and admiration, as well as of my 
 gratitude for your indulgent kindness to one so much beneath 
 you as myself. I implore you to forget and pardon what has 
 nappened to-night. I am too ignorant of the world in which 
 you live to know what I ought to do ; and I can only assure you 
 that I am ready to submit myself entirely to your discretion, 
 and still hold myself bound by every word I said in this room 
 on the day when you promised to be my wife. 
 
 " Yours sincerely, 
 
 " Fkakcis Tredethlyn." 
 
 No one but the servants knew when or how Mr. Tredethlyn 
 left the Cedars on that first night of the New Year ; but a little 
 before one o'clock the next day a letter was delivered to Mr. 
 Hillary — a letter from the assistant-manager of a certain bank 
 in the City, informing the merchant that a sum of twenty 
 thousand pounds had that morning been placed to his credit. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 SOMETHING LIKE FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 Maude Hillary did not rise very early after that New Year's 
 entertainment at the Cedars ; painful emotions, troubles, doubts, 
 and perplexities, that had been unknown to her through all her 
 
 {)revious lifetime, had crowded suddenly upon her within the 
 ast few weeks, and it was scarcely strange if she well-nigh 
 fainted under the burden. She slept for some hours on that 
 first night of the year, — slept the feverish, heavy slumber that 
 waits upon trouble of mind and exhaustion of body. The win- 
 ter sun shone with a chill brightness between the rose-coloured 
 draperies of her window when she awoke from a painful dream 
 to a dim sense of actual trouble that was still more painful. 
 She remembered the scene of the previous night, her own des- 
 perate appeal for help, Francis Tredethlyn's avowal, and Julia's 
 indignation. She remembered all this with a burning sense of 
 shame, and with a tender and pitying regret for Julia's wrongs. 
 "And he did not love her!" she thought, "when I fancied 
 theywere so happy and united, so much what lovers ought to 
 be; it was all false, after all, and he had deceived her." But 
 why? What motive could he have for doLnec her so great a 
 wrong?"
 
 140 Only a CM. 
 
 Miss Hillary pondered upon this mystery •while she dressed, 
 — unaided this morning, for she did not care to endure her maid's 
 sympathetic remarks upon her pale face and heavy eyes ; un- 
 aided, for how soon that pretty Twickenham paradise, with all 
 its dependencies, might pass away from her, unsubstantial as 
 the fairy palace in which Princess Balroubadoiiir floated away to 
 Africa ! ]Maude put on her plainest morning dress, and went 
 straight to Julia's room, intending to make her peace with that 
 young lady, at any cost of self-humiliation. No base thought 
 of JuKa's obligations, no remembrance of the favours that had 
 been heaped upon the Irish girl in that hospitable habitation, 
 had any place in Maude Hillary's mind. She thought of her 
 friend as tenderl}'- as she might have thought of an only sister, 
 and she remembered nothing except the great wi'ong that had 
 been done to Juha by the defection of her lover. The breach 
 between them was not to be narrowed. When Maude entered 
 her friend's bedroom, she only found an empty and desolate- 
 looking apartment, in which oj^en wardrobes and drawers, and 
 a dressing-table, cleared of all its pretty frivohties, bore witness 
 to the angry Julia's departure. 
 
 Miss Hillary's maid came running along the corridor, while 
 her mistress stood amazed in Miss Desmond's deserted chamber. 
 
 " Oh, Miss," cried the girl, " to think as you should get up and 
 dress yourself without a bit of help, while I've been waiting and 
 hstening for the bell these last two hours ! Miss Desmond, she 
 have gone. Miss, above an hour ago, and have took all her boxes 
 in a fly to the station, but wouldn't have none of the servants to 
 go with her ; and Oh, Miss, she looked as white as that toilet- 
 cover." 
 
 That was all Maude could hear of her sometime friend's 
 abrupt departure from that pleasant dwelling-place, in which 
 she had enjoyed such a luxurious home. This was all that the 
 servants could tell their young mistress about the sj^lendii 
 Julia ; but in the study, where the sceaie of the previous night 
 had been enacted, Maude found a letter directed to herself, in 
 Miss Desmond's handwriting. It was a very brief missive; 
 almost such a one as an English Elizabeth, or a Russian Cathe- 
 rine, might have written. 
 
 " For your father's hospitality," wrote !Miss Desmond, " I 
 shall always remain grateful, and shall be sorry to hear of any 
 evil that may befall him. The debt I owe to 7/o?(. I shall also 
 know how to remember, and shall wait the time and oj)portunity 
 for its repayment. — J. D." 
 
 Maude sat for some time musing sorrowfully upon this ora- 
 cular epistle. She was not in any wise terrified by her friend's 
 threats ; she was only sorry for Julia's disappointment. 
 
 •' She must have loved Francis Tredethlyn very dearly," Miss
 
 Sometliing LiJce FriendsMj). 141 
 
 Hillary tlionglit, soiTOwfnlly, " or she would never feel his con- 
 duct so deeply. And yet I have often fancied that she spoke of 
 him coldly, almost contemptuously." 
 
 Poor Maude Hillary's lessons in the mysteries of every-day 
 hfe had only just begun; she had yet to learn that there are 
 other disappointments than those which wait u\>on true love, 
 other pains and sorrows than those which have their root in 
 the heart ; and that there are such things as marrying and 
 giving in marriage for the love of thirty thousand a year. 
 
 She spent a weary day in the pleasant drawing-room, where 
 the red glow of a great lire ilhiminated as much prettiness in the 
 way of china, and Parian, and bronze, and ormolu, and enamel, 
 as would have stocked a hric-a-hrac shop in Wardour Street. 
 She spent a thesome day, that seemed interminably long, lying 
 on a low sofa near the fire, thinking of her father's troubles and 
 Juha's desertion. She thought also of that cruel scene, in which 
 she had seemed to play so contemptible a part. What bitter 
 humiliation it was to look back upon, now that the mad impulse 
 of the moment, the desperate courage that had made her snatch 
 at amj chance of help for her father, had altogether passed 
 away ! How mean and pitiful the whole business seemed now 
 to her calmer judgment, looked upon'in the cold light of common 
 sense ! A borrower, a beggar almost, a miserable suppliant to 
 her friend's affianced husband. What wonder that Francis 
 Tredethlyn had basely taken advantage of that false position, to 
 avow a passion whose least expression was an insult to her on 
 the lips of Julia Desmond's lover ? And then what wasted 
 humiliation, what unnecessary shame ; for had not she turned 
 upon him and upbraided him in the next moment, forgetful of 
 her father's desperate need ! 
 
 Such thoughts as these were scarcely pleasant company all 
 through that brief January day, which seemed so long to Maude 
 Hillary. The slow hours crept on, and she still lay tossing rest- 
 lessly on the sofa, which ofl'ered all that upholstery can offer 
 for the consolation of a troubled mind. A servant brought 
 lamps, and crept from window to window, drawing the curtains 
 as stealthily as a burglar would have cut a square out of the 
 iron door of Mr. Hillary's plate-room. The first dinner-bell 
 rang out in the old-fashioned cupola upon the roof, and informed 
 all Twickenham that it was time for the people at the Cedars to 
 array themselves for the evening meal: but Maude still lay 
 upon the sofa, hiding her flushed face in the pillows, and trying 
 to quiet the throbbing in her burning head. What did it 
 matter ? The poor inexperienced girl broke down all at once in 
 her social comedy. She could act the wearisome play no longer; 
 she wanted to give up all her share in this world, and to go to 
 bed and lie there quietly until she died. All the conunoa DUBi*
 
 142 Only a Clod. 
 
 ness of life scorned nnutteraLly loathsome to her, — the dressing 
 and diuing, the simpermg small-talk, the finery of a grand house 
 no longer honestly maintained. Oh, that it could all be swept 
 away hke the vision engendered out of some trouljled slumber; 
 giving place to a subiirban cottage and a life of decent toil ! 
 
 "I have seen girls — well-bred, good-looking girls, trudging 
 in the muddy London streets, with music portfohos in tlieir 
 arms, wliile I have been out shopping in my carriage," she 
 thought. " Oh, if I could only be like one of these, and work 
 for papa, and see him happy, smiling at me across our little 
 table, as I gave lum his dinner, and not brooding as he does 
 now, hour after hour, hour after hour, in this grand draw- 
 ing-room, with the same settled look of trouble on his face! " 
 
 It was not only of late that Maude had watched her father 
 anxiously and sadly. Very often during the year just passed, 
 and even in the year preceding that, the girl had been alarmed 
 by Lionel Hillaiy's moody looks and long gloomy reveries, out 
 of which it was his wont to rouse liimself in a mechanical kind 
 of way when strangers were present. But the merchant always 
 gave the same explanation of his sombre looks. Those head- 
 aches, those constitutional headaches, which came upon him 
 constantly through the fatigue and wony of biisiness — those 
 terrible headaches made an excuse for everything, and Maude's 
 fears about her father related solely to his health. How should 
 she understand the dismal diagnosis of commercial disease? 
 How should she imagine that there was any limit to the ftiiiy 
 purse of Fortunatns — any chance of a blight in Aladdin's 
 orchard of jewelled fniits? 
 
 The second dinner-bell rang, and there was no sign of the 
 merchant's retiu-n. It had been a common thing lately for 
 Lionel Hillary to keep his cook in a fever of vexation over the 
 hot plates and furnaces where the viands for the diurnal banquet 
 simmered and frizzled in their copper receptacles. Maude felt 
 no special alarm about her father. VDaj should he hui-ry home 
 to lengthen the long evening of brooding thought and care ? 
 Why should she wish him home, when, out of all the depth of 
 her love and devotion, she could not conjui-e one word of com- 
 iovt wherewith to greet him ? 
 
 She was thinking this when the door was opened suddenly 
 by an eager hand, and jMr. Hillary came into the room. 
 
 His daughter rose from the sofa, startled by the suddennesg 
 of his entrance. It is a small action, that of opening a door, 
 and entering a room ; but there was as great a change in Mr. 
 Hillary's jDerformance of it, as if twenty years had suddenly 
 been lifted from his life. 
 
 " My darling ! " he cried, taking his daughter in his arms, "it 
 10 you whom lliave to thank. It was your doing, was it not ?"
 
 Poor Francit. 14S 
 
 " Wliat, papa ? " 
 
 " The money — tho twenty tlioiisand ponLis." 
 
 " Twenty thousand pounds !" 
 
 She thought the burning pain in her head had engendered 
 Bome sudtlen delirium. She could not helieve that thin was her 
 fiither's face, lighted by a hoi)et'ul smile, sucli as she had not 
 ieen upon it during the last three years. 
 
 " What twenty thousand pounds, papa ? " 
 
 " The sum that has been placed to my credit to-day anony- 
 jQOusly. The bank i:)eople refused to tell me the name of my 
 benefactor. I look to you, Maude, to solve the mystery. There 
 is only one man whom I know of, rich enough to advance such 
 a sum of money — young enough to do it in so Utopian a man- 
 ner. There is only one man, Maude, and his name is Francis 
 Tredethlyn. Tell me, my dear, have I guessed rightly ? " 
 
 " You have, papa. Yes, I am sure you have. Poor fellow ! 
 and I was so angry with him last night. It was very good of 
 him to do this, pa]ia." 
 
 " Good of him ! " cried the merchant — " good of him to lend 
 twenty thousand pounds, without a halfpennyworth of security I 
 U])on my word, Maude, it is good; and I can assure yon it's a 
 kind of goodness that fs very imcommon in the City." 
 
 CHAPTER XVin. 
 
 POOR FRANCIS. 
 
 Prom the second day of the New Year things went pleasantly 
 enough in the Twickenham household. How could JNIaude do 
 otherwise than rejoice in the salvation of her father's honour — 
 to say nothing of his commercial prosperity — even though that 
 salvation had been obtained by a great humiliation on her own 
 part ? She would have borne that humiliation very willingly, 
 and would have freely acknowledged her obligation to Francis 
 Tredethlyn, could she have seen Julia Desmond reconciled to 
 her lover. But the separation between these two, wliich had 
 arisen out of the scene on New Year's night, was a perpetual 
 reproach to Maude Hillary. 
 
 She was not able to be quite happy, therefore, even though 
 Buch a terrible burden had been lifted from her, — even though 
 she saw the dark cloud swept away from her father's face. Her 
 girlish frivolity had departed from her for ever on that terrible 
 night in her father's study at Brighton ; and there was a 
 womanly softness, a pensive tenderness in her manner now, 
 that made her even more bewitching than of old. Her affection 
 for her I'ather — always the ruling passion of her simple mind—,
 
 144 OnTy a Clod. 
 
 had been intensified by that fiery ordeal through which she had 
 60 latch'- passed ; and there was somctliiug very beautiful in the 
 nnion which now existed between the father and daiijijhter. 
 Mr. Hillary had been surprised into confidences that niadea 
 new tie between himself and his child. lie could never again 
 entirely withhold his secrets from that tender friend and 
 consoler. He could never again think of her as a beautiful, 
 frivolous creature, only intended to wear expensive dresses and 
 float about in gi-aceful attitudes amongst the costly hric-a-hrac 
 of a fashionable drawing-room. He had learned to trust hia 
 child ; and poor Maude apphed herself diligently to the study of 
 the customs and deahngs common in that mysterious region 
 known to her as the City. She tried to rmderstand her father's 
 position — for she was tonnented by a feverish anxiety as to the 
 repayment of Francis Tredethlyn's twenty thousand pounds; 
 biit the comphcations of an Australian merchant's trade, aa 
 affected by wars, and ramours of wars, by alterations in the 
 rate of discount and the price of Consols, were a little beyond 
 Miss Hillary's comprehension, and she was fain to give up 
 the attempt in despair, and to accept any statement which 
 her father cared to make to her respecting the altered aspect 
 of his afiairs. 
 
 There was less company at the Cedars than usual during the 
 bleak early months of the year. Mr. Hillary worked very 
 sedulously in the City during this time, and did not care to 
 fill his house ■with frivolous young idlers or ponderous City- 
 bred matrons and their fashionably-educated daughters. The 
 recklessness engendered by the contemplation of inevitable ruin 
 had given jDlaceto the careful dealing of a man who has a diffi- 
 cult but not impossible task allotted to him. You can scarcely 
 expect the daughters of King Danaus to labour very arduously 
 in the filling of those buckets which they Jinoiv will not hold 
 water; but if the buckets are only thin at the bottom, and may 
 possibly carry their contents safely to the well, it is worth while 
 to work conscientiously. 
 
 Francis Tredethlyn's twenty thousand pounds had done 
 wonders for Lionel Hillaiy ; hut the dry-rot had been for a long 
 time at work in that stately ship of which the merchant was 
 captain, and the successful navigation of the vessel, amidst aU 
 the rocks and shoals and tempests of the commercial ocean, 
 was by no means an easy duty. 
 
 But Mr. Hillary was sanguine, and his daughter saw the 
 new hopefulness and brightness of his face, and was very nearly 
 happy. She was not quite happy, for Harcourt Lowther's let- 
 ters grew more despondent and complaining by every maik 
 He reproached Maude Hillary for her prosperity and her in- 
 difference; she must be indifferent, he argued, or she wovdd
 
 Foor Francis. 145 
 
 have encccoflcd crc this in obtaining her father's consent to her 
 marriage with the penniless ofllcer. "There arc girls who will 
 go thrmigh tire and water ibr the man they love," he wi-ote in 
 an cjustle that was half filled with fierce rei^roaches. " I have 
 Been the power of a woman's devotion ; but then that woman 
 was only a poor simple creature, and not the daughter of a 
 millionaire. I cannot believe that you could fail to infiuenco 
 your father, if you really cared to do so. If you loved me, 
 Maude, this business would have been settled long ago." 
 
 Did she love him P That was a question which she had never 
 Bct herself to answer. Had they not engaged themselves to 
 each other in the prettiest and most sentimental fashion, like 
 a modern Master of Eavenswood and Lucy Ashton? Maude 
 took the fact of her love for granted. All the sweetest and 
 tenderest dreams of her life were mingled with the memory of 
 Harcourt Lowther. He was so superior to all the other men 
 who had paid her their homage ; and it may be that his con- 
 temptuous beai-ing towards those other men had been a part of 
 the fascination of his manner. He had affected that modem 
 Edgar Eavenswood tone— that elegant Timon of Athens-ism — 
 which is so intensely charming in the eyes of a very young 
 woman, however spurious it may be. And with all this,_ he had 
 beeii so devoted, so dehghtfuUy exacting, so dehciously jealotis ! 
 Maude looked back to the one sentimental period of her life, 
 and saw Harcourt Lowther's image radiant in all the hght of 
 her own youthful fancies. So the worshipper in a village chapel 
 sees some poor painted wooden figure of a saint glorified by the 
 ghtter of tapers, the brightness of flowers and draperies and 
 decorations. How was she to separate the lamps and the flowers 
 about the shrine from the image which they adorned ? How 
 was she to discover the paltry nature of that clay out of which 
 the graceful figure was fashioned ? Harcourt_ Lowther repre- 
 sented to her all that was brightest and best in her early girl- 
 hood ; and sitting alone, through long and thoughtful hours, in 
 the empty rooms at the Cedars, Maude Hillary brooded very 
 Badly upon the only love-story of her life. 
 
 She had veiitured to speak of Harcourt to her father once 
 since the beginning of the year ; but her timid pleading had 
 been met by a cruel repulse. 
 
 " Understand me at once and for ever, Maude," Lionel 
 Hillary said, sternly ; " such a maniage as that can never be. 
 If you were the great heiress peojjle think you, I might gratify 
 this whim, as I have gratified other fancies, foolish and extrava- 
 gant in their way. But the road I am now treading is by no 
 means too secure under my feet, and I cannot afford to see my 
 only child the wife of a penniless adventurer. I want to see 
 you happy, Maude, but not after a sentimental girl's noti-in of
 
 146 Only a Clod. 
 
 happiness. I Imowwliat all those pretty theories about a snburban 
 cottage and poverty come to when they are put into practice. 
 I have seen the slipshod maid-of-all-work, and the miserable 
 dinners, and the Kidderminster carpets, and stale bread and 
 rank butter, that belong to love in a cottage. And more than 
 Hiis, Maude, I know that Harcourt Lowther is the very last 
 ;uan to ally himself to a dowerless wife." 
 
 " Ah, how little you know him ! " Maude murmured, softly. 
 She thought she knew her lover so well herself, and fancied him 
 the most generous and devoted of men because he had given 
 her a few half-guinea bouquets, purchased on credit from a con- 
 fiding florist. " Ah, dear papa, how little you know him ! He 
 is always reproaching me with my fortune, and lamenting the 
 gulf it has made between us. Let me tell him of your difficul- 
 ties; let me tell him that I am no longer a millionaire's 
 daughter, that I am free to marry the man I love. Ah, let me 
 tell him " 
 
 " Not a word, Matide," answered Lionel Hillary — " not a 
 word to that man, if you have any love or respect for your father. 
 Hemember that I have trusted you with secrets that a man 
 seldom confides to his daughter.** 
 
 " And your confidence shall be sacred, papa," Miss Hillary 
 replied, submissively. And thus ended her intercession in favour 
 of Harcourt Lowther. 
 
 She was fain to be contented, however, remembering the great 
 trouble which had been so near her, and which a merciful hand 
 had Hfted away. She was fain to remember, shudderingly, the 
 feverish horror of that night at Brighton, and to think grate- 
 fully of Francis Tredethlyn, to whom she owed her father's 
 rescue. She was grateful to him ; but she could not put en- 
 tirely away from her the sense of shame left by that scene in 
 the study, and Julia Desmond's passionate reproaches. She 
 could not forget that it was for her sake Francis Tredethlyn had 
 helped her father, and that the burden of a great obUgation 
 must rest upon her shoulders untU that loan of twenty thousand 
 pounds was repaid. Poor Maude's unbusiness-like mind en- 
 tirely ignored any such thing as interest for Mr. Tredethlyn's 
 money. She only thought of the loan itself, and the question 
 of its repayment was perpetually in her mind. Had she not 
 been the supphant, at whose suit the money had been lent P 
 and was she not in a manner the actual debtor ? 
 
 Things were much better in the City, her father told her; but 
 upon two or three occasions when she had ventured to hint her 
 anxiety respecting the early repayment of Francis Tredethlyn's 
 money, the merchant's answers had filled her mind with vagiia 
 disquietude. There was an indifierence in ]\Ii-. Hillary's manner 
 that alarmed Maude's keen sense of right and honour.
 
 Poor Francis. 147 
 
 "TredetMyn is too well off to want liis morey ia any desperate 
 hurry, my dear," lie said ; " lie is not likely to become a very 
 pressing creditor." 
 
 The hedgerows about Islewortli and Twickenham were green 
 with their earliest buds before Francis Tredethlyn came again to 
 the Cedars. IMr. Hillary had called upon the young man at his 
 hotel several times before he succeeded in seeing him, and had 
 only with great difficulty wrung from him an admission of the 
 fact that he was the anonymous lender of the twenty thousand 
 pounds that had saved the merchant from ruin and disgrace. _ 
 
 " My dear Tredethlyn, why should you insist upon any dis- 
 guise ? " Mr. Hillaiy said, wth a pleasant ease that r^ot every 
 man could have maintained in such a position as that in which 
 the merchant found himself with regard to this simple-minded, 
 country-bred Croesus. "Is it not enough to have been the 
 most generous of men, without trying to cariy_ generosity to 
 the verge of Quixotism ? How can I doubt the identity of my 
 preserver ? 1 know that Maude betrayed my necessities to you, 
 under the excitement of those unfortunate theatricals, and I 
 know that loans of twenty thousand pounds do not drop from 
 the. skies. My dear fellow, I am most heartily thankful to you 
 for what you have done. It was a very noble thing to do, an 
 action that any man might be proud of doing. If I had ever 
 doubted your having good blood in your veins, your conduct in 
 this one matter would have settled my doubts. But I never 
 did doubt it, my dear Tredethlyn. I have recognized you from 
 the first as a gentleman; not by the right of an accidental 
 thirty thousand a year, sci aped out of aU manner of commercial 
 gutters by a miserly uncle ; but by virtue of some of the best 
 blood in the West of England." 
 
 And then Mr. Hillary sti-etched out both his hands, and shook 
 those of Francis Tredethlyn in his vigorous grasp; and alto- 
 gether the interview could scarcely have been more eutu-ely 
 satisfactory had the merchant written a cheque for the twenty 
 thousand pounds on the spot. Indeed, to Francis any imme- 
 diate repayment of that money would have been a grievous 
 moi-tification. Was it not delightful to him to remember that 
 he had been of service to her father? Was not the money 
 advanced to the mgji-chant a kind of link between Maude and 
 the man who loved her so dearly and so hopelessly, — only a 
 very sordid, earthy link ; but better than none ? 
 
 "I offended her very much that night," Francis thought; 
 " but perhaps she will forgive me, and remember me kindly, 
 when she thinks that I have been useful to her father." But 
 when Mr. Hillary begged Francis to renew his visits to 
 Twickenham, the young man resisted those friendly invitations 
 Bs obstinately as if the ^<idar3 had been the most obnoxioua
 
 148 Only a Clod. 
 
 place upon earth. He could not muster np courage to en» 
 counter Mai;de Hillaiy after that scene in the little study. 
 "What if he had oiieuded too deeply for forgiveness ? What 
 if she slow him with a frozen glance from her lovely eyes? 
 Again and again in his lonely rides, emboldened by the dusky 
 twilight of the early spring evenings, he had ventured to 
 haunt the neighbourhood of the old brick -bailt mansion by the 
 river ; but he could not bring himself to go any nearer to the 
 shrme of his divinity ; and he made all manner of lame excuses 
 in answer to Mr. Hillary's cordial invitations. 
 
 He was only a clod ; only an uneducated rustic, newly cast 
 upon a strange world, open to all the pleasant snares which are 
 laid for the simple-minded possessor of thirty thousand a year. 
 Heaven only knows the perUs and temptations into which some 
 young men would have fallen under similar circumstances. It is 
 something in Francis Tredethlyn's favour that his worst mis- 
 take was to fall desperately in love with Maude Hillary, and 
 wear hi^ horse's shoes out in disconsolate rides about the twilit 
 lanes and roads in the neighbourhood of her dwelling-place. 
 
 And in the mean time Messrs. Kursdale and Scardon were 
 supposed to be busily employed m their search for the missing 
 girl, who might or might not have any right to another name 
 than that of Susan Tredethlyn. Very little came of the law- 
 yers' endeavours. Several advertisements had been inserted in 
 the " Times ; " but it is to be feared that the lost and missing ad- 
 vertised for in those columns are too often wanderers in a weary 
 region, far removed from that comfortable sphere of life in 
 which the morning papers are punctually dehvered to enhven 
 the breakfast-table. No reply came to any of those myste- 
 riously-worded ajDpeals to Francis Tredethlyn's cousin which 
 were concocted by the young man and his legal advisers ; and 
 the image of the friendless girl grew paler and fainter day by 
 day in the mind of JMaude Hillary's adorer. 
 
 At last Fortune — who will generally do anything ia the 
 world for us, if we have patience enough to wait her own time 
 for doing it — brought about the result which Francis Tredethlyn 
 had so obstinately avoided, yet so fondly desired. Lounging 
 against the rails one brilliant April day at the corner opposite 
 Apsley House, Francis saw Maude Hillary's carriage drive into 
 the Park. 
 
 Yes, there she was, with her sunny hair framed in spring 
 blossoms and white areophane. The young man seemed to 
 behold the vision of an angel in a Parisian bonnet, and half 
 wondered if the folds of her white burnous were not a pair of 
 downy pinious floating away from her divine shoulders. He 
 grew very red and uncomfortable, and in another moment 
 would have yielded to tho impul.'so that prompted him to seek
 
 J?oor Francts. 149 
 
 rofiio-o in fTiulit; Init before he could do so, the carriage waa 
 close to the rails, Miuule Hillary had recognized him, and had 
 told the coachman to stop. 
 
 She was not otlended with him, then ; she forgave him, and 
 thought of him kindly. His heart swelled with a rapture that 
 was almost overpowering. Ah! this v^ as love. How different 
 from that placid sense ot affection with which he_ had regarded 
 his cousin, Susy ! how much more delicious ! how infinitely more 
 painful ! 
 
 " I have wanted so much to see you, Mr. Trcdethlyn," Maude 
 said, after shaking hands with her bewildered adorer ; " why 
 have you never been to Twickeiiham ? " 
 
 "I — I — don't like — I thought you were angiy with me," 
 stammered Francis, very awkwardly. Ah, how sad it is that the 
 presence of those we love best, and in whose eyes we would 
 most desire to appear at an advantage, should entail upon us 
 the annihilation of anything like ease or grace of manner ! 
 Mr. Tredethlyn felt himself becoming purple and apoplectic, 
 under the iniluence of that seraphic creature, whose image had 
 filled his mind unceasingly for the last six months. 
 
 " Ano-ry with you ! " exclaimed Maude ; " how shoiild I be 
 otherwise than grateful to you, when I remember how good you 
 have been to papa ? Believe me, Mr. Tredethlyn, I am not too 
 proud to own the extent of our obligation. I thank you most 
 Bincercly. You can never know how grateful I am for the 
 service you have rendered my dear father." 
 
 She bent her head, and the spring-flowers in her bonnet were 
 very near him as she said tliis in a low, earnest voice. But in 
 the next moment the memory of that uncomfortable scene in 
 the study flashed back upon her, and she felt that she must 
 always be more or less in a false position with regard to Francis 
 Tredethlyn. She made a little effort to set herself right before 
 she i)arted from him. 
 
 " You have seen Julia ; you and she are reconciled, I hope, 
 Mr. Tredethlyn ? " 
 
 " No ; indeed, I have never heard from her since — since I left 
 
 the Cedars. Yom- papa told me that she Oh, Miss Hillary, I 
 
 think it was better that we should part. I don't think that we 
 had either of us ever really cared for each othev. It was better 
 that it should end as it did." 
 
 " But I would give so mucli to find Julia, to hear where 
 she is." 
 
 Francis Tredethlyn shook his head hopelessly. He had a 
 vague idea that he had not done his very uttermost in hia 
 search for his cousin Susan, and he recoiled with terror from 
 the idea of having to engage in a hunt for Miss Desmond. 
 
 " Good-bye, Mr. Tredethlyn ; I hope that all will come right,
 
 150 Only a Cloi. 
 
 after all ; and I hope that you -will believe I am grateful fot 
 
 your gooduess to my father." 
 
 She held out her hand, and the Comishman took it in his 
 own with almost as reverential a touch as if it had been some 
 rehc handed to him from an altar. The carriage drove oflf im- 
 mediately after this, and Francis saw that seraphic bonnet with 
 the spiing-blossoms melt away and lose itself among mundane 
 bormets. He lingered at the rails till the carriage came back 
 again, and still hngered after that, thinking that Miss Hillary's 
 equipage would again return to Hyde-Park Comer ; but after 
 out-watching all the loungers by the rails, and seeing the last 
 of the carriages leaving the Ladies' Mile, he was fain to go 
 home, resigned to the obvious fact that Maude Hillary had left 
 the Park by the Kensington gates on her homeward route. 
 
 He went home, but not disconsolate. Had he not seen and 
 spoken with that divinity before whom he was the simplest wor- 
 shiiDper who ever bowed before any earthly shrine ? Was he not 
 assured of her forgiveness ? nay, even of her gratitude ? Her 
 gratitude — Maude Hillary's gratitude, in exchange for that vile 
 dross which he had ever held so hghtly. Money was indeed good 
 for something, if it could buy the rapture of that httle intemew 
 across the park-rail, in which Francis had played so very poor a 
 part. He Avent home, and canied Maude Hillary's image with 
 him, and walked up and down his big sitting-room in the Covent 
 Garden Hotel, smoking a cigar and thinking of the woman he 
 loved: he thought of her quite as hopelessly as ever Claude 
 Melnotte could have thought of Pauline before Beauseanfs 
 diabohcal suggestions had prompted him to his treacherous 
 wooing. He thought of her as innocently as a schoolboy thinks 
 of the stage fairy-queen in a Christmas pantomime, and no am- 
 bitious or selfish dream had any abode in his mind ; only when 
 a brief note reached him from Lionel Hillary, renewing the old 
 unceremonious invitation to the Cedars, poor Francis could no 
 longer resist the voice of the charmer, but was fain to pack his 
 portmanteau and di-ive down to the merchant's office, whence 
 Mr. Hillary was to convey him in the mail phaeton to Twicken- 
 ham. She was not angry with him, and he might bask in the 
 Bunshme of her presence ! For a httle while he might enjoy the 
 dangerous delight, and then the officer to whom she was be- 
 trothed would come back to claim her, and there would be a 
 wedding at the old church by the Thames ; and he, Francis, 
 would see his divinity radiant in bridal robes and crowned with 
 orange-flowers before he departed for ever into the outer darknesi 
 where she was not.
 
 Mr. mUary specJcs Ids Mind. 161 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 MB. niXLAIlY SPEAKS HIS MIND. 
 
 AnER that meeting in Hyde Park, Francis Tredetlilyn came 
 very often to the Cedars ; so often, as to engender a vague nn- 
 easincss in Miss Hillary's mind. She knew that he loved her. 
 If that sudden declaration in the study had never occurred to 
 reveal the fact, Maude must have been sometliing less than a 
 woman had she been bluid to a devotion that was made manifest 
 by every look and tone of her adorer. She knew that he loved 
 her, and that he had done battle with liis love in order that she 
 might be happily ignorant of the pangs that tormented his 
 simple heart. The highly educated girl was able to read the 
 innermost secrets of that honest uncultivated mind, and was 
 fain to pity Francis Trcdethlyn's wasted suffering. Alas ! had 
 she not indeed traded upon his devotion, and obtained her 
 father's safety at the expense of her own honour ? 
 
 Such thoughts as these tonnented Miss Hillary perpetually 
 now that Francis spent so much of his life at Twickenham. 
 She perceived with inexpressible pain that her father encouraged 
 the young man's visits, — her father, who could not surely shut 
 his eyes to the real state of the Cornishman's feelings ; yet who 
 knew of her engagement to Harcourt Lowther. She did not 
 know that JuUa Desmond had taken good care to inform Francis 
 of that engagement, and that the young man came knowingly 
 to his dehcious torture. She did not know tliis ; and all that 
 womanly compassion which was natural to her, that pitying 
 tenderness which showed itself in the injudicious rehef of bare- 
 faced tramps and vagabonds about the Twickenham lanes, and 
 the pami:)eiTng of troublesome x^et dogs and canary birds — all 
 her womanly pity, I say, was aroused by the thought that she 
 was loved, and loved in vain, by an hon.et!t and generous heart. 
 
 Thus it came to pass that she could no longer endure the 
 course which events were taking, and she determined upon 
 speaking to her father. They had dined alone one bright Juno 
 evening : they wer» not often thus together now, for Mr. Hillary 
 had fallen into his old habit of bringing visitors from London, 
 and the ponderous matrons and croquet-playing young ladies 
 inflicted a good deal of their company upon Maude. They had 
 dined alone, and Miss Hillary seized the opportunity of speaking 
 to her father upon that one subject which had so long occupied 
 her thoughts. 
 
 "Mr. Tredethlyn comes here very often, papa," she said, 
 breaking gro\tnd veiy gently. 
 
 Lionel Hillary hllod his glass, retiring as it wore behind the
 
 152 Only a Ciod. 
 
 claret-jug, from which comfortable shelter he replied to his 
 daughter's remark,-— 
 
 _ " Often ? — yes — I suj^pose lie does spend a good deal of his 
 time here. I am glad that he should do so ; he is an excellent 
 young man, a noble-hearted young fellow — the best friend I 
 nave in the world." 
 
 Mr. Hillaiy was a long time filling that one glass of claret, 
 and his face was quite hidden by the crystal jug. 
 _ " Yes, papa, he is very good ; but do you think it is quite 
 right — quite -svise to invite him so often?" 
 
 "Right — wise?" cried Mr. Hillary; "what, in the name of 
 all that's absurd, can you mean by talking of tlie rigbt or wis- 
 dom of an in\dtation to dinner ? The young man hkes to come 
 here, and I like the young man, and Hke to see him here. That 
 is about all that can be said upon the subject." 
 
 Maude was sUent for some moments. It was very difiicult to 
 discuss this question with her father, but she had grown familiar 
 with difficulties within the past few months, and was no longer 
 the frivolous girl who had known no loftier cause of anxiety 
 than the uncertam health of her Skye terrier. She returned to 
 the charge presently. 
 
 " Dear papa, I am sorry to worry you about this business," 
 she said, gently, " ]:)ut there are such pecuUar circumstances in 
 our acquaintance with Mr. Tredethlyn — we are under so deep 
 an obligation to him, and " 
 
 "And on that account we ought to shut our doors in his 
 face, I sujDpose ! " exclaimed Mr. Hillary, with some show of 
 impatience. " My dear Maude, what mare's-nest have you 
 lighted upon ? " 
 
 " It is so difficult for me to explain myself, papa : you can 
 never imagine how difficult. But I think you ought to under- 
 stand what I mean. AVlien Juha was here, Mr. Tredethlyn's 
 visits were quite natural, and I was always glad to see him ; 
 but it was my ajJiDhcation to him for the loan of that money 
 which resulted in the breaking of JixHa's engagement. I can- 
 not forget that night, jjapa; nothing but desperation would 
 have prompted me to apj^eal to Francis Tredethlyn ; and now 
 that we are under this great obhgation to him, I feel that we 
 are bound to him by a kind of duty. We have, at least, no 
 right to deceive hini." 
 
 " Deceive him ! Who does deceive him ? " 
 
 " Willingly, no one. But he may deceive himself, papa. 
 You force me to speak very plainly. Upon the night on which 
 I appealed to him for that loan, he told me that he loved me, 
 even though he was then engaged to Julia. There was some- 
 tliing in his manner that convinced me of his sincerity, though 
 I was shocked at the want of honour involved in such a
 
 Mr. Uniary sjjeaJcs Ins Min3. 153 
 
 declaration. But now that his engagement to Julia has been 
 broken off, indirectly through my agency, he may think it 
 Hkely that " 
 
 " He may think it likely that you would bo wise enough to 
 accept one of the best fellows that ever lived for your husband. 
 Is that what you mean, Maude ? " 
 
 " Papa ! " 
 
 " Oh, my dear, I have no doubt you think me a cruel father, 
 because I venture to make such a suggestion. But surely, 
 Maude, you cannot have been blind to this young man's devo- 
 tion. From the very first it has been obvious to anyone gifted 
 with the smallest power of perception. Julia Desmond con- 
 trived, by her consummate artifice, to inveigle the poor fellow 
 into a false position ; but in spite even of that foolish engage- 
 ment, he has been devoted to you, Maude, from the first. I 
 have seen it, and have counted, Heaven knows how fully, upon 
 a man-iage between you and him." 
 
 "You have done this, papa, and yet you knew all about 
 Harcourt," exclaimed Maude, reproachfully. 
 
 " I knew that you were a foolishly sentrmental girl, ready to 
 beheve in any yellow-whiskered young Admirable Crichton, 
 who could make pretty speeches, and criticise the newest Italian 
 opera, or Tennyson's last poem. But I knew something more 
 than this, Maude; I knew the state of my own afl'airs, and that 
 my only hoj^e for you lay in a wealthy marriage." 
 
 "And you thought that I would marry for money — you 
 could think so meanly of me, papa ! " 
 
 " I thought that you were a sensible, high-spirited girl, and 
 that when you came to know the desi:)eration of the case, you 
 would show yourself of the true metal — as you did that night 
 at Brighton ; as you did when you asked Tredetlilyn for the 
 loan which saved me from ruin." 
 
 Lionel Hillary stretched out his hand as_ he spoke, and 
 gi-asped that of his daughter. In the next minute she was by 
 his side, bending over him and caressnig him. Only lately it 
 had begun to dawn dimly upon Maude Hillaiy, that perhaps 
 this father, whom she loved so dearly, was not the noblest and 
 most honourable of men : but if any such knowledge had come 
 to her, it had only intensified the tenderness with which, from 
 her earliest childhood, she had regarded that indulgent father. 
 The erperience of sorrow had transformed and exalted her na- 
 ture ; and she was able to look upon Lionel Hillary's weak- 
 liesses with pitying regret, rather than >vith any feeling of con- 
 tempt or indignation. 
 
 " Dear papa," she said, very gravely, "you and I love each 
 other so dearly, that there should be no possibility of any mis- 
 understanding between us. I can never marry Mr. Tredetlilyn;
 
 154 Only a Clod. 
 
 I know that he is good and generous-minded and simple* 
 hearted ; I feel the extent of our obUgation to him, but I can 
 never be his wife. It is for this reason that I am fearful lest 
 any false impression may arise in his mind. Pray, dear papa, 
 take this iato consideration, and do not let him come here so 
 often — at any rate, not until you have been able to repay him 
 his money, not until the burden of this great obUgation haa 
 been removed from us." 
 
 Lionel Hillary laughed aloud. 
 
 " Not until the money has been paid ! I'm afraid, in that 
 case, Tredethlyn will stoj:* away from this house for a long time 
 to come." 
 
 " A long time, papa ! But you told me you would be able 
 to repay the twenty thousand pounds," said Maude, tui'ning 
 very pale. 
 
 " And I dare say I shall be able to pay the money some day. 
 Such a loan as that is not repaid in a few months, Maude. 
 How should you understand these matters ? The twenty thou- 
 eand pounds went to fill a yawning gulf in my business, and it 
 would be about as easy for me to get the same amount of money 
 back out of that gulf as it would for a single diver to bring up 
 the treasures of a sunken argosy." 
 
 Maude sighed wearily. It seemed as if a kind of net had 
 been woven round her, and that she suddenly found herself ia 
 tie centre of it, unable to move. 
 
 " Papa," she cried, " you don't mean that Mr. Tredethlyn's 
 money is lost ? " 
 
 " Lost ! No, child ; but it may be a very long time before I 
 shall be able to pay him. If you were not so foolish as to throw 
 away one of the noblest hearts in Christendom — to say notliing 
 of the fortune that goes along with it — there would be very 
 little need for me to worry myself about this money." 
 
 " Oh, I understand, papa. If I were Mr. Tredethlyn's wife, 
 you would not be obUged to pay the twenty thousand pounds," 
 said Maude, very slowly. 
 
 " I should not be tonnented about it as I am now. Say no 
 more, my dear; you don't understand these things, and you 
 drive me very nearly mad with your questions about my affairs." 
 
 " Forgive me, papa. No, I don't understand — I can't under- 
 stand all at once ; it seems so strange to me." 
 
 She bent her head and kissed her father on the forehead, 
 and then went quietly out of the room; leaving him alone in 
 the still summer twilight, Avith a belated wasp buzzing feebly 
 amongst the fruit and flowers on the table. Maude went to her 
 own room, and sitting there in the dusk, shed some of the bit- 
 terest tears that had ever fallen from her eyes. The discovery 
 *f her father's views with regard to her had humiliated her to
 
 Mr. Hillary speaks Ms Minct. 155 
 
 the very dust. Tlie idea tliat Francis Tredcthlyn's loan would 
 never be repaid was torture to her keen sense of honour ; tor- 
 ture which was rendered still more poignant by the recollection 
 of her own part in the transaction. Would he ever be paid ? 
 Would that money, for the loan of wliich — and never more than 
 the loan — she had supplicated her fiiend's betrothed husband, 
 would that money ever be returned to the generous young man 
 who had so freely lent it ? Her father had said that it would 
 in due course ; but there was something in his manner that had 
 neutrahzed the effect of his words. To Maude Hillary's mind 
 this debt was a very sacred one, a debt which must be repaid, 
 and for which she herself was responsible. Twenty thousand 
 pounds;— all the faculties of her brain seemed to swim in a 
 gi-eat sea of confusion as she thought of that terrible sum — 
 twenty thousand pounds, which she was bound to see duly 
 paid ; and she was no longer an heiress, to whom money was 
 di-oss. She was a penniless, helpless girl : worse off than other 
 penniless girls by reason of her inexpenence of poverty. 
 
 She thought of Harcourt Lowther ; and liis image seemed to 
 shine upon her across a wilderness of troubles ; a bright and 
 pleasant thing to look at, but with no promise of help, no inspi- 
 ration of hope, no pledge of comfort in its brightness. 
 
 " Perhaps papa is right, after all," she thought, " and Har- 
 court would scarcely care to burden himself with a penniless 
 wife." 
 
 She was ashamed of this brief treason against her lover, 
 almost as soon as the thought had shaped itself; only in her 
 despair it seemed to her as if there coxJd be no security of any 
 happiness xipon this earth. 
 
 " I will tell Francis Tredethlyn the tnith about myself,'' she 
 thought ; " he shall not be deceived as to anytliing in which I 
 am concerned. He shall know of my engagement to Harcourt.* 
 
 Maude did not go downstairs again that night, nor did Mr. 
 Hillary send for her, as it was his wont to do when she was lon(; 
 away from him. It may be that he scarcely cared to encounter 
 his daughter after that conversation in the dining-room, wliich 
 had been far from pleasant to him. He was not a father of 
 Mr. Capulet's class, who could order his daughter to marry the 
 County Paris at a few days' notice; or in the event of her 
 refusal, bid her rot in the streets of Yerona. But from the very 
 first he had been bent upon bringing about a union _ between 
 Francis and Maude, and he brooded moodily over the girl's reso- 
 lute rejection of any such alliance. 
 
 " What woxild become of her if I were to die to-morrow P " 
 he thought ; " and what is to become of my business if I fail to 
 secure a rich partner ? "
 
 156 Onhj a Clod. 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 AN EXPLANATION. 
 
 Francis Tredethlyx, now so frequent a visitor at the Cedara, 
 happened to present himself there upon the day after that on 
 wliich Maude had come to an understanding with her father. 
 The young man rode down to T\vickenham in the afternopn, 
 and found Miss Hillary occupied with two croquet-playing 
 young ladies and a croquet-playing young gentleman, whose 
 manners and opinions were of the same insipidly flaxen hue as 
 their hair and eyebrows. 
 
 There was a tired look in Maude's face that afternoon, which 
 was very perceptible to Francis Tredethlyn, although quite 
 invisible to the neutral-tinted croquet-players. Her eyes wan- 
 dered away sometimes from the balls and mallets, and fixed 
 themselves, ^vith a sad, dreamy look, upon the sunlit river or 
 the distant woodland. Francis saw this, and that faithful 
 Cornish heart grew heavy in sympathy with Miss Hillary's un- 
 known trouble. There must be a little of the Newfoundland 
 dog in the nature of a man who can love hopelessly ; a little of 
 that superhuman fideHty, a httle of that canine endurance wliich 
 has inspired so many odious comparisons to the disparagement 
 of the inferior animal called man. Francis Tredethlyn's eyes 
 followed Miss Hillary with a dog-hke patience all this afternoon, 
 during which he established himself in the estimation of the 
 flaxen-hah-ed droppers-in as one of the vilest of croquet-playera 
 and worst-mannered of men. But tjie croquet-players departed, 
 after taking tea out of a verj^ ugly Queen- Anne teapot and some 
 old Sevres cups and saucers, which had been bought for Miss 
 HUlary at the sale of a defunct collector's goods and chattels, 
 at Messrs. Christie and Manson's. Francis stayed to dinner, 
 and dined alone with Maude and her father, and found very 
 little to say for himself. He was distracted by the sight of 
 Maude's pale face and sadly thoughtful eyes. How changed 
 she was from the bright and sparkHng creature whom he re- 
 membered a few months ago in that house ! How changed ! 
 What was the secret trouble which had worked that transfor- 
 mation ? "What could it be except Miss Hillary's sorrow for 
 the circumstances that divided her from her distant lover P 
 There could be no other cause for her unhappiness, since her 
 father's commercial difficulties had been smoothed by that 
 twenty thousand pounds so freely advanced to him; and it never 
 occurred to Francis that Maude Hillary couLI possibly give 
 herself any uneasiness about that money, so hglitly pai-ted with 
 by him ; nor could he think that any new trouble thi-eatened
 
 An Explanation. 157 
 
 the mercliant's peace, for ]\Ir. Hillary was specially gay and 
 pleasant tliis evening. 
 
 After dinner Maude strolled out into tlie garden, and down 
 to that delicious terrace by the river, where the big stone vases 
 of geraniums looked dark and grim in the twihght. She walked 
 slowly up and down the long esjolanade with a filmy lace hand- 
 kerchief tied coquettishly over her head, and her long muslin 
 dress sweeping and imstling after her hke the draperies of a fa- 
 shionahly-attired ghost. Francis Tredethlyn furtively watched 
 that white-robed figure in the shadowy distance as he sat at the 
 dinner-table with Mr. Hillary, and would fain have left his glass, 
 filled vni\\ the merchant's rarest Burgundy, for a stroll by the 
 quiet river. Perhaps Mr. Hillary perceived this, for he presently 
 gave the young man liis release. 
 
 " Since you don't drink your wine, you may as well go for a 
 stroll in the garden, Tredethlyn," he said, good-naturedly. "I 
 Bce Llaude yonder ; and she'll be better company for you than 
 I am." 
 
 Francis was by no means slow to take this hint. But once 
 outside the dining-room windows, he went very slowly to the 
 terrace on which Maude was walking. He walked in and out 
 Among the flower-beds, making a faint pretence of admh-mg 
 nature in this twilight aspect. He stojiped to caress one of 
 Maude's Skye terriers. The animals were very fond of him 
 now that he had learned to avoid that tramphng on their toes 
 which had been one of the earlier manifestations of liis devo- 
 tion to Miss Hillary. He loitered here and there on every pos- 
 sible pretext, and at last approached the fau- deity in the mus- 
 lin dress with very much the air of a schoolboy, who presents 
 himself in that awful audience-chamber wherein a grim peda- 
 gogue is wont to pronounce terrible judgments upon youthful 
 offenders. 
 
 He did not know that Miss Hillary had been expecting him 
 all this time ; and that her special purj^ose was to bring him to 
 her side upon that sohtary terrace-walk, where she could talk to 
 him freely without fear of eavesdro2:>23ers. He did not know 
 that he was quite as much expected as the schoolboy who has 
 becTi summoned to the parlour, and was to receive a sentence aa 
 terrible. 
 
 Maude welcomed him very graciously, and for a little while 
 they strolled side by side, talking of the STimmer's night, and the 
 flowers, and Skye terriers, and canary-birds, and other subjects 
 equally commonplace and harmless. Then they came to a stop, 
 mechanically, as it is in the nature of people to do when they 
 walk by the side of a river, and looked over the stone balustrade 
 into the still water. And then a dcatli-like silence came down 
 npon them ; and Maude Hillary felt that the lame had come
 
 168 Only a CloS. 
 
 in •wliic'h she must titter whatever she had it in her mind to 
 eay. It was difficult to begin ; but then all her duties of late 
 had been difficult ; and upon her knees the night before, in the 
 midst of tearful prayers and meditations, she had resolved that 
 there should be no more sailing under false colours as regarded 
 this young man. 
 
 "Dear Mr. Tredethlyn," she began at last, " you have been 
 BO good to my father, so good to me — for to serve him is to ren- 
 der a double service to me — you have been so Mnd and generous 
 a fiiend, that I have grown to think of you and trust yoii almost 
 as I might if you had been my brother." 
 
 Poor Francis hstened to this exordium with a very despondent 
 air. Inexperienced as he was in the ways of the world, he was 
 wise enough to know that there was notliing hopeful in such an 
 address as this. When a young lady tells a gentleman that she 
 can regard liim as a brother, it is the plainest possible declara- 
 tion that he can never be anything else. In this case it seemed 
 an uncalled-for act of cruelty, for the Cornisliman had never 
 deluded himself by any false hope. 
 
 " I think of you almost as if you were ray brother," Maude 
 went on, with heartless repetition of the obnoxious word ; " and 
 I cannot help thinking, dear Mr. Tredetlilyn, that you are 
 scarcely employing your hfe as wisely or as well as you might. 
 I don't think you were ever intended to be an idle man ; and 
 again, with such a fortune as yours, a man has scarcely the 
 right to be idle. There are so many people who may be benefited 
 by a rich man's active Hfe. Oh, forgive me if I seem to lecture 
 you. You will laugh at me, perhaps, and think I want to set 
 myself up as a strong-mmded woman, a poUtical economist, or 
 something of that kind. But I only venture to speak to you 
 because I think you waste so much of your time down here, play- 
 ing bilUards with the empty-headed young men who haunt tliis 
 place, and lounging in the drawing-room to hear the frivolous 
 tallc of half-a-dozen idle women, myself among the number." 
 
 She spoke Hghtly, but she was not the less earnest in her in- 
 tention; she was only travelling gradually round to the point 
 she wanted to reach. 
 
 " But I am so hapjjy here," cried Francis Tredethlyn. " Ah, 
 if you knew how I have tried to stop away — if you could only 
 know what happiness it is to me to come " 
 
 Maude Hillary interrupted him hastily. 
 
 " Yes, I know it is a pleasant life in its way," she said; "very 
 pleasant and very useless. It is a httle new to yoii perhaps, and 
 Bcems pleasanter to you on that account. But if j^ou knew 
 what dreaiy work it is to look back at a long summer season of 
 operas, and concerts, and horticultural meetings, and boat-races, 
 and not to be able to remember one action worthy of being re»
 
 An Explanation. 159 
 
 corded in all that time ! I am getting very tired of my present 
 life, Mr. Trodetlilyn. It lias ceased to bo jilcasant to me ever 
 since I have known of papa's difficulties. It is altogether un- 
 euited to me; for I am engaged to marry a poor man, wha 
 would bitterly feel the burden of an expensive wife." 
 
 The bolt was launched, and Miss Hillary expected to see somo 
 evidence that it had gone home to its mark. But Francis Tre- 
 dethlyn made no sign. There was just a Uttle pause, and then 
 he said very quietly, — 
 
 " Yes, I know that you are to marry a poor man ; but with 
 Buch a wife a man could scarcely remain poor. I suppose it's 
 only an ignorant foohsh notion, but I can't help thinkmg that 
 for the sake of the woman he loves, any man could cut his way 
 to fortune. I can always believe in those knights of the olden 
 time, who used to put a badge in their helmets, and then ride 
 off to the wars to do aU sorts of miraculous things ; and I fancy 
 it must be the same now-a-days, somehow ; and that a man who 
 loves truly, and is truly loved again, can achieve anything." 
 
 Maude was inexpressibly relieved by this speech. 
 
 " You know of my engagement, then ? " she said. 
 
 " Yes, I have known it for a very long time." 
 
 " Ah, of course, Julia toW you ? " 
 
 "Yes, it was Mias Desmond who told me." 
 
 " She had a perfect right to do so ; there was no reason for 
 any secrecy in the matter. I am very glad that you have known 
 of it. You are so kind a friend that I should not like you to ba 
 ignorant of anything nearly relating to my father or myself." 
 
 " It is veiy good of you to call me a friend," Francis answered. 
 It seemed to him as if some angelic creature was stooping from 
 her own j^roper sphere to jDlace herself for a brief interval by his 
 side. " It is very good of you to take any interest in my wel- 
 fare ; and I feel that you are right. The life I lead is utterly 
 idle and useless ; but it shall be so no longer. Your father has 
 very generously offered me a grand opportunity of turning both 
 my time and money to account." 
 
 "My father? But how?" 
 
 " He has offered me a i^artnership in his own house." 
 
 "A pai-tnership ? — a partnership in his difficulties — his lia- 
 bihties? " cried Maude, in a tone of hoi'ror. 
 
 " Those difficulties were only temporary. The thirty thousand 
 I advanced have wiped out all UabUities, and your father's busi- 
 ness stands on a firmer basis than ever." 
 
 "Thirty thousand! You have lent papa thirty thousand 
 pounds ? " 
 
 " I have not lent it, my dear Miss Hillary. I have only in- 
 rested it in your father's business. There is no obligation in 
 the matter, believe me ; or if there is, it is aU on my side. I get
 
 160 Only a Clod. 
 
 a higher rate of interest for my money than I should get else, 
 where." 
 
 He stopped suddenly, for Maude had burst into a passion of 
 Bobs. 
 
 " Oh, how could he do it P How could he ? " she cried. " How 
 could papa take so mean an advantage of your generosity ? I 
 love him so dearly, that it almost kills me to think he should be 
 base or dishonourable. I thought the twenty thousand pounds 
 would soon be paid, and instead of that he has borrowed more 
 money of you." 
 
 " My dear ]\Iiss Hillary, pray, pray do not distress yourself. 
 Beheve me you misunderstand tliis business altogether. It is 
 not a loan. It is only an equitable and friendly an-angement, 
 quite as advantageous to me as to your father. Uiwn ray word 
 of honour you do Mr. Hillary a cruel wrong when you imagine 
 otherwise." 
 
 Maude dried her tears, and hstened to the voice of her con- 
 soler. She was so anxious to think well of her father, that she 
 must have been something more than an ignorant, inexperienced 
 girl, if she shut her ears to Francis Tredethlyn's arguments. ' 
 
 Those arguments were very convincing, very specious. Maude 
 ought, perhaps, to have perceived that they were not the original 
 ideas of Mr. Tredetlilyn. She ought, perhaps, to have discovered 
 the parrot-Hke nature of his discourse respecting all the grand 
 prospects of the house of Hillary and Co. ; but she wanted to 
 think well of her father, and Francis Tredethlyn urged her to 
 that conclusion. She Hstened to his discourse as eagerly as if 
 he had been the most eloquent of living creatui-es. She felt a 
 kind of tender friendship for him as he talked to her; never 
 before had he seemed so nearly on a level with herself. She 
 wanted to beheve in his wisdom; she wanted to respect his sense 
 and judgment, because he was the defender of her father — that 
 beloved father against whom her own conscience had so lately 
 arisen, a stern and pitiless judge. 
 
 The quiet river rippled under the summer moonhght before 
 Maude and her companion left the teiTace; so much had Francis 
 found to say about the house of Hillaiy and Co., and the wonder- 
 ful advantages that must come to him from a partnership in 
 that great firm. Surely his enthusiasm must have arisen from 
 Bome vague idea that even that commercial alliance would be 
 jBome kind of link between ]\Iiss Hillary and himself. He talked 
 very freely to-night, for Maude's confidence had set him at his 
 ease ; and in almost every word he uttered he naively revealed 
 Bome new depth in his devoted love. 
 
 Late that night, when the Cornishman had gone away, Ma^^de 
 stood at her open wuadow, looking out at the river, and thinking 
 of all that Francis Tredethlyn had said to her.
 
 Harcourt Lowther's Welcome. 161 
 
 " Harcourt Lowthcr never loved me as tliis man loves mc," 
 bKo tliouglit, sadly. " Ah, what a pity that there should be sc 
 much wasted love and devotion in the world ! " 
 
 And then the thought of Francis Tredethlyn's thirty thou- 
 sand pounds arose in her mind, — a terrible obligation, a heavy 
 burden of debt ; a debt that was perhaps never to be cancelled. 
 
 CHAPTER XXI, 
 
 HAJICOURT LOWTHEIl's WliLCOME. 
 
 WiTiXTN a month from that night on which the merchant's 
 daughter and Francis Tredethlyn had lingered so long together 
 on the terrace up the river, Maude Hillary sat at her desk in 
 the little study, trying to begin the most difficult letter she had 
 ever Imd occasion to write. 
 
 The letter was to be addressed to Harcourt Lowther, and the 
 three words, " My dear Harcourt," were already wi'itten on the 
 rose-tinted foreign note-paper; but beyond those preliminary 
 words ]\f aude found it very difficult to proceed. 
 
 That which she had to tell the distant soldier, sorely tried by 
 inglorious idleness in a penal settlement, and inclined to resent 
 every stroke of ill-fortune, was by no means a pleasant thing to 
 tell. She had to announce to him that the promise she had 
 made long ago in the twilight by the river had been deliberately 
 broken. She had to tell liim that she was the jilighted wife of 
 another man ; and she was not free to reveal to him any one of 
 the strange circumstances that had pressed so cruelly uj^on her, 
 pushing her, little by little, into this renunciation of her first and 
 only love. 
 
 It was only a very commonplace letter that Miss Hillary 
 could write to her discarded lover. !?lie could only tell the old, 
 common story, and jrat in the hackneyed pleas so often heard in 
 the court of Cupid ; — her father's wishes : her desire to secure 
 his happiness rather than her own ; and then a wild womanly 
 prayer for pity : an entreaty that her lover would believe in the 
 existence of stronger reasons — higher motives — the nature of 
 which she was not free to reveal. And last of all, after many 
 pages of passionate supplication for pardon, with not a Uttle 
 violation of the nicer laws propounded by Lindley Murray and 
 his successors, — at the very last there came one page blotted 
 with tears, earnest yet incoherent, in which IMiss Hillary im- 
 plored Mr. Lowther to forget her, and to seek happiness with a 
 happier woman. Never had she loved him so dearly aa while
 
 t62 Only a Cfto3. 
 
 she wrote fhat last page, in which she resigned him for ever. 
 Surely Queen Guinevere's diamonds must have sparkled theif 
 very brightest just in that one angiy moment in which she 
 flung them into the river. 
 
 Yes, it had come to this. Maude Hillary, like a modem 
 Iphigenia, had sacrificed herself for the benefit of her father. 
 The burden of that debt which had been incurred by her agency 
 had weighed too heavily upon her girhsh breast. Somehow or 
 other Francis Tredethlyn must be paid ; and since he loved her 
 so devotedly, so foolishly — since he held her as the brightest 
 treasure to be won by aspiring man — it was surely better that 
 he should take this poor recompense than go altogether unre- 
 warded. It may be that Maude Hillary would under no circum- 
 stances dehberately have broken faith with her betrothed lover. 
 But these grand crises, upon which the fate of a lifetime may 
 depend, are apt to come very suddenly upon us. The great flood- 
 tide of fate arises, and carries away the weak creatures afloat 
 on its resistless waters. A moment of hesitation — a few falter- 
 ing words — half doubtful, half imploring, and the thing is done. 
 
 It had all ha]-ipened on the day on which Francis Tredethlyn 
 accepted Mr. Hillary's magnanimous ofi'er, and allowed liimself 
 to be created a sleeping partner in the Australian house. It 
 was only natural that on such a day Francis should dine at the 
 Cedars; and it was only natural that Lionel Hillary should 
 make a little speech about the young man, telling his daughter 
 of the generosity of this noble-minded Cornishman, who had 
 been something more than a son to him — a friend, a benefactor, 
 a preserver. "\Vhat praise could be loud enough for a man who 
 would lend thirty thousand pounds without security? And 
 then this noble-minded Cornishman, whose heart was hke a great 
 lump of tinder — only wanting the feeblest spark to kindle it 
 into a blaze — burst out into a passionate declaration of his love. 
 "What was his fortune but so much dirt, wliich he was onty too 
 glad to fling under the fe^ of Miss Hillary ? Would he not go 
 out into the world to-morrow penniless, barefoot, a beggar, if 
 by so doing he could add to her happiness ? He asked a few 
 such questions as these: and then cried out suddenly that he 
 was a despicable wretch, and that he was ashamed of himself 
 for saying aU this, when he knew that Miss Hillary's heart was 
 given to another man. He would go, he said ; she should never 
 again be tormented by him. She should not be annoyed by so 
 much as the mention of his name. After which passionate 
 speech Mr. Tredethlyn grasped the merchant's hand, and then 
 made a rush towards the door. He would fain have suited the 
 action to the word ; he wanted to go away that moment, and 
 hide himself for ever from Maude Hillary. But before he could 
 teach the door Maude was by his side, with her hands clasped
 
 Harcourt Zowther's Welcome. 163 
 
 abont his arm her face looking upward at his, and drowued 
 with tears. 
 
 " How good you are ! " she cried. " Don't go away ; wo 
 cannot part from j-ou like this. You have been so good to my 
 father. Ah, how can we ever recompense so much devotion ! 
 If my esteem — my gratitude — can make you happy, they are 
 yours, — they have long been yours. I renounce every other 
 thought, every other duty. I can have no duty higher tha/ 
 this." 
 
 The last words were almost stifled on her lips, for Franciu 
 Tredethlyn caught her to lus breast as passionately as in that 
 last scene of the " Lady of Lyons." 
 
 " Maude, my love — my angel — you will renounce, for my 
 sake — you — you — will be my own — my wile ! " he gasped, inco- 
 herently. "No — no, I cannot accept such a sacrifice — I am 
 not so mean, so selfish, as to " 
 
 But Mr. Hillary, hovering over his daughter and the generous- 
 minded yoxmg Cornishman, would not allow Francis to finish 
 this sentence. 
 
 " My dear boy ! " he exclaimed, — " my darling Maude ! no- 
 thing upon earth could give me greater jjleasure than this, 
 because I know that it is for your miitual happiness. What 
 joy can be deeper or purer than that of a father who knows 
 that liis cliild has won for herself the devoted affection of a 
 good man P " 
 
 " And the thirty thousand pounds will be sunk for ever and 
 ever in the firm of Hillary and Co.," the merchant may have 
 thought at the close of that enthusiastic address. 
 
 D 
 
 Tims it was that ]')raude Hillary arrived at the veiy point 
 towards which fate and her fiither had been pushing her lor the 
 last twelve months. After that passionate impulse of self- 
 ■acrifice had passed away, a dull dead feeling of pain took pos- 
 session of her breast. Alone in the quiet of her own pretty 
 rooms ; alone through the long sunny July mornings ^vith her 
 books, and Berlin-wool work, and piano, she had only too much 
 time to consider the step she had taken ; she had only too much 
 time to think of her broken vows, her scattered hopes. And 
 she did think of these things, — with cruel remorse and self- 
 upbraiding, with l)itter and unavailing regret. 
 
 And now Francis Tredethlyn appeared to her all at once in 
 a new light. Alas ! he was no longer the noble-hearted i'riend 
 to whom she could appeal for heli) in the day of trouljle. He 
 was no longer the humble adorer, kneeling on the lowest step of 
 the altar, remote and submissive. He was her affianced hus- 
 band, and he had a right to her society. He had a right to 
 %ttend her in her walks and rides, to linger near the piano when
 
 I64t Only a Clo3, 
 
 she sang, to hold perpetual skeins of Berlin-wool daring those 
 tedious morning visits which he made now and again to the 
 Cedars. All these privileges were his by right; and other 
 people gave place when he approached ]\Iiss Hillary, and 
 watched to see her face brighten as he drew near her._ It was 
 not that Francis liimself was in any way altered. His adora- 
 tion of his bright divinity was no less humble than of old— even 
 now when he'knew that the goddess was to descend from her 
 pedestal and exchange her starry crown for tlie orange-blossoma 
 of an earthly bride. He was in no way changed ; the distance 
 between himself and Maude Hillary was as wide as ever. He 
 could set it before liim — a palpable gulf, across which he beheld 
 her, a strange creature, in a strange land, — a creature who 
 might hold out her hand to him once in a way across the impass- 
 able abyss, but who could never draw him near her. Alas for 
 Francis Tredethlyn's loveless betrothal ! that dreary distance 
 was growing wider every day, now that Iphigenia knew the 
 hour of sacrifice was drawing near. 
 
 It had been one thing to think of Mr. Tredethlyn as a friend — 
 a dear and devoted friend, worthy to be regarded with an almost 
 sisterly affection. It was another thing to contemplate him as 
 a future husband. All his ignorance, his homely ways of speak- 
 ing and tliinking, his httle awkwardnesses and stupidities, hia 
 vacillating temperament in the matter of spoons and forks at 
 those elaborate Russian dinners, — all these things pained Maude 
 Hillary now as cruelly as they had galled JMiss Desmond's proud 
 spirit some six months before. And then to the faint shivering 
 paiu of disgust was joined all the bitterness of contrast. Never 
 had Harcourt Lowther's image seemed so near to this wayward 
 girl as it seemed now, when she was the promised wife of another 
 man, and tried most honestly to shut the memory of her old 
 lover completely out of her mind. Never had he been so near to 
 her. His graces of manner, his accomiDfishments, the hght touch 
 of his pointed fingers on the piano, the deep organ-tone that he 
 alone amongst amateurs could draw out of a flute, the free out- 
 lines of his pencil, the transparency of his water-colour sketches, 
 the graphic humour of his pen-and-ink caricatures ; the airy %yit, 
 which never verged upon vulgarity ; the fervid eloquence, which 
 never degenerated into rant ; the trenchant satire, which never 
 sank to the vile level of personal spite : she thought of her dis- 
 carded lover: and all the showy attributes that had won her 
 girlish love arose before her in cruel contrast with the deficiencies 
 of Francis Tredethlyn. 
 
 Yet all this time she was very kind to her betrothed husband. 
 It was not in her to be scornfully indifferent to the man whom 
 Bhe regarded as her father's friend and benefactor. She was not 
 a woman to sacrifice herself with an ill grace. The silent war-
 
 Earcourt Lotd'her's Welcome. 165 
 
 fare went on witHn her breast. Slie struggled and suffered, but 
 she had always the same kind, cold smile, the same gentle words 
 for the man whom she had i:>romised to marry. 
 
 And in the meantime the hands went steadily round upon all 
 the clock-dials, and the inevitable hour drew very near. Busy 
 milliners and dressmakers, bootmakers and outfitters, came back- 
 wards and forwards from Wigmore Street to the Cedars, and were 
 busy and glad. Mr. Hillary's credit was unlimited, and it was 
 almost as if a princess of the blood royal had been about to marry. 
 Francis Tredcthlyn bought the lease of a big black-looking house 
 in a new neighbourhood near Hyde Park : and there were nego- 
 tiations pending for the purchase of an estate within a few miles 
 of Windsor. 
 
 August was melting into September. Already there were 
 bright glimpses of red and yellow here and there among the 
 sombre green of the woodlands. The wedding was to take place 
 very early in October : the guests were bidden, the dresses of 
 the bridesmaids were chosen, and in the still evening Iphigonia 
 walked alone on the terrace. She was very seldom alone at this 
 hour ; but to-night her father had taken Francis Tredetlilyn ta 
 a club-dinner, given by a bachelor stockbroker of some eminence 
 in Mr. Hillary's circle. To-night Maude was alone; and leajiing 
 upon the broad balustrade, with her elbow resting amongst the 
 thick ivy that crept along the stone, she looked down at the still 
 water — the dark melancholy water — and thought of her past 
 life. 
 
 It seemed so far away from her now, left so entii-ely beliind — 
 all that frivolous past. She seemed to have grown out of herself 
 since the knowledge of her father's troubles had come upon her ; 
 and looking backwai'ds she saw a careless and happy creature, 
 who bore no relationship to tliis thoughtful woman, before whom 
 all the future seemed a blank and dreary country, unillumined 
 by one glimpse of sunshine. 
 
 She turned away from the water presently, and walked slowly 
 up and down the long terrace. There seemed to be a melancholy 
 influence in the evening stillness, the dusky shadow lying upon 
 every object, the distant peal of bells floating across the river 
 from some church where the ringers were practising ; even the 
 voices of passing boatmen and the low monotonous splash of 
 oars took a pensive tone, in unison with the hour and Maude 
 Hillary's sad remorseful thoughts. 
 
 She was near the end of the ten-ace, close to that ivy-grown 
 old summerhouse which had sheltered the patched and powdered 
 beauties of King George the Second's Court, when she was 
 startled by the sound of a chain grating against stone- work, and 
 rapid steps on the flight of stairs leading from the terrace to the 
 liver. The young men who came to the Cedars were very fouJ
 
 IGG Only a Clod-, 
 
 of making fho jounicy by water: so tliere was notliing strange 
 in the sovlnd of a step on the river stair. Maude turned to meet 
 the intruder with a sense of wciiriness and vexation. He would 
 not be Ukely to stay long, whoever he was; but the prospect of 
 even ten minutes' idle conventional discourse jarred upon her 
 present frame of mind. 
 
 She turned to meet the unwelcome visitor with a languid 
 Bigh, and saw a man hurrying towards her in the twilight; a 
 man in whose figure and dress there was a careless grace, an 
 undefinable aii- of distinction, which, in Maude Hillary's eyes, 
 stamped him as difi'erent from all the rest of the world. 
 
 He came hurrj'iiig towards her. In a moment he was close to 
 her, holding out his arms, eager to take her to his breast. But 
 she recoiled from him, deadly white, and with her hands ex- 
 tended, motioning him back. 
 
 " Don't touch me," she cried ; " don't come near me. Ai, you 
 don't know — you cannot have had my letter." 
 
 "What letter? " cried Mr. Lowther, staring almost fiercely at 
 the shrinking girl. These sort of things so rapidly make them- 
 selves understood. Harcourt Lowther saw at once that some- 
 thing was wrong. " What letter ? " 
 
 "My last; the letter in which I told you that Ah, how 
 
 you will hate and despise me! But if you could know all, 
 Harcourt, as you never can, you might excuse — you might 
 forgive " 
 
 A torrent of sobs broke the sentence. 
 
 " Oh, I think I understand," said Harcourt Lowther, very 
 quietly. " You have thrown me over. Miss Hillary." 
 
 She held out her clasped hands towards him witli an imjiloring 
 gesture ; and then in broken sentences, in half-finished phrases, 
 that were rendered incoherent by her sobs, she recapitulated 
 something of her letter of explanation. Mr. Lowther's face had 
 blanched before this, and his lower lip cpiivcred now and then 
 with a little spasmodic action ; but he listened very quietly to 
 all Maude had to say. 
 
 " I ought never to have expected anything else," he answered, 
 when she had finished her piteous attempt to explain and justify 
 her conduct without revealing her father's commercial secrets. 
 " I don't know that I ever did expect anything else," he went on 
 very deliberately. "What has a penniless younger son to do 
 among the children of Manmron ? How can the earthen pot hope 
 to sail down the stream with the big brazen vessels, and escape 
 wreck and ruin? Don't let there be any scene between us, Miss 
 Hillary; I hate all domestic tragedy, and I think if my heart 
 »\'cre breaking — and men's hearts luive been known to break — I 
 could take things quietly. You have grown tired of our long 
 and apparently hopeless engagement, aod you have promised to
 
 Talcing it Quiet! i/. 107 
 
 marry somebody else. It is all perfectly natural. May I know 
 the narae ot'my fortunate rival? " 
 
 " His name is Trcdctlilyn— Francis Trcdetlilyii." 
 
 "A Cornisliman," added Ilarcourt Lowther, — "a fellow who 
 has lately come into a qrcat fortune ? " 
 
 " Yes. You know him, then ? " 
 
 " Intimately. I congratulate you on your choice, Miss Ilillaiy. 
 Francis Tredethlyn is a most excellent iellow. I have reason to 
 speak well of him, for he was my servant for a year and a lialf 
 out yonder in Van Diemen's Land." 
 
 " Your scn'ant ? " 
 
 " Yes. He was really the best of fellows ; and in the art of 
 brushing acoat or cleaning a pair of riding-boots was positively 
 unrivalled." 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 TAKING IT QUIETLY. 
 
 " If you could know all, Harcourt, as you never can, you might 
 excuse — you might forgive " 
 
 Harcourt Lo^vther, veiy quick of apprehension always, es- 
 pecially so where his own interests were concerned, had tckcn 
 careful note of these broken sentences tittered by Maude Hillary, 
 and, rowing Londonwards in the summer dai-kness, pondered on 
 them long and deliberately, only arousing himself now and then 
 from his sombre reverie, in order to express his profound ou- 
 tempt for some amateur waterman who was just saved froSi 2t 
 foul by the superior skill of the young officer. 
 
 "NVliat did it mean? That was the question which Mr. 
 Lowther set himself to answer. 
 
 "It means sometliing more than the caprice of a shallow- 
 hearted jilt," he thought, as he rested on liis oars and lighted 
 his cigar. " How pale she grew at sight of me ! That white, 
 agonized look in her face was real despair. ' If I could know 
 all!' she said. All what? There's a mystery somewhere. 
 Maude Hillary is the last woman in the world to throw over a 
 poor lover for the sake of a rich one. The sentimental girl, who 
 was ready to keep her engagement with me at the sacrifice of 
 her father's fortune, would scarcely marry a clownish rustic for 
 the sake of his thirty thousand a year. Besides, these heiresses, 
 ■who have never known what it is to have a ^vish denied them, 
 are the most romantic creatures in creation, and cherish sub- 
 limely absurd ideas upon the sordid dross question. No, I can- 
 not think that Maude would be influenced by any mercenary 
 considerations — and yet how else ?" 
 
 The villas and viUagea on V\q river-banks ilitted past him
 
 168 Only a Clod. 
 
 like phantom liaLitations in tlie dim light. The flat shores of 
 Battersea; the clingy roofs and chimneys of crowded Chelsea 
 and manufacturing Lambeth ; the bridges and barges ; the low- 
 lying prison, lurking like some crouching beast upon the swampy 
 ground, shifted by as the oars dij^ped in the quiet water, while 
 Harcourt Lowther's hght w'heiTy sped homeward with the tide. 
 But all the length of his water-journey he could find no satisfac- 
 tory answer to that question about Maude Hillary ; and when 
 he relinquished liis boat to its rightful owner at a certain landing- 
 place in Westminster, he was still undecided as to the meaning 
 of those broken phrases wliich had drop^Ded from the hps of the 
 merchant's daughter in the first moment of surjMiseand emotion. 
 
 " I dare say it is only the old story after all," he thought, as 
 he walked towards the Strand, in the purheus of which he had 
 taken up his quarters. " Lionf'l Hillary, being as rich as Croesus, 
 is determined that no poor man shall profit by his daughter's 
 fortune. Water runs to the river, and Maude's do^viy will go to 
 swell that old Cornish miser's savings. It's only my usual luck. 
 I am engaged to a beautiful woman -with a hundred thousand 
 or so for a fortune, and I find a victorious rival in the man who 
 cleans my boots." 
 
 But Mr. Lowther had not settled the question even yet. 
 Lying awake and feverishly restless in his lodgisg in Norfolk 
 Street, ]\Iiss Hillary's pale face was still before him, the sound 
 of her imploiing tones was perpetually in his ear. 
 
 "'If I knew all, I might forgive, I might excuse!' There 
 must have been some meaning in those words, some sedret in- 
 volved in them. Surely, if her father had forced tliis man-iage 
 upon her, after the manner of some tyi-annical old parent in a 
 stage-jDlay, — surely, if that had been the case, she would have 
 candidly told me the truth ; she would have jDleaded the best 
 excuse a woman can have. There must be some secret reason 
 for this marriage, and I must be a consummate fool if I fail in 
 getting to the bottom of the mystery." 
 
 Mr. Lowther breakfasted early the next morning, and dressed 
 himself with his accustomed neatness before going out. He had 
 no body- servant now whom he could badger and worry when the 
 world went ill with him ; or that individual would most assuredly 
 have paid the penalty of Miss Hillai-y's broken faith. Harcourt 
 Lowther, the younger son, was too poor to keep or pay a valet. 
 He had grown weary of waiting for promotion in the army, as 
 he had sickened of hojiing for advancement at the bar, and had 
 sold liis commission. The world was all before him now, as it 
 had been seven years ago, when he had first looked about liim 
 for a profession. The world was all before him, and his one 
 chance of fortuiio, the possibility of a marriage with Maude 
 Hillary, seemed entirely lost to liim. It was scarcely strange if
 
 Talcing it Quietly. 1G9 
 
 hig spirits sank before the dismal blankness of tlie prospect 
 which he contemplated that morning, as he loitered over his 
 breakfast of London eggs and lodging-house toast and coffee. 
 
 He went out a little after twelve o'clock, hailed the first 
 prowling hansom he encountered in the Strand, and ordered the 
 man to drive to a certain street in the City, sacred to the stock- 
 broking and money-making interests. Here he alighted, dis- 
 missed the cab, turned into a narrow court, still more entirely 
 sacred to stockbroking, and entered a little office, whei'e there 
 was a desk, two or three horsehair chairs, a great many bills 
 hanguig against the wall, all relating to the stockbroking in- 
 terests, and a six-foot screen of wooden panelling, dividing the 
 small outer office fi-om a larger inner office. 
 
 Mr. Lowther walked straight to this screen, and standing on 
 tip-toe, looked over into the second office. 
 
 A gentleman with sandy whiskers, a light overcoat, and a 
 white hat, was standing at a desk, and jotting some pencil 
 memoranda upon the margins of a file of documents, which he 
 was tnrning over with a certain rapidity and i^recision of touch 
 pecuUar to a man of business. 
 
 " Can you sj^are a quarter of an hour of your valuable time 
 from the calculation of last year's prices for the Fiji Island 
 Grand Junction Stock in order to devote it to the claims of 
 friendship?" asked Mr. Lo-\vther. 
 
 The clerks smiled as they looked up from their desks ; and the 
 gentleman in the wliite hat dropped his pencil, and ran to a 
 little wooden door in the partition, over which Harcourt Low- 
 ther's hat made itself visible. 
 
 " My dear Lo-^i;her ! " he exclaimed, presenting himself in 
 the smaller office, and stretching out both his hands towards tha 
 intruder ; " this is a surj^rise ; I thought you were at the Anti« 
 podes." 
 
 " Yes, that's the way of the world," answered Mr. Lowther, 
 rather peevishly; " a man is banished to some outlandish hole 
 at the remotest end of the universe, ergo he's never to return 
 to the civilized half of the globe." 
 
 *' But it seems only yesterday when " 
 
 " And that's another cruel thing a man's friends say to him 
 when he does turn up in the civilized hemisphere," interrupted 
 Mr. Lowther. " ' It seems only yesterday when you left us ;' 
 that is to say, life has been so pleasant and rapid for us, amidst 
 all the gaities and luxuries and successes of the most wonderful 
 city in the world, that we are utterly unable to believe in the 
 dreary months and years Unat you've had to drag out, poor 
 devil, in your hole on the other side of the Une. That's what a 
 fellow's friends memi when they talk their confounded humbug 
 about it'a only seeming yesterday."
 
 170 Only a Clod. 
 
 Harcourt Lowtlier's City friend was not tte most brilliant o? 
 eri-ginal of men when you took liim away from the stockbrpking 
 interests. He stared blankly durintr Mr. Lowtlier's discon- 
 tented remarks upon the selfishness of mankind. 
 
 ' Haw ' that's good. Meant no offence by allusion to yester* 
 day ; omy meant that I was jolly glad, to see you, you know, 
 and so on. But, you see, a fellow turning iip in the City when 
 you've been given to understand that he's in Van Diemen'a 
 Land is rather a surimse, you know. Can I do anything for 
 you .P I'll tell you what, old fellow ; I can put you up to a 
 good thing in the Etruscan Loan, — panic prices, — nine per cent, 
 and certain to turn up trumps in the long run." 
 
 Mr. Lowther smiled bitterly. 
 
 " Do you suppose that I've any money to invest ; or that if I 
 had money, I'm the sort of man to sink the glorious principal 
 for the sake of some miserable dribblings in the way of interest? 
 No, my dear Wilderson, you can do me a good turn, but it's 
 in quite another direction. Just step tliis way." 
 
 He put his hand on liis friend's shoulder, and led him to the 
 door leading into the court. Here, safely out of the hearing of 
 the clerks at work in the inner office, Mr. Lowther lowered his 
 voice to a confidential tone. 
 
 " Wilderson," he said, " I think you know Lionel Hillary, 
 the Australian merchant P " 
 
 " Hillary and Co. ? " exclaimed Mr. Wilderson,—" I should 
 flatter myself I did." 
 
 " I want you to tell mc all about him — how he stands — 
 how he has stood for some time past ; in short, all you know 
 about him." 
 
 The stockbroker pulled Ids hay-coloured whiskers thought- 
 fully, and shook his head. 
 
 " These sort of things are rather dif&cult to hiow," he said, 
 " but a man may have his thoughts about 'em." 
 
 •' And what are your thoughts ? Hang it, man, speak out. 
 You talked just now of being ready to sei-ve me. You can 
 Berve me in this matter, if you choose." 
 
 Mr. Wilderson shrugged his shoulders, and again pulled Ida 
 whiskers in a reflective mood. 
 
 " Dear boy," he said presently, " come out into the court." 
 
 Evidently in Mr. Wilderson's mind the court was as soma 
 primeval forest, wherein no listener's ears could penetrate. 
 
 Out in the court the stockbroker hitched his arm through 
 that of Harcourt Lowther, and began to discourse upon Inonel 
 Hillary, or Ilillaiy and Co., as Mr. Wilderson preferred to _de« 
 signate him. He said a great deal in a low, confidential voice, 
 and Harcourt Lowther's lower jaw fell a Httle as he listened. 
 One tiling was -made clear to the ex-officer, and that was, that
 
 Talcing it Quietly. 171 
 
 Lionel Hillaiy's affairs had been hinted at by the knowing ones 
 as rather shaky ; that there had been even whispers of that 
 awiul word, " svispension : " bnt that somehow or other Hilhiry 
 and Co. had contrived to right themselves; and that it was 
 supposed by the aforesaid knowing ones that the Australian 
 merchant had found a wealthy backer. 
 
 " There's fresh blood been let into his business, you may 
 rely upon it, dear boy," said ]\Ir. Wilderson. " I know that he 
 was in Queer Stueet last Christmas. Bills referred to drav/er, 
 and that sort of thing. The bankers were beginning to get shy 
 of liis paper. I held a little of it myself, and a deuced deal of 
 trouble I had to plant it." 
 
 This and much more to hear did Harcourt Lowther seriously 
 incline. Then he asked Mr. Wilderson to dine with him at a 
 certain noted estabhshment in the Strand, and left the court 
 veiy grave of aspect and slow of step. 
 
 " So my lovely Maude is not a millionaire's daughter after 
 all," he thought. " And my friend Hillary has been dipping 
 his capacious paw into Francis Tredcthlyn's jjurse. I ought to 
 have known that half these reputed rich men are as rotten as a 
 pear. So this is the exjilanation of my simple Maude's heroics. 
 Poor little girl, she has been the pretty fly with which that ac- 
 complished angler, Mr. Hillary, has whipped the stream for his 
 big giidgcon ! Any little card I may have arranged to play for 
 myself has been very neatly taken ovA of my hands ; and I find 
 my friend provided with a needy father-in-law and an extra- 
 vagant %vife. However, I dare say there's some small part left 
 for me to play : and perhaps the best thing I can do is to tako 
 it quietly." 
 
 HarcouH Lowther's servant ! 
 
 The man to whom Maude Hillary was now engaged had 
 once been the valet of her discarded lover. This could scarcely 
 be a pleasant thought to any young lady early imbued with all 
 the ordinary jirejudices of society. Miss Hillary was not a 
 Btrong-minded woman ; she could not console herself with a 
 neat aphorism from Bums to the effect that " a man's a man 
 for a' that ; " and to her Harcourt Lowther's revelation seemed 
 ci-uclly hnmiUating. She had heard of young women in her 
 own position marrying grooms, or perhaps even footmen, for 
 love, and she had shuddered at the very idea of their iniquity. 
 But was it not quite as degrading to many a valet for money, 
 as to elope with a groom for love ? 
 
 " He blacked Harcourt's boots ! " thought poor Maude ; and 
 it is impossible to describe the utter despair expressed in that 
 brief sentence. She met her lover with a vety pale face the next 
 day, and, seating himself in his accustomed place by her em-
 
 172 Only a Clod. 
 
 broidery frame, Francis Tredetlilyn saw that thero was e^metliing 
 wi-ong. Alas ! poor— Francis, he had ah-eady learned to watch 
 every change upon that beautiful face; ah-eady, before the 
 marriage vows had been sjjoken, all the miserable tortures of 
 doubt had begun to prey upon his devoted heart. She had 
 promised to marry him, but she had not promised to love him. 
 He remembered that. She had given herself to liim in pay- 
 ment of her father's debt. She had sacrificed herself in accor- 
 dance with the loyal instincts of her noble nature. Francis, 
 generous and loyal himself, could understand this, much better 
 than it was understood by Lionel Hillary, for whose sake the 
 sacrifice was made. 
 
 There were times when the young man reproached himself for 
 his selfishness in accepting the supreme desire of his soul. 
 Ought he not rather to have wrestled with himself and let this 
 bright young creature go ? But there were other times when 
 Francis Tredethlyn sufiered himself to be beguiled by deUcious 
 hopes. Had not trae and honest love sometimes triumphed over 
 circumstance ? Might not the day come when Maude Hillary 
 would be able to return his aflection, to reward his patience ? 
 
 " I can aiford to be so patient," he thought ; "for it wiU bo 
 such happiness to be her slave." To-day, watcliing her pale 
 face ua pensive contemi^lation, Francis puzzled liimself vainly 
 to guess what was amiss with his promised wife. It was not 
 only that she was paler than usual, — and the brightness of her 
 colour had faded very much of late, — but to-day, there was a 
 shade of coldness in her manner wliich was quite new to her 
 afiianced husband, and which sent a chill to liis heart, always 
 ready to sink under some vague apj^rehension where Maude 
 Hillary was concerned. We hold these suijreme joys of life by 
 60 slender a thread, that half our deUght in them is poisoned 
 by the dread of theii' possible loss. 
 
 " Maiide," he said by-and-by, after a few commonplace 
 phrases, and after he had watched her for some minutes in 
 silence, " I am sure there is something amiss with you to-day. 
 You are ill— you " 
 
 " Oh, no, not ill. Only a little worried." 
 
 " Worried — but about what? " 
 
 " I heard something about you last night, Mr. Tredethlyn," 
 said Miss Hillary, — it was the first time she had called him Mr. 
 Tredethlyn since their engagement, — "something which you 
 never told me yourself. Mr. Lowther, — a friend of papa's, who 
 has just come home from Van Diemen's Land, told me — that— 
 that — you had been " 
 
 " His servant ! Yes, Maude, it is quite true. I was a soldier, 
 and I was obliged to obey orders. I was ordered to attend upou 
 Ensign Lowther, and I did my best to serve him well. Wlien I
 
 Talcing it Quiclly. 173 
 
 enlisted in her Majesty's service, I had all sorts of foolish fancies 
 about fij^hting and gloiy, but they all dwindled down to the 
 usual routine. No figlitiug, no glory, no desperate attacks upon 
 Indian fortresses, no scaling walls to plant the British flag xipon 
 the enemy's ranijiarts ; but any amount of drill and hard work, 
 and a discontented fine gentleman to wait upon." 
 
 A flood of crimson rushed into Maude's face as Francis said 
 this ; but the young man's head was drooping over the em- 
 broidery frame, and he was trifling mechanically with the loose 
 jHcrlin wool lying on Miss Hillary's canvas. 
 
 " I am ai'raid you think it a kind of degradation to you, that 
 i should have been a servant, Maude ? " he said presently. 
 
 '* You never told me " 
 
 " No — I told you I had been a piivate in the 51st. The other 
 business was only a part of my duty." 
 
 Maude was silent for some moments after this. She sat look- 
 ing dreamily out of the window, while Francis still twisted 
 the Berlin wools in Ms strong fingers. Maude was the first to 
 speak. 
 
 " Was it Mr. Lowther you meant just now, when you spoke 
 of a discontented fine gentleman ? " she asked, -with some slight 
 hesitation. 
 
 "Yes; I never served any other master. Ensign Lowther 
 was horribly discontented. He was one of those men who can't 
 take things easily ; but I can understand a good deal of his 
 ]icevish restlessness now. I can sympathize Avith him now, 
 ]\Iaude." _ 
 
 His voice grew low and tender as he said this. 
 " Wliy ? " asked Miss Hillary, rather coldly. 
 " He was in love, Maude, — an unhappy attachment, as I un- 
 derstood, to some lady — an heiress, I think — whose money was 
 a hindrance to a marriage between them." 
 
 From tlie beginning to the end of this conversation Maude 
 Hillary's thoughts ha.d been employed in debating one question 
 — should she, or should she not, tell her future husband that 
 Harcourt Lowther was the man to whom she had been pre- 
 viously engaged ? He knew of that broken engagement, but 
 he did not know the name of her lover. Was it her duty to tell 
 him ? It would be very unpleasant to do so ; l^ut then duty is 
 BO often unpleasant. She was still silently debating this sub- 
 ject ; the words which she should sjieak were forming themselves 
 in her mind ; when the drawing-room door was opened, and a 
 servant announced Mr. Lowther. Maude's heart beat violentl3^ 
 Would there lie a scene ? Why had Harcourt come, when he 
 
 knew ? But Mr. Lowther verj^ speedily relieved her fears 
 
 upon this subject. Nothing could be more delightful than his 
 manner. He was cordial to his old servant, without attemptintr
 
 174 Only a Clod. 
 
 any airs of patronage. He could not liave been more entirely 
 at liis ease with Maude, had he been the most indifferent of fii-st- 
 cousins. 
 
 Mr. Lowther was only acting tip to his detei-miuation to take 
 things quiotl3^ He had met Lionel Hillary in the City that 
 morning, and had surprised the merchant by speaking of 
 Maude's engagement to Francis Tredethlyn. 
 
 "But don't alarm yourself, my dear Hillary," he said with a 
 frank smile. " To say that I adored, and do adore, your daugh- 
 ter, ia only to admit a fact to which, I dare say, every male 
 visitor at the Cedars would be happy to testify in a round- 
 robin. Miss Hillaiy is made to be worshi]>ped. I have only 
 been one among a score of worshippers. If ever I hoped to 
 overcome your very natural prejudice against my disgusting 
 poverty, I have long ceased to hoi^e it ; so it was scarcely such 
 a death-blow to me to discover what had happened duiing my 
 exile. Will you let me renew my old relations with your house- 
 hold? Will you let me be one of the moths again? I know 
 now that the candle -will burn, and that its dangerous glare 
 alone, and not its tender warmth, is reserved for me, so I shall 
 have only myself to blame if I come away with a scorched 
 wing." 
 
 Mr. Hillary's only reply to this rather sentimental speech 
 was a hearty invitation to dinner. 
 
 " I can give you your favourite Eiidesheimer with the oysters. 
 ChabUs is a mistake, when you can get good hock. Sharp 
 seven, remember ; but you may go earher if you care for croquet. 
 I dare say you'll find Tredethlyn there." 
 
 " The poor fellow is very hard hit, I s^^pIJOse P " 
 
 Mr. Hillary smiled and shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 " I never saw such a devoted creature. Good day." 
 
 The merchant hurried off, and Harcoui*t walked slowly away, 
 pondering as he went. 
 
 " A devoted creature. Yes, and there has been new blood let 
 into the commercial anatomy of Hillary and Co. I dare say 
 that poor devil Tredethlyn has been bled to a hideous extent." 
 
 The dinner at the Cedars went off very pleasantly, "\\niat 
 dinner could fail to go off tolerably well, enlivened by Harcoui-t 
 Lowther, when that gentleman cared to exercise his genius for 
 making conversation? There were other guests at the mer- 
 chant's round table ; and after dinner people showed an inch- 
 nation to stroll out of the lamplit drawing-room on to the dusky 
 lawn, and down to the terrace, drawn perhaps by the magnetic 
 inQuence of the river, which %aill be looked at. 
 
 It happened somehow — I sni^pose Mr. Lowther himself 
 managed it — that he and Maude were left a little way behind 
 the rest of the loiterers npcjn the twiht terrace. Ah ! how
 
 Talcing it Quietl//. 1^8 
 
 fividly in the memory of both arose the I'ictnre of a time lor.g 
 ago, when they had gtooJ there side by side, by the same river, 
 in a twilight cahn hke this, with the same star glimmering 
 faintly in a low rose-tinted western sky ! In Maude's breast 
 that memory awakened cruel pangs of shame and remorse ! In 
 Ilarcourt Lowtlicr's breast there was a strangely mingled feel- 
 ing of bitterness and regret ; — bitterness against the Destiny 
 which had given him so few of life's brightest possessions ; re- 
 gi-et for the vanished time in which some natural earnestness, 
 sonic touch of fresh and manly feeling, had yet lingered in his 
 heart. 
 
 "Poor, simi^le, unworldly Maude," ho thought, as he con- 
 tcmplat(Hl the girl's pale face, " what a penitent look she has ! 
 and yet if she knew " 
 
 lie smiled, and left the thought unfinished. Tlien, turning 
 to Maude, he said, with a little touch of melancholy solemnity, 
 worthy of Edgar Kavcuswood himself, " IMiss Hillary, let us bo 
 friends. If you can bury the past, so can I. AVc may yet strew 
 sweet flowers of friendship on the grave of our dead love." 
 
 "And I really don't want to let Francis Tredcthiyn slip 
 through my fingers altogether," Mr. Lowther added, mentally, 
 as a sort of rider to that pretty little speech. 
 
 Maude looked at him with rather a puzzled expression. 
 
 " You are very generous," she faltered, embarrassed, and at 
 a loss how to express herself, " but — don't you think it would 
 be better for us — to — to say good-bye to each other — for ever ? 
 I — I — hope you will marry some one — worthy of you — .somo 
 one who is less the slave of circumstances than I am. I want 
 to do my duty to Mr. Tredethlyn — ;and I think it is a part of 
 my duty to tell him of our broken engagement." 
 
 " My dear Miss Hillary, you would surely never do anything 
 BO foolish. Poor Francis is the best fellow in the world, but ha 
 is just the man to be ferociously jealous if he once got any 
 fooUsh crotchet into liis head. I have lived in the same house 
 v,-ith him, remember, and niust therefore know him Ijetter than 
 5-ou do. As for saying farewell for ever, and all that kind of 
 thing, your eternal parting reads remarkably well in a novel, but 
 it isn't i^racticable between civilized people who belong to the 
 same rank of society. Georgina bids Algernon an irrevocable 
 adieii on Tuesday morning, and there is burning of letters and 
 love-locks, and weeping and wailing in Brompton Crescent; and 
 on Wednesday evening the same Algernon takes her down to 
 dinner in TVestbourne Terrace. We can bury the past in a3 
 deep a grave as you like, and lay the ghost of memory with any 
 exorcism you please, but we can't pledge ourselves not to meet 
 »iy day in the week in the houses of our common friends." 
 
 Maudo vras quite unable to argue with so specious a reasonex
 
 176 Only a Clocl. 
 
 as Mr. Lowtlier. She did her best to defend her position, aiid 
 iirged the necessity of telling Francis Tredetlilyn the whole 
 truth. But Harcourt overruled her objections, and in the end 
 obtained from her a promise that she would still remain silent 
 as to the name of her discarded lover. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 TIDINGS OF SUSAN. 
 
 Absohbed in the conflicting tortures and delights of his bond- 
 age, Francis Trcdethlyn had thought very little of that missing 
 cousin who had once been so near and dear to him. Now and 
 then, when he had been most entirely under the spell of Maude 
 Hillary's fascinating presence, the vision of a rosy rustic face, 
 framed in a little dimity bonnet, had arisen suddenly before 
 him, mutely reproachful of his forgetfulness and neglect, and he 
 had resolved that on the very next day some new steps should 
 be taken in the searcli for Susan Trcdethlyn. But then, on that 
 next day, there was generally some flower-show or matinee 
 musicale, some boat-race at Putney or appomtment to play 
 croquet at Twickenham ; in short, some excuse or other for 
 devoting himself to Maude Hillary; and poor Susan's rustic 
 image melted away into chaos. But Mr. Trcdethlyn was sud- 
 denly startled into recollection of his neglected duty by the 
 receij^t of a letter from his solicitors, Messrs. Kursdale and 
 Scardon, asking for an early interview, and announcing that 
 they had an important communication to make respecting Miss 
 Susan Trcdethlyn, otherwise Miss Susan Turner. 
 
 An important communication. The Cornishman felt his face 
 grow hot as he read the letter. Susan was found, perhaps, he 
 thought. He had never mentioned her name to Maude Hillary, 
 and now it might be that she would need all the devotion of a 
 loving protector, perhaps even the strong arm of an avenger, at 
 a time when his every tliought was absorbed by his approaching 
 marriage. The young man did not wait for any ceremonioua 
 appointment, but hurried oiF at once to Gray's Inn, and pre* 
 eented himself before Mr. Kursdale, the senior partner. 
 
 In the quiet office Francis Tredethlyn's hot eagerness tamed 
 down a little before the matter-of-fact manner of the solicitor. 
 There was a sober tranquillity in the aspect of the man and of 
 the place, which seemed to have a singularly soothing effect upon 
 all human emotion. The sober little clock ticking on the grey 
 stone mantel-i^iece — a skeleton clock, exhibiting its entire ana- 
 tomy to the public eye, and superior to all meretricious adom« 
 ment — seemed to be perpetually ticking out in thp etillnesa:
 
 Tidhigs of Susan. 177 
 
 " Let me advise you to take it easily ; let me recommciitl you 
 to take it quietly : whatever tlio Law can do for you will be done 
 for you hei'e ; but it must be done iu the Law's own way, wliich 
 is veiy slow, and very complicated, and rather trying to human 
 patience." 
 
 Mr. Kursdale received Francis with calm cordiality, and after 
 a few stately compliments proceeded at once to business. 
 
 " You ^vill remember that my opinion, and that of my partnei 
 — for I availed mj'sclf of his judgment in tlic msitter, — you 
 will, no doubt, recollect, that after considerable study of the 
 manuscript or journal which you confided to me, I came to the 
 conclusion that the writer of that journal had contemplated 
 imjjosing ujjon )'our cousin's simplicity by a mock marriage, a 
 sham ceremonial, performed before some person falsely repre- 
 senting himself to be a district registrar. This opinion was 
 really forced ujion me by the wording of the diary. Ijook at 
 the diary in what light I would, — and I assure you I weighed 
 the matter most carefully, — I could not see my way to any 
 other conclusion." 
 
 "I understand," answered Francis. "I knew the man wag 
 a Bcoundrel. I made that out, somehow or other, fi-om his 
 journal. I knew he meant mischief and treachery upon little 
 Susy ; but I couldn't make out ivhat treachery till you opened 
 my eyes to the truth." 
 
 " But suppose that, after all my care, I was too hasty in 
 forming a conclusion. Suppose that we have been mistaken, 
 Mr. Tredethlyn?" 
 
 " How do you mean, sir ? " 
 
 " Some days since, I happened to open a drawer which had 
 been unopened for a long time, and hidden under a lot of 
 other documents I found the diary which you entrusted to mo. 
 The sight of the manuscript reminded me of you and your 
 missing cousin ; so I suppose it was only natural that I should 
 turn over the pages, — not in the hope of finding any new 
 meaning in them, however, for I had studied them too carefully 
 for that. I turned them over, and while debating the question 
 of a mock marriage, the thought suddenly flashed upon mo 
 that it would be at least very easy to ascertain if any genuine 
 ceremonial had taken place in London. Kemcmber, Mr. Tre- 
 dethlyn, I did not for one moment imagine that there had been 
 a real marriage, and I fully lielievcd that the trouble I was 
 about to take would be wasted trouble. If I had not from tha 
 first been firmly convinced that the writer of the diarj- con- 
 templated a sham marriage, and nothing but a sham marriagQ 
 I should, at the outset, have done that wluch I only did tW 
 other day." 
 
 Francis Trcdethlyn's impatience was so very evident, that th& 
 
 M
 
 178 Only a Clod. 
 
 lawyer, slow as he generally was, quickened his pace a little aa 
 he went on. 
 
 " I was determined to institute an investigation of the hooka 
 of eveiy registrar's office in the metropolis during the months 
 of January, February, and March, 1819. I entrusted a confi- 
 dential clerk with this task, and three days afterwards he 
 brought me the result of his investigation. On the 27th Feb- 
 ruary'-, 181-9, Robert Lesley was married to Susan Turner, in the 
 office of the district registrar for Marylebone. The registrar's 
 name was Joseph- Pepper ; the names of the witnesses were 
 Mary Banks and Jemima Banks, of No. 7, Woolcote Villas, 
 St. John's Wood." 
 
 " Thank God ! " ejaculated Francis Trcdethlyn, reverently. 
 " Thank God, for my little Susan's sake, that this man was not 
 the scoundrel we took him for." 
 
 " Whether such a man-iage, contracted under a false name on 
 your cousin's part, and it is very possible, also under a false 
 name on the part of the writer of the diary, — whether such a 
 marriage might not be open to dispute, is another question. 
 However, the ceremonial, so far as it went, was genuine, and in 
 any case there would be some little difficulty in setting it 
 aside." 
 
 " It shall not be set aside ! " cried Francis, " if I have the 
 power to enforce it. Thank God for this, Mr. Kursdale, and 
 thank you for the thought, late as it came, that led to the dis- 
 covery of the truth." 
 
 " You must remember, though, my dear Mr. Tredethlyn," 
 remonstrated the solicitor, who was almost alarmed by the 
 young man's eagerness, " you must bear in mind that it is just 
 possible there may have been some other Susan Turner and 
 some other Eobert Lesley married in the month of February, 
 1849, and that this registration may refer to them." 
 
 "I am not afraid of that," Francis answered, decisively. 
 " No, the man meant to be a scoundrel, I dare say ; but my 
 little Susy's artless confidence touched his heart at the very 
 last, perhaps, and he could not be such a villain as to deceive 
 her. Rely upon it, Mr. Kursdale, the marriage was a genuine 
 marriage, and I shall live to see my cousin righted, and to 
 divide my uncle Oliver's money Avith her." 
 
 Mr. Kursdale stared at his client in blank amazement. 
 
 " You would — do that ? " he asked, after a pause. 
 
 "Of course I would. Poor little ill-used darling ! The 
 money was hers, every penny of it, by right. _ I — I meant at 
 first to have restored it all to her ; but new claims have arisen 
 for me, and I can only give her half the fortune that should 
 have been her own." 
 
 The solicitor stilled a gi'oan.
 
 Tidings of Susan. 179 
 
 "And now how am I to find Susy? " asked Francis. "This 
 registration business gives us a new clue, doesn't it ? " 
 
 "Unquestionably. We can, at any rate, hojie to find the 
 two witnesses, Llary and Jemima Banks, and from them we mar 
 discover j'our cousin's present whereabouts. I'll send a clerk 
 to these Banks i)Cop]e to-moiTOw." 
 
 " Do you know I think I'd rather go and look for them 
 myself, and at once," said Francis. " I've been very neglectful 
 of Susy's interests lately, and I feel as if I ought to do some- 
 thing to make up for my neglect. I'll go myself, Mr. Kursdale, 
 and try to find out these people. If I fail, you must help me 
 to find them. If I succeed, I'll come here to-morrow morning 
 and tell yon the result." 
 
 The young man wrote the address of the people in St. John's 
 Wood in his pocket-book, shook hands with his legal adviser, 
 and hurried away ; he was so eager to atone for the neglect of 
 the past by the activity of the present. lie hailed a hansom in 
 IloUxim, and was on his way to St. John's Wood five minutes 
 after he had left the lawyer's office. lie sat with his watch 
 open in his hand, wliilo he made abstruse calculations as to tho 
 time it would take him to find the females, Mary and Jemima 
 Banks, extort from them all the information they had to give, 
 drive back to his hotel, reorganize his toilet, and then make his 
 way to Twickenham. Mr. Tredethlyn had grown something of 
 a dandy of late ; he emjjloyed a West-end tailor, belaboured 
 his honest head with big ivory-backed brushes, and bedewed hia 
 cambric handkerchief with the odorous invention of that necro- 
 mancer of the flower-garden. Monsieur Eugene Eimmel. The 
 big Cornishman smiled at his reflection in the glass sometimes, 
 wondering at his own frivoHty. But it was for Maude Hillary's 
 sake that he brushed his hair laboriously every day, and grew 
 critical in the choice of a waistcoat. He had even hired a man 
 to wait upon him, and had a Uttle regiment of boot-trees in hia 
 di'essing-room. 
 
 St. John's Wood proper is perhaps one of the most delightful 
 suburban retreats in which the man can make a pleasant 
 temple for his lares and penates, who, yearning for the wa\'ing 
 of green trees about his abode, is yet obliged to live within an 
 easy cab-drive from the City. Dear little wallas, embosomed 
 in fohagc; stately mansions, towering proiidly out of half an 
 acre of trimly-kept garden, invite the wealthy citizen to retire- 
 ment and repose. The young lilacs and laburnums of to-day 
 may represent but poorly the bosky verdures of the past, but 
 Btill the Wood of St. John is a cool and pleasant oasis in tho 
 great arid desert of London. 
 
 But there are outskirts and dependencies of St. John that are 
 Dot quite 80 pleasant, — ragged wastes and shabby little terraces,
 
 180 Only a Clod. 
 
 that hang like tattered edges disgracing a costly garment. 
 These dismal streets and dreary terraces may not belong of 
 right to St. John, but they hang about him, and chug to him, 
 and shelter themselves under the grandeur of his name, never- 
 theless. 
 
 Woolcote Villas, St. John's Wood, were very pretentious little 
 dwelhng-places, fronted -with damp stucco, and with a tendency 
 to a mossy gi'eenncss of aspect that was eminently dispiriting. 
 Woolcote Villas were of the EUzabethan order of architecture, 
 and went off abruj^tly into peaks and angles wherever a peak or 
 an angle was possible. How such small houses could require 
 the massive stacks of EUzabethan chimneys which made Wool- 
 cote Villas ajjpear top-heavy and incongruous to the eye of the 
 stranger, was an enigma only to be solved by the arcliitect who 
 designed those habitations; and why Woolcote Villas should 
 each be finished off with a stuccoed mustard-pot, popularly 
 known as a campanello tower, which was not Ehzabethan, and 
 not practicable for habitation, being open to the four winds of 
 heaven, was another problem perpetually awaiting the same 
 individual's solution. 
 
 The hansom cabman, after driving tlirough all the intricacies 
 of St. John's Wood on different false scents, came at last upon 
 Woolcote Villas, through the friendly offices of a milkman, and 
 pulled up his horse before the door of No. 7. 
 
 Francis aUghted and rang a bell, — a bell with a slack wire, 
 which required to be pulled a great many times before any 
 effect was produced. At last, however, the bell rang ; and then, 
 after a pause and another jjeal, the door was opened, and a slip- 
 shod eervant-maid, with a flapping circle of dii'ty net hanging 
 from the back of her disorderly head, emerged from No. 7, 
 Woolcote Villas, and presented herself at the httle gate before 
 which Francis Tredethlyn was waiting. 
 
 The young man asked if Mrs. Banks was at home. Yes, she 
 was at home, and Miss Banks also. Did he please to want the 
 apartments? 
 
 Mr. Tredetlilyn told her that he had particular business vrith 
 Mrs. Banks, and that it was that lady whom he wished to see. 
 The girl looked disaj^pointed. There were a good many biUs in 
 the Elizabethan windows of Woolcote Villas, and the demands 
 of lodgers were not equal to the supply of furnished ai^artments. 
 
 The sound of a tinkling piano, played very badly, greeted Mr. 
 Tredethlyn as he entered the narrow passage. The dirty maid- 
 servant opened the door of the apartment whence the sound 
 came, and Francis found himself in a shabby parlour, tenanted 
 by a young lady, who rose from the piano as he entered, and 
 who was very fine and yet very shabby, and a trifle dirty, like 
 the parlour, and like Woolcote Villas generally. The young
 
 Tidings of Susan. 181 
 
 lady wore a gi-casy-ioolcing black silk, relieved by a coquettish 
 little apron of Stuart inlaid, and adorned by all manner of ribanda 
 and narrow velvets, witli a good deal of Mosaic jewelry in tho 
 way of hearts and crosses, and anchors and lockets ; and her 
 hair was turned Ijack from her forehead, and ilowed in graceful 
 ringlets of the corkscrew order upon her stately fi^aoulders. She 
 was altogether a very extensively adorned youwg lady ; and she 
 gave a little start expressive of surprise and timidity, with just 
 a slight admixture of jileasure, as Mr. Tred(;thlyu presented 
 liimself before her. Many single gentlemen had inspected the 
 long-vacant lodgings ; but there had been no one among them 
 80 good-looking, qr so sjilcndid of aspect, as this tall, bi'oad- 
 ehouldered Cornisliman, revised and corrected by his West-end 
 tailor. 
 
 " The apartments, I 8upi~>ose," the young lady said, curtsey- 
 ing and simpciing. " My ma being busy, perhaps you will 
 allow me to show them to you P This is the parlour. If tho 
 use of a sitting-room only is required, with partial board, in- 
 cluding dinner on Sundays, the terms would be seventeen and 
 sixpence. Private apartments, without board, fifteen sliillings, 
 or with full board " 
 
 The young lady would have proceeded further, but Francia 
 Tredethlyn interrujitcd her. 
 
 " I beg your pardon," he said, " I don't require apartments ; 
 my business is quite of a dilferent nature. Your name is 
 Banks, I believe ? " 
 
 The lady inclined her head graciously. Life was very dreary 
 in Woolcote Villas, and the advent of a good-looking stranger 
 could scarcely be otherwise than agreeable, eveii if he was not a 
 prospective tenant. 
 
 " Mary — or Jemima — Banks? " asked Francis. 
 
 " I am Miss Jemima Banks," the young lady rcj)]ied, with 
 considerable dignity. She began to think the good-looking 
 stranger inclined to be presumptuous ; but Francis was too pre- 
 occupied to be aware of the intended reproof. 
 
 " I am very glad that I have been so fortunate as to find 
 you," he said, " for I believe you can give me the information I 
 want. You were present at a marriage before the registrar, at 
 an office in Folthorpe Street, Marylebone, on the "2 7th of Feb- 
 ruary, 1849. Can you tell me where the young lady who was 
 married went after the ceremony ? I have some right to tsk 
 this question, for Susan Tre — Susan Tumor is my first-cousin." 
 
 " Well, I never did ! " exclaimed JMiss Banks, surju-i.sed out of 
 her stateliness. "Poor Susan was your cousin, was she? Why, 
 bIic came home here a fortnight after her marriage." 
 
 ** She came here ? " 
 
 "Yes, ehe was lodging liere before that; and she and her
 
 182 Oniy a Clod. 
 
 husband went off to Paris after the ceremony ; and there was no 
 breakfast and no notliing ; and Mr. Lesley, he was always very 
 high and mighty-like in his ways — he flung do^vn a twenty- 
 pound note ui^on the desk before the registrar, and when the 
 man said something about change, he threw up his head scorn- 
 ful-like — it was a way he had if anytliing vexed liim, — ' There's 
 your money,' he said, ' and don't let's have any humbug;' and 
 then he dragged liis poor little wife's hand through his arm, 
 just nodded to me and mother, and walked off to the cab with- 
 out a word, leaving me and mother in the registrar's office. 
 The registrar was full of praises of the gentleman's generosity, 
 and said he'd like to tie up a half-a-dozen such couples every 
 week ; but mother was regularly cross about that twenty-pound 
 note, and went on about it all the way home, saying that !Mr. 
 Lesley had ground her down close enough about the rent for 
 these rooms, and needn't go showing off his generosity to strange 
 registers." 
 
 " And my cousin Susan went to Paris P " 
 
 " Yes, but only for a fortnight, and we was to keep the apart- 
 ments for her, which we did ; and at the end of a fortnight she 
 came back, dressed beautiful, and with all sorts of lovely things 
 in her boxes, and she was looking so well and so happy, and 
 anybody would have thought she was the luckiest woman in 
 the world. But mother, she used to shake her head about it, 
 and say she never knew those secret sort of marriages to come 
 to any good, because when a gentleman begins by not wanting 
 to own his wife, he's very apt to end by wishing he hadn't mar- 
 ried her. But mother always looks at the black side of things, 
 whether it's taxes, or whether it's lodgers, or whatever it is ; so 
 I didn't take much notice. Mrs. Lesley seemed very happy; 
 and Mr. Lesley, for the first week or so, he stopped at home a 
 gi-eat deal, and scarcely ever went out, except to take his wifo 
 out to dine, or to a theatre, or something of that kind ; and they 
 really seemed the hajipiest couple that ever was ; but by-and-by 
 Mr. Lesley went away, — to college, his wife told me; and I 
 shall never forget how she cried, poor thing, the night he left 
 her, and how lonely she looked sitting in this room, where 
 they'd been so happy together, with their Httle oyster-suppers 
 after the theatre, and everything that heart could wish. She'd 
 got some books that he'd left behind him spread out before her 
 on the table, and she was turmng one of them over when I went 
 in to see her. 
 
 " ' They're very hard to understand. Miss Banks,' she said ; 
 'but I try to read them, because I want to be clever, and able 
 to talk to Robert when he comes home.' 
 
 " After this she was almost always reading, poor Httle thing, 
 Bad she'd eit ia this room for days and days together ; for she
 
 Tidings of Susan. 183 
 
 didn't like to go out alone, and motlier docs drive and worry so, 
 that it wasn't often I could get out with her. Mr. Lesley was 
 to bo away three months, slie told ine; and I'm sure that poor 
 thing used to count the liourtj and minutes ahuost, wishing the 
 time to go : but when the three mouths was up, there was no 
 Mr. Lesley; he was going tishing, somewhere in Wales, with 
 some grand friends she told me, and wouldn't be home till the 
 next vacation. I never saw any one so cut nj) as she was by tli(3 
 disappointment, though she wouldn't talk about it; only 1 cuuld 
 Bco every morning by her face, that she'd been lying awake half 
 thfi night, crying her poor eyes out." 
 
 " Poor girl, poor girl ! " murmured Francis Tredethlyn. 
 
 This all-absorbing passion called love was a sorrowful thing, 
 then, he thought, let it come to whom it woidd— a one-sided 
 frenzy, a perpetual sacrifice, a self-imposed immolation. 
 
 " i'ray tell me all you can about my cousin," he said to Misa 
 Banks. " You cannot imagine how anxious I am to hear of 
 her." 
 
 "I'm sure she and mo was always the best of friends," 
 answered the fair Jemima, with a toucii of diplumac}' ; " and if 
 you did tliink of taking the apartments, me and mother would 
 do all in our power to make you comfortable, if it was only on 
 Mrs. Lesley's account; for she was one of the sweetest young 
 creatures I ever knew. She stayed with us three weeks before 
 she was married ; and I never shall forget her pretty face tho 
 day she first came up from the country after the lodgings bad 
 been took for her." 
 
 " Mr. Lesley engaged the lodgings, I suppose ? " 
 
 " No, it was Mr. Lesley's brother." 
 
 " Oh, he had a brother, then? " 
 
 " Yes, his brother was something in the law, I think — a very 
 nice gentleman, and almost the hvino: image of Mr. Lesley him- 
 self." . . 
 
 " Can you give me a description of Mr. Lesley ? I never saw 
 him, and I want very much to know wliat kind of man he is." 
 
 Miss Banks hesitated for some moments. 
 
 " It's so dlllicult to give an exact description of any one," slie 
 BJiid. "Mr. Lesley was a tall, handsome-looking man, with fair 
 hair and blue eyes. I don't think I could describe him any 
 nearer than that." 
 
 rranci.s Tredethlyn sighed. There are so many tall, hand- 
 Bome-looking men \vith fair hair and blue eyes ! and it is chielly 
 in melodrama that people go about the world conveniently 
 marked with a strawberry or a coronet. 
 
 "Answer me one question," said Francis, eagerly, "before you 
 tell me the rest of my cousin's history. Do you know whera 
 ihe is now ? "
 
 184 Only a Clod. 
 
 Miss Banks shook lier head, and sighed despondently. 
 
 "No more than you do, su-," she exclaimed. " It's two years 
 and a half ago since I set eyes upon Mrs. Lesley, and I don't 
 know no more than the dead what's become of her since." 
 
 " Then she's as much lost to me to-day as she was yesterday," 
 Baid Francis, sadly. "But you can at least tell me all you 
 know of my poor cousin. It may help me to some clue by 
 which to find her." 
 
 Jemima was evidently a good-natured girl. She begged Mr. 
 Tredethlyn to be seated, and placed herself opposite to him. 
 
 "I'll call mother if you like," she said; "but I think I can 
 tell you more about Mrs. Lesley ; mother is such a one to 
 wander, and when one's anxious to know anything quicks it 
 don't do to have to deal with a person whose mind's always 
 harping upon lodgers and their ways. Of course everybody 
 knows lodgers are tiresome, and nobody lets ajDartments fo* 
 pleasure, and nobody would pay taxes if they could help it, and 
 poor-rates are not expected to raise people's spirits ; but if fact* 
 are disagreeable, that's no reason you should have them crop- 
 ping up promiscuous in every style of conversation. Till now 
 it used to be a relief to me to come and sit with Mrs. Lesley of 
 an evening, and hear her troubles, if it was only for the sake of 
 a change." 
 
 " I thank you heartily for having been good to my cousin," 
 Francis said, earnestly. He was thinking that he would drop 
 into a jeweller's shop on his way homeward, and choose the 
 handsomest diamond ring in the man's stock for Miss Jemima 
 Banks. 
 
 " I don't know as I deserve any thanks, sir," answered the 
 girl. " I couldn't help taking to Mrs. Lesley, and I couldn't 
 help feeling for her when I saw her so solitary and so sad. 
 Months and mouths went by before her husband came back to 
 her ; and when he did come her baby was bom, and there was 
 the cradle in the corner just by where you're sitting, and she 
 Bcemed as if she couldn't make enough of the child." 
 
 "A child!" mui'mured Francis. "Mrs. Burfield never told 
 me of the child." 
 
 " But Mr. Lesley, he didn't seem so wrapped up in the baby 
 as she did," continued Miss Banks; " and I used to fancy shft 
 saw it, and fretted about it. He couldn't take her out to dinner 
 anywhere this time, nor j-et to the theatre, on account of the 
 child. She asked him once to take her for a drive somewhere 
 in the country, and to take the child with them ; but he laughed 
 at her, and said, ' I don't think there's a pleasanter sight iu 
 creation than an estimable mechanic in his Sunday clothes, 
 with three children in a wicker chaise, and a foiirth in arms ; 
 but don't you tliiuk we may as well leave that sort of thing in
 
 Tidings of Susan. 185 
 
 the niocliaiiic, Susy ? the poor fellow lias so few clianccs of 
 distinguisliing liiuiself.' That was just the sort of speech Mr. 
 Lesley was always makhig, half laughmg, half scornful ; he was 
 alvj-ays going on in a snecruig way about the baby, and her 
 being so fond of it, and devoting herself so much to it; and 
 souiotimes one of those nasty speeches of his would set his -wifo 
 off crying, for her health wasn't very strong just then, and any 
 little thing would 'ipset her. And then he'd look at her with a 
 hard, cruel look ,,hat he'd got sometimes, and throw liis book 
 into a corner, and get np and walk out of the house, banging 
 the door to that degree that mother would be imnei-ved for the 
 rest of the evening. Mr. Lesley took to stopping out very lato 
 this time, and used to let liiraself in -with a latch-key, long after 
 me and mother had gone to bed ; but I know that Susan nsed 
 to sit up for him, and I know that he used to be angry with her 
 for doing it ; for Woolcote Villas are slight-built, and I've heard 
 him talking to her as I lay awake overhead. He was at home 
 for some months this time off and on, — but he'd be away for 
 days together, — and when he was at home he had a tired way 
 like, that made me feel uncomfortable somehow to see him. Ho 
 was always j^awning, and smoking, and sitting over his books, 
 or lying asleep iipon the sofa; and I'm sure if I'd been Mrs. 
 Lesley, I should have been very glad when he took himself off. 
 But, Lor' bless your heart ! poor httle tiling, she fretted about 
 his going away, just as if he'd been the kindest of husbands. 
 He wasn't going back to college any more ; he was going to 
 Germany this tune. I know she wanted to go with him, poor, 
 tender-hearted thing; and I heard her say to him, so pitiful 
 like, once, ' Oh, Robert, what will become of me when you are 
 gone ! If you would only take me ! ' But he only laughed at 
 ner, and cried out, ' "What ! abandon the baby ? ' So at last the 
 time came for him to go, and his poor wife got paler and paler 
 every day, tiQ I'm sure she looked Hke a hving corpse walking 
 about the house," said Miss Banks, unconsciously paraphrasing 
 Shelley. 
 
 " And this man left her P " 
 
 " Lor', yes, what did he care for her looking white and sorrow- 
 ful ? He was more wrajiped up in his new portmanteaus, and 
 travelling-bags, and dressing-cases, and such-like, than in his 
 wife or his child. He went off as gay as could ])e, though h^ 
 left Mrs. Lesley almost broken-hearted. And he didn't leavft 
 her too well off either, I know, though she always paid mother 
 to the moment; but all her pretty dresses and bonnets that 
 Mr. Lesley had bought her in Paris had gro\vn shabby, and he 
 hadn't bought her any new ones. He had so many expenses, 
 she told me ; for she was always making excuses for him like, 
 and pretending that he was very good to her. Poor dear thing!
 
 186 Onhj a Clod. 
 
 after he was gone away the baby was her only comfort ; and 
 I'm sure if it hadn't been for that child she'd have fretted her- 
 self away into the grave. Well, sir, the baby was four months 
 old when Mr. Lesley went away to Germany, and he was only 
 to be away three months at the longest, L"i.'\san told me : she 
 was very friendly with me, and I always called her Susan. 
 And she used to count the days just as she did before ; and 
 she'd say to me often how tlie time was going, and her husband 
 would soon be bach. She used to wiite him letters, — such long 
 letters, all full of her talk about the baby, and his taking notice, 
 and growing, and such-like ; but she didn't have many letters 
 from him. ' You see, Jemima, he's always going from place to 
 place,' she said ; ' and then my letters Ue at the post-offices 
 where I direct them, and half the time he doesn't i*eceive tliem 
 at all ; so I can't wonder at not hearing very often from liim.' 
 She used to be so pleased, poor dear, when a letter did come, 
 though I'm sure they were short enough, for I've seen her open 
 them ; but, ah ! when the three months went by, and Mr. Lesley 
 didn't come back, how dreadfully she did fret ! — always secretly, 
 though ; for she didn't seem to like that anybody should know 
 her troubles, for fear they should blame him, the brute ! ' He's 
 going farther north,' she told me ; ' Germany's such a big 
 country, you know, Jemima ; and I'm afraid, from what Robert 
 says, he thinks of going beyond Germany, to St. Petersburg, 
 perhaps. You see, it's necessary for him to travel in order to 
 complete his education.' I couldn't help laughing outright at 
 this ; for I thought if Mr. Lesley wasn't educated enough with 
 all his books, and colleges, and crackjaw languages, and such- 
 hke, he never would be educated. HoAvever, that was no busi- 
 ness of mine, and I kept my thoughts to myself. The time 
 went by, and still there was no news of Mr. Lesley coming 
 home. He was always going farther and farther north, Susan 
 told me, when she spoke of him ; biit she'd got to talk of him 
 very httle now, though I know she was thinking of him and 
 fretting about him all day and all night too : for I've sle2>t with 
 her sometimes, and heard her moan in her sleeji, and speak hia 
 name, oh, so pitiful ! " 
 
 " Poor girl ! poor child ! she was Httle more than a child ! " 
 murmured Francis Tredetlilyn. 
 
 *' No more she was," answered Miss Banks, with energy ; 
 "and him as ill-treated her was a brute. I'm sure I never 
 thought much of him, with his scornful, sneering ways, treat- 
 ing me and mother as if we were so much dirt under his feet. 
 As for that poor young thing, it was a sorrov,-ful day for her 
 when she fii'st set eyes upon him, fine gentleman though he 
 was, and above her in station, which she was always telhng me 
 as a kind of excuse for hia bad conduct. Well, sir, his letters
 
 Tidings of Susan. 187 
 
 got fewer and fewer, and still Susan kept her troubles to her- 
 Bclf, and only said lie was going farther north, and that ha 
 would be back before the year was out. But the year passed, 
 and he didn't come back, and he'd been away nearly ten 
 months, and the baby was fourteen months old, when a letter 
 came for Susan, with St. Petersburg on the post-mark. I never 
 shall forget that day. It was dull, cold, March weather, with 
 the wind howhng and moaning enough to give the liveliest 
 person the dismals, and Mrs. Lesley had been sitting by the 
 window all the afternoon watching for the postman. She was 
 beginning to be nei^vous about her husband's health, she told 
 me, as it was so long since she had heard from him. The post- 
 man came at last, and I was down-stairs with mother when he 
 came. Mrs. Lesley ran into the passage, and took the letter 
 herself. We heard the parlour door shut, and then five minutes 
 afterwards we heard a scream and a heavy fall. Me and mother 
 rushed up-stairs, and there was poor Susan lying on the floor, 
 with a letter clutched in her hand, and the fingers clenched 
 upon it so that neither me nor mother could loosen them. We 
 hfted her up and -aid her on the sofa. She didn't seem to have 
 fainted dead away, for she opened her eyes directly, and said, 
 ' Oh, why didn't you let me he there till I died ? ' And it was 
 enough to pierce the hardest heart to hear her. ]\Iother began 
 talking about the troubles of the world, and asked her if there 
 was bad news in the letter. ' Oh, yes ! ' she cried ; ' cruel news 
 ■ — dreadful news ! ' And then mother asked her, Was Mr. 
 Lesley dead ? * Yes,' she said, ' dead to me ! dead to m.e ! ' 
 Mother fancied she meant he was really dead, and said she 
 hoped Mrs. Lesley was left comfortably provided for. You see, 
 having seen a deal of trouble herself, mother will look at things 
 in that hght. And then Susan cried out that her trouble was 
 one that we could never understand. I couldn't bear to leave 
 her ; but I got mother out of the way, — for her ways are apt to 
 be wearing to any one that's in trouble, — and I stopped with 
 Susan all the evenmg. But she never spoke once ; she only lay 
 quite quiet on the sofa, with her face turned to the wall ; but T 
 knew that she was crying all the time ; and when I took her the 
 baby, thinking the sight of him might comfort her, she only 
 waved him away like with her hand. I didn't leare her till 
 twelve o'clock that night ; but she was still lymg on the sofa 
 with her face turned to the wall. But just as I was going 
 away she stretched out her hand and siiid, ' God bless you, 
 Jemima ! it is very good of you to stop with me, but there ia 
 nothing upon this wide earth that can give me any comfort 
 now.' I didn't see her the next morning, for she went out very- 
 early, and took the baby with her, and she didn't come back till 
 late at night, and then she came back without the baby. You
 
 1S8 Only a Clod. 
 
 miglit have knocked me down witli a feather when I opened the 
 door to her and saw her come in -withont the child. ' Oh, Su-san,' 
 I said, ' what have you done with Eobert ? "— he'd been christ- 
 ened Kobert after his 'pa, and I'd stood godmother for him. 
 Susan was as pale as death, but she said very quietly, ' I've put 
 him out to nurse in the country, Jemima. I was obliged to 
 part from him, for I'm going away.' I thought all in a moment 
 that she was going abroad to her husband, and that her grief 
 had been about parting with her child ; but then I remembered 
 what she'd said the night before, about Mr. Lesley being dead 
 to her, and do what I would I couldn't make it out. I'm sure I 
 was as much cut up at the thought of her going away as if she 
 had been my own sister." 
 
 " I Avish to Heaven she had stopped with you ! '' exclaimed 
 Francis Tredethlyn. " She had few friends, poor girl, and had 
 no need to leave any one who felt kindly towards her." 
 
 "But she did leave us," replied Miss Banks; "she paid 
 mother every farthing she owed her, and packed up her few Httle 
 things. She would make me take some of her pretty ribands 
 and collars that had been bought in Paris, and never worn out, 
 for she didn't care to dress herself smart when Mr. Lesley was 
 not at home ; and then she sent for a cab, aoad went away. I 
 heard her tell the driver Shoreditch railway station, for I ran 
 out to the cab and kissed her the last thing, and begged her to 
 come and see us whenever she came back to London ; and she 
 promised that if she Hved, and things went well with her, 
 she would. But from that day to this we've never set eyea 
 upon her." 
 
 And this was the end of what Miss Banks had to tell. 
 Francis Tredethlyn's thoughts wandered back to Mrs. Burfield ; 
 it was to her that Susan Tredethlyn had gone in the March ot 
 1851. So far the girl's history was complete; but the grand 
 question still remained. Where was she now to be found ? A 
 deserted wife, a friendless and perhaps penniless mother ; what 
 had become of this lonely, inexperienced girl between the March 
 of 1851 and this present autumn of 1853 P 
 
 " But suroly you can give me some clue by which I niay 
 trace my cousin P " said Francis, after_ a pause ; " you can give 
 me the address of some friend, some intimate acquaintance of 
 Mr. Lesley's : he must have had visitors while he lived here." 
 
 Jemima shook her head decisively. 
 
 " Not one," she answered : " except for bringing his brother 
 home to dinner once or twice, when he was first married, no 
 mortal belonging to Mr. Lesley ever darkened mother's doors. 
 Mother and me used to think it odd ; and of course there alwaya 
 are advantages in lodgers keeping much company, which makes 
 up for extra trouble j and the most audacious lockers-up that
 
 Tidings of Susan. 189 
 
 ever were can't go and lock-up under visitors' very noses. But 
 we sni^poscd, as Mr. Lesley's niarriage was a secret one, ho 
 didn't care to bring liis friends home." 
 
 " But his brother came ? " 
 
 "Yes, only when they were first married; lie never came 
 after." 
 
 " Did you hear the brother's address ? " 
 
 " AVell, I have heard that it was in some of those law-places, 
 the Temple, or Gray's Inn ; but I never heard any nearer than 
 that." 
 
 Mr. Tredethlyn gave a despairing sigh; he thought of Mrs. 
 Burfield's description of his cousin, pale and wan, waving her 
 little hand out of the can-iage- window as she left Coltonslough, 
 friendless and poor. "Was it not more than Hkely that she had 
 only gone away to die, and that his search for her would end at 
 last in the discovery of a grave ? 
 
 But might not the man, the husband who had deserted hia 
 iionoccnt and confiding -\^nfe, might not he be found and made to 
 pay a heavy penalty for his sius ? Vengeance seems but a poor 
 thing at the best, but it is at least something; and Francis 
 Tredethlyn felt a fierce desire for revenge against the cold- 
 blooded destroyer of his cousin Susan's happiness. 
 
 He asked Miss Banks many more questions ; but she could 
 tell him no more than she had already told him. She had 
 never heard anytliing of Mr. Lesley's family or antecedents, 
 directly or indirectly. She knew he went to college, but she 
 never remembered hearing what college. She had fancied some- 
 times that Ml*. Lesley's name was an assumed one; indeed, she 
 was sure it was; for when his brother had come to dine at 
 Woolcote Villas the first time, he had inquired for Mr. Robert 
 by some other name. Unfortunately, that other name had 
 entirely escaped Lliss Jemima's recollection. 
 
 "He caught himself up short," she said, " as if he was vexed 
 with himself for having let slip that other name, and I never 
 heard it again the whole time Mr. and Mrs. Lesley were with 
 us. I don't think Susan knew much more about her husband's 
 aflPairs than I did, for ,he always treated her like a child ; and 
 even when he was kindest to her, he seemed to have a high and 
 mighty way with her, that would have kept any timid person 
 from asking questions." 
 
 Francis thanked Miss Banks very heartily for the trouble she 
 had taken to enlighten him to the extent of her power, and then 
 bade her good afternoon. 
 
 " If you should meet with any one wanting apartments and 
 board, either partial or entire, you'll perha2:>s be kind enough to 
 fccar mother in mind," the young lady said, as she escorted him 
 to the door. He murmured some poUtc assurance that he
 
 190 Only a Clod. 
 
 would neglect no opportunity of promoting Mrs. Banks's in- 
 terest, and returned to the hansom, which had been waiting for 
 him during his prolonged interview with the good-natured 
 Jemima. 
 
 From Woolcote Yillas he drove to the office of the Marjlebone 
 registrar, and from that official he obtained an assurance that 
 the marriage between Eobert Lesley and Susan Tui-ner, on the 
 27th of February, 184.9, was, so far as his part of the business 
 went, as legally binding as if the ceremony had been performed 
 by the Archbishop of Canterbury within the solemn precincts 
 of Westminster Abbey. 
 
 " If they chose to be married in false names, that was their 
 business," said the registrar, " and they might find themselves 
 bothered about it by-and-by. But, except where there's pro- 
 perty, it isn't often that a person's called upon to prove his 
 marriage. I suppose, by your making the mquiry, there i$ 
 property in this case? " 
 
 Francis Tredethlyn shook liis head. 
 " I know no more about that than you do," he said. 
 "Well, I shan't forget that business in a hurry," said the 
 registrar, who was inclined to be communicative. " In the first 
 place, the man was one of your regular tip-top swells, and that's 
 a kind of party we,don't often see here ; and in the nextplace, 
 he gave me a twenty-pound note, which was the first windfall 
 of that kind that ever dropped into my pocket, and is more 
 than likely to be the last." 
 
 " Can you tell me what the man was Uke ? " 
 " Tall and fair, with blue eyes and light hair ; your regular 
 swell: not the heavy military swell, — more of a delicate 
 womanish way with him; but such as you may see by the 
 dozen any afternoon in St. James's Street or Pall Mall." 
 
 This description was no clearer than that given by Jemima 
 Banks. Francis could scarcely walk through a London street 
 without meeting with some man who might be described in the 
 same words. He left the registrar's office, and went back to his 
 hotel ; and, absorbed in the arduous duties of his toilet, thought 
 alternately of lost Susan Tredethlyn, alias Susan Lesley, and 
 t>i beautiful Maude Hillary, who was so soon to be hia wife. 
 
 CHArTER XXIV. 
 
 FRANCIS TREDETIILYN's DISINTERESTED ADVISER. 
 
 She was so soon to be his wife ! Yes, October was near at 
 hand. Already the woods and hills beyond the Star and 
 Garter were bright with autumnal tints of vivid orange and 
 glowing crimson. The millincva and dressmakers, the outfitters
 
 A Disinterested Adviser. 191 
 
 and bootmalvcrs, were perpetually appearing in the hall and ou 
 the staircases at the Cedars. Wicker baskets covertnl with 
 oilskin seemed continually passing in and out of Mr. Hillary's 
 abode, and Maude could rarely enjoy a quiet half-hour undis- 
 turbed by a mysterious summons, entreating her to inspect oT 
 try on some garment newly brought home by a "young person" 
 from town. Harcourt Lowther made himself quite at home 
 both at the Cedars and at Francis Tredethlyn's chambers 
 during this period of preparation. Francis took very kindly to 
 his old master in his new capacity of friend and mentor. The 
 habits of the past made a hnk between them. The old half- 
 friendly, half-supercilious familiarity which had characterized 
 Harcourt Lowther's treatment of his servant melted now into a 
 playful and almost caressing friendliness. Mr. Lowther was a 
 thoroughly selfish man, and he found himself called upon in 
 this instance to sacrifice his pride in the cause of his interest. 
 He affected a hearty interest in Francis Tredethlyn's affairs, 
 and contrived somehow, by a scries of manoeuvres, so subtle as 
 to be imperceptible, to install himself in the post of chief adviser 
 to the inexperienced young Cornishman. Mr. Lowther was an 
 idle man, a very clever man, too versatile for greatness, or even 
 for any celebrity beyond that species of drawing-room repu- 
 tation, which women are able to bestow on the men who are not 
 too noble to waste a lifetime in small accomplishments and shal- 
 low courtesies. He was very clever, very idle, very much in- 
 clined to quan'el with the decrees of Providence ; and in Francis 
 Tredethlyn he saw the possessor of the two things he himself 
 most ardently desired — a great fortune, and Maude Hillary for 
 a wife. But he was true to his resolution to take matters 
 quietly ; and he assisted in the preparations for the wedding 
 with as much outward show of pleasure as if he had been a 
 match-making mother rejoicing in the happy disposal of a 
 whole brood of daughters. The big mansion in the new district 
 of palatial streets and squares lying between Kensington and 
 Brompton was fitted and furnished under Mr. Lowther's super- 
 intendence. He had meetings with architects, gilders, de- 
 corators, and upholsterers ; and, with only an occasional refer- 
 ence to Francis, gave his orders as freely as if the house had 
 been his own. Sometimes, walking up and down the whole 
 length of the three drawing-rooms, a strange smiV flickered 
 over his face, — a contemi)lativG smile, which faded away in the 
 next moment, giving place to that perfection of fashionable in- 
 difference to all things in heaven and earth which was his ordi- 
 nary expression. 
 
 The appointed day came at last, and poor Francis drove down 
 to Twickenham, looking as pale as his light waistcoat, but sup- 
 ported by his friend Harcourt Lowther as best man. Once, and
 
 192 Only a Clod, 
 
 once only, Maiide Hillary looked at her discarded lover wWle 
 she remained Maude Hillary; but there was a world of mingled 
 BCorn and reproach in that one look. Ah, how difierent hifl 
 love must have been from hers ! she thought. Had he forsaken 
 her for a wealtliier bride, she would have gone far away from 
 the sound of liis wedding bells, and the sight of his wedding 
 finely. In that one look she had seen that he was almost as 
 pale as the bridegroom ; but she could not forgive him for being 
 there. 
 
 There was all the usual business. Autumnal flowers scat- 
 tered under the feet of the bride and bridegroom ; charity chil- 
 dren in clean i^inafores cheering in shrill treble voices as the 
 bridal carriage drove away ; and then a breakfast, and the pop- 
 ping of champagne corks, and the creaming of delicately per* 
 fumed Moselle, and a little speech-making of the mildest cha- 
 racter; and then a departure amidst all the confusion of a 
 crowded hall and portico — young-lady intimates pressing for- 
 ward to caress the bride ; loud-voiced young men congi-atulating 
 the bridegroom ; sei-vants with white favours standing on tip- 
 toe to get a peep at the show : and then the postilions crack 
 their whips, and the carnage rolls away through the chill 
 autumn evening; and Maude sees Twickenham town spin by her 
 in a dim glimmer of comfortable firehght, twinkling redly in 
 cottage windows. # 
 
 The wedding tour had been amongst the many things which 
 Harcourt Lowther had kindly undertaken to plan for his friend; 
 and after a gi-eat deal of deliberation, that gentleman had 
 pitched upon one of the dullest and quietest watering-places 
 m Devonshire, as the one spot upon all this earth best suited 
 for Mr. Tredethlyn and his bride. 
 
 " Yon don't want the stereotyped Continental tour ; — the 
 Rhine steamers are crowded with cockneys, who find it easier 
 to spout ' Childe Harold ' than to regulate the administration ol 
 their h's. What do you know about the castled crag of Drach- 
 enfels, dear boy ? and what do you care for all the hackneyed 
 sentimentahty about beery old knights and battered old castles ? 
 You don't speak any language but your honest native tongue, 
 and you would be bothered out of your hfe before your travels 
 were over unless you took a courier — and then imagine seeing 
 nature through the eyes of a courier ! No, my dear Tredeth- 
 lyn ! the sort of tiling for you is some quiet little watering* 
 place, — * an humble cot, in a tranquil spot, with a distant viev? 
 of the changing sea,' and all that sort of thing ; in other words, 
 a tranquil little retreat where you and Mrs. Tredethlyn maj 
 have time to get acquainted with one another." 
 
 Francis was only too glad to take such pleasant advice. Tl 
 be alone with Maude, alone beside the still gi-ey sea in the quiet
 
 A Disinterested Adviser, 193 
 
 Butnmn evenings, sccnioil to liirn the higlicst Lll?s that oartli 
 could liuM for any luunan being : and 2:»oor Francis blessed Lis 
 generons friend for the sound judgment wliich was to securo 
 him such happiness. 
 
 " I dare say I should have gone scampering all over the Con« 
 tinent but for 3'ou, Lowther," he said, innocently. " Those other 
 follows at the Cedars ad\-ised a tour through half Europe : ' See 
 plenty of life,' they said ; ' freshen yourself up with change of 
 Hceiie, and pick u[) all the jargon you can out of Murray, so as to 
 be able to h( lid your own in society. Everybody travels nowa- 
 days, and it doesn't do for a fellow with lots of tin to be beliind 
 the rest of the world.' But I'll take your advice, Lowther. I 
 wanted Maude to choose the place for our bridal trip, but she 
 wouldn't; so we'll go to the Devonshire village." 
 
 It is not to be supposed, of course, that Mr. Lowther had 
 any other than the most friendly intention when he selected 
 Combe Western as the scene of Francis Trcdethlyn's honey- 
 moon ; but, on the other hand, it must be confessed that had 
 Ilarcourt wished to inspire Maude \^ath a weariness of her 
 husband's society, he could have scarcely selected any place 
 better calculated to assist him in the carrynig out of his design. 
 At Combe "Western, the misty autumn days were unljroken by 
 any change, save the slow changes of the hojws and the gradual 
 darkening of the sky. There were pleasant drives and romantic 
 scenery to be found in the neighbourhood of Combe Western ; 
 but Devonshire is a rainy county, and as it rained -with little 
 intermission during the whole of that honeymoon period, 
 Francis Tredcthlyn's bride was compelled to find her chief 
 amusement in the prim lodging-house drawing-room and the 
 society of her husband. 
 
 And this society was not congenial to her. He was handsome, 
 and pleasant to look at ; manly, good-tempered, generous. No 
 mean or unworthy sentiment ever dropped from his lijjs. She 
 respected him, and was grateful to him ; nay, even beyond this, 
 there was a certain latent affection for him lurking in some 
 comer of her heart; but she was very tired of him nevertheless. 
 To be truly attached to a person, and desperately weary of 
 them, is not altogether an impossibihty. Are we not sometimes 
 weary of ourselves, whom we yet love so dearly ? When you 
 get tired of a book, you have nothing to do but close the volume 
 and restore it to its shelf. But you cannot shut up your frienJ 
 ■when he becomes tedious ; you must needs go on, wading* 
 through page after page of his conversation, till you yawji in 
 bis face, and arouse him to the unpleasant conviction that he is 
 a nuisance. 
 
 Maude was very gi-atcfully and afTectionatcly disposed to
 
 194 Only a Clod. 
 
 ■wards her father's benefactor ; but she grew terribly tired of his 
 sole companionship during that rainy six weeks in the quiet 
 Devonian watering-place. If the bride and bridegroom had 
 gone on that stereotyped foreign tour so strongly protested 
 against by Harcourt Lowther, Maude's sunny nature would 
 speedily have asserted itself. She would have found in the 
 rapid changes of scene, in all the pleasant excitement of quick 
 travelling, plenty of subject-matter for conversation with her 
 new companion ; there would have been always some common 
 ground on which they could have met, some httle incident, 
 among the hundred incidents of a traveller's day, which would 
 have aroused a sympathy between them. But tin-own on their 
 own resources at Combe ^Vestem, a Horace "VValjiole and a 
 Madame du DefFand might have exhausted their conversational 
 powers, and yawned drearily in each other's faces. Maude 
 found herself wishing for the end of her honeymoon before the 
 first week had drawn to its close ; and Francis, always timidly 
 watchful of liis wife's beautiful face, felt a chill anguish at his 
 heart as he perceived her weariness of spirit. 
 
 Thus it was that, when they returned to London, the husband 
 and wife were httle nearer to each other than on their wedding- 
 day. No pleasant familiarity with each other's thoughts and 
 feelings had arisen during that dull residence in a dull watering- 
 place. That subtle process of assimilation by which — except 
 m some dismal examples— husband and wife grow Uke each 
 other in mind and ' feeling, had not yet begun. They were 
 strangers still ; in spite of Maude's esteem for her husband's 
 character, in spite of Francis Tredethlyn's blind idolatry of liis 
 ■wife's perfections ; and Harcourt Lowther, who was one of the 
 guests at their first dinner-party, was not slow to recognize the 
 state of the case. 
 
 " You'll get on admirably together by-and-by, dear boy," 
 he said to Francis, as they smoked their cigars together in a 
 luxurious little study beliind the big hbrary, some days after 
 the great duiner. " You'll get on supei-bly with your lovely wife, 
 if you only play your cards cleverly. There must be no Darby 
 and Joan business, you know — no sentimentahsm. Lionel 
 Hillary's daughter is just the woman to be disgusted by that 
 eort of thing. It was all veiy weU, of course, to do the ro- 
 mantic during the honeymoon ; but that's all over now ; your 
 wife will go her way, and you'll go yours. Her friends will 
 absorb a great deal of her time and attention ; your friends will 
 absorb you. You'U have your club, your horses, your men's 
 parties, and perhaps the House, — for you ought decidedly to 
 get into Parliament, — and it will be utterly impossible for you 
 to spend all youx mornings hanging about your -wife's rooms,
 
 A Bisinteresfcd Adviser. 105 
 
 or nursing her Skyc ton-iers, as you seem to have done 
 hitherto." 
 
 " But I hke so much to be with her," Francis remonstrated, 
 piteously. " It's very friendly of you to give me these hints, 
 and I dare say you're right, to some degree. I know Maude 
 used to secTu very tired at Combe Western, and we_ botli got 
 into the habit of looking at our watches in a dispiriting kind 
 of way every quarter of an hour; but since we've come to 
 London she has quite recovered her spirits, and we are so happy 
 together; — you should have heard her langli the other morn- 
 ing, when I taught one of the Skyes to shoulder arms with a 
 lead-pencil." 
 
 Mr. Tredethlyn laughed aloud himself at the recollection of 
 this feat. Harcourt Lowther shrugged his shoulders, and a 
 frown, or the passing shadow of a frown, darkened his hand- 
 some face. 
 
 There are some natures in which there is a certain element of 
 childishness, and between such natures no desperate antagonism 
 is ever likely to arise. 
 
 "We were rather dull at Combe Western," said Mr. Tre- 
 dethlyn, presently ; " but since we've been in London we've got 
 on capitally. I've been everywhere with Maude— shopping 
 even; and I've written out the lists for her parties.and been on 
 a round of calls ; and, in short, I've been the happiest fellow in 
 all creation." 
 
 "No doubt, my dear boy; that sort of thing's delightful 
 for a fortnight ; but look out for the day when the twin demons 
 of satiety and disgust ^vill arise to wither all these Arcadian 
 delights/' 
 
 Francis pondered gravely. He had been happy since his 
 return to London, for he had seen IMaude briglit and lively, 
 pleased with the novelty of her position, happy in her father's 
 affectionate welcome, serene in the consciousness of pure inten- 
 tions, and grateful for the devotion, of which some new evi- 
 dence met her at every turn. Poor Francis had been entirely 
 happy ; but it needed only a whisper from an elegant Mephis- 
 topheles in modem costume to reuder this simple Coruishman 
 doubtful even of his own happiness. It might be only a sham 
 and delusion, after all; and Maude's sunniest smile might be 
 the smile of a victim resigned to the sacrifice. 
 
 " If you think that Llaude is likely to grow tired — ;-" Francis 
 began, in a very melancholy tone ; but Mr. Lowther interrupted 
 him. 
 
 "If I think ! dear boy. How can I do otherwise than think 
 what is obvious to the dullest apprehension ? Take life as other 
 people take it, my dear, simple-minded Tredethlyn, and you'll
 
 196 Only a Clod. 
 
 find it go smoothly enough with you. Try to live on a plan of 
 your own, and — the rest is chaos. 
 
 ' It n'est pas de honheur hors des routes communes : 
 Qm vit a travers champs ne trouve qu'infortunes* 
 
 Ton had better stick to the vulgar highway, Frank, and not 
 attempt to set up an exceptional menage. No woman will long 
 tolerate a man tied to her apron string. She may be flattered 
 by his devotion in the beginning, but she ends by despising his 
 folly." 
 
 So it was that Francis Tredethlyn began life nnder the advice 
 of his friend Harcourt Lowther. After that conversation in the 
 study the young husband no longer intruded himself upon his 
 wife's leisure, or attempted to identify himself with her pursuits. 
 He found plenty to occupy his own time ; for Harcourt Lowther 
 always had some new scheme for his friend's employment or 
 amusement. A race, that no man li\nng in the world could 
 exist without seeing ; a horse to be sold at TattersaU's ; a cele- 
 brated collection of pictures at Christie and IManson's ; a bache- 
 lor's dinner at a club ; a review at "Wimbledon ; — somehow or 
 other there was always something to be seen, or something to 
 be done, of a nature in which Mrs. Tredethlyn could neither 
 have any part nor feel any interest ; and when Francis and his 
 friend dined alone with her, as they did very often, it happened 
 somehow that the conversation was always of a horsy and mas- 
 cuhne character, painfully wearisome to the ordinary female 
 mind. If Mr. Lowther had been intent on widening the natural 
 gulf which circumstances had set between these two people, he 
 could scarcely have gone to work more skilfully than he did: 
 though it is of course to be presumed that he was only an un- 
 conscious instrument, an involuntary agent of mischief and ruin. 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 THE ROAD TO UTTIK. 
 
 Mattde TuEDETnLTN took her new life very pleasantly. Her 
 father was haj^py. There had been a reaction in the City; 
 things were going very well for the Australian merchant ; and 
 Francis Tredethlyn was receiving handsome interest for his 
 thirty thousand pounds. 
 
 He brought these tidings to his wife's boudoir one morning 
 early in the new year. 
 
 " I knew you'd be glad to hear it, Maude," he said ; " and 
 now you see that it was a very fine thing for me to get into
 
 Tlie lioac! to liuin. 197 
 
 your father's Lvisincss. So you need not have been uneasy 
 about the matter, my darUng." 
 
 Mrs. Tredethlyn ht'ted herself upon tiptoe, and pursed up the 
 rosiest lips in Christendom. A kiss, transient as the passing 
 tlutter of ahutterlly's wing, alighted somewhere amid the thickets 
 of the Cornishman's beard. 
 
 " You dear, good old Francis ! That is the pleasantest news I 
 ever heard, except " 
 
 " Except what, darhng ?" 
 
 " The news that papa brought me home a year ago, when a 
 generous friend stepped in between him and ruin." 
 
 Francis Tredethlyn blushed like a schoolgirl. 
 
 "Oh, Frank, if I should ever forget that day!" said Maude, 
 in a low voice, that had something of sadness in its tone. 
 
 Was she thinking that there had been occasions since her 
 marriage when she had almost forgotten how much she owed to 
 the devotion of her lover, — occasions on which some little social 
 fidlure — some small omission or commission — some petty sin 
 against the laws of the Belgravians and Tyburnians, nad been 
 large enough to blot out all memory of her husband's goodness P 
 IIow can you remember that a man has a noble heart, when, 
 for want of the ordinary tact by which the well-bred navigators 
 steer their barks amid the troubled waters of society, he blurts 
 out some luilucky allusion which paralj^zes the conversational 
 powers of an entire dinner-table, and brings blight and ruin 
 down upon an assemblage which has fairly promised to be a 
 success ? Or how can you be expected to appreciate the gene- 
 rous spirit of a being whose ungainly elbow has just tilted half- 
 aodozen pdites timbales de gihier into the ruby-velvet lap of 
 your most imj^ortaut gnest ? 
 
 There were times when Maude was forgetful of everything 
 except her husband's genial good-nature and unfaiUng devotion. 
 There were other times when her heart sank within her as she 
 saw his candid face beaming at her from the remote end of a 
 long dinner-table, and heai-d his sonorous laugh pealing loud 
 and long above the hushed accents of Belgravia. 
 
 He was her slave. If she loved him — and surely it was im- 
 possible that she could accej^t so much idolatiy, and render no 
 small tribute of affection in return — her love for him was pretty 
 much of the same quahty as that which she bestowed on her 
 favourite Skye terrier. 
 
 He was such a dear, devoted creature — so sensible, so obedient; 
 and if he did not quite stand up in a corner to beg, with a bit of 
 bread upon his nose, it was only because he was not required to 
 do so. He was the best of creatures — a big, amiable Newfound- 
 land, ready to lie down in the dirt to be trodden npou by his 
 mistress's pretty slipper, or to Uy at the throat of the foe who
 
 198 Only a Clod. 
 
 dared to assail her. He -was a faitliful slave and defender, anj 
 it was very jileasant to know that he was always at hand — to 
 be patted on the head now and then when he was specially good 
 — to be a little ne.olected when liis mistress was absorbed hy the 
 agreeable distractions of society^to be blnshed for, and even 
 disowned now and then, when his big awkward paws went ruth- 
 lessly trampling upon some of the choicest flowers in the conven- 
 tional flower-garden. 
 
 He was her slave — her own. He loved her with an idolatrous 
 devotion wliich she could rarely think of -without smiling at his 
 exaggerated estimate of her charms and graces. He was hers — 
 80 entirely that no possibility of losing him ever entered into her 
 mind. He was hers, and we are apt to be just a little indifferent 
 about the possessions we hold most securely. It had become a 
 matter of course that her hnsband should scatter all the trea- 
 sures of his affection at her feet, and hold himself richly repaid 
 by any waif or stray of tenderness she might choose to bestow 
 upon him. She had no uneasiness about him, — none of those 
 sharp twinges of jealousy — those chilling pangs of doubt — those 
 foolish and morbid fears, which are apt to disturb the peace of 
 even the ha^^piest wife. She knew that he had loved her from 
 the very hour of their first meeting, against his will, in despite 
 of his better reason. She knew that ho had been content to 
 stand afar and worship her in utter hopelessness ; and having 
 now rewarded his fidelity, she fancied that she had no more to 
 do, except to receive his idolatry, and smile upon him now and 
 then when it pleased her to be gracious. 
 
 There was neither jiride nor presumption in her nature ; but 
 she had hved all her hfe in one narrow circle, and she could not 
 help being xmconsciously patronizing in her treatment of the 
 man who had taken her Majesty's shilling, and blacked Harcourt 
 Lowther's boots. 
 
 Francis Tredethlyn might perhaps have been entirely satisfied 
 by brightly i>atronizing smiles, and gentle pattings on the head, 
 if he had not been blessed with a friend and adviser, always at 
 his elbow, always ready to step in with an intellectual lantern 
 held gracefully aloft, and a mocking finger pointed, when the 
 simple Corniehman's perception failed to show him the iincom- 
 fortable side of the subject. 
 
 "What a darhng she is!" exclaimed Mr. Tredethlyn, as he 
 left the house with Harcourt Lowther, after Llaude had parted 
 from him on the staircase all in a flutter of silk and lace, and 
 •with a feathery bush of golden hair framed in the last Parisian 
 absurdity in the way of bonnets. 
 
 " Mrs. Tredethlyn is just the sort of wife for a man of the 
 world," Harcourt answered, with a slight shrug of his well- 
 Bhaped shoulders. " Cut I can't help fancying sometimes that
 
 Tlie Boad to Buin. 199 
 
 you're too good a fellow to be throvm away npon the loveliest 
 creature wlio ever isolated herself from the rest of the human 
 race in the remote centre of a continent of moire antique. Of 
 course I can't for a moment deny that you are the most fortu- 
 nate of created beings — Tnit — there is always a ' but,' you know, 
 even if one has a beautiful wife and thii-ty thousand a year. I 
 suppose it is the habit of my mind to quarrel with perfection. 
 I tliink if I were a fresh-hearted, simple-minded fellow like you, 
 Tredethlyn, I should yearn for something nearer and dearer \JI) 
 me than a fashionable wife." 
 
 The finger of Mephistophelcs, always pointing, generally con- 
 trived to touch a sore place. Francis Tredethlyn, even when he 
 had been happiest in tlie sunlight of Maude's smiles, had felt a 
 vague sense of that one bitter truth. She was no nearer to him 
 than of old. The impassable gulf still yawned between them, not 
 to be bridged over by pretty little coui-tesies or patronizing smiles. 
 
 But in spite of all inward misgi%dngs, Mr. Tredethlyn turned 
 upon his friend, and hotly denied the truth of that gentleman's 
 observations. 
 
 Harcourt Lowther was quite resigned to a little fiery contra- 
 diction of this kind. The arrow went home to the mark it had 
 been shot at, and rankled there. Such discussions were very 
 frequent between the two men ; and however firmly Francis 
 might argue with his friend in the daytime, he was apt to lib 
 awake in the dead of the night, Hke false cousin Amy in the 
 poem, when the rain was pattering on the roofs of the palatial 
 district, and wonder, with a dull, aching pain in his heart, 
 whether Harcourt Lowther was right after all ; and Maude — 
 Bunny-haired, beautiful, frivolous Maude — would never be any 
 nearer and dearer to him than she was now. 
 
 In the meantime, Mr. Lowther, who sowed the seeds of tho 
 disease, was always ready with the remedy; and tho remedy 
 was — dissipation. 
 
 Harcourt Lowther, in whose few years of legal study had 
 been crammed the vicious experiences of a lifetime, was eager to 
 
 fterform tho promise he had made to Francis Tredethlyn somo 
 wo years before, when the young man first received tho tidings 
 of his uncle Oliver's bequest. 
 
 " T told you I'd show you life, dear boy," ho said ; " and I 
 mean to keep my word. While Mrs. Tredcthljoi amuses herself 
 with the usual social treadmill business — perpetually moving 
 on, aiid never getting any farther — you and I will see a world 
 in which life is worth living." 
 
 Thus it was that Francis Tredethljm was lured away from a 
 home in which he was taught to believe himself unappreciated, 
 and introduced for the first time within tho unholy precincts of 
 the kingdom of Bohemia.
 
 200 Onlij a Clod. 
 
 He entered the mj'stcrious regions at first very reluctantly. 
 He had the ignorant rustic's notion of Vice, and fancied that 
 Bhe would show herself in naked hideousness; but he found her 
 with her natural face hidden under a plaster mask modelled 
 from the fair countenance of Virtue. It was something of a 
 caricature, perhaps ; for all imitations are so apt to become ex- 
 aggerations. He found that Bohemia was a kind of Belgravia 
 in electro-plate. There were the same dresses and properties, 
 only a little tarnished and faded ; the same effects, always con- 
 siderably overdone; the same jargon, but louder and coarser. 
 Life in iBohemia seemed like a Trans23ontine version of a West- 
 end drama, with cheaper scenery and actors, and a more up- 
 roarious audience. 
 
 This was the kingdom with whose inner mysteries Harcourt 
 Lowther affected a fashionable familiarity. He presented his 
 wealthy friend to the ])otentates of the kingdom, and carried 
 him hither and thither to worship at numerous temples, whose 
 distinguishing features were the flare of gas-lamps, and the 
 popping of champagne corks, branded with the obscurest names 
 in the catalogue of wine-growers, and paid for at the highest 
 rate kno^vn in the London market. 
 
 Perhaps in all his wanderings in the darksome wilderness 
 which his Mentor called London life, Francis Tredethlyn's worst 
 sin was the perpetual "standing" of spurious sj^arkling wines, 
 and the waste of a good deal of money lost at unUmited loo, oi 
 blind hookey, as the case might be. He had liigh animal spirits 
 and thirty thoiisand a year, which common report exaggerated 
 into sixty thousand, and which the more imaginative denizens 
 of Bohemia multiplied into fabulous and incalculable riches ; so 
 that he mot with a very cordial welcome from the magnates of 
 the land. But the descent of Avernus, however easy it may be, 
 is a gradual sloj^e, and not a precii^itous mountain- side, down 
 which a man can be fkmg headlong by one push from a friendly 
 hand. Francis Tredethlyn yawned in the faces of the brightest 
 stars in the Bohemian hemisphere. His frank nature revolted 
 against the shallow falsehoods around and about him. The 
 glare of the gas seemed to have no brilUancy : the bloom upon 
 the women's faces was only so much vermilion and crimson-lake 
 bought at the perfumer's shop, and ghastly to look at in a side- 
 light. The laughter had the false ring of si^urious coin; the 
 music was out of tune. In all this httle world there was no 
 element of spontaneity ; except perhaps in the uproarious gaiety 
 of some boyish countr}- squire making a railroad journey through 
 Bome fine old property that had been kept sacred and unbroken 
 for half-a-dozcn centuries, to be squandered on a handful of pearls 
 to melt in Cleopatra's wine, or expended on the soaps and per- 
 fumeries of a modern Lamia.
 
 The Bond to Buin. 201 
 
 There was neither bloom nor freshness on anything except on 
 the wings of a few pigeons newly lured into the haunts of the 
 vulture tribe. Everything else was false, and withered, and 
 faded. The smiles of the women, the friendship of the men, 
 were as sjiurious as the rhubarb chami^agnes and gooseljcrry 
 Moselles, and were bought and sold like them. Mephistophelea 
 may lead his pupU to the Brocken, but he cannot compel the 
 young man to enjoy himself amongst the wicked revellers ; nor 
 can he altogether prevent the neophyte from perceiving such 
 small inconvenances as occasional red mice hoj^ping out of the 
 mouths of otherwise charming young damsels. 
 
 Harcourt Lowther found it very hard work to keep Francis 
 Tredethlyn amused, night after night, ia remote and unap- 
 proachable regions, whose very names were only to be spoken in 
 hushed accents over the fourth bottle of Chamber tin or Clos 
 Vougeot at a bachelor's dessert. Poor Frank would rather have 
 been dancing attendance upon his wfe, and tramphng on th<? 
 silken trains of stern matrons and dowagers at the dullest 
 "Wednesday," or " Tuesday," or " Saturday," in all the stuccoed 
 mansions in which Maude's pretty face and pleasant manners, 
 and liis own good old Cornish name and comfortable income, had 
 secured his footing. He was very good-natured, and did not 
 care how much bad wuie he was called ujDon to pay for. He 
 could lose a heavy sum at blind hookey without the faintest 
 contraction of his black eyebrows, or the smallest depression of 
 his lower jaw. But he did not enjoy himself. 
 
 He did not enjoy himself — and yet somehow or other he went 
 again and again to the same temples, always under convoy of 
 liis friend Harcourt, and generally very firmly resolved that 
 each visit should be the last. But there was always some special 
 reason for another visit — an appointment with some elegant 
 acquaintance of the vulture tribe, who wanted Itis revenge at 
 blind hookey; or a little dinner to be given at the Star and 
 Garter, in honour of some beautiful Free-Lance, whose chief 
 fascinations were the smoking of tissue-paper cigarettes and a 
 vivacious disregard of Lindley Murray. There was always some 
 engagement of this kind ; aud as it happened somehow that 
 Francis Tredethlyn generally found himself pledged to act as 
 paymaster, it would of course have been very unmanly to draw 
 back. If he could have sent his friend Lowther and a blank 
 cheque as a substitute for his own presence, he would gladly 
 have done so ; but his friend Lowther took care to make that 
 impossible. So the matter always ended by Mr. Tredeth.l^ a 
 finding himself, at some time on the wrong side of midnight 
 seated at the head of a glittering dinner-table ; with the ruins 
 of an expensive dessert and the faces of his guests only dimly 
 vibible athwart a thick and atiiiing vapour of cigar Bmoke;
 
 202 Onhj a Clod. 
 
 while the clamour of strident laughter mingled with the occa* 
 sional chinking and clattering of glass, as some applauding 
 hand thumped its owner's approval of the florid sentiments in 
 an eloquent postprandial oration. 
 
 It is impossible to be perpetually paying for sparkling mnes 
 without occasionally drinking a little too freely of their bub- 
 bling vintage. Francis Trcdethlyn, imder the influence of 
 unlimited Moet or Cliqxiot, found the Bohemians a much plea- 
 santer kind of people than when he contemplated them in the 
 cold grey morning light of sobriety. Harcourt Lowther took 
 care that his friend should pretty generally look at things 
 through a rose-tinted medium engendered of the juice of the 
 grape ; for he found that it was by this means alone that he 
 could retain his hold upon his pupil. 
 
 Go where he might, the Comishman carried his wife's image 
 in his heart, and he would have left the most bi-illiant assemblage 
 in Bohemia fur a quiet tete-a-tete in Maude's boudoir ; if his 
 friend Harcourt had not carefully impressed upon him that his 
 entrance into that pretty little chamber was an intrusion only 
 tolerated by Mrs. Tredethlyn's good nature. 
 
 There is no need to enter very minutely upon the details of 
 the work which Harcourt Lowther was doing. The art of 
 ruining a well-disposed young man is not a very difficult one ; 
 but Mr. Lowther had reduced the art into a science. His great 
 effects were not the sublime hazards of genius, but the cal- 
 culated, results of a carefully studied process. So many nights 
 in a tainted atmosphere ; so many Richmond and Greenmch 
 dinners ; so many subtle insinuations of Maude's indifference, 
 must produce such and such an effect. Mr. Lowther disj^layed 
 none of that impolitic and vulgar haste with which a meaner 
 man might ruin his friend. He never humed his work by so 
 much as a single step taken before its time. But he never 
 wavered, or relented, or turned aside even for one moment from 
 the course which he had mapped out for himself. So, in the 
 course of that London season, it became quite a common thing 
 for a street hansom to bring Mr. Tredethlyn to the gigantic 
 stuccoed mansion which he called his own in the early situ- 
 hght of a spring morning. There were even times when the 
 returning wanderer found it no easy matter to open a door 
 with a patent latch-key, which would go meandering hoi^elessly 
 over the panel of the door, scratching all manner of eccentric 
 circles and parabolas on the varnish, instead of finding its way 
 into the key-hole. There was one awful night, on which 
 Maude, coming home from some very late assembly, was 
 Btuinbled against by a tijosy man who was groping his way up 
 the great stone staircase, and found, to her unutterable horror, 
 that the tipsy man — who apologized profusely for tearing half-
 
 A Chilling Beconciliation. 203 
 
 a-df)zcn yards of MecHin from the hem of her skirt, declaring 
 that he was " vcr' sorr', 'pen m' wor'; b't y' see, m' dea' 
 Maurr, if y' w'U wear dress s' long, mussn' be s'prise get torr t' 
 piecess" — was her husband. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 A CHILLING BECONCILIATION. 
 
 That unfortunate meeting on the stairs made a very deep im- 
 pression nj^on Maude Tredcthlyn. She had never before en- 
 countered drunkenness ; and it was one of those sins which 
 seemed to her to belong to a region of outer darkness, in which 
 decent peojole had no place. Her father had always been aa 
 sober as an anchorite ; her father's guests were gentlemen. 
 She had heard, now and then, in the course of her life at the 
 Cedars, of a drunken gardener dismissed with ignominy from 
 the gardens — a drunken groom degraded from his rank in the 
 stables. But Francis, her husband, — that he should be thick 
 of speech and unsteady of foot under the influence of strong 
 drink ! — it seemed almost too horrible for bchef. She lay 
 awake in the morning sunlight, thinking of Francis Trcdeth- 
 lyn's misdemeanoiir. 
 
 " And just as I fancied that I was beginning to love him ! " 
 Bhe thought, regretfully. Would they meet at breakfast ? she 
 •wondered. And if they did meet, what would Francis say to 
 her? A sickly dread of that meeting took possession of her 
 mind. If he apologized, how was she to answer him ? Would 
 it be possibl e for her to conceal her disgust ? 
 
 " Let me remember his goodness to my father," she mur- 
 mured. " Oh, can I ever be so base as to forget that P " 
 
 The possible meeting at the breakfast-table was very easily 
 avoided. Mrs. Tredethlyn had a headache, and took her strong 
 green tea and dry toast in the pretty little boudoir, with tho 
 pink draperies and Parian statuettes, the satin-wood cabinets 
 and bookcases, the Persian carpets and polar-bear-skin rugs, 
 the marquetcrie jardinieres, and toy Swiss-cottage birdcages, 
 selected by Harcourt Lowther. It was rather an enervating 
 little boudoir, eminently adapted for the perusal of French 
 novels, and the neglect of all the duties of life. Mrs. Tredeth- 
 lyn breakfasted in this room; so there was no uncomfortable 
 meeting between the husband and wife. Francis left the house 
 before noon, in order to keep an appointment with his friend 
 Mr. Lowther. Thay were going together to the Doncaster 
 epring meeting, where Bohemianism would be rampant, and 
 were to be away for some days. Poor Francis ra.n into the 
 library, while hia friend waited for him, and scribbled a hasty
 
 201 Only a CM. 
 
 note to his wife, full of penitence and self-liumiliation. He 
 gave the missive tj Mrs. Trcdetlilyn's maid at the foot of the 
 Btairs, while Harcourt was standing in a httle room opening 
 out of the hall, arranging the strap of a race-glass across hia 
 Hght overcoat. Mr. Tredcthlyn went back to the library in 
 search of a railway rug which he had flung off his arm when 
 he sat down to write the letter ; and during his brief absence 
 there was a flutter of silk in the hall, and a httle conference 
 between Mr. Lowther and the Abigail. 
 
 Half an hour afterwards, when the two men were walking up 
 and down the platform at the King's Cross station, with cigars 
 in their mouths, Mr. Lowther handed his friend the identical 
 letter which Francis had entrusted to his wife's maid. 
 
 " You can post that to its address if you Hke, dear boy ; but 
 I think I should hght my cigar with it. The seal is unbroken, 
 you see ; but I fancy I can make a tolerable guess at the con- 
 tents of the epistle. Dear old Frank, if you want to preserve 
 the merest semblance of manhood, the poorest remnant of in- 
 dependence, never beg your wife's pardon." 
 
 Of course Mr. Tredethlyn was very angry. Harcourt Low- 
 ther was prepared to encounter a given amount of resistance. 
 The wave may lash and beat itself against the quiet breast 
 of the rock ; and the rock, secure in its supremacy, has only 
 to stand still until that Y>oor worn-out wave crawls meekly 
 to the stony bosom, a conquered and a placid thing. Mr. 
 Lowther had his work to do, and he took his own time about 
 doing it. The apologetic httle epistle was not sent to Mrs. 
 Tredethlyn ; and at an uproarious after-dinner assemblage at 
 the Eeindeer, Francis abandoned such frivolous stuff as spark- 
 hng Moselles and Burgundies for fierce hbations of brandy 
 punch. He made a tremendous book for all manner of events, 
 always under the advice of his friend ; indeed, its images con- 
 tained many rather heavy engagements -svith Mr. Lowther him- 
 self, who affected extreme simplicity amongst the magnates of 
 the turf, but who was nevertheless emmently respected by those 
 gentlemen, as being of the deep and dangerous class — a dark 
 horse, secretly exercised on lonely commons at weird hours of 
 the early morning, and winning with a rush when he was least 
 expected to do so. 
 
 While Francis was seeing hfe through the medium provided 
 for him by his experienced adviser, Maude enjoyed herself after 
 her own fashion. She had been very happy at Twickenham ; 
 but she had never until now been entirely her own mistress, 
 with unUmited credit and unlimited ready money, and all the 
 privileges of a matron. At the Cedars she had been always 
 more or less imder her father's direction. She had acted very
 
 A Cliilling Bcconciliation. 1^05 
 
 much as slie iilcascd upon all occasions ; but she had made a point 
 of consiilting him aboiit the smallest step in her simple lite ; a 
 ronnd of calls, a day's shopping, a little musical gathering after 
 a dinner-j^arty, the amoiint of a subscription to a charity, — even 
 the colour of a dress. 
 
 But now the young matron shook off even the gentle fettera 
 which had held the girl, and sj^read her pinions for a bolder 
 flight. A much wider world had opened itself to the merchant's 
 daughter since her marriage. The story of Mr. Tredethlyn's 
 fortune— always multiplied by the Hberal tongue of rumour — 
 »vas one of the most popular topics amongst the denizens of the 
 new district in which Mr. Tredethlyn's house was situated. 
 None of these West-end people knew that Lionel Hillary's 
 position had ever endured a dreadful crisis of uncertainty and 
 terror. The marriage between Maude and Francis was sup- 
 posed to be one of those subhme imions in which wealth is 
 vmited to wealth — the alliance of a Miss Eothschild with a 
 Master Lafitte — a grand commercial combination for the con- 
 sohdation of capital. 
 
 So Maude took her place as one of the most important novel- 
 ties of the ciirrent year. She gave great receptions in her three 
 drawing-rooms, whose gorgeous decorations were just a little 
 too much like the velvet and ormolu magnificence of a public 
 room at a gigantic hotel. She organized dinner-parties, and 
 revised and corrected a menu, with the savoir /aire of a Brillat 
 Savarin in petticoats. Always accustomed to a reckless expen- 
 diture, she had no idea of the necessity for some regulation in 
 the expenses of a large household. Left a great deal to herself, 
 and frequently at a loss for occupation, she often spent her hus- 
 band's money from sheer desire for amusement. After that 
 unlucky encounter on the stairs, she resigned herself entirely to 
 her position as a fashionable wife. Her husband went his way 
 unmolested, and she went hers. She was tolerably hajipy, for 
 the hfe was a very pleasant one to live ; but oh, what a vain, 
 empty, profitless existence to look back upon ! — the success of a 
 dinner, the tiiumph of an audacious todette, the only landmarks 
 on a great flat of frivolity. But Mrs. Tredethlyn was not at 
 the age in which people are given to looking back; she was 
 rich, beautiful, accomplished, agreeable, with that dash of reck- 
 lessness in her gaiety wliich makes a woman such an acquisi- 
 tion in a drawing-room, and the fumes of the incense which 
 her admirers burned before her were just a little intoxicating. 
 The T\\nckonham loungers, who had worshipped her mutely 
 and reverently from afar off', found themselves distanced now by 
 bolder adorers, and, conversing amongst themselves u^on tha 
 staircases and on the outer edges of crowded drawing-rooms in 
 th^ stuccoed district, shook their heads and pulled their whig-
 
 206 Only a Clod. 
 
 kers, gravely opining that Mrs. Ti-edethlyn was "going tha 
 pace." 
 
 Itlaude had been Francis Tredethlyn's \vife more than six 
 months, and the London season was at its fullest height, when 
 an accidental meeting with JuUa Desmond brought about tliat 
 young lady's restoration to her old position of confidante and 
 companion to the pampered daughter of her dead father's friend. 
 The two women met in the Pantheon ; and it was a ten-ible 
 fihock to Maude to see her old companion dawdling listlessly 
 before a stall of toys, dressed in a shabby black silk and a 
 doubtful bonnet, and attended by two ungainly gii-ls in short 
 petticoats and scarlet stockings. 
 
 The proud spirit of the Desmonds had been crushed by the 
 iron hand of necessity. In these perpetual duels between pride 
 and poverty, the result seems only a question of time. Poverty 
 must have the best of it, imlcss, indeed, death steps between the 
 combatants to give poor pride a doubtful victory. Juha Des- 
 mond had carried her pride and anger away from the luxu- 
 rious idleness of the Cedars, to nurse them in a London lodging. 
 The only money she had in the world was a ten-pound note, 
 left out of a sum which the liberal merchant had given her for 
 the payment of a dressmaker's bill. She had the jewels given 
 her by Francis Tredethlyn — the diamonds wliich she had thrown 
 at his feet in the little study at the Cedars, on the night of the 
 amateur theatricals — but which the sober reflections of the 
 following morning had prompted her to retain amongst her 
 possessions. She had these, and upon these she might have 
 raised a very considerable sum of money. But the angry Julia 
 had no desire to raise money. A Hfe of idleness in a London 
 lodging was the very last existence to suit her energetic nature. 
 She inserted an advertisement in the " Times " upon the very 
 day after her departure from Twickenham, and she went on ad- 
 vertising until she succeeded in getting a situation as governess 
 in a gentleman's family. But ah ! then came the bitterest of 
 all her trials. She fancied that her life, wherever she went, 
 would be more or less like her hfe at the Cedars. There would 
 be a great deal more work, perhaps, there might be less luxury, 
 less gaiety, but it would be the same Icind of life : while on any 
 day the lucky chance might arise, and the beauty of the Des- 
 monds might win her some great prize in the matrimonial 
 lottery. 
 
 Alas for Juha's inexperienced notions of a governess's exist- 
 ence ! She found herself the drudge of an exacting mistress, 
 with every hour of her di-eary life mapped out and allotted for 
 Iter, with less share in the social pleasures of the house she lived 
 in than if she had been the kitchen-maid, and with two small 
 tyrants in crinkled hair and holland pinafores always on the
 
 A CJiillmr/ Eeconciliation. 207 
 
 watch to detect ter shortcomings, and to twist them into ex- 
 cuses for their own. The dreadful monotony of her life would 
 alone have made it odious ; but Julia had " a sorrow's crown of 
 sorrow " perpetually pressing on her tortured brow. She had 
 the recollection of hajipier things — the pleasant idleness at the 
 Cedars, the position of Francis Trcdethlyn's aliianced wife. 
 And she had given up this position in one moment of ungovern- 
 able rage and jealousy. She had suffered one mad impulse of 
 her proud nature to undo the slow work of months. Miss Des- 
 mond had ample leisure for the contemplation of her folly during 
 the long winter evenings which she spent in a third-floor Bitting- 
 room at Bayswatcr, hearing unfiling children gi-ind hopelessly 
 at a German grammar by the light of two gutteritig tallow- 
 candles. She did contemplate her folly, while the guttural 
 verbs and declensions fell with a droning noise on her unlistening 
 cars ; but the rage which swelled her bosom was against Maude 
 Hillary, and Maude alone. 
 
 She saw Maude's carriage in the Park sometimes, while she 
 took her allotted walk -with the unwilling children, who might 
 have been pleasant cliildren enough, perhaps, if they had not 
 been weighed down by intellectual exercises compared to which 
 the enforced physical labours of Toulon would have seemed light 
 and agreeable. JuUa saw her old companion, and her mind 
 •went back to the sunny afternoons on the lawn at Twickenham ; 
 and the sight of the pretty face and golden hair, the Skye 
 terriers and neatly appointed equipage, stin-ed the fire of hatred 
 always burning in her breast, until she could almost have shaken 
 her small fist at the merchant's daughter. 
 
 She saw the announcement of Maude's maiTiage in the 
 " Times," and hated her still more. She saw Maude in the 
 Park, after her marriage, in a more splendid equijiage than tho 
 landau fi-om the Cedars, and she hated her even more and more. 
 She set her teeth together, and drew back under the shadow of 
 the trees to watch Francis Trcdethlyn's Avife drive by. 
 
 " She has cheated me out of it all," she thought ; " it wotdd 
 all have been mine but for her treachery." 
 
 Then one bright and sunny afternoon in early May the two 
 women met, — Juli-a a wan shadow of her former self, worn out 
 with hard work, depressed by the monotony of her hfe, indif- 
 ferent as to her dress and appearance ; Claude a beaming 
 creature in gauzy mauve musUn, with a Watteau skirt, all 
 a-fiutter with ribands, and a voluminous train sweeping tho 
 dust behind her. 
 
 " Dear JuUa " 
 
 " Maude— Mrs. Tredethlyn ! " 
 
 Miss Desmond turned as pale as death. The encounter had 
 oome upon her very suddenly, and she was neither physically
 
 208 Only a Clod. 
 
 nor montally aljle to bear it. She set her teeth and tried to 
 flash the old defiance from her dark eyes. But the light of that 
 once fierj' glance died out hke the flame of a candle which burns 
 feebly in the glare of the morning sun. Julia was qviite worn 
 out by the life she had been leading for the last year and a half. 
 The pride of a Somerset might give way beneath a long course 
 of ovonvork and indifierent diet. 
 
 After that first exclamation of surprise she drew herself to 
 her fullest height, and tried to pass Mrs. Trcdethlyn with a 
 bow, and a faint, cold smile of recognition, but Maude stojDped 
 her. 
 
 " Dearest Julia, ifyoti knew how anxious and unhappy I have 
 been about you, I'm sure you would not want to pass me by. 
 Do lot us be friends. The past is forgotten, isn't it ? Yes, I'm 
 sure it is. Will you come up-stairs to the picture-gallery? 
 that's always a nice sohtary place where one can talk. Are 
 those young ladies with you ? What very nice little girls ! 
 Miss Desmond and I are going up-stairs, dear, to have a chat. 
 Will you come with us ? " 
 
 The elder of Julia's pupils, to whom this question was ad- 
 dressed, replied only by a stony glare. She was petrified by 
 the audacity of this smiling creature in mauve who dared to 
 take possession of her governess. The youthful mind, soured 
 by a long course of German declensions, is apt to contemplate 
 everj'thing in a gloomy aspect. 
 
 Maude and Julia went past poor Haydon's big cold picture, 
 and made their way to a small room which was quite empty. 
 Julia's face had a stern darkness upon it, wliich might have 
 frightened any one less hopeful than Maude ; but that young 
 lady had been surrounded by an atmosphere of love from her 
 cradle upwards, and was entirely unacquainted with the diag- 
 nosis of hatred. She despatched the children to look at the 
 pictures in the larger rooms, and then laying her hand caress- 
 ingly upon Miss Desmond's arm, she said, very earnestly, — 
 
 " Dearest JuHa, I hope you have forgiven me?" 
 
 Miss Desmond locked her hps, and stood for seme momenta 
 with her face quite fixed, staring at vacancy. There were 
 hollow rings round the dark eyes now, and the oval cheeks 
 had lost their smooth outline. Perpetual drudgery and friend- 
 less solitude had brought Juha very low ; but the Desmond 
 pride still struggled for the mastery over its grim assailant^ 
 jiecessity. 
 
 " I don't know that I have anything to forgive," said she. 
 After an ominous pause; "Mr. Tredethlyn was free to transfer 
 his afi"ections as often as he chose. I was very glad to read of 
 your marriage, for it was at least satisfactoiy to find that he 
 Lad not changed his mind a second time, I do not blame any
 
 A 'CliUling ReconciUation. 209 
 
 one but myself, Mrs. Tredethlyn. I should have been wiser 
 
 than to entrust ray happmess to a man who " 
 
 Miss Desmond stopped abrnptly. She made a long pause, 
 during which she contemplated Maude, almost as if she had 
 been looking for some tender spot ui which to i:)lant her dagger. 
 " I must not forget that he is your husband, and I do not 
 wish to say anything humiliating to you ; but I cannot forget 
 that he is not a gentleman. No gentleman would have treated 
 any woman as Mr. Tredethlyn treated me." 
 
 If Julia's conscience had had a voice, it might perhaps have 
 chimed in with an awkward question here : " And would any 
 lady have sjoread a net to catch a rich husband, Juha, trading 
 on the generosity of his simple iaat;are, and angling for the for- 
 tune of a man whose heart was obviously given to another? " 
 
 Mrs. Tredethlyn's bright face crimsoned, and her lower lip 
 fell a little. It is not to be sujDposed that she could be very 
 fond of her husband ; but she felt any allusion to his short- 
 comings almost as keenly as if he had been the incarnation of 
 her girlish dreams. AVhatever he was, he was hers, and she 
 was responsible for him. 
 
 " If generosity of heart could make a gentleman, Julia," she 
 said, almost entreatingly, " I think Francis would be the first of 
 gentlemen." 
 
 Miss Desmond did not condescend to reply to this obser- 
 vation. 
 
 " Oh, Julia," Mrs. Tredethlyn said, after another little pause, 
 " how can you be so unkind and unforgivmg ? Have you for- 
 gotten how happy we used to be together long ago at the 
 Cedars ? If — if I thought you were pleasantly circumstanced 
 now, I would not worry you with any proffers of friendship ; 
 but somehow I cannot think that you are happy. Dea': Julia, 
 forgive me for the past, and trust me once more." 
 
 The stony look in Miss Desmond's face did not melt away 
 under the influence of Maude's tenderness ; but presently, with 
 an almost awful suddenness, she sank upon the nearest chair, 
 dropped her face iipon her clasped hands, and burst into a 
 passion of tears — convulsive sobs that shook her with their 
 hysterical force. The strong will of the Desmonds asserted 
 itself to the very last, for this j^assionate outburst was almost 
 noiseless. The slender frame writhed and trembled, the chest 
 heaved, the small hands were clenched convulsively, but there 
 was no vulgar outcry. Miss Desmond recovered herself almost. 
 as suddenly as she had given way to her emotion, and drew up 
 her bead proudly, though her face was blotted with tears. 
 
 "Heavtn help me!" she exclaimed; "what a poor weak 
 wretch I am ! " 
 "You will let me be your friend again, won't you, Julia? 
 

 
 210 Only a Clod. 
 
 You'll come and live with me once more? You need see very 
 little of Mr. Tredetlilj'n, if you dislike liim. He and I are quite 
 fasliionable people, I assure you, and he is very seldom at home. 
 I shall he so glad to have you with me. _ I go a great deal into 
 society, and I know you like society, JuHa. Come, dear, let us 
 be friends again, just as we used to be in the dear old times." 
 
 Maude gave a little sigh — she was apt now and then to tliink 
 sentimentally of that remote period of her existence, some four 
 or five years back, when she had beheved that the happiest fate 
 Heaven could award her would be a union vdth Harcourt 
 Lowther. Even now, though she had schooled herself to think 
 of him coldly, though she tried very hard not to think of him 
 at all, the memory of the old time would come Ijack ; the 
 picture of the home that might have been — the little cottage in 
 St. John's Wood — the long quiet evenings, made delightful by 
 genial companionship — the pleasant hours devoted to art — the 
 dear old concertante duets by Mozart and Beethoven — the 
 " two souls with but a single thought, two hearts that beat as 
 one," — the images of these things were apt to arise suddenly 
 before her, in the midst of her frivolous pleasure in her fine 
 dresses, and gorgeous house, and admiring friends. 
 
 " Dear Julia," she said, winding one arm caressingly about 
 the Irish girl, " you will come, won't you ? " 
 
 " Yes," Miss Desmond answered, " I will come if you want 
 me. But I must come upon a new footing. This time I must 
 work for my wages. I have been a hired slave ever since I left 
 your father's house. I will be your servant, Mrs. Tredethlyn, 
 if you choose to hire me." 
 
 " JuUa, you \vill be my friend, just as you used to be." 
 
 " No," cried Miss Desmond, with a resolute gesture of her 
 hand, " no ; if you want a companion to keep your keys and 
 attend to your lapdogs, to fijiish fancy-work that you have 
 begun and grown tired of, to read French novels to you when 
 you want to be read to sleep, to write your letters of invitation, 
 to take the bass in your duets, or carry an occasional message 
 to your milliner, — if you want a person of this kind, I am quite 
 wilUng to be that person." 
 
 " JuUa ! " 
 
 " I will come to you on those terms, or not at all." 
 
 " You shall come to me on any terms you please, so long ae 
 you come." 
 
 " Very well, then, I wiU come. My present employer gives 
 me sixty guineas a year, and makes me work harder than a 
 pack-horse. You can give me the same money, if you think my 
 services worth so much. I will make arrangements for leaving 
 my present situation. A housemaid left the other day, and I 
 feeUeve she gave her mistress a month's notice — I suppose the
 
 Seeing a Ghost. 211 
 
 same rule will hold good witli me : I will come to you at tho 
 end of that time, unless you change your mind in the mean- 
 while." 
 
 "I shall not change stj mind; I only wish you could come 
 to me to-day. Take my card, dear, and give me yours." 
 
 " I have no cards," answered Miss Desmond. " I have 
 neither name nor place in the world, and have no need of 
 visiting-cards." 
 
 She wrote her address upon the back of an envelope, and 
 gave it to Mrs. Tredethlyn. To the last her manner was cold 
 and ungracious : but Maude parted from her happy in the idea 
 that she had rescued her old companion from a life of drudgeiy. 
 
 " Why should I not be her hired slave ? I shall still have the 
 right to hate her," thought Miss Desmond, as she went back 
 to Bayswater with her gloomy charges. 
 
 CHAPTER XXYII. 
 
 SEEING A GHOST. 
 
 Under the perpetual influence of his friend and master, Har- 
 court Lowther, Mr. Tredethlyn's days and nights were so fully 
 occupied that he had very little leisure_ for serious thought. 
 Day by day the patient master taught his deadly lesson ; day 
 by day the luckless pupil took his teacher's precepts more 
 deeply to heart. The simple, credulous nature was as malleable 
 as clay under the practised hand of the modeller, and took any 
 shape Mr. Lowther chose to give it. 
 
 Francis was fully impressed with the idea that his money had 
 purchased a lovely wife whose heart could never be given to 
 him. AH that fair fabric of hopes and dreams which had been 
 lais when he married Maude Hillaiy had been slowly but surely 
 undermined, and there was nothing left of its brightness but 
 the memory that it once had been. He thought of those foolish 
 hopes now with anger and bitterness. Could he at any time 
 have been so mad, so blind, so besotted, as to believe that this 
 beautiful creature, perpetually floating in an atmosphere of 
 frivolity and adulation, would ever fold her wings to nestle ten- 
 derly in his rude breast ? Othello, recalled to the sense of hia 
 declining years and grimy visage by the friendly bluntness of 
 lago, could scarcely have thought moi'^ bitterly of his lovely 
 Venetian bride than Francis thought of Maude after six_ months' 
 daily association with his old master. But if the poison was 
 quick to do its deadly work, the antidote was always at hand. 
 With thirty thousand a year and a fine constitution, what need 
 has a young man for reflection ? It is all very well for Mr. 
 Young the poet, having failed to obtain wealth or preferment.
 
 212 Only a Clod. 
 
 to retire from a •world wliicli lias treated liim ill, and meditate 
 upon the transitory nature of earthly blessings that he has 
 been unable to obtain ; but -with youth and thirty thousand per 
 annum, surely no man need be bored by such a darksome guest 
 as dull care. Haroourt Lowther did his best to sliield his friend 
 from the gloomy intruder by contriving that Francis Tredethlyn's 
 existence should be one perpetual fever of huny and excitement. 
 But though you may carry a man from racecourse to race- 
 course, by shi-ieking expresses tearing through the darkness of 
 the night ; though you may steep him to the hps in theatres 
 and dancing-halls ; though you may drag him from one scene of 
 mad unrest to another, till his tired eyeballs have lost theii 
 power to see anything but one wearisomt confusion of gas Hght 
 and colour, — you cannot prevent him from thinking. The in- 
 voluntaiy j^rocess goes on in spite of him. He Avill think in a 
 hansom cab tearing over the stones of the Haymarket, in an 
 express train rushing towards Newmarket at sixty miles an hour, 
 on the box-seat of a guardsman's drag, on the rattling fire-engine 
 of an aristocratic amatexir Braidwood, on the downs at Epsom — 
 yes, even at the final rush, when every eye is strained to concen- 
 trate its power of sight upon one speck of colour, the man's mind, 
 for ever the veriest slave to follow that will-o'-the-wisp called 
 association, will wander away in spite of him, — to mourn above 
 a baby's grave, to sit amidst the perfume of honeysuckle and 
 roses in a still summer twilight triEing with the rings on a 
 woman's hand. 
 
 There were times when thought would come to Francis Tre- 
 dethlyn, in si:)ite of all his friend's watchful care. He would sit 
 atjthe head of a dmner-table at the Crown and Sceptre, staring 
 vacantly at the frisky wine-bubbles in his shallow glass, and 
 thinking how happy he might have been if Maude had only 
 loved him. Ah, this poor substitute of noise instead of mirth, 
 — this pitiful tinsel of dissipation in place of the pure gold of 
 hapjiincss, — how miserable a mockery it was even at the best ! 
 
 Mr. Lowther generally broke in ujoon such gloomy reveries as 
 these by calling to the waiter to exchange his friend's shallow 
 glass for a tumbler. But there are pangs of regret not to be 
 lulled to slumber by all the sj^arkhng wines that were ever 
 grown in the fair champagne country, and Harcourt Lowther 
 Bometimes found his work very difficult. 
 
 But amidst such pei-petual hurry and excitement it was only 
 natural that some things should be almost entirely forgotten by 
 Francis Tredethlyn, and amongst these forgotten things were 
 the sorrows of ms missing cousin. The Gray's-Inn lawyers 
 had carte lilanclie, and could have employed all the detective 
 machinery in London in a search for Susan Tredethlyn, alias 
 Susan Lesley, had they so chosen ; but yoMr intensely respect-
 
 Seeing a GJiost. 213 
 
 aT)le family solicitor is the slowest of slow coaches, and Messrs. 
 Kursdale and Scardon contented themselves with the insertion 
 of an occasional advertisement in the second column of the 
 " Times " supplement, informing Susan Lesley that she might 
 hear of something to her advantage on applymg at their office ; 
 and further offering a liberal reward for any information respect- 
 ing the above-mentioned lady. 
 
 The advertisement did not entirely escape notice. A good 
 many Susan Lesleys presented themselves : — one a fat old 
 woman of seventy, who kept a tobacconist's shop in the neigh- 
 hourhood of Seven Dials ; another a bony and pugnacious-look- 
 ing person, with fiery red hair, and a fine Sonth-of-Ireland 
 hrogue, who threatened dire vengeance on the quiet lawyer 
 when he refused to recognize her pretensions to hear of some- 
 thing to her advantage. All the Susan Lesleys were ready to 
 swear anything in order to eatablish their claims to that \inknown 
 advantage — which might be anything from a five-pound note 
 to a million of money, or a dormant peerage, — but they all 
 broke down lamentably uiider Mr. Kursdale's cross-questioning, 
 and he did not even trouble Francis Tredethlyn to confront the 
 false syrens. 
 
 So, amid Newmarket meetings and Greenwich dinners, 
 chicken-hazard, bilHards, and unlimited loo, poor Susan's rustie 
 image melted quite away ; and Francis forgot the solemn 
 promise he had made, and the sacred duty he had set himself ta 
 do when his Uncle Ohver's heritage first fell into his hands. 
 And Francis Tredethlyn's forgetfulness might have lasted very 
 long, if an accident had not awakened him to a most vivid re- 
 ■coUection of the past. 
 
 It was the May-time saturnalia of the turf, the Epsom week, 
 and Mr. Tredethlyn's drag had been to and fro upon the dusty 
 roads cai-rying a heavy load of Bohemianism under convoy of 
 the indefatigable Harcourt Lowther. Francis had baen rather 
 unlucky, and a good deal of money had changed hands after the 
 Derby, the larger part of it finding its way into the pockets of 
 Mr. Tredethlyn's obliging friend. The Oaks day was to have 
 redeemed his fortunes, but the day was over, and Francis drove 
 home amongst the noisy ruck of landaus and waggonettes, pon- 
 derous double dog-carts, and heavily-laden sociables, tax-carta 
 and costermongers' barrows, with the outer leaves of an atten- 
 uated cheque-book peeping from his breast-pocket, and the dim 
 consciousness that he had distributed hastily-scribbled cheques 
 to the amount of some thousands, floating confusedly in his 
 brain. He drove to town through the spi'ing twilight, with 
 Dutch dolls in his hat, and a heavy pain 'in his heart. The 
 ^lajrier mnche noses of his cor^panicns were scarcely more false 
 vid hollow than their gai^t/
 
 214 Only a Clod. 
 
 Of course it would be impossible to conclude Buch a day wth. 
 out a dinner. The sort of I'eople amongst -wliom Francis Tre- 
 detblyn lived are perpetually dining and giving dinners ; only 
 the dinner-givers are as one to twenty of the diners ; so, at some 
 time between nine and ten o'cloct, Maude's husband found him- 
 self in his usual place at the head of a glittering taljle, in an 
 odorous atmosphere of asparagus soup and fried muUet,_ and 
 with a racking headache, that was intensified by every jingla 
 of glasses and rattle of knives and forks. 
 
 He had lost heavily, and had drunk deeply under the warm 
 May sunsliine on the Downs. To lose cheerfully is given ta 
 many men, but how very few have the power to lose quietly C 
 Francis had taken his disappointment in a rather uproarioua 
 spirit ; slapping his companions on the shoulder, and making 
 new engagements right and left ; backing the same horses by 
 whose shortcomings he had just lost his money ; and huskily 
 protesting the soundness of his own judgment in despite of the 
 misfortunes of to-day. 
 
 He went on talking now at the head of the dinner-table, 
 though the sound of his ov^m voice by no means improved the 
 splitting pain in his head. He went on talking amidst a 
 clamour of many voices, through which one sober and silent 
 toady, sitting next Mr. Tredethlyn, made avain effort to under- 
 stand his discourse. He poured forth misty vaticinations on 
 coming events, gave general invitations for a great dinner at 
 Virginia Water on the Ascot cup day, and galloped noisily 
 along the road to rain in which Harcourt Lowther had set hine 
 going. That splitting headache of his was getting worse every 
 minute, when some one proposed an adjournment to an adj» 
 cent theatre 
 
 There had been counsel taken with a waiter. A West-end 
 waiter is no mean dramatic critic, though he never sees a play ; 
 the opinions of playgoers percolatiiig perpetually through his 
 ears must leave some residuum in the shape of knowledge. The 
 ■waiter opined that the best entertainment in London was to be 
 had at Drury Lane, where a melodramatic spectacle of some 
 celeljrity was being played that evening for the last time but one. 
 
 Inspii-ed by the waiter, Mr. Tredethlyn's party made their 
 way to the theatre, bearing Mr. Tredethlyn along with them. 
 indifl'erent where he went, and carrying liis headache with him. 
 everywhere. 
 
 It was i:)ast ten o'clock, and the last scene of the great spec- 
 tacle was on. The house was full, and the audience were chiefly 
 of that restless and vociferous order who drop into a theatre at 
 half-price on great race-nights. Mr. Tredethlyn and his party 
 could only find standing-room at the back of the di-ess-circl6j. 
 and from this position Francis beheld the grand final tableau
 
 Seeing a Ghost. 216 
 
 The piece was an adaptation of some great Parisian succosa 
 ■ — some story of tlie Reign of Terror, — and in this last scene 
 the stage was crowded by a clamorous populace. Upwards of 
 three hundred men, women, and children were engaged in the 
 scene. Blouses and uniforms, tlie picturesque head-dresses of the 
 provincial peasantry, the scarlet cap of liberty, the cocked hats of 
 the gendarmerie, — all blended in one grand mass of movement 
 and colour, while the rapid action of the piece drew to ita 
 triumphant close. 
 
 JMr. Tredethlyn did not trouble himself to wonder what the 
 piece had been about. He saw somebody killed— a villain it 
 was to be supposed, since the crowd set up a well-organized yell 
 of rejoicing; then there was a reconcihation, an embrace, a 
 young lady in short- waisted wliite muslin clasped to the breast 
 of a young man in a long-tailed blue coat and low top-boots, 
 adorned with many-coloured bunches of riband. Then the 
 band broke into the stately measure of the " Marseillaise Hymn," 
 the crowd clamoured a shrill chorus, and the curtain fell. 
 
 It was while the cui-tain was descending very slowly to that 
 triumphant music that Francis Tredethlyn saw sometliiug 
 which startled him like the sight of a ghost. 
 
 It was a face — a woman's face in a high IMormandy cap, 
 looking out of the many faces in the crowd, a tliin, worn, 
 melancholy countenance, very sad to look upon, among aU those 
 other faces fronting the audience with a stereotyped smile. 
 
 "My God!" cried Mr. Tredethlyn, clasping his two hands 
 upon his hot forehead, and pushing back the rumpled hair, 
 " who is it ? What's the matter with me ? I feel as if I'd seen 
 a ghost!" . 
 
 There was a httle piece after the melodrama, a slender httle 
 production, popularly known as a "screaming" farce. It was 
 not the most strikingly original dramatic invention, and ita 
 chief point consisted in one gentleman in tartan trousers being 
 perpetually mistaken for another gentleman in tartan trousers, 
 while both gentlemen were alternately sitting upon bonnet- 
 boxes and dropping trays of crockery. 
 
 There was certainly not very much in the farce, but the 
 audience laughed uproariously, and Francis Tredethlyn's party 
 joined in the laughter. He found himself laughing, too, as 
 loudly as the rest of them ; but amidst all that confusion and 
 clamour, the wan, sad face, with two inartistic patches of rouge 
 upon its hollow cheeks, kept surging up ever and aiaon out of 
 the chaos of his brain, and haunting him Hke the face of a 
 ghost. 
 
 Who was it ? What was it ? Was it some accidental like- 
 ness ? Was it a face that he had seen and kno-wn in the past ? 
 Alas for the steady, clear-headed twldier, who had been so
 
 216 Onhj a Clod. 
 
 prompt to obey military orders, so strict in the performance of 
 duty! Francis TrMvthlyn's muddled senses refused to help 
 him to-night. The author of " What will he do vdih. it ? " tells 
 us that light wines are the most treacherous of liquors ; " they 
 inflame the brain like fire, while melting on the palate like ice." 
 Mr. TredethljTi had been driuking a mixture of divers cham- 
 pagnes and Moselles all day long, and he tried m vain to fix the 
 vague image which floated amidst the confusion of his brain. 
 
 He went home in the early grey of the JMay moruiug ; but 
 not to sleep. He lay tossmg from side to side, tormented by 
 that preternatural wakefulness which is apt to succeed a long 
 period of riot and excitement. The course at Epsom, the gipsy 
 fortune-tellers, the bettmg-men in white hats and green veils, 
 the Dutch dolls and pink cahco pincushions, the dust and cla- 
 mour of the homeward diive, the jinghng of broken glass, the 
 popping of corks, the revolutionary crowd in the drama, the 
 tartan trousers and broken bandboxes in the farce,— all mixed 
 themselves in his brain, falUng to pieces, and putting themselves 
 together again like the images in a kaleidoscope. 
 
 Mr. Lowther, coming to see his friend at the correct visiting 
 hour, found Francis s'till in bed, in a little room behind the 
 library, which he had fitted up for himself at Harcourt's instiga- 
 tion, as a bedi-oom and dressing-room, a kind of refuge to which 
 he might betake himself when he was unfit to encounter the 
 calm gaze of Maude's clear blue eyes fixed upon him in sorrow- 
 ful wonder. Her manner to him had never quite recovered its 
 old kindness since that unlucky encounter on the stairs. She 
 •was still kind to him ; but he could see that it was by an efibrt 
 only that she retained anything of her old friendhncss. He could 
 see this, and the knowledge of" it galled him to the quick. Har- 
 court Lowther's work was more than half done by this time. 
 He had no longer any difficulty in beguiling Francis abroad, for 
 the Coi-nishman no longer cared to remain at home. 
 
 Mr. Tredethlyn had not very long fallen into a feverish 
 sluml^er after long hours of wakeful weariness, when his friend 
 called upon him. Harcourt seated himself by the side of the 
 narrow brass bedstead, and stared contemplatively at the 
 sleeper, while he spoke to the valet who had admitted Mm to 
 the darkened chamber. 
 
 " You can let your master sleep till four o'clock, Jervois," he 
 said. " At four give liim some soda and brandy. He has an ap- 
 pointment vrith me at half-past five. Take care that he doesn't 
 oversleep himself. I'll write him a Une by way of reminder." 
 
 He drew a httle writing-table towards him, and wrote a fe^ 
 lines on a sheet of note-paper: 
 
 ♦♦Deab. Tkedetulyx, — Kemember your engagement at my
 
 Seeing a Ghost. 217 
 
 quarters ; 5.30 sharp. You had better bring the mail phaeton, 
 and can give me a litt to the S. and G. 
 
 " Yours faithfully, 
 
 "H. L." 
 
 He slipped his note into an envelope, and dipped his pen into 
 the ink ; but before writing the address, he stopped suddenly, 
 and tore the note into fragments. 
 
 " She might see it ! " he muttered, thoughtfully, " and that 
 might show her the nature of my cards. The only wise man 
 is the one who can do his work without that most dangerous of 
 all machinery — pen and paper. Poor Francis ! he looks a little 
 worn." 
 
 Mr. Lowther looked down iipon the sleeper with the most 
 benign expression. He had no dislike whatever to the simj^le 
 Cornishman ; he had only — his own plans. 
 
 " These fellows who come suddenly into a large fortune are 
 sure to kill themselves before they have done spending it," he 
 murmured, complacently. "Jei-vois," he said, as he went out, 
 "you won't forget your master's engagement. He'd better 
 drive up to my place in the mail i)haeton." 
 
 Mr. Lowther's "place" was the same lodging which he had 
 taken for himself when he first returned to England. He was 
 an adventurer ; but he was not a vulgar adventurer, and in all 
 his dealings with Francis Tredethlyn he had not sponged upon 
 that gentleman's purse for so much as a five-pound note. He 
 -had his jjlans ; but they were not the plans of a man who lives 
 from hand to mouth. He won a good deal of his friend's 
 money ; but he never cheated Francis out of a sixjDence. His 
 sole advantage was that which must always accompany skill 
 and. exj^erience as opposed to ignorance and inexperience. In 
 the meanwhile, Harcourt Lowther lived as best he might on 
 his winnings and a small allowance made him by his mother. 
 
 The Lowthers were great people in their way, and Harcourt 
 had admission to some of the best houses in London. He was 
 veiy well received in that circle in wliich Maude Tredethlyn 
 had taken her place, and contrived somehow or other to be 
 present for an hoiir or so at almost all of the parties in whici 
 she appeared ; though to break away from the haunts of Bohei 
 mianism to droj) into politer life, and then return to Bohemia in 
 the same evening, was almost as difficult as a harlequin's jump 
 in a iDantomime. Harcourt Lowther did this, however, and did 
 it very often ; and Llaude Tredethlyn, enjoying all the privileges 
 of a matron, found herself sometimes standing amongst the 
 statues and exotics on a crowded staircase in Tybm-nia, talking 
 •with Harcourt Lowther almost as famiharly as they had talked 
 in tl]£ old summer evenings by the quiet river.
 
 218 Only a Clod. 
 
 Sometimes, looking back upon sucli a meeting, Maude felt 
 inclined to be angry witli Mr. Lowtber for having taken some- 
 thing of the old tone ; but could she blame him for the lowered 
 accents of his voice, the subdued Hght in his eyes, the un- 
 conscious tenderness into which he was betrayed in those public 
 meetings, when she remembered how nobly he kept aloof from 
 her in her home ? Never yet had he presumed upon his inti- 
 macy with the husband in order to intrude himself on the 
 presence of the wife. "What harm or danger, then, if, in 
 crowded assemblages, he surmounted all manner of small diffi- 
 culties in order to make his way to her side ? Wliat could it 
 matter if he lingered just a httle longer than others, contriving 
 all sorts of excuses for delay ? It is rather a pleasant thing 
 for a frivolous young manied woman, serene in the conscious- 
 ness of her own integrity, to know that a man's heart is break- 
 ing for her in a gentlemanly way. A word too much, a tone, a 
 look, and Maude would have taken alarm, and fled from her old 
 admirer as from the venomous fangs of some deadly rej^tile ; 
 but Harcourt Lowther knew better than to speak that word. 
 He had his own plains, and he was carrying them out in his 
 own way : neither by word nor look had he ever yet offended 
 Maude Tredethlyn ; but now, when he tried to cut a path for 
 himself through the crowd about her, he foimd less difficulty in 
 the progress. People began to make way for him, and it was 
 considered a settled thing that he should be found somewhere 
 near her. He had not offended herj he had only — compro- 
 mised her. 
 
 Francis awoke before the hour at which liis servant had been 
 told to call him. The valet's place was almost a sinecure, for 
 the Cornishman still retained, of his old nature, the simple in- 
 dependent habits of a man who can wait upon himself. He 
 got up at four o'clock, and had nearly completed liis toilet, when 
 the servant brought the soda and brandy prescribed by Harcourt 
 Lowther. 
 
 " And if you please, sir, you were to be so good as to remem- 
 ber an appointment with Mr. Lowther at half-past five, and was 
 to please to drive the mail phaeton," said the valet, while his 
 master drank the revivifying beverage. 
 
 " Very good," muttered Mr. Tredethlyn, with something hke 
 a groan ; " you may go and order tho phaeton for five o'clock. 
 Is JMrs. Tredethlyn at home? " 
 
 " No, sir." 
 
 The man departed, and Francis finished dressing. He had 
 ten minutes to sj)are after putting on his outer coat, and he 
 sat down to look at the newsi^aper which lay ready cut on 
 his writing-talile. He took up the " Times," but only stared
 
 "O, my Amy! Mine no MoreT 219 
 
 vacantly at the acTvertiscmcnt slicet. His head still ached, iu 
 spito of a shower-bath and a vigorous application of hard hair- 
 brushes ; but liis intellect was a good deal clearer than it had 
 been before he dressed. 
 
 Suddenly, out of the advertisement sheet, vivid as the fissure 
 of Banquo at Macbeth's uncomfortable supper-party, there 
 arose before him a face — a wan, faded face — in a wliite mualin- 
 caf . 
 
 " Great Heaven ! " he cried ; " I didn't know her ! " 
 The ghost that he had seen upon the previous night was the 
 ghost of the woman he had so long been looking for — his cousin 
 Susan. 
 
 CHAPTEE XXVIII. 
 
 *'0H, MY amy! mine NO MOEE !" 
 
 Feancis TiiEDETHLYN drovc his friend down to Eichmond at 
 a rattling j-'ace, but he scarcely spoke half-a-dozen words 
 throughout the journey ; and Harcourt Lowther, keeping the 
 watchful eye of the master upon his pupil, saw that somethiBg 
 was amiss. 
 
 Now although the Cornishman's guide and Mentor had his 
 23lans, very definite plans, as clearly drawm out as the great 
 Duke's arrangements for Waterloo, — which wondrous victory 
 was not quite the lucky accident our neighbours imagine it to 
 have been ; yet he was far too wise a diplomatist to ignore the 
 sublime opportunities which chance sometimes throws in the 
 way of a schemer, shattermg the complicated machinery so 
 dexterously and patiently put together, and opening a new and 
 easy way to success over the ruins of the old road. 
 
 Mr. Lowther was quite preiaared to make good use of any 
 accident which seemed likely to help him. He was like a 
 chess-player who takes his place before the board with a per- 
 fect plan of action mapped ou-t in his mind, and who may see 
 his entire scheme overthrown, his most brilliant arrangements 
 stultified by the first move of his adversary, but who will win 
 the game nevertheless, after liis enemy's fashion, if not after 
 his OAvn, being no enthusiastic advocate of pet theories, but 
 only a man of the world, resolutely bent on success. Upon 
 this particular afternoon Harcourt saw that something had 
 gone amiss with his friend, and he was bent on discoveiing 
 what the something was. With this view he had resort to 
 that imaginary instrament which liis companions of Bohemia 
 called the " pump-handle ;" but on letting down a moral plum- 
 met i-nto the depths of Mr. Tredethlyn's mind, he foimd himself 
 in much deeper water than usual, and quite unable to reach the 
 bottom.
 
 220 Only m Qod. 
 
 " If he has secrets from me, he'll throw all my machinery ont 
 of gear," mused ^Ir. Lowther; "and yet I don't quite know 
 that — a secret might be worked into something loith her. "What 
 a wonderful creature that lago was, by the bye ! especially 
 when one considers that he took all that trouble for no better 
 motive than jealous twinges about a wife whom he treated like a 
 dog, and an envious grudge of Cassio's advancement. Aha, my 
 divine WiUiams, that's the only flaw in your marjnuni opus; 
 your motive power isn't equal to your ponderous machinery! 
 Now if Othello had been the owner of thirty thousand a year 
 and a beautiful wife whom lago loved, there might have been 
 some reason for the exhibition of a Uttle Itahau diplomacy. 
 But revenge ! Bah ! The lus\iry of a maniac. The pet wicked- 
 ness of a woman. Tour novelist cannot write a story, your 
 playwright cannot devise a drama, but he must have recourse 
 to revenge to keep the action going. Yet, in the history of men 
 how small and pitiful a part the heroic passion plays ! A Crom- 
 well condemns a Charles Stuart to the scaffold. For revenge ? 
 No; simply because Charles is in his way. A Eobespierre 
 drowns his countiy in the blood of her sons ; and yet I doubt ir 
 he bore a hearty gnidge against one of his victims — a little 
 pohtical jealousy, perhaps, at the worst. A Eicheheu extin- 
 guishes the haughty nolle sse of France — out of revenge ? No ; 
 but the nohlesse interfere with the schemes of my Lord Cardinal. 
 A Countess of Essex connives at the poisoning of her husband: 
 revenge ? not a bit of it, but because she wants to man-y some 
 one else; and poor Sir Thomas Overbury must die, not that 
 any one hates the man, but the creature is so tiresome. And 
 Arabella Stuart pines in jmson ; and the heads of the regicides 
 rot on Temple Bar ; and Charles, the meny monarch, the pet of 
 the painters and romancers, the man whose sins have been dealt 
 with so hghtly that we are apt to mistake them for virtues — can 
 he as hard as a Nero when it suits him that the patriots Russell 
 and Sidney shall perish in their prime; and James II. sends 
 young Monmouth to the block. Why ? Is revenge the impulse 
 that stirs these men's hearts ? Not at all. Not man's passionate 
 hatred of his neighbour, but man's devoted love of himself ig 
 the motive power that moves the headsman's arms, and bids 
 the swooping axe descend upon fair young necks from which the 
 lovelocks have been newly shorn. Eevenge P Pshaw ! Has it 
 a feather's weight in the balance of histoi-y ? In all the story 
 of our land, what has revenge to answer for? A semi-mythical 
 Eosamond poisoned in her bower — an Essex condemned in pas- 
 Bionate haste, and lamented in dreary leisure by the Queen who 
 loved him— a Konigsmark's handsome face trampled upon by a 
 German tigress." 
 
 With such random reflections as these Mr. Lowther beguiled
 
 '*01i, my Amy! Mine no More!'* 221 
 
 the silence of the drive to Eichmond. During dinner and 
 
 thronghout the evening he watched his friend closely ; but all 
 the fascinations of Bohemia were powerless to arouse Francis 
 Tredethlyn from the thoughtful mood. Indeed, the Bohemian? 
 had a charming faculty for enjoying themselves amongst them- 
 selves without any reference to the host and paymaster, who 
 was generally looked at rather in the hght of a bore and an 
 intruder — the death's head at the banquet. Some of Mr. Tre- 
 dethlyn's new friends had christened him the Necessary Evil ; 
 and to-night, while he sat moodily brooding over the story of 
 his cousin, pretty lips made faces at the company over his 
 shoulder ; and one lovely Bohemian, more playful than the rest, 
 amused herself and her acquaintances by filling the pockets of 
 ^s dress-coat with the empty shells of the lobsters, and the 
 corks of the champagne. 
 
 For the rest, what did it matter in what dreary regions his 
 mind wandei'ed, so long as he was there to write a cheque for 
 the bill ? Only one pair of eyes looked at him with any show 
 of interest ; and those eyes watched him as the serpent watches 
 the bird ; with as deadly a purpose, with as quiet a gaze. But, 
 watch him as closely as he would to-night, there was something 
 in Franeis Tredethlyn's mind which Harcourt Lowther could 
 not read quite as easily as a page in an o-peu book, and as it was 
 his habit to read most things relating to the Comishman. 
 
 ""V^Tiat does it matter.'^" thought Mr. Lowther, abandoning 
 himself to reflection again during the homeward drive ; " let 
 him keep his secret from me if he Hkes, and I'll use it for my 
 own benefit when he plays against me. He is my dummy, and 
 he plaj'S my game. When he leads a suit of his own choosing, 
 I am ready on his right hand with a cluster of small trumps. 
 Play as he will, he can scarcely throw me out. What does it 
 matter how the game is won, so long as one scores the odd 
 trick?" 
 
 The day after this Eichmond dinner was Sunday ; but even 
 that circumstance did not prevent Francis Tredethlyn from 
 taking preliminary steps towards finding the missing girl whom 
 he fancied quite within liis reach now ; since it seemed certain 
 that the face he had seen on the stage of Dimry Lane was the 
 face of his uncle Oliver's daughter, and no other. It had been 
 his habit until very lately to accompany Maude every Sunday 
 morning to a certain fashionable place of worship not very far 
 from Sloane Street, where miserable sinners lamented their 
 iniquities and their wretchedness amid the subdued rustling of 
 silk at a guinea a yard, and in an atmosphere that was odorous 
 with Jockey Club and Ess Bouquet. But Star-and- Garter 
 dinners, and evenings " firished " in mysterious locahties at the
 
 222 Only a Clod. 
 
 West-end, are by no means condticive to early rising ; and now 
 the Sabbath bells that Mr. Tredethlyn bad been wont to bear 
 ringing blithely in the morning air while he breakfasted with 
 his wife, were apt to mingle with his feverish morning dreams, 
 and to transform themselves into the shrill peal of an alarm-bell 
 snmmoning the fireman's succour for perishing wretches in some 
 blazing habitation, or the bell on board a boat leaving a pier— 
 a boat which the dreamer was — oh, so eagerly — striving to 
 reach, but never, never could ; for just as his foot was going 
 to step upon the deck, the plank on which he trod v/ould give 
 way and tilt him into the waking world; with a ragii;g_head- 
 ache, perhaps, and a dull ceaseless pain in his breast, which he 
 scarcely cared to acknowledge by itis ugly name of Eemorse. 
 
 So now Mr. Tredethlyn was apt to spend the earlier part of 
 his Sunday morning in fitful slumbers, and the later portion 
 of his day in the society of his devoted friends. Unhappily 
 Mephistopheles has such a knack of making himself tiseful, that 
 after once enjoying his society, Faust is apt to find life very 
 dreary without that fatal companionship. Drifted away from 
 the simple life that was natural to him, Francis was only a 
 helpless creature, with all the dismal blank of existence to be 
 filled up somehow or other. 
 
 But upon tliis particular Sunday he had a purpose of liis own, 
 rnid the honest energy with which he set about the achievement 
 of that pui-j^ose transformed liim into a new being. 
 
 Harcourt Lowther might have felt a little twinge of alarm 
 had he seen liis pujjil, as he walked away from the stuccoed 
 district, with the old light in his eyes, the old hghtness in his 
 ^m tread. Francis forgot that he had an empty hfe to drag 
 jut, and an idohzed wife who did not love him. He forgot 
 everything, except that he had to redeem liis half- forgotten vow, 
 to fulfil a long-neglected dnty. 
 
 " My uncle Oliver's money brought her peace of mind, and 
 IDrosperity for the father she loves so dearly," _ thoujjht Mr. 
 Tredethlyn. " Let me remember that, when I think of his dis- 
 inherited daughter." 
 
 Crumpled in one of the pockets of his overcoat, Francis had 
 found the programme of the perfci-mances at Drury Lane, and 
 in the long list of names crowded together at the bottom of the 
 programme, he discovered half hidden amongst Percies and Va- 
 vasours, Vane Tempests and Leveson Gowers, and such appel- 
 lations as the corps cle ballet modestly chooses for its own — the 
 vulgar name of Turner. He concluded, therefore, that his cousin 
 had called herself Turner at the Drury Lane Theatre, as well aa 
 at Coltonslough, and he did not anticipate much difficulty in 
 finding her. The search after any information upon theatrical 
 matters might have seemcJ rather a hopeless thing on a Sunday,
 
 ** Oh, my Amy ! Mine no More ! " 223 
 
 but Francis TredetUyn's energy was not to be damped by small 
 difficulties. 
 
 " I have wasted too many hours already," he thought ; " where 
 my poor lost girl is concerned, every moment of delay seems a 
 new wrong." 
 
 He took a hansom and drove straight to the theatre; but 
 Drury Lane on a Sunday seems an utterly hopeless and im- 
 practicable place. The stage-door was closed. The box-office 
 might have been the tomb of the Pharaohs for any appearance 
 of life within its portals. Happily Francis was not to be dis- 
 heartened. He walked up and down the street until the clocks 
 struck one, and a dense crowd began to pour out of a chapel 
 in Crown Court, and disgorge itself into Little Eussell Street. 
 Then, when the doors of the pubUc-houses were opened, he 
 entered a tavern nearly opposite the stage-door, and made his 
 inquiries. 
 
 The barmaid at the tavern was able to tell him where the 
 stage-doorkeeper lived, but she was not able to grw* him any 
 information as to the habitations of the ladies of tho haUet. 
 
 " Most of them live out at Camberwell, or up Islingto?! way ; 
 though how they manage it, poor things, walking backwards 
 and forwards through all sorts of weather, is more than I can 
 tell. They send over here when there's a long rehearsal for 
 their half pint of porter and their sandwich, and that's about 
 all the dinner they get on such days, I dare say." 
 
 Thus, discursively, the barmaid. Francis left her, and made 
 his way to the adjacent court in which the doorkeeper was to be 
 found in his private capacity. That gentleman was in the 
 midst of a very greasy dinner and in the bosom of liis family 
 when ]Mr. Tredethlyn intruded on him, and was at first inclined 
 to resent the interraption. 
 
 "I don't caiTy two hundred and forty-nine addresses in my 
 blessed head," he remarked, in an injured tone; "which our 
 company at the beginning of this season was over two hundred 
 and forty-nine; and I don't care to be hunted upon Sundays 
 when I'm eating of my dinner, for a pack of ballet-girls. I 
 don't get paid for that when I take my salary. If any young 
 swell wants to find out one of our ladies' address, to leave 'em 
 a^ bokay, or to take a ticket for their benefit or such-hke, I 
 should tiiink they could find it out of a week-day, and not come 
 chivying of a man over his Sunday wittles." 
 
 But a judiciously-administered half-sovereign had a very 
 Boothing effect upon the mind and manners of the doorkeeper. 
 'l:iere are so few things in a small way which cannot be done 
 -^th half-a-sovereign. The man laid down his knife and fork, 
 ted appHed himself to serious reflection, while his wife and
 
 224 Only a Clod. 
 
 family suspended their operations to stare admiringly at the 
 fashionably-di-essed intruder. 
 
 " Let me see," said the doorkeeper, scraping his stubbly chiu 
 as he mused, " there's such a many of 'em, that I may sit here 
 trying to remember where this here Miss Turner lives till dooms- 
 day, and not be no Aviser. I'll tell you what I'll do with you, 
 sir ; I've got the addresses of every member of the company in 
 my book over the way. I'U shp over and get Miss Turner' 
 dii'ection, while you wait here if you Uke." 
 
 " Over the way " was Druiy Lane Theatre. The doorkeeper 
 took some i^onderous keys from a nail over the mantel-piece, and 
 put on his hat. Francis Tredethlyn went vdth him. 
 
 "Turner," said the man; "Turner? A joale-faced yoimg 
 woman, ain't she? looks as if she'd gone through no end of 
 trouble. She's only an extra, took on for this here great piece 
 that's just done with." 
 
 "An extra? " inquired Francis. 
 
 " Yes ; a sort of supemume'ry ; not a reg'lar ballet-girl, — • 
 can't dance, or anything of that sort, only fit to go on in 
 crowds, and so on. I remember her, a very quiet, civil-spoken 
 young person." 
 
 The address was soon found ; it was at a house in Brydgea 
 Street. Francis left the doorkeej^er vrith his heart beating 
 iiumultuously ; his face pale with emotion that was half joy, 
 half pain — joy at finding her at last, when hope had almost 
 died out into forgetfulness — pain at finding her thus. Ah, yes ! 
 it was very painful to remember the innocent rosy face peeping 
 out of a dimity bonnet, and to know that sorrow had set its un- 
 defaceable hand upon that rustic Jjeautj, and that the face he 
 remembered had no more a place upon this earth. 
 
 "Miss Turner and Miss Willoughby hve together over an 
 eating-house in Biydges Street," the doorkeeper had told 
 Francis, with the further information that he was to pull the 
 top bell twice. Mr. Tredethlyn found the eating-house, which 
 was ostensibly closed; but the door of the shop was ajar, and 
 the atmosphere about and around it seemed greasy with the 
 steam of suet-pudding and boiled meat. The bell which Francis 
 rang was answered by a careworn-looking woman of doubtful 
 age, who had an air of faded gentihty, a flimsy smartness of 
 apparel, wliich was more plainly demonstrative of poverty than 
 the shabbiest garments that ever hung together loosely upon 
 the figure of a slattern. 
 
 "Miss Turner hves here, I believe?" Francis said eagerly; 
 " I wish to see her, if you please." 
 
 '■ Miss Turner dtcZ hve here," the woman answered, "but 8h« 
 has left."
 
 " O^, my Amyt Mine no More/'* 225 
 
 " Lefl ? "WTiy I saw her at the theatre only the night before 
 last, and the doorkeeper has just directed me here." 
 
 " Mi.s,- Turner's engagement exi^ired last night, sir, and she 
 left London this morning." 
 
 " Tliis morning, only this morning ! But of course you can 
 tell me where she has gone ? I am her first-cousin, her only 
 surviving relative. If I had known that there was the least 
 chance of her leaving London, I should have tried to find her 
 last night. Will you be good enough to direct me to her ? " 
 
 The woman shook her head. 
 
 " I don't know where Miss Turner has gone," she said. 
 
 Francis Tredethlyn's face whitened to the very lips. 
 
 "My God ! " he exclaimed, "is there a fatality in this busi- 
 bess ? am I never to find her ? " 
 
 Then addressing himself to the woman with sudden earnest- 
 ness, he said, — 
 
 " For pity's sake, if you can help me in my difficulty, do so 
 with all your might. You do not know how much depends on 
 my finding her. I scarcely think I should say too much, if I 
 were to tell you that it is a matter of life and death ; for I saw 
 my cousin's face the night before last, and it looked to me like 
 a face that is fading away from this earth. You have been 
 told, perhaps, to give no one her address ; but she did not think 
 her cousin Francis would come to ask for it. Pray trust me 
 and believe in me ; I am the only friend that poor girl has in 
 all this world." 
 
 "I have told you the truth, sir," answered the woman, 
 quietly ; " I do not know where Miss Turner has gone. Any- 
 tliing I can tell you about her, I shall be happy to tell," she 
 added, as if answering the look of blank despair in Francis 
 Tredethlyn's face ; " but it is very Httle. Will you step up- 
 stairs to my room ? It is only a humble place, but it will be 
 quieter there than here." 
 
 This could scarcely fail to be true ; for duiing the very brief 
 inteiwiew which had just taken place, Francis had been brushed 
 against and flouted some half-dozen times by young persons 
 with jugs and door-keys, going to and from a neighbouring 
 pubhc-house. It was the popular dinner-hour in Drury Lane, 
 and four separate floors, with their minor divisions of backs and 
 fi'onts, were more or less engaged in the business of dining. 
 
 Francis followed his cousin's late associate, !RIiss Willoughby, 
 up three steps of rather dingy stairs, upon which Httle colonies 
 of children had estabUshed themselves here and there with theii* 
 toys. One young gentleman of tender years was trying to fly 
 a kite in the well of the staircase, with a persevering disregard 
 of atmospheric difficulties and the heads of the passers below ; 
 while a young lady, belonging to an adjacent tribe of settlere, 
 
 P
 
 226 Only a Clod. 
 
 took lier doll for an airing in a lobster-shell, drawn by a string 
 wbicli wound itself about IMr. Trcdctblyu's legs, and had to be 
 unwound Hke a bandage. Occasional skii-misliers fron" distant 
 settlements came sliding down the banisters — which, f-i inipared 
 to the stairs, were as the modem railroad to the ancient high- 
 way — assaiUng peaceable families with the war-whoop of de- 
 fiance : and the cries of " Shan't," — " Do it again, then, there !" 
 —"Wouldn't you just like to, now ?"—" Won't I tell my 
 mother, that's all? '"'— " TeU-tale-tit, yah ! "—resounded in a de- 
 lightful confusion of voices from the first floor to the attics. 
 
 Miss Wnioughby conducted Francis to a back room upon the 
 thii-d floor — a dark gloomy Httle room, hung with chocolate- 
 and-drab paper, but enhvened by a little gallery of theatrical 
 photographs, and some engraved portraits cut out of TaUis's 
 " Shaiiespeare," neatly arranged over the mantel-piece. 
 
 Ifetras not veiy difhcult to perceive that the anomalous piece 
 of fumiturs, which was too vividly brown for mahogany, too 
 elaborately grained for nature, and which was not quite a chest 
 of drawers, nor altogether a wardrobe, was neither more nor 
 less than a member of the mysterious family of press-bedsteads. 
 It was not difficult to perceive that industrious poverty and sim- 
 ple independence reigned in that three-pair back, whose pitiful 
 goods and chattels, and worthless scraps of ornament, were 
 arranged vrith as exquisite a neatness as might pervade the 
 chambers of a bachelor in the Albany, or a gandin of the Fau- 
 bourg St. Honore. 
 
 " I shall miss your conein very much," said Miss WiUoughby ; 
 " we got on so nicely together." 
 
 " She lived with you ? Here ? " asked Francis. 
 
 *Yes; we shared this apartment. It made the rent come 
 lighter for both of us, and apartments are so dear in London ; 
 and of course it was the same advantage in coals — not that we 
 wanted many for our little bit of cooking, but one can't even 
 boil a kettle without a fire ; and saveloys and sandwiches are 
 apt to pall upon one after a long continuance ; so, having Miss 
 Turner to live with me made it altogether come much plea- 
 santer ; besides which, we were always the best of friends." 
 
 Mr. Tredethlyn was slow to answer. He was looking round 
 the room, and out at the leaden ball floating on the surface of 
 a dingy leaden cistern visible athwart some scarecrow gera- 
 niums, which seemed as if they had been put upon a short 
 allowance of mould. Everything in the place, from the scrimped 
 morsel of worn carpet, wliich only made an oasis of Elidder- 
 minster in a dreaiy desert of boards, to the handful of red 
 coals that burned brightly between massive embankments of 
 brick, bore mute evidence to the poverty which struggles and 
 endures. An open cupboard stared Francis in the face, and he
 
 " Oh, my Amy ! Mine no More I " 227 
 
 saw, oil, such a pitiful morsel of sickly-complexioned ham lying 
 cheek by jowl with the fag-eud of a stale half-quarteru loat. 
 He looked at these things, and remembered the house in which 
 he hved, the reckless extravagance that pervaded all his life. 
 
 "Does a curse cling to the gold of a miser ? '' he thought; 
 " and is my uncle Oliver's child never to derive any advantage 
 from the wealth her father scraped and pinched together, at the 
 cost of everything that makes life endiu'able ? " 
 
 He roused himself from his brief reverie to appeal once more 
 to the elderly ballet-girl, who had seated herself by the httle 
 Pembroke table, on which lay a newspaper evidently borrowed 
 from the estabhshment below, and transformed into a kind of 
 parchment by the action of grease. 
 
 " Give me what information you can about my cousin," he 
 said, imploringly ; " and if you will accept any Httle joresent 
 from me in acknowledgment of your kindness, I will send you 
 a cheque to-morrow morning, and you shall purchase what you 
 please as a memorial of your friendship for my poor httle 
 Susy." 
 
 A faint flush kindled in Miss WiUoughby's pale cheeks. A 
 cheque ! Oh, bright representative of an El Dorado, only to 
 be thought of in some happy dream. Clara Willoughby — other- 
 wise Mary Anne Jones — had not seen such a thing as a cheque 
 since the happy time in which she had been columbine at the 
 tumble-down httle theatre in a ganison town, and the colonel 
 himself had taken five pounds' worth of tickets for her benefit. 
 
 " You arc very kind," she said ; " but I don't want any pay- 
 ment for the Httle help I can give you. Miss Turner is a very 
 quiet young person ; and, though we were so friendly together, 
 she never told me anytliing of her history ; and when she went 
 away this morning, having only been taken on as an extra, and 
 her engagement expiring last night, she said, * TcTu've been very 
 good to me, Clara, and I shall always remember you kindly; 
 and if things go well with me, I'll write and tell you where I 
 am. You mustn't be offended because I don't tell you where I 
 am going. I don't quite know myself. I have not made up my 
 mind yet ; there's a place I want to go to, and friends I want 
 to see ; but I don't think I shall ever bring my mind to go 
 there, or to see them." 
 
 " I think I understand her," said Francis. " I think the 
 place she means is her old home. If she goes there, I shall 
 near of her immediately ; but if — if she should not be wise 
 enough to return to the friends who would be so glad to shelter 
 
 her . Did sha ever speak of her home, or of her cousin 
 
 Francis Tredethlyn ? " 
 
 " Nfever ! She seemed to have some settled grief upon her 
 mind ; and having known trouble myself, I know how hard it
 
 228 Only a Clod. 
 
 is to be won-ied by strangers' questions and strangers' pity, 
 even when it's meant ever so kindly ; so I never asked her to 
 tell me so much as one word about her former life." 
 
 •■' But how did she come to be at the theatre with you ? I 
 should think of all ways of earning a Hviag, that must be the 
 very last that would occur to my cousin Susan." 
 
 "That's very time," answered Miss Willoughby ; "but_ it 
 doesn't take a woman long to come to the last way by which 
 she can earn her bread — the ways are not so many. I can tell 
 you how your cousin came to be at Drury Lane, for I was the 
 means of getting her engaged ; and it all came about, as one 
 may say, quite promiscuously. I suppose you know that Susan 
 Turner is a married woman H" 
 
 " Yes, I do know of her unhappy marriage." 
 
 " She called herself Miss Turner in the bills, because, you see, 
 in the theatrical profession a single female is always considered 
 more attractive; though why it should be so, — unless with 
 regard to boys in jackets, in the Christmas holidays, who, being 
 apt to fall in love with the columbine, might find it damping to 
 cheir spkits to know she was the mother of a family, — I really 
 can't imagine. However, Susan was Miss Turner in the bills, 
 and I am Miss Willoughby for the same reason,_ although I've 
 been thirteen years a widow come next boxing-night. PerhapiS 
 you may remember the sprite who was killed by a faU ofi' a 
 flying bridge in * Harlequin Buttercup, or the Maiden all For- 
 lorn ; the Fairy Queen of the Daisies, and the Cow with the 
 Crumpled Horn,' twelve years ago last Christmas ? Not being 
 professional yom-self, you mayn't happen to remember the cir- 
 cumstance ; but Signer Wilsonio was my husband. He was 
 not an Itahan, and his name in private Hfe was "Wilson. We 
 had been married two years, and he left me with a httle boy 
 iust six months old." 
 
 Francis listened very respectfully to this fragment of family 
 histoiy, but he chafed under its infliction nevertheless. 
 
 " If yoii will teU me how you came to " he began. 
 
 " I am just coming to that," answered Miss WiUoughby, with 
 dignity. " My poor husband, not having anything to leave me 
 except a complimentary benefit, which the manager of the 
 theatre allowed me on account of my bereavement, I was 
 obh'ged, of course, to continue in the profession ; and oh, sir ! 
 nobody that hasn't gone through it can tell the pain of having 
 to change your widow's weeds for white muslin and spangles, 
 and put away your baby from your breast to go and slaj) 
 cheesemongers' shops into furnished lodgings with a harlequin's 
 wand. As soon as I got over the dreadful kind of numbness 
 that came upon me in the first of my troiibles, I looked out for 
 some Olio who would take care of the child ; for I need not t«ll 
 
 V
 
 " O, my Amy ! Mine no More ! " 229 
 
 J row that you can't leave an infant-in-arms in unfurnished 
 odgings loltliout attendance, when you get black looks from 
 your landlady if you so much as ask for your fire to be poked 
 once in an evening in a friendly way, and much less to look 
 after a child, which is apt to be trying to the best of tempers. 
 Well, sir, inquiring of one and another, I heard of a very 
 '^T-espectable elderly person who had seen better days — and it does 
 seem odd, but people connected with bringing \ip children by 
 hand always have seen better days. The elderly person lived 
 down Chelsea way, close to the water, which was considered 
 healthy, and next deor but one to a cowkeeper — also considered 
 healthy, especially if predisposed to consumption." 
 
 '* If you would only " murmured Francis, despondently. 
 
 " Wiiich I am just coming to," answered the ci-devant colum- 
 ]jine, again with dignity. " The long and short of it is, I took 
 my baby to the respectable elderly person at Chelsea, and there 
 he's been ever since, at seven shilhngs a week, which is a hard 
 struggle sometimes now, though light enough when I was en- 
 gaged as columbine ; but dancing has made such progress, and 
 unless you can take flying leaps from one side of the stage to 
 the other, a manager won't look at you." 
 
 " But with regard to- " 
 
 "Which I am about to explain," continued Miss Willoughby, 
 with unshaken calmness. "It was at the respectable elderly 
 person's that I first met Miss Turner; for my darling baby 
 having learnt to call his nurse Nungey, and taking so to her, 
 and not taking to anybody else, and she so attached to him, 
 that she froze my very blood by talking of Battersea Bridge in 
 quite a meaning way, when I spoke of taking him away. 
 Owing to this and one circumstance and another, Harry has 
 stopped at Chelsea till he's quite a big boy. So, of course, I 
 very often go to see him— not that he takes to me so much as 
 he ought to do, being so wrapjoed up in liis Nungey. And one 
 day, about three years ago, I went there quite promiscuous, and 
 found Ha.rry walkmg ujd and down before the door with a baby 
 in his arms ; and the nurse told me that she'd put an advertise- 
 ment in the paper, and the very day it was inserted a lady came 
 to her — a sweet-looking young creature, she said — and left this 
 baby, which might be going on for twelve months old. Well, 
 the long and the short of it is, that this was your cousin Susan's 
 babj^ ; and going there off and on, I saw a good deal of your cousin. 
 But see her as much as you would, she was so quiet and so reserved, 
 that you never got anything like intimate with her. At first she 
 was dressed like a lady, and she had a pretty httle gold watch 
 and chain, and many things that had cost money ; but, Httle by 
 little, all these disappeared, and she seemed to get very poor. 
 One day. when I was there, it came out somehow that she wa»
 
 230 Onltj a Clod. 
 
 doing plain needlework for one of tlie great clieap outfitters' 
 hoiises in tlie City, and wliat a hard life it was, and, worse than 
 tard — uncertain; so then, knowing there were 'extras' wanted 
 for the new piece, I proposed to her that with my help she 
 should try and get engaged. It would be much hghter work 
 than the plain sewing, and better pay. Well, at first she wag, 
 very much against it, but after a deal of persuasion she gave' 
 way, and I got her the engagement. That was full five months 
 ago ; for the piece had a long ran. She had been lodging in one 
 room at Chelsea until then, for the sake of being near her boy, 
 and she left that lodging to come and share mine." 
 
 " And do you think she ■\vill go back to the old lodging ? " 
 
 " I doubt it. She seemed so uncertain, that I really don't 
 think she'd made up her mind whene to go." 
 
 " But she is likely to have gone straight to her child ! " cried 
 Francis. " WiU you give me the address of the old woman at 
 Chelsea ? Oh, I thank you so much for giving me this clue. 
 I nnxist find my poor girl now ! " 
 
 The sprite's widow opened a little poi*tfoHo and wrote an 
 address on a scrap of paper, while Francis stood by eager to 
 take it from her. 
 
 " Do you know that there has been an advertisement appeal- 
 ing to my cousin, in the columns of the " Times " newspaper, a 
 hundred times within the last two years ?" 
 
 " Dear! dear!" murmured the ballet-dancer; " and she going 
 through so much, with rich friends looking for her all the time. 
 But, you see, poor people can't aflord to take in a newspaper ; 
 and there might be only a threepenny paper standing between a 
 naan and a million of money, and he none the wiser." 
 
 She handed Francis the address, wliich was a very long one. 
 And then she gave him divers verbal du-ections, the gist of 
 which was, that he was to find a certain public-house called 
 " The Man in the Moon," and was then to inquire of anybody 
 for a certain street, and was to go a little way farther and 
 inquire again, thus accompHsliing his journey by easy stages 
 and frequent inquii-ies. 
 
 But Francis was much too full of hope to be dashed by any 
 small difiiculties. He grasped the dancer's hand in his heartiest 
 way, and left Brydges Street in impetuous haste. The hansom 
 cabman, who met him at the corner of Eussell Street, and 
 drove him thence to "The Man in the Moon," was a lucky 
 individual, and went home rejoicing to the bosom of liis family. 
 But after dismissing the cabmt^, Francis had to thread liis way 
 through intricacies which would have been maddening in a 
 hansom cab, and were only to be overcome by rej^eated in- 
 quiries and frequent reference to Miss Willoughby's written 
 direction.
 
 " OA, ony Amyt Mine no Morel'* 231 
 
 At last, however, while the bells were still ringing for after- 
 noon service, Francis Trcdethlyn found the place, which was a 
 damp little street without any thoroughfare, called Pollard's 
 jftow. Pollard's Eow, with the summer sunlight on it, and 
 given up entirely to the occupation of one mongrel dog, which 
 was lying with his head upon liis forepaws, snapping at ima- 
 ginary flies, was a dreary place to contemplate ; Francis 
 Tredethlyn troubled liiinself very little about the aspect of the 
 neighbourhood. He walked rapidly past the httle row of houses 
 until he came to No.'17, which was occupied by the respectable 
 elderly person, otherwise Mrs. Chnnock. 
 
 The elderly jjerson made some faint show of a commercial 
 character in the shape of three very green pickle-ljottles con- 
 taming confectionery, all more or less melted out of its normal 
 mould by long exposure to the sun, and a few gingerbread 
 figures of weird and ghastly outline, su^jposed to represent the 
 ]iuman form. A tattered chintz curtain hung upon a limp 
 string, and made a backgTound to these wares. Looking across 
 this cui'taiu Francis Tredethlyn saw a woman sitting in the 
 ruddy glow of the fire, with a child in her lap, and knew by the 
 beating of his hcai't that he had found his cousin Susan. 
 
 The door of No. 17 stood ajar. Francis pushed it open and 
 went into the passage. Three stejDS brought him to the door ot 
 the little room, which was a compound of shop and parlour, Avith 
 a shght flavour of bedroom. A womau — a girlish creature 
 still, but pale and worn-looking — was sitting in a low nursing- 
 chair, -wdth a child of four years old in her arms. Alas for the 
 handiwork of Sorrow, the destroyer ! The soft brown hair, the 
 tender hazel eyes, alone remained of the rustic beauty which 
 Francis Tredethlyn remembered smiling at him upon the moor- 
 lands of his native county. 
 
 Ah, how much of his youth came suddenly back upon the 
 Cornishman in that moment of recognition ! His mother's face 
 watching liim as he left the dear old homestead in the early 
 summer morning to go to the dame-school ; hajapy haymakings 
 on his father's farm in the days when haymaking and harvest 
 time were two Arcadian festivals, and not nervous crises in the 
 life of a hardworking farmer, who may or may not be able to 
 pay his rent. His childhood came back to him with all its 
 unconscious happiness, and he fell on his knees by his cousin's 
 chair in a tumult of emotion. 
 
 " Susy, my darUng, my pet! at last, at last I have found 
 you!" 
 
 The boy slid from his mother's arms, frightened by thia 
 tumultuoiis stranger. Susan rose pale and trembling, and 
 shrank away with her hands spread before her face, as if even 
 now she would have hidden herself from her cousin.
 
 233 Oivly a Clod. 
 
 " Oh, Francis," she cri^d, " dou't come near me — don't look 
 at me ! Oh, Hoavefti have pity on me ! I have so prayed that 
 none who ever knew me in my cliildhood should see me now." 
 
 " But, my darUng, why, why should you hide yourself from 
 those who love you so fondly ? " 
 
 She made him no direct answer, l^ut covered her face with her 
 hands and sobbed aloud — 
 
 " Oh, my shame — my shame ! Wh.o will beheve me when 
 my father would not ? " 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 ENTANGLEMENTS IN THE WEB. 
 
 Harcourt Lowther, calling at the stuccoed mansion in time 
 for Mrs. Tredethlyn's afternoon tea, found a daric and dashjing 
 young lady comfortably established in a luxurious amber da- 
 mask nest against a backgi-ouud of amber curtain, whose glow- 
 ing tints were extremely becoming to the young lady's clear 
 complexion. The two ladies wei-e quite alone, though Maude 
 declared, gaily that she had had crowds of peoj^le that afternoon. 
 
 " You generally come so late, Mr. Lowther," she said 
 " Those were the Dudley Boltons whom you met going out — 
 nice people, fresh from the wolds of Toi'kshu-e, quite new to 
 town, people who come once in ten years or so, when there's an 
 International Exhibition, or sometliing of that kind. Isn't it 
 strange that peoj^le can be so civilized living in the depths of 
 the coimtry — read the last novel — see the last great picture — 
 because you see, nowadays, great pictures jog about the country 
 like poiDular prime ministers, and if Mahomet can't go to the 
 mountain in Trafalgar Square, the mountain goes to meet 
 Mahomet in his jDrovincial town. But I want to introduce you 
 to Miss Desmond, the daughter of the late Colonel Desmond, 
 papa's oldest friend. Julia dear, Mr. Lowther has heard me 
 talk of you perpetually, and you have heard a good deal of 
 him," — Mrs. Tredeihlyn blushed a Uttle as she said tliis, — " so 
 I expect you to be intensely intimate immediately." 
 
 Tliis introduction took place towards the close of June, nearly 
 a month after the Oats day ; and dm-ing the time that had 
 elapsed since that event, Harcourt Lowther, in his character of 
 Mephistopheles, had found Faust what is popularly called a 
 very troublesome customer. Francis Tredethlyn had a secret, 
 and so far it had been a secret which Mr. Lowther could neither 
 penetrate nor turn to his own use. 
 
 Yes, this simple-minded Cornishman, whose confiding can- 
 dour had revealed every feehng, and every shade of feeling, to 
 his baneful comjjauion, had hi» secret now, and seemed to know 
 Tery well how to keep i^
 
 JEntanglements in iho Web. 233 
 
 There were days on which he had business which took him a 
 little way out of town ; and Harcourt Lowthcr, pumping never 
 BO wisely, could pump no further information out of the secret 
 depths of his friend's mind. lie had even proj50sed to accom- 
 pany Francis on these mysterious excursions, but his friendly 
 offers had been niet by a point-blank refusal. He had ventured 
 a little playful badinage ; he had gone so far as to make an 
 occasional insintiation ; but Francis Tredetlilyn had repelled 
 his hints with the fiery indignation of a man whose tenderest 
 and noblest feelings are involved in the subject of liis friend's 
 'persiflage. 
 
 " 1 know yoTi get plenty of pleasant little witticisms of that 
 kind out of those flimsy-covered books Mr. Jeff's siii3plies you 
 with; but hadn't you better keep them for Mrs. de Eothsay's 
 next evening party ? They tell so much better amongst people 
 who understand the French phrases you're so fond of using. 
 Some of youi* best things might as well be Greek, so far as I 
 am concerned," Mr. Tredethlyn said, coolly. 
 
 Mephistopheles shrugged liis shoulders in mild deprecation 
 of his pupil's imj)ertinence. Faust was positively beginning to 
 acquire the tone of good society. He was learning to be in- 
 Bolent. 
 
 Harcourt Lowther left no stone unturned in his endeavours 
 to discover the Cornisliman's secret, but unluckily there were 
 not many stones to turn : and when Mr. Lowther had pumped 
 Francis, and pumped Francis's valet, who could give no clue 
 whatever to his master's conduct, there remained nothing more 
 to be done ; ninless, indeed, Mr. Lowther had cared to resort to 
 the private-inquiry system, and employ a shabby-genteel person 
 at three or four guineas a week to track the footsteps of Mr. 
 Tredethlyn. But this was a plan to which Harcourt Lowther 
 could only have resorted in the most desperate extremity. If 
 possible, he wanted to do dirty work without soiling his fingers. 
 The private-inquii-y system would have, been a dangerous kind 
 of machinery to put into motion — dangerous even if successful 
 — utterly fatal in the case of failure; and it was jurst possible 
 that the shabby-genteel person might do his spu-iting awk- 
 wardly, and make his watchfulness sufficiently intrusive to 
 arouse suspicion, and bring impetuous Francis Tredethlyn down 
 upon him in an avalanche of manly rage. 
 
 "Pshaw!" thought Mr. Lowther, after a meditative and 
 leisurely review of his position. " It's only a matter of so 
 much time. ' Point de zele^ said Talleyi-and ; but he only 
 laeant, don't be in a hui-ry. Your zealous diplomatist may be 
 a very valuable jDerson, provided he knows how to keep the 
 secret of his earnestness ; but your impatient diplomatist is a 
 eertain faUure. Yet there are people who to ill gather their
 
 234 Only a Clod. 
 
 fruit before it is ripe. "Wlieu your true diplomatist comes toan 
 awkward knot in -blie airy network of his scheme, the best thing 
 he can do is to sit down quietly before the web until some 
 accidental hand unravels the entanglement. Chance is the un- 
 faihng friend of the schemer ; but the goddess is very capricious 
 in her visiting routine, and there are stupid creatures who 
 won't wait for a morning call. Luckily, I am not one of them. 
 I can afford to be patient. Maude is an angel ; the StuccovHle 
 dinners are excellent, and the Stuccoville wines are my own 
 selection ; and for the rest 1 do pretty well. _E carte is a most 
 agreeable game ; especially when one plays with a man who is 
 half his time so absent-minded as to forget to mark the king. 
 Yes, dear Francis, I can afford to wait for the lucky accident 
 which is to put me in possession of the clue to those little tripa 
 of yours, in hansom cabs, which you prefer to pick up for your- 
 self ; thereby depriving your valet of any help to be derived by 
 an examination of the number of the vehicle, and a subsequent 
 chat with the driver." 
 
 Harcourt Lowther came very frequently to Mrs. Tredethlyn's 
 drawing-rooms, now that she was to be foiuid always accom.- 
 panied by her darling Julia, and entirely unembarrassed by his 
 visits. He did not always come at the orthodox hour, but would 
 make his appearance between eleven and twelve o'clock on a 
 hopelessly rainy morning, with a new book, or a roll of music, 
 or sometliing deUghtfuUy hideous in the way of jelly-fish for 
 Maude's aquarium, or the last fashion in ferns or orcliids for 
 Maude's conservatories ; and the back of Mrs. Tredethlyn's house 
 broke out into ferneries and conservatories wherever the inge- 
 nuity of a fashionable builder could find an excuse for carrying 
 out Mrs. Tredethlyn's graceful ideas, and swelling Mr. Tredeth- 
 lyn's little account. 
 
 Mr. Lowther had contrived to make himself the friend of the 
 house, so there was always some very plausible excuse for visits 
 at unorthodox hours, and pleasant dawdhng in Maude's pretty 
 morning-room ; and Stuccoville, furtively observant belund rose- 
 coloured curtains in opposite houses, took note of Mr. Lowther'a 
 morning calls, and kept a sharp account of the period that 
 elapsed between his entrances and exits ; and all this time nothing 
 could be more delicately deferential, more tenderly resiDOctful, 
 than Harcoui-t Lowther's manner to his friend's wife. By not 
 one hazardous phrase, by not so much as a furtive glance, a 
 half-suppressed sigh, had he awakened Maude to a perception 
 of possible danger in this pleasant intimacy with a man who 
 had once been her affianced lirusband. No poisonous breath 
 from the schemer's false lips had tarnished the purity of thia 
 bright young soul ; but Stuccoville had taken alarm already, and 
 —in confidential converse in cosy corners of ottomans, under tho
 
 Entanglements in tTie Weh. 235 
 
 eliadow of a tall vase of exotics, or a Parian statuette — declared 
 Mrs. Tredetlil3^n's conduct to be "Positively appalling, my 
 dear; and that absu.rd west-country dolt of a nusband con- 
 tinues as blind as ever ; and now she has taken a comijanion, 
 my love. You remember the companion in ' Vanity Fair ; ' 
 that delightful Becky calls her a sheep-dog ; and you recollect 
 Madame de Marneffe's companion in that horrible novel of 
 Balzac's, which my tiresome Georgiana found the other morn- 
 ing at the bottom of a cupboard, in which her brother Charles 
 keejas his cricketing shoes and fishing-tackle, and was discovered 
 by the governess sitting on the ground positively devouring the 
 book, and when questioned said it was ' Telemaque ; ' but as I 
 
 was about to tell you, my dear, with regard to Mrs. T and 
 
 Mr. H. L ! " and so the little mole-hill gathered size, and 
 
 gradually grew into a mountain. 
 
 Harco\irt Lowther and Mrs. Tredetlilyn's darling JuHa were 
 not slow to an-ive at a very friendly understanding. One morn- 
 ing silent in Miss Desmond's society was quite sufiicient to show 
 so subtle an observer as Harcourt the real state of that young 
 lady's feehngs with regard to her patroness. Indeed, Julia did 
 not take much trouble to conceal her sentiments. Gay and 
 animated one minute, darkly brooding the next, very often cap- 
 tio-us and contradictory, sharply ironical, or sternly defiant, she 
 was in all things the very reverse of the paid companion who 
 sets her employer's caprices against the amount of her salary, 
 and gratefiilly accepts any pleasures or advantages that fall in 
 her way. Maude's natural forbearance was exaggerated by a 
 remorseful consciousness that all the luxuries and gaieties of her 
 life were so many blessings which she had in a manner stolen 
 from JuHa, and her tenderness towards Miss Desmond was un- 
 bounded. But there were times when the Irish girl rebelled 
 even against this tenderness. 
 
 ** Do jou think my poverty is an open wound, that you 
 approach it so shrinkiugly P " she exclaimed impatiently, one 
 day when Maude had broken down in a delicate periphrasis, in 
 ■which she tried to ofier to pay her friend's milliner's bill without 
 wounding her friend's pi'ide. " Why don't you say at once, ' My 
 husband has thirty thousand a yeaa.', and a twenty -pound note 
 more or less is ineffably unimportant to me — while you must go 
 bareheaded if your pride revolts against dirty tulle and tumbled 
 flowers ?' Pay me my salary, Mrs. Tredethlyn, when it becomes 
 due, and do not force your favours u23on me ! for I come of a 
 proud race, who are slow to perceive the difference between an 
 unwelcome favour and an uncalled-for insult. As for the 
 unmade silk dresses which you have tried go delicately to_ force 
 upon me, under the pretence that the colours are unbecoming to
 
 236 Only a Clod. 
 
 your complexion, you cau parade your wealth and your gene- 
 rosity by presenting them to your maid. I am voue au noir 
 henceforward; and when you are tired of seeing my shahby- 
 genteel black moire and Limerick lace in some obscure corner of 
 your rooms, you have only to give me a hint, and I will spend 
 the evening in my own apai-tmeut." 
 
 It was not often that Miss Desmond indulged in. such a 
 speech as this, or perhaj^s even remorseful Maude could scarcely 
 have endured her comjDanionship. She sometimes made herself 
 very agreeable during those idle rainy mornings in which Maude 
 and Harcourt practised the old concertante duets for flute and 
 piano, or dawdled amongst the dehcate ferns with the crackjaw 
 names in the httle fernery that opened out of the boudoir ; or 
 devised gorgeously incomprehensible illuminations for an ob- 
 scure verse in Malachi. JuUa could never be charming, for the 
 power to charm is a gift sui generis, and does not necessarily 
 go along with versatile accomphshments or intellectual superi- 
 ority ; but she could be an amusing and agreeable companion 
 whenever she pleased to exhibit herself in that character, and 
 she did so please very frequently ; for it is so much less trouble 
 to be agi-eeable than to be disagreeable, that the most persever- 
 ing sulker is apt to give way under the weary burden of his 
 own bad temper. But let ]\Iiss Desmond be ever so vivacious, 
 or ever so delightful, Harcourt Lowther never lost sight of one 
 fact, — and that was the fact of JuHa's unappeased and unap- 
 peasable hatred of Maude Tredethlyn. Stuccoville, which was 
 omniscient of everj^thing, knew that Mr. Tredethlyn had been 
 engaged to Juha, and had jilted her in order to marry Maude ; 
 and from StuccoviUe Mr. Lowther obtained the clue to the Irish 
 girl's feelings. 
 
 " A Httle genuine feminine mahce might be rather a useful 
 element, if I can set it working unconsciously for my benefit. 
 Your amateiu-'s assistance is generally a dismal failure ; but I 
 really thiak this Miss Desmond might help me. She is so very 
 clever — and so intensely s]?iteful," 
 
 So one morning when Harcourt Lowther happened to find 
 Julia alone in the moriiiug-room, he took the opportunity of 
 being quite confidential upon the subject of Mr. Tredethlyn's 
 dissipation. 
 
 " He dined from home yesterday ? and the day before ? Ah, 
 to be sure, I dined Avith him the day before," said Mr. Lowther, 
 with a deprecating sigh. He did not attempt to conceal the fact 
 of his own participation in Francis Tredetlilyn's pleasures ; but 
 he contrived in the most subtle manner to make it understood 
 that he accompanied Francis in the character of a guardian 
 angel, a protecting spirit in modern costume, with an arresting
 
 Entanglements in the Weh. 237 
 
 hand for ever extended to snatch the sinner from the verge of 
 the precipice. Miss Desmond shruggeS her shoulders disdam- 
 
 " i don't think Mrs. Tredethlyn vahies her husband's society 
 sufficiently to feel his neglect very keenly," she said ; " she 
 seems perfectly happy." -, , ^i i 
 
 Yes, it was quite true ; Maude seemed very happy, though 
 her husband spent the best part of his time away ii-om home, 
 and was gloomy and ill at ease in her society. Harcourt Low- 
 ther's hints had done their work, and the breach was very wide 
 between husband and wife. Francis beheved that his presence 
 was odious to Maude. Maude imagined that home pleasures 
 and simple domestic enjoyments were tame and insipid for 
 FKancis. And it had all been so easily done ! _ Harcourt had 
 only to make a few careless speeches abotit his friend. 
 
 "You see, my dear Mrs. Tredethlyn, a man of our dear 
 Frank's temperament requires out-door amusements— hunting, 
 and shootmg, and racing, and all their agreeable concomitants 
 in the way of meet breakfasts and uproarious dmners. A man 
 with Frank's animal spirits must have more boisterous plea- 
 sures than can be procured in a drawing-room, however charm- 
 jng — or amongst women, however dehghtful. There are some 
 men who do not care for the society of ladies ; very excellent 
 fellows in their way, but men in whose mhids poetry and music, 
 beautiful scenery,' exquisite sentiments, grand ideas, are all 
 classed under one head as ' doosid bores.' You know the style 
 of man who calls everything except his horse and his dog a 
 ' doosid bore.' I don't say that Tredethlyn is quite that sort 
 of man, but he is not a domestic animal." _ _ 
 
 Mr. Lowther— sitting amongst a chaos of femmme htter, 
 snipping out painted birds and flowers with a pair of fairy-like 
 scissors for Maude's iMicliomanie, looked the very incarnation of 
 all that is domestic and devoted to the fair sex. Perhaps he 
 fully estimated the advantage of the contrast between his own 
 character and that of the men he had been describing. 
 
 Mrs. Tredethlyn gave a httle sigh. _ 
 
 " And Frank iised to be so very domestic ; and so dotmgly 
 fond of Floss," she said, looking pensively at a mouse- coloured 
 Skye tender, whose cold nose reposed in the pink palm of her 
 pretty hand. " However, we contrive to do very well without 
 him, don't we, Flossy Possy ? and we shouldn't care if he went 
 to all the races in that dreadful calendar, and never, never came 
 near his own house at all, shoi^ld we. Flossy Possy ? " 
 
 Harcourt Lowther, looking up furtively from the covert ol 
 his auburn eyelashes, snipped a bird into mincemeat, and tight- 
 ened his mouth until the tliin lips were scarcely visible. 
 
 "That nonsense sounds rather like pique," he thought
 
 23'8 Only a Clod. 
 
 " Can she care for tlie fello-w ? A handsome boor, who would 
 scarcely know the difference between Beethoven's 'Moonlight' 
 and ' Eule, Britannia ! ' — can she have the faiatest sentiment of 
 affection for such a man as that, when " 
 
 Mr. Lowther's self-esteem finished the sentence, — 
 
 " When she knows me, and can contrast my infinite graces 
 and accompHsliments with the boor's defects ? " 
 
 But Mr. Lowther, looking at his position in. all its aspects, 
 could not do otherwise than perceive that the provincial rust 
 was gradually weaiing off the farmer's son, and that Francis 
 Tredethl}"!! was learning to hold his own amongst men who 
 had played ci-icket in the Eton meads, and paced the gi-and old 
 cloisters and quadrangles of Oxford and Cambridge. Associa- 
 tion is the best schoolmaster; and even in Bohemia, a man 
 who is blessed with a fair amount of inteUigence must learn 
 something. 
 
 There were times when Harcourt Lowther frowned darkly 
 as he brooded over his cards, and began to think that the game 
 was not such an easy one to vsdn, after all. But he played 
 patiently, notwithstanding ; and, tnie to Ms faith in the saving 
 help of Chance, he waited for the goddess to look over his 
 shoulder, and point with her inspu*ed finger to the trump which 
 should win him the final trick. 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 THE TWO AXTEPHGLI, 
 
 It was while the schema* was waiting that an event occurred 
 which had some influence upon the current of his life. 
 
 His elder brother, heir to all that Eobert Lowther, of Low- 
 ther Hall, Hampshire, had to leave, and exi^ectant heir to the 
 more important possessions of a very wealthy maiden aunt, 
 returned unexpectedly from Belgium, where he had been estab- 
 lished for some time as a member of the Corps Diiolomatique, 
 and dropped unannounced into Mr. Lowther's lodging while 
 that gentleman was lounging over his breakfast. 
 
 The meeting between the two brothers was not remarkable 
 for its enthusiasm. Roderick Lowther strolled lazUy into the 
 room, dropped into an easy- chair, and indulged in a long 
 leisurely stretch and a loud yawn before he addressed his 
 Astonished relative. 
 
 "Didn't exj^ect to see me yet awhile, did you, old boyP 
 Been travelling all night, and feel as if my bones were not so 
 much bones as rheumatism, — some fellow says something Like 
 that in a book, doesn't he ? Came over in the Baron Osy ; very
 
 Tlie Two Antiploli. 239 
 
 bad passage, jolting and tumbling about all night, waves 
 mountains high, as peojile say in books. So you've cut the 
 line, dear boy, and are living on the proceeds of your commia- 
 eion, I suppose? The wandor blood of the Lowthers who 
 fought at Bosworth and Flodden seems to have lost a little of 
 its tiery quality in filtering through three centuries of country 
 gentlemen. There was a Lowther who distinguished himself 
 at bloody Malplaquet, by the bye, and another who was with 
 yoimg General Wolfe on the heights of Quebec. But we've 
 done with all that nowadays. We are peacel'idly disposed, and 
 sell out on the earliest opportunity ; and we steal a march on 
 our beloved brother, and come home on the quiet to cultivate 
 our maiden aunt." 
 
 " That's a He," replied Harcourt, very coolly. " I haven't been 
 near her since I came home." 
 
 "What did yon come home for then?" asked the other. 
 " Yoii, came for something." 
 
 The two men looked at each other. They were very much 
 alike. There was the same steelly hght in the blue eyes, the 
 same tight contraction of the thin lips. The elder looked at 
 the younger with a glance of shrewd inquiry ; the younger 
 looked back sulky defiance. 
 
 " Come," said the traveller, after a second leisurely stretch 
 and a second prolonged yawn, " what is it, then, the little 
 game ? Q^j, my friend. You didn't sell out of her Majesty's 
 service without a motive, and you didn't come home without a 
 motive. By Jove ! you never did anything in yoiu* life with- 
 out a motive. You are a schemer, my dear Harcourt. The 
 schemer is boi-n, and not made, and he must obey his instincts. 
 Dear boy, I know your organization, and in these days of 
 physiological science no man can keep himself quite dark, 
 lago would have been a failure if Othello had studied his 
 Lavater. Be candid, Harcourt, and tell me what noble vessel, 
 laden mth the spoils of a new Peru, flaunts her white sails 
 upou the wind, and invites the attention of the pirate." 
 
 " You are so deuced confiding yourself, that you've a right 
 to demand another fellow's confidence," Harcourt resi^onded, 
 moodily. " When I want your help, I'll tell you my secrets. 
 That has been yozir way of managing matters, I beheve." 
 
 " My Harcourt bears maUce ! " exclaimed Roderick. " An- 
 tipholus of Ephesus reproaches Antipholus of Syracuse. Dear 
 boy, I suppose it's our misfortune to be too much aUke. Per- 
 haps, if you Avon't give me your confidence, you will at least 
 oblige me with a chop. There was an atmosphere of smoky 
 chimneys and warm train-oil on board the Baron which inca- 
 pacitated me for breakfast." 
 
 Mr. Lowther the elder possessed himself of the teapot, and
 
 240 07ily a C7od. 
 
 appropriated his brother's breakfast- cup, while Harcourt rang 
 the bell and gave an order for additional rolls and chops. 
 
 " I didn't know you were coming to England," Mr. Lowther 
 the younger said, after a pause, in which he had stared moodily 
 at his brother. 
 
 " I suppose not," answered the other ; " and I can't say that 
 the heartiness of your welcome is very encouraging to the 
 returning prodigal. However, as I have not been in these do* 
 minions for the last three years or more, and as my father and 
 I are not the best friends, — there's nothing so economical for a 
 parent as a long-standing quarrel with all his children, by the 
 way, — I shall look to you, my dear Harcourt, for any friendly 
 ofSces I may require. I have three months' leave of absence, 
 and I have not — le sou. I come to England to recuperate, as 
 brother Jonathan has it. I want to get on the bhnd side of my 
 beloved aunt to the tune of a few hundi-eds; and I want to 
 many an heiress." 
 
 "Oh," said Harcourt, thoughtfully, "you want to marry an 
 heiress ? " 
 
 " Yes ; can you help me to do it P " 
 
 "I think not." 
 
 "Humph! perhai^s if I could make it worth your while to 
 assist me you'd teU another story. However, you can introduce 
 me to some nice people, I suppose .P" 
 
 Harcourt nodded moodily. 
 
 "And I must look up my own old set. Not that I know 
 many people, for I hved such a hide-and-seek sort of life when 
 I was in England. Can you get me rooms in this house ? We 
 can commonize, you know. I left my portmanteaus on board 
 the Baron. I suppose there's a boots, or a somebody of the 
 scout species appertaining to this establishment, who can take a 
 cab, and fetch them fo^ me ? " 
 
 Thus unceremoniously did Antipholus of Syracuse estabhsh 
 himself in the abode of his ungracious brother. Frankenstein, 
 pursued by the monster of his creation, could scarcely have 
 seemed more ill at ease than Harcourt Lowther ujider the inflic- 
 tion of his brother's society. Was it that these men were too 
 much ahke? Did Harcourt think that the keen eyes of his 
 brother would follow every thread in the intricate network of 
 his scheme, and the subtle brain of his brother would apply 
 itself to plotting against him ? 
 
 But the coolness so apparent in Harcourt's reception of the 
 ^turning wanderer made no im^^ression whatever on that gentle- 
 Iian. Eoderick Lowther stretched his long legs upon his 
 brother's hearth-rug, and smoked his brother's cigars, with a 
 Berene indifference as to his brother's feeUngs. 
 
 " If you dine anywhere to-day you can take me with you," he
 
 Tlie Two Antipholi, 24^ 
 
 blandly; "and to-morrow I'll introduce yon to a spl'ondid 
 of fellows at the ' Travellers'.' You haven't thought of au 
 
 jress yet, I suppose?" 
 
 " No." 
 
 " Ah, you'll hit upon something in that way presently, I dare 
 say, if you mn your mind's eye over your visiting list. I'm in 
 no hurry. Three mouths is a small eternity in these days of 
 railroads and j^hotography." . 
 
 "And you really would marry?" said Harcourt again, very 
 thoughtfully. 
 
 " Beally would ? Of course I would, if I could get the chance 
 of making an advantageous match, and propitiate my aunt 
 Dorothea by the sacrifice. You know how bent the prudent old 
 lady has always been on my making a great marriage, and re- 
 Btoring the forgotten glories of the Lowthers. Yes, Hai'court, I 
 come prepared for victory, and I trust to your brotherly friend- 
 ship to help me to see and conquer." 
 
 " Humph ! By the bye, I suppose you have heard nothing 
 of " 
 
 " Not a word," answered Roderick, rather hastily ; " I know 
 what you're going to ta.lk about, and as that's rather an unplea- 
 sant subject to me, we may as well agree to avoid it. I wrote a 
 letter, candid, explanatory, and so forth ; promising to do what 
 I considered my duty. I don't profess to be a generous man, 
 and I freely acknowledge that I'm a very poor one; so the 
 
 modest annual sum, which I considered my duty, was weU, 
 
 very modest! Howe'.er, the letter was unanswered. People 
 drop through, you see," concluded Mr. Lowther the elder, blow- 
 ing away a slender puff of blue vapour, as if he had been blowing 
 away a troublesome subject; "and when people do, of their own 
 election, di-op through, I can't see that it's any fellow's duty to 
 dig them up again. Yoii haven't heard anything, I suppose ? " 
 
 ""Not a word." 
 
 " Fort-anate for you ! Sometimes that sort of person fastens 
 on to one's relations. However, as I observed before, we'll agree 
 to avoid the subject. Suppose we discuss your affairs ? " 
 
 " I had much rather we did not." 
 
 " Of course, dear boy ; but as I am candidly disposed myself, 
 I don't mean to be kept in the dark by the most saturnine of 
 brothers who ever sulked in the face of an amiable relative. 
 You used to be engaged to an heiress — something in the Moor- 
 gate-Street line — Australian merchandise, wasn't it? a l&ias 
 Hillersdon, or Hillary, eh, dear boy ? There used to be some- 
 thing of that sort on the cards, I believe ? " 
 
 " There used to be, but there has ceased to be for the last 
 twelve months. "Will that do for you, ? " 
 
 "Ah, Miss HiUersdon — or Hillary — has jUted you, I suppose? ** 
 
 Q
 
 242 Only a Clod. 
 
 " Slie lias." 
 
 " And the man she has married- 
 
 ' Is my very good friend, the happy possessor of a charming 
 ■wife and a large fortune, and the man at whose house I dine to- 
 day." 
 
 " Oh !" exclaimed Eoderick Lowther, lengthening the ejacula- 
 tion to its estremest capacity of extension — " Oh, I think I begin 
 to understand your policy. Miss Hillary has married a rich 
 man, and ydb. are intimate with the husband and au mieux 
 with the wife. The husband is a sickly fellow — consumptive — 
 apoplectic, eh, dear boy ? " 
 
 "The husband is something over six feet high, and has the 
 shoulders of a lifeguardsman ; and, if it were not for his dissi- 
 pated habits, might live to be ninety." 
 
 " Ah, if it were not for his dissipated habits. And you are 
 his intimate friend? My dear Harcourt, what a very trans- 
 parent game you are playing ! and what a consummate fool yon 
 must be if you supposed that I shouldn't see through it ! Why 
 not a bond of union between us — all for one, and one for all, like 
 Dumas's musketeers? Help me to find an heiress, and I'll help 
 you aupres cle Mrs. , what's the lady's name, by the bye?" 
 
 Harcourt Lowther allowed this last piece of information to be 
 screwed out of him, and parted with it as grudgingly as he had 
 parted mth the rest. It is not a pleasant thing when you are 
 playing a very difficult game with the odds against you, to have 
 an inconvenient brother swooping down upon you and insisting 
 on looking over your hand. 
 
 There was no affection between these two brothers ; the like- 
 ness Avhich they bore to each other, morally as well as physically, 
 seemed to have a blighting influence upon their relations. Thej 
 knew each other, and they distrusted each other. Perhaps it 
 would have been scarcely too much to say they hated each other. 
 
 But they went out to dinner together nevertheless, and Har- 
 court smilingly introduced his brother to Mrs. Tredethlyn and 
 Miss Desmond. They had plenty of time to grow quite intimate 
 in the drawing-room while they were waiting for Francis, who 
 came in, flushed with a hurried toilet, at ten minutes to eight. 
 He had been absent upon one of his mysterious excursions a 
 little way out of town. 
 
 Eodei-ick Lowther was received very graciously by the two 
 ladicri, and cordially welcomed by Mr. Tredethlyn. Harcourt, 
 watching his brother ensconced in a nook of Maude's favourite 
 ottoman, and discoursing at his ease upon Belgian notabilities, 
 was troubled by dark misgivings of danger. _ 
 
 " I must find the fellow a quarry for himself," he thought, 
 •* or he'll be trying to stalk my game. He asks me to introduce 
 him to an eligible parti as coolly as if life were a five-act comedy.
 
 T}ie Diplomatist'' s JPolicy. 243 
 
 witli the traditional heiress always waiting to fall a prey to tin 
 traditional adventurer. An heiress ! in these days of marvellous 
 commercial successes there must be such things as heii'essea 
 But the question is where to look for them." 
 
 One of Mr. Tredethlyn's pompous retainers opened the draw- 
 ing-room door at this moment and announced — 
 
 " Mr. and Mias Grunderson." 
 
 " Egad ! " thought Harcourt Lowther, " there's the solution of 
 my dirticulty. AVhy not Miss Grunderson ? Miss Grundersoa 
 is an heiress, or ought to be, if there is stabHity in any part of 
 the commercial universe." 
 
 A young lady with a very rosy face, a young lady decidedly 
 inclined to that quaUty which in the fair sex is elegantly en- 
 titled evihonjwint, a young lady who was surrounded by surging 
 flounces of pink areophanc, dotted about with more pink rose- 
 buds and larger full-blown roses than were ever worn by any 
 young lady with a judicious recollection of the sweeps on May- 
 day, bounced into the room, and bounced up to Mrs. Tredethlyn ; 
 wlule an elderly geutleman, who was evidently the young lady's 
 papa, beamed mildly at the company across an enormous ex- 
 panse of embroidered shirt-front and black waistcoat. 
 
 But in the network that Harcourt Lowther has woven Miss 
 Grunderson is destined to be considerably entangled, and de- 
 serves to be introduced more ceremoniously in a fresh chapter. 
 
 CHAPTEE XXXI. 
 
 THE diplomatist's POLICY. 
 
 That ponderous Mr. Grunderson, who plunged heavily down 
 upon Maude's central ottoman, a miraculous combination of 
 upholstery and floriculture — that shining bald-headed Mr. Grun- 
 derson, who sat placidly grinning at the company, and addressed 
 his hostess as " Mum " — had begun Ufe as a market-gardener; 
 and, had Mrs. Tredethlyn been born some twenty years earher, 
 would have beei ;roud to supply her with azaleas and camelUas 
 for the decoration'of the ottoman upon which he was now sitting. 
 The march of progress, and the accompanying march of bricks 
 .and mortar, had driven before them the cabbages and strawberry- 
 beds, the cucumber-frames and joung plantations of evergreens, 
 by the cultivation of which Mr. Grunderson and his forefathers 
 had Uved comfortably upon one-o'clock dinners of fat bacon and 
 indigestible dumplings, with occasional varieties of butcher's 
 meat, thinking themselves passing rich when their ledgers 
 showed a profit of two or three hundi-ed poujids at the end of 
 the year. 
 
 The march of civilization, or rather the march of the myr-
 
 244 Only a Clod. 
 
 midcms of that unreasoning despot, that implacable ruler, whom 
 'vomen call Fashion, always pusliing westward, had contrived to 
 push Mr. Grunderson's gardens ofl' the face of the earth, and in 
 BO doing had set a Pactolus flowing steadily into Mr. Grunder- 
 son's pocket. The wealth poured in upon him -with a rapidity 
 which was like nothing but a fairy tale. That heroic Jack of 
 the nursery story — who, by the bye, seems to have had no sur- 
 name — never looked in more amazement on the bean-stalk that 
 shot into the very skies in a single night, than did the honest 
 market-gardener at the stuccoed district which had arisen^ 
 seven or eight stories and a campanello tower high, on the fields 
 where he remembered execrating the slugs on dewy mornings 
 a few years before. Where a prairie of bright red stocks had 
 perfumed all the summer air with spicy odours, a square of 
 stately mansions stared grimly at each other, and prime minis- 
 ters' carriages rolled with meteor lamps through the midnight 
 darkness. Where ragged children, and gaunt sunburnt women, 
 in blucher-boots and with indescribable bonnets balanced on 
 their freckled noses, had weeded strawberry-beds for a pitiful 
 sixpence a day, duchesses trailed their silken trains and wearied 
 of the rolling hours after the approved manner of their kind in 
 J the pages of the poets and romancers. The transformation 
 was as perfect as it had been rapid; and instead of the cabbages 
 and cabbage-roses, the cucumber-frames and hothouse flowers 
 of his youth and early manhood, Mr. Grunderson found himself 
 at fifty years of age, proprietor of ground-rents that made him 
 a millionaire. He had only one child, a daughter, who had 
 been educated for some fifty pounds a year at a seminary for 
 young ladies, in which she had been cruelly snubbed on account 
 of her father's cabbages, and who was now determined to re- 
 venge herself on the companions of her blighted youth by the 
 splendour of her womanhood. Led by tliis young lady, who 
 was blessed with an energetic temperament and imperturbable 
 good humour, Mr. Grunderson found liimself, always more or 
 less independently of his own agency, going through the com- 
 plete formula of fashionable life according to his daughter 
 Kosa's notion of that formula ; which notion was extremely 
 variable, and took its colour from the last acquaintaace to whom 
 the lively heiress was pleased to attach herself. 
 
 The very last just now happened to be Maude Tredethlyn, 
 about whom Rosa was ready to go off into raptures at any 
 moment, and whom she always spoke of as " a dear," " a love," 
 or "a darling." But there was a warm womanly heart beating 
 under Rosa's fine dresses, tiAd her raptures had more meaning 
 in tham than the raptures of enthusiastic young ladies are apt 
 to have. She attached herself so effectually to Maude that 
 Mrs. Tredethlyn was fain to forget, or at any rate to forgive^
 
 The Diplomatisfs I'oUcy. 245 
 
 the occasional lapses in her grammar, the unpleasant ^varmth 
 of her fat little hands, which always came floppiii<T down on 
 the hands of her companion when she was enthnsiastic, and the 
 shadow of vulgarity wliich is so apt to accompajiy the sunshine 
 of low-bom liveliness. 
 
 Harcourt Lowther took an early opportunity to inform hia 
 elder brother that the young lady in [)ink areopluine avu-s an 
 heiress, and an heiress well worthy the cultivation of any en- 
 terprising young diplomatist. Roderick was not slow to take 
 the hint, but he was a great deal too much of a diplomatist 
 to attempt any obvious angling for this rich prize. Tie exerted 
 all his powers of fascination in order to make himself agreeable 
 to Mrs. Tredethlyn, and he did not address so much aa one 
 Byllable of the most commonplace civility to the market-gar- 
 dener's daughter; the consequence of wliich little manojuvre 
 was, that as Eosa was sitting next to Maude all the evening, 
 Bhe listened open-mouthed to eveiy word he uttered, and when 
 she departed in her papa's three-hundi*ed-guinea chariot — the 
 market-gardener had insisted on possessing the traditional 
 lemon-coloured chariot with hammer-cloth, and powdered re- 
 tainers, which he had beheld and admired in his boyhood — she 
 earned Roderick Lowther's image away with her. 
 
 It must be acknowledged, however, that it was no nncomrooa 
 cccuiTence for Miss Grunderson to carry the image of some 
 tolerably good-looking and passably well-mannered young man 
 away from any festal gathering at which she happened to find 
 herself. The good-humoured Rosa had a habit of falling 
 desperately in love wiTth any eligible person whom she encoun- 
 tered either in pubhc or private life, who did anything to make 
 himself notorious, or wore his hair long enough to be entitled a 
 Being. A long list of Beings had occupied that sentimental 
 caravansary wliich Miss Grunderson called her heart. She had 
 been in love with all the poets, from the Laureate to Mr. 
 Tnpper ; with all the novelists, from the great Sir Edward to 
 the newest fledged of Mr. Mudie's popularities ; and I fear she 
 often fell in love with angels unawares in the shape of feminine 
 romancers who were pleased to hide their gentle sex under mas- 
 culine nomenclature. She had been in love — fathoms deep — 
 with Lord Palmerston, Signor Mario, Sir Edwin Landseer, and 
 Mr. Charles Mathews. ^She was wont to keep the three-hun- 
 dred-guinea chariot waiting in Pall Mall for an hour at a stretch 
 while she hunted Mr. Graves and his assistants for the last 
 new portrait of her last new idol ; and her room was hke a good 
 Catholic's chapel, — hung with the engraved efligies of an army 
 of saints. 
 
 It was a very pure flame which burnt before so many shrinea, 
 fcnd a very hannlrtsfl one ; and perhaps if Mr. Lowther the eldei
 
 246 Onli/ a Clod. 
 
 had known Eosa Grunderson's little idiosyncrasies, lie ■wonH 
 not have felt quite so coinplacentl}' triumphant in the conscious- 
 ness that her round grey ej'^es had been fixed upon him all the 
 evening with the fond gaze of hero-worship. Harcourt con- 
 trived to swell this triumph by artful Httle brotherly compli- 
 ments, as the two young men walked Londonwards under the 
 starlit summer sky, smoking their regalias, and talking as men 
 about town do talk under those sublime stars. Sentimental 
 Eosa was gazing at those luminous unknown worlds from the 
 covert of the pinkest curtains in Stuccovilie, and thinking about 
 Him ! Rosa's last adoration was always mysteiiously alluded 
 to under cover of a j^ersonal pronoun. Her admiration for 
 Roderick Lowther was multiplied a hundredfold by the young 
 diplomatist's disregard of her. Poor Rosa had been accus- 
 tomed to be made the object of what, in the argotic parlance of 
 her age, she called " a dead set," on account of her papa'a 
 ground-rents ; and she was inclined to imagine Mr. Lo\vther the 
 noblest and most disinterested of mankind because he did not 
 commence this "dead set'' immediately after being introduced 
 to her. 
 
 " I wonder whether he knows that I'm the Miss Grunder- 
 Bon ? " she thought, as she looked up at those romantic stars so 
 familiar to her in her Byron. " Of course he does, thought 
 'Pa is so different from the rest of society, that peojole always 
 know there's some reason for his being where he is, and they're 
 not very long guessing that the reason is money. Will any- 
 body ever want to man-y me for my own sake, I wonder ? Ah, 
 how I wish the Marquis of Westminster would fall in love with 
 me ! He couldn't want pa's ground-rents." 
 
 Thus the maiden mused in her bower, while Roderick Low- 
 ther, encouraged by his junior, talked complacently of his con- 
 quest. 
 
 " She's the simplest Httle thing in Christendom," he said ; 
 " simpler than — anybody I ever met in my Hfe. The disin- 
 terested game is the dodge in that quarter, dear boy. Do you 
 remember how Frederic Souhe's Lion treats the httle shop- 
 keejier's daughter? First with the elegant devotion of a 
 fashionable Romeo, then with the hrnsquerie of a Benedick 
 or a Petruchio. Lise Laloine died under the treatment; but I 
 don't think the plump Rosa is made of quite such ethereal stuff. 
 'jja Fetife is sentimental, and wants to be lovod for herself 
 dlone ; ' 0, wert thou in the cauld blast ! ' ' And long he 
 mourned, the Lord of Burlegh ; ' and that sort of thing. She 
 Bhall have it, the darling innocent ! Tennyson and Owen 
 Meredith by the kilo, disinterested devotion by the bushel. But 
 oh, my Harcourt, do not lure your loving brother into the quag- 
 mire of delusive wealth! Make sure that our simple-looking
 
 Tlie Diplomatist's l^olinj. 2-17 
 
 Gninderson docs not hide the cloven hoof of insolvency nnder 
 the golden fleece in wliich he drapes himself: those simple-look- 
 ing men generally fail for half a million. I Uke your Mrs. Tre- 
 dethlyn, by the bye; she is very pretty and veiy elegant; but, 
 to be camiid, my dear Harcourt — a brother ought to be candid, 
 you know, even at the risk of being unpleasant — I fancy there 
 IS more in tlie husband than you imagine. A man with such a 
 chest must have some solidity in liis composition. If I am 
 anything of a physioloo^ist, it is not in that man's organization 
 to be made a fool of. Ah, I see you don't care to talk about it ; 
 you like to keep yonr own secrets, and play your own gamo 
 without backers or advisers. So be it. For myself, I am of 
 an open disposition ; I like to talk of my own affairs when they 
 go smoothly, and to drop them when they take the crooked 
 course. I don't suppose Napoleon the First was very fond of 
 talking about Waterloo. He forgot that little skirmish, you 
 may depend; and talked of Areola and Lodi, the Pyramids, 
 Austerlitz, Wagram, and Auerstadt. I dare say Mr. Merry 
 holds his tongue about those two-thousand-guinea colts that 
 didnt win the Derby. People are not eloquent about their 
 failures. I shall look up my old aunt early to-morrow morning ; 
 and after that, if you have any excuse for calling on Mrs. Tre- 
 dcthlyn, I shall be glad to accompany you. Unless I am very 
 much at -fault in feminine psychology, Miss G runderson will 
 drop in upon her friend, to discuss my bearish behaviour, on the 
 earliest oiDportunity. Nothing impresses a sentimental young 
 person so favourably as downright rudeness. The heroine in 
 i lady's novel always adores the man who snubs her." 
 
 Thus argued the diplomatist by profession, strolling Strand- 
 wards in the starlight ; while the diplomatist by organization 
 listened quietly, and thought his own thoughts as regarded this 
 grand conquest, of which his kinsman was so proud. Ilarcourt 
 Lowther was not apt to resent the insolent insouciance, the 
 calm assurance of superiority, with which his senior treated 
 him, and indeed had treated him from that early boyhood in 
 wliich the lads had played together at Eton. But the wrongs 
 that rankle deeply in a man's breast are sometimes those which 
 he endures silently. Harcourt believed that his own prospiects 
 had been sacrificed to the advancement of Roderick; and he 
 was not sorry when the elder son went wild, and turned his 
 back as coolly upon his father as if he had never been the pam- 
 
 Eered favourite of weak love, the all-absorbing drain upon a 
 mited income. In every way Roderick had fared better than 
 his brother. Lowther Hall, surrounded by park and farm-lands 
 that constituted an estate of some three hundred acres, might 
 not be worth very much to a man of large ideas and lofty in- 
 epirations; but whatever it was worth, it was tightly entailed
 
 248 OnJt/ a Clod. 
 
 upon the telr of fhe Lowthers, and not so mncli as a game- 
 keeper's cottage or a scrap of meadow-land was resen'ed for 
 the luckless junior. Mrs. Lowther had been mistress of a small 
 fortune, but that had been spent on the education of the two 
 yoting men, — Harcourt in tliis matter, as in all others, going to 
 the wall ; for his University career had been cut short in order 
 that his brother's debts might be paid, and that extravagant 
 gentleman be enabled to face the big-wigs of his college without 
 fear of clamorous creditors, and read at leisure for a degree 
 which he was too lazy to succeed in getting. After this Har- 
 court's prospects had again been sacrificed, and the young bar- 
 rister, unable to hve at the bar, had been fain to accept an 
 ensign's commission; whUe Roderick, pushed into the diplo- 
 matic world by a desperate efibrt of family interest, exliibited 
 his handsome face at the Prussian Court, and squandered every 
 farthing that he could screw out of his father's slender purse. 
 When the purse had become as empty as it well could, there 
 had been the usual remonstrances, the usual bad feeling which 
 is likely to arise between an utterly selfish and unprincipled 
 young man and the father who is no longer able to be of any 
 use to him, and who takes the liberty of resenting the extra- 
 vagance which has involved his later Ufe in difficulties. 
 
 Besides the advantages obtained from his father's partiality, 
 Koderick Lowther had been the favourite of a maiden aunt of 
 miserly habits and independent fortune, who had condescended 
 to give him her name at the baptismal font, and who had never 
 bestowed on him anything else — except, indeed, a neat cloth- 
 bound copy of " The Dairyman's Daughter," presented to the 
 lad one birthday, and promptly disposed of at a rag-and-bone 
 shop in the High Street of Harrow for the small sum of four- 
 
 Eence. But although Miss Dorothea Burnett had not been veiy 
 beral in her donations to her favourite nephew during her 
 lifetime, it was supposed that, after her departure from this 
 world, the young man would reap the reward of occasional 
 dutifully-worded letters and affected deference to her wshes, and 
 that the reward would be a very substantial one; for Miss Bur- 
 nett had contrived to swell her own httle fortune by many stray 
 windfalls in the way of legacies from relatives, whose regard 
 her busy married sister Mrs. Lowther had neglected to cultivate. 
 Beyond this, the maiden lady had bought small but profitable 
 tenements, and had dabbled a little in shares ; and she had 
 watched her small investments with an intelligence, and nursed 
 them with a tenderness, which her stockbroker had admiringly 
 declared to be a credit to the sex she adorned by her commercial 
 acumen. 
 
 So Roderick Lowther, finding his younger brother on the 
 field, vras alarmed by the idea that he might have been under-
 
 The Diphmatisfg Policy. 249 
 
 mined in this direction, and was by no means inclined to loso 
 any time before presenting himself to his spinster aunt. He 
 brushed and curled his amber whiskers with more tlian usual 
 circumspection, therefore, on the moniing after the dinner at 
 Mrs. Tredcthlyn's ; and walking through Covent Garden, on 
 his way to Miss Burnett's Bloomsbury hermitage, lie expended 
 sixpence on a hothouse flower to put in the button-hole of the 
 dark-blue coat which he wore under a flimsy outer garment of 
 pale grey. He had dressed himself very carefulty, for he knew 
 that, in spite of the maiden lady's lectures on the subject of 
 prudence, her feminine eye was fascinated by the elegant frivo- 
 lities which she aflected to disapprove. 
 
 Miss Burnett occupied a very big house in the dullest street 
 in Bloomsbury — a dismal cul de sac, in which there was almost 
 always an elderly organ-grinder playing " Home, sweet home," 
 or the " Old Hundredth," with a little group of squalid children 
 gathered round him. The big house smelt Uke a tomb, and 
 was almost as rarely opened as if it had been one; for the 
 butcher-boy who brought Miss Burnett's mutton-chop, or the 
 half-pound of steak or tliree-quarters of Hver, upon which Miss 
 Burnett's servant was wont to make her repast, handed hia 
 wares across the area-gate, and exchanged no word of comment 
 with the grim damsel who received them, knowing very well 
 that the lady of the house sat at her favourite window in the 
 front parloiir, with her open Bible before her, and a watchful 
 eye upon the outer world, which some sentimental Christians 
 might have thought scarcely consistent with so much piety. 
 
 The grim damsel who admitted Roderick Lowther to Miss 
 Burnett's darksome abode relaxed her ordinary sternness of 
 visage into something faintly resembUng a smile as she recog- 
 nized her mistress's nephew. 
 
 " Your aunt has been very ill since you were last here, Mr. 
 Lowther," the woman said, in answer to Roderick's inquiry. 
 " She was very bad with her asthma all the winter ; but the 
 warm spring weather brought her round again." 
 
 "Yes," thought the young man, "the spring weather always 
 does bring her round, — and always will, I suppose, till I am 
 dead and in my grave." 
 
 He was ushered into the dining-room while this irreverent 
 idea was in his mind ; and the next minute he was seated oppo- 
 site to his aunt, inquiring tenderly about her astlima. The 
 dining-i'oom was very dismal. There was more mahogany fur- 
 niture and brown damask than is compatible with the smallest 
 ray of cheerfuhiess, and the walls were rendered ghastly by 
 some hideous preparations painted in asphaltum, and exhibiting 
 gigantic cracks that looked like gory, yawning wounds, — pre- 
 parations which, on account of their smoky nature and revolting
 
 250 Only a Clod. 
 
 choice of subject, were supposed to be the work of the old 
 masters. 
 
 " I am very glad to see you, my dear Koderick," said Miss Bur- 
 nett, gravely ; " as glad as T can be abo^^t anything in this carnal 
 Ufe," added the old lady, whose spirits had been revived that 
 morning by a rise of one and a qv;arter per cent, in the value of 
 her pet investment. " But we are taught not to rejoice, Roderick, 
 
 except in that which Is that a hothouse flower, my dear ? " 
 
 inquired Miss Burnett, looing sharply at the myosotis in her 
 nephew's button-hole. " Dear, dear ! what an extravagant age 
 it is ! You are looking veiy well, my dear Roderick. I dare say 
 you are what a worldly-minded person would call very hand- 
 some ; but we must try to remember that we are all worms," 
 murmured the old lady with a doleful sigh ; for she took the 
 gloomy view of things which is so common to some people who 
 read that Gospel which is all hfe and colour and brightness, full 
 of the happy faces of meiTy-makers at a bridal festival, and 
 little children gathering round a favourite Teacher's knees, 
 radiaut with sudden rejoicings in mourning households, the 
 dead restored to smile upon the living. There is something 
 strange in the dull grey tint wliich some worshippers are able 
 to infuse into a story that a painter can hardly read without 
 feeling the tropical heat of a meridian sun, the perfume of a 
 thousand lilies, the spicy odours of the feathery palms, and the 
 free dash of Galilee's blue waves about the prow of a fisher- 
 man's frail bark saihng gaily under an Eastern sky. Surely 
 the richness of colour with which the Catholic Church invests 
 the Christian faith is, after all, only the natural attril^ute of a 
 religion which arose amid the splendom* and beauty of the Holy 
 Land ! 
 
 " I hope, my dear Roderick," said the maiden lady, very 
 solemnly, " that while absent in those idolatrous foreign lands, 
 you kept the promise which you gave me before leaving Eng- 
 land." 
 
 " My dear aunt," murmured the young man, who had quite 
 forgotten having made any promise whatever to his jsious 
 relative, and was painfully mystified by this address, " I assure 
 you that I " 
 
 He would have broken down here, but the lady came to his 
 rescue. 
 
 " Don't prevaricate, Roderick!" she exclaimed, sternly. " Did 
 you, or did you not, enter a Roman Catholic place of worship 
 during your sojourn among the high pi-iests of Baal ? Did you, 
 or did you not, sit under one of those idolatrous v/orshippers of 
 stocks and stones ? And oh, that I should live to see candle- 
 Bticks on the altar of a church in this very neighbourhood ! " 
 cried Miss Burnett, with a sudden burst of indignation ; " and to
 
 TJie Biplomatist's PoJiri/. 251 
 
 hear STmflHiip:, -whicli I at first attributed to a cold in tlio head, 
 but at'torw;irds ascertained to be the wicked workings of Komi; !" 
 
 The stanch Dcn-othea paused for a few moments to reccver 
 tor indignation, and then tackled her nephew once more. 
 
 " You i)romiscd me, before going to Belgium, that you would 
 not, however tempted, enter a Roman Catholic place of wor- 
 ship," she said. 
 
 " And I did not, my dear aunt," answered Roderick, promi^tly ; 
 " I give you my word of honour as a gentleman." " Nor any 
 other place of worship," thought the heir, as his aunt nodded 
 approvingly. 
 
 And then there was a little more talk, chiefly taking the 
 form of a catechism, which Mr. Lowther went throxigh trium- 
 phantly, since his answers to the old lady's inquiries were shaped 
 in accordance with his knowledge of what was likely to please 
 his aunt, rather than with any reference to actual fact. But a 
 man must do a good many mean things when he devotes him- 
 fcelf to the cultivation of a naiTow-miuded maiden aunt, for the 
 chance of inheriting small tenements and first-preference bonds 
 in flourishing railway companies. Roderick Lowther breathed 
 a long sigh of relief when he left the house that smelt like a 
 tomb behind him, after drinking a glass of his aunt's dry 
 sherry, which act of devotion was in itself no small penance. 
 
 He hailed a hansom as soon as he was safely beyond ken of 
 the observant spinster, and was rattled back to his brother's 
 lodgings, where he found Harcourt poudei-ing moodily over the 
 " Times " newspaper, and whence the same hansom drove the 
 two Antipholi to Stuccoville. 
 
 Mr. Tredethlyn was out, but Mrs. Tredethlyn was at home. 
 Harcourt went into his friend's study to write a note ; while 
 Roderick followed a servant to the drawing-rooms, in the 
 smallest and cosiest of wliich three gorgeous apartments the 
 diplomatist found Maude and Rosa seated side by side on a low 
 Bofa, while proud Julia meditated apart at the mudow. 
 
 " You're the lady I should like to many," thought Roderick, 
 as he looked at Julia's dark face, which Hghted up for a moment 
 •with her flaslung smile, as she bowed to him, and then relapsed 
 into gloom; "there'd h& some pleasure in taming you. Who 
 woiild care to cage a robin ? but there would be some glory in 
 subduing the spirit of an eagle." 
 
 Thus mused Mr. Lowther, while he murmured some common- 
 
 Elace remark upon the beauty of the summer day, and dropped 
 imself lazily into a seat near Maude Tredethlyn. He was true 
 t"( his tactics of the night before, and addi-essed his remarks 
 almost entirely to Jtlaude and Julia. When he did condescend 
 to address the vivacious Rosa, he did so in a manner that was a 
 deHcate admixture of the intellectual bearishness of one of poof
 
 252 Only a Clod, 
 
 Miss Bronte's heroes with the Hvely banter of a Benedick. The 
 result of this policy was triumphant, and the market-gardener's 
 daughter plunged deeper and deeper still into her five-and- 
 twentieth hopeless attachment. 
 
 AVhile j\Ir. Lowther the elder was cultivating his own inte- 
 rests in the drawing-room, Mr. Lowther the younger was pacing 
 Tip and down Francis Tredethlyn's study in no happy frame of 
 miud. Imagine the feelings of a Mephistopheles who begins to 
 suspect that his \'ictim. has shjjpcd away from him. Harcourt 
 was beginning to feel very doubtful as to the firmness of his 
 hold on his pupil and companion. 
 
 Francis Tredethlyn's conduct for the last few weeks had quite 
 baffled his friend's penetration. The Cornishman had grown 
 suddenly preoccupied and reserved. He might still be seen in 
 the haunts of the Bohemians — for Mr. Lowther took care that 
 he should not easily extricate himself from the bonds that he 
 had allowed to be coiled about him ; but Francis, always un- 
 willing to be led into the scenes where he had no pleasure, was 
 now more unwilling than ever, and Harcourt found it very diffi- 
 cult to play the game he wanted to play without showing his 
 cards. If it had been a mere question of plucking so many 
 feathers from an innocent pigeon, the thing might have been 
 done easily enough, perhaps ; but Mr. Lowther evidently wanted 
 something more than his friend's golden plumage. It seemed, 
 indeed, as if he would be satisfied with nothing less than the 
 utter ruin and degradation of Maude Tredethlyn's husband. 
 
 To-day, walking up and down the study, whose broad plate- 
 glass window commanded an agreeable view of a stony quad- 
 rangle and the roofs and chimneys of a mews, Harcourt thought 
 very despondently of that grand scheme to which he had devoted 
 himself so patiently since his return to England. 
 
 " Wliat secret is the fellow hiding from me ? " he thought, re- 
 sentfully; "he refused to dine with me to-day, and he threw 
 over the party I made for Greenwich the day before yesterday. 
 He has made no book for the York summer, and yet he is less 
 at home than ever. "\Yhat does it aU mean ? Can he have gone 
 to the bad in real earnest at last, and without any help from 
 me? There must be something in it; but what is the some- 
 thing?" 
 
 Tired at last of such meditations as these, Harcourt Lowther 
 flung liimself into a chair to compose the letter he had talked 
 about writing when he entered the study. 
 
 He wrote his note, which was very brief, and the gist of which 
 was to remind Francis of some engagement that would entail 
 the usual champagne drinking, the usual squandering of money 
 for the gratification of the worthless society in which a few irmo- 
 cent pigeons abandoned themselves to be plucked vdthout mercy
 
 TIarcourt gathers his First Fruits. 253 
 
 by every species of predatory fowl. After haviiij^ written this 
 little note, so carefully worded that no print of tlie fiend's hoof 
 could have been deciphered therein by uninitiated eyes, Har- 
 oourt Lowther sat with his elbow on the tal>le, biting the feather 
 of his pen, and ruminating moodily. There were open lettei-a 
 and tradesmen's bills lying about iipon Francis Tredethlyn's 
 disorderly writing-table. Mr. Lowther flung aside his pen pre- 
 sently, and amused himself by a careless examination of these 
 documents. Some of the bills were heavy ones, but not so 
 leavy as to make any very serious inroad upon the Cornish- 
 man's fortune, and Harcourt tossed them away from him one 
 after the other, uninterested in their details, unconcerned by 
 their sum-totals, until he came to a dead stop all at once at the 
 first line of a document which seemed to him to bear an extra- 
 ordinary significance. 
 
 This document was the bill of a fashionable upholsterer, and 
 the line below the tradesman's name and address ran thus : 
 
 " For goods supplied to Francis Tredctlilyn, Esq., at Brook 
 Cottage, Petersham, June 20th, 185-;" and then followed a list 
 of the furniture for a cottage, the sum-total of which came to 
 little more than three hundred pounds. 
 
 " So," muttered Mr. Lowther, " I think I have fallen upon the 
 clue to the mystery. We will go and look at Mr. Tredethlyn's 
 furnished cottage." 
 
 He wrote the address on a tablet in his portemonnaie, and 
 went up-stairs to the drawing-room, where he found Roderick 
 intolerably at his ease in the society of the three ladies. There 
 was an arrangement made for a meeting in Maude's roomy box 
 at Covent Garden, to wliich Mrs. Tredethlyn was fain to invite 
 the affectionate Eosa, who clung to her with peculiar fondness 
 to-day : and then the two gentlemen took their depai^ture ; 
 Roderick to look in at the " Travellers'" and the " St. James's;" 
 Harcourt to huriy post-haste — or rather hansom-cab haste — • 
 to the Waterloo terminus, whence he took the train for Rich- 
 mo&d. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXn. 
 
 HAHCOTTRT GATHERS HIS FIRST FRUITS. 
 
 The party in Mrs. Tredethlyn's opera-box that evening was 
 a very pleasant one. Whatever business had taken Harcourt 
 Lowther to Richmond must have been tolerably satisfactory in 
 its result, for that gentleman's spirits were gayer than usual as 
 he stood behind Maude's chair in the shadow of the crimson 
 curtain, talking to her under cover of all those crashing choruses 
 and grand orchestral effects which Meyerbeer must surely have
 
 254 Oiily a Clod. 
 
 composed with a view to comfortable conversation. Miss Grander* 
 son was gorgeous in thirty guineas worth of blue moire antique 
 o /'I WoAteau, and exhibited a small fortune in the way of lace 
 and artificial flowers upon her plump httle pei'son. Her diamond 
 earrings were the biggest in the opera-house; though it must 
 be confessed that a straw-coloured tint, which the connoisseur 
 repudiates, pei-vaded the gems that the market-gardener had 
 bought for his daughter — size, rather than purity of water, 
 being the quality for wliich Mr. Grunderson selected his dia- 
 monds. Nothing could be more striking than the contrast 
 between Maude's simple toilet of white silk and Eosa's gaudy 
 Bpl»«idaiir. 
 
 i3ut Miss Grunderson was very happy this evening, for the 
 delightful Roderick condescended to talk to her, while his 
 brother was engrossed by Mrs. Tredetlilyn. He was not very 
 
 {)ohte, but Rosa thought him positively charming. She had 
 eamt to understand the emptiness of the attentions that had 
 been paid to her by enterprising young bachelors, who thought 
 that an alliance with the sfreat Grunderson's daughter would be 
 a veiy pleasant starting-point on the high-road of hfe; but she 
 did not understand that there might come a man wise enough 
 to eschew vain flatteries and all the ordinary allurements of the 
 vulgar fortune-hunter, and yet designing enough to spread hia 
 nets for any heiress worthy of his ambition. 
 
 In his conversation with the simple-minded Rosa he affected 
 the sentiments of a confirmed misogynist. 
 
 " If there were such a possibility as a sensible woman," he 
 said, " I might perhaps hope to end my days in the bosom of a 
 family ; but smce the age of miracles is past, I resign myself to 
 the idea of remaining a lonely wanderer until the day of mj 
 death." 
 
 Thus, half in despondency, half in bitterness, Rodericlr 
 Lowther replied to some leading remark of Miss Grunderson's. 
 She called him a honid man and a dreadful creature : but she 
 admired him amazingly notwithstanding, and she felt a seraphic 
 happiness in listening to this dehghtful cynical being, to the 
 utter neglect of Meyerbeer. 
 
 " With the exception of public characters," mused the market- 
 gardener's daughter, " I don't think I was ever really in love 
 tmtil now." 
 
 And thus it fell out that, when Mrs. Tredethlyn said, in tho 
 course of the evening, that she was going to spend the foUowing 
 day at Twickenham, Rosa gave such broad hints about the 
 loveliness of the weather, and the dehghts of suburban scenery, 
 that good-natured Maude promised to take her down for a long 
 afternoon among the roses in the dear old garden where so mucB 
 of her own happy youth had been idled away.
 
 Harcourt gathers 7ii8 I'lrst Fruits. 255 
 
 "Are droppers-in to bo permitted in your Arcadia, ladies? " 
 demanded Harcourt; " and will the balls and mallets be con- 
 sidered out of place uiDon the lawn by the river? " 
 
 This was quite enough for Miss Grunderson, who cried out 
 directly that of all things in the world she admired crocjuet, and 
 that '• Par " had bought her a set of Cremer's most exquisite 
 walnut-wood balls and mallets. There were times when the 
 vivacious Rosa called her indulgent parent " Par," in spit« of 
 those half-dozen annual accounts which he had paid for the 
 young lady's education. 
 
 " I shall so enjoy a game of croquet in a real garden ! " cried 
 Rosa. "We play it in the square sometimes; but the little 
 boys and the baiers' and butchers' young men outside the rails 
 are so dreadfully trying, especially when the balls won't go 
 where one wants them, owing to nervousness ; and Pm sure it's 
 enough .to make anybody nervous to have a strange chimney- 
 Bweep calling out, ' Well done, butter-fingers ! ' if one drops a 
 mallet ; and that square-keeper is never within sight when 
 wanted." 
 
 " Does Trcdethlyn go with you to-morrow ? " asked Harcourt 
 Lowther presently ; he had been very thoughtful for the last 
 few minutes. 
 
 " No," Maude answered, rather sadly. " I asked Frank to 
 drive me down in the mail-phaeton ; but he told me lie was 
 going a little way out of town on business." 
 
 She was thinkmg how very great a change had come to pass 
 since her husband had been her adoring slave, only too happy 
 to follow wherever she pleased to lead him. Now there was no 
 quarrel, no actual misunderstanding between them ; but there 
 was quite a wide breach, as if they had agreed to sepai-ate after 
 a long series of domestic battles. 
 
 " Roderick and I will come down to the Cedars to-morrow," 
 said Harcourt, bending over Maude's chair, " unless you forbid 
 us to do so. The river is deUghtful just now, and you may 
 want the ser^nces of a couple of boatmen." 
 
 " We shall be very glad to see you, if you like to come," 
 Mrs. Tredethlyn answered, carelessly. Looking up just then, 
 she saw Miss Grunderson's round eyes fixed upon her with a 
 very earnest expression. Rosa had heard all sorts of insinua- 
 tions respecting Mr. Lowther's constant attendance upon Mrs. 
 Tredethlyn, and the young lady was wondering whether her 
 darling Maude did really deserve any of the reprobation that 
 had been showered upon her as a flirting matron. 
 
 " There's a way of saying ' How do you do ? ' or ' Pretty 
 well, thanks,' that seems like flirting," mused Miss Grunderson; 
 " and Mr. Lowther always has that way when he talks to Mrs. 
 Tredethlyn. I hnow she is too good to be a flirt, in spite of all
 
 256 Onhj a Clod. 
 
 those malicious people may say about her; anil I don't like 
 Harcourt Lowther a bit, for he must know how his flirting 
 manner is talked about, though she doesn't. I've seen half-a- 
 dozen opera-glasses turned this way to-night, just because he'a 
 been bending over her chair in that whi.?Dering way of his. And 
 yet he has only been talking of croquet.*^* 
 
 Hosa's friendship was quite as ardent as her love, and much 
 more lasting. Mrs. Tredethlyn's gentleness had quite subdued 
 that affectionate little heart, and the market-gardener's daughter 
 would have been willing tD make any effort in her friend's ser- 
 vice. She was a very energetic little girl, with a good deal of 
 that moral courage which is sometimes wanting in more delicate 
 natures. To put the fact in her own words, Rosa was able to 
 speak her mind, and to speak it very freely too, whenever the 
 occasion called for candour. 
 
 The next day was one of the brightest in a brilliant July, and 
 Mrs. Tredethlyn's shell-shaped barouche was waiting before the 
 ponderous stuccoed portico at eleven o'clock. Francis had left 
 the house half an hour before on foot, bent on that mysterious 
 expedition a httle way out of tovni which he took so frequently 
 now. Maude and Julia came down-stairs at a quarter after 
 eleven ; and Miss Grunderson skipped up the stone steps two 
 minutes afterwards, with the bluest bonnet and the pinkest 
 parasol in London. 
 
 " How do you like the new contrast ? " she inquired, twirling 
 the pink parasol triumphantly, when she had adjusted her 
 flounces and furbelows to the best of her ability on the front 
 seat of Mrs. Tredethlyn's carriage. " I remember, when I was 
 at school, pink and blue together were thought bad taste, but 
 now they're quite de rigger. Ness pas ker say joli dong? 
 e'p'tite ombrelle ? " demanded Miss Grunderson, bursting into 
 French. " Vingt-huit shilHngs, ma chere ! Ness pas trescher, 
 chere? Et le boutiquier ne voudrait pas prendre un sbc-sous la 
 dessous, quoique je I'ai marchande comme un juif," she added, 
 with a slap-dash rendering of the language which was peculiar 
 to her. 
 
 The summer day was dehghtful, and Maude's spirits, which 
 had been rather depressed of late, rose with the sunshine and 
 the pure air, as the high-stepping bays left Stuccoville behind 
 them for the pleasant country road, and the rustic odours of 
 suburban gardens. And then, when she found herself amongst 
 her own birds and flower-beds, it was hard to beheve that she 
 was no longer a girl, with a girl's careless hajjpiness in beautiful 
 things. She sat under a great drooping willow, whose lowest 
 branches dipped into the water, and watched her dogs gambolling 
 with Rosa on the grass. 
 
 "I waa like that, once," she thought, "before I knew <tf
 
 Harcourt gatlicrs his First Fruita. 257 
 
 papa's difSciiltics — before I sold myself for money. I fancied 
 that it was a lioroic thing to marry the man I did not lovo, in 
 the hope that my esteem might be some poor repayment of his 
 generous devotion — liis noble trust in my father. But I know 
 now that I could do him no baser wi-ong than become his wife. 
 1 know it now, when he himself has learnt to dos]>ise and to 
 avoid me, even when I am anxious to win back his regard." 
 
 Yes, it had come to this. Maude Tredethlya deeply felt her 
 husband's palpable avoidance of her. So long as he had been 
 slavishly devoted, she had been just a little inclined to despise 
 him ; but now that the treasure of an honest man's love sceuied 
 to have slipped away from her, she awoke to the consciousness 
 that it was a treasure, and that she had need to be unhappy in 
 the loss of a jewel that is not given to every woman to possess. 
 She sickened at the thought of the wealth which her marriage 
 had given her, now that it was unsanctilied by the love of the 
 giver. Was it gone, that devoted aifection which she had held 
 so lightly while it was hers to throw away ? _ She began to 
 understand now how delicate a thing a heart is, even when it 
 beats beneath the rudest breast, and how soon it withers under 
 the blighting influence of disdain. Yes, she had been faithfully 
 loved by an honest man who would have_ given his very life for 
 her happiness, and she had trilled with his love until it was lost. 
 Queen Gtiinivere has only one set of diamonds to throw into 
 the river ; and when the passion has passed in whose hot impulse 
 she flung them away, the lady is apt to regret her lost jewels. 
 
 Miss Desmond and Miss Grunderson trilled with the balls 
 and mallets, while Maude wandered listlessly on the terrace 
 thinking of the breach between herself and her husband. She 
 was still luigering there alone, when Harcourt and Roderick 
 Lowther strolled from the drawing-room on to the lawn. Thd. 
 eldest set about instructing Julia Desmond and Miss Grunder- 
 Bou with regard to the latest and most intricate by-laws of 
 croquet; and the younger made his way at once to the terrace 
 where Maude was walking listlessly and slowly under a co- 
 quettish white umbrella. 
 
 Harcourt Lowther took care that Mrs. Tredethlyn had no 
 more time for solitary musing. He brought all his talents to 
 bear to keep her amused, and by the aid of fashionable small- 
 talk, sharp little criticisms on new books, croquet, luncheon, 
 and an incursion among Mr. Hillary's hothouses, he contrived 
 to chase the shadow of care quite away from the young wife's 
 girlish brow. It was about four o'clock, and the afternoon had 
 lapsed into a sultry sleepy brightness that was almost oppres- 
 sive even in that green retreat beside the river, when the two 
 gentlemen suggested the water. 
 
 " Of all tilings in the world the most dehghtful ! " screamc<l 
 
 u
 
 25S Only a Clod. 
 
 Mis8 Grunclcri3on. " Oh, do please take "as out in one of those 
 darling little dangerous-looking boats I saw in the Swiss boat- 
 house down there. And oh, what a jsity I didn't wear a hat 
 instead of this odious blue bonnet, which is beginning to fly 
 already! " said Eosa, looking despondently at the expansive 
 ribands fluttering below her double chin, which had lost some 
 little of their azure intensity under the influence of the July 
 sun. To Miss Grunderson's great delight, the two gentlemen 
 proceeded forthwith to the boat-house, and lowered a couple of 
 wherries, as perfect in their way as any craft that ever came 
 out of the hands of Messrs. Messenger. Harcourt placed Mrs. 
 Tredethlyn and Julia Desmond in one of these boats, and to 
 the other descended Miss Uriinderson, with more small shrieks 
 of teiTor and feminine skirmishing, and a greater display of 
 Balm^oral boots and embroidered flounces than was absolutely 
 necessary to the embarkation. 
 
 "I never get into a boat without thinking I shall be drowned," 
 said Rosa, plumping down upon the cushions, and all but up- 
 setting herself at the first start; "the water does give way so. 
 But if one was drowned, it would be rather nice to have a 
 paragraph all to one's self in the daily newsj^apers, or perhaps 
 what pa calls a social leader, beginning with something about 
 the Moloch Pleasure having swallovred another victim, and 
 Youth at the prow and Pleasure at the helm, and the Pale 
 Horse, and so on." 
 
 And then Miss Grunderson, finding herself quite alone with 
 the latest object of her adoration, exerted all her small fasci- 
 nations to beguile the woman-hater from his stern aversion to 
 her sex. She chattered as gaily as some talking- bird ; and 
 Roderick Lowther, who imagined that he had by this time 
 established himself firmly as a disinterested individual, conde- 
 scended to make himself agreeable, and to drift into that plea- 
 sant cun-ent of meaningless small-talk which maUcious people 
 call flirtation. 
 
 While Roderick rowed his fair companion swiftly past the 
 verdant bank, Harcourt let his boat drift slowly down with the 
 current, only dipping his oars now and then in the intervals of 
 his discourse. Maude had forgotten her troubled reveiie upon 
 the terrace, and gave herself up to the enjoyment of all the old 
 talk about books and music, poetry and painting, which had 
 been so delicious to her in those departed days when she and 
 Harcourt had drifted down that same river plighted husband 
 and wife. There is no monitor so sharp as rural nature when 
 we have need to be reminded of our inconstancy. Looking at 
 those reedy banks, those tranquil gardens sloping to a tranquil 
 tide, Maude found it almost difficult to believe in the changes 
 of her life since she had first floated down that stream, a child,
 
 Harcourt gathers 7ns First Fruits. 259 
 
 with wild-flowers in her lap, and licr little bare arm hari^ng 
 across the edge of the boat, for the infantile pleasure of 
 eplashing. 
 
 Harcovirt Lowther found his brothei-'s boat moored to a little 
 quay in a shady corner of the river below the Star and Garter, 
 and the splendid colouring of Miss Grunderson's toilet made 
 that young lady conspicuous as she ascended a little pathway 
 eloping uj^wards to the terrace, attended by her cavalier. Har- 
 court shipped his oars, and proposed a stroll in the Petersham 
 meadows. Maude looked at her watch ; it was a quarter to 
 five, and Mr. Hillary's dinner-hour was half-past seven. There 
 was plenty of time for a stroll across those verdant meadows, 
 and Mrs. Tredethlyn, having the interval to dispose of somehow, 
 had only to choose in wasting it in this way or in some other 
 fashion. Harcourt had liis wish therefore. He assisted the 
 two ladies to disembark, gave his coat into the custody of one 
 of the lounging watermen at the rustic landing-stage, and then 
 strolled with his two companions into the meadows leading to- 
 wards Petersham. 
 
 There is little need to tell the Enghsh reader what Petersham 
 is like. Almost everybody knows that rural cluster of modem 
 villas and grand old red brick mansions nestling so comfortably 
 under the shadow of Richmond Hill Surely the next best 
 thing to inhabiting Earl Eussell's house in Eichmond Park, or 
 that magic chateau of Monsieur Fould's, hidden deep in the 
 woody heart of grand old St. Germain's, would be to own one 
 of those Georgian mansions at Petersham, with cool fishponds 
 and shady gardens, long ranges of narrow windows, and a 
 marble-paved vestibule, with a ceiling by Thornhill, and old 
 family portraits by jwlite Sir Joshua himself. It was the after- 
 noon of afternoons for hstless dawdhng about such a place as 
 Petersham, and Mr. Lowther and the two ladies were aUke 
 enthusiastic in their admiration of the Georgian mansions. 
 
 " I wish Francis would buy a nice old house down here," said 
 Maude. " I am so thed of London ; it is all the same thing 
 over, and over, and over again ; the same flock of sheep jumj-iing 
 through the same gap in the same hedge, and notoue of them 
 —no, not even the leader — knowing why they do it. I should 
 be near papa here, a,nd all my old friends. In town I eeem to 
 know everybody, and yet not to have a single friend." 
 
 There was a rustic bench in the lane through which they 
 were walking as Maude said this. The two ladies sat down to 
 rest for a few minutes, and Harcourt Lowther took out his 
 cigar-case. . ^^ 
 
 " I shall leave you just long enough to smoke a ciq-arette, ' he 
 said, " and then 1 will take you back to the water-side by a stiD 
 prettier road, if you like."
 
 260 Only a Clod. 
 
 He went away at a leisurely pace, ligliting tis cigar as lie 
 went ; but lie walked a good deal faster when lie was out of 
 Maude Tredethlyn's ken, and he was flushed with heat when hft 
 returned after a quarter of an hour's absence. 
 
 " Now, ladies," he said, " if we are not to keep Mr. Hillar_y 
 waiting for his dinner, it is high time for us to go back to the 
 boat." 
 
 Maude and Juha rose, and the little party strolled into tho 
 road at the end of the lane in the straggling order usual to 
 people who walk for their own pleasure in a country village. 
 Mrs. Tredethlyn's wliite umbrella was a little way ahead of her 
 companions, when Harcourt Lowther laid his gloved hand lightly 
 upon Juha's shoulder. 
 
 She looked up at him, startled by the gesture. 
 
 " You have had some reason to complain of your friend Miss 
 Hillaiy and Francis Tredethlyn," he said. " I am going to give 
 you your revenge." 
 
 Julia stared in amazement at the speaker; but he did not 
 wait to be interrogated. 
 
 " Come, Mrs. Tredethlyn," he said, " your papa will have to 
 wait for his dinner, unless you walk a Uttle faster." 
 
 He had not much reason to complain of ]\Iaude, who had 
 been ahead of him until this moment, but he hurried her along 
 the dusty road until, at a spot Avhere it curved round to tha 
 river, he stopped suddenly, pointing to a cottage-garden, seen 
 through the iron rails of a high old-fashioned gate set in a 
 framework of clematis. 
 
 " Look at that, Mrs. Tredethlyn ! Isn't it a pretty picture ?" 
 
 It was a little rustic tableau composed of two figm*es grouped 
 under a mulbeny-tree, — a deUcate-looking woman, with soft 
 brown hair, touched here and there with a glimmer of gold, 
 seated on a rustic bench. Her face was turned away from the 
 road, and she was looking up at a man who leaned against 
 the trunk of a tree. It was only a glimpse of this picture which 
 Maude caught between the iron scroll-work of the gate, but she 
 sas^ quite enough. 
 
 The man was Francis Tredethlyn. 
 
 " Great Heaven ! " exclaimed Harcourt Lowther, in an audible 
 whisper; "it is Francis !" 
 
 Maude looked at him with a vague alarm in her face, which 
 had grown almost as Avliite as the umbrella that sheltered it. 
 Harcourt's whisper had frightened her a hundredfold more than 
 che sight of her husband, at home in that unknown garden 
 with a woman she had never seen or heard of. 
 
 " Who is that lady ? " she asked, when they had passed the 
 eate. " Do you know her, Mr. Lowther ? You know all my 
 husband's associates much better than I do."
 
 Harcourt gathers his First Fruits, 261 
 
 She tried to speak quite calmly, but failed miserably in the 
 effort. Harcourt's whisper had expressed so much. 
 
 " No, I do not know the lady," he answered, gravely. " I 
 think you had better make no inquiries about her. Mr. 
 Tredethlyn did not tell you that he was to spend the day at 
 Petersham ? " 
 
 " No. He only said that he was going a little way out of 
 town." 
 
 " Then in that case it will be better for you to leave him to 
 finish his day as he pleases, since you have made no an-ange- 
 ment for meeting him here, and do not know the lady." 
 
 Maude did not answer him just then. She walked ona little 
 faster than before ; and Harcourt kept by her side, looking fur- 
 tively every now and then at the pale profile, the tremuloug 
 lower lip. He could see that Mrs. Tredethlyn was profoundly 
 agitated, and that she was trying to conceal her agitation. He 
 could see this; and he was determined to make her speak, and 
 speak freely. 
 
 " She is not the sort of woman to suffer in silence," he 
 thought. " This kiad of trouble is new to her, and she will cry 
 out presently." 
 
 Mr. Lowther was not very much at fault in his estimate of 
 Maude's heroism. She sjioke to him when they were a few paces 
 from Julia, whose face was hghted by a look of triumph under 
 her gauzy veil. 
 
 " You say you do not know that lady. Tou must at least 
 know who she is ?" 
 
 This was said in a tone of almost piteous entreaty. 
 
 " Upon my honour, no," Harcourt answered, gravely. 
 
 There was a pause for some moments. They were in one of 
 the meadows by this time, nearing the water's edge, Julia still 
 in the rear, and Maude still walking very fast, as itis the 
 habit of most people to walk under the influence of agitation. 
 Perhaps in that unreasoning, unnecessary haste, there lurks a 
 vague fancy that we can hurry mvay from our trouble. 
 
 All at once Maude turned to Harcourt Lowther and laid her 
 hand upon his arm. 
 
 " Tell me what it all means," she cried,—" tell me the worst, 
 however bad it is. I know that you are hiding something from 
 me. I know by your manner jiist now that there is some 
 horrible meaning in Frank's presence in that garden with that 
 woman." 
 
 " My dear Mrs. Tredethlyn, you ask me to interfere in a 
 matter which I have no right to approach. It may be every- 
 thing to you where your husband goes, — whom he associates 
 with. I have been his friend, — for your sake ; and I have done 
 my best to steer him clear of dangerous acquaintance and dan.-
 
 262 Only a Clod. 
 
 gevoiis amiisementa — still for yoiu- sake. I may have found it 
 a hard matter to keep him out of mischief, and may have re- 
 gretted the natural tendencies of his character — always for your 
 sake. Beyond this I can have nothing to do with him. I had 
 good reason for being sorry when j'ou niamed him — on my own 
 account. Of late I have been even more sony — on yours." 
 
 Maude looked at him, white and trembling. The schemer was 
 pleased to see what deadly mischief had been done, and yet 
 stung to the very heart to find that any falsehood of his victim's 
 coiild wound so deeply. There are triumj^hs which have a 
 shadow of humiliation upon their brightness, and this was one 
 of them. Julia, seeing that her companions were loitering, 
 seated herself on the lower step of a stile. She had no desire 
 to interrupt this conversation. 
 
 " Speak to me plainly," Mrs. Tredethlyn cried, passionately, 
 " or I will go back to that cottage and ask my husband him- 
 self for an explanation. PerhajDs that would be best. He has 
 abetter right to explain his conduct than any one else." 
 
 She walked a few paces from her companion ; but Harcourt 
 Lowther followed her, and caught her gently by the arm. 
 
 " Will Francis Tredethlyn tell you the truth if you question 
 him ? " he asked. " My dear Mrs. Tredethlyn, how could you 
 endure the esclandre of such a scene as tnust ensue if you go 
 back to that house, and confront your husband in the presence 
 of that woman ? " 
 
 " Why should there be a scene, or any esclandre ? The lady 
 may be the wife or daughter of some friend of my husband's. 
 Have I any right to imagine something horrible because I see 
 Frank with a person who is a stranger to me ? It was only 
 your manner that frightened me." 
 
 " I am veiy soit}^ my manner was so foolish. Let us drop the 
 subject. Only — take my advice — don't go back to that house." 
 
 " Why should I not, if my husband is innocent ? as I am 
 sure he is." 
 
 Mr. Lowther shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 " Because it is an unj^leasant thing to intrude where one is 
 not invited," he answered. " "Wliatever questions you -ndsh to 
 ask your husband can be resei-ved until you are both at home ; 
 and in the meantime pray let the matter droj^. Believe me, it 
 is not a fit subject for discussion between 3^ou and me." 
 
 There are lawyers who generally inaugurate a consultation 
 by advising their clients not to go to law. They know it is a 
 very safe display of magnanimity. It is only the old story of 
 standing on the shore to reason with a tempestuous ocean, or 
 interfering with the appetite of a famished wolf in favour of the 
 lamb on which he means to dine. To try to restrain a woman 
 whose jealousy has once been aroused from any investigation of
 
 llarcourt gathers his First Fruits. 203 
 
 her flincied wrongs, is no less wasted labour; and Harcourt 
 Lowtlier knew quite enough of human nature to be very sura 
 of lliis. 
 
 Airs. Trcdethlyn turned upon him fiercely. lie had never 
 seen the woman he loved in a passion until this moment ; 
 and though, he had so much else to emj^loy his thoughts just 
 now, he could not help pausing for a moment to think how 
 beautiful she looked with that new light in her eyes, that 
 feverish glow so suddenly kindled in the cheeks that had been 
 deadly pale. 
 
 " I will not let the matter drop," she cried. " You are keep- 
 ing some hideous secret hidden from me. I know you are. I 
 could not be mistaken in your tone just now when you saw 
 Francis in that garden. If there were no harm in his being 
 there, why should you express such amazement? llarcourt 
 Lowther, we were friends once, and you alicct to be my friend 
 now. If you are what you pretend to be, teU me the meaning 
 of my husband's conduct? " 
 
 " You love him very much, Maude, to feel his conduct so 
 dee]-)ly." 
 
 She was too agitated to notice that her old lover had called 
 her by her Christian name. Ho had perhaps been scarcely 
 aware of it himself. He loved her better at this moment than 
 he had ever loved her in his life, now that she stood before him 
 a beautiful, angry, passionate crcatui-e, ap]iealingto him against 
 the husband for whose sake he had been jilted. 
 
 " You must be very much in love with your husband," he 
 repeated, bitterly ; " and yet I should have scarcely thought it 
 possible you could care for that sort of 2JCrson." 
 
 "He is my husband," answered Maude, " and I have a right 
 to be angry if he does any wrong." 
 
 " I acknowledge your right to be as angry as you please, but 
 I am sorry to see you so agitated. I am very sorry we hap- 
 pened to walk this way." 
 
 " Will you tell me the truth P I have appealed to you by 
 our old friendship. I shall never again believe in you as a 
 friend unless you speak plainly to-day." 
 
 " If you say tli^at, you oblige me to speak. Will you take 
 my arm, and walk up and down by the hedge yonder? I see 
 people coming into the meadow, and we look rclher conspicuous 
 standing just here." 
 
 Mrs. Tredetidyn ' accepted the proffered arm. Harcourt 
 Lowther was silent for some moments, while they strolled 
 slowly under the shadow of a tall hawthorn hedge. He waa 
 waiting until Maude should have recovered some little calm- 
 ness, and be in a condition to appi'eciate the full value of what 
 lie was going to saj.
 
 261 Onry a aod. 
 
 " It would be going over very old ground, and awalcening 
 very litter recollections — on my part, at least," he began at 
 Jast, in a subdued and pensive tone, " were I to tell you what 
 I thought of your marriage with Francis Tredethlyn. When 
 I thought of it most mildlj^, I believed it the maddest sacrifice 
 that was ever made to the Moloch Wealth since this world 
 began. You had your reasons, you told me, and they Avere 
 very powerful reasons, but they were to be kej)t a secret. I had 
 ao more to say. All I could do was to hope that you might 
 not be utterly miserable with the man you married — to my 
 mind, the man of all others least adapted to make you a hapj^y 
 wife. I should have done well had I been wise enough to keep 
 aloof from you and your husband after that unhappy mamage. 
 I was so mad as to hang about your house, and accept the 
 friendship of my rival, in the belief that I might save the 
 vessel wherein you had embarked from some of those rocks 
 which I saw a Uttle ahead of the calm bay whence you sailed, 
 with all the stereotyped paraphernalia of pennants flying and 
 guns fii-ing. I have saved you from a good deal ; but I have 
 not been able to change your husband's nature, and he has 
 taken his own way in sjMte of me." 
 
 " What do you mean ? " Maude demanded, breathlessly. 
 
 "I cannot, and will not, enter into the details of Francis 
 Tredethlyn's life for the last twelve months. ISTo, Maude, not 
 even your entreaties shall wring from me more than I have a 
 right to tell, or you to hear. And if I spoke the plainest words 
 that ever sullied a woman's ear, I should only be talking a 
 strange language which would convey no meaning to your 
 innocent mind. There are places in London whose names you 
 bave never heard in your hfe — places whose very existence 
 might never be known to honest people, if men did not write 
 about them in the newspapers ; and amongst the hahitucs of 
 those places your husband has been conspicuous since the first 
 week of his return from the village where you and he spent 
 your honeymoon. There are dinners given, up at that hotel 
 yonder, to women whose costume is an extravagant copy of 
 yours, but who in everything except their dress differ from you 
 as entirely as darkness differs from light; and Francis Tre- 
 dethlyn has been foremost amongst the dinner-givers ever since 
 he has had a fortune to squander. So long as he was amused 
 by open follies and dissipations I cherished a lingering hojie that 
 custom would bring weariness, and that the very monotony of 
 these poisonous pleasures would render them their own antidote. 
 I made excuses for the man who had so newly succeeded to a 
 fortune large enough to intoxicate a weak brain ; and I fancied 
 when the novelty of his wealth had ceased to bewilder him, he 
 would awake to a'*vir.er sense of the degrading path in which
 
 Harcoiirt gathers 7ns First Fruits 2G5 
 
 ho was treading. I tliouglit this, Maude, and I believed also 
 that your loveliness, your purity, rendered all the more oljvioiia 
 by contrast with the people among whom he wasted liis life, 
 ninst lure him bnclc to your side. How could I think otherwise 
 )iian this ? — I, who had loved and lost you ! " 
 
 It never occurred to Mrs. Trcdethlyn that these were the very- 
 last words that Harcourt Lowther should have spoken to her, 
 at this moment above all other moments. It seemed as if she 
 scarcely heard this allusion to the past, any more than she had 
 heard her old lover's frequent utterance of her Christian name. 
 
 " I think my husband loved me — once," she murmured in a 
 low sorrowful voice. " He was so noble in his conduct — so gene- 
 rous to my father." 
 
 " My poor girl," exclaimed Harcourt, with supreme compas- 
 sion, " how should yo^o know the difference between a good 
 man's generosity and a profligate's lavish bid for the fair young 
 bride who happens to be the fancy of a moment ? There are 
 men who will give as exaggerated a price for a picture as ever 
 Francis Tredethlyn offered when he won you for his wife ; but 
 you would scarcely call a man ' generous ' because he bid extra- 
 vagantly for a Eaffaelle or a Murillo at Christie's. There is no 
 creature in this world so selfish as a profligate." 
 
 ]\Iaude turned sick and cold to the very heart as Mr. Lowther 
 said this. 
 
 A profligate ! The horrible word wounded her like the stroke 
 of a knife. In a moment this innocent girl, who until now had 
 only known the existence of " profligacy " as an unspeakable 
 noun substantive hidden away somewhere in the close cokmms 
 of unexpurgated dictionaries, felt the veil rudely torn from the 
 purity of her mind ; and was told that her husband — the other 
 part of herself, united to her by the solemn service of the 
 Churcli — was the obnoxious thing which until this hour no one 
 had ever dared to name in her presence. The generosity she 
 had believed in was a sham. The noble nature which had com- 
 manded her regard and esteem, even when it could not -win her 
 love, had never existed out of her own imagination. She had 
 been wronged, betrayed, humiliated ; while in her schoolgirl sim- 
 plicity she had been lamenting her unworthiness of a devoted 
 husband's love. She had been bought for money like a slave 
 in some Oriental market-place, when she had imagined herself 
 a free sacrifice offered as the recompense of a sacred debt. 
 
 She did not speak ; but looking at her face Harcourt Lowther 
 saw that his words had gone home. The breach between 
 husband and wife yawned wide enough now. The under- 
 mining of the ground had been slow, laborioiis work, but th« 
 result repaid this social engineer for all his trouble. Witli 
 what a crash the earth fell in when it was time for the convali
 
 2G6 Cnly a aod. 
 
 sion ! So some hnge mass of Kcntisli chalk, which sappers 
 and miners have been iiianipulatiug for a mouth or so, and at 
 which a crowd ot tired spectators have been straining hope* 
 lessl}^ for two hours at a stretch, breaks away all at once from 
 the bosom of the cHff with a thunderous noise, and crumblea 
 into powder. 
 
 But Mr. Lowther had not finished yet. 
 
 " I thought I could win you back to your husband, Maude, 
 and restore him to you a better man," he said ; " but I soon 
 discovered how futile such a hope was. I have been by his side 
 in scenes that were horrlljly repugnant to my o\vn nature, in 
 order that I might hold liim back from the verge of deeper 
 gulfs than those into which he had already fallen. ^Yithin the 
 last few months I have known that he kept a secret from me, 
 and I knew that it must be a disgraceful one. Only a few days 
 ago it came to my knowledge that he had lately furnished a 
 house somewhere in the suburbs. This gave me a clue to those 
 mj'sterious absences, those journeys on business a Httle way 
 out of town, about which j'our husband had been so reticent. 
 Men of Francis Tredethlyn's calibre do not furnish houses from 
 benevolent motives. I had no means of kno^ving where the 
 house was, — how little could I imagine that it was in this 
 neighbourhood, or that accident would lead our footsteps to its 
 very threshold ! Mrs. Tredethlyn, you shall not wring another 
 word from me. I am sorry that you have tempted me to tell 
 you so much," exclaimed Mr. Harcourt, who had said all he 
 wanted to say — 
 
 It was a long time before Maude answered him ; and then 
 she said, very slowly, and with a painful eifort — ■ 
 
 " I thank you — for having told me the tinith. It is always 
 best to know the truth," 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 kosa's kevelations. 
 
 After this there was no more said between Harcourt Lowther 
 and Mrs. Tredethlyn upon the subject of her husband's dehn- 
 quencics. They walked slowly back to the stile, where Julia 
 was sitting as quietly as if she had been that monumental 
 Patience of whom the poet has told us. There is something 
 wonderfully expressive in natural pantomime ; and Miss Des- 
 mond, sitting on that rustic stile tracing figures from Euclid 
 on the dusty pathway under her feet with the ivory point of her 
 parasol, had yet contrived to keep a sharp watch upon those 
 two people on the other side of the meadow, and to form ft 
 tolerably clear idea as to th 3 gist of their conversation.
 
 IRosa's lievelations. 2G7 
 
 " Julia dear," Maude said, wearily, as they walked to the river- 
 eide, " would you mind going back to town as soon as we can 
 get to the carriage ? I have such an intolerable headache, that 
 I'm sure I shall be quite unlit to dine with papa." 
 
 Of course Julia decilared that dining in London or at the 
 Cedars was equally indilierent to her. It was very often her 
 humour to affect the dull characterless manner of a paid depen- 
 dant; and it was her humour to do so just now. 
 
 " I am afraid Mr. Lowther and I have kept you waiting an 
 unconscionable time," said Maude, looking at her watch. 
 
 "Not at all," replied Miss Desmond; "I rather like wait- 
 ing. 
 
 Eoderick Lowther and iliss Grunderson were loitering at tho 
 little landing- stage ; the young lady's showy draperies pre- 
 Eaftaelite in the sharp edges which she exhibited against the 
 hot blue sky. 
 
 " Oh, you darling Mrs. Tredethlyn!" exclaimed Eosa; "I 
 thought you never were coming. If your pa is half as par- 
 ticular about his dinner as mine is, won't he be cross with us 
 all ! It's close upon seven o'clock ! " 
 
 Maude looked piteously at Harcourt Lowther, He nnder- 
 Btood that aiapealing glance. 
 
 " I have given Mrs. Tredethlyn a violent headache by putting 
 Aer in an awningless boat under a broiling sun," he said, " and 
 then bcguiUng her into a fatiguing walk ; and I deserve to be 
 horsewliipped for my stupidity. If you have any regard for 
 your friend's health. Miss Grunderson, you will forego the plea- 
 sure of dining with Mr. Hillary, and get her home as quietly aa 
 you can." 
 
 Eosa Grunderson might be siUy, but she was by no meana 
 stupid ; and, looking at Maude's ashen face, she saw that some- 
 thing more than a headache had caused the change in her 
 friend. She saw this ; and that vague distrust which she felt 
 about the brother of the man she adored shaped itself into a 
 positive dislike. 
 
 "That Mr. Lo'wther has been saying something to annoy 
 her," thought Miss Grunderson; "and I hate him. AVTiat 
 business has he to be always dancing attendance upon her 
 instead of her husband ? And now he's not content with get- 
 ting her talked about, so he must needs go and make her un- 
 happy, poor darling." 
 
 Thus mused the meditative Eosa, while Eoderick Lowther 
 rowed her homeward over the placid water. The diplomatist's 
 fascinations were almost tlirown away upon her during this brief 
 journey from Eichmond to the Cedars, although he had pro- 
 gressed so far in Miss Grunderson's affections during a leisurely 
 Dromenade on the terrace, that he had serious thoughts of
 
 268 Only a Clod. 
 
 calling on Grunderson fere within the week to make a formal 
 
 ofl'er for the young lady's hand and fortune. 
 
 "I have no idea of wasting my time and trouble upon the 
 girl, to find myself thrown out at the last moment by the im- 
 practicable parent," thought Roderick, as he shot through the 
 water with that long deliberate stroke for which the Oxoniana 
 are celebrated. " I must know exactly where I am, befoi-e I 
 devote myself to the plumj) Rosa. There vaw&t be no nonsense 
 about settlements and so forth. I won't have any legal brick 
 wall and chevaux defrise between me and my wife's fortune. A 
 man doesn't quarter a cabbage with the arms of the oldest un- 
 titled family in Hami^shire without getting well paid for the 
 humiliation. I must understand what I'm going in for, when I 
 propose to my charming Rosa." 
 
 Lionel Hillary was in the drawing-room when the water- i^arty 
 reurned to the Cedars ; but he accepted his daughter's as^rance 
 that she was too tired and too ill to dine with him, and escorted 
 her to her carriage as soon as it was ready for her. Maude was 
 quite composed now, and there was no suspicion of the truth 
 aroused in the merchant's mind when he kissed her and bade 
 her good-bye. 
 
 " It was foolish of you to go on the water in the hottest part 
 of the day, darling," he said ; " and I'm afraid you are going 
 out a httle too much in town ; but the season will soon be over, 
 And I suppose you will be leaving London." 
 
 Mrs. Tredethlyn murmured something unintelligible, and the 
 barouche rolled away. She saw her father and the two Lowthera 
 standing on the wide stone steps diml}'- through a mist, athwart 
 which the group seemed only a confusion of familiar faces and 
 dark garments; and then she found herself driving London- 
 wards through the still evening, with JuHa by her (wde, and 
 Rosa's anxious face opposite to her. 
 
 She accepted unquestioningly all that Harcourt Lowxher had 
 told her. jler husband was false to her. There was so much 
 in Trancis Tredetlilyn'o Hfe since his marriage which seemed an 
 evidence of his accuser's truth. And then Harcourt had not 
 wished to accuse. The cruel revelation had been extorted from 
 him._ ISTo trouble that J\Iaude had ever yet endured had been 
 60 bitter as that which had come upon her to-day, — the shame, 
 the humiliation, the uniitterable horror of that discovery made 
 in the summer sunshine, amidst the perfume of flowers, the 
 joyous carolling of a skylark high up in the warm blue sky. 
 She did not love her husband; and the agony which gnawed 
 her breast during this homeward journey was the sharp pang 
 wliich belongs to wounded pride rather than to betrayed aflFec- 
 tion. At least this was what she said to herself, as she remem- 
 bered, with an angry flush upon her brow, those sneering re-
 
 Eosa's Beulationt. 2G9 
 
 marks of Mr. Lowther's about her love for sucli a man aa Francis 
 
 Trodethlyn. 
 
 " I do believe he loved me once, let Harconrt Lowtlier say 
 what ho ■will ; and he was nobly generous to my father ; and 
 now he deserts me altogether, and devotes himself to some 
 horrible woman!" thought Mrs. Tredethlyn, whose ideas were 
 not particularly sequential this evening. 
 
 She meditated upon so much as she knew of the life that 
 Francis had led since the close of his honeymoon. His late 
 hours, his frequent absences, all seemed to confirm Harcourt'a 
 account of dissipated habits and degraded tastes. 
 
 Yes, everything combined to prove the miserable truth. She 
 was a neglected wife; abandoned by the man who had once 
 Beemed the veriest slave that ever bowed beneath the supreme 
 dominion of Love. She remembered what he had been, or what 
 she had beheved him to be, and was all the more indignant with 
 him for the discoveries of to-day. Rosa Grunderson, anxiously 
 watcliing Mrs. Tredethlyn in the twilight, wondered that so 
 dark a cloud could overshadow the fair face of her friend. 
 
 " It must be something very dreadful," thought Rosa ; " but 
 whatever it is, that Mr. Lowther is at the bottom of it. If 
 Roderick does propose, — which I've every reason to think he 
 will, from the way he conducted liimself on the terrace, — and he 
 tnd pa can come to any arrangement about me, I won't have 
 much to do with my brother-in-law, that's certain, for I hate 
 him. But I dare say those horrid groimd-rents will always 
 stand in the way of my being married to anybody but a Roths- 
 child ; and Rothschilds don't trouble themselves about ground- 
 rents." 
 
 The drive from Twickenham to Stuccoville is not a very long 
 one ; and Mrs. Tredethlyn's bays got over the ground at a pace 
 that did credit to the judgment of Mr. Lowther, who had chosen 
 the horses for his friend. It was nearly nine o'clock when the 
 barouche drew up before the Doric colonnade which imparted a 
 funereal darkness to Maude's dining-room; and before the three 
 ladies could alight, a hansom cab dashed up to the kerbstone, a 
 pair of slamming doors were flung open, and Francis Tredethlyn 
 sprang out upon the pavement. 
 
 His wife's face flushed crimson, and then grew deadly pale. 
 She turned to Rosa Grunderson, and murmured in faint, broken 
 accents : " Will you dine with us, Rosa ? or shall Martin drive 
 you home ? " 
 
 " Thank you, darling," Miss Grunderson answered promptly ; 
 "I think I'll some in for just a few moments. Pa will have 
 gone to the Bell and — to his club by this time," added Rosa, 
 whose parent was wont to spend his evenings in the parlour of 
 a very respectable tavern in the Brompton Road, where he and
 
 270 Only a Clod. 
 
 several other wortliies assembled nightly to discuss^ the affairs 
 of the nation amidst the ^imes of their cigars, the primitive clay 
 being strictly tabooed in that select little coterie. 
 
 Mande alighted and entered the hall. Francis had handed 
 her from the carnage, and followed her into the house. He 
 threw away his cigar as he stepped into the hall, and approached 
 his mfe radiant with good spirits and perfumed with tobacco. 
 
 " I'm so glad you've come home," he said. " I thought you 
 •were going to dine with the governor, and that I should have to 
 sit in that dreary room all by myself, vrith only Landseer's stag- 
 hounds to keep me company ; though if half the people one calls 
 company were as much aHve as they are, a dinner-party wouldn't 
 he such a dismal business as it is. Of course jou haven't dined ; 
 no more have I ; and unfortunately there doesn't seem to be any 
 dinner," added Mr. Tredethlyn, as he opened the door and looked 
 into the dining-room, where the table was blank and ghastly 
 under a faint glimmer of gas. " ISTo one was expected, I suppose ? 
 However, they can get us sometliing. Geoffreys, just see about 
 dinner, will you ? How do you do. Miss Grimderson _? I dare say 
 you're hungry after your drive. Are you going up-stairs, Maude? " 
 
 " Yes," answered Mrs. Tredethlyn. The syllable had a start- 
 ling effect as it fell from her lips, like one soUtary di-op of hail 
 falling suddenly on a summer day. 
 
 " I am going up-stairs," said Miss Desmond confidentially to 
 Eosa ; " will you come with me, and take off your things ? " 
 
 " No, thanks, dear," answered Miss Giimderson, who would 
 have endured tortures rather than say "thank you," when 
 fashion required that she should say "thanks." "I don't 
 think I v-ill take off my things. Mrs. Tredethlyn doesn't seem 
 very well ; and it's almost too late for dinner ; so I tliink I'll 
 just go up to the morning-room, and rest for a few minutes 
 before I go home. The carriage needn't be kept, you know, 
 please," added Miss Grunderson, to a male domestic hovering 
 in the shadowy depths of the hall ; " for I can have a cab fetched 
 when I want to go." 
 
 Mr. Tredethlyn had followed his wife to the drawing-room; 
 and the two girls standing at the foot of the staircase heard one 
 of the doors close with a sonoroias bang. 
 
 Miss Desmond went up-stairs, and Miss Grunderson followed 
 slowly. The morning-room of which Rosa had sj^oken was on 
 the second floor ; but the young lady did not go any farthei 
 than the first landing-place. The door of the front drawing- 
 room was closed, but the doors of the back drawing-room stood 
 wide open ; and peering into the lighted apartment, Eosa saw 
 that it was qiiite empty. She paused for a moment, looked 
 about her ; and then went quietly into the back drawing-room, 
 ind closed the door very softly behind her.
 
 ^ Rosa's BevehUons. 271 
 
 Francis Tredethlyn followed his wife to the drawing-room 
 because that one frozen syllable, together with the strange ex- 
 pression of her face, had been quite enoucrh to tell him that 
 something was wrong. This husband and this wife had never 
 quarrelled. There had been betv/eeu them none of those little 
 stormy passages which are ai:)t to interrupt the serenity of the 
 best-regulated households ; and the Cornishman's heart turned 
 cold with the thought that anything hkc ill-feeling could arise 
 between himself and Maude. The altered expression of her face 
 boded so much ; and yet what could arise to displease her, 
 when he was nothing but her devoted slave, ready to obey her 
 commands, wilhng to lay down his very hfe for her pleasure ? " 
 
 "Maude," he said, as he closed the drawing-room door, 
 "you speak to me and look at me as if you were offended. 
 And yet I have no consciousness of having done anything to 
 displease you." 
 
 Mrs. Tredethlyn looked at her husband with supreme con- 
 tempt ; not the cool scorn wliich is akin to indifference, but 
 rather a passionate disdainfulness. Taking into consideration 
 the fact that Maude did not care for her husband, all this femi- 
 nine rage seemed a sad waste of feeling. 
 
 " Do not add hypocrisy to the wrong you. have done me," 
 eaid Mrs. Tredethlyn. "I have been most cruelly awakened 
 this day to a knowledge of the life you have been leading — 
 ever since our mamage. I cannot speak of this subject ; it is 
 too horrible ; I think the words would choke me. . I thought 
 that I should have been able to wi-ite what I had to tell you ; 
 but since I have been so unfortunate as to meet you, I may as 
 well say with my own lij^s what I meant to have said m a 
 letter. It is very Little. I have only to tell you that from 
 this moment we must be strangers to each other. After my 
 discovei-ies of to-day, I should consider myself a base and 
 degraded creature if I ever suffered your hand to touch mine 
 in friendship again. The obligation of my father's debt to 
 you must rest upon him henceforward, and not upon me." 
 
 "But, Maude, explain yourself! — your discovery of to-day, 
 you say ! What discovery ? " 
 
 " Your affectation of unconsciousness is a deeper insult 
 
 than your No, I will not discuss this subject with you ! " cried 
 
 Maude, passionately. " It is shameful — it is cruel — that I should 
 have been wronged so basely, when I trusted you so completely. 
 Do not speak to me; do not touch me !" she exclaimed, shrink- 
 ing away from him with a shudder ; " your jM-esence inspu-es me 
 with disgust and abhorrence. Why do you make any poor 
 pretence of inhabiting this house, wliich has only afforded you 
 an ostensible shelter, while your amusements and your friends 
 have been found elsewhere P I set you free fi'om tins hour, Mr.
 
 272 Only a Clod. ^ 
 
 rredetUyn. Seek for liapj^Iness after your own fasliion; where 
 you please. I liave notliing more to say to you." 
 
 She swept from the room before her husband could arrest 
 her. Unspeakably bewildered by her passionate words, which 
 were almost meaningless to him, Francis Tredethlyn stood 
 motionless as a statue a few paces from the doorway by which 
 his wife had just left him. He was standing thus when the 
 voluminous curtains which were drawn across the archway 
 between the drawing-rooms were cautiously divided, and a 
 plump little figure iu blue muslin ajDpeared among the amber 
 drapery. The Comishman heard the rustling, and tm-ned 
 abruptly towards the portiere. 
 
 " Yes," exclaimed Miss Grunderson, " it's me ; no, it's I ! — 
 but, goodness gracious, what does it matter about grammar, 
 when there's so much trouble in the world? — yes, and I've been 
 listening," continued the young lady, answering Mr. Tredethlyn'a 
 inquiring stare ; " and I know that listening in a general way is 
 considered mean ; but I think the amount of pa's ground- rents 
 ought to exempt me from any imputation of meanness. If I 
 didn't love that sweet lamb so dearly ; and if I hadn't a very 
 sincere regard for you, Mr. Tredethlyn, — having come into 
 money suddenly myself, and knowing how trying it is to carry 
 it off carelessly, and not look as if one was always conscious 
 of being richer than other people ; — if I didn't— in short, I 
 shouldn't have stopped behind those curtains, — and run the 
 risk of being considered a sneak and a listener. But do say that 
 you forgive me, please, and believe that I meant it for the 
 best ? " pleaded Kosa, whose diction was apt to become rather 
 obscure under the influence of excitement. 
 
 " What, in Heaven's name, does it all mean. Miss Grunder- 
 son ? " asked Francis, piteously. 
 
 He was ready to chng to the frailest spar by which he might 
 float on the wide ocean of perplexity, whose billows had so sud- 
 denly encompassed him. 
 
 " Goodness gracious knows — I don't any more than the dead 
 though if there is anything in di-awing-room tables balancing 
 themselves on tijD-toe and great-coats flying about the room like 
 awkward birds the dead may know more than we give them 
 credit for," exclaimed the lively Rosa, without a single stop ; 
 " but it's very certain there is something wrong, and whatever 
 it is, that Mr. Lowther is at the bottom of it." 
 
 " Harcourt Lowther ? " 
 
 " Yes. My pa hears a great deal of gossip at the Bell and — 
 at clubs, and such places ; and he always tells me everything he 
 hears. And oh, Mr. Tredethlyn, if you knew how long I have 
 Urished to si^oak my mind to you, I am sure you would forgive 
 M« for listening just now."
 
 Sosa's BcvelatioM. 2T3 
 
 " My dear Miss Gnmderson, what could you have to say to 
 toe P " asked the bewildered Cornishinan. 
 
 " Oh, lots of things. But then you know the grand maxim 
 in society is that you mustn't speak your mind. It's Uke tliat 
 Latin person's rule of nil thingamy; you mustn't admire any 
 thing, you know ; and so on. And one nmst unlearn all one's 
 Catechism, about loving one's neighbour as oneself, and doing 
 unto others as one would they should — which always reminds 
 me of a winter Sunday afternoon at school and broken chil- 
 blains, because one did break once while I was saying it. And 
 you see in society the thing is to let your neighbour go his way 
 and to go yours, and to say, ' Bless my soul ! exactly as I anti- 
 cipated ; paw creatchaw ! ' if your neighbour tumbles over a 
 precipice, from which it would be the very worst of bad manners 
 to hold him back ; and in society, if you saw the good Samaritan 
 — no, the other person — lying wounded in the road, it would be 
 a dreadful incon — what it's name ? — to pick him up and take 
 him to an inn and pay for his lodging, because he might call you 
 to account for your imiDcrtinent officiousness as soon as he got 
 well. So, though I have been bursting to speak my mind 
 almost ever since I've known you, Mr. Tredethlyn, I've held 
 my tongue until to-night. But to-night the climax has come, 
 and I viust speak. Oh, you poor dear thing ! " cried Kosa, in 
 a sudden outburst of sympathy, " how you and your wife have 
 been talked about ! " 
 
 " Talked about !— by whom, when, and where ? " 
 
 " By everybody, always, everywhere. You don't know — 
 though you ought to know, if you ever listened to what was 
 going on ai'ound you — how peo2:)le do talk. They've talked 
 about your dissijiation, the hours you have kept, the places you 
 have been seen at, the people 3'ou have been seen with ; about 
 your coming home in hansom cabs in the middle of the night ; 
 and I think if quieter vehicles could be invented for people who 
 stay out late, or at least the doors made to open differently, 
 there wouldn't bo so much scandal. They've talked about your 
 getting tijosy," exclaimed Rosa, shaking her head solemnl3% and 
 laying a tremendous stress upon the obnoxious word ; " and 
 they've said you were drinking yourself mto an early grave, and 
 that Harcourt Lowther was leading you on to your death in 
 order that he might marry your wife afterwards." 
 
 " Harcourt lead me — to my death — and — many Claude ! Oh, 
 no, no, no; it is too horrible ! " gasped Francis, staring at Miss 
 Grunderson, with his head clasped in his hands, and big beads 
 of perspiration ujion his brow. 
 
 "I know it is," answered Ro.=;a; "but they say it; and you 
 must own it was not a wise thing for you to be so very iutimata
 
 274 Only a CfJod. 
 
 with a man who was engaged to your wife before you married 
 her." 
 
 " Engaged to my wife ! Wlio was engaged to my wife ? " 
 
 " Why, Harcourt Lowther, of course ! Didn't you know all 
 about it ? " 
 
 " No, so help me Heaven ! " 
 
 MibS Grunderson looked very grave, All that she had said 
 had been spoken in perfect good faith; but, all at once, she 
 began to see that miscliief might come of this free utterance of 
 her thoughts. 
 
 " I thought that you knew it," she stammered in considerable 
 confusion, "or I'm sure I should never have said one word 
 about " 
 
 "How did you come to know it?" asked Francis, turning 
 fiercely upon the terrified Rosa. 
 
 " Miss Desmond told me." 
 
 " It is a He, a malicious lie, invented by Juha Desmond ! " 
 
 " I dare say it is something in the way of a story," responded 
 Miss Grunderson, who was very anxious to extinguish the 
 sudden conflagration which her unconscious hand had fired ; 
 " people do tell such stories, you know ; not that I think Miss 
 Desmond would speak so positively unless — but I'm sure if Mrs, 
 Tredethlyn ivas ever engaged to Mr. Lowther, she had quite 
 forgotten him when she married you ; only if it was so, I don't 
 think it was quite honourable of him to be so friendly with you 
 without telling you all about it." 
 
 Thus Miss Grunderson — floundering helplessly in a conver- 
 sational quagmire — endeavoured to undo any mischief which 
 her indiscretion might have made. But Francis was not listen- 
 ing to her ; he was thinking of all liis hfe during the last year, 
 and a host of trifling circumstances recurred to his mind, in 
 evidence against the vnie he had loved, and the fi-iend he had 
 trusted. 
 
 " Yes," he thought, as he sank moodily down into the nearest 
 chair, and covered his face with his hands, as heedless of Miss 
 Grunderson's presence as if that young lady had been one of her 
 father's cabbages,—" ves, it is no lie of Julia Desmond's. A 
 hundred recollections arise in my mind to bear witness to its 
 truth. Maude's confession about the some one whom she ha-l 
 loved, but whose poverty was a hindrance to a marriage with 
 her. Harcourt Lowther's letters from that beautiful heiress, 
 whose father's wealth stood between him and happiness. I 
 knew that they had known each other before he sailed for Van 
 Diemen's Land ; but I beheved him implicitly when he told m« 
 casually one day that they had never been more than the moat 
 indifi'erent acquaintances. He had a careless, half-contemptu-
 
 Jiosa*s Hevelationt. 275 
 
 ons way of talliing of my wife that galled me to tlic qniclc, nud 
 that I have soinetiines resented. Fool and dupe that I was ! 
 That affected cynicism, that pretended imliU'ercnce, was only 
 a part of his scheme. He loved her all the time; and whilo 
 with one hand he pushed me away from her into the drunken 
 orgies that only kill a little more slowly than the secret dosea 
 of the assassin, with the other he lu'ld fast the chaiu that 
 bound him to her; waiting till he should be able to say, 'You 
 are free, and I claim the fulfilment of your broken promise. 
 You are enriched by the death of the i)oor dupe who loved you, 
 and poverty need separate us no longer.' Oh, God of Ileaven, 
 what a fool I have been ! and how clearly I can see my folly, 
 now when it is too late ! False wife, false friend ! so deeply, 
 fondly loved, so blindly trusted. I can remember my wife's 
 face the day she spoke to me of Harcourt Lowther. lias she 
 been in the base plot against me ? No, I will not believe it. If 
 I have been this man's blind dupe, his helpless tool, she may 
 have been as blind, as helpless as myself. God, give me 
 strength to trust her still, for my heart must break if she i.s 
 base and cruel." 
 
 A man's ideas are not apt to aiTange themselves very conse- 
 cutively at such a time ; but it was something after this fashion 
 that Francis Tredethlyn reflected upon his friend's treachery, 
 while Rosa stood by watching him very anxiously, with that 
 fiery eagerness Avhich had prompted her to si:)cak her mind con- 
 siderably cooled down by the asjiect of her comijanion's distress. 
 
 " Miss Grunderson," said Francis presently, "whatever the 
 world may have said against Harcourt Lowther, it is a false 
 and lying world if it ever slandered the goodness and purity of 
 my wife." 
 
 '* I know that," answered Rosa, becoming energetic once 
 more ; " for of all the sweet darlings that ever were, she's the 
 sweetest and the dearest. And how should slie know that people 
 made nasty disagreeable remarks about Mr. Lowther's always 
 happening to go to the parties she went to and calling here 
 oftener than other people, and so on " 
 
 " He went to parties ! " cried Francis. " He told me that he 
 hated parties ; that he scarcely went anywhere." 
 
 " Ah, but he did,9though ; and it has been his flirting way — 
 not the things he has said, you know, but his way of saying 
 them — his ompressmonrj, you know, that has caused those ill- 
 natured remarks about Mrs. Tredethlyn. Nothing sets people 
 talking like omj^ressmonj." 
 
 Francis did not answer. Little by little the mists cleared 
 away from his mental vision ; and he saw that Harcourt Low- 
 ther had been from first to last the subtlest schemer who ever 
 plotted the ruin of an honest blockhead. It had needed only
 
 276 Only a Clod. 
 
 Miss GrunJerson's feminine guesswork to let sudden light into 
 tlie cavernous depths of the foulest pitfall that ever treachery 
 dug under the ignorant footsteps of its victim. Francis remem- 
 "bered all the bitter ridicule, the sneering compassion, that Har- 
 court Lowther had heaped upon the respectable world, from 
 which he held his dupe aloof, while he plunged him to the veiy 
 lips in the dissipations of Bohemia. By this means he had 
 effected as complete a separation between the husband and wife 
 as if the same roof had ceased to shelter them. 
 
 " I have thought — when my tempter gave me time to think 
 — that it was Maude's coldness alone which separated us; but 
 I know now that it was the schemer's work from first to last. 
 She did not love me,— Heaven, have pity upon my poor tor- 
 tured heart !— she loved him, perhaps : but I might have had 
 some little chance of winning her love if I had remained at her 
 feet — her slave, her worshipper ; but he has held me away from 
 her, and now she abhors me. She has no feeling but disgust 
 and disdain for the wretch who has abandoned her to waste his 
 days on a racecourse, his nights in the drunken orgies of a 
 gaming-house." 
 
 Francis Tredethlyn sat with his face hidden in his hands, 
 thinking of his folly, and hating himself for it. Why had he 
 given himself up body and soul into the power of Harcourt 
 Lowther ? why had he been so poor a dupe in the toils of this 
 man ? It was not that he had entertained any special regard 
 for the gentleman who had pretended to be his friend. In Van 
 Diemen's Land he had often had good reason to despise the 
 peevish grumbler, the selfish Sybarite ; and yet for the last year 
 he had taken the man's dictum upon every subject, even upon 
 that one vital question on which the happiness of his Hfe de- 
 pended. Why had he trusted so blindly ; why had he submitted 
 BO slavishly to follow the guiding-strings that led him intc 
 
 E laces where he found no pleasure, amongst people who inspired 
 im with disgust? 
 Little by little the answers to these questions shaped them- 
 selves in Francis Tredethlyn's mind ; and he saw that his uncle 
 Oliver's hoarded wealth had been at the root of all his misery. 
 The wealth which had hfted him suddenly into a world that 
 was strange to him ; the wealth which had made him the mark 
 for every schemer ; the wealth which had won him the hand of 
 the woman whose heart could never have been won by liis time 
 and honest love. Adrift in that strange world, the man who 
 had kept his name unsullied, his soul untainted, his head erect 
 before the faces of his fellow-men, while his pockets were empty, 
 and his very existence dependent upon the day's work that 
 earned him a day's food, found himself all at once the most help- 
 less creature that had ever floated at the mercy of the windi
 
 JRosa*8 Hevclaiions. 277 
 
 and waves upon a trackless ocean ; and he had been very f,dad 
 to grasp the first rope that was thrown ont to him in all Irieudly 
 leeming to guide him safely to the shore. His ignorance had 
 flung him, unarmed and i)0wcrless, into Harcom-t Ijowther'a 
 arms; aiul the man to whom he had ft.lt himsclt" superior whilo 
 nlacking his hoots and obeying his orders out in Van Diemen's 
 Land became all at once, indeed, the master, free to work his 
 own will with that most helpless of all creatures, an uneducated 
 millionaire. 
 
 " If I had a son," thought Francis Tredethlyn, — and a faint 
 thrill was stirred in his breast by the mere nypothesis, — "I 
 should send him to school before I turned him out into the 
 world. Yet I, who am as ignorant as a baby of the world in 
 which I live, have plunged recklessly into its vortex, expecting 
 to emerge unhurt. My own folly is the cause of my destruction. 
 And yet I might have met with an honest friend ; I might have 
 hac^a loving wife." 
 
 " A loving wife !" Ah, how the poor faithful heart ached as 
 Francis thought this ! A man's fireside is the same peacefid 
 sanctuary, whether the hearth is gorgeous with encaustic tiles 
 and an Axminster rug, or poorly covered with a scrap of fa,ded 
 Kidderminster, in some humble chamber where the firehght 
 glimmers on the delf platters that adorn a cottage-dresser. 
 
 " If Maude had loved me," Francis argued, brooding moodily 
 upon his wrongs, " my money need have brought me no misery ; 
 my ignorance would have beguiled me into no danger. Her 
 voice would have regulated my life; her counsel would have 
 prompted every action. Her smallest wish would have been my 
 law. And it would have been very hard if the companionship 
 of a lady had not in time transformed me into a gentleman. 
 But it'/iai are the people with whom I have herded since my 
 marriage — the acquaintances whom Harcourt Lowther has 
 chosen for me? What! pshaw! why do I stop to think of all 
 this ? She never loved me. I should have tried to win her love 
 if he had left me to do so. I might have failed even then as 
 miserablv as I have failed now." 
 
 He groaned aloud as he thought this, and startled Miss 
 Grunderson, who was sitting at a respectful distance from him 
 folding and unfolding her parasol, and wondering why she had 
 got into this galere, and how she was to get out of it ; and regis- 
 tering a mental vow that she would never again be tempted by 
 her recollection of her duty to her neighbour to depart from the 
 manners and customs of polite society. But to her reUef Francis 
 looked up presently, and addressed her. ^^ 
 
 " I thank you heartily for having spoken so frankly to me, 
 he said; "it is only right that I should be acquainted with the 
 common talk about the man whoae hand I have clasped in friend-
 
 278 Onli/ a Clod. 
 
 ship almost every day for the last twelve months. But I liop« 
 you will believe that, whatever Mr. Lowther may or may not be, 
 my \\-ite is good and pure, and worthy of the warmest affection 
 yoit can feel for her. Tour warmth of feeling has touched me 
 deeply. Miss Grunderson. I have been living in so false an 
 atmos]')here lately, that I must be dull indeed if I were not 
 affected by your friendly candour. If— if anything should 
 happen to separate ilaiide and me, I should be very glad to 
 think she had such a friend as you. And — if ever you saw her 
 trusting, as I have trusted, iu the tnith and honour of Harcourt 
 Lowther, you would stand between her and that dangerous ad- 
 viser, that false friend — would you not. Miss Gninderson? " 
 
 "I would," answered Kosa, vahantly; "I should speak my 
 mind to her and to Mr. Lowther into the bargain, as candidly 
 as I have spoken it to you to-night." 
 
 " I believe you would," said Francis. " And now, my dear, 
 G od bless you, and good night ! " 
 
 He held out both his hands and clasped Rosa's pudgy Uttle 
 paws in a brief grasp, and then strode past her on his way 
 towards the door. 
 
 " You're not going out to-night, are you, Mr. Tredethlyn ? " 
 she asked anxiously; "it is so verylaie." 
 
 Poor little Eosa was rather alamied by that resolute stride 
 towards the door, which might only be the first step in some 
 ghastly vengeance to be taken upon Harcourt Lowther by the 
 stalwart Cornishman. 
 
 " I shouldn't hke to have his blood npon my head, thongh I 
 do hate and detest him," thought Miss Grunderson; "for in 
 these days of spirit-rapping there's no knowing how he might 
 spite himself upon me. I might have him tUting and tip-toeing 
 eveiy table I ever sat down to." 
 
 " I'm only going to my room to write a letter," answered Mr. 
 Tredethlyn ; " shall I order my wife's carriage for you ? " 
 
 " No, thank you ; as our house is so near, I think I'll ask one 
 of your ser\'ants to see me home," rephed Eosa, who had no idea 
 of lea^-ing the ground just yet. "I'll run up to Mrs. Tre- 
 dethlyn's room and say good-bye. Shall I take her any message 
 from you ? " 
 
 "None, thank you; good night." 
 
 " Good night." 
 
 Eosa left him still standing in the drawing-room. The 
 spacious and grandiose apartment, in all of whose costly adorn- 
 ment — from the pictures on the walls to the Louis- Seize snuff- 
 boxes and lapis-lazuli honhonnicrcs, and all the expensive fri- 
 volities so lavishly scattered on the tables — there was no single 
 object which had been chosen with any reference to his taste, 
 with any thought of his comfort or pleasure. No exquisite -*oys
 
 The Lady at PelersJiam. 279 
 
 of " piclving-iip ; " no delicious bargaininfr with dirty brokers in 
 the piirlicus of Holbom; no evening excursions, trcasun>-liunt- 
 iug, among dingy by-ways, wlicrc remnants of choice old ebitia 
 lurk sometimes, unrecognized and nn\-a!ued, amongst tlie rulj- 
 bish in a diinly-Hghted shop-window; none of the pleasant 
 Btruggles, the proud triumphs, which attend the collection of 
 Poverty's art and virtu, had attended tlic decoration of tliia 
 splendid chamber. The Cornishman had given aiHii blanche 
 to liis friend, and had written cheques — whose figures he had 
 not remembered five minutes after writing them — in favour of a 
 celebrated dealer in Bond Street, and an upholsterer in Oxford 
 Street ; and that was all. He smiled bitter! v now as he paused 
 to look round the room before he left it — perhaps for ever. 
 
 " And this has been my home," he thought. " Home ! Better 
 to sit by my uncle Oliver's miserly fire, in the dreary house on 
 the Cornish moors, than to loll in one of those yellow-satin 
 chairs, playing at ball with a gold snuff-box, and watching the 
 traitor whom I have trusted talking to my wife." 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIV. 
 
 THE LADY AT PETERSHAM. 
 
 TnE letter which Francis Tredethlyn wrote in his study was a 
 long one; a very painful one to write, as it seemed, from the 
 face of the writer, and the weary sigh which every now and 
 then escaped from his lips, as his hurrying pen paused for a 
 moment. It was close upon ten o'clock when he began the 
 letter. The clock chimed the half-hour after eleven while he 
 was sealing it. He addressed the envelope, and then threw 
 himself back in his chair to think. He had so much to think 
 of. Maude's extraordinary conduct, Ilosa Gninderson's revela- 
 tion, had overthrown the whole fabric of his life ; and he found 
 himself surrounded by ruins whose utter chaos he could not 
 contemi)late ^^■ithout bewilderment. 
 
 For the last few weeks his thoughts had been almost exclu- 
 gively devoted to his cousin Susan, and lier wrongs. Found at 
 last, after so many failures and disappointments, so much delay, 
 the lonely girl had been welcomed as tenderly as any wanderer 
 who ever returned to the lost friends of his youth. But Susan 
 Lesley had a sad story to tell her cousin. The missing link in 
 the chain that Francis Tredethlyn had put together piece by 
 piece was the letter which had been written from St. Petersburg 
 by the man whom Susan had loved and trusted — the man 
 ■whose diary had revealed to Francis the utter worthless ness ot 
 his character. 
 
 Robert Lesley's letter was only a worthy companion to
 
 280 07ily a Clod. 
 
 Kobert Lesley's diary. In it he coldly and deliberately told the 
 girl who loved him, that she was not his wife ; that the Mary- 
 lebone marriage was no marriage ; the registrar no recognized 
 official, but a scoundrel hned for a twenty-pound note to play 
 the part of that functionary ; that the registrar's office had 
 been no office, but a lodging-house parlour hired for the occa- 
 sion, and half-a-dozen doors from the real office. This state- 
 ment was, of course, accomiDanied by the usual heartless sophis- 
 tries which run so glibly from the pen, or fall so smoothly from 
 the hps, of an utterly heartless man. The self-confessed 
 betrayer pleaded the madness of an all-absorbing love ; the 
 stem necessities of well-bred poverty ; the pressure of family 
 circumstances ; the fear of a father's rage ; and then, in conclu- 
 sion, the writer stated the pitiful stipend which he was prepared 
 to offer to the woman he had abandoned, and the cliild he had 
 disowned. 
 
 Susan showed her cousin this letter, and told him how, after 
 receiving it, her mind had almost given way imder the burden 
 of her great agony. Then it was that she had gone to Mrs. 
 Burfiekl, and had written to her father a long letter, telling him 
 something of her story, but not all ; appealing piteously to tho 
 only friend to whom she could appeal ; for faithful Frank waa 
 far away in some unknown country. She told her cousin how 
 she had waited, at first with a faint sickly hope, then with a 
 blank despair, for some answer from the father to whom she 
 had appealed. But none came ; and when her Uttle stock of 
 money had sunk to its lowest ebb, she left the dull quiet of 
 Coltonslough to begin a weary, lonely struggle for bread, which, 
 had endured, without one ray of sunlight to illumine its blank 
 misery, until the summer Sunday afternoon on which Francis 
 Tredethlyn found her sitting in the nurse's cottage with her 
 boy in her arms. 
 
 It was so sad a stoi-y, and so sadly common, that there ia 
 little need to dwell upon the unvarnished record of a woman's 
 battle with poverty in the heart of a great city. 
 
 "Perhaps I ought to think myself very happy, Francis," 
 Susan said when she had told her story ; " for I was always 
 able to pay the nurse somehow for her care of my darling ; and 
 the deadly fear of not being able to do that was the worst 
 trouble I knew in all that dreary time. I have been face to face 
 with starvation, Frank, very often within the last two years 
 put it is not so terrible, when one is used to it. The hell 
 always came at last, and some friendly hand, so unexpected 
 that it might have dropped down from heaven, has often coma 
 between me and despair. I have sometimes thought that bittel 
 struggle for my daily bread was only a blessing in disguise, 
 for it kept me from brooding upon my great sorrow; it some*
 
 The Lady at Petersham. 281 
 
 tunes shut from me the thought of Robert's cruelty and my own 
 disgrace." 
 
 "Disgrace !" cried the Comishman; "no, Susan, there is no 
 shadow of disgrace upon you except the disgrace of being united 
 to a scoundrel and a bar. The marriage before the registrar 
 was a hnndfulo marriage, as binding as if it had been porl'ormed 
 by the Archbishop of Canterbury." 
 
 And thou Francis told Susan of his visit to the registrar's 
 office. This was the balm which he was able to pour into the 
 deepest wound that ever tortured a woman's heart. But the 
 identity of the husband who had bed in denouncing himself a 
 liar was entirely unknown to Susan. In all tlie familiar inter- 
 course of the brief period in which the trusting girl had been 
 a petted and happy wife, Eobert Lesley had not let fall one 
 careless word relating in the remotest way to his position in hfe, 
 his family, or his prospects. When first consulted by Francis 
 upon the contents of the diary, Messrs. Kursdale and Scardon 
 had instituted an inquiry as to whether a Mr. Robert Lesley 
 had been inscribed on the books of St. Boniface any time 
 between 1845 and 1852 ; and the answer had been in the negative. 
 No person of the name had been a member of that college 
 within the last ten years. Francis could only conclude, there- 
 fore, that Mrs. Burfield had been right in her supposition that 
 the man calling liimself Robert Lesley had shielded his identity 
 under a false name. 
 
 " But your husband was visited by his brother, was he not, 
 Susan ? " said Mr. Tredetlilyn, when this subject was cbscussed 
 between the cousins. 
 
 " Yes ; but I knew no more of Robert's brother than of 
 Robert himself. He did not come to us olten. I heard that he 
 was a lawyer, — a barrister, I think, — and that he Uved in the 
 Temple. I heard even that by accident, and Robert seemed 
 almost vexed that I should know so much." 
 
 All these trifling cii'cumstanccs seemed to point inevitably to 
 one conclusion ; Robert Lesley had intended from the first to 
 abandon liis wife, whenever his own interests rendered it advis- 
 able that he should throw off the tie that boiind him to her. 
 Love and selfishness go very badly hand-in-hand together; and 
 love had soon left selfishness sole master of the field. 
 
 " But this man shall be made to acknowledge his wife, — 
 to give a name to his child," cried Francis, "if he can be 
 found." 
 
 If he could be found : that was the grand question. But Mr. 
 Tredethlyn was quite at a loss with regard to the means by 
 wloich liis cousin's husband was to be found. In this case even 
 the grand medium by which the lost are restored to the arms of 
 their friends — the second column of the " Times " — could be of
 
 282 Only a Clod. 
 
 no avail ; for wliat is the use of advertising for a man who dooi 
 not want to reveal himself? 
 
 " If my husband is alive, Providence may throw him across 
 my path some day," Susan said, resignedly. " He could not be 
 more dead to me than he is now if he were buried in the deep- 
 est grave that ever held the ashes of the lost ; but if he gave 
 my boy the name that is his right, I think I could forgive him 
 all the wrong he has done me." 
 
 It was quite in vain that Francis Tredethlyn sought to carry 
 his cousin and her son home to his own house. The sorrowful 
 young mother shrank with absolute terror from the idea of 
 encountering strangers, of finding herself in a splendid house 
 amongst happy people. 
 
 "I am used to my poverty, Francis," she said; — "let me be 
 poor stiU. Nobody is inquisitive about me, because I am beneath 
 people's curiosity. No one questions me about the husband 
 who has deserted me, or extorts my story from me only to 
 doubt it when it is told. My father would not beheve me ; can 
 I exj^ect strangers to be more trusting than he was? No, 
 Francis ; leave me alone in my obscm-ity. I have a lodging 
 near here, and I can see my darling every day. I will freely 
 accept from you a Utile income which will enable me to live as 
 I have lived, without working as hard as I have worked ; but I 
 will accept no more. I am delighted to think that my father 
 left his fortune to you, Frank ; and I thank and bless you for 
 ha%'ing taken so much trouble to find me out." 
 
 Francis Tredethlyn found it hard work to win Susan away 
 from this determination, so quietly expressed. But he did at 
 last persuade her to agree to his ovm. plans for her hfe, on con- 
 dition that he should tell Maude nothing, nor ask Susan to 
 meet her until the missing husband was found, and compelled 
 to acknowledge his wife and son. Francis consented to promise 
 this ; but he cherished a hope that Susan would relent by-and- 
 by, when she heard more of Maude's tender and amiable natxire, 
 and that he would be able to win his wife's fnendsliip for the 
 eimple country girl who had played with him amongst the 
 daisies in Landresdale church3^ard. 
 
 " You must accept the home I shall prepare for you, Susy," 
 said Francis, " or I v/ill have a deed of gift drawn up to-morrow, 
 transferring half my fortune to you. I am ready to divide your 
 father's wealth with you as soon as ever I understand your legal 
 position. In the meantime let me have the sweetest pleasure 
 my money has ever given me yet — the pleasure of making a 
 happy home for you and my httle kinsman. If you knew hoyt 
 I have wasted tliat hoarded money, Susy, on racecourses, and 
 all kinds of worthless places," added Mr. Tredethlyn, with a 
 remorseful recollection of one particular brand of Moselle, for
 
 The Lady at Petersliam. 283 
 
 wliich he had been wont to pay fourteen shillings a bottle iu 
 the i)iirlicus of the Ilaymarkct. 
 
 Susan consented to let her cousin do what he liked with 
 regard to the place in which she was to live henceforward. 
 What mother could refuse a bright home for th(f child she 
 loves ? A few words from Francis conjured up the vision of 
 a garden, where the boy could play binder the shadow of lilacs 
 and laburnums ; where the summer breeze would waft the 
 petals of overblown roses around that golden head. From the 
 happy moment in which he urged the child's welfare as an 
 argument against the mother, Francis Tredethlyn's triumph 
 •was secured. Susan pondered. She thought of the sweet 
 country air, the bright rooms, with the fresh breath of morn- 
 ing blowing in at the open windows, the garden, the cow, the 
 chickens, and all the joys of that sweet rustic paradise which 
 town-bred cliildrcn hear of from their mother's lips, and see 
 only in their dreams. Susan hesitated. Francis had made 
 friends with the boy by this time, and had enhsted the child 
 on his side of the argument. When the woman's sorrowful 
 pride began to hold out weakly, when the mother's heart 
 showed symptoms of relenting, the child's httle chubby arms 
 crept round her neck, and the child's tiny voice pleaded in her 
 ear: 
 
 " Peese, mammy, do live in the pooty house, and let Wobert 
 have pooty flowers." 
 
 It was the triumph of mfantine oratory. Susan turned 
 to her kinsman, half laughing, half crying, and gave him her 
 hand. 
 
 " You must do as you hke, cousin Frank," she said. " Wliat- 
 ever is best for Robert miist be best for me." 
 
 Thus it was that Francis Tredethlyn had withdrawn himself 
 in a great measure from the society of Mr. Lowther, while he 
 scoured the prettiest suburbs in search of a home for his cousin, 
 and superintended the necessary imj)rovements and decoi-ation, 
 the selection of the simj^le furniture, the arrangement of _a 
 garden, in which Kobert Lesley's sou might play happily, his 
 life undarkened by the baseness of an unknown father. There 
 had been unspeakable pleasure for the Cornishman in the doing 
 of this work. It was so long since he had been of use to any 
 one ; it was so long since his supremest benevolence to his 
 fellow-men had taken any higher form than the jsayment of a 
 dinner-bill, and a handsome bonus to the waiter. _ He seemed 
 to breathe a new atmosphere, a fresher, pui-er air, when he 
 shook himself clear of Harcourt Lowther's society, and spent a 
 summer's day pottering amongst carpenters and house-paintera 
 in the Petersham cottage. The odour of turpentine and lead 
 flid not give him a headache ; it was almost invigorating after
 
 284 Only a Clod. 
 
 tlie stifling fumes of musk and mock-turtle, patchouli, and 
 devilled -whitebait that had pei-vaded the hotel dining-rooms in 
 which he had so often acted as host. Energetic though Mr. 
 Tredethlyn was in the can-ying out of his arrangements, Susan 
 had been estabhshed little more than a week at the cottage, and 
 the paint on the Yenctian shutters was still rather sticky, when 
 Harcourt Lowther found the upholsterer's bill, which gave him 
 the clue to his piipil's mysterious conduct. To hasten down to 
 Petersham, find the cottage, refresh himself -vxith dry sherry and 
 soda-water at the nearest tavern, and to make himself agreeably 
 famiUar with the landlord of the tavern, was all incomparably 
 easy to Mr. Lowther. From the landlord he heard all about 
 Brook Cottage. How it had been to let for nearly a twelve- 
 month ; how it had been taken all in a hurry at the end of May 
 by a dashing-looking gentleman from town, who had been re- 
 ported scouring the neighbourhood in hansom cabs, inquiring 
 for houses to let, for three days at a stretch ; how painters 
 and glaziers, carpenters and gardeners, had set to work in hot 
 haste to renew and revivify everything in-doors and out; how 
 waggon-loads of the finest gravel from Wimbledon, and cart- 
 loads of the softest turf from Ham, had been laid down in the 
 garden ; how furniture, that Avas eveiy bit of it new, had been 
 brought down from London ; how the tall, dashing, energetic 
 gentleman in the hansom cab had been perpetually on the 
 ground with his ofiicious finger for ever in the pie ; and how 
 larger cans of half-and-half had been consumed by the workmen 
 at the cost of the dashing gentleman than the landlord of the 
 Prince's Feathers remembers to have chalked up against any one 
 customer since he had traded as a licensed victualler. 
 
 All this Mr. Lowther was told ; and beyond this, he heard 
 how a lady, very pretty and quite young, but a little pale and 
 worn-looking, had arrived at last to take possession of " the 
 prettiest little bos that was ever put together, without regard to 
 expense ;" how she was attended by an elderly female in black, 
 who had evidently seen better days, and who acted as nurse to 
 a httle boy ; how two respectable young women had been hired 
 in the neighbourhood, to act as cook and housemaid ; and how, 
 coming regularly to the Feathers in quest of the kitchen-beer, 
 they had already reported their mistress as the sweetest and 
 pleasantest of ladies, and first-cousin to the dashing gentleman 
 in the hansom cab. The landlord tried to look as if he had no 
 uncharitable thoughts about this cousinship; but Harcourt 
 Lowther saw that Francis Tredethlyn and the lady had been 
 subjects of grave scandal in that quiet country place. He heard 
 that the dashing gentleman had been at Petersham almost every 
 day for the last week ; and that he and the lady passed the 
 greater part of their time in the garden, where they might h«
 
 TJie Lac!y at Pctersliam. 285 
 
 Been at any time from the high-road, — the gentleman smoking 
 and playing with a little boy, and the lady working, at a rustic 
 table, under a mulberry-tree. A pot-boy, coming in from his 
 rounds, as Harcourt lounged at the bar, eoiiiirnicd the landlord's 
 statement when appealed to. lie had passed Brook Cottage not 
 five minutes before, and had seen the lady and gentleman tidk- 
 ing to a gardener, who was doing something to a rose-tree. 
 
 " She's a rare one for flowers, the lady is," the potman said, 
 in conclusion. 
 
 A rare one for flowers : Harcourt Lowthcr mused gravely 
 njDon this remark. 
 
 The fair denizens of Bohemia, to whom he had introduced 
 Francis, were not generally devoted to floriculture in cottage- 
 gardens, though they were greedy of gigantic bouquets, to rest 
 on the velvet cushions of their opera-boxes, or the front seats 
 of their carriages, when they drove to race meetings. Who was 
 this pale, worn-looking young woman, who called Francis 
 cousin ? Was she really his cousin, that Cornish girl of whom 
 the soldier had told his master in Van Diemen's Land, and 
 ■whose miserably-executed likeness had reminded Harcourt of 
 another face, whose owner had played some part in the experi- 
 ence of his life ? Was this inhabitant of the newly-furnished 
 cottage really the Cornish cousin ? Mr. Lowther could scarcely 
 imagine that it was so ; for, in that case, why should Francis 
 have kept her existence a secret from his fidus Achates in the 
 person of Harcourt himself ? 
 
 " Secrecy is only another name for guilt," thought Mr. Low- 
 ther. "Our friend has gone to the bad in real earnest this 
 time, and I can make a coup. I was getting very tired of the 
 slow game." 
 
 Armed with this information, the schemer went back to town, 
 to take his place in Maude's opera-box, and to lead up to that 
 idea of a morning at the Cedars, wliich seemed to originate in 
 Mrs. Tredethlyn's own brain. Chance, which had been against 
 him so long, had gone with him unfailingly in this business. 
 The lucky moment had come ; he had got ms lead at last, and 
 had only to play his winning cards. Chance had been constant 
 to the schemer even in that interview between Francis and 
 Rosa ; for it had happened that, in all Miss Grunderson's can- 
 did outpourings, she had not dropped a word about Mrs. Tre- 
 dethlyn's stroll in the Petersham meadows ; though, even if she 
 had done so, the Coruishman might have been ver}' slow to per- 
 ceive that an accidental glimpse of himself and gentle Susy, in 
 friendly companionship, could have been the primary cause of 
 that stormy greeting which he had received at the hands of his 
 wife. Francis accepted his wife's passionate outburst as only
 
 286 Only a Clod. 
 
 the climax of the disgust and weariness with which he had 
 inspired her. 
 
 " She reproaches me for the life I have been leading lately," 
 he said bitterly ; " but she does not understand her own feel- 
 ings. It is not my hfe, but me she hates. It is myself that 
 inspires the loatliing and contempt which she talked of, and not 
 my late hours or my gambling and horse-racing." 
 
 After sitting for some time plunged in a gloomy reverie, in 
 the dreary hbrary, where the backs of the books he never opened 
 seemed to fro^voi upon him in their sombre Russia leather 
 brovmness, Francis stirred as the httle black marble clock on 
 the mantel-piece chimed the quarter after twelve, and felt in Ids 
 waistcoat-pocket for a note which he had found waiting for him 
 on his table the previous night. It was a tiny twisted poulet 
 from Harcourt Lowther : — 
 
 " Dear Frank, — A line to remind you of to-morrow night. 
 You will be expected any time after nine. — Youra always, 
 
 "H. L." 
 
 This reminder referred to a bachelor's supper which Mr. 
 Lowther had arranged at his lodgings ; a party at which there 
 was to be what the host called a quiet rnljber. A rubber 
 pjlayed with that deadly c^uiet which attends the science of 
 whist when heavy amounts tremble in the balance, and a 
 sum that a poor man would call a fortune may depend on the 
 player's judicious choice between a five and a sevefl. Such a 
 rubber as that which the well-known Sir Robert was once con- 
 cluding, when, just as he j^ondered over his two last cards, a 
 thoughtless looker-on happened to break the solemn silence by 
 one luckless word, and lo, the chain of scientific reasoning 
 droj^ped to pieces, — the popular statesman played the wrong 
 card, and lost a thousand pounds. It was not often that 
 Harcourt Lo-wther entertained his friends ; but when Francis 
 lajised into a temporary stagnation, the master was apt to 
 keep his j^upil going on the road to ruin by such an entertain- 
 ment as this. The quiet iiibber at Mr Lowther's lodgings 
 generally led to other rubbers elsewhere, or cursory appointments 
 for Liverpool or Newmarket, or Chester or Northampton, or a 
 dinner at Richmond, gaily cut for at blind hookey while the 
 men were rising from the whist-table. It was a quai-ter-past 
 twelve now. It would be nearly one o'clock before the fastest 
 hansom could carry Mr. Tredethlyn to the Strand. Francis 
 looked from the clock on the chimney-piece to the scrap of 
 paper in hie hand ; hesitated for a few moments, with a black
 
 A Hasty HecJconing. 287 
 
 frown upon his face, and then started hastily from his lounging 
 attitude, and looked about him for his hat. 
 
 " There couldn't be a better opportunity," ho muttered, "for 
 Baying what I want to say to him." 
 
 CHAPTER XXXV. 
 
 A HASTY RECKONING. 
 
 Harcourt Lowtiter had never jilayed so bad a rubber as that 
 ■with which he beguiled the evening while waiting Francis 
 Tredothlyn's appearance at the little bachelor-party assembled 
 in his rooms. There was the usual blending of the hawk and 
 pigeon tribe at Mr. Lowther's reunion : the birds of prey dis- 
 tinguishable by the purple blackness of their dyed moustaches 
 and the crow's-feet round their faded eyes ; the innocent fledg- 
 lings fresh-coloui'ed and tawny, with a profound belief in their 
 own wisdom and a supreme contempt for everything outside 
 the narrow circle in which they condescended to exist. 
 
 Mr. Lowther suffered his partner to knock under igno- 
 miniously to antagonistic sevens and nines, while the big cards 
 lurked idle in his own liand, to fall at the close into the raven- 
 ous jaws of the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth trumps ; nor 
 was he to be roused into decent play by the unqualified re- 
 monsti^nces of his victim. He was thinking of Maude. It 
 was not the face of the queen of spades which he saw as ho 
 sat hopelessly staring at the card in a vain endeavour to con- 
 centrate liis attention; it was Maude's speaking, passionate 
 countenance which looked at liim, all aglow with angry feehng. 
 He saw her in all her beauty as he had seen her that afternoon, 
 — the tremulous lips, the flashing blue eyes, — for there are 
 bine eyes which in anger have more fire than tlie starriest orbs 
 that ever veiled their lightnings under the cloudy lace of an 
 Andalusian marchesa. His love for her — which was one of 
 the most selfish passions of a selfish nature — had grown and 
 strengthened day by day since the hour of his return, and had 
 kindled into an all-absorbing flame now that he seemed so 
 near his triumph. 
 
 Was he near his triumph ? That question occurred to him 
 several times as he sat opposite his friend Captain Harrison of 
 the Spanish Legion, playing the unluckiest rubber that the 
 Captain had been engaged in for weeks, — " And the beggar had 
 such first-rate cards too," as the Captain said afterwards, po- 
 litely criticising his friend's play ; " if he liMn't kep' his trumps 
 BO jolly dark we could have cf^^ried everything before us." 
 
 Was he near his triumph? He had been playing for two 
 stakes — the woman he loved and the fortune he envied- He
 
 288 Only a Clod. 
 
 knew Maude Tredethlyn well enough to know that so long as 
 her husband Hved, she was as far beyond his reach as the stars 
 which shone down upon him as he walked home from StuccO' 
 ville, and of whose light he thought so little. Maude, as the 
 daughter of an insolvent trader, was a lovely being whom ho 
 had felt no reluctance to resign ; for he had looked forward with 
 a horrible foresight to the day when the girl he loved should be 
 again within his reach ; no longer as a penniless spinster, but a 
 wealthy widow. This had been the goal which Harcourt had 
 Been at the end of that weary road along which he conducted 
 the young man who trusted him. No physician ever watched 
 a patient more intently than Mr. Lowther watched the slow 
 undermining of the Comishman's glorious constitution under 
 the influence of late hours and hard drinking. The bloodshot 
 eyes, the unsteady hand, the failing appetite, the uncertain 
 spirits, the feverish unrest, were all diagnostics that marked the 
 progress of the schemer's work. Mr. Lowther had seen so many 
 young men drop down in the poisoned atmosphere to which he 
 mtroduced Maude's husband. He hoped that the end wliich 
 had come to so many would come to tliis ignorant, blundering 
 rustic, into whose lap blind Plutus had cast the wealth that 
 should have fallen to better men. The end must come ; for the 
 stupid Croesus tumbled so helplessly into the snare, and aban- 
 doned himself so completely to his captor's mercy. It was ouly 
 a question of patience. The end would come in due time : and 
 then there was the woman he loved, and the richest widow in 
 London, to reward the plotter's patience, to crown his eiforts 
 with happiness and success. To-day's business, Harcourt 
 Lowther argued, as he played that unfortunate rubber, could 
 not be otherwise than a lucky stroke, hkely to huiTy matters to 
 a crisis. Francis had slipped out of his hands so often of late, 
 had kept better hours and drunk less. But a serious quarrel 
 with Maude would inevitably fling ]\Ir. Tredethlyn back upon 
 the spurious Lethe of the brandy-bottle, and would hasten the 
 schemer's work to its fatal close. " I think I have shut the door 
 of his home upon him," thought Harcourt ; " it will be strange 
 if he is not glad to drop completely into the groove in which I 
 want to see him." 
 
 This, in plain English, is the plan which Harcourt Lowther 
 bad made for himself; though he would scarcely have put his 
 scheme into such very plain words, even in his own thoughts, 
 lagc, in a play or a novel, is obliged to give utterance to his 
 schemes vnth tolerable clearness ; but the real lago is reticent, 
 even in commune with himself, and huddles his blackest thoughts 
 into some dark corner of his mind, where they he conveniently 
 hidden from the e3'^e of conscience. 
 
 Before twelve o'clock Mr. Lowther had abandoned his placa
 
 A Hasty Beckoning. 289 
 
 Bt the whist-table to his hroilicr; niul after lonnging hehind tho 
 chill r of a young man who was playing ccarte, and making a 
 random bet now and then, the host proposed supper, — a pro- 
 position which was received very warmly by the men who were 
 losing money, and very coolly by tlio winners. ITarcourt 
 Lowther's supper was almost as unceremonious an aii'air as 
 that memorable entertainment in Lant Street, Borougln, at 
 •which Mr. Robert Sawyer played the part of host. A young 
 man, hired for the occasion from a neighbouring tavern, laid the 
 cloth very rapidly, while the guests lounged against the corners 
 of the mantel-pieces, and grou2:)ed themselves in little knots, to 
 discuss coming events in the racing world, or to criticise current 
 pictures and current theatricals, with an occasional spice of 
 curreift scandal. 
 
 The supjier was very simple. There were unlimited supplies 
 of those delicate little oysters which seem created with a special 
 view to bachelors' supper-parties, and the refreshment of ex- 
 hausted playgoers; and whose native beds the ignorant foreigner 
 might not unnaturally imagine to lie somewhere at the liack of 
 the Strand. And to wash these down, INIr. Lowther had pro- 
 vided Chablis, white Hermitage, and Eiidesheimer. There were 
 spatch-cocks and devilled kidneys, fried potatoes, monster 
 lobsters, marvellous cheeses from the remotest cantons of Swit- 
 zerland, and the most delicate varieties of green-stuff from a 
 French fruiterer's in the purlieus of Leicester Sc[uare. There 
 was no pretence of an elaborate entertainment ; but there was 
 an open case of sparkling Moselle by the side of Mr. Lowther's 
 chair, into which he dipped about once in five minutes ; and the 
 young man from the tavern had been initiated into the mysteriec 
 of a claret-cup, which he compounded at a rickety little side* 
 board in the inner room. 
 
 So far as the guests went, the supper was a success. There 
 was just the amount of confusion which gives a picnic flavour 
 to a meal, and which seems an infallible stimulant of animal 
 spirits. Mr. Lowther's visitors enjoyed themselves immensely, 
 and the party was becoming boisterous in its gaiety, when the 
 door was opened, and Francis Tredethlyn walked in. 
 
 Harcourt Lowther pushed away the Moselle case, which was 
 now only filled with tumbled straw and empty bottles, and 
 called for a chair, which was edged into the corner at the host's 
 right hand. 
 
 "You'll have some supper, Tredethlyn?" he said, while 
 Francis wag shaking hands with some of the men They were 
 all known to him, and all knew liis story, and had a pretty clear 
 idea that Harcourt was what they called " cleaning him out," 
 in the most approved style by which the process can be per- 
 formed. " These things are all cold, I'm afr3J4. Jones, run acroaa
 
 290 Onhj a Clod. 
 
 and get some fresh oysters, and you can order another spatch* 
 cock — to be ready in a quarter of an hoiar at the latest. Sit 
 down, dear boy. What the deuce have you been doing -with 
 yourself all night? Give him elbow-room, Harding, that's a 
 good fellow, and don't knock your ashes on to this corner of the 
 table-cloth just yet. Now, then, Philcote, the ' Last Rose of 
 Summer' as soon as you like; but you may as well make up 
 your mind what key you'll sing it in before you begin." 
 
 Francis called back the man as he was hurrymg from the 
 room. 
 
 " Stop ! " he cried ; " you needn't order anything more — for 
 me. I shan't eat supper to-night." 
 
 Something in his tone arrested every other voice ; and there 
 was a silence as sudden and as complete as if some magician 
 had waved his wand and changed Harcourt Lowther's guests 
 into stone. Something in his look attracted every eye, and held 
 it fixed in a wondering stare upon his face. .Mr. Philcote, who 
 fancied himself an amateur Sims Reeves, was disturbed in his 
 calculation of that vocal bullfinch to be clearc-d between the 
 third and fourth notes of the " Last Rose of Summer," and 
 abandoned all thoughts of singing his favourite ballad. 
 
 The Cornishman's colourless face and disordered hair and 
 dress might have suggested the idea that he had been drinking ; 
 but there was an inscrutal)le something in that white face 
 which was not compatible with drunkenness. Hai'court Low- 
 ther looked at him nervously. The marital quarrel had come 
 off, evidentlv, and Francis took matters very sei'iously. 
 
 " Come, Mr. Troublefeast," cried the host, " we're not going 
 to stand this sort of thing, you know. We'll have no statue of 
 the Commander stalking in upon us in the midst of our fun — ■ 
 without Mozart. What the deuce is the matter with you, dear 
 boy ? Roderick, pass that tankard this way, will you ? You 
 fellows down there contrive to keep everything to yourself. Let 
 the rosy vintage circulate. There's another half-dozen of the 
 claret in the next room, and no end of lemons. So the moment 
 for the selfishness of the savage to overpower the civilization of 
 the gentleman has not arrived. Come, Frank, take down the 
 shutters, and light up; you've made us all as quiet as the 
 frozen crew described by that pertinacious old boi-e, the Ancient 
 Manner. Take a long dip into that tankard, old fellow, and 
 come up bright again." 
 
 Mr. Lowther struck his small white hand lightly upon his 
 friend's shoulder as he concluded. Francis had dropped into 
 the place offered to him, and sat there, looking like nothing hut 
 the Commander, in his stony i-igidity of face and figure. Aa 
 Harcourt Lowther's hand alighted on his shoulder, he startled 
 every one by throwing it deliberately away from him.
 
 A Hasfi/ ItccJconing. 201 
 
 "I have liad enough of your friendship, thant yon," ho said; 
 "henceforward, if we arc to be anything at all to each other, I 
 had rather we should be foes — I may have better luck perhaps 
 that way." 
 
 " Trcdcthlyn ! are you dranlc ? or mad ? " 
 
 "Neither, but I have been both; for I have tnisted you. 
 You needn't ask me what I mean," said Francis, interrupting 
 Harcourt Lowthcr's exclamation by a rapid gesture of his up- 
 lifted hand ; " I am going to tell you, and very plainly. Gen- 
 tlemen, yon were going to listen to a song just now ; have you 
 any objection to hearing a story instead? There will be time 
 for your ballad afterwards, you know, Philcote. My story is 
 not a long one." 
 
 Harcourt IJO^vther had turned very j^alc. His light blue eyes 
 glittered, and the slim white fingers of his right hand closed 
 involuntarily on the knife that had been lying near them. He 
 looked as a man might look, who marching proudly upon the 
 road to victorj^ saw the earth yawn asunder beneath his feet, and 
 knew all at once that his next step must hurl him to a dreadful 
 death. He was very quiet ; but the quivering of his thia 
 nostrils, the quickening of his breath, and his faded colour, 
 betrayed a degree of hesitation which set his guests wondering, 
 and infused a dash of excitement into the wind-up of the little 
 banquet. The highest development of Christianity cannot quite 
 extinguish the natural savage. Cromwell's Ironsides did mur- 
 derous work with the gospel in their wallets and pious exclama- 
 tions upon their lips; and it seems the attribute of human 
 nature to delight in a row. The guests at Harcourt Lowther's 
 Bupper-table jiricked up their ears with one accord, and it was 
 with considerable difliculty that they managed to keep up a 
 faint attempt at that kind of conversation which had engaged 
 them, in twos and threes, before Francis Tredcthlyn's entrance. 
 "When they spoke to one another now, it was only in under- 
 tones, and their disjointed sentences revealed the fact that they 
 were Ustening to the speaker at the end of the table. But when 
 Francis spoke of telling a story, the company drojiped all pre- 
 tence of indifference to him ; and listened with a polite appear- 
 ance of perfect unconsciousness as to an}' unfriendly intention 
 on the part of the late visitor. 
 
 " Sing your song, Philcote," said Harcoui-t Lowthor, reso- 
 lutely ; " we want no stories — we've no time for twaddle of that 
 sort. Let's have a good song or two, and then we'll go into the 
 next room for a rubber." 
 
 Mr. Philcote, whose nerves were fluttered by the ominona 
 gloom that had so suddenly fallen upon the assembly, gave a de- 
 spairing cough, and made a husky plunge at the A flat on which 
 he should have begun the sweetest song- writer's sweetest songj
 
 t92 Only a Clod. 
 
 but before lie had articulated liis initiatory " 'Tig," a big ma 
 willi a black nioustaclie, who owed Harcourt Lowther a grudge, 
 and had been consuming the best bits of the lobsters, and the 
 hon's share of the Moselle, under a mental protest, interrupted 
 t'he timid singer : 
 
 " Let's have the story first, and the ' Last Rose ' afterwards," 
 he said. " Fire away, Tredethlyn ; your audience have supped 
 luxuriously, and are in good humour." 
 
 " I dare say it's a common story enough in your set, Boy- 
 stocli," answered Francis; "but it isn't a long one. It is the 
 story of a man who was lifted one day from poverty to wealth, 
 and found himself all at once alone in a world as strange to 
 him as if he had been transported out of this jjlauet into 
 another inhaliited by a different species." 
 
 " Egad," muttered Mr. Boystock, " I wish somebody would 
 transport me ! " 
 
 " Ah, it isn't likely, old fellow, in that way," murmured hia 
 neighbour. 
 
 " For some time the country-bred cub — he was country- 
 bred, and what you would call a cub — got on well enough. Ho 
 floundered into a few mistakes, and he floundered out of them, 
 after his own ignorant fashion. I think there is a providence 
 for such men, as there is for drunkards, and so long as they 
 stagger along alone, they come to very httle grief He did a 
 great many silly tilings with his money, I dare say ; but I think 
 he once did a generous thing — though, God knows, in doing it, 
 he only followed the blind impulse of his undiscijilined heart as 
 ignorantly as if he had been some blundering Newfoundland 
 dog that pulls the mistress he loves out of the water where he 
 sees her drowning. His wealth prospered with him, though ho 
 had cared little enough for it when it feU into his hands. By 
 means of it he was able to save the woman he loved from a 
 great trouble ; and in her boundless gratitude for the service 
 which he valued so hglitly, she abandoned herself to the purest 
 impulse that ever stirred a noble breast, and offered him her 
 hand. If he had been generous or wise, he would have refused 
 the hand which could not give him a heart. He was only — 
 in love. Selfishly, stupidly, he seized the proffered sacrifice; 
 too besotted in his bhnd passion to perceive that it waa a 
 sacrifice." 
 
 Mr. liowther's guests stared blankly at one another. They 
 had not dropped their own talk to hear suck stufi" as thi^ 
 Harcourt sat very still, with his hand always upon the knifa 
 At the other end of the table lounged Eoderick, the ver^ 
 picture of well-bred indifference. He felt that his brother haflj 
 dropped in for it ; but he had no idea of interrupting the action 
 of the little drama by any fraternal chamj^ionship.
 
 jL Hasiy BecJconing. 293 
 
 ** Let tliorn fi,£r'ht it out their own way," he tlionglit ; " I like 
 to see the white man suil'er."' 
 
 " The country -bred cub was still fresh to the intoxication of 
 his fancied happiness, when a man who had been familiar with 
 him in his poverty came from the distant part of the world 
 where they had met and known each other, and offered to bo 
 his friend. The cub's ignorance of life was so complete, that he 
 did not know it was possiljle for a man who bore her IMajesty'a 
 commission, and called himself a gentleman, to be a bar and a 
 villain. He triisted his old acquaintance implicitly, and accepted 
 him as a friend — beUeving, still in his boorish ignorance, that 
 there was such a thing as friendship, or, at the worst, an hon- 
 ourable good fellowship between honest men. His friend did not 
 tell him that he had been the engaged lover of the woman the 
 boor was going to marry; and when the young couple began 
 their new life, he planted himself in their house ; and his first 
 act was to shut the husband from the home whose dingiest room 
 was a paradise, so long as it was sanctified by the presence 
 of an idolized ^\dfe. AVdl any one at this table guess the plot 
 which the boor's friend hatched against him in the hour when 
 their hands tirst met in friendsliip? I think not. The gentle- 
 man — polished, well-bom, highly educated— allowed the coiintry 
 cub to marry the woman he loved; reserving to himself the 
 hope of marrying her, enriched by the cub's money, when the 
 cub \^a9 dead. This once arranged, there was only one thing 
 more to be settled; and that was the cub's life. Unluckily he 
 was a brawny six-foot fellow, with the constitution of a prize- 
 fighter. But then prize-fighters are not always long-lived ; their 
 habits are so apt to be against them. Well, gentlemen, there 
 have been men who have undermined a victim's strength with 
 small doses of antimony, while they smiled in his face, an(? 
 called him brother. We manage these things better nowadays. 
 The gentleman resolved that the boor should drink himself t/ 
 death." 
 
 " Is this the plot of a French novel ? " asked Roderick, super- 
 ciliously, after a brief silence, in which Francis Tredethlyn had 
 paused to take breath; " if it is, you had better tell us the title 
 of the book, and let us read it in the original. ^^ There may be 
 some chance of our thinking it interesting thin." 
 
 " There are shameful things done out of novels as well as m 
 them, Mr. Lowther," answered Francis. " What T am telling 
 you is the truth. The gentleman took the wealthy boor under 
 his protection, and from that hour the cub's mind and the cub's 
 body began to wither under the iniluence of a vice which of 
 himself he held in abhorrence, but which in the dull indifference 
 of a man who has no ho]-.e to elevate him, no aim to strive for,
 
 S§4 Only a Clod. 
 
 he was -weak enongli to accept as the cure for all his troubles. 
 What did it matter how many glasses of brandy he drank, 
 or how often he staggered across his dreary threshold in the 
 early morning, stupefied by foul gaslit atmospheres and bad 
 wines ? His friend took care to remind him that there was no 
 one to be sorry for liis misdeeds, or to rejoice in his repentance 
 if he repented. He could not smk so low that his wife would be 
 affected by his degradation ; he could not rise so high that she 
 would be proud of his elevation. His friend diuned the bitter 
 truth into the wretch's ear. The beautiful young wife despised 
 him; the wealth that other men envied was useless to liim, 
 except in its power to buy the obhvion of the brandy-bottle. 
 From the hour in which his well-born friend took him under his 
 protection, the boor never did a generous action, or heard a 
 noble sentiment ; and he very rarely went home sober. He waa 
 drinking himself to death as fast as a strong man can, when 
 Providence took compassion on him, and gave him a duty to 
 fulfil. A helpless girl, his kinswoman, was thrown across his 
 path, and all at once he found himself of use in the world. 
 From that moment his friend's scheme was overthro^vn. Good- 
 bye to the brandy-bottle and the bad wines ! The boor had a 
 friendless woman dependent on his protection, and he had some- 
 thing to live for. He determined to sink the past ; bid farewell 
 to the -wife whose aff'ection he was unable to win ; turn his back 
 upon the circle he had lived in and the people who had known 
 him ; and finish his days honestly among honest men." 
 
 " ' So he died, and she veiy imprudently married the barber,' " 
 exclaimed Mr. Boystock. " It's a very good story, I dare say ; 
 but apropos to what?" demanded the gentlemaii, looking at 
 Harcourt Lowthcr with a mahcious twinkle in his little black 
 eyes. " I don't see the connection with the proverbial bottes. 
 What does it all mean ? " 
 
 " It means, gentlemen, that I am the boor who has been the 
 dupe of a villain, and will be so no longer ; and the name of the 
 villain is Harcourt Lowther." 
 
 There was a moment's silence, followed by a sudden smash- 
 ing of glass. A pair of small sinewy white hands fastened 
 cat-like upon Francis Tredethlyn's throat, and he and Harcourt 
 Lowther were grappling each other in a fierce struggle. It was 
 very long since the gentleman had been weak enough to get in 
 a passion. He had sat as still as a statue while the Cornish- 
 Yian set forth his indictment, waiting to see how completely he 
 had failed ; and now that he knew that his plot, so deliberately 
 laid, so patiently carried out, was only a bungling bushiess after 
 aU — for the man must have bungled who fails so utterly— Mr. 
 Lowther lost his head aU in a moment, and abandoned himself
 
 A Ilasfi/ lUccJconiiig. 295 
 
 to a sudden access of rage, tliat reduced him to the level of a 
 wounded tiger. 
 
 It WHS scarcely with Francis that ho was anc^ry. What did 
 it matter how this man spoke of him or thought of him? 
 What did it matter that these other men should hear him 
 accused of a baseness, which was only an intellectual iinin-ove- 
 ment upon the vulgar jirocess by which the gentlemanly ))ird8 
 of prey plucked the tender plumage of their victims ? All this 
 was nothing. It was against himself — against his own failure 
 — that Ilarcourt Lowther's fuiy was raging; only like all fury 
 of that kind, it was ravenous for vengeance of some sort. It 
 was only for about twenty seconds that his claws were fastened 
 on ^rancis Tredethlyn's throat. A Cornish heavy-weight is 
 not exactly the kind of person for a delicately-built Sybarito 
 to wrestle with very successfully. 
 
 " We are rather celebrated for this sort of thing in my county," 
 Mr. Tredethlyn muttered between his set teeth, as he loosened 
 Harcourt Lowther's grasp from his throat, and hurled him in a 
 kind of bundle to a corner of the room, where he fell crashing 
 down amongst the ruins of a dumb-waiter, half buried under a 
 chaos of broken bottles and lobster-shells. 
 
 Roderick Lowthcr would have sprung upon his brother's foe 
 in the next minute, but the other men hustled round him and 
 hemmed liim in. 
 
 " Don't you see the fellow's a Hercules ? " cried one of them ; 
 " let him alone, Lowther." 
 
 " Let me go ! " roared the diplomatist; " I know my brother's 
 a false-hearted rascal, but I won't stand by and see a Lowthcr 
 played at ball with by any boor in Christendom. Let me get at 
 him, Boystock, or I shall hurt you." But Francis had walked 
 quietly to the door, and turning with his hand upon the lock, 
 waited for a moment's pause in the confusion before he spoke. 
 
 " Gentlemen," he said, " you are witnesses that your friend 
 attacked me. I have no quaiTcl with Mr. Roderick Lowther ; 
 and as I am the bigger man of the two, there would be no 
 credit for either him or me in a scuffle between us. If Harcourt 
 Lowther wants to see me, ho will be able to find me any time 
 this week at the Grand Hotel, Covent Garden ; after this week 
 I shall sail for South America by the first packet that leaves 
 Liverpool." 
 
 He ijaused a second time. There was no answer. The 
 diplomatist had thought better of his tliirst for fraternal retri- 
 bution. 
 
 "Why should I get myself into a mess about the beggar P" 
 he thought; "he wouldn't see vio out of a scrape, I dare say." 
 
 So Francis dejiarted unquestioned: not to return to th*
 
 296 Only a Clod. 
 
 Stuccoville mansion, but to walk np Southampton Street, and 
 across Covent Garden, to seek a shelter in the old lodginga 
 vhere he had Hved so jjleasantly in liis bachelor days. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVI. 
 
 POOH Frank's letter. 
 
 Maude shut herself in her own rooms after her interview with 
 Francis, and refused to see any one except Julia. She wanted 
 some one to cling to in her sudden distress, and was fain to 
 throw herself upon the Irish girl's bosom for consolation. 
 
 Then Jnlia Desmond had her revenge. It was very sweet to 
 Bee the woman who had usurped the cup of prosperity once held 
 to her own lips brought down so low ; more wretched in the 
 midst of her wealth and grandeur than Julia had been in her 
 lonely attic at Bayswater, with a July sun glaring in upon her 
 through a curtainless window, and the drowsy voices of her 
 pupils droning in her ears. The pleasure that thrilled through 
 her breast as she held Maude Tredethlyn in her arms, and heard 
 her declare, amidst passionate sobs, that Francis had been false 
 and base and wicked, and that she was the most miserable 
 woman in the world, was a sensation more exquisite than Miss 
 Desmond had ever known before. For the honour of humanity, 
 that wicked jaleasure did not last veiy long. The daughter of 
 Patrick Macnamara Ryan O'Brien Desmond was not altogether 
 base. Maude was at her feet, and she was avenged. It was 
 her rival's insolent happiness — hapj^iness always does seem inso- 
 lent to the unhappy — that had galled her to the quick. The 
 two women were on a level now, and Julia forgave her old com- 
 panion. 
 
 "I told you he was a villain," she said; and that was the 
 only unkind speech she uttered. After that, she was comforter, 
 confidante, friend, and she was almost sorry to see the endurance 
 of Maude's grief. "You have your fine house and your carriages 
 still," she said, as the young wife sat on the ground at her feet 
 in the abandonment of her sorrow; "you could never have 
 married Francis Tredethlyn for any other reason than the wealth 
 he could give you. What does it matter to you whether he is 
 true or false ? You never loved him." 
 
 "No," answered Maude, naively, "I suppose not. But it ia 
 BO shameful of him to care for anybody else. And from what 
 Harcourt Lowther says, he does care for that horrible person ; 
 and to leave me, Julia, day after day, and to be — there — all the 
 time— in a garden — smoking — looking as much at home as if h9 
 had lived there all his life — I never can forgive him, Julia!"
 
 Poor FranJc's Letter. 297 
 
 "Of course not," Miss Desmond replied promptly; "but I 
 dtm't see that you need make yourself so very unliappy about 
 his coiuluet. You will liave a formal separation, 1 suppose. 
 Your papa, or your papa's solicitors, will manage that, no duubt; 
 and you will live quietly in a smaller house than this. You will 
 not be able to go so much into society, you know ; for it is so 
 difficult for a woman who is separated from her husband to 
 escape scandal, however careful she may be," Julia added, with 
 considerable satisfaction. It is so nice to sit in the dust and 
 mingle our sympathetic tears with those of the fallen powera 
 who have lately queened it over us. 
 
 Maiide's sobs redoubled. 
 
 •' Society !" she exclaimed. " I hate Gociety ! Yes, it's no use 
 talking, Julia. I know what you're going to say about my 
 going out to three parties a night, and so on ; but I don't like 
 it — nobody likes it. They get into the whirlpool, and there they 
 are. If you go to Mrs. A.'s Thursday, you must go to Lady 
 B.'s Friday, or you offend her; and if you go once, you must go 
 on going, or it seems as if you didn't like the people you met ; 
 and then, if you don't ask people, you are accused of dropjung 
 them ; and if you ask strange people, you are accused of picking 
 them up ; and if you always ask the same peoiDle, your partiea 
 are called slow ; and if you ask different people, you are called 
 capricious. I am so tii-ed of the world, Julia," sighed Mrs. Tre- 
 dethlyn. " AVhen I drive any distance to dinner on an autumn 
 evening, I always envy the people who live in little villas, and 
 drink tea at seven o'clock in pretty parlours that I can see in 
 the firelight. They seem so happy. I never hear a miiifin-bell 
 — don't laugh, Julia; but there is something pecuhar in a 
 muffin-bell — without thinking how hollow my life is, compared 
 to the lives of the people who eat the muffins. And then I 
 fancy that I should have been so much happier in a pretty 
 little cottage in St. John's Wood, with a tiny, tiny back-garden 
 sloping do\\Ti to the canal, and a still tinier garden in front for 
 Floss to bark in. I used to think sometimes," continued ]\Iaude 
 di-opping her voice and s]3eaking with some slight embarrass 
 ment, " that Francis and I would get to understand each other 
 better by-and-by, and that we should lead quite a Darby-and- 
 Joan sort of Hfe, doing a gi-eat deal of good, and going out much 
 less. But, of course, that hope is quite gone now. I can never 
 endure liis society again. I could never trust him. And oh, 
 Julia, I did trust "him so implicitly! I had such a belief in liis 
 goodness that I despised myself for not being better worthy of 
 him. And to think that he should deceive me so cruelly ; that 
 he should have been deceiving me all along, leading a Nsncked 
 life amongst wicked people for his own pleasure; when I fancied
 
 298 Only a Clod. 
 
 that he was driven from his home by my indifference, and re« 
 proached myself so bitterly for being wanting in my duty to 
 him." 
 
 In this strain poor Maude discoursed at internals for some 
 hours. Julia v.ras very patient, sympathetic even, in a hard 
 kind of way; but she bore with all her weight upon the evidence 
 of Francis Tredethlyn's perfid}', and she di'ained the cup of her 
 triumph to the very dregs. 
 
 It was not till the next morning that the letter which Francis 
 had left in the library was dehvered to his wife. She was sitting 
 in her boudoir, with an untasted breakfast before her, and the 
 sj'mpathetic Julia on the other side of the table, when her maid 
 brought the missive, which a housemaid had discovered at day- 
 break on her master's table, two or three hours before Mr. 
 Tredethl3m's valet found the httle bedroom behind the library 
 untenanted, and perceived that liis master had not slept at home. 
 
 The Cornishman's letter was very simply worded. Maude 
 opened it hastily in the hope that it might contain some justi- 
 fication of her husband's conduct. But he did not even allude 
 to his delinquencies, and confined himself to bidding an earnest 
 and friendly farewell to the wife who had never loved him. 
 Tears of disappointment, humiliation, regret, poured slowly 
 down Maude's cheeks as she read the letter. It was the first 
 time Francis had written to her since her marriage ; and there 
 was something almost strange to her in the sight of his bold 
 commercial hand, whose accustomed regularity had been a little 
 disturbed by the writer's agitation. 
 
 " My veuy deak Wife, — I write to you for the first time since 
 it has been my privilege to address you by that sacred name. 
 If I could tell you the pride and happiness I once felt in that 
 privilege, when first you laid your hand in mine, when first I 
 heard yon called by my name, I should be a veiy differeut 
 person from what I am ; and then it is possible this letter need 
 never have been ^^Titten. I write to bid you good-bye, Maude ; 
 and I think the best proof I can give you of mj'^ love is the proof 
 I give you now, when I bring my mind to the necessity of our 
 separation, and resign myself to the knowledge that I may never 
 see your face again upon tliis eai'th. 
 
 " I will not tell you how soon I discovered your indifference 
 — ^how soon another person demonstrated to me that your feeling 
 towards me was even something worse than indifference ; that 
 it was dislike and contempt which I inspired in your mind. My 
 dense ignorance of the world, and your amiable nature, would 
 have prevented my making this discovery of my own accord. 
 "But there are always plenty of those ' good-natured friends ' the
 
 Poor Franks Letter. 299 
 
 man vn the plaj^ talks about. J found such a friend. If you 
 have any curiosity upon the suhjcct, llosa Grunderson, wlio is a 
 good honest-hearted little girl, will tell you the name of the 
 man who opened my eyes to the full misery of my position. Id 
 writing this, Maude, I have no thought of reproach a!,Minst 
 yoH. To me you have been and always will be something so 
 bri^dit and lovely as to be amenable to none of the common laws 
 which govern common natures. When you offered to bo my 
 wife, you yielded to a generous impulse ; and it is I who deserve 
 reproach for having been so base in my blind sellishness as to 
 accept the sacrifice you were willing to offer in repayment of a 
 fancied obhgation. I cannot undo the past ; but I can at least 
 set you in some manner free from the fetters you forged for 
 
 J'^our^i'lf \inder the influence of that brief enthusiasm. So 
 ong as I live, one of the miseries of my life will be thi.' know- 
 ledge that I shut you out of a brighter fate; that I depri%-eyou 
 of a more worthy companion; that the greatest sacrifice I can 
 make in atonement of the past will only make you the lonely 
 widow of a living husband. But I can at least rid you of the 
 society of a man whose presence inspires you with disgust and 
 loathing. Maude, I am quoting your own words ; spoken so 
 deliberately, so coldlj', that I should be indeed mad and cowardly, 
 were I to shrink from accepting them in their fullest import. 
 I might have doubted untU to-night ; I might have hugged 
 myself with the notion that a bar and a scoundrel, for his own 
 base purposes, had taught me to think myself despised and 
 disliked ; but your own lips have spoken, and I can doubt no 
 longer. Oh, my darling, my pet, my beloved, this seems so hke 
 a reproach; but it is not, it is not. 
 
 " I am going to Soi;th America. When you read this, my 
 preparations will no doubt have begun. If possible, I shall sail 
 immediately. Of all the men who ever left England for that 
 fiery young world out yonder, there was never, perhaj^s, any one 
 better adapted to be happy and successful there than I am. 
 I bid good-bye for ever to the idle dissipations, the drunken 
 orgies in which I have sometimes found distraction, but never 
 happiness. And I begin a new life in a new field of labour. 
 My uncle's money has been the root of all ray misery, and I 
 shall take very little of that useless gold to the other shore. I 
 don't think I was ever guilty of any great folly while I was a 
 poor man ; but since I have been a rich one, my hfe hus seemed 
 one long mistake. 
 
 " I write so much about myself and my own plana because I 
 do not want the memory of me, or of nny sorrow wliich I may 
 feel in this parting, to cloud the brightness of your future; and 
 I understand your generous nature well enough to know that
 
 300 Onli/ a Clod. 
 
 you will be happier if you can believe tbat I am happy. O 
 Maude, if you could know how anxious I am that the life before 
 you should be a bright and haj^py one, you might almost for- 
 give me for the j^ain my selfish folly has hitlicted upon you ! 
 My poor, generous-hearted girl ! my innocent darling ! you 
 thought it was so light a tiling to link your life to the life of a 
 man whom you could not love ; and you have borne your bur- 
 den so quietly. I cannot release you from the chain that binds 
 you to me, but I will do my best to make that chain a hght 
 one. And, for the rest, I go to a country in which life and 
 death walk hand in hand together. I take with me all au 
 ignorant man's love of adventure, a soldier's indifference to 
 danger. "Wear your chain patiently, darling, — you may not 
 have to wear it long. But one word of warning from the man 
 who has loved you so foolishly, and, until this night, so selfishly. 
 You have married hastily once. Weigh well what you do if 
 ever you marry again. If you accej^ted for yoiir husband an 
 ignorant West-country boor when you manned me, I was at 
 least an honest man. If I die, Maude, and you are free to 
 make a second marriage, be sure that the husband of your 
 choice has something of your own noble character ; as well as 
 some smattering of the accomplishments that please you, and 
 the tricky jargon about art and literature which passes for 
 cleverness. I was anxious once to make myself a gentleman 
 for your sake, Maude ; and when we have been visiting together, 
 I have listened to the men's talk, for I wanted to find out how 
 it was done ; and you could never guess how spurious some of 
 that brilhant conversation sounds to a man who only hstens. 
 I xised to read some of your Mudie books in my own room 
 sometimes of a morning, — Fronde, and Carlyle, Burton, Barth, 
 and so on; and I've heard men laying down the law about 
 them at night, and I have known from their talk that they 
 hadn't read a page of the book itself, and were only airing the 
 second-hand opinions picked up out of a review. 
 
 "I saw you shudder once, Maude, because I didn't know it 
 was the right thing to say ' Barkley Square ; ' and pronounced 
 the word as it is spelt. But oh, what bosh I've heard the 
 Barkley- Squarers talk sometimes about things I do understand ! 
 I've heard a man at a dinner-party hold forth about our convict 
 system sometimes, and transportation, and Van Diemen's Land, 
 till I've been inclined to get up and do something to him \vith a 
 cai-ving-knlfe ; and oh, the self-satisfied manner of the creature, 
 and the way he has lifted his eyebrows and looked at me, if I 
 ventured to express any opinion upon the subject ! In South 
 America there may be fever and disease, perhaps — privation, 
 danger; but there will be no Barkley Square. I may meet
 
 Poor FranJc's Letter. 801 
 
 with Aztecs, who Tiiay maltreat or. even assassinate mo; but 
 thoy won't have little bits of glass that they can't see through 
 to hitch into their eyes whenever I speak to them. And they 
 won't lift their eyebrows and be;?in to whisixn- al)oiit me tlio 
 moment I enter a room. And I shall never hear them say, 
 ' Oh, the rich Tredethlyn, is it ? Gad, what a clodhopper 1 ' 
 
 "Why do I write about these things, Maude, when I am 
 writmg to bid you good-bye for ever? Only because I want 
 you to beheve there is somcthtufj wanting even in the perfect 
 world in which you Hv«. If my death should set you free in 
 your youth, marry again, dear, by all means ; but marry a man 
 whose truth and loyalty have been proved by a life of unble- 
 mished honour; marry a man who has set his mark upon the 
 age— who has done something; for such a man is scarcely likely 
 to be a scoundi-el. Above all, davhng, accept my warnmg 
 against one man : do not marry Harcovrt LorAher. 
 
 "All the privileges that you have enjoyed diu-ing your bond- 
 age you shall retain in your freedom. "Before sailing, I shall 
 make my will, in which you will be left residuary legatee, and 
 recipient of the bulk of my fortune. While I hve, your income 
 will be large enough to support the style in which you have 
 lived during the past year ; and there will be a wide margin left 
 for the indulgence of every impulse of your generous heart. I 
 shall place full directions as to the management of my fortune 
 in the hands of my soUcitors, Messrs. Kursdale and Scardon ; 
 and they will call on you by my direction to explain your posi- 
 tion immediately after recei\nng my instructions. You will find 
 yourself the mistress of the larger part of the income derived 
 from my late uncle's investments and from the Cornish estate, 
 and you will have no further trouble than to sign your name 
 now and then, when the lawyers want you to do so. In the 
 interim I enclose a cheque for £500, so that you may not be 
 without ready money. Your father's affairs are now, he tells 
 me, in a very easy state, and I do not leave him in troubled 
 water. He may consider you his creditor for the interest of the 
 thirty thousand sunk in his business ; and I don't sui:)i50se he 
 will find you a very importunate one. 
 
 " And now good-bye indeed. I leave you with all confidence 
 in your noble heart, your high principles. You are too good and 
 pure to be otherwise than happy. Far away on the Pampas, 
 lying under canvas, with the long silvery trail of the moonlight 
 on the grey expanse beyond my tent, the whisper of faint windb 
 among the long grasses sounding in my ears, I shall think of 
 you, and see you happy in the old Engli"sh garden at Twicken- 
 ham, loitering_ on the terrace by your father's side. In that 
 hracklesa loneliiiess, fever-parched perhaps, and far away from
 
 302 Only a Clod, 
 
 tlie cHaTice of water, I shall think of the blue EngUsh river, bui 
 never think of it without seeing your image standing by the 
 tide, your bright face reflected in the glassy stream. Oh, Maude, 
 I have loved you so dearly, so fondly ! and now that it comes to 
 saying good-bye, it^eems almost as difficult to tear myself from 
 this lifeless sheet of ]?apcr, as it wc-ald be to take my lips away 
 from yours in a last long kiss. My pet, _my darhng, God bless 
 you, and good-bye ! Think of me sometimes ; but never with 
 pain. Some midnight, when you are waltzing in a crowded 
 ball-room, with a brazen band braying in your ears, and the 
 hum of a hundred voices round about you, think that in some 
 savage wilderaess a man is kneeling under God'sblue sky, pray- 
 ing for you as few people are prayed for on this earth ; think 
 sometimes, if a special peace comes down u];>on you_, like the 
 cool shadow we have watched drop slowly upon the river when 
 the sun was down, think, darling, that I am saying, ' God keep 
 and guard her safely through the night ! God fill her heart with 
 peace and gladness, whether she sleeps or wakes ! ' _ 
 
 " And so, my own dear wife, for the first and last time in my 
 life, I sign myself your true and loyal husband, 
 
 " Fkaxcis TREDETmrN." 
 
 Julia had fluttered out of the room and iiito the little con- 
 servatory, where there were always faded leaves to be snipped 
 off, or bird-cages to be replenished with fresh water. Miss 
 Desmond, in her darkest mood, was too much a lady to sit by 
 and stare while Maude possessed herself of the contents of her 
 husband's letter. She lingered among the twittering canary- 
 birds and sprawling ferns so long as she considered that deli- 
 cacy demanded she should be absent, and then she strolled back 
 to the breakfast-table with a look of supreme unconsciousness. 
 But she gave a Uttle scream as she glanced across the table at 
 Mrs. Tredethlyn, and flew to the bell. Maude had finished her 
 letter, which lay in scattered sheets at her feet, and she had 
 fallen back upon the sofa-pillows in a dead faint. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXYII. 
 
 ELEANOB, DEO PS IN UPON KOSAMOND. 
 
 It is strange what virtues we are apt to discover in the thing we 
 have lost. After recovering from her fainting-fit, Maude Tre- 
 dethlyn wept as bitterly for the loss of her husband as if he 
 had been the first choice of her maiden heart. A young lady 
 told Mr. de Quincey that, being on the point of drowning, she 
 saw in one instant her whole life exhibited before her ia its
 
 Meanor drops in upon Jiosamond. 303 
 
 minutest details, like a vast picture ; — and so the young vn£c, 
 reading her husband's solemn farewell, behold in a moment the 
 picture of her courtship and married life, and saw how good he 
 had been to her. _ Yes, in that one monieiit a thousand instances 
 — such trifling instances, some of them— of his goodness and 
 devotion, his enduring love, his patient self-abnegation. Hashed 
 upon her, and her heart smote her with a bitter anguish as she 
 perceived her own unworthiness. 
 
 " I ^had no right to take his love as I take the love of my 
 dogs," she thought ; " giving him nothing in return for his de- 
 votion." At tirst, as she read her husband's epistle, she smiled 
 at his talk of leaving her, and thought how easy a thing it 
 would be to lay her hand upon his shoulder and draw him down 
 to his old place at her foct. She furgot all about the cottage 
 at Petersham when she thought this. And then, as she read 
 farther and farther, she recognized the solemn meaning of the 
 letter, and felt that it was indeed a farewell. Then a sudden 
 mist came between her and the page; all the machinery iu 
 London seemed buzzing and booming in her ears; and she 
 fell back amongst the downy cushion, whiter than the pure 
 ground of the rosebud cliintz which Harcourt Lowther had 
 selected for the upholstery of her nest. 
 
 She recovered very quickly under the influence of half a 
 bottle of toilet- vinegar ; and then there were more confidences 
 to be poured into Juha's ear, when the maid, who was so 
 Bympathetic, and so ravenously eager to know why her mistress 
 had fainted, was fairly out of the room. 
 
 Maude read Julia little bits of the letter, leaving oflP every 
 now and then to demand pathetically tvhat she was to do. 
 
 "He surely c-c-couldn't write like that, Julia, if he were 
 what Harcoiu-t Lowther says he is," sobbed Mrs. Trcdothlyn. 
 " He says I spoke to him coldly and deliberately. Oh, if he 
 could only know what a passion I was in! There must be 
 some horrible mistake; and if there is, what a wretch I must 
 have seemed to him last night ! Julia, advise me ! give me 
 some help ! My husband must not go to America. There is a 
 whole week for me to act in. What am I to do? " 
 
 "How can I advise you?" asked Julia. " I am so entirely 
 in the dark — and yoii too. If Mr. Trcdothlyn had given you 
 any explanation of his presence at that strange house, domiciled 
 80 familiarly with that strange woman, you might accept it — if 
 you could — and believe him. But he does not even attempt to 
 explain or to justify his conduct. He passes it over in a manner 
 which, I must confess, seems very ominous. To me, Maude, 
 his silence is a tacit confession of his guilt." 
 
 Poor Maude turned the leaves of her husband's letter, and
 
 804 Only a Clod. 
 
 looked •^stfully at the blotted pages. It* she conld have only 
 found some Lrief explanation of that Petersham business any- 
 •where — in a postscript — a itarenthesis ! Bnt there was none ; 
 anil jMrs. Trcdethlyn put the ejiistlc into her jjocket, and looked 
 at Julia with a very rueful countenance. Unluckily, she forgot 
 that she had brought no specific charge against her husband, 
 but had only attacked him in that vaguely denunciatory manner 
 which is so essentially feminine. 
 
 " What a child she is ! " thought Miss Desmond, as she 
 watched her friend's tear-blotted face and quivering lip. " If 1 
 had a pair of high-stepping ponies to drive in the Park, and a 
 couple of grooms to sit behind me, I would demand no expla- 
 nation of my husband's absences, though he were to stay away 
 from me for ten years at a stretch." 
 
 But it was the very reverse of tliis convenient code of morality 
 to which Julia gave utterance presently, when she sjDoke to 
 Maude. 
 
 " You ask me for my advice," she said. " If I am to give it 
 frankly, I must own that in your place I would not touch Mr. 
 Tredethlyn's hand in friendship until he had accounted fuUy 
 and conclusively for his presence in that garden yesterday. I 
 would permit no resei-vations on the jjart of my husband ; and I 
 uhould be inclined to think that a secret kept from me was only 
 another name for a wrong done to me." 
 
 Maude was silent for some minutes, wiping the tears from 
 her face, and trying to escape from the demonstrative sympathy 
 of a Skye terrier, who had been frantic at the sight of his mis- 
 tress's distress; and then she exclaimed, with sudden energy 
 that almost startled Lliss Desmond, — 
 
 " Yes, I will take your advice, Julia ; and Francis sliall ex- 
 plain liimself — as — as I'm sure he can." 
 
 This was a challenge which Julia was too wise to take up ; 
 for she saw that the wind had set violently in Francis Tre- 
 dethlyn's favour since Maude's perusal of his letter. 
 
 " I will insist upon an explanation from my husband ; but 
 before seeing him I will do what I should have done yesterday. 
 I will go to that cottage at Petersham, and see the lady who 
 was sitting in the garden with Francis yesterday afternoon. It 
 is my right as a wife to know my husband's friends." 
 
 " You will see the — person," exclaimed Juha, on the tips of 
 her hps, as the French say, 
 
 " I mil." 
 
 " Well, perhaps, after all, it is not a bad plan," answered 
 Miss Desmond, after a pause. " And if you do see that person, 
 I dare say you wiU hear something unpleasant," she thought : 
 •*it is only fair there should be some coimtcrbalance to yow
 
 Eleanor drops in upon Bosamond. 305 
 
 grooms and ponies, even beyond Pickford's vans, and the sharp 
 corner in Dean Street, Park Lane." 
 
 " Julia, you -will go with me P " asked Maude, putting down 
 her Skyc terrier. "No, Floss, not to-day. Oh, I wonder 
 whether you were ever married, and had this sort of thing to go 
 through !— You'll go to Petersham with me, won't you, Julia 
 dear? " 
 
 " Of course I will," answered Miss Desmond promptly; "it 
 is a part of my metier. But how do you mean to go P " 
 
 " Oh, we'll drive." 
 
 " Your ponies ? " asked Julia, spitefully. 
 
 The " steppers " were a late acquisition. Maude's childish 
 cry of rapture at the sight of the Countess of Zarborough's 
 equipage liad sent Francis off to Tattcrsall's to bid for a pair of 
 black ponies that Harcourt LoAvther and his set had pronounced 
 " chppers." You see an ignorant man's love is such a vulgar 
 passion that it will express itself in this sordid way. 
 
 _" Oh, Julia," cried Maude, "how could you? As if I would 
 drive those frivolous ponies with a frivolous parasol fastened to 
 my whip, and those two listening grooms behind me, when my 
 heart is almost broken by Frank's conduct." 
 
 " Then you will go in the barouche? " 
 
 " Yes, and I can leave the carnage some distance from the 
 house," Maude answered, with her hand upon the bell ; " and 
 we'll go at once, Julia dear, — if you're sure you've finished 
 breakfast," added Mrs. Trcdethlyn, looking piteously at the cup 
 of stagnant chocolate and unbroken roll, which bore witness to 
 her own incapacity to eat or drink. 
 
 Of course Julia declared that she had breakfasted— as com- 
 pletely as a companion had any right to breakfast, she inferred 
 by her manner ; so the two ladies adjourned to their aiiartments. 
 Mrs. Tredethlyn found her maid in her dressing-room, oppressed 
 by such tender anxieties with regard to the adjustment of 
 Maude's bonnet and shawl, that she was not to be shaken off 
 till her mistress stepped into the barouche, and even then con- 
 trived to be the medium of communication with the coachman, 
 to the setting aside of a stolid Jeames, who was so utterly weary 
 of life in general as not even to be often interested in other 
 people's business. 
 
 The confidante in white muslin is apt to have a hard time 
 of it when Tilburina's affairs go badly; but Julia endured her 
 burden with sulilime patience. Maude, bewailing the incon- 
 Btancy of her husband one moment, and lauding his devotion 
 in the next, might now and then degenerate into an inconsistent 
 bore; but, at the worst, she was more endurable than Maude 
 insolently happy, — a radiant floatinjf creature, all lace floimcea
 
 306 Onlij a Clod. 
 
 and gauzy sleeves, like one of Mr. Buckner's j^ortraits. Julia 
 enacted her part of confidante very creditably during the drive 
 from Stuccoville to Petersham, and submitted graciously to be 
 left in the caTriage, in a shady curve of the winding road, -with 
 the Skye tei-riers and the last new novel to keep her company, 
 while Mrs. Tred.ethlyn went alone to face her rival. 
 
 Perhaps Maude's heart sank just a little with something 
 akin to fear, as she tripped along the dusty road in dainty 
 high-heeled boots and flounced petticoats, whose embroideries 
 flickered to and fro in shadowy arabesques upon the sunlit 
 ground. She was not at all strong-minded. Imagine Waller's 
 Sacharissa stepping out of her coach in EastcheiDe, with a 
 negro page behind her, and one of the Duchess of Portsmouth's 
 favourite spaniels nesthng in the perfumed lining of her muff, 
 bent upon a visit to a money-lender ; or Pope's Behnda alight- 
 ing from her sedan to attend a meeting of creditors. Imagine 
 anything that is incongruous, or absurd, or impossible, and it 
 will be scarcely more out of keeping than this picture of Maude 
 Tredethlyn going alone to meet her rival, under the shelter of a 
 point-lace parasol. And yet this injured young mfe was as 
 sincerely miserable as if she had worn sackcloth and ashes, or 
 the sombre draperies which Miss Bateman has made so famihar 
 to us in her impersonation of the jilted Leah. 
 
 Mrs. Tredethlyn went straight to the cottage with the old- 
 fashioned iron gate and the ivy-bordered wall. A womanly 
 instinct guided her, as by a kind of inspiration, to the spot 
 where she had seen her husband so much at home with a 
 nameless and unknown creature. An air of prim respectabihty 
 pervaded the place, which Maude inspected as she waited for 
 admission, and j)eered inquisitively through the iron scroll- 
 work. There were none of the rose-coloured curtains and 
 china flower-stands, the yelping lap-dogs and twittering birds, 
 which Mrs. Tredethlyn had been taught to associate with those 
 inhabitants of an outer world, in whom she perceived only over- 
 done imitations of herself. Everything here had a prim coun- 
 trified prettiness of its own; and looking across the smooth 
 lawn, Maude saw a slender girUsh figure in a cotton dress 
 bending over a flower-bed, while a httle boy stood by with a 
 tiny watering-pot, whose contents he dribbled industriously over 
 his own toes. 
 
 Maude's summons was responded to by an elderly woman in 
 black. She was vei-y grim and stern, as people who dote upon 
 Email children usually are; and she was no other than the 
 eminently respectable person at Chelsea, who wore rusty bom- 
 bazine in mourning for the better days whick lay far back in 
 Bome remote period beyond the memory of her oldest acquaint*
 
 Eleanor Ji-ops in upon Hosamond. 307 
 
 atico. Tliis person carried Maude's card to the lady in the cotton 
 dress, and then swooped down upon the httle boy with the 
 watering-pot, and carried him away strugghng. 
 
 Maude, still without the citadel, watched the girlish face as 
 it bent over her card. She expected astonishment, confusion, 
 defiance, — anything except what she saw, which was a half- 
 l)leased smile, a look of hesitation, and then a little glance 
 towards the gate, and a cry of remonstrance to the elderly 
 person now invisible. 
 
 " Oh, Mrs. Cliunock, how could you leave that lady outside ? 
 The key ! ah, I see it's in the gate." Maude's fancied rival had 
 crossed the little lawn by this time, and Rosamond was only 
 separated from Eleanor by the iron scroll-work. " Dear Mrs. 
 Tredethlyn, how very rude you must think my nurse ! But so 
 many people have called, out of mere curiosity I am sure, and 
 I am so afraid of strangers— Francis knows that — for he knows 
 how often he has begged me to see you ; and it was only y ester* 
 day that I gave way, and said he might tell you all about me. 
 But I didn't think you would come so soon," said Rosamond, 
 with sudden tears welKng up to her innocent brown eyes. She 
 had opened the gate and admitted Maude while she talked, and 
 the two women were now standing face to face. 
 
 Mrs. Tredethlyn's mystification was depicted upon her coun- 
 tenance, which at first exj^ressed only her complete bewilder- 
 ment ; then a chilling expression came over her face, a scornful 
 smile curved her lip, and she looked at her rival with her head 
 poised as haughtily as ever Eleanor's could have been when she 
 offered Lord Cliff'ord's daughter that agreeable choice between 
 the bowl and the dagger. 
 
 " Oh, I see," she thought ; " tliis person is trying to disarm 
 my suspicions by her cool impertinence." 
 
 " It was so kind of you to come," murmured Rosamond, 
 timidly. She was beginning to feel rather afraid of this haughty 
 lady, who made no response to her warm greeting. " I did not 
 think that I should see you so soon." 
 
 " No, I dare say not," answered Mrs. Tredethlyn; "I should 
 scarcely imagine that you expected to see me at all." 
 
 Rosamond, otherwise Susan, clasped her hands and flushed 
 crimson to the roots of her hair. 
 
 " Ah, then, you too are unkind, like my father," she cried 
 piteously. " You do not believe what Francis told you." 
 
 Maude was almost too indignant to remark that piteous 
 accent. It was not a gentle creature in distress that she saw. 
 Jealousy_ looks through a medium that distorts the simplest 
 objects into evil and threatening shapes. Mrs, Tredethlyn 
 imajrined that she beheld a shameless adventuress, who sought 
 to disarm her justifiable suspicions by social histrionics.
 
 808 Only a Clod. 
 
 " By what right do you call my husband by hia Christian 
 name ? " she asked, indignantly. 
 
 " By what right ! " stammered Susan, alarmed by the angry 
 tones in ^Yhich the question had been asked. " What else should 
 I call liim ? I have called him Francis all my Ufe, except when 
 we were children, and then I called him Frank. Oh, he has 
 been so good to me, Mrs. Tredethlyn ! and he knows that the 
 marriage was a real one. Oh, pray, pray don't look so coldly at 
 me ! don't doubt my word and his. I am as true and pure a 
 wife as you are, though I have no husband's arm to lean upon, 
 though even the name my husband gave me may be a false one." 
 
 Maude stared at the earnest face in new bewilderment. ISTot 
 even jealousy could distort the expression of that face into any- 
 tliing but innocence. 
 
 " What does it all mean ? " she cried at last ; " who and what 
 are you ? " 
 
 " Susan Turner, OHver Tredethlyn's daughter and Francis 
 Tredethlyn's cousin," answered Susan, considerably jjuzzled in 
 her turn; "who else could you sui:>pose me to be, Mrs. Tre- 
 dethlyn ? Surely Francis told you aU about me, or you coiJd 
 never have known where to find me." 
 
 " ISTo, he told me nothing," exclaimed Maude ; and then she 
 pounced suddenly upon poor astonished Susy, and kissed her 
 as she had never in all her life kissed any one before. 
 
 " Oh, you dear ! " she cried ; " oh, you darhng ! To think 
 that you should be only his cousin after all, when I thought 
 that — when I was wicked enough to think " 
 
 Mrs. Tredethlyn did not say what she had thought, but 
 bestowed another shower of kisses upon Susan. 
 
 " You pet ! " she exclaimed ; " and to think that I should 
 never guess you were his cousin; and that he should never 
 tell me, the silly fellow ! And he let me go on at him too last 
 night as if he had committed all sorts of crimes, and did not 
 even deny them. And you are Uke him too. Yes, I'm sure you 
 are ; there's an expression about the eyes. Yes, there really is. 
 Oh, how dearly I shall love you! I remember Francis speaking 
 of you once ; but he was very reserved upon the subject, and I 
 did not like to question him. And so you really are his uncle 
 Oliver's daughter ! then we are cousins, you know, dear ; almost 
 sisters — and I never had a sister — or even a friend who was 
 gidte like a sister," added Maude, with a remorseful recollection 
 of Miss Desmond waiting in the carriage. 
 
 She coiild have run on for an hour at a stretch, in her delight 
 at the discovery that her husband was not a villain. The two 
 women walked ujt> and down the lawn together, while Susan 
 related all her stwl little history, and received Maude's tender 
 assurances of sympathv and lova.
 
 l£leanor flro])s in vpon liosnmond. 809 
 
 Mra. TroJetlilyn was told how f,'ooil her hu.sl)anel liad bcon to 
 ilia IViondless cousin ; and was pleased to dwell fondly on iho 
 Btory of Frank's kindness, his selection of that pretty house, 
 his purchase of the furniture, and, above all, liis goodness to 
 the little boy. 
 
 iMaudc wanted Susan to ,c,-o straight home with her in the 
 carriage ; but the Cornish girl clunj; to her sheltered home, and 
 the iron gate that screened her from intrusive strangers. 
 
 " I am not used to the people amongst whom you live," sho 
 said ; " it is very kind of you to wish to take mc — but I could 
 never be happy amongst strangers ; and Robert and I are so 
 hapjiy here." 
 
 "And I came to break in npon your happiness like a horrible 
 jealous fury," cried Maud^ " but you see good has come out of 
 evil; for now we have met,^ shall love each other dearly always, 
 shan't we, Susan? Call me Mande, please. And oh, my 
 dear Susan, I have all sorts of troubles still to go through ; for 
 Frank was so oflcnded by what I said last night, that he has 
 written me a dreadful letter, in wliich he says be means to sail 
 for America directly. But of course he won't. He never could 
 leave me like that, could he, dear ? And when I leave you, I 
 shall drive straight home ; and if he hasn't been home, I shall 
 go on to his solicitors, Messrs. Something and Something, 
 Gray's Inn, — I shall know their names when I see them in the 
 Directory, — and of course they'll know his address wherever ha 
 is ; and I shall go to him, and ask him to forgive me for having 
 behaved so badly, and to-morrow he and I will come together, 
 Susan. And now kiss me once more, dear, and au rcvoir ; for 
 I have a friend waiting for me in the carriage a little way off; 
 and if her book doesn't happen to be interesting, I'm afraid 
 she'll be cross, fcr I am sure I must have been an unconscion- 
 able time." 
 
 There was a little embrace, and then Susan oj^ened the gate 
 and Maude tripped away. The vulgar gravel seemed like em- 
 pyreal air under her high-heeled boots this time ; so changed 
 ■were her feelings since she had discovered how deeply she had 
 wronged her husband by the shapeless jealousies that Harcoui't 
 Lowther had inspired in her breast. 
 
 Julia looked with astonishment at her friend's altered coun- 
 tenance as Maude apologized for the length of her absence, 
 while the blase footman let down the steps ; she was still more 
 astonished when the carriage drove townwards, and Maude 
 gushed into French, to the discomfiture of the footman, who 
 had a habit of looking behind him for imaginary veliiclcs when 
 his mistress's conversation happened to interest Lim. 
 
 In French, Maude informed Julia that the mythic rival had
 
 310 Only a Clod. 
 
 melted into a " little cousin," wlio was " all tliat tliere is of th« 
 most charming," " an all young girl," " a candid angel," whom 
 Mrs. Tredethlyn was ready to take to her heart forthwith. 
 Julia found it a great deal harder to sympathize with Maude's 
 happiness than with her misery. 
 
 But the happiness did not last very long ; for on inquiry at 
 Stuccoville, Maude found that her husband had not been home ; 
 and on penetrating Holbom- wards to Gray's Inn, to the disgust 
 of the languid, footman, she met with a second disappointment 
 in the offices of Messrs. Kursdale and Scardon, who had heard 
 nothing of the absent Mr. Tredethlyn. After this Maude drove 
 homewards with a very sad countenance, and was glad to shrink 
 from even JuHa's sympathy, and to hide herself in her owe 
 rooms, where she paced disconsola||Jy to and fro, listening for 
 the cninching wheels and banging door of a hansom cab, and 
 stopping every now and then to look hopelessly out into the 
 monotonous street. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXYIII. 
 
 GONE. 
 
 Ail through the dreary day, and far into the still more dreary 
 night, Maude Tredethlyn waited and listened for her husband's 
 coming. She could not beHeve that he would hold to the pur- 
 pose so earnestly expressed in liis letter. His resolution had no 
 doubt been fixed as the Monument itself while he wrote, for he 
 had written immediately after his wife's unjustifiable denuncia- 
 tion of him ; but surely long before the time came for action 
 !Francis Tredethlyn's purpose would waver, and the faithful 
 slave would come back to his place at the feet of his mistress. 
 In any case he would, surely seek some explanation of Maude's 
 anger. 
 
 " He never could be so cniel as to leave me because of a few 
 foolish words," thought Mrs. Tredethlyn; " he could not be so 
 Tinjust as not to give me the opportunity of explaining myself." 
 
 But on reading Francis Tredethlyn's letter for the third or 
 fourth time, Maude discovered how complete the estrangement 
 was that had divided her from her husband. The indignant 
 reproaches inspired by unreasoning jealousy had been received 
 by Francis as the dehberate utterance of a contemptuous dis- 
 hke that had reached a point at which it could no longer be 
 hidden under the mask of fashionable indiff'erence. Mrs. Tre- 
 dethlyn perceived, as she read that mournful letter, that, in her 
 conduct of the previous night, her husband had only seen the 
 miserable climax of his married life. He beheld, as he fancied.
 
 Gone. 311 
 
 liis wife's silent scorn transformed all at once into passionate 
 reproach; and the proud spirit which hrcatlics in all siinplo 
 natures had asserted itself in the farewell letter which ]\Iaudo 
 read through a mist of tears. 
 
 " He thinks I married him for his money, and that I have 
 disliked and despised him," she thought sadly. " Ah, if ho 
 could know how often I have reproached myself for being un- 
 worthy of his devotion, — if he could know how my heart hai* 
 sunk day by day as I have seen the breach grow wider Ix^tween 
 us ! I fancied that I had lost his love, and yet this letter is 
 full of the old devotion." 
 
 Maude awoke from the brief morning slumber that generally 
 succeeds a sleepless night to a second day of suspense. She 
 did not talk to Julia of her troubles now. They were growing 
 too serious for feminine discussion or friendly sympathy. Mrs. 
 Tredethlyn shut herself in her own rooms, and would see no 
 one. She pleaded a headache, and the plea was no emj^ty 
 excuse ; for when her all-absorbing anxieties permitted her tio 
 remember the existence of her head, she knew that it ached 
 with a dull heavy pain which all the eau-de-Cologne in her 
 dressing-case could not assuage. She roamed hopelessly to and 
 fro between her bedroom and dressing-room, and failed most 
 utterly in her attempt to hide her distress from the omniscient 
 eye of her maid. 
 
 The second day passed, and there was no Francis. In the 
 evening Maude despatched a messenger to Mr. Kursdale with a 
 note of inquiry about Francis : had his solicitors heard or seen 
 anything of him ; and so on. The messenger was to wait an 
 answer. But as old-established solicitors do not usually reside 
 in Gray's Inn, the messenger found only darkness and stout 
 oaken doors when he obeyed his mistress's behest. Maude 
 wrote another letter that evening, addressed to Ilarcourt ^ow- 
 ther, and containing only these few lines, hurriedly wnttco' 
 and with all the important words undei-lined : 
 
 "Deak Mr, Lowtiter, — Have you seen my husband since 
 the day before yesterday? He left home on Tuesday night, 
 and I have not seen him since. I am terribly anxious about 
 him. I have leen to Petersham, and have seen the lady. We 
 were quite wrong ahowt her, and I am ashamed of myself for 
 having been so foolish. She is a near relation of Frank's; and 
 his conduct to her has been most -noble. Pray find him imme* 
 diately, if possible, and show him this letter. 
 
 " Youi'S sincerely, 
 
 "M.T. 
 
 *' Thursday night.'*
 
 312 Only a CM. 
 
 A pleasant letter this for Ilarconrt Lowtlier to receive tlie 
 next day, as he lay helpless on the lodging-house sofa, with his 
 head and face sadly dilapidated by the effects of his fall under 
 a shower of broken wine-glasses and cruets. 
 
 He gi-oaned aloud as he read Maude's missive. 
 
 " Is there any possibility of comprehending a woman's tac- 
 tics ? " he muttered. " She writes as if this boor were an idol- 
 ized husband. Is it all hypocrisy — or what ? So the bubble of 
 jealousy has burst, and the young person at the Petersham 
 cottage is a cousin, after all; and Francis has kicked up his 
 heels ; and I lie here as miserably bruised and battered as if I 
 had just been beaten in a fight for the championship, at the very 
 time when I most want to be uj) and astir." 
 
 Yes, Mr. Lowther was a prisoner. He had been seriously 
 Bhaken by the scuffle with Francis, and had been in the doctor's 
 hands since the unpleasant termination of his supper-party. 
 But this was not the worst. It was the disfigurement of his 
 handsome face which Harcourt took most deeply to heart. A 
 black eye or a scarred forehead will keep a man as close a 
 captive as a warrant of committal to the Tower. At the very 
 moment when the sudden entanglement of his web threatened 
 to render all past efforts useless, when the schemer had most 
 need of his dexterity, Harcourt Lowther found himself an un- 
 presentable object, and knew that he must spend dreary weeks 
 of seclusion before he dared emerge into the world once more, 
 and take up the disordered threads which he still hoped to 
 weave into a harmonious network. Imagine Paris, with all his 
 plans laid for the abduction of Helen, brought suddenly to a 
 standstill by a score of vulgar cuts and bruises, the sight of any 
 one of which might have restored the lady to a sense of her 
 duty. Harcourt Lowther, with his face bandaged, felt himself 
 a contemptible creature, a modern Samson without the glorioua 
 remnant of a Samson's strength. For the first time in liis life 
 the fine gentleman discovered how much he depended on his 
 handsome face, and what a lost wretch he would be without it. 
 
 He felt a savage rage against Roderick, who strolled in and 
 out of the room half the morning, dressing and breakfasting by 
 instalments, smoking, and writing letters, and crackhng the 
 daily papers, as it seemed to Harcourt, more persistently than 
 newspapers were ever crackled before. He was free to_ sally 
 forta alter his careful toilet, while his junior lay on that rickety 
 sofa as furious in his wretched helplessness as some wounded 
 hyena. Eoderick had volunteered to call upon Francis at the 
 Covent Garden hotel, to demand a reckoning for the scuffle at 
 the supper-party; but Harcourt declined the friendly offer. 
 " As Boou as I can leave the house, I wiU go to him rayself,"
 
 Oone. 813 
 
 he said. " Tlic fellow'-e talk about going abroad is all Iximbast, 
 I dare say. He will be siicalciiig back to his wife's apron-string 
 now that I am laid by the heels." 
 
 AVhen ITarcourt had read Maude's letter, ho tossed it over to 
 his brother. 
 
 " Do 3^ou know how to reckon that up P " he asked. " What 
 does it mean ? " ^ 
 
 Mr. Lowthcr the elder had l\y no moans a high estimate of 
 the female character. In his idea of the sex, the woman who 
 was not a profound simpleton was only something very much 
 worse than a simpleton. 
 
 " The fellow has not gone back to his wife ; so that's one 
 point in your favour, at any rate," said Roderick, after reading 
 Maude's epistle. " I dare say he'll go altogether to the bad now, 
 at a railroad pace, and finish himself off before the year is out. 
 The lady's anxious inquiries about her husband may be read in 
 more ways than one. This letter may be only intended tti put 
 you au courant as to the state of aftairs. Unluckily, that ugly 
 scar about your nose will prevent your calling on ]\Irs. Tredeth- 
 lyn for some weeks. Eut I don't mind being brotherly for once 
 in a way ; and I'll Licik in at the Sluccoville mansion this after- 
 noon, if you like. Virtue is sometimes rewarded, and there is 
 just a chance that I may see the lovely Grunderson, and improve 
 the occasion." 
 
 Harcourt, after a little deliberation, consented to this arrange- 
 ment. His confidence in the honour of his brother was about 
 as small as it could be ; but as the interests of the two Antipholi 
 were in this instance not antagonistic, he could scarcely have 
 an3'thing to fear from Roderick's intei-vcntion. 
 
 " You can tell Mrs. Trcdethlyu that I am seriously ill," he 
 said, when his brother was leaving him. " If you coiild drop a 
 hint or two about a rapid decline — a secret sorrow undermining 
 a constitution that was originally delicate — the sword and the 
 scabbard, and so on, it would only le friendly to do so. Of 
 course I have seen nothing of Francis since Tuesday, which is 
 perfectly true ; only you need say nothing of Tuesday night — 
 curse him !" muttered Harcourt, with a lively recollection of the 
 wounds inflicted by a broken vinegar-cruet, and the pernicious 
 effects of the adulterated vinegar, as exhibited in his inflamed 
 eyes. " You can take care to let Mvs. Tredcthlyn understand 
 that her husband has returned to his old haunts and his old 
 companions ; and that any anxiety she may be so absurd as to 
 feel about him is wasted upon a person who woiild be the first 
 to laugh at her folly." 
 
 "Dear boy, I have not served my country for nothing," 
 answered the diplomatist. "You may trust in my discretioo
 
 314 Only a Clod. 
 
 and in my power to make tlie best of an opportunity. Tlii 
 people who plan a conversation beforehand never are able to 
 talk according to their programme. The other party doesn't 
 give the necessary cues. The man who trusts to the inspiration 
 of the moment never makes a failure. The divine _ afflatus ia 
 always right ; but you can't pump the sacred wind into a man 
 with vulgar bellows. It acmes, dear boy; and it will come to 
 your humble sen-ant, I have no doubt. I shall dine at the St. 
 James's, and I've two or three places to go to in the evening ; so 
 I leave you to your reflections and the goulard-water. Adieu ! " 
 
 The diplomatist had no opportunity of serving his brother by 
 any sentimental hints about secret soitows and mortal illness, 
 for Maude sent Julia Desmond to receive her visitor, and to 
 hoar anything he might have to say about Francis. Mrs. Tre- 
 dethlyn would see no one and would go nowhere. Juhahad 
 been "busy all the morning writing excuses to people whose invi- 
 tations had been accepted. Miss Grunderson had called, and 
 had sent up pencilled supplications upon the backs of cards, 
 imploring her dear Mrs. Tredethlyn to see her, if only for a few 
 minutes ; but Maude had been inexorable. There are soitows 
 which friendship is powerless to soothe; and. in the time of such 
 sorrow noisy friendship is above all things intolerable. Maude 
 shuddered as she thought of Miss Grunderson's warm paws and 
 schoolgirl endearments ; so Eosa was sent away disconsolate.^ 
 
 Roderick Lowther would have been very well contented to loiter 
 in Mrs. Tredethlyn's morning-room talking to Julia, whose half- 
 haughty, half-defiant manner had a wonderful fascination for 
 him ; but that young lady gave him no opportunity of dawdling. 
 She had seen his tactics with regard to Miss Grunderson, and 
 took care to let him know that she understood his dijilomacy ; 
 but she listened to all his insinuations against Francis, and he 
 saw her eyes brighten as he uttered them. 
 
 " She will convey my hints to Mrs. Tredethlyn," thought the 
 diplomatist, " and they won't lose by her interpretation ; so Fve 
 done that fellow a sei-vice, and wasted my morning, sin-ce Miss 
 Grunderson is not to be seen." 
 
 But on leaving Juha Mr. Lowther decided on speculating a 
 call upon Eosa's papa. There was always the chance of seeing 
 the young lady ; and as Mrs. Tredethlyn's house could no longer 
 afford a platform for the carrying out of Eoderick's matrimonial 
 schemes, it was absolutely necessary that he should try a bold 
 stroke and advance matters. He had ascertained Eosa's address, 
 and had no difficulty in finduig the Grunderson mansion, which 
 was close at hand. He was not very certain about the number 
 of the house, but selected it unhesitatingfly from its fellows for 
 the vivid greenness of its blinds, and the intense newness which
 
 Gone. 315 
 
 pervaded every oLject that was visible through unshrcmd*! win- 
 dows of plate-glass. The Grunderson nian.sioii bared its inner 
 Bplendours unflinchingly to the eyes of the ]>asser-by; and Mr. 
 Grundcrsou's dining-room, superb in pollard oak, and with the 
 Grunderson arms blazing on the scarlet morocco backs of tho 
 chairs, revealed itself to the very core of its heart to every 
 butterman's apprentice or butcher's boy who brought liis wares 
 to the area-gate. Thus Roderick Lowther found it very ditllcult 
 not to make his perception of Mr. Grunderson, seated at the 
 head of his table with a substantial luncheon before him, un- 
 pleasantly palpable while he rang the visitors' bell. Fortune 
 favoured the diplomatist, for the hospitable millionaire insisted 
 on his being ushered into the dining-room ; very much to tlm 
 discomfiture of Rosa, who was partaking of an unfashionablo 
 plate of underdone beef from the sirloin before her papa, and 
 who had a big bottle containing some yellow compound in the 
 way of pickle, and ornamented by a blazing label, on her right 
 hand, and an imperial pint of Gmnness's stout on her left. Tho 
 stout and the embarrassment produced by Mr. Lowther's ap- 
 pearance combined to dye Rosa's cheeks with a very vivid 
 carnation; but the diplomatist would have been less than a 
 diplomatist if ie had not appeared supremely iinconscious of 
 the two bottles and the underdone beef. 
 
 "Sit ye down, Mr. Lowther, and make yourself at home," 
 exclaimed the hospitable Mr. Grunderson. " A knife and fork 
 for this gentleman, Thomas ; and look shai-p about it. You'll 
 find this here as fine a bit of beef as ever was cut from an Aber- 
 deen bullock; and there ain't no bullocks equal to a Scotch 
 short-horn, go where you will. Let me give you a slice out of 
 the aldei-man's walk, wliicli was a name my father always gavo 
 to the undercut ; and a very good father he was too, though ho 
 never thought of my sittin' down to table upon the very spot 
 where he built hisself a tool-house forty year ago, when you 
 couldn't have got six pound an acre per annum for any ground 
 about hei-e. There's a pigoon-pie at the other end of the table, 
 and there's some of your foreign kickshaws, — cutl-its a la curl- 
 papers, and mutton-chops a la smashed potato, I call 'em ; for 
 I'm not a young man, Mr. Lowther, and I can't rememlier your 
 eouheeses, and your maintenoncjs, and your jarduicers, and so 
 on, as my daughter can. We don't have the men to wait at 
 lunch, for my daughter says it isn't manners; and I'm very 
 glad it ain't, for I can't say I enjoy my meals when I have to 
 take 'em with a couple of fellows shoving vegetable-dishes and 
 sauce-boats at me eveiy two minutes, and never shoving the 
 right ones ; for I'm blest if I ever knew 'em yet to shove me the 
 cucumber before I'd half finished my salmon, though they do
 
 816 Only a Clod. 
 
 call themselves exi^cricnced sen^ants. Ilowsome^cver, if w« 
 must dine ally Eousse, and wrap our mutton-cliops in greasy 
 paper and call 'em mainteiiuong, we must, and there's an end 
 of it ; but I don't miud confessing to you, Mr. Lowther, that 
 this is the time I make my dinner, and it's no use frowning at 
 me, Rosa, for I don't care who knows it." 
 
 Mr. Lowther, whose luncheon generally consisted of a glass 
 of seltzer- and- sherry and one small biscuit, escaped the infliction 
 of one of Mr. Grunderson's plates of beef by a judicious 
 manoeuvre, and helped himself to a morsel of pigeon-pie. But 
 before doing so, he allowed his eyes to wander about the walls 
 in contemplation of some impossible conglomerations of brown 
 rockery and soajDsud sky, which Mr. Grunderson called his 
 SalUvaters ; and thus gave Rosa time to dismiss her bottles and 
 her plate, and to recover from her embarrassment. 
 
 After this everything went very smoothly. Mr. Grunderson 
 expanded under the influence of bottled stout and Madeira, and 
 was very loquacious ; but sinking presently into a rather ster- 
 torous slumber, wliich he called forty winks, and which generally 
 lasted about an hour and a half, the ci-devant market-gardener 
 left Rosa and Roderick to their own resources. On this Mr. 
 Lowther would have departed, but the candid Rosa begged him 
 to remain. She had kept uj^ a visiting acquaintance -with most 
 of her old school-fellows, and as she was perpetually making new 
 acquaintances, she was positively besieged by callers, and had a 
 tea-drinking institution, which she called a kettle-drum, almost 
 every afternoon. The idea of exhibiting the elegant diplomatist 
 to her feminine circle was emmently delightful to iliss Grunder- 
 son ; and as soon as her papa had begun to snore with undis- 
 guised vehemence, she conducted Roderick to the drawing-room, 
 where there were as many albums, and perfume-caskets, and 
 ormolu workboxes, and enamelled book-slides, and solitaire 
 boards, as would have stocked one of Messrs. Parkins and 
 Gotto's show-rooms, and where a grand piano, scattered with 
 all the easisst polkas in the gaudiest covers, testified to Rosa'a 
 taste for music. 
 
 Miss Grunderson's kettle-drum visitors began to assemble 
 almost immediately ; and before long Rosa's drawing-room was 
 full of young ladies in overpowering bonnets and transparent 
 cloaks of every imaginable tissue. The male element was very 
 much in the minority at ISIiss Grunderson's gatherings, and was 
 chiefly represented by speechless younger brothers, who came iu 
 sulky submission to overbearing sisters, and who lounged in un- 
 comfortable attitudes upon Rosa's most fragile chairs, spilt their 
 tea upon the velvet table-covers, rarely moved ^\'ithout knocking 
 Bomethuig down, and left dingy thumb-marks in all Rosa's
 
 Too Late. 817 
 
 albums. AniongRt such as these Roilerick shone WVa a star of 
 the first magiiitudo, and Miss Grunderson exhibited him with 
 unspeakable pride. The kettle-drum lasted for two mortal hours, 
 and Mr. Lowther was one of the last to depart, bored to death, 
 as l.e told his brother afterwards. 
 
 " But a fellow must brine,' his mind to go through a good deal 
 if he wants to marry a millionaire's only daughter in these hard 
 times," thought the attache, despondently, as he went yawning 
 to bed. " If my lovely Rosa does become I\Irs. Lowther, sho 
 will have to renounce her ^cnc/tani for bad French and vinlent 
 pink dresses; but she may cram her drawing-room withaf.[iiain- 
 tance of ^^tnsi-gentility, and drink tea all day, so far as 1 shall 
 be concerned in the matter." 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIX. 
 
 TOO LATE. 
 
 A LONG miserable week wore itself slowly ont after the night in 
 which Francis Tredetlilyn had turned his back upon a house 
 which he had never been allowed to find a home. Through all 
 the week there were no tidings of Maude's departed husband ; 
 but when the week was over, a formal letter from Mr. Kursdale 
 acquainted her with Mr. Trcdethlyn's arrangements for her 
 weltare, and with the fact that he liad embarked the day before 
 on board the stcam-vesscl Kinr/Jisher, bound for Buenos Ayres. 
 The news inlhcted as great a shock upon Maude as if her hus- 
 band's letter announcing his intended departure had never been 
 written. To the last she had believed, that when the time for 
 action came, his resolution would fail him all at once, and he would 
 hurry back to her, faithful and devoted as in the earliest days 
 of their brief married life, when he had nursed her Skye terriers, 
 and sat patiently for an hour at a stretch in a haberdasher's 
 shop while she selected ribands and laces. She had written him 
 a penitent letter, and had enclosed it to Mr. Kursdale, entreating 
 that gentleman to dehver it to his client whenever he saw him. 
 .She had not thought it possible that, even if Francis persisted 
 *n his intention of leaving England, he would leave without an 
 interview with his sohcitor. But when Maude drove post-hasto 
 to Gray's Inn, and presented herself in the lawyer's (4Hce, she 
 found that there had been no interview. Francis had communi- 
 cated with his solicitor by letter only, and his char and concise 
 .jpistle bore the date of the very day on which he was to start 
 for Plymouth, whence the KuKjfishcr was to sail. 
 The letter thus dated had arrived at tho lawyer's office after
 
 B18 Only a Clod. 
 
 business hours ; and wlien Mr. Kursdale opened it next morning, 
 there ■was little douLt that the Kinyfislier was outward bound 
 with Francis Tredelhlyn on board her. Maude made a confidant 
 of her husband's solicitor. A family lawyer is a kind of father 
 confessor in the matter of secrets, and has generally outlived the 
 capacity of surprise as comjjletely as those imperturbable dis- 
 ciples of St. Ignatius Loyola who are irreverently entitled 
 " crows." The despondent wife told Mr. Kursdale that Francis 
 had left home in consequence of a slight misunderstanding — (was 
 any conjugal quaiTel ever yet described by the belligerents as 
 anything mort than a slight misunderstanding?) — and she im« 
 plored him to assist her in bringing about her husband's speedy 
 return. 
 
 " But do you think he has really sailed ? " she asked ; " do 
 you think he can have been so cruel as to leave England without 
 even giving me the opportunity of imjiloring liim to remain ? " 
 
 Mr. Kursdale shook his head gi-avely. 
 
 " There is notliing in his letter to me which indicates indif- 
 ference to your wishes," he said ; "it is only a business letter; 
 but in a practical way it is the strongest evidence of a husband's 
 devotion that ever came to my knowledge. We lawyers are a 
 matter-of-fact set of men, and we are apt to form our conclusions 
 in a matter-of-fact way. What other people would treat as an 
 atfair of sentiment, we look at as an afl'air of figures ; and I 
 must say, Mrs. Trcdethlyn, that gauged by that standard, your 
 husband comes out nobly." 
 _ "But I want liim to come back to me," Maude exclaimed, 
 Bimply; "I don't want to be rich — or to live like a woman of 
 fashion. He ■svi-ongs me most cruelly when he thinks that I 
 married him for his money. I mamed him because he was 
 good to my father. Do you think I could accept the income 
 which that letter places at my disposal, knowing that my 
 husband has left his native country because of me? Tell me 
 what I am to do, Mr. Kursdale. I know that 1\y. Tredetlilyn 
 is unha2»py, and that a few words from me would set all right- 
 Whatam I to do?" 
 
 "AVe must try to send him the few words, my dear Mrs. 
 Tredetlilyn," answered the lawyer, cheerftdly. " South America 
 IS not so very far ofi' nowadays; and you know that even in 
 A lexander Pope's time a sigh might be wafted from Indus to 
 the I'ole, by means of ocean postnge. We'll get your letter de- 
 livered to jlr. Tredetlilyn as quickly as the improvements of 
 modem science will allow, you may depend upon it. Shall I 
 send the letter you enclosed to me the other day ? Perhaj s 
 you would like to add something to it — another jiostscript, eh? 
 Ladies have such a i>cncliaid for postscripts," said the lawyer.
 
 Too Late. 319 
 
 lapsing into mild facetiousncss, wliicli lie imagined to be of an 
 einineiitly consolatory cliaracter. There are people who believe 
 ^hat a feeble joke ia an infallible specific for a deeply rooted 
 grief. 
 
 " I will send a cleric off to Plymouth by the next train," said 
 Mr. Kursdale, with his hand upon the spring of a little bell 
 beside him. He spoke as coolly as if he bad been talking of 
 sending a clerk over the way. " If by any chance the King- 
 fisher has not sailed when the young man arrives, your husband 
 will have the letter before dark. If the Einrjfisher has sailed, 
 the letter must be sent on by the next mail. At the worst, 
 Mr. Tredethlyn may be back in six or seven weeks.'' 
 
 In six or seven weeks ! It seemed a very long time ; but on 
 receiving the lawyer's letter announcing her husband's depar- 
 ture, Maude had fancied that he was lost to her for ever. With 
 what wonderful intelligence we can perceive the value of any- 
 thing we have lost I In your daily walks, modest collector of 
 household treasures ! you will see a little bit of china, a picture, 
 an apostle spoon, a quaint old volume in a shop-window, — and, 
 intending to look in and bargain for it some day when you have 
 leisure, you will pass it a hundi-ed times, indifferent as to its 
 merits, half uncertain whether it is worth buying ; but you dis- 
 cover some day that it is gone, and then in a moment_ the 
 doubtful shepherdess becomes the rarest old Chelsea, the dirty- 
 looking little bit of landscape an undeniable Crome, the battered 
 Bilver spoon of unquestionable antiquity, the quaintly bound 
 book a choice Elzevir. The thing is lost ; and we regret it for 
 all that it might have been, as well as for all that it was, and 
 there are no bounds to the extravagance we would commit to 
 regain the chance of possessing it. 
 
 It was something after this fashion, perhaps, that Mrs. Trc- 
 detlilyn regretted her husband, as she drove home disconsolately 
 after her interview with the lawyer, to await the result of his 
 clerk's journey. She would have gone herself to Plymouth if 
 she could have done any more than the clerk ; but she had a 
 dim behef that if there was infallibility anywhere on earth, it 
 was to be found in the office of an old-established solicitor, 
 and she thought that Mr. Kursdale's accredited agent could not 
 fail to effect some good. 
 
 Her disappointment was very bitter the next day when she re- 
 ceived a note from the solicitor, informing her that the Kingfisher 
 had sailed twelve hours before the clerk arrived at Plymouth. 
 
 After this Maude could only await the result of her letter. 
 Six or seven weeks seemed such a weary time as she looked for- 
 ward to it; and it might be as long as that, or even longer,
 
 320 Only a Clod. 
 
 before any tidings from Francis could reach her. She went to 
 her father, to pour her sorrows into his ear ; but though he 
 received her very affectiouately, she could see that he blamed 
 her severely for the folly which had driven Francis Tredethlyn 
 from his home. 
 
 She would have gone to stay at the Cedars during this dreary 
 period ; but she had a nervous dread of not being on the spot to 
 receive any possible communication from her husband, so she 
 remained amid the grand hotel-Like splendour of the Stuccoville 
 mansion ; though her neighbours were daily departing for dis- 
 tant British watering-places, or on the first stage of continental 
 wanderings, to toil amidst Alpine glaciers, or to lounge at 
 German gaming-tables. 
 
 Mrs. Tredethlyn was very glad to see London growing empty; 
 but before her acquaintance departed for their autumnal relax- 
 ations they had ample time to discuss her husband's disappear- 
 ance and her own sudden withdrawal from society. The fact of 
 that slight misunderstanding, which Maude had been obliged to 
 confess to the solicilor, had become patent to all Stuccoville 
 through the agency of loquacious maids and languid footmen, 
 and had assumed every possible aud impossible complexion in 
 feminine debates. So Maude stood listlessly at one of the win- 
 dows in her spacious bedchamber, sheltered by the voluminous 
 curtains and the flowers in the balcony, and looked despondently 
 at happy family parties driving away to railway stations with 
 cargoes of parasols and umbrellas, and deliciously fluffy carriage- 
 rugs and foot-muffs. Other people always seem so happy. The 
 lives of those smiling Stuccovillians might not have been un- 
 clouded in their serenity ; but Mavide watched them very sadly, 
 remembering how she and her husband might have been start- 
 ing in the twilight for the Dover mail, hke that merry young 
 couple from the house over the way. 
 
 Surely she must have loved him very dearly, or she scarcely 
 could have regretted him so much. If she had been questioned 
 as to the real state of her feehngs on tliis point, she could not 
 have given any very clear re2)ly to the qi^estion. She only knew 
 that her husband had been very good to her, and that she had 
 repaid his devotion with neglect and indifference. Maude had 
 been a spoiled child, it must be remembered, and there may 
 have been sometldng of a sjioilcd child's useless remorse in her 
 penitence ; but she was very penitent. All her life for the last 
 year had been crowded with proofs of Francis Tredethlyn's 
 unbounded love ; and, looking back upon them, she could not 
 remember one instance in which she had been sufficiently 
 grateful for his affection. 
 
 " Those silly young men at the Cedars used to make a fool
 
 Too Late. 321 
 
 of me with their empty flatteries," she thought, remorsefully; 
 " and I treated Frank as I had learned to treat them, accepting 
 his generous devotion as indifferently as I had accepted their 
 unmeaning compliments. " 
 
 Tliere was one thing that Maude did not remember as she 
 looked back at her past life, and that was Harconrt Lowther'a 
 influence. She did not know how much of her indifference to 
 her husband had been engendered by the subtle sarcasms of 
 her jilted lover; nor did she know how the schemer had prac- 
 tised upon her girlish love of society, in order to widen the 
 gulf that divided her from Francis Tredethlyn. Her errors aa 
 a wife had chiefly arisen from want of leisure. She had found 
 no time to adapt herself to her husband's tastes — no time to 
 elevate and refine him by association — no time to give him any 
 return for those practical proofs of his affection in the way of 
 jewels and caiTiages, thorough-bred steppers, and hundred- 
 guinea shawls, which he was constantly lavishing upon her; 
 and, worse than all, she had found no time to inquire how he 
 
 t massed his hfe, or in what circles he sought the happiness she 
 lad never tried to provide for him in his home. 
 
 " I will ask him to complete the purchase of the Berkshire 
 estate when he comes back to me," she thought ; " and then we 
 shall be able to begin a new life away from this perpetual 
 whirlpool of society ; and I can drive to the meet when Frank 
 hunts, and even take an interest in the stables. Country 
 stables are so pretty ; and it's so nice to see a favourite horse 
 looking over the door of his loose-box, with a big tal.iby cat 
 sitting on the wooden ledge beside him, and honeysuckle blow- 
 ing about his head. But one's horses might as well be at the 
 North Pole for all one can see of them in a London mews, where 
 there are always dreadful men in shirt-sleeves, and cross-looking 
 women hangmg up clothes," mused Mrs. Tredethlyn, with a 
 vivid recollection of the prospect which all the ground glass in 
 her fernery coidd not quite shut out. 
 
 While she was thinking very jDcnitently of the past, and 
 weaving pleasant schemes for the future; while she was per- 
 petiially counting the days which must elapse before Francis 
 returned to her, always supposing that the remorseful wonls of 
 her letter found their way straight to his heart, as she implicitly 
 believed they would ; while she was praying daily and nightly 
 for his safe preservation in tempest and danger, Maude Tre- 
 dethlyn took up the " Times " newspaper one morning as she 
 loitered listlessly over a lonely breaktast-table, and the first 
 paragraph that met her eyes was the announcement of the 
 Kirigfishcr's total destruction by fire, and the entire loss of 
 passengers and crew. 
 
 X
 
 822 ^niy a Vlod. 
 
 CHAPTER XTu 
 
 AN IGNOMIXIOUS PAILTTRE. 
 
 Hakcotot LowTHJiR had liis copy of the great jonmal on the 
 day when Maude read that horrible paragraph. Roderick had 
 called at Stticcoville during Mrs. Tredethlyn's seclusion, and 
 had heard of the Cornishman's departure, and the name of the 
 vessel he had gone in, from Julia Desmond. The schemer 
 turned deadly pale Avhen his brother read him the brief aocount 
 of one of those terrible catastrophes which come upon mortal 
 travellers now and then, to teach them hnvv frail is man's hold 
 of that wondrous power by which modern science has learnt 
 to rule the elements. The coolest villain who ever planned a 
 comrade's destruction must surely suffer one sharp pang of 
 remorse when he knows that the hand which has so often, 
 clasped his own is really cold. To Harcourt Lowther the 
 wealthy Comishman had never been anything worse than an 
 impediment. He was gone now ; there was httle doubt of 
 that. Midway between her starting place and her destination, 
 the Kingfisher, sailing gaily on a jDlacid sea, had succumbed to 
 a worse foe than tempest or hurricane, and all on board her 
 had perished. A fragment of charred timber, branded with 
 the name of the steamer, had been picked up by a homeward- 
 bound vessel; and in the calm moonlit night the blazing ship 
 had been seen by distant voyagers a luiid speck ujDon the 
 silvery horizon. By these and many other tokens the fact of 
 the catastroj^he had been made known ; and in a hundi-ed 
 British households there was mourning for lost friends and 
 kinsmen. 
 
 After the first shock that came upon him with these sudden 
 tidings, Harcourt Lowther gave a long sigh of relief. 
 
 "It was the fellow's own doing," lie miittered. "If he had 
 not made a quarrel with me, this would never have happened. 
 And he's gone ! Poor lad ! He was not such a bad fellow, 
 after all. Better to die that way than of delirium tremens," 
 added Mr. Lowther, with a furtive glance towards a tall smoke- 
 coloured bottle which was apt to adorn his table very often 
 nowadays. " And so my Maude is free — at last ! Do you 
 know, Roderick, it seems to me as if I had lived twenty years 
 or so since my return from Yan Diemcn's Land ? and now that 
 the luck turns, and the winning colour conies uj? for the fij'st 
 time, I feel as if I had almost outlived the power to care much 
 about it. Roderick ! " cried the invalid, with a sharp sudden- 
 ness that startled his brother, " did Folson tell you there was 
 any serious damage done to my head by that ngly fall the other
 
 An Ignominious Failure. 323 
 
 niglit ? I know lie has talked to you about me. I hoard you 
 aud him niuttering together yesterday, when I was lying half 
 asleep in the next room." 
 
 Mr. Folson was the medical man who had attended Harcourb 
 Lowther after the scuffle with Francis, and who had brought 
 all his science to bear for the i^reservatiou of the handsome face 
 without which his patient would have been so small a creature, 
 
 '* Poison said very little about the damage you got in the 
 row," the attache answered, very coolly ; " but he told me you 
 must drojD your liberal consumption of that sort of tiling, or 
 you'd find yourself very speedily in Queer Street." Mr. Low- 
 ther pointed to the smoke-coloured bottle as he thus addressed 
 himself to his invahd brother. " While you were teaching tha# 
 fellow Tredethlyn to drink himself to death, you ought to have 
 learnt how to keep yourself ahve by not drinking," he said pre- 
 sently. " However, I don't want to say anything unj^leasant, 
 but you really must cut your very intimate acquaintance with 
 the brandy-bottle, if you want to improve your opportunity, 
 now that Mrs. Tredethlyn is a rich widow. If you don't look 
 sharp I shall throw over the Grunderson, and go in against you." 
 
 Harcourt smiled supercihously. 
 
 " I am not afraid of yo^i, for more reasons than one," he said. 
 *' Maude is a curious girl. I sometimes fancy my own chance 
 is not quite so good as it once was. Goethe says that a man 
 wins in his age the prize he sighs for in liis youth. Perhaps, 
 when I am a pottering old fellow of seventy, I shall have a 
 great fortune and a handsome wife; only the capabihty of 
 cariBg much for either will be gone. How fond we were of 
 toffee at Han-ow ! But all the toffee that was ever manufac- 
 tured in Doncaster during the Sellenger week wouldn't give me 
 a ray of pleasure now. Madame de Maintenon began to enjoy 
 herself when she was eighty ; rather late in the day, wasn't it ? 
 My soul is weary, Roderick ; and now the chance has come, I'm 
 not the man I was. Perhaps, after all, the simple truth of the 
 matter is that I am suffering from an attack of blue devils, 
 engendered of sohtary confinement in this detestable crib. I'll 
 tell you what I'll do, old fellow. As the ugly scar across my 
 forehead has dwindled into a romantic-looking badge of bygone 
 prowess, and the variegated hues of my countenance are rapidly 
 fading into an interesting pallor, I'U get you to send me round 
 a hack from Parsons's, and I'll take a spin in the Park ; there 
 won't be many people about at this time of year, and the fresh 
 air will blow my old self back again, I dare say. I'll meet you 
 at the MetropoUtan aftei-wards, if you lilie," added Harcourt, 
 naming an adjacent restaurant at which the brothers had been 
 wont to dine occasiouallj.
 
 324 Only a Clod. 
 
 ,» St 
 
 " No, thanks. I dine at the GnindersonB*, 
 
 " Beja ! "We go fast, my friend ! " 
 
 "If your mihtary experience had cj:tcnded farther than the 
 Bnperintendence of penitent burglars, you might have kno^vn 
 that where the assaihug party is weak, a fortress must be taken 
 quickly, or not at all. I declared myself to Eosa this morning. 
 She is delighted with the idea of flourishing at foreign coiirta 
 in ecrasant pink dresses. How I shall tone her do-vvn, poor 
 child ! and what a hard time we shall both have of it before the 
 Bcent of the market- garden ceases to cHng to her still ! I am 
 to speak to papa Grunderson this evening, over his wine. He 
 consumes the best part of a bottle of old port every night, and 
 finishes ofi" at a neighbouring tavern with the gin-and- water of 
 his early manhood. Rosa tells me that he is an indulgent old 
 party, and that I shall not have any diificidty in bringing him 
 to book." 
 
 "Then you really think of marrying P" asked Harcourt, 
 thoughtfully. 
 
 "Eeally think of marrying? Of course I do. "VYhat else 
 should I tliink of whereby to improve my fortunes ? And 
 Rosa will not be so very disagreeable after a good deal of toning 
 down." 
 
 " I thought perhaps you might have some lingering regard 
 for that other person." 
 
 The diplomatist turned npon his brother with a frown. 
 
 " I thought I told you that I didn't care to discuss that 
 subject," he said, haughtily. " Drop it, if you please. There 
 are plenty of disagreeable things in your hfe, I dare say, that I 
 might remember, if I wanted to make myself obnoxims. How- 
 ever, as you have been existing upon a limited supply of oxygen 
 for the last six weeks, I suppose you're privileged to be can- 
 tankerous. I'll look in at the stables and send you the hack ; 
 and if I find you here when I come home to dress, I dare say 
 we shall hit it better. A hientot ! " 
 
 Harcourt Lowther had his gallop in the Park, and punished 
 the hvery- stable hack rather severely. It was dusk before he 
 went back to tovm, and he left the Park by the Piiuce's Grate, 
 and rode slowly through the gorgeous dismality of Stit-Cco- 
 ville. He walked his horse down the street in which Francig 
 Tredethlyn's household had been established. Glimmering 
 lights burned feebly in the windows on the second floor, but the 
 gasht dining-room was blank and cmjjty. 
 
 Looking up at the dimly lighted windows, Harcourt Lowther 
 wondered if Maude Tredethlyn's heart, set free all at once from 
 its mercenary bondage, had fluttered back to the lover of hei
 
 An Ignominious Failure. 325 
 
 yonth. He was strangely tormented by conflicting fancies, and 
 found it liard to strike the balance between his low estimate of 
 woman's constancy and his very liigli opinion of his own merita 
 
 " She loved me once," he thought, " and my hold upon her 
 ought to be stronger now than ever it was. I have quires dt 
 schoolgirl letters filled with protestations of eternal constancy 
 and reliance in a bright future waiting for us somewhere in the 
 cloudy distance of our livea. And now the happy future is 
 ours, my Maude ; you are free and you are rich ; so we can 
 afford to build the castle of our di'eams, and live in it very 
 respectably." 
 
 Riding slowly homeward through the crowded streets, Mr. 
 Lowther found it very difficult to shut out of his mind the 
 picture of a burning sliij), and the image of the man whom he 
 had called his friend, prominent amidst a wild night-scene of 
 death and horror. 
 
 " I'm glad I had nothing to do with the fellow's going in that 
 vessel," thought Mr. Lowther, as he tried to shake off the un- 
 comfortable feeling which oppressed him. " I had no hand in 
 his mad freak of bolting off to Buenos Ayres ; so I needn't 
 worry myself about the business. If he had Hved to get there 
 safely, I dare say he'd have been finished off by fever or 
 small-pox." 
 
 Nearly a week elapsed before Harcourt Lowther approached 
 the woman who had once been his plighted wife, and who was 
 now free to renew her broken vows as speedily as common de- 
 cency would allow her to accept the addresses of a second hus- 
 band. The schemer wanted to be sure of his triumph. One 
 interview with Maude, one look in her face, would be enough to 
 tell him whether his hold on her was undiminished, whether hia 
 future happiness was secure. Assured of this, he would be 
 contented to stand apart until the usages of society would per- 
 mit him to take his place by her side as her acknowledged 
 suitor. But he was eager to be quite sure of his position. A 
 nervous restlessness that was foreign to his temperament had 
 come upon him since the tidings of the Kingfisher's destruction 
 had reached his ears ; and he could not endure anything like 
 uncertainty or suspense. 
 
 He called at Stuccoville one morning. He was told that Mrs. 
 Tredethlyn would see no one ; but that Miss Desmond was at 
 home, and would receive him, if he pleased. 
 
 He did please ; and was ushered into the morning-room, where 
 Julia sat writing at a little table near the window. There was 
 a door opening from Mrs. Tredethlyn's dressing-room into thia 
 morning-room ; and as Harcourt entered at one door, a pale wan 
 ereature in black appeared at the other.
 
 820 Only a Clod. 
 
 It was Maude— so changed tliat a sudden panj^ eliot tlirougK 
 the scliemer's heart as he looked at her ; a sudden pang that 
 must have been remorse, but which gave place immediately to a 
 feeling of jealous anger. 
 
 Was the loss of her husband so deep a sorrow that it should 
 change her hte this ? 
 
 She had seen the visitor, and was di-awing back, when he ran 
 to her and seized her hand. 
 
 " Maude ! " he cried, passionately, " I must speak to you. 
 Surely you are not gomg to treat me Uke a stranger." 
 
 She tried to take her hand from his, but he held it firmly and 
 drew her into the room ; as he did so, Julia, who had risen on 
 his entrance, went quietly out at the other door. Maude and 
 Harcourt were alone. 
 
 " AYliat can you have to say to me? " asked Mrs. Tredethlyn. 
 " It is cruel of you to force yourself upon me at such a time as 
 this, I have grief enough and trouble enough without being 
 tortured by the sight of you." 
 
 Harcourt Lowtlier looked at her aghast. 
 
 " Tortured by the sight of me ! " he repeated. 
 
 " Yes," answered Maude, indignantly. " It was your fault 
 that my husband left me. It was vou who planted _ baso 
 suspicions in my mind when there wa^no need for suspicion^. 
 If I had gone back to the cottage at Petersham — as I would 
 have done, but for you — I should have discovered the folly of 
 my jealous fancies — inspired by you — yes, by you alone. For 
 when I saw Francis and his cousin, my first impulse was to call 
 him by his name. It was your exclamation that frightened me ; 
 it was your manner that filled me with absurd alarm. Why 
 did you poison my mind against the best husband a woman ever 
 had ? How could you be so base as to repay his trusting friend- 
 ship with such malicious treachery P " 
 
 " Because I loved you, Mrs. Tredethlyn, and I believed that 
 your husband had wronged you. Was I Hkely to be a very 
 lenient judge of his conduct towards you, when I had loved you 
 so passionately, and had been jilted by you so cnielly for him ? 
 You questioned me, and I spoke. Can you forget or deny that 
 I spoke reluctantly ? You hang your head, Mrs. Tredethlyn ; 
 ah, I see that you remember." 
 
 "Yes," answered Maude, piteously, as she sank into a chair; 
 "you are right. I made you speak. It was my own jealous 
 folly from first to last. If others doubted and suspected,^ I 
 ought to have trusted liim. What a pitiful retm-n_I made him 
 for so much devotion, when I could not even give him my 
 confidence ! " She was silent for some moments, lost _ in 
 thought. It was of her husband, and not of the man standing
 
 An Ignominious Failure. 827 
 
 before her, that she was thinking. Harcourt Lowtlver could 
 Bee that. 
 
 She looked up at him presently, as if she suddenly remem- 
 bered his presence. " Have you anything more to say to me ? " 
 Bhe asked, coldly. 
 
 " Have I anything more to say ! Are you mad, Mrs. Tre- 
 dethlyn, that you ask me such a question ? I have outraged 
 propriety perhaps in coming to see you so soon, you will tell 
 me ; but a man who has suffered as much as I have at the hauda 
 of the woman he loves is not veiy likely to be held back by cere- 
 monial constramts when the hour comes in which he may claim 
 atonement for the wrong that has been done him. I respect 
 your natural sorrow foi the terrible fate of your husband; but I 
 should despise you if you were so false-hearted a prude as to 
 affect forgetfulness of what is due to me." 
 
 Maude looked at him as she had never looked at him before. 
 Wonder, indignation, disgust— all mingled in the expression of 
 her countenance. He had woven his network to ensnare a 
 frivolous shallow-hearted girl, and behold, on the completion 
 of the schemer's web, a woman arose in the strength of her 
 truth and purity, and shook herself free from the toils as easily 
 as if they had been so much gossamer. " There is sometluno- 
 due from me to you ? " she asked, haughtily. " ^Vhat is it ? "'^ 
 
 "The fulfilment of your broken promise. I have waited, 
 Maude, and waited patiently. Another man would have re- 
 venged himself on your inconstancy by proving to you that ho 
 too could be inconstant. Hopeless but patient, I have given 
 you a disinterested devotion which is without a parallel in the 
 history of man's sacrifice for the woman of his choice. Wow 
 that you are free, I ask some atonement for the past, some 
 reward for my patience. Tell me that the past is not quite 
 forgotten — that the tender protestations which consoled me in 
 my miserable exile were not utterly meaningless and false. 
 Why do you look at me like that ? Have I been the dupe of 
 a coquette from first to last, Mrs. Tredethlyn, and does your 
 husband's death only leave you free to jilt me again ? Have I 
 been fooled to the top of my bent by a woman who has never 
 loved me P " 
 
 "No, Mr. Lowther," Maude answered, very quietly; "I did 
 love you once. I look back now, and wonder at myself as I 
 remember how dearly. But my love died— a very sudden 
 death." •' 
 
 " When you discovered the advantages of a wealthy marriage 
 for the penniless daughter of a commercial defaulter," cried 
 Harcourt. 
 
 " No ; my love for you was a girlish fancy, if you like ;
 
 328 Onltj a Clod. 
 
 though Heaven only knows how deeply I felt for yon in yoar 
 exile— how willing I wonld have been to resign my imagin»ffy 
 wealth for love of yon, if you had asked me to do so._ But you 
 never did ask that. You did not want the wife without the 
 fortune. When you came home and found me engaged to 
 another man— about to sacrifice myself in a mercenary mar- 
 riage, as you thought— there was yet time to have exacted tho 
 fulfilment of my promise. I loved you then, Harcourt Lowther. 
 A word from you, and I would have told Francis Tredethlyn 
 the truth, and demanded my release. He was far too generous 
 to have withheld it. But in doing that I should have ofi'ended 
 my father, and T should have come to you penniless. You did 
 not want me on those terms, Harcourt. The honest indigna- 
 tion of a disinterested lover never found an utterance on your 
 lips. You were contented to assume the position of friend and 
 confidant to your unconscious rival ; and it is only since I have 
 been left alone to think of my past life, that I have fully 
 understood the dishonour involved in keeping our broken en- 
 gagement a secret from my husband. I loved you when you 
 came back to England, Harcourt. It was a hai-d battle which 
 duty had to fight against the unaltered affection of my girl- 
 hood. I prayed to God night and day for strength to do my 
 duty, and to keep my promise to the man who had a claim 
 upon me, which you have never known. I prayed for power to 
 blot your image from my mind; and my prayer was heard. 
 My first foolish love died on my wedding-day, Harcourt, when 
 you stood by to see me married to Francis Tredethlyn. From 
 that hour to tliis you have been no more to me than any other 
 man who has paid me the conventional attentions which I 
 imagined I had a right to receive. H I had ever seen more 
 than this in your conduct, Mr. Lowther, you would have found 
 me quite capable of asserting my position." 
 
 " The world lias chosen to see a good deal more than conven- 
 tional coiu-tesy in my attendance upon you, Mrs. Tredethlyn," 
 answered Harcourt. He had lost the game. Utterly defeated 
 in the moment of his exiDCcted triumph, he was careless as to 
 the rest of his play. How can the whist-player, who knows 
 that he is beaten, be expected to pay any great attention to tho 
 order in which he plays the two or three insignificant cards that 
 lie holds at the close of the rubber ? " People have been good 
 enough to make us the subject of considerable discussion, Mrs. 
 Tredethlyn," continued Harcourt. "A man is apt to hear 
 these things, though they rarely reach the ears of the lady most 
 interested in hearing them. The people amongst whom we live 
 have made up their minds about us, I know, and will be con- 
 eiderably astonished if you throw me over now that you are free
 
 An Ignommious Failure. 329 
 
 to reward tlie patient devotion wliich has endured so mncli in 
 the hope of tliis hour." 
 
 He saw Maude's look of unutterable scorn ; a look which 
 revealed her to him in a new and higher light, and insjOTed him 
 with a more passionate love than he had ever felt for her yet — • 
 and at his worst he had loved her. 
 
 " Maude," he cried, in a sudden access of mingled rage and 
 despair, "why do you goad me to say these things? I know 
 now detestal)le I seem to you. And yet, as there is a heaven 
 above me, I have loved you truly from first to last. Pity me 
 if, while I prayed for no better fate than to face the enemy's 
 guns on an Indian battle-field, I was a coward in social life and 
 dared not brave genteel poverty even for your sake. Pity me it 
 I shrank from thrusting myself between you and a wealthy 
 marriage. I had been poor all my hfe ; and I knew what you 
 have never learnt — the horrors of a gentleman's poverty. I 
 have smiled at your girUsh talk of pretty cottages and tiny 
 suburban gardens ; an elegant httle drawing-room, in which you 
 and I might spend the winter evenings together with our boots 
 and music. The poor gentleman's cottage is never pretty ; the 
 poor gentleman's drawing-room is never elegant. His wife's 
 tastes may be ever so simple, his own aspirations may be ever 
 Bo pure ; but poverty countenances no taste, permits no asj^ira- 
 tion. His wife is fond of music, perhaps. Heaven help her ! 
 she cannot be sure of an hour in which her piano may not be 
 seized by the broker. She delights in flowers ; but the nosegays 
 she arranges so gaily to-day may entail a writ for the florist's 
 account to-morrow. You would have thought me a model of all 
 that is noble and disinterested if I had exposed you to such 
 miseries as these : you tliink me a scoundrel because I was not 
 selfish enough to say to you, ' Eeject Francis Tredethlyn and a 
 hfe of elegant ease, and accept my devotion and an existence of 
 penury and trouble.' " 
 
 " And you ask me now to fulfil my broken promise ? Have 
 you inherited a fortune P or how is it that your ideas upon 
 matrimony have altered ? " 
 
 The schemer flushed crimson to the roots of his hair, and 
 then grew deadly pale. For the hfe of him he could not answer 
 that question. He could not say, " My position is unchanged, 
 but you are rich. Give me your fortune and the heart I did not 
 choose to claim when it was unaccompanied by fortune." 
 
 " Had we not better wish each other good morning, Mr. Low- 
 ther ? " Maude said, after a little pause. " Your visit is ill-timed 
 and most unwelcome. Your presence remmds me of a cruel 
 wrong done to a noble friend, a devoted husbaud, whose worth 
 T have learned only too late ; whom I have loved unconsciously,
 
 330 Only a Clod. 
 
 only to discover fhe depth of my affection when its object ia 
 lost to me for ever." 
 
 " You loved your husband ! " cried Harcourt, with a cynical 
 laugh ; " you seem determined to astonish me to-day. You 
 loved your husband ? " 
 
 " Yes — dearly and truly ; and love his memory better than 
 ever I loved you. I have learned to think, since I have been 
 released from your influence ; for it was your influence that 
 regulated my life as well as my husband's ; it was your in- 
 fluence that kept us asunder, and plunged both of us into a 
 whirlpool of dissipation. I have had time to think during the 
 long miserable days and nights in which I have watched for the 
 coming of him who was never to return to me ; and if I had 
 not discovered the shallowness of your love before my marriage, 
 I should have made that discovery since. You are base enough 
 to tell me that the world has Hnked my name with yours. I 
 can afford to despise a world in which I have never found real 
 happiness, and in which I no longer wish to hold a place. I 
 shall go back to my father's house, and my hfe will be one long 
 atonement for the past. I tell you this, Mr. Lowther, in order 
 that you may understand that we must be strangers to each 
 other henceforward." 
 
 She laid her hand upon the bell as she spoke, Harcourt 
 Lowther stood for some moments looking at her. A strange 
 compound of passionate admiration and vengeful fury flamed in 
 his eyes. 
 
 " I have sometimes wondered at the madmen who murder the 
 women they have loved ; but God help you, Maude Tredethlyn, 
 if I had a loaded pistol in my pocket to-day ! " 
 
 He folded his arms, locking them together with a convulsive 
 suddenness, as if he could only thus restrain the impulse by which 
 he would have struck her down where she stood defying him ; 
 and then he turned, and slowly left the room. 
 
 He had left his hired horse in the quiet street, in charge of a 
 boy ; but the boy's back was turned when his employer left the 
 house, and Harcoiart Lowther drove back to town in a hansom. 
 It was only when his brother reminded him of the horse, that 
 he remembered how he had gone to Stuccoville ; and sent a man 
 to recover the missing steed. After that he left the noisy 
 regions of the Strand, and wandered Across one of the bridges 
 out to some dismal waste ground in the neighbourhood of 
 Battersea; a remote and forgotten tract, that was almost as 
 lonely as an African desert : there he laid himself down amongst 
 the rubbish of a deserted brickfield, and cried like a chikj*
 
 Susan's Good Newa. 331 
 
 CHAPTER XLI. 
 
 Susan's good news. 
 
 Maude Tredetiilyn sat aloue in lier siDacious chamber : oh, so 
 spacious, so splendid, so dreary, so ghastly, with a tall carved 
 walnut-wood bedstead that was like one of the tombs in Pere 
 la Chaise, only not so lively, and with long panels of looking- 
 glass shimmering ghost-like in dark walnut-wood wardrobes 
 and armoires, and duchesse dressing-tables. She might have 
 endured her troubles better, perhaps, if her room had been 
 furnished with white and gold rather than so much funereal 
 walnut-wood and ghastly lookijig-glass. She sat alone, think- 
 ing of the husband whom she had lost, and whose worth she 
 had only discovered when it was too late. She would accej^t 
 sympathy from no one. Juha wrote her letters, and saw people 
 who must be seen, and was very good ; but the wayward heart 
 shrank away from her in its sudden desolation. She had loved 
 him — she had loved him — and had been ashamed to confess her 
 real feelings either to herself or to the people who had smiled 
 upon a mercenary marriage as if it was the most natural thing 
 under heaven ; but who would have lifted their eyebrows in 
 scornful surprise had they known that she could care for a 
 person whose boyhood had been spent in a humble old home- 
 stead among the Cornish moorlands. GHding gracefully through 
 her frivolous hfe, tolerably happy in a shallow kind of way, 
 with more shopping, and driving, and riding, and calling, and 
 kettle-drumming, and dinner-giving, and horticultural-fete at- 
 tending, always to be done than it was in the power of any one 
 woman to do, except by a perpetual scramble, she had found no 
 time to consider her position, no time to be aware how entirely 
 even her most frivolous pleasures depended on the faithful 
 minister whom no influence could entirely divide from her. 
 
 Amongst the pajDcrs she had looked over on the library 
 shelves and tables, where the dust lay thick, she had sometimes 
 found a sheet of perfumed note-paper, and a hst of items in her 
 own writing — commissions she had given Francis to execute, 
 troublesome ones sometimes, involving loss of time, and patient 
 inquii-y amongst West-end emporiums — orders for new books, 
 di-awing materials, fems, music, all the frivoHties of her Kfe. 
 She remembered with a cruel pang of remorse how faithfully 
 the smallest details had been remembered, how patiently the 
 most tiresome researches had been conducted, and how very 
 lightly all this untiring service had been accepted. Circum-. 
 stances which she had been too thoughtless to notice at the 
 time flashed back upon hey mow, and she remembered how
 
 332 Only a Clod. 
 
 Harcourt Lowther tad stepped between her and her hnsband 
 even in this commonplace communion — how Francis had been 
 pushed aside, politely taught to remember what an ignorant and 
 awkward creature he was when compared to the fine gentleman. 
 
 As she sat alone, upon the evening after her interview with 
 Harcourt Lowther, her husband's image was more vividly pre- 
 sent with her than it had been at any moment since his depar- 
 ture. The bright honest face — the faithful loving face — shone 
 out upon her in the ghastly t'ftoLight of her ghastly chamber, 
 and she thought how pleasant it would have been to be sitting 
 opposite her husband in the firelight glow of a cosy parlour, 
 far away from splendid lonehness and carved walnut-wood. 
 Slie thought of him with her face hidden in her hands, and her 
 aching head lying wearily on the sofa-cushion. She thought 
 of him until a nervous restlessness came upon her, and she 
 sprang suddenly to her feet, unable to bear the oppression of 
 that dreary room, or any room in that dreary house. 
 
 " I must go away somewhere, or I shall die," she thought ; 
 "this place seems haunted. I will go to j^apa. He is very 
 good to me, but he does not understand what I feel about 
 Francis. People speak so Hghtly of him, and seem to have 
 known him so little. If I could talk to any one who really 
 loved him ; if I could talk to any one who knew his goodness as I 
 ought to have known it — as I do know it, now that he is dead !" 
 
 She crossed the room hurriedly, and rang the bell. She had 
 told her maid to bring lights only when she rang for them, 
 much to the dismay of that symi>athetic young person, who 
 believed that candle-light and company were eminently conso- 
 latory in all earthly sorrows. When the candles came, Maude 
 went to a writing-table, and wrote a few hasty Hues to her hus- 
 band's simple httle cousin. She had written to Susan once 
 before, to tell her of Francis Trcdethlyn's de2)arture; but the 
 two women had not seen each other since their first meeting. 
 
 " My deau Susajt, — There is ten-ihle news of your cousin : 
 it may have reached you before this, perhaps. Will you come 
 to me ? I am so utterly miserable ! and I beheve that you axe 
 the only person in the world who can understand my sorrow. 
 Come, dear, I implore you. Ever your afiectionate 
 
 " Maude." 
 
 Mrs. Tredethlyn was a great deal too impatient to wait for 
 any such commonplace means of communication as the post. 
 She summoned her maid, and entrusted her letter to that faith- 
 ful attendant, with directions that a groom should mount one 
 of the Park hacks immediately, and ride straight to Petersham
 
 Susan^s Good News. 333 
 
 with the missive. The maid obeyed ; and the groom, who had 
 made an engagement to go half-price to a West-end theatre, 
 departed, grumbling sulkily, and determined on punishing the 
 Park hack for the unwarrantable caprice of his miatress. 
 
 Maude slept soundly that night for the first time since the 
 tidings of the Kingfisher's fate had reached her, and woke in 
 the morning to see Susan looking down at her with a smile ujion 
 her face. 
 
 " Ah, you don't know," cried Maude, waking out of a ha])i)y 
 dream to an instant consciousness of her sorrow, — "you don't 
 know what has happened : you haven't heard ? " 
 
 " Of what, dear? " Susan asked, gently, as Maude started up 
 from amongst her pillows feverish and excited. 
 
 "The loss of the Kingfisher-^-tho lire — the dreadful fire! 
 Oh, Susan, you cannot have heard ! " 
 
 Mrs. Tredethlyn said tliis, because the girl's face, though it 
 was grave and sad, expressed none of that acute anguish which 
 Susan ought to have felt for her cousin's untimely fate. She 
 only looked at Maude with a wondering earnestness. 
 
 " Yes, it was very dreadful," she said. " Mrs. CHnnock read 
 it in the paper, and told me. I am so sorry for all the sufferers. 
 But oh, Maude, dear cousin, how grateful we ought to be for 
 the accident that saved Francis from such a fate ! If he had 
 gone by that vessel, dear " 
 
 She stopped suddenly, for Maude looked at her with an un- 
 natural stare, and then feU back unconscious. 
 
 No, he had not perished with the ill-fated passengers of the 
 Kingfisher. Lives as noble, friends as dear, husbands and 
 fathers, brothers and sons, worth and genius, some tribute from 
 all that is brightest iipon earth, — had gone down to the deep 
 waters ; but Francis Tredethlyn had not made a part in the 
 mighty sacrifice. "When Maude recovered from the deadly faint- 
 ness that had come upon her, Susan showed her a letter which she 
 had received from her cousin, — a letter that had been wi-itten ip 
 an hotel at Plymouth after the saihng of the Kingfisher. It was 
 a kind kinsmanlike letter, stating the arrangements which the 
 writer had made for the comfort and welfare of his crmsin and 
 her child ; and, in conclusion, Francis told Susan that he had 
 reached Plymouth too late to leave by the Kingfisher, a steamer 
 which he had intended to go by, and in which he had taken his 
 berth. Thus left with his time on his hands for some days, he 
 had resolved on going to have a look at the old neighbourhood 
 once more. 
 
 " It might seem a foolish fancy to many people, but I don't 
 tiiuk it will to you, Susy," he wrote, " I want to gather e
 
 334 Only a Clotl 
 
 handful of daisies from my mother's grave before I leave the 
 soil that holds her for ever. I want to stand by the old hearth 
 once more, though God knows what a pain it wiU be to me to 
 eee sti-angers in the old home. God bless j'^ou, dear, and good- 
 bye ! I shall not ^vl•ite again till I vrrite from the New World." 
 
 This was the close of the letter, which Susan gave Maude to 
 read. Her first fcehng on reading it was unbounded gratitude 
 to the Providence that had saved Francis Tredethlyn. Her 
 Becond feeling was considerable indignation against Francis 
 himself. The mother of the comic song who bewails her missing 
 child in such pathetic numbers, and slaps liim soundly when 
 she finds him, is not such a very impossible character. 
 
 " It was shameful of him to let me suffer so much," she 
 cried, " when a few lines from him would have made me so 
 happy ; " and then she \\'as grateful to Providence again, and 
 angry with herself for having been angiy with Francis ; and 
 then she pounced upon Susan and kissed her. 
 
 "What am I to do, darhng? " she asked. "I dare say he has 
 gone off by some other horrible steamer. But wherever he is, 
 I won't stop idle in this dreary house. I won't trust every- 
 thing to that slow solemn lawyer. I'll go to Cornwall myself, 
 Susy, and find out all about my husband ; how long he stayed 
 there, and when he left. You'll teU me where to go ; won't 
 you, Susy P " 
 
 Of course Susan was ready to give her cousin's wife all need- 
 ful information about that forgotten corner of the earth, Lan- 
 drcsdale. She would have volunteered to accompany Maude to 
 the western moors, only there was the boy ; and Susan had an 
 idea that if she were to turn her back upon her son for twenty- 
 four consecutive hours, he would inevitably be seized with 
 measles or scarlatina in her absence. But Maude declared she 
 wanted no one to accompany her. 
 
 "I sujjpose I must take my maid," she said; "but I shall 
 Iciwe her at the inn at Falmouth, and go alone to that queer old 
 house on the moor, and those queer old people Francis once told 
 me about." 
 
 JuUa Desmond had to endure a good deal that morning, for 
 Maude was radiant when she api^eared mth Susan at the break- 
 fast-table. She was so grateful to Susan for huiTying to her in 
 the early morning. 
 
 " Every night, when I have gone to sleep, I have thought the 
 same thing," she said: "if I could only wake and find it all a 
 dream — if I could wake to find it only a di*eam ! And this 
 morning I did wake to find an angel standing by my bed with 
 the best news I ever heard in aU my Hfe. But I am very sorry 
 for those poor pco])le who were really lost in the Kinf/fisher,"
 
 Su^an^s Good News. 835 
 
 added Meuide, mournfully; she felt that there was something 
 almost incongruous in her own happiness when so many must 
 be sorrowful for the destruction of that ill-fated vessel. 
 
 While she was malcing preparations for her departure, Mr. 
 Kursdale, the soUcitor, was announced. He came radiant and 
 red-faced to tell her the result of inquiries which he had con- 
 sidered it expedient to have made at Plymouth before taking any 
 legal steps with regard to the supposed demise of his respected 
 client ; and the result was that Francis had not sailed in the 
 Kingfisher ; and he was very proud and happy to announce to 
 Mrs'. Tredethlyn 
 
 He would have gone on in a ponderous manner for some time 
 longer, if Maude had not interrupted him by the assurance that 
 she knew all about it. 
 
 " You did not ascertain that my husband had left Plymouth 
 by any other vessel ? " she asked. 
 
 "No." 
 
 " Then we may hope he is still in England. I am going to 
 Cornwall immediately to look for him. At the worst, I shall 
 there hear all about him." 
 
 Mr. Kursdale evidently thought this very unprofessional, and 
 suggested the expediency of a clerk acting as Mrs. Tredethlyn's 
 proxy ; but Maude shook her head. 
 
 " I -will go myself," she said. " If my husband is still in Eng- 
 land, I will find him. There can be no further misunderstanding 
 between us, if once we can meet face to face." 
 
 Mr. Kursdale submitted, and departed. Maude ran away to 
 Buperintend her maid's packing of a small portmanteau, and 
 Susan sat in the morning-room with Julia. It had been settled 
 ■\hat Miss Desmond should drive her back to Petersham after 
 luncheon. 
 
 They were talking rather ceremoniously, when the door was 
 suddenly opened by an impetuous hand, and Miss Grunderson 
 burst in upon them, more intensely pink than usual. 
 
 " They wanted me to go to the drawing-room, and they'd go 
 and see if Mrs. Tredethlyn was at home I " exclaimed Rosa. " I 
 know what their going and seeing is. Not at home always:, 
 and I do so want to see that poor darling ; and I'm sure there's 
 noonein the world more truly sorry for her than I am; and ff 
 going into half-mourning would have been considered a tribute 
 of sincere respect, and not an intrusion or uncalled for, I would 
 have^ ordered a crape bonnet, trimmed with lilies of the vaUey 
 and jet beads, du-ectly I heard of it." 
 
 Julia interrupted Miss Gninderson with a simple statement of 
 the fact which had put an end to Maude's Ijrief time of mourn- 
 ing. Kosa's delight was very genuine, and on being introduced
 
 336 Onhj a Clod. 
 
 to Mrs. Lesley, she expanded as it was her wont to expand on 
 all occasions. 
 
 " You can't think how glad I am ! " she exclaimed ; " for I 
 assure you when I heard of fhat dreadful event, I felt as if it 
 was (juite hard-liearted of me to be happy, and I have been very 
 hajjpy for the last week or so. In point of fact," added Miss 
 Gnmderson, dragging at the button of a very tight glove in 
 evident embarrassment, "I'm engaged to be married." 
 
 " Indeed ! " said Julia, politely. 
 
 "Yes. You see as par has long objected to my running 
 after public characters, which of course was tiresome to him, — 
 for of all the people to tear about to all sorts of inaccessible 
 places, and oblige one's getting up unreasonably early in the 
 morning to hear them or to see them, pubHc characters are the 
 worst, — so par was really glad for me to be seriously engaged to 
 anybody that would keep me quiet, he said, even if the person 
 was not rich; so when Mr. Lowther — Mr. Eoderick Lowther, 
 you know — proposed, par happening to be in a good temper, it 
 was all settled immediately." 
 
 " I am very glad to hear it," answered Miss Desmond ; " but 
 I am not at all surprised. I quite expected as much." 
 
 " Did you really, now ? Well, upon my word, I thought at 
 first he was almost as grampy as Rochester in * Jane Eyre ; ' 
 but when those grumpy people do begin to pay one compliments, 
 it is so nice. Of course, wath regard to Mario, Lord Palmerston, 
 Sir Edwin Landseer, and Charles Mathews, my feehngs will be 
 unchanged to my dying day. But the worship of public cha- 
 racters need not interfere with the ha^Dpiness of domestic Hfe ; 
 and as Roderick's position in the cor2:)s dijjloviatiqiie will take 
 us abroad, his jealousy need never be aroused in the shghtest 
 degree." 
 
 Miss Grunderson entertained the two ladies for some time 
 with minute details of her own affairs, and she confessed pre- 
 sently that Roderick had promised to call for her. 
 
 " He doesn't want to see Mrs. Tredethlyn, you know," she 
 said; "he was only anxious to express to you how sorry he is, 
 and so on— though, of course, now he hasn't any occasion to be 
 Borry, thank goodness ! — but you don't mind liis coming to 
 fetch me, do you, dear ? The carriage is waiting for me, and 
 I'm going to take him on to the Hay market, where we're to see 
 about the resetting of some old-fashioned diamond earrings 
 that Roderick's ma has sent me. They're not neai-ly as hand- 
 some as my o^vn, you know ; but, of course, I feel grateful to 
 her for the attention. And I'm to go down to Lowther Hall to 
 stay before our marriage ; and I'm to be introduced to a maiden 
 aunt of Rc-derick's, from whom he has expectations, this vei7
 
 Susan's Good 27ews. 33*/ 
 
 afternoon — T mean I'm to be introduced to her this very after- 
 noon," added Rosa. 
 
 While she was chattering the door was opened, and a servant 
 announced Mr, Lowther. He came out of the bright white 
 dayHght on the staircase into the room which was "kept cool 
 and shadowy by closed Venetian shutters. As he looked about 
 him, unaccustomed to the obscurity, he heard a faint shriek, 
 and a woman who had been sitting with her back to the window 
 started suddenly from her chair. 
 
 "Robert!" she cried; "Robert, is it you P" And then sho 
 sank down again, pale and breathless. 
 
 " Robert ! " exclaimed Miss Grunderson ; " yon must mistake 
 Mr. Lowther for some one else, Mrs. Lesley. His name is not 
 Robert." 
 
 "Perhaps not," Susan answered, sadly. "He kept his real 
 name a secret from the poor girl who was once proud to call 
 herself his wife; but whatever his name may be he is my 
 husband nevertheless, and Providence has brought about our 
 meeting to-day. Oh, don't add a falsehood to the vsTong you 
 have done me ! " she cried, appeaUng to Roderick Lowther, who 
 stood pale and confounded, with the faces of the three women 
 all turned towards him, and with the knowledge that those 
 scrutinizing eyes were upon him. " I shall claim very little of 
 you. I only want you to give me the name I have a right to 
 bear ; I only want you to acknowledge your son." 
 
 Roderick Lowther did not reply to thia appeal. After a 
 moment's pause he turned to Juha : 
 
 " Where do you pick up yonr acquaintance, Miss Desmond ? " 
 he said. " I should scarcely have expected to meet tliis lady 
 
 " This lady is my husband's cousin," answered Maude, who 
 had entered the room while he was speaking ; " and I do not 
 know any one who has a better right to be here. What is the 
 matter, Susy darhng p " 
 
 Roderick Lowther's heart was stirred faintly by the sound of 
 that familiar name — the name which he had whispered so often 
 beside a grey wintry sea, under a wintry sky, in the desolate 
 region^ which had been brightened for him by his discarded 
 wife's innocence and love. 
 
 "There is nothing that can be spoken of here," Susan 
 answered; "1 have met some one whom I never expected to see 
 again. I will wait till my cousia comes back. I will say no 
 more till then." 
 
 "But, good gracious me!" exclaimed Miss Grunderson, "I'm 
 not going to be treated in this sort of way. What does it all 
 mean, Roderick? That lady starts up all of a sudden, and
 
 SS8 Only a Clod. 
 
 calls yon her husband, and then says she'll wait till her consin 
 comes home. I can't be expected to wait till her cousin comes 
 home. I can't take matters so coolly. With my trousseau 
 ordered, and all ! I must and will have an explanation ! " 
 
 " You shall, Eosa ; but, for mercy's sake, hold your tongue. 
 There is some infernal mistake. You had better go home; 
 never mind about the earrings to-day. If this lady mistakes 
 me for some one she knows, or has a claim upon, I have no 
 doubt I shall be able to demonstrate her mistake, if I can talk 
 to her for a few minutes quietly. And now let me take you to 
 your carriage, Eosa." 
 
 Miss Grunderson would have resisted such a summary way of 
 disposing of her and her wrongs ; but Eoderick Lowther waa 
 firm. He led her down-stairs, and he put her into her carriage, 
 and he sent her home as coolly as if she had been a packet of 
 dry goods consigned to his temporary care, to be sent on to Mr, 
 Grunderson. 
 
 " Awkward," he muttered, as he went back to the house ; 
 "but things always do happen awkwardly just when a fellow 
 fancies he's swimming with the tide all in his favour." 
 
 He looked very grave as he went to Mrs. TredethljTi'a morn- 
 ing-room to demand an interview with Susan ; but he looked a 
 great deal more grave as he left the house at\er that interview 
 and made his way back to his brother's lodgings. 
 
 He found Harcourt sitting moodily by the empty fireplace, 
 the shm foreign bottle on the table by his side, and a cigar in 
 his mouth. 
 
 "What is the matter with you?" asked the younger brother, 
 listlessly, as he perceived the scowl upon his senior's face. 
 
 " There is this much the mattfer with me," answered Eoderick ; 
 " I trusted a fellow to help me in a delicate business, and I've 
 reason to think that he took advantage of my confidence to get 
 me into a dilemma that it will take me all my Hfe to get out of. 
 I have seen Susan Turner to-day." 
 
 "Indeed!" 
 
 " And she has told me something about the Eegistrar — 
 something that I can scarcely bring myself to believe. Do you 
 remember what I asked you to do for me, Harcourt ? " 
 
 "Perfectly. And I have got the letter containing your 
 request in my possession — such a nice letter ! You tell me in 
 it that you have fallen over head and ears in love with an in- 
 nocent little country girl, too poor and insignificant to be your 
 "wife, too virtuous to be your mistress. Another man might 
 have accepted his fate, and either resigned the lady, or made 
 Bome sacrifice of his own interests and married her. You were 
 inclined to do neither, and you fell back upon a viUanona
 
 Sman's Good News. 339 
 
 expedient familiar to the readers of old-fashioned novels, an^ 
 known as a mock marriage. You wrote to me about tliis in a 
 half-playful tone, as if it were the simplest thing in the world 
 — an elegant Httle comedy, out of which it would be your care, 
 of course, to see that no harm should arise; and so on. The 
 carrying out of the little conspiracy would be very easy. You 
 suggested how it might be done. I had only to engage some 
 clever scapegrace to enact the Registrar ; liire a parlour in some 
 obscure street near a District Eegistrar's Office — ia the same 
 street, if practicable; the ceremony would only occupy about 
 ten minutes, and could be got over as quietly as the most 
 commonplace morning call, if the fellow engaged to personate 
 the Registrar knew what he was about. The dear httle girl 
 was the last person in the world to suspect anything amiss. 
 In short, it was the simplest possible business, and all our dear 
 good Harcoui-t had to do was to find the handy scamp who 
 would act the official, and get himself well ujd in the httle pro- 
 fessional formula of signing and counter-signing, and so on, in 
 some big books that he would get for the purpose. The certi- 
 ficate business would have to be finessed of course. The dear 
 little girl would ask for no certificate, and the dear little girl's 
 vritnesses must be conveniently shut up if they made their 
 noses unpleasantly prominent." 
 
 " I begin to understand you," said Eoderick, with suppressed 
 fury. " You have sold me ; and you are going to defend your- 
 self upon high grounds, conscientious scruples; and so on. 
 Pray proceed. That sort of talk will sound so well from your 
 lips." 
 
 "I am not going to do anything of the kind. I am only 
 going to remind you that, as you never in your life did a 
 generous thing for me, or stepped aside from your own interest 
 or your own pleasure by so much as a hair's breadth to serve 
 me, it wasn't very Hkely that I should get myself into a legal 
 hobble — that mock marriage would have been something like 
 felony, I should imagine — and inflict a cruel wrong upon an 
 innocent httle girl to obhge you. I didn't want to be too dis- 
 obhging, so I an-anged a marriage, but it was a real and not a 
 sham one ; and you are as tightly tied to your pretty httle wife 
 as if the business had been transacted at St. George's, Hanover 
 Square, by a popular bishop, assisted by an aristocratic uncle 
 to the bride." 
 
 " You are a rcmorseless scoundrel ! " exclaimed Mr. Lovrther, 
 coolly. _ " Ajad I am very hajjpy to tell you that your own 
 pretty Httle plans are knocked on the head. Francis Tredethlyn 
 did not sail in the Kingfisher / " 
 
 Harcourt gave a Kttle start of surprise ; but his cotintenanc*
 
 340 Onljj a Clod. 
 
 did not express tlie profound vexation and disappointment that 
 his brother had expected to see in it. The schemer had failed 
 BO completely, that it mattered very little to him now what 
 course events took. 
 
 " Yes, Francis Tredethlyn is alive and well, I have no doubt," 
 resumed Roderick. " And my httle Susy turns out to be 
 Francis Tredethlyn's first cousin. I have a recollection of her 
 telling me, after our marriage, that her real name was sometliing 
 outlandish, of a Cornish character ; but the name had shpped 
 my memory completely before I met your wealthy Cornishman." 
 
 " Then the likeness which I fancied I saw in that daub of a 
 portrait and the similarity of name were not mere coincidences, 
 after all," muttered Harcourt. "And the lady at Petersham is 
 my little sister-in-law. It's a pity you didn't treat her rather 
 better," he added ; " for Francis Tredethlyn could afford to give 
 her a handsome fortune, if he pleased. It is from her father he 
 inherits his money ; and if you had declared your marriage, and 
 made things square with the old man, your wife need not have 
 been disinherited, and would have been as rich a prize as any 
 Miss Grunderson." 
 
 " Hold your tongue ! " cried Roderick ; " I know what I have 
 lost as well as you do. If you had been above-board with me, 
 and told me that you had sold me about the marriage, I might 
 have acted differentl}'. Why did you get me into such a mess ? " 
 
 " Because I didn't choose to be your catspaw. I have been 
 sacrificed to your interests all my life, and I was determined to 
 keep my hold upon you when I had got it." 
 
 "And you would have allowed me to marry Eosa Grun- 
 derson P " 
 
 " C'est selon ! I thinh I should have spoken at the last moment 
 — and yet it might have been very convenient to hold an awk- 
 ward little secret about one's wealthy brother. A man must be 
 very hard up before he descends to that undignified mode of 
 livelihood which the French galley-slaves call chantage ; but 
 when a fellow is hard up there's no knowing how low he may 
 descend." 
 
 " You are a scoundrel ! " 
 
 "And you are — I can't finish the sentence without sinking 
 to slang. We resemble each other in character as we do ia 
 person." 
 
 In this fashion the brothers bandied civilities for some time ; 
 but they ended matters by dining together at the Metropolitan. 
 Arabian traditions as to the sanctity of bread and salt cannot 
 hold good against the exigencies of civiUzed hfe ; and men may 
 dine together in a friendly way, and reserve the right of hating 
 each other nevertheless.
 
 A Perfect Union. 341 
 
 Warmed by a good dinner and a bottle of Moselle, Roderick 
 grew hopefnl as to the future. Susan would relent from her 
 calm determination never to hold any communication with the 
 husband she had loved so tenderly, by whom she had been so 
 cruelly abandoned. Francis might act in a handsome manner 
 about the fortune which ought to have been his cousin's ; and, 
 after all, the turn which affairs had taken might not be alto- 
 gether an unlucky one. 
 
 " Looking at it in any way, Eosa was a nuisance," said Mr. 
 Lowther, as he bedewed his moustache with the rose-water 
 which the luxurious Metropolitan provides for its guests ; " and 
 perhaj^s it's better as it is. We hadn't come to close quarters 
 about the settlements ; and I dare say if the pere Grunderson 
 had been brought to the scratch, we should have had a scuffle." 
 
 CHAPTER XLII. 
 
 A PERFECT UNION. 
 
 Maude left Paddington by an afternoon express, and reached 
 Exeter after a journey that was long and wearisome even to a 
 modem traveller, for whom the way has been smoothed so de- 
 lightfully. It was late the next evening when she reached 
 Falmouth, after a day in a stage-coach, and put up at the 
 principal hotel with her maid, who was a good deal more tired 
 than her mistress, as it is in the nature of maids to be. The 
 coach that passed through Landresdale on its way to some still 
 more remote and savage district left Falmouth early in the 
 morning ; and Maude left with it, this time unattended by her 
 maid, whose curiosity had been considerably stimulated by tha 
 erratic nature of her misti'ess's movements, and who thought it 
 a hard thing to be left alone to look out of the window of the 
 hotel sitting-room, while Mrs. Tredethlyn pursued her mys- 
 terious journey to its mysterious close. 
 
 How strange and new all the wild Cornish scenery seemed to 
 Maude, as she sat alone in the interior of the coach, which was 
 not affected by the sturdy agriculturists and miners who were 
 generally the only passengers on this route ! How many con- 
 tiicting hopes and fears found a place in her mind as she looked 
 out at the unknown country amidst which her hiaaband's boy- 
 hood had been spent ! Had he sailed for the New World by 
 some later vessel than the Kingfisher ? Was he far away from 
 the rustic homestead towards which she was travelling with a 
 faint hope of finding him at the end of her journey ? — an un- 
 reasoning hope, which she tried to shut out of her mind in her 
 dread of the cruel disancointment that mieht await her.
 
 842 Only a Clod. 
 
 The coach put her down before the Crown Inn, and she stood 
 llone in Landresdale High Street, with the great gates of the 
 iiarquis's enchanted castle frowning down npon her from the 
 ibp of the hill. She inquired aLout a conveyance to take her 
 Wi to Tredethlyn Grange ; and the landlord of the Crown 
 ordered the immediate preparation of a lumbering old equipage 
 of a tub-like character, lined with washed-out chintz, wliich waa 
 brought forth on rare occasions, and charged for at a prodigious 
 rate. While the equipage was being prepared, the landlord con- 
 templated his bright young visitor with evident curiosity, and 
 would fain have beguiled her into conversation ; but Maude had 
 no inclination to be communicative. If she was to receive a 
 death-blow to all her hopes, she did not want to take it from 
 the hands of this coarse common man. She wanted to go 
 straight to the Grange and learn her fate there, and there only. 
 The road from Landresdale to the moorland farmhouse was 
 longer than the by-path through the churchyard by which 
 Francis had gone ; and the clumsy old brown horse, and the 
 lumbering veliicle in which Maude was seated, progressed very 
 slowly. The way seemed intolerably long to her ; but at last 
 she saw a grey sjiot against the blue sky, and made out that 
 the vehicle was bearing towards it by a winding track along 
 which heavy waggons had left the impression of their broad 
 wheels. The grey sjDot grew bigger and bigger against the 
 horizon, until it grew at last iuto a dreary-looking habitation, 
 with quaint old gables and moss-grown stone walls. One 
 slender thread of smoke curled upward, white against the clear 
 blue atmosphere ; some sheep were grazing* upon the patch of 
 ground that had once been a garden ; and the perfume of the 
 clover blew towards the traveller as the fly lumbered nearer tx» 
 the broken gate. 
 
 Maude looked hopelessly at the quiet house, — so little sign of 
 occupation, so httle token of life. 
 
 " He can't be there," she thought ; a sudden gush of teara 
 shutting out the grey stone walls, the clover-field and browsing 
 eheep. " I am too late ! " 
 
 She brushed away her tears, di-ew down her veil, and alighted, 
 telling the driver to wait for her ; whereupon the man took the 
 bit out of his horse's mouth and abandoned himself to slumber, 
 while the animal cropped the stunted grass contentedly. Some 
 sheep that had been lying in the pathway skipped awkwardly 
 away as Maiide crossed the bare enclosure ; and as she ap- 
 proached the door, it was opened by a tall gaunt woman, who 
 had evidently been disturbed by the unwonted sound of wheels 
 on the rough moorland road. 
 
 " Mr. Tredethlyn has been staying here, has he aofc^ " Maud* 
 asked, eagerly.
 
 A Perfect Union. 843 
 
 " Yes, ma'am ; and lie's here still. Excuse me for being a 
 little put out like, but you have taken me so aback. You don't 
 happen to be my master's wife, do you ? " 
 
 "Yes, yes ! Oh, thank Heaven, he is still here ! Let me see 
 him at once, please ! " exclaimed Maude, trying to pass the 
 grim-looking woman who barred her passage. 
 
 " Not yet ! Oh, please, ma'am, not yet I " cried the woman, 
 eagerly. " It mightn't be safe." 
 
 " Not safe ! What do you mean P " 
 
 " He has been so ill, ma'am ; and the doctor's special orders 
 was that he was to be kept from anytliing that might upset 
 him. And he talked and raved so about you, poor dear, when hia 
 senses were quite gone, as they were for days together ; and I'm 
 sure nothing could upset him so much as the sight of your 
 coming upon him sudden. Let rr.e see him first, and teU him 
 you are here. I make no doubt he'll be overjoyed to see you ; 
 but it mustn't come like a shock upon him." 
 
 " He has been ill ! " cried Maude ; " dangerously iU ! " 
 
 " Yes, ma'am ; very dangerously. We had two doctors with 
 him at one time. Brain fever it was ; over- fatigue and trouble 
 of the mind, and so on, the doctors said. He came up here 
 after being too late for the steamer by which he was to have 
 gone abroad ; and he came to settle everything about the farm 
 and the quarries, and so on ; and he worked at it night and day, 
 without rest nor sleep, though me and my husband told him how 
 bad it was for him ; and everything was almost settled when he 
 woke one morning bad in his head, and after that got from bad 
 to worse, until his hfe was almost give up." 
 
 " But he is out of danger now ? " 
 
 " Yes, ma'am, thank God, quite out of danger now ; but, oh, 
 so weak ; the smallest child that ever I had to do with wasn't 
 weaker than my poor master now." 
 
 Maude burst out crying. Until this moment she had stood, 
 pale and breathless, waiting to hear that she was indeed too 
 late — that Francis Tredethlyn had escaped the destraction of 
 the Kingfisher only to find death waiting for him in his own 
 home. 
 
 " Don't mind me," she exclaimed, as the gaunt woman made 
 a clumsy attempt to comfort her; " I am crying for joy. Go 
 and tell my husband that I am here ; but not at any hazard to 
 him. I will be very patient. Thank God I have found him ! 
 thank God I shall be able to fall on my knees by his bed-side 
 and beg his forgiveness for my neglect and ingratitude !" 
 
 Martha DryscoU looked wonderingly at this butterfly crea- 
 ture, who talked hysterically of falling at her husband's feet and 
 begging forgiveness. Francis had made no confidants in tha*
 
 344 Only a Clod. 
 
 Cornisli house ; and Mrs. Dryscoll began to fear that Hs mar- 
 riage had been a very unfortunate aflair, and that this sudden 
 arrival of an elegantly dressed penitent was to be the last act of 
 a domestic tragedy. 
 
 " If you'll walk in there, ma'am," Martha said, pointing to 
 the parlour, with a severe aspect of countenance, " I'll go and 
 see my master." 
 
 She said no more, but departed ; and Maude crept into the 
 old-fashioned room, fearful lest the rustling of her silk dress 
 might disturb an invalid's slumber. It seemed a long time that 
 she -v^ited, and then Mrs. Dryscoll retui-ned, smiling grimly 
 this time. 
 
 "He'll see you directly minute," she said; "and, oh, he does 
 seem so pleased, poor dear !" 
 
 She led Maude to the top of the staircase, and then pointed 
 to a half-open door at the end of a dusky corridor, after which 
 she went down- stairs again, and Maude heard her sobbing 
 quietly to herself until the sound subsided in the distance. 
 
 The young wife went on to the half-open door, and entered 
 the room in which her husband lay on a white-curtained bed, 
 very pale, very wan, and so weak that he could not raise his 
 hand to offer it her in token of loving reconciHation, 
 
 She fell on her knees by the bed, and laid her cheek upon the 
 hand that was too feeble to be lifted. 
 
 " Oh, forgive me ! " she said ; " my dear, my love, my true 
 and cherished husband ! If you wanted to give me a lesson, you 
 have given me a very cruel one ; but you have taught me that 
 I cannot live without you." 
 
 She sat by his pillow, with his weak head encircled by hor 
 caressing arms, and told him the story of her penitence and re- 
 morse. It was a sweet exchange of forgiveness for the past, 
 and tender promises for the future. No denizens of Stuccoville 
 kept watch from behind pink curtains ; the driver of the fly 
 slumbered as profoimdly as one of the seven sleepers ; the rustif 
 sound of the sheep cropping the clover was the only sound that 
 stirred the drowsy stillness. Martha kept herself discreetly out 
 of the way ; and the husband and wife, truly united for the first 
 time in their lives in that Cornish sohtude, were loath to break 
 the spell which held them in such loving union. 
 
 But such spells have to be broken for the common business of 
 life. Punctual to the appointed moment Mrs. Dryscoll appeared 
 with her master's medicine; and then the lumbering fly was 
 sent back empty to Landresdale ; and after that Mrs. Tredethlyn 
 was banished from the sick room, and made some faint show of 
 taking a little of the refreshment wliich had been provided for 
 her by Martha.
 
 A Perfect U^iion. 345 
 
 After dinner she wrote two brief notes — one to her maid at 
 Falmouth, who was to follow her immediately wth the port- 
 manteau ; the other to Julia, who was to be so good as to send 
 her such luggage as would be necessary to her in a stay of some 
 weeks. 
 
 After this Mrs. Tredethlyn had no more to do but to nurse her 
 husband through the slow stages of convalescence. It was very 
 long before he was strong enough to get up to a httle Arcadian 
 tea-di-inking. It was very long after that before he was able to 
 take a few turns in the clover-field, leaning on Maude's arm. 
 It was stUl longer before he was well enough to think of turn- 
 ing his back upon Cornwall, to plunge into busy commonplace 
 life again. 
 
 If he could have been an invalid for the rest of his days, he 
 would have resigned hitnself uncomplainingly to his fate; for 
 what period of his chequered existence had been so sweet as 
 this, in which he and Maude were all in all to each other ? — 
 this perpetual tete-a-tete, unbroken by the intrusion of morning 
 callers, undisturbed by the conflicting emotions which attend 
 social intercourse in high latitudes. And they were not idle 
 either during these autumn months. Hidden among those wild 
 Cornish moors, the husband and wife were very busy together 
 •^mjproving their minds ; for Maude had confessed to her hus- 
 band, with a good deal of girHsh giggling and blushing, that 
 her own education had been very nearly as defective as his, and 
 that the wide fields of knowledge, which were such strange and 
 bewildering regions to him, were scarcely more famihar to her. 
 
 " And you are so clever, Frank," she exclaimed, in conclusion 
 — she always called him Frank now. " You remember what 
 those American phrenologists — Messrs. Somebody and Some- 
 thing — said about your perceptive faculties ? You could learn 
 anything, they said. And we'll learn together, dear ; for I'm 
 ashamed to say I've forgotten everything my governesses and 
 masters taught me, except French and music, and a smattering 
 of German and Italian. And I'm sure if you'd seen how, as 
 soon as one master had beaten anything into my brains, another 
 master came and beat it out again with something else, you'd 
 scarcely wonder that I'm ignorant. So we'll begin together, 
 Frank dear, and learn everything. Won't it be fun ? " 
 
 A young lady who looked upon the acquisition of universal 
 knowledge as an agreeable joke would scarcely be expected to 
 drink very deeply of the Pierian spring. Maude imbibed the 
 classic water in little fitful sips, and wasted a good deal of it in 
 froUcsome splashing ; but Francis had read considerably, even 
 in the midst of his London dissijiation, and he had a happy 
 knack of remembering what he read. Mrs. Tredethlyn wrote
 
 S46 Only a Clod. 
 
 to a popiilar librarian for his catalogue; and in the pages of 
 this pamphlet she ticked off the solid works which she consi«' 
 dered adapted to the improvement of her own and her hus- 
 band's mind. 
 
 "Merivale's 'History of the Komans under the Empire! '" 
 she exclaimed ; " that of course we must read. I'm sure I 
 haven't the faintest idea of Julius Caesar, except that he always 
 seemed to have a laurel-wreath on his head and a kind of 
 roUing-pin — if I remember right — in his hand, and that he once 
 passed something called the Rubicon, though what it w-as I 
 haven't the shghtest notion. "We'll have the ' Roman Empire ; ' 
 and when we've got through that, we'll have Gibbon in one 
 volume, you know," said Maude, triumphantly; "he'll seem 
 shorter in one volume, even if the small print is rather trying 
 to one's eyes. Newman's ' Phases of Faith ' — that sounds like 
 theology, doesn't it ? and I don't think we need begin theology 
 yet, because if we got into the early schisms of the Church, 
 and Gnostics, and Arians, and so on, our brains wouldn't be 
 clear enough for Julius CiBsar. There's a Ufe of Madame de 
 Maintenon, by the Due de Noailles; I think we'll have that: 
 Bhe'll be quite a rehef after the ' Roman Empke,' because one 
 has a kind of idea about her, and that she was a nasty old 
 frump, and said nide things about the king, who was so kiiid to 
 her, and so on." 
 
 The selection of these and a great many more _ books was 
 eminently delightful ; but when they came, Maude insi-sted on 
 dipping into " Roman Emi^ires " and ponderous histories of dif- 
 ferent ages just as if they had been so many novels; and she 
 frisked among the records of the Reign of TeiTor with a very 
 confused idea as to the difference between the " Mountain " and 
 the " Gironde," but a vivid notion of Charlotte Corday having 
 her portrait painted just before her death, and Citizen Roland's 
 beautiful wife declaiming on the scaffold. 
 
 They were very happy together. If Francis read in real 
 earnest, and his wife only played at reading, they were not the 
 less united in their studies. The industrious honey-bee and the 
 frivolous butterfly may hover about the same flower, happy 
 according to their different natures in the same siimmer noon. 
 Francis Tredethlyn and his wife were so happy in the quiet 
 old farmhouse that they let the autumn days drift by them in 
 their moorland retreat, even after the Comishman had growi 
 strong enough for a new skirmish -with Harcourt Lowther, had 
 there been any need of a physical contest between the two mem 
 
 " We have been so happy here, Francis," Maude said one din 
 November evening, as the husband and wife walked side by side 
 upon the moorland before the Grange ; " but I think we have
 
 A Perfect Union. 347 
 
 learnt to uiiderstand eacli other so well now, that no one in tho 
 world will be able to divide us again. And by-and-by, when 
 you hare read a great deal about Julius Ca3sar and poUtical 
 economy, and so on, and go into the House " — Maude opened 
 her eyes to the widest extent as she pronounced the high- 
 souncfing substantive — " how proud I shall be of you ; and I 
 shall go to the Ladies' Gallery when you are going to speak ! 
 And then, when you have settled all about the Berkshire estate, 
 how dehghtful it will be to arrange our model farm, and model 
 stables, and pineries, and vineries, and conservatories, and 
 orchid-houses, and a model dairy, and a model poultry-yard, 
 almost as pretty as the one at Frogmore ! and then how much 
 we shall have to think of and talk aboiit, shan't we, Frank? " 
 " And you'll never be ashamed of me again, Maude ? " 
 "Ashamed of you!" cried Mrs. Tredetlilyn, innocently; 
 "was I ever ashamed of you ? " And then she looked at her 
 husband arclily, blushing and laughing. " Well, perhaps once, 
 when you knocked those petits timhales de gihier into tho 
 duchess's lap, — half-a-dozen of them at the very least, Frank ; 
 and the night you tore Lady OpheUa Fitzormond's old point : 
 but you are so refined, Frank, so improved, if I may venture to 
 Bay as much without offending you." 
 
 " I should be a churlish brute indeed, if I had not improved 
 in the society of the sweetest wife in Christendom, to say 
 nothing of JuUus Ca3sar. My great-grandfather was a gentle- 
 man, Maude ; and there are few names older than Tredethlyn, 
 even in this land of ancient lineages. We dropped down until 
 we came to be represented by my grandfather, who Hved Hke 
 a peasant for the sake of hoarding his money, and in whose 
 steps my uncle Oliver followed. I shall try to make myself a 
 gentleman for your sake, Maude — it would never do for j^eoplo 
 to say that the lovely Mrs. Tredethlyn had allied herself to a 
 man who was only a clod." 
 
 After this, need it be said that all went very smoothly with 
 Mr. and Mrs. Tredethlyn ? — so smoothly, that poor discontented 
 Juha abandoned the haj^py couple in disgust, and went abroad 
 as travelling companion to a rheumatic old countess, who leads 
 her a dreadful hfe, and insists upon being read to sleep out of 
 German metaphysical works at weird hours of the night. Slio 
 has met with Roderick Lowther in the course of her travels, lonely 
 and cynical, looking at everything in life through the medium 
 of his own disappointments ; for he has sought in vain for a 
 reconcihation with his young wife, and has found to his cost 
 how very firmly a gentlewoman can hold to her resolution, when 
 her firmness is justified by the sense of a deep and deadly wrong.
 
 848 Only a Clod. 
 
 They are very liappy, Francis and Maude. The Berkshire 
 estate is just one of those exceptionally delightful places which 
 drop now and then into the hands of rich commoners when 
 the aristocratic proprietors go to the dogs ; and the Stuccovillo 
 mansion only sees its owners during the few months in which 
 they skim the cream of the London season, before scudding off 
 to the Continent to improve their minds among the monu- 
 ments of the past, or in the most fashionable watering-places 
 of the present. They are very happy. As time speeds on, 
 there appears on the lawn in Berkshire a little rolhng bundle of 
 wliite muslin and expensive lace, which, inspected closely, turns 
 out to be a baby, and which, if it could speak at all, would 
 answer to the name of Lionel Hillary Tredethlyn ; and by-and- 
 by, when the young couple travel in the bright autumn weather, 
 a prim English nurse and a French tonne follow in their rear, 
 and there is a httle girl baby in a wliite hood ; and papa and 
 mamma are alike concerned for the safe conveyance of these 
 domestic treasures. The girl baby is called Maude; but she 
 owns a string of other names; and her two godmothers are 
 Susan Lowthcr, who Hves hajjpily with her boy in the Peter- 
 sham cottage, and Rosa Gi-underson, who declares that, in 
 consequence of the distracting influence of jsublic characters, 
 and her fatal exj^ierience of |the perfidy of private individuals 
 in the person of Roderick Lowther, she will descend a spinster 
 to the grave. 
 
 One day, at a German watering-place, Francis and his wife 
 hear of a man living in the same hotel with them, their country- 
 man ; a man who is young, has been handsome, and who for the 
 last few months has been conspicuous in the gaming-saloons of 
 the Kursaal as a desperate, and sometimes a veiy lucky, player 
 — a traveller who can scarcely be an adventurer, for he has been 
 admired and caressed by elegant women and well-born nijcn, but 
 who has been a hard drinker from first to last, and within the 
 last fortnight has fallen a victim to the most hideous disease 
 which vice ever engendered as the scorpion-whip to work its own 
 retribution, — a disease called delirium tremens. 
 
 The landlord of tlie hotel tells Mr. Tredethlyn how this 
 wretched Englishman has his bad fits and his intervals of quiet ; 
 how he vnW. lie down calmly enough perhaps at night, to start 
 up mad in the dim grey morning, to walk far out into the 
 country, hurrying wildly before the fiend that pursues him; 
 and to fall exhausted in some desolate spot, and lie there till 
 some passing peasant picks him up and conveys him back to 
 his lodging. The landlord describes, with considerable vivacity 
 and gesticulatiou, how this poor afilicted creature will sit for 
 hours together catching at ima^nary insects that buzz about
 
 A Perfocl Union. 349 
 
 him and torment lilm ; how ho will watch and point to falling 
 snow, that never falln ; how with a power that is hideously 
 grai)hic, he will dcscrilie the devils that dance and gibber roiiTid 
 his miserable bed. He tells how the shutting of a door, the 
 rustUng of a newspaper, the flutter of a falling leaf, will startle 
 this unhappy sufferer more than an unexioected peal of thunder 
 would startle another man. He describes the sleeplessness which 
 no opiate is strong enough to conquer, the restlessness and 
 dejiression with which medical science struggles in vain. He 
 tells Francis Tredethlyn, in confidence, that the poor aihng 
 wretch is all but penniless, and that very scanty supplies of 
 money come to him in reply to the letters he writes to England 
 now and then in his rational moments. 
 
 It scarcely needs Maude's appeahng look to inspire Francis 
 with the wish to help this unhappy countryman. He says no- 
 thing to his wife, but he goes by-and-by to smoke his cigar in 
 the lamplit quadrangle, where there is a cafe, and a smoking- 
 room, and a reading-room, and a post-office, and a perpetual 
 chatter of divers tongues, and clatter of hurrying feet. He is 
 a long time smoking that cigar ; and yet Maude feels no dis- 
 pleasure in his absence, as she sits alone in her balcony looking 
 out at the lampUt town and the solemn forest looming darkly in 
 the distance. She knows that whatever impulse stirs her own 
 heart is almost sure to find an answering impulse in her hus- 
 band's ; and she can guess what keeps him so long to-night. 
 
 He has spoken to the landlord, he tells her, when he comos 
 back, and has given him a cheque which is to keep things 
 smooth for the present, and has promised more money, if more 
 should be needed; for in any case the Englishman is not to 
 be worried about money matters while he is ill ; and above all 
 he is not to know that a stranger's help has saved him from 
 annoyance. 
 
 " The landlord persuaded me to go into the — poor fellow's 
 room, afterwards," said Francis, slowly. " He thought it would 
 cheer liim up a Httle to shake a countryman by the hand ; and 
 I did go in, Maude, — and I saw him." 
 
 "Yes, dear; and the interview has made you un.iappy, I'm 
 Dure. You are looking dreadfully pale ! " 
 
 " The man is very ill, Maude, very ill. Yes, the sight of him 
 did almost knock me over, I assure you." 
 
 It was a week after tliis when Mr. and Mrs. Tredethlyn left 
 the German watering-place. They were on the point of start- 
 ing from the hotel when Maude noticed the closed shutters of 
 some windows on an upper story, and on questioning one of the 
 Waiters, was told that the Englishman was dead. She asked 
 hiir husband to tell her more about the painful end of this
 
 850 Only a Clod:. 
 
 lonely Englishman, as they sat alone in tlie coupe of a railwaj^ 
 carriage. 
 
 " Yes, lie is dead, Mande," Francis answered, sadly. " It 
 •was a very melancholy fate. The doctors could not conquer 
 the sleeplessness, and he sank at last into a state of coma from 
 which he never rallied. It was a very miserable ending. He 
 will be buried in the Httle Protestant cemetery. I left all 
 necessary directions, and I have written to his friends in Eng- 
 land. Perhaps some one who cared for him will come over to 
 Btand beside his grave. He was no friend of mine ; but there 
 seems something very shocking in this solitary death in a 
 foreign country." 
 
 " He was no friend of yours ! " repeated Maude, wonder- 
 ingly ; " how strangely you say that, Frank ! You knew him, 
 then ? " 
 
 " Yes, Maude, and you knew him too. The man who died 
 kfit night was Harcourt Lowther I " 
 
 THE END.
 
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