V by Lode E. A. WEEKS & COMPANY, CHICAGO. Thk Marguerite Series.— No. 7, July, 1 , 1893. Issued Semi-Monthly. Subscription Price, $l).00 per year. Entered at Chicago Postoffice as second-class matter. •Univ. of HI. Library 5 2 /4/o •• .rr rv r s =■ *«■ "« r** * 1 - ■ FOILED BY LOYE. FOILED BY LOVE By BERTHA U. CLAY. Copyright 1893, Melbourne Pub. Co. FULLY ILLUSTRATED. CHICAGO: E. A. WEEKS & COMPANY, 276 and 278 Franklin Street. FOILED BY LOVE. CHAPTER I. Ik the front room of a house in Fig street, Chelsea, a woman and a girl are seated at work. The former is darning a coarse stocking, much the worse for wear. The latter is making a pencil drawing of an artistic-looking jug that stands upon the table. Both are silent. The mother is busy with thoughts which give a sad expression to a face still refined, but once beautiful. She is plainly and simply dressed, in coarse blue serge, but her gown is made with taste ; it fits her still graceful figure perfectly, and there is a neatness about the plain linen collar and the well-brushed but faded hair such as one but rarely sees in a woman of her station in life. Presently she says : “ You must get on quickly with your lessons, Hetty ; there are those slippers to fill in for the Berlin wool-shop, I promised them by to-morrow morning ; and these stockings must be mended. You can do which you like.” “Just another minute, mother,” is the answer, “then I shall have finished this, and I will get on with the slippers. You know I never can darn stockings, I always make them in lumps.” “ That is because you don’t make up your mind to mend them properly,” is the quiet reply. “If you resolutely determined to do any one thing well, you may be quite sure you would succeed.” “So you have often told me, mother,” responds Hetty, 8 FOILED BY LOVE . thoughtfully, pausing to bite her pencil, “and 1 have won- dered that, as you believe this, and are so very clever, that you have not done something in all your life to make you rich or famous.” “ If a man or a woman falls so low in the social scale as I have fallen, they never rise again,” replies Mrs. Hamblin, sadly. “ But don’t talk or think of me ; I am no example for you or for any woman. You have your way to make in the world, Hetty, and provided you are honest and pure you must succeed in attaining an honorable position.” “You have been a dear, good mother to Chris and me,” cries the girl, flinging her arms round her parent’s neck, and kissing her fondly. Then, as her mother pauses to respond, pressing her ten- derly round the waist, and murmuring, “My precious one ! ” Hetty asks, softly : “ What was my grandfather’s name, mother ? What were you before you married my father ? ” Mrs. Hamblin starts from her daughter’s embrace as though the question had w r ounded her in some vital part ; her face becomes deadly pale, she presses her hands upon her heart, then says, in a low, pain- wrung voice : “Never ask that question again, never seek to know the answer ! When I left my father’s house to marry he read the funeral service over the child he had lost, and I died to him and to my old life as completely as though I had indeed been buried.” Then, with her head bent upon her breast and her whole figure drooping, the unhappy woman walks out of the room, and the troubled girl is left alone. For a few seconds Hetty continues to bite her pencil meditatively ; then she flings it down, and, springing to her feet, exclaims, passionately : “ What a horrid old man my grandfather must have been, to read the funeral service over his daughter, whom he knew to be alive ! Not much like my father ; he lets me do just FOILED BY LOVE . 9 as I please. Dear old dad ! He would be perfect if he were always sober.” This last thought brings a train of painful recollections to her mind, and, with a view of abstracting her thoughts from the great blot upon their domestic life, Hetty finds the canvas intended for slippers, and soon she is industriously at work upon it. There is very little money to be made at this work, and Hetty and her mother have, neither of them, much time to give to it, but the three or four shillings a week they man- age to earn between them helps to supply their simple ward- robe. As she sits there in the plainly-furnished room, with the dainty woolwork in her hands, Hetty Hamblin makes as fair a picture as will ever hang upon the walls of the Royal Academy. She is very young, scarcely sixteen, but she is tall and well developed for her age ; her waist is small and beauti- fully round, her complexion is clear and white, her neck is like a pillar of ivory, and her hair has that peculiar tinge of bronze, with a glint of gold in it, which is more often seen in Venetian pictures than in real life. But it is her eyes — those long, liquid, lustrous eyes, that give the greatest charm to the face — those eyes look purple and violet and blue, as the light falls upon them ; while a careless observer wcfuld think they were black, so long and heavy are the curling eyelashes that sweep the fair cheek, upon which they so often rest. It is a singular and a beautiful face, with features of a high order ; quite a contrast to all the girl's surroundings, which are coarse and sordid and mean. But Hetty's surroundings have been pretty much the same ever since she was born, sometimes worse, never better. Therefore her innate grace and beauty must have been inherited from either or both of her parents. Plain as is the furniture of the room, there is something suggest- 10 FOILED BY LOVE . ive of stables about it all — there are whips and spurs and bits hung on the walls, or reposing on shelves ; while the portraits of some famous racers look down on the solid deal table, now covered with a faded red cloth; the wooden arm-chair, evidently used by the master of the household ; the horse-hair couch, the cracked chimney-glass, and the threadbare pieces of carpet that are flung upon the floor. But there are two things in this apartment, besides the fair girl that occupies it, that help to humanize and refine it — one is a carefully-tended flower, which blooms by the window ; the other is a piano, not new, or even modern in shape, but which shows signs of much usage ; while the pile of worn and discolored music is a clear proof that somebody here knows how to play. Hetty is industriously stitching, and is thinking of her mother, and of the grandeur she must have left behind her when she deserted her father’s roof to marry a man infinitely below her in social position, when a loud rat, tat, tat, tat, comes upon the front door, and she flings down her work and hastens to obey the summons. Of course, no servant is kept in this house; Hetty and her mother do all the household work. There is sometimes even a struggle to keep a roof over their heads; and, as it is, the one odd room that can be spared is let to a still more humble lodger. But no lodger in so small an establishment would come to the door with such a thundering knock, and Hetty is so startled that she has reached the passage and opened the door before her mother has got to the top of the stairs. “ Does Joe Hamblin live here ! ” asks a haughty and imper- ious voice. “ Yes, sir,” is the reply. “ Is he in ? ” is the next question, uttered in the same tone; but evidently spoken before the questioner has had time to look at the girl who has answered him, for the gentleman’s voice perceptibly changes, as he next asks; FOILED BY LOVE. 11 “ Pardon me; do you expect him home shortly ?” “I don't know, he is very uncertain; but I will ask my mother/’ says Hetty, coloring deeply under the bold eyes which are gazing in admiration upon her face. “No need to do that; I will come in and wait,” is the next assured remark. And, despite the girl’s evident reluctance to admit him, he walks into the house as though wherever he chose to bestow his presence it must be welcome. Hetty retreats before him rather than leads the way into the living room; she is too much of a child, despite her height, too much unversed in the ways of the world, to bar his entrance, but she knows that he ought not to come here, that both her father and mother will be annoyed at his presence, and after pointing to a seat she would leave him alone, if he did not detain her by asking: “Is Joe Hamblin your father ? ”. She replies in the affirmative. “I thought there was a likeness,” he remarks. “He is a trainer of horses, isn’t he ? ” “Yes,” she returns, nervously. “I thought as much,” he goes on. “He has been recom- mended to me; he is not in any regular employment at present, is he ? ” “I think not, but I don’t quite know; here is my mother, she can tell you better than I.” And as Hetty speaks, Mrs. Hamblin, very pale, but calm and self-possessed, comes into the room. Lord Claude Irongate is sufficiently startled by the ap- pearance of the trainer’s wife to rise and bow with much more deference than he is in the habit of showing to women in humble life ; for there is something in Mrs. Hamblin’s face that commands respect from the highest as well as the lowest, and while in her presence Lord Claude can but yield to her influence. 12 FOILED BY LOVE. “I want to see Joe Hamblin/’ he says, courteously ; “he will be back soon, will he not ? ” “No, I don’t expect him till the evening,” is the reply. “Pardon me, I must have misunderstood,” he says, turn- ing to Hetty with a sweet smile, as though he were asking her to help him out of his difficulty. But she says, steadily : “I told you I did not know when he would be back.” “ Ah, how stupid of me ! ” he remarks, with a laugh at his own expense ; mentally, he adds : “ What a little fool the girl is ; why couldn’t she help me over the stile ? But I rather like a pretty simpleton ; it will be refreshing after the blue stockings with whom I have lately been thrown. ” Then, with the adroitness of a man of the world, he says, aloud : “ You live in a very out-of-the-way place ; I have had some difficulty in finding you.” “The postman has no difficulty,” says Mrs. Hamblin, quietly, “and my husband rarely has any one to come here.” “No, I should think not,” responds his lordship, a trifle more curtly. He understands that Mrs. Hamblin is not to be won over to talk in a friendly or confidential tone, neither is she at all likely to leave her daughter to converse with him ; so he returns to the business that brought him here, and, produc- ing his card-case, he writes the name of a hotel upon a piece of pasteboard, and, leaving it upon the table, says : “ There is my card ; please tell Hamblin to call on me to-morrow before ten.” Then, with a gracious bow to Hetty, and a much less effusive one to her mother, he returns to the front door, Mrs. Hamblin following him. When the latter comes back to the room, she finds her daughter reading the visiting card, speculating upon its owner. FOILED BY LOVE . 13 “ Lord Claude Irongate,” she reads aloud ; “ isn’t it a pretty name,, mother, and isn’t he handsome?” “I neither admire him nor his name/’ is the sharply uttered response; “ and I cannot understand why you Nought him into this place.” “I didn’t bring him, mother, he came without being asked,” protests the girl. But her parent waves her hand as though she would say, “ Enough of this,” and a minute or two afterward she inquires how Hetty is getting on with her work. For a full hour after this Hetty and her mother continue to ply their needles, the silence between them almost un- broken. Mrs. Hamblin’s thoughts have wandered back to the past, Hetty’s are busy with the present. She is thinking of Lord Claude’s handsome face, of his golden hair, his long drooping mustache, and of that inde- finable something about him which reminds her of her mother. Hetty is not clever at putting two and two together to arrive at any given result, and her experience of the world has been too slight for her to realize that her mother and this young lord had possibly sprung from the same class in society, rather than that there is any real similarity between them. She is still thinking of their recent visitor, when the sound of a latch-key opening the front door is quickly followed by the entrance of her father. As a specimen of mere physical beauty, Joe Hamblin would have borne off the prize twenty years ago in any com- petition; he is a handsome-looking man still, but he bears upon his puffy cheeks and bleared eyes the indelible marks of the drunkard. He is sober this morning, probably because his pockets are empty, and, after a growl of greeting, he asks impa- tiently: “Haven’t you got any dinner for a man? I’m hungry! ” 14 FOILED BY LOVE. “I didn’t expect you/’ replies his wife,, indifferently; but there is some cold meat. Hetty, lay the cloth and fetch it from the safe.” “Cold meat!” growls Hamblin, discontentedly; “you know I hate cold meat. On such a day as this, too, with a north-east wind freezing the blood in my veins.” “You should have said you were coming home to dinner,” retorts the wife, quietly. But her husband does not heed her, his eye has caught sight of the visiting card, and he pounces upon it eagerly. “ Lord Claude Irongate ! ” he cries ; “ the very swell I’ve wanted to know. I’m in luck’s way ! His horse Nimrod won the Lancaster plate last year.” Then he makes his wife and daughter repeat all that his: lordship has said to them, and he is so elated at the pros- pect of the forthcoming interview that he forgets to grumble any more about his cold dinner, and does not even make a complaint at having to drink water with his meal instead of ale. But even as he eats he talks. He is as sanguine and as easily elated as a child, and he begins to speculate upon the employment which Lord Claude means to offer him, his imagination even going so far as the management of his stud of race horses and a comfortable house to live in. “A house in the country, father,” exclaims Hetty; “oh, wouldn’t that be delightful? Just think of being awakened by the lark in the morning ; of having dear little chickens to feed ; of wandering in the woods and picking the prim- roses and violets and wild anemones ; of hearing the low- ing of cattle, the gurgling of water, and seeing the clear, blue sky overhead. Away from all the bricks and mortar, and the noise and bustle of the streets ; oh, it would be like heaven to me ! ” Then, turning to her other parent, she asks : “Wouldn’t you like it, mother ?” “No,” is the cold but emphatic reply. FOILED BY LOVE. 15 u Your mother never likes anything that other folks do,” growls Hamblin, “ but she must take what she can get, like the rest of us.” Then he lights his pipe, and sits over the fire smoking. His wife and he are as far asunder as the poles in thought, tastes and sympathy. Whatever love or passion gilded the first few months of their married life has long since disappeared, and he has painfully realized that it would have been far better for him to have married a woman in his own station than to have aspired to the hand of his master's daughter. As for her, she has hundreds of times wished that she had died rather than have married as she did. It is the children that have kept them together, and that have made life endurable to both ; and it is with the for- tunes of one of those children that we have most to do. But this day comes to a close, as other days before it have died away, and on the following morning Joe Hamblin returns from his interview with Lord Claude Irongate with the announcement that he has accepted the post of head trainer to his lordship's stud, that he has likewise obtained a berth at the same place for his son Chris, and that before the end of the week they 'and all their belongings must transfer themselves to Stanmoor. “ Stanmoor ! ” repeats Mrs. Hamblin, with white lips and pallid cheeks ; “ it is impossible, I cannot — I will not go there.” And her husband replies, moodily : “ You must please yourself. I'm not going to stay in London to starve ; I shall go myself, and shall take Hetty and Chris with me.” And he knows, from the groan his wife utters, that he will take her also. 16 FOILED BY LOVl 7. CHAPTER II. Chris Hamblin is a handsome, good-natured little fel- low ; lithe of limb and light of weight, and he stands a chance, with good luck, of being one of the most successful jockeys of the day. He is very fond of his sister, and is proportionately afraid of his mother, between whom and himself there never has been any confidence, while there has been as little love. For Chris is like his father on a smaller scale — no trace of high birth or of gentle blood is to be found in him ; he is a jockey pure and simple, fond of horses, learned in all the tricks of the stable, his great ambition being to ride the winner of the Derby or of some other famous race, and to grow rich as many men of the same calling have done before him. Chris has no ambition to be anything more than a jockey. He knows that his mother was born a lady, but he does not desire to be like any of her family. Learning was always a trouble to him, and when he left the board-school, he did so because he was old enough to escape from author- ity, and not because of any proficiency in his studies. With Hetty matters were widely different ; she learned rapidly, she delighted in study, and she has already made great progress both in music and drawing. So matters stand when the Hamblins move to Stanmoor — a big rambling house, built on the side of a hill, with extensive stables and outhouses standing a good quarter of a mile in the rear. The great feature of Stanmoor is its stables. The house itself has a neglected appearance, as though it had fallen in its fortunes from the residence of a gentleman to that of an upper servant ; and the extensive grounds, which are planted with many rare trees brought from foreign coun- tries, look wild and uncared for. FOILED BY LOVE . 1? At the bottom of the hill winds the sluggish river, look- ing like a ribbon of shining silver as Hetty and her mother first come in view of the house. The girl utters a cry of delight, and the mother smiles faintly in sympathy with her daughter’s pleasure ; but the smile soon disappears, for Mrs. Hamblin is uneasy and sus- picious, and the very liberality with w T hich Lord Claude Irongate has treated them has alarmed and surprised her. But his lordship has more than one motive for this con- duct : Joe Hamblin is known as a good trainer and honest in his way, and Chris is a careful though fearless rider, so father and son may help to put some thousands of pounds into his pockets ; while the presence of an exceedingly pretty girl at Stanmoor, is a by no means unwelcome attraction. The Hamblins have not been at Stanmoor a week, how- ever, before Lord Claude understands that Hetty is care- fully kept out of his way by her mother. At first he is irritated by Mrs. Hamblin’s watchfulness, and by the quiet manner in which she keeps him at a distance, ignoring alike his condescension and his attempts at friendliness and familiarity ; her husband and son are his servants, but she and her daughter are not, and though she dare not say so, she more than once makes him feel that, despite his solicitude for their comfort, he has absolutely no business in the house. Hetty is unconscious of all this. In the new life that has opened out to her she takes unceasing pleasure ; her mother is now able to afford a country servant to do the household work, and this leaves her free to pursue her studies, and to give much of her time to the garden, which has been sadly neglected. It was February when they first came here, and the bitter east wind made walking in the open country disagreeable ; added to which, Hetty has an unreasonable fear of cows and of all horned cattle, and for a little while her walks are con- 18 FOILED BY LOVE. fined to the neglected grounds of the house, or consist in going to the neighboring town, which is only a mile distant. Here there is a public library where she can get books to read free of charge ; and there is also the church to which she and her mother go regularly every Sunday. It is at church principally that she sees Lord Claude Iron- gate and his sister — Lady Daphne, with their aunt, who lives with them, and who takes the place of a mother to her brother’s children. There are other people of distinction and position who attend this church, and whose very names are unknown to Hetty ; but she looks at them wonder ingly from her far- away place in the free seats, until their faces become famil- iar to her, There is one gentleman’s face for which she looks every Sunday. What magnet draws her eyes toward him she can- not tell, but Lord Claude knows him, so does Lady Daphne, and it may be the fact of this lady’s face lighting up with sudden brightness when she first meets this gentleman that makes Hetty think there must be something unusually fas- cinating about him. But the great families that live around Colneford are a constant source of interest to Hetty, and she wonders vaguely how it is that a great social gulf yawns between her and them. That the gulf is there, and cannot be passed over. Lord Claude always makes her feel, if by any chance he can man- age to speak with her out of the hearing of others ; for his easy familiarity grates upon her nerves, and rouses her pride, sets her whole soul up in arms against him, and drives her to fly for refuge from his bold admiration with her father, or Chris, or, still better, with her mother. Conscious that their daily bread depends upon the favor of this man, whose admiration is little better than an insult, Hetty makes no complaint to any one ; but she avoids Lord Claude as much as possible* and hopes that FOILED BY LOVE. 19 when he sees how unwelcome are his honeyed words he will cease to whisper them in her ears. April and May have gone by ; it is the month of June, and roses are climbing over the front of the house in which Hetty and her parents live, and one white bud looks in at her chamber window ; the whole of the country also is beautiful with flowers and foliage, and Hetty has by this time managed to become acquainted with the most lovely spots for several miles round. On this particular day, Hetty hastens to finish the task set her by her mother ; and as soon as dinner is over, while Mrs. Hamblin, who is not very well, lies down to rest for awhile, Hetty, with a hat on her head and a pretty basket in her hand, sets off to walk to Brent Wood, which is deservedly famous in the neighborhood for the beauty and abundance of its wild flowers. Hetty's dress is of the plainest material possible, a pale blue cambric, without either pattern or stripes upon it, made by her mother and herself, but fitting her exquisitely, showing the soft curves of her graceful, girlish figure ; the round, tapered waist, the budding bust, and the strong, though small, shoe, that peeps out like a mouse from under- neath the skirt. Her hat is of the same material as her gown, simple and inexpensive to the last degree, but it suits her well ; it makes her dark, heavily-fringed eyes look bluer than usual, it offers a bright contrast to the golden gleam in her bronze- hued hair, and it does what it is intended to do, it com- pletely shields the sun from her lovely face. To-day, Hetty is particularly light-hearted ; she knows not why, but she feels so merry she could dance and sing in the very exuberance of youthful spirits, and she trips along by the riverside, too intent upon watching the fishes leap after venturesome flies to observe that Lord Claude Iron- gate has seen her, and is following at a distance. Along by the side of the river, across a field, through a 20 FOILED BY LOV ft. small copse of fir-trees ; then she opens a tall, wooden gate, and passes into the Brent Wood. The sun is high in the heavens, and Hetty is a little tired with her walk; but here is shade and shelter from his burning rays, and, after pausing a minute or two to rest against a tree, she begins to look about her for the flowers and ferns which she came to gather. It is always a misfortune to a girl when she has not a sister or a congenial friend to accompany her in her walks, to share her joys and her sorrows, and Hetty has never had a companion save Chris and her mother, the latter havipg sternly forbidden her to make friends with any of the girls with whom it has been her lot to come in contact. Sometimes the girl is very lonely when thus thrown on her own resources ; but to-day this feeling does not oppress her, and she is so busy picking the lovely flowers which grow at her feet that she forgets everything else, until a hare springs from a hole at the root of a tree close to her, and she starts back with a sudden cry of alarm. The next moment she would laugh at her own childish terror, if a man’s voice, but a few yards distant, did not ask, with unnecessary solicitude : “What is the matter ? Don’t be alarmed; the hare is more frightened than you are ! ” This assertion is not strictly true, for though Hetty was only startled by the hare, she is thoroughly frightened by the presence of her father’s master, though she scarcely knows why she should be so. Womanly instinct impels her to hide this fear, and with an innate dignity, inherited from her mother, she says : “Thank you, my lord. I was more surprised than alarmed.” Then, with a humble bow, she turns away, and continues her occupation of hunting for wild flowers. Her pale blue gown is a lovely bit of color against the green and yellow moss, the white and red and purple flowers. FOILED BY LOVE . 21 and the dark foliage of the lofty trees ; and Lord Claude Irongate, who is an artist in his way, and who, if he were not a wealthy man, could probably earn a living by his brush, wishes that he had his painting-box at hand, so that he might transfer the scene to canvas. Hetty had turned from him as though she expected he would go on his way and pay no more heed to her. Nothing, however, is farther from his intention. He takes a few steps to the right so that he can get a glimpse of her lovely face, and then all thought of regarding her only as a beauti- ful picture vanishes from his mind. Her face fires his heart with passion, but it likewise sets him thinking. Where did she get such glorious eyes, such an exquisitely-formed face,, such glittering, gold-tipped hair, and where has he seen another face so like hers that from the very first moment of their meeting her countenance seemed familiar to his gaze ? He cannot tell. Her face seems to carry his mind back to some old picture gallery, where beauties of a by-gone cen- tury, attired in marvelous costumes, look down with unchanging smiles upon the wondering crowds that pass by them. But he cannot fix the time or place when those eyes on canvas first met his own, and, with the living girl before him, he soon ceases to wonder where he first saw her pro- totype. As for Hetty, without seeming to hurry from him, she has picked a flower here and there, and has gone on some little distance in the direction of one of the lodge gates, which she knows is not far off. If she can only reach the lodge, she feels she will be safe, and, even as she is hurrying onward, she chides herself for her nervous anxiety to get out of sight of Lord Claude. He has never offered her an insult ; he has, it is true, treated her with an amount of familiarity that has made the proud blood rush to her temples, and has excited the indignation of her mother ; but she is dimly conscious that 22 FOILED BY LOVE . other people — Molly Stiles,, for instance — would not feel at all insulted if a gentleman in Lord Claude's position spoke to her in the same manner ; and Hetty tries to impress upon her own mind that she herself stands no higher in Lord Claude's eyes than does Molly, her mother's servant. Still, there are instincts in our natures which will not be stifled — a man born to greatness must have