LI E> RARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UN 1 VLRSITY 
 
 Of ILLINOIS 
 
 823 
 S^ 32.S
 
 Digitized by tine Internet Arciiive 
 
 in 2010 with funding from 
 
 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/secretofseanovel01spei
 
 A SECRET OF THE SEA, 
 
 3^fioi)d. 
 
 By T. W. SPEIGHT, 
 
 author .of 
 "in the dead of night," "under lock and key," etc., etc. 
 
 
 IN THREE VOLUMES. 
 
 LONDON : 
 RICHARD BENTLEY AND SON. 
 
 1876. 
 
 {All Rights Reserved.)
 
 i^3X 
 
 jx^ 
 
 CONTENTS OF VOL. I. 
 
 ♦HAPTER 
 
 I. IN THE lawyer's OFFICE 
 
 II. MISS BELLAMY .... 
 
 III. THE STORY OF THE MURDER . 
 
 IV. A BROKEN LIFE 
 
 V. GERALD AT PEMBRIDGE 
 
 VL "that's the man!". 
 
 VII. MISS DEANE FINDS A NEW HOME 
 VIII. GERALD AT STAMMARS 
 IX. FOUND 
 X. IN HARLEY STREET . 
 XL IN KENSINGTON GARDENS 
 XII. THE FACE IN THE GLASS 
 
 PAGE 
 1 
 
 34 
 54 
 72 
 101 
 122 
 141 
 174 
 201 
 225 
 246 
 270
 
 A SECRET or THE SEA. 
 
 >>©4< 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 IN THE lawyer's OFFICE. 
 
 T was a December morning, clear 
 and frosty. The timepiece in the 
 office of Matthew Kelvin, attor- 
 ney-at-law, Pembridge, Hertford- 
 shire, racing noisily after the grave old 
 Abbey clock which had just done chiming, 
 pointed to the hour of ten. With his back 
 to the welcome fire, and turning over yes- 
 terday's Times with an air of contemptuous 
 indifference, stood Mr. Podley Piper — 
 whose baptismal name was universally 
 
 VOL. I. 1
 
 2 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 shortened into " Pod " — a short, thickset 
 young gentleman of the mature age of 
 sixteen. His nose was a pure specimen 
 of a pug, and his short scrubby hair was of 
 a colour sufficiently pronounced to earn 
 him the nickname of " Carotty Pod '^ from 
 sundry irreverent small boys of his ac- 
 quaintance. His nose and his hair not- 
 withstanding, Pod was a keen, bright- 
 looking lad, with an air of shrewdness and 
 decision about him by no means common in 
 one of his age. 
 
 " Awfully dry reading — the Times,'' mut- 
 tered Pod, tossing the paper on Mr. Kel- 
 vin's desk. "Only one suicide, and not a 
 single murder in it. It's not worth buying. 
 And yet there must be something in it, or 
 so many people wouldn't read it. I sup- 
 pose that by the time I'm fifty, and wear 
 creaky shoes and carry a big gold watch in 
 my fob, and have to count my hairs every 
 morning to see that I haven't lost one 
 overnight, — I suppose, when that time 
 comes, I shall think as much of the Times 
 as Sir Thomas Dudgeon does. But just at
 
 IN THE LA IVYER'S OFFICE. 3 
 
 present I'd rather read the ' Bounding Wolf 
 of the Prairies/ " 
 
 Hardly were the last words out of Pod's 
 mouth, when the inner door was opened, and 
 Matthew Kelvin walked silently into the 
 room. In silence he sat down at his desk, 
 after one sharp glance at Pod and another at 
 the fire, and set to work at once at the task 
 immediately before him. This task was the 
 opening of the pile of post letters which 
 had been placed ready to his hand by Pod. 
 A brief glance at the contents of each was 
 generally sufficient. In very few cases did 
 he trouble himself to read a letter entirely 
 through. Three or four of the more im- 
 portant documents were put aside to be 
 attended to specially by himself ; the rest 
 of them had a corner turned up on which 
 Pod pencilled down in shorthand Mr. Kel- 
 vin's instructions for the guidance of Mr. 
 Bray, his chief clerk. It was his cleverness 
 at shorthand that had gained Pod his pre- 
 sent situation. 
 
 '' That will do," said Mr. Kelvin, after a 
 few minutes of this sharp work. " Give 
 
 1—2
 
 4 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 those papers to Mr. Bray, and tell him not 
 to come in till I ring." 
 
 Something out of the ordinary way was 
 evidently the matter with Mr. Kelvin this 
 morning. After making one or two futile 
 attempts to read over for the second time, 
 -and more carefully than before, the letters 
 left behind by Pod, he gave up the attempt 
 as a bad job. 
 
 " I don't feel as if I could settle down 
 to anything this morning," he said. '^ And 
 no wonder. How well the secret has been 
 kept ! Even I had not the remotest sus- 
 picion of such a thing. What a strange 
 example of the irony of events that I, of 
 all men in the world, should have to break 
 these tidings to Eleanor ! What will my 
 proud beauty say when I tell her ? I 
 could never have devised so exquisite a 
 revenge. And yet it is not my hand that 
 will drag her down. It is the hand of 
 Jacob Lloyd that smites her from out his 
 grave." 
 
 He fell into a reverie which lasted till he 
 was disturbed by a knock at the door.
 
 IN THE LA WYERS OFFICE. 5 
 
 " Come in," he said mechanically, and the 
 head of Pod was thrust into the room. 
 
 "A lady to see you, sir. Says her name 
 is Miss Deane." 
 
 " Olive Deane !" said Mr. Kelvin, in sur- 
 prise. " Show her in." 
 
 Matthew Kelvin at this time was thirty- 
 five years old. He was a handsome, large- 
 nosed man, with full grey eyes and rather 
 prominent teeth. He was already partially 
 bald ; but what hair he had left was care- 
 fully trimmed and parted down the middle, 
 while his bushy dark - brown whiskers 
 showed no traces of age. He always 
 dressed well, and was very particular as 
 to his boots and gloves and the cut of his 
 trousers. He had studied the art of dress 
 as carefully as he had studied many other 
 things, and the result was a success. 
 
 For his inferiors and those in his employ, 
 Mr. Kelvin had a brusque, imperious man- 
 ner that was not unmixed with a sort of 
 hard contemptuousness. For his rich 
 clients and those above him in the social 
 scale, he had a pleasant, smiling, ddgagd
 
 6 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 style, which sat upon him so easily and 
 naturally that it was impossible to doubt 
 its genuineness. To such people he was a 
 man who never seemed to have much to do 
 beyond trimming the nails of his very 
 white hands, and sniffing at the choice 
 flowers in his button-hole, and now and 
 then dashing off his signature at the foot 
 of some document which he never seemed 
 to be at the trouble of reading. 
 
 Yet no one ever seemed to doubt Matthew 
 Kelvin's ability in his profession, unpro- 
 fessional as he was — -judged by the ordi- 
 nary types of provincial lawyers — in many 
 of his ways and doings. But, then, he 
 was a sort of second cousin to Sir Frederick 
 Carstairs of Wemley, and that perhaps 
 made some difference. Many people thought 
 it did, for the Carstairs were a very old 
 family ; and where's the use of having good 
 blood in one's veins unless it declares itself 
 in some shape or other ? 
 
 Mr. Kelvin was fond of hunting, and sub- 
 scribed liberally to the Thorndale pack. 
 Few faces were more familiar in the field
 
 IN THE LA WYEKS OFFICE, 7 
 
 tlian his, and he was always nominated as 
 one of the stewards of the Hunt Ball. 
 Having a good voice, and being fond of 
 singing, it was only natural that he should 
 te a member of the Pembridge Catch Club ; 
 besides this, he was chairman of the Lite- 
 rary Institute. One winter he gave a 
 couple of lectures on " Some Recent Dis- 
 •coveries in Astronomy," with illustrative 
 drawings by himself; while on more than 
 one occasion he had treated the whole of 
 the workhouse children to an Orrery or a 
 Panorama, and even to that wicked place — 
 the Circus. 
 
 Matthew Kelvin lived with his mother, 
 in the house where he had been born. His 
 father had been dead some twelve years 
 when we first make his acquaintance. The 
 business had come down from his grand- 
 father, who had been the first Matthew 
 Kelvin known in Pembridge. 
 
 Perhaps the finest trait in Matthew's 
 character was his love and reverence for 
 his mother, who had been more or less of 
 a,n invalid for many years. For her sake,
 
 8 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 when she was ill, and hungered for his 
 presence by her bedside, he would give up 
 his most pressing engagements, and sit by 
 the hour together reading novels to her — a 
 class of literature to which he rarely con- 
 descended at other times. 
 
 Mrs. Kelvin, who was a sensible, clear- 
 sighted woman enough in the ordinary 
 afiairs of life, still cherished a strange pre- 
 ference for the milk-and-water novels and 
 vapid romances of the Minerva Press school, 
 such as had been fashionable when she was 
 a girl ; and it was pleasant to see her son 
 reading out this rubbish to her with the 
 gravest air possible, hiding his contempt 
 and weariness under a well-feigned interest 
 in the fortunes and misfortunes of some 
 book-muslin heroine, or some hero with 
 chiselled features who was never anything^ 
 less than a lord in disguise. 
 
 Of such books as these Mrs. Kelvin never 
 seemed to tire. It may be that they car- 
 ried her back for a little while to the days 
 of her youth, when she too was young and 
 blooming ; and that when buried in their
 
 TN THE LA WYER'S OFFICE. 9 
 
 pages she forgot for a brief hour or two that 
 she was nothing now but a grey-haired 
 woman — old, sickly, and a widow. 
 
 There were people still alive in Pern- 
 bridge, to whom the one romantic episode 
 in the life of Barbara Kelvin was known in 
 all its details. It was this : — The present 
 Mathew Kelvin's father had run away with 
 and married Miss Barbara Carstairs, an 
 orphan niece of the late Sir Frederick Car- 
 stairs of Wemley, one of the chief magnates 
 for twenty miles round. Miss Carstairs, to 
 be sure, had not a penny that she could 
 call her own, and was living the life of a 
 genteel dependent at Wemley, when young 
 Kelvin — who was passing backwards and 
 forwards between Sir Frederick and his 
 father, in connection with certain law busi- 
 ness — persuaded her to elope. But the 
 fact that Miss Carstairs' sole earthly pos- 
 sessions consisted of the clothes on her 
 back and a solitary spade guinea in her 
 purse, by no means lessened the magnitude 
 of the offence of which the audacious young 
 lawyer had been guilty. There was an
 
 lo A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 outcry of horror, accompanied by a turning 
 up of eyes and a lidding up of hands, as 
 the news spread from one country house to 
 another ; but nothing could be done save 
 to excommunicate the late Miss Carstairs, 
 ■with " bell, book, and candle," and try to 
 forget that any such creature had ever had 
 an existence. 
 
 Whether, when the romance of girlhood 
 was over, Mrs. Kelvin ever regretted that 
 she had forgotten the obligations of caste 
 in order to become the wife of a ]")rovincial 
 lawyer, was a fact best known to herself; 
 but if any such regret ever made itself felt 
 at her heart, it never found expression at 
 her lips. Her husband was fond of her, 
 -and never stinted her in any way, and her 
 life, quiet though it was, w^as not without its 
 consolations. It was surely better to have 
 a husband and a home, and to be the recog- 
 nized leader of middle-class Pembridsfe so- 
 ciety, than to live and die in single blessed- 
 ness, a wretched nobody, in her uncle's grand 
 cold mansion at Wemley. Like a sensible 
 woman, she made the best of her position.
 
 IN THE LA WYER'S OFFICE. 1 1 
 
 She had her little re-unions, her Tuesdays, 
 when everybody that was worth knowing 
 in Pembridge, met in the little drawing- 
 room over her husband's office, and where 
 her simple hospitalities were dispensed with 
 a grace and refinement that would have 
 done no discredit to Wemley itself. But 
 all those things now belonged to the past. 
 At the time we make Mrs. Kelvin^s ac- 
 quaintance she had seen her sixtieth birth- 
 day, and was a confirmed invalid. 
 
 This home of the Kelvins for three gene- 
 rations was a substantially-built red-brick 
 house that dated from the era of the second 
 George, It was not in the Pembridge 
 main street, but formed one of a dozen 
 houses similar to itself in a short retired 
 street that opened out of the busier tho- 
 roughfare. It was the kind of house that 
 — if houses could do such things — you 
 would naturally expect to shrink into its 
 foundations with horror, if ever compelled 
 to have for its next-door neighbour anything 
 so vulgar as a shop. The massive front 
 door, with its lion's head knocker, opened
 
 12 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 into a good-sized entrance-hall, at the far- 
 end of which was a tiny glass-fronted den 
 sacred to the use of Mr. Piper ; from which 
 coign of vantage that ingenuous youth could 
 see everybody who came in or went out, 
 could tell this person to wait or usher that 
 one into his master's office, and answer all 
 inquiries ; and could furthermore refresh 
 himself by keeping up a guerilla warfare of 
 repartee and chaff with the clerks as they 
 passed into or out of their office. On the 
 left as you entered from the street was the 
 door which opened into Matthew Kelvin's 
 private office. On the right hand were, 
 first, the door which opened into the clerk's 
 office, and secondly, the door of a waiting- 
 room. Beyond these was a door which 
 opened on to a private staircase. The real 
 entrance to the private part of the house 
 was down a covered passage at the side. 
 Such passages were by no means infrequent 
 in Pembridge. Manj^ of the best houses in 
 the place opened, not from the street, but 
 from these side entries. Behind the house 
 was an extensive piece of garden ground.
 
 IN THE LAIVYER'S OFFICE. 13 
 
 containing fruit trees and rustic seats, and 
 any quantity of old-fashioned sweet-smell- 
 ing flowers such as our grandfathers and 
 grandmothers dearly loved, but which look 
 so dreadfully out of place in these days of 
 riband-gardening and floral mathematics. 
 
 ''Why, who on earth expected to see 
 you T said Mr. 'Kelvin, as he shook hands 
 heartily with Miss Deane. 
 
 "Not you, I daresay, Matthew," answered 
 Miss Deane, with a blush and a little sigh, 
 as she looked straight into his handsome 
 face. 
 
 " Why not I as much as anyone ?" 
 queried her cousin with a smile, as he 
 placed a chair for her at no great distance 
 from his own. " You always were fond of 
 change, Olive." 
 
 She smiled again, a little bitterly. 
 «' Why don't you add — like all my 
 sex ?" 
 
 " Because I was speaking to one of your 
 sex. Had I been talking to a man, I 
 should probably have used those very 
 words. Olive, I'm really glad to see you,
 
 14 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 whether you come holiday-making, or 
 whether you come because you have left 
 Lady— Lady T 
 
 " Lady CuUoden. Yes, I have left her. 
 I grew tired of my situation. Slights in- 
 numerable ; one petty insult after another : 
 my position not properly recognised : till 
 at last I felt that I must speak my mind 
 or die. I did speak my mind, and in a 
 way that her ladyship is not likely to for- 
 get. We parted. I felt a longing to see 
 Pembridge and my old friends. I wanted 
 to see my aunt — and you." 
 
 " You know that you are always sure of 
 a welcome here." 
 
 "But my aunt — how is she?" asked Miss 
 Deane. 
 
 " No better, I am sorry to say ; neither 
 do I see much prospect of her ever being 
 so. She is confined very much to her own 
 room." 
 
 " Poor dear aunt ! I am very very sorry 
 to hear that she is no better. Does she 
 keep up her good spirits T 
 
 " Yes," replied Mr. Kelvin ; " her spirits
 
 IN THE LAWYERS OFFICE. 15. 
 
 are, as they have always been, something 
 wonderful." 
 
 "I believe, Matthew, that I love her 
 better than I ever loved my own mother." 
 
 '' No one can know my mother without 
 liking her," he returned. 
 
 " And then what a gentlewoman she 
 is !" said Olive. " There is as much dif- 
 ference between her and Lady Culloden as 
 there is between a flower cut out of a tur- 
 nip and a real camellia." 
 
 Olive Deane at this time was twenty- 
 eight years old. The money which her 
 mother — a sister of the second Matthew 
 Kelvin — had taken as a dowry to her hus- 
 band had soon been squandered in wild 
 speculations, and it had been impressed 
 •upon Olive's mind, almost from the time 
 when she could remember anything, that 
 she would have to earn her own living; 
 and she started with that idea the very 
 first day she went to school. Her mother 
 died when she was ten years old, and her 
 father when she was fifteen ; and from the 
 latter age till now she had been altogether
 
 i6 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 dependent on her own exertions for her 
 daily bread. The Kelvins would gladly 
 have assisted her, both then and subse- 
 quently, but the girl would accept no help. 
 She went out as nursery governess in the 
 first instance, and had gone on, step by 
 step, till she could now command her 
 ninety or hundred guineas a year as finish- 
 ing governess in families of distinction. 
 Olive Deane had taken to teaching as na- 
 turally as a duck takes to water. She 
 had had five years at a really good French 
 school before her father's death, but every- 
 thing else she owed to her own love of 
 knowledge and indomitable perseverance. 
 The wasteful extravagance of which she 
 had been a witness when a child at home, 
 had not been without its effect upon her. 
 She grew up thrifty, self-denying, econo- 
 mical in every way ; and now, at twenty- 
 eight years of age, she was mistress of four 
 hundred pounds, which her cousin Matthew 
 had advantageously invested for her in 
 Pembridge gas shares. 
 
 Olive's sole recreation was a visit now
 
 IN THE LAWYER'S OFFICE, 17 
 
 and then to the theatre. A classical play 
 of the sterling old school, she delighted in. 
 She was an omnivorous reader. Anything, 
 from a French novel to the last philoso- 
 phical essay, had an interest for her. To 
 learn : to know : was all she asked. The 
 quality of the knowledge mattered little 
 or nothing. Wherever she might be, she 
 generally contrived to have half an hour s 
 reading of the Times, so as to keep herself a?^ 
 courant with the chief political movements 
 of the day. She had a clear, hard mascu- 
 line intellect, with no sentimental nonsense 
 about it, as her cousin Matthew often de- 
 clared — and he was a great admirer of 
 Olive : in fact, he had been heard to say 
 that if Olive had been a man he would 
 have made her his partner long ago. 
 
 Miss Deane was a little above the ordi- 
 nary stature of her sex. She had a lithe, 
 slender figure, and in all her movements 
 she was graceful, easy, and self-possessed. 
 She had clearly-cut, well-defined features, 
 and many people would have called her 
 handsome. But she certainly lacked 
 
 VOL. I. 2
 
 i8 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 colour. Her clear olive complexion — 
 .strangely in accordance with her name — 
 was too clear and too colourless. Only on 
 very rare occasions was its waxen pallor 
 flushed through with the faintest tinge of 
 damask. She had magnificent eyebrows, and 
 eyes of the darkest brown, that looked jet- 
 black by candlelight, with a keen, watchful 
 look in them, begotten, perhaps, of the 
 time when, little more than a child, she 
 had to fight her way through the world 
 and found a thorn or a pitfall at every step 
 .she took. Her hair, too, was black, but a 
 dull, dead, lustreless black, without the 
 slightest gloss of brightness in it, and very 
 fine in quality. She almost invariably 
 dressed in black, with white linen cuffs 
 turned up from the wrist, and a white 
 linen turn-down collar fastened with a 
 simple bow of mauve or violet riband. 
 No ear-rings, no brooch, no ornaments of 
 any kind visible, except an inch of the gold 
 chain that held her watch. 
 
 " I thought we should have heard the 
 news of your wedding before now, Olive," 
 said Mr. Kelvin.
 
 IN THE LAWYER'S OFFICE. 19 
 
 *^ The news of my wedding, Matthew ! 
 You will never hear that." 
 
 " Never is a long word, Olive. Such a 
 nice, clever girl as you are can't be des- 
 tined to live and die an old maid." 
 
 Olive's black eyebrows came together for 
 a moment, and she tapped the floor im- 
 patiently with her foot. 
 
 " It almost seemed at one time, Olive, as 
 if you and I would have come together," 
 went on Kelvin, while his fingers toyed 
 absently with a paper-knife. " Those were 
 pleasant days — those old days on the sands 
 at E-edcar, when I was recovering from my 
 sprain, and you did your best to nurse me. 
 You used to read novels to me, and play to 
 me on that vile old lodging-house piano ; 
 and out of gratitude I taught you cribbaga 
 and ecarte. I have never enjoyed a holi- 
 day like that. Do you remember our long 
 row by moonlight, and how we kissed as 
 "we stepped out of the boat on to the wet 
 sands T 
 
 No word from Olive : only a far-away 
 look in her eyes, and the thin straight 
 
 2—2
 
 20 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 line of her lips looking thinner and straighter 
 than before. 
 
 " And yet it all came to nothing !" re- 
 sumed Kelvin, glancing carelessly at her. 
 " It might have come to something : wha 
 knows? Only, two hours later, I was tele- 
 graphed for to London, and 
 
 "And, as you say, Matthew," interrupted. 
 Olive, " it came to nothing. So much the 
 better probably for both of us." 
 
 " Certainly so much the better for you^^ 
 Olive ; but whether or not for me, may be 
 open to doubt. Why, even in those old 
 days that now seem so far away, when you 
 and I were girl and boy together, how fond 
 we were of each other ! Do you remember 
 that afternoon when the swing broke down 
 and I pitched on my head, and how you 
 cried over my bruises as if your heart would 
 break T 
 
 " I have not forgotten," said Olive, in a 
 low voice. 
 
 *' Whenever I go into a chemist's shop^ 
 it takes me back in memory to your fathers 
 little surgery. How cleverly you used to
 
 2N THE LAWYERS OFFICE, 2r 
 
 help him with his drugs and mixtures ! 
 You seemed to know the contents of every 
 gallipot and bottle almost as well as he 
 did. If you had been a man you would 
 have been a doctor." 
 
 " Possibly so," said Olive. 
 
 "I remember when Farmer Sinclair's 
 dog bit you/' continued Mr. Kelvin, " how 
 bravely you bore the pain. The dog died 
 a week after, and some people said you had 
 poisoned it ; but I scouted the idea." 
 
 " But I did poison the brute," replied 
 Olive. 
 
 " You did r 
 
 "Why not? ilt bit me in the wrist. 
 I have the scar now. It was not fit to live." 
 
 Matthew Kelvin shrugged his shoulders, 
 but did not rejoin. 
 
 " But why call up such reminiscences ?" 
 said Olive. " I want to hear about your- 
 self. A rising man like you, Matthew — a 
 man born to fight his way upward — how is 
 it that you are still unmarried ? A rich 
 wnfe would do so much to help forward 
 your ambitious schemes 1"
 
 22 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 " My ambitious schemes, indeed ;" said 
 Kelvin, with a sly twinkle in his eye. 
 " What has a simple-minded country law- 
 yer like me to do with ambition ?" 
 
 " I know you too well, Matthew, not to 
 feel sure that in ten years from this time 
 you hope to be in a very different posi- 
 tion." 
 
 Kelvin dropped the paper knife with 
 which he had been playing, and gazed 
 steadily at his cousin for a moment before 
 speaking. 
 
 Her eyes met his unshrinkingly. 
 
 " You are right, Olive/' he said, speak- 
 ing 'gravely enough now. " 1 do cherish 
 some strangely bold dreams. I am an am- 
 bitious man ; but you are the only person 
 who seems to have divined that fact. I 
 am far richer than the world knows of; 
 and, but that it would almost break my 
 mother's beart, I should have given up the 
 old business years ago. In any case, I 
 shall dispose of it before long. I can afford 
 now to put it behind me. The first step 
 in my ambition is to get into Parliament.
 
 IN THE LA WYER'S OFFICE. 23. 
 
 And SO you think I ought to get married, 
 
 eh r 
 
 " Yes — to a woman who could help you 
 forward in your career by sympathizing 
 with and comprehending the aims and ob- 
 jects of your ambition. No mere drawing- 
 room doll must be your wife, but a woman 
 fitted in heart and brain to be your com- 
 panion." 
 
 ^' I won't say that you are not right,'' 
 said Mr. Kelvin. *' But in these matters 
 men rarely do that which their friends 
 think they ought to do. Cupid, you 
 know, never went to school, and his pro- 
 blems cannot be worked out by rule-of- 
 three." 
 
 " That may apply to a very young man,, 
 who lacks sense to know what is best for 
 him and where to look for it ; but not to 
 
 you." 
 
 " That is just where you make a mistake, 
 Olive. What will you say of my strength 
 of mind — of my common sense — when I 
 tell you that I have fallen in love with a 
 simple country girl with nothing to recom-
 
 24 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 mend her save a pretty face and the finest 
 eyes in the world V 
 
 Olive Deane rose slowly to her feet. 
 Her face grew whiter ; her eyes blacker ; 
 her thick brows made a straight, unbroken 
 line across her forehead. If looks had 
 power to slay, Mr. Kelvin would have been 
 annihilated on the spot. But his face was 
 turned the other way. His own thoughts 
 held him. He was gazing meditatively 
 into the fire. 
 
 "And she — she accepted you, of course?" 
 said Olive, at last, her voice hardly raised 
 above a whisper. 
 
 "On the contrary, she rejected me." 
 
 "How I hate her for it!" Then she 
 added, under her breath, "But I should 
 have hated her worse if she had accepted 
 him." 
 
 " You are the only person in the world, 
 Olive, to whom I have breathed a word of 
 this." 
 
 " Your confidence is safe with me, Mat- 
 thew." 
 
 " I am sure of that, and it is a relief to
 
 IN THE LAWYER'S OFFICE. 25 
 
 me to talk to you. To you, Olive, I can 
 always talk as to a sister/' 
 
 " Yes — as to a sister/' she said, with a 
 slow nod of the head. Then she shivered 
 slightly, as if with cold, and held out her 
 hands to the blaze. " Go on, Matthew. 
 You are sure of my sympathy in any 
 case." 
 
 " Need I tell you any more, Olive T 
 
 *' I want you to tell me all about the 
 affair, from beginning to end. You have 
 piqued my curiosity, and now you must 
 satisfy it." 
 
 Kelvin paused for a moment or two, as if 
 to pull himself together. 
 
 " It seems strange to take even you into 
 my confidence," he said, " and yet I feel as 
 if I must tell some one — especially after 
 what happened yesterday. To begin, then. 
 I fell in love with this girl, Eleanor Lloyd 
 — madly, desperately in love. Her father, 
 Jacob Lloyd, was a well-to-do small land- 
 owner, whose affairs I managed for him. 
 He seconded my suit, but, as I have said 
 already, the girl rejected me. I am a
 
 26 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 patient man. I waited six months, and 
 then I spoke to Miss Lloyd again — spoke 
 more warmly and strongly than a less in- 
 fatuated man would have done. Again 
 she rejected me ; this time in a way that I 
 can neither forget nor forgive. I vowed 
 that I would some day humble her haughty 
 pride — and that day has come. Six months 
 ago Jacob Lloyd died without a will. He 
 had been speculating greatly for years, and 
 Eleanor Lloyd, much to her own surprise 
 and that of everyone else, found herself an 
 heiress to the amount of something over 
 twenty thousand pounds. When I first 
 knew this, I thought that the day of my 
 revenge had gone by for ever. But I was 
 wrong. Such was the state of affairs yes- 
 terday : to-day they are very different." 
 
 " In what way are they different to- 
 day r 
 
 "Listen. Before administering to Mr. 
 Lloyd's will, it was necessary thci.t I should 
 be in a position to prove that Miss Lloyd 
 was really the person the world believed 
 her to be. Jacob Lloyd left an immense
 
 IN THE LA WYERS OFFICE. 27 
 
 mass of papers behind him, amongst which 
 I was not long in finding his marriage cer- 
 tificate ; but I failed to find any document 
 having reference either to the birth or 
 baptism of his daughter. Having some 
 other important matters on hand just then, 
 and there being no particular hurry in the 
 affair, I did not prosecute my search very 
 vigorously. I knew that about the time 
 Miss Lloyd was born, Jacob Lloyd and his 
 wife were travelling, either for health or 
 pleasure, from place to ]ilace, and I had 
 little doubt that when a proper search came 
 to be made I should be able to find the in- 
 formation I wanted. A few days ago, how- 
 ever, there came into my hands certain 
 documentary proofs, full and complete, 
 of the truth of what I am now going to tell 
 you. Eleanor Lloyd is not the daughter 
 of Jacob Lloyd, nor any relation of his 
 whatever. She is neither more nor less 
 than a child adopted in infancy by him and 
 his wife, they having no family of their 
 own. The fortune left by Jacob Lloyd is 
 the property of a nephew, Gerald Warbur-
 
 ^8 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 ton, now living somewhere on the Con- 
 tinent. The wonnan who rejected me is an 
 -absolute pauper/' 
 
 '' A strange story — a very strange story, 
 indeed, cousin Matthew !" 
 
 ''Eleanor Lloyd has to come here two 
 hours hence to sign certain deeds. She 
 will enter this room a rich woman ; she 
 will leave it penniless !" 
 
 " And you will be revenged ?" 
 
 " And I shall be revenged." 
 
 They were both silent, thinking their 
 own thoughts. 
 
 "Where has she been living since the 
 death of her father ?" said Olive. 
 
 " She has been living very quietly at 
 Bridgely, her own home." 
 
 " But has it not been her intention to 
 take up a position in society, such as her 
 supposed wealth would entitle her to 
 •occupy ?" 
 
 " Lady Dudgeon, the wife of one of out 
 Pembridge magnates, has taken her by the 
 iiand, and has constituted herself Miss 
 Lloyd's chaperone. Eleanor is to accom-
 
 IN THE LA WYER'S OFFICE. 29. 
 
 pany her ladyship to London in the spring, 
 and will then make her debut." 
 
 " To how many people is Miss Lloyd's 
 true parentage known T 
 
 " Not a soul in the world knows of it 
 except myself — and you.'' 
 
 " Good. And your idea of revenge is to 
 break this news to Miss Lloyd suddenly — 
 here — this very morning — and so crush 
 her?" 
 
 '' It is." 
 
 " A man's idea — poor and commonplace. 
 Shall I tell you what mine — a woman's 
 idea of revenge — would be in such a case ?" 
 
 " You are a clever girl, Olive, and you 
 pique my curiosity." 
 
 " Were I in your place, I would keep 
 my discovery a profound secret for some 
 time to come. I would let her for a little 
 while taste all the pleasures that wealth 
 can confer. I would let her go on till a 
 life of ease and self-indulgence should have 
 become as it were a second nature to her. 
 I would let her live on in blissful ignorance 
 of the thunderbolt you have in store for
 
 30 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 her till she has learned to love — perhaps 
 even till she is engaged to be married." 
 
 "Eleanor married to another! I never 
 thought of that," said Kelvin, under his 
 breath. 
 
 " Then, when you think the comedy has 
 lasted long enough, you shall go to her 
 some day when she is surrounded by her 
 fine friends — on her wedding morning it- 
 self, if it so please you — and, touching her 
 on the shoulder, you shall say to her, 
 ' Eleanor Lloyd, you are a beggar !' Her 
 fall from wealth to poverty will then seem 
 infinitely greater than it would do now, and 
 yours will be a revenge worthy of the name." 
 
 " A devilish scheme, Olive, and one 
 which only an Italian — or a woman — 
 would have thought of 1" 
 
 "You flatter me," said Olive, with a 
 little liftiDg of the shoulders, and the ghost 
 of a smile playing round her thin lips. 
 
 To say that Mr. Kelvin was thoroughly 
 startled, is to say no more than the 
 truth. Olive was right. There w^ould 
 be a refinement — a subtlety — about such
 
 IN THE LAWYER'S OFFICE. 31 
 
 ^ scheme which his own scheme alto- 
 gether lacked. But, would it not be a 
 mean and dastardly advantage to take of 
 an innocent girl like Eleanor Lloyd ? He 
 got up from his chair and crossed to the 
 window, and then walked slowly back again 
 and sat down without a word. He was a 
 man whom circumstances had never before 
 tempted to step out of the beaten track of 
 morality. The orthodox path had for him 
 been paved with golden guineas. So far 
 as he had seen, it was only reprobates who 
 went astray, or were foolish enough to do 
 anything which the general opinion of 
 society condemned ; simpletons, in fact, 
 who could not understand that to do right 
 — in a worldly point of view — was a far 
 better paying game than to do its opposite. 
 But Olive's words had found the weak 
 place in his armour. His judgment did 
 not fail him so utterly as to mislead him 
 with regard to the meanness of what he 
 meditated, but his own wishes and desires 
 in the matter threw a sort of lime-light 
 glamour over it, which made it seem some-
 
 32 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 tiling altogether different from what it 
 really was. 
 
 " I'll do it, Olive/' he said at last. '' Yes ; 
 for good or for evil, 111 do it ! Ill crush 
 her prond spirit to the dust. I will humi- 
 liate her as she humiliated me. She shall 
 suffer as I suffered. I will repay scorn with 
 scorn : insult with insult. At the moment 
 of her greatest triumph I will strip her of 
 love, of wealth, of friendship ; and show 
 her to the world for what she really is — a 
 pauper and an outcast !" 
 
 " Bravely spoken, Matthew ! Don't let 
 her soft looks or winning ways melt you 
 from your purpose," said Olive, as she 
 pushed back her chair. " And now I will 
 go upstairs to my aunt." 
 
 Kelvin put his elbows on the table, and 
 rested his face in his hands. Olive 
 stood looking down at him for a moment. 
 There was a tear in the corner of her eve, 
 but a smile played round her mouth. She 
 went up to him and laid her hand gently 
 on his shoulder. " I shall see you later in 
 the day, shall I not ?"
 
 IN THE LA WYERS OFFICE. 35, 
 
 li 
 
 Yes — later in the day," he answered, 
 absently, without lookiDg up. 
 
 Olive went ; and presently Mr. Piper's 
 head was seen. 
 
 " Captain Dixon, sir, has sent for you. 
 He's been taken ill and wants his will 
 drawn up without delay." 
 
 Kelvin roused himself from his abstrac- 
 tion. " Another fool who has put off till 
 the day of his death what he ought to have 
 done years ago." He began to put his 
 papers together, but still in an absent- 
 minded way. " This is a damnable thing 
 to do. I despise myself for promising ta 
 do it," he muttered. " And yet why should 
 she not suffer ? I have only to call to mind 
 her words — her looks — that summer even- 
 ing in the garden, when for the second 
 time I pleaded my love before her : I have 
 only to remember how she turned on me, 
 as if I were a reptile, to feel my purpose 
 harden within me, and every grain of pity 
 melt out of my soul !" 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 CHAPTEH 11. 
 
 MISS BELLAMY. 
 
 m 
 
 HE place was Miss Eellamy's lodg- 
 ings in Ormond Square, Bays- 
 water, and the time eight p.m.^ 
 on a frosty evening in mid-winter. 
 The people were two : Miss Bellamy her- 
 self, and her guest, Mr. Gerald Warburton. 
 Miss Bellamy was forty -five years of age, 
 but looked older. She was spare in person 
 and lengthy in nose, but still retained con- 
 siderable traces of former good looks. She 
 wore her hair, which was fast turning grey, 
 in three old-fashioned curls, fastened down 
 with combs on either side her face. She
 
 MISS BELLAMY. 35 
 
 always wore silk in an afternoon, either 
 brown or black — thick, rustling silk, made 
 to wear and last, that would turn and dye, 
 and then look nearly as good as new. Pri- 
 vately, Miss Bellamy used spectacles, but 
 no one had ever seen her wear them except 
 Eliza, the maid-of-all-work ; and it was 
 currently reported in the house that that 
 young person had been bribed with two 
 half-crowns never to divulge the terrible 
 secret. 
 
 Gerald War burton was a tall, dark-com- 
 plexioned young fellow, some six or seven 
 and twenty years old. He had a refined 
 aquiline face, a pair of dark eyes, behind 
 which a smile seemed always to be lurking, 
 and black, silky hair. He had an easy, 
 lounging, graceful manner, more common 
 among Frenchmen or Italians than among 
 us stiff-necked islanders ; but then, he had 
 lived so much abroad that he could hardly 
 be said to belong to one country more than 
 another. He possessed the happy faculty 
 of adapting himself with ease to whatever 
 place or persons he might be associated 
 
 3—2
 
 36 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 with. Whether living among Laps and 
 reindeer, or smoking the pipe of peace in 
 an Indian wigwam, he made himself equally 
 at home ; and what was still rarer, he made 
 those with whom he happened to be feel 
 that, for the time being, he was one of 
 themselves. No Frenchman would have 
 made a mistake as to his nationality, but 
 in a walk down Regent Street or Pall Mall 
 it is not improbable that half the people 
 who noticed him would have set him down 
 as a foreigner. 
 
 Just now he was employed, after a tho- 
 roughly English fashion, in the slow but 
 sure consumption of a thoroughly English 
 beefsteak. Occasionally he paused to re- 
 fresh himself from the cup of fragrant tea 
 at his elbow. Miss Bellamy sat opposite 
 to him, looking on with admiring eyes. 
 The more beefsteak he ate and the more 
 tea he drank, the more Miss Bellamy ad- 
 mired him, from which we may conclude 
 that she at least was thoroughly English. 
 Gerald had just reached London, after 
 twenty-four hours of unbroken travelling.
 
 MISS BELLAMY 37 
 
 " I wish I could induce you to take 
 another lump of sugar in your tea," said 
 Miss Bellamy. " I never think that you 
 get the real flavour of the leaf without 
 plenty of sugar to assist it." 
 
 " There you must allow me to differ from 
 you/' said Gerald. '' To put sugar in tea 
 seems to me simply to spoil it." Miss 
 Bellamy smiled and shook her head. 
 
 " Then you really have some faint recol- 
 lection of having seen me when you were 
 a, child ?" she said, after a pause. 
 
 "Yes, a very clear and distinct recol- 
 lection of sitting on your knee and being 
 fed with sugar plums." 
 
 ^' Ah, you are far too big now to care for 
 sugar plums," said Miss Bellamy with a 
 little sigh. 
 
 " Not at all too big. Only that I now 
 require a different kind of sugar plum to 
 keep me good, from those I cared for then." 
 
 '' Why, you could not have been more 
 than four years old !*' 
 
 " I suppose that was about my age." 
 
 *' And I never saw your poor dear mamma 
 -after that day 1"
 
 38 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 " I was just ten years old when T lost my 
 mother," said Gerald, gravely. 
 
 "Four of us, there were, all bosom 
 friends, and they called us the Four Graces 
 in the little town where we were born and 
 brought up ; and now I am the only one 
 that is left alive !" said Miss Bellamy, with 
 a little quaver in her voice. " There was 
 Ellen Barry : she married your uncle, 
 Jacob Lloyd. Then there was Minna, 
 Jacob's sister, who married your father. 
 The third was Mary Greaves, who married 
 Mr. Ambrose Murray. There seemed to be 
 no husband left for me : but, thank Heaven, 
 I have never felt the need of one !"j 
 
 " It is never too late to make a change 
 for the better," said Gerald, demurely, as 
 he pushed away his plate. 
 
 " In my case it would have been for the 
 worse. I should only have tormented some 
 poor man's life out of him, and no one can 
 lay that to my charge now.'* 
 
 As soon as Eliza had cleared the table, 
 Miss Bellamy put a tiny copper kettle to 
 simmer on the hob, and then produced a
 
 MISS BELLAMY. 39, 
 
 bottle of whisky, a lemon, and the other 
 materials necessary for brewing a glass of 
 punch. From another cupboard she brought 
 out a box of cigars, which she had made a 
 special journey into the City to buy. Being 
 no judge of such articles, or their cost, she 
 had brought back a box of what Mr. Piper 
 would have called " duffers." 
 
 " Snuff- ta,king among gentlemen is going 
 quite out of fashion nowadays," she had 
 said to herself "But IVe no doubt Gerald 
 is fond of a cigar, and 111 not trouble about 
 the curtains for once." 
 
 " You don't seem in the least curious 
 about the news I've got to tell you/' said 
 Miss Bellamy at last. 
 
 " No, I'm very comfortable/' said Gerald 
 as he sipped his grog, "and more than 
 that a man need not wish to be." 
 
 " And yet you have come all the way 
 from the south of France to hear it ?" 
 
 " And yet I have come all the way from 
 France to hear it ! But I daresay it will 
 keep a little longer." 
 
 " Just your poor mother's careless way of
 
 40 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 looking at things/' said Miss Bellamy with 
 a smile and a shake of the head. " Just 
 the same easy way that I remember so 
 well/' She gazed into the fire for a few 
 moments, her mind far away among the 
 things of the past. 
 
 '' How long did you say that your father 
 has been dead, Gerald ?" 
 
 " A little more than two years." 
 
 " And no reconciliation ever took place 
 between your uncle Jacob and him ?" 
 
 " None whatever. My father knew he 
 w^as in the wrong, and that only served to 
 embitter him still more against my uncle. 
 My uncle could neither forgive nor forget 
 my father s cruel treatment of my mother. 
 I believe that if a woman's heart was ever 
 broken, hers was." 
 
 ^' Don't talk in that way, Gerald. You 
 must not forget that the man was your 
 father." 
 
 " Can I ever forget it ?" said Gerald, bit- 
 terly. " You were my mother's friend, and 
 I tell you distinctly that my father broke 
 her heart. The bitterest tears that ever I
 
 MISS BELLAMY. 41 
 
 shed, or that I ever can shed in this world, 
 
 were those with which I mourned her loss." 
 
 " You left home soon afterwards, did you 
 
 not r 
 
 " I was thirteen years old when I ran 
 away to sea. By that time my father's 
 tyranny had become unendurable. One 
 victim had eluded him by dying, but I was 
 still left. On the morning of my birthday 
 I left home to seek my fortune, my sole 
 earthly possessions being four-and-sixpence 
 in money, two ally-taws, an apple, and a 
 thick slice of bread.'' 
 
 " But you saw your father again after 
 that ?" 
 
 " On two occasions only, and then only 
 at an hotel where we met by appointment. 
 Time had softened my bitterness against 
 him, but not his against me. Had I been 
 a dog at his feet he could hardly have 
 treated me worse. Reconciliation on the 
 terms proposed by him was impossible." 
 
 « Were you not with him when he died?" 
 
 " No. He died rather suddenly, and I 
 was abroad at the time."
 
 42 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 " But at least, he surely did not forget 
 you in his will V 
 
 '' He left everything to different charities 
 in the town where he died. There is some 
 talk of erecting a statue to him." 
 
 " My poor boy ! And how have you 
 contrived to live, all these years ?" 
 
 "As I best could ; but all things con- 
 sidered, T have not done amiss. I stopped 
 at sea till I was seventeen; then I got a 
 situation as a storekeeper on a South Ameri- 
 can hacienda, and there I stayed till I was 
 twenty. Growing tired of that, I set up a 
 photographic apparatus and travelled some 
 thousands of miles with it, earning my 
 bread as I went. Those were some of my 
 happiest days. When I was of age, I came 
 into possession of two hundred and fifty 
 pounds a year, left me by my mother. 
 Since that time T have lived chiefly on the 
 Continent, pottering about among anti- 
 quities, buj'ing now and again a bronze, a 
 coin, or a tazza in a cheap market, and sell- 
 ing it in a dear one ; writing at odd times 
 an article for one or other of the magazines;
 
 MrSS BELLAMY. 
 
 43 
 
 having no settled home, leading a vagabond, 
 Bohemian kind of existence, but by no 
 means an unhappy one." 
 
 " You did hear that your uncle Lloyd 
 was dead V 
 
 " Quite by chance I saw the announce- 
 ment in an English newspaper," 
 
 "And yet you never thought it worth 
 your while to inquire w^hether he had re- 
 membered you in his will ?" 
 
 " Knowing that he had a daughter, and 
 that he had never seen me since I was six 
 years old, it did not seem to me worth 
 while to make any such inquiry." 
 
 " It might have been," said Miss Bellamy, 
 drily. 
 
 '" Year uncle died between seven and 
 eight months ago," resumed Miss Bellamy. 
 '' I was away in Guernsey at the time, and 
 did not hear of it till my return to London, 
 some seven weeks since. It was a great 
 shock to me. Your aunt and I had been 
 like sisters, and after her death the friend- 
 ship between Mr. Lloyd and myself re- 
 mained unbroken. It is only about
 
 44 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 eighteen montlis since I left Pembridge 
 and came to reside in London ; and up to 
 that time I was a frequent visitor at 
 Bridgeley, the place where he lived for 
 the last eighteen years. Several years ago 
 Mr. Lloyd put into my hands a sealed 
 packet of papers, addressed to a certain 
 person, and labelled ' not to be opened till 
 after my death,' with a request that I 
 should keep it till that event took place, 
 and then forward it to the person to whom 
 it was addressed. At the time that he 
 placed the packet in my hands he told me 
 of what the contents consisted. The chief 
 document was a statement of certain events 
 in his personal history which were already 
 well known to me, and about which he and 
 I had often talked. As already explained, 
 I did not know of your uncle's death till 
 six or seven weeks ago, consequently it was 
 not till six months after that event that 
 the packet I held could reach the person 
 to whom it belonged. That person ought 
 to have acted on the contents of the packet 
 without a day's unnecessary delay. Seven
 
 MISS BELLAMY. 4^ 
 
 weeks have gone by, and as yet he has 
 taken no action in the matter. It is for 
 that very reason that I sent you so impera- 
 tive a summons to come to me here as 
 quickly as possible." 
 
 Gerald stared across the table at Miss 
 Bellamy as if he could hardly believe the 
 evidence of his ears. " But in what pos- 
 sible way can all this affect me ?" he asked. 
 
 "All this affects you very nearly indeed," 
 answered Miss Bellamy. *' Your uncle 
 Lloyd had been a prudent man. When 
 he was dead, it was discovered that he 
 was worth something over twenty thou- 
 sand pounds. He died without a will, and 
 you are his heir-at-law." 
 
 " I my uncle's heir-at-law !" said Gerald, 
 with a little laugh. " How can that be, 
 my dear Miss Bellamy ? You seem to for- 
 get that my uncle had a daughter." 
 
 *' Your uncle had no daughter." 
 
 Gerald sat speechless for several seconds. 
 " If my cousin Eleanor is dead, I certainly 
 never heard of it." 
 
 " You never had a cousin Eleanor."
 
 46 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 '' My dear Miss Bellamy," said Gerald, 
 " will you kindly run a pin into my arm, 
 so that I may make sure I am not dream- 
 ing." 
 
 ''You are not dreaming, Gerald Warbur- 
 ton. The young lady you have hitherto 
 believed to be your cousin, is no relation 
 v^hatever to you, neither was she any rela- 
 tion to your uncle, Jacob Lloyd. She was 
 simply his adopted daughter/' 
 
 After hearing this startling news, Ge- 
 rald's silence was not to be wondered at. 
 He woke up like a man rousing himself 
 from a dream. 
 
 "■ You have all along known what you 
 have just told me. Miss Bellamy ?" 
 
 "Yes, I have known it all along. But 
 to no one else was the secret ever imparted 
 by your uncle and aunt. Eleanor was 
 adopted by them when she was quite a 
 little thing, and when they were living in 
 a town more than two hundred miles away 
 from Pembridge. For certain reasons they 
 gave her their own name. She never knew, 
 she does not know now, that they were not
 
 MISS BELLAMY. 47 
 
 really lier parents. She loved them as such, 
 and they could not have thought more ten- 
 derly of her had she been that which the 
 world believed her to be. But Jacob Lloyd 
 was not only a kind-hearted man : he was 
 a just one. He shrank from revealing the 
 truth to Eleanor while he was alive, but 
 it was imperatively necessary, for certain 
 reasons which I may one day explain to 
 you, that she should become cognisant of 
 everything after his death. Hence the 
 sealed packet : which contains a duly au- 
 thenticated statement of these facts." 
 
 " You take my breath away ! There is 
 nothing in the ' Arabian Nights ' half so 
 exciting," exclaimed Gerald. 
 
 "The one unfortunate feature of the case 
 is this," resumed Miss Bellamy. " From 
 what your uncle hinted to me at different 
 times, I am perfectly convinced that it was 
 his intention to provide very handsomely for 
 Eleanor. Unfortunately, he kept putting 
 off the making of his will till it was too 
 late. One morning he was found dead in 
 his bed, and the girl whom he brought up
 
 48 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 and cherished as his own child is left an* 
 absolute beggar." 
 
 A tear stood in Miss Bellamy's eye, as 
 she ceased speaking. " There need be no 
 trouble on that score," said Gerald empha- 
 tically. " If, as you state, I am my uncle's- 
 heir, and the young lady, through an un- 
 wise oversight, has been left penniless, 
 why, then, my duty lies clearly before me. 
 Whatever may be the amount that will 
 come to me from my uncle, whether it be 
 a hundred pounds or twenty thousand 
 pounds, this young lady, whom I cannot 
 help looking upon as my cousin, is clearly 
 entitled to half of it. And half of it she- 
 shall have, as sure as my name is Gerald 
 Warburton !'* 
 
 " Don't make any rash promises, Gerald,, 
 in the heat of the moment. You may 
 regret them afterwards." 
 
 " Such a promise as this I could never- 
 regret. I should indeed be base." 
 
 '' It was certainly not in my province to- 
 send for you, and tell you all that you have 
 just now heard," said Miss Bellamy, " ani
 
 MISS BELLAMY. 
 
 49 
 
 under other circumstances I should not 
 have thought of doing so. The lawyer in 
 whose hands was the management of Mr. 
 Lloyd's affairs is the proper person to have 
 communicated with you. He ought to 
 have broken the news to Eleanor, and have 
 communicated with you at the same time. 
 The sealed packet has been in his hands 
 for upwards of seven weeks, and, as yet, 
 he has done neither one thing nor the 
 other." 
 
 " May I ask how you know that he 
 has not yet broken the news to Miss 
 Lloyd?" 
 
 "Because I had a letter from Eleanor 
 only three days ago, written from Stam- 
 mars, the residence of Sir Thomas Dudgeon, 
 where I find that she is visiting. She 
 talks of coming to London with Lady 
 Dudgeon very shortly, and says that her 
 ladyship treats her quite as one of the 
 family — proof positive that Eleanor is still 
 living on in happy ignorance." 
 
 "Perhaps the lawyer did not know 
 where to find me ? Perhaps he has delayed 
 
 VOL. I. 4
 
 so A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 breaking the news to Eleanor on that 
 account ?" 
 
 *' No : I suspect that there is some other 
 motive at the bottom of Matthew Kelvin's 
 strange silence. He has sense enough to 
 know that any letter addressed to you at 
 Brexly would be sure to find you. He 
 knows all about Brexly, and the quarrel 
 between your father and Mr. Lloyd." 
 
 "Kelvin— Matthew Kelvin?" said Gerald, 
 musingly. '' I seem to have heard that 
 name before." 
 
 " You can readily understand why I 
 never breathed even the faintest suspicion 
 of the truth to Eleanor. Such a revela- 
 tion would be too painful for me to make 
 to a person whom I have known and loved 
 from a child. Therefore I have sent for 
 you : and my advice is that you at once go 
 down to Pembridge, see Mr. Kelvin, give 
 him to understand that you know every- 
 thing, and demand from him an explana- 
 tion of his singular silence." 
 
 " Is this Mr. Kelvin aware that you have 
 any knowledge of the real facts of the case ?"
 
 MISS BELLAMY. 51 
 
 " No : I am convinced that he has no 
 such knowledge." 
 
 *' His silence certainly seems rather sin- 
 gular ; but W3 shall probably find on in- 
 quiry that he has been ill, or away from 
 home, or something of that sort." 
 
 Miss Bellamy shook her head. She 
 was far from being convinced. '^ A clever 
 schemer, but not to be trusted/' she said, 
 presumably with reference to Kelvin. 
 
 " But about this cousin who is no cousin — 
 about Eleanor," said Gerald. " You know 
 that I have never seen her. What is she 
 like ? Is she good-looking ? Is she nice ?'^ 
 
 " I don't know what you young gentle- 
 men call nice," said Miss Bellamy. " I 
 don't see young ladies with the eyes that 
 you see them with. Eleanor Lloyd is a 
 dear good girl ; slightly impulsive, perhaps, 
 but open and honest as the day — a girl 
 that any man might be proud to call his 
 wife." 
 
 Gerald pursed his lips a little. Miss 
 Bellamy's outline was too vague to take bis 
 fancy. " A country-bred hoyden, evidently, 
 
 4—2
 
 52 A SECRET OF THE SEA, 
 
 •with red cheeks and large hands, and a 
 healthy appetite/' he muttered to himself. 
 
 " There is one point that you have not 
 enlightened me upon/' he said presently. 
 "But perhaps it is one on which I have no 
 right to question you." 
 
 " Tell me what it is." 
 
 '* You say that Eleanor, when an infant, 
 was adopted by my uncle and aunt. She 
 must have been somebody's child. You 
 have not yet told me who and what her 
 friends were." 
 
 Miss Bellamy's face became more grave 
 and troubled than Gerald had yet seen it. 
 " Pardon me/' he said, " if I have unin- 
 tentionally wounded your feelings." 
 
 '• You have not wounded my feelings. 
 You have only brought back the memory 
 of a very old trouble. But, as I have told 
 you so much, I see no reason why I should 
 not tell you the remainder. You must 
 learn the story sooner or later, and you 
 had better hear it from my lips than from 
 the lips of anyone else." 
 
 "I am so sorry " began Gerald.
 
 MISS BELLAMY. 5j 
 
 "Pray don't say another word. How- 
 were you to know ? — Yes, Gerald Warbur- 
 ton, I will tell you the story, painful though 
 it be — but not now. You have heard 
 enough to ponder over and dream about 
 for one night. I shall just mix you one 
 more glass, and then I shall send you off 
 to bed."
 
 CHAPTER HI. 
 
 THE STORY OF THE MURDER. 
 
 ERALD WAEBUETON had not 
 
 been in London for some time, 
 and two or three days passed 
 quickly and pleasantly away in 
 hunting up old acquaintances, and in see- 
 ing sights that he had never seen before. 
 Besides which, he wanted a little time to 
 familiarize himself with the thought of his 
 new-found fortune. By nature and dispo- 
 sition, he was one of the least worldly of 
 men, and the wandering life he had led for 
 many years had tended to make him more 
 unpractical than he might otherwise have
 
 THE STORY OF THE MURDER. 55 
 
 been. For money, as money, lie cared 
 nothing : nay, he told himself that he 
 thoroughly despised it : but that was pro- 
 bably an exaggeration. He was one of 
 those men who never think of saving — of 
 putting away for a ''rainy day," as the 
 phrase goes — and who never can save, not 
 even when their incomes are doubled or 
 trebled, unless some pressure of an extreme 
 kind (a thrifty wife, for instance, who has a 
 will of her own) is brought to bear upon 
 them. 
 
 As a matter of course, despite all Gerald's 
 unpracticality, one of the most frequent 
 thoughts in his mind just now — a thought 
 turned over and over in his brain during 
 his long solitary walks through London 
 streets — was what he should do with the 
 ten thousand pounds that was coming to 
 him. He had quite made up his mind that 
 the other ten thousand should be handed 
 over to his cousin Eleanor, as he could not 
 help still calling her to himself. Had any- 
 one asked him a few days previously 
 whether ten thousand pounds would have
 
 56 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 satisfied all his earthly wants from a mone- 
 tary point of view, he would have laughed, 
 and answered that half that sum would 
 satisfy his every wish. And yet, now, 
 when so much money was really coming to 
 him, it w^as quite remarkable what a long 
 list of things that might almost be con- 
 sidered indispensable he could count up in 
 his mind. Instead of ten thousand, thirty 
 or forty would be needed before he could 
 get through even the first few pages of his 
 mental catalogue. 
 
 But having got so far, Gerald was obliged 
 to pull himself up suddenly. He called to 
 mind that it was not ten thousand a year 
 that he was coming into, but simply one 
 sum of that value ; and that, however plea- 
 sant it might be to think how easily and 
 agreeably to himself he could have spent the 
 whole of it in the course of a few days ia 
 London or Paris, it would be the height of 
 folly so to do ; such an act would indeed be 
 killing the goose with the golden eggs. 
 No : by judiciously investing his ten thou- 
 sand pounds, he might secure for himself a
 
 THE STORY OF THE MURDER. 57 
 
 comfortable little income of five hundred a 
 year, which sum, when added to the in- 
 come he could already call his own, would 
 serve to make life tolerably pleasant in time 
 to come. He would live in Paris, of course: 
 somehow he always felt more at home in 
 Paris than in London. He would be able 
 to dabble a little more than heretofore 
 among his favourite bronzes, and coins, and 
 old cups and saucers. He could afford 
 a stall rather oftener at the Opera or the 
 Frangais. He would drink a choicer wine 
 to his dinner, and honour his wine with a 
 better repast. A month or six weeks 
 among the glaciers, or in the Black Forest, 
 need no longer be a serious question with 
 him on the score of expense. Altogether, 
 he felt very well satisfied with the pleasant 
 future that seemed looming before him. 
 That he was somewhat of an Epicurean, 
 addicted to self-indulgence, and hardly 
 knowing the meaning of self-sacrifice, can- 
 not be denied ; but it is to be hoped that 
 we shall not altogether lose our interest in 
 him on that account. He had many vague
 
 58 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 noble impulses, as most of us have at one 
 time or another ; but, as yet, no necessity 
 had arisen in his life for testing whether 
 those impulses were strong enough to bear 
 chaining down to the hard rough usages of 
 everyday life. 
 
 Often in his solitary musings he would 
 ask himself of what possible use or service 
 he was to the world in which he found him- 
 self ; and now and then a dim idea would 
 trouble him for awhile that there were 
 many kinds of wheels turning in it, to one 
 or other of which, if he were so minded, he 
 might put his shoulder with some little pro- 
 fit both to himself and his fellows. But when 
 next day came, it would find him leading his 
 old slip-shod far-niente kind of life. Amid 
 the glitter and bustle of the Boulevards, 
 noble impulses and vague ideals seemed of 
 the stuff that poets rave about, and girls 
 weave into the tissue of their dreams. 
 
 The more Miss Bellamy saw of Gerald, 
 the better she liked him. The easy geni- 
 ality of his disposition, and the soft courtesy 
 of his manner, were alike pleasing to her.
 
 THE STORY OF THE MURDER. 59 
 
 Gerald, on his side, conceived a very warm 
 regard for the true-hearted lady who had 
 been his dead mother's dearest friend. He 
 soon got into the way of calling her ^'avint"; 
 the relationship seemed a natural one be- 
 tween them, and the assumption was satis- 
 factory to both. 
 
 Miss Bellamy's sitting-room was a plea- 
 sant apartment, with three French windows 
 that opened on a balcony and that looked 
 out on the grass and trees of the square. 
 It was pleasantly furnished, too; in a some- 
 what old-fashioned style it must be admit- 
 ted ; but then, Miss Bellamy herself was 
 somewhat old-fashioned, so that there was 
 nothing incongruous between the room and 
 its mistress. 
 
 One of Miss Bellamy's most valued pos- 
 sessions was a portrait of her uncle, the 
 late Dean of Winstead. It was a three- 
 quarter-length in oils, with a very ornate 
 frame, and it occupied a post of honour, 
 being hung immediately over the chimney- 
 piece, where it at once attracted the eyes of 
 all who came into the room. The Dean, a
 
 6o A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 very atrabilious-looking gentleman, with a 
 bald head, was represented as seated at a 
 table with one elbow resting on three thick 
 volumes of his own sermons, and with his- 
 thumb and forefinger pressed lightly against 
 his cheek. Pens and ink were upon the table, 
 and the Dean was presumably thinking out 
 another of his discourses. Several copies 
 of his sermons, together with an income of 
 three hundred a year, had come to Miss 
 Bellamy on the death of her reverend rela- 
 tive, so that she had ample reasons for 
 cherishing his memory. You could not pay 
 Miss Bellamy a higher compliment than ta 
 tell her that there was a strong family like- 
 ness between herself and her uncle, and 
 her admiration for him rose almost to the 
 height of hero-worship. She made a point 
 of reading one of his sermons through every 
 Sunday of her life. Her firm belief was- 
 that there were no such eloquent and soul- 
 stirring appeals toanunawakened conscience 
 to be met with in the lukewarm religious 
 literature of to-day, and that you must go 
 back to the days of Jeremy Taylor to find
 
 THE STORY OF THE MURDER. 6i 
 
 anytliing like their equal. From long 
 habit, when sitting near a table, either 
 thinking or working, she naturally fell into 
 the same pose as that of the Dean in his 
 picture — her elbow resting on the table, her 
 thumb and forefinger pressed against her 
 cheek — and those who knew her weakness 
 — her friends, her toadies, and her pen- 
 sioners — whenever they saw her sitting 
 thus, would not fail to remark to her how 
 like she was to her Very Eeverend Uncle. 
 However deeply Gerald's curiosity might 
 be excited to hear the sequel of the strange 
 story which Miss Bellamy had promised to 
 tell him, the subject was evidently so pain- 
 ful a one to her that he could not venture 
 even to hint at his wishes in the matter. 
 There was nothing for it but to wait 
 patiently till she should feel in the humour 
 to tell him what he wanted to know. He 
 was in no particular hurry to take the jour- 
 ney to Pembridge, and a few days more or 
 less in London were of no consequence to 
 him. She had promised to tell him all 
 about Eleanor, and he felt sure that she
 
 62 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 would not break her promise. In so think- 
 ing Gerald was quite right, but it was not 
 until the evening of the fourth day after 
 his arrival in London that Miss Bellamy 
 recurred to the subject in any way. 
 
 " I will tell you to-morrow/' she said to 
 him that evening, as he shook hands with 
 her at parting. " And then you must get 
 down to Pembridge as quickly as you can. 
 You have lingered in London quite long 
 enough." 
 
 Miss Bellamy was a believer in suppers. 
 In fact, she still stuck to the old-fashioned 
 hours for meals to which she had been ac- 
 customed when a girl at home : dinner at 
 half-past one, tea at six, and supper at ten. 
 In such a case supper is generally the 
 pleasantest and most sociable meal of all ; 
 people then seem more inclined for talking 
 than at any other time, and subjects that 
 one hardly cares to mention during the 
 day seem to assimilate themselves quite 
 naturally to the time and place, and come 
 to be discussed without much difficulty. 
 Supper was over, and the cloth removed.
 
 THE STORY OF THE MURDER. 63 
 
 The ni^ht being cold, Miss Bellamy had 
 drawn her easy chair up close to the fire, 
 and now sat resting her chin in the palm of 
 one hand, and gazing silently into the glow- 
 ing embers. Gerald, prepared to listen to 
 a sad story, had thrown himself into an 
 easy chair opposite Miss Bellamy on the 
 other side of the fire. At length Miss 
 Bellamy roused herself with a sigh, and 
 turned on Gerald a face that seemed sud- 
 denly to have grown five years older. 
 
 "Twenty years ago, this very month," 
 she said, " a terrible murder was committed. 
 All murders are terrible in a greater or a 
 lesser degree, but this one was terrible, not 
 merely from the crime itself, but from the 
 after consequences that arose out of it. 
 The name of the murdered man was Paul 
 Stilling ; the place where he was murdered 
 was the Pelican Hotel, Tewkesbury ; and 
 the name of the man who was accused of 
 the crime was Ambrose Murray." 
 
 Gerald started. 
 
 " Stilling was a young man, the junior 
 partner in a firm of Birmingham jewellers.
 
 64 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 At the time he met with his death he had 
 property on him of the value of four thou- 
 sand pounds. It was for the sake of this 
 property that he was murdered. He was 
 found dead in his bed, stabbed to the heart. 
 In the portmanteau of Ambrose Murray, 
 who was stopping that night in the same 
 hotel, was found a bracelet of the value of 
 two hundred pounds, which had belonged 
 to Stilling. No other portion of the pro- 
 perty has, to my knowledge, ever been 
 found from that day to this. 
 
 "Ambrose Murray was arrested, com- 
 mitted for wilful murder, subsequently 
 tried, and condemned to death in due 
 form,'' went on Miss Bellamy. "Before, 
 however, the time had come for carrying 
 out the last dread sentence of the law, 
 symptoms of undoubted insanity mani- 
 fested themselves in the condemned man, 
 and his sentence had to be commuted into 
 imprisonment for life." 
 
 Gerald sat lost in wonder. 
 
 " So far, I daresay, you see nothing un- 
 common in my story — nothing that has any 
 
 I
 
 THE STORY OF THE MURDER. 65 
 
 particular interest for you. But when I 
 tell you that Ambrose Murray's wife was 
 my intimate friend, as well as being the 
 intimate friend of your mother and your 
 aunt — when I tell you that Ambrose Mur- 
 ray's wife died heart-broken within twelve 
 months of the time her husband was taken 
 from her ; when I tell you that the child 
 adopted by your uncle and aunt was none 
 other than the child of a man condemned 
 to death for murder, and that Eleanor 
 Lloyd is in reality Eleanor Murray — when 
 I tell you all this, you cannot say that my 
 story has no interest for you, you cannot 
 say that I have claimed your attention 
 without sufficient warrant for so doing." 
 
 " What a strange chapter of family his- 
 tory you have opened for me," exclaimed 
 Gerald. *' What you told me the other 
 night seemed to me sufficiently wonderful, 
 but this is stranger than all. Poor Eleanor ! 
 poor girl !" he added. " Although I have 
 never seen her, I have always felt that 
 when we did meet I should come t(v 
 regard her as a sister ; and now you tell 
 
 VOL. I. 5
 
 66 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 me that I cannot even claim her as a 
 cousin." 
 
 Miss Bellamy said nothing. She was 
 gazing into the fire again, but with thoughts 
 that were far away. She was roused at 
 last by a direct question from Gerald. 
 
 " How much of the story you have just 
 told me will be known to this Mr. Kelvin, 
 when he comes to open the sealed packet 
 which you sent him by my uncle's instruc- 
 tions T 
 
 ''He will know that Eleanor is no re- 
 lation of your uncle, and that is the news 
 which he will have to break to her. Inside 
 his own packet is a second packet, sealed 
 up and directed to Eleanor, and to be 
 opened by her alone. This packet will tell 
 her everything." 
 
 " What a shock for a girl like her !" 
 
 " You are right, Gerald ; it will be a 
 terrible shock. I cannot tell you how 
 grateful I am that I have been spared the 
 pain of enlightening her." 
 
 " About her father. Did you believe 
 him to be guilty or innocent V
 
 THE STORY OF THE MURDER, 67 
 
 " I would stake my life on Ambrose 
 Murray's innocence. No one who ever 
 knew him would for a single moment be- 
 lieve in his guilt. He was one of the 
 gentlest-hearted men I ever met. There 
 was something almost feminine about him. 
 His was, indeed, a most lovable disposi- 
 tion.^' 
 
 " What was he by profession ?" 
 
 "A doctor. He had been staying at 
 Malvern for the benefit of his health — he 
 was always delicate — and was walking 
 home by easy stages. He had got as far 
 as Tewkesbury, and happened to be stop- 
 ping there on that one particular night 
 when Paul Stilling was murdered." 
 
 '* Is he still alive V 
 
 *' He is. I saw him only a few months 
 ago. In fact, I have been in the habit of 
 visiting him at intervals ever since his 
 wife's death. For many years he did not 
 know me. But gradually — imperceptibly 
 almost — his reason has come back to him, 
 ^nd he is now, and has been for the last 
 five years, as sane as either you or I." 
 
 5—2
 
 68 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 " Is there no prospect of his ever being^ 
 released ?" 
 
 " None whatever, I'm afraid. You see, 
 the crime — assuming him for the moment 
 to have been guilty of it — was committed 
 before his insanity declared itself It is 
 not as though he had been a lunatic at the 
 time of the murder." 
 
 " What a terrible fate ! Does he know 
 that his daughter is alive ?" 
 
 " He knows everything. It is at his 
 own wish that Eleanor has been kept in 
 ignorance of her real parentage for so long 
 a time ; and, had Jacob Lloyd lived, the 
 secret would not have been told her even 
 now." 
 
 " But how did it happen that none of the 
 gossips of Pembridge found out that Eleanor 
 was not my uncle's child ?" 
 
 " It was not till about a year after their 
 adoption of the child that your uncle, aunt, 
 and Eleanor made their first appearance at 
 Pembridge, your uncle having just bought 
 Bridgeley, where he lived till he died. 
 They had come from a town two hundred
 
 THE STORY OF THE MURDER. 69 
 
 miles away, and did not know a soul in the 
 place." 
 
 " Has no rumour of the truth ever crept 
 out T 
 
 " Never, I am certain." 
 
 '^ And Eleanor herself has never had any 
 suspicion ?" 
 
 " Not the sliofhtest, so far as I know. 
 How should she ? She was but eleven 
 months old when her mother died : far too 
 young to have the faintest recollection of 
 anything that happened." 
 
 At this moment, the^^ both heard a 
 knock at the front door, but without pay- 
 ing any heed to it. Miss Bellamy was never 
 troubled with late visitors. There were 
 other lodgers in the house, and the knock 
 could come from no one in search of her. 
 
 But presently came the sound of foot- 
 steps on the stairs, followed by Eliza's 
 timid tap at the room door. " Come in," 
 said Miss Bellamy, a little more sharpl}^ 
 than usual. She felt annoyed that her 
 t^te-a-t6te with Gerald should be thus 
 interrupted.
 
 70 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 The door opened, and Eliza's head was 
 intruded. " A gentleman to see you, 
 ma'am. He won't give no name." 
 
 " A gentleman to see me !" said Miss 
 Bellamy, as she started up in surprise. 
 She felt slightly scandalised to think that 
 any gentleman should be so indiscreet as to 
 call upon her at such an hour as eleven 
 o'clock p.m. 
 
 But by this time the gentleman, who fol- 
 lowed the girl upstairs, had pushed himself 
 into the room ; and Eliza, a little frightened 
 at his audacity, slunk timidly out and shut 
 the door quickly behind her. 
 
 "May I ask, sir " began Miss Bel- 
 lamy frigidly, and then something in the 
 stranger's face suddenly froze her into 
 silence. 
 
 And yet not much of his fl\ce was to be 
 seen, all the lower part of it being hidden 
 in the folds of a large plaid, and the upper 
 part shaded by the broad brim of a soft felt 
 hat, from under which looked forth two dark 
 melancholy eyes of singular beauty. Miss 
 Bellamy's hands began to tremble, and she 
 leaned against the table for support.
 
 THE STORY OF THE MURDER. 71 
 
 The stranger did not speak, but swiftly 
 unrolling his plaid, let it half drop to the 
 ground and took off his hat. Miss Bel- 
 lamy's face grew as white as death. She 
 started forward ; and then she shrank 
 back, all a-tremble. Gerald Warburton's 
 eyes turned from the stranger to her, and 
 then went back to the man ; a tall, thin, 
 frail-looking figure, with a long white beard, 
 and white hair that fell over the collar of 
 his coat. 
 
 " Sir — you — you are either Ambrose 
 Murray or his ghost !" slowly gasped Miss 
 Bellamy. '^ In Heaven's name, what has 
 brought you here ?" 
 
 " I have escaped !" exclaimed the man in 
 a low, hoarse voice. " Escaped at last !" 
 
 He clasped his hands suddenly above his 
 head, gave utterance to a short, sharp, 
 hysterical laugh, staggered forward a few 
 steps, and would have fallen to the ground 
 had not Gerald Warburton caught him in 
 his arms.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 A BROKEN LIFE. 
 
 ERALD WARBURTON did not 
 
 leave London for Pembridge next 
 day, nor for several days after- 
 v^^ards. 
 When Ambrose Murray learned that 
 Gerald v^as the nephew of Jacob Lloyd, 
 the man who had so befriended his 
 daughter, and that Gerald's mother was 
 the Minna Lloyd w4iom he remembered, 
 and who had been one of his wife's dearest 
 friends, he clung to him as a man who is 
 being carried away by the tide will cling 
 to the life-buoy which his hands have un-
 
 A BROKEN LIFE, 73 
 
 expectedly grasped. And, indeed, this 
 man, who, after having been closely shut 
 up from the world for twenty years, found 
 himself thrown again on the great stream 
 of life, seemed as helpless and bewildered 
 as some weak swimmer who contends in 
 vain against the resistless tide that is fast 
 carrying him away. He was more than 
 bewildered — he was frightened by the vast 
 whirlpool of London life in which he found 
 himself such an infinitesimal atom. There 
 had always been an element of weakness, 
 of vacillation, in his character. He had 
 always been one of those men who are in- 
 evitably crushed into the background in 
 the great rush and struggle for life with 
 which they are mixed up — men not lacking 
 talent, but simply from want of energy and 
 physique, and power of elbowing their way 
 to the front, drifting year after year help- 
 lessly into the rear, seeing themselves dis- 
 tanced by younger and fleeter feet, and 
 seeing the prizes that in the flush of youth 
 seemed so close at hand and easy of attain- 
 ment, receding hopelessly into the distance.
 
 74 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 Sometimes disappointment and bitterness 
 of heart sour such men for ever ; sometimes 
 they sink into mere dreamers and ideaUsts, 
 who console themselves for the buffets of 
 the real world by living as much as possible 
 an inner life of their own, in which destiny 
 is carved out by them in accordance with 
 their varying fancies, and in which they 
 grasp — in imagination — whatever prizes 
 please them best. 
 
 If at twenty-five years of age Ambrose 
 Murray had been ill-fitted to withstand 
 the rubs of fortune, it was hardly to be 
 expected that his armour should be stronger 
 or his sword brighter after his twenty years 
 of incarceration from the world. It was, 
 indeed, evident from the first, both to Miss 
 Bellamy and to Gerald, that he would have 
 to be treated in many ways as if he w^ere 
 neither more nor less than a grown-up child. 
 He had forgotten so much, and he had so 
 much to learn ! The march of events had 
 left him so terribly in the rear, that it seemed 
 doubtful whether he would ever be able to 
 reach the world's full stride again.
 
 A BROKEN LIFE. 7S 
 
 Then, again, as time went on and they 
 grew to know him better, a doubt would 
 sometimes make itself felt, both with Miss 
 Bellamy and Gerald, as to whether some 
 shadow of the terrible affliction which had 
 overclouded his mind for years did not 
 linger there still. On ninety-nine topics- 
 out of a hundred he would talk as sanely 
 and sensibly as anyone ; but the introduc- 
 tion of the hundredth would elicit from 
 him some observation so bizarre, so outra- 
 geous, or, on the other hand, so childishly 
 simple, that his hearers could only look at 
 each other in dismay, and change the con- 
 versation as quickly as possible. 
 
 Ambrose Murray's chief employment in 
 prison since the recovery of his reason 
 would seem to have been the cleaning and 
 repairing of all the clocks and watches in 
 the establishment. When a boy of twelve 
 at home he had been able to take his 
 father's watch to pieces, clean it, and put 
 it together again. The delicacy of the 
 workmanship, and the exquisite adjustment 
 of each part with reference to the whole.
 
 76 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 had for him, even at that age, a fascination, 
 a charm, that might have led him, step by 
 step, into the highest walks of mechanics, 
 had not a stern parental will decided for 
 him that he was born to be a doctor. 
 
 As a result of his labours on the prison 
 clocks and watches, Mr. Murray had con- 
 trived, little by little, to save up the sum 
 of twelve pounds. Ten pounds of this 
 amount he placed in the hands of Miss 
 Bellamy the morning after his arrival in 
 London, with a request that she would act 
 as cashier for him in every way as far as 
 the money would go, and that when it was 
 exhausted she would not fail to let him 
 know — although what he would have done 
 in such a case to replenish his purse it 
 would have puzzled him to say. Just then, 
 however, no such consideration troubled his 
 mind. In his best days he had not under- 
 stood or troubled himself much about money 
 matters, and now-a-days ten pounds seemed 
 amply sufficient to last him for an indefinite 
 length of time. And it did last him a very 
 long time, thanks to Miss Bellamy's re-
 
 A BROKEN LIFE. 77- 
 
 markable management ; for when, at the 
 end of two months, he said to her, " I 
 think the ten pounds must be getting 
 rather low, Maria " — he had always been 
 in the habit of calling Miss Bellamy by 
 her Christian name — she only answered 
 with a smile : " That shows how little you 
 know about money matters. There's more 
 than half of it left yet." Ambrose Murray 
 was quite content to think that it was sa, 
 and troubled himself no further about the 
 matter. 
 
 That first night Gerald took him to his 
 own rooms ; but the question that had to 
 be settled next morning was, where he 
 should live for the future. In London he 
 would undoubtedly be safer from pursuit 
 and detection than in the country ; besides 
 which, he wanted to be near Miss Bellamy. 
 She was the one link that connected him 
 with the past : away from her he would 
 have felt as helpless as a being who had 
 wandered by mistake on to a wrong 
 planet. As it happened, there were two 
 furnished rooms to be let in the next house
 
 78 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 to that in which Miss Bellamy lodged, and 
 it was decided that there, for awhile at 
 least, the fugitive should pitch his tent. 
 It was highly necessary that he should 
 both change his name and disguise himself 
 to a certain extent — not that Murray him- 
 self would ever have thought of adopting 
 •any such precautions, but would have gone 
 about as openly and unsuspiciously as the 
 freest man in England. That some pur- 
 suit would be attempted, that some effort 
 would be made to re-capture him, there could 
 be no manner of doubt ; and both to Miss 
 Bellamy and Gerald it seemed quite evi- 
 dent that unless some few obvious precau- 
 tions should be adopted, his whereabouts 
 could not long remain unknown to the 
 police. It was accordingly agreed that for 
 the time being he should change his name 
 from Murray to Greaves — that having been 
 his wife's maiden name ; and that he should 
 pass as a cousin of Miss Bellamy, who had 
 come to London to look after some pro- 
 perty that was in Chancery. The next 
 thing to do was to reduce the length of his
 
 A BROKEN LIFE. 79 
 
 flowing white beard and of his long white 
 hair. What was left was then died black 
 — its normal colour — and this simple change 
 was enough to disguise him beyond the 
 chance of recognition by any one who had 
 only seen him as he was when he first took off 
 his hat and plaid in Miss Bellamy's room. 
 
 As he was still barely fifty years old, 
 there was nothing incongruous about his 
 black hair and beard ; and when his sar- 
 torial needs had been duly attended to, 
 the world saw him as a rather tall, frail- 
 looking man, with a thin, scholar-like face, 
 who stooped a little as he walked, and who 
 seemed ever more intent on his own secret 
 thoughts than concerned with anything 
 that was passing around him. Not that 
 the world, as exemplified by Ormond 
 Square and its neighbourhood, ever saw 
 much of him. He rarely stirred out of the 
 house till dusk, and more frequently than 
 not it was ten or eleven at night before he 
 crossed the threshold, except when he went 
 to see Miss Bellamy — which he did every 
 'day ; but as he had only to step from one
 
 8o A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 house into the next in order to do that, it 
 could hardly be considered as going out. 
 The noise and bustle of the streets dis- 
 tracted him — even daylight itself, except 
 when it cauie winnowed through the in- 
 terstices of the Venetian bhnds, seemed 
 distasteful to him. The friendly silence of 
 the long, dark suburban streets, where 
 were no gaudy shops or glaring gin- palaces, 
 suited him best. There he could think his 
 inmost thoughts and commune with his 
 strange fancies in silence and peace. There 
 he could feel sure that no keen eyes were 
 prying into his, and trying to find therein 
 some gleam, some lurking trace, of that ter- 
 rible demon whose fingers had scorched his 
 brain once already, and who still, at times, 
 seemed terribly near at hand, waiting — as 
 in his childish days he believed robbers used 
 to wait for him — round some dark corner 
 no great distance away, with his black 
 cloak in his hands, ready to throw it over 
 his victim's head the moment he passed 
 that way. 
 
 After awhile both Gerald and Miss
 
 A BROKEN LIFE. 8i 
 
 Bellamy were able to tell when this demon 
 was haunting Murray's steps more closely 
 than common. At such times, when not 
 •conversing with others, he would talk in- 
 audibly to himself for hours together, un- 
 less interrupted, his lips moving as though 
 in earnest assertion, but no sound coming 
 therefrom. At such times, when walking 
 out, he would turn his head slowly from 
 side to side, but without raising his eyes 
 from the ground, as though in search of 
 something. 
 
 On the first occasion that Gerald noticed 
 this peculiarity, they were walking to- 
 gether, and he said to him, " Have you 
 lost something, Mr. Murray ?'' 
 
 Murray started, looked up, smiled, and 
 pressed his companion's arm more closely. 
 
 *' Yes, I have lost something," he said, 
 with a little sigh. " I don't exactly know 
 what it is — but it's somethinef. I shall 
 iind it again one of these days, I do not 
 doubt." 
 
 His voice was full of pathos as he spoke. 
 Gerald never mentioned the subject again. 
 
 VOL. I. 6
 
 82 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 "Now that you are settled for some time 
 to come, I presume that you will not be 
 \ong before you break the news to Eleanor ? 
 You must remember that as yet she knows 
 absolutely nothing." 
 
 So spoke Miss Bellamy to Ambrose 
 Murray one evening across the tea-table. 
 Gerald was also there. This was the first 
 time that Eleanor's name had been men- 
 tioned since Murray's arrival, and Miss 
 Bellamy could bear the father's strange 
 silence no longer. 
 
 "It is not my intention to tell my 
 daughter anything at present. Why should 
 I T said Murray. 
 
 Miss Bellamy looked at him as though 
 she could scarcely believe her ears. 
 
 " Why should you not T she said. " It 
 seems to me that one of the very first 
 things you ought to do is to tell every- 
 thing to your only child." 
 
 Murray stirred his tea slowly for a few 
 moments before answering. 
 
 " Eleanor is well and comfortable, I 
 hope," he said at last.
 
 ' A BROKEN LIFE. 83 
 
 " Quite well and quite comfortable." 
 
 " She is still living among her friends at 
 Pembridge ?" 
 
 " She is." 
 
 " And wants for nothing ?" 
 
 *' And wants for nothing, so far as I 
 know." 
 
 ''That is well. And she still believes 
 that Jacob Lloyd was her father ?" 
 
 " I am not aware that anyone has unde- 
 ceived her on that point." 
 
 " Why should I be the first to undeceive 
 her?" 
 
 "Jacob Lloyd is dead. You are her 
 father, and you are now a free man." 
 
 " Precisely so. I am a free man because 
 I have broken my prison bonds. I am a 
 free man who is liable to recapture at any 
 moment. I am a free man to whose name 
 the stain of murder still clings." 
 
 " But Eleanor would never believe you 
 to be guilty, as I have never believed yoa 
 to be guilty." 
 
 " Possibly not. But why distress her by^ 
 
 6—2
 
 84 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 making her the recipient of so painful a 
 revelation T 
 
 " She is your daughter, and she has a 
 right to be told the truth/' 
 
 '' As you say, she is my daughter, and 
 perhaps she has a right to be told. But 
 seeing that her ignorance has lasted for 
 twenty years, it cannot matter greatly if 
 she be kept in the same ignorance for a few 
 weeks or a few months longer. That ulti- 
 mately everything will be told her, I do not 
 
 doubt; but not now — not till — till " 
 
 Overcome by some hidden emotion, he 
 faltered, and was dumb. 
 
 "Not till what, Ambrose?" said Miss 
 Bellamy very gently. 
 
 " Not till I have proved my innocence to 
 the world." 
 
 Miss Bellamy sighed, but said nothing. 
 If Eleanor was not to be told her father s 
 story till his innocence should be proved, 
 then would it remain untold for ever. 
 
 " Do not think," resumed Anbrose Mur- 
 ray, " that I have not thought over, times 
 without number, all that can be urged either
 
 A BROKEN LIFE. 85 
 
 for or against the telling of my story to 
 Eleanor, but I have come to the conclusion 
 that for a little while to come it had better 
 remain untold." 
 
 "And do you think, Ambrose, that after 
 such a length of time there is any chance, 
 however remote, of your being able to prove 
 your innocence ?" 
 
 '' I don't know : I cannot tell. I can 
 simply hope. The world is full of apparent 
 wonders, and Providence works out its ends 
 in a way that we cannot fathom. T know 
 how vain and futile must seem to you the 
 prospect of my ever being able to prove my 
 innocence ; but it is for that purpose, and 
 that alone, that I am now here. Had I not 
 been sustained by such a hope, I believe that 
 I should not have cared to seek my freedom. 
 Years since, the desire for freedom, for 
 freedom's own sake, burnt itself to a cinder 
 in my heart by its very intensity. I came 
 at last to cling to the narrow walls that 
 had been my home for so long a time, as a 
 limpet clings to its boulder on the beach, 
 neither knowing nor caring for any horizon
 
 8^ A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 beyond its own few inches of rock and sand. 
 How is it possible for me to make you com- 
 prehend what simple things may become 
 dear to a man who has been cut off from the 
 world as I have been ? The pair of robins 
 that I used to feed, the candy -tuft that grew 
 outside my bedroom window, the head- 
 warder's motherless child, the laurel-walk 
 in the garden, my box of tools— the source 
 of so many happy hours : it was not with- 
 out a pang of bitter anguish that I cast 
 these behind me for ever, even though 
 freedom itself was beckoning to me from 
 the hill-tops ! 
 
 *' But an inner voice seemed to urge me 
 forward, a will superior to my own seemed 
 to guide my footsteps. In saying this I 
 may be merely the victim of self-delusion. 
 My hopes and wishes in this matter may 
 have no better foundation than a few inco- 
 herent dreams. Once already my mind has 
 been like an empty room that is open to 
 every wind that blows ; and sometimes even 
 now — Heaven help me ! — I seem as if I had 
 hardly strength enough to hold the door
 
 yl BROKEN LIFE. 87 
 
 against the troop of demons that press and 
 hustle to get in, and complain that I have 
 dispossessed them of their home. But be 
 this as it may, I am held and sustained by 
 the hope of which I have spoken. It may 
 prove to be nothing better than a broken 
 reed, but till it is so proved, I will in no 
 wise let it go : and till that time shall 
 come, my daughter and I must remain to 
 «ach other the strangers we have hitherto 
 been." 
 
 " Have you no desire to see Eleanor — to 
 kiss her — to clasp her to your heart T 
 
 " Do not ask me !" he said, with a sudden 
 shrillness in his voice. Then, in a moment, 
 he broke down utterly, and began to cry in 
 a helpless, broken-hearted way that was 
 painful to see. 
 
 Miss Bellamy went round to him and 
 laid her hand gently on his shoulder. 
 
 " Oh, Ambrose, forgive me !" she said, 
 with tears in her eyes. " I did not think 
 to hurt your feelings. I cannot tell you 
 how sorry I am." 
 
 " It is I who am so foolishly weak," he
 
 .83 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 said ; " but I shall be better in a minute or 
 two/' He held out one of his hands. Miss 
 Bellamy pressed it affectionately between 
 both hers, and then went softly back to 
 her seat. For a little while no one 
 spoke. 
 
 Ambrose Murray was the first to break 
 the silence. ''Upwards of twenty years 
 have gone by/' he said, '' since Paul 
 Stilling was murdered one night at the 
 Pelican Hotel, Tewkesbury, and the pro- 
 spect of my being able to prove my inno- 
 cence after such a lapse of time would to 
 most people appear an utterly hopeless one; 
 and even to me, in my most sanguine mo- 
 ments, the chances of success seem very 
 faint and far away indeed. Still, it is for 
 this hope alone that I now live." 
 
 " Has any fresh evidence been discovered 
 since the trial ?" asked Miss Bellamy ; ''any- 
 thing tending to exculpate you and fix the 
 crime on the real murderer ?" 
 
 " So far as I know, nothing has been 
 discovered. The case virtually came to an 
 end with my condemnation. The world
 
 A BROKEN LIFE. 89, 
 
 believed me to be guilty — no one cared to 
 sift further into the matter, and I was left 
 to my fate." 
 
 "We none of us believed you to be guilty," 
 said Miss Bellamy, with much earnestness. 
 " But the evidence was so terribly against 
 you, and events followed each other so 
 quickly, and we poor women were all so 
 bewildered and heart-broken, that — that 
 we felt as if we could do nothing." 
 
 "As you say, Maria — you could do no- 
 thing ; and I have never wronged any of 
 those who were my friends at that sad time 
 by thinking that more could have been done 
 for me than was done. What was wanted 
 was time, and that the law would not grant: 
 time, and a man of strong will and clear 
 brain, and then, perhaps, the mystery might 
 have been fathomed." 
 
 "Then what it is now requisite to do," 
 said Gerald, joining in the conversation for 
 the first time, "is to reopen the case ; ta 
 set to work on it, in fact, as if the murder 
 had been committed only last week, instead 
 of twenty years ago."
 
 90 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 *• That is precisely what I propose to do," 
 said Murray. 
 
 *' And the first step is ?" 
 
 " To find out whether Max Jacoby is 
 living or dead." 
 
 " Max Jacoby ?" said Miss Bellamy. '' I 
 have not heard that name for years ; but 
 what a flood of painful reminiscences the 
 mention of it recalls !" 
 
 " Who was the man you speak of?" asked 
 Gerald. 
 
 " He was the man who murdered Paul 
 StilHng ! 
 
 "You stare at me as if you believed me 
 to be still mad," he added, after a pause, ad- 
 dressing himself to Miss Bellamy : '' and 
 you ask me in your thoughts, if you do not 
 with your lips, what evidence I can bring 
 to prove the truth of what I have just 
 stated. My answer is, that I cannot ad- 
 duce one tittle of evidence that would be 
 considered worth a moment's notice in a 
 court of law : but not the less sure am I 
 that he was the man." 
 
 Neither Gerald nor Miss Bellamy could
 
 A BEOKEN LIFE. 91 
 
 ilielp being impressed by his earnestness, 
 however disposed they might be to think 
 that nothing but disappointment could ever 
 issue from it. 
 
 " Have you any clue by means of which 
 it may be possible to trace the present 
 •whereabouts of this man, Max Jacoby T 
 •asked Gerald presently. 
 
 *' I have no clue of any kind." He said 
 this, not despondently, but as cheerfully as 
 though the point involved were of no con- 
 sequence whatever. 
 
 " As you said just now, Gerald, we must 
 go into the case ah initio," he resumed. " I 
 say we, because it may chance that now and 
 then I shall claim vour assistance in the 
 matter ; and should I have to do so, I 
 know that I shall not claim it in vain." 
 
 *' That you will not," said Gerald warmly. 
 " You may count on my poor services in any 
 and every way." 
 
 " You must bear in mind," said Miss 
 Bellamy to Murray, " that Gerald has not 
 such an intimate knowledge of the case as 
 either you or I have. He has heard a bare
 
 92 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 outline of the facts from me ; but would it 
 not be as well if you were to tell him the 
 story in detail from your own point of view, 
 and so enable him to judge for himself as- 
 to the mode in which he might be best able 
 to assist you T 
 
 " You are right, Maria, as you always- 
 are/' said Murray. *' Gerald shall have the 
 story. It wuU not take long to tell. As a 
 narrative of events, nothing could appear 
 more clear, simple, and straightforward ; 
 and yet, underneath it, there still lurks 
 the foul mystery that poisoned my life — 
 that condemned me to a horrible death — 
 that broke my wife's heart — and that made 
 of me the wretched creature I am now !" 
 
 He rested his head in his hands, and was 
 silent for a little while, calling up the me- 
 mories of a bitter past. 
 
 " As you are no doubt already aware," 
 he began, " I was brought up, at my father's- 
 request, to be a surgeon. I was in practice 
 for myself, and had been married about two 
 years, when my health, which had always 
 been delicate, broke down. I was ordered
 
 A BROKEN LIFE. 93 
 
 to Malvern to try the hydropathic system, 
 and there I stayed for four months, gather- 
 ing strength daily. At length I found my- 
 self well enough to start for home. I had 
 always been fond of walking, and on the 
 present occasion I determined to shun the 
 railways and do the entire distance on foot, 
 going by easy stages so as not to over-fatigue 
 myself In pursuance of this plan I got as 
 far as Tewkesbury, where I had made up 
 my mind to stay all night. But already I 
 found I was doing myself more harm than 
 good by walking, and it was evident that I 
 should have to finish my journey by rail. I 
 sought and found shelter for the night at 
 the Pelicau Hotel. My purse was not very 
 heavy, and I joined the company in the 
 coffee-room. The company in question con- 
 sisted but of two individuals, — Paul Still- 
 ing, a young Englishman, and Max Jacoby, 
 a Dutch or German Jew of about the same 
 age as myself Stilling was a tall, slim, 
 handsome young'fellow, with closely cropped 
 black hair and a thin silky moustache. He 
 was junior partner in a firm of Birmingham
 
 94 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 jewellers, and it transpired that he was then 
 on his way, with a parcel of valuable jewel- 
 lery, to the house of a w^ ell-known noble- 
 man, resident no great distance from 
 Tewkesbury. There was about to be a 
 wedding in the family, and he was taking 
 a selection of goods from which sundry 
 bridal presents were to be chosen. He had 
 engaged a bed at the Pelican for that night, 
 and had ordered a fly to be ready at ten 
 next morning to take him forward to his 
 destination. Jacoby was a broad-built, 
 resolute-looking man, with a thick sandy 
 beard and ear-rings. He was travellings 
 for a firm of Sheffield cutlers. 
 
 " The two men had been dining together, 
 and the meal was just over when I entered 
 the room. Stilling at once entered into 
 conversation with me, but the German only 
 sat and looked at us. After I had finished 
 my steak I joined them over cigars and a 
 bottle of port. The evening was chilly, 
 and we all drew up close to the fire. Still- 
 ing had evidently been drinking earlier m- 
 the day, and his voluble tongue had been
 
 A BROKEN LIFE. 9S 
 
 made more voluble still by his potations. 
 He did not fail to tell us who and what he 
 was, and the object of his visit to Tewkes- 
 bury ; in fact, he had the conversation 
 pretty much to himself. I joined in occa- 
 sionally, but Jacoby did little except smoke 
 and turn his keen eyes from one to the other 
 of us, interjecting now and then a gruff 
 Nein or Ja when a point-blank question was 
 put to him by the jeweller. 
 
 " At length nothing would satisfy Stilling^ 
 but showing us the wedding jewellery, on 
 the beauty of which he descanted in glow- 
 ing terms. So he ran upstairs as nimbly as 
 a lamplighter, and presently came back, 
 carrying a small, square leather case under 
 his arm. This case, when unlocked, was 
 found to contain a small box, made of 
 polished oak, clamped with silver, and 
 having the initials P. S. outlined on the 
 lid with silver nails. The box was duly 
 opened, and was found to be lined with 
 purple velvet, and divided into compart- 
 ments which were filled with jewels of 
 various kinds. One after another Stilling
 
 96 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 lifted them tenderly out of their soft rest- 
 ing-place, in order that we might examine 
 them. They flashed and scintillated in the 
 gaslight, and threw out a thousand brilliant 
 rays. Happening to turn my head, I could 
 not help being struck with the change in 
 Jacoby. He had put down his cigar in 
 order that he might examine the jewels 
 more closely, and was at that moment hold- 
 ing in his hairy, muscular hands a necklace 
 of magnificent brilliants. But his hands 
 were trembling as he held it, and his face 
 had taken a yellow tinge, and his forehead 
 had become clammy, and he was biting his 
 under lip ; and while I was looking, he 
 flashed across at Stilling a look which said 
 plainly enough : * To make these mine I 
 would kill you and a thousand like you !' 
 That was how I read his look then ; that 
 is how I read it now. If ever there was 
 murder in a man's eyes,there was in Jacoby's 
 at that moment. 
 
 "When the jewels had been sufi&ciently 
 admired, they were put back into their 
 resting-place and locked up. A little later
 
 A BROKEN LIFE. 97 
 
 we bade each other good-night, and went 
 off to our several rooms. I had ordered an 
 early breakfast, and I left Tewkesbury by 
 the seven a.m. train, having taken a ticket 
 through to Bristol. By the time I reached 
 Gloucester, however, I had changed my 
 mind. The weather was brilliant, and I 
 should not be looked for at home for several 
 days. Why not go down Hereford way, 
 and explore the scenery of the Wye, and 
 by so doing gratify a wish that dated back 
 for several years ? I accordingly quitted 
 the Bristol train at Gloucester, and booked 
 myself through by another line to Hereford, 
 which place I reached late in the afternoon. 
 I was sitting next morning in the coffee- 
 room of the hotel, plodding through my 
 breakfast, when the door was opened, and 
 a heavy hand was laid on my shoulder, and 
 next moment I found myself arrested on a 
 double charge of robbery and murder. 
 Stilling had been found dead in his bed 
 at the Pelican Hotel : the silver-clamped 
 box could not be found, and I was charged 
 with the double crime. 
 
 VOL. I. 7
 
 98 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 *' But I must not weary you. At the 
 very bottom of my travelling bag was found 
 a bracelet set with turquoises and diamonds, 
 that had been the property of Stilling. In 
 the murdered man's room was found a 
 handkerchief marked with my initials. I 
 had taken a railway ticket to Bristol, but 
 had left the train at Gloucester, and had 
 gone forward by another line in order to 
 baffle pursuit — so they said. Taken in con- 
 junction, these facts were enough to con- 
 demn any man, and they condemned me. 
 Twelve men unanimously found me guilty, 
 and the judge told me that he quite con- 
 curred in their verdict. And then I saw the 
 black cap put on, and heard my own death- 
 sentence pronounced, and heard my wife's 
 wild shriek for mercy, where no mercy could 
 be shown. Can you wonder that my brain 
 gave way ?" 
 
 He paused. In the silence they heard 
 the clocks strike twelve. 
 
 " The same hand that put the bracelet 
 into my bag put my handkerchief into the 
 murdered man's room. It was the hand of
 
 A BROKEN LIFE. 
 
 99 
 
 Jacoby ! How I know that — how I feel so 
 sure of it — I cannot explain to either of 
 you, and if I could you would only smile 
 at me. In this world much of our highest 
 knowledge comes to us intuitively, and by 
 intuition only do I know that it was Max 
 Jacoby who compassed the death of Paul 
 Stilling — but that suffices for me." 
 
 " Then your idea," said Gerald, "is to 
 find out whether this Max Jacoby is still 
 alive V 
 
 *' It is. And I want you, out of your 
 knowledge of the world, to advise me as to 
 the best mode of setting about this busi- 
 
 ness." 
 
 " I am going out of town to-morrow for 
 a couple of days, I will think over very 
 carefully all that you have said, and will 
 make a point of seeing you immediately 
 upon my return." 
 
 With this agreement they separated for 
 the night, and early next morning Gerald 
 set out for Pembridge. 
 
 Miss Bellamy had not deemed it neces- 
 sary to say anything to Ambrose Murray 
 
 7—2
 
 loo A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 as to the fact of Eleanor still passing as 
 Jacob Lloyd's daughter, and still believing 
 herself to be the heiress to his property. 
 To have told him would only have unset- 
 tled his mind still further, and would have 
 served no useful purpose. Besides which, 
 Gerald's visit to Pembridge was for the ex- 
 press purpose of seeing Mr. Kelvin, and of 
 ascertaining from him why he had omitted 
 to carry out the instructions conveyed to 
 him in the sealed packet. In a few days 
 more at the most, Eleanor would learn that 
 she was not the daughter of Jacob Lloyd, 
 and not the heiress she believed herself to 
 be. Meanwhile, it was better, as far as 
 Ambrose Murray was concerned, that these 
 matters should remain untold.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 GERALD AT PEMBRIDGE. 
 
 HE mention of Matthew Kelvin's 
 name by Miss Bellamy toudied a 
 chord of recollection in the mind 
 of Gerald Warburton, but some 
 time elapsed before he could trace back in 
 his memory to the particular occasion on 
 which he had heard it last. He had been 
 groping about for some time, when sud- 
 denly a single flash revealed to him every- 
 thing that he was looking for. It showed 
 him a country inn in the Lake district, 
 and two men, weather-bound by the un- 
 ceasing rain, perforce dependent on each
 
 102 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 other for companionship and the practice 
 of those minor social virtues which such 
 an occasion should undoubtedly call forth. 
 They meet as strangers meet under such 
 circumstances, but by the end of the third 
 day they seem to have known each other 
 for years. Glad as they are on the fourth 
 morning to find that the clouds have dis- 
 persed and that the hill-tops can be seen 
 again, they do not part without a certain 
 feeling of regret, or without a cordial grip 
 of the hand and a hope that, unlikely as 
 such a thing seems, they may one day 
 meet again. One of those men is Matthew 
 Kelvin, the other is Gerald Warburton. 
 Kelvin, at parting, had given Gerald his 
 address, and had begged of him that, 
 should he ever find himself in the neigh- 
 bourhood of Pembridge, he would not fail 
 to look him up. Gerald, at the time, had 
 no address to give. In fact, it was not 
 as Gerald Warburton, but under the name 
 of "Jack Pomeroy," that he had made 
 Kelvin's acquaintance. 
 
 A year or two previously, in the course
 
 GERALD AT PEMBRIDGE. 103 
 
 of one of his rare interviews with his father, 
 the latter had said to Gerald : " You are a 
 disgrace to the name of Warburton !" " If 
 that is the case, sir," said Gerald, bitterly, 
 *' it shall be disgraced no longer." 
 
 When he next went out into the world, 
 it was as John Pomeroy. His full name 
 was Gerald John Warburton. So he took 
 the John and tacked it to a name that had 
 been common in his mother's family for 
 generations ; and it was as Jack Pomeroy, 
 a vagabondising young artist, rather out at 
 elbows, as clever young men often are, but 
 a decidedly amusing companion for a wet 
 day, that he hs.d made Kelvin's acquain- 
 tance. 
 
 " I wonder whether he will know me 
 again," muttered Gerald to himself, as he 
 .walked down the main street of Pembridge 
 on his way to Mr. Kelvin's office. " There 
 was a little about him that I liked, and a 
 great deal that I didn't like. His joviality 
 was merely on the surface ; it had no foun- 
 dation in his disposition. It was a mere 
 will-o'-the-wisp, flickering fitfully over the
 
 I04 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 darker depths of his character. Me he 
 tolerated as one tolerates a droll when 
 tired of one's own company, and with 
 nothing more serious to do. For the time 
 being he even made believe to be a Bohe- 
 mian himself It was a phase of character 
 that he had rarely encountered before, and 
 for forty-eight hours it fascinated him ; 
 forty-eight hours later he would have 
 turned his back on it and me with a sneer. 
 ''It is indeed a strange chance that has 
 brought "US together again after so long a 
 time ! I will tell him neither my name 
 nor my errand for a little while. I will 
 go to him as the Jack Pomeroy in whose 
 society he once spent three days of bad 
 weather. I will even pretend to be hard 
 up, and to stand in need of a helping-hand. 
 Probably he will order me out of the office ; 
 perchance he will ask me to dinner and put 
 a sovereign into my hand at parting. It 
 will be time enough to tell him my real 
 business after I have put him to the test.. 
 Besides which, by concealing my identity 
 for a little while, I may perhaps be able to
 
 GERALD AT PEMBRIDGE. 
 
 [05 
 
 glean some imformation as to his reason for 
 keeping back for so long a time the contents 
 of the sealed packet from Eleanor." It was 
 in pursuance of this idea that Gerald had 
 put on for the nonce an older suit of clothes 
 than common, and had locked up in his 
 portmanteau at the hotel his watch and 
 chain and scarf-pin. He found Kelvin's 
 office in due course, and made his way into 
 the entrance-hall, and was there received 
 by Mr. Piper. 
 
 That young gentleman was what he 
 himself would have called " down in the 
 dumps." The obligations of gentility ex- 
 tend from the highest stratum of society 
 to the lowest, and Mr. Piper felt that this 
 morning he had lost caste in the eyes of 
 Mr. Hammond — his guide, philosopher, 
 and — in a far-off, Olympian kind of way — 
 his friend. Mr. Hammond, walking down 
 a by-street on his way to business, had 
 come suddenly on Pod, who, in company 
 with several other youths, was scraping 
 with a knife the sweet interstices of an 
 empty sugar-cask that was standing on the
 
 io6 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 pavement in front of a grocer's shop. Un- 
 seen till he laid his gloved hand on Pod's 
 shoulder, Mr. Hammond had said to him : 
 "Here's a penny for you, Piper, to buy 
 some sweetmeats with, but do, for good- 
 ness' sake, leave the sugar-cask alone." 
 And so, with a smile and a sneer, had gone 
 daintily on his way. Pod felt as if he 
 could have bitten his head off, had such an 
 anatomical feat been at all possible. He 
 would not have cared half so much had he 
 been seen by anyone else — even by Kelvin 
 himself. But to have been seen thus ig- 
 nominiously engaged by the elegant, the 
 scented, the fastidious Mr. Hammond ! 
 Besides which, this was not the first occa- 
 sion on which Mr. Hammond had found 
 him engaged in a pursuit derogatory to 
 that assumption of manhood and gentility 
 which it was the secret ambition of his life 
 to maintain in the eyes of his patron. On 
 his way home, one evening, Pod had been 
 overtaken by a temptation which he found 
 it impossible to resist. The temptation on 
 this occasion took the shape of marbles.
 
 GERALD AT PEMBRIDGE. 107 
 
 Pod had fallen in with three or four of 
 his old schoolmates engaged in a game of 
 knuckle-down, and, fired by the recollection 
 of his prowess in olden days, had for once 
 flung gentility to the winds. 
 
 Carefully depositing in a corner his 
 chimney-pot hat, for the next ten minutes 
 he was a boy again. This time, also, it 
 was Mr. Hammond's voice which recalled 
 him to a consideration of how far he had 
 forgotten himself ** Well done. Piper," he 
 said, as he came suddenly round the corner. 
 " With practice and perseverance you will 
 make a tolerable player. By-the-by, I 
 promised to buy you something on your 
 birthday. What shall it be ? A. hoop, or 
 a kite, or a pretty coloured ball that you 
 and the baby can amuse yourselves with 
 in wet weather V 
 
 This had been very galling to Pod, espe- 
 cially when said before his schoolmates ; 
 and now, to-day, he had given Mr. Ham- 
 mond an opportunity of sneering at him 
 for the second time. This Mr. Hammond 
 was Matthew Kelvin's one articled pupil.
 
 io8 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 Attracted by Pod's shrewdness, and keen 
 common sense, he had " taken him in 
 hand," as he himself phrased it ; although 
 whether such taking in hand would ulti- 
 mately prove beneficial to Pod, seemed 
 somewhat doubtful at present. Mr. Ham- 
 mond found Pod useful as a go-between 
 in his love-affairs. He was engaged to a 
 young lady against the wishes of her 
 friends. Any letters sent by him through 
 the post were intercepted, and it was only 
 by trusting to Pod's skill and diplomacy as 
 a messenger that he could contrive to com- 
 municate with her at all. In such a case 
 as this, Pod might be trusted implicitly, 
 and Hammond knew it. He was rewarded 
 chiefly with cigars, and now and then with 
 an odd half-crown, or a pair of soiled laven- 
 der kid gloves ; which latter articles, when 
 cleaned, looked almost as good as new, and 
 although somewhat large, created quite a 
 sensation among Pod's friends and acquaint- 
 ances, when worn by him on his evening 
 stroll along the Ladies' Walk. Then Mr. 
 Hammond had made Pod a present of
 
 GERALD AT PEMBRIDGE, 109 
 
 an old silver- mounted meerscliaum, which, 
 although he found it somewhat full-flavoured 
 at present, he would doubtless be able to 
 smoke w^ith comfort when he should have 
 practised on it for five or six months 
 longer. 
 
 But far beyond any pecuniary reward 
 was to be counted the happiness of being 
 in Mr. Hammond's confidence, and the in- 
 estimable boon of his society. Since Mr. 
 Hammond had taken him by the hand, Pod 
 felt himself to be quite a different sort of 
 person — he had, as it were, emerged from 
 the grub into the butterfly. The world 
 and he were on altogether different terms 
 from what they had been on twelve months 
 ago. A year ago, for instance, he would 
 not have thought of wearing a chimney-pot 
 hat, or of wearing stand-up paper collars of 
 the same shape as Mr. Hammond's, or of 
 carrying a slim silk umbrella to and from 
 business. To be sure, the umbrella, how- 
 ever elegant and even useful it might seem 
 when folded tightly up, was in reality so 
 worn and dilapidated as to be quite in-
 
 no A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 capable of being opened ; but as tbis was a 
 secret known to Pod alone, it did not mat- 
 ter greatly. Then it was surely a brilliant 
 stroke of inventiveness to allow himself to 
 be seldom seen in the town without a 
 Times newspaper under his arm — generally 
 three or four days old ; but that was of no 
 consecjuence. To be so seen seemed to add 
 a foot to his stature, and it is impossible to 
 say how much to his consequence. 
 
 But with all his precocious ways, Pod was 
 a good son to his mother — a poor hard-work- 
 ing widow with a large family, of whom 
 Pod was the eldest. He did his best to 
 help her in every way, and would nurse 
 the baby for hours together when he got 
 home of an evening. He was not unmind- 
 ful that his education had been a poor one, 
 and three evenings a week he attended a 
 night school, where he laid a tolerable 
 foundation both of French and Latin ; but 
 of this he said nothing to Mr. Hammond. 
 Neither did he say anything of the nume- 
 rous books he was in the habit of obtaining 
 from the town library, and over w^hich he
 
 GERALD A T PEMBRIDGE. 1 1 1 
 
 would pore of a night long after everyone 
 else in the house was fast asleep. 
 
 Gerald Warburton was duly ushered by 
 Pod into the private office. 
 
 " If you can wait a minute or two, Mr. 
 Kelvin won't be long," he said, as he 
 handed Gerald a chair and a news- 
 paper. 
 
 Five minutes later, Matthew Kelvin 
 opened the door and walked in. Gerald 
 rose as ho entered, smiled, and held out his 
 hand. For a moment or two Kelvin was 
 evidently at a loss. 
 
 " I seem to know your face," he said, 
 " and yet you must excuse me if for the 
 moment I fail to recollect where I have 
 seen it before." 
 
 " Don't you recollect Jack Pomeroy and 
 the ' Jolly Anglers ' at Grasmere ?" 
 
 " Of course, of course !" shaking him by 
 the hand. " How one's memory fails as one 
 grows older ! But sit down and tell me 
 how you have been getting on all this long 
 time." 
 
 "Oh, with the proverbial luck of the
 
 112 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 rolliDg stone," said Gerald, as he resumed 
 his seat. 
 
 Kelvin by this time had been able to 
 note his visitor s appearance — to note that 
 his clothes, although originally well-made, 
 were now worn and shabby : and Kelvin 
 never liked a man who did not dress well ; 
 to note that there was not a single item of 
 jewellery visible, that his scarf was without 
 a pin, and his pocket minus a watch, and 
 that altogether there was a decidedly im- 
 pecunious look about his unwelcome Bohe- 
 mian acquaintance. In Kelvins estima- 
 tion, a man who could not afford to carry a 
 gold watch was hardly worth knowing. 
 He elevated his eyebrows, and felt sure in 
 his own mind that before ten minutes were 
 over he should be called upon to disburse 
 five guineas. 
 
 " That's the worst of making chance 
 travelling acquaintances," he said to him- 
 self " They are sure to turn up at some 
 future date, and want you to do something 
 for them. So many people want you to do 
 something for them I" 
 
 J
 
 GERALD A T PEMBRIDGE. 1 1 3 
 
 " Not quite made your fortune, then V 
 he said aloud. 
 
 Gerald's only answer was an expressive 
 shrug of the shoulders. 
 
 " When I saw you last you talked about 
 going to the Antipodes. What has brought 
 you back again T 
 
 " Partly that lack of pence with which 
 all really great men are afflicted, and partly 
 a little private business which required my 
 presence at home." 
 
 " You are a born Bohemian, Pomeroy — 
 one of those incorrigibles on whom argu- 
 ment and advice alike are thrown away." 
 
 " Utterly thrown away — utterly ; and I 
 glory in the confession." 
 
 " And what are your prospects for the 
 future T 
 
 " I am happy to say that I have no pros- 
 pects in particular. Never had such things 
 in my life." 
 
 " Nor any present necessities ?" 
 
 " Ah ! now you touch me on a tender 
 point." 
 
 " How can I be of service to you ? Is. 
 
 VOL. I. 8
 
 114 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 there anything I can do for you in a modest 
 way V 
 
 " Well — you may invite me to dinner if 
 you like." 
 
 " That I'll do willingly. I suppose if 
 the dinner were supplemented with an 
 offer of a five-pound note you would not 
 feel offended." 
 
 " Offended ! Not a bit of it," said Gerald, 
 with a laugh. '' But remember this, Kel- 
 vin, I have not asked you for money." 
 
 " Oh, I fully appreciate your delicacy of 
 feeling," answered Kelvin, not without a 
 sneer. " Well, we dine at six sharp. No 
 company, only my mother and my cousin." 
 
 Gerald rose and took up his hat. 
 
 " I suppose you would find it somewhat 
 difficult," said Kelvin, "after vagabondising 
 about the world for so long a time, to settle 
 down to any quiet steady employment — 
 too monotonous, and that sort of thing — 
 eh?" 
 
 " I don't know so much about that," said 
 Gerald. " Certainly liberty is sweet, and 
 it is pleasant to be one's own master. Be-
 
 GERALD A T PEMBRIDGE. 1 1 5 
 
 sides which, as yet I have given no host- 
 ages to fortune, and having only my own 
 unworthy self to look after, I dare say that 
 I should find it difficult to settle down into 
 a steady, sober, tax-paying citizen, who sits 
 on a stool from one year's end to another, 
 and who knows the amount of his income 
 to a penny. No, I am afraid that I should 
 find such a life slightly tedious." 
 Kelvin laughed. 
 
 " Why don't you go in for marrying an 
 heiress T he said. 
 
 "You talk, mon ami! — talk as if heiresses 
 were as plentiful as blackberries." 
 
 '' I don't think your heiress is a difficult 
 fish to catch, especially by such a clever 
 angler as I do not doubt that you are. 
 But then you must make up your mind to 
 be indifferent to good looks, and good 
 breeding, and a few other simple et 
 ceteras." 
 
 " Ah ! there's the rub." 
 "But do you mean to say that the idea 
 of marrying for money is one that you have 
 never turned over in your mind V 
 
 8—2
 
 Ii6 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 " I can't say that exactly ; but ray ideas 
 on the point have been very hazy ones 
 indeed — quite nebulous, I assure you — 
 nothing solid or tangible about them." 
 
 " Nebulosity of ideas is a very bad thing 
 in anybody. The sooner you bring them 
 down from the clouds and condense them 
 into a practical shape the better. First 
 catch — not your hare, but your heiress ; 
 then bring all your powers of fascination to 
 bear upon her, and then " 
 
 "My powers of fascination, indeed! You 
 talk of me as if I w^ere a rattlesnake." 
 
 Again Kelvin laughed, then recollecting 
 an appointment, he looked at his watch. 
 
 " Well, don't forget to be here at six 
 sharp," he said. 
 
 And with that Gerald went. 
 
 " A dinner, a five-pound note, and exit 
 Jack Pomeroy ; that is what Kelvin means,'^ 
 said Gerald to himself. "Well, he might 
 have treated me worse than that. I'll not 
 tell him who I really am till the last minute. 
 I wonder what his motive can be for keep- 
 ing back the information from Eleanor. 

 
 GERALD AT PEMBRIDGE. 117 
 
 But I suppose I shall know all about it by 
 to-morrow at this time." 
 
 Gerald passed a by no means unpleasant 
 evening. Neither Mrs. Kelvin nor Olive 
 had ever been further from home than 
 Paris. They were eager in their questions 
 about the different strange places which 
 Gerald had visited on his travels, and he 
 was by no means loth to gratify their 
 curiosity. What pleased Kelvin most was 
 to see his mother so lively and full of 
 spirits. 
 
 " Give me a look in at the office about 
 eleven to-morrow," he said to Gerald, as 
 they parted at the door. 
 
 Half an hour later, Kelvin received a 
 telegram which necessitated his starting 
 for Scotland by the 7 a.m. train next morn- 
 ing. He was down betimes to breakfast ; 
 but early as it was, Olive was there before 
 him, waiting to pour out his tea and attend 
 to all his little wants. 
 
 " I shall not be able to see Pomeroy," 
 he said. " You can explain to him how I 
 have been called away, and tell him that if
 
 ii8 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 he will leave his address I will write to 
 him on my return." 
 
 ** Have you any idea of doing something 
 for him ?" asked Olive. 
 
 " My idea is to send him a five-pound 
 note and have done with him." 
 
 "You were mentioning, the other day, 
 that Sir Thomas Dudgeon was in want of 
 an amanuensis and secretary. It seems to 
 me that Mr. Pomeroy would be just the 
 man for such a position." 
 
 " Oh, he's got ability enough for such a 
 berth, I daresay. But, in the first place, I 
 believe the fellow is too much of a Bohe- 
 mian ever to settle down steadily to any- 
 thing ; and, in the second place, I know 
 nothing about either himself or his antece- 
 dents. How would it be possible for me to 
 recommend a man to Sir Thomas respecting 
 whom I know nothing T 
 
 "However much of a Bohemian, as you 
 call it, Mr. Pomeroy may have been, he has 
 both the manners and education of a gentle- 
 man ; and I daresay that he would be able 
 to satisfy you as to his respectability. Aunt
 
 GERALD A T PEMBRIDGE. 1 19 
 
 was quite taken with him last evening, 
 and when I went into her room this morn- 
 ing she desired me to tell you that she 
 would take it as a kindness to herself if 
 you would interest yourself for Mr. Pome- 
 roy in whatever way you might think would 
 benefit him most." 
 
 " Of course, if I thought it would please 
 my mother, I might stretch a point in his 
 
 favour, though really '' 
 
 " It would please my aunt greatly if 
 you would do so. It struck me that this 
 situation at Sir Thomas Dudgeon's would 
 be just the thing for Mr. Pomeroy." 
 
 " But, really, I don't at all see how I can 
 recommend a man about whom I know 
 nothing." 
 
 " You are going away ; Mr. Pomeroy is to 
 call here at eleven ; let me see him in your 
 place, and if he can satisfy me as to the 
 respectability of himself and his connec- 
 tions, may I promise him the situation in 
 your name ?" 
 
 *' Really, Olive, you ssem very much in- 
 terested in this man."
 
 I20 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 " I am interested in him, Matthew." 
 *' Take care that your interest in him 
 does not deepen into something far more 
 dangerous ; take care that you don't lose 
 your heart to him." 
 
 Olive s colourless cheek flushed for a mo- 
 ment, but she answered quite calmly : — 
 
 *' Your warning on that point is quite 
 unnecessary, Matthew. But you have not 
 answered my question." 
 
 Kelvin looked at his watch, and then 
 rose hurriedly. It was later than he had 
 thought. He had barely time to catch his 
 train. 
 
 *' Do as you like about it," he said, not 
 "without a touch of irritation in his voice. 
 "When my mother and you lay your heads 
 together and conspire against me, I know 
 that I may as v/ell give in at once. Mind 
 you, I don't think this fellow is worth half 
 the trouble that you two women are taking 
 about him." 
 
 " Blind — blind as ever !" muttered Olive 
 to herself as she stood at the window and 
 watched Kelvin hurrying down the street
 
 GERALD A T PEMBRIDGE. 1 2 1 
 
 in the direction of the station. " A woman 
 of my own age and any brains at all would 
 detect my motive at once, but a man can 
 rarely see beyond his nose."
 
 CHAPTEE YI. 
 
 " that's the man !" 
 
 S already explained, Mr. Piper had 
 a tiny glass - fronted office, or 
 ratlier den, all to himself, at the 
 far end of the passage which led 
 from the main entrance to Matthew Kel- 
 vin's premises. In the wall that divided 
 the sanctum of Mr. Piper from that of his 
 employer, was a small window of ground 
 glass, which had originally been intended 
 as a means of communication between one 
 office and the other. Of late years, how- 
 ever, it had never been so used, Mr. Kelvin 
 having adopted the modern invention of
 
 ''J HATS THE MANr 123 
 
 India-rubber tubes as the readiest and most 
 convenient method of making known his 
 wishes either to Mr. Piper or to the clerks in 
 the general oflSce. Since the little window- 
 had fallen into disuse, a thick green curtain 
 had been hung across it, in order that the 
 privacy of Kelvin's office might be still 
 further secured; but, as it so happened, 
 the object in view came at last to be de- 
 feated through this very precaution. 
 
 One cold morning, Mr. Piper, while spar- 
 ring at an imaginary opponent in order to 
 keep up the circulation of his system, sent 
 his elbow incautiously through one of the 
 panes of the little window. There was no 
 great harm done : a shilling or two would 
 pay for the damage ; but, for all that. Pod 
 thought it best not to let Mi\ Kelvin know 
 of the accident. He knew that Kelvin was 
 going out of town in the course of a few 
 days, and he would take that opportunity 
 of having the window mended at his own 
 expense. Meanwhile, the curtain would 
 effectually hide what had happened from 
 his employer's notice.
 
 124 A SECRET OF THE SEA, 
 
 In thus making his calculations, there 
 was, however, one point which, to give 
 Pod his due, had altogether escaped his 
 notice. So long as the broken window 
 remained unmended, the privacy of Kel- 
 vin^s office was altogether gone. Pod had 
 only to put his ear to the fractured pane in 
 order to hear every word that was spoken 
 in the other room. There was nothing but 
 the curtain between him and the speakers. 
 Pod, as a rule, would not have thought it 
 worth his while to listen — would not have 
 condescended to listen ; but happening one 
 day accidentally to overhear a few words of 
 a certain conversation, he was induced to 
 listen more attentively, and the result was 
 that he quietly reached his pencil and note- 
 book and took down the whole of the con- 
 versation in shorthand. 
 
 "If I don't spoil their little game, my 
 name's not Pod Piper !" he said to himself 
 with an air of energy as he shut up his 
 note-book. '^ The pair of cowardly vipers!" 
 
 The conversation stenographed by Mr. 
 Piper, and denounced by him in such em-
 
 <' THATS THE MANP' 125 
 
 phatic terms, was that which took place 
 between OUve Deane and Gerald Warbur- 
 ton on the forenoon of the day following 
 the visit of the latter to Kelvin's house. 
 When Gerald called at eleven o'clock he 
 w^as told that the lawyer had been sud- 
 denly summoned away, but that Miss 
 Deane was desirous of speaking to him. 
 Inwardly w^ondering what Miss Deane 
 could have to say to him, he sat down, 
 but was not kept long waiting. Pod w^ent 
 to tell her that Mr. Pomeroy was there, and 
 Olive came at once. 
 
 " My cousin has been called from home 
 quite unexpectedly," she said ; '* and he 
 asked me to see you in his stead." 
 
 " He could not have chosen a " 
 
 " No compliments, if you please, Mn 
 Pomeroy. I think that neither you nor I 
 care greatly for that sort of thing. Be- 
 sides, I am here to discuss a matter of 
 business with you. Pray pardon the ques- 
 tion, but are my cousin and I right in as- 
 suming that if some situation could be 
 found for you, the duties of which would
 
 126 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 not be onerous, which would bring you into 
 contact with *good' people, and which 
 might open up for you a channel to some- 
 thing far better in the future, you would 
 not be unv/illing, after due consideration, 
 to accept it ?" 
 
 Gerald hesitated. With the knowledge 
 that ten thousand pounds would fall into 
 Ms pocket in the course of a few days, he 
 might w^ell pause before answering such a 
 question. 
 
 " Reall}^, Miss Deane, you quite take me 
 by surprise. I have led a vagabond exist- 
 ence for so many years, that the idea of a 
 situation of any kind that would at all 
 cramp that freedom of action to which I 
 have been so long used, and which has be- 
 come so sweet to me, could not but be 
 somewhat distasteful. Still, if I ever do 
 intend to settle down into a respectable 
 member of the community, it is quite time 
 I began to think of doing so, and the pic- 
 ture just drawn by you is not without its 
 allurements. You will not, therefore, I 
 hope, think me presumptuous if I ask you
 
 "THATS THE MAN F 127 
 
 to favour me with a few more parti- 
 culars." 
 
 " I will be quite candid in the matter 
 
 with you," said Olive. " The situation to 
 which I refer is that of amanuensis and 
 secretary to Sir Thomas Dudgeon, the 
 newly-elected member for Pembridge. 
 My cousin has the management of Sir 
 Thomas's affairs, and has been asked to 
 find some one suitable for the situation in 
 question." 
 
 Gerald was at a loss what to say. The 
 mention of Sir Thomas's name at once 
 brought to his mind what Miss Bellamy 
 had told him — how Eleanor Lloyd had 
 been taken up by Lady Dudgeon, was now 
 living with the family, and was to go to 
 London with them when they moved there 
 for the season. But how would all that be 
 when Miss Lloyd should be proved to be 
 penniless ? 
 
 " You hesitate," said Olive, after a few 
 moments. " You hardly know whether to 
 say Yes or No." 
 
 " You are right — I don't," said Gerald,
 
 128 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 frankly. '^ At the same time, my warmest 
 thanks are due to you and Mr. Kelvin for 
 thinking of me in the way you have." 
 
 " Take time to think over what I have 
 said. Don't give me an answer now. 
 Suppose you either call and see me, or let 
 me have a line from you by to-morrow 
 morning? Or shall you want a still longer 
 time before making up your mind T 
 
 " Thanks," said Gerald, with a laugh ; 
 " but till to-morrow will be quite long 
 enough." 
 
 " Matthew mentioned something to me 
 of the conversation that passed between 
 you and him," said Olive, with a smile. 
 " He told me of his suggestion that you 
 should elevate your fortunes by marrying 
 an heiress." 
 
 " It was very unfair on Kelvin's part to 
 tell tales out of school." 
 
 '* But seriously, why should you not 
 marry an heiress V 
 
 " Seriously, I know of no reason why I 
 should not, except this — that all the ladies 
 with whom I have the happiness to be
 
 "THATS THE MAN/" 129 
 
 acquainted are very little better off tlian 
 myself." 
 
 "Should you agree to become Sir Thomas 
 Dudgeon's secretary, you will have an op- 
 portunity, while under his roof, of ingratiat- 
 ing yourself with a veritable heiress." 
 
 ''Come, come, the plot is thickening fast," 
 said Gerald, and he hitched his chaii* a little 
 nearer Miss Deane. 
 
 " Yes, a veritable heiress, young and 
 charming into the bargain, and one whose 
 affections, I have every reason to believe, 
 are totally disengaged." 
 
 " Pardon me for saying so," said Grerald, 
 ''but it seems highly improbable to me that 
 any relative of Sir Thomas Dudgeon would 
 condescend to look upon that gentleman's 
 secretary in the light of a suitor for her 
 hand." 
 
 " The lady in question is no relative of 
 Sir Thomas — she is merely a visitor under 
 his roof; but a visitor who will probably 
 stay there till a husband shall take her 
 away to a home of her own. Why should 
 not you be that husband, Mr. Pomeroy ?" 
 
 VOL. I. 9
 
 I30 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 " Why not, indeed ! But would it be a 
 breacli of confidence if you were to tell me 
 the lady's name ?" 
 
 " It would be no breach of confidence," 
 said Olive, " although it was not my inten- 
 tion to reveal to you the lady's name at 
 present. However, having been frank with 
 you so far, I may as well continue to be so. 
 The lady to whom I refer is Miss Eleanor 
 Lloyd — of course, a perfect stranger to you. 
 Her father died a few months ago, and left 
 her a fortune of twenty thousand pounds." 
 
 All Gerald's self-control was needed to 
 keep him from betraying himself to the 
 pair of keen eyes that were fixed so steadily 
 on him. He turned his head away, and 
 affected to be deeply considering the words 
 he had just heard. He wanted time to re- 
 cover himself 
 
 Up to a few moments ago, not the 
 slightest suspicion had entered his mind 
 that the offer which Kelvin had made him 
 through Miss Deane had sprung from any- 
 thing but a feeling of genuine friendship 
 on the lawyer's part ; and even when Olive
 
 « THAVS THE MAN r 131 
 
 had propounded her theory that he ought 
 to recoup his fortunes by marrying an 
 heiress, he had looked upon it as so much 
 quiet chaff on her part, never thinking that 
 any serious meaning was attached to her 
 words. 
 
 But the mention of Eleanor Lloyd's name 
 had changed all this. Suddenly he seemed 
 to see a pitfall at his feet. His mind, ever 
 active in moments of emergency, at once 
 whispered certain questions to him, not one 
 of which he could answer to his own satis- 
 faction. What object had Kelvin in view 
 in offering to procure for a man whom he 
 knew only as a nameless adventurer a 
 situation of trust and responsibility in the 
 house of such a man as Sir Thomas Dud- 
 geon ? What object had Olive Deane in 
 view in trying to persuade this same name- 
 less adventurer to make love to and win 
 the hand of Eleanor Lloyd ? Was it with 
 Kelvin's knowledge and sanction that Miss 
 Deane was thus trying to persuade him? or 
 was she doing it merely in furtherance of 
 some hidden scheme of her own ? Was 
 
 9—2
 
 132 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 Miss Deane aware, as Kelvin undoubtedly 
 was, that Eleanor was not the heiress people 
 believed her to be, nor any relation of Jacob 
 Lloyd ; and if so, what could her object 
 possibly be in trying to bring Jack Pomeroy 
 and Miss Lloyd together ? Finally, came 
 the oft-recurring questions : Why had not 
 Kelvin written to him as Gerald Warbur- 
 ton, the real heir ; and why had he neg- 
 lected to reveal the contents of the sealed 
 packet to Eleanor ? There seemed to be 
 something under the surface that at present 
 he could in no wise fathom. He could not 
 rid his mind of the suspicion that there 
 w^as some hidden link of connection between 
 the concealment of the sealed packet by 
 Kelvin, and the evident desire of Olive 
 Deane that he should win Eleanor for his 
 wife. And yet how could there be any 
 such link of connection ? In any case, he 
 would meet stratagem with stratagem. It 
 should be a case of diamond cut diamond. 
 
 He would still be Jack Pomeroy to them, 
 and would seem, for a little while at least, 
 to fall in with all their views and wishes.
 
 " THATS THE MAN P' 133 
 
 " Really, Miss Deane/' he said at last, 
 " you have piqued my curiosity in the 
 strangest possible way. I hardly know in 
 what terms to answer you, The position 
 of this Miss Lloyd, who is so far above me 
 in the social scale, would seem to render 
 utterly absurd and Quixotic on my part 
 any advances that I might make with the 
 view of ultimately winning her hand." 
 
 " Of course, if you are lacking in bold- 
 ness and audacity," said Miss Deane, with 
 the faintest possible sneer, "those are 
 qualities which no one can lend you for the 
 occasion, and the sooner we bring our in- 
 terview to an end the better. But if your 
 hesitation arises from the fact of your 
 being short of funds, you need be under 
 no apprehension on that score. Par- 
 don me for speaking so plainly, but my 
 cousin gave me to understand that you 
 were not one of the richest of individuals — 
 he insinuated, in fact, that you were almost 
 penniless." 
 
 " Not for the first time in my life, Miss 
 Deane — in fact, I rather like being penni-
 
 134 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 less, it keeps the circle of one's friends and 
 acquaintances so limited and select." 
 
 " To begin with — noy cousin Matthew 
 must lend you fifty pounds." 
 
 " Fifty pounds ! I like the first item ot 
 your programme vastly." 
 
 *'The first necessity in your case is that 
 you should have the dress and appearance 
 of a gentleman." 
 
 " I quite agree with you, Miss Deane. 
 We owe much to our tailor — in the way of 
 gratitude." 
 
 " I have said nothing to you respecting 
 your friends and connections. I have as- 
 sumed all along that you would be able to 
 satisfy Sir Thomas on those points, should 
 he ever choose to question you respecting 
 them — which 1 don't for one moment think 
 that he will do." 
 
 " On the points you speak of, I do not 
 doubt that I could satisfy either Sir Thomas 
 Dudgeon or any one else." 
 
 "Such being the case, and wdth the man- 
 ners, dress, and appearance of a gentleman, 
 it seems to me that yoa would have the 
 
 i
 
 « THATS THE MAN r 135 
 
 campaign almost entirely in your own 
 hands. You would be under the same roof 
 with Miss Lloyd — an inestimable advantage 
 in your case. You would be in the habit of 
 seeing her daily, and might make yourself 
 agreeable to her in many ways. Under 
 such circumstances, where would be the 
 harm if, now and then, you were to hint 
 vaguely at your expectations — at your rich 
 relations — at your fashionable friends ? 
 Neither would you altogether omit an oc- 
 casional mention of your undergraduate 
 days at Cambridge, nor of your travels 
 abroad." 
 
 " My dear Miss Deane, you might safely 
 leave all the delicate little details, all the 
 nuances of the picture, to me." 
 
 " I am quite sure of that. Miss Lloyd 
 is nothing but a simple, country-bred girl : 
 you are a man of the world. Voila tout!' 
 
 Gerald rose. 
 
 " I may just mention this," said Olive : 
 "Miss Lloyd will be of age in a few months. 
 She will then be entirely her own mistress, 
 and can give her hand, and her twenty
 
 136 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 thousand pounds with it, to the man she 
 likes best, and no one will have the right 
 or power to say her nay." 
 
 " Kelvin himself could not have stated 
 the case more clearly." 
 
 " You will let me hear from you, Mr. 
 Pomeroy, by to-morrow morning at the 
 latest ?" 
 
 " There will be no need for you to wait 
 till to-morrow morning, Miss Deane." 
 
 "Does that mean that you have made up 
 your mind already V 
 
 " It does." 
 
 " And the answer is ?" 
 
 " The answer is, that if Matthew Kelvin 
 can obtain this situation for me, I will 
 gladly accept it. To tell the truth, I am 
 somewhat tired of the nomadic sort of life 
 that I have been leading since I was quite 
 a lad. I think I am sufficiently tamed to 
 settle quietly down to work — provided 
 there is not too much of it, and I am 
 allowed to have pretty much my own 
 way." 
 
 " Any person who chooses to assert him-
 
 « THAT'S THE MAN/" 137 
 
 self can have his own way with Sir Thomas 
 Dudgeon. I am glad that you have de- 
 cided to accept the position. I feel quite 
 sure that you will have no cause to regret 
 doing so." 
 
 " It is you who have persuaded me. I 
 feel sure that Kelvin would not have suc- 
 ceeded as you have.'* 
 
 " Don't forget what I have told you about 
 Miss Lloyd.'' 
 
 " I am not at all likely to do so. I am 
 all anxiety to see her." 
 
 " When do you go back to town V 
 
 " This afternoon, by the ^wq o'clock 
 express." 
 
 " You will leave me an address before 
 you go, by means of which my cousin 
 can communicate with you. You may ex- 
 pect to hear from me in a week at the 
 latest." 
 
 Gerald pencilled down the address of a 
 London friend, to which any letters for 
 him might be sent. A few minutes later 
 he took his leave. 
 
 This conversation it was that Mr. Piper
 
 138 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 thought it worth his while to take down in 
 shorthand. 
 
 " My cousin Matthew's revenge shall be 
 worthy of the name," said Olive to herself, 
 as soon as she was alone. " Let this Elea- 
 nor Lloyd but engage herself to Pomeroy 
 — let her marry him if she will — and on 
 the day that Matthew tells her the secret 
 of her birth, he can tell her also that the 
 man to whom she has given her heart is 
 but a sorry impostor, whose sole object in 
 marrying her was to obtain possession of 
 that money which is hers no longer. When 
 that day comes, may I be there to see ! 
 Her proud beauty shall be humiliated to 
 the dust." 
 
 When Gerald got back to London, he 
 told Miss Bellamy everything that had 
 happened. She quite concurred with him 
 that it looked very much as if some strange 
 conspiracy were afoot; but what the nature 
 and objects of it might be they were alto- 
 gether at a loss to imagine. In any case, 
 it could do no harm for Gerald to retain 
 his incognito for a little while longer.
 
 '' THATS THE MAN r 139 
 
 A few days later, Gerald received by 
 post a bank-note for fifty pounds, with 
 Miss Deane's compliments. Mr. Kelvia 
 had not yet got back home, she wrote, 
 but would doubtless communicate with 
 Mr. Pomeroy immediately after his return. 
 Mr. Pomeroy pinned one note to the other, 
 and having sealed them up in an envelope, 
 he put them carefully away in his writing- 
 desk. 
 
 A day or two later, Ambrose Murray 
 called upon him at his rooms. " If you 
 have nothing better to do," he said, "I 
 wish you would give up the day to me. I 
 want to visit my wife's grave. She lies 
 among some of her own people in a little 
 country churchyard, about a couple of miles 
 from Welwyn. To me such a journey seems 
 quite a formidable undertaking, and I want 
 you, if you will, to go with me." 
 
 Gerald at once assented. They took the 
 train from King's Cross to AVelwyn, and 
 then walked the remainder of the distance. 
 When the churchyard was found, Gerald 
 left Mr. Murray to himself for half an hour.
 
 I40 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 It was still broad daylight wlien they got 
 back to the station. They were pacing the 
 platform slowly, waiting for their train, 
 when the up express came rushing past at 
 the rate of forty miles an hour. They stood 
 for a moment to watch it. Suddenly Am- 
 brose Murray gripped his companion by 
 the arm. 
 
 " Look ! look !" he cried. '' That's the 
 man ! As I live, that's the face of Max 
 Jacoby !" 
 
 Gerald looked, but ah-eady the train had 
 gone too far to allow him to distinguish 
 any particular face. 
 
 " But after twenty years T said Gerald. 
 
 " I should know him at the end of a 
 thousand years 1" exclaimed Murray, his 
 whole frame tremtling with excitement. 
 "Max Jacoby is still among the living. 
 The next thing to do is to find him."
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 MISS DEANE FINDS A NEW HOME. 
 
 HEN Matthew Kelvin reached 
 home from his journey, he was 
 certainly surprised at the budget 
 of news which his mother had ready for 
 him. 
 
 *' Where's Olive V was the first question 
 he asked, as he sat down to his dinner, after 
 kissing his mother, and satisfying himself 
 that she was no worse in health than when 
 he left her. 
 
 " She's gone to see the Leightons, and 
 won't be back till to-morrow, so that I shall 
 have my dear boy all to myself this even-
 
 142 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 ing. It was very considerate of Olive, I 
 must say." 
 
 Mrs. Kelvin was a handsome, stately old 
 lady, with silvery hair and gold-rimmed 
 spectacles. She wore a richly brocaded 
 dress, a China crape shawl — even in the 
 house she always wore a shawl — and a black 
 lace cap of elaborate construction. To see 
 her sitting in her easy chair by the fire, no 
 one would have suspected her of being an 
 invalid ; but for many years past she had 
 suffered from a spinal complaint which 
 almost entirely disabled her from walk- 
 ing. 
 
 " But we shall soon lose Olive now," 
 added Mrs. Kelvin, a moment or two 
 later. 
 
 " Indeed ! how's that T asked Kelvin, 
 indifferently. 
 
 " She is going to Stammars, as governess 
 to Lady Dudgeon's two little girls. At 
 her own terms, too — a hundred guineas a 
 year." 
 
 " Well done, Olive 1" cried the lawyer. 
 " A clever girl, v^ry ; but I'm afraid that
 
 MISS DEANE FINDS A NEW HOME. 143 
 
 she and Lady Dudgeon won't agree long 
 together/' 
 
 " She may perhaps have a private reason 
 of her own for so readily accepting Lady 
 Dudgeon's offer. Mind, dear, I only say 
 she may have ; I don't say she has." 
 
 Matthew Kelvin knew that it was ex- 
 pected of him to show some curiosity in 
 the matter. 
 
 " Shall I be set down as unduly inqui- 
 sitive," he said, " if I ask you to tell me 
 what you suppose this private reason to 
 be?" 
 
 "I think it quite possible that Olive may 
 be willing to go to Stammars, because — 
 well, because Mr. Pomeroy will be there 
 also." 
 
 Mrs. Kelvin drew her shawl round her 
 with quite a relish, and shook her head 
 meaningly at her son. 
 
 "Because Mr. Pomeroy will be there 
 also !" said Mr. Kelvin, like a man who could 
 hardly believe his ears. " Who says that 
 Mr. Pomeroy is going to Stammars ?" 
 
 In the pressure of far more important
 
 144 A SECRET OF THE SEA, 
 
 matters, he Lad almost forgotten the exist- 
 ence of an individual of so little conse- 
 quence as Jack Pomeroy. 
 
 " Why, Matthew, dear, I thought it was 
 all arranged that as soon as you came home, 
 Mr. Pomeroy was to be made Sir Thomas 
 Dudgeon's secretary, or something of that 
 kind ; and Olive and I have advanced him 
 fifty pounds to provide him with an outfit. 
 You know you told me yourself that you 
 didn't suppose he had a shilling in the 
 world." 
 
 It tested all Mr. Kelvin's powers of self- 
 control to keep down an explosion of tem- 
 per. He remembered in time that any 
 •outbreak on his part would be sure to up- 
 set his mother and make her ill for several 
 days, so for a minute or two he did not 
 speak. He put down his knife and fork, 
 and sipped at his claret, as if in deep 
 thought. 
 
 " Fifty pounds is a great deal of money, 
 mother," he said at last. 
 
 "It is a great deal of money, Matthew, 
 of course ; but Mr. Pomeroy understands
 
 MISS DEANE FINDS A NEW HOME. 145 
 
 that he is to pay the amount back out of 
 his salary." 
 
 " The whole affair seems to be cut and 
 dried, and I have not even spoken to Sir 
 Thomas about the man !" he said, not with- 
 out a touch of impatience. " For anything 
 I know to the contrary, Sir Thomas may 
 have filled up the situation himself, while 
 I have been away." 
 
 " I am sorry, dear, if I have done any- 
 thing against your wishes ; but really I 
 thought I was managing everything for the 
 best." 
 
 Matthew Kelvin could see a tear in a 
 corner of his mother s eye, and he could 
 not bear that. 
 
 " There, there, mother, don't put your- 
 self out of the way," he said. " Fifty pounds 
 won't ruin us, even though we should never 
 get a penny of it back." 
 
 "But Mr. Pomeroy was such a nice 
 young man!" continued Mrs. Kelvin. "So 
 good-looking and well-educated ; so gentle- 
 manly in every way." 
 
 " Some of the most unmitigated scamps 
 
 VOL, I. 10
 
 146 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 I have ever met with were very nice young 
 men indeed," returned Matthew. " Not 
 that I know anything to Pomeroy's dis- 
 credit ; at the same time, I know nothing 
 very greatly to his credit. He has been a 
 Bohemian — a wanderer to and fro on the 
 face of the earth for years ; and to intro- 
 duce such a man, about whom, be it re- 
 membered, I know absolutely nothing, into 
 the household of Sir Thomas Dudgeon, is a 
 serious responsibility." 
 
 " Oh, I believe Olive satisfied herself 
 thoroughly as to the respectability of Mr. 
 Pomeroy and his connections." 
 
 Mr. Kelvin smiled grimly at the idea of 
 Olive Deane getting more information about 
 himself out of Jack Pomeroy than that indi- 
 vidual might be inclined to give; but, as we 
 have already seen, Olive never troubled 
 herself with any such unnecessary details. 
 
 " If women would but refrain from med- 
 dling with matters that they don't under- 
 stand, what a blessing it would be !" said 
 Kelvin to himself 
 
 " What was that you said just now about
 
 MISS DEANE FINDS A NE W HOME, 1 47 
 
 Olive and this fellow Pomeroy T he asked, 
 presently. 
 
 " Why, simply this : that I rather fancy 
 Olive has contracted a penchant in that 
 quarter. Something has given me that 
 idea, but I may be quite mistaken." 
 
 Mr. Kelvin shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 *' Of course she is old enough to choose 
 for herself," he said, " and, as a rule, I 
 think Olive is quite capable of taking care of 
 her own interests : but if she should ever 
 fall in love, I should like it to be with a 
 man that one knows something about, and 
 not with a mere adventurer." 
 
 " I can't help thinking that you are a 
 little too hard on Mr. Pomeroy. It is a 
 long time since I was so taken with any 
 one as I was with him. A modest, sen- 
 sible, well-informed young man I set him 
 down as, and a gentleman withal, or else I 
 don't know what a gentleman is." 
 
 " I suppose we men of law see with dif- 
 ferent spectacles from anybody else," said 
 Matthew. " Suspicion is part of our stock- 
 in-trade." 
 
 10—2
 
 148 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 "I was certainly very much taken with 
 Mr. Pomeroy," returned Mrs. Kelvin; "but 
 at the same time my suspicion with regard 
 to Olive made me interest myself more in 
 his case than I should otherwise have 
 done." 
 
 Mrs. Kelvin was not a woman to readily 
 abandon any point that she had set her 
 mind on carrying. Before bidding her son 
 good -night, she won from him a promise 
 that he would do his best to obtain for Mr. 
 Pomeroy the coveted situation. 
 
 Olive Deane was quite aware that her 
 cousin would be greatly annoyed when he 
 should come to ascertain what had been done 
 during his absence, and she wisely left to 
 his mother the task of telHng him. Certainly 
 she would have been anything but satisfied 
 — anything but pleased — had she heard 
 the conversation between her aunt and her 
 cousin. The reference to a possible liking 
 on her part for Pomeroy would have touched 
 her pride to the quick. Very, very dif- 
 ferent was the feeling at work deep down 
 in her heart.
 
 MTSS DEANE FINDS A NEW HOME. 149 
 
 Mrs. Kelvin, in fact, had been altogether 
 mistaken with regard to the reasons which 
 had induced Olive to accept the situation 
 of governess to Lady Dudgeon's children. 
 Olive had no option but to accept it — or 
 felt that she had not. When Lady Dud- 
 geon made her the offer, and when her aunt 
 said, " It would be a capital situation for 
 you, and were I you I should certainly 
 accept it," Olive felt that she was not at 
 liberty to do otherwise — not at liberty to 
 live an idle life any longer. She had always 
 given her aunt to understand that she was 
 merely taking a few weeks' rest before 
 looking out for another situation. Here 
 was an excellent situation ready to her 
 hand. How was it possible that she should 
 refuse it ? 
 
 And yet — and yet no one but herself 
 knew how bitter it was to her to have to 
 quit that roof; no one but herself knew 
 how infinitely sweet to her had been those 
 few weeks of sojourn with her cousin and 
 her aunt ! She had loved Matthew Kelvin 
 with an undivided love from the time when,
 
 ISO A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 as girl and boy, they had played together. 
 It was a love that had grown with her 
 growth, and had rooted itself more firmly 
 in her heart with each passing year. 
 
 She was clear-sighted enough to know 
 that never since the time of that brief, 
 romantic episode at Redcar, when she had 
 had him all to herself for a blissful fort- 
 night, had Matthew Kelvin felt for her 
 anything warmer than a mere cousinly, or, 
 at the most, a quiet, brotherly affection. 
 She was sufficiently versed in worldly 
 knowledge to be aware that the chances 
 that she, a poor governess, neither very 
 young nor very handsome, should ever be- 
 come the wife of her ambitious, well-to-do 
 cousin were about as remote as it was pos- 
 sible for them to be. And yet, for all that, 
 a dim, faint hope had always held possession 
 of her heart — so dim and so faint, that she 
 herself seemed to be hardly aware of its ex- 
 istence — that among the unknown chances 
 and changes of the future, that out of the 
 involvement and evolution of the great un- 
 rehearsed drama of life, with its unforeseen
 
 MTSS DEANE FINDS A NEW HOME. 1 5 r 
 
 exits and entrances, such a happy cUniax 
 might somehow — she could not tell how 
 — be brought about. 
 
 She had got into the way of looking upon 
 her cousin as a man not likely to marry. 
 If this view of his character struck the 
 foundation from her own hopes, it seemed 
 to preclude fear from any other quarter. 
 When, therefore, Matthew told her the 
 story of his love for, and rejection by, 
 Eleanor Lloyd, it came upon her with all 
 the force of an astounding revelation. 
 Happily there ssemed no likelihood of Miss 
 Lloyd altering her determination not to 
 accept Mr. Kelvin ; therefore, as far as she 
 — Olive — was concerned, she would not 
 look upon the campaign as entirely lost 
 even now. 
 
 Many a husband has been won through 
 his rejection by a rival. Men at such times 
 are prone to seek the first pleasant shelter 
 that offers itself to them. They want to 
 lie quiet and heal them of their wounds ; 
 and there are plenty of women in the world 
 ready to act the part of physician to the
 
 152 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 wounds inflicted by another, provided only 
 that the wounded knight will agree to 
 wear no other gage than theirs in time to 
 come. 
 
 Such a physician would Olive gladly 
 have become, rather than lose her knight, 
 if he would but have consented to such a 
 method of treatment. But Mr. Kelvin was 
 no soft-hearted swain who thinks the world 
 is no longer good for anything because a 
 certain pair of white arms refuse to coil 
 themselves round his neck. It is true that 
 he had told her of his wounds, but he had 
 expressed no desire to be healed of them ; 
 he had given Olive no encouragement what- 
 ever to offer herself as his nurse. He had 
 expressed himself very bitterly with re- 
 gard to the person who had so wounded 
 him, and Olive had done her best to in- 
 tensify that bitterness ; but that was all 
 She felt that she was not one step nearer 
 the capture of her cousin's heart than on 
 that day, now several weeks ago, when he 
 had first told her of his love for Miss Lloyd. 
 But was that love really dead ? Was it
 
 MISS DEANE FINDS A NE W HOME. 1 53 
 
 not, unknown to himself, still smouldering 
 in his heart, ready at the slightest provoca- 
 tion to burst into a flame tenfold more 
 ardent than before ? 
 
 She felt instinctively that no other 
 woman would ever become the wife of 
 Matthew Kelvin so long as Eleanor Lloyd 
 remained unmarried; and this feeling it 
 was that was at the bottom of the plot for 
 inducing Pomeroy to make love to the 
 latter. That dangerous rival once out of 
 the way for ever, Olive's ambitious scheme 
 would not look so entirely hopeless as it did 
 just now. 
 
 Chagrined as Olive was at having to quit 
 her cousin's roof with the hidden purpose 
 of her life no nearer its accomplishment 
 than before, she yet acknowledged to her- 
 self that she would much rather go to 
 Stammars than anywhere else. She had 
 all a woman's curiosity to see that other 
 woman about whom she had been told so 
 much, and who had been in her thoughts, 
 day and night, ever since she had heard the 
 first mention of her name. At Stammars,
 
 154 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 too, she would have an opportunity of see- 
 ing Matthew now and then when he should 
 come there to visit Sir Thomas on business. 
 Then, she would be on the spot, ready, 
 with deft fingers, to tie up any threads 
 of her plot which might be accidentally 
 broken, or to hasten Pomeroy's footsteps 
 along the path she wanted him to tread, 
 should it prove needful to do so. In any 
 case, she need not stay there longer than 
 was necessary for the carrying out of her 
 own views. At any time she could pick a 
 quarrel with Lady Dudgeon, throw up her 
 situation, and go back for a while to the 
 shelter of her aunt's roof 
 
 Five days after her cousin's return, Olive 
 Deane found herself duly installed in her 
 new home, and two days after that Mr. 
 John Pomeroy made his appearance at 
 Stammars. 
 
 Mr. Kelvin, despite his irritation and 
 chagrin at what had taken place during his 
 absence, did not fail to carry out the pro- 
 mise he had made to his mother. The 
 situation was still open, and Sir Thomas at
 
 MISS DEANE FINDS A NEW HOME. 155 
 
 once promised it to Pomeroy. Then Kelvin 
 wrote to the latter, telling him when he 
 would be expected at Stammars, but not 
 in any way alluding to the loan of fifty 
 pounds. As a matter of course, on passing 
 throuofh Pembrido^e, Gerald called to see 
 Kelvin, but the lawyer was not at home — 
 purposely. He had done his duty by his 
 mother, but he had no wish to see the man 
 who had caused him so much annoyance ; 
 he only hoped that Pomeroy would do no- 
 thing to disgrace his recommendation. For 
 the present he washed his hands of him. 
 
 Mr. Kelvin had not been without his 
 own thoughts all this time as to the course 
 he had taken at Olive's suggestion in keep- 
 ing from Miss Lloyd the contents of the 
 sealed packet sent him by Miss Bellamy. 
 He was not usually a man whose mind 
 vacillated with regard to any of his inten- 
 tions or purposes. " There's no shilly- 
 shallying about Matthew," his mother 
 would often say. " When he sees his 
 point he goes straight at it : fire and water 
 would hardly keep him back."
 
 156 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 But in this matter of the sealed packet 
 he did shilly-shally painfully, blowing hot 
 and cold by turns, making up his mind one 
 day that he would tell everything, and 
 being as stedfastly determined the next 
 that he would do nothing of tke kind. He 
 was not unaware of the meanness of what 
 he was doing ; it was altogether foreign to 
 his notions of right and wrong, to act with 
 anything but the strictest honour towards 
 his clients, rich or poor. Still, about this 
 particular case there was something so 
 exceptional as to remove it out of the 
 ordinary category of purely professional 
 business — that is what he said to himself : 
 but the real reason was that his own feel- 
 ings were more deeply interested than they 
 had ever been before. Under such circum- 
 stances it is by no means difficult to argue 
 oneself into the belief that although the 
 action on which we are engaged may not 
 be positively meritorious, it is, at least, one 
 from which no one will suffer. ** I am only 
 doing Miss Lloyd a negative wrong," Kel- 
 vin would sometimes say to himself. " If
 
 MISS DEANE FINDS A NEW HOME. 157 
 
 anything, she ought to thank me for keep- 
 ing the secret from her as long as possible." 
 Having put off the revelation for so long a 
 time, he shrank more than ever from telling 
 her now. One morning on getting up he 
 would swear to himself that he had never 
 loved Eleanor Lloyd as he loved her now : 
 next morning he would vow that he had 
 never hated any human being as he hated 
 her. He had been rendered very wretched 
 by Miss Lloyd's rejection of his suit ; but 
 with all his unhappiness he had never till 
 now lost his own sense of self-respect : not 
 that he would have admitted for a single 
 moment that he had so lost it. He made 
 believe, even to himself, that it was still as 
 safely in his possession as ever it had been. 
 But the acute consciousness of its loss 
 which came over him at odd times — only 
 to be at once thrust into the background 
 with a firm hand — by no means tended to 
 mitigate the intensity of his determination 
 to be avenged, in one form or another, on 
 the woman to whom he owed this strange 
 new feeling, which not seldom made him
 
 158 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 shrink within himself, as though he were 
 in reality little better than a whipped cur. 
 Stammars, the residence of Sir Thomas 
 Dudgeon, was, as a family mansion, still 
 quite in its infancy, being something under 
 twenty years old. Sir Thomas had stuck 
 to the old house as long as it was safe for 
 him to do so ; but when, during a night of 
 terrible storm, a great part of it was blown 
 about his ears, he began to see that it 
 would not be advisable to delay his removal 
 much longer. So, on a windy knoll about 
 half a mile from the old house, the new 
 mansion was built. It was built with all 
 modern conveniences and appliances. The 
 rooms were large and lofty, and had huge 
 plate-glass windows with Venetian blinds. 
 Ptound about were gardens, and shrubberies, 
 and hothouses, with a view beyond over 
 miles of pleasant Hertfordshire scenery. 
 Everybody expressed themselves as being 
 enchanted with the house, and yet every- 
 body felt that it lacked one essential. 
 There was no homelike comfort about it. 
 Whether it was that the rooms were too
 
 MISS DEANE FINDS A NEW HOME. 159 
 
 big and the fire-places too few ; whether it 
 was that the house was built so high above 
 the surrounding country as to be exposed 
 to every wind that blew, and so had never 
 been able to get itself warmed through ; or 
 from whatever other cause it might arise, 
 certain it is that Stammars never seemed 
 otherwise than cold and comfortless. Each 
 room in the house seemed to have its own 
 particular draught, while the wind seemed 
 to be for ever playing at hide-and-seek up 
 and down the great wide corridors and 
 staircases, banging every now and then a 
 bedroom door, or creeping with snake-like 
 motion under any piece of carpet that had 
 not been firmly nailed down. 
 
 The old mansion of Stammars had dated 
 back for upwards of four centuries, and 
 had originally been the home of the Fy- 
 zackerleys, one of the most ancient fami- 
 lies in the county. So ancient, indeed, 
 had the Fyzackerleys at length become 
 that they had died out, and the estate 
 had been brought to the hammer. The 
 fortunate purchaser was the present Sir
 
 i6o A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 Thomas's grandfather, at that time a sugar 
 refiner in the Minories, and some ^^q 
 years subsequently Lord Mayor of London. 
 While filling the latter office he had the 
 good fortune to be knighted, and later still 
 by two or three years he was created a 
 baronet. Why such an honour had been 
 conferred on the worthy but obscure sugar 
 refiner, no one seemed to know. There 
 was some question about it at the time, 
 and certain people went so far as to whisper 
 that the baronetcy had been given in re- 
 turn for a loan of twenty thousand pounds 
 made to a certain august personage, who 
 would have found repayment of the same a 
 somewhat inconvenient matter. But such 
 a report was probably the invention of pure 
 malice. Be that as it may, the sugar re- 
 finer took his title and his money down to 
 Stammars ; and there he died, and there in 
 due course he was buried. After him came 
 his son, and then, in the ordinary course 
 of events, his grandson, the present Sir 
 Thomas Dudgeon and the third baronet of 
 that name.
 
 MISS DEANE FINDS A NEW HOME. i6r 
 
 Sir Thomas, at this time, was close upon 
 sixty years of age, and was a short-statured, 
 podgy man, with white hair, and a red, 
 good-natured face. He almost invariably 
 wore a black tail-coat, black waistcoat, 
 pepper-and-salt trousers, and shoes. He 
 wore starched check neckcloths, and pointed 
 collars that nearly touched his ears. His 
 hats were always of flufiy, white beaver 
 and as they were very rarely brushed, they 
 gave him a certain shaggy and unkempt 
 appearance. He had a trick of whistHng 
 vinder his breath when he had nothing 
 better to do, and of jingling the keys and 
 loose change in his pocket. It was a pecu- 
 liarity of Sir Thomas that his shoes always 
 creaked when he walked. No one could 
 tell why every pair of shoes that he had 
 should do so, but they did. At Stammars 
 everybod}'^ was so accustomed to this creak- 
 ing that if by any possibility he had become 
 possessed of a noiseless pair, his family 
 would certainly have been alarmed : they 
 would have taken it as an omen that some- 
 thing dreadful was about to happen. It 
 
 VOL. I. 11
 
 i62 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 was told in Pembridge as a good thing that 
 when Sir Thomas was presented to his 
 Sovereign, his shoes creaked so loudly that 
 the eyes of all the great functionaries were 
 turned on him in horror ; but that the little 
 man backed smiUngly out of the royal pre- 
 sence, blandly unconscious of the conster- 
 nation he had excited. When we first 
 make his acquaintance he had just been 
 elected member for Pembridge, in place of 
 the late Mr. Rack straw, who had repre- 
 sented that borough for more than twenty 
 years. Parliament would meet in February, 
 when the family would go up to town, and 
 Sir Thomas would take his oaths and his 
 seat, and do his best to justify the hopes of 
 his Pembridgian supporters, that he would 
 speedily become one of the shining lights of 
 his country's senate. 
 
 Lady Dudgeon was a tall, large-boned 
 woman, some half dozen years younger 
 than her husband. She had a loud, rough- 
 edged voice, and a magisterial cross-ex- 
 amining manner. She was never happier 
 than when laying down the law to some of
 
 MISS DEANE FINDS A NEW HOME. 163 
 
 her servants or dependents, or scolding 
 them for an infringement of one or another 
 of the innumerable rules and regulations 
 with which she strove to fence round the 
 daily lives of all those over whom she had 
 any control. Had she been a man, Lady 
 Dudgeon would infallibly have developed 
 into a Justice of the Peace, and as such 
 have been a terror to all the evil-doers of 
 the neighbourhood. With two exceptions, 
 everybody at Stammars, her husband in- 
 cluded, stood in awe of her. Those excep- 
 tions were her eldest daughter, Sophia, 
 aged thirteen ; and Eleanor Lloyd. 
 
 Lady Dudgeon had only two children 
 living — the aforesaid Sophia, and Caroline, 
 who was two years younger than her sister. 
 For their behoof it was that an engagement 
 had been entered into with Olive Deane. 
 They were two handsome, resolute girls, 
 full of high spirits and mischief, who looked 
 upon governesses as their natural enemies. 
 Three ladies of this profession they had 
 already worried into resigning their posi- 
 tion at Stammars, and they had looked 
 
 11—2
 
 i64 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 forward with considerable glee to worrying 
 Miss Deane in like manner. 
 
 It was on a complaint from Madame 
 Ribaud, who was governess number two, 
 respecting some terrible act of mutiny, that 
 Sophia obtained a signal victory over her 
 mother, and from that time she had never let 
 go the advantage thus gained. In conse- 
 quence of Madame's complaint, Lady Dud- 
 geon had taken Sophia by the hand, and 
 had led her away with the avowed inten- 
 tion of shutting her up in a certain dark 
 closet under the stairs, and there leaving 
 her to do penance during the whole of a 
 long summer s day — a day when the sun 
 was shining and all the birds in the shrub- 
 bery were calling to her to go out of 
 doors and be one with them. 
 
 " Mamma, you are not going to shut me 
 Tip in that horrid hole ?" said Sophia, when 
 the door had been flung open for her to 
 enter. 
 
 " I certainly am going to shut you up 
 here," said Lady Dudgeon, with a por- 
 tentous shake of her head.
 
 MISS DEANE FINDS A NEW HOME. 165, 
 
 " Then do you know what I shall do, 
 mamma V 
 
 " I don't know what you will do, Sophia, 
 neither do I care." 
 
 " You are going to have a dinner-party 
 on Friday,^' said Sophia, with determina- 
 tion. " In the middle of the dinner I will 
 walk into the room and tell everybody that 
 you wear a wig and have five false teeth !" 
 
 Lady Dudgeon glared down into the 
 girl's bold face as if she could hardly be- 
 lieve the evidence of her ears. What 
 Sophia had just stated she had hitherto 
 fondly believed to be a secret known to 
 her husband and her maid alone. 
 
 " You naughty, vile girl," she stammered 
 out. ** T will send you right away from 
 home to a school on the Continent, and 
 you shall not come back any more until 
 you are quite grown up." 
 
 " All right, mamma ; I'll go," said the un- 
 daunted girl ; " but I'll write to everybody 
 by post and tell them about the wig and 
 the teeth ;" and, as Lady Dudgeon knew, 
 her daughter was just the girl to carry out
 
 1 66 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 the threat. Her ladyship was puzzled. 
 " Look here, mamma," said Sophy : " be- 
 tween you and me, E-ibaud's nothing but 
 an old stupid, and no more fit to be a 
 governess than I am. You take my advice, 
 and send her about her business. I'm 
 going to get my rope and have a jolly skip 
 round the laurels." 
 
 And almost before her ladyship knew 
 what had happened, she had been well 
 hugged, and found herself alone, staring 
 blankly into the closet under the stairs. 
 
 A few days later Madame Ribaud re- 
 ceived a month's notice, and Lady Dudgeon 
 never attempted extreme measures with 
 Sophia after that time. 
 
 It is not improbable tliat she had this 
 very incident in her mind during her first 
 interview with Miss Deane after the latter s 
 arrival at St am mars. " I place theai en- 
 tirely in your hands," said her ladyship, in 
 reference to her two girls. " Exercise 
 whatever discipline over them you may 
 think best, only don't box their ears, and 
 don't trouble me. If you find that they
 
 MISS DEANE FINDS A NEW HOME. 167 
 
 are becoming your master instead of you 
 being theirs, don't come and complain in 
 the expectation that I shall assist you to 
 maintain an authority that you are not 
 strong enough to keep in your own hands. 
 Should such a contingency arise, it would 
 be better for you to resign your situation 
 at once." 
 
 For the first two or three days all went 
 tolerably well, but hardly to Olive's satis- 
 faction. There were no overt signs of re- 
 bellion, but the girls seemed unaccountably 
 stupid. Whether their stupidity arose from 
 inattention, from weakness of memory, or 
 from a natural lack of intelligence, she was 
 for some time at a loss to judge. But, by- 
 and-by, she began to suspect that this 
 stupidity was merely an assumption on 
 their part purposely to annoy her, and that 
 all the time they were laughing at her in 
 their sleeves. But at such a game as that, 
 Olive knew that her patience was far more 
 than a match for theirs, and so it turned 
 out. Miss Deane seemed so quiet and 
 ^asy, that there was evidently no fun to be
 
 i68 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 got out of her without trying something 
 more practical than stumbling over one's 
 French verbs, or making mistakes in the 
 spelling of one's copies. Thus it fell out on 
 a certain morning when Miss Deane was 
 going out for a walk, that she found it im- 
 possible to get her arms into the sleeves of 
 her waterproof On examination, it was 
 found that the sleeves had been sewn up 
 at the wrist. Miss Deane hung the water- 
 proof up without a word, and took off her 
 bonnet. Then she said, " I think, young 
 ladies, we will not go for our usual walk 
 this morning." Sophy and Carry, half 
 frightened and half defiant, were nudging 
 each other and making believe that it was 
 great fun. 
 
 When they got back into the school- 
 room, said Miss Deane : " As you young 
 ladies appear to be so fond of playing off 
 practical jokes on other people, you cannot 
 reasonably object to one being played off 
 on you. You will, if you please, write out 
 in detail and learn by heart, pages twenty- 
 five to twenty-nine of the irregular verbs
 
 MISS DEANE FINDS A NEW HOME. 169 
 
 in your French Instruction Book. And 
 you will not leave the room till you can 
 repeat the lesson to my satisfaction.'* 
 
 The two girls made a face at each other, 
 but said nothing. It was not the first 
 time they had had a big task set them 
 for a punishment, but they had always 
 contrived to win the day either by 
 force or stratagem, and they did not 
 doubt their ability to do so in the present 
 case. 
 
 By luncheon time they had got the lesson 
 written out. It was not pleasant to have 
 to sacrifice their luncheon, but they w^ere 
 prepared to submit to that : dinner would 
 make up for everything. They did not 
 expect that Miss Deane would let them ga 
 down to dinner as usual, but they did 
 expect that she would go down herself, as 
 Madame Bibaud had done in similar cases. 
 When this had happened, one of the house- 
 maids had always supplied them surrep- 
 titiously with a basket of provisions, which 
 they had drawn up to their window by 
 means of a cord, and had afterwards feasted
 
 I70 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 on ill secret. No dinners had ever tasted 
 half so sweet. Thus provisioned, they had 
 been able to set Madame Eibaud at defi- 
 ance, who, indeed, had never the heart to 
 extend their quarantine beyond the usual 
 hour for tea, and would then set her rebels 
 free, with a little sigh and an ominous 
 shake of her head. As it had happened 
 before, so would it fall out again, thought 
 the girls ; but they did not know Olive 
 Deane. 
 
 Between luncheon and dinner-time they 
 dawdled over their lesson, skimming it 
 carelessly over a few times, but employing 
 themselves more in drawing caricatures 
 than in anything else. After a time the 
 dinner-bell rang — they dined early at Stam- 
 mars when there was no company — but ap- 
 parently Miss Deane took no notice. 
 
 ** Did you not hear the dinner-bell. Miss 
 Deane ?'' asked Caroline, timidly. 
 
 '^ Yes, I heard it ; but I don't want any 
 dinner to-day. I am going to stay here 
 with you." 
 
 The girls looked at each other. Carry's
 
 MISS DEANE FINDS A NEW HOME. 171 
 
 eyes flushed with tears; but Suphy clenched 
 her sharp white teeth, and said something 
 under her breath. All the same, she was 
 as hungry as a young wolf. Both the girls, 
 in fact, were blessed with fine, healthy ap- 
 petites, which they took care to indulge on 
 every possible occasion ; and now their ap- 
 petites cried out in a way that it was 
 almost impossible to resist. 
 
 Candles were lighted, and the afternoon 
 wore itself wearily on till tea-time came 
 round. Anxious eyes were turned on Miss 
 Deane. Surely she would go down to tea; 
 if not, what could she be made of? But 
 no, Miss Deane merely changed one book 
 for another, and went on with her reading, 
 totally unconcerned. 
 
 Carry snivelled a little in secret, but 
 Sophy looked as fierce as a young brigand. 
 Presently Sophy wrote a little note, and 
 flung it across to her sister. "If she doesn't 
 let us out soon, I'll kill her and roast her 
 for supper." 
 
 This made poor Carry tremble violently. 
 She fully believed in her sister's ability to
 
 172 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 carry out her terrible threat. And so 
 another wretched hour doled itself wearily 
 out. 
 
 Sophy's wolf was becoming very ravenous 
 indeed. She saw clearly that her enemy 
 was too strong for her. By-and-by she 
 tossed a scrap of paper to her sister, on 
 which she had written the words : " It's no 
 use. She carries too many guns for us '* 
 — this was a favourite phrase of her father. 
 " I'm going to learn my task, and I advise 
 you to do the same." 
 
 Three-quarters of an hour later, Sophy 
 walked up to Miss Deane and held out her 
 book in silence. Then she went through 
 her task without a single mistake. She 
 took back the book, made Miss Deane an 
 elaborate curtsey, and marched out of the 
 room with the dignified air of a young 
 duchess. 
 
 Carry did not manage so well. She 
 broke down when about half-way through, 
 and burst into tears. Olive quietly shut 
 the book, drew the girl to her and kissed
 
 MISS DEANE FINDS A NEW HOME. 173 
 
 her, and then bade her run off and get 
 some supper. 
 
 From that day forth, Miss Deane and 
 her pupils were on the best possible 
 terms.
 
 CHAPTEE VIII. 
 
 GERALD AT STAMMARS. 
 
 PLEASANT morning-room at 
 Stammars. Lady Dudgeon is 
 busy with her correspondence. 
 To her enter Sir Thomas and 
 Mr. Pomeroy. The former has a volume 
 of Hansard under his arm, the latter 
 carries a roll of manuscript. Lady Dud- 
 geon lays down her pen and looks up. 
 
 " There is no fear, I hope, Mr. Pomeroy/' 
 she says, ''that Sir Thomas's letter of thanks 
 to his supporters will he too late for the 
 next issue of the ' Pembridge Gazette ' ?"
 
 GERALD AT ST AM MARS. 175 
 
 " The editor has promised me that it 
 shall appear on Saturday without fail." 
 
 "Have you got the speech ready that 
 Sir Thomas is to deliver at the Farmer's 
 Dinner on Tuesday next T 
 
 " Sir Thomas had it from me yesterday." 
 
 " Have you looked over it, my dear T — 
 to the baronet. 
 
 "I fell asleep over it last night vsrhile 
 you were at the ball." 
 
 "And you doubtless found that Mr. 
 Pomeroy had succeeded in faithfully repro- 
 ducing your views and ideas with regard 
 to the various important topics on which 
 you are desirous of addressing our friends 
 on Tuesday next T 
 
 " Mr. Pomeroy has written the speech. 
 If he would only speak it too, I " 
 
 " That is nonsense, dear. No one but 
 yourself must be the exponent of your own 
 ideas. Mr. Pomeroy's share in the trans- 
 action is a purely mechanical one — that of 
 finding words wherewith to clothe the 
 thoughts of a profoundly original mind. 
 Am T not right, Mr. Pomeroy ?"
 
 176 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 " Your ladyship could not be otherwise." 
 
 "So be it/' said Sir Thomas. "Any- 
 thing for a quiet life. But I'll be hanged 
 if I ever knew before that I had such a lot 
 of ideas." 
 
 " That is just what I have said all along, 
 my dear. If you had never succeeded in 
 getting into Parliament, what would have 
 become of the splendid abilities, of the 
 choice gifts of intellect, with which Nature 
 has so liberally endowed you? They would 
 simply have been wasted, and your country 
 would have been so much the poorer by the 
 loss of them." 
 
 " That is all very fine, your ladyship ; 
 but as for my splendid abilities — fudge I 
 My abilities lie among my turnips and 
 short-horns, and not in speechifying to a 
 lot of fellows who laugh at me the moment 
 my back is turned." 
 
 " The modesty of real talent, Mr. Pome- 
 roy." 
 
 " Just so, madam." 
 
 " I have not been your wife all these 
 years, Sir Thomas, without being aware
 
 GERALD AT ST AM MARS. 177 
 
 that you were born to be a landmark in 
 your country's history/' 
 
 " Heaven forbid ! Why not make a 
 milestone of me at once ?" 
 
 Sir Thomas sighed deeply, jingled the 
 change in his pocket, and looked out of the 
 window. Presently he began to whistle 
 under his breath. 
 
 Her ladyship folded and addressed a 
 note with slow, mechanical precision. Turn- 
 ing to her husband, she said — 
 
 *'You will have to be very industrious 
 in order to get your speech off by heart in 
 readiness for Tuesday's dinner." 
 
 " I shall indeed — more's the pity ! I 
 never could get my lessons off by heart 
 when I was a school-boy, and it is not 
 likely that I can take kindly to the task at 
 my time of life." 
 
 " Now that your election is safe, there 
 will be no necessity for you to speak, ex- 
 cept on very rare occasions. There are too 
 many empty-headed speakers, too many 
 frothy orators, in Parhament already. All 
 the more will your grand faculty of silence 
 
 VOL. I. 12
 
 1 78 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 be invaluable to your country. "We want 
 men of profound thought, with the ability 
 to express themselves in the fewest possible 
 words. When once it is understood by the 
 House that you are not a speaker, but a 
 thinker, you cannot fail to be appreciated. 
 Am I not right, Mr. Pomeroy ?" 
 
 " Undoubtedly you are right, madam. 
 The House will soon learn to appraise Sir 
 Thomas at his proper value." 
 
 " You will be a man, dear, much sought 
 for on committees. Your opinion will carry 
 immense weight with it, because it will be 
 so seldom expressed. There is a massive 
 solidity of brain about you, such as few of 
 your contemporaries can hope to rival." 
 
 " That's all very well ; but don't forget 
 to let me have a supply of lozenges on 
 Tuesday. If I haven't a lozenge in my 
 mouth while I'm speaking, I shall be sure 
 to break down." 
 
 " The lozenges shall not be forgotten," 
 ssid her ladyship. " I will make a note 
 of it." 
 
 " And I shall want a spare handkerchief
 
 GERALD A T STAMMARS. 1 79 
 
 in ray pocket. Something to fumble with, 
 you know. I can't bear to be empty- 
 handed when I'm speaking. So awkward, 
 you know.'' 
 
 " Everything shall be attended to." 
 Then, turning to Mr. Pomeroy, she added, 
 "How delightful it is to note the little 
 peculiarities of genius ! Lozenges and a 
 spare handkerchief for one ; for another, an 
 orange or a toothpick ! When Sir Tho- 
 mas's biography comes to be written, these 
 little traits of character must not be for- 
 gotten." 
 
 "They are very characteristic," said Jack, 
 with the utmost seriousness. 
 
 Gerald (or, as we had better perhaps call 
 him during his sojourn at Stammars, Jack 
 Pomeroy) could never feel quite sure 
 whether Lady Dudgeon in her own mind 
 really believed her husband to be possessed 
 of those superior qualities the presence of 
 which she was continually striving to im- 
 press as an undoubted fact on the minds of 
 all around her, or w^hether it was merely 
 an effort on her part to bUnd people to 
 
 12—2
 
 i8o A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 the deficiencies of her very commonplace 
 idol. 
 
 How was it possible, Jack often asked 
 himself, that such a woman as Lady Dud- 
 geon could be self-deceived in so simple a 
 matter ? On every other subject her lady- 
 ship was shrewd and clear-headed to a 
 degree. She could scold her servants, or 
 check her tradesmen's accounts ; she could 
 discuss the last fashion in bonnets, or the 
 last bit of gossip anent a neighbour's short- 
 comings, as effectively and with as much 
 relish as any middle-aged lady in the three 
 kingdoms. And yet with regard to Sir 
 Thomas she seemed so thoroughly in 
 earnest, her admiration of him (while keep- 
 ing the matrimonial yoke fixed tightly on his 
 shoulders) seemed so genuine, that it was 
 next to impossible to believe that she was 
 merely acting a part in furtherance of 
 certain hidden views of her own. It was 
 ^a problem that Jack set himself to study 
 from the day of his arrival at Stammars ; 
 but at the end of a month he found himself
 
 GERALD AT ST.AMMARS. i8r 
 
 no nearer its solution than he had been at 
 first. 
 
 Sir Thomas himself was by no means 
 elated by the honour which the electors of 
 Pembridge had thrust upon him. He felt 
 it especially hard that he should have to 
 leave the country, which he loved so much, 
 and be obliged to mew himself up in Lon- 
 don during the six pleasantest months of 
 the year. 
 
 *'What do I want with being M.P.?" 
 he would often ask himself, with a sort of 
 mild despair. "■ When a man has got his 
 cows, and his sheep, and his grass crops, 
 and his wheat to look after, as I have, what 
 more can he want to make him happy? 
 What a fool I must have been to let Matilda 
 persuade me as she did ! And then that 
 speechifying ! Ugh ! Matilda may say 
 what she likes, but I've not got what Coz- 
 zard calls * the gift of the gab ;* and if I 
 had, there's far more talking done in the 
 world now than there's any need for. If 
 people would only work more and talk less, 
 we should be all the better for it.''
 
 i82 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 The "Cozzard" alluded to was Sir 
 Thomas's factotum and chief business man 
 in all inferior matters. Mr. Kelvin looked 
 after his interests in matters superior. 
 Cozzard was something more than a game- 
 keeper, without coming up to the modern 
 notion of a bailiff. Being Sir Thomas's 
 foster-brother, he could do and say things 
 that nobody else would venture on, and 
 was more in his master s confidence, and 
 knew more of his master's secrets, than 
 Lady Dudgeon herself 
 
 In search of this faithful retainer. Sir 
 Thomas bent his steps this morning to- 
 wards the stables, after leaving his wife 
 and Mr. Pomeroy. He found Cozzard in 
 the harness-room, smoking a short black 
 pipe and mending a fishing-rod : a spare, 
 grizzled, hard-featured man, in a velveteen 
 coat and gaiters, with an unmistakable 
 something about him that spoke of horses, 
 and dogs, and guns, and a free life in the 
 woods and fields. 
 
 " Morning, Cozzard," said Sir Thomas.
 
 GERALD AT STAMMARS. 183 
 
 ** I've just looked in to tell you that we're 
 oiFto London next week." 
 
 " I'm mortal sorry to hear it, Sir Thomas." 
 
 " So am I sorry, Cozzard — very sorry." 
 
 "It's all through that confounded 'lection. 
 I wish with all my heart that you'd lost it!" 
 
 " So do I wish with all my heart that 
 I'd lost it — only I wouldn't for the world 
 have her ladyship hear me say so." 
 
 " Lord ! how we shall all miss you down 
 here at the old place ! But there ! it seems 
 months now since we saw you about the 
 fields with your billycock on your head and 
 your spud in your hand, or riding Gray 
 Dapple from one farm to another, and all 
 through that confounded 'lection. And 
 now Gray Dapple's that fat for want of 
 exercise she can hardly get out o' the stable 
 door, and everything looks different since 
 you took to them 'lectioneering ways." 
 
 " I am missed, then, a little bit, am I, 
 €ozzard r 
 
 "I should think you just was, Sir Thomas. 
 — Why even old Granny Eoper at the toll- 
 bar says to me, only yesterday, says she :
 
 t84 a secret of THE SEA, 
 
 ' My snuff doesn't seem to have the right 
 flavour now the squire's not here to dip his 
 fingers in my box.' " 
 
 '' The old girl said that, did she ! I'll 
 send her a quarter of a pound of the best 
 rappee this very afternoon." 
 
 " Why the very dogs, Spot, and Kanger, 
 and Lob, seem to miss you. I know they 
 do. And poor old John Nutley as died 
 t'other day — eighty and f^vQ weeks was his 
 age — what were his last words ? Why 
 these : * Give my respex to Sir Thomas,' 
 says he, ' as has been a good master to me, 
 and tell him as I should like to have seen 
 him again afore going home. He would 
 have shaken hands with me, I know he 
 would, if he had been here.'" 
 
 " Poor old John ! But why didn't you 
 send for me ?" 
 
 " You were speechifying at Pembridge," 
 said Cozzard sententiously, not without a 
 touch of contempt in his voice. 
 
 Sir Thomas coughed and turned the 
 subject. " What I want you to do," said 
 he, " is to write me a lon^ letter once a^
 
 GERALD AT ST AM MARS. 185 
 
 week while I'm away in London, telling 
 me how everything is going on. Not but 
 what I shall drop down and see you some- 
 times on a Saturday. I would come every 
 week — it's not a long journey — only you 
 
 know ," and Sir Tliomas actually 
 
 winked at Cozzard. 
 
 " Only her ladyship wouldn't like it," 
 said Cozzard bluntly. 
 
 *' That's just it. WJjen I'm not busy at 
 the House she will want me to go out with 
 her. She doesn't like me to be gadding 
 about by myself." 
 
 " Just like my old woman when she 
 fetches me of a night from the Green 
 ion. 
 
 "You will write me the letter, won't 
 you, Cozzard — a good long one every 
 Saturday ? You will tell me how the 
 stock is getting on, and how the crops 
 look, and give a look at the kitchen 
 garden, and see that a couple of hampers 
 of fresh vegetables are sent up to us every 
 week, and " 
 
 ''But, Sir Thomas !" pleaded Coz-
 
 1 86 A SECRET OF THE SEA, 
 
 zard, with a visible lengthening of his thin 
 visage. " I couldn't put down half that, 
 not if I was to write all day on Sunday. 
 Six lines is the most as ever I could 
 manage, and then there mustn't be any 
 long words in it." 
 
 *' Then I'll tell you what you shall do : 
 you shall get my god-daughter, Sally, to 
 do the writing part. You tell her what to 
 say, and she'll put it down all right and 
 ship-shape, and I'll bring her a new silk 
 gown when I come back from London. 
 And now get Gray Dapple saddled, and 
 find my favourite spud. You and I, Coz- 
 zard, will go round the farms this very 
 morning." 
 
 It had been altogether a surprise to 
 Pomeroy to find Miss Deane in the 
 position of governess at Stammars. Was 
 the coincidence of her being there at the 
 same time as himself due altogether to 
 accident, or was there some hidden purpose 
 underlying it? — Was it, or was it not, 
 connected in any way with the concealment
 
 GERALD AT STAMMARS. 187 
 
 by Kelvin of the contents of the sealed 
 packet ? And yet, how was it possible 
 that Olive Deane could have any know- 
 ledge of the sealed packet ? Matthew 
 Kelvin was not a man who would be likely 
 to take anyone into his confidence in such 
 a matter. No ; Miss Deane's presence at 
 Stammars must evidently be set down 
 as one of those fortuitous events which 
 happen so often in real life ; events which 
 would seem as if they must have their 
 origin in some set purpose or prearranged 
 design, but which are in reality due to the 
 merest accident. 
 
 " You did not expect to see me here, 
 Mr. Pomeroy," said Olive with a smile, as 
 she shook Jack's hand about an hour after 
 his arrival at Stammars. 
 
 " No, indeed," said Jack. " It is quite 
 an unexpected pleasure." 
 
 "When I saw you last, I had no idea 
 whatever of coming here. Lady Dudgeon, 
 knowing I was out of a situation, called on 
 me some three days after your departure 
 from Pembridge, and offered me the charge
 
 i88 A SECRET OF THE SEAi 
 
 of her two daughters — a charge which I 
 was glad to accept. When one has ta 
 work for one's daily bread, it does not 
 do to be idle for too long a time." 
 
 " I have been used to idleness — to com- 
 parative idleness, that is — for so long a 
 time that I am afraid it will go rather 
 against the grain to settle down to any 
 daily occupation." 
 
 "• And yet it must be their very rarity 
 which makes the idle hours of a busy man 
 seem so peculiarly sweet." Then she turned 
 the subject. " Miss Lloyd is away visiting 
 in Leicestershire, and will not be back for 
 about a week." This she said with her 
 searching eyes bent full upon him. 
 
 " So I have been told already," said 
 Jack, drily : but he could not prevent a 
 little tell-tale colour from mounting to his 
 cheek. 
 
 Nothing more was said at that time, nor 
 was Miss Lloyd's name mentioned again 
 between them till after that young lady's 
 return. 
 
 Jack was very eager that she should
 
 GERALD A T ST AM MARS. 189 
 
 return. He chafed and fumed at her 
 •absence, but why he should do so he could 
 not have told anyone, unless it were that 
 he thought he could have spent his time 
 much more pleasantly and profitably to 
 himself than in cataloguing the books, and 
 writing the letters, of an unfledged country 
 M.P. But having advanced so far in his 
 •enterprise, he was by no means minded to 
 give it up. He would await the return of 
 Eleanor Lloyd even though she should be 
 two months away instead of a single week. 
 He had not yet decided as to what his line 
 of action should be when he should meet 
 her. All that he left to time and circum- 
 stance : at present he asked only that he 
 might see this girl about whom so much 
 had been told him, and towards whom ha 
 stood in a relationship so peculiar and ua- 
 common. 
 
 He was destined to see her sooner than 
 he was aware of. 
 
 Always a great walker. Jack found his 
 greatest pleasure, suice he had come down 
 to Stammars, in long, solitary rambles
 
 IQO A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 along the pleasant Hertfordshire roads, 
 and the more lonely the road, the better 
 he was pleased. As he was posting along 
 at the rate of four miles an hour one after- 
 noon towards the end of January, swinging 
 his walking-stick, and watching the flying 
 clouds, his ear was suddenly caught by a 
 low, plaintive cry that evidently came from 
 somewhere close at hand. He stood still 
 to listen. Presently he heard it again, 
 evidently the wailing cry of a very young 
 child. He looked round him on every side, 
 but there was not a human being nor even 
 a house visible from where he was standinof. 
 Once again the cry came, this time louder 
 than before. His eyes, drawn by the 
 sound, concentrated themselves on the root 
 of a large tree, of a tree which grew out of 
 the hedofe and overshadowed the road. 
 Between the footpath and the hedge was a 
 tiny watercourse, now covered with a thin 
 coat of ice. Over this Jack strode, and 
 began to peer about in the hedge bottom. 
 He was not long in discovering the origin 
 of the cry that he had heard. In a sort of
 
 GERALD AT STAMMARS. 191 
 
 tiny recess formed in part by the gnarled 
 roots of the tree, and in part by the close- 
 woven shoots of the hedge, lay a child — a 
 child of apparently some six months old, 
 with a tuiy, pinched face, and dark, serious 
 eyes, that gazed up wonderingly at Pomeroy 
 for a moment and then filled with tears. 
 
 " A pleasant predicament truly !" mut- 
 tered Jack to himself " There must 
 surely be somebody belonging to it close 
 
 by." 
 
 He swung himself up on to the root 
 of the tree, and took a long, steady look 
 round. The point where he now was was 
 exactly on the crown of a small hill. Right 
 and left of him the road dipped down 
 into a valley with bare, treeless fields on 
 either side. Nowhere was there a human 
 being visible : had there been one he could 
 hardly have failed to see it. The child had 
 evidently been deserted — left there to be 
 found by chance, or otherwise to die. 
 
 "When Jack had satisfied his mind on 
 this point he dropped quickly from his 
 perch, flung his stick over the hedge.
 
 592 A SECRET OF THE SEA, 
 
 picked up the child as tenderly as he knew 
 how, stepped lightly across the brook, and 
 set off on his way back to Stammars — a 
 three miles' walk. He felt very awkward 
 indeed, and was possessed by an acute 
 sense of the ludicrous appearance he must 
 have presented had anyone been there to 
 see him, which fortunately there was not. 
 The child seemed wrapped up warmly 
 enough, its outside covering being an old 
 black skirt of some cheap material. 
 Whether it were a boy or a girl. Jack had 
 no skill to judge, nor was that a point 
 which had much interest for him. That 
 strange, serious look in its eyes troubled 
 him a little; but when, after it had finished 
 its examination of him, a wintry smile 
 flickered over its little white face, while it 
 seemed to nestle nearer to him, he could 
 not keep his arms from folding themselves 
 still more closely round it. 
 
 The difficulty that now presented itself 
 to Jack's mind was how to dis}")Ose of the 
 child. It would never do to take the 
 little waif to Stammars : Lady Dudgeon
 
 GERALD AT STAMMARS. 193 
 
 would have been horrified : and yet Jack 
 shrank instinctively from the thought of 
 leaving it to the tender mercies of the 
 workhouse authorities, although that was 
 clearly the proper thing to do. He was 
 still debating the question, when he heard 
 the noise of wheels behind him. He turned 
 instinctively, and to his great dismay saw 
 a pony phaeton coming rapidly along the 
 road, driven by a youth in livery, beside 
 whom was seated a lady — whether young 
 or old Jack could not yet tell — but evidently 
 well wrapped up in furs. The hot colour 
 rushed to his face. What should he do ? 
 What indeed could he do ? There was no 
 bye-lane up which he could slink — no stile 
 through which he could wriggle, and so 
 put the shelter of the thick hedge between 
 himself and the road ; and it was quite 
 evident that he could not leave the child 
 on the foot-path and take to his heels. All 
 that he could do was to pull his hat savagely 
 over his brows, set his teeth, and march 
 stubbornly on, as if it were the most natural 
 and proper thing in the world for a gentle- 
 VOL. I. 13
 
 194 ^ SECRET OF THE SEA, 
 
 man in a fashionable overcoat and kid 
 gloves to be strolling along a country road 
 in the middle of the afternoon, hugging a 
 "baby — and not a nicely dressed baby either 
 — and acting generally the part of a nurse- 
 maid. 
 
 "I hope she's an old lady— a grand- 
 mother, or at least a mother," said Jack to 
 himself in desperation. "In that case, it 
 mightn't be a bad thing to appeal to her, 
 and tell her how I came to pick up this 
 pitiful little vagabond. It's quite evident 
 that I can't walk into Pembridge like 
 this." 
 
 But, as it happened, the lady who caused 
 poor Jack to quake so terribly was neither 
 a grandmother nor a mother. She was, in 
 fact, no other than Eleanor Lloyd, who 
 was on her way back to Stammars a couple 
 of days before she was expected there. One 
 of the children having been taken suddenly 
 ill at the house where she had been staying, 
 she had hurried her departure. She had 
 quitted the train a couple of stations short 
 of Pembridge in order to call upon another
 
 GERALD AT ST AM MARS, 195 
 
 friend, and it was in this other friend's 
 phaeton that Miss Lloyd was now being 
 conveyed to Stammars. 
 
 As the phaeton drove past, Pomeroy, 
 struggling gallantly on, with a very red 
 face, could not resist shooting a little 
 glance out of the corners of his eyes at the 
 occupant of the carriage. She was young 
 and. had blonde hair — so much he could 
 see ; and then he set his eyes stubbornly 
 before him and would not look again. He 
 could see too that she gave him one quick 
 comprehensive glance in passing. He 
 thought the worst was over, and began to 
 breathe again. But hardly had the phaeton 
 passed him a score yards when a small 
 hamper that had been tied up under the 
 back seat slipped, and fell to the ground. 
 Unconscious of her loss, the lady drove 
 serenely on. What was to be done ? Un- 
 less Jack should call out, the hamper 
 would be left behind in the road ; and if 
 he did call out they would drive back, and 
 then all concealment on his part would be 
 impossible. " I'm in for it now and no 
 
 13—2
 
 196 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 mistake !" he muttered to himself, and 
 then he called at the top of his voice. 
 
 By the time the phaeton had been driven 
 back and the hamper picked up, Jack, who 
 had been walking steadily forward all the 
 time, was within half a dozen yards of the 
 lady. She turned to thank him, but he 
 could see that all the time she was speak- 
 ing her eyes were fixed in a sort of mild 
 surprise on the burden in his arms. 
 
 " If you are going my way, perhaps you 
 will allow me to help you along the road," 
 she said. 
 
 "You are very kind, and I will gladly 
 avail myself of your offer," he replied. 
 " But first a word of explanation. I found 
 this little waif in the hedge bottom about 
 half a mile from here, evidently deserted. 
 Of course I could not leave it there ; but 
 now that I have brought it away I am 
 really at a loss to know what to do with 
 it." 
 
 " Deserted, did you say T exclaimed Miss 
 Lloyd, and she was out of the phaeton in a 
 moment. '^ Poor, poor little darling !" and
 
 [GERALD AT STAMMARS. 197 
 
 before Jack knew what had happened, he 
 found himself relieved of his burden. Miss 
 Lloyd's next act was to stoop and kiss the 
 child. When she looked up, her lovely 
 blue eyes were brimmed with tears, but a 
 half-smile still dimpled the corners of her 
 mouth. Pomeroy vowed to himself that 
 never in the whole course of his life had he 
 seen anything half so charming. 
 
 Then they got into the phaeton, Jack 
 sitting behind, and Miss Llojd still hold- 
 ing the baby. 
 
 "What a cruel thing to do !" she said. 
 " Who would believe that there could be 
 such hard hearts in this beautiful world !" 
 
 Jack did not answer, but his heart gave 
 a little sigh. '' What a darling she is !'* 
 he thought. *' I wonder whether Eleanor 
 Lloyd is half as pretty. And yet, why 
 wonder, for what is Eleanor Lloyd to me, 
 or I to Eleanor Lloyd ?" 
 
 He could not keep his eyes off her, and 
 Miss Lloyd could not keep hers off the 
 baby. *' If it were a duchess's child she 
 <jouldn't take to it more kindly," said Jack
 
 198 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 to himself. "What strange creatures 
 women are !" 
 
 Presently Miss Lloyd turned with a 
 bright look in her eye. " How good it 
 Was of you to pick up the child, and bring 
 it away with you !'' 
 
 *' Under the circumstances, I don't see 
 what else I could have done," said Pome- 
 roy, simply. 
 
 " Many people would have left the child 
 where they found it, and have satisfied 
 themselves with telling the inmates of the 
 nearest house of their discovery." 
 
 " That is a plan I never thought of," said 
 Jack, with a smile, " or else I should very 
 likely have adopted it." 
 
 " No, I don't think you would," said 
 Miss Lloyd, earnestly. 
 
 " In any case, now that I have saddled 
 myself with the young shaver, I'm quite at 
 a loss to know what to do with him." 
 
 *' Do with him, indeed !" exclaimed Miss 
 Lloyd. ''Don't you know, sir, that it's a 
 little girl ?" 
 
 *'I certainly didn't know anything of the
 
 GERALD AT STAMMARS. 199. 
 
 kind," said the crest-fallen Jack. " But at 
 that age they are all so much alike." 
 
 "Ah, you gentlemen are very ignorant 
 of many things." Then she added, " I 
 suppose it would never do to take the child 
 to Stammars." 
 
 " To Stammars !" exclaimed Jack, in 
 astonishment. " That is the place where I 
 am living at present." 
 
 *' Indeed ! A guest of Sir Thomas Dud- 
 geon, I presume T 
 
 " Hardly that. My name is John Pome- 
 roy, and I am only Sir Thomas's new 
 secretary." 
 
 " And I am Miss Lloyd. Like you, my 
 present home is at Stammars." 
 
 Pomeroy did not answer. He was con- 
 founded. But through him there shot a 
 strange, rapturous thrill, such as he had 
 never felt before. " I wish we were going 
 to travel too^ether for a thousand miles in- 
 stead of three !" was the unspoken thought 
 in his heart. " This is she whom I have 
 secretly longed to see ever since I was 
 quite a boy. Her name itself had always
 
 20O A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 a straDge fascination for me. And now I 
 see her and know her. If there be any 
 wit in my brain, any power of pleading in 
 my tongue, any strength of purpose in my 
 heart — then shall this sweet creature be- 
 come my wife !" 
 
 " I think," said Miss Lloyd, '' that for 
 the present, at least, we could not do better 
 than place this little darling under the care 
 of Mrs. Nixon, the wife of the under gar- 
 dener at Stammars. She is a mother her- 
 self, and will treat it kindly. We shall then 
 have time to think about its future. It is 
 very singular that you and I should have 
 met thus. "When I passed you on the road 
 I was certainly puzzled at first to make out 
 what it was that you were carrying," she 
 added, with a smile. *' But when I saw 
 what it really was, I thought that you were 
 perhaps doing it for a wager. Such things 
 have been done, I daresay. But to do 
 what you did out of pure compassion, was 
 very nice of you indeed."
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 FOUND. 
 
 N the eve of his departure for Pern- 
 bridge, Gerald Warburton had 
 promised Ambrose Murray that 
 immediately after his return he 
 would consult with him as to the steps 
 which it would be advisable to take in 
 furtherance of that quest on which the 
 mind of the elder man was so firmly bent, 
 but which to the younger one looked, at 
 that time, so thoroughly hopeless. The 
 momentary glimpse which they obtained 
 of Jacoby while standing on the platform of 
 Welwyn Station, happening just then, came
 
 202 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 like an apt and singular confirmation of the 
 story told by Murray. It acted as a spur 
 to Gerald's flagging purpose, and would 
 have served as an additional incentive to 
 Murray, had any such been needed, to press 
 forward unflinchingly towards the end he 
 had in view. From that day forward no 
 one could accuse Gerald of anv want of 
 enthusiasm for the cause he had adopted 
 as his own. He put his hand to the plough, 
 and he never looked backward again. 
 
 The first, and perhaps the most diflficult, 
 move in the game they had set themselves 
 to play, had been solved for them by the 
 merest accident. Jacoby was still alive. 
 There was no need for them to trouble 
 themselves further on that score. The 
 next move, and one hardly less difl&cult than 
 the first one, was to find out where Jacoby 
 was now living ; and the question that 
 Gerald at once set himself to answer was 
 this : What is the likeliest and readiest 
 mode of discovering the whereabouts of this 
 man ? 
 
 Among the papers which had come into
 
 FOUND. 203. 
 
 the hands of Miss Bellamy at the death of 
 Ambrose Murray's wife, were certain ver- 
 batim accounts of the trial for the Tewkes- 
 bury murder. These papers Miss Bellamy 
 had carefully preserved, and they were now 
 handed over by her to Gerald, who pro- 
 ceeded to read them carefully through 
 three or four times, by which means he 
 made himself master of all the details of 
 the case as they had presented themselves 
 at the trial. A. certain Mr. Frodsham had 
 been Murray's counsel on that occasion, and 
 very admirable had been the speech, and 
 very cogent the arguments, employed by 
 him in his attempt to prove the innocence 
 of his client — an attempt which, as we 
 have already seen, did not succeed. To 
 Gerald, turning the whole case over in his 
 mind, it seemed that the first thing to do 
 was to find out this Mr. Frodsham, see him, 
 consult with him, tell him in confidence of 
 Murray's escape, and ascertain whether, 
 after so long a time, his experience could 
 suggest any feasible plan for proving, or 
 even attempting to prove, the innocence
 
 304 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 of a client for whose sake, twenty years 
 ago, all his eloquence had been exerted in 
 vain. 
 
 In settinsf about the task which he had 
 thus taken in hand, and which he was 
 thoroughly determined to go through with, 
 Gerald did not expect to derive much as- 
 sistance from Murray himself, nor, in fact, 
 •did he. Murray was altogether too un- 
 practical ; he had been shut up too long 
 from the busy, struggling world around him 
 to enable him to cope with it face to face, 
 or to grope his way through such a blind 
 man's maze as his own case necessarily in- 
 volved, at every step of which a knot would 
 have to be disentangled, or a diflSculty of 
 some kind encountered and overcome. He 
 could asseverate earnestly enough that 
 Jacoby was the murderer, and that the 
 sole object for which he now lived was to 
 bring the crime home to him ; but when 
 asked by what means that was to be done, 
 he was like a child who had lost itself in 
 some dark place. He could only cling to 
 Gerald, and ask him to think, to devise, to
 
 FOUND. 205 
 
 scheme for him. *' I have faith — faith the 
 most intense," he would sometimes say, 
 ''that the world will know me for what I 
 am before I die. Why else was my reason 
 given back to me ? why else was a way of 
 escajDe shown me ? why else am I here, 
 except to prove this thing ? And, oh, 
 Grerald ! why has an over-ruling Intelli- 
 gence sent to me you, the son of my lost 
 darlings oldest friend — you, with your kind 
 heart, and clear brain, and knowledge of 
 the world and its ways — except to assist 
 me, to give to my forlorn weakness that 
 strong helping hand, without which I can 
 do nothing ! Other men might ask : Why 
 should I help this escaped lunatic ? Why 
 should I trouble myself about this criminal 
 madman, on whose head the guilt of blood 
 still rests ? But not you — not you ! You 
 and I, Gerald, have been mysteriously drawn 
 together by the bonds of an invisible sym- 
 pathy. We have been brought together, 
 not that we may be to each other as mere 
 touch-and-go acquaintances, but for the 
 working out of some hidden purpose. For
 
 2o6 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 good or for evil, the issues of your life and 
 mine are inextricably mingled ; like streams 
 from two distant sources, they have met, 
 never again to be disunited, till they fall 
 into the far-off Hidden Sea !'' 
 
 Mr. Frodsham had been too well known 
 in the legal profession for Genild to experi- 
 ence much difficulty in obtaining answers 
 to his inquiries respecting that gentle- 
 man. It did not take him long to ascertain 
 that Mr. Frodsham had been dead for 
 several years. But from the same source 
 whence he derived this positive information, 
 came another piece of information not quite 
 so positive, which, being of no apparent use, 
 was thrown in gratis, as it were, to the 
 effect that although Mr. Frodsham was dead, 
 Mr. Peter Byrne, who had been his confiden- 
 tial clerk for many years, was supposed to be 
 still alive. To Gerald this extra piece of 
 information seemed of no use whatever. 
 His idea in wanting to see Mr. Frodsham 
 had been, not to obtain facts — those he had 
 already — but to seek his advice, his counsel, 
 perchance his assistance. But of what use
 
 FOUND. 207 
 
 or assistance Mr. Frodsham's confidential 
 clerk could be to him, he could not for the 
 life of him see. Still, as it behoved him to 
 neglect no source of information, however 
 trivial or apparently unimportant it might 
 seem to be, and as he was rather non- 
 plussed for the time being as to what was 
 the next step which it behoved him to take, 
 he decided to have this Mr. Byrne hunted 
 up, if it were possible to find him, and then 
 see him in person, on the very faint chance 
 that something might be elicited from him 
 which would tend to show what line of ac- 
 tion it would be advisable to adopt next. 
 
 Five days later Gerald received Mr. 
 Byrne's address by post. It was No. 2, 
 Amelia Terrace, Claridge Eoad, Battersea, 
 which place Gerald next day made it his 
 business to go in search of 
 
 Amelia Terrace was in a desolate locality 
 enough, being shut out from the world by 
 wide intervening stretches of market garden, 
 very useful and very productive, no doubt, 
 but which seenied to lack every pleasant 
 attribute with which a garden is usually
 
 2o8 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 associated in one's mind. The particular 
 house that Gerald was in search of was one 
 of twenty others exactly similar to it in 
 pattern and design. Little shabby-looking 
 six-roomed houses, the cheap stucco with 
 which their fronts were plastered peeling 
 off already in great ugly blotches, the yard 
 of " garden " on to which their windows 
 looked protected by cheap railings, broken 
 away in many places, and thick with rust, 
 or twisted out of shape in others. Inside, 
 the rooms were close and frowsy, with 
 doors and windows that in some cases 
 would not shut, and in others left crevices 
 that in this wintry weather had to be 
 stuffed up with rags, or old newspapers, or 
 even here and there with an old bonnet. 
 At one corner was a flaring gin-palace, and 
 at the other a huckster s shop, only its 
 proprietor did not call it a shop, but an 
 " emporium." 
 
 Yes, Mr. Byrne was at home, said the 
 slatternly servant who answered Geralds 
 knock at No. 2. 
 
 Before more could be said, some one
 
 FOUND. 
 
 209 
 
 called out from the parlour, " Walk in, sir, 
 walk in, if it's me you are in want of I 
 saw you when you were over the way, but 
 I didn't know that you were looking for 
 No. 2." 
 
 Gerald accepted the invitation and walked 
 into the parlour, a shabbily-furnished little 
 room, pervaded by a vile odour of stale 
 tobacco-smoke. Mr. Byrne, in red morocco 
 slippers, a Turkish cap, and a faded dress- 
 ing gown of a flowery Chinese sort of pat- 
 tern, rose from the sofa to receive him. 
 
 Peter Byrne was a man of sixty, but 
 looked quite ten years younger than that 
 age, thanks to his dyed hair, his artificial 
 teeth, and the faintest possible suspicion of 
 rouge, without which, when got up for the 
 day, he never ventured abroad. But so 
 deftly and artfully was the hare's foot ap- 
 plied, that not one out of a dozen of his ac- 
 quaintances accepted as other than genuine 
 that pleasant, healthy colour which, what- 
 ever the season might be, Peter Byrne's 
 cheeks never failed to display. He was 
 rather under than over the medium height, 
 
 VOL. I. 14
 
 2IO A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 was lightly built, and was very active for 
 liis age. His head was large, and some- 
 what disproportionate to the size of his 
 body. He had large, but regular features, 
 and had doubtless thought himself very 
 good-looking when a young man ; but the 
 lines of his face were now coarse and fleshy, 
 and seemed to indicate a too free indul- 
 gence in the good things of the table, and 
 possibly too great a fondness for after- 
 dinner potations. He had clear grey eyes, 
 with a keenness and a steadfastness in them 
 that Gerald liked ; and yet there seemed 
 something factitious about his smile — it 
 came and went too readily to seem alto- 
 gether genuine. 
 
 Gerald having introduced himself and 
 taken a chair, proceeded at once to the ob- 
 ject of his visit. 
 
 " In my search for certain information," 
 he said, *' I have been recommended to call 
 upon you as having been the confidential 
 clerk of the late Mr. Frodsham." 
 
 "I certainly was Mr. Frodsham's con- 
 fidential clerk for several year^," said Byrne^
 
 FOUND. 21 r 
 
 *' and any information that may be in my 
 power I shall be happy to afford you — pro- 
 vided, of course, that such information in- 
 volve no breach of business confidence." 
 
 " You need be under no apprehension on 
 that score," answered Gerald. '^I must 
 ask you, in the first place, to let your 
 memory travel back for twenty years, and 
 then to tell me whether you have any re- 
 collection of a somewhat remarkable case in 
 which Mr. Frodsham was engaged for the 
 defence. It was a murder case, and was 
 tried at the Gloucester Spring Assizes. 
 The crime was committed at Tewkesbury, 
 the murdered man's name was Paul Still- 
 ing, and the prisoner's name Ambrose Mur- 
 ray. 
 
 " I remember the case in question quite 
 well," answered Byrne. " In fact, I was in 
 court when the trial took place. Mr. Frod- 
 sham was busier than usual that circuit, 
 and he took me with him." 
 
 " So far that is fortunate," said Gerald. 
 " Then you will probably recollect that one 
 of the chief witnesses at the trial was a 
 
 14—2
 
 212 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 Dutcli or German Jew of the name of Max 
 Jacoby V 
 
 " I recollect distinctly the man to whom 
 you refer." 
 
 " My object in coming to see you to-day 
 is to ask you whether you can in any way 
 assist me to discover the present where- 
 abouts of this man, Max Jacoby ?" 
 
 Byrne gave vent to a long, low whistle. 
 
 " It's a hard nut, sir, that you've set 
 yourself to crack — the finding of a man like 
 that after twenty years ; and — and really 
 I hardly know in what way I can help 
 you." 
 
 Gerald was silent. He had no inten- 
 tion of accepting Byrne's answer as final. 
 
 "Why don't you apply to Scotland 
 Yard for assistance ?" asked Byrne, after a 
 pause. 
 
 " I have private reasons for not doing 
 so," answered Gerald. *' But there is no 
 reason why you should not treat me as your 
 client in this matter, and endeavour to ob- 
 tain this information for me either from 
 Scotland Yard or elsewhere."
 
 FOUND. 213 
 
 " Hum ! Such inquiries, whether suc- 
 -cessful or unsuccessful, cost money." 
 
 " Get me the information I ask for, or 
 -even show me that you have done your 
 best to get it but have failed, and we shall 
 not quarrel about the price." 
 
 "' But the man may have died years ago, 
 or, being a foreigner, he may be living in 
 some little town on the continent, in which 
 case our inquiries could hardly hope to be 
 successful.'' 
 
 " Jacoby was alive, and well, and in 
 London only three weeks ago." 
 
 " Oh, come, there's something tangible 
 about a fact like that. And you know 
 nothing more concerning him ?" 
 
 " Absolutely nothing." 
 
 Mr. Byrne, with due solemnity and de- 
 liberation, proceeded to charge and light a 
 long-stemmed pipe with a painted China 
 bowl, which stood propped against the 
 chimney-piece ready to his hand. 
 
 " I will be candid with you, Mr. War- 
 burton," he said, after a few preHminary 
 puffs. ** I don't anticipate that there will
 
 214 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 be SO mucli difficulty in tracing this man 
 Jacobj as there might be in the case of a 
 great many other people." 
 
 " Why should there be any difference in 
 his case ?" asked Gerald. 
 
 " Because he is a man with whom the 
 police have had dealings, directly or in- 
 directly, not on one occasion only, but 
 several times. There is no need for me to 
 say more at present, except this, that such 
 a man is seldom altogether lost sight of, 
 unless he leaves the country and goes to 
 live abroad. Still, I should not advise you 
 to be too sanguine." 
 
 Gerald promised not to be too sanguine, 
 but still had good hopes of success. He 
 then went into some monetary details 
 with Mr. Byrne, and after that he rose 
 to go. 
 
 " I dare say you wonder a little to find a 
 man like me living in a dog-kennel of a 
 place like this," said Byrne, with his ex- 
 pansive smile, as he stood for a moment or 
 two airing his back at the fire. 
 
 " I have seen too much of the world to
 
 FOUND. 215 
 
 wonder greatly at anything," said Gerald, 
 ambiguously. 
 
 " You see, this is how it was," said 
 Byrne, confidentially. " I was Mr. Frod- 
 sham's clerk for a great number of years 
 — not that I ever liked the profession, but 
 my bread and cheese was dependent on 
 it, and I was bound to stick to it. By 
 the death of a relative, I came in for ten 
 thousand pounds, and I at once retired to 
 live on my means. I had always been fond 
 of the turf, I had always fancied that I 
 knew something about that noble animal, 
 the horse, and I now determined to turn 
 my knowledge to account. I made up my 
 mind that I would turn my ten thousand 
 pounds into thirty thousand. Sir, I did 
 not turn it into thirty thousand pounds, 
 but into thirty thousand pence. In fact, 
 I lost the whole of it. I was too old 
 to re-enter the profession, and having an 
 income of eighty pounds a year for life, 
 I determined to settle down upon it, 
 and make the best of a bad job. This 
 locality, if not the most genteel in the
 
 2i6 A SECRET OF THE SEA, 
 
 world, is cheap and salubrious, and here 
 Miriam and I have pitched our tent for a 
 little time, while waiting for summer 
 weather. Relatives, sir, can't live for ever, 
 especially when turned eighty years of age, 
 and asthmatical into the bargain." 
 
 "At the risk of being thought imper- 
 tinent, may I ask who Miriam is ?" 
 
 "Miriam, sir, is my daughter — an only 
 child, and a jewel of a girl, though I say 
 it who ought not. Nature, sir, has been 
 liberal to her, having endowed her with 
 beauty and talents that would fit her to 
 adorn a sphere far superior to this one. I 
 hope and trust that there is a brilliant 
 future in store for her." 
 
 This interview with Mr. Byrne took place 
 between the time of Gerald's first visit to 
 Pembridge and that second visit which 
 resulted from his acceptance of the position 
 of secretary to Sir Thomas Dudgeon. He 
 gave Byrne Miss Bellamy's address, to 
 which any communication for him was 
 to be sent. Such communication would 
 be re-addressed and forwarded to him at
 
 FOUND. 217 
 
 Stammars by Miss Bellamy. He had been 
 at Sir Thomas Dudgeon's about a week, 
 when he received the following brief note 
 from Byrne : — 
 
 " Dear Sir, 
 
 " With reference to the subject re- 
 specting which you spoke to me a few days 
 ago, no time has been lost in taking the 
 preliminary steps, and I am happy to in- 
 form you that 1 believe we are already on 
 the right track. I hope in a week at the 
 most to be able to supply you with some 
 positive information. But we must not be 
 
 too sansfuine. 
 
 " Faithfully yours, 
 
 " P. B." 
 
 A few days later Gerald went up to town 
 to transact certain business for Sir Thomas 
 Dudgeon, and having some spare time on 
 his hands, he spent most of it either with 
 Miss Bellamy or Ambrose Murray. It was 
 while they were all three sitting together 
 one afternoon, that the postman brought a 
 second note from Byrne to Gerald.
 
 2i8 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 " Dear Sir, 
 
 " The person respecting whom you 
 spoke to me at my house is now, I beheve, 
 passing under another name. If you will 
 meet me either this or to-morrow evening 
 at seven on the steps of the General Post 
 Office, I will take you to a place where — 
 yourself unseen — you can see the man to 
 whom I allude, and so have the means of 
 identifying him. Should he prove to be 
 the person you want, I will afterwards fur- 
 nish you with his address. If you decide 
 upon meeting me this evening, wire me to 
 that effect. " Yours faithfully, 
 
 " P. B." 
 
 At seven o'clock that evening, Gerald 
 Warburton and Ambrose Murray found 
 themselves at St. Martin's-le-Grand, where, 
 two minutes later, they were joined by Mr. 
 Byrne. 
 
 " As I myself am totally unacquainted 
 with the person we are in search of, never 
 to my knowledge having seen him," said 
 Gerald to Byrne, " I have been compelled
 
 FOUND. 219. 
 
 to bring this gentleman with me. Jacoby 
 was well known to him by sight many 
 years ago, and he does not doubt his ability 
 to identify him now." 
 
 Byrne bowed slightly, and threw a keen 
 glance at Murray ; but the evening was 
 cold, and the latter was so mufEed up that 
 very little of his features could be seen. 
 
 They were still standing on the post- 
 office steps, when Byrne, turning to Gerald, 
 said — 
 
 " The man I am about to show you lives 
 in the city, and has done so for several 
 years. When in town he always dines at 
 one particular tavern. He is generally to 
 be found there from half-past six till half- 
 past seven. He dined at this place yes- 
 terday and the day before, and I have 
 no doubt that he is there at the present 
 moment. We must wait near at hand till 
 he comes out, and then you will have 
 an opportunity of getting a clear view of 
 him by the light of the lamp over the 
 door.'' 
 
 Here and there in some quiet city nook
 
 220 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 may still be found one of those homely, 
 old-fashioned taverns, innocent of lacquer- 
 work and gilding — panelled, not with look- 
 ing-glass, but with substantial mahogany, 
 dark with age, such as were common in 
 the davs when Charles Lamb or Washinrrton 
 Irving were peripatetics about the streets 
 of London, but which are becoming rarer 
 with each recurring year. To several of 
 these taverns is attached a dining-room, 
 where a fried sole or a cut off a wholesome 
 joint may be obtained as late as six or 
 seven o'clock, and where any one who is 
 known to the house may have a chop or a 
 steak done to a turn up till midnight. 
 There is no bustle and confusion here ; you 
 are not hurried over your meals ; you need 
 not quit your sea.t the moment you have 
 swallowed your last mouthful, in order to 
 make room for some one else. Day after 
 day the same people come — punctual to 
 the minute, as a rule. They are all on 
 hob-nobbing terms with each other, and 
 fresh faces are rarely seen. 
 
 It was over against such a tavern as this
 
 FOUND. 221 
 
 that our three conspirators now stationed 
 themselves. The street was very narrow, 
 and exactly opposite the tavern was a dark 
 passage leading to sundry suites of offices, 
 now silent and deserted. Within the 
 shelter of this passage they took their 
 stand. Not long had they to wait. Pre- 
 sently the swing doors were pushed open 
 from the inner side, and the man whom 
 they had come to see issued forth into the 
 street — a man of fifty, or perhaps lifty-five, 
 broad-chested, strongly built, and with a 
 face that might have been carved out of 
 lignumvitae, so hard, resolute, and deter- 
 mined was it in every line. He stood for 
 a moment in the fall light of the lamp over 
 the doorway, and then he walked slowly 
 down the street. 
 
 Gerald felt Murray's grasp on his arm 
 tighten suddenly as the man came out. 
 
 " Is that the man you wanted me to 
 find ? Is that Max Jacoby ?" asked Byrne, 
 in a low voice. 
 
 " That is Max Jacoby !" answered Mur- 
 ray, in a whisper.
 
 222 A SECRET OF THE SEA, 
 
 " We must give him time to get clear 
 away," said Byrne, "and then I will show 
 you the place where he lives." 
 
 Five minutes later they left their hid- 
 ing-place. Byrne, taking his companions 
 through several short cuts and narrow 
 ways, brought them presently to another 
 part of the city, and came to a halt close 
 against a tall, substantial-looking house. 
 It stood in a narrow way intended for foot- 
 passengers only, that led from one great 
 artery of city traffic to another. One 
 side of this footway was bounded by the 
 blank wall of a range of huge warehouses 
 that had their frontage in another street. 
 The opposite boundary of the footway con- 
 sisted of a low stone wall, crowned with 
 rusty railings, that shut in an ancient 
 graveyard. The church that once on a 
 tim.e had appertained to the graveyard 
 had been demolished years ago ; but the 
 dilapidated tombstones, with their "for- 
 lorn Hie jacets " all overgrown with rank 
 and frowsy herbage, were still there, to- 
 gether with a miscellaneous assortment of
 
 FOUND. 223 
 
 old shoes, broken bottles, and other rubbish. 
 As usual, it was Nobody's business to bring 
 about a diflferent state of things, and No- 
 body did his business thoroughly by leaving 
 it altogether undone. 
 
 The house to which Byrne had brought 
 his companions was built into the grave- 
 yard, and its front door was in a line with 
 the raised wall ah-eady spoken of. It was 
 an old-fashioned, red-brick house, and 
 had doubtless at one time been the resi- 
 dence of the rector, or of some other func- 
 tionary connected with the church that 
 was no longer there. From the windows, 
 both back and front, the view must have 
 been dismal in the extreme. To-night the 
 whole house looked as dark and deserted 
 as the graveyard in which it stood. Not a 
 single glimmer of light was visible in any 
 of its windows. Byrne, after taking a 
 cautious look round, drew his companions 
 forward. There was a square brass plate 
 let into the door, on which, by the light of 
 a lamp near at hand, they all three read 
 these words :
 
 224 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 Max Yan Duren. 
 Greneral Agent, &c. 
 
 " He has changed his name !" said Mur- 
 ray, turning suddenly on Byrne. 
 
 " There's nothing to wonder at in that," 
 said Byrne, with a shrug. ''In London 
 one comes across queer changes every 
 day."
 
 CHAPTEE X. 
 
 IN HARLEY STREET. 
 
 Y the end of the first week in 
 February Sir Thomas Dudgeon 
 and his family were comfortably 
 settled in Harley Street. 
 Sir Thomas, having no permanent resi- 
 dence in London, had been obliged to take 
 a furnished house for the season. Since 
 the early years of their marriage, the baro- 
 net and his wife had never spent more than 
 three weeks, or, at the most, a month, of 
 each season in town ; neither had they 
 travelled much abroad. Their adoption of 
 a quiet country life all these years had not 
 VOL. I. 15
 
 226 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 been without good and sufficient reasons. 
 The chief reason of all was a laudable desire 
 to economize in money matters. The estate 
 had come to Sir Thomas considerably bur- 
 dened, and till every penny of mortgage 
 upon it should be cleared off, both Sir 
 Thomas and his wife were determined to cut 
 down every expense as much as possible. 
 The establishment at Stammars was kept 
 up with due regard to comfort, as well as 
 to the family's position in society ; but no 
 luxuries were indulged in, and all extra- 
 vagances were carefully eschewed. A whole 
 season in town, and an autumn on the Con- 
 tinent, however much she might have en- 
 joyed them, would certainly have been set 
 down by Lady Dudgeon as needless extra- 
 vagances : and she had sufficient heroism 
 in her disposition to give them up without 
 a word of repining. But all this now be- 
 longed to the past. Every penny of in- 
 cumbrance had been cleared off the estate 
 some two years ago, and matters of late 
 had been still further assisted by a hand- 
 some legacy from a distant relative. Then,
 
 IN HA RLE V STREET, 227 
 
 jusu in the nick of time, had come the 
 opportunity for Sir Thomas to offer himself 
 xis member for Pembridge. Lady Dudgeon 
 had been the first to seize the occasion. 
 From the first, she had seen in her mind's 
 eye all the brilliant results that might be 
 made to follow "in sequence due" this one 
 bold step. As in a vision, she had seen 
 the whole glittering pageant. No longer 
 would she be compelled to content herself 
 with a miserable three weeks in London : 
 she would have a whole glorious season to 
 flutter through. She would have a new 
 brougham, and there should be no hand- 
 somer horses than hers seen in the Park. 
 As for garden parties and flower shows, as 
 for the opera and the theatre — she would 
 simply do her best to make up for lost 
 time. Poor Sir Thomas, when he allowed 
 himself, very much against his will, to be 
 nominated at the hustings in place of the 
 late lamented Mr. Rackstraw, had not the 
 faintest notion of the splendid conceptions 
 which even then were fermenting in his 
 wife's brain. But he had not been many 
 
 15—2
 
 228 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 days in London before he got some glim- 
 mering of what was in store for him. 
 
 " I feel, dear, as if we had been buried 
 all these years — as if we had never really 
 begun to enjoy life till now," said her lady- 
 ship to him one morning at breakfast. 
 
 *^ And yet it seems to me that we have 
 spent many happy days at Stammars," re- 
 turned Sir Thomas. 
 
 " Happy after a fashion, of course ; but 
 so different from life here !" continued her 
 ladyship. 
 
 " Different indeed !" echoed Sir Thomas,, 
 with a sigh. 
 
 " To-morrow is my birthday, Thomas ; 
 and as you always make me a present on 
 that occasion, I want you, this year, to let 
 me choose for myself what it shall be." 
 
 '* Certainly, Matilda. I shall be most 
 happy for you to do so." 
 
 " That noble heart of yours ! What I 
 want is that you shall take me to Long 
 Acre, and buy me a new carriage." 
 
 " Good gracious, Matilda !" 
 
 *' As the wife of the member for Pern-
 
 IN HARLE V STREET. 229 
 
 bridge, I could not think of being seen 
 about London in a hired brougham; neither, 
 I am sure, would you wish me to do any- 
 thing so paltry." 
 
 " But the landau at Stammars — if painted 
 and furbished up " 
 
 " A market-cart, my dear — neither more 
 nor less than a market-cart," cried Lady 
 Dudgeon. " I should be the laughing- 
 stock of the Park. No ; if you cannot 
 afford me a new brougham out of your 
 legacy, why, I'll go about in a hansom. 
 I'd far rather do that than be seen in one 
 of those horrid livery-stable abominations, 
 which always put me in mind of fevers and 
 other dreadful things." 
 
 When in London, Sir Thomas was always 
 -one of the most wretched of men ; indeed, 
 a town of any kind was to him a place to 
 be escaped from as quickly as possible. To 
 him it was ever a mystery how people could 
 be found to dwell contentedly for years 
 amoner acres of brick and mortar, inhalino- 
 diluted smoke, and leading lives that were 
 one perpetual round of noise, turmoil, and
 
 230 A SECRET OF THE SEA, 
 
 confusion. He had not been in London 
 more than three days before there came 
 over him a longing, that was almost painful 
 in its intensity, to get clean away out of 
 sight of it — out of hearing of it — if only 
 for a few hours. Taking advantage of a 
 visit of his wife to her milliner, he stole out 
 of the house — and he really felt as if he 
 were doing something that he ought not 
 to do — and a swift hansom soon set him 
 down at ''Jack Straw's Castle." A long 
 stretch through the valley on the other 
 side of the Hampstead hills, amid the 
 sights and sounds of country life, sent him 
 back to Harley Street a happier man for 
 the time being. 
 
 But the watch which her ladyship kept 
 over him did not allow of a too frequent 
 indulgence in such forbidden luxuries. 
 
 " I hope, my dear, that you will not be 
 long before you decide as to the particular 
 question that you intend to make your own 
 this session," she said to her husband one 
 morning, about a fortnight after the open- 
 ing of Parliament.
 
 {IN HA RLE Y ST REE T. 23 1 
 
 " Keally, my dear," said Sir Thomas, 
 insinuatingly, '' everything is so strange to 
 me just at present — the forms of the House, 
 and all that, you know — that I have hardly 
 had time to give my mind to anything else." 
 
 "Just so, my love. Of course, every 
 allowance must be made for that. But 
 still I think you ought to be preparing — 
 working up a subject, mastering the de- 
 tails, and so on. What do you say to the 
 Sugar Duties, now ? That is a topic about 
 which the public are likely to be greatly 
 interested before long. Or Indian Finance ? 
 That is a IVuitful subject." 
 
 " But, then, I know absolutely nothing 
 about either of them." 
 
 " So much the better. You will bring 
 to the study and discussion of these great 
 questions a mind fresh and unprejudiced — 
 a mind unfettered by the bonds of tradition 
 or the obligations of party." 
 
 " But, in addition to not knowing any- 
 thing about the Sugar Duties or Indian 
 Finance, I don't care about them — no, not 
 a brass farthing.'*
 
 232 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 " All tlie more will yow be able to discuss 
 tliem with impartiality. Your capacious 
 intellect will enable you to look at a ques- 
 tion from several different points of view, 
 and to give to each its proper value." 
 
 " But, even supposing I had the inclina- 
 tion — which I certainly have not/' per- 
 sisted poor Sir Thomas, " I have not the 
 remotest idea how to set about working up 
 any such subjects as those mentioned by 
 your ladyship." 
 
 " My dear, you surprise me ! What is 
 Mr. Pomeroy for ? It cannot, of course, be 
 expected that you should waste your time 
 in picking out a lot of dreary statistics, or 
 in wading through a heap of dry, mecha- 
 nical details. All that forms part of the 
 duties of your secretary. It is his place to 
 bring to a common focus all the various 
 facts and figures that may have any bearing 
 on the subject in hand. Such a summary 
 of facts and figures could be readily mas- 
 tered by you in the course of a morning's 
 study. You would then have to consider 
 the line of argument which you would
 
 IN HARLEY STREET. 233 
 
 adopt in stating your case to the House ; 
 and having divided your subject into 
 two or three heads, you would have, 
 finally, to work up the various points in 
 the most effective manner possible, taking 
 care to conclude with one of those glow- 
 ing perorations — one of those spontaneous 
 bursts of eloquence — for which you are so 
 justly famed." 
 
 Sir Thomas sat staring at his wife in 
 speechless dismay. After a little while he 
 got up and walked to the window, and 
 stood there jingling his loose silver. 
 
 "What a pity it is, Matilda, that you 
 are not the member for Pembridge instead 
 of me 1 You would have done far more 
 justice to the position than I can ever hope 
 to do." 
 
 ** Tut ! tut ! my dear. You must not 
 talk so foolishly," said her ladyship, com- 
 placently. *' I know your abilities far better 
 than you do yourself All that you lack is 
 confidence, and that will come to you in 
 due time.'' 
 
 "I suppose those worthy people down
 
 234 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 at Pembridge wouldn't feel satisfied unless 
 I made some sort of an attempt at a speech 
 some time before the session's over, eh ?" 
 
 " Certainly not. So the sooner you take 
 the plunge, the better for everyone. How 
 would you like to meet your constituents 
 in the autumn, if the sound of your voice 
 had never been heard in the House ?" 
 
 Sir Thomas stood without speaking for 
 a minute or two. At last he said, "I 
 think I'll go and have a little talk with 
 Pomeroy." 
 
 " Do so, my dear. I have no doubt that 
 his views will coincide with mine. Mr 
 Pomeroy is a very clever young man — and 
 so exemplary too I I am highly pleased 
 with him." 
 
 Sir Thomas found Jack in the library, 
 where, having nothing to do for his employer, 
 he was trying to hammer out a few verses 
 for one of the magazines ; only, as the fair 
 face of Eleanor Lloyd would keep coming 
 between his muse and him, it is to be feared 
 that he was not making very satisfactory 
 progress.
 
 IN HARLEY STREET. 235 
 
 Sir Thomas gave a little sigh, and sat 
 down at the opposite side of the table. 
 " Pomeroy," he began presently, " her 
 ladyship seems to think that it's about 
 time I made a little bit of a splash in the 
 House. Bather out of my line, you know ; 
 but I suppose it has to be done, and the 
 sooner its got over the better. So what 
 I want you to do for me is this : there's to 
 be a big debate on the Sugar Duties in 
 about a month's time, and I want you to 
 work the subject up, and write out a bit of 
 a speech for me that I can get off by heart. 
 I know that's a sort of thing that comes 
 easy enough to a clever young chap like 
 you, but it would be deuced difficult to 
 me ; just as difficult, I daresay, as it would 
 be for you to buy half a score bullocks at 
 a fair, and make sure at the same time 
 that you were getting full value for your 
 money." 
 
 " I shall be glad to have a little more to 
 do, Sir Thomas. At present I don't feel 
 as if I were earning my salary." 
 
 " You mustn't make the speech too long,
 
 236 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 you know, or else I shall be sure to forget 
 some of it — and you mustn't even hint to 
 her ladyship that it's not my own com- 
 position." 
 
 " You may rely implicitly upon my dis- 
 cretion, sir." 
 
 "And then I want you to write out a 
 second speech, which must be simply an 
 amplification of the first, with a few fine 
 words and big phrases dropped in here and 
 there, like plums in a dumpling. This 
 second speech is for my constituents, and 
 you must arrange with the editor for its 
 appearance in the Pemhridge Gazette on the 
 Saturday following my delivery of speech 
 number one in the House." 
 
 '^ T comprehend perfectly, sir," said Jack. 
 
 "You are a good fellow, Pomeroy — a 
 very good fellow," added Sir Thomas. " I 
 like you much. Her ladyship likes you 
 much. She quite values you. But not a 
 word to her about our little arrangement 
 — and don't forget the plums in the dump- 
 ]ing." 
 
 Sir Thomas had hardly been gone five
 
 IN HARLE Y STREET. 2yj 
 
 minutes, when there came a discreet tap at 
 the door, and in walked Olive Deane. 
 
 " Good morning, Mr. Pomeroy," she 
 said. '^ I hear that the box has arrived 
 from Mudie's. Her ladyship gave me the 
 privilege of ordering two or three books on 
 my own account, and I am anxious to see 
 whether they have come." 
 
 " Here is the box," said Jack, " un- 
 opened as yet ; so that you v/ill have the 
 pleasure of being the first to explore its 
 contents." 
 
 " You seem to understand our sex — a 
 little," said Olive, as she turned over the 
 books. "It is singular, but true, but I 
 should not derive half so much pleasure 
 from turning over the contents of this box 
 had anyone, especially another woman, 
 done it before me. But we women are full 
 of contrarieties." 
 
 " It ia precisely those contrarieties which 
 make your sex so charming. You are so 
 full of surprises. No woman, it seems to 
 me, can ever be altogether commonplace." 
 
 " Oh, I grant you that we are full of
 
 238 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 surprises," said Olive. "A man, for in- 
 stance, has only one or two ways of showing 
 his temper, whereas we have fifty ways, all 
 different from each other : which prevents 
 monotony. If we cannot startle you with a 
 wise or a witty remark, we prefer to try an 
 inane one, rather than not startle you at 
 all. We are melodramatic to the back- 
 bone, and are always studying a climax or 
 a surprise, if it be only in the petty details 
 of every- day life." 
 
 "I feel that I ought to say something 
 pretty here, in deprecation of the severity 
 of your judgment," said Jack, with a smile, 
 *' but nothing worthy of the occasion occurs 
 to me at present. I fear that I am even 
 more stupid than usual this morning." 
 
 ^' Stupidity is certainly the great failing 
 of your sex," said Olive, with candour. 
 " How seldom one meets with a man who 
 has anything to say worth listening to ; or 
 if he has, how rarely he knows how to say 
 it. No ; in comparison of your sex as 
 against ours, it seems to me that there is 
 only one point wherein we fail — only one
 
 IN HARLEY STREET. 239 
 
 grand faculty that men possess and that we 
 have no idea of." 
 
 " And that is T 
 
 "The faculty of silence. The want of 
 that, and of that alone, has lost us the 
 supremacy of the world." 
 
 Jack laughed, and Olive went on with 
 her examination of the books. 
 
 It had been a debatable point with Lady 
 Dudgeon whether or not she should take 
 her children to London with her; but 
 Sophy's earnest pleading not to be left 
 behind had at last won a half-reluctant 
 consent from her ladyship. But there was 
 another reason, of which Sophy knew no- 
 thing, why the young ladies should ac- 
 company their mamma. The truth was 
 that her ladyship found Miss Deane's ser- 
 vices so useful to her in many ways, that 
 she could by no means make up her mind 
 to let Olive stay behind at Stammars. By 
 so doing she would have to take on herself 
 again a number of duties of which Miss 
 Deane had of late relieved her ; and how 
 would it be possible for her to do that, with
 
 240 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 all the extra demands on her time which 
 a residence in town necessarily implied? 
 If Miss Deane had been useful to her in 
 the country, in London she would be in- 
 valuable : so to London Olive and the 
 young ladies were transferred in due course. 
 
 Lady Dudgeon was one of those people 
 who delight in keeping an elaborate series 
 of house-keeping books, in which every item 
 of domestic expenditure is carefully tabu- 
 lated, and against which the tradespeople's 
 accounts can be minutely checked. During 
 the last few months, however, her lady- 
 ship's eyesight had begun to fail her, where- 
 upon her medical man had threatened her 
 with spectacles unless she would consent to 
 give her eyes a little more rest. The threat 
 frightened her. She could not afford to 
 give up her diary ; she could not find in 
 her heart to curtail her correspondence ; she 
 must perforce give up her housekeeping 
 accounts, or delegate the labour connected 
 with them into other hands. 
 
 When, some three months later, Olive 
 Deane arrived at Stammars, her ladyship's
 
 IN HARLE V STREET. 241 
 
 "book-keeping had got terribly into arrear. 
 She was greatly perturbed in her mind 
 thereby, feeling perfectly sure that her 
 tradespeople were all aware that she no 
 longer checked their accounts, and that 
 they were leagued together to overreach 
 her in every possible way. Olive had not 
 been many days at Stammars before she 
 found out what was amiss, whereupon she 
 begged so earnestly that the books and 
 accounts might be put into her hands, that 
 her ladyship, not without a considerable 
 degree of reluctance, agreed at last to en- 
 trust them to her. And she had never had 
 cause to regret having done so. Every- 
 thing was done almost — not quite, but 
 almost — as well as she could have done it 
 herself; and her ladyship was not slow to 
 sing the praises of Olive. 
 
 If there was one thing on which Lady 
 Dudgeon prided herself in secret more than 
 another, it was upon her epistolary talents. 
 She was, indeed, a most voluminous and 
 untiring correspondent. However trivial 
 might be the subject about which she was 
 
 VOL. I. 16
 
 242 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 writing, she had a copious stream of words 
 at command — a stream that never ran it- 
 self dry. The involution of her sentences 
 was only equalled by the ambiguity of their 
 meaning. Because her correspondents ac- 
 knowledged that they had to read her 
 letters two or three times over before thev 
 could thoroughly comprehend all that was 
 intended to be conveyed by them, she — 
 and in some cases they also — came to look 
 upon it as a sign of profundity, of deep 
 thought, clothed with the fine flowers of 
 rhetoric, that such a difficulty should be so 
 generally admitted to exist. To have 
 written out a plain statement of facts in a 
 few plain words, was a feat of which her 
 ladyship was quite incapable, and one 
 which, to do her justice, she would have 
 xiespised herself for even attempting. She 
 had been so often complimented on her 
 letter-writing (and knowing for a fact, as 
 she did, that several of her correspondents 
 carefully preserved her epistles) that there 
 had grown up in her mind a sort of vague 
 idea that, after her demise, some one would
 
 IN HARLE V STREET. 243 
 
 certainly be found wlio would look upon it 
 as an act of pious duty to awaken the 
 world to a sense of its loss, to let it see for 
 itself what a genius had dwelt for years in 
 its midst, save by a few choice spirits, un- 
 appreciated and unknown. There was only 
 one way by which a heedless world could 
 be thus enlightened, and that was by pub- 
 lishing — posthumously, of course — a selec- 
 tion of her ladyship's correspondence. The 
 fame denied to her during her lifetime 
 would be hers after death. After this 
 fashion it was that Lady Dudgeon fed her 
 imagination : and yet there were not want- 
 ing people who denied her the possession 
 of any such commodity, and who mentally 
 catalogued her as one of the most prosaic 
 and commonplace of her sex. 
 
 " I hope you have not forgotten our con- 
 versation in my cousin's office at Pem- 
 bridge V said Olive suddenly to Jack, as 
 she shut down the lid of the box and put 
 her own two particular volumes under her 
 arm, preparatory to leaving the room. 
 
 IG— 2
 
 244 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 *' There are some conversations that I 
 can never forget : that is one of them." 
 
 " I have sometimes thought since how 
 very foolish it was of me to talk to you in 
 the way I did on that occasion. But you 
 had only yourself to blame." 
 
 " I am not aware that there was any 
 foolishness in the matter : quite the con- 
 trary. But tell me in what way I was to 
 blame." 
 
 " In causing my aunt to feel such an 
 interest in you. Me, too, you interested. 
 We were both anxious to assist you, if it 
 were possible to do so." 
 
 " And you have assisted me, and I thank 
 both you and Mrs. Kelvin very heartily 
 for it/' 
 
 " Is not Miss Lloyd charming ?" 
 
 " Thoroughly charming." 
 
 *' You seem to have succeeded in interest- 
 ing her, as you interested my aunt and 
 me," said Olive, with one of her wintry 
 smiles. 
 
 " Miss Lloyd has seen so little of the 
 world, and is so fresh and untutored, that
 
 IN HARLE V STREET. 245 
 
 •anyone could interest her whose conversa- 
 tion was not absolutely stupid/' 
 
 " John Pomeroy, the Hesperian fruit is 
 within your grasp !" said Miss Deane, 
 changing her manner in a moment to one 
 of intense earnestness. ''Put forth your 
 hand aud seize it. Be not slow to make it 
 your own. If you are, be sure that some 
 one else will quickly claim the golden 
 prize." Her black eyes, fixed steadily on 
 his face, seemed full of some hidden mean- 
 ing. With a grave inclination of the head, 
 she turned and slowly left the room. 
 
 " I ivill seize the golden fruit, chere de- 
 moiselle ; I ivill make it my own !" muttered 
 Pomeroy to himself, as Olive closed the 
 door. " Though why you should feel so 
 strange an interest in my fortunes is more 
 than I can comprehend. A crooked brain 
 and a dark heart are yours, Olive Deane, 
 or else my reading of your character is 
 altoofether a wronof one."
 
 CHAPTEE XI. 
 
 IN KENSINGTON GARDENS. 
 
 '-^IHE feeling of curiosity which had 
 
 actuated Miss Deane in her desire 
 to see her rival, as she called 
 Eleanor Lloyd in her thoughts, 
 had been almost as powerful as that which, 
 for the time being, had made John Pome- 
 roy its slave. When Miss Deane did see 
 Eleanor, she could not help acknowledging 
 to herself that Matthew Kelvin's violent 
 passion for that lady was not without some 
 justification. That Miss Lloyd was indeed 
 very lovely, she at once admitted ; for Olive 
 was free from that common feminine failing
 
 IN KENSINGTON GARDENS. 2^7 
 
 which refuses to acknowledge that another, 
 and more especially a rival, can be the pos- 
 sessor of superior charms, either of person 
 or mind ; and she told herself at once that, 
 as far as mere good looks went, she could 
 not hope to stand the slightest chance in a 
 comparison with Miss Lloyd. So long as 
 Miss Lloyd should remain unmarried, 
 Matthew Kelvin would never look with 
 serious eyes elsewhere ; and Olive saw with 
 a sort of savage satisfaction how quickly 
 and readily Mr. John Pomeroy had fallen 
 into the same toils in which the lawyer had 
 been enmeshed before him. Her keen eyes 
 saw that which was suspected by no one 
 else — that a few short hours had indeed 
 sufficed to seal Pomeroy s fate. So far 
 everything had gone well with her ; every- 
 thing had answered her highest expecta- 
 tions. But when she looked on the other 
 side of the question ; when she came to ask 
 herself, " Does this girl return this man's 
 love T she could not feel quite so sanguine 
 as to the result. That Eleanor liked the 
 company of John Pomeroy, and that his
 
 248 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 conversation interested her, Olive could see 
 clearly enough. But liking is not love, 
 though it is often a big stride on the road 
 towards it. All that was left her to do was 
 to hope for the best and to remain as quietly 
 watchful as she had hitherto been. 
 
 Of all these plottiugs and counter-plot- 
 tings that were going on under her very 
 nose, poor innocent Lady Dudgeon dreamt 
 nothing. She had long ago made up her 
 mind that her ensuing season in town 
 should be fruitful of much pleasure and 
 much enjoyment to her. But chief of all 
 the pleasures that she looked forward to 
 was that of assisting her darling Eleanor to 
 select — or, better still, of selecting for her 
 — a suitable partner for life. She had not 
 been more than a fortnight in Harley 
 Street before she began to cast wary eyes 
 around, and to make cautious inquiries 
 here and there with respect to the pre- 
 tensions and positions of certain individuals 
 who, even thus early, had evinced a generous 
 alacrity to sell themselves for life for the 
 sake of twenty thousand pounds — the
 
 IN KENSINGTON GARDENS, 249 
 
 young lady who was tacked to the money 
 being of course thrown in as an unavoidable 
 necessity. 
 
 The interest shown by Lady Dudgeon in 
 the fortunes of Miss Lloyd had its origin 
 in a feeling that dated from the time when 
 Eleanor was little more than a mere child. 
 At the risk of his own life, Jacob Lloyd 
 had succeeded in stopping her ladyship's 
 ponies one day when they were running 
 away with her, and making in a straight 
 line for a very deep gravel-pit that may 
 still be seen close by the edge of Dingley 
 Common. Jacob having been considerably 
 bruised and knocked about in his struggle 
 with the ponies, Lady Dudgeon could do 
 no less than call several times at Bridgeley 
 to inquire after his health. There it was 
 that she first saw Eleanor, at that time a 
 flaxen-haired, blue-eyed child of eight, in 
 short frocks and pinafores. She drew the 
 child to her, looked her fixedly in the face 
 for a moment or two, and then stooped and 
 kissed her. Impulsive Nelly at once flimg 
 her arms round Lady Dudgeon's neck.
 
 2 so A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 *' You are pretty, and I do love you !" she 
 cried ; and from that moment her lady- 
 ship's heart was won. She would insist 
 upon taking Nelly back to Stammars, and 
 that first visit was but the precursor of 
 several others. 
 
 Lady Dudgeon was generally looked 
 upon as a cold-mannered, unimpressionable 
 sort of person, and her strange partiality 
 for Mr. Lloyd's daughter was a surprise to 
 all who knew her — to her husband as 
 much as anyone. But Sir Thomas was 
 eminently good-natured, and he yielded to 
 his wife's whim in this respect as in every- 
 thing else. Before long, indeed, he grew 
 almost as fond of his Bonnybell, as he 
 called her, as Lady Dudgeon herself 
 Having no children of his own at this 
 time, he liked very well to have Eleanor 
 about him — he liked to have her tusfoinof 
 at his coat-tails, or hanging on his arm, or 
 sitting in front of him on his pony as he 
 rode about the fields looking at his crops 
 or watching his labourers at work. 
 
 Even as a child there was about Eleanor
 
 IN KENSINGTON GARDENS, 251 
 
 Llojd a native distinction of manner that 
 few people failed to observe. Combined 
 with this was a sweet, fearless freedom — 
 like the fearlessness of a fawn — that 
 sprung from a total unconsciousness of self, 
 and that charmed without beinof aware of 
 its own existence. At ten years of ag^e 
 Eleanor felt as much at home in Lady 
 Dudgeon's drawing-room, among Lady 
 Dudgeon^s fine company, as she did when 
 helping Biddy to make a custard in the 
 kitchen. 
 
 Lady Dudgeon's liking for Eleanor did 
 not lessen with years. The child was a 
 frequent visitor at Stammars u}) to the 
 time that she was sent to Germany to 
 finish her education. And when her two 
 years of absence were over, and she was 
 back again at home, the intercourse was at 
 once resumed, although by this time Lady 
 Dudgeon had two young daughters of her 
 own. After the sudden death of Jacob 
 Lloyd, and the announcement that Eleanor 
 had come into a fortune of twenty thousand 
 pounds, there seemed all the more reason
 
 252 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 why the bond of intimacy should be drawn 
 still closer ; and no one was surprised when 
 it was given out that Miss Lloyd had, 
 for the present, accepted Lady Dudgeon's 
 invitation to live with her at Stammars. 
 
 A day or two before the departure of 
 the family for Harley Street, Lady Dudgeon 
 called Eleanor into her bedroom. " My 
 dear," she said, " I am going to show you 
 something that you have never seen before 
 — something that no eyes but my own 
 have seen for years. To you they may, 
 perhaps, seem hardly worth keeping, but 
 they are very precious to me." 
 
 She opened a drawer as she spoke, the 
 contents of which were covered with 
 several layers of tissue-paper. When the 
 paper had been carefully removed, there 
 were displayed to Eleanor's view several 
 articles that had evidently belonged to a 
 child. There was a little crimson frock 
 and a sash, a pair of tiny shoes, a broken 
 doll, and part of a necklace of coral beads. 
 Eleanor looked up wonderingly. For the 
 first time in her life she saw tears in the
 
 IN KENSINGTON GARDENS. 255 
 
 eyes of Lady Dudgeon. ** They belonged 
 to my little daughter, whom I lost before 
 I ever saw you. She died when she was 
 four years old. She would just have been 
 your age had she lived. Like you, she 
 was fair and had blue eyes. That first 
 day when I saw you at your father's, it 
 almost seemed to me as if my own lost 
 darling had come back again. I could not 
 help loving you then, dear, and I have 
 loved you ever since." 
 
 From the first moment that Gerald 
 Warburton set eyes on Eleanor Lloyd, he 
 made up his mind that, if it were in the 
 possibility of things to do so, he would 
 make her his wife, and from that deter- 
 mination he had never wavered. The 
 more he saw of her the more settled 
 became his conviction that he had never 
 really loved till now. Flirtations he had 
 had, and little love-smarts in plenty. 
 Many a pleasant face had haunted his 
 dreams for a night or two, but never for 
 longer. In his writing-desk were two or
 
 254 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 three crumpled gloves, a ribbon or two, 
 and at least half a dozen cartes-de-visite : 
 tokens all, as he sometimes said to himself, 
 of how hard he had tried to love, of how 
 often he had fancied himself to be in love, 
 and of the very short space of time it had 
 taken him to discover either what an ass 
 he had made of himself, or what an ass 
 some gul had made of him. Such memen- 
 toes are not without a certain amount of 
 instructiveness. Gerald looked upon them 
 in the light of warnings. '^ How terrible 
 -and strange it is to think," he said to him- 
 self one day, " that each one of these gages 
 d amour represents a most foolish moment 
 in my life, a moment that might have been 
 the turning-point of my existence : such a 
 moment as has been the turning-point of 
 many a man's existence ! How well one 
 knows the history of such relics ! A pair 
 of bright eyes, a waltz, a glass of cham- 
 pagne, a glove or a ribbon dropped by 
 accident or design ; or else a moonlight 
 ramble capped with some poet's soft non- 
 ■sense, and a little hand nestling timidly
 
 IN KENSINGTON GARDENS. 255 
 
 under your arm. Then comes a pressure 
 of the tmy hand, an appeahng glance into 
 the bright eyes, a whispered word, and 
 unless your enslaver does not really care 
 for you — in which case nothing but your 
 vanity suffers — your fate is sealed, and the 
 chances are that you wake up next morn- 
 ing to find that, for the sake of an hour's 
 foolish romance, you have bound yourself 
 for life to a person for whom in your heart 
 you don't care the price of a box of cigars." 
 
 So moralized Gerald, as he took his 
 relics out of their resting-place for the last 
 time and dropped them quietly, one by one, 
 into the fire. Without a single pang he 
 saw them flare and shrivel into ashes. Let 
 the dead past bury its dead. 
 
 No doubt ever clouded his mind as to 
 the strength and reality of that passion 
 which in these latter days had taken pos- 
 session of his heart. It was no mere will- 
 o'-the-wisp, to be followed with passionate 
 footsteps through brake and morasB, but 
 the Planet of Love itself, serene and 
 beautiful : the lodestar of his life and
 
 256 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 fortune shining down on him at last with 
 a light that nothing but death could ever 
 again eclipse. 
 
 Since that first meeting with Eleanor he 
 had made it his business to see as much of 
 her as the exigencies of his position would 
 allow of his doing. Except when they had 
 company, he generally dined with Sir 
 Thomas and Lady Dudgeon. He had the 
 happy knack of being able to select topics 
 of conversation that had an interest for 
 both of them. He did his best to please 
 them, and he succeeded, simply that he 
 might be able thereby to see more of Miss 
 Lloyd than he could otherwise have hoped 
 to do. The peculiar circumstances under 
 which Eleanor and he had first met had 
 done more to break the ice between them 
 than a month of ordinary intercourse would 
 have done ; besides w^hich, it had supplied 
 them with a subject for conversation that 
 Eleanor seemed never to grow tired of, and 
 one in which our artful Gerald feigned a 
 far deeper interest than he really felt. 
 
 Days and weeks had come and gone,
 
 IN KENSINGTON GARDENS. 257 
 
 and lie was still as undecided as ever what 
 steps to take in the matter of the sealed 
 packet. Kelvin still maintained his mys- 
 terious silence. Gerald had said to himself 
 that, after having been at Stammars for a 
 little while, after having seen and made 
 the acquaintance of Eleanor, should Kelvin 
 not then have spoken, he would write to 
 him in his real name, and demand some 
 explanation of his unaccountable silence. 
 This would at once force matters to a 
 climax, and he, Gerald, would then be 
 able, in the natural course of events, to 
 assume his proper name and position. But 
 day by day was flitting away, and he still 
 neglected to take this very obvious course. 
 As matters had turned out, he shrank from 
 doing so. He loved this girl with all the 
 strength of his ardent temperament. Should 
 he declare himself, such a declaration would 
 take from her all that she had hitherto 
 deemed her own, all that was most dear to 
 her in life : name, wealth, position — every- 
 thing. Should his be the hand to know- 
 ingly strike her such a blow ? The more 
 
 VOL.1. VI
 
 258 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 he tliouglit of it, the more hateful such a 
 proceeding seemed to him. He could never 
 hope to see Love's sweet light dawn in 
 those beautiful eyes were he to smite her 
 thus. And then how much more precious 
 to him would it be to win her love for his 
 own sake, to win it as a poor man, to fight 
 for her against the host of other suitors who 
 would surely come when they should dis- 
 cover what a golden prize was there for the 
 winning ; to say no word to her of this 
 thing, but to let her rest in blissful ignor- 
 ance till their wedding day was come. 
 After that, she might, perchance, learn to 
 love him all the more for his long silence. 
 Thus it was that Gerald argued with him- 
 self, and thus it was that to the world at 
 large he was still known as John Pomeroy, 
 ■secretary to Sir Thomas Dudgeon, at an 
 honorarium of one hundred and fifty guineas 
 per annum. 
 
 As Gerald was strolling quietly through 
 Kensington Gardens one day between 
 luncheon and dinner, he was met by 
 Eleanor, who was coming from an opposite
 
 IN KENSINGTON GARDENS. 259 
 
 ■direction. They shook hands, and Gerald 
 turned and walked back with her. 
 
 " What are you meditating this morn- 
 ing ?'■' asked Eleanor. '' A sonnet, or 
 another speech on the Sugar Duties ?" 
 She had seen and heard enough to know 
 from what fount it was that Sir Thomas 
 derived the stream of his Parliamentary 
 eloquence. 
 
 ** Neither anything so sentimental on 
 the one hand, nor anything so prosaic on 
 the other," answered Gerald. " I was 
 better employed in listening to the birds, 
 and in marking how the brown buds were 
 here and there beginning to open themselves 
 to the sun." 
 
 " You are easily satisfied. I should have 
 thouofht that the Ride would have had 
 more attractions for you." 
 
 '' Not at all. In London, humanity is 
 so plentiful that trees and birds seem some- 
 times the best of company. In the coun- 
 try, where trees and birds are so common, 
 a fresh face is sometimes a godsend." 
 
 " But you, who have been so accustomed 
 
 17—2
 
 26o A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 to change — to seeing fresh faces and visit- 
 ing strange places — must surely find it 
 both dull and tedious to spend your days 
 among blue-books and parliamentary re- 
 ports, wading through columns of dreary 
 statistics, and concocting speeches which 
 another than yourself will deliver T 
 
 " I did find it both dull and tedious at 
 first, but I don't find it so now." 
 
 " And why do you not find it so now ?" 
 
 He would have liked to answer : '' Be- 
 cause your presence here has made my 
 work glad. Because I could count no 
 work as slavery if through it I were 
 brought into contact with you. Because, 
 since I have learned to love you, life has 
 assumed for me an altogether different 
 complexion from that which it wore before 
 — is imbued with altogether different pur- 
 poses and ambitions." But the time was. 
 not yet ripe for him to say all this, or even 
 part of it. Some more commonplace answer 
 must be found to her question. 
 
 " I think," said he, " it must be because 
 human motives and human purposes are
 
 IN KENSINGTON GARDENS. 261 
 
 «o intimately mingled with the dry bones 
 of politics, that politics exercise such a 
 strange fascination over nearly everyone 
 who is brought into close contact with 
 them. Certainly to me, and that no very 
 long time ago, they seemed the dryest and 
 most uninteresting study to which a man 
 ■could devote his time." 
 
 " But you have seen reason to change 
 your opinion since then ?" said Eleanor. 
 
 *' I have," said Gerald, emphatically. 
 '^ From the moment I leapt into the arena 
 — from the moment that I ceased to be a 
 looker-on and became a gladiator myself — 
 in the very humblest of positions though it 
 was — my blood seemed to warm to the 
 struggle. I buckled my armour round 
 me with gladness at the thought that I 
 was about to contend with shapes of 
 bone and sinew ; that my life need no 
 longer have to content itself with potter- 
 ing about among the petty dilettanteisms 
 of Art, while never quite certain in my 
 own mind whether it was Nature's in- 
 tention that I should develop into a
 
 262 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 man of genius or degenerate into a block- 
 head." 
 
 Eleanor laughed. " Then you think you 
 have found your right groove at last," she 
 said. 
 
 "As to the right groove, I don t know 
 that this particular one is better for me 
 than any other in which there would be 
 earnest work to do in which I could take a 
 hearty interest. Certainly I have come to 
 find a degree of interest in what I am now 
 doing that could surprise no one more than 
 it does myself." 
 
 " You ought to be in Parliament your- 
 self, Mr. Pomeroy, instead of filling the 
 anomalous position you do now." 
 
 " One must learn to creep before one can 
 walk," said Gerald, with a shrug. 
 
 " But some people never get beyond 
 creeping. If 1 were a man, I should cer- 
 tainly strive to get into Parliament," added 
 Eleanor, a minute or two later. *' How 
 easy it is for a man to have a noble ambi- 
 tion 1" 
 
 " Then you like a man to be ambitious ?"^
 
 IN KENSINGTON GARDENS. 263 
 
 " I could certainly never look up to any- 
 one who was not so." 
 
 " I am afraid that you aim your arrow 
 too high for these commonplace days. There 
 are many kinds of ambition that a man 
 may occupy himself with, and yet none of 
 them may be really ignoble : Sir Thomas 
 Dudgeon's, for instance. It is his ambition 
 to breed superior sheep and oxen — and it 
 is decidedly for our benefit that he should 
 do so. I have a friend in Paris who has a 
 crippled sister, and the object of his ambi- 
 tion is the invention of an invalid's chair 
 that shall be superior to any other. These 
 are not large ambitions, but they are cer- 
 tainly very laudable ones." 
 
 " If you know the object of a man's 
 ambition, cannot you from that gauge, to a 
 certain extent at least, the quality of his 
 mind T 
 
 *' Undoubtedly you can, to a certain ex- 
 tent, as you say. But there are many 
 men who keep their ambitious dreams to 
 themselves as closely as they do their bank- 
 book. When such a man dies, the general
 
 264 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 verdict is that he might have succeeded 
 very much better in life if he had only had 
 a little more ambition, whereas the proba- 
 bility is that he succeeded so ill because he 
 had too much ambition." 
 
 '^ I hardly follow you," said Eleanor. 
 
 '' Let us say that such a man's ambition 
 was to stand on the topmost pinnacle of 
 the Jungfrau ; and because he felt that he 
 had neither the strength nor the skill re- 
 quisite to carve his way step by step to the 
 summit, rather than content himself with 
 any lesser altitude, he preferred to sit 
 quietly down, dumb and disappointed, 
 among the ignoble crowd at the bottom." 
 
 They walked on for a little while in 
 silence. Gerald kept feasting himself with 
 little side glances at Eleanor s face. And it 
 was a face well worth looking at. A deli- 
 cate, slightly aquiline nose ; two eyes of the 
 deepest and tenderest blue, that put you 
 in mind of an April sky when the clouds 
 have divided after a shower ; and massive 
 coils of rich flaxen hair that seemed full of 
 stolen sunshine. Her upper lip had a chi-
 
 IN KENSINGTON GARDENS. 26^ 
 
 celled fineness of curve and outline rarely 
 found am on Of Ensflisli women, and this fea- 
 ture it was that gave a special distinction 
 to the character of her face. But far before 
 everything else was a prevailing sweetness 
 of expression — a sweetness that was with- 
 out insipidity, that only served to heighten 
 that delicate verve — the outcome of an 
 -ardent and generous nature — which shone 
 through everything she said and did. She 
 had a small basket on her arm this morn- 
 ing, for she had her pensioners already, and 
 was returning from visiting two of them : 
 a poor old orange woman who had broken 
 her arm through slipping on the ice ; and a 
 young mother whose husband lay ill of a 
 fever in the hospital. Gerald, glancing 
 now and ao;ain into the beautiful face beside 
 him, felt his heart thrill strangely. He 
 would have dearly liked to fling his arms 
 about her and print a thousand kisses on 
 her lips. 
 
 " What is the latest news of the little 
 waif?" asked Gerald suddenly, after a 
 pause.
 
 266 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 ** I have no news other than that which 
 you know abeadj." 
 
 " Then she has not been claimed ?" 
 
 ''No. She is still under Mrs. Nixon's 
 care." 
 
 " It is not at all likely that anyone will 
 now come forward and claim her." 
 
 " I hope with all my heart that they 
 won't. Those to whom she belonged left 
 her to be found by a stranger, or to perish ; 
 and after such an act as that they can hardly 
 want to reclaim her." 
 
 " I should think that they would hardly 
 dare do so." 
 
 " The law would surely punish a deed so 
 detestable. But I have little fear of any- 
 one coming forward. I feel that the child 
 belongs to me, and to me alone." 
 
 *' Have I, then, no share in her ?" asked 
 Gerald, with a smile. 
 
 " It was agreed that you should give 
 your share over to me," answered Eleanor. 
 
 "I may at least be allowed to feel a 
 little interest in the child's future for- 
 tunes r
 
 IN KENSINGTON GARDENS. 26^ 
 
 " As deep an interest as you like. You 
 are her preserver, and yours shall be the 
 first name that she shall be taught to speak. 
 But for all that, you must let me claim her 
 as altogether my own." 
 
 " Oh, with all my heart. I should make 
 a very poor guardian, I am afraid, for such 
 a wee morsel of humanity." 
 
 " I have regular accounts from Mrs. 
 Nixon every two or three days, and next 
 week I am going down to Stammars to see 
 her." 
 
 " I wish she only thought half as much 
 of me as she does of that young customer 
 down at Stammars !" said Gerald, rather 
 disconsolately, to himself, when he had 
 parted from Eleanor. 
 
 " What has come over you, child ?" said 
 Lady Dudgeon to Eleanor, two or three 
 days afterwards. *' This is the third time 
 this morning that I have caught you in a 
 day-dream. Anyone who did not know 
 better, would certainly say that you were 
 in love." 
 
 "Then they would certainly say what
 
 268 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 was not true," said Eleanor, with a blush 
 and a smile. 
 
 " I hope so, I am sure," said her lady- 
 ship, emphatically. "I don't think your 
 time has come yet, dear." 
 
 Eleanor was used to Lady Dudgeon's 
 phraseology, and did not reply. 
 
 No ; she certainly was not in love, she 
 said to herself. But it was rather strange 
 how often Mr. Pomeroy had been in her 
 thoughts of late. She had caught herself 
 thinking about him several times : day- 
 dreaming, Lady Dudgeon called it. And 
 why should she not think about him ? she 
 asked herself He interested her. There 
 was about him something different from 
 anyone she had ever met before. If only 
 she could have assisted him to get into 
 Parliament, how happy that would have 
 made her ! Despite his careless, easy way 
 of talking, she felt sure that he was am- 
 bitious. But with only a hundred and fifty 
 pounds a year, and no friends to push him 
 forward, a man's ambitious dreams must 
 perforce be buried in his heart. If only she
 
 IN KENSINGTON GARDENS. 269 
 
 could endow him with some portion of her 
 
 wealth ! But here she broke off with 
 
 a blush, and made up her mind that for 
 the future she would not think quite so 
 much about Mr. Pomeroy. " I must re- 
 member that I am not to think quite so 
 much about him," she said to herself. But 
 the very fact of having to remember this 
 had only the effect of bringing his image 
 more frequently to her mind.
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE FACE IN THE GLASS. 
 
 EOM Harley Street, Cavendish 
 Square, to Ormond Square, 
 Bayswater, is but a short dis- 
 tance as the crow flies, but it 
 was enough to transform the John Pome- 
 roy of one place into the Gerald Warburton 
 of the other. And such transformations 
 were very frequent with Gerald just at this 
 time. Now that he had learned to love Am- 
 ibrose Murray's daughter, Ambrose Murray 
 himself had acquired a fresh interest in his 
 eyes, and he very rarely let more than two 
 days pass over without finding himself in
 
 THE FACE IN THE GLASS. 271 
 
 Miss Bellamy's sitting-room. From Miss 
 Bellamy he had but one secret — his love 
 for Eleanor. Everything else he told her : 
 but to Ambrose Murray nothing was told. 
 Murray had not the slightest idea that his 
 daughter was in London ; and so incurious 
 was he respecting her, that he never even 
 asked the name of the friends with whom 
 she was living ; and yet it was impossible 
 to doubt that in his strangely constituted 
 heart he loved her passionately. He still 
 adhered to his first determination — not to 
 see her, nor even to let her become aware 
 of his existence, till he could stand before 
 her, a man whose innocence the world was 
 now as eager to proclaim as it had been be- 
 fore to swear that he was guilty. 
 
 Miss Bellamy felt it as a great depriva- 
 tion that she could not go to see Eleanor, 
 whom she had known and loved from in- 
 fancy. But had she done so, Eleanor would 
 have certainly been seen in Ormond Square 
 before many hours were over — and then, 
 what a meeting might there not have been ! 
 It was requisite that Eleanor should believe
 
 272 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 that Miss Bellamy had gone abroad for a 
 short time, and the latter lady went out 
 less frequently than she would otherwise 
 have done, so great was her dread of un- 
 expectedly encountering Miss Lloyd in the 
 street. 
 
 '' What are we to do now that we have 
 found Jacoby ?" said Gerald to Murray the 
 day after their expedition into the City. 
 
 " That is just what I want you to tell 
 me/' was Murray's complacent rejoinder, as 
 he took one of Gerald's hands between his 
 thin palms and patted it gently. " Your 
 knowledge of the world will enable you to 
 say what the next step ought to be." 
 
 " I am afraid that my knowledge of the 
 world, as you call it, is altogether at fault 
 in this instance," said Gerald, with a dubious 
 shake of the head. " To find a man, even 
 in the great wilderness of London, is an 
 altogether different thing from working up 
 a chain of evidence strong enough to con- 
 vict him of a crime committed twenty years 
 ago." 
 
 "But don't you see, Gerald," argued
 
 THE FACE IN THE GLASS. 273 
 
 Murray, in liis quietly earnest way, " that 
 the very fact of our having found this man 
 constitutes the first link in the chain ? All 
 the proofs in the world w^ould have availed 
 us nothing had we not been able to find 
 him. But now that we have got the first 
 link complete, you may depend upon it that 
 the forging of the second will follow in due 
 course." 
 
 He spoke with an air of such thorough 
 conviction, that for a moment or two Gerald 
 hardly knew how to answer him. 
 
 " I am certainly at a nonjDlus," he said 
 at last. *' I was never more in the dark in 
 my life. Have you any objection to my 
 consulting Byrne ?" 
 
 " No objection in the world. Consult 
 anybody and everybody, as may seem best 
 to you." 
 
 " Should I find it necessary to do so, 
 have I your permission to tell him every- 
 thing ?" 
 
 " You have : my full permission." 
 
 *' Mind you, I don't build any hopes on 
 my interview with Byrne. I don't see ho^Y 
 
 VOL. I. 18
 
 274 A SECRET OF THE SEJ. 
 
 he can possibly help us ; but still I will 
 consult him." 
 
 " And out of that consultation the forging 
 of the second link will be accomplished," 
 said Murray. Again Gerald shook his head. 
 Slightly exasperating to him was Murray's 
 air of thorough conviction, unbacked as it 
 was by the least fragment of proof, or even 
 the vaguest suggestions as to either how or 
 where such proof might be forthcoming. 
 
 Two days later, having an afternoon to 
 spare, Gerald chartered a hansom for Amelia 
 Terrace, Battersea, and picked up Ambrose 
 Murray by the way. He had seen enough 
 of Byrne to make him believe that he was a 
 man who might be thoroughly trusted, and 
 he had made up his mind to lay the case 
 before him in its entirety. He left the cab 
 with his companion in it at the corner of 
 the terrace, and three minutes later he was 
 closeted with Mr. Byrne. 
 
 That gentleman was smoking his long- 
 stemmed pipe with the china bowl. He 
 squeezed Gerald's outstretched hand, and 
 greeted him with one of his expansive
 
 THE FACE IN THE GLASS. 275 
 
 smiles, which came and went as suddenly 
 as though produced by a clock-work move- 
 ment inside his head. 
 
 " That was a neat stroke of business that 
 we did the other night, sir, though it is I 
 who say it," remarked Mr. Byrne. 
 
 " Yes ; you managed it very cleverly, and 
 it is on that very subject that I have come 
 to see you again." 
 
 "I am yours to command, Mr. War- 
 burton." 
 
 " If I recollect rightly, when I saw you 
 before, you gave me to understand that you 
 were in Court on the day that Ambrose 
 Murray took his trial for the murder of 
 Paul Stilling T 
 
 " I was in Court at the time, and I re- 
 tain a very clear recollection of the different 
 features of the case." 
 
 " Can you tell me what impression you 
 formed at the time as to the guilt or inno- 
 cence of the prisoner ?" 
 
 " Now you put a very difficult question 
 to me. Anyone who has seen much of 
 criminal trials will tell you what an ex- 
 
 18—2
 
 276 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 ceedingly unsafe thing it is to form an 
 opinion froDi a prisoner's demeanour as to 
 his guilt or otherwise." 
 
 " Never mind the prisoner's demeanour 
 in this case. I simply want to know what 
 your own impression was, as a result of 
 what you saw and heard at the trial." 
 
 " Well, the weight of evidence, as no 
 doubt you are aware, was dead against the 
 prisoner, and that very fact will, as a rule, 
 go a long way in the formation of a person's 
 opinion. Still, in spite of that, at the time 
 it was my impression that, whoever else it 
 might have been, Murray was not the 
 murderer." 
 
 " I am glad to hear you say that," said 
 Gerald, heartily. '^ Because, after being 
 shut up for twenty years, Murray has 
 escaped from prison." 
 
 '*' Phew ! That's good news, Mr. War- 
 burton, very good news ! I never could 
 see my way to believe that man guilty." 
 
 " That man it was, and no other, who 
 made the third in our little party the other 
 night."
 
 THE FACE IN THE GLASS, 277 
 
 The cliina pipe had never been so near 
 l)eino: broken as it was at that moment. It 
 slipped from Byrne's nerveless fingers, and 
 only the hearthrug saved it. This brought 
 back his presence of mind. 
 
 '' In telling you this," said Gerald, 
 *' you will understand at once the amount 
 ■of confidence which I am placing in your 
 discretion." 
 
 " Not undeservedly, Mr. Warburton — of 
 that you may rest fully assured !" said 
 Byrne, warmly. '' I feel honoured by your 
 €onfidence in this matter, sir : and if I can 
 be of any farther assistance either to you 
 or Mr. Murray, my services are entirely at 
 your command." 
 
 " That is just the point to which I am 
 coming," said Gerald. '' We do want your 
 further assistance. It is for that very pur- 
 pose I am here to see you to-day : it is 
 for that very purpose Mr. Murray himself 
 has come to see you." 
 
 " Mr. Murray here — to see me !" 
 
 " He is waiting in a cab at the corner of 
 the street. I will go and fetch him."
 
 278 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 Presently Ambrose Murray entered, 
 ushered in by Gerald. Byrne regarded 
 him with mingled feelings of respect, 
 curiosity, and pity. It was characteristia 
 of the man that during the few minutes of 
 Gerald's absence he had found time to put 
 on a better coat, and also, if the whole 
 truth must be confessed, to impart the very 
 slightest extra suspicion of rouge to his 
 cheeks. The pipe was not again visible 
 during the interview. 
 
 Gerald introduced Mr. Murray in his 
 real name to Byrne, who had hardly spoken 
 half a dozen words to him at their previous 
 meeting. 
 
 " I am proud to see you, sir, under my 
 humble roof," said Byrne, ^' and I should 
 have been proud to have entertained you 
 during my days of prosperity. But that 
 w^as not to be,'' he added, with a melan- 
 choly shake of the head. 
 
 "And now to business," said Gerald. 
 " Mr. Murray is firmly convinced that Max 
 Jacoby was the murderer of Paul Stil- 
 ling."
 
 THE FACE IN THE GLASS. 279 
 
 " Aye, aye !" interjected Byrne. 
 
 '' As a matter of course, the great desire 
 of his life is to prove his innocence of the 
 terrible crime of which in the eye of the 
 law he is still adjudged to be guilty. He 
 can only do this by bringing home the 
 guilt to the real murderer. Assuming Mr. 
 Murray's view of the case to be the correct 
 one, the question is, by what means is 
 Jacoby's guilt to be brought home to 
 
 him r 
 
 ^' And that is the problem you have 
 come to me to help you to solve ?" said 
 Byrne. 
 
 Murray answered by a grave inclination 
 of the head. 
 
 " I don't know that I ever had such a 
 poser put to me before," said Byrne. 
 
 " It is the very difficulty of the problem 
 that has induced me to seek your services," 
 said Gerald. 
 
 " I must put on my considering-cap," 
 said Byrne. " I must sand-paper my 
 brains." 
 
 He was silent for a little while, Th
 
 28o A SECRET OF THE SEA, 
 
 he said, '* I see no light at present — not 
 the faintest gleam. You must let me have 
 time to think about it — to smoke over it. 
 My old pipe has made many a diffi.culty 
 clear for me ; perhaps it may help me in 
 this one." 
 
 '' Take your own time, Mr. Byrne/' said 
 Murray. " When the light you seek is 
 ready to come to you, it will come.'' 
 
 " Yes ; but I don't know where to look 
 for it," said Byrne. 
 
 '^ It will come of its own accord." 
 
 Byrne shook his head. 
 
 " Poor fellow ! he's just a bit touched 
 yet," he said to himself. 
 
 After a little more conversation, Gerald 
 and Mr. Murray went. It was arranged 
 that Byrne should write and let them know 
 when he was ready to see them again. 
 
 It was about a week later when they all 
 met again by appointment. 
 
 "Has the light come yet?" was Murray's 
 first question. 
 
 *' If it has, it is only a tiny ray indeed," 
 said Byrne. '^ Something like that of a
 
 THE FACE IN THE GLASS. 281 
 
 farthing rushlight, liable to be blown out 
 by the first pufF of wind." 
 
 " In such cases as the one before us/' re- 
 sumed Byrne, when they were all seated, 
 *' it often happens that several abortive 
 attempts have to be made before the proper 
 €hannel for exploration is discovered. The 
 plan which I am about to propose to you 
 will, in all probabiUty, prove an abortive 
 one, and will result in some other effort in 
 some other direction having ultimately to 
 be made. The plan in question is, how- 
 ever, the only one I can think of at present 
 which seems to possess the least degree of 
 feasibility. Yery few words will suffice to 
 lay it before you." 
 
 Mr. Byrne here .paused to refresh him- 
 self from his daughter's smelling-bottle, 
 which stood on the chimney-piece. Then 
 he resumed — 
 
 " In the course of my various recon- 
 noitrings about the house of Max Jacoby, 
 or rather Van Duren, as we ought now to 
 call him, I discovered a card in one of the 
 windows, on which were the words, ' Un-
 
 282 A SECREl OF THE SEA. 
 
 furnislied Apartments to let/ From what 
 I can make out, Van Duren occupies no 
 more of the house than the basement and 
 ground-floor, the two upper floors being 
 empty and to let, and having a private 
 side-entrance of their own. Now, what I 
 propose is, that I and my daughter shall 
 go and take these empty apartments. Mr. 
 Warburton here shall be my son for the 
 time being. In that capacity he will be 
 able to call upon me as often as he may 
 think well to do so. By these means I 
 shall become an inmate of Yan Duren's 
 house — he and I will be under one roof 
 Should there be anything to discover, I 
 shall thus be more likely to discover it ; 
 should any clue develop itself by means of 
 which this man's crime may be traced home 
 to him, I shall be on the spot to follow it 
 up. In any case, to get near the man 
 seems the first thing to do ; away from him 
 we can do little or nothing.'' 
 
 " I think your idea a most admirable 
 one," said Murray. " As you say, the first 
 thing to do is to get near the maa."
 
 THE FACE IN THE GLASS. 283. 
 
 " Will it be essential that you sliould 
 take your daughter into your confidence T 
 asked Gerald. '^ Will it be requisite that 
 you should explain to her your reasons for 
 taking up your residence in Yan Duron's 
 house T 
 
 "I have no secrets from Miriam," an- 
 swered Byrne. "But you need be under 
 no apprehensions on that score. Miriam can 
 keep a secret as well as I can ; she is no 
 common-place, talkative school-girl. Be- 
 sides which, her presence and co-operation 
 are essential to the scheme I have in view. 
 Without her, it would be impossible for 
 me to carry it out. What this scheme is 
 in all its details, you will excuse me from 
 explaining to you now. I have told you 
 what the first step is to be. With your 
 permission, and if you can place full con- 
 fidence in me, we will leave the remaining 
 steps to develop themselves in the natural 
 course of events." 
 
 '' You have our fullest confidence, Mr. 
 Byrne," said Murray. '' We leave j^ou to
 
 284 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 conduct the case entirely in the way that 
 may seem best to you." 
 
 Gerald, unperceived by Mr. Murray, 
 passed a slip of paper into Byrne's hand, 
 on which was pencilled these words — 
 
 "Say nothing to Mr. M. about money 
 matters. I will call to-morrow and arrange 
 with you." 
 
 Murray and Gerald walked home to- 
 gether arm-in-arm. The former was in un- 
 usually high sph^its. 
 
 "Did I not tell you, Gerald, that a way 
 would be found out of the difficulty before 
 long T 
 
 " We are not out of the wood yet, sir," 
 said Gerald, drily. 
 
 " Certainly not ; but we have got a 
 glimpse of daylight. But I cannot hope 
 that you will see with my eyes ; I cannot 
 hope that the faith that burns within me 
 will more than faintly warm you." 
 
 Gerald walked with Murray as far as the 
 corner of Ormond Square, and then stopped 
 the first empty cab that passed him, and 
 hurried back to Harley Street.
 
 THE FACE IN THE GLASS. 285 
 
 Murray did not go straiglit home, but 
 wandered back to a favourite second-hand 
 book-stall, where he was well known. His 
 purchases, it is true, were never of a very 
 extensive character, being always confined 
 to the threepenny, or, at the most, to the 
 sixpenny box. But he was a frequent 
 visitor at the stall, and he always made a 
 point of turning over the entire contents of 
 the box before making up his mind which 
 particular treasure he would ultimately 
 choose for his own. On the present occa- 
 sion, after half an hour's diligent search, he 
 decided on the extravagance of a double 
 purchase. He bought ^^Althazar," an 
 Arabian romance, for which he paid six- 
 pence; and a "Treatise on Conic Sections," 
 for which he paid threepence. This done^ 
 he walked quietly home, hugging his trea- 
 sures under his arm, and promising himself 
 a good long read that very evening, in 
 either one volume or the other — it did not 
 matter in the least which. 
 
 Mr. Murray's small stock of books, all 
 selected from the same receptacle as his
 
 286 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 present purchases, was indeed a somewhat 
 multifarious one. Nothing modern, nothing 
 frivolous, was to be found there. They 
 were all books that had seen service in 
 their time, and the authors of which were 
 not only dead, but forgotten. "Musings 
 in a Churchyard," and " Travels in Africa 
 in 1755," jostled each other on the same 
 shelf. " A Treatise on the Steam Engine " 
 had heaped a-top of it, as though there 
 were some danger of an explosion, " An 
 Essay on the Measurements and Construc- 
 tion of the Great Pyramid," and a thin 
 volume of elegiac verse " by Mary M.," 
 whoever she may have been. 
 
 It was characteristic of Mr. Murray that 
 he seemed to like any one of these books 
 as well as another. From each and all ot 
 them he seemed to derive either amuse- 
 ment or information, or perhaps both. 
 And then he was one of those rare readers 
 who will read the same book contentedly 
 five or six times over. If he happened to 
 be wakeful in the night, he would light his 
 candle and pick up the treatise on Steam
 
 THE FACE IN J HE GLASS. 287 
 
 Engines, if tliat happened to come first to 
 his hand, and read himself quietly to sleep 
 again over matter that he had probably, 
 perused attentively only some three or four 
 days before. 
 
 He had not been at home more than five 
 minutes to-day, when he heard a clatter of 
 little feet on the stairs, and then came a 
 knocking at his door, followed by a request 
 that " Uncle Greaves " would go down into 
 the garden and turn Alice's skipping-rope. 
 So down he went, and turned the skipping- 
 rope dutifully for half an hour. Then came 
 a whisper from Frank, who was on thorns 
 to know how the big kite was getting on, 
 that Uncle Greaves had promised to make 
 for him. It was getting on famously, he 
 was told. '' And will it really be as big as 
 me T asked Frank, eagerly. '' Bigger — 
 ever so much bigger," was the bhssful an- 
 swer. Then, with a troubled face, up came 
 little Will. His waggon and horses had 
 somehow come to grief; would Uncle 
 Greaves try to mend them ? Uncle 
 Greaves would try to mend them, and
 
 288 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 would not only do that, but would 
 give Dobbin a new coat of paint, and 
 make an altogether superior animal of 
 him. 
 
 When the afternoon grew dusk and 
 chilly, and tea-time was at hand, the chil- 
 dren would not let their darling uncle go till 
 they had kissed him all round ; and little 
 blue-eyed Kitty, out of sheer love, slipped 
 her old sawdust doll into his tail-pocket, 
 and so made him a present of her dearest 
 worldly possession. 
 
 "Take that card out of the window,"^ 
 said Mr. Van Duren, a few afternoons later, 
 to his clerk, Pringle. 
 
 *' Booms let at last T asked Pringle. 
 
 " Yes, at last." 
 
 '' To ancient deaf old party and young 
 lady, I suppose,'^ muttered Pringle to him- 
 self, as he removed the card from the win- 
 dow. " Make this dead-alive hole a bit 
 more lively, maybe. It needs it bad 
 enough." 
 
 A strange thing happened to Max Yan
 
 THE FACE IN THE GLASS. 289 
 
 Duren that night. It was nearly midnight 
 when he let himself in with his latch-key. 
 His housekeeper had gone to bed long ago, 
 and all was dark and silent. He lighted 
 his bed-candle, and tramped slowly upstairs 
 to his own room. He had put his candle 
 on the dressing-table, and was proceeding 
 to divest himself of his cravat, when, hap- 
 pening to glance into the large oval glass 
 in front of which he was standing, he was 
 startled to see there the reflection of another 
 face beside his own. It was peering over 
 his shoulder, and its eyes met his in the 
 glass. Black and full of menace, or it 
 might be of warning, were those eyes ; and 
 but for them, the face, with its thin line of 
 black moustache, would have looked like 
 that of a corpse, so death-like was its 
 pallor. 
 
 Involuntarily Van Duren wheeled quickly 
 round ; but he was alone in the room. In- 
 voluntarily his eyes travelled back to the 
 glass ; but there was only the reflection of 
 his own white face to be seen there now. 
 He staggered back, and sat down in the 
 
 VOL. I. 19
 
 290 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 nearest chair. But he was a man of very 
 powerful nerve, and it did not take him 
 long to recover himself. Presently he rose 
 and crossed the room to a little cupboard. 
 From this he drew a bottle of some cordial, 
 out of which he poured a few drops into 
 some water, and then drank the mix- 
 ture. 
 
 There was a writing-table near the fire — 
 when he was restless ' of a night, and could 
 not sleep, he would often get up and work 
 for an hour or two. At this table he now 
 sat down, and drawing from a secret drawer 
 a book of private memoranda, he proceeded 
 to make the following entry in it, having 
 first written down the day, month, and year 
 of the occurrence : — 
 
 " At five minutes before twelve to-night 
 I saw once again, and for the fourth time 
 in ray life, the Face [in the Glass. It is 
 some years since I saw it last, and I had 
 begun to flatter myself that I should never 
 see it again. Never have I seen it except 
 as an omen of ill to follow. The first time 
 it appeared to me was a few hours before I
 
 THE FACE IN THE GLASS. 291 
 
 set foot on board the cursed ' Albatross. ' 
 The second time was the night before 
 Katrinka tried to poison me, and all but 
 succeeded. The third time was just before 
 I heard the news of the great smash at 
 Amsterdam, by which I lost half my for- 
 tune. Always as a presage of quick-follow- 
 ing misfortune has that face appeared to 
 me. And always his face ! I shall dream 
 of this for a month to come, and wake up 
 every night shivering with horror. But 
 what is the misfortune that is about to 
 overtake me now? Vain question! Never 
 did the horizon look fairer to me than it 
 does at the present moment. Not the 
 faintest cloud or sign of tempest anywhere 
 visible. And yet, that something is about 
 to happen — that some great crisis of my 
 life is near at hand — I feel but too well as- 
 sured. If only I knew where to look — if 
 only I knew what to expect ! But I am 
 like a man who is condemned to fight a 
 phantom in the dark. 
 
 " To-day I let my empty rooms to a 
 deaf old gentleman and his daughter. 
 
 19—2
 
 292 A SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 What a bewitching creature the daughter 
 is ! Were I only twenty years younger, 1 
 know not into what folly I might be led 
 by the sorcery of a face like hers." 
 
 END OF VOL. I. 
 
 tULLING A.VD SONS. PRINTERS. GUILDFORD. SURREY.