nase ; AAP res iad . epistle— «DEAR Miss SomeRsET—Mr. Richard Bassett, a cousin of Sir Charles, wishes very much to be introduced to you, and has begged me to assist in an object so laudable. I should hardly venture to present myself, and, therefore, shall feel surprised as well as flattered if you will receive Mr. Bassett on my introduction, and my assurance that he is a respect- able country gentleman, and bears no resemblance in character to ; ‘Yours faithfully, ‘¢ ARTHUR VANDELEUR.”’ TEMPTATION. i: a Next day Bassett called at Miss Somer- set’s house in May Fair, and deliver ed his introduction. He was admitted after a short delay, and entered the lady’s boudoir. It was Luxury’s nest. The walls were rose- colored satin, padded and puckered ;' the voluminous curtains were pale satin, with floods and billows of real lace; the’chairs embroidered, the tables all buhl and ormolu, and the sofas felt like little seas. The lady herself, in a delightful pelgnoir, sat nestled cozily in a sort of ottoman with arms. He finely formed hand, clogged with brilliants, was just conveying brandy and soda-water to a very handsome mouth when Richard Bassett entered. She raised herself superbly, but with- out leaving her seat, and just looked at a chair in 4 way that seemed ‘to say, ‘‘I permit you to sit down;” and that done, she carried the glass to her lips with the same admirable firmness of hand she showed in driving. Her lofty manner, coupled with her beautiful but rather haughty features, smacked of im- perial origin. Yet she was the writer to ‘‘jorge,’’ and four years ago a shrimp- girl, running into the sea with legs as brown as a berry. So swiftly does merit rise in this world, which, nevertheless, some morose folk pretend is a wicked one. I ought to explain, however, that this haughty reception was partly caused by a breach of propriety. Vandeleur ought first to have written to her and asked permission to present Richard Bassett. He had no business to send the man and the introduction together. This law a Parliament of Sirens had passed, and the slightest breach of it was a bitter offense. Equilibrium governs the world. These ladies were bound to be .overstrict in something or other, being: just a little lax in certain things where other ladies are strict. Now Bassett had pondered well what he should say, but he was disconcerted by her superb presence and demeanor, and her large gray eyes, that rested steadily upon his face. 12 WORKS OF CHARLES READE. However, he began to murmur mellif- luously. Said he had often seen her in public, and admired her, and desired to make her acquaintance, etc., etc. «Then why did you not ask Sir Charles to bring you here?’’ said Miss Somerset, abruptly, and searching him with her eyes, that were not to say bold, but singularly brave, and examiners pointblank. «“T am not on good terms with Sir Charles. He holds the estates that ought to be mine; and now he has robbed me of my love. He is the last man in the world I would ask a favor OL. “You came here to abuse him behind his back, eh?’’ asked the lady with un- disguised contempt. Bassett winced, but kept his temper. ““No, Miss Somerset; but you seem to think 1 ought to have come to you _ through Sir Charles. I would not enter your house if I did not feel sure I shall not meet him here.”’ Miss Somerset looked rather puzzled. ‘*Sir Charles does not come here every day, but he comes now and then, and he is always welcome.”’ ‘* You surprise me.”’ “Thank you. Now some of my gen- tlemen friends think it is a wonder he does not come every minute.”’ “You mistake me. me is that you are such good friends under the circumstances.”’ ‘Circumstances! what circumstances?’’ ‘Oh, you know. You are in his ¢on- fidence, I presume ? ’’—this rather satiri- cally. So the lady answered, defiantly : «Yes, I am; he knows I can hold my tongue, so he tells me things he‘ tells nobody else.”’ «Then, if you are in his confidence, you know he is about to be married.”’ ‘‘Married! Sir Charles married !”’ ‘‘In three weeks.’’ ““Tt’sa lie! You get out of my house this moment! ”’ Mr. Bassett colored at this insult. He rose from his seat with some little dignity, made her a low bow, and retired. But her blood was up: she made a wonderful What surprises rush, sweeping down a chair with her dress as she went, and caught him at the © door, clutched him by the shoulder and half dragged him back, and made him sit down again, while she stood opposite him, with the knuckles of one hand resting on the table. ‘* Now,’’ said she, panting, ‘* you look mein the face and say that again.’’ “Excuse me; you punish me too se- verely for telling the truth.’’ . “Well, I beg your pardon—there. Now tell me—this instant. Can’t you speak, man?’’ And her knuckles drummed the table. ‘He is to be married in three weeks.”’ On te “VWiho wo 2; | ** A: young lady I love.’’ Y ‘* Her name ?”’ ‘¢ Miss Arabella Bruce.”’ << Where does she live? ”’ ‘Portman Square.”’ <‘T’ll stop that marriage.”’ ‘“How ?’”’ asked Richard, eagerly. “*T don’t know; that I’ll think over. But he shall not marry her—never ! ”’ Bassett sat and looked up with almost as much awe as complacency at the fury: he had evoked; for this woman was really at times a poetic impersonation of that fiery passion she was so apt to in- dulge. pale, her eyes glittering and roving sav- agely, and her nostrils literally expand- ing, while her tall body quivered with . wrath, and her clinched knuckles pat- tered on the table. “*He shall not marry her. V'll kill him first | ’’ : CHAPTER III. RICHARD BASSETT eagerly offered his services to break off the obnoxious match. But Miss Somerset was begin- ning to be mortified at having shown so much passion before a stranger. ‘‘ What have you to do with it ? ’’.said she, sharply. She stood before him, her cheek . A THRRIBLE «Everything. I love Miss Bruce.”’ ‘Oh, yes; I forgot that. Anything else? There is, now. I see it in your eye. What is it?” ‘‘Sir Charles’s estates are mine by right, and they will return to my line if he does not marry and have issue.”’ ‘¢Oh, I see. That is so like a man. It’s always love, and something more important, with you. Well, give me your address. Jl write if I want you.” “Highly flattered,’’ said Bassett, iron- ically—wrote his address and left her. Miss Somerset then sat down and wrote ‘* DEAR SIR CHARLES—please call here, I want to speak to you. yours respecfuly, ‘*RHODA SOMERSET.”’ Sir Charles obeyed this missive, and the lady received him with a gracious and smiling manner, all put on and cat- like. She talked with him of indifferent things for more than an _ hour, still watching to see if he would tell her of his own accord. When she was quite sure he would not, she said, ““Do you know there’s a ridiculous ‘report about that you are Sone to be married ? ”’ “Indeed !”’ ‘They even tell her name—Miss Bruce. Do you know the girl?” — Sey 6S. .° ‘“Is she pretty ?”’ “Very.” “< Modest ? ”’ «Asan angel.’’ «‘And are you going to marry her?’’ ee-Yes.”’ <‘Then you are a-villain.”’ “«“ The deuce [am!’’ “You are, to abandon a woman who has sacrificed all for you.”’ Sir Charles looked puzzled, and then smiled; but was too polite to give his thoughts vent. Nor was it necessary ; Miss Somerset, whose brave eyes never left the person she was speaking to, fired up at the smile alone, and she burst into TEMPTATION. 13 a torrent of remonstrance, not to say vituperation. Sir Charles endeavored once or twice to stop it, but it was not to be stopped ; so at last he quietly took up his hat to go. He was arrested at the door by a rus- tle and a fall. He turned round, and there was Miss Somerset lying on her back, grinding her white teeth and clutching the air. He ran to the bell and rang it vio- lently, then knelt down and did his best to keep her from hurting herself; but, as generally happens in these cases, his in- terference made her more violent. He had hard work to keep her from batter- ing her head against the floor, and her arms worked like windmills. | Hearing the bell tugged so violently, a pretty page ran headlong into the room —saw—and, without an instant’s dimi- nution of speed, described a curve, and ran headlong out, screaming ‘“ Polly! Bonlyets?? | The next moment the housekeeper, an elderly woman, trotted in at the door, saw her mistress’s condition, and stood stock-still, calling, ‘‘ Polly,’’ but with the most perfect tranquillity the mind can conceive. In ran a strapping house-maid, with black eyes and brown arms, went down on her knees, and said, firmly though re- spectfully, ‘‘ Give her me, sir.”’ She got behind her struggling mis- tress, pulled her up into her own lap, and pinned her by the wrists with a vigorous grasp. The lady struggled, and ground her teeth audibly, and flung her arms abroad. The maid applied all her rustic strength and. harder muscle to hold her within bounds. The four arms went to and fro in a magnificent struggle, and neither could the maid hold the mistress still, nor the mistress shake off the maid’s grasp, nor strike anything to hurt her- Selita Sir Charles, thrust out of the ae looked on with pity and anxiety, and the little page at the door—combining art and nature—stuck stock-still in a mili- tary attitude, and blubbered aloud. 14 WORKS As for the housekeeper, she remained in the middle of the room with folded arms, and looked down on the struggle with a singular expression of counte- nance. There was no agitation what- ever, but a sort of thoughtful examina- tion, half cynical, half admiring. However, as soon as the boy’s sobs reached her ear she wakened up, and said, tenderly, ‘“‘ What is the child cry- ing for? Run and get a basin of water, and fling it all over her; that will bring her to in a minute.”’ The page departed swiftly on this be- nevolent errand. Then the lady gave a deep sigh, and ceased to struggle. Next she stared in all their faces, and seemed to return to consciousness. Next she spoke, but very feebly. ‘* Help me up,’’ she sighed. Sir Charles and Polly raised her, and now there was a marvelous change. The vigorous vixen was utterly weak, and linp as a wet towel—a woman of jelly. As such they handled her, and deposited her gingerly on the sofa. Now the page ran in hastily with the water. Up jumps the poor lax sufferer, with flashing eyes: ‘‘ You dare come near me with it!’’? Then to the female servants: ‘‘Call yourselves women, and water my lilac silk, not two hours old ?’’ Then to the housekeeper : ‘‘ You old mon- ster, you wanted it for your Polly. Get out of my sight, the lot!’’ Then, suddenly remembering how feeble she was, she sank instantly down, and turned piteously and languidly to Sir Charles. ‘They eat my bread, and rob me, and hate me,’’ said she, faintly. ‘‘T have but one friend on earth.’? She leaned tenderly toward Sir Charles as that friend ; but before she quite reached him she started back, her eyes filled with sud- den horror. ‘‘And he forsakes me !’’ she cried; and so turned away from him de- spairingly, and began to cry bitterly, with head averted over the sofa, and one hand hanging by her side for Sir Charles to take and comfort her. He tried to take it. It resisted; and, under cover of that little disturbance, the other hand OF CHARLES READE. dexterously whipped two pins out of her hair. The long brown tresses—all her | own—fell over her eyes and down to her waist, and the picture of distressed beauty was complete. Even so did the women of antiquity conquer male pity—‘‘ solutis crinibus.”’ The females interchanged a meaning glance, and retired; then the boy fol- lowed them with his basin, sore per- plexed, but learning life in this admirable school. Sir Charles then, with the utmost kind- ness, endeavored to reconcile the weeping and disheveled fair to that separation which circumstances rendered necessary. But she was inconsolable, and he left the house, perplexed and grieved; not but what it gratified his vanity a little to find himself beloved all in a moment, and the Somerset unvixened. He could not help thinking how wide must be the circle of his charms, which had won the affections of two beautiful women so opposite in character as Bella Bruce and La Som- erset. The passion of this latter seemed to grow. She wrote to him every day, and begged him to call on her. She called on him—she who had never called on a man before. She raged with jealousy; she melted with grief. She played on him with all a woman’s artillery ; and at last actually wrung from him what she called a re- prieve. Richard Bassett called on her, but she would not receive him; so then he wrote to her, urging co-operation, and she re- plied, frankly, that she took no interest in his affairs; but that she was devoted to Sir Charles, and should keep him for herself. Vanity tempted her to add that he (Sir Charles) was with her every day, and the wedding postponed. This last seemed too good to be true, so Richard Bassett set his servant to talk to the servants in Portman Square. He learned that the wedding was now to be on the 15th of June, instead of the 31st of May. Convinced that this postponement was only a blind, and that the marriage would A THRRIBLE never be, he breathed more freely at the news. But the fact is, although Sir Charles had yielded so far to dread of scandal, he was ashamed of himself, and his shame became remorse when he detected a fur- tive tear in the dove-like eyes of her he really loved and esteemed. He went and told his trouble to Mr. Oldfield. ‘‘I am afraid she will do some- thing desperate,’’ he said. Mr. Oldfield heard him out, and then asked him had he told Miss Somerset what he was going to settle on her. ‘‘Not I. She is not in a condition to be influenced by that, at present.” ‘‘Let me try her. The draft is ready. T’ll call on her to-morrow.”’ He did call, and was told she did not know hin. ‘You tell her 1am a lawyer, and it is very much to her interest to see me,’’ said Mr. Oldfield to the page. He was admitted, but not to a téte-a- téte. Polly was kept in the room. The Somerset had peeped, and Oldfield was an old fellow, with white hair; if he had been a young fellow, with black hair, she might have thought that precaution less necessary. ‘‘ Hirst, madam,’’ said Oldfield, ‘‘ I must beg you to accept my apologies for not coming sooner. Press of business, etc.’’ ‘Why have you come at all? That is the question,’’ inquired the lady, bluntly. “‘T bring the draft of a deed for your approval. Shall I read it to you? ”’ “Yes; if it is not very long.”’ He began to read it. The lady interrupted him characteris- tically. ‘It’s a beastly rigmarole. it mean—in three words ? ”’ ‘«Sir Charles Bassett secures to Rhoda Somerset four hundred pounds a year, while single; this is reduced to two hun- dred if you marry. The deed further assigns to you, without reserve, the beneficial lease of this house, and all the furniture and effects, plate, linen, wine, etc.”’ “*T see—a Dbribe.”’ What does TEMPTATION. 15 ‘Nothing of the kind, madam. When Sir Charles instructed me to prepare this deed he expected no opposition on your part to his marriage; but he thought it due to him and to yourself to mark his esteem for you, and his recollection of the pleasant hours he has spent in your company.”’ Miss Somerset’s eyes searched the law- yer’s face. He stood the battery un- flinchingly. She altered her tone, and asked, politely and almost respectfully, whether she might see that paper. Mr. Oldfield gave it her. She took it, and ran her eye over it; in doing which, she raised it so that she could think be- hind it unobserved. She handed it back at last, with the remark that Sir Charles was a gentleman and had done the right thing. ‘“‘He has; and you will do the right thing too, will you not?” “J don’t know. I am just beginning to fall in love with him myself.’’ ‘‘ Jealousy, madam, not love,’’ said the old lawyer. ‘“‘ Come, now! I see you are a young lady of rare good sense 3. look the thing in the face: Sir Charles is a landed gentleman; he must marry, and have heirs. He is over thirty, and his time has come. He has shown himself your friend; why not be his? He has given you the means to marry a gentle- man of moderate income, or to marry be- neath you, if you prefer it—”’ «¢ And most of us do—’’ ‘Then why not make his path smooth ? Why distress him with your tears and remonstrances ? ”’ He continued in this strain for some time, appealing to her good sense and her better feelings. When he had done she said, very quiet- ly, ‘‘ How about the ponies and my brown mare? Are they down in the deed ? ”’ ‘TT think not; but if you will do your part handsomely [ll guarantee you shall | have them.”’ “You are a good soul.’’ Then, after a pause, ‘‘ Now just you tell me exactly what you want me to do for all this.’’ Oldfield was pleased with this question. He said, ‘“‘Il wish you to abstain from 16 WORKS OF CHARLES READE. writing to Sir Charles, and him to visit you only once more before his marriage, just to shake hands and part, with mu- tual friendship and good wishes.”’ ‘You are right,’’ said she, softly; “‘best for us both, and only fair to the girl. Then, with sudden and eager curl- osity, ‘‘Is she very pretty ?”’ . ‘‘T don’t know.”’ ‘What, hasn’t he told you ? ”’ ‘He says she is lovely, and every way adorable; but then he is in love. The chances are she is not half so handsome as yourself.”’ <¢ And yet he is in love with her? ’’ ‘Over head and ears.’’- ‘¢T don’t believe it. If he was really in love with one woman he couldn’t be just to another. J couldn’t. He’ll be coming back to me in a few months.”’ ‘¢God forbid ! ’’ ‘«‘Thank you, old gentleman.”’ Mr. Oldfield began to stammer excuses. She interrupted him: ‘‘Oh, bother all that; I like you none the worse for speak- ing your mind.’’ Then, after a pause, ‘““Now excuse me; but suppose Sir Charles should change his mind, and never sign this paper ? ”’ ‘ said Bella, very re- OF CHARLES READE. ‘‘Excuse my remarking it. We are professional nurses, and apt to be a little officious, I fear.’ No reply. ‘‘Tsaw you were unwell. But I hope it is not serious. I can generally tell when the sick are in danger.’’ A peculiar look. ‘‘lam glad not to see it inso young and—good a face.’’ ' “You are young, too; very young, and—’’ she was going to say “‘ beautiful,” but she was too shy—‘‘to be a Sister of Charity. But Iam sure you never regret leaving such a world as this is.”’ ‘“Never. Ihave lost the only thing I ever valued in it.’’ “‘T have no right to ask you that was.”’ «¢ You shall know without asking. IT loved proved unworthy. ”’ The Sister sighed deeply, and then, hiding her face with her hands for a mo- ment, rose abruptly, and left the square, ashamed, apparently, of having been be- trayed into such a confession. Bella, when she was twenty yards off, put out a timid hand, as if to detain her; but she had not the courage to say any- thing of the kind. She never told her father a word. She had got somebody now who could sym- pathize with her better than he could. Next day the Sister was there, and Bella bowed to her when she met her. This time it was the Sister who went and sat on the bench. Bella continued her walk for some time, but at last ceuld not resist the tempta- tion. She came and sat down on the bench, and blushed ; as much as to say, ‘‘T have the courage to come, but not to speak upon a certain subject, which shall be nameless. ”’ The Sister, as may be imagined, was not so shy. She opened a conversation. ‘Tl committed a fault yesterday. I spoke to you of myself, and of the past: it is discouraged by our rules. We are bound to inquire the griefs of others; not to tell our own.” This was a fair opening, but Bella was too delicate to show her wounds to a fresh acquaintance. what One A TERRIBLE The Sister, having failed at that, tried something very different. ‘*But I could tell you a pitiful case about another. Some time ago I nursed a gentleman whom love had laid on a sick-bed.”’ greedily to Mary Wells’s gossip. He had counted on her volubility; it did not disappoint him. She never met him without a budget, one-half of it lies or exaggerations. She was a born liar. One night she came in high spirits, and greeted him‘thus: ‘‘ What d’ye think ? I’m riz! Mrs. Eden, that dresses my lady’s hair, she took ill yesterday, and I told the housekeeper I was used to dress hair, and she told my lady. If you didn’t please our Rhoda at that, ‘twas aS much as your life was worth. You mustn’t be thinking of your young bf man with her hair in your hand, or she’d rouse you with a good crack on the crown with a _ hair-brush. So I dressed my lady’s hair, and handled it like old chaney; by the same token, she is so pleased with me you can’t think. She is a real lady; not like our Rhoda. Speaks as civil to me as if I was one of. 60 WORKS OF her own sort; and, says she, ‘I should like to have you about me, if I might.’ I had it on my tongue to tell her she was mistress; but I was a little skeared at her at first, you know. But she will have me about her; I see it in her eye.”’ Bassett was delighted at this news, but he did not speak his mind all at once; the time was not come. He let the gypsy rattle on, and bided his time. He flattered her, and said he envied Lady Bassett to have such a beautiful girl about her. ‘Ill let my hair grow,” said he. SrAwe nds Ssaldeshe, ‘andzthen {1 ll pull it for you.’’ This challenge ‘ended in a little struggle for a kiss, the sincerity of which was doubtful. Polly resisted vigorously, to be sure, but briefly, and, having given in, returned it. One day she told him Sir Charles had met her plump, and had given a great start. This made Bassett very uneasy. ‘‘Confound it, he will turn you away. He will say, ‘This girl knows too much,.o77 ‘How simple -you be!’’ said the girl. “D’ye think I let him know? Says he, ‘I think I have seen you before.’ ‘Yes, sir,’ says I, ‘I was housemaid here before my lady had me to dress her.’ ‘No,’ says he, ‘I mean in Lon- don—in Mayfair, you know.’ I declare you might ha* knocked me down wi’ a feather. So I looks in his face, as cool as marble, and I said, ‘ No, sir; I never had the luck to see London, sir,’ says I. ‘All the better for you,’ says he; and he swallowed it like spring water, as sister Rhoda used to say when she told one and they believed it.’’ ““ You are a clever girl,’’ said Bassett. ‘“‘He would have turned you out of the house if he had known who you were.”’ She disappointed him in one thing; she was bad at answering questions. Morally she was not quite so great an ‘egotist as himself, but intellectually a greater. Her volubility was all ego- tism. She could scarcely say ten words, except about herself. So, when CHARLES READE. Bassett questioned her about Sir Charles and Lady Bassett, she said ‘‘ Yes,’’ or “No,” or ‘‘I don’t know,” and was off at a tangent to her own sayings and doings. Bassett, however, by great patience and tact, extracted from her at last that Sir Charles and Lady Bassett were both sore at not having children, and that Lady Bassett bore the blame. “That is a good joke,’’ said he. ‘‘The smoke-dried rake! Polly, you might do mea good turn. You have got her ear ; open her eyes for me. What might not happen ?’’ His eyes shone fiendishly. The young woman shook her head. ‘‘“Me meddle between man and wife! I’m too fond of my place.”’ “Ah, you don’t love me as I love you. You think only of yourself.’’ ‘And what do you think of ? Do you love me well enough to find me a better place, if you get me turned out of Hun- tercombe Hall ? ’’ “¢ Yes, I will; a much better.”’ ‘That is a bargain.”’ Mary Wells was silly in some thing's, but she was very cunning, too; and she knew Richard Bassett’s hobby. She told him to mind himself, as well as Sir Charles, or perhaps he would die a bachelor, and so his flesh and blood would never in- herit Huntercombe. This remark en- tered his mind. The trial, though appar- ently a drawn battle, had been fatal to him—he was cut; he dared not pay his addresses to any lady in the county, and he often felt very lonely now. So every- thing combined to draw him toward Mary Wells—her swarthy beauty, which shone out at church like a black diamond among the other women; his own loneliness ; and the pleasure these stolen meetings gave him. Custom itself is pleasant, and the company of this handsome chatter- box became a habit, and an agreeable one. The young woman herself employed a woman's arts; she was cold and loving by turns, till at last he gave her what she was working for, a downright promise of marriage. She pretended not to believe him, and so led him further; he swore he would marry her. a A THRRIBLE He made one stipulation, however. She really must learn to read and write first. When he had sworn this Mary became more uniformly affectionate; and as wo- men who have been in service learn great self-government, and can generally please SO long as it serves their turn, she made herself so agreeable to him that he began really to have a downright liking for her —a liking bounded, of course, by his in- curable selfishness ; but as for his hobby, that was on her side. Now learning to read and write was wormwood to Mary Wells; but the prize was So ereat ; she knew all about the Huntercombe estates, partly from her sister, partly from Bassett himself. (He must tell his wrongs even to this girl.) So she resolved to pursue matrimony, even on the severe condition of becoming a scholar. She set about it as follows: One day that she was doing Lady Bas- sett’s hair she sighed several times. This was to attract the lady’s attention, and it succeeded. ‘‘TIs there anything the matter, Mary ?”’ ‘“No, my lady.” ‘‘T think there is.’’ «‘ Well, my lady, lam ina little trouble; but it is my own people’s fault for not sending of me to school. I might be married to-morrow if I could only read and write.’’ ** And can you not?” “No, my lady.’’ “Dear me! I thought everybody could read and write nowadays.” ‘*La, no, my lady! not half of them in our village.” ‘‘Your parents are much to blame, my poor girl. Well, but it is not too late. Now I think of it, there is an adult school in the village. Shall I arrange for you to go to it?”’ | “Thank you, my lady. eWVell 2? “All my fellow-servants would have a laugh against me.”’ “The person you are engaged to, will he not instruct you? ”’ “Oh, he have no time to teach me. Besides, I don’t want him to know, either. But then" TEMPTATION. 61 But I won’t be his wife to shame him.’’ (Another sigh.) ‘“Mary,’’ said Lady Bassett, in the in- nocence of her heart, ‘‘ you shall not be mortified, and you shall not lose a good marriage. I will try and teach you my- self.”’ Mary was profuse in thanks. Lady Bassett received them rather coldly. She gave her a few minutes’ instruction in her dressing-room every day; and Mary, who could not have done any- thing intellectual for half an hour at a stretch, gave her whole mind for those few minutes. She was quick, and learned very fast. In two months she could read _a great deal more than she could under- stand, and could write slowly but very clearly. Now by this time Lady Bassett had become so interested in her pupil that she made her read letters and newspapers to her at those parts of the toilet when her services were not required. Mary Wells, though a great chatter- box, was the closest girl in England. Limpet never stuck to a rock as she could stick to a lie. She never said one word to Bassett about Lady Bassett’s lessons. She kept strict silence till she could write a letter, and then she sent him a line to say she had learned to write for love of him, and she hoped he would keep his promise. Bassett’s vanity was flattered by this. But, on reflection, he suspected it was a falsehood. He asked her suddenly, at their next meeting, who had written that note for her. ‘* You shall see me write the fellow to it when you like,”’ was the reply. Bassett resolved to submit the matter to that test some day. At present, how- ever, he took her word for it, and asked her who had taught her. ‘‘T had to teach myself. Nobody cares enough for me to teach me. Well, I’ll forgive you if you will write mea nice let- ter for mine.”’ ‘What! when we can meet here and say everything ? ”’ ‘No matter; I have written to you, and you might write to me. They all get 62 WORKS letters, except me; and the jades hold ’em up to me: they see I never getone. When you are out, post me a letter now and then. It will only cost you a penny. I’m sure I don’t ask you for much.”’ Bassett humored her in this, and in one of his letters called her his wife that was to be. This pleased her so much that the next time they met she hung round his neck with a good deal of feminine grace. Richard Bassett was a man who now lived in the future. Everybody in the county believed he had written that anonymous letter, and he had no hope of shining by his own light. It was bit- ter to resign his personal hopes; but he did, and sullenly resolved to be obscure himself, but the father of the future heirs of Huntercombe. He would marry Mary Wells, and lay the, blame of the match upon Sir Charles, who had blackened him in the county, and put it out of his power to win a lady’s hand. He told Wheeler he was determined to marry; but he had not the courage to tell him all at once what a wife he had selected. The consequence of this half confession was that Wheeler went to work to find him a girl with money, and not under county influence. One of Wheeler’s clients was a retired citizen, living in a pretty villa near the market town. Mr. Wright employed him in little matters, and found him active and attentive. There was a Miss Wright, a meek little girl, palish. on whom her father doted. Wheeler talked to this girl of his friend Bassett, his virtues and his wrongs, and interested the young lady inhim. Thisdone, he brought him tothe house, and the girl, being slight and deli- cate, gazed with gentle but undisguised admiration on Bassett’s torso. Wheeler had told Richard Miss Wright was to have seven thousand pounds on her wed- ding-day, and that excited a correspond- ing admiration in the athletic gentleman. After that Bassett often called by him- self, and the father encouraged the inti- macy. He was old, and wished to see his daughter married before he left her; and eee A OF CHARLES READE. this seemed an eligible match, though not a brilliant one; a bit of land and a good ~ name on one side, a smart bit of money on the other. The thing went on wheels. Richard Bassett was engaged to Jane Wright almost before he was aware. Now he felt uneasy about Mary Wells, very uneasy ; but it was only the uneasi- ness of selfishness. He began to try and prepare; he af- fected business visits to distant places, etc., In order to break off by degrees. By this means their meetings were com- paratively few. When they did meet. (which was now generally by written appointment), he tried to prepare by telling her he had encountered losses, and feared that to marry her would be a -bad job for her as well as for him, es- pecially if she should have children. Mary replied she had been used to work, and would rather work for a hus- band than any other master. On another occasion she asked him quietly whether a gentleman ever broke his oath. ‘* Never,’’ said Richard. In short, she gave him no opening. She would not quarrel. She adhered to him as she had never adhered to any- thing but a lie before. Then he gave up all hope of smoothing the matter. He coolly cut her; never came to the trysting-place; did not an- swer her letters; and, being a reckless egotist, married Jane Wright all in a hurry, by special license. He sent forward to the clerk of Hunter- combe church, and engaged the ringers to ring the church-bells from six o’clock till sundown. This was for Sir Charles’s ears. It was a balmy evening in May. Lady Bassett was commencing her toilet in an indolent way, with Mary Wells in attend- ance, when the church-bells of Hunter- combe struck up a merry peal. “Ah!” said Lady Bassett ; ‘‘ what is that for? Do you know, Mary? ”’ ‘“‘No, my lady. Shall Iask?”’ ‘““No; I dare say it is a village wed- ding.’’ ‘“No, my lady, there’s nobody been A TERRIBLE married here this six weeks. Our kitchen-maid and the baker was the last, you know. [ll send and know what it is for.”’ Mary went out and dispatched the first house-maid she caught for intelligence. The girl ran into the stable to her sweet- heart, and he told her directly. Meantime Lady Bassett moralized upon church-bells. «“They are always sad—saddest when they seem to be merriest. Poor things! they are trying hard to be merry now; but they sound very sad to me—sadder than usual, somehow.”’ The girl knocked at the door. Mary half opened it, and the news shot in— «Tis for Squire Bassett ; he is bringing of his bride home to Highmore to-day.’’ ‘Mr. Bassett—married—that is sud- den. Who could he find to marry him ? ”’ There was no reply. The house-maid had fiown off to circulate the news, and Mary Wells was supporting herself by clutching the door, sick with the sudden blow. Close as she was, her distress could not have escaped another woman’s eye, but Lady Bassett never looked at her. After the first surprise she had gone into a reverie, and was conjuring up the future to the sound of those church-bells. She requested Mary to go and tell Sir Charles ; but she did not lift her head, even to give this order. Mary crept away, and knocked at Sir Charles’s dressing-room. «“ Come in,”’ said Sir Charles, thinking, of course, it was his valet. Mary Wells just opened the door and held itajar. ‘‘ My lady bids me tell you, sir, the bells are ringing for Mr. Bassett ; he’s married, and brings her home to- night.’’ A dead silence marked the effect of this announcement on Sir Charles. Mary Wells waited. ‘‘May Heaven’s curse light on that marriage, and no child of theirs ever take my place in this house! ”’ — * A-a-men!’’ said Mary Wells. TEMPTATION. 63 ‘Thank you, sir!’’ said Sir Charles. He took her voice for a man’s, so deep and guttural was her ‘‘ A-a-men”’ with concentrated passion. She closed the door and crept back to her mistress. Lady Bassett was seated at her glass, with her hair down and her shoulders bare. Mary clinched her teeth, and set about her usual work; but very soon Lady Bassett gave a start, and stared into the glass. ‘‘ Mary !’’ said _ she, ‘‘what 7s the matter? You look ghast- ly, and vour hands are as cold as ice. Are you faint ? ”’ Nov’ ‘Then you are ill; very ill.’’ ‘*T have taken a chill,’’? said Mary, dog- gedly. “Go instantly to the still-room maid, and get a large glass of spirits and hot water—quite hot.”’ Mary, who wanted to be out of the room, fastened her mistress’s back hair with dogged patience, and then moved toward the door. ‘Mary,’ said Lady Bassett, in a half- apologetic tone. “« My lady.’’ ‘*] should like to hear what the bride is like.’’ ‘*T’ll know that to-night,’’ said Mary, grinding her teeth. ‘‘T shall not require you again till bed- time.’ Mary left the room, and went, not to the still-room, but to her own garret, and there she gave way. She flung her- self, with a wild cry, upon her little bed, and clutched her own hair and the bed- clothes, and writhed all about the bed like a wild-cat wounded. In this anguish she passed an hour she never forgot nor forgave. She got up at last, and started at her own image in the glass. Hair like a savage’s, cheek pale, eyes blood-shot. She smoothed her hair, washed her face, and prepared to go downstairs ; but now she was seized with a faintness, and had to sit down and moan. She got the better of that, and went to the still- room, and got some spirits; but she 64 WORKS OF drank them neat, gulped them down like water. They sent the devil into her black eye, but no color into her pale cheek. She had a little scarlet shaw] ; she put it over her head, and went into the village. She found it astir with expectation. Mr. Bassett’s house stood near the highway, but the entrance to the prem- ises was private, and through a long white gate. By this gate was a heap of stones, and Mary Wells got on that heap and waited. When she had been there about half an hour, Richard Bassett drove up in a hired carriage, with his pale little wife beside him. At his own gate his eye encoun- tered Mary Wells, and he started. She stood above him, with her arms folded grandly ; her cheek, so swarthy and ruddy, was now pale, and her black eyes elittered like basilisks at him and _ his bride. The whole woman seemed lifted out of her low condition, and dignified by wrong. He had to sustain her look for a few seconds, while the gate was being opened, and it seemed an age. He felt his first pang of remorse when he saw that swarthy, ruddy cheek so pale. Then came admiration of her beauty, and dis- gust at the woman for whom he had jilt- ed her; and that gave way to fear: the hater looked into those glittering eyes, and saw he had roused a hate as unre- lenting as his own. UAT UH a ou LLY For the first few days Richard Bassett expected some annoyance from Mary Wells ; but none came, and he began to flatter himself she was too fond of him to give him pain. This impression was shaken about ten days after the little scene I have de- CHARLES READE. scribed. He received a short note from her, as follows: ‘¢StR—You must meet me to-night, at the same place, eight o’clock. If you do not come it will be the worse for you. ce M W ee) Richard Bassett’s inclination was to treat this summons with contempt; but he thought it would be wiser to go and see Whether the girl had any hostile in- tentions. Accordingly he went to the tryst. He waited for some time, and at last he heard a quick, firm foot, and Mary Wells appeared. She was hooded with her scarlet shawl, that contrasted admir- ably with her coal-black hair; and out of this scarlet frame her dark eyes glit- tered. She stood before him in silence. He said nothing. She was silent too for some time. she spoke first. “Well, sir, you promised one, and you have married another. Now what are you going to do for me?”’ ‘What can Ido, Mary? I’m not the first that wanted to marry for love, but money came in his way and tempted him.”’ ‘“No, you are not the first. But that’s neither here nor there, sir. That chalk- faced girl has bought you away from me with her money, and now I mean to have my share on’t.’’ | ‘‘Qh, if that is all,’’ said Richard, ‘‘ we can soon settle it. Iwas afraid you were going to talk about a broken heart, and all that stuff. You are a good, sensible girl; and too beautiful to want a husband long. Ill give you fifty pounds to for- give me.’’ “Fifty pounds!’’ said Mary Wells, contemptuously. ‘*What! when you promised me I should be your wife to- day, and lady of Huntercombe Hall by- and-by? Fifty pounds!. No; not five fifties.”’ “ Well, I'll give you seventy-five ; and if that won’t do, you must go to law, and see what you can get.’’ “What, han’t you had your bellyful of law? Mind, it is an unked thing to But "qUSIG OUINjOA ‘Havay ‘HOVId AHL MVS AHS LNAWOW AHL YAH OL ATAIOITTALINI AYHA ANVOUA SLNAWWOD S,SSOyT "XT sagdnyp ‘u01nidwuay, 219144a7, F— . h Ker \ a \ ) \ Ne Gye it are \\ =S_— eN SSS = = = =. a SSS SSS A TERRIBLE forswear yourself, and that is what you done at the ’sizes. I have seen what you did swear about your letter to my sister ; Sir Charles have got it all wrote down in his study: and you swore a le to the judge, as you swore a lie to me here under heaven, you villain!’’ She raised her voice very loud. ‘‘ Don’t you gain- say me, or I[’ll soon have you by the heels in jail for your lies. You’ll do as I bid you, and very lucky to be let off so cheap. You was to be my master, but you chose her instead: well, then, you shall be my servant. You shall come here every Saturday at eight o’clock, and bring me a sovereign, which I never could keep a lump o’ money, and I have had one or two from Rhoda; so Ill take it a sov- ereign a week till | get a husband of my own sort, and then you’ll have to come down handsome once for all.”’ Bassett knitted his brows and thought hard. His natural impulse was’ to defy her; but it struck him that a great many things might happen in a few months; so at last he said, humbly, ‘‘I consent. I have been to blame. Only I’d rather pay you this money in some other way.”’ ‘“ My way, or none.”’ “« Very well, then, I will bring it you as you say.”’ ‘Mind you do, then,’’ said Mary Wells, and turned haughtily on her heel. Bassett never ventured to absent him- self at the hour, and, at first, the black- mail was delivered and received with scarcely a word ; but by-and-by old hab- its so far revived that some little conver- sation took place. Then, after a while, Bassett used to tell her he was unhappy, and she used to ‘reply she was glad of it. Then he began to speak slightingly of his wife, and say what a fool he had been to marry a poor, silly nonentity, when he might have wedded a beauty. Mary Wells, being intensely vain, list- ened with complacency to this, although she replied coldly and harshly. By-and-by her natural volubility over- powered her, and she talked to Bassett about herself and Huntercombe House, but always with a secret reserve. | was cruel. TEMPTATION. 65 Later—such is the force of habit—each used to look forward with satisfaction to the Saturday meeting, although each dis- trusted and feared the other at bottom. Later still that came to pass which Mary Wells had planned from the first with deep malice, and that shrewd in- sight into human nature which many a low woman has—the cooler she was the warmer did Richard Bassett grow, till at last, contrasting his pale, meek little wife with this glowing Hebe, he con- ceived an unholy liking for the latter. She met it sometimes with coldness and reproaches, sometimes with affected alarm, sometimes with a_ half-yielding manner, and so tormented him to her heart’s content, and undermined his af- fection for his wife. Thus she revenged herself on them both to her heart’s con- tent. But malice so perverse is apt to recoil on itself; and women, in particular, should not undertake a long and subtle revenge of this sort; since the strongest have their hours of weakness, and are surprised into things they never intended. The subsequent history of Mary Wells will exemplify this. Meantime, however, meek little Mrs. Bassett was no match for the beauty and low cunning of her rival. Yet a time came when she defended herself unconsciously. She did some- thing that made her husband most solicitous for her welfare and happiness. He began to watch her health with maternal care, to shield her from draughts, to take care of her diet, to indulge her in all her whims instead of snubbing her, and to pet her, till she was the happiest wife in England for a time. She deserved this at his hands, for she assisted him there where his heart was fixed; she aided his hobby: did more for it than any other creature in England could, To return to Huntercombe Hall: the loving couple that owned it were no long- er happy. The hope of offspring was now deserting them, and the disappointment They suffered deeply, with READE—VOL. VIII. "3 66 WORKS OF CHARLES RHADE. this difference—that Lady Bassett pined | tact of women—a quality the narrow com- and Sir Charles Bassett fretted. The woman's grief was more pure and profound than the man’s. If there had been no Richard Bassett in the world, still her bosom would have yearned and pined, and the great cry of Nature, < Richard. **The man had his faults, but he had his good qualities too: a high-spirited gentleman, beloved by his friends and respected by all the county. His successor will find it hard to reconcile the county to his loss.”’ Wheeler satirically. This eulogy was never repeated, for Sir Charles proved ungrateful—he omitted to die, after all. } Attended by first-rate physicians, tend- erly nursed and watched by Lady Bassett and Mary Wells, he got better by de- grees ; and every stage of his slow but hopeful progress was communicated to the servants and the village, and to the ladies and gentlemen who rode up to the door every day and left their cards of inquiry. The most attentive of all these was the new rector, a young clergyman, who had obtained the living by exchange. He was a man highly gifted both in body and mind—a swarthy Adonis, whose large dark eyes from the very first turned with glowing admiration on the blonde beauties of Lady Bassett. He came every day to inquire after her husband ; and she sometimes left the suf- ferer a minute or two to make her report stared, and then grinned A THRRIBLE to him in person. At other times Mary Wells was sent tohim. That artful girl soon discovered what had escaped her mistress’s observation. The bulletins were favorable, and wel- comed on all sides. Richard Bassett alone was incredulous. ‘‘T want to see him about again,’’ said he. ‘Sir Charles is not the man to lie in bed if he was really better. As for the doctors, they flatter a fellow till the last moment. Let me see him on his legs, and then I’ll believe he is better.’’ Strange to say, obliging Fate granted Richard Bassett this moderate request. One frosty but sunny afternoon, as he was inspecting his coming domain from ‘¢The Heir’s Tower,’’ he saw the Hall door open, and a muffled figure come slowly down the steps between two wom- en. It was Sir Charles, feeble but con- valescent. He crept about on the sunny gravel for about ten minutes, and then his nurses conveyed him tenderly 4n again. This sight, which might have touched with pity a more generous nature, start- led Richard Bassett, and then moved his bile. ‘‘I was a fool,” said he; ‘“‘ nothing will ever kill that man. He will see me out; see us all out. And that Mary Wells nurses him, and I dare say in love with him by this time; the fools can’t nurse a man without. Curse the whole pack of ye!’’ he yelled, and turned away in rage and disgust. That same night he met Mary Wells, and, in a strange fit of jealousy, began to make hot protestations of love to her. He knew it was no use reproaching her, so he went on the other tack. She received his vows with cool com- placency, but would only stay a min- ute, and would only talk of her master and mistress, toward whom her heart was really warming in their trouble. She spoke hopefully, and said: “ ’Tisn’t as if he was one of your faint-hearted ones as meet death half-way. Why, the second day, when he could scarce speak, he sees me crying by the bed, and says he, al- most in a whisper, ‘ What are you crying for?’ ‘Sir,’ says I, ‘’tis for you—to see TEMPTATION. 43 | you lie ikea ghost.’ ‘Then you be wast- ing of salt-water,’ says he. ‘I wish I may, sir,’ says I. So then he raised him- self up a little bit. ‘Look at me,’ says he; ‘’ma Bassett. Iam not the breed to die for a crack on the skull, and leave you all to the mercy of them that would have no mercy ’—which he meant you, I suppose. So he ordered me to leave cry- ing, which I behooved to obey; for he will be master, mind ye, while he have a finger to wag, poor dear gentleman, he will.’’ And, soon after this, she resisted all his attempts to detain her, and scudded back to the house, leaving Bassett to his reflections, which were exceedingly bitter. Sir Charles got better, and at last used to walk daily with Lady Bassett. Their favorite stroll wasup and down the lawn, close under the boundary wall he had built to shut out “ The Heir’s Walk.’’ The afternoon sun struck warm upon that wall and the walk by its side. On the other side a nurse often carried little Dicky Bassett, the heir ; but neither of the promenaders could see each other for the wall. ; Richard Bassett, on the contrary, from ‘‘The Heir’s Tower,’’ could see both these little parties; and, as some men cannot keep away from what causes their pain, he used to watch these loving walks, and see Sir Charles get stronger and stronger, till at last, instead of leaning on his beloved wife, he could march by her side, or even give her his arm. Yet the picture was, in a great degree, delusive ; for, except during these bliss- ful walks, when the sun shone on him, and Love and Beauty soothed him, Sir Charles was not the man he had been. The shake he had received appeared to have damaged his temper strangely. He became so irritable that several of his servants left him; and to his wife he re- pined; and his childless condition, which had been hitherto only a deep disappoint- ment, became in his eyes a calamity that outweighed his many blessings. He had now narrowly escaped dying without an heir, and this seemed to sink into his mind, and, co-operating with the concussion his 74 WORKS OF CHARLES READE. brain had received, brought him into a morbid state. He brooded on it, and spoke of it, and got back to it from every other topic, in a way that distressed Lady Bassett unspeakably. She consoled him bravely; but often, when she was alone, her gentle courage gave way, and she cried bitterly to herself. Her distress had one effect she little expected ; it completed what her invari- able kindness had begun, and actually won the heart of a servant. Those who really know that tribe will agree with me that this was a marvelous conquest. Yet so it was; Mary Wells conceived for her a real affection, and showed it by unre- mitting attention, and a soft and tender voice, that soothed Lady Bassett, and drew many a Silent but grateful glance from her dove-like eyes. Mary listened, and heard enough to blame Sir Charles for his peevishness, and she began to throw out little expressions of dissatisfaction at him; but these were so promptly discouraged by the faithful wife that she drew in again and avoided that line. But one day, coming softly as a cat, She heard Sir Charles and Lady Bassett talking over their calamity. Sir Charles was saying that it was Heaven’s curse; that all the poor people in the vil- lage had children ; that Richard Bassett’s weak, puny little wife had brought him an heir, and was about to make him a par- ent again; he alone was marked out and doomed to be the last of hisrace. ‘“ And yet,’ said he, ‘‘if I had married any other woman, and you had married any other man, we should have had children by the dozen, I suppose.”’ Upon the whole, though he said noth- ing palpably unjust, he had the tone of a man blaming his wife as the real cause of their joint calamity, under which she suffered a deeper, nobler, and more silent anguish than himself. This was hard to bear; and when Sir Charles went away, Mary Wells ran in, with an angry ex- pression on the tip of her tongue. She found Lady Bassett in a pitiable condition, lying rather than leaning on the table, with her hair loose about her, sobbing as if her heart would break. All that was good in Mary Wells tugged at her heart-strings. She flung herself on her knees beside her, and seiz- ing her mistress’s hand, and drawing it to her bosom, fell to crying and sobbing along with her. This canine devotion took Lady Bassett by surprise. She turned her tearful eyes upon her sympathizing servant, and said, “Oh, Mary!’ and her soft hand pressed the girl’s harder palm gratefully. Mary spoke first. ‘Oh, my lady,’’ she sobbed, ‘‘it breaks my heart to see you so. And what ashame to blame you for what is no fault of yourn. If I was your husband the cradles would soon be full in this house; but these fine gentlemen, they be old before their time with smok- ing of tobacco; and then to come and lay the blame on we! ”’ ‘“‘“Mary, I value you very much—more than I ever did a servant in my life; but if you speak against your master we shall part.”’ 7 “La, my lady, | wouldn’t for the world. Sir Charles isa perfect gentleman. Why, he gave me a Sovereign only the other day for nursing of him; but he didn’t ought to blame you for no fault of yourn, and to make youcry. It tears me inside out to see you cry; you that is so good to rich and poor. I wouldn’t vex myself so for that: dear heart, *twas always so; God sends meat to one house, and mouths to another.’’ “‘T could be patient if poor Sir Charles was not so unhappy,” sighed Lady Bas- sett; “‘but if ever you are a wife, Mary, you will know how wretched it makes us to see a beloved husband unhappy.’’ ‘Then ’d make him happy,”’’ said Mary. «¢ Ah, if I only could !”’ “Oh, I could tell you a way; for I have known it done; and now he is as happy as a prince.. You see, my lady, some men are like children; to make them happy you must give them their own way; and so, if Iwas in your place, I wouldn’t make two bites of a cherry, for sometimes I think he will fret himself out of the world for want on’t.’’ ‘‘ Heaven forbid ! ’’ A TERRIBLE “‘Tt is my belief you would not be long behind him.’’ ‘No, Mary. Why should [?”’ <¢Then—whisper, my lady!”’ And, although Lady Bassett drew slightly back at this freedom, Mary Wells poured into her ear a proposal that made her stare and shiver. As for the girl’s own face, it was as unmoved as if it had been bronze. Lady Bassett drew back, and eyed her askant with amazement and terror. «‘What is this you have dared to say ?”’ ““Why, it is done every day.” “By people of your class, perhaps. No; I don’t believe it. Mary, I have been mistaken in you. Iam afraid you are a vicious girl. Leave me, please. I can’t bear the sight of you.’’ Mary went away, very red, and the ‘tear.in her eye. In the evening Lady Bassett gave Mary Wells a month’s warning, and Mary accepted it doggedly, and thought herself very cruelly used. After this mistress and maid did not exchange an unnecessary word for many days. | This notice to leave was very bitter to Mary Wells, for she was in the very act of making a conquest. Young Drake, a very small farmer and tenant of Sir Charles, had fallen in love with her, and she hiked him and had resolved he should marry her, with which view she was play- ing the tender but coy maiden very pret- tily. But Drake, though young and very much in love, was advised by his mother, and evidently resolved to go the old- fashioned way—keep company a year, and know the girl before offering the ring. ; Just before her month was out a more Serious trouble threatened Mary Wells. Her low, artful amour with Richard Bassett had led to its natural results. By degrees she had gone further than she intended, and now the fatal conse- quences looked her in the face. She found herself in an odious position ; for her growing regard for young Drake, though not a violent attachment, was enough to set her more and more against TEMPTATION. 75 Richard Bassett, and she was preparing an entire separation from the latter when the fatal truth dawned on her. Then there was a temporary revulsion of feeling ; she told her condition to Bas- sett, and implored him, with many tears, to aid her to disappear for a time and hide her misfortune, especially from her sister. Mr. Bassett heard her, and then gave her an answer that made her blood run cold. ‘‘ Why do you come to me ?”’ said he. ‘*Why don’t you go to the right man—young Drake ?”’ | He then told her he had had her watched, and she must not think to make a fool of him. She was as inti- mate with the young farmer as with him, and was in his company every day. Mary Wells admitted that Drake was courting her, but said he was a civil, re- spectful young man, who desired to make her his wife. ‘‘ You have lost me that,’’ said she, bursting into tears ; *‘ and so, for God’s sake, show yourself a man for once, and see me through my trouble.’’ The egotist disbelieved, or affected not to believe her, and said, ‘‘ When there are two it is always the gentleman you girls deceive. But you can’t make a fool of me, Mrs. Drake. Marry the farmer, and I’ll give you a wedding present ; that is all I can do for any other man’s sweet- heart. I have got my own family to pro- vide for, and it is all I can contrive to make both ends meet.’’ He was cold and _ inflexible to her prayers. Then she tried threats. He laughed at them. Said he, ‘‘ The time is gone by for that: if you wanted to sue me for breach of promise, you should have done it at once; not waited eigh- teen months and taken another sweet- heart first. Come, come; you played your little game. You made me come here week after week and bleed a sover- eign. A woman that loved a man would never have been so hard on him as you were on me. I grinned and bore it; but when you ask me to own another man’s child, a man of your own sort that you are in love with—you hate me—that is a little too much: no, Mrs. Drake; if that NY ee 76 WORKS is your game we will fight it out—before the public if you like.’’ And, having de- livered this with a tone of harsh and loud defiance, he left her—left her forever. She sat down upon the cold ground and rocked herself. Despair was cold at her heart. She sat in that forlorn state for more than an hour. Then she got up and went to her mistress’s room and sat by the fire, for her limbs were cold as well as her heart. She sat there, gazing at the fire and sighing heavily, till Lady Bassett came up to bed. She then went through her work like an automaton, and every now and then a deep sigh came from her breast. Lady Bassett heard her sigh, and looked at her. Her face was altered ; a sort of sullen misery was written on it. Lady Bassett was quick at reading faces, and this look alarmed her. *‘ Mary,”’’ said she, kindly, “‘is there anything the mat- ter ? ”’ No reply. “¢ Are you unwell ? ”’ BING. a) «¢ Are you in trouble? ”’ “ Ay!” with a burst of tears. Lady Bassett let her cry, thinking it would relieve her, and then spoke to her again with the languid pensiveness of a woman who has also her trouble. ‘‘ You have been very attentive to Sir Charles, and a kind good servant to me, Mary.’’ “* You are mocking me, my lady,”’ said Mary, bitterly. ‘‘ You wouldn’t have turned me off for a word if I had been a good servant.’’ Lady Bassett colored high, and was silenced fora moment. At last she said, “‘T feel it must seem harsh to you. You don’t know how wicked it was to tempt me. But it is not as if you had done any- thing wrong. I do not feel bound to mention mere words; I shall give you an - excellent character, Mary—indeed I have. I think Ihave got a good place for you. I shall know to-morrow, and when it is settled we will look over my wardrobe to- gether.”’ This proposal implied a boxful of pres- OF CHARLES READE. ents, and would have made Mary’s dark eyes flash with delight at another time ; but she was past all that now. She in- terrupted Lady Bassett with this strange speech: ‘‘ You are very kind, my lady; will you lend me the key of your medicine chest ? ”’ Lady Bassett looked surprised, but said, ‘‘Certainly, Mary,’’ and held out the keys. But, before Mary could take them, she considered a moment, and asked her what medicine she required. ‘Only a little laudanum.”’ ‘““No, Mary; not while you look like that, and refuse to tell me your trouble. Tam your mistress, and must exert my authority for your good. ‘Tell me at once what is the matter.” *“1’d bite my tongue off sooner.’’ “You are wrong, Mary. I am sure I should be your best friend. I feel much indebted to you for the attention and the affection you have shown me, and I am grieved to see you so despondent. Make a friend of me. There—think it over, and talk to me again to-morrow.’’ Mary Wells took the true servant’s view of Lady Bassett’s kindness. She looked at it as a trap; not, indeed, set with malice prepense, but still a trap. She saw that Lady Bassett meant kindly at present; but, for all that, she was sure that if she told the truth, her mis- tress would turn against her, and say, ‘¢Oh! I had no idea your trouble arose out of your own imprudence. I can do nothing for a vicious girl.’ She resolved therefore to say nothing, or else to tell some he or other quite wide of the mark. Deplorable as this young woman’s sit- uation was, the duplicity and coarseness of mind which had brought her into it would have somewhat blunted the mental agony such a situation must inflict; but it was aggravated by a special terror ; she knew that if she was found out she would lose the only sure friend she had in the world. The fact is, Mary Wells had seen a great deal of life during the two years A THRRIBLE she was out of the reader’s sight. Rhoda had been very good to her; had set her up in a lodging-house, at her earnest re- quest. She misconducted. it, and failed : threw it up in disgust, and begged Rhoda to put her in the public line. Rhoda complied. Mary made a mess of the public-house. Then Rhoda showed her she was not fit to govern anything, and drove her into service again ; and in that condition. having no more cares than a child, and plenty of work to do, and many a present from Rhoda, she had been happy. But Rhoda, though she forgave blun- ders, incapacity for business, and waste of money, had always told her plainly there was one thing she never would forgive. Rhoda Marsh had become a_ good Christian in every respect but one. The male rake reformed is rather tolerant; but the female rake reformed is, as a rule, bitterly intolerant of female frailty ; and Rhoda carried this female character- istic to an extreme both in word and in deed. They were only half-sisters, after all; and Mary knew that she would be cast off forever if she deviated from vir- tue so far as to be found out. Besides the general warning, there had been a Special one. When she read Mary’s first letter from Huntercombe Hall Rhoda was rather taken aback at first ; but, on reflection, she wrote to Mary, saying she could stay there on two conditions: she must be discreet, and never mention her sister Rhoda in the house, and she must not be tempted to renew her acquaintance with Richard Bassett. ‘‘Mind,’’ said she, ‘“‘if ever you speak to that villain I shall hear of it, and I shall never notice you again.”’ This was the galling present and the dark future which had made so young and unsentimental a woman as Mary Wells think of suicide for a moment or two; and it now deprived her of her rest, and next day kept her thinking and brooding all the time her now leaden limbs were carrying her through her menial duties. The afternoon was sunny, and Sir TEMPTATION. v7 Charles and Lady Bassett took their usual walk. Mary Wells went a little way with them, looking very miserable. Lady Bassett observed, and said, kindly, ‘*Mary, you can give me that shawl; I will not keep you; go where you like till five o’clock.’’ Mary never said so much as ‘Thank you.’ She put the shawl round her mis- tress, and then went slowly back. She sat down on the stone steps, and glared stupidly at the scene, and felt very miser- able and leaden. She seemed to be stuck in a sort of slough of despond, and could not move in any direction to get out of it. While she sat in this somber reverie a gentleman walked up to the door, and Mary Wells lifted her head and looked at him. Notwithstanding her misery, her eyes rested on him with some admiration, for he was a model of a man: six feet high, and built like an athlete. His face was oval, and his skin dark but glowing ; his hair, eyebrows, and long eyelashes black as jet; his gray eyes large and ten- der. He was dressed in black, with a white tie, and his clothes were well cut, and seemed superlatively so, owing to the importance and symmetry of the figure they covered. It was the new vicar, Mr. Angelo. He smiled on Mary graciously, and asked her how Sir Charles was. She said he was better. Then Mr. Angelo asked, more timidly,, was Lady Bassett at home. ‘‘She is just gone out, sir.”’ A look of deep disappointment crossed Mr. Angelo’s face. It did not escape Mary Wells. She looked at him full, and, lowering her voice a little, said, ‘‘ She is only in the grounds with Sir Charles. She will be at home about five o’clock.’’ Mr. Angelo hesitated, and then said he would call again at five. He evidently preferred a duet to a trio. He then thanked Mary Wells with more warmth than the occasion seemed to call for, and retired very slowly: he had come very quickly. Mary Wells looked after him, and asked 78 herself wildly if she could not make some use of him and his manifest infatuation. But before her mind could fix on any idea, and, indeed, before the young clergy- man had taken twenty steps homeward, loud voices were heard down the shrub- bery. These were followed by an agonized scream. Mary Wells started up, and the young parson turned: they looked at each other in amazement. Then came wild and piercing cries for help—in a woman’s voice. The young clergyman cried out, ‘‘ Her voice! her voice !’’ and dashed into the shrubbery with a speed Mary Wells had never seen equaled. He had woh the 200- yard race at Oxford in his day. The agonized screams were repeated, and Mary Wells screamed in response as she ran toward the place. CHAPTER XVI. Sir CHARLES BASSETT was in high spirits this afternoon—indeed, a little too high. ‘Bella, my love,’’ said he, ‘now [ll tell you why I made you give me your signature this morning. ‘The money has all come in for the wood, and this very day I sent Oldfield instructions to open an account for you with a London banker.’’ Lady Bassett looked at him with tears of tenderness in her eyes. ‘‘ Dearest,”’ said she, ‘‘I have plenty of money; but the love to which I owe this present, that is my treasure of treasures. Well, I ac- cept it, Charles; but don’t ask me to spend it on myself; I should feel I was robbing you.”’ ‘‘ It is nothing to me how you spend it ; I have saved it from the enemy.”’ Now that very enemy heard these words. He had looked from the ‘‘ Heir’s Tower,’’ and seen Sir Charles and Lady 9 WORKS OF CHARLES READE. Bassett walking on their side the wall, and the nurse carrying his heir on the other side. He had come down to look at his child in the sun; but he walked softly, on the chance of overhearing Sir Charles and Lady Bassett say something or other - about his health; his design went no further than that, but the fate of listeners is proverbial. Lady Bassett endeavored to divert her husband from the topic he seemed to be approaching; it always excited him now, and did him harm. ‘Do not waste your thoughts on that enemy. He is powerless.’’ ‘““At this moment, perhaps; but his turn is sure to come again; and I shall provide for it. I mean to live on half my income, and settle the other half on you. I shall act on the clause in the entail, and sell all the timber on the estate, except about the home park and my best covers. It will take me some years to do this; I must not glut the market, and spoil your profits; but every year I’ll have a fall, till | have denuded Mr. Bassett’s inherit- ance, aS he calls it, and swelled your banker’s account to a Plum. Bella, I have had a shake. Even now that I am better such a pain goes through my head, like a bullet crushing through it, whenever I get excited. I don’t think I shall be a long-lived man. But never mind, I’ll live as long as I can; and, while I do live, 11 work for you, and against that villain.” ‘‘Charles,’’ cried Lady Bassett, “I implore you to turn your thoughts away from that man, and to give up these idle schemes. Were you to die I should soon follow you; so pray do not shorten your life by these angry passions, or you will shorten mine.”’ This appeal acted powerfully on Sir Charles, and he left off suddenly with flushed cheeks and tried to compose himself. But his words had now raised a corre- sponding fury on the. other side of that boundary wall. Richard Bassett, stung with rage, and, unlike his high-bred cousin, accustomed to mix cunning even A TERRIBLE with his fury, gave him a terrible blow— a very coup de Jarnac. He spoke at him; he ran forward to the nurse, and said very loud: ‘‘ Let me see the little darling. He does youcredit. What fat cheeks !—what arms !—an infant hercu- les! There, take him up the mound. Now lift him in your arms, and let him see his inheritance. Higher, nurse, higher. Ay, crow away, youngster; all that is yours—house and land and all. They may steal the trees; they can’t make away with the broad acres. Ha! I believe he understands every word, nurse. See how he smiles and crows.” At the sound of Bassett’s voice Sir Charles started, and, at the first taunt, he uttered something between a moan and a roar, aS of a wounded lion. ‘<‘Come away,’’ cried Lady Bassett. “He is doing it on purpose.” But the stabs came too fast. Sir Charles shook her off, and looked wild- ly round for a weapon to strike his insulter with. ‘Curse him and his brat!” he cried. «They shall neither of them— I'll kill them both.”’ He sprang fiercely at the wall, and, notwithstanding his weakly condition, raised himself above it, and glared over with a face so full of fury that Richard Bassett recoiled in dismay for a moment, and said, ‘“‘“Run! run! He’ll hurt the child !”’ But, the next moment, Sir Charles’s hands lost their power; he uttered a miserable moan, and fell gasping under the wall in an epileptic fit, with all the terrible symptoms I have described in a previous portion of this story. These were new to his poor wife, and, as she strove in vain to control his fearful con- vulsions, her shrieks rent the air. In- deed, her screams were so appalling that Bassett himself sprang at the wall, and, by a great effort of strength, drew himself up, and peered down, with white face, at the glaring eyes, clinched teeth, purple face, and foaming lipsof his enemy, and his body that bounded convulsively on the ground with incredible violence. At that moment humanity prevailed TEMPTATION. 79 over every thing, and he flung himself over the wall, and in his haste got rather a heavy fall himself. “It is a fit!’’ he cried, and, running to the brook close by, filled his hat with water, and was about to dash it over Sir Charles’s face. But Lady Bassett repelled him with horror. ‘Don’t touch him, you villain! You have killed him.’’ And then she shrieked again. At this moment Mr. Angelo dashed up, and saw at a glance what it was, for he had studied medicine a little. Hesaid, ‘It is epilepsy. Leave him to me.” He managed, by his great strength, to keep the patient’s head down till the face got pale and the limbs still; then, telling Lady Bassett not to alarm herself too much, he lifted Sir Charles, and actually proceeded to carry him toward the house. Lady Bassett, weeping, proffered her assistance, and so did Mary Wells; but this athlete said, a little bruskly, ‘‘ No, no; I have practiced this sort of thing; ”’ and, partly by his rare strength, partly by his familiarity with all athletic feats, carried the insensible baronet to his own house, as I have seen my accomplished friend Mr. Henry Neville carry a tall actress on the mimic stage; only, the distance being much longer, the perspira- tion rolled down Mr. Angelo’s face with so sustained an effort. He laid him gently on the floor of his study, while Lady Bassett sent two grooms galloping for medical advice, and half a dozen servants running for this and that stimulant, as one thing after another occurred to her agitated mind. The very rustling of dresses and scurry of feet overhead told all the house a great calamity had stricken it. Lady Bassett hung over the sufferer, sighing piteously, and was for supporting his beloved head with her tender arm ; but Mr. Angelo told her it was better to keep the head low, that the blood might flow back to the vessels of the brain. She cast a look of melting gratitude on her adviser, and composed herself to apply stimulants under his direction and advice. Thus judiciously treated, Sir Charles 80 began to recover consciousness in part. | He stared and muttered incoherently. Lady Bassett thanked God on her knees, and then turned to Mr. Angelo with streaming eyes, and stretched out both hands to him, with an indescribable elo- quence of gratitude. He gave her his hands timidly, and she pressed them both with all her soul. Unconsciously she sent a rapturous thrill through the young man’s body: he blushed, and then turned pale, and felt for a moment almost faint with rapture at that sweet and unexpected pressure of her soft hands. But at this moment Sir Charles broke out in a sort of dry, business-like voice, ‘© 71] kill the viper and his brood!’’ Then he stared at Mr. Angelo, and could not make him out at first. ‘‘Ah!”’ said he, complacently, ‘‘ this is my private tutor: a man of learning. I read Homer with him ; but I have forgotten it, all but one line— ‘ pHmvos Os TaTépa KTELYwWY Taldas KaTaAEtTEL.” That’s a beautiful verse. Homer, old boy. I’ll take your advice. [’ll kill the heir at law, and his brat as well, and when they are dead and well seasoned I'll sell them to that old timber-merchant, the devil, to make hell hotter. Order my horse, somebody, this minute !”’ During this tirade Lady Bassett’s hands kept clutching, as if to stop it, and her eyes filled with horror. Mr. Angelo came again to her rescue. He affected to take it all as a matter of course, and told the servants they need not wait, Sir Charles was coming to himself by degrees, and the danger was all over. But when the servants were gone he said to Lady Rassett, seriously, ‘‘ I would not let any servant be about Sir Charles, except this one. She is evidently at- tached to you. Suppose we take him to his own room.”’ He then made Mary Wells a signal, and they carried him upstairs. Sir Charles talked all the while with pitiable vehemence. Indeed, it was a continuous babble, like a brook. WORKS OF CHARLES READE. Mary Wells was taking him into his own room, but Lady Bassett said, ‘‘No: into my room. Oh, I ‘= never let him out of my sight again.’ Then they carried him into nk Bas- sett’s bedroom, and laid him gently down on a couch there. He looked round, observed the locality, and uttered a little sigh of complacency. He left off talking for the present, and seemed to doze. The place which exerted this soothing influence on Sir Charles had a contrary and strange effect on Mr. Angelo. It was of palatial size, and lighted by two side windows, and an oriel window at the end. The delicate stone shafts and mullions were such as are oftener seen in cathedrals than in mansions. The deep embrasure was filled with beautiful flowers and luscious exotic leaf-plants from the hot-houses. The floor was of polished oak, and some feet of this were left bare on all sides of the great Aubus- son carpet made expressly for the room. By this means cleanliness penetrated into every corner: the oak was not only cleaned, but polished like a mirror. The curtains were French chintzes, of sub- stance, and exquisite patterns, and very voluminous. On the walls was a delicate rose-tinted satin paper, to which French art, unrivaled in these matters, had given the appearance of being stuffed, padded, and divided into a thousand cozy pillows, by gold-headed nails. The wardrobes were of satin-wood. The bedsteads, one small, one large, were plain white, and gold in modera- tion. All this, however, was but the frame to the delightful picture of a wealthy young lady’s nest. The things that startled and thrilled Mr. Angelo were those his imagination could see the fair mistress using. The exquisite toilet table; the Dresden mirror, with its delicate china frame muslined and ribboned; the great ivory-handled brushes, the array of cut-glass gold- mounted bottles, and all the artillery of beauty; the baths of various shapes and — sizes, in which she laved her fair body ; ReApg, Volume Eight. AT THIS MOMENT MR. ANGELO DASHED UP. —A Terrible Temptation, Chapter XVI. A TERRIBLE the bath sheets, and the profusion of linen, fine and coarse; the bed, with its frilled sheets, its hugh frilled pillows, and its eider-down quilt, covered with bright purple silk. A delicate perfume came through the wardrobes, where strata of fine linen from Hamburg and Belfast lay on scented herbs; and this, permeating the room, seemed the very perfume of Beauty itself, and intoxicated the brain. Imagi- nation conjured pictures proper to the scene: a goddess at her toilet; that glorious hair lying tumbled on the pillow, and burning in contrasted color with the snowy sheets and with the purple quilt. From this reverie he was awakened by a soft voice that said, ‘‘ How can I ever thank you enough, sir? ”’ Mr. Angelo controlled himself, and said, ‘‘By sending for me whenever I can be of the slightest use.’? Then, comprehending his danger, he added, hastily, ‘‘And I fear I am none what- ever now.’’ Then he rose to go. Lady Bassett gave him both her hands again, and this time he kissed one of them, allin a flurry; he could not resist the temptation. Then he hurried away, with his whole soulin a tumult. Lady Bassett blushed, and returned to her husband’s side. Doctor Willis came, heard the case, looked rather grave and puzzled, and wrote the inevitable prescription; for the established theory is that man is cured by drugs alone. Sir Charles wandered a little while the doctor was there, and continued to wander after he was gone. Then Mary Wells begged leave to sleep in the dressing-room. Lady Bassett thanked her, but said she thought it unnecessary ; a good night’s rest, she hoped, would make a great change in the sufferer. Mary Wells thought otherwise, and quietly brought her little bed into the dressing-room and laid it on the floor. Her judgment proved right ; Sir Charles was no better the next day, nor the day after. He brooded for hours at a time, TEMPTATION. 81 and, when he talked, there was an inco- herence in his discourse; above all, he seemed incapable of talking long on any subject without coming back to the fatal one of his childlessness; and, when he did return to this, it was sure to make him either deeply dejected or else violent against Richard Bassett and his son; he swore at them, and said they were wait- ing for his shoes. Lady lBassett’s anxiety deepened ; strange fears came over her. She put subtle questions to the doctor; he re- turned obscure answers, and went on prescribing medicines that had no effect. She looked wistfully into Mary Wells’s face, and there she saw her own thoughts reflected. ‘‘Mary,’’ said she, one day, in a low voice, ‘‘ what do they say in the kitchen ?”’ “Some say one thing, some another. What can they say? They never see him, and never shall while I am here.’’ This reminded Lady Bassett that Mary’s time was up. The idea of a stranger tak- ing her place, and seeing Sir Charles in his present condition, was horrible to her. “Oh, Mary,’’ said she, piteously, ‘‘ sure- ly you will not leave me just now ? ”’ ** Do you wish me to stay, my lady ?”’ “Can you ask it? How can I hope to find such devotion as yours, such fidelity, and, above all, such secrecy ? Ah, Mary, I am the most unhappy lady in all En- gland this day.”’ Then she began to cry bitterly, and Mary Wells cried with her, and said she would stay as long as she could; ‘“ but, said she, ‘“‘I gave you good advice, my lady, and so you will find.”’ Lady Bassett made no answer what- ever, and that disappointed Mary, for she wanted a discussion. > The days rolled on, and brought no change for the better. Sir Charles con- tinued to brood on his one misfortune. He refused to go out-of-doors, even into the garden, giving as his reason that he was not fit to be’seen. ‘‘I don’t mind a couple of women,” said he, gravely, ‘‘ but no man shall see Charles Bassett in his present state. No. Patience! Patience! 82 WORKS I’ll wait till Heaven takes pity on me. After all, it would be a shame that such a race aS mine should die out, and these fine estates go to blackguards, and poach- ers, and anonymous-letter writers.’’ Lady Bassett used to coax him to walk in the corridor; but, even then, he or- dered Mary Wells to keep watch and let none of the servants come that way. From words he let fall it seems he thought ‘‘ Childlessness ”’ was written on his face, and that it had somehow de- graded his features. Now a wealthy and popular baronet could not thus immure himself for any length of time without exciting curiosity, and setting all manner of rumors afloat. Visitors poured into Huntercombe to in- quire. Lady Bassett excused herself to many, but some of her own sex she thought it best to encounter. This subjected her to the insidious attacks of curiosity admir- ably veiled with sympathy. The assail- ants were marvelously subtle; but so was the devoted wife. She gave kiss for kiss, and equivoque for equivoque. She seemed grateful for each visit; but they got nothing out of her except that Sir Charles’s nerves were shaken by his fall, and that she was plaving the tyrant for once, and insisting on absolute quiet for her patient. One visitor she never refused—Mr. An- gelo. He, from the first, had been her true friend ; had carried Sir Charles away from the enemy, and then had dismissed the gaping servants. She saw that he had divined her calamity, and she knew from things he said to her that he would never breathe a word out-of-doors. She confided in him. She told him Mr. Bas- sett was the real cause of all this misery : he had insulted Sir Charles. The nature of this insult she suppressed. ‘‘ And oh, Mr. Angelo,’’ said she, ‘‘ that man is my terror night and day! I don’t know what he can do, but I feel he will do something if he ever learns my poor hus- band’s condition.’’ “‘T trust, Lady Bassett, you are con- vinced he will learn nothing from me. Indeed, I will tell the ruffian anything OF CHARLES READE. you like. He has been sounding me a lit- tle ; called to inquire after his poor cousin —the hypocrite! ”’ ‘“How good you are! Please tell him absolute repose is prescribed for a time, but there is no doubt of Sir Charles’s ulti- mate recovery.”’ Mr. Angelo promised heartily. Mary Wells was not enough ; a woman must have a man to lean on in trouble, and Lady Bassett leaned on Mr. Angelo. She even obeyed him. One day he told her that her own health would fail if she sat always in the sick-room; she must walk an hour every day. ‘*¢ Must I?’’ said she, sweetly. “Yes, even if it is only in your own garden.”’ From that time she used to walk with him nearly every day. Richard Bassett saw this from his tower of observation; saw it, and chuckled. ‘‘Aha!’’ said he. ‘*‘ Husband sick in bed. Wife walking in the garden with a young man—a parson, too. He is dark, she is fair. Something will come of thisy( ihat Tuas Lady Bassett now talked of sending to London for advice; but Mary Wells dis- suaded her. ‘‘ Physic can’t cure him. There’s only one can cure him, and that is yourself, my lady.”’ “* Ah, would to Heaven I could! ”’ “Try my way, and you will\see, my lady.’’ «What, that way! Oh, no, no!”’ ‘¢ Well, then, if you won’t, nobody else can.” | Such speeches as these, often repeated, on the one hand, and Sir Charles’s melan- choly on the other, drove Lady Bassett almost wild with distress and perplexity. Meanwhile her vague fears of Richard Bassett were being gradually realized. Bassett employed Wheeler to sound Dr. Willis as to his patient’s condition. Dr. Willis, true to the honorable tradi- tions of his profession, would tell him nothing. But Dr. Willis had a wife. She pumped him: and Wheeler pumped her. By this channel Wheeler got a some- at exaggerated account of Sir A THRRIBLE Charles’s state. He carried it to Bas- sett, and the pair put their heads to- gether. The consultation lasted all night, and finally a comprehensive plan of action was settled. Wheeler stipulated that the law should not be broken in the smallest particular, but only stretched. Four days after this conference Mr. Bassett, Mr. Wheeler, and two spruce gentlemen dressed in black, sat upon the ‘* Heir’s Tower,’’ watching Huntercombe Hall. They watched, and watched, until they saw Mr. Angelo make his usual daily call. Then they watched, and watched, until Lady Bassett and the young clergyman came out and strolled together into the shrubbery. Then the two gentlemen went down the stairs, and were hastily conducted by Bas- sett to Huntercombe Hall. They rang the bell, and the taller said, in a business-like voice, ‘‘ Dr. Mosely, from Dr. Willis.”’ Mary Wells was sent for, and Dr. Mosely said, ‘‘Dr. Willis is unable to come to-day, and has sent me.’’ Mary Wells conducted him to the pa- tient. The other gentleman followed. ‘““Who is this?”’ said Mary. ‘‘I can’t let all the world in to see him.”’ “Tt is Mr. Donkyn, the surgeon. Dr. Willis wished the patient to be examined with the stethoscope. You can stay out- side, Mr. Donkyn.”’ This new doctor announced himself to Sir Charles, felt his pulse, and entered at once into conversation with him. Sir Charles was in a talking mood, and very soon said one or two inconsecutive things. Dr. Mosely looked at Mary Wells and said he would write a prescription. As soon as he had written it he said, very loud, ‘“‘ Mr. Donkyn!”’ The door instantly opened, and that worthy appeared on the threshold. *‘Oblige me,’’ said the doctor to his confrére, “‘by seeing this prescription made up; and you can examine the pa- tient yourself; but do not fatigue him.”’ With this he retired swiftly, and strolled TEMPTATION. 83 down the corridor, to wait for his com- panion. He had not to wait long. Mr. Donkyn adopted a free and easy style with Sir Charles, and that gentleman marked his sense of the indignity by turning him out of the room, and kicking him industri- ously half-way down the passage. Messrs. Mosely and Donkyn retired to Highmore. Bassett was particularly pleased at the baronet having kicked Donkyn; so was Wheeler; so was Dr. Mosely. Donkyn alone did not share the general enthu- siasm., When Sir Charles had disposed of Mr. Donkyn he turned on Mary Wells, and rated her soundly for bringing strangers into his room to gratify their curiosity ; and when Lady Bassett came in he made his formal complaint, concluding with a proposal that one of two persons should leave Huntercombe, forever, that after- noon—Mary Wells or Sir Charles Bassett. Mary replied, not to him, but to her mistress, ‘‘ He came from Dr. Willis, my lady. It was Dr. Mosely; and the other gent was a surgeon.’’ ‘Two medical men, sent by Dr. Wil- lis?’’? said Lady Bassett, knitting her brow with wonder and a shade of doubt. ‘* A couple of her own sweethearts, sent by herself,’’ suggested Sir Charles. Lady Bassett sat down and wrote a hasty letter to Dr. Willis. ‘‘Send a groom with it, as fast as he can ride,’’ said she; and she was much discomposed and nervous and impatient till the answer came back. Dr. Willis came in person. ‘‘I sent no one to take my place,”’ said he. ‘I es- teem my patient too highly to let any stranger prescribe for him or even see him—for a few days to come.”’ Lady Bassett sank into a chair, and her eloquent face filled with an unde- finable terror. Mary Wells, being on her defense, put in her word. ‘‘I am sure he was a doc- tor; for he wrote a prescription, and here ’tis.”’ Dr. Willis examined the prescription, with no friendly eye. 84 WORKS OF CHARLES READE. ‘« Acetate of morphia! The very worst thing that could be given him. This is the favorite of the specialists. This fatal drug has eaten away a thousand brains for one it has ever benefited.’’ Ah!” said Lady Bassett. ists !’ what are they ?”’ ‘* Medical men, who confine their prac- tice to one disease.”’ ‘* Mad-doctors, he means,’’ said the pa- tient, very gravely. Lady Bassett turned very pale. those were mad-doctors.”’ ‘“Never you mind, Bella,’’ said Sir Charles. ‘I kicked the fellow hand- somely.’’ ‘‘T am sorry to hear it, Sir Charles.”’ mawWihy 77 Dr. Willis looked at Lady Bassett, as much as to say, ‘‘I shall not give him my real reason;’’ and then said, ‘I think it very undesirable you should be excited and provoked, until your health is thoroughly restored.’’ Dr. Willis wrote a prescription, and retired. Lady Bassett sank into a chair, and trembled all over. Her divining fit was on her; she saw the hand of the emeny, and filled with vague fears. Mary Wells tried to comfort her. “ VU take care no more strangers get in here,”’ said she. “And, my lady, if you are afraid, why not have the keepers, and two or three more, to sleep in the house ? for, as for them footmen, they be too soft to fight.’’ “IT will,’’? said Lady Bassett; ‘‘but I fear it will be no use. Our enemy has so many resources unknown to me. How can a poor woman fight with a shadow, that comes ina moment and strikes ; and then is gone and leaves his victim trem- bling ? ”’ Then she slipped into the dressing- room and became hysterical, out of her husband’s sight and hearing. Mary Wells nursed her, and, when she was better, whispered in her ear, ‘‘Lose no more time, then. Cure him. You know the way.”’ “* « Special- «Then CHAPTER XVII; In the present condition of her mind these words produced a strange effect on Lady Bassett. She quivered, and her eyes began to rove in that peculiar way I have already noticed; and then she started up and walked wildly to and fro; and then she kneeled down and prayed ; and then, alarmed, perplexed, exhausted, she went and leaned her head on her patient’s shoulder, and wept softly a long time. Some days passed, and no more stran- gers attempted to see Sir Charles. Lady Bassett was beginning to breathe again, when she was afflicted by an un- welcome discovery. Mary Wells fainted away so suddenly that, but for Lady Bassett’s quick eye and ready hand, she would have fallen heavily. Lady Bassett laid her head down and loosened her stays, and discovered her condition. She said nothing till the young woman was well, and then she taxed her with it. Mary denied it plump; but, seeing her mistress’s disgust at the falsehood, she owned it with many tears. Being asked how she could so far forget herself, she told Lady Bassett she had long been courted by a respectable young man; he had come to the village, bound on a three years’ voyage, to bid her good-by, and, what with love and grief at parting, they had been betrayed into folly; and now he was on the salt seas, little dreaming in what condition he had left her: ‘‘and,’’ said she, “ before ever he can write to me, and I to him, I shall be a ruined girl; that is why I wanted to put an end to myself; I will, too, unless I can find some way to hide it from the world.’’ Lady Bassett begged her to give up those desperate thoughts; she would think what could be done for her. Lady Bassett could say no more to her just then, for she was disgusted with her. But when she came to reflect that, after all, this was not a lady, and that she appeared by her own account to be the A TERRIBLE victim of affection and frailty rather than of vice, she made some excuses ; and then the girl had laid aside her trouble, her despair, and given her sorrowful mind to nursing and comforting Sir Charles. This would have outweighed a crime, and it made the wife’s bowels yearn over the unfortunate girl. ‘‘Mary,’’ said she, ‘others must judge you; I am a wife, and can only see your fidelity to my poor husband. I don’t know what I shall do without you, but I think it is my duty to send you to him if possible. You are sure he really loves you ?”’ ““Me cross the seas after a young man?’ said Mary Wells. ‘‘1’d as lieve hang myself on the nighest tree and make an end. No, my lady, if you are really my friend, let me stay here as long as I can—I will never go downstairs to be seen—and then give me money enough to get my trouble over unbeknown to my sister; she is all my fear. She is mar- ried to a gentleman, and got plenty of money, and | shall never want while she lives, and behave myself; but she would never forgive me if she knew. She is a hard woman; she is not like you, my lady. Id liever cut my hand off than I’d trust her as I would you.”’ Lady Bassett was not quite insensible to this compliment ; but she felt uneasy. “What, help you to deceive your sis- ter ? ’”’ ‘‘Wor her good. Why, if any one was to go and tell her about me now, she’d hate them for telling her almost as much as she would hate me.”’ Lady Bassett was sore perplexed. Un- able to see quite clear in the matter, she naturally reverted to her husband and his interest. That dictated her course. She said, ‘‘ Well, stay with us, Mary, as long aS you can; and then money shall not be wanting to hide your shame from all the world; but I hope when the time comes you will alter your mind and tell your sister. May ILask what her name Sie SG Mary, after a moment’s hesitation, said her name was Marsh. “YT know a Mrs. Marsh,’’ said Lady Bassett; ‘‘but, of course, that is not TEHMPTATION. 85 your sister. My Mrs. Marsh is rather faire? ‘‘So is my sister, for that matter.’’ ** And tall ? ” “Yes; but you never saw her. You’d never forget her if you had. She has got eyes like a lion.”’ ‘*Ah! Does she ride? ”’ ‘Oh, she is famous for that; driving, and all.’’ ‘Indeed! But no; blance.”’ ‘*Oh, she is only my half-sister.”’ ‘«This is very strange.”’ Lady Bassett put her hand to her brow, and thought. ‘‘Mary,’’ said she, “all this is very mysterious. We are wading in deep waters.”’ Mary Wells had no idea meant. The day was not over yet. Just be- fore dinner-time a fly from the station drove to the door, and Mr. Oldfield got out. He was detained in the hall by sentinel Moss. Lady Bassett came down to him. At the very sight of him she trembled, and Said, **hichard ‘Bassett? “ Yes,’’ said Mr. Oldfield, ‘‘ he is in the field again. He has been to the Court of Chancery ex parte, and obtained an in- junction ad wnterim to stay waste. Not another tree must be cut down on the es- tate for the present.”’ ‘‘“Thank Heaven it is no worse than that. Not another tree shall be felled on the grounds.’’ “Of course not. But they will not stop there. If we do not move to dis- solve the injunction, I fear they will go on and ask the Court to administer the estate, with a view to all interests con- cerned, especially those of the heir at law and his son.’’ ‘‘ What, while my husband lives ?.”’ and I see no resem- what she ‘If they can prove him dead in law.”’ “T don’t understand ‘you, Mr. Old- field.’’ “They have got affidavits of two medi- cal men that he is insane.”’ 86 WORKS Lady Bassett uttered a faint scream, and put her hand to her heart. ‘¢ And, of course, they will use that extraordinary fall of timber as a further proof, and also as a reason why the Court should interfere to protect the heir at law. Their case is well got up and very strong,’’ said Mr. Oldfield, regretfully. ‘‘ Well, but you are a lawyer, and you have always beaten them hitherto.”’ ‘“‘T had law and fact on my side. It is not so now. To be frank, Lady Bas- sett, I don’t see what I can do but watch the case, on the chance of some error or illegality. It is very hard to fight a case when you cannot put your client forward —and I suppose that would not be safe. How unfortunate that you have no chil- dren !’’ ‘Children! How could they help us? ”’ «What a question! How could Rich- ard Bassett move the Court if he was not the heir at law?”’ After a long conference Mr. Oldfield returned to town to see what he could do in the way of procrastination, and Lady Bassett promised to leave no stone un- turned to cure Sir Charles in the mean- time. Mr. Oldfield was to write imme- diately if any fresh step was taken. When Mr. Oldfield was gone, Lady Bassett pondered every word he had said, and, mild as she was, her rage began to rise against her husband’s re- lentless enemy. Her wits worked, her eyes roved in that peculiar half-savage way I have described. She became intolerably restless; and any one ac- quainted with her sex might see that some strange conflict was going on in her troubled mind. Every now and then she would come and cling to her husband, and cry over him; and that seemed to still the tumult of her soul a little. She never slept all that night; and next day, clinging in her helpless agony to the nearest branch, she told Mary Wells what Bassett was doing, and said, “* What shalimeoedor: :Helish not mad; but he is in so very precarious a state that, if they get at him to torment him, they will drive him mad indeed.’’ OF CHARLES READE. ‘* My lady,’’ said Mary Wells, “I can’t go frommy word. *Tis no use in making two bites of acherry. We must cure him: and if we don’t, you’ll never rue it but once, and that will be all your life.’’ “‘T should look on myself with horror afterward were I to deceive him now.”’ ‘“No, my lady, you are too fond of him for that. Once you saw him happy you’d be happy too, no matter how it came about. That Richard Bassett will turn him out of this else. Iam sure he will; he is a hard-hearted villain.”’ Lady Bassett’s eyes flashed fire; then her eyes roved ; then she sighed deeply. Her powers of resistance were begin- ning to relax. As for Mary Wells, she gave her no peace; she kept instilling, her mind into her mistress’s with the pertinacity of a small but ever-dripping fount, and we know both by science and poetry that small, incessant drops of water will wear a hole in marble. ‘*Gutta cavat lapidem non vi sed spe cadendo.” And in the midst of all a letter came from Mr. Oldfield, to tell her that Mr. Bassett threatened to take out a commis- sion de lunatico, and she must prepare Sir Charles for an examination; for, if reported insane, the Court would admin- ister the estates; but the heir at law, Mr. Bassett, would have the ear of the Court and the right of application, and become virtually master of Huntercombe and Bassett; and, perhaps, considering the spirit by which he was animated, would contrive to occupy the very Hall itself. Lady Bassett was in the dressing- room when she received this blow, and it drove her almost frantic. She bemoaned her husband; she prayed God to take them both, and let their enemy have his will. She wept and raved, and at the height of her distress came from the other room a feeble cry, ‘* Childless ! childless! childless ! ”’ Lady Bassett heard that, and in one moment, from violent she became un- naturally and dangerously calm. She said firmly to Mary Wells, “This is more than I can bear. You pretend you can save him—do it.’’ ; | A THRRIBLE Mary Wells now trembled in her turn ; but she seized the opportunity. ‘‘My lady, whatever I say you'll stand to?’ ‘«¢ Whatever you say I'll stand to.”’ CHAPTER XVIII. Mary WELLS, like other uneducated women, was not accustomed to think long and earnestly on any one subject ; to use an expression she once applied with far less justice to her sister, her mind was like running water. But gestation affects the brains of such women, and makes them think more steadily, and sometimes very acutely ; added to which, the peculiar dangers and difficulties that beset this girl during that anxious period stimulated her wits to the very utmost. Often she sat quite still for hours at a time, brooding and brooding, and asking herself how she could turn each new and unexpected event to her own benefit. Now so much does mental force depend on that exercise of keen and long attention, in which her sex is generally deficient, that this young woman’s powers were more than doubled since the day she first discovered her con- dition, and began to work her brains night and day for her defense. Gradually, as events I have related unfolded themselves, she caught a glimpse of this idea, that if she could get her mis- tress to have a secret, her mistress would help her to keep her own. Hence her in- Sidious whispers, and her constant praises of Mr. Angelo, who, she saw, was infatu- ated with Lady Bassett. Yet the de- signing creature was actually fond of her mistress; and so strangely compounded is a heart of this low kind that the ex- traordinary step she now took was half affectionate impulse, half egotistical de- sign. She made a motion with her hand in- TEMPTATION. 8? viting Lady Bassett to listen, and stepped into Sir Charles’s room. *“ Childless! childless! childless ! ”’ ‘¢ Hush, sir,’’ said Mary Wells. “ Don’t say so. We shan’t be many months without one, please Heaven.” Sir Charles shook his head sadly. “Don’t you believe me? ”’ ** Nov’ ‘What, did ever I tell you a lie? ”’ ‘No: but you are mistaken. She would have told me.”’ ‘“ Well, sir, my iady is young and shy, and | think she is afraid of disappointing you after all; for you know, sir, there’s many a slip *twixt the cup and the lip. But ’tis as I tell you, sir.”’ Sir Charles was much agitated, and said he would give her a hundred guineas ifthat was true. ‘‘ Where is my darling wife? Why do I hear this through a servant ?”’ Mary Wells cast a look at the door, and said, for Lady Bassett to hear, ‘‘She is receiving company. Now, sir, I have told you good news; will you do some- thing to oblige me? You shouldn’t speak of it direct to my lady just yet; and if you want all to go well, you mustn’t vex my lady as you are doing now. What I mean, you mustn’t be so downhearted— there’s no reason for’t—and you mustn’t coop yourself up on this floor: it sets the folks talking, and worries my lady. You Should give her every chance, being the way she is.”’ Sir Charles said eagerly he would not vex her for the world. ‘‘ I’ll walk in the garden,’’ said he; “‘but as for going abroad, you know | am not in a fit con- dition yet ; my mind is clouded.”’ ‘Not as I see.”’ “Oh, not alwavs. But sometimes a cloud seems to get into my head; and if 1 was in public I might do or say some- thing discreditable. I would rather die.”’ La, sir!’ said Mary Wells, .in’-a broad, hearty way — ‘“‘a cloud in your head! You’ve had a bad fall, and a fit at top on’t, and no wonder your poor head do ache at times. You'll outgrow that—if you take the air and give over fretting about the t’other thing. I tell 88 WORKS OF CHARLES you you’ll hear the music of a child’s voice and little feet a-pattering up and down this here corridor before so very long—if so be you take my advice, and leave off fretting my lady with fretting of yourself. You should consider: she is too fond of you to be well when you be he ‘© T’ll get well for her sake,’ Charles, firmly. At this moment there was a knock at the door. Mary Wells opened it so that the servant could see nothing. “Mr. Angelo has called.”’ ‘My lady will be down directly.”’ Mary Wells then slipped into the dress- ing-room, and found Lady Bassett look- ing pale and wild. She had heard every word. “<“There, he is better already,’’ said Mary Wells. ‘‘ He shall walk in the gar- den with you this afternoon.’’ «What have you done? Ican’t look him in the face now. Suppose he speaks to me?” ‘“‘Hewill not. Vll manage that. You won’t have to say aword. Only listen to what J say, and don’t make a liar of me. He is better already.”’ ‘‘ How will this end ?’’ cried Lady Bas- sett, helplessly. ‘‘ What shall Ido?” “You must go downstairs, and not come here for an hour at least, or you’ll spoil my work. Mr. Angelo is in the drawing-room.’’ ‘<7 will go to him.’’ Lady Bassett slipped out by the other door, and it was three hours, instead of one, before she returned. For the first time in her life she was afraid to face her husband. b) said Sir 2 CHAPTER XIX. MEANTIME Mary Wells had a long con- versation with her master; and after that she retired into the adjoining room, READE. and sat down to sew baby-linen clandes- tinely. After a considerable time Lady Bassett came in, and, sinking into a chair, coy- ered her face with her hands. She had her bonnet on. Mary Wells looked at her with black eyes that flashed triumph. After so surveying her for some time she said: ‘‘I have been at him again, and there’s a change for the better al- ready. He is not the same man. You go and see else.”’ Lady Bassett now obeyed her servant: she rose and crept like a culprit into Sir Charles’s room. She found him clean shaved, dressed to perfection, and look- ing more cheerful than she had seen him for many along day. ‘‘ Ah, Bella,’’ said he, ‘‘you have your bonnet on; let us have a walk in the garden.’’ Lady Bassett opened her eyes and con- sented eagerly, though she was very tired. They walked together ; and Sir Charles, being a man that never broke his word, put no direct question to Lady Bassett, but spoke cheerfully of the future, and told her she was his hope and his all; she would baffle his enemy, and cheer his desolate hearth. She blushed, and looked confused and distressed ; then he smiled, and talked of indifferent matters, until a pain in his head stopped him; then he became con- fused, and, putting his hand piteously to his head, proposed to retire at once to his own room. Lady Bassett brought him in, and he reposed in silence on the sofa. The next day, and, indeed, many days afterward, presented similar features. Mary Wells talked to her master of the bright days to come, of the joy that would fill the house if all went well, and of the defeat in store for Richard Bassett. She spoke of this man with strange viru- lence ; said ‘‘she would think no more of sticking a knife into him than of eating her dinner;’’ and in saying this she showed the white of her eye in a manner truly savage and vindictive. To hurt the same person is a surer bond A TERRIBLE than to love the same person; and this sentiment of Mary Wells, coupled with her uniform kindness to himself, gave her great influence with Sir Charles in his present weakened condition. Moreover, the young woman had an oily, persuasive tongue; and she who persuades us is stronger than he who convinces us. Thus influenced, Sir Charles walked every day in the garden with his wife, and forbore all direct allusion to her condition, though his conversation was redolent of it. He was still subject to sudden collapses of the intellect ; but he became conscious when they were coming on; and at the first warning he would insist on burying himself in his room. After some days he consented to take short drives with Lady Bassett in the open carriage. ‘This made her very joy- ful. Sir Charles refused to enter a single house, so high was his pride and so great his terror lest he should expose himself ; but it was a great point gained that she could take him about the county, and show him in the character of a mere in- valid. Every thing now looked like a cure, slow, perhaps, but progressive ; and Lady Bassett had her joyful hours, yet not without a bitter alloy: her divining mind asked itself what she should say and do when Sir Charles should be quite re- covered. This thought tormented her, and sometimes so goaded her that she hated Mary Wells for her well-meant in- terference, and, by a natural recoil from the familiarity circumstances had forced on her, treated that young woman with great coldness and hauteur. The artful girl met this with extreme meekness and servility; the only reply she ever hazarded was an adroit one; she would take this opportunity to say, ‘‘ How much better master do get ever since I took in hand to cure him !”’ This oblique retort seldom failed. Lady Bassett would look at her husband, and her face would clear; and she would generally end by giving Mary a collar, or a scarf, or something. Thus did circumstances enable the lower TEMPTATION. 89 nature to play with the higher. Lady Bassett’s struggles were like those of a bird in a silken net; they led to nothing. When it came to the point she could neither do nor say any thing to retard his cure. Any day the Court of Chancery, set in motion by Richard Bassett, might issue a commission de lunatico, and, if Sir Charles was not cured by that time, Richard Bassett would virtually adminis- ter the estate—so Mr. Oldfield had told her—and that, she felt sure, would drive Sir Charles mad for life. So there wasno help forit. She feared, she writhed, she hated herself; but Sir Charles got better daily, and so she let herself drift along. Mary Wells made it fatally easy to her. She was the agent. Lady Bassett was silent and passive. After all she had a hope of extrication. Sir Charles once cured, she would make him travel Europe with her. Money would relieve her of Mary Wells, and dis- tance cut all the other cords. And, indeed, a time came when she looked back on her present situation with wonder at the distress it had caused her. ‘¢] was in shallow water then,’’ said she —‘*but now!” CHAPTER XX. SIR CHARLES observed that he was never trusted alone. He remarked this, and inquired, with a peculiar eye, why that was. Lady Bassett had the tact to put on an innocent look and smile, and say: ‘* That is true, dearest. I have tied you to my apron-string without mercy. But it serves you right for having fits and frightening me. You get well, and my tyranny will cease at once.”’ However, after this she often left him alone in the garden, to remove from his mind the notion that he was under re- straint from her. 90 Mr. Bassett observed this proceeding from his tower. One day Mr. Angelo called, and Lady Bassett left Sir Charles in the garden, to go and speak to him. She had not been gone many minutes when a boy ran to Sir Charles, and said, ‘‘Oh, sir, please come to the gate; the lady has had a fall, and hurt herself.”’ Sir Charles, much alarmed, followed the boy, who took him to a side gate opening on the high-road. Sir Charles rushed through this, and was passing between two stout fellows. that stood one on each side the gate, when they seized him, and lifted him in a moment into a close carriage that was waiting on the spot. He struggled, and cried loudly for assistance; but they bundled him in and sprang in after him; a third man closed the door, and got up by the side of the coachman. He drove off, avoiding the village, soon got upon a broad road. and bowled along at a great rate, the car- riage being light, and drawn by two powerful horses. So cleverly and rapidly was it done that, but for a woman’s quick ear, the deed might not have been discovered for hours; but Mary Wells heard the cry for help through an open window, recog- nized Sir Charles’s voice, and ran scream- ing downstairs to Lady Bassett: she ran wildly out, with Mr. Angelo, to look for Sir Charles. He was nowhere to be found. Then she ordered every horse in the stables to be saddled; and she ran with Mary to the place where the cry had been heard. Hor some time no intelligence whatever could be gleaned; but at last an old man was found who said he had heard some- body cry out, and soon after that a car- riage had come tearing by him, and gone round the corner: but this direction was of little value, on account of the many - roads, any one of which it might have taken. However, it left no doubt that Sir Charles had been taken away from the place by force. Terror-stricken, and pale as death, Lady Bassett never lost her head for a WORKS OF CHARLES READE. moment. Indeed, she showed unexpected fire; she sent off coachman and grooms to scour the country, and rouse the gentry to help her; she gave them money, and told them not to come back till they had found Sir Charles. Mr. Angelo said, eagerly, “I'll go to the nearest magistrate, and we will ar- rest Richard Bassett on suspicion.”’ ‘*God bless you, dear friend !’’ sobbed Lady Bassett. ‘ Oh, yes, it is his doing —murderer !”’ Off went Mr. Angelo on his errand. He was hardly gone when a man was seen running and shouting across the fields. Lady Bassett went to meet him, surrounded by her humble sympathizers. It was young Drake: he came up pant- ing, with a double-barreled gun in his hand (for he was allowed to shoot rabbits on his own little farm), and stammered out, ‘Oh, my lady—Sir Charles—they have carried him off against his will!’ “Who? Where? Did you see him?” ‘“‘Ay, and heerd him and all. I was ferreting rabbits by the side of the turn- pike-road yonder, and a carriage came tearing along, and Sir Charles put out his head and cried to me, ‘ Drake, they are kidnapping me. Shoot!’ But they pulled him back out of sight.’ “Oh, my poor husband! And did you let them? Oh!” ““Couldn’t catch ’em, my lady: so I did as I was bid; got to my gun as quick as ever I could, and gave the coachman both barrels hot.’’ « What, kill him ? ”’ ‘‘Lord, no; ’twas sixty yards off; but made him holler and squeak a good un. Put thirty or forty shots into his back, I know.”’ ‘““Give me your hand, Mr. Drake. never forget that shot.”’ to cry. ‘‘Doant ye, my lady, doant ye,’’ said the honest fellow, and was within an ace of blubbering for sympathy. ‘‘ We ain’t a lot o’ babies, to see our squire kid- naped. If you would lend Abel Moss there and me a couple o’ nags, we’ll catch them yet, my lady.”’ ‘That we will,’”’ cried Abel. Vl Then she began APN Evy | A TERRIBLE take me where you fired that shot, and we'll follow the fresh wheel-tracks. They can’t beat us while they keep to a road.”’ The two men were soon mounted, and in pursuit, amid the cheers of the now excited villagers. But still the perpetra- tors of the outrage had more than an hour’s start; and an hour was twelve miles. And now Lady Bassett, who had borne up so bravely, was seized with a deadly faintness, and supported into the house. All this spread like wild-fire, and roused the villagers, and they must have a hand init. Parson had said Mr. Bassett was to blame; and that passed from one to another, and so fermented that, in the evening, a crowd collected round High- more House and demanded Mr. Bassett. The servants were alarmed, and said he was not at home. Then the men demanded boisterously what he had done with Sir Charles, and threatened to break the windows unless they were told; and, as nobody in the house could tell them, the women egged on the men, and they did break the win- dows; but they no sooner saw their own work than they were a little alarmed at it, and retired, talking very loud to sup- port their waning courage and check their rising remorse at their deed. They left a house full of holes and screams, and poor little Mrs. Bassett _ half dead with fright. As for Lady Bassett, she spent a hor- rible night of terror, suspense, and agony. She could not lie down, nor even sit still ; she walked incessantly, wringing her hands, and groaning for news. Mary Wells did all she could to com- fort her; but it was a situation beyond the power of words to alleviate. Her intolerable suspense lasted till four o’clock in the morning ; and then, in the still night, horses’ feet came clattering up to the door. Lady Bassett went into the hall. It was dimly lighted bya single lamp. The great door was opened, aid in clattered Moss and Drake, splashed and weary and downcast. TEMPTATION. 91 *“ Well?’ cried Lady Bassett, clasping her hands. ‘My lady,’’ said Moss, “‘ we tracked the carriage into the next county, to a place thirty miles from here—to a lodge —and there they stopped us. The place is well guarded with men and great big dogs. We heerd ’em bark, didn’t us, MV ““ Ay,’’ said Drake, dejectedly. ‘The man as kept the lodge was short, but civil. Says he, ‘This is a place no- body comes in but by law, and nobody goes out but by law. If the gentleman is here you may go home and sleep; he is safe enough.’ ”’ ‘““A prison? No!”’ ‘A ’sylum, my lady.’’ CHAPTER XXI. THE lady put her hand to her heart, and was silent a long time. At last she said, doggedly but faintly, “You will go with me to that place to- morrow, one of you.”’ ‘*T’ll go, my lady,’’ said Moss. ‘* Will, here, had better not show his face. They might take the law on him for that there shot.’’ | Drake hung his head, and his ardor was evidently cooled by discovering that Sir Charles had been taken to a mad-house. Lady Bassett saw and sighed, and said she would take Moss to show her the way. At eleven o’clock next morning a light carriage and pair came round to the Hall gate, and a large basket, a portmanteau, and a bag were placed on the roof under care of Moss; smaller packages were put inside; and Lady Bassett and her maid got in, both dressed in black. They reached Bellevue House at half- past two. The lodge-gate was open, to Lady Bassett’s surprise, and they drove through some pleasant grounds to a large white house. 92 WORKS OF The place at first sight had no distinct- ive character: great ingenuity had been used to secure the inmates without seem- ing to incarcerate them. There were no bars to the lower front windows, and the side windows, with their defenses, were shrouded by shrubs. The sentinels were out of sight, or employed on some occu- pation or other, but within call. Some patients were playing at cricket; some ladies looking on; others strolling on the gravel with a nurse, dressed very much like themselves, who did not obtrude her functions unnecessarily. All was appar- ent indifference, and Argus-eyed vigilance. So much for the surface. Of course, even at this moment, some of the locked rooms had violent and mis- erable inmates. The hall door opened as the carriage drew up; a respectable servant came for- ward. Lady Bassett handed him her card, and said, ‘‘ l am come to see my husband, Sing, The man never moved a muscle, but said, ‘* You must wait, if you please, till I take your card in.”’ He soon returned, and said, ‘‘ Dr. Suaby is not here, but the gentleman in charge will see you.”’ Lady Bassett got out, and, beckoning Mary Wells, followed the servant into a curious room, half library, half chemist’s shop; they called it ‘‘the laboratory.’’ Here she found a tall man leaning on a dirty mantelpiece, who received her stiffly. He had a pale mustache, very thin lips, and altogether a severe manner. His head bald, rather prematurely, and whisk- ers abundant. Lady Bassett looked him all over with one glance of her woman’s eye, and saw she had a hard and vain man to deal with. “* Are you the gentleman to whom this house belongs ?”’ she faltered. “No, madam; I am in charge during Dr. Suaby’s absence.”’ ‘«That comes to the same thing. Sir, I am come to see my dear husband.”’ «* Have you an order ?”’ ‘* An order, sir? Iam his wife.’’ CHARLES READE. | Mr. Salter shrugged his shoulders a lit- tle, and said, ‘‘1 have no authority to let any visitor see a patient without an order from the person by whose authority he is placed here, or else an order from the commissioners. ”’ “But that cannot apply to his wife; to her who is one with him, for better for worse, in sickness or health.”’ ““Tt seems hard; but I have no discre- tion in the matter. The patient only came yesterday—much excited. He is better to-day, and an interview with you would excite him again.’”’ ‘Oh no! no! no! I can always soothe him. I will be so mild, so gentle. You can be present, and hear every word I say. I will only kiss him, and tell him who has done this, and to be brave. for his wife watches over him; and, sir, I will beg him to be patient, and not blame you nor any of the people here.’’ ‘* Very proper, very proper ; but really this interview must be postponed till you have an order, or Dr. Suaby returns. He can violate his own rules if he likes; but I cannot, and, indeed, I dare not.”’ ‘Dare not let a lady see her husband ? Then you are not a man. Oh, can this be England? It is too inhuman.”’ Then she began to cry and wring her hands. ‘‘This is very painful,’’ said Mr. Salter, and left the room. The respectable servant looked in soon after, and Lady Bassett told him, between her sobs, that she had brought some clothes and things for her husband. ‘Surely, sir,’’ said she, ‘‘ they will not refuse me that? ”’ ‘7 1h0rd, no, marvam, aesaid.. bhewemals ‘You can give them to the keeper and nurse in charge of him.”’ Lady Bassett slipped a guinea into the man’s hand directly. ‘‘ Let me see those people,’’ said she. The man winked, and vanished: he soon reappeared, and said, loudly, ‘*‘ Now, madam, if you will order the things into the hall.”’ Lady Basset came out and gave the order. A short, bull-necked man, and rather a A TERRIBLE pretty young woman with a flaunting cap, bestirred themselves getting down the things ; and Mr. Salter came out and looked on. Lady Bassett called Mary Wells, and gave her a five-pound note to slip into the man’s hand. She telegraphed the girl, who instantly came near her with an India rubber bath, and, affecting igno- rance, asked her what that was. Lady Bassett dropped three sovereigns into the bath, and said, ‘‘Ten times, twenty times that, if you are kind to him. Tell him it is his cousin’s doing, but his wife watches over him.”’ ‘All right,’’ said the girl. again when the doctor is here.”’ All this passed, in swift whispers, a few yards from Mr. Salter, and he now came forward and offered his arm to conduct Lady Bassett to the carriage. But the wretched, heart-broken wife forgot her art of pleasing. She shrank from him with a faint cry of aversion, and got into her carriage unaided. Mary Wells followed her. Mr. Salter was unwilling to receive this rebuff. He followed, and said, ‘‘The clothes shall be given, with any message you may think fit to intrust to me.’’ Lady Bassett turned away sharply from him, and said to Mary Wells, ‘‘ Tell him to drive home. Home! I have none now. Its light is torn from me.’’ The carriage drove away as she uttered these piteous words. She cried at intervals all the way home; and could hardly drag herself upstairs to bed. Mr. Angelo called next day with bad news. Not a magistrate would move a finger against Mr. Bassett: he had the law on his side. Sir Charles was evi- dently insane; it was quite proper he should be put in security before he did some mischief to himself or Lady Bassett. *“They say, why was he hidden for two months, if there was not something very wrong ?”’ Lady Bassett ordered the carriage and paid several calls, to counteract this fatal impression. She found, to her horror, she might as “Come TEMPTATION. 93 well try to movearock. There was plenty of kindness and pity ; but the moment she began to assure them her husband was not insane she was met with the dead si- lence of polite incredulity. One or two old friends went further, and said, “My dear, we are told he could not be taken away without two doctors’ certificates : now, consider, they must know better than you. Have patience, and let them cure him.*’ Lady Bassett withdrew her friendship on the spot from two ladies for contra- dicting her on such a subject; she re- turned home almost wild herself. In the village her carriage was stopped by a woman with her hair all flying, who told her, in a lamentable voice, that Squire Bassett had sent nine men to prison for taking Sir Charles’s part and ill-treating his captors. “My lawyer shall defend them at my expense,’’ said Lady Bassett, with a sigh. At last she got home, and went up to her own room, and there was Mary Wells waiting to dress her. She tottered in, and sank into a chair. But, after this temporary exhaustion, came a rising tempest of passion ; her eyes roved, her fingers worked, and her heart seemed to come out of her in words of fire. ‘“‘I have not a friend in all the county. That villain has only to say “Mad,) andualueturny (fom) imenaseitean angel of truth had said ‘ Criminal.’ We have no friend but one, and she is my servant. Now go and envy wealth and titles. No wife in this parish is so poor as I; powerless in the folds of a serpent. I can’t see my husband without an order from him. He is all power, I and mine all weakness.’’ She raised her clinched fists, she clutched her beautiful hair as if she would tear it out by the roots. “I shaileounacdtelishall’oormad Heino said she, allofa sudden. ‘“‘ That will not do. That is what he wants—and then my darling would be defenseless. I will not go mad.’’ Then suddenly grinding her white teeth : ‘‘1’l1 teach him to drive a lady to despair. VU fight.’’ She descended, almost without a break, from the fury of a Pythoness to a strange 94 WORKS OF CHARLES READE. calm. Oh! then it is her sex are dan- gerous. ‘* Don’t look so pale,’’ said she, and she actually smiled. ‘‘ All is fair against so foul a villain. You and I will defeat him. Dress me, Mary.”’ Mary Wells, carried away by the un- usual violence of a superior mind, was quite bewildered. Lady Bassett smiled a strange smile, and said, ‘‘I’ll show you how to dress me;’’? and she did give her a lesson that astonished her. ‘«“And now,’’ said Lady Bassett, ‘I shall dress you.’”’ And she took a loose full dress out of her wardrobe, and made Mary Wells put it on; but first she in- serted some stuffing so adroitly that Mary seemed very buxom, but what she wished to hide was hidden. Notso Lady Bassett herself. Her figure looked much rounder than in the last dress she wore. With all this she was late for dinner, and when she went down Mr. Angelo had just finished telling Mr. Oldfield of the mishap to the villagers. Lady Bassett came in animated and beautiful. Dinner was announced directly, and a commonplace conversation kept up till the servants were got rid of. She then told Mr. Oldfield how she had been re- fused admittance to Sir Charles at Belle- vue House, a plain proof, to her mind, they knew her husband was not insane; and begged him to act with energy, and get Sir Charles out before his reason could be permanently injured by the out- rage and the horror of his situation. This led to a discussion, in which Mr. Angelo and Lady Bassett threw out various suggestions, and Mr. Oldfield cooled their ardor with sound objections. He was familiar with the Statutes de Lunatico, and said they had been strictly observed both in the capture of Sir Charles and in Mr. Salter’s refusal to let the wife see the husband. In short, he appeared either unable or unwilling to see any- thing except the strong legal position of the adverse party. Mr. Oldfield was one of those prudent lawyers who search for the adversary’s strong points, that their clients may not be taken by surprise; and that is very wise of them. But wise things require to be done wisely: he sometimes carried this system so far as to discourage his client too much. It is a fine thing to make your client think his case the weaker of the two, and then win it for him easily; that gratifies your own foi- ble, professional vanity. But suppose, with your discouraging him so, he flings up or compromises a winning case? Sup- pose he takes the huff and goes to some other lawyer, who will warm him with hopes instead of cooling him with a one- sided and hostile view of his case ? In the present discussion Mr. Oldfield’s habit of beginning by admiring his ad- versaries, together with his knowledge of law and little else, and his secret conviction that Sir Charles was un- sound of mind, combined to paralyze him; and, not being a man of invention, he could not see his way out of the wood at all; he could negative Mr. Angelo’s sug- gestions and give good reasons, but he could not, or did not, suggest anything better to be done. Lady Bassett listened to his negative wisdom with a bitter smile, and said, at last, with a sigh: ‘‘It seems, then, we are to sit quiet and do nothing, while Mr. Bassett and his solicitor strike blow upon blow. There! I’ll fight my own battle ; and do you try and find some way of de- fending the poor souls that are in trouble because they did not sit with their hands before them when their benefactor was outraged. Command my purse, if money will save them from prison.”’ | Then she rose with dignity, and walked like a camelopard all down the room on the side opposite to Mr. Oldfield. Angelo flew to open the door, and in a whisper begged a word with her in private. She bowed ascent, and passed on from the room. ‘“What a fine creature ! ’’ Oldfield. ‘‘ How she walks !”’ Mr. Angelo made no reply to this. but asked him what was to be done for the poor men: ‘‘they will be up before the Bench to-morrow.”’ said Mr. x A TERRIBLE Stung a little by Lady Bassett’s re- mark, Mr. Oldfield answered, promptly, ‘“We must get some tradesmen to bail them with our money. It will only be a few pounds apiece. If the bail is accepted, they shall offer pecuniary compensation, and get up a defense; find somebody to swear Sir Charles was sane—that sort of evidence is always to be got. Counsel must do the rest. Simple natives—bene- factor outraged — honest impulse — re- gretted, the moment they understood the capture had been legally made. Then throw dirt on the plaintiff. He is mali- cious, and can be proved to have forsworn himself in Bassett v. Bassett.’’ A tap at the door, and Mary Wells put in her head. “If you please, sir, my lady is tired, and she wishes to say a word to you before she goes upstairs.’’ ‘«“Hxcuse me one minute,’’ said Mr. Angelo, and followed Mary Wells. She ushered him into a boudoir, where he found Lady Bassett seated in an arm- chair, with her head on her hand, and her eyes fixed sadly on the carpet. She smiled faintly, and said, “ Well, what do you wish to say to me? ”’ “Tt is about Mr. Oldfield. He is clearly incompetent. ”’ ““T don’t know. I snubbed him, poor man: but if the law is all against us! ”’ ‘* How does he know that ? He assumes it because he is prejudiced in favor of the enemy. How does he know they have done everything the Act of Parliament requires? And, if they have, Law is not invincible. When Law defies Morality, it gets baffled, and trampled on in all civil- ized communities.”’ *“T never heard that before.’’ ‘“But you would if you had been at Ox- ford,”’ said he, smiling. ce Ab ! 29 “ What we want is a man of genius, of invention; a man who will see every chance, take every chance, lawful or un- lawful, and fight with all manner of weapons ” Lady Bassett’s eye flashed a moment. ** Ah !”’ said she; ‘‘ but where can I find such a man, with knowledge to guide his Zeal? ’’ TEMPTATION. 95 ‘¢T think I know of a man who could at all events advise you, if you would ask him.”’ < S.D te O22" ‘‘He is a writer; and opinions vary as to his merit. Some say he has talent ; others say it is all eccentricity and affecta- tion. One thing is certain—his books bring about the changes he demands. And then he is in earnest; he has taken a good many alleged lunatics out of con- finement.”’ ‘“Is it possible ? him at once.’’ ‘(He lives in London; but I have a friend who knows him. May I send an outline to him through that friend, and ask him whether he can advise you in the matter ? ”’ “You may; and thank you a thousand times ! ’’ <“A mind like that, with knowledge, zeal, and invention, must surely throw some light.’’ ‘*One would think so, dear friend.”’ “T’ll write to-night and send a letter to Greatrex; we shall perhaps get an answer the day after to-morrow.”’ “Ah! you are not the one to go to sleep in the service of afriend. A writer, did you say? What does he write ?’”’ ‘¢ Hiction ge “What, novels? ”’ ** And dramas and all.”’ Lady Bassett sighed incredulously.