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 A LION AMONG THE LADIES.
 
 A LION 
 AMONG THE LADIES. 
 
 A NOVEL. 
 
 BY 
 
 PHILIP GASKELL, 
 
 AUTHOR OF "the SENIOR MAJOR," ETC. 
 
 A lion among ladies is a most dreadful thing; for there 
 is not a more fearful wild fowl than your lion living." 
 
 Midsummer Night's Dream. 
 
 IN THREE VOLUMES. 
 VOL. I. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 F. y. WHITE & CO., 
 
 31 SOUTHAMPTON STREET, STRAND, W.C. 
 
 18 8 8.
 
 EDINBURGH 
 
 COLSTON AND COMPANY 
 
 PRINTERS 
 
 i
 
 Qh\^^ 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 S 
 
 o 
 
 ■,j CHAP. 
 
 o 
 o 
 
 I. 
 
 
 II. 
 
 
 III. 
 
 IV. 
 
 1 
 
 V. 
 
 v' 
 
 VI. 
 VII. 
 
 ".VIII. 
 
 
 IX. 
 
 
 X. 
 XI. 
 
 1 
 
 XII. 
 
 N^ XIII. 
 
 The Adjutant gives Advice, . 
 
 Guy Leycester of " Ours," 
 
 A Dark Horse, 
 
 Guy Leycester to the Eescue, 
 
 An Affair of " Ancient History," 
 
 A Repentant Prodigal, . 
 
 The Major shows a Cloven Foot, 
 
 Lady Gregorie is Up in Arms, 
 
 Miss Vidal puts Herself forward 
 
 Past, but not Forgotten, 
 
 The Adjutant falls in Love, . 
 
 Out of Evil Good may spring. 
 
 The Major feels His Way, . 
 
 PAGE 
 
 1 
 
 17 
 
 34 
 
 62 
 
 88 
 
 106 
 
 125 
 
 146 
 
 160 
 
 175 
 
 194 
 
 215 
 
 233
 
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 A LION AMONG THE LADIES.
 
 A LION AMONG THE LADIES. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE ADJUTANT GIVES ADVICE. 
 
 OW, look here, my boy, tlii& 
 kind of thing won't do. I've 
 been a good deal longer in 
 the Service than you have, and have 
 seen more than one young fellow come 
 to grief, and that simply because he has 
 been a fool, and wouldn't take advice. 
 Now if you don't pull up in time, it 
 
 VOL. I. A
 
 2 A Lion among the Ladies, 
 
 ^dll be a case, either of exchanging into 
 what you chaps call a red regiment, or 
 of making tracks for the Colonies." 
 
 The utterer of this premonishment was 
 an officer dressed in the uniform of the 
 Pirst Battalion of the Chalkshire Eifles, 
 and the locality in which he spoke was 
 his own room, in the field-officers' quarters 
 of the Broadmere Barracks. Captain El- 
 phinstone — for so the officer was named 
 — had, during two years been Adjutant 
 of the regiment, and was known as one 
 of its smartest as well as steadiest 
 officers. He was a general favourite, 
 especially with the junior officers of the 
 l>attalion, for though sufficiently well 
 favoured, he was no " beauty man," — no 
 " Lion amongst the ladies " (such as 
 was Guy Leycester of "Ours"), whose at- 
 tractions threw into the shade those of
 
 The Adjutant gives Advice. 3 
 
 the younger soldiers who naturally as- 
 pired to producing a sensation amongst 
 the fair sex. A " sharp fellow," too, as 
 they all agreed, was old "Elphy,*' and 
 *' one who could put men up to a dodge 
 or two when he chose," was the invol- 
 untary compliment paid by these thought- 
 less boys to the experienced man of the 
 world who, taking pity on them for 
 their youth and folly, gave them good 
 advice, and was not extreme to mark 
 what was done by them amiss. 
 
 The second Lieutenant, with whom 
 Rowley Elphinstone was good-naturedly 
 holding colloquy, had been endowed by 
 nature with a handsome face, and a 
 slim, graceful figure; but, although good 
 enough to look at, Alfred Durant was, 
 at the age of twenty, decidedly, in the 
 matter of sense and experience, below
 
 4 A Lion among the Ladies. 
 
 the average of his fellow subs. He was 
 the only son of a doting and widowed 
 mother, and as he had not been allowed 
 to gain the teaching of worldly know- 
 ledge which a public school affords, the 
 unlucky young man too often laid him- 
 self open, by reason of the simplicity 
 and ignorance which he displayed, to 
 the merciless chaffings of his comrades. 
 
 The Broadmere Barracks stood, even 
 as they stand now, upon an eminence 
 of some considerable height. The view 
 from that height is extensive, and not 
 devoid of attraction. The country in 
 the midst of which the town of Broad - 
 mere stands, cannot claim for itself the 
 merit of being beautified by woodland 
 scenery. No meadows, rich in their lush 
 grasses, and not a single cultivated field, 
 meet the eyes of the two men who.
 
 The Adjutant gives Advice. 5 
 
 seated near an open window in Captain 
 Elphinstone's barrack-room, are looking 
 out upon a land of "rock and fell," 
 upon precipitous and barren headlands, 
 and on a mere or loch, along the shores 
 of which there is no fringe of wooded 
 verdure to refresh the eye, and reflect 
 on breezeless days, their leafy beauties 
 upon the water's bosom. 
 
 Situated in what may almost be called 
 a northern county, the town of Broad- 
 mere owes it present prosperous existence 
 to the discovery — in the towering head- 
 lands before mentioned — of valuable min- 
 erals. The extensive coal mines which 
 were worked in a neighbouring county 
 tended greatly to the lucrative develop- 
 ment of the mineral trade. Capital 
 flowed with astonishing rapidity into 
 Broadmere. From an insignificant vil-
 
 6 A Lion among the Ladies. 
 
 lage, it grew in a few years to be a 
 mighty town, and, with its dimensions, 
 wickedness, as a natural consequence, in- 
 creased also. In process of time, there- 
 fore, and because of the crimes and mis- 
 demeanours which, as the result of its 
 size, multiplied exceedingly, the presence 
 of soldiers in the big manufacturiDg 
 city of Broadmere was imperatively called 
 for ; and thus it came about that exten- 
 sive barracks were, on an eminence out- 
 side the town, erected, and that in those 
 barracks Captain Eowley Elpbinstone, 
 and his subaltern Alfred Durant, were, 
 one morning in early spring, holding 
 somewhat serious converse. They were 
 seated, the older man in a luxurious arm- 
 chair, and the younger on the broad 
 cushioned seat of the one large window that 
 gave -,ight and air to the barrack-room.
 
 The Adjutant gives Advice. 7 
 
 "Look here, my boy," the Captain was 
 saying, " I hate to see a young fellow of 
 your age making a downright ass of 
 himself; and, as I said before, if you 
 go on as you've begun, imitating chaps 
 who have double and treble your means, 
 and ten times your experience, take my 
 word for it, you'll come to grief" 
 
 Young Durant, over whose boyish 
 cheek a blush had stolen, had to pull 
 himself together before replying to his 
 mentor's warnings ; then he said, a trifle 
 sheepishly, — 
 
 " I don't know who you mean. Captain. 
 I was not aware of having imitated 
 anybody. I have given ladies a few 
 flowers, and ridden out early " (this 
 with an exaggeration of the celestial 
 rosy red with which his beardless face 
 had been, to his credit, tinged) "a few
 
 8 A Lion among the Ladies, 
 
 times with the same lady, while other 
 men — Guy Leycester, for instance, who's 
 got no end of tiles flying, gives women 
 lots of splendid jewellery. I saw a 
 bracelet that he had ordered for Mrs 
 Denham, that couldn't have cost less 
 than twenty sovs., and what I send to 
 Lady Gregorie — the flowers, I mean — 
 only stand me in a pound or so." 
 
 At the mention of Guy Leycester's 
 name, a frown of mingled pain and 
 anger had contracted the Captain's brow. 
 He and the brother ofiicer whose mis- 
 doings had thus been, without *' malice 
 prepense," alluded to, had for years been 
 the closest and most attached of friends. 
 A few years senior to Guy, and gifted 
 with far more strength of mind and 
 steadiness of purpose than nature had be- 
 stowed upon the younger man, Eowley
 
 The Adjutant gives Advice, 9 
 
 Elphinstone had welcomed with joy into 
 the ranks of his own regiment the lad 
 whom he had known from boyhood 
 as brave, lovable, and true. A more 
 intimate knowledge, however, of his 
 friend, when the latter had progressed 
 from youth to manhood, served some- 
 what to modify Rowley's satisfaction 
 in the appointment of his jidus Achates 
 to the Chalkshire Rifle Regiment. It 
 was to no diminution of the admirable 
 qualities with which the older man had 
 credited the young subaltern that this 
 result was due, for these, to Rowley 
 Elphinstone's thinking, remained intact ; 
 but there were other proclivities — other 
 tastes and tendencies, which were to the 
 manner born in Guy, and the rapid 
 development of which filled the mind 
 of his watchful friend with ever-grow-
 
 lo A Lion among the Ladies. 
 
 ing anxiety. The characters of regi- 
 ments differ from each other as much 
 as do the idiosyncrasies of individuals, 
 and the one which the Chalkshire Eifles 
 had long since earned for itself, was 
 that of being *' fast," " smart," and 
 '^dashing." The Colonel, Sir Wilfred 
 Gregorie, was a man of fortune, whose 
 pride was in the regiment he com- 
 manded, and it pleased him that his 
 officers should be possessed both of liberal 
 means, and a talent such as he himself 
 evinced, for expenditure and show. He 
 objected, he had been heard to say, to 
 having fellows in the regiment who had 
 not money enough to do it credit, and 
 thence it followed that too many foolish 
 youths followed not only their own 
 inclinations, but the example set them 
 by the Colonel, and plunged into the
 
 The Adjutant gives Advice. i r 
 
 various extravagances which lead eventu- 
 ally to ruin. 
 
 Guy Leycester's early antecedents were 
 not such as to render him proof against 
 the manifold temptations which, as a 
 handsome, popular young soldier, beset 
 his path. His mother, Lady Alicia Ley- 
 cester, was a fine lady, a woman of the 
 world, and one of the most careless of 
 mothers ; whilst his father, an admiral 
 and a K.C.B., had always, during his sixty 
 years of honourable existence, lived in the 
 blessed belief that no son of his, could, 
 by such disgraceful acts as he was told 
 were daily perpetrated by young men of 
 family, bring liis grey hairs in shame 
 and sorrow to the grave. To what ex- 
 tent, and in what a disastrous fashion, 
 the fine old sailor deceived himself, 
 remains hereafter to be seen. I have
 
 12 A Lion among the Ladies. 
 
 already hinted at Elphinstone's distress 
 of mind as the inborn propensities of the 
 youth whom he had loved as a brother 
 only too rapidly made themselves appar- 
 ent ; and when the weak-minded lad whose 
 fall into the depths of debt and ill-doing 
 the kind-hearted Captain w^as endeavour- 
 ing to avert, quoted Guy Leycester s un- 
 principled conduct as being in some sort 
 an excuse, Rowley Elphinstone's indigna- 
 tion was only equalled by his regret. It 
 was terrible to reflect that this boy — this 
 child — in the old days that were gone 
 by — of his affections, should now, through 
 means partly of his very attractiveness, 
 have become a snare, and an occasion of 
 falling to the young and inexperienced 
 amongst his fellows. It was this latter 
 feeling which induced him to say, with a 
 severity of manner to which the young-
 
 The Adjutant gives Advice. 13 
 
 sters of the regiment were totally un- 
 accustomed, and to which Alf Durant 
 listened with a certain amount of awe, — 
 " I am sorry that you have thought it 
 necessary to mention any names, and to 
 accuse absent persons of acts of which 
 they may or may not have been guilty. 
 As regards your own conduct, I confess- 
 that it recalls to my mind that of a 
 young and simple-minded boy-officer of 
 hussars, who, on being advised by his 
 good-natured Colonel to refrain from pay- 
 ing openly-marked attentions to a married 
 lady, replied, ' But, sir, if I didn't pay 
 them openly, no one would know that I 
 pay them at all.' The object of a lad of 
 your age, when he sends flowers to a lady, 
 and in other ways endeavours to show 
 to the world that he adores her, is in 
 ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the
 
 14 A Lion among the Ladies, 
 
 gratification of his own vanity, and his 
 reward usually, and very justly, consists 
 of ridicule on the part of lookers-on at 
 his egregious folly. By the way, my 
 dear boy, I must, whilst talking of ladies 
 generally, caution you against mentioning 
 any by name. In this respect you would 
 do W'cll to imitate the example of such 
 men as Captain Leycester. With men of 
 the world — gentlemen, I should say — of 
 his sort, the names of the women of their 
 acquaintaDce are never allowed, in con- 
 nection with attentions paid to them, to 
 pass their lips ; and when a few more 
 years have rolled over your head, you 
 will perhaps acknowledge the wdsdom — 
 to say nothing of its being a case where 
 a man's honour is concerned — of following 
 my advice in this matter."
 
 The Adjutant gives Advice, 15 
 
 " Well, old fellow, you've had a wigging, 
 I expect," said a young brother officer 
 of Durant's, who chanced to meet that 
 somewhat crestfallen youth in the cor- 
 ridor leading to the mess-room. " The 
 Adjutant's been trying his hand at mak- 
 ing a good boy of you, eh ? Do you 
 feel like the sort of thing % — renouncino; 
 the devil and all his works, and living 
 henceforth in the odour of sanctity ? " 
 
 " There was nothing said about sanc- 
 tity," answered Alf, as he aflfectionately 
 linked his arm within that of his brother 
 sub. " Old Elphinstone doesn't set up for 
 being a saint. What he preaches against 
 is running in debt ; but I should like to 
 know how a fellow who has no more by 
 way of an allowance than a miserable two 
 hundred a year, can help doing that." 
 
 So spoke (and, I grieve to say, without
 
 i6 A Lion among the Ladies. 
 
 one twinge of remorse for his ingratitude) 
 the lad who, only one short year before^ 
 had listened with words of heartfelt, and 
 eager protest to the unselfish plans of his 
 widowed mother, and two young and 
 pretty sisters, for their only brother's 
 fancied good. With what more than 
 readiness had they vied with each other 
 in the sacrifice of some daily luxury and 
 comfort — or, as indeed it might almost be 
 called, some ''necessity" — in order to ren- 
 der possible the object of their dear one's 
 ambition ; and now, alas ! this only son 
 of a widow, this child of many prayers, 
 was being carried rapidly away by the 
 force of evil example, and had more than 
 begun to tread the downward path which 
 leads to ruin, and perchance disgrace !
 
 CHAPTER 11. 
 
 GUY LEYCESTER OF " OURS." 
 
 ITHIN a mile of Broadmere Bar- 
 racks is a handsome square^ 
 and in that square there 
 stands a gorgeously - furnished house, 
 which its owner, a wealthy retired mer- 
 chant in coals and iron, had, as a great 
 favour (according to his own showing), 
 consented to let, during the stay of 
 the Rifles in Broadmere, to the Colonel 
 of the regiment. The rent demanded, 
 and without much shilly-shallying on 
 Sir Wilfred's part, agreed to, w^as ex- 
 
 VOL. I. B
 
 i8 A Lion among the Ladies. 
 
 travagantly high, for, in the opinion of 
 the owner, who had expended many of 
 his hard - earned thousands in gilding 
 and ornamentation, the mansion was a 
 Tery temple of magnificence and beauty. 
 Lady Gregorie, however, thought other- 
 wise. Her tastes, although fully as ex- 
 pensive as those of the Broadmere 
 tradesman, were infinitely simpler ; and 
 after taking possession of her new 
 abode, many days were expended by 
 her in hiding away not a few splendid 
 specimens of Broadmere elegance, and 
 substituting for them many really pretty 
 things, as well as more tasteful decora- 
 tions, of her own choosing. 
 
 " I assure you the drawing-rooms 
 were too ghastily dreadful when first 
 we took possession," the Colonel's hand- 
 some wife would say to her afternoon
 
 Guy Leycester of ** Ours!' 19 
 
 visitors, " and even now it is only just 
 possible to live in them ; " and her lady- 
 ship, looking lovely in one of Worth's 
 most simple yet most costly tea-gowns, 
 leant back in an arm-chair which 
 Gillow had sent from his London re- 
 pository, and felt that the hundreds she 
 had expended in newly modelling hor 
 temporary home had not been thrown 
 away in vain. 
 
 Sir Wilfred was both proud and fond 
 of his wife. She was very ornamental, 
 entirely to be trusted, and easy to live 
 with. He enjoyed seeing the admiration 
 she inspired, and thought it good fun 
 when the boys of the regiment fell 
 down — metaphorically speaking — at her 
 feet and worshipped her. The Colonel 
 was one of the last men living to see 
 with complacency, jewels, which were
 
 20 A Lion among the Ladies. 
 
 the gifts of aspirants to her favour, 
 adorning the neck and arms of his 
 wife ; but the case of offerings at 
 beauty's shrine made in the guise of 
 flowers by his boy officers, was another 
 aff'air altogether ; and while his wife 
 accepted with an amused smile these 
 juvenile tributes to her beauty, he 
 could afl"ord to look on unmoved at 
 play so innocent of harm. He had in 
 his salad days been guilty of many 
 such follies, and it never occurred to 
 him that more than one of the foolish 
 young fellows who paid their ^n% or 
 ten shillings — as the case might be — for 
 the flowers which decorated his fair 
 wife's drawing-room, might be the gifts 
 of spendthrifts who did not possess five 
 shillings which they could legitimately 
 call their own.
 
 Guy Leycester of '' Ours'' ^i 
 
 On the morning following the day 
 when Captain Elphinstone had bestowed 
 the rarely-appreciated gift of good ad- 
 vice upon Alfred Durant, Sir Wilfred, 
 on entering his wife's boudoir, found 
 her engaged in the pleasant occupa- 
 tion of arranging in vases a profu- 
 sion of various coloured roses. They 
 lay on the table before her, "thick as 
 leaves in Vallombrosa," crimson, pale 
 yellow, pink, and ivory white, whilst 
 her delicate, slim hand moved lightly 
 amongst the blossoms, picking and choos- 
 ing those which seemed to her, best 
 suited to be grouped together. 
 
 '' Oh, I say ! " exclaimed the Colonel, 
 as he sauntered towards the table. "You 
 have been well supplied to-day. Which 
 of the pet idiots sent you these ? " 
 
 Without ceasing from her occupation,
 
 2f A Lion among the Ladies. 
 
 and with an air of perfect unconcern, 
 Lady Gregorie answered the question 
 put to her. 
 
 " The idiot at present in question," 
 she said, " is young Durant, and I am 
 going to tell him not to spend his 
 money so foolishly again. These roses 
 must have cost a fortune." 
 
 " Which he has not, and never will 
 have," said the Colonel. " Between our- 
 selves, Flo, young Durant and his chum 
 Fuller are going rapidly to the bad, 
 and the sooner the finale comes, the 
 better for them. Durant is in debt 
 right and left to the trades-people, and 
 both he and Fuller are in with the 
 money-lenders. They are no credit to the 
 regiment, and the sooner they are out 
 of it, the better I shall be pleased." 
 
 Florence Gregorie, although vain and
 
 Guy Leycester of ^^ OursT 23 
 
 a flirt, is not devoid of kindly feel- 
 ings. She is sorry for young Durant, 
 and lifting a pair of dark, languid eyes 
 to the Colonel's face, makes a feeble 
 effort in favour of the condemned one. 
 
 ^' I'm distressed, dear, at what you 
 tell me," she says calmly. " Durant is 
 a nice boy." 
 
 " The greatest muff I ever happened 
 to come across," breaks in Sir Wilfred. 
 
 " I daresay ; but I know something, 
 through the Lennards, about his people, 
 and his mother and sisters will be in 
 despair if he comes to grief. They have 
 pinched themselves in all sorts of ways 
 for what they thought his good ; and, 
 after all, as I said before, he is nice, 
 and a gentleman, which — from what I 
 have heard you say — young Fuller is 
 not."
 
 24 A Lion among the Ladies. 
 
 " On the contrary, he is an unmiti- 
 gated snob, and Durant must have 
 deuced bad taste to get so intimate 
 with him. There are subs of a better 
 sort in the regiment with whom he 
 might have made friends." 
 
 " Ah, but he is so young ! Not 
 twenty, and to have been got hold 
 of already by the Jews ! Couldn't you, 
 dear Wilfred," persists Flora, ''give him 
 a few words of advice ? " 
 
 The Colonel, a fine soldier-like look- 
 ing man, of a little over forty years of 
 age, is standing with his hands in his 
 pockets, and his back to the fireless 
 grate. At his wife's last words he 
 breaks into a laugh. 
 
 '* Couldn't I," he, with sarcastic humour 
 asks, " read, like old Gladstone, the 
 lessons in St Andrew's Church on Sun-
 
 Guy Leycester of " Ours." 25 
 
 day ? No, no ; I leave the lecturing 
 department to Elphinstone. He has 
 taken more than one turn at Durant, 
 and might as well have talked to the 
 winds. If a young fellow is bent on 
 going to the devil, go he will, and 
 there's no use in trying to stop him." 
 
 Lady Gregorie, with a little sigh of 
 regret, resumed her occupation. She had 
 got accustomed to the attentions of Alf 
 Durant, and would miss, she thought, 
 his good-looking, boyish face from among 
 her visitors. The roses, too, with which 
 her fingers were toying were his gift, 
 and she felt unwilling to abandon his 
 cause as hopeless. 
 
 " I think you are hard upon him, 
 dear Wil," she said ; " so much harder, 
 too, than you are upon others who 
 have not half his excuse for being ex-
 
 26 A Lion among the Ladies. 
 
 travagant, and in debt. Look at Guy 
 Leycester. From what I have been 
 told, he owes hundreds of pounds, where 
 Durant has only run in debt for shil- 
 lings." 
 
 The utterance of Guy Leycester's name, 
 called up an angry flush on Sir Wilfred's 
 cheek. He had never felt any real 
 jealousy of his handsome wife's admirers ; 
 but there had been a time — passed away 
 now, and wellnigh forgotten — when he 
 had not seen without some slight sen- 
 sations of annoyance, betrayals in the 
 tactics of Captain Guy Leycester of a 
 desire to add the Colonel's admired wife 
 to the number of those who, accord- 
 ing to report, had loved him "not 
 wisely but too well." But in addition 
 to this cause, if cause indeed it were, 
 for the evident annoyance which the
 
 Guy Leycester of ^'' Otci^sJ' 27 
 
 mention of Guy Leycester's name by 
 his pretty, thoughtless Florence gave 
 to Sir Wilfred, there was the circum- 
 stance that — reckless spendthrift, and 
 unprincipled Lothario though the junior 
 Captain was known to be — his Colonel 
 had less than no wish that he (the 
 offender) should be driven by stress 
 of circumstances to leave the regiment. 
 Leycester's good looks and birth, his air 
 of high breeding, and his great and 
 universal popularity, had concurred to 
 render him — as a wag had once been 
 heard to remark — the " show man " of 
 the Chalkshire Kifles. It was true, 
 feared the Colonel — who, after all, pos- 
 sessed only a very partial knowledge 
 of the truth — that Guy's utter ruin was 
 only an affair of time. His debts^ 
 gambling ones included, had been several
 
 2,8 A Lion among the Ladies. 
 
 times paid by the Admiral ; but even 
 parental endurance has its limits, whilst 
 the holders of the prodigal's hilU had 
 never evinced any signs of waiting with 
 kindly forbearance for the better times 
 to which their sanguine creditor was 
 in the habit of alluding. Nor were the 
 *' rascally " London tradesmen, whose name 
 was legion, and who had been guilty 
 of the self-seeking folly of giving fash- 
 ionable Lady Alicia Leycester's fashion- 
 able son almost unlimited credit, less 
 backward (now that the young officer 
 seemed near the end of his tether), 
 than were the money-lenders, in press- 
 ing their claims for payment. 
 
 It is scarcely surprising that the Col- 
 onel, who was well aware that Guy Ley- 
 cester's embarrassments must have ex- 
 ceeded by a hundredfold those of all
 
 Guy Leycester of Quinsy 29 
 
 the regimental youngsters put together, 
 should — when his wife mentioned Cap- 
 tain Leycester's name as that of one 
 not undeserving of rebuke — have both 
 looked and felt uncomfortable. His 
 reply betrayed to Florence — who was 
 well acquainted with her husband's weak- 
 nesses — that the subject of Guy's well- 
 known impecuniosity w^as one which 
 had better, in her Colonel's presence, 
 be avoided. 
 
 ** Leycester," he said, '* is the kind of 
 man who, besides being a first-rate soldier, 
 any regiment would regret to lose. If he 
 should go a cropper, as the boys say, 
 it would bring a certain amount of dis- 
 credit on the Corps, and I for one sin- 
 cerely hope, if it were only for Lady Alicia 
 and the Admiral's sake, that he will be 
 able to keep his head above water."
 
 30 A Lion among the Ladies. 
 
 In that hope Lady Gregorie perfectly 
 coincided. She, however, prudently for- 
 bore to impart to Sir Wilfred her cordial 
 agreement with his wishes. Guy Ley- 
 cester had earned for himself, amongst 
 quiet-going husbands, a reputation which 
 had naturally the effect of preventing 
 prudent young wives from speaking out 
 boldly in his praise ; and Florence Gre- 
 gorie differed in nothing from the im- 
 mense majority of her sex, who both 
 liked and admired this enfant gate 
 des dames. His manner to all women, 
 from the highest to the lowest, was 
 marked with the thoroughbred courtesy 
 which disclosed the innate chivalry of 
 his nature ; and then he was so hand- 
 some, and carried his six-feet-two of 
 manly height with an air so distin- 
 guished and graceful, that the unstudied
 
 Gtty L eye ester of '^ OursT 3 1 
 
 attitudes, and even walk, of much-ad- 
 mired Guy Leycester, were by many an 
 aspiring subaltern, frequently, but wholly 
 without success, made matter for imita- 
 tion. He was not at any time, a man 
 of many words ; neither had much care 
 and money been in his boyhood and 
 youth expended on his education ; but 
 his knowledge of the world was consider- 
 able, whilst a natural tact, and the 
 companionship outside the barrack gates 
 of good society conversationalists, had be- 
 stowed on him the gift of small talk, 
 and that " touch-and-go " fashion of 
 handling social matters which in the 
 world so often does duty for " agreeable- 
 ness." As regarded the women with 
 whom, in their various grades, he had, 
 or been supposed to have had, relations, 
 the reticence of Guy Leycester was so
 
 32 A Lion among the Ladies. 
 
 strict, and, I may add, so singular, that, 
 but for his prestige and popularity, 
 he would undoubtedly have incurred 
 amongst his juniors a certain amount of 
 ridicule — ridicule svh rosa, be it under- 
 stood, for Guy was not one with whom 
 even men of his own age permitted 
 themselves to be unduly and obnoxi- 
 ously familiar. Excepting in the one 
 admirable proclivity, of his chivalrous 
 respect for the weaker sex, a w^orse ex- 
 ample for young officers could not well, 
 in any regiment in the Service be found. 
 None were ignorant of the patent facts 
 of his immorality, his want of principle, 
 and the verge of ruin on which, through 
 his own misdoings, Captain Guy Leyces- 
 ter stood, and yet he was, by the com- 
 manding officer of his battalion, caressed 
 and made much of; whilst even the rank
 
 Guy Leycester of " Ours!' 35 
 
 and file, carried away by the charm of 
 his manner, and the innate generosity 
 of the spendthrift's nature, followed the 
 example of their officers, and would have 
 gone through fire and water to do him 
 service, and to prove their confidence in 
 him as a first-rate soldier, and as the 
 " soldiers' friend." 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 A DARK HORSE. 
 
 HORTLY after the conversation 
 between the Colonel and his 
 wife which was recorded in 
 the last chapter, the junior Major of the 
 Chalkshire Rifles was compelled, through 
 the pressure of long-continued ill-health, 
 to leave the Service. From some cause, 
 into which it is needless to enter, pro- 
 motion did not go in the regiment, an 
 exchange from another corps being 
 effected by one Major Brereton, who was 
 without delay gazetted to fill the place
 
 A Dark Horse, 3 c 
 
 of the invalided veteran. The remplacant 
 of the grey-headed and much-respected 
 old field-officer had spent the greater 
 portion of his military career in India. 
 His experience had been chiefly gained 
 in out quarters, but he had seen some 
 service, and had earned in a slight de- 
 gree, a reputation as a soldier. When the 
 name of Major Louis Brereton was first men- 
 tioned in the mess-room of the Kifles, as 
 that of the man whom the young soldiers 
 were to welcome as one of their field- 
 officers, the antecedents as well as char- 
 acter of the latter became, not unnaturally, 
 the subject of much conjectural talk. 
 
 " He's evidently what you may call 
 a dark horse," remarked a would-be 
 facetious lieutenant, Cardew by name ; 
 ** and men who have been a long time 
 in India are always nuisances."
 
 36 A Lion among the Ladies. 
 
 " Fancy," remarked young Durant, who 
 was lounging lazily in a rocking-chair, 
 his shell -jacket open, for the day was 
 warm, and with an unpaid -for shilling 
 cigar between his beardless lips, "the 
 cheek of a fellow exchanging from a 
 red regiment into ours ! " 
 
 The lad's days in the crack Kifle 
 regiment were, as he well knew, all but 
 numbered, but this small display of 
 esjprit de corps sounded well, and cost 
 him no trouble. 
 
 The surgeon of the battalion — a quiet 
 man, and prosy, but withal somewhat 
 addicted to gossip — now put in his word. 
 Laying down the " Army and Navy 
 Gazette," over the pages of which he 
 had been poring, he said slowly, and 
 after the manner of one who is ransack- 
 ing the storehouses of his memory, —
 
 A Dark Horse, 2>7 
 
 " I recollect that when I was in India, 
 there was a story about a mad dog, in 
 which a young fellow of the name of 
 Brereton was mixed up. Three men 
 were dining together, when a dog be- 
 longing to one of them went mad, and 
 tried to bite. The one of the three who 
 was nearest the door was Brereton ^it 
 needn't, you know, have been this man, 
 besides, the thing happened a long time 
 ago), and he thinking, I suppose, that 
 self-preservation was the first law of 
 nature, rushed from the room, closing 
 and locking the door behind him." 
 
 " What a coward ! " " What an infer- 
 nal cad ! " were amongst the expletives 
 which, after listening to this brief anec- 
 dote, were heard in varied tones from 
 the much disgusted audience. 
 
 " And what became of the other
 
 ^S A Lion among the Ladies. 
 
 men 1 " asked more than one sympa- 
 thiser with the victims of a brutal act 
 of selfishness. 
 
 "Oh, as well as I can remember," 
 replied Dr Braintree, " one of them 
 killed the brute with his sword, but not 
 before the other had been bitten, and he, 
 poor fellow, died of rabies." 
 
 " I hope to G — ," exclaimed one of the 
 youngsters present, "that the man who 
 is taking old Nugent's place is not the 
 Brereton of whom you heard in India. 
 One couldn't stand a man in our regiment 
 who has such a story as that attached 
 to his name." 
 
 "Now I come to think of it," resumed 
 the surgeon, who was a prudent man, 
 and always preferred being on the safe 
 side, "I rather think that the hero of 
 this story was a civilian ; and what
 
 A Dark Horse, 39 
 
 makes it the more likely is, that he told 
 the ancedote himself, boasting of his 
 own cleverness in taking care of his own 
 person first, whereas his conduct in 
 the matter would have got him kicked 
 out of any decent regiment in the 
 Service." 
 
 At that moment a senior Lieutena^^t, 
 who had served on the Commander- 
 in-Chiefs staff in India, came sauntering 
 into the room, and the story of the 
 mad dog, as connected with one Brere- 
 ton, w^as eagerly, and with sundry com- 
 ments thereupon, repeated to him. 
 
 " Did you ever hear of it ? " was the 
 question which, in various forms, was 
 asked him on all sides. 
 
 " No ; and I wasn't likely to," re- 
 sponded the Honourable Richard de 
 Silvertop, better known in the regi-
 
 40 A Lion among the Ladies, 
 
 ment as Dicky Dollars. " The affair 
 happened most likely up the country, 
 and before I joined. I recollect the 
 name in India, but that had something 
 to do with a woman." 
 
 " I daresay — most affairs have," re- 
 marked the doctor sententiously ; and 
 then, flattering himself that he had made 
 a telling, as well as an original hit, he 
 took advantage of the same to effect 
 what he considered a " good exit " from 
 the room. 
 
 Shortly after this, an event occurred 
 which caused no small amount of sensa- 
 tion, not only in the Chalkshire Eegi- 
 ment, but in the big town of Broad- 
 mere itself. The two impecunious sub- 
 lieutenants. Messieurs Durant and Fuller, 
 were reported one day as " missing with- 
 out leave " from their respective quarters.
 
 A Dark Horse, 41 
 
 It had long been apparent to lookers-on 
 that the departure from the regiment 
 of these two hopeful youths would not 
 be long delayed, but it had occurred to 
 no one, from the Colonel downwards, 
 to imagine that in either case their 
 retirement would have been effected in 
 other than a normal and legitimate 
 fashion ; and now% to the disgrace of 
 themselves and their relations, they had 
 gone away like thieves in the night, 
 carrying away with them every article 
 of marketable value of which they had 
 contrived on " tick " to obtain possession. 
 The town of Broadmere, many of 
 whose wealthiest shopkeepers had been 
 victimised by the absconding officers, 
 was unpleasantly startled when the news 
 from the barracks spread through the 
 streets. In addition to the losses which
 
 42 A Lion among the Ladies. 
 
 the jewellers, tailors, gunsmitlis, etc. etc., 
 had sustained, their faith in the military 
 generally was shaken, and they almost 
 vowed within themselves that they would 
 never more give " credit " to an officer. 
 
 The shame and anger felt by the 
 Colonel, as well as by the regiment 
 generally, at the manner in which the 
 " skedaddling " had been carried out, was 
 intense. It was a case (as even the 
 young fellows who had not for a 
 lengthened period paid for a single ar- 
 ticle they possessed, declared) of utter 
 swindling, for the culprits had made a 
 clean sweep of every valuable thing, 
 including a brand new sixty-guinea dog- 
 cart, in which they had driven off — no 
 one as yet knew where. 
 
 But if great was the consternation of 
 the trades-people and money-lenders when
 
 A Dark Horse. 43 
 
 the moonliglit flitting of the graceless 
 young offenders became known, what 
 can be said of the grief of the widowed 
 mother of Alfred Durant, when she, with 
 her sorrowing daughters, read in the 
 newspaper a short paragraph containing 
 an account — the reverse of merciful — 
 of her boy's and his companion's mis; 
 conduct. She was scarcely likely, poor 
 soul, to have been apprised in a more 
 considerate and less painful manner of 
 the heavy calamity which had befallen 
 her family, for, living as she and her 
 girls had — from motives of economy — 
 done for some time past, in a distant part 
 of Cornwall, and possessing in her son's 
 regiment neither friend, nor even ac- 
 quaintance, there existed no one in the 
 outer world, save that son himself, who 
 would have been either able or willing to
 
 44 ^ Lion among the Ladies. 
 
 impart to her the fearful news of his 
 disgrace. Alfred's letters to his home — 
 angels' visits, from their preciousness in 
 his mother's eyes as he well knew them 
 to be — had of late grown rarer and 
 more rare. He had been so good when 
 first he joined, this youngest born, for 
 whom she had sacrificed so much, had 
 written to her every week, describing, 
 with the frankness of a schoolboy, before 
 the mother's love within his heart had 
 grown cold and scant, the small events, 
 as well as the more important circum- 
 stances, by which his new life was 
 characterised, that Mrs Durant had been 
 rendered happy in the belief that her 
 Alfred's " home affections " would never 
 in his heart and memory be disjoined from 
 the interest in his new vocation which 
 it was only natural that he should take.
 
 A Dark Horse, 45 
 
 But in this belief she was fated to be 
 disappointed. The time — and that only 
 too soon — arrived, when many weeks to- 
 gether were allowed to elapse without 
 any signs of his existence being given 
 by the absent one. It was in vain that 
 his sisters, seeing, although she uttered 
 no words of complaint, the mother's 
 cheek grow pale and thin, and signs- 
 of breaking health betraying themselves 
 in her languid movements, wrote im- 
 ploring him, by the love they had alw^ay& 
 borne their boy, to cheer his mother's 
 failing spirits by a letter. The lad, 
 ashamed and self-reproachful, made na 
 sign, and thus it followed that it was 
 only by mere chance that the truth, in 
 all its startling nakedness, became known 
 to the anxious watchers in their far- 
 away Cornish home.
 
 46 A Lion mnong the Ladies, 
 
 Worse, far worse than her direst anti- 
 cipations, was the reality, as, in all its 
 complicated horrors, it became fully ap- 
 parent to the already much-tried mother. 
 8he had been prepared for debt, and had 
 even, in the secret recesses of her own 
 mind, been alive to the possibility that 
 some *' dreadful creature " — one of those 
 harpies who make victims of unsuspect- 
 ing youth, and drag them down into 
 perdition — had seized, body and soul, 
 upon her boy : but here was worse than 
 this. And Mrs Durant, who was a 
 soldier's widow, and whose father had 
 died fighting bravely in far-away Afghan- 
 istan for England's glory, felt to the 
 very quick the bitter disgrace which her 
 boy's conduct had brought upon the 
 name he bore. Then came the awful 
 •question — awful in that there was no
 
 A Dark Horse. 47 
 
 one to answer it — of where had he gone ? 
 Dread visions of the hiding-places to 
 which the lad, in his despair, might be- 
 take himself, filled the mother's brain. 
 She pictured to herself the horror of 
 the disgrace which he must be endur- 
 ing, and could, in the anguish of her 
 own heart, have put to him the patriot 
 poet's touching question, — 
 
 " Where will you bury your shame % 
 Where, in what desolate place, 
 Hide the lost wreck of a name 
 Broken and stained by disgrace ? 
 
 One night, and one only, did Mrs 
 Durant spend in sleepless cogitation on 
 the steps which, in order to find 
 her boy, it behoved her to take, and 
 then she informed her girls that she 
 intended, on that very day, to start 
 by an early train to Broadmere. The
 
 48 A Lion a7no7ig the Ladies. 
 
 poor young creatures, who had spent 
 the silent hours in tears, and in vain 
 conjectures as to what would happen 
 next, protested vehemently against their 
 mother's project. 
 
 '' You cannot do it, mother ! " cried 
 Helen, the elder of the two, and the 
 most decided in speech and character. 
 *' Think how^ little strength you have, 
 and how that only yesterday you had 
 to come out of church because you felt 
 so faint and weak." 
 
 " Oh, that was because good Mr 
 Everett's sermon was so long, and he 
 said such terrible things ; besides," con- 
 tinued the unhappy lady, " the shadow of 
 this dreadful misfortune may have been 
 hanging over me. I am better to-day, 
 and, dear children, I cannot rest quiet 
 without knowing something of our boy.
 
 A Dark Horse. 49 
 
 He may be^oli, I tremble to think of 
 
 it all ! — in even some worse trouble 
 
 than we know of, and it is not for his 
 
 own mother to desert him now." 
 
 " No, no ! we feel that, dearest,'^ 
 
 pleaded the fair young spokeswoman ; 
 
 whilst dark-eyed Mary could only cling 
 
 round her parent's waist, and sob out 
 
 her sorrow on the frail shoulder which 
 
 was so ill-fitted to bear another load of 
 
 care. "But cannot I — who am young 
 
 and strong — undertake, instead of you, 
 
 this long and trying journey ? Surely 
 
 I am old enough at nineteen to travel 
 
 alone, and see strangers, and make 
 
 inquiries about poor Al£ Do let me 
 
 go, mother. Tell me all I have to do, 
 
 and I will obey your instructions ta 
 
 the letter." 
 
 But to this plan Mrs Durant would 
 VOL. I. D
 
 50 A Lion among the Ladies. 
 
 not listen for a moment. There were 
 reasons — some of which she could not 
 even hint at to her girls — why one 
 so young and ignorant of the world's 
 wickedness as was Helen, could not, in 
 this momentous crisis of a young lad's 
 life, be employed as a parent's substi- 
 tute. She, that pure-minded and virtu- 
 ous mother, might- — who could foretell 
 events ? — be forced by cruel circum- 
 stances to follow the prodigal to the 
 haunts of vice, and do battle for his pos- 
 session with the lost ones of her sex ; 
 and therefore it was that she must go 
 forth alone, armed only with the weap- 
 ons of maternal love, and the undying 
 patience of which, in a parent's heart, 
 there exists such an endless store. 
 
 The journey from Penzance to Broad- 
 mere is a long, and, to an invalid, a
 
 A Dark Horse, 5 1 
 
 trying one, but the strong excitement 
 under which the widow laboured, to- 
 gether with a certain amount, unknown 
 to herself, of the blessed gift of hope, 
 enabled her to bear up bravely under 
 the burden which had been laid upon 
 her. As might have been expected, and 
 as her anxious daughters had foretold, 
 the inexperienced traveller met in her 
 progress with contretemps without end. 
 Long and innumerable were the waitings 
 at junctions, and many the mistakes 
 into which an imperfect education in 
 the mysteries of " Bradshaw " caused her 
 to fall ; in short, it too soon became 
 patent to her bewildered mind, that had 
 she taken the advice of Mr Everard, 
 their village clergyman, and gone to the 
 north via London, both time and money 
 would have been eventuaUy saved. 
 
 U, OF ILL U'i.
 
 52 A Lion among the Ladies. 
 
 It was eleven o'clock in the morning 
 after her departure from, home, that Mrs 
 Durant, after a weary night of all but 
 ceaseless travel, found herself suddenly 
 hustled from her Train, and removed, 
 she scarcely knew how, or by whom 
 (for her head was in a whirl, and her 
 perceptions of time and distance hope- 
 lessly confused), into a carriage, which, 
 to her dismay, proved to be a smoking 
 one. This startling event occurred when 
 she was only some ten miles from 
 Broadmere, the Train to which she had 
 been transferred being a junction one, 
 and used chiefly for the convenience of 
 the military, and the conveyance of 
 mineral ore to and from the city of 
 Broadmere. The widow, rightly judging 
 from the strong smell of tobacco which 
 pervaded the compartment, that she had
 
 A Dark Horse. 53 
 
 involuntarily intruded where individuals 
 of her sex are the reverse of welcome, 
 immediately, in her feeble, ladylike voice, 
 commenced an apology for her mistake 
 to the only other occupant of the car- 
 riage. He — a tall, distinguished-looking 
 man — Guy Leycester, to wit — had on her 
 entrance thrown his lately - lighted cigar 
 from the window, and he now, in the 
 courteous, almost caressing manner with 
 which he was in the habit of address- 
 ing the softer sex, apologised in his 
 turn for the inconvenience to which he 
 feared that his fellow-passenger was being 
 put. 
 
 " One feels positively ashamed," he 
 said, "of having helped to produce an 
 atmosphere in which no lady can breathe 
 with comfort ; " and then noticing her 
 ha^^ard looks, he added kindly, "I am
 
 54 ^ Lion among the Ladies, 
 
 afraid you are suffering from the oppres- 
 sion. Shall I open this window a little 
 wider for you % " 
 
 " Thank you ; it is not that," she 
 faltered; ''but if you would kindly tell 
 me how far we are from Broadmere, 
 and — and — from the barracks." 
 
 " We shall be there in ten minutes," 
 was the reply. "The barracks come first, 
 and if — it is my regiment that is quar- 
 tered there — T can be of any use to 
 you—" 
 
 " Oh ! you can, or, at least, perhaps you 
 may be 1 " the poor mother, who, at sight 
 of one of her son's late brother-officers, 
 lost her small remains of self-control, 
 ejaculated. " I have come to ask, — to 
 find out, if I can, what has become of 
 my unhappy son ; for I am Alfred 
 Durant's mother ; and oh, he was once
 
 A Dark Horse. 55 
 
 honourable and good, and if — " but here 
 tears, which she strove hard to suppress, 
 choked her utterance, and her slight 
 frame shook with the violence of her 
 emotion. 
 
 Guy Leycester was greatly distressed 
 by the sight of a grief so real and so 
 irrepressible. He would have given 
 much to console the sorrowing mother 
 with intelligence, however slight, of her 
 " young scamp's " whereabouts ; but un- 
 happily his ignorance in that respect 
 was as great as her own, he could only 
 therefore speak to her in the soothing 
 tones best suited to her state of mind, 
 and entreat her to compose herself. 
 
 ''I have no doubt," he said, "that 
 one or other of our young fellows will 
 be able to give you some information 
 about your son. In the meantime, I
 
 56 A Lion among the Ladies. 
 
 advise you to let me take you to a 
 clean little inn, which stands about a 
 mile from the barracks, and there you 
 had better stay till I send one of our 
 fellows to you. I daresay it will be 
 Elphinstone, the Adjutant. He is as good 
 a chap as ever lived, and always took 
 an interest in Durant. Ah, here we 
 are ! Now let us see after your traps," 
 and then gathering together the very 
 limited " plunder " which his fellow- 
 traveller tearfully informed him consti- 
 tuted her individual possessions, he, with 
 as much respect (to quote the widow's 
 later words) as if she had been a 
 duchess, offered her his arm, and bear- 
 ing in his other hand her small black 
 leather travelling-bag, escorted her from 
 the Station to the Dragon Inn. The 
 landlady, a neatly-dressed, kindly-faced
 
 A Dark Horse, 57 
 
 woman, emerged from her own precincts 
 to meet the somewhat incongruous-look- 
 ing pair, with one of whom at least, 
 she could boast of being in some degree 
 what might be called, slightly acquainted. 
 
 Captain Leycester, on being curtseyed 
 to by stout Mrs Purlings, raised his hat 
 with as much outward respect as he 
 would have paid to Eoyalty had it 
 chanced to appear before him in the 
 flesh, and said, in his courteous fashion, — 
 
 " Would you kindly allow this lady, 
 who is very tired after a long journey, 
 the use of a sitting-room, and — there 
 may probably be more apartments re- 
 quired — for a few hours ? A friend — 
 Captain Elphinstone, from the barracks — 
 will possibly call before long ; but in 
 the meanwhile, I am sure that you will 
 make the lady as comfortable as you can."
 
 58 A Lion among the Ladies. 
 
 " Certainly, Captain, certainly," re- 
 sponded the hostess of the Dragon 
 cheerfully. *' There is the upstairs front 
 parlour, with a fire ready laid for light- 
 ing ; and if the lady will step this 
 way — Mind your at, Captain. Our 
 doorway's low for such tall army gentle- 
 men as you." 
 
 " All right," laughed Guy, as he 
 shook hands with his new acquaintance, 
 and advised her, in the simple, matter- 
 of-fact manner which was calculated to 
 check any possible suspicion on the 
 landlady's part of the travellers identity, 
 to have some breakfast, and lie down 
 for an hour or two to rest. 
 
 Kest ! Ah, word thrice blessed to 
 the ear ! When — the weary woman 
 asked herself — would she know the quiet 
 joy of it again % It is easy for lookers-
 
 A Dark Horse, 59 
 
 on at human trials and heart tortures to 
 cry Peace ! Peace ! to the afflicted ones^ 
 but as long (and that will be for aye) 
 as "the wicked are like the troubled 
 sea, whose waters cast forth mire and 
 dirt," so long will sinless mothers weep 
 tears of blood over the *' thankless chil- 
 dren " who have brought upon their 
 declining years, sorrows which are more 
 hard to bear than even death itself. 
 In its full bitterness did Mrs Durant, 
 when at last the kindly, officious land- 
 lady left her to her own thoughts^ 
 realise the truth that for her there was 
 " no peace." She had been fully alive 
 to the sympathetic delicacy of feeling 
 which had prompted Captain Leycester to 
 abstain, in Mrs Purlings' hearing, from 
 mentioning the name of Durant ; but 
 oh ! the shame of reflecting — which in
 
 6o A Lion among the Ladies. 
 
 the solitude of the little inn's best room 
 she could not but do — that the honoured 
 name of her dead husband was now so 
 indelibly stained by disgrace that the 
 honest mistress of that humble inn 
 might, if she knew all, flout and sneer 
 at her 1 And then, to her dismay, the 
 unhappy woman suddenly recollected 
 that on the lid of her one small box, 
 the address, " Mrs Durant, passenger 
 to Broadmere," had been in Mary's 
 large legible hand inscribed. Poor girls ! 
 not as yet had they had time to realise 
 the truth that " Alf 's extravagance " had 
 changed for them the whole course and 
 current of their lives. The *' little mother" 
 who, before these troubles came, had 
 been gay and light-hearted almost as 
 themselves, would perforce henceforward 
 go on her way with lowered head, and
 
 A Dark Horse. 6r 
 
 a step which in its heaviness betrayed 
 the fact that for her, the zest of life, and 
 the sunshine thereof, were for ever passed 
 away. But this truth was not, as I be- 
 fore said, as yet patent to the widow's 
 daughters. There would be money diffi- 
 culties, of course, and more parings 
 away from the few comforts which Alfs- 
 frequent demands upon the family purse 
 had left to them ; later on, too, would 
 necessarily come the hard - to - answer 
 question, of what the prodigal was to 
 do next ? They — id est, that impoverished 
 widow's household — had it not in their 
 power to help him farther ; no fatted 
 calf had they to kill, nor rich robe to- 
 put upon his shoulders : they could only 
 weep tender tears upon his neck, and 
 tell him that from the bottom of their 
 hearts he was forgiven !
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 GUY LEYCESTER TO THE RESCUE. 
 
 HILST Mrs Durant, seated be- 
 fore her almost untasted break- 
 fast, was picturing to herself 
 iier small luggage box, covered with black 
 American cloth, and betraying on its 
 humble yet shining surface that it be- 
 longed to one who bore the same name 
 i,s that of the "swindler" Durant, Mrs 
 Purlings, taking note in the entrance - 
 passage of the address, had already made 
 up her mind that the lady in the well- 
 worn black cashmere and scanty silk
 
 Guy Leycester to the Rescue, 63 
 
 mantle, who was occupying, pro tern., her, 
 best front parlour, was no other than 
 the parent of the missing sub-lieutenant. 
 She — the hostess — was a kind-hearted 
 woman, and had had more trouble with 
 her own boys than she had ever told to 
 the father of her gamins; but she had 
 buried — as the saying in her class is — 
 that worthy paterfamilias now, and the 
 sons, God bless 'em ! had been good to 
 her on the whole. So, reasoning from 
 analogy, she decided that the poor lady 
 upstairs might take comfort from the 
 experiences of a mother who, like herself, 
 had given birth to unruly prodigals. 
 Acting on this amiable impulse, Mrs Pur- 
 lings ascended the narrow, well-worn 
 stairs, and, having knocked softly at her 
 guest's door, she received a low-voiced 
 permission to enter.
 
 64 A Lion among the Ladies, 
 
 Now it had been this good woman's 
 purpose to, in the most consoling 
 fashion, but nevertheless without delay 
 or circumlocution, touch upon the dis- 
 covery she had made. It required, how- 
 ever, but one glance at the gentle face 
 of the unmistakably impecunious lady, 
 and a few words from her educated 
 voice, to demonstrate to the well-inten- 
 tioned visitor the inexpediency of enter- 
 ing, without due preparation, on the 
 subject of which her limited intellect 
 was for the moment charged. Under 
 these circumstances, a simple inquiry 
 after the traveller's health was, by the 
 intruder, substituted ; and, approach- 
 ing nearer to the table on which the 
 tea- service had been arranged, she said, 
 in the melancholy tones which, in 
 the worthy creature's opinion, were best
 
 Guy Leycester to the Rescue, 65 
 
 adapted to the display of sympathy 
 and compassion, — 
 
 " Why, dear hearfm, youVe never 
 touched your breakfast ! It isn't to your 
 liking, I am afraid ; and yet the tea's 
 about the best as can be got in Broad- 
 mere. Would a fresh egg tempt you 
 now'm, do you think ? or a slice, cut 
 very thin, of some bileed edge bone of 
 beef?" 
 
 " Nothing, thank you. Everything is 
 very nice," replied Mrs Durant feebly. 
 " I believe that I am too tired to eat. 
 Kest and quiet are what 1 want the 
 most." 
 
 " Ah ! poor lady, I know well enough 
 what you must be feeling," rejoined Mrs 
 Purlings dolefully; ''for when I've been 
 in trouble myself, I've been that put 
 about by people coming bothering with 
 
 VOL. I. E
 
 66 A Lion among the Ladies. 
 
 their accounts and their inquiries, that 
 I haven't known which way to turn my- 
 self. But, as I used to say, there's no 
 good comes of worretting ; things right 
 themselves in the end — leastways they 
 did with me, and so they will with 
 you'm, if you keep up a good heart. 
 Why, my boy Joe was at one time 
 about as troublesome a young customer 
 as you'd ever come across, and now, 
 thank God ! he's as steady as the town 
 clock, and has taken to the butchering 
 line of business, as handy, for all the 
 world, as if he had been bred to the 
 trade from a babby." 
 
 Mrs Durant listened in absolute silence 
 to the landlady's exordium. That she 
 herself stood revealed to that loquacious 
 personage, as well as to the entire 
 household, as the mother of the abscond-
 
 Guy Leycester to the Rescue. 67 
 
 ing officer, she at once perceived, and the 
 torture she endured at having her bleed- 
 ing wounds thus roughly handled, is 
 easier to imagine than to describe. In 
 what manner she would have responded to 
 this kindly-meant effort at consolation, 
 cannot however now be known, as at 
 that identical moment one of the em- 
 ployees of the establishment gave notice 
 — holding, meanwhile, the door ajar in 
 her hand — that a *'hofficer" from the 
 barracks was waiting below to see the 
 lady who had come by the morning Train. 
 " Ask him to come up, please ; and " 
 (addressing the landlady), "thank you 
 very much for coming to see me," said 
 Mrs Durant hurriedly. She was one of 
 those rarely unselfish beings to whom the 
 feelings of others are things of moment, 
 — things, in short, which even those
 
 68 A Lion among the Ladies. 
 
 who are themselves in trouble are not 
 justified in trampling upon and ignoring ; 
 and therefore it was that, whilst the clatter 
 of spurs and sword upon the stairs set 
 her heart beating wildly, she did not 
 forget, though Mrs Purlings' words had 
 sorely tried her, that the intention of her 
 tormentor had been kind and Christian-like. 
 It is not necessary — seeing that the 
 course of our story, and the amount of 
 matter which it contains alike require 
 us to " keep moving " — to minutely par- 
 ticularise the interview which, between 
 Captain Eowley Elphinstone and the 
 grieving mother of his former subaltern, 
 took place. He was very gentle with 
 her, breaking as tenderly as he could, 
 the news that the two misguided boys — 
 as to her, he charitably styled the cul- 
 prits — were, instead of seeking with tears
 
 Guy Leycester to the Rescue. 69 
 
 a secluded place in which to repent 
 them of their sins, " living like fighting 
 cocks," or — to quote Captain Elphinstone's 
 own words — " spending a short time at 
 the Louvre Hotel in Paris." 
 
 No sooner did the poor mother realise 
 this startling truth, than she announced 
 her intention of starting off immediately 
 to the Continent. 
 
 " I must bring him home at once, 
 Captain Elphinstone," she said. "He 
 cannot resist temptation. Poor unhappy 
 boy ! he is so weak — so easily led ! — 
 not really wicked," looking very wist- 
 fully into the kind face of her new 
 friend ; " you do not think that of him, 
 I hope ? And yet — if anyone has more 
 reason than another to have an ill 
 opinion of him, it is you, for I have 
 not now to learn how good you have
 
 yo A Lion among the Ladies. 
 
 always been to him, and how little he 
 has profited by your advice." 
 
 "Poor fellow, he has been his own 
 worst enemy," rejoined Eowley. " But as 
 regards this journey to Paris, you must 
 not think of it. Your own health — if 
 it were nothing else — should put the idea 
 out of the question." 
 
 " Oh ! " she cried, " when it is a 
 question of saving Alfred, there is no 
 fear of my breaking down. I am 
 stronger than I look, and when once I 
 have him under my care again — " 
 
 " But the question is, my dear Mrs 
 Durant," interrupted Elphinstone, and as 
 he spoke the anxious woman noted the 
 added seriousness of his voice and man- 
 ner, ''whether you can^ with prudence 
 and — and — safety bring your son to 
 England."
 
 Guy Leycester to the Resctte. 7 1 
 
 " With safety ? — I do not understand. 
 Is he — can he be in any danger ? " asked 
 the now eflfectually frightened woman. 
 ** He is so young — only twenty ! Oh ! 
 Captain Elphinstone, what reason have I 
 — has he — badly as he has behaved — to 
 fear?" 
 
 *' I cannot tell you — I know so little 
 of — of — these things," her interlocutor 
 said compassionately ; ** but perhaps if 
 you were to see a lawyer — " * 
 
 ** Oh, then there is something still 
 worse to hear ! " she, with growing agita- 
 tion, ejaculated. " He — my boy — has — ■ 
 no — no — not forged ! " (and as she uttered 
 the fearful word, a strong shudder ran 
 visibly through her frame). "His father's 
 son can never have sunk into such depths 
 of crime as that.'' 
 
 "You are right, dear madam, and I —
 
 72 A Lion among the Ladies, 
 
 with the best intentions — have causelessly 
 frightened you. Your son's fault is com- 
 paratively a venial one ; nevertheless it 
 unhappily, possibly places him within the 
 power of the law. What he has done is 
 this. Finding that the circumstance of his 
 being still under age stood in the way 
 of his obtaining money from a certain 
 Jew diamond merchant, he, in an un- 
 guarded moment, and being goaded on 
 by his necessities, took an oath that he 
 had passed the age of twenty-one. The 
 money-lender was probably well aware of 
 the deception, but what cared he ? He 
 had got the poor boy into his toils, 
 and—" 
 
 He, the good-natured apologist for the 
 errors of the widow's son, would probably, 
 in his anger against the class under dis- 
 cussion, have added a few more sentences
 
 Guy Leycester to the Rescue. 'J2> 
 
 to his diatribe, but a slight, rustling 
 sound caused him to look up from the 
 table on which his eyes had been uncon- 
 sciously fixed, and he perceived, to his 
 surprise and consternation, that Mrs 
 Durant had quietly fallen back, in a dead 
 faint, upon the shining horse-hair sofa. 
 An energetic pull at the bell-rope was 
 almost immediately followed by the hur- 
 ried entrance of the landlady, and under 
 her direction, measures for the recovery 
 of the sufferer were, without a moment's 
 delay, undertaken. Addressing herself to 
 the chambermaid, who, together with 
 sundry other members of the establish- 
 ment, were showing their faces in the 
 doorway, Mrs Purlings, in tones of sup- 
 pressed energy, exclaimed, — 
 
 "Eun, Lizzie, for some brandy. Here, 
 take the key of my cupboard ; and
 
 74 ^ Lion among the Ladies. 
 
 bring the vinegar cruet along with 
 you. Poor dear lady," this to Elphin- 
 stone, who had been employed in 
 tenderly placing the unconscious head 
 upon the slippery pillow of the couch, 
 "I guessed how it would be when she 
 wouldn't take anything to her breakfast ; 
 she wouldn't let on, poor soul, not a 
 word, about her troubles, for all I left 
 everything at sixes and sevens downstairs 
 to try and cheer her up a bit." 
 
 "You had far better have let her 
 alone," retorted Captain Eowley savagely ; 
 "and, Mrs Purlings, I must beg of you," 
 he went on, with some severity, as he 
 drew on his gloves, "not — when this lady 
 recovers — to say anything, — to ask her 
 any questions, I mean, about her private 
 concerns. Dr Braintree, our surgeon, 
 will, I hope, be here in a few minutes,
 
 Guy Leycester to the Rescue. 75 
 
 and he will, I am sure, insist upon tlie 
 same thing, namely, perfect rest, and 
 freedom from intrusion." 
 
 Mrs Purlings, feeling considerably ag- 
 grieved, had, during the delivery of this 
 speech, been busying herself, not, how- 
 ever, as yet with any perceptible result, 
 in the restoration to consciousness of the 
 patient. Mrs Durant had, it is true, 
 opened her eyes, but only for a moment ; 
 with a slight quiver of the lids, they 
 had closed again, and she now lay as 
 still, and almost as breathless, as a corpse. 
 The failure of her simple remedies was 
 beginning to have a crushing effect upon 
 Mrs Purlings' spirits, and it was with 
 feelings of intense relief that she hailed 
 the entrance of the regimental doctor. 
 
 " We can't bring her too no how, doc- 
 tor," she was beginning ; but Dr Braintree
 
 76 A Lion among the Ladies, 
 
 cut short her flood of words by taking 
 the management of the case into his own 
 hands. 
 
 He had seen much practice, that 
 middle-aged medico, who had now under 
 his care not only an ailing body but a 
 mind diseased, and he proved himself 
 equal to the occasion. That his patient 
 was none other than the mother of the 
 erring absentee was now an open secret ; 
 and, moreover, Captain Elphinstone had 
 related to the surgeon the particulars of 
 his interview with Mrs Durant. 
 
 " She evidently feels the disgrace 
 acutely," the Adjutant wound up by say- 
 ing ; " and I would have given much to 
 avoid telling her the worst, but there 
 was no alternative. She was bent on 
 going to Paris, and bringing the young 
 scapegrace home, and that, as you are
 
 Guy Leycester to the Rescue. ']"j 
 
 aware, might have ended rather awk- 
 wardly. I hope, doctor, that you will 
 find there is nothing serious the matter, 
 for the poor thing is quite by herself 
 here, aud the Dragon Inn is not pre- 
 cisely a pleasant locality for a lady under 
 an attack of illness to remain in." 
 
 Pleasant, however, or otherwise as the 
 Dragon might be, it soon became ap- 
 parent to Dr Braintree's experienced eyes 
 that, even without taking a too despond- 
 ing view of the case, a considerable time 
 must perforce elapse before Mrs Durant 
 would be enabled to leave her present 
 uncongenial quarters. There were, in the 
 surgeon's opinion, certain diagnostics in 
 his patient's case which clearly pointed 
 to the eventuality of brain, or at least of 
 nervous, fever supervening on the attack 
 of syncope ; and if this fear should un-
 
 y^ A Lion among the Ladies. 
 
 happily be realised, what more unsuitable 
 place in which to be laid up than a 
 third-rate inn — let that inn be ever so 
 clean, and even comfortable, in its way — 
 could there be found ? As for the suf- 
 ferer herself, she, on recovering from her 
 prolonged attack of faintness, appeared, 
 happily perhaps for herself, altogether 
 unconscious either of where she was, or of 
 the events which had lately taken place. 
 Her eyes had assumed a fixed and be- 
 wildered look, whilst the power of speech 
 seemed temporarily to have deserted her. 
 From time to time she made what were 
 evidently painful efibrts to speak dis- 
 tinctly, but the few words she was able 
 to articulate, fell, in what may be called 
 nonsense sentences from her trembling 
 lips, and comprehending apparently that 
 so it was, the helpless creature, with a
 
 Guy Leycester to the Rescue. 79 
 
 mournful shake of her drooping head, 
 would desist from further efforts to make 
 herself understood. 
 
 To the little inn's best bedroom the 
 poor mother had been carried by tender 
 hands, and there, on a big old-fashioned 
 four - poster, which filled up two - thirds 
 of the small apartment, she lay with 
 widely-opened eyes, and with the fire of 
 incipient fever burning in her veins. Her 
 condition, both of mind and body, occa- 
 sioned much sympathy amongst the kind- 
 hearted soldiers who were cognisant of her 
 illness and of its cause ; and many and 
 anxious were the inquiries that were daily 
 made concerning her state. Amongst the 
 most constant of the visitors to the 
 little inn was the Colonel's wife. Lady 
 Gregorie " knew," as the saying is, through 
 the medium of mutual friends, of Mrs
 
 8o A Lion among the Ladies. 
 
 Durant and her family ; but sucIl inci- 
 dental and vicarious acquaintance was not 
 needed in order to induce Sir Wilfred's 
 kind-hearted wife to befriend, as far as 
 lay in lier power, the forlorn stranger 
 who lay — it might be, near her end — 
 almost within the barrack gates. It was 
 by Florence Gregorie that the suggestion 
 of writing to Mrs Durant's "people" was 
 first mooted ; but it was Eowley Elph in- 
 stone who, in his capacity of quondam 
 friend and mentor of the absent lad, 
 took upon himself the task of writ- 
 ing such a letter to Miss Durant as 
 would prepare her for the chances of 
 still worse intelligence on the morrow. 
 He made no attempt to disguise his 
 opinion that Mrs Durant ought to have, 
 at this juncture, a near relation by her 
 side. ''We are doing for her what little
 
 Guy Leycester to the Rescue. 8 1 
 
 we can," the Adjutant wrote, "but, being 
 comparative strangers, we are, I may 
 almost say, working in the dark." 
 
 " That will fetch the young lady," said 
 Rowley to himself, as he fixed a stamp on 
 the letter, and pressed it down securely 
 with his doubled fist. '' From what the 
 mother said, I take her to be a good 
 sort. Wanted to come and look up Master 
 Alf herself, poor girl ! "Well, I for one 
 shall be deuced glad when the young 
 woman turns up," he, still soliloquising 
 in a dreamy fashion, added, when his 
 lucubrations were cut short by the en- 
 trance of a visitor. 
 
 " Hallo ! old chap," he, addressing the 
 unexpected intruder, exclaimed. *'Why 
 you are a second Sir Boyle Roche's bird, 
 in two places at once. I heard that you 
 were ofi* for one of your runs up 
 
 VOL. I. F
 
 82 A Lion among the Ladies. 
 
 to town to-day, and now, here you 
 are." 
 
 " Yes, here I am, as you say," re- 
 joined Guy Leycester, as he carelessly 
 threw his length of limb into a comfort- 
 able barrack lounging-chair, " and here — 
 not exactly in this room, so cheer up 
 again, old fellow — I mean to remain, till 
 such time as you and I shall have 
 hit upon some plan for getting that 
 poor woman out of the Dragon's 
 jaws." 
 
 Elphinstone had left his writing-chair, 
 and was standing on that meet spot 
 for an English gentleman's meditations, 
 namely, the rug before an empty fire- 
 grate. With something akin to triumph 
 in that he too had been occupying him- 
 self in the widow's concerns, he pointed 
 to the letter, stamped, and bearing the
 
 Guy Leycester to the Rescue. 83 
 
 address, in his big, masculine handwrit- 
 ing, of Miss Helen Durant. 
 
 " 1 hope," he said, " that we shall soon 
 have better advice as to how to act. I 
 have had a talk with Lady Gregorie, 
 and, partly at her suggestion, I have 
 written to Miss Durant." 
 
 "Who will, I conclude, come to her 
 mother without delay ; but in the mean- 
 while, as old Braintree says, every hour 
 that Mrs Durant spends in that beastly 
 hole is driving another nail into her coffin." 
 
 " Oh, come ! The poor old Dragon is 
 not so bad as that comes to. Lady Gre- 
 gorie went yesterday to see Mrs Durant, 
 and was quite struck with the cleanli- 
 ness and niceness of her bedroom." 
 
 " I w^onder if the fair Florence were 
 to visit the place in the evening, whether 
 she would be equally enchanted with the
 
 84 A Lion among the Ladies. 
 
 odour of stale bird's-eye, and the row and 
 rattle of the billiard balls. Mrs Purlings 
 does her best, good old soul, to keep the 
 house quiet, but she has her customers 
 to consider, and one can't expect her to 
 quarrel with Hodge and Tommy Atkins 
 for the sake of a poor lady who is 
 probably about to do her the ill service 
 of dying in her house." 
 
 " But what is the alternative ? What, 
 in your opinion, can be done \ " Elphin- 
 stone, a trifle impatiently, asks. 
 
 " Well, it strikes me that Brain tree's 
 advice must be followed, and that Mrs 
 Durant must be moved as soon as pos- 
 sible into a private house." 
 
 " Yes, but what house ? A Broadmere 
 lodging would be almost worse, I expect, 
 even than the Dragon — " 
 
 '' Ah, but I'm not thinkino; of that
 
 Guy Leycester to the Rescue, 85 
 
 abominable thing — a lodging ! It's the 
 Shanty we want to have the sick woman 
 taken to — " 
 
 "The Shanty! Mrs Denham's house! 
 You surely cannot mean it ! " 
 
 "Indeed I do; and pray — may I 
 ask — why not ? " 
 
 *' Why ? Upon my word now — Well, 
 if you come to ask me — " 
 
 "I do ask you, and, what is more," 
 he, with one of the smiles, half cynical 
 and half caressing, which were character- 
 istic of his weak, but handsome mouth, 
 added, "I expect to have an answer." 
 
 "Well, for one thing," the Adjutant, 
 finding himself fairly driven into a corner, 
 said, " the Shanty is such a little place — " 
 
 " Granted ; just big enough for two, 
 and no more; but as Denham and his 
 wife have gone for six weeks to the Ei-
 
 86 A Lion among the Ladies. 
 
 viera, and as IVe telegraphed to Mra to 
 lend me tlie Shanty whilst they are away, 
 it has been arranged between Braintree 
 and me — at least not exactly arranged, 
 till we had talked it over with you — that 
 he should see to the migration of Mrs 
 Durant at once. They have left two 
 servants in the house — one a dear old 
 woman who was Mrs Denham's nurse — 
 so that will be all right ; and if the 
 daughter comes, which I conclude she 
 will do, it will be at any rate better for 
 her than putting up at a pothouse." 
 
 After this explanation, what farther ob- 
 jection could Captain Ephinstone even 
 venture to hint at against a plan which 
 in some respects was very decidedly re- 
 commendable ? He was on more intimate 
 terms with Guy Leycester than was any 
 other officer in the regiment, yet even
 
 Guy Leycester to the Rescue. 87 
 
 he could not bring himself to disclose to 
 his friend the real reason for his objec- 
 tion to that friend's proposal. The truth 
 was, that if only Mrs Durant had been 
 in question, if there had been no young 
 lady, by name ** Helen," to whom he had 
 just been taking upon himself to write a 
 letter of advice, Eowley Elphinstone would 
 probably not have been stirred by a cer- 
 tain dim sense of the indecorum involved 
 therein, to object to Guy's plan of pro- 
 ceeding. But there did, as he well knew, 
 exist a Helen — a girl whom he pictured 
 to himself as pure and unstained as snow, 
 who might in a very few hours be 
 on her way to Broadmere ; and — strive 
 as he might against the feeling — he could 
 not, without a sensation of repugnance, 
 picture to himself that girl as an inmate 
 of Mrs Denham's house.
 
 CHAPTEE Y. 
 
 AN" AFFAIR OF '* ANCIENT HISTOEY." 
 
 HE news that one Louis Brere- 
 ton was gazetted as Major of 
 the Chalkshire Kifles, was cer- 
 tainly — by one person at least who had 
 an interest in the Corps — not looked upon 
 with favourable eyes. Lady Gregorie — 
 now a woman of some seven-and-twenty 
 years — had, in her early and romantic 
 girlhood, been so unfortunate as to make 
 acquaintance with the man whose very 
 ilame — seeing that a decade had slipped, 
 by since she had heard it — had almost
 
 An Affair of '' Ancient History T 89 
 
 escaped her memory. It was in the 
 first-class compartment of a Belgian ex- 
 press Train that Florence Maynard, tra- 
 velling after her school holidays, with 
 an elderly and confidential English maid, 
 back to her Pension at Bruges, met, and 
 was politely accosted by a good-looking 
 
 and gentlemanlike-mannered young Eng- 
 
 • 
 lishman. That Englishman was no other 
 
 than Louis Brereton. Florence, with her 
 fresh young beauty, and her bright 
 untutored talk, at once attracted his 
 admiration. Throughout a journey of sev- 
 eral successive hours, during the greater 
 part of which the duenna slept the sleep 
 of the just, Mr Brereton, then a lieu- 
 tenant in a Line Eegiment, and travel- 
 ling to Bruxelles, on leave to visit his 
 parents, did not permit his attentions to 
 his pretty fellow-traveller to flag. And
 
 90 A Lion among the Ladies. 
 
 Florence ? Well, as is the wont of her 
 sex and age, she was pleased with being 
 made much of, and as much bewildered 
 as enchanted by the first compliments to 
 her beauty which in her young and 
 secluded life had as yet saluted her ears. 
 The story — totally innocent of harm as 
 regarded its child heroine, as it doubtless 
 was — of her adventure with Louis Brere- 
 ton, was, however, destined to bring forth 
 evil fruit. The man, being vicious to the 
 core, and the object of his convoitise 
 being only a simple, unsuspicious girl, 
 the consequences of this chance meeting 
 may be easily guessed. Brereton found 
 no difficulty in discovering the locality of 
 the English maiden's temporary home. 
 Bruges is, as all the world knows, a dull 
 and ancient city, but it is easy of access 
 from the gay little Belgian capital, and
 
 A 11 Affair of ' 'A ncient History, " 91 
 
 not a few were the trips taken by the 
 enterprising British officer from the Boule- 
 vard de Waterloo to the banks of the 
 dismal-looking canal over which looked 
 the prison-like windows of the Pension 
 de St Agathe. On the low wall that 
 skirted the canal, Mr Brereton would, for 
 hours at a time, seat himself, thereby — as 
 he fondly hoped — not only working on 
 the young lady's feelings, but succeeding 
 in " compromising " the pupil (who — as 
 he had taken the trouble to ascertain— 
 was to a certain extent an heiress), and 
 thus compelling her parents to receive 
 him as a suitor for her hand. These 
 manoeuvres — silly and in bad taste al- 
 though they were — would not of them- 
 selves have been productive of much 
 injury to the carefully-guarded pupil, had 
 it not been that Brereton was clever
 
 92 A Lion ainong the Ladies. 
 
 enough to induce the inexperienced girl 
 to commit herself by writing to him. 
 They were but two in number, those 
 foolish little notes in which she assured 
 her well-loved Louis of her undying de- 
 votion, but, short and simple in their 
 childish ignorance as they were, those 
 eagerly entreated for hillet doux were 
 destined to work the writer much trouble 
 in the days which were to come. 
 
 The following letter, written by Lady 
 Gregorie immediately after she had be- 
 come aware that Louis Brereton was 
 about again to play a part (an odious 
 one, possibly), in her present prosperous 
 life, will afford ample proof of the condi- 
 tion of mind into which the writer of 
 the letters had been — without prepara- 
 tion — thrown. It was addressed to one 
 Emily Vidal, a former schoolfellow of
 
 A n Affair of ' 'Ancient His to ry.'' 93 
 
 Lady Gregorie's, and her confidante in 
 the silly open-air flirtation which ten 
 years previously had been carried on be- 
 tween the military heiress hunter and 
 his intended victim. Miss Yidal was two 
 years older than her friend, and in expe- 
 rience of the world, and knowledge of 
 mankind, had been — when the pair first 
 became acquainted — ten years in advance 
 of Florence. It was this superiority in 
 worldly knowledge which threw pretty, 
 simple-minded " Flo " into the arms, as 
 it were, of her far less personally attrac- 
 tive, but very astute^ fellow-pupil. Emily 
 Vidal — the daughter of a decayed gentle- 
 man (if gentleman indeed he ever had 
 been) was quick, on Florence Maynard's 
 first appearance at the Pension, to per- 
 ceive the " advantage " which from a 
 friendship with the well-born and well-
 
 94 ^ Lion among the Ladies. 
 
 endowed new pensionnaire, might be 
 "sucked." She was an adroit flatterer, 
 not being — to borrow a culinary phrase — 
 too " heavy a hand " with the condi- 
 ments, but administering them in homeo- 
 pathic doses, and with a discretion that 
 was worthy of an older head. Florence — 
 as might have been expected — fell at once 
 under the spell. It was pleasant to be wor- 
 shipped, and seeing that the possession of 
 a sweetheart is — when the secret of that 
 possession is confined to a girl's own breast 
 — of comparatively small value — she lost 
 no time in opening out her pure young 
 heart for the inspection and vivisection of 
 her clearer-sighted, and sympathising friend. 
 Of late years — that is to say, since her 
 marriage, which had taken place four 
 years previously. Lady Gregorie had seen 
 — Qot from choice but from necessity,
 
 An Affair of Ancient History T 95 
 
 comparatively little of Emily Vidal. The 
 fortunes of the latter had, during that 
 period, undergone a change for the worse. 
 Heavy turf and sundry horse-breeding 
 losses, together with an expenditure far 
 beyond his means, had reduced Mr Vidal, 
 "peve, to the condition of an impecunious 
 man, and his four still unmarried daughters, 
 of whom Emily was the youngest, were 
 left, with a gouty father and an habitually 
 querulous mother, to " dree their weird " 
 somewhere in the direction of that com- 
 paratively cheap and populous district 
 known in the Directory as Maida Vale. 
 To this young woman — one who, as I 
 need hardly say, did not bear the re- 
 verses of fortune with the contented 
 mind which, according to Holy Writ, is 
 a continual feast — Lady Gregorie wrote 
 as follows : —
 
 96 A Lion among the Ladies. 
 
 " My dearest Em, — I fear you may- 
 have thought me unkind in not havino^ 
 sooner answered your last letter, but the 
 delay has not, I assure you, been owing 
 to forgetfulness. T have been wanting to 
 name a time for your promised visit, but 
 for various reasons have found doing so 
 difficult. I am not, of course, quite my 
 own mistress, and although Wilfred, I 
 am happy to say, continues to be kind- 
 ness itself, yet even the best of men are 
 -'kittle cattle," and I really think they 
 sometimes positively enjoy putting spokes 
 in one's wheels. Just now, however, I am 
 happy to say, there are no spokes, and I 
 am at full liberty to write that Tuesday in 
 next week will suit us beautifully to re- 
 ceive you. You must come prepared for a 
 little — I wish for your sake it were more 
 — dissipation. We — the Chalkshires —
 
 An Affair of ''Ancient History T 97 
 
 give a ball on the twentieth, and the 
 Town, another — where we may expect to 
 have great fun — on the Tuesday following. 
 You will find poor Molyneux shyer than 
 ever, but he will be a different man be- 
 fore you have been here a week. And, by 
 the way, who do you think has turned 
 up again ? Why that wretch Louis Bre- 
 reton ! He has dropped into the vacant 
 Eegimental ' majority,' and I could almost 
 wish — only it would be too wicked—^ 
 that it was the grand general majority 
 instead, that he had joined. I am ter- 
 ribly afraid that he means mischief, and, 
 if so, you who are so much more clever 
 than I am in such matters, must help me 
 to circumvent him. As you know, I had 
 never heard a syllable either of or from 
 the man since, until a short time before 
 
 my marriage, he wrote those odious hints 
 VOL. I. G
 
 98 A Lion among the Ladies. 
 
 about the letters. You advised me then 
 to take no notice of his impertinence, 
 and I am sure that you were right ; and 
 oh ! I was so in hopes that he had for- 
 gotten me altogether. But how can one 
 ever be sure ? During five years I heard 
 nothing of him, and then one day, when 
 I least expected it, I was startled almost 
 to death by the sight of his handwriting ! 
 I can never tell you how I dread the 
 prospect of seeing him ; and Wilfred too, 
 who is so quick to notice everything that 
 passes ! It is enough to drive one wild. 
 Still, I may be disquieting myself in 
 vain. Miracles may sometimes happen, 
 and there exists the possibility that this 
 miserable cad — for so he certainly did 
 deserve to be called — may have become 
 metamorphosed into a gentleman. Come 
 without fail, dear, and tell me whether or
 
 An Affair of ''Ancient History T 99 
 
 not you think the nature of the man is 
 unchanged, and ever believe me affection- 
 ately yours, Florence Gregorie." 
 
 The young person to whom this urgent 
 appeal for aid is addressed, had, when the 
 letter is put into her hands, just been 
 thinking — without, it must be owned, 
 very kindly feelings — of the writer there- 
 of. She — Emily — is seated with two of 
 her elder sisters in the small back draw- 
 ing-room of the shabby Portsdown Road 
 house in which the retired stockbroker 
 has found a shelter. The three *' girls" — 
 the youngest of whom is within a year 
 of her thirtieth birthday — are busily en- 
 gaged in altering, planning, and contriv- 
 ing sundry well-worn evening dresses into 
 an appearance calculated to deceive the 
 general public into the belief that the
 
 loo A Lion among the Ladies. 
 
 said dresses have only just left the 
 milliner's hands. 
 
 The eldest of the three is plain, but 
 clever, a good mimic, and an excellent 
 hand at making herself generally agree- 
 able ; whilst the second — a faded beauty^ 
 has adopted the pensive style of attrac- 
 tiveness, which style, seeing that her con- 
 versational powers are limited, suits her, 
 as the saying is, '* down to the ground." 
 With the exception of a little occasional 
 jealousy in regard to Emily, whose inti- 
 macy with Lady Gregorie they have 
 never been permitted to share, the sisters 
 live together in harmony. The mention^ 
 however, of the Chalkshire Eifles, and of 
 "Em's" highly - placed friend, rarely fails 
 to kindle a certain spark which is the 
 reverse of sisterly love in the breasts of 
 the older spinsters, and thus it follows,
 
 An Affair of ''Ancient History!' loi 
 
 that when Miss Emily, in a would-be 
 cnreless fashion, announces the fact that 
 lier letter is from Lady Gregorie, and 
 that it contains an invitation to Royalty 
 Square for the following week, Miss Vidal 
 finds no difficulty in supplementing the 
 communication with a few bitter and 
 well-chosen words. 
 
 *' It is so very long since you have 
 heard from I^ady Gregorie," she, looking 
 up from h.&Y frilling, says, "that I hardly 
 imagine you will even think of going to 
 Broadmere." 
 
 " I shall not only think of going, but 
 go,'' Em, with a considerable display of 
 spirit, rejoins ; " and, what is more, I 
 shall coax Mrs Marshall into letting me 
 have two dresses on tick." 
 
 " On tick ! " breaks in the beauty. 
 *' What an expression ! Eeally, Em, when
 
 I02 A Lion among the Ladies. 
 
 you even talk about going amongst sol- 
 diers, slang comes so naturally to you 
 that one feels positively shocked." 
 
 " Does one ? I think it rather nice," 
 retorts her junior, "and I call Flo no 
 end of a brick for asking me. There are 
 two balls — " 
 
 " And you've neglected Mrs Allen's 
 ' Kestorer ' frightfully, lately. I saw two 
 grey hairs at the top of your head no 
 later than this morning." 
 
 This cruel shaft is levelled by the 
 clever sister, and proves efiectual in driv- 
 ing her antagonist, almost in tears, from 
 the room. But ah ! if those (for the 
 nonce) unkind relations could have seen 
 into the envied one's heart, they would 
 have found there, small cause for jealous- 
 grudgings ; for Emily Vidal is quite sharp 
 enough to understand that she owes her
 
 An Affair of ''Ancient History T 103 
 
 present invitation to Broadmere solely to 
 the fact that the gazetting of Louis 
 Brereton to the Rifles has terribly alarmed 
 her friend. 
 
 " What a fool she must think me ! " 
 the matured candidate for matrimony 
 says to herself " Ou pent etre plus 
 fine que les autres, mats pas plus fine 
 que toutes les autres, and I for one can 
 see very clearly through Milady Flo's 
 little game. She thinks I may know 
 of some dodge by which those idiotic 
 letters may be got out of Brereton, and 
 she expects to blind me to her only real 
 motive, by writing of balls and parties ! 
 That Sir Wilfred does not like me she 
 knows as well as I do, and yet, there 
 again, she flatters herself that she throws 
 dust into my eyes ! However, we sh aP. 
 see what we shall see, and in the mean-
 
 T04 A Lion amono^ the Ladies. 
 
 while I must lose no time in trying 
 to talk over Mrs Marshall about my 
 
 dresses." 
 
 Before the arrival of Miss Vidal in 
 Eoyalty Square, three events of some 
 •Grarrison importance had taken place. 
 Major Brereton had made his somewhat 
 tardy appearance on the scene ; Mrs Dur- 
 ant had, under careful military and medi- 
 cal supervision, been safely removed to 
 the Shanty ; and her daughter Helen had 
 been met at the little Junction Station 
 by Eowley Elphinstone, and duly es- 
 corted by that chivalrous soldier to her 
 mother's present abode. There was at 
 first sight nothing in the appearance of 
 the pale, agitated girl whose powers of 
 speech seemed to have temporarily de- 
 serted her, to enhance the interest which 
 the Eegiment generally, and Eowley El-
 
 An Affah' of ''Ancient Histoiy^ 105 
 
 phinstone in especial, were so obviously 
 taking in the misfortunes of the Durant 
 family. Helen, in her plain black dress, 
 and with a veil shrouding her white and 
 trembling lips from the gaze of the curi- 
 ous, was remarkable for nothing save 
 her rather unusual height, and the grace- 
 fulness of her walk and carriage. In re- 
 sponse to Captain Elphinstone's whispered 
 information that Mrs Durant was rather 
 better than worse, she could only bow 
 her head in silence ; and then, taking his 
 offered arm, she was led by him to the 
 carriaofe that was in readiness to receive 
 her.
 
 CHAPTEE VL 
 
 A REPENTANT PRODIGAL. 
 
 T last ! And I feel assured that 
 your patient must be really 
 better, or I should not now 
 have the long-hoped-for pleasure of see- 
 ing you." 
 
 It is Kowley Elphinstone who speaks. 
 His tones are low and gentle, and he 
 holds, during the half minute which suf- 
 fices for their utterance, the two small 
 hands of Helen Durant between his own. 
 He has not seen her since the day — now 
 nearly a week ago — when he escorted the
 
 A Repentant Prodigal. 107 
 
 agitated girl, in a Station fly, to Mrs- 
 Denham's small, yet luxurious, ^ned d 
 terre; but Helen has not now to learn 
 how zealously both he and others of 
 her new friends had been employed in 
 her sick mother's service, and her heart 
 is brimming over with gratitude towards- 
 the kindly visitor, to whom she is now 
 able to express, for the first time, 'her 
 gratitude in spoken words. 
 
 Looking up with bright yet tearful 
 eyes into the soldier's face, she says, — 
 
 " Yes, thanks to God, and to all here 
 who have been so good to us ! the worst, 
 Dr Braintree assures us, is over, and my 
 dear mother will be, we hope, quite herself 
 again. But I tremble when I think of 
 Alfred's coming, and of what the effect on. 
 her may be. He — the doctor — advised my 
 telling her that he was sent for, and that
 
 io8 A Lion among the Ladies. 
 
 someone bad gone to bring him back, 
 but oh, Captain Elphinstone, supposing 
 that he should not come ! He must feel 
 so ashamed, so conscious-stricken." 
 
 " Yes ; but he must remember that the 
 mother who longed to see him was at the 
 point of death, and that she had ever 
 been to him — Well, what only a mother 
 can be. No, you need not fear that 
 your brother will prove refractory. He is 
 good at heart, I think, and, besides, the 
 friend who has volunteered to bring him 
 back, is one to whom it would not be 
 easy for him to say 'No.'" 
 
 " Then who is it that has gone ? " 
 Helen, feeling not a little surprised at 
 this piece of information, asks ? "I 
 thought it was a — a confidential servant, 
 perhaps, and I longed to say how kind 
 I thought the friend who had sent
 
 A Repentant Prodigal. 109 
 
 him to Paris, had been ; and now you 
 tell me — " 
 
 " That the emissary in question who, 
 by the way " (Elphinstone, with a smile, 
 broke in), " is simply his own emissary 
 - — is no other than a certain erratic Cap- 
 tain of ours, by name Guy Leycester, who 
 having for the moment no job on hand, 
 set off post haste to Paris, in order to 
 bring back your brother." 
 
 Helen Durant, on hearing the name of 
 Leycester, clasps her small white hands 
 together in positive dismay. 
 
 ''Oh, Captain Elphinstone!" she ex- 
 claims, " what shall we do ? How can 
 we ever hope to repay such kindness? 
 It is owing to Captain Leycester that we 
 are here, in these delightful rooms ; not 
 but what the beauty of them troubles 
 me greatly : it would be so dreadful if
 
 f lo A Lion among the Ladies. 
 
 anything were to be broken. But, of 
 -course, leaving the 'Dragon' was a great 
 blessing. Dr Braintree says that mother 
 never would have recovered there, so that, 
 under Providence, we owe her life to 
 liim. But — but — oh ! there is more yet 
 to speak of. There is," she continues, 
 flushing hotly as the word escapes her 
 lips, " the money that all this has cost. 
 Where has it come from ? I had only 
 just enough for my journey here, and 
 that was lent me by our clergyman, Mr 
 Everard, with whom my sister Mary is 
 .staying whilst we are away ; and mother 
 will, I know, fret dreadfully until she 
 can sell out Trust money, in order to 
 pay all the debts which Alfred's miscon- 
 duct has entailed upon us." 
 
 There is in her young face an ex- 
 pression of such deep despondency, that
 
 A Repentant Prodigal. 1 1 1 
 
 Elphinstone — moved with compassion for 
 her poverty and helplessness — can no 
 longer resist the impulse to throw him- 
 self on the couch beside her, and entreat 
 her to consider him henceforth as a 
 friend for life. 
 
 *' Do not talk of fretting," he says 
 soothingly. " Yours was a case of what 
 I may almost call a brother soldier's 
 trouble ; and we were all glad to do our 
 part in helping. Thank God ! there is 
 plenty of what the Germans call kame- 
 radschaft, in the Eifle Corps ; and the 
 debts of a fellow who has worn the 
 oTeen uniform shall never — as long as we 
 €an help it — be brought up in judgment 
 against him." 
 
 The conflicting feelings of shame and 
 gratitude which are warring in Helen's 
 breast absolutely forbid for the moment
 
 112 A Lion among the Ladies. 
 
 any attempt on her part to enter into the 
 question of her obligations. She can only 
 press in silence the hand which Eowley 
 still holds imprisoned, and then, after 
 murmuring indistinctly something about 
 being wanted in her mother's room, she 
 leaves her soldier friend, to think over 
 what has passed. 
 
 Helen Durant — worn although she was 
 with anxiety and sleeplessness — had, 
 during that short half- hour's colloquy, 
 struck Eowley Elphinstone as being rarely 
 lovely, and it was with some amount of 
 trepidation that he remembered how large 
 a proportion of the girl's gratitude was 
 due to his friend. Helen was not one — as 
 he could plainly see — by whom such an 
 obligation was at all likely to be repudi- 
 ated ; and Elphinstone, who perhaps set 
 an undue value — as compared to his own —
 
 . A Repentant Prodigal. 1 1 3 
 
 on Guy's attractions, had already begun to 
 fear the effect which the latter's chival- 
 rous conduct might produce upon Miss 
 Durant. It was true that Guy was not 
 in a position — even should his tastes in- 
 cline that way — to marry, and, moreover — 
 on principle, as he himself said — he never 
 — if he could help it — either talked to, 
 or danced with, "girls"; but, notwith- 
 standing these re -assuring facts, Elphin- 
 stone could not bring himself to feel 
 satisfied with the aspect of affairs. Helen 
 was, in his opinion, so especially charm- 
 ing, and if she should look up with those 
 pathetic eyes of hers into Guy's hand- 
 some face, and thank him in her gentle 
 voice for all his kindly help, how could 
 he — so Elphinstone, with incipient envy 
 of his friend's advantages, asked himself 
 — choose but love her? 
 
 VOL. I. H
 
 114 ^ Lion among the Ladies, 
 
 The friendly but troublesome office of 
 endeavouring to restore young Durant to 
 the safe custody of his mother, devolved 
 upon Gay in this wise. A fellow feeling 
 rendered the latter acutely sympathetic as 
 regarded the state of mind in which the 
 truant at the present moment probably 
 found himself. He entertained more than 
 one vivid recollection of scenes with the 
 Admiral, when he — the prodigal son — had 
 been — to borrow his owd expression — blown 
 up sky high for the venial (?) sin of order- 
 ing jewellery, etc., for which he could not 
 afford to pay ; and he could well under- 
 stand that, under the circumstances, the 
 defaulter would very decidedly " funk " 
 the meeting with his people which was 
 in tlie present instance, deemed advisable. 
 '* I call it a deuced hard case," Captain 
 Guy would sometimes, in his languid way.
 
 A Repentant Prodigal. 1 1 5 
 
 remark, ''that I never can have a six- 
 pence of my own, without some officious 
 fellow writing to say it's his." Now, see- 
 ing that Admiral Leycester was one of 
 the most scrupulously honourable of men, 
 and that he considered the non-payment 
 of a tradesman's bill in precisely the same 
 light as the shuffling off of a debt — so- 
 called — of honour, the frequent money dis- 
 agreements between father and son need 
 to the reader be the cause of no surprise 
 whatever. 
 
 On the occasion when the two Cap- 
 tains who were chiefly interested in Mrs 
 Durant's troubles had met together to con- 
 sult as to the best means to be adopted 
 for the withdrawal from Paris of the 
 widow's son, Guy Leycester had given 
 voice to the following somewhat remark- 
 able opinion : —
 
 1x6 A Lion among the Ladies. 
 
 "Look here, old man," he said impres- 
 sively. "A fellow who, when he is tele- 
 graphed to, that his mother is dying and 
 has asked for him, makes no sign, is not 
 to be talked into doing the right thing, by 
 even so respectable an old duffer as your 
 man Cumberbatch. Now if I go — ' 
 
 " You go ! Good Lord ! " And at the 
 bare idea of this modern instance of 
 " the blind leading the blind," Eowley — 
 after giving vent in four impressive 
 words to his amazement — fell back, with 
 an explosion of laughter, into his chair. 
 
 ''Well. And why shouldn't I do as 
 well, or better than anyone else ? Cum- 
 berbatch would only prose at the young- 
 ster, and you wouldn't do much better; 
 whereas I shall stand no nonsense. I,, 
 shall just take him by the scruff of the 
 neck, and say, 'Come along, old chap.
 
 A Repentant Prodigal, 117 
 
 You've had your fling, and now you 
 must take the consequences;' and FJl 
 answer for it that he'll follow me." 
 
 " Like a dog, eh ? " 
 
 "No, like a sheep to the slaughter, or 
 a whipped cur, or any other miserable 
 and degraded thing. I pity him from 
 my soul, poor devil ! but — having compas- 
 sion also on myself — I must repeat, what 
 indeed I have said before, that when a 
 chap is up a tree, it is a jolly lounge for 
 him not to be handicapped with a father. 
 But now about the money. It won't come 
 to much, but I must ask you to lend me 
 enough to clear the young fellow out of 
 Paris, and bring us both safe back. T 
 won't spend a farthing more than I can 
 help out there, but I literally have not 
 got a rap." 
 
 "Your normal condition, dear old
 
 1 18 A Lion among the Ladies. 
 
 (^hap." Elphinstone, laying his hand 
 kindly on his brother officer's shoulder, 
 said. He had risen from his chair, and 
 was about to seat himself at his writing- 
 table, when he turned round, and, with 
 a slightly suggestive smile, added, — " But 
 how about Paris ? — Paris which you know 
 as well, or better than you do your 
 London, and where — " 
 
 '^ I shall turn neither to the right 
 hand nor to the left. The image of that 
 poor delirious mother will be ever before 
 me, and till such time as I can bring 
 this young reprobate to her side, I shall 
 know neither peace nor rest." 
 
 It was always a matter of some diffi- 
 culty to decide whether, when Guy 
 Leycester happened to be in a rather 
 grandiloquent mood, he spoke in jest or 
 earnest. Elphinstone, however, was suffi-
 
 A Repentant Prodigal, 119 
 
 ciently acquainted with his friend's inner 
 nature to be certain that in the present 
 instance he was thoroughly to be trusted. 
 Guy was, in truth, kind-hearted to the 
 verge of weakness. The impulse to give 
 was as strong within him as the craze 
 for gambling, and the passion (as the old 
 Admiral had once described it) of appro- 
 priating to himself possessions which 
 rightfully belonged to others. Strange, 
 perhaps, to say, all young and innocent 
 things turned with affection aud confi- 
 dence to Guy. Bashful children raised 
 their heads, and smiled responsive to his 
 pleasant greeting ; while as for dogs, there 
 was not, from the pet fox-terrier with 
 his jingling bells, to the big St Bernard, 
 merciful in his strength and greatness, 
 that was not, on a first introduction, 
 ready to hail Guy Leycester as a friend.
 
 1 20 ^ Lion among the Ladies. 
 
 He experienced little difficulty in finding 
 the widow's graceless son, towards whom 
 he felt anything but mercifully inclined. 
 Some little time indeed elapsed before 
 he gave the now thoroughly ashamed- 
 of-himself lad, the relief of hearing that 
 the worst item in his heavy list of 
 transgressions would — thanks to Captain 
 Elphin stone's exertions — never now be 
 brought up in judgment against him. As 
 he (Guy) had expected would be the 
 case, the crestfallen young fellow made no 
 effort at resistance ; an amount of pusil- 
 lanimity for which his bear-leader heartily 
 despised him. Leycester's nature was 
 essentially combative, and it was chiefly 
 owing to Alfred's display of debile sub- 
 mission that the older man could not 
 bring himself to enter into conversation 
 with his evidently miserable charge. The
 
 A Repentant Prodigal. 121 
 
 '* fellow feeling" (or, I should rather say, 
 the similarity of some of his tastes with 
 those of the delinquent) which should 
 have rendered him "wondrous kind," was 
 neutralised, if not indeed extinguished, 
 by the fact that the sins of his junior 
 having *' found him out," that weak vessel 
 was meekly reaping the fruits of his mis- 
 conduct. 
 
 Then, too, it must be remembered that 
 Guy's stock in hand of compassion had 
 been already largely drawn upon : the 
 object of that sympathy being the chief 
 victim — as Guy considered Mrs Durant 
 to be — of the culprit's transgressions. 
 That gentle creature had been, both by 
 Elphinstone and the doctor, spoken of to 
 him as a patient sufferer brought to the 
 brink of the grave by reason of this 
 *' young ruffian's " ingratitude, and selfish
 
 12 2 A Lion among the Ladies. 
 
 sponging on his mother's slender re- 
 sources ; and Guy, albeit he did not go 
 the length of thanking God that he was 
 not " even as that sinner," could never- 
 theless, he flattered himself, hold his own 
 in comparison with the widow's son, inas- 
 much as never since he had entered the 
 army, had he applied to Lady Alicia for as- 
 sistance in his needs. To be sure, the said 
 Lady Alicia was not the kind of woman 
 likely to make sacrifices for a son ; that, 
 however, was beside the question, the 
 fact remaining the same, viz., that not 
 even in his sorest straits, and when ruin 
 in biggest letters was staring him in the 
 face, had he asked the women of his 
 family to, even by the slightest of loans, 
 assist him in his distress. 
 
 It was not until the long journey was 
 drawing to a close, that Leycester, notic-
 
 A Repentant Prodigal. 1 2 3 
 
 ing the increasing agitation as well as 
 deadly pallor of his companion, began to 
 show symptoms of relenting. The intense 
 anxiety and nervousness under which the 
 unhappy lad was suffering, were evidenced 
 by the trembling of his hands, and the 
 quiver of the lip, on which not the 
 faintest down suggestive of approaching 
 manhood was as yet traceable. He looked 
 so young to be a sinner ! — so young to 
 have already tasted of the bitter cup 
 which follows on detected guilt, that Guy, 
 when the Train stopped at the Junction 
 Station, good-naturedly brought him, from 
 a neighbouring wayside " public," a wine- 
 glassful of British brandy. 
 
 " Here, boy," he said kindly, " drink a 
 mouthful of this nectar, and keep your 
 pecker up. If your mother were worse, 
 you would have heard of it ; and you
 
 124 ^ Lion among the Ladies. 
 
 mustn't go, you know, with a face a 
 yard long, into her room." 
 
 *' Thank you ; I know ; of course I do," 
 murmured the culprit. " But it isn't 
 only that; it's the trouble — the — " 
 
 " Exactly, but you had better not talk 
 of it now. We shall be at Broadmere 
 directly. Ah 1 there is old Elphinstone, 
 and a young lady — your sister, of coursQ 
 — so pull yourself together and be a 
 man."
 
 CHAPTER YII. 
 
 THE MAJOR SHOWS A CLOVEN FOOT. 
 
 HE first impression made " by 
 Major Brereton on his hitherto 
 unknown brother-officers was 
 not a favourable one. Guy Leycester at 
 once, and without taking the trouble to 
 even whisper his opinion, pronounced him 
 to be a ''cad." 
 
 " If I don't mistake," he said, " he's 
 the very man who some years ago, left 
 — on purpose, it was said — a woman's 
 letter in the blotting-book belonging to 
 his bachelor's room, at Lord Collington's,
 
 126 A Lion among the Ladies, 
 
 where he had been staying. The hus- 
 band — who was to succeed him en garqoii 
 in the room — found it, and there was the 
 devil's own row. But it was hushed up 
 somehow. I think," musingly, "I'll men- 
 tion Lord Collington's name some day, 
 just to see how the fellow looks. If he 
 turns out to be the same man, we must 
 get rid of him, you know, some w^ay or 
 other. The woman who wrote the letter 
 had money of her own, I fancy, and they 
 wanted to make it out a case for divorce; 
 but that cock wouldn't fight, and so the — 
 By Jove ! I was going to say their names 
 are living together, and let us hope, in 
 harmony still." 
 
 Meanwhile the object of these remarks 
 had met Lady Gregorie and her friend 
 out riding, and had at once, and in the 
 most free and easy manner, claimed ac-
 
 The Major shows a Cloven Foot, 1 2 7 
 
 quaintance with the ladies as a former 
 intimate. 
 
 " I hope," the Major, addressing Sir Wil- 
 fred's wife, said, " that you differ from 
 the popularly-received opinion, that once 
 in every seven years everything and every- 
 body undergoes a change. It is more 
 than seven years. Lady Gregorie, since 
 you and I had the pleasure of meeting, 
 and I am delighted to see that any change 
 in you — in your appearance, that is to 
 say — is decidedly to your advantage." 
 
 Lady Gregorie had been at first too 
 much startled by Major Brereton's un- 
 expected appearance and address to an- 
 swer him ; but she was no coward, and 
 ner anger at his familiar compliment 
 getting the better of her discretion, she 
 suddenly checked her horse, and said, — 
 
 ''Major Brereton, I cannot say that /, at
 
 128 A Lion among the Ladies. 
 
 least, look back with any pleasure to the 
 silly conduct — when I was a mere child 
 at school — to which you refer ; nor can 
 you, 1 imagine, as a gentleman, think 
 with any satisfaction of the advantage 
 which you then took of my youth and 
 inexperience. I have no wish to injure 
 you, but you must be aware that if the 
 past were known — " 
 
 " Neither Sir Wilfred Gregorie nor his 
 wife would have quite such an easy time 
 of it as, I am happy to think, is the 
 case with them now. But, I ask. you — 
 and you also, Miss Vidal — why, in Heaven's 
 name, should the past be known % We 
 are old friends, we three, — knew one 
 another years ago at Bruges, and, being 
 old friends, what so natural as that I 
 should come and call, and that you and 
 Miss Vidal should receive me — I will not
 
 The Major shows a Cloven Foot. 129 
 
 say with open arms, but with as much 
 cordiality as you are in the habit of dis- 
 playing towards the generality of your 
 husband's brother officers ? " 
 
 He looked at her scrutinisingly as he 
 spoke, and ah ! how bitterly did Florence 
 at that moment regret her cowardly folly 
 in that she had not, when first she heard 
 the name of Brereton, made a clean breast 
 of it to her husband. 
 
 '' It cannot be," she faltered. " 1 have 
 said nothing to Sir Wilfred of — of my Bel- 
 gian school days, and he would think it so 
 strange, your seeming to be intimate with 
 rae. 
 
 *' But I would not seem intimate," smiled 
 
 Brereton. " You may trust me entirely. I 
 
 would not for the world get you into a scrape. 
 
 Miss Yidal, you have stood our friend before, 
 
 and I expect that you will help us now." 
 VOL. I. I
 
 130 A Lion among the Ladies, 
 
 He raised his hat (for he was out of 
 Tiniform) as he spoke, and, touching his 
 liorse lightly with his whip, rode briskly 
 away. He had, he flattered himself, exe- 
 cuted his initiatory movement skilfully 
 and well. The important fact that the 
 Colonel of the regiment was as yet en- 
 tirely in the dark as regarded a not 
 "unimportant episode in his wife's early 
 history, had now become an established 
 fact, and therefore, in the course which lay 
 before him, there was more plain sailing 
 than he had previously ventured to antici- 
 pate. Lady Gregorie was an uncommonly 
 handsome- woman, handsomer ten times 
 over than she had been in her bread-and- 
 butter days, when he, seated on the chilly 
 stone rampart of the Bruges canal, played 
 Eomeo to the Juliet of the English Mees ; 
 and, in his mind's eye, the Major, although
 
 The Major shows a Cloven Foot, 1 3 1 
 
 the first glory of his youth had departed, 
 and the ''wild freshness of morning" no 
 longer stirred the thinning curls that had 
 once adorned his head, foresaw in the 
 dim future, certain potentialities which, as 
 he rode along the quiet lanes, brought a 
 smile of anticipated triumph to his lip. 
 The unlooked-for presence of Miss Vidal 
 on the scene of action, was not altogether 
 satisfactory to the Major. A far more 
 ''knowing card" was she than the hand- 
 some, unsuspicious woman who, as a girl, 
 he had found ductile as wax within his 
 hands. Ten years, or nearly so, had 
 elapsed since he had made that notable 
 discovery ; and one glance at the fair 
 Emily's discontented countenance, and feat- 
 ures pinched by the wearing sickness of 
 hope deferred, was sufficient to convince 
 him that she who had been quick-witted
 
 132 . A Lion among the Ladies. 
 
 then, was even more quick-witted noiv. 
 To checkmate both these women — neither 
 party being in the secret of his little game 
 — must be now his object. The task would 
 not be an easy one, but Louis Brereton, 
 calling to mind sundry passages in his 
 earlier career, told himself that it was one 
 to which his powers were not inadequate. 
 
 " Yes," he said to himself complacently, 
 *'I ought to be able to do it, and, what is 
 more, I will. Failure is a word which in 
 this case shall have for me no meaning." 
 
 "Whilst thoughts such as these were 
 whirling through the busy brain of the 
 newly-gazetted Major, the two women 
 whose future fates — in so far as they were 
 intermingled with his own — formed the 
 subjects of his lucubrations, were, in no 
 spirit of charity, giving voice to their 
 opinions regarding him.
 
 The Major shows a Cloven Foot, 133 
 
 " Oh, Em ! " Lady Gregorie, as soon as 
 they were out of the man's hearing, ex- 
 claimed, " what shall we do ? He is so 
 awfully familiar ; and oh 1 how old and 
 ugly he has grown ! I should not have 
 known him if he had not spoken to 
 me. 
 
 " Should not you ? " rejoined her com- 
 panion. " Well, I cannot say that I per- 
 ceive much difference ; but then I never 
 thought him so wonderfully handsome as 
 you did." 
 
 '* 1 was a goose, and made a swan of 
 the wretch," said poor Florence, whilst 
 tears of mortification welled up to her 
 eyelids. " I read once, in one of Lord 
 Lytton's novels, and I can feel now how 
 true the saying is, that * There is no 
 anguish like the memory of an error of 
 which we feel ashamed.' And I am so
 
 1 34 -^ Lion among the Ladies, 
 
 ashamed of having even fancied — child 
 although I was, and ignorant — that I 
 cared for Brereton ; and now he will 
 come, in his detestably off-hand way, and 
 will try to make it appear that we 
 are old friends." 
 
 " Well, dear, and so, for the matter of 
 that, you are," Miss Vidal says sweetly, 
 'and of course Sir Wilfred, until it is 
 explained, will think it odd. If I were 
 in your place, I would contrive to receive 
 him at first without witnesses, and then 
 you could complain afterwards of him, or 
 at least mention to the Colonel, that you 
 think his manner objectionable, and that 
 he will be no credit to the regiment. 
 You know the sort of thing to say." 
 
 *' Exactly; but then, you know, Wilfred 
 must, sooner or later, see us together; 
 and I am afraid he would never think it
 
 The Major shows a Cloven Foot. 135 
 
 possible that any man, however little he 
 might be accustomed to good society, 
 could, on so short an acquaintance, speak 
 to any lady, let alone his Colonel's wife, 
 in the way he 5po^e to me just now. Oh, 
 Em, dear, I am dreadfully frightened I 
 and I do so wish that I had been brave 
 enough to tell my husband everything 
 from the first. He would not have 
 minded anything then, but now all his 
 old prejudices against what he calls ' girls' 
 schools ' will revive, and he will jump at 
 all sorts of untrue conclusions." 
 
 "It is probably those stupid letters 
 that have done all the mischief," said 
 Emily, as, with her small 'patte de velours 
 she gently stroked the glossy neck of 
 the Colonel's second charger. " You see 
 the wretch has unfortunately something 
 that he could show — "
 
 136 A Lion among the Ladies, 
 
 "Oh ! " cried Florence, letting, in her 
 alarm, the reins fall from her hand, upon 
 her lap, " you do not really thiak — even 
 if he has kept the silly things — that he 
 would dare to show them % " 
 
 " Not if it is to his own interest to 
 keep them back. But there is one thing, 
 dear Flo, that you must ever bear in 
 mind, namely, that you must be beyond 
 measure careful not to make an enemy of 
 Louis Brereton. ' Hell,' so some poet has 
 written, 'has no fury like a woman 
 scorned,' but, in my opinion, a man who 
 is foiled, is capable of winning for him- 
 self a still- hotter place, down below, than 
 we can earn. You must not — however in- 
 dignant you may feel — say anything either 
 of or to him which may wound his vanity, 
 and incite in him a spirit of revenge. If 
 I mistake not, our friend has a nasty
 
 The Major shows a Cloven Foot. 137 
 
 temper of his own, and, for my part, if 
 I were in your place, I would let the 
 sleeping dog lie." 
 
 " How gladly would I follow your ad- 
 vice ; but my fear is that he will not 
 let this poor dog " (touching her breast 
 lightly with her gauntleted hand) " rest 
 in peace. Ah, if he only would, how 
 thankful I should be ! And what is it 
 that he can possibly hope to gain by tor- 
 menting me ? Cannot you, dear Em, try 
 to make him see the cruelty — when I am 
 so happy — of working mischief between 
 Wilfred and me." 
 
 The simplicity of this suggestion amuses 
 Emily. She, however, betrays no sign of 
 her inward sensations, but says, with an 
 open-heartedness of manner which com- 
 pletely hoodwinks her friend, — 
 
 " My poor dear, I only wish that I
 
 13S A Lion among the Ladies. 
 
 could help you. It must be so dreadful 
 to feel oneself in a man's power. Still, 
 there is one thing — I hardly like to pro- 
 pose it, however, and one could scarcely 
 expect that Major Brereton would give 
 in to the plan — " 
 
 " But what is it ? " Florence asked im- 
 petuously. '' Tell me what it is, and 
 then I can be in some sort a judge of 
 whether my husband is likely to be — 
 well, I fear that I must say the word — 
 deceived by it." 
 
 Miss Vidal hesitated for a moment, and 
 then said deprecatingly, — 
 
 "My idea is, I daresay, a foolish one, 
 but it flashed across me that I might — 
 or rather that we together might — lead 
 Sir Wilfred to think that I, and not you, 
 was the heroine of the Bruges adventure. 
 I have not thought about details, and I
 
 The Major shows a Cloven Foot. 139 
 
 daresay you will deem the notion too 
 absurd for consideration." 
 
 " Not at all, dear, and I feel most 
 grateful for your thought of immolating 
 yourself in my favour ; but I do not think 
 that Sir Wilfred—" 
 
 " Could be induced to credit the story. 
 I have no doubt that you are right," 
 Miss Vidal said, and her tones, although 
 her cheeks had slightly flushed, were still 
 sympathising and afiectionate. " Sir Wil- 
 fred is not very likely to believe that 
 any man in his senses, who had been 
 given two girls to choose from, would 
 select the one who happened to be ugly." 
 
 "Now, Em, dear, that is really un- 
 kind," Lady Gregorie, almost with tears ex- 
 claimed. "You did not let me finish my 
 sentence — and the idea of calling yourself 
 ugly ! What I meant to say was this,
 
 140 A Lion among the Ladies. 
 
 that if, as I fear, this horrid man is bent 
 on compromising me, he is not likely to 
 act so as to turn Sir Wilfred's attention 
 in yonr direction. You see what I mean, 
 dear, don't you ? " added poor Florence, 
 who little dreamt that by a few thought- 
 lessly-spoken, but vanity-wounding words 
 she had done more injury to her cause 
 than any terms of endearment, any acts 
 of kindness, could thenceforth effectually 
 cancel. 
 
 " Of course I understand, dear Flo. Pray 
 do not think I was silly enough to mind," 
 said Em urbanely. ''But look, there is 
 Freddy ! And riding Captain Leycester's 
 horse too ! Now if I were Sir Wilfred, 
 that is the man I should be jealous, of, 
 and not such a poor creature as Louis 
 Brereton." 
 
 The two equestrians have arrived within
 
 The Major shows a Cloven Foot. 1 4 1 
 
 a few yards of the Colonel's temporary 
 residence in Royalty Square, and the first 
 object which meets their view is a beauti- 
 ful boy — Sir Wilfred's only son — who is^ 
 perched (his bare, four-year-old legs only 
 reaching half way to the termination of 
 the saddle-flaps) on a tall chesnut horse, 
 which a brother officer, on leave between 
 returns, has put at the temporary disposal 
 of Guy Leycester. That good-natured 
 soldier, having come to the Square in 
 order to pay a visit to the Colonel's wife, 
 had been pounced upon by her son and 
 heir, and so coaxed and wheedled that he 
 had dismounted, and placed the delighted 
 boy in his place upon the saddle. The 
 child's hand — for it was not without 
 trepidation that he felt the horse move 
 onwards beneath his feather weight — 
 was holding tightly by the collar of his-
 
 142 A Lion a7nong the Ladies. 
 
 friend's coat, whilst the latter led the 
 tall charger carefully along the silent 
 road. But in spite of these precautions 
 against an accident, Lady Gregorie's ma- 
 ternal fears were excited by the scene 
 she witnessed. 
 
 " Oh, Captain Leycester," she exclaimed, 
 ** is he safe ? Is the horse certain not 
 to plunge or shy ? " 
 
 "Not at all certain," answered Guy 
 imperturbably ; " but if he does, Freddy 
 means to sit him — don't you, Freddy ? — 
 like a man." 
 
 " But he might fall. Thank you very 
 much for taking care, but — Freddy, dar- 
 ling, won't you come on mother's horse ? 
 You are so fond of Hotspur, you know, 
 and you can give him a piece of sugar 
 when we go in." 
 
 But even this tempting bribe proved
 
 The Major shows a Cloven Foot, 143 
 
 ineffectual in luring Master Freddy from 
 the proud position which he felt himself 
 to be filling. Lifting up his shrill treble 
 in defiance, he said boldly, — 
 
 " Me don't like riding two on a horse. 
 Make him gee-up, Captain Leycester," 
 and the young rebel knocked his little 
 fat legs against the saddle- flaps with as 
 much self-assurance as if he were ridinof 
 a steeplechase for a wager. 
 
 *' Naughty boy," said the mother fondly, 
 and the dispute seemed likely to be 
 a prolonged one, when fortunately Sir 
 Wilfred Gregorie suddenly appeared upon 
 the scene. He took in the situation at 
 a glance, and with a terse question ad- 
 dressed to the child of, ''What are you 
 doing up there, young shaver ? " speedily 
 brought down the delinquent from his 
 vantage ground.
 
 144 ^ Lion among the Ladies. 
 
 " I hope he has not been boring you 
 too much," said the Colonel, addressing, 
 with the cordiality of an equal, the 
 officer amongst his subordinates with 
 whom he was most intimate, and who 
 was preparing, after saying a few conven- 
 tional words to the ladies, to remount 
 his horse. " He is a good little chap 
 when he is kept in order, but he is safe 
 to turn out ill, with Lady Gregorie as 
 Commander-in-chief. " 
 
 ''Don't believe him, Captain Leycester," 
 laughed Florence, as her husband lifted 
 her from the saddle, *' and do come in 
 and have some tea. I am sorry that 
 Freddy was so troublesome, but it is al- 
 most your own fault, for being so good 
 to him." 
 
 As a matter of course, Guy protested 
 that the trouble was a pleasure ; and then.
 
 The Major shows a Clove^i Foot. 145 
 
 having offered a polite excuse for not join- 
 ing Lady Gregorie's tea-party, he, with 
 a graceful salute to the ladies, rode 
 away. 
 
 " Well," said Emily, as she and her 
 hostess ascended the stairs together, '* I 
 repeat what I said before, that if I were 
 a husband, I should be jealous of Guy 
 Leycester." 
 
 " There is safety — let us hope — in mul- 
 titudes," was Florence Gregorie's care- 
 less reply. " There is always some 
 new married lady being talked of as 
 Captain Leycester's mnannorata of the 
 hour. The last is one Mrs Mansfield, 
 whom he calls his aunt, but who, it is 
 thought, is no more relation to him than 
 is the Queen of the Sandwich Islands. 
 However, the fable amuses him perhaps, 
 and does no one else any harm." 
 
 VOL. I. K
 
 CHAPTER VII I. 
 
 LADY GREGORIE IS UP IN A EMS. 
 
 »T'S my belief that old Eowley 
 is caught at last," said Cap- 
 tain Boldero, one afternoon 
 to a pleasant little gathering of ladies 
 who, at an " afternoon " given by the wife 
 of a Broadmere notability, were discussing 
 the small local topics of the hour. The 
 Officer in question was — as a fetcher and 
 carrier of gossip, an individual whose 
 society was much appreciated by the fair 
 sex ; nor did the fact that he had earned 
 (in part owing to the feminine nature of
 
 Lady Gregorie is Up in Arms, 147 
 
 his tastes, but also on account of his 
 baptismal appellation of Francis) the so- 
 briquet in the regiment of " Miss Fanny," 
 in any degree tend to diminish the 
 warmth of the welcome which in feminine 
 circles was accorded to him. The number 
 of those of his sex who either find 
 pleasure, or affect to do so, in the mild 
 pastimes known as afternoon tea, is suf- 
 ficiently limited, to account, in a great 
 degree, for Captain Boldero'^s popularity. 
 
 "Oh, not really!" exclaimed a rather 
 pretty woman, the wife of the lately- 
 appointed Broadmere Barrack - master. 
 ■" Surely a girl like Miss Durant — " 
 
 " I mentioned no names," put in Miss 
 Fanny sententiously, " and I must enter 
 my protest against being quoted as an 
 authority in the matter." 
 
 " Oh, we all know who the lady is,
 
 14B A Lion among the Ladies. 
 
 so you need not be so cautious," broke 
 in a cheery-looking spinster, who, hav- 
 ing no matrimonial designs either on her 
 own account or on that of others to dis- 
 turb her mind, could venture to speak it 
 plainly; "and," she added, with a laugh, 
 " there is nothino^ libellous in the accu- 
 sation, unless it is suggested that Captain 
 Elphinstone means nothing serious by his 
 attentions to the young lady in question." 
 " I don't believe a word of it," said 
 the wife of a rich Broadmere mine-owner 
 whose daughters would have ''fortunes" of 
 their own, and whose dinner invitations 
 to the well-to-do and popular infantry 
 captain had neither been few nor far be- 
 tween ; " and I shall not do so till I see 
 in the papers that he is actually mar- 
 ried. Captain Elphinstone has, we know,, 
 been talked about for so many girls."
 
 Lady Gregorie is Up in A^^ms. 149 
 
 **Not owing, I think, to any fault of 
 Lis," put in Miss Staniforth ; but what 
 she may have been about to add was in- 
 tercepted by Captain Boldero, who, albeit 
 a frequent sower of strife, was neverthe- 
 less anxious for the maintenance of " peace 
 within the borders ; " and he felt at the 
 present juncture no small degree of alarm 
 lest his voice should be drowned by the 
 excited clamour of female obstructionists. 
 
 " Well, well," he said soothingly, and 
 addressing himself more especially to the 
 sceptical parent of three pleasing and not 
 portionless girls, " there may be no truth 
 in the reports that are flying about. 
 Elphinstone is not, one would think, the 
 kind of man to marry an obscure girl, 
 whose brother — but we need not, perhaps, 
 mention him — poor fellow, is certainly no 
 credit to any family ; but then, you see,
 
 1 50 A Lion among the Ladies, 
 
 Lady Gregorie has taken these Durants up 
 so violently, and the girl is striking-look- 
 ing — not exactly beautiful, perhaps, but 
 yesterday, when I saw her in Lady 
 Gregorie's carriage, and with Elphinstone 
 sitting opposite to them, and looking — 
 Well, as men do look when they are in 
 love — into her eyes, it struck me that 
 the young lady was very fair to see." 
 
 " And so you at once decided that he 
 was what you call caught f sneered Mrs 
 Mansfield, the wife of the Barrack-master, 
 the milk of human kindness in whose 
 system had become *' turned " by the 
 neglect ou Lady Gregorie's part to enter 
 with her into the bonds of friendship. 
 " If that is all from which you draw 
 your conclusions — " 
 
 " Not conclusions — say suspicions, please," 
 said Captain Boldero sweetly, " which that
 
 Lady Gregorie is Up in Arms, i 5 r 
 
 drive caused me to entertain. Its ob- 
 ject evidently was to inspect that pretty 
 honeymoon-suggesting old house called Ivy 
 Combe—" 
 
 " I know," interrupted more than one 
 voice. " A dear old place, not far from 
 the Junction Station." 
 
 "Exactly. Well, Ivy Combe is to be 
 let." 
 
 "And you forthwith made up your 
 mind that Captain Elphinstone took his 
 bride-elect to that secluded cottage in 
 order that she might decide on its merits 
 as a future residence ! Eeally, Captain 
 Boldero," laughed Mrs Mansfield, " you are 
 easily carried away by your imagination." 
 
 " Well, time will show whether or not 
 I am wrong in my conjectures," rejoined 
 Captain Boldero. " In the event, however, 
 of Elphinstone having at last found his
 
 152 A Lion among the Ladies. 
 
 fate, you, and indeed all of us who are 
 interested in his welfare, will be glad to 
 learn that this is not a case of encan- 
 aillement. It has been stated on good 
 authority that, during the reign of Wil- 
 liam the Fourth, one Lady Emily Durant 
 held some appointment in the Eoyal 
 Household, and that — " 
 
 " Oh," said the Broadmere Society 
 Queen, " most families can, in an emer- 
 gency, contrive to rake up from their 
 family histories some big name or other, 
 in order to give a colouring to the idea 
 that they themselves have a right to 
 figure among the aristocracy. I conclude 
 that it is Lady Gregorie who has set 
 this idea going. She must feel rather 
 ashamed of patronising such very obscure 
 people — to say nothing worse of them — as 
 these Durants."
 
 Lady G^^egorie is Up in Arms. 153 
 
 The utter absurdity of this hist sug- 
 gestion was so palpable, that Captain 
 Boldero, although ready enough as a rule 
 to say flattering things of the Colonel's 
 wife, felt that in this instance to take 
 up the cudgels in her defence would 
 expose himself to needless ridicule. Un- 
 der these circumstances, and taking into 
 consideration the fact that he had 
 already worked up his audience into a 
 state of excitement which rendered more 
 than one of their number deaf to the 
 voice of reason, he deemed it expedient 
 to take his departure, leaving the drop 
 of poison which he had administered, to 
 do its unfailing work. He was not an 
 ill-natured man, and to do any human 
 creature a really " ill turn" was as far as 
 possible from his intentions, but nature 
 had cast his inner being in a small
 
 154 ^ Lion among the Ladies. 
 
 mould, and it was that being's plague to 
 crave for the trifling excitements which 
 are to be found in the society of tattling- 
 loving w^omen, and in the puerile satis- 
 faction of being the first to hint at a 
 piece of startling news. 
 
 That Lady Gregorie had, what in 
 everyday parlance is called '' taken a 
 fancy " to Helen Durant, was perfectly 
 true, and, previous to the unwelcome ap- 
 pearance of Major Brereton upon the sun- 
 lit stage of her happy life, she showed, 
 in many a kind and womanly fashion, 
 the interest which she took in the gentle 
 yet eminently helpful girl, whose misfor- 
 tunes had given rise to so much general 
 as well as individual sympathy. As the 
 days ran on into weeks, and Captain 
 Elphiustone's visits to the Shanty grew 
 more frequent. Lady Gregorie's interest
 
 Lady Greg or ie is Up in Arms. 155 
 
 in the case increased ; and when the idea 
 that such an advancement in life as an 
 union with a man so in every way 
 eligible as the much-sought-after Captain 
 ) was possible for Helen had once entered 
 the pretty head of kind-hearted, volatile 
 Florence, the latter determined to assist, 
 as far as lay in her power, in bringing 
 about a consummation so eminently de- 
 sirable. It w^as true that in so acting 
 she would be setting at defiance her 
 husband's often openly - expressed wish 
 to keep the Ofiicers of his regiment un- 
 trammelled by the bonds of wedlock : 
 true also was it that in a general way 
 she, as the pretty and admired wife 
 of the Colonel, not only enjoyed, but 
 looked upon as a right, the attentions of 
 her husband's military subordinates ; but 
 Captain Elphinstone. not only in his char-
 
 156 A Lion among the Ladies. 
 
 acter of an excellent parti, hut as being, 
 both in temperament and habits, a man 
 standing out alone amongst the butter- 
 flies and danglers of the hour, was one 
 whose innocent gallantries she could, as 
 regarded her own feelings, easily dispense 
 with. On the other hand, and — quoad 
 her husband's fancy to keep his officers, 
 after the example of the Zulu king's 
 young warriors, unhampered by domestic 
 ties, Lady Gregorie (excellent wife although 
 she was) looked upon the notion as a 
 mere fad, and went her own quiet, but 
 eff'ectual way to work, in order to cir- 
 cumvent Sir Wilfred's autocratic wish. 
 
 "Of course it would be difl'erent if 
 Kowdey Elphinstone were such an one as 
 Guy," she said one day to her friend Emily 
 Vidal. "If he were in the habit now, of 
 making love to girls, I should be very
 
 Lady Gregorie is Up m Arms. 157 
 
 careful — kind as he has been to the Duraiits 
 — not to throw dear Nellie in his way." 
 
 •'Of course," responded Em, as she peered 
 (for the friends were driving in Florence 
 Gregorie's Victoria) through the deep 
 fringe of her parasol at her companion. 
 " It is not Guy Leycester's vocation to 
 make victims of any but married women. '^ 
 
 "Oh," rejoined Florence, with a laugh 
 so light and careless that any further 
 chaffing was, as regarded the " Lion's " 
 relations with his Colonel's wife, felt by 
 Miss Yidal to be out of place, " 1 am not 
 at all sure that poor Guy is not some- 
 times more to be pitied than the ladies 
 who are supposed to be his prey. How- 
 ever, I can quite enter into Captain 
 Elphinstone's dislike to this occupation 
 by the Durants of Mrs Denham's house. 
 He has suggested that pretty Ivy Combe
 
 158 A Lion among the Ladies. 
 
 Cottage was a place to which they might 
 go. The man who farms the land which 
 lies about it, is living there with his wife, 
 but as Captain Elphinstone has heard that 
 three or four of the rooms could be made 
 comfortable for lodgers, he and I, and pos- 
 sibly Miss Durant, may drive there some 
 afternoon and see what the place is like." 
 
 " I think," suggested Em, after a pause, 
 during which she was endeavouring to make 
 up her mind as to the amount of plain 
 speaking on which she could venture with 
 her friend, "that you would perhaps act 
 wisely in not allowing Major Brereton to see 
 you on apparently familiar terms with other 
 men. It would perhaps exasperate him, — 
 render him less easy to manage. He hints 
 at being — or having been — in love with you." 
 
 "I do not understand you," Florence 
 broke in haughtily. " What you seem to
 
 Lady Gregorie is Up in Arms. 159 
 
 imply is really too sickening. Major Brere- 
 ton is a low wretch, for whom horse- whip- 
 ping is too good ; and you talk to me 
 ^ of his love, — his love for me, Colonel Gre- 
 gorie's wife," and as she said the words, 
 the angry toss of her small head went 
 near to jerking one of Mrs Heath's newest 
 things in hats into the carriage - road. 
 ** I should like," setting her pearly teeth 
 viciously together, " to see him flogged ! " 
 
 *' I can understand your feeling," Miss 
 Yidal, with much amiability of manner, 
 rejoined ; " but as that is a pleasure which 
 you are not likely to enjoy, I recom- 
 mend you — for your own good solely, dear 
 Florence — to be prudent." 
 
 Lady Gregorie vouchsafed no answer 
 to this remark, and during the remainder 
 of the drive silence reigned between the 
 so-called friends.
 
 CHAPTEE IX. 
 
 MISS VIDAL PUTS HERSELF FORWARD. 
 
 T is early in the afternoon. 
 Luncheon is over in the 
 Eoyalty Square " mansion," 
 and the two ladies — Freddy having been 
 captured by the head-nurse for the pur- 
 pose of a walk round the Square — are 
 left in peace to talk over their coming 
 gaieties, their dresses, and their anxieties. 
 In Lady Gregorie's mind, the latter have 
 for the moment greatly the preponder- 
 ance, a circumstance which is rendered 
 evident by a slight pucker in her low,
 
 Miss Vidal puts Herself Forward. i6r 
 
 classic forehead, and by her tone of voice 
 as she says, — ■ 
 
 " I hope, dear Em, that you have not 
 quite set your heart on going to this 
 tiresome garden-party on Thursday. That 
 horrid man is certain to be there, and I 
 cannot endure the thought of meeting 
 him. If you do not mind, T will write 
 an excuse to Lady Indiscarra." 
 
 " But, dear Flo, you have no excuse," 
 breaks in Miss Vidal eagerly ; " and, be- 
 sides, what is the use of putting off the 
 evil day ? The sooner it is over, and 
 Sir Wilfred has seen you and Major 
 Brereton together, the better. My advice 
 is altogether disinterested, for you can 
 hardly hate the idea of seeing the man 
 more than I do ; but there is nothing 
 more foolish than being afraid, excepting, 
 perhaps, showing that you are so. What 
 
 VOL. I. L
 
 1 62 A Lion among the Ladies. 
 
 you must do is to look your prettiest, 
 and — which is of still more consequence — 
 your j oiliest ; for if you display a degage 
 air, he must see that you have what the 
 Irish call a ' strong back,' and then he 
 will be afraid to carry the war into the 
 enemy's country." 
 
 Lady Gregorie shakes her head mourn- 
 fully as she murmurs, — 
 
 " I don't believe in his being afraid. 
 He would not have dared to address me 
 as he did the other day if he hadn't 
 felt that he had me completely in his 
 power." 
 
 '' Which, of course, as long as he has 
 the letters, you are ; but his holding 
 them in terrorem over you is such a 
 thoroughly ungentlemanly act that he 
 will not, I feel persuaded, do anything 
 very outrageous. Our object must be to
 
 Miss Vidal puts Herself Forward. 163 
 
 get the letters from him ; and perhaps, if 
 we go to Lady Indiscarra's party, I may 
 have an opportunity of speaking to him 
 without witnesses, and finding out the 
 price he puts upon them." 
 
 Before her departure for the garden- 
 party, to which Emily Vidal insisted that 
 her hostess should, in her society, betake 
 herself, the anxious woman summoned 
 courage to ask her husband his opinion 
 of the latest addition to the Corps. 
 
 *' Do you think he's nice ? " she asked. 
 " He is an ugly man, certainly." 
 
 " Deuced ugly. But not a bad soldier 
 I should say. Hardly a gentleman though. 
 But why do you ask ? He is not an after- 
 noon tea-party man. We have enough of 
 these already, without him. By-the-way, 
 I met Elphinstone walking out with that 
 pretty Miss Durant, this morning, so I sup-
 
 164 A Lion among the Ladies. 
 
 pose we shall have another married man 
 in the regiment soon. What a bore it is 1 
 I wish the women would let them alone — " 
 
 *' Or that they would let the w^omen 
 alone," amended Florence, with her pretty 
 smile. " You should not have set the 
 example, you wicked Wil, if you did not 
 mean it to be followed ! The Colonel, 
 though, I suppose, like the King, can do 
 no wrong." 
 
 " Not in his wife's eyes, I hope," Sir 
 Wilfred, patting her fair cheek affection- 
 ately, rejoined. " But if we are to go to 
 this garden-party is it not time to be get- 
 ting yourself up ? Your friend Miss Vidal 
 has, I suspect, been hard at work at it 
 for an hour past ; and, Flo, between our- 
 selves," added the Colonel, as he knocked 
 the ashes from his cigarette, " I don't 
 think she pays, when all's done, for the
 
 Miss Vicial picts Herself Forward. 165 
 
 trouble. I never saw a girl more gone 
 off than your friend. She was never what 
 one could call good-looking, but now she is 
 positively plain. I cannot, for the life of 
 me, see what you can find to like in her." 
 
 *' One does not like one's friends only 
 for their looks, I hope ! " said Lady Gre- 
 gorie, as she gathered together her work- 
 ing materials, preparatory to leaving the 
 room. " She is very warm-hearted and 
 affectionate — " 
 
 "Is she really, do you think?" the 
 Colonel says lazily. " AVell, do you know 
 that she rather gives me the idea of a 
 snake in the grass. I have a creepy feel 
 when she comes near me." 
 
 " Ah, that is because you do not ad- 
 mire her. As for me, I agree with the 
 copy-book that it is better to be good 
 than pretty."
 
 1 66 A Lion among the Ladies. 
 
 " I never could uDderstand why women 
 should not be both," remarked her hus- 
 band. 
 
 " Now, you bad man ! " she retorted, 
 stopping behind him, and laying her two 
 hands lovingly on his broad shoulders, 
 ''you know that you like them better 
 when they are just the very least bit in 
 the world, bad." 
 
 " Nonsense ! Go and dress, child," he 
 said impressively, whereupon her ladyship 
 tripped away in double quick time to do 
 his bidding. 
 
 Champion Hill — the beautiful family 
 place from which Lord Indiscarra had not 
 yet, by the smoke and wickedness of the big 
 neighbouring town, been driven to more 
 remote quarters — is situated at the distance 
 of about seven miles from the Barracks, and 
 had long been spoken of admiringly by the
 
 Miss Vidal puts Herself Forward. 167 
 
 surrounding neighbourhood as the very 
 place of all others for a garden-party. Cir- 
 cumstances had, however, been hitherto 
 against that pleasant form of festivity 
 being enjoyed at the Hill. There had 
 been a long minority, an impecunious and 
 withal strait-laced dowager had set her 
 face, resolutely against youthful friskiness, 
 and, to crown all, Irish rents had been so 
 badly paid, that Lady Indiscarra had been 
 advised to shut up the family mansion 
 in England, and vegetate for a few years 
 in the sister isle. But things were altered 
 now. The young lord had attained his 
 majority, and an education at Eton and 
 Oxford having confirmed his preference for 
 English life, the O'Flynn family — consist- 
 ing of the dowager, with her two sons 
 and three daughters — shook the bog earth 
 of their native land from off their feet.
 
 1 68 A Lion among the Ladies. 
 
 and settled themselves permanently at 
 Champion Hill, 
 
 As the two well-bred cobs which drew 
 the Colonel's sociable dashed rapidly along 
 the country lanes towards their destina- 
 tion, they passed many carriages and 
 horsemen who were evidently, from the 
 gala dresses of the ladies, about to share 
 in the amusements which, according to 
 report, had been plentifully provided for 
 their entertainment at the Hill. Amongst 
 those — who trotted by, and raised their 
 hats to the ladies as they passed — was, on 
 his well -broken charger, Major Brereton. 
 Lady Gregorie would have given half 
 her diamonds — and they, by the way, 
 would have realised no unimportant sum — 
 could she have succeeded in looking, when 
 her enemy took the liberty of saluting 
 her, perfectly calm and unconcerned ; but
 
 Miss Vidal puts Herself Forward. 169 
 
 ) 
 she was no actress, and the flush which 
 
 mantled her cheeks was quickly succeeded 
 
 l^y so deadly a pallor that Sir Wilfred, 
 
 from his place in front of the two ladies, 
 
 saw and noticed the change. 
 
 " What is the matter, Flo ? You are 
 not ill, are you ? " he asked ; and felt not 
 a little relieved — for Lady Gregorie's 
 health was at that time giving some 
 €ause for uneasiness — when Miss Vidal, 
 €oming to the rescue, said, — 
 
 "It must be that dreadful tanyard. 
 Take my eau-de-Cologne, dear. Eeally 
 people who have such horrid-smelling 
 works should be obliged to keep them 
 at a distance from the highroad." 
 
 The explanation thus promptly given 
 appeared for the moment to satisfy Sir 
 Wilfred, but a turn in the road unfortun- 
 ately brought the Major again in view.
 
 170 A Lion among the Ladies, 
 
 and as on this occasion his bow was em- 
 phasised b}^ a somewhat familiar smirk, 
 the anger of his superior officer was 
 roused, and he said, with some heat, — 
 
 "What the devil does the fellow mean 
 by grinning like that ? I don't know 
 him except officially, and I don't intend 
 to. Perhaps, however," he, addressing Miss 
 Vidal, added more calmly, " the man may 
 be an acquaintance of yours, and, if so, 
 I beg your pardon for my involuntary 
 rudeness." 
 
 Finding herself thus appealed to, Em, 
 who for reasons of her own had secretly 
 favoured the notion of taking upon her- 
 self the part of Juliet which had been 
 originally played by her friend, blush - 
 ingly pleaded guilty to a portion at least 
 of the " soft impeachment." 
 
 '' Major Brereton," she said, "is an old
 
 ^ Miss Vidal puts Herself Forward. 1 7 1 
 
 friend of my father's ; but I never liked 
 him, and when I heard that an officer of 
 his name was gazetted to your Regiment, I 
 was in hopes — which, of course, was very 
 stupid of me — that he was not the man 
 I knew. I was more vexed than I can 
 tell you when I found he was the same, 
 for I felt sure that neither you nor Flo 
 would like him. There is no harm in 
 him, I believe — " 
 
 " I daresay not ; but you must excuse 
 me for saying that I do not think him 
 very well worth talking about," inter- 
 rupted Sir Wilfred, who was always 
 annoyed when Miss Vidal either spoke of, 
 or addressed his wife as "Flo." "I beg, 
 however, that you will not think it 
 necessary to ignore your old acquaint- 
 ance because you do not happen to be 
 at home. There is, as you say, no harm,.
 
 172 A Lion a mo Jig the Ladies. 
 
 doubtless, in Major Brereton ; and now, as 
 the Lodge gates of the Hill are in sight, 
 we will talk, if you please, of something 
 more agreeable." 
 
 *' I told you how it would be," said 
 Plorence, when the greetings which Lady 
 Indiscarra stood at the door to receive 
 were over, and she — Lady Gregorie — 
 could whisper a few confidential words 
 in her friend's ear. " Wilfred only half 
 believes your story, and he will now 
 be dreadfully on the watch. There will be 
 wheels within wheels. He will find from 
 Major Brereton that he never knew Mr 
 Vidal, and — oh ! why was it necessary to 
 enter into all those particulars ? " 
 
 " Because I was taken aback, and 
 thought of nothing but helping you. If 
 you could have seen your own face — so 
 wan, so haggard — you would not wonder
 
 Miss Vidal puts Herself Forward, 173 
 
 now that I was frightened at the thought 
 of what might happen next." 
 
 " Forgive me, dear, I was ungrateful 
 and unjust ; but the constant fear in 
 which I live is so terribly trying, that 
 sometimes I really hardly know what I 
 say or do." 
 
 " T know it. I can understand how 
 you are suffering, and I would do any- 
 thing in my power to put an end to 
 your worries. If you think it advisable, 
 dear, I will talk — confidentially, of course 
 — to the man, to-day. He is no fool, and 
 must be well aware that to compromise 
 you with Sir Wilfred would be the most 
 stupid thing that he could do. A case, 
 you know, of killing the goose — I mean, 
 of course, letting the cat out of the bag 
 — that lays the golden eggs." 
 
 " But what eggs ? 1 do not under-
 
 174 ^ Lion among the Ladies, 
 
 stand, and never shall, I suppose, what 
 his object in keeping those letters can 
 be." 
 
 " Probably nothing more — but that, you 
 may say, is bad enough — than to make 
 people fancy that he has a right to seem 
 familiar with you. However, I will try 
 and find out to-day what his motive is, 
 and when that is ascertained, we shall 
 know better how to act."
 
 CHAPTEE X. 
 
 PAST, BUT NOT FORGOTTEN. 
 
 )T is gratifying to think, Miss 
 Vidal, that you do not in- 
 tend keeping me at arms' 
 length, as her ladyship seems disposed 
 to do. She refused just now to be in- 
 troduced to me. I saw the whole thing 
 from behind a liolly bush near which 
 she was standing. That nice boy Indis- 
 carra offered to present me to her. I 
 didn't say a word about having known 
 her before, and she owes me one, I 
 think, for that. Well, what do you 
 think happened ? "
 
 176 A Lion among the Ladies. 
 
 " I can't guess, but I am sure that 
 she did not mean to be disagreeahle." 
 
 "Not mean — I like that, when she- 
 turned away as proud as a queen, and 
 tohi him point blank that she did not 
 wish to know any more of the officers." 
 
 " I think you must have misunderstood 
 her," Em says deprecatingly. *' Lady Gre- 
 gorie is the last person in the world 
 to give herself airs." 
 
 "Lady Gregorie ! " repeats the Major 
 bitterly. "And it used to be Flo and 
 Louis ! " 
 
 " But that was long ago, you know,, 
 and when a girl is married, things are 
 so different." 
 
 "Yes, when the husband is present; 
 but at other times, I don't see why she 
 should not be Flo again to me. I was 
 very fond of her, you know."
 
 J> 
 
 Past, did 7iot Forgotten. 177 
 
 " I daresay, and you have had time to 
 get fond of twenty girls since then," said 
 Em, who was beginning to be disgusted 
 with the man's impertinence and folly. 
 "But the truth is, that my friend is so 
 worried and annoyed, owing to her own 
 silly imprudence in not having told Sir 
 Wilfred of your previous acquaintance — " 
 
 '' Acquaintance indeed I It was some- 
 thing more than that, I reckon." 
 
 "Very little, if anything. I was, if 
 you remember, present whenever you met, 
 and," she added, laughing, "if you call 
 your interviews with Florence courting, all 
 I can say is that I do not." 
 
 *'What do you say to the letters? 
 They, at least, are something more than 
 mere civility notes." 
 
 " I suppose they are. Girls of sixteen 
 are tolerably certain, when they do write, 
 
 VOL. I. M
 
 178 A Lion among the Ladies. 
 
 to write nonsense. You have destroyed 
 them, I suppose, long ago ? " 
 
 " Indeed I have not. They are pre- 
 cious to me as the apple of my eye. 
 But for them, it would seem like a 
 dream that Florence ever loved me." 
 
 "Well you had better think of it as 
 a dream, and give them up. Lady Gre- 
 gorie has already, as you know, asked for 
 them in vain ; and now I ask you if 
 you think it is quite honourable and — 
 and gentlemanlike to keep them against 
 her wish ? It is, I warn you, a danger- 
 ous thing to do, for Lady Gregorie is 
 a very impulsive person, and if she frets 
 much longer over this business, I should 
 not be surprised if she were to tell the 
 whole story to Sir Wilfred. You had 
 better, therefore, follow my advice, and 
 keep the stupid affair quiet."
 
 J> 
 
 Past^ but not Forgotten. 179 
 
 The walk in which these two former 
 acquaintances are holding this secret con- 
 fabulation runs parallel with a thick yew 
 hedge. It — the walk, id est — is carpeted 
 with closely-mown turf, and from it there 
 is a slope to a narrow but swiftly run- 
 ning river in which small brown trout 
 abound, and across which a pretty rustic 
 bridge has, long years before, been 
 thrown. Over the rail of this bridge k)ng 
 ivy tendrils hang, and dwarf ferns have 
 sown themselves plentifully in the inter- 
 stices of the stone work. At intervals 
 along the walk, snug recesses have been 
 clipped, and in each of those recesses 
 there has been placed a seat. Into one 
 of these the Major and his companion, 
 at this juncture in their conversation, 
 place themselves, and he, after a few 
 minutes given to thought, says, —
 
 i8o A Lion among the Ladies. 
 
 "You, or rather Lady Gregorie, should 
 have the letters at once, if it were in 
 my power to let her have them, but un- 
 fortunately they a.re no longer in my 
 hands — " 
 
 ** Impossible I I cannot believe it ! " 
 exclaims Miss Vidal excitedly. " For your 
 own sake, if not for hers, I feel sure that 
 you would not allow another person to 
 have possession of those thoughtlessly- 
 written effusions." 
 
 " It is by a mere accident," he rejoins, 
 '^that I no longer have them. They got 
 mixed up — owing to my abominable care- 
 lessness—with some other papers which 
 were consigned for safe keeping to my 
 solicitor. Unfortunately he — the lawyer — 
 is, like too many of his trade, a man 
 without any sense of honour. He has 
 lately sent me in a bill of costs which is
 
 Past, but not Forgotten. i8i 
 
 too shamefully exorbitant for me even to 
 dream of paying it ; and because I refuse 
 to do so, lie has kept my papers — a not 
 uncommon dodge with rascals of his de- 
 scription — until such time as I — a very 
 unlikely thing to happen — pay him his 
 nefarious demand." 
 
 During the delivery of this speech, 
 Major Brereton kept his eyes fixed upon 
 the ground. He held his walking-cane 
 between his knees, and with it was mak- 
 ing sundry digs at the daisies which were 
 cropping up on the turf in front of him. 
 The man was not entirely dead to self- 
 respect, and if he had caught sight of 
 the expression — that of scornful unbelief 
 — which curled his companion's lip, me- 
 thinks that the fact of being " found 
 out " would have awakened even his 
 hardened conscience to reojret.
 
 1 82 A Lion among the Ladies. 
 
 There is, to my mind, no more con- 
 vincing proof of the moral superiority, in 
 some respects, of women to men, than the 
 fact that the former feel more surprised 
 and shocked at the lapses from honour of 
 the stronger sex than is, as a rule, the case 
 with men when weaker vessels prove them- 
 selves capable of disloyal acts. Emily Vidal 
 was no ingenue. She had heard from her 
 childhood instances of the " dodges " of 
 which men are capable who are either in 
 what are called difficulties, or who are 
 bent, at all costs, on enriching them- 
 selves ; and she had long ere this gauged 
 the extent of chicanery of which Major 
 Brereton, in the furtherance of his own 
 ends, was capable. As regarded the "ras- 
 cally lawyer," whose name was not per- 
 mitted to transpire, Em shrewdly sus- 
 pected that he existed solely in the
 
 Past, but not Fo7^gotten. 183 
 
 Major's imagination. Tlie man was pro- 
 bably in want of money, and not being 
 able to screw his courage to the sticking- 
 point of demanding payment on his own 
 account, he summoned from the depths of 
 his fancy a stalking-horse, on the shoul- 
 ders of which he had saddled his treacher- 
 ous and unmanly scheme. Miss Vidal's 
 anger at the ruse was so great that she 
 made no attempt to conceal from him the 
 fact that he was unmasked. 
 
 " From what you have just said," she 
 remarked calmly, " I gather that a sum of 
 money paid to you by Lady Gregorie would 
 ensure the delivering up of her letters." 
 
 " You are mistaken," he answered 
 calmly. '' I repeat again, that nothing 
 would give me greater pleasure than to 
 comply with your friend's request, but 
 unhappily the power to do so does not
 
 1 84 A Lion among the Ladies. 
 
 lie with me. This villain of a lawyer 
 has got me under his thumb, and under 
 it I expect that he will keep me." 
 
 "But," said Miss Yidal, after a pause, 
 during which she looked carefully to the 
 right hand and the left, in order to as- 
 certain that no one was within earshot, 
 " supposing that Lady Gregorie should 
 be inclined to give money for the papers 
 which you withhold, what is the price 
 that would be demanded ? " 
 
 *'AVell," mused the Major, "I am afraid 
 that less than four hundred pounds would 
 not , induce my rascal to loose his hold 
 over me.- You see the bill of costs 
 has been running on for years, and if 
 one only writes half-a-dozen words to 
 an attorney, there is six-and-eightpence 
 gone at once." 
 
 **The sum is certainly a large one,"
 
 Past, bttt not Forgotten. 185 
 
 said Em, *' and one which I am afraid that 
 Lady Gregorie would not find it easy to 
 pay. Perhaps, however, if you will tell 
 me the lawyer's name, I may come to 
 better terms with him." 
 
 "Not likely, I am afraid. However, 
 I will send you his name and address, and 
 you can make what you can of him." 
 
 " In the meantime," Emily, rising huf 
 riedly from her seat, said, " I must ask 
 you to refrain from doing anything which 
 could possibly annoy or compromise Lady 
 Gregorie. Sir Wilfred" (and here a blush 
 of genuine shame sufi'used her cheeks), 
 " has been led to believe that I, and not 
 his wife, was the object of attraction to you, 
 at Bruges. The deception has not been, as 
 you may suppose, an agreeable one for me." 
 
 " Nor for me either, by Jove ! " the 
 Major, with a coarse laugh, broke in ;
 
 1 86 A Lion a7nonor the Ladies. 
 
 " and the Colonel must be a greater duffer 
 than I took him to be, to believe any- 
 thing so improbable. However," he con- 
 tinued, as he sauntered side by side with 
 his companion towards a less - secluded 
 portion of the grounds, " I pledge my- 
 self, remember, to nothing, excepting the 
 sending back of the letters." 
 
 '• Under cover to me — " 
 
 " Exactly, under cover to you," he, 
 looking searchingly into the girl's eyes, 
 repeated ; " and now had we not better 
 return to the festive scene ? Even in 
 our character of happily re-united lovers, 
 we have, already, I think, indulged in 
 almost too long a Ute-a-tete.'" 
 
 Thanks to Lady Gregorie's popularity, 
 as well as to her own ingenious devices, 
 she contrived, during the continuance of 
 the garden-party, to effectually avoid
 
 Past, but not Forgotten. 187 
 
 any compromising conversation with her 
 enemy. She had noted, with an anxi- 
 ous heart, the lengthened dialogue which 
 between him and Emily Vidal had taken 
 place ; and had persuaded the Colonel — 
 who, indeed, was nothing loth — to leave 
 the scene of gaiety earlier than the ma- 
 jority of the visitors to the " Hill," her 
 object in doing so being to ascertain 
 from her friend the result of her tete- 
 d-tete with Major Brereton. 
 
 " Well, dear, what have you got to tell 
 me ? " the harassed woman says anxiously, 
 when in her friend's dressing-room the 
 two at length find themselves alone. 
 
 " Not much, I fear, that you will 
 think satisfactory," replied Em, as she 
 removed her hat, and leant back luxuri- 
 ously in a low arm-chair ; whilst Flor-
 
 i88 A Lion among the Ladies. 
 
 ence, who was tired and ill at ease, " lay- 
 down in her loveliness " on the pretty 
 chintz-covered sofa that stood at the foot 
 of Emily's virgin couch ; " and now," the 
 skilful diplomatist said, '' I will give you 
 a true and correct account — as far as I can 
 remember what passed — of my mission." 
 
 The tale did not take long in the 
 telling thereof, and when the climax 
 was reached, Lady Gregorie, clasping her 
 hands in dismay, ejaculated, — 
 
 '* But this money ! oh, whence am I 
 to procure it ? I would give it gladly 
 if I had it, but now I see no hope of 
 escape from the tormentor's toils." 
 
 " And if you could, I confess that I 
 should hate to see you pay all that 
 money to a villain," said Em. '' Still, " 
 after a pause, " perhaps anything would 
 be better than fretting yourself ill."
 
 Past, but not Forgotten. 189 
 
 *' But when there is no alternative, 
 what is the use, dear, of thinking which 
 way is the best or worst ? I can no 
 more give Major Brereton four hundred 
 pounds than I can four thousand." 
 
 " Excepting by — but no, I will not say 
 what I was going to ; you would think 
 the idea too wild — too impossible." 
 
 " Whilst, on the contrary, I may consid'^r 
 it very tame and feasible," smiled Florence. 
 *' At anyrate, tell me what the idea is, and 
 let me decide upon its merits myself." 
 
 " Well you must not scold me if I am 
 wrong, but I think I have heard you talk 
 of certain diamonds which, because they 
 are set in an old-fashioned way, you never 
 wear. Now, could you not — as it is such 
 an object with you to get back your 
 letters — raise some money on the jewels ? " 
 
 " Without really parting with them ?
 
 190 A Lion among the Ladies. 
 
 Oh, if I only could ! I believe that they 
 are worth much more than four hundred 
 pounds ; and if you could inquire for me at 
 Salters' what he would give me for them, 
 it would be so good of you. Of course, my 
 name must not appear — that would be too 
 fatal ; but he does not know you by sight." 
 '' He might therefore think that I had 
 stolen them," laughed Em. " But I will 
 — if you really wish it — run the risk. As 
 you say, anything, perhaps, is better 
 than living on thorns in this way. K\j 
 anyrate, too, asking Salters the question 
 can do no harm. I should like to see 
 the diamonds ; and if we were to brighten 
 them up a little, the jeweller might be 
 inclined to give more. But to be 
 obliged in the end, perhaps, to sell them, 
 and for such a wretch too ! for I really 
 do believe him capable of anything."
 
 Past, but not Forgotten. 191 
 
 Perhaps if Lady Gregorie had been 
 possessed of the same mania for precious 
 stones which impels so many women to 
 sacrifice their name and fame to the ac- 
 quirement of brilliant gauds wherewith 
 to adorn their persons, she would not so 
 readily have given in to the notion which 
 her friend had mooted ; but she did not 
 happen to be one of those weak specimens 
 of her sex whose happiness can either be 
 increased or lessened by the consciousness 
 of being envied. The diamonds of which 
 she had spoken to Emily Vidal, had lain 
 unnoticed in her jewel-case for years. 
 The setting was rococo, and the sum re- 
 quired for re-setting them would, she felt, 
 be more profitably spent in other ways, 
 and therefore it was that with a light 
 heart she ran to her room for the faded 
 leather cases in which reposed on their
 
 192 A Lio7i among the Ladies. 
 
 yellowed white satin beds her little-prized 
 trinkets. 
 
 They were pronounced — and justly so — 
 by the spectatress to be " splendid 1 " and 
 then the rubbing of them up, by the aid 
 of rouge powder, commenced. It was 
 agreed between the conspirators that 
 during their drive on the following day, 
 Emily — with a case containing an ex- 
 quisite riviere of brilliants, and a smaller 
 one, in which a sparkling pendant with a 
 large diamond in the centre reposed 
 safely in her velvet handbag, should 
 leave the carriage and proceed on 
 foot to the jeweller's shop. No word 
 regarding the possible purchase on his 
 part of the property was to be said to 
 him, his appraisement thereof being all 
 that he was called upon to give. Mr 
 Salter after a careful examination of the
 
 Past, but not Forgotten. 193 
 
 gems, pronounced the value of the riviere 
 to be four hundred and ten pounds, and 
 that of the pendant one hundred and 
 eighty pounds. They were stones of the 
 first water, he said, and hardly to be 
 surpassed in beauty and value. 
 
 Whilst the jeweller still held in his 
 hand the diamond riviere, the demon of 
 acquisitiveness entered into Emily Yidal's 
 breast ! For a few moments she did battle 
 against the foe, but he was too strong for 
 her, and by the time she reached the car- 
 riage, his victory was no longer doubtful. 
 
 " What luck ! " she almost hysterically 
 exclaimed, as she threw the cases into 
 Lady Gregorie's lap. "Mr Salter says that 
 the value of the vv^hole is fully four thou- 
 sand pounds, and that the stones would 
 fetch that sum in the market any day." 
 
 VOL. I. N
 
 CHAPTEE XT. 
 
 THE ADJUTANT FALLS IN LOVE. 
 
 IF there be truth in the saying 
 thac in every inhabited house 
 there lurks a skeleton, with 
 equal veracity may it be said that in 
 every household there will be found 
 materials — slight or plentiful as the case 
 may be— for a romance. Within a radius 
 of a mile from Broadmere Barracks there 
 w^ere located three households, in each of 
 which there existed elements of mischief 
 which were capable, under circumstances 
 easily to be imagined, of being worked
 
 The Adjutant falls in Love. 195 
 
 up into a " story." At the Shanty, 
 within whose walls Mrs Durant had been 
 slowly recovering from the attack of 
 brain fever which had laid her low, 
 Eowley Elphinstone's visits of inquiry 
 after the invalid, had, he hoped, not 
 been so frequent as to give occasion 
 amongst the gossips for remark. Owing 
 to the combined facts that he was popu- 
 larly supposed to be rich enough to 
 marry, and also that Nature as well as 
 Fortune had been generous to him, Cap- 
 tain Elphinstone had, from the time when 
 he first, as a beardless second lieutenant, 
 joined the Chalkshire Eifle corps, found 
 himself rather a marked man amongst 
 the many pleasant-mannered and good- 
 looking young fellows w^ho like himself 
 wore the dark-green uniform of the 
 "sharp-shooters." He had, in point of
 
 196 A Li 071 among the Ladies, 
 
 fact — being rather heavily handicapped 
 not only with "filthy lucre," but with 
 relations o^alore whose titles fio^ured 
 in Debrett — suffered not a little from 
 the kindly-meant attentions of anxious 
 mothers, and girls on the look-out — poor 
 things — for an establishment. It is not 
 every day — as my readers will, I think, be 
 ready to admit — that a young officer, good- 
 looking, pleasant-mannered, and withal 
 wealthy to the tune of three thousand 
 pounds per annum, sheds his beams, like 
 those of a veritable Prince Charming, on 
 the middle-class society of a country 
 town ; but when he does so, the effect is 
 naturally electrical. All things considered, 
 Eowley Elphinstone was a prize which, in 
 order to obtain, not a few young women 
 had not shrunk from making some sacri- 
 fices of self-respect to obtain, — sacrifices
 
 The Adjutant falls in Love. 197 
 
 which, he — his nature being a chival- 
 rous one, and his respect for the fair sex 
 great — regretted to find them capable of 
 organising. The " chaff " — as regarded 
 his successes — which from some of his 
 brother-officers he was doomed to under- 
 go, offended rather than gratified him ; in- 
 deed owing, as he believed he did, the said 
 successes to his wealth alone, any allu- 
 sions to them became, after a short time, 
 positively distasteful to his feelings. 
 
 "I wish to Heaven," he said, one day 
 after mess, to Lieutenant Cardew, a 
 young gentleman who, being the son of 
 a poor clergyman, did not come in for 
 many of the sweet looks which were 
 lavished on his superior officer, "that you 
 would find something besides girls to 
 talk about. It's always the same thing 
 with you fellows. ' Maria ' has given you
 
 1 98 A Lion among the Ladies. 
 
 a flower, or ' Gertrude ' has allowed you 
 to keep her boot-lace — " 
 
 But here a roar of laughter interrupted 
 hiro. 
 
 "As if girls used boot-laces !" exclaimed 
 several voices at once ; whilst one young- 
 ster, who was apparently given to taking a 
 more practical view of the subject in ques- 
 tion than the rest, ventured to suggest but- 
 tons as the medium by which young ladies' 
 boots were made fast above their insteps. 
 
 " Silvertop " {alias Dicky Dollars) " has 
 one, I know," said the boy. " A round 
 black thing, and he is thinking — at least 
 so he told me once — of having it set as 
 a tie pin, don't you know ? " 
 
 '' Bosh ! " exclaimed the blushing victim 
 of this cruel slander. " I never showed 
 3'ou anything of the kind. If I were 
 Elphinstone now — "
 
 The Adjutant falls iit Love. 199 
 
 " Oh, by Jove ! stop that," Eowley 
 was beginning, but Dicky proved for 
 the moment absolutely irrepressible. His 
 father. Lord Silvertop, had made — at least 
 so it was popularly supposed — his " pile " 
 during the i\.merican war. Many a busi- 
 ness man, clever in the contracting line, 
 had been enabled to turn not a few 
 " almighty dollars " — honest or dishonest 
 according to circumstances — in the fight, 
 so-called, for freedom ; but although his 
 lordship was known to be wealthy, and 
 Dicky was an only son, yet Nature 
 having bestowed on him one of those 
 chubby, roseate countenances which are 
 apt to recall to the mind of a looker-on 
 images of prize babies, and of calves 
 ready fatted for a prodigal's return, 
 romantic sensations in his regard were 
 apt, even in the breasts of the most
 
 200 A Lion amonz the Ladies. 
 
 designing of the sex, to be nipped in the 
 bud. In addition to this misfortune — for 
 as a misfortune poor Dicky's rubicund 
 face might fairly be considered — it was 
 his fate to be always more or less in 
 love, and it was therefore with an air of 
 genuine feeling that he said to Eowley, — 
 
 " Upon my soul and honour, old man, 
 I'd give — No, on second thoughts, I 
 don't know what I wouldn't give, if tlie 
 girls would only make love to me for 
 one half-hour as they do to you." 
 
 '* Nonsense! Man alive, it isn't the 
 girls, poor things, but their mothers ; and 
 I, for one,- don't blame them. They know 
 that when paterfamilias goes to kingdom 
 come, his unmarried daughters will pro- 
 bably have little enough to keep body 
 and soul together on, and so — " 
 
 " They spend their time in angling for
 
 The Adjutant falls in Love. 201 
 
 husbands for them ! And they set to work 
 too, in such a barefaced way ! I verily 
 believe that if you, Elphinstone, simple 
 as you sit there, were to give out that 
 you preferred walking on your head, half 
 the mothers in Broadmere would declare 
 that their daughters had a strong objec- 
 tion to progressing in any other way." 
 
 " I tell you what it is," put in Guy 
 Leycester lazily (he was leaning his six feet 
 two inches of handsome manhood ag;ainst 
 the wall, and taking occasional pulls at as 
 good a cigar as could be obtained for 
 "love " — id est, on tick, by one of the most 
 inveterate smokers in the British army), 
 " I consider it a do and a sell, for a fellow 
 — say like you, Dicky, with no end of tin, 
 to come into a regiment like ours. Why 
 we haven't a chance. You dwarf us all." 
 
 But here another roar of laughter broke
 
 202 A Lion among the Ladies, 
 
 in upon the speaker's remonstrance. They 
 were "tickled by a straw," those foolish 
 young fellows, and the comparison as re- 
 garded height between Leycester and the 
 somewhat stumpy form of his brother- 
 officer, struck them as a superior stroke 
 of wit. In the midst of the cachination, 
 Elphin stone made his escape, unnoticed, 
 from the room. He had, in fact, an ap- 
 pointment to keep, and not for the sake 
 of a whole " rosebud garden of girls " 
 would he have failed in his troth. It 
 was to an afternoon tea that he was 
 bound, and taking into consideration the 
 circumstance that Kowley's distaste for 
 that institution had almost passed into a 
 proverb, it was only an act of common 
 prudence on his part to abstain from 
 divulging the reason of his abrupt depart- 
 ure. He felt less than no call to ex-
 
 The Adjutant falls in Love. 203 
 
 plain, even to his friend Griiy, that, just 
 as '^ one star differs from another sun in 
 glory," so, making due allowance for 
 difference of dimensions, may one early 
 tea-party stand aloof from others in in- 
 terest and attraction. It was a very 
 small affair, that reunion which Rowley 
 
 Elphin stone would not, for any reward 
 
 • 
 which could be offered to him, have failed 
 
 to assist at. He himself was the only 
 invited guest, the giver of the entertain- 
 ment being no other than Helen Durant. 
 The occasion of the festivity was the 
 anticipated meeting — the first since the 
 poor lady's illness — of Rowley and Mrs 
 Durant. Helen had begged hard that 
 Alf might be allowed to make one of the 
 little party, but her mother had deemed 
 it prudent to refuse. 
 
 " The poor boy feels so dreadfully dis-
 
 204 A Lion among the Ladies. 
 
 graced," she said ; " and Captain Elphin- 
 stone may not see his shamefacedness in 
 the same light that we do. His being 
 under such deep obligations to our friend, 
 will naturally make him feel shyer than 
 ever ; and although you and I, darling, 
 see nothing in our boy's tears to be 
 ashamed of, yet he himself, poor fellow, 
 would, I know, be ready to sink into the 
 earth if he found that, whilst thanking 
 Captain Elphinstone for his kindness, it 
 was impossible to drive them back." 
 
 " Perhaps you are right, dear mother," 
 Helen, after a few more minutes' thought, 
 rejoined. . "At the same time, I feel 
 sure tha,t Captain Elphinstone would 
 never judge anyone — especially a fellow- 
 creature who is down — either unjustly or 
 uncharitably. And now, darling mother, 
 you must rest quietly till Captain Elphin-
 
 The Adjutant falls in Love. 205 
 
 stone comes ; and, above all things, let us 
 beware of thanking him too much. You 
 see, he has not yet made absolutely sure 
 of obtaining the post in Canada which he 
 hopes to succeed in getting for Alf, and 
 if it should end in nothing, he will be 
 the more vexed at having raised our ex- 
 pectations in vain. I do not mean the 
 interview to be a long one," Helen, gts 
 she carefully arranged the white Shet- 
 land shawl upon the invalid's shoulders, 
 added. '' You must not tire yourself just 
 when you are getting better. Ah ! there 
 is a ring at the bell. Now, mother dear, 
 you must try to think that you have 
 known Captain Elphinstone a long, long 
 time ; " and in truth, when the tall soldier 
 in undress uniform entered the pretty 
 drawing-room of the Shanty, the girl's 
 manner to him was — without being either
 
 2o6 A Lion among the Ladies. 
 
 gushing or forward — almost like that of 
 an old friend. But for the pretty blush, 
 indeed, which rose suddenly to her 
 cheeks, Captain Elphinstone might have 
 been justified in thinking that she felt 
 for him only as a sister. 
 
 " I have been telling mother," Miss 
 Durant, when the introduction was over, 
 said, "that she is not to talk, but to 
 listen. I have promised her that w^e 
 will make ourselves very pleasant — " 
 
 ''AVas not that rather a rash vow on 
 your part % " interrupted Eowley, with a 
 laush. " I can answer for one of the 
 two succeeding in the task, but as for 
 the other, it will, I fear, be but a lame 
 attempt after all. However, I am happy 
 to say, that in default of being either 
 playful or jocose, I have brought your 
 brother's appointment to the post he
 
 The Adjutant falls in Love. 207 
 
 covets, in my hand. I am afraid he will 
 find the climate rather trying — " he was 
 continuing, but an expressive glance from 
 Helens large blue eyes warned him that 
 he was treading on dangerous ground. 
 "It is a thousand times better, of course," 
 he, taking warning by the look, went 
 on, " than the tropics, or anywhere near 
 them, and I have known young fellows 
 to have far better health in that part of 
 Canada than they had at home. In the 
 first place, there is little or no wind — " 
 
 "Which is a great advantage," Mrs 
 Durant, plucking up courage, said. " But, 
 whether my boy likes the climate or 
 not, we cannot be too grateful to you 
 for your kind and generous help. Nellie 
 said," she continued, looking tenderly up 
 at the tall girl who was hanging over her 
 chair, '*that I was not to thank you — "
 
 2o8 A Lion ajnong the Ladies. 
 
 '' Oh, mother," remonstrated the girl, 
 " I only warned you not to say too 
 much, because disappointment and regret 
 are so hard to bear ; but we do thank 
 you now with all our hearts, and I hope 
 that Alfred—" 
 
 "Oh, when he leads a wholesome out- 
 of-door life, away from bad examples, I 
 haven't a doubt of his doing well. I 
 need not ask you if he can ride, for 
 I never saw a spirited English lad who 
 couldn't; and, besides, we had experience 
 of his powers that way on one occasion. 
 A dealer brought a vicious brute one day 
 to the Barracks, in hopes of selling him. 
 There was no mistaking the animal's 
 character. He showed the whites of his 
 eyes — " 
 
 "And put back his ears, I suppose — 
 just as Silverface used to do, don't you
 
 The Adjutant falls in Love. 209 
 
 remember, Nellie ? in poor papa's time. 
 But Alfred never was afraid of riding 
 him. I used to be dreadfully frightened, 
 but he always came back safe." 
 
 "As he did when he rode the dealer's 
 nag, which other fellows were afraid to 
 mount. He'll make a capital mounted 
 police officer," continued Eowley encour- 
 agingly — for there were tears in the 
 widow's eyes, and he lived in mortal 
 dread of a breakdown — '^ and I have one 
 or two old friends out there who will 
 help him to keep straight." 
 
 " We shall miss the luxuries of this 
 delightful house," Helen, being anxious 
 to give an enlivening turn to the conver- 
 sation, said. "In a few days I hope that 
 my mother will be well enough to move 
 to the hotel—" 
 
 "I hope so, but not to the Dragon, 
 
 VOL. I. O
 
 2 10 A Lion amo7ig the Ladies. 
 
 surely," interposed Eowley. " The landlady 
 is a capital woman, but the place is too 
 noisy — too rowdy altogether. Now the 
 Eoyal Hotel — the one which is at a 
 stone's throw of the Colonel's house — would 
 suit Mrs Durant a thousand times better." 
 
 *'It is quieter, I have no doubt," 
 Helen said seriously, " but I am afraid — 
 well, that the expense would be beyond 
 our means. It is a horrid thing to talk 
 of money, and always makes mother ill, 
 but it is better, I think, to tell the truth. 
 The Koyal Hotel looks very comfortable 
 and nice, but we have lived too long already 
 at other people's expense, and till my 
 uncle, who is mother s trustee, comes from 
 abroad, w^e must, I fear, remain insolvent." 
 
 She strove her utmost to speak lightly, 
 and as though the burden of obligation 
 were not lying heavily on her girlish
 
 The Adjutant falls in Love. 211 
 
 breast, but Elphinstone saw tbat it was 
 only through a brave effort that her 
 tears were kept from falling, and he 
 longed — as only a strong man who has 
 never wasted his heart's best affections 
 on frivolous and unworthy objects can 
 long — to kiss away the rising tears, and 
 bid her, within the shelter of his loving 
 arms, forget the sordid, romance-destroy- 
 ing cares of life. She was, he felt, so true, 
 — so free from guile, — so guiltless of any 
 scheming or self-seeking thought; and 
 then, although she was not, strictly 
 speaking, beautiful — 
 
 " He felt that she was more, 
 One of those women, women dread, 
 Men fatally adore." 
 
 For a few passing moments his heart 
 bounded with unwonted quickness within 
 his breast ; then, remembering the caution
 
 2 12 A Lion among the Ladies. 
 
 whispered to him by Helen — to refrain, in 
 her mother's presence, from agitating topics, 
 he said, with well-assumed composure, — 
 
 *' If you would not think me officious, 
 I would inquire the price at the Eoyal 
 for bed and board for two ladies, who 
 probably do not consume more food than 
 sparrows. I daresay the difference between 
 the charges there, and those at the other 
 hotels, is not very great. I have generally 
 found them pretty much the same all 
 over the world. The o^ood old ' Dragoon ' is 
 not, of course, without its faults, but as 
 the Denhams are coming home so soon — " 
 
 " It seems ungracious to say so," inter- 
 rupted Helen, with a sigh, " especially after 
 having been so very comfortable, and Cap- 
 tain Leycester having been so kind, but I 
 almost wish that we had never come here." 
 
 For a second or two he looked into
 
 The Adjutant falls in Love. 213 
 
 her soft eyes searchingly. Could it be 
 that the breath of scandal had tainted 
 her pure ears with whispers of the truth, 
 and that she, with an unblushing front 
 (although a pang in that Guy Leicester's 
 name had not escaped slander had wrung 
 her heart), had alluded to this by many 
 suspected liaison. The doubt — momentary 
 as the lightning's flash — needed but otie 
 mute query of the honest eyes, to be set 
 at rest, and Eowley felt ashamed of the 
 suspicion that the Una who stood before 
 him in her virgin purity had either 
 heard the rumour which coupled Guy 
 Leycester's name with that of Mr Den- 
 ham's wife, or, having heard, had under- 
 stood it. He had fallen — whilst thinking 
 of his access of stupidity — into a brief 
 reverie, from which he was aroused by 
 hearing Helen say gently to her patient, —
 
 2 14 ^ Lion amo7ig the Ladies, 
 
 "Mother, dear, you must not mind if I 
 treat you like a baby and carry you off 
 now. It is not difficult to keep this sick 
 mother of mine in order," she said, with 
 a smile, to Eowley. "When she is well 
 cest autre chose,'' she added, as the 
 frail but still pretty little woman clung 
 confidingly to the strong arm of her 
 stately daughter, and together the pair 
 moved slowly towards the door, which 
 Captain Elphinstone held open for their 
 egress. " Don't go quite directly," the 
 younger woman, as they passed their 
 visitor, said simply ; "I will come back 
 when my -mother is on her sofa again." 
 
 *'Pray do," rejoined Elphinstone; "and 
 I hope you will be able to tell me that 
 Mrs Durant is not likely to suffer from 
 her exertions."
 
 CHAP TEE XI I. 
 
 OUT OF EVIL GOOD MAY SPEING. 
 
 TEUST that the effort which 
 Mrs Durant has just made, 
 has done her no harm ? " 
 Captain Elphinstone, standing, English- 
 man like, with his back to the fireless 
 grate, asks of Helen on her return. 
 
 " No, indeed. On the contrary, I 
 think that seeing you has done her 
 good," the girl replies. " She cried a 
 little, and the tears relieved her. I often 
 wish that I had inherited the power of 
 weeping. Tears seem in some sort to 
 wash a dry grief away."
 
 2i6 A Lion among the Ladies, 
 
 '' They may seem to, but they do not 
 really soften sorrow," Elphinstone rejoins. 
 " My dear Miss Durant, you should not wish 
 for tears. To indulge in grief, as people call 
 it, is a mistake, and one which no one who 
 had ever really felt it, would be liable to 
 fall into. Life at your age should be all 
 sunshine, and if — may I go on ? I have 
 been longing, watching for an opportunity 
 of asking you one question, but I have 
 seen no sis^n — no look of encouragement." 
 
 And here the strong man, standing 
 with his hands in his trousers' pockets, 
 and with no betraying evidence of emo- 
 tion in his stern, handsome face, fairly 
 breaks down, and waits — with an inward 
 agitation which would have better become 
 a no vice' — for the reply of the blushing 
 girl beside him. She finds it hard to 
 speak, hard to find a fitting answer to
 
 Out of Evil Good 7nay spring. 217 
 
 words so ambiguous as those which have 
 been just addressed to her. She had 
 never thought of Kowley Elphinstone as 
 of a possible admirer ; and although she 
 could not be ignorant of the fact that 
 Nature had noX, —quoad personal advan- 
 tages — treated her in a niggardly fashion, 
 no man had as yet shown signs of covet- 
 ing her for his own. And yet for all th*at 
 so it is, her female instinct tells her that 
 the question of which Captain Elphin- 
 stone has made mention, is one which 
 involves the happiness or otherwise of her 
 whole future life, and this being the 
 case, and understanding also that her 
 reply must be waited for by her com- 
 panion with some sensations of anxiety, she 
 summons courage to say, in a tone that is 
 half-playful and half-redolent of shyness, — 
 " What have I ever done or said to
 
 2i8 A Lion among the Ladies. 
 
 make a friend so kind as you are think 
 twice before asking me any question, 
 however unusual it may be ? " 
 
 Rowley's laugh at her reply causes 
 them both to feel more at ease, so much 
 so indeed, that when the former, without 
 betraying any consciousness of manner, 
 suggests that the question on the ta/pis 
 may as well be settled in a sitting as 
 a standing position, Helen has nearly 
 recovered from the momentary confusion 
 into which she had been thrown. 
 
 " My question is quite an e very-day 
 one," the soldier, drawing his chair very 
 close to that of Helen, says. *' It is one 
 w^hich is asked, I should imagine, many 
 times in every day that passes, for it is 
 simply this — Will you be my wife ? " 
 
 The triteness of the language in which 
 this all-important query is put, together
 
 Out of Evil Good 7nay spring. 219 
 
 with the total absence of elaboration by 
 which the demand is characterised, adds 
 greatly to the startling effect on Helen 
 of the proposal itself. It is strange, 
 but the words had no sooner passed her 
 admirer's lips than the Bible text of 
 "Let your answer be yea or nay, for 
 whatsoever is more than this cometh of 
 evil," recur repeatedly to her mind. Th& 
 extreme curtness of the terms in which 
 the aspirant for her hand couched his 
 appeal, is probably the cause of the sin- 
 gular persistence wherewith the Scripture 
 words keep sounding in her ears. The 
 untiring repetition, added to the state 
 of agitation into which the demand has 
 in itself thrown her, has a bewildering 
 effect upon her brain : she, however, is 
 sufficiently herself to feel that in this 
 especial instance, the Biblical counsel
 
 2 20 A Lion among the Ladies. 
 
 must not be too literally followed. 
 Nevertheless her answer comes with dif- 
 ficulty, and is as follows. 
 
 " How can I answer you, Captain Elph- 
 iii stone ? I have known you so short a time, 
 and you have loaded us with obligations — " 
 
 "Ah 1 that is the devil — I beg you a 
 thousand pardons — I mean the evil of it. 
 You may think — and I, for one, cannot 
 blame you if you do — that I am presum- 
 ing on some trifling help — which it has 
 cost me nothing to give — in order to 
 bring forward some claim to your regard. 
 But you would be quite wrong." 
 
 "I am sure I should be," the girl says 
 eagerly, adding, almost with tears in her 
 large grey eyes, — "Oh, Captain Elphiustone, 
 how could you think so meanly of me ? " 
 
 " / think meanly of you ! Good 
 heavens ! I who know you to be the
 
 Out of Evil Good may spinng. 221 
 
 sweetest, — the most perfect of God's 
 creatures ! Dear Miss Durant, my fate 
 for life is in your hands. I am not so 
 idiotic as to try and make you believe 
 that I — a man who has passed his thir- 
 tieth year — have never fancied myself in 
 love before, but I can truly say that you 
 are the first of your sex to whom I 
 have given my heart, — the first, moreover, 
 whom I have wished to make my wife. 
 You have known me but a short time, 
 you say — and that is true, but you have 
 perhaps seen me often enough to guess, 
 at least, whether in time you might learn 
 to return my love. Tell me, can you 
 give me hope, or must I, like the lover 
 in the ballad, ' to the greenwood go — a 
 lone and banished man ' % " 
 
 He smiles as he quotes the words, and 
 Helen to whom the ballad of the "Nut-brown
 
 22 2 A Lion among the Ladies. 
 
 Maid " is familiar, blushes deeply as the re- 
 collection of its finale crosses her mind. 
 
 To add to her confusion, she remembers 
 that only a few days previously she and 
 Captain Elphinstone had talked together of 
 the famous old-world poem, and that they 
 had differed in opinion as regarded the 
 amount of wrong which it was advisable, 
 or indeed possible (when that wrong was in- 
 flicted by a lover) for a woman to submit to. 
 
 " I draw the line at jealousy," Elphin- 
 stone had said. " A girl who really and 
 truly loved, could never bear with equani- 
 mity to be told by her sweetheart that 
 he had found a maid fairer than ever she 
 was. No, no, the thing is out of nature, 
 and impossible to the last degree." 
 
 Helen clearly recollected how merrily she 
 had at the time laughed at his vehemence, 
 saying playfully, as she did so, —
 
 Out of Evil Good may spring. 223 
 " Ah ! we are talkino^ of what mig^ht 
 
 O CD 
 
 have happened more than three centuries 
 ago ; " and then, suddenly calling to mind 
 that the subject of conversation might 
 possibly be classed among those which 
 are popularly known as " delicate," she 
 had hastened to give it a less slippery 
 turn. The fact that the story of the 
 " Early " and his ladye-love ended — for 
 all the world like any modern three vol- 
 ume novel — in a marriage between the 
 respective parties, had not escaped Helen 
 Durant's memory ; and happening, as was 
 now the case with her, to lift for a moment 
 her dark lashes to her questioner's face, 
 it flashed across her brain — and that with 
 a force of conviction which almost took 
 away her breath — that existence for her, 
 were she never to see again the man whose 
 visits and whose kindly sympathy had
 
 224 A Lion among the Ladies. 
 
 during the last few weeks contributed so 
 greatly to her happiness and comfort, 
 would be well-nigh valueless. The change 
 which this sudden conviction wrought in 
 her countenance must have struck Eowley 
 as being of good omen, for his utterance 
 of the simple monosyllable *' Well ? " had 
 in it a ring of hopefulness. 
 
 "Well," the girl, with an effort to be 
 calm, repeats, " I would answer you at 
 once, only I would like first " — and she 
 stops, blushing painfully, for a pair of 
 dark questioning eyes are very near to 
 hers, and there is that even in the mus- 
 cular hand that is nervously twisting his 
 heavy moustache, which conveys to her 
 mind a sense of power which fascinates 
 whilst it well-nigh frightens her. 
 
 " What would you like first ? " he says 
 gently. "But do not — j^ray do not keep
 
 Out of Evil Good may spring. 225 
 
 me in suspense. I am a big fellow," he 
 adds, with a smile, " to look at, but you 
 have me in your power, and, as you are 
 Tnorally great, you must be merciful." 
 
 The softness of his words and manner 
 reassure her, and this time she succeeds 
 in giving utterance to the sentence which 
 she had commenced. 
 
 " I think," she said timidly, " that yo\i 
 should know me better before — before 
 you think so highly of me. In the first 
 place, I am not young. I should by this 
 time have gone through three, if not four, 
 seasons if I had been a London girl." 
 
 " Which, thank Heaven, you are not ! " 
 ejaculates Elphinstone fervently. But 
 Helen, without noticing the interruption, 
 continues, — " I am more than twenty-one 
 — two years older than Alfred, and I have 
 never been to school— never been taught 
 
 VOL. I. P
 
 2 26 A Lion among the Ladies. 
 
 anything, and you might find me very 
 stupid. Then there is poor Alf — " 
 
 " And what of him, poor lad ? He 
 has, as most of us have done, sown his 
 wild oats, but, unfortunately for him, the 
 work was not done prudently and by 
 stealth. He had the misfortune — and a 
 great one it is — to be found out : how- 
 ever, all that is done and over. He will, 
 I am sure, take warning by the past, 
 and refrain in future from any acts of 
 folly such as those which you have had 
 to deplore. With regard to the reasons 
 which you give why I should think 
 twice before undertaking the task of en- 
 treating you to be my wife, I can only 
 say that your reasons are all in favour 
 of my determination to, if possible, suc- 
 ceed. To begin with then, I share to the 
 full my sex's horror of a young ladies'
 
 Out of Evil Good may spring, 227 
 
 school. I have no weakness for highly- 
 educated girls, and I consider that if you 
 had been a year less in age than twenty- 
 one, you would have been too young for 
 me. In my opinion, ten years is exactly 
 the amount of difference in age which 
 ought to exist between husband and wife. 
 And now, having answered all your objec- 
 tions, I shall return to my question, and 
 ask you, not whether you will be my 
 wife, but whether you think that you 
 will ever learn to love me." 
 
 She held her breath hard for a moment, 
 and then looking up bravely into his hand- 
 some, determined face, she said quietly, — 
 
 '' I can — I know that I can ! I think 
 if I were never to see you again, that I 
 should break my heart." 
 
 Then he took her into his arms, and covered 
 her sweet blushing face with fervent kisses.
 
 2 28 A Lion among the Ladies. 
 
 " My darling," he said, as the girl 
 blushingly freed herself from his embrace, 
 " you must forgive me. It is so long 
 since I have touched a woman's lips with 
 mine ; and the taste is very sweet. You 
 do not know how I have hungered for 
 you. I longed to speak, yet dared not. 
 I feared that the very thought of love would 
 startle you into a refusal of my prayer ; 
 and now that in your angel's breast I 
 have discovered a warm and passionate 
 heart, I must endeavour not to frighten 
 you with the exuberance of my joy." 
 
 His arm is round her waist, for he has 
 thrown himself on the couch beside her, 
 and he is feasting his imagination on the 
 shy happiness which he fancies is trace- 
 able beneath her lowered lids, when she, 
 looking down upon the small hands that 
 are clasped upon her lap, says, —
 
 Out of Evil Good may spring. 229 
 
 " I cannot think what sudden impulse it 
 was that made me speak so boldly. I 
 ought, I suppose, to feel ashamed of my 
 behaviour just now. You would respect 
 me more, perhaps, if I had not said ' yes ' 
 so quickly." 
 
 " I doubt it, sweetest," he, pressing her 
 more closely to his heart, replies. "You 
 had looked long enough the beautiful 
 statue which I now know you are not ; 
 and do you think it gives me no happiness 
 to find that touch of mine has warmed 
 my Galatea into life ? But now," he said, 
 looking hurriedly at his watch, *'I must 
 leave, you darling, till to-morrow, for I 
 have an appointment which has to be 
 kept, with the Colonel. You must tell me 
 though, before I go, whether you think I 
 can speak to your mother to-morrow of 
 our engag^ement. She looks so weak and
 
 230 A Lion among the Ladies, 
 
 delicate, and I hardly know yet — she is 
 so different from some other mothers I 
 have known — whether our news will give 
 her joy or sorrow." 
 
 " I must prepare her gently," Helen 
 says, " for she is sadly nervous, to hear 
 that for the first time in my life I have 
 acted without asking her advice ; but she 
 likes you so much, and you have been so 
 good, that I feel sure she will forgive me — " 
 
 '* She must, for 1 shall love her like a 
 son ; " and having so said, the Adjutant 
 (his sweetheart the while looking on with 
 the pride of another Andromache at the 
 proceedings of her soldier lover) buckled 
 on the sword which on his entrance 
 he had deposited in a corner, and, after 
 a true lover's au revoir to his betrothed, 
 he went his way, the click-clack of his 
 spurs sounding, after he had closed the
 
 Out of Evil Good may spring. 231 
 
 door, like a pleasant omen in the ears of 
 the happy girl he had left behind him. 
 And if she in her glad surprise was 
 happy, how much the more reason had 
 Elphinstone, in that he had not only 
 found his ideal, but had secured to him- 
 self the prize, to rejoice over his success. 
 He had, during his frequent visits of in- 
 quiry at the Shanty, taken every oppor- 
 tunity of studying Helen's character and 
 disposition, and he had found in them no 
 flaw. The widow and her daughters had 
 lived for years in close and economical 
 retirement. Their acquaintances had been 
 few and harmless, whilst the girls had, 
 owing to the remoteness of their dwelling 
 from the haunts of men, been saved from 
 the contamination of sensational novel 
 reading. But there were other causes, 
 still more potent, according to Eowley's
 
 232 A Lion amo7ig the Ladies. 
 
 thinking, than these, for the self -con- 
 gratulation which filled his breast. His 
 Helen's form was exquisitely moulded — a 
 fact which her well-fitting dresses sufii- 
 ciently disclosed — and it gladdened her 
 lover's heart to think that the lovely 
 arms and perfect bust of his afiianced 
 wife had never yet, save when '' robed 
 and crowned with chastity," and draped 
 with womanly decorum, been gazed upon 
 by mortal man. The somewhat singular 
 manner in which Helen had received his 
 proposals had been also very satisfactory 
 to Eowley ; for he had found but little 
 trouble in convincing himself of what was 
 indeed the fact, namely, that, unguessed 
 at by the innocent girl herself, he had 
 been, since his first introduction, gradually 
 finding a resting-place in the deep re- 
 cesses of her heart.
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 THE MAJOR FEELS HIS WAY. 
 
 ELL, Flo, I am sorry to s^y 
 that you are in for being 
 on visiting terras with Major 
 Brereton. Collington has written, asking 
 me to be civil to him. He is some 
 distant connection, it appears, of Lady 
 
 C 's, so I have asked him to dinner 
 
 on Thursday. The party will be a large 
 one, so you need only just be civil to 
 him, and there will be an end of it." 
 
 " An end of it indeed ! " repeated Flor- 
 ence to herself, when Sir Wilfred, after
 
 234 ^ Lion among the Ladies, 
 
 giving his wife this unwelcome piece of 
 intelligence, left her to her own reflec- 
 tions. " Oh, how I wish there would be, 
 and that Wilfred was not so dreadfully 
 watchful and keen-sighted 1 Disliking the 
 man as he does, he will be all the 
 more on the qui vive, and ready to see 
 anything in the wretch's manner which 
 is calculated to give offence ; and oh"! 
 what shall I do if Brereton should 
 take it into his head to be impertinently 
 familiar ? " 
 
 Sir Wilfred Gregorie was a man of 
 small stature — his height scarcely reach- 
 ing to five feet nine inches — but he held 
 his well-poised head with such an aris- 
 tocratic air, his manner of speech was so 
 decided and incisive, and his eye — with 
 its look of keen penetration — seemed so 
 formed — like that of Jove — to " threaten
 
 The Major feels His Way. 235 
 
 and command," that no one ever dreamt 
 of making comparisons to his disadvan- 
 tage, between the Colonel and any one 
 of his six-feet high subordinates, of whom 
 there were several in the battalion. 
 Florence Gregorie loved her husband 
 dearly, but even her " perfect love " 
 could not succeed in casting out the fear 
 in which she stood of him. 
 
 Amongst those who were invited to 
 meet Major Brereton was Guy Leyces- 
 ter. The two men happened almost at 
 the same moment to be ushered into the 
 room at the door of which Lady Gre- 
 gorie was stationed to receive her guests ; 
 and she — being on the watch for possible 
 coming events — was struck by the peculiar 
 expression of Guy's countenance, as he 
 made his graceful salaam. It was a look, 
 as he fixed his eyes on her pale and
 
 236 A Lion among the Ladies. 
 
 slightly-agitated face — in which were 
 combined the elements both of ang-er 
 and compassion, the former feeling being — 
 as he fancied — directed against Major 
 Brereton, as he (the Major), whilst re- 
 taining his position near the mistress of 
 the house, made repeated and conspicuous 
 efforts to draw her into conversation. 
 This, however, the party being a large 
 one, was not easily done, the task being 
 rendered still more difficult by Lady 
 Gregorie's persistent endeavours to keep 
 him at a distance. At length, after the 
 men had joined the ladies in the draw- 
 ing - room, the perseverance of Major 
 Brereton was crowned with success. He 
 had been amongst the first to enter, and 
 Lady Gregorie chancing to be for the 
 moment alone, he approached, and in a 
 low voice accosted her.
 
 The Major feels His Way, 237 
 
 "At last I see you, Florence," he 
 whispered, "but it is by chance and not 
 by favour. You know how much I have 
 longed to talk to you. I have sent 
 messages to you by your friend, and you 
 have treated both them and me with 
 scorn, and now — " 
 
 "Now I can hear no more," Florence 
 retorted. Her face was pale to the lips, 
 with anger and deadly fear, as she, in 
 the same low tone, replied, " You can say 
 anything you wish to Miss Vidal, and I 
 will send an answer to what you ask ; 
 bat, for God's sake, leave me now ! You 
 do not seem to understand," she, with 
 increasing agitation added, " that my 
 husband would kill you if he saw you 
 speaking to me like this." 
 
 There was an ugly sneer upon his face 
 as he saw her preparing to move away.
 
 238 A Lion among the Ladies. 
 
 and his last words came with a sibilant 
 sound from between his clenched teeth. 
 
 "Well, if your lawful possessor should 
 take such an idea into his head, he shall 
 know before I die that lie was not his 
 wife's first love." 
 
 Fortunately for Lady Gregorie, Sir 
 Wilfred had been detained by a button- 
 holding bore at the further end of an 
 adjoining room, and had been thus pre- 
 vented from being a witness of the extra- 
 ordinary emotion betrayed by his wife 
 during the short conversation with Major 
 Brereton, which that enemy to her peace 
 forced her to undergo ; but there was one 
 — Guy Leycester, to wit — who, during the 
 continuance of the scene, had placed him- 
 self, in so far as he could venture so to 
 do, between his Colonel's wife and danger, 
 and who, having noted the agonised ex-
 
 The Major feels His Way, 239 
 
 pression of the harassed woman^s face, 
 had mentally vowed to be her champion. 
 
 '* You are tired, Lady Gregorie," he, 
 in the languidly-deferential manner which 
 women found so charming, said. " It 
 must have been that awfully hot sun at 
 you the Inspection to-day, which knocked 
 up." 
 
 " I daresay ; my head aches frightfully," 
 she rejoined, and looked so on the point 
 of falling, that Guy drew a chair towards 
 her, and, seating himself near to it, said, 
 in a voice which long practice rendered 
 indistinct to all save the person especi- 
 ally addressed, — 
 
 " You have been bored by the man 
 who has just left you. He is a cad of 
 the worst description, and as I happen to 
 know something of his antecedents, I 
 might be able — with your permission, of
 
 240 A Lion among the Ladies. 
 
 course — to save you from further annoy - 
 ance. It is a subject into which I could 
 not enter now, but if I were to see you 
 alone — " 
 
 "Or with Emily Vidal ? "Would not 
 that be better ? " suggested Florence hur- 
 riedly. " She is my friend, and very 
 clever. Yes, you are right ; Major Brere- 
 ton lias been worrying me, but I can- 
 not allow you," she added, looking with 
 lovely, pleading eyes into his face, " to 
 get into trouble on my account." 
 
 His thin lip curled scornfully as he re- 
 butted the idea which Lady Gregorie's 
 words suggested. 
 
 " I think," he said, " that in this case 
 I can hold my own. However, as you 
 will not, or cannot — being en jpuissance 
 de mari — grant my request, I — for the 
 reason partly that I owe the man a
 
 The Major feels His Way. 241 
 
 grudge — shall take an opportunity on my 
 own account of having it out with him. 
 You may trust me entirely, for I will be 
 on my guard against any idiotic notions 
 which people may take into their heads 
 about yourself." And Guy, having so 
 said, lounged away to talk to the pretty 
 wife of a rich Broadmere ironmaster, who 
 evidently fully appreciated the honour he 
 was doing her. 
 
 Meanwhile Major Brereton had, out of 
 hearing of the rest of the guests, taken 
 possession of a chair, which Miss Vidal 
 had cleverly contrived to keep vacant for 
 him. 
 
 *' You have had, I fear, rather a stormy 
 interview," said the young lady playfully. 
 " 1 almost wonder that you ran the risk. 
 Sir Wilfred is not the kind of man to 
 take things coolly, and her ladyship's 
 
 VOL. I. Q
 
 242 A Lio7i among the Ladies. 
 
 countenance as you talked to her was 
 very betraying. I was thankful that the 
 Colonel was otherwise employed, and did 
 not see how white and terrified she 
 looked." 
 
 Major Brereton made no comment on 
 this exordium. For reasons best known 
 to himself, he could not afford to waste 
 time on purposeless discussions regarding 
 a woman's nervous agitation. His oppor- 
 tunities for consulting Miss Vidal on the 
 subject of ways and means were few, and 
 had to be taken advantage of, therefore he 
 said, in a veiled tone, and tentatively, — 
 
 "Money is a thing one hates to talk 
 about. Miss Vidal, and I am sure you 
 will agree with me that it never ought to 
 be mixed up with sentiment. I am sorry, 
 of course, to have distressed Florence, but 
 my rascal of a lawyer — "
 
 The Major feels His Way. 243 
 
 " Yes ; I know all that," Em said impa- 
 tiently, for the man's roguery and schem- 
 ing disgusted her, even while she was 
 tacitly acting as an intermediary in an 
 affair which she had been quick-witted 
 to at once perceive was shady in the 
 extreme. 
 
 There followed, after the girl's uncere- 
 monious interruption, a dialogue between 
 the pair, in which the affair of the 
 diamonds was fully discussed. The worth 
 of those which were to be put into Major 
 Brereton's possession was. Miss Yidal in- 
 formed him, four hundred pounds ; and 
 they (the jewels) would, she said, be 
 placed in a certain spot, the locality of 
 which she made clear to him, provided 
 always that Lady Gregorie's letters, which 
 he had been entrusted to bring with him, 
 were given in the first place into her
 
 244 ^ Lion amo7tg the Ladies. 
 
 (Emily's) safe custody. Now this arrange- 
 ment was far from being altogether satis- 
 factory to Br ere ton. He would have greatly 
 preferred ascertaining for himself the value 
 of the jewels before the letters — which he 
 looked upon in the light of bank notes — 
 left his hands ; on. two points, however, 
 Miss Vidal showed herself absolutely de- 
 termined not to yield. She would first 
 obtain possession of the letters, and she 
 ivould not be made a catspaw of by 
 Brereton. The diamonds should be pur- 
 loined — as she boldly called the transac- 
 tion — by himself. His would be the bene- 
 fit, she urged, and it was only right that 
 he should incur the risk. 
 
 For a short while he deliberated, turn- 
 ing over in his mind the pros and cons 
 of the case, and then — repeating to him- 
 self more than once the popular truism
 
 The Maj 07^ feels His Way. 245 
 
 of " nothing venture nothing have " — he 
 elected to deliver up Lady Gregorie's 
 letters. 
 
 " They are short," he said, with a sneer, 
 as he took them from the breast-pocket 
 of his regimental jacket, " but very sweet, 
 and you may tell her, with my love, 
 that I was sorry to part with them." 
 
 With these words he left her, ahd 
 Emily, clutching the closed envelope in 
 her hand, forgot, for a few moments, the 
 expediency of opening it. She had been 
 bewildered by the rapid occurrence of 
 events which had lately taken place. 
 The conduct of her male coadjutor — which, 
 after all, was scarcely more shameful than 
 her own — filled her with horror, and she 
 forgot for a moment the extreme proba- 
 bility that he would have been unable to 
 resist the temptation of keeping back one
 
 246 A Lioji among the Ladies. 
 
 of the letters as a reserve fund in the 
 event of future pecuniary difficulties. 
 This supplementary act of meanness he 
 had not, however, been guilty of, and Em, 
 as, from her quiet position near a heavy 
 portiere, she watched the movements of 
 the man who she knew to be so con- 
 summate a rascal, wondered greatly at 
 the careless ease with which he moved 
 from group to group, now admiring the 
 bouquet of a pretty, laughing girl, and 
 anon complimenting a married performer 
 on the beauty of the song with which she 
 had just been favouring the company. 
 At length he approached the door, and 
 in another moment would — Emily trem- 
 blingly told herself — be within a few yards 
 of the big open-mouthed pot-'pourri jar 
 in which he had been told to seek his 
 treasure. As she pictured to herself his
 
 The Major feels His Way. 247 
 
 stealthy progress down the stairs, her 
 heart beat almost to suffocation within 
 her bodice. It was in vain she told her- 
 self that it was for Florence's sake that 
 she had taken a part in this vile trans- 
 action. Conscience was making of her a 
 sorry coward, and her fear lest one of 
 the servants at least — if not one of the 
 Colonel's guests — might witness the maji's 
 proceedings, grew to fever heat. 
 
 But she need not have been alarmed. 
 The upstairs company were too busy 
 listening to, and increasing the busy hum 
 of men and women, to attend to the 
 unpopular Major's proceedings, whilst the 
 domestics below were probably feascing 
 on the remains of the excellent dinner 
 which had been provided for their "bet- 
 ters." The door had closed upon the 
 guilty man, to whose example her own
 
 248 A Lion among the Ladies. 
 
 fall was, she told herself, due, and not a 
 sound, intently as she listened, had met 
 her ears. Then an idea — born of her 
 great relief from nervous strain — occurred 
 to her. It was not too late — in her case 
 — for repentance ; she might, whilst placing 
 the recovered letters in her friend's hands, 
 whisper to her at the same time the wel- 
 come news that all her diamonds had 
 not passed into the enemy's possession. 
 
 "It was a foolish trick of mine/' she 
 might say, " to frighten you. The riviere 
 was worth — so Mr Salter said — the money, 
 and here is your 'pendant, worth two hun- 
 dred pounds, come back to you, and you 
 must forgive me for my childish trick." 
 
 For a short while after coming to this 
 almost resolve to act uprightly. Miss 
 Yidal felt happier than she had done 
 for days ; but then came a reaction.
 
 The Major feels His Way. 249 
 
 There was a milliner's, to say nothing of 
 a bootmaker's, bill to pay, and Em's 
 allowance for toilette expenses had already 
 been in a great measure forestalled. Mr 
 Vidal— a man who never denied himself 
 an enjoyment which his limited means 
 permitted him to indulge in — was apt 
 to turn very rusty when his timid, and 
 often-ailing wife ventured to beg a -few 
 pounds of him for the adornment of her 
 girls; and Emily lived in dread of the 
 family scene which his discovery of the 
 truth concerning her extravagance might 
 occasion. The two hundred pounds which 
 lay almost within her grasp, would be to 
 her a blessing beyond price, whilst Flor- 
 ence would never miss the sum which 
 would set her (Emily) free from daily 
 and nightly care and worry. The deed 
 would be a terribly dishonourable one—
 
 250 A Lion among the Ladies. 
 
 the girl did not shut her eyes to that 
 fact — but then her need was great, and 
 Florence would — the girl felt convinced — 
 if she were made acquainted with that 
 need, come at once to her friend's relief. 
 It was too soon, however, even if 
 Em could have brought herself to act a 
 beggar's part, to seek the assistance of 
 the rich and generous woman she was 
 about to wrong, and therefore it fell 
 about that the girl, after a fierce inward 
 battle with her better self, yielded to 
 the sin that was besettino; her ! 
 
 The sight of Lady Gregorie's joy when 
 she received the letters, and the warmth 
 of her grateful expressions to the friend 
 who had so successfully carried out the 
 hateful task which she had undertaken, 
 reconciled Emily in some degree to her- 
 self Surely, she thought, some recom-
 
 The Major feels His Way. 251 
 
 pense was due to her for the zeal which 
 ill the service of her hostess she had 
 displayed. Her stolen interviews with 
 Major Brereton were not only odious 
 but might have given rise to scandal. 
 All this risk she had incurred, and — on 
 the principle that the labourer is worthy 
 of his hire — she deserved — she strove 
 hard to convince herself — a proportional 
 reward. 
 
 On the following morning, Guy Leyces- 
 ter and Major Brereton happened, greatly 
 to the satisfaction of the former, to 
 come across each other. It was in the 
 yard of a horse-dealer and livery stable- 
 keeper in Broadmere that the accidental 
 meeting took place. A charger, which 
 neither of the men had much idea of 
 purchasing, was to be sold by auction 
 in the yard ; and after the sale was over,
 
 252 A Lion among the Ladies. 
 
 Leycester, when well out of hearing of 
 the hangers-on, said to Major Brereton, — 
 
 " Can you give me a few minutes' con- 
 versation, Major, outside, before we re- 
 turn to barracks ? There is a trifling 
 subject which I should like to discuss 
 with you." 
 
 " All right ! " was the apparently care- 
 lessly-spoken reply, and then the two 
 men, one of whom was conscious of 
 undergoing a certain amount of inward 
 trepidation, walked away together. 
 
 " I think it best," said Guy, " to do a 
 disagreeable thing — if one has it to do — 
 at once. A kid hates swallowing a dose 
 of nasty physic, but the longer he holds 
 his nose over it, the more he will set 
 himself ao;ainst it. Now, the lorn^ and 
 the short of this matter is, that last 
 week, at that confounded garden-party.
 
 The Major feels His Way. 253 
 
 I was at the other side of the thick 
 yew-hedge whilst you and Miss Vidal 
 were holding a palaver, and I heard 
 every word you both said." 
 
 " Which was a cursed mean thing to 
 do, and I wonder you like to own to it," 
 rejoined his companion imperturbably. 
 
 ** Well, perhaps it was, but that's 
 neither here nor there. I heard a lady's 
 name mentioned, and as it seemed to me 
 that you have her in a fix, it occurred 
 to me to try and get her out of it. It 
 appears that you have got possession of 
 this lady's letters — we won't mention 
 names, if you please, just now — and that 
 you won't give them up without a con- 
 sideration in the shape of money. Now, 
 I don't know whether you understand 
 French, but this comes under the head 
 of what they call over there chantage,
 
 2 54 ^ Lion among the Ladies. 
 
 and renders you liable to an action for 
 felony." 
 
 Brereton, although he was, at Guy's 
 opening words, taken terribly aback, had 
 now, to a certain extent, contrived to 
 pull himself together, and had made up 
 his mind that a bold denial of facts 
 would be his best and safest plan. Miss 
 Vidal, in the event of matters coming to 
 an issue, could be, he thought, safely 
 depended on as a witness in his favour, 
 and therefore he said, with an assumption 
 of injured innocence, by which Guy was 
 not in the least deceived, — 
 
 *' I have not an idea of what you are 
 talking. Some fellow — the thing is not 
 uncommon — may have been written to 
 by a woman, and, if he happens to be 
 hard up, which is also a case of common 
 occurrence, he may have been tempted
 
 The Major feels His Way. 255 
 
 to do a confoundly blackguard thing, and 
 go in for what is called, as I have heard, 
 hush - money ; but why you should take 
 it into your head that I am the scoun- 
 drel whose conversation you took the 
 trouble to listen to, I can't for the life 
 of me conceive. Anyway, your assump- 
 tion that I am capable of acting like a 
 scoundrel is an affront — I might alihost 
 say an insult — which, in my opinion, 
 calls on your part for an apology, and 
 an apology I therefore demand from 
 you." 
 
 The tone taken by the Major is so 
 insolent in its firm denial of what Guy is 
 perfectly convinced are simple facts, that 
 for a moment he feels at a loss how to 
 proceed. Brereton's voice is, however, a 
 peculiar one, and, moreover. Lady Gre- 
 gorie's agitation whilst subjected to his
 
 256 A Lion am07ig the Ladies. 
 
 evidently unwelcome attentions, is, to- 
 gether with her admission to him (Gruy 
 that she has suffered annoyance at 
 Brereton's hands, additional proof, if any 
 were wanting, that the man has uttered 
 falsehoods. After a second or two, there- 
 fore, given to reflection, he says, with 
 decision, — 
 
 " I decline. Major Brereton, to offer you 
 any apology until I am well convinced 
 that I have made a mistake. Such, at 
 present, is so far from being the case 
 that I shall wish you ' Good-morning ; ' " 
 and so saying. Captain Guy, in his accus- 
 tomed graceful fashion, touches his forage 
 cap with his riding-whip, and lounges 
 slowly away towards the barracks. 
 
 END OF VOL. I. 
 
 COLSTON AND COMPANY, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.
 
 Ltlr*.,
 
 UNIVERSITY OP ILLINOIS-URBANA 
 
 3 0112 045852172