LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD
 
 Malo benefacere tantumdem est periculum, 
 Quantum bono malefacere." 
 
 — Plauti Pcenulus. 
 
 How strangely in this life good with evil mixes : 
 God throws the dice, but the devil gets double sixes ! 
 
 — Laurence Farquhar.
 
 LITTLE HMD AND MUOKLE GOLD 
 
 A STUDY OF TO-DAY 
 
 BY 
 
 X. L. 
 
 AUTHOR OF 'AUT DIABOLUS AUT NIHIL 
 
 IN THREE VOLUMES 
 VOL. I. 
 
 WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS 
 
 EDINBURGH AND LONDON 
 
 MDCCCLXXXIX 
 
 All Rights reserved
 
 TA.3 
 
 V.I 
 
 ^ 
 
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 TO 
 
 ^^ ALGEENON CHAELES SWINBUENE 
 
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 I
 
 LITTLE HAND AND MIJCKLE GOLD. 
 
 CHAPTEK I. 
 
 It may, we think, be asserted without any fear 
 of contradiction, that no event since the time 
 when young Bonaparte caught and strangled* 
 " the fair and fierce Kepublic with her feet of 
 fire " has so entirely, from garret to basement, 
 as it were, from palace to hovel, turned topsy- 
 turvy all French social life, as did the mys- 
 terious plot hatched in the Palace of the Elysee 
 by a handful of adventurers some seven-and- 
 thirty years ago, and known to the student of 
 history as the coup - dJetat of Prince Louis 
 Napoleon. Many men went to bed prosperous 
 and happy on the night of the 1st December 
 1851 — that famous and terrible night when
 
 4 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 Morny, the arcli-conspirator, on being asked by 
 a lady into whose box at the Opera Comique 
 he had sauntered, if it were true that the 
 Prince - President intended to sweep out the 
 Chamber, replied, with characteristic flippancy 
 and cyoicism, *' I can't say. Countess ; but if 
 he does, you may rely upon it I shall endeavour 
 to be on the side of the broom handle," — many 
 men, we say, went to bed prosperous and happy 
 on that eventful night, to awake in the morning 
 to find themselves utterly ruined, deprived of 
 all that makes life worth the living, and even 
 in very many cases prisoners, and destined to 
 pass the remainder of their unhappy days in 
 exile. Indeed, the coup - cVetat of the 2d 
 December, being far more sudden and unex- 
 pected than that of the 18th Brumaire, had a 
 more immediate and terrible effect throughout 
 the length and breadth of France. The nephew, 
 being a far weaker man than the uncle, had to 
 snatch where the other grasped. The blow 
 given by Napoleon I., although not to be 
 avoided, could be seen coming : the spring 
 with which Napoleon III. leaped into despotic 
 power took nearly all save his fellow-conspira- 
 tors by surprise.
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 5 
 
 Multitudes were ruined ; and men of every 
 class and rank in life, from the ambitious poli- 
 tician, high-spirited general, or powerful finan- 
 cier, who found their career and speculations 
 abruptly and finally brought to a close, down 
 to the humble artisan and mechanic who learnt 
 too late, when their food and that of their 
 children was thus peremptorily snatched from 
 them, the bitter lesson that it is a dangerous 
 thing in France for a man who has his daily 
 bread to earn to indulge in the luxury of having 
 political opinions. And it is, indeed, no wonder 
 that the French nation was taken by surprise, 
 for the whole thing, as we know now, was done 
 in a great hurry ; and the only wonder is, that 
 a plot so amazingly simple, and so hastily put 
 together, should have been so thoroughly suc- 
 cessful. There was, however, no time to be 
 lost — not a moment ; for as every one was in 
 debt, and as nobody had anything to pay with, 
 as a last chance France herself had to be seized 
 upon to prevent the Palace of the Elysee from 
 being exchanged for the debtor's prison of 
 Clichy. Prince Louis Napoleon, who could 
 not shake ofi* the habits of extravagance con- 
 tracted at Crockford's, was besieged by creditors.
 
 6 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 Morny, who had begun his life of a dandy and 
 lady-killer under the auspices of the eldest son 
 of King Louis Philippe, the ill - fated Due 
 d'Orleans, and concerning whom that Prince 
 had written to his brother, the Due de Nemours, 
 six years before, " apropos des femmes eplorees 
 tu sauras que Morny part pour TAlgerie," had 
 at the time of the coiip-d'etat an execution in 
 his house, and all his worldly goods would have 
 gone to the hammer in a day or two had he not 
 caught France by the throat just in time to 
 save his furniture from being sold ; while as for 
 that most delightful of men, Fleury, and that 
 typical adventurer, St Arnaud, they had never 
 known what it was to be out of debt, and were 
 ever ready, at a moment's notice, to lend their 
 hand and brain to the furthering of any scheme 
 that would seem to offer them any reasonable 
 chance of being able to inspire still further 
 credit. So, as it is often the smallest and most 
 contemptible causes that bring about the most 
 important results, here we find the fact of a few 
 sheriff's officers and a handful of impertinent 
 tradesmen clamouring for the settlement of 
 their little outstanding accounts, effecting the 
 change of government in France in 1851,
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 7 
 
 which, deluging the Boulevards in blood, and 
 eventually leading, as this change did, to the 
 Franco - Prussian war, altered the map of 
 Europe ! 
 
 But though very many suffered most bitterly 
 — nay more, were utterly crushed and ruined by 
 this change — no small number greatly benefited 
 by it. Men who had never been even heard 
 of the previous November occupied the most 
 important and exalted positions in the follow- 
 ing December, and the bankrupt of yesterday 
 became in many cases the millionaire of to- 
 day. Country attorneys and provincial jour- 
 nalists blossomed into prefects and Cabinet 
 Ministers with appalling swiftness ; and women 
 who had often cooked their own dinners and 
 washed up the dishes afterwards, found them- 
 selves suddenly called upon to represent the 
 proudest country in Europe at foreign courts. 
 That this sudden revolution in France should 
 so have affected for good or for ill Frenchmen 
 and Frenchwomen, need not (all the extra- 
 ordinary circumstances of the case being taken 
 into consideration) surprise us so very greatly ; 
 but that this general and complete upsetting of 
 things Gallic should have very greatly benefited
 
 8 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 a very humble native of perfidious Albion, may 
 indeed fill our minds with wonder and astonish- 
 ment. And yet such was the case. 
 
 William Meredith was the son of a chemist 
 who kept a small shop on the High Eoad, 
 Chiswick ; and if it had not suited. Prince Louis 
 Napoleon to break his word pledged to the 
 French nation, and seize upon the reins of 
 Government on the terrible December night 
 already alluded to, it is more than probable 
 that *' Bill " Meredith would never have been 
 known to fame, and would have gone to his 
 long home only remembered by a very re- 
 stricted and small circle of very humble in- 
 dividuals as having been a man of quite 
 extraordinary personal beauty, and one en- 
 dowed with a bountiful supply of good-nature, 
 and a well-developed bump of intrigue. It 
 was, indeed, the beauty that did it all. When 
 the poor Chiswick chemist, who found it difli- 
 cult to make both ends meet, looked upon this, 
 his fourth, son, he would have groaned inwardly 
 at the appalling generosity of Providence in so 
 amply filling his quiver had the lad not been 
 so comely in aspect. But who could resist that 
 smile ? Many of the most beautiful women in
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 9 
 
 Europe gladly refrained from attempting to do 
 so a few years later, and so Timothy Meredith 
 sighed and set to work to collect the necessary 
 funds to provide his pretty boy with some smat- 
 tering of a knowledge of medicine. But the 
 beauty grew with the boy, and kisses but too 
 often interrupted the making of pills and the 
 pounding with the pestle— kisses which grew 
 more lingering, more fervent, and more caressing 
 as the golden curls turned to a rich brown, the 
 fluff of early manhood began perching on the lip. 
 In vain the family of the youth expostulated, 
 prayed, entreated : he found the kisses pleasant, 
 and had inwardly decided to make them, if 
 possible, profitable. And he was not far wrong 
 in his reckoning, for one kiss got him appren- 
 ticed to a good London medico, and another 
 landed him in Paris, and enabled him to pursue 
 his studies, and eventually take out his diploma 
 as M.D. at the Acadt^mie de Medicine of that 
 town, — sundry intermediate embraces enabling 
 him to live in good style, to send something 
 home to Chiswick — where indignation at these 
 osculatory exercises had given place to well-fed 
 satisfaction, not uncoupled with awe — and to 
 make many valuable friends. It was at the
 
 10 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 close of the reign of Louis Philippe that young 
 Meredith took his diploma ; and, in fiict, it was 
 on the very morning that all Paris had been 
 shocked with the news of how the Due de 
 Praslin had basely murdered his Duchess, that 
 the Chiswick youth ordered his first breakfast 
 at Foyod's as M. le Docteur. 
 
 Every one in Paris saw that the end was fast 
 approaching. The Marie Capelle, Martin du 
 Nord, and Praslin scandals all plainly fore- 
 shadowed, in the eyes of superstitious French- 
 men, that the days of the Citizen King were 
 numbered, and that some radical change was 
 imminent. Every one was consequently in a 
 hurry to make hay while the sun still shone ; 
 and as the ladies of Paris have never lagged 
 far behind the sterner sex in matters of agility 
 and quickness, they displayed the same ardour 
 in the pursuit of pleasure as their husbands, 
 brothers, fathers, and sons did in the chase 
 for wealth. The kissing, therefore, naturally 
 enough, became sharper and brisker than ever ; 
 and, as was also natural, so good-looking an 
 adept in the art as Dr Meredith was not left 
 out in the cold during these busy times. 
 
 The result of all this was, that in a few
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 11 
 
 months the young English doctor found him- 
 self on terms of intimacy with many people of 
 very great social and political importance in 
 Paris, and had the good and rare luck to meet 
 on two or three occasions the arch - conspirator 
 and dandy mentioned above, the half-brother 
 of the Prince-President — Morny himself. This 
 was the turning-point in Meredith's life. Morny 
 saw at a glance that the good-looking and 
 ambitious young English doctor, who seemed 
 to do very much what he pleased with the ladies 
 of the Chaussee d'Antin, might be very likely of 
 great service to him if properly handled, and so 
 this most fascinating bastard of a queen deter- 
 mined to keep his eye on this most lawfully be- 
 gotten son of a Chiswick chemist. Of course, it 
 was impossible for the Count to be more than 
 loftily gracious to one so infinitely beneath him 
 in social position ; but as he and Meredith only 
 met under rather peculiar circumstances — never, 
 of course, in society, but merely coming in and 
 going out of boudoirs on Ic roi est mort, vive le 
 roi principle — Morny was able to let the young 
 Englishman see very plainly that he had excited 
 his interest and favour, without any one else 
 suspecting this important fact. What, there-
 
 12 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 fore, was Meredith's surprise when, on awaken- 
 ing on the memorable morning of the 2d 
 December 1851 in his little apartment in the 
 Eue Eumford — a street now destroyed by 
 Haussmann — he found himself arrested, and 
 agents from the Commissaire de Police busily 
 rummaging among his papers ! In vain he 
 expostulated, pointed out that he was a harm- 
 less Englishman, and begged the myrmidons of 
 the law to respect the privacy of his correspon- 
 dence. They merely laughed, shrugged their 
 shoulders, and took the medico and his letters 
 off to the depot together. Ten days did 
 Meredith languish in jail, but on the eleventh 
 he was taken to see Morny, whom he found 
 comfortably ensconced at the Home Office, and 
 who had read with amused interest some of the 
 very ardent epistles which the tender-hearted 
 disciple of ^sculapius had had the imprudence 
 to keep. 
 
 " It was by my order that you were arrested," 
 explained Morny, airily. " I knew you knew a 
 great many ladies of the Chaussee d'Antin, and 
 I fancied that, like most of your countrymen, 
 you had fallen into the bad habit of not destroy- 
 ing letters. I find I was right ; but as your
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 13 
 
 letters have tauglit me nothing, and as I fear I 
 have put you to some inconvenience, I sent to 
 tell you that I shall be happy to be of service 
 to you." 
 
 " M. le Comte ! " stammered Meredith, over- 
 come with sudden joy, for he saw with apoca- 
 lyptic foresight that here at length was fortune 
 within his grasp — " oh, M. le Comte ! " And 
 he bowed his head as his eyes filled with grate- 
 ful tears. 
 
 The Count himself was visibly affected by 
 this display of emotion on the part of the in- 
 genuous young man, and a calm, grave smile 
 passed over his handsome face as he con- 
 tinued — 
 
 ^' Being an Englishman, I suppose you are 
 naturally anxious to leave Paris during these 
 troubles and return home." 
 
 Meredith wasted no time in useless fencinof 
 with the shrewdest master of intrigue in Europe, 
 and replied boldly — 
 
 ''No, M. le Comte. This morning I should 
 have been but too enraptured at the idea of re- 
 turning home, leaving all these perils behind me, 
 and clasping my aged parents once more to my 
 bosom ; but now — now — I cannot leave Paris."
 
 14 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE COLD. 
 
 " Ah/' said the Count, quickly, his interest 
 awakening as he scented some amusing liaison, 
 '* and may I ask why ? " 
 
 " Because, M. le Comte, your kindness has 
 laid upon my shoulders a debt of gratitude 
 which I never can repay, but which I can at 
 least endeavour to lighten. I beseech, I implore 
 your Excellency to allow me to remain in your 
 service, and devote all my poor powers to the 
 furtherance of your wishes." 
 
 '' Well," replied the Count, vastly amused by 
 the fellow's shrewdness, and not a little pleased 
 with himself on finding that he had not mis- 
 taken his man, ^' you are certainly the first man 
 I ever met who thanked me for having had him 
 imprisoned and his letters confiscated ; but 
 after all, tous les go'tits sont dans la nature, 
 and as you are so easily pleased, I daresay I 
 shall be able to find you something to do. Go 
 back to your apartment now : don't stir out, 
 and see nobody. When I want you I will send 
 for you. In the meantime, in case you should 
 be in want of money, here is a thousand francs 
 to go on with. Now, good morning ; and," he 
 added, smiling and twirling his moustachios, 
 " don't forget, my dear doctor, that the Prince-
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 15 
 
 President and his friends can alone save France 
 from revolution and civil war" — at that very 
 moment civil war was raging, and they were 
 fighting in the streets. " Never in politics trust 
 yourself to say more than that. Au revoir." 
 
 At the end of another ten days Meredith 
 was again sent for, but this time to the Elysee, 
 where he not only saw his patron Morny, but 
 also Mocquard, and for a few minutes the 
 Prince - President himself. The result of this 
 interview was, that he was sent on a secret 
 mission of no importance to London ; but as he 
 acquitted himself creditably on this occasion, 
 on his return he was employed in delicate mat- 
 ters of more moment in. Paris, where his know- 
 ledge of not a few of the alcoves of the Chaussee 
 d'Antin enabled him to be of real service to 
 the cause of the Prince-President. Indeed so 
 brightly shone his lucky star that, within six 
 months of the coup-d'etat, Meredith found him- 
 self very comfortably housed in a pretty apart- 
 ment in the Eue de la Ville I'Eveque, and one 
 of the men pointed out as being au mieux with 
 the triumphant and successful gang of conspir- 
 ators who had conquered France. Morny was, 
 indeed, with all his faults, like his half-brother
 
 16 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 Napoleon 111. a good and staunch friend, and 
 knew how to generously reward any services 
 rendered to him ; and as he found that the 
 great personal attractions of the young English 
 physician, coupled with rare shrewdness, and 
 a still more rare absence of all kind of moral 
 scruple, formed a most useful combination in 
 many emergencies — for Morn}^ firmly believed 
 in governing the women and letting them in- 
 fluence the men — no wonder that he, Morny, 
 being now really the head of the State, Mere- 
 dith found his good luck increasing day by day. 
 He met, indeed, at first with some little dif- 
 ficulty in being received at the British Embassy ; 
 but pressure from the Elys^e was brought to 
 bear, and that obstacle was successfully sur- 
 mounted. Patients now poured in ; and as 
 Morny advised him to have a speciality, he 
 chose the heart, and ' Meredith on Cardiac 
 Affections' was ordered like a ham, and sold 
 like sandwiches, the four men who sat up dur- 
 ing three nights to write it being amply re- 
 warded, and then shipped off to Algiers. 
 
 About this time one Stephen Houghton, a 
 very wealthy and successful Liverpool mer- 
 chant, happened to pass through Paris on his
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 17 
 
 way to Italy for his only daiigliter's health. 
 They put up at Meurice's. The London phy- 
 sicians had said the lungs, but somebody in 
 Paris whispered the word " heart," and Dr 
 Meredith was sent for. The case would seem 
 to have been a serious one, for Dr Meredith 
 was constant in his attendance, and could not 
 think of allowing his fair patient to move on 
 to the south. The heart, he said, was weak, 
 but not diseased ; the young lady must avoid 
 the fatigue engendered by travelling, but at 
 the same time she must be amused. Miss 
 Houghton, who had been greatly struck with 
 the beauty of her medical adviser, and de- 
 lighted to look down on his brown curls as he' 
 pressed his ear against her bosom, coincided 
 absolutely with this opinion ; and as the poor 
 stockbroker knew nobody in Paris, and hardly 
 dared venture to the Embassy, where they might 
 or might not have opened his eyes, it naturally 
 devolved upon Dr Meredith to amuse the Liver- 
 pool heiress. It must in all fairness be ad- 
 mitted that in this praiseworthy and charitable 
 undertaking the fascinating physician was most 
 successful. He took his patient everywhere 
 where her delicate state of health would allow 
 VOL. I, B
 
 18 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 her to go, — not into society, of course, for there 
 she would meet with too many people and be 
 fatigued. Nor was she allowed to receive many 
 visitors ; but the doctor neglected scores of 
 patients for the sake of his fair and wealthy 
 fellow-countrywoman, and long w^ere the drives 
 they took together in the splendid spring days, 
 while in the evening Each el at the Comedie 
 Franeaise was a constant source of joy. At 
 length Dr Meredith proposed marriage to the 
 fair invalid and was accepted, but Mr Houghton 
 would not hear of it : certain rumours had 
 reached the ears of the Liverpuddlian which 
 he did not like, and he very bluntly told Dr 
 Meredith that he would sooner see his daughter 
 dead than married to a man concerning whom 
 such offensive tales were rife. Now just at 
 this time the troops had shouted " Vive I'Em- 
 pereur " at the review at Satory, and every 
 one knew that the Empire was an imminent 
 fact ; so when Mr Houghton told Dr Meredith 
 that he had heard he was a blackguard, not only 
 did the latter deny the charge, but offered to 
 bring the stockbroker to the Emperor to hear 
 the rights of the story. Such a temptation 
 could not, of course, be resisted : Mr Houghton
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 19 
 
 allowed himself to be brought to Saint Cloud. 
 Napoleon II L good-naturedly said a few words 
 in praise of the protege of his half-brother, and 
 before the week was out Dr Meredith was 
 engaged to be married to Miss Laura Houghton, 
 who had inherited from her mother £6000 a- 
 year, and who was the sole heiress of her father. 
 Meredith Avas, however, far too clever a man 
 to let the grass grow under his feet ; and fearing 
 that some one of his numerous envious enemies 
 might come and undo the good work accom- 
 plished by the Emperor, he urged the stock- 
 broker to return at once to Liverpool, accom- 
 panied, of course, by his daughter and himself, 
 so that the necessary formalities preliminary to 
 marriage might be begun without delay — for, as 
 he most truly averred, he was longing to call 
 the young lady his own. This happy fore- 
 thought and despatch saved him : for twenty- 
 four hours after the engagement had been pub- 
 lished in the ' Morning Post,' the Paris and 
 Liverpool post-offices were literally encumbered 
 with letters, both signed and anonymous, but 
 all highly derogatory in their contents to the 
 honour of the successful doctor. Meredith in- 
 tercepted four of these letters and destroyed
 
 20 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 them ; but then losing patience, put the young 
 lady's arm within his own, strolled into the 
 registrars office, got married, and returned to 
 his father-in-law's house just in time to have 
 the door slammed in his face by Mr Houghton, 
 who yelled from the doorstep that he hoped 
 never to see his daughter or her '* most filthy 
 bargain " again. The happy pair — for nothing 
 could interfere with the £6000 per annum — then 
 returned to Paris, where Morny received his 
 adventurous i?rotege with a warm benevolence 
 which the great beauty of Mrs Meredith did not 
 tend to diminish. 
 
 The doctor now took a sumptuous apartment 
 in the Kue Royale, and began to live that life 
 of splendid excitement only known to men who 
 make it their principle to live beyond their 
 means. Patients flocked to him by hundreds, 
 and the few gentlemen who came Avith sound 
 hearts lost that useful organ when they saw Mrs 
 Meredith. His wife's beauty, indeed — although 
 it was by no means extraordinary — worked 
 wonders for tlie doctor, and gave him access to 
 certain drawing-rooms, the doors of which would 
 otherwise have remained for ever closed ao^ainst 
 him. Mrs Meredith went everywhere and knew
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 21 
 
 everybody, from the Emperor and Empress to 
 the latest landed millionaire from California. 
 Her salon was anything but a select one, but it 
 was certainly a very amusing place of meeting ; 
 and in the clays of the Second Empire in Paris, 
 samuser was, of course, the chief and, in fact, 
 whole duty of man. 
 
 Morny, now made duke, began speculating, 
 and of course Meredith followed his protector, 
 and in a few months netted over two hundred 
 thousand pounds ; and that very year Mrs Mere- 
 dith had extended to her for the first time the 
 signal honour of being included in one of the 
 famous series of his Imperial Majesty's guests 
 at Compiegne. Another piece of good fortune 
 happened to the worthy doctor at about the 
 same time. He himself cared for nothing but 
 money and pretty women, but his wife's Liver- 
 pool blood pulsated with the wildest ambition, 
 and she longed to be something other than plain 
 "Mrs Meredith." At one time, indeed, she 
 had half thought of persuading her husband — 
 whom she could twist easily around her finger, 
 and who obeyed her every caprice — to renounce 
 his nationality, and accept the prettiest of the 
 thousand and one foreign titles which, in the
 
 22 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 palmy days of the Second Empire, could have 
 been had for the paying ; and the only con- 
 sideration which induced her to refrain from 
 taking this rather extreme step, was a fear lest 
 it might not only excite ridicule and contempt, 
 but also very gravely injure her husband's 
 practice and reputation as a physician. * Mere- 
 dith on Cardiac Affections ' — and cardiac affec- 
 tions had indeed made his fortune — was a 
 text-book, and had made him famous ; and as 
 celebrity and glory have their penalties, so must 
 her husband remain for ever Meredith — the 
 Meredith. Morny again came to the rescue, 
 whispered something in Mrs Meredith's pretty 
 ear, and she straightway proceeded to London 
 and took a small house in Hill Street, Berkeley 
 Square. Lord Clarendon, who had heard a great 
 deal of her from his dear friend the Empress, 
 was very kind, and offered to endeavour to ob- 
 tain for her any invitations she might require. 
 But Mrs Meredith — who had come over to 
 gloomy London (which she hated) on far more 
 important business than to seek a social recog- 
 nition, which she felt sure would at the best 
 be but coldly extended to her — declined the 
 dear old nobleman's hesitatino; offer, and
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 23 
 
 averred that she had only come over to see 
 Poole about a riding-habit. This riding-habit 
 took a long time to make, but in the meantime 
 Mrs Meredith hardly ever left the pretty little 
 furnished house she had hired, and only received 
 a few leading political and financial magnates. 
 By degrees, however, disagreeable and absurd 
 rumours began to get about concerning the 
 frequency with which a well-known white horse 
 was seen turnino; down Hill Street : and at last 
 things got so bad, that even the cabmen and 
 policemen would smile when they saw a gentle- 
 man whose face was even better known than 
 that of her Majesty herself, ride up to the door 
 of No. 999 regularly every day at three, and 
 many a smile was exchanged as they averred 
 *'they would be blessed" if a certain noble 
 Whig statesman could get on without the 
 ladies. Then suddenly the house was given 
 up, as suddenly as it had been taken ; Mrs 
 Meredith returned to Paris, and the papers 
 announced that the honour of knighthood 
 had been conferred on the " eminent and ami- 
 able'' Paris physician, Dr William Meredith. 
 Nobody seemed to know exactly how this had 
 come about. Something was said about the
 
 24 LITTLE HAND AND MUOKLE GOLD. 
 
 iiiHueiicc of Moriiy, about the Crimean war, 
 about the treatise on Cardiac Affections, and 
 about how very pretty Lady Meredith was ; 
 but nothing very disagreeable on the whole 
 was said, and every one seemed to think that 
 Meredith had been made a knight, principally 
 because he was just the sort of man who 
 ought to be a knight : in fact, many people 
 wondered what her Majesty could have been 
 about, not to have recognised his services in 
 this way long before. 
 
 Meredith's cup of happiness was now full, 
 and very nearly brimmed over when, two 
 months after he had blossomed out as Sir 
 William, the Liverpool stockbroker forgave 
 him and died, leaving Lady Meredith twenty 
 thousand a-year, invested in all sorts of out- 
 landish American securities, bringing in fantas- 
 tically high interest. Meredith had begun 
 with the Second Empire, and risen with the 
 Second Empire ; and as the splendour of the 
 Second Empire was now at its zenith, so had 
 the fortunes of Sir William now reached their 
 very highest limit. He and the Empire had 
 reached the very top of the hill. They might 
 indeed pause on the summit for a while and
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 25 
 
 survey the surrounding landscape, and count 
 with a contented smile every step taken, every 
 obstacle which they had overcome together, but 
 further ascent was impossible. After a rest — 
 a breathing-time — all that remained for the 
 nephew of the great Napoleon and the son of 
 the Chiswick apothecary was to go down as 
 slowly as might be, — above all things avoiding 
 stumbles, but go down. So the descent began. 
 Morny died ; pitiless Prince Death laid his 
 ruthless hand on that most charming of men, 
 and left his inconsolable young widow, with 
 her hair cut short after the Eussian fashion, to 
 smoke cigarettes alone and wonder if her life 
 were indeed over. The Duke's death was a 
 terrible blow to Meredith in more ways than 
 one, for not only did he really dearly love the 
 architect of his fortunes, but this rather sudden 
 demise of Morny entirely upset and brought to 
 ruin numerous little speculations in which he 
 and the gallant Duke had been engaged. So 
 the blow, both from a cardiac and a financial 
 point of view, was a severe one. Then Moc- 
 quard died, and another link which bound the 
 English adventurer to the glorious past was 
 broken. Then the Emperor became sadder and
 
 26 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 more reserved than ever, and the Empress 
 seemed to look with some coldness on the 
 diamonds and white shoulders of Lady Mere- 
 dith. Then the Mexican campaign began, and 
 while that hideous tragedy was being played 
 out Meredith's affairs went from bad to worse — 
 a terrible disaster comins: to him in the form of 
 a telegram, informing him that the American 
 securities which represented his wife's fortune 
 had not been able to recover from the effects of 
 the secession war, were temporarily paralysed, 
 and had now ceased for the time being to pay 
 any interest whatsoever ; and a still worse mis- 
 fortune befalling him in the death of his only 
 son and darling, who was thrown from his pony 
 while out riding in the Bois and killed on the 
 sjDot. This sad catastrophe left Sir William 
 with but one child, a daughter, Muriel ; but as 
 it is with her we shall be chiefly concerned in 
 these pages, it were perhaps best to speak of 
 her at once before continuing the enumeration 
 of the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune 
 which, though so long withheld, seemed — dating 
 from the death of Morny — to have selected the 
 handsome Chiswick adventurer for a target.
 
 27 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 The houses in the Rue Royale — at least those 
 nearest the Place de la Concorde — are all lar^e, 
 comfortable, and old-fashioned ; and Sir William 
 Meredith and his family occupied one of the 
 largest, most comfortable, and most old-fashioned 
 of them, situated between the Garde Meuble and 
 the Faubourg St Honore. In this house he had 
 taken two apartments, and joined them by con- 
 structing a private staircase which, quite apart 
 from the grand escalier, led from the dining- 
 room on the first floor to the doctor's study, 
 which was situated on the second. It would 
 indeed have been much more economical to have 
 taken a hotel than to indulge in these extrava- 
 gant alterations ; but Meredith cared but little 
 for economy, and could find nothing to suit him 
 so well as the Rue Royale, where he was near 
 his club (the Imperial), and midway between
 
 28 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 his friend Morny's place of abode and the Palace 
 of the Tuileries ; and so he took the two flats on 
 a very long lease, and joined them together in 
 the way just mentioned. 
 
 Although, owing to long residence abroad, 
 Meredith had become very foreign both in 
 manners and appearance, he strongly resembled 
 one of his very celebrated fellow-countrymen, 
 Mr Dombey, in one particular, — that the dream 
 of his life having been to have a son, he had 
 been greatly disappointed when a daughter was 
 born to him first ; and although he always 
 treated little Muriel with kindness, the ten- 
 derest sources of paternal love in his heart 
 were not touched until, a year after the birth 
 of Muriel, a son was bestowed on him by a 
 beneficent Providence, which seemed hardly 
 able to refuse hina the gratification of even the 
 merest whim or caprice. 
 
 As he had often laughingly compared himself 
 to Dombey, liked the name of Paul, and was in 
 no wise superstitious, he called his long-wished- 
 for son after the well-known and wearisome 
 infant whose inquiries as to the wild waves and 
 whose untimely decease have worn out so many 
 pocket-handkerchiefs, and reddened so many
 
 THE SOWma OF THE SEED. 29 
 
 noses. It would seem, however, by an odd 
 coincidence, as if tliere really did exist some 
 resemblance between the brother of Florence 
 Dombey and the brother of Muriel Meredith. 
 For little Paul Meredith was the most puny and 
 ailing of infants, and coughed his way up into 
 the most delicate of childhoods. It was there- 
 fore natural enough that, under these circum- 
 stances, Paul should become the idol of the 
 family, and the very centre and focus of all 
 the affection and devotion the worthy doctor 
 and his wife could muster, and that little 
 Muriel should in consequence be left out in 
 the cold. It was not, however, in the nature 
 of the little girl to harbour in her tender, 
 sympathetic heart, so ferocious a sentiment as 
 jealousy ; and as her parents were really kind 
 to her, and as she adored her little brother, the 
 only way in which this real absence of affection 
 acted on her child-life was by creating in her 
 heart a general feeling of loneliness, and a long- 
 ing for love of any sort. And her early child- 
 hood was indeed a lonely one, and the more 
 so because she was thoughtful, observant, and 
 sensitive beyond her years. From about six 
 months after the birth of her little brother
 
 30 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 until that interestincf infant readied the aoje 
 of four, Muriel hardly ever saw him, for the 
 doctors had declared the Paris air unfit for the 
 child, and he had been sent with his nurse to 
 Plombieres, whither his mother, accompanied 
 by two maids and eight large trunks, took 
 special train every two months to pass a week. 
 Daring this period, from babyhood up to the 
 age of five and a half, Muriel was left almost 
 wholly alone with her nurse, an old Scotch- 
 woman named Agnes, who looked upon Paris 
 and its frivolities, and especially Lady Mere- 
 dith's bare shoulders and diamonds, with most 
 special abhorrence. Such religious training as 
 this stern Calvinist could give her she obtained, 
 and no more, for " papa '^ and " mamma " found 
 this present world far too pleasant a place to 
 waste any of its delicious moments in bothering 
 about the next ; and so while the sterner side of 
 Christianity, with all the eternal penalties at- 
 tached to even trivial sins, was put before her 
 on all and every occasion, she heard little or 
 nothing of the lessons of mercy embodied in the 
 doctrine of Jesus. The result was that this 
 thouo^htful little child found herself face to face 
 with a terrible enigma, which it distracted her
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 31 
 
 brain, and nearly broke her heart, to try and 
 solve. If what Agnes said was true, then papa 
 and mamma were not only surely and everlast- 
 ingly damned, but were moreover day by day 
 and hour by hour sinking deeper and deeper 
 into the night of perdition ; and yet they did not 
 seem to care ! That was the strangest part of 
 it. Surely if there really was a dreadful fire 
 waiting for them, they must know it; and as 
 they both of them, as Muriel well knew, hated 
 even sultry weather, they could not be comfort- 
 able thinking of all this sulphur and brimstone 
 which was being got ready for them. And 
 yet they were comfortable, and never, so far as 
 Muriel heard, ever said anything about hell. 
 She had, indeed, on one occasion overheard the 
 great Duke, whom she adored, — for he always 
 brought her marrons glaces, dolls, and all sorts 
 of nice things, — and whom she really fell wildly 
 in love with wdien she was eight, and used to 
 write verses to, say that he would make Paris 
 an enfei' for some obnoxious individual. But 
 then papa and mamma had both laughed, as if 
 they thought it a good joke. Which theory, there- 
 fore was she to adopt, — that preached by her 
 nurse, or that j)ractised by her parents ? This
 
 32 LITTLE PIAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 tempest of doubt and perplexity nearly drove 
 the nervous and quick-witted child into rank 
 atheism, for what Agnes said was very unpleas- 
 ant, and seemed to lead to nothing very nice 
 just now, at all events ; whereas what papa and 
 mamma did was evidently at least amusing, for 
 they seemed to enjoy it very much. 
 
 This j)eculiar phase of feeling may perhaps be 
 best illustrated by the following incident, which 
 will at the same time mye the reader an insiorht 
 into the very practical view of matters taken by 
 Miss Muriel, — a hard aspect which more fre- 
 quently accompanies tender and romantic na- 
 tures than a mere superficial observer might 
 suspect. Doctor Meredith had only been author- 
 ised to adopt the prefix of " Sir " a few weeks, 
 and little Paul had only been back from Plom- 
 bieres a week or so, when one day he stole into 
 the nursery where Muriel sat alone, pretending 
 her doll was the Due de Morny, and saying, 
 " Comment ca va, mon cher Due," in imitation 
 of her father, with his face as white as a sheet, 
 and announced in an awe-frighted whisper the 
 followinof astoundinfi^ intelliojence : — 
 
 " Oh, Muriel, God is dead 1 " 
 
 *' What ? " screamed that young lady, letting
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 33 
 
 her doll fall to the ground ; " what do you 
 say?" 
 
 " God's dead ! " 
 
 " What can you mean, Paul ? " 
 
 *^ Why, just now I went into mamma's 
 boudoir, and there I saw her lying on the sofa, 
 with her face turned to the wall, and crying so 
 — oh, Muriel, crying so ! " 
 
 " Poor mamma ! Why didn't she send for 
 me?" 
 
 '^ Oh, no ; I was going up to her, but 
 Angelique caught me and brought me out of 
 the room, and when she got me outside she 
 told me that we must neither of us disturb 
 mamma to-day or worry her, for she had just 
 got very bad news, and that we had all of us 
 lost our best friend, and that was why mamma 
 was crying so." 
 
 " Lost our best friend ! " echoed Muriel. 
 
 " Yes ; and as you know God is our best 
 friend " — the theology taught to Paul at Plom- 
 bieres had evidently been sounder than that 
 taught to Muriel in Paris — " it must be God 
 that's dead." 
 
 This pitiless logic of childhood seemed incon- 
 trovertible. Deep silence followed the announce- 
 
 VOL. I. C
 
 34 LITTLK HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 ment of this really important news, and Paul 
 crept up to his sister and nestled under her arm, 
 waiting for her to speak and comfort him, as she 
 always did. She felt the meaning of his little 
 imploring squeeze ; she felt that she was called 
 upon now in this great crisis to afford comfort 
 to the weaker, and the woman's heart within 
 the child's rose to the situation. 
 
 " Do you mind much, Paul ? " she said, turn- 
 ing and kissing his pale trembling lips. 
 
 The poor little fellow only closed his eyes and 
 shuddered. Muriel burst into a merry laugh — 
 
 " Because / don't ! " 
 
 " Don't mind God's being dead, Muriel ? " 
 inquired the dumfounded Paul, hardly believ- 
 ing his ears. 
 
 " No, not a bit, and I'll tell you why, Paul," 
 she continued, laughing, and giving him an- 
 other encouraging kiss, — '^ because, don't you 
 see, now we can all do as we please ! " 
 
 Whether, when later on in the day it was 
 explained to the children that it was the death 
 of their grandfather that had caused Lady 
 Meredith's tears to flow, Muriel felt any dimin- 
 ution in her satisfaction, we hardly dare in- 
 quire ; but that this sudden glimpse of the
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 35 
 
 possibility of emancipation from all laws and 
 punishments had a great effect upon the plas- 
 tic and receptive nature of the little girl, is 
 beyond all doubt. When Paul was at home, 
 of course Muriel's life was one of almost un- 
 alloyed happiness ; but then, even after what 
 was supposed to be his definite return from 
 Plombieres, his health necessitated frequent 
 jaunts to mild or bracing climes, and as by 
 that time little Muriel, with her beauty, 
 grace, and quaint sayings, had become quite a 
 celebrity in the child -world of Paris — and we 
 all remember the great social importance which 
 children's parties assumed in the days of the 
 Second Empire, and especially when there was 
 a possibility of such entertainments being 
 honoured by the presence of the Prince Im- 
 perial — Lady Meredith did not think fit to 
 allow her daughter to leave the metropolis and 
 accompany the little invalid in his journeys in 
 search of health. So Muriel was forced to re- 
 main at home and take her part in the social 
 life of the capital of pleasure, although poor old 
 Agnes held up her hands in holy horror, and 
 spoke of everlasting punishment as being the 
 inevitable result of Miss Muriel's having danced
 
 36 LITTLE 1L\ND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 with young De Drigodc, or of having allowed 
 one of the Bruttazu boys to kiss her. 
 
 But this excitement of social life, which would 
 have delighted most children, by no means satis- 
 fied Miss Muriel Meredith ; for, by one of those 
 odd freaks of nature which are not uncommon, 
 although Lady Meredith was so totally and 
 entirely a thing dependent for her very breath, 
 life, and sustenance upon society and fashion 
 that her idea of Paradise would, had she ever 
 questioned herself on the subject, probably have 
 been quinqucnniads of waltzing with De Caux, 
 followed by an eternal and desperate flirtation 
 with Nieuwerkerke and Morny, while Worth 
 draped the clouds, and Pingat clothed the 
 cherubs in those becoming cloaks of his, — her 
 only daughter cared no more for the pleasant 
 fever of social life than if she had been the 
 natural child of an Esquimaux, born on an ice- 
 berg and fostered by a polar bear. Lady Mere- 
 dith could not make this out, and puzzled her 
 brains in vain to find a plausible solution of 
 this tiresome enigma. The child was certainly 
 remarkably pretty, remarkably graceful, and 
 remarkably clever, and, moreover, she was 
 notoriously one of the most perfectly dressed
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 37 
 
 children in the capital of Fashion ; and yet, 
 although whenever she did go into society she 
 without any effort invariably took the palm, 
 little Muriel did not seem to care whether or 
 not her mother refused or accepted for her the 
 multitudinous invitations to all kinds of enter- 
 tainments for children with which she was 
 bombarded from early in November till late 
 in June every year. 
 
 The real cause of this diffidence was com- 
 plex. In the first place, the strong current 
 of her abnormally affectionate nature, which 
 had, during the long absence of her little 
 brother, naturally flowed towards her parents, 
 had, as we have already said, in that directioii 
 received a decided check. When a mere baby, 
 her father had positively disliked her, and her 
 mother had simply ignored her ; and now that 
 she had otowu into a charmino; and beautiful 
 child, both father and mother looked upon her 
 as being merely something to be proud of, inas- 
 much as other people envied them the possession 
 of it : in other words, a precious and charming 
 commodity, not to be much more highly prized 
 than the splendid pair of bays, Sultan and Tzar, 
 for which Narischkine had once offered some
 
 38 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 absurd sum to Sir William. Baffled in this 
 quarter, little Muriel had turned, as all children 
 do when disappointed in their parents, to her 
 nurse for that sympathy for which her little 
 heart yearned almost to bursting ; but here 
 again she met with a repulse, not indeed arising 
 from coldness and indifference, but from the 
 flames of Gehenna with which the wretched 
 Agnes scorched the young imagination, and 
 withered the opening buds of trustful tenderness 
 in the child's nature. Beaten back as^ain, and 
 standing in the agony of doubt alluded to above, 
 wondering whether mamma and Worth were 
 right or God and Agnes, she by degrees re- 
 lapsed into herself, and her love became, as De 
 Stendhal would say, crystallised, unconsciously 
 awaiting that sun to rise later on in girlhood 
 that might peradventure melt the glistening 
 icicles into tears of gladness or of sorrow. 
 What the child mioht have become but for 
 
 o 
 
 her idolatrous love for her little brother, whom, 
 however, she saw but seldom, who can tell '? 
 But even this affection, strong as it was, was 
 wholly incapable of satisfying the thirst for 
 sympathy which devoured her, and for which 
 she sought in vain some appeasement in the
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 39 
 
 society of the silly little boys and girls whom 
 she met at the brilliant gatherings which it 
 suited her mother to order her to attend. She 
 went to these parties at first out of curiosity ; 
 but she soon found that the excitement wearied 
 without amusing her, and — for it must be borne 
 in mind these dissipations lacked in her case 
 that great attraction of being either half-for- 
 bidden fruit, or at the best sweets but rarely to 
 be indulged in, which is perhaps the most com- 
 mendable quality in the eyes of childhood — 
 were it not that she knew her little social suc- 
 cesses gave her mother pleasure, she would 
 gladly have refused all invitations after her 
 tenth party. Muriel, in truth, felt hersdf 
 strangely ill at ease with children, except quite 
 babies, and when, only seven, felt herself to be 
 really older than any of her associates, who 
 were perhaps nearly double her age. In her 
 mind she would, in an old-fashioned motherly 
 way, call them, as she heard Agnes do, '' chil- 
 dren," and would find herself wondering while 
 dancing d la roncle, for instance, if any of these 
 "children" were troubled, like herself, with 
 doubts as to whether it were better to lead an 
 unhappy life of self-denial and escape hell-fixe
 
 40 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 — for Agnes never spoke of any particular re- 
 ward to be earned by crucifying the flesh, and 
 expended her eloquence wholly in describing in 
 hideous detail the punishment that must await 
 even the careless — or to dance and flirt, and 
 then burn for ever? So, as we have said, the 
 childhood of Sir William's daughter was a lonely 
 one, and all the more lonely in that she was 
 forced to associate with those with whom she 
 had no sympathy, and whom she in her very 
 heart, and almost unconsciously, perhaps, looked 
 upon as her inferiors. 
 
 Brought up according to French ideas, she 
 had been taught that manners were everything, 
 and that it is the first duty of a lady to be 
 agreeable to every one ; and so as none of her 
 young companions imagined for a moment how 
 their society bored her, and as her beauty, wit, 
 grace, and wealth made her very popular, the 
 urbanity of her manners encouraged them in 
 the pleasing hope that they were all her devoted 
 friends, and that she could not get on without 
 them. If they could have seen her sometimes 
 when alone and unobserved, they might perhaps 
 have altered their opinion — may have even won- 
 dered if this were the same laughing, seemingly
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 41 
 
 careless, little playmate who had been singing 
 " A la tour, prend garde " so merrily with them 
 but a few short hours ago — seen her, for in- 
 stance, in the early dawn kneeling by her bed- 
 side, after a sleepless night, in an agony of 
 prayer, and beseeching God to burn her as 
 much as He liked, but to spare poor little Paul : 
 seen her glaring with incipient madness in her 
 eyes from the nursery window, and wondering 
 whether if, like her favourite Eebecca in * Ivan- 
 hoe' — for she read what she liked, and had 
 devoured all Scott's novels before she was eight 
 — she should attempt to leap from the parapet, 
 the mailed arm of some strono; knic^ht v^ould 
 not steal around her waist to protect h^er, 
 clasp her, love her, ride away with her, and 
 make her happy in some far-distant land — of 
 course with Paul strono; and well — for ever- 
 more : seen her, as once they might, in open 
 revolt, bowing down and worshipping her bolster 
 (bowing down before Baal, she called it), so as 
 to, by this deadly sin, render once and for ever 
 impassable the gulf fixed between her weak 
 endeavours to be good and the rigid require- 
 ments of Ag^nes's relicrion. 
 
 Whether the course of time and the advance
 
 42 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 of age would have calmed down tliese ecstasies, 
 or whether the child would have gone mad, it 
 would be difficult to determine ; but luckily, just 
 as her mental excitement was at its worst, she 
 made a chance acquaintance which was destined 
 to influence her life until its close. We have 
 described Sir William Meredith as a worldly 
 man, and one whom the world would doubtless 
 term a heartless man ; and there can indeed be 
 but little doubt that the earnest attention he 
 had paid to the hearts of others had induced 
 him to neglect to a most lamentable degree the 
 proper cultivation of his own. But then, on the 
 other hand, he was a most profoundly sensual 
 man, and liked giving pleasure when it cost him 
 nothing to do so ; nay more, would go out of 
 his way to do a kind deed, unknown to the 
 world, — not because he was really kind, but 
 because he liked to think himself so, and be 
 able to smile on reflecting how the world mis- 
 understood him. We have seen that he was a 
 dutiful son, in so far as the sending of large 
 sums to Chiswick was concerned — although he 
 certainly would not have left a duchess's boudoir 
 had he known his mother was dying at the cor- 
 ner — and also that he was a devoted father, so
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 43 
 
 far as his son was concerned. As regards Mu- 
 riel, and his early coldness for her when a child 
 — which sentiment, by the way, gradually 
 warmed, as she grew up, into so much admira- 
 tion as to be a tolerably good imitation of ster- 
 line: affection — much of this was doubtless due 
 to his great disappointment at the vexatious 
 conduct of Providence in giving him a daughter 
 when he wanted a son, and much also to his 
 utter lack of power to appreciate any possible 
 merit in a female human being who could not 
 be made love to or made use of. The nature of 
 the man was such, and the accidents and vicis- 
 situdes of his life had taught him, that from 
 a worldly point of view — which, of course, w^soi 
 the only one he ever thought worthy of con- 
 sideration — his theory was not altogether with- 
 out its merit. But withal, Sir William was a 
 man who had ridden through more dirt, without 
 soiling his boots, than many another social ad- 
 venturer, more widely praised as a man of heart, 
 could have truly boasted of having done ; and 
 so, when he found the widow of an English 
 groom dying in penury in a garret in La Vil- 
 lette, it struck him as the most natural thing in 
 the world to do, when he had given orders and
 
 44 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 paid for the funeral, to take the poor little orphan 
 girl, Madge Tyrrell, back with him to the Rue 
 Royale, in the most perfect brougham Binder 
 ever built, and to consign her to the care of old 
 Agnes, to be looked after until he could find a 
 suitable home for the waif in England. It was 
 not his fault that Lady Cowley heard of it, and 
 that eventually the Empress heard of it: he had 
 really intended to do good by stealth, and he 
 was indeed almost distressed at the obtrusive 
 generosity of Fate in conferring on him so pub- 
 licly a reward which he had, as a matter of fact, 
 never sought for nor desired. As the Empress, 
 whose noble heart always went out in pity and 
 sympathy to meet the suffering and helpless, 
 chose to say charming things to Lady Meredith 
 about this trifling matter, so much the better : 
 he had not sought nor desired the praise ; but 
 as a man of the world and courtier, he felt bound 
 to accept and take advantage of it since it was 
 gratuitously bestowed. 
 
 The little girl was one year older than his 
 own daughter Muriel, and so unlike that young 
 lady in every way, that the two at once became 
 fast friends. Madge was as dark, proud, openly 
 passionate and wilful, as Muriel was fair, re-
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 45 
 
 tiring, apparently calm — althougli we know this 
 calmness was assumed — and obedient. Muriel 
 had been educated to a point but rarely attained 
 by girls even double her age, and moreover, by 
 the morbid introspection to which we have re- 
 ferred, had educated herself, as it were, to a 
 degree wholly unsuspected by the outer world. 
 Madge was wholly unlettered, could neither read 
 nor write, and the sum total of all her com- 
 munings with her inner self would appear to 
 have resulted in the constantly expressed deter- 
 mination to be an actress. This determination 
 she very boldly announced to Lady Meredith, 
 much to that lady's amusement, before she had 
 been half an hour in the house; and it wasfiot 
 long before the secret of how this one dominant 
 idea had got possession of her mind was ex- 
 tracted from her. It was indeed simple enough. 
 Her father had been groom to one of the 
 actresses at the Varietes, and the child had 
 been petted and spoilt on one or two occasions 
 by her late father's mistress. But the few 
 transient and momentary glimpses into the 
 splendour of an actress's life wliich had been 
 thus afforded to poor little Madge had been 
 quite sufficient to make her decide that, no
 
 46 LITTLE HAND AND MIJCKLE GOLD. 
 
 matter what else the Fates might have in store 
 for her, she would become an actress as soon as 
 she should be old enough to tread the boards. 
 She had indeed already taken one step towards 
 the accomplishment of her ultimate purpose in 
 life ; she had learnt a song — " Le Chapeau de 
 la Marguerite " — and this song she would readily 
 sing whenever asked to do so, without any false 
 shame and without any effrontery, but with a 
 quaint pathos most astonishing in one so young, 
 so inexperienced^ and so wholly uncultured. 
 
 Before Madge had been a fortnight an inmate 
 of Sir William Meredith's hospitable house, she 
 and her song had become quite an object of 
 interest in the hlasc Court circle, presided over 
 by Madame de Metternich : and before the month 
 was over, Madge met with the high honour of 
 being ordered to sing her little song before no 
 less a personage than Csesar himself. After 
 this Sir William saw at once that it would not 
 be possible to put his original plan into execu- 
 tion, and send the child back to England to 
 some charitable institution to be taken care of. 
 He consulted with Lady Meredith, and the 
 result of this conversation was that Mado^e was 
 told her kind benefactors had decided on not
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 47 
 
 only keeping her with them, but also on edu- 
 cating her — so that if, when she had reached 
 years of discretion, she should still adhere to 
 her resolve to become an actress, she would 
 then be fully equipped with the weapons neces- 
 sary to engage in the combat with fair hopes of 
 winning the laurels of victory.
 
 48 
 
 . CHAPTER III. 
 
 Muriel Meeedith was ten years old when the 
 advent of the ambitious little Miss Madge 
 T3^rrell into what, on the lucus a non lucendo 
 principle — for all the members of the family were 
 never at home at the same time, even for meals, 
 and Lady Meredith was indeed, some hinted, the 
 original of Sardou's famous Madame Benoiton 
 — we will call the Meredith family circle, caused 
 a complete change and revolution in her child- 
 life. Madge was different in every way from 
 any girl she had ever met before, and this fact, 
 more perhaps than even the accident of living 
 together, and, after the first few weeks, sharing 
 the same bedroom, attracted her into a bond of 
 close sympathy with the waif. Madge's ex- 
 periences of life had been so wholly different 
 from those of Muriel, and seemed so strange 
 and romantic to the child who had been from
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 49 
 
 her cradle surrounded by every luxury, that the 
 groom's daughter very soon assumed the impor- 
 tance of a heroine in the eyes of Miss Meredith. 
 Madge was indeed a most extraordinary child, 
 and not one of the least noticeable features in 
 her character was the perfectly calm and matter- 
 of-fact way in which she accepted her miracu- 
 lous change of fortune. Nothing seemed to 
 surprise her, and although she greeted with grace- 
 ful and pretty gratitude every new act of kind- 
 ness, she did so very much in the way Muriel 
 did, — as if it were, although, of course, very nice, 
 only natural and in the proper order of things 
 after all. She certainly never in her wildest 
 dreams could have seen such luxury and con> 
 fort as now surrounded her ; but she expressed 
 no astonishment, and, in fact, privately to 
 Muriel announced that in many particulars the 
 establishment of the great English physician was 
 not conducted in a degree of splendour equal to 
 that of the demi-mondaine whose unpaid -for 
 steeds her late father had had the privilege of 
 grooming. " Vois tu, ma chere Mu-mti," — for 
 such was the caressing little name she had 
 given to her companion, — " I can't understand 
 how such a great lady as Madame votre mere 
 
 VOL. I. D
 
 50 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 does not take a milk bath every morning, as 
 Sophie Crapule used to do. It must be de- 
 lightful ! " 
 
 *' A milk bath ! What for 1 " inquired Muriel, 
 her eyes opening wide with wonder. 
 
 " Why, for the skin, of course. I have heard 
 poor father say that she used to send for him to 
 give him his orders while she was in her milk 
 bath, and that he never saw anything so pretty 
 as her little golden head emerging from the 
 great white sea. When Tm an actress, I shall 
 have a bath of milk every morning, and send 
 for my coachman to take his orders then, — 
 although," with a sigh, *' I can never hope to 
 be so pretty as Sophie ! " 
 
 Even the great honour of singing *' Le 
 Chapeau de la Marguerite " before the Emperor 
 one afternoon at St Cloud did not seem to 
 affect her as such an event might reasonably 
 have been expected to do ; and although little 
 Muriel — of course the whole matter was ar- 
 ranged very privately, and as a mere joke by 
 the lady who called herself the " singe a la 
 mode " — nearly fainted with excitement when, 
 the opening bars of the accompaniment having 
 been boldly struck by Madame de Persigny,
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 51 
 
 who presided at the piano, this strange, dark, 
 gipsy - looking little mite, her eyes already 
 luminous with the anticipated pathos of the 
 song, rose, bowed before the most powerful 
 sovereign of Europe, threw up her head, crossed 
 her little, thin, attenuated arms, and began, the 
 singer herself preserved a graceful composure, 
 worthy of Giulia Grisi ; and it was only when 
 the Emperor kissed her, and a round of applause 
 had greeted the end of her song, that her satis- 
 faction in having succeeded found vent in a few 
 quiet tears. 
 
 Meredith having once decided that this 
 strange creature which an odd accident had thus 
 thrown upon his hands was worthy of his in- 
 terest, in that the attention which she attracted 
 for the moment to some extent benefited him, 
 gave general orders in his careless, extravagant, 
 good-natured way that she should enjoy the 
 same privileges as his own daughter, and that 
 the servants should treat her with the same 
 respect and deference which they were in duty 
 bound to show to Miss Muriel. Old Agnes, of 
 course, gibed at this, and terrible were the 
 conflicts waged in the nursery between the 
 gaunt apostle of damnation and dainty Miss 
 
 UBHARf 
 ««iV£RSI7Y0FntrNnr«
 
 52 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 Muriel, while the dusky little subject of all 
 this fighting stood calmly looking out of the 
 window. 
 
 *' How dare you speak so to Miss Madge, you 
 wicked Agnes ? " 
 
 *' Miss Madge, indeed ! a child born in a 
 manger, and no better than a collie pup ! Miss 
 Madge ! " 
 
 *' Agnes, take care ! " 
 
 " Tak' care yoursel', Miss Muriel, and mind 
 lest the pup dinna tear and rend ye ! " Was 
 this prophetic ? *' I dinna ken what the master 
 and mistress are about bringing strange gipsy 
 lassies into the house fra the kennels, as if they 
 didna neglect their ain bairns enough ! " 
 
 " Agnes, how dare you ! " 
 
 " Never mind her, Mu - mu,'^ Madge re- 
 marked scornfully, turning her face slowly 
 round, and looking at the old Scotchwoman 
 with ineffable contempt; "the woman is mad, 
 or," she added, with a brutality bred of her 
 early training, " more likely drunk I '^ 
 
 " Drunk ! Me ? You hussy ! " and Agnes 
 made a rush at Miss Tyrrell, who would pro- 
 bably have received a very severe North 
 British box on the ear had not Muriel inter-
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 53 
 
 posed and ordered Agnes out of the room. 
 Such scenes were at first of almost daily occur- 
 rence ; but as neither Sir William nor Lady 
 Meredith would ever listen to any complaints 
 against this plaything (who, moreover, was 
 always staunchly defended by Muriel), and as 
 time and education wrought considerable im- 
 provement on the manners and bearing of Miss 
 Madge, the feud between the sour but well- 
 meaning retainer and the imperious intruder 
 by degrees smouldered down, although it was 
 never wholly extinguished, and would from 
 time to time break forth and burn with suddenly 
 renewed violence. 
 
 Madge — perhaps greatly owing to Muriel, 
 who was devoted to her, and whose almost 
 morbid refinement could not fail to have a very 
 powerful influence on the rough but plastic 
 nature of the groom's daughter — made rapid 
 progress in her studies, and very soon learned 
 all the natural tricks and habits of a child well 
 born ; but as she grew up and improved, the 
 fashionable ladies who had taken a momentary 
 interest in her wildness and precocity declined 
 to extend the same indulgence to an ordinary 
 and well-behaved young lady who was born in
 
 54 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 a coach-house and destined for the footlights, 
 and so by degrees, as a social factor in the 
 world of Paris, Madge ceased to exist ; and al- 
 though at home she was always treated on 
 a footing of equality with the daughter of 
 the house, the outer world drew a very strong 
 line of demarcation between the two, wholly 
 ignoring Madge, while beaming with ever-in- 
 creasing graciousness on Muriel. But this 
 change crept on so gradually, and was indeed 
 at first rendered so necessary by the extra 
 attention Madge was compelled to give to her 
 studies to make up for lost time, that it may be 
 doubted whether ever it gave rise to any unplea- 
 sant feeling between the two girls. Muriel cared 
 nothing for social festivities, and only attended 
 them to please her mother ; and as Madge had 
 never been accustomed to social dissipations, she 
 found such entertainments — and they were 
 brilliant and of frequent occurrence — as the 
 Merediths gave at home, and which, of course, 
 she always attended, quite sufficient to satisfy 
 her very modest ambition for social recognition. 
 The most pleasant hours of all, however, were 
 those passed in the long winter afternoons, 
 when, Agnes having gone to sleep in her room.
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 55 
 
 the girls would light up the nursery with the 
 two bedroom candles, and set to work to play 
 some deadly drama, or, more frequently, some 
 favourite opera, — for they were both passionately 
 fond of music, and rarely missed attending in 
 Lady Meredith's box at the Salle Ventadour or 
 in the Kue Lepelletier. " Lucrezia Borgia " was 
 their favourite ; and Agnes would certainly have 
 had a fit had she looked in and found, as she 
 might very often have done, her cherished 
 Muriel draped in a long cloak, and with a 
 plumed hat on her head, peering cautiously 
 around the piano, and then advancing with 
 stealthy tread to Madge, who, habited in a like 
 garb, and having gone through the same by- 
 play, met her half-way in the middle of the 
 room. Astolfo and Kustighello : " Qui che 
 fai?" Muriel — Rustighello — would sing in inso- 
 lent inquiry. " Che tu t'en vada, fermo aspetto, 
 e tu che fail" Astolfo — Madge — would reply, 
 with an equal amount of musical scorn and 
 mystery. Then Muriel again : " Che tu sgom- 
 bri la contrada. Fermo attendo." ''Con chi 
 r hai ? " And so on. 
 
 But these histrionic performances were really 
 quite as much the suggestion and delight of
 
 5G LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 Muriel as of Madge ; for, oddly enough, as time 
 went on, the passionate desire to become an 
 actress which had inspired the groom's daughter 
 when a mere chikl seemed to subside, and she 
 spoke less and less of her ambition to rival 
 either Eachel or Schneider. Perhaps this was 
 due partly to the refining influences of her new 
 life, and partly to the fact that as she grew up 
 she came to see more clearly that the career of 
 an opera-bouffe diva, or that of a tragedy queen, 
 was not quite of such untarnished splendour as 
 she had in her infancy fondly imagined it to 
 be. The Merediths were, at all events, secretly 
 pleased with this change in the disposition of 
 theiv protegee ; for although, in the beginning, 
 the child's wishes, reasonably justified by her 
 precocious talent, had met with their careless 
 approbation, they looked forward with dismay 
 to the possibility of meriting the dubious 
 honour of having fostered some future Venus 
 aux Garottes. The girl amused both Sir Wil- 
 liam and his wife ; and moreover their children, 
 both Paul and Muriel, were warmly attached to 
 her. So the worthy medico and his consort de- 
 cided to leave the girl's future in the hands of 
 a Providence which, as experience had taught
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 57 
 
 them, ever evinced a laudable willingness to 
 meet their wishes. Sir William had, of course, 
 willed all his fortune to Paul, and Lady Mere- 
 dith, out of her father's money, had provided a 
 magnificent dowry for Muriel : so if, when he 
 and his wife were gone, the children wished to 
 take care of their old playmate, well and good. ; 
 if not, and if she had not shown shrewdness 
 enough to marry money, why, poor Madge 
 would have to shift for herself. In the mean- 
 time, she should have the best of everything, 
 and it was quite on the cards that her very 
 beautiful eyes might win her a rich husband ; 
 and in the event of this last lucky accident 
 taking place during his lifetime. Sir William 
 was quite prepared to give the girl away, pro- 
 vide her with a decent dot, and in fact reward 
 her very handsomely for the pleasure she had 
 given his children. More than this he could 
 not and would not do, and, as he complacently 
 admitted to himself, few men under the circum- 
 stances would be prepared to do so much. 
 
 The series of pecuniary disasters to which 
 we have alluded at the end of the first chap- 
 ter of our story, but more especially the terrible 
 sorrow which came upon him when his only
 
 58 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 son was brought home crushed and dead, greatly 
 modified Sir William's views concerning the 
 future of Madge Tyrrell, but in very different 
 ways. When Morny's untimely demise upset 
 many of his most brilliant schemes, — he had, 
 for example, invested over a hundred thousand 
 pounds in a speculation by which Deauville 
 was to become the sea-side headquarters of the 
 Court, a kind of Yersailles-sur-Mer, and where 
 a splendid marble palace was to be built for 
 the Prince Imperial, — and when disaster fol- 
 lowed disaster. Sir William had told himself 
 that it was now quite all he could do to look 
 after his own children ; that Lady Meredith 
 must, in fact, greatly diminish the dowry des- 
 tined for Muriel, and give the greater portion 
 of it to Paul ; while as for Madge, she would 
 have, when grown up, to go out as a governess. 
 When the appalling news came that the Ameri- 
 can securities which constituted the entire por- 
 tion of Lady Meredith were — at least for the 
 time being, although some faint hope were 
 held out that a revival might not be impossible 
 — of absolutely no value, Sir William steeled his 
 heart still more against the little waif whom, 
 in a moment of quixotic generosity, he had
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 59 
 
 taken to his bosom ; and had Madge been at 
 that time old enough to earn her own living, it 
 is probable that she would without further 
 ceremony have been cut adrift. But then 
 came the terrible catastrophe, the crushing 
 blow, the death of Paul, and the horse that 
 killed the child killed all Sir William ^s hopes 
 and ambitions and dreams. When he had time 
 to think of anything save his overwhelming 
 sorrow, he remembered how fondly attached his 
 poor boy had been to Madge Tyrrell ; and he 
 felt that now as he had only Muriel to provide 
 for — and of course there was more than enough 
 of his splendid fortune still left for that pur- 
 pose — he would perhaps be acting in accord- 
 ance with his dead son's wishes if he made it 
 his special care to look after the welfare of 
 his boy's cherished companion and playmate. 
 Ready money to any great extent he could not 
 give her now, for what he could spare from 
 the dowry reserved for Muriel he needed for 
 purposes of speculation ; but he could use his 
 experience and social influence to get her a 
 good husband, and see her happily settled in 
 life before his time came to join Saint Arnaud, 
 Morny, Mocquard, and his old fellow-conspira-
 
 60 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 tors who had passed on before him to the great 
 unknown. Muriel, of course, could pick and 
 choose for herself; for although many strait- 
 laced members of the French and English aris- 
 tocracy still coldly frowned when they heard 
 the name of William Meredith mentioned, 
 nevertheless there could be no doubt that the 
 girl's great beauty, grace, high intellectual 
 ability, and wealth, would easily enable her to 
 marry some man of rank and power. 
 
 With Madge, of course, it was wholly differ- 
 ent. She was the daughter of Bob Tyrrell, a 
 groom, and that was about all that was known 
 about her. Nobody even exactly knew whether 
 the child had been born in lawful wedlock or 
 not, for certainly nobody had ever taken the 
 trouble to inquire. Then, again, she was not 
 beautiful, like Muriel. Her face was full of 
 character, of dramatic energy, and her eyes 
 were fine, and that was about all that could be 
 said in her favour as regards personal charms. 
 That she was very clever and self-willed was 
 beyond all doubt ; but then, according to Mere- 
 dith's experience of life, an inch of beauty was 
 of more practical value to a woman than a 
 hundredweight of brains. In fact, he had always
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 61 
 
 feared and avoided clever women, and quite 
 believed in Gautier's maxim, " Une femme qui 
 a assez d'esprit pour etre belle a bien assez 
 d'esprit pour moi.'^ What to do with this 
 young lady whose future welfare he now felt 
 it incumbent on him to ensure seemed indeed 
 a puzzle, for of course matrimony was the only 
 way out of the scrape, and who would be found 
 to marry the penniless daughter of a stable- 
 boy? Doubtless Meredith could have got 
 scores of titled men as suitor for her hand had 
 he been prepared to endow her with a hand- 
 some dot^ but that under the present circum- 
 stances was impossible ; and, moreover, the 
 sudden tragic death of his son had inspired him 
 with a romantic spirit of sentimentality con- 
 cerning his son's playmate, and he wished to 
 see her not only well married in a worldly 
 sense, but happily married, in the way they 
 used to understand the term in the old days 
 when he was a boy at Chiswick, stealing lemon- 
 drops from his father's scanty stock-in-trade — 
 that is, married to an honest man ; and when this 
 view of the matter struck him, Sir William had 
 perforce to smile — a smile that would have de- 
 lighted wicked old Arouet, for the wonder swam
 
 62 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 into his mind whether such a thing as an honest 
 man could be found ? Did he, Sir William 
 Meredith, the celebrated physician, the famous 
 author of the treatise on Cardiac Affections, the 
 confidential friend and adviser of innumerable 
 princes and potentates, the supposed million- 
 aire, the man who knew half Europe, — did he 
 know one honest man ? Yes I Parhleu ! he 
 did — Jim Anstruther !
 
 63 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 At the time of little Paul's death Madge was 
 seventeen, and although she was but one year 
 older than Muriel, her dark complexion, which 
 was indeed almost swarthy, and indicated gipsy 
 blood, made her look quite three years the 
 senior of the slender, nervous, gold-crowned, 
 and blue-eyed Miss Meredith. Although al- 
 most of equal height, — for Muriel had rather 
 outgrown her strength, — the coarse blood of 
 the elder girl had so developed her, that, 
 standing by the side of the younger, she looked 
 almost a woman by comparison. As all about 
 Muriel was quick, tender, passionate, and girl- 
 ish, so were the leading characteristics of 
 Madge's nature, — reserve, steady self - will 
 amounting almost to mulish obstinacy, and an 
 independence of spirit which, although out of 
 place in a girl of her years, promised well for
 
 64 LITTLE HAND AND MUOKLE GOLD. 
 
 the future, if guided into the proper channel. 
 Such is doubtless the view that any casual 
 observer would have taken of the two friends ; 
 but as an author is proverbially endowed with 
 Asmodean privileges, we would venture to sub- 
 mit that the greater amount of real strength 
 of character lay in the girlish and impulsive 
 blonde rather than in the calm and reserved 
 brunette, and that what we should be tempted 
 to call the breeding of the former, were we not 
 speaking of the granddaughter of a country 
 chemist, would inspire any experienced student 
 of human nature with far greater confidence, 
 as betokening what in speaking of a horse is 
 called staying power, than tlie rather sullen 
 strength and decision of the latter. In other 
 words, the nervous power possessed by Muriel 
 Meredith was better calculated to sustain a 
 woman in great and bitter trials, and to aid her 
 in attaining great and high aims, than the 
 vulgar thick strength and sinew of Madge 
 Tyrrell. 
 
 But strength and power, though of this differ- 
 ent quality, were latent in both these girls, and 
 made themselves manifest in a thousand different 
 ways, but notably in their conduct one towards
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 65 
 
 the other. In the ordinary trivial affairs of 
 everyday life Muriel could always seek the 
 counsel and advice of Madge, and so taught the 
 latter to look upon herself rather as the strong 
 protector of her weaker and younger friend ; but 
 in any really serious emergency Madge almost 
 involuntarily would turn to Muriel for that true 
 and steel-like support and strength which might 
 bend but which could never break, and by the 
 side of which her own ordinary and common- 
 place decision of character shrivelled to nothing. 
 When Paul was brought home mangled and 
 dead, the grief of Madge was as that of a mad 
 woman, and terrible to behold, — in fact, it 
 almost brought on a serious illness ; but the 
 anguish in the heart of Muriel was far too un- 
 speakably bitter to find expression in hysterics. 
 She bowed her head, and every nerve and sinew 
 in her body quivered with re-echoing pain ; but 
 she thought of her father and his grief, and of 
 Paul and his rest, and in the sweet pure well 
 of her womanly sympathy she found the balm 
 wherewith to comfort sorrow more boisterous 
 but far less poignant than her own. But the 
 two, notwithstanding this great diiference of 
 character, — nay, rather perhaps because of it, — 
 
 VOL. I. E
 
 G6 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 lived together in apparently the happiest and 
 closest intimacy, the soft and tender nature of 
 Muriel finding a bracing stimulant in being 
 brought in contact with the rouo^her fibre of her 
 friend, while what still lingered of innate coarse- 
 ness in Madge could not fail to be beneficially 
 influenced by the refining gentleness of Muriel. 
 
 The long j)eriod of mourning succeeding the 
 death of Paul, and that sad event itself — for 
 death, the great disentangler, unites as fre- 
 quently as he separates — brought the two girls 
 still closer together, and no one but the shrewdest 
 reader of woman's heart would ever have sus- 
 pected that the two lives did not flow in perfect 
 harmony. Such, however, was far from being 
 the case. As she grew older, Madge began to 
 realise, vaguely at first, the false position which 
 she held in society ; but the relative coldness 
 which Sir William (quite unconsciously, be it 
 observed) showed her during the time when his 
 financial troubles before the death of his son 
 had filled his mind with perplexity regarding 
 the future of his pi^otegee, brought suddenly and 
 abruptly before Madge, with terrible distinct- 
 ness, the appalling fact that the whole making 
 or marring of her life depended upon the caprice
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 67 
 
 of a selfish man, who was not bound to her by 
 any tie of blood or affection, and to whom 
 already, in the eyes of the world, she doubtless 
 owed a debt of gratitude for having lifted her 
 out of the sphere in which she was born, and 
 exalted her to an altitude from which, should 
 this same support not be continued, she must 
 inevitably fall and be crushed. The effect upon 
 the coarse but imaginative nature of Madge, 
 when the full importance of this discovery 
 dawned upon her, was indeed terrible. All 
 idea of the stage she had abandoned : what 
 was to become of her in the event of her beinof 
 cut adrift by the Merediths, or rather by Sir 
 William, — for she felt certain she could always 
 count on the lasting affection of his daughter ? 
 Why, she asked passionately in her heart, had 
 she not been left in the garret where she had 
 been found ? and what right had these people 
 to take up her life as if it were a plaything 
 which they might break or throw away or keep 
 at pleasure 1 The nature of Madge was emi- 
 nently a selfish one, and here she found her most 
 vital interests imperilled by what she chose to 
 look upon in the light of a mere heartless 
 caprice. The draught was a bitter one, and
 
 68 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 might indeed have poisoned even a more healthy 
 and purer nature than hers. As it was, when 
 the girl became fully convinced that no member 
 of the family save Paul and Muriel really cared 
 for her, and that she had been merely taken out 
 of the gutter as a plaything for these two, her 
 whole soul turned in hatred against her bene- 
 factor, and she longed for the day to come when, 
 at no matter what price, she could w^in sufficient 
 independence to be able to indulge in the luxury 
 of revenge. 
 
 Her anger, however, did not blind her to the 
 innocence of Paul and Muriel. They, at least, 
 had never worked her harm ; it was no doing 
 of theirs that she found herself in the position 
 of a lapdog, to be caressed one minute and 
 then spurned away the next ; they, at least, had 
 frankly given her the whole wealth of their 
 love, and she had as frankly given hers to them. 
 She would not include the children in the hatred 
 she felt justified in feeling for the parents, — 
 nothing should ever separate her heart and 
 theirs ; and so, by a curious and morbid form 
 of reasoning, the more she felt her hatred 
 against Sir William deepen, the more she felt 
 it her duty, as it was her pleasure, to cherish
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 69 
 
 her love for his children. It was doubtless 
 owing to this dual sentiment that the death 
 of little Paul aflPected Madge so violently, and 
 that Muriel, far from having any reason to sus- 
 pect that her friend's feelings were undergoing 
 any change unfavourable to her or to her family, 
 on the contrary could not fail to notice a sudden 
 and unaccountable increase of most demonstra- 
 tive affection on her part. As for Sir William 
 himself and Lady Meredith, they saw so com- 
 paratively little of Madge and Muriel, being for 
 ever taken up and absorbed from morning till 
 night, the man with his business and the 
 woman with her social occupations, that even 
 if any change in Madge's manner towards them 
 had been observable — and it was not — they 
 neither of them would have noticed it. The 
 girls were indeed left very much to themselves, 
 and allowed an amount of liberty which spoke 
 eloquently of the indifference with which their 
 welfare was regarded. They could receive whom 
 they pleased, and go where they pleased, — for 
 Sir William greatly admired what he termed the 
 American system of bringing up young girls, 
 which system would seem to consist mainly in 
 letting them bring themselves up ; while as for
 
 70 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 Lady Meredith, she never bothered her head 
 about the matter one way or the other. Old 
 Agnes had long since been forced to give way 
 before the determined spirit of Miss Madge; 
 and so these two young ladies found themselves, 
 at the respective ages of sixteen and a half and 
 seventeen and a half, enjoying a liberty which 
 in many countries would hardly have been 
 granted to a young married woman. It must, 
 however, in all fairness be admitted that they 
 took no undue advantage of the li])erty thus 
 accorded to them. The moral atmosphere of 
 Paris during the last decade of the Second 
 Empire was far from pure, and men and women 
 of every rank in life seemed bent on enjoying 
 themselves at no matter what cost. That under 
 these circumstances, and in such a town, and 
 knowing all they knew, two such attractive 
 girls as Madge Tyrrell and Muriel Meredith 
 should have been able to thoroughly enjoy the 
 most unusual liberty of action allowed to them 
 without in any way incurring scandal, spoke 
 volumes in favour of the theory of the danger 
 of innocence. They went everywhere by them- 
 selves, or accompanied by any friends whom 
 they might care to invite to go with them ; and
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 71 
 
 they had carte blanche to receive all their ac- 
 quaintances in the Kue Eoyale, and indeed 
 entertain them, so far as the consumption of 
 tea and cake may be considered as an enter- 
 tainment ; and as I^ady Meredith was but rarely 
 at home, and Sir William never, the girls had 
 the spacious saloons generally to themselves. 
 
 The death of Paul, and the financial troubles 
 — concerning which, by the way, the girls knew 
 little or nothing, although they continued in- 
 creasing in frequency and severity — had decided 
 Lady Meredith to postpone formally introducing 
 Muriel to society until her eighteenth birthday ; 
 and so the dissipations indulged in by the two 
 young ladies, besides the tea and cake mentioned 
 above, consisted mainly in going to the operas — 
 for Lady Meredith had a box at all three houses, 
 the Grand Opera, the " Italiens," and the Opera 
 Comique — attending concerts, and riding or 
 driving in the Bois. They were, however, both 
 of them far too attractive to pass unnoticed in 
 a metropolis so keenly alive to the charms of 
 female society as Paris, and before long these 
 afternoon teas, presided over by two graceful and 
 charming girls, became the place of rendezvous 
 for a few ladies who liked to meet after shop-
 
 72 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 ping and talk gossip without the restraint of a 
 hostess, and many men who found Sir William's 
 drawing-room in agreeable proximity to the 
 Cercle des Moutards, as the Rue Royale Club 
 was called in those days. That the conversa- 
 tion carried on at these gatherings would have 
 shocked and scandalised many a matron on our 
 chaste side of the silver streak is more than 
 likely, for Madge, if not Muriel, was well ac- 
 quainted with most of the mysteries of passion 
 as described by George Sand, Balzac, De Musset, 
 and others ; but their Parisian training, which 
 taught them that although no fruit may be 
 classified as being absolutely forbidden, much 
 of it must be looked upon as distinctly indi- 
 gestible, kept these two pretty moths from burn- 
 ing their wings, although it might please them 
 from time to time to fly dangerously near the 
 flame. 
 
 But perhaps we had better let the ladies 
 speak for themselves. It is February — a cold, 
 chilly February. Paul has been dead a year. 
 It is hardly five, and the two girls are alone, 
 carelessly awaiting any chance visitor, for it 
 is too cold and bleak to think of venturing to 
 the Bois.
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 73 
 
 " So you don't admire papa's friend, Madgy ? " 
 asked Miss Muriel, trying to stifle the ghost of a 
 yawn. 
 
 " Who do you mean ? " 
 
 " Colonel Anstruther." 
 
 " Admire him ! Why, of course not. What 
 in the world is there in the man to admire ? 
 Do you ? " 
 
 " Papa says he's ' a man of sterling merit.' " 
 Here we are forced to admit Miss Muriel 
 mimicked her father's rather pompous way of 
 speaking. 
 
 Madge laughed. " Oh, I've no doubt he is 
 all that : but old soldiers of sterlinoj merit 
 ought to content themselves with the Iri- 
 valides or Chelsea Hospital when they get so 
 infirm." 
 
 " But he's not infirm : he looks as strong as 
 iron. He's only lost a leg, and papa says he 
 lost that at Inkerman, when he got the Victoria 
 Cross for distinguished bravery under fire." 
 
 " I don't care whether he lost it at Inker- 
 man or at Mabille — he's lost it." 
 
 " Well, and what if he has ? What have his 
 legs got to do with you ? " 
 
 Madge laughed. " Nothing so far, certainly;
 
 74 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 but I'm not at all certain Uncle Bill would not 
 like them to have." 
 
 '' What in the world can you mean ? " 
 
 " Why, you know, I told you about the long 
 talk Uncle Bill had with me two months after 
 
 " and she hesitated, and her voice dropped 
 
 — " after poor Paul's death." 
 
 *' AVhat ! you mean when he told you you 
 ought to marry a man with money *? " 
 
 Madge nodded. 
 
 " Why, you don't mean to say, Madgy, that 
 you think papa wants you to marry Colonel 
 Anstruther ? Why, you're crazy ; he hasn't got 
 a penny. I heard papa say so only yesterday." 
 
 " I'm certain he wants me to marry him ; and 
 I feel sure the poor man was brought here all 
 the way from Cheltenham on purpose for me." 
 
 "But he hasn't got a penny/' persisted 
 Muriel. 
 
 " Not now ; but he will have, it seems, when 
 his father dies." 
 
 " He can't have a father alive," Muriel ex- 
 claimed, with the splendid disdain of seventeen 
 for all over forty. '^His father would be a 
 hundred." 
 
 "No; his father is just eighty-one. Sir
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 75 
 
 Eoderick Anstrutlier is his name. He's got. a 
 nice place in Kent, and is patron of four 
 livings." 
 
 " How in the world do you know all that ? 
 Did he tell you ? " 
 
 " No ; I looked him up in Debrett when I saw 
 how the land lay." 
 
 Muriel laughed. " Don't be taken in by any 
 nonsense of that kind, Madgy. I don't believe 
 in expectations. Look at poor Arthur." 
 
 We are sorry to be forced to chronicle that 
 these two very wayward and badly brought up 
 young ladies had acquired the detestable habit 
 of calling their male friends by their Christian 
 names. * 
 
 " Oh, Arthur is very different," replied Madge. 
 " He is only the second son." 
 
 " Yes, but his father is a duke." 
 
 " What difference does that make if he has no 
 chance of ever being duke himself '? " 
 
 '^ Well, I'd sooner be the second son of a duke 
 than the eldest son of a baronet any day." 
 
 *' That depends upon the money. I wouldn't," 
 replied Madge, quietly. 
 
 " So you've made up your mind to marry this 
 man of sterling merit, I see."
 
 70 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 " No, I haven't ; he hasn't asked me yet." 
 
 " Of course not ; but you know you could 
 easily get him to do that whenever you like." 
 
 " Well, I suppose I could," assented Madge, 
 smiling. 
 
 ^' Well ? " 
 
 "Wein" 
 
 " Would you accept him if he did '? " 
 
 " That depends." 
 
 " Depends on what ? " 
 
 Madge burst out laughing. " Why, on the 
 state of his father's health, of course, you little 
 goose. I wouldn't marry an old man with only 
 one leg if his father wasn't going to give him 
 up the title and money before long." 
 
 " I should think not," assented Muriel. 
 " You'd rather marry Arthur, although he is 
 only the second son "of a duke, wouldn't you ? 
 He's young and good-looking, at least." 
 
 " Yes, but Arthur wouldn't have me, you see." 
 
 '' Yes, he would. Why not "? " 
 
 " Because he doesn't like me, and does like 
 somebody else." 
 
 " I suppose you mean me ? " Muriel coloured 
 as she spoke. 
 
 Mado^e nodded.
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 77 
 
 '* What nonsense, Madge ! Arthur and I are 
 good friends, of course, and that's all. He 
 wouldn't marry me if I were the only girl in 
 Paris." 
 
 '' I know better ! " and Madge looked very 
 wise. 
 
 " What do you know ? " 
 
 ^' What every one knows." 
 
 '' And what is that ? " 
 
 " That Arthur Pendragon is over head and 
 ears in love with you ! " 
 
 " What an outrageous girl you are, Madge. 
 You really ought not to say such abominable 
 things. You know they are not true." 
 
 " I know they are true." • 
 
 *' How do you know ? " 
 
 '^ Never mind ; I do know, and that's enough." 
 
 " No, it isn% you wicked girl. How do you 
 know ? Tell me, how do you know ? He 
 
 hasn't " and Muriel stopped short, blushing 
 
 violently. 
 
 " Hasn't what ? " asked Madge, with provok- 
 ing calmness. 
 
 " Hasn't You know what I mean, 
 
 Madgy dear. Hasn't said anything to any 
 one (
 
 78 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 '' Hasn't said anything to any one ! " echoed 
 Madge. " What in the world do you mean ? " 
 
 " You know what I mean, you wicked Madge." 
 
 Madge shook her head. " No, I am sure I 
 don't. You must explain yourself, Mu-mu, 
 before I can answer your question." 
 
 Muriel came appealingly up to her foster- 
 sister like a kitten seeking to be petted, and 
 put her arms around her neck and kissed 
 her. 
 
 *^ Tell me, you wicked Madge, tell me," she 
 whispered in her ear. 
 
 Madge tried to push her away laughingly. 
 
 " You must tell me, Madgy ; do tell me," she 
 murmured, in a little soft whisper. 
 
 '' Tell you what ? " 
 
 '^ Has he ever said anything ? " 
 
 '^ Who ? " 
 
 " Arthur." 
 
 " About you ? " Muriel gave her a little 
 squeeze of assent. '* Yes, he has." 
 
 '' Oh ! " Muriel caught her breath. '' What 
 did he say, Madgy ? Tell me Avhat he said," 
 she whispered. ** Whom did he say it to ? " 
 
 " To me." 
 
 ''What did he sayV'
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 79 
 
 " He said a great deal for him, for you know 
 he is generally as cold as an icicle." 
 
 ^'No, he isn't. Tell me what he said." 
 
 " Well, he asked me all sorts of questions 
 about you the other day ; and when I had 
 told him all the good I could — which was 
 not much, you know — he said he thought 
 you were the very nicest little girl he ever 
 met." 
 
 *' He didn't say little girl ! Arthur never 
 dared say little girl ; " and Muriel relinquished 
 her hold on her friend, and threw up her head 
 proudly. 
 
 " Yes, he did ; he said little girl most dis- 
 tinctly." • 
 
 *^ What impertinence ! I don't believe it." 
 
 ''So that's all the thanks I get, Miss Pussy, 
 is it?" 
 
 " He never said little girl. Say he never said 
 little giriy 
 
 " Yes, he said little girl. If you don't believe 
 me, ask him." Then, as a footman pulled back 
 the portiere — '' There he is, I daresay ! " 
 
 Muriel started back, but her fear was ground- 
 less. It was not Lord Arthur Pendragon, but 
 a note for Miss Tyrrell. Madge glanced at the
 
 80 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 writing, and remarking quietly, " from Lau- 
 rence," opened the envelope, which contained 
 three tickets and a note. 
 
 "How good of him," exclaimed Madge. 
 *' He s got us those tickets to hear Cruvelli ; " 
 and throwing the tickets over to Muriel, she 
 began to read what her correspondent had 
 written. It was only a few doggerel rhymes, 
 scratched with a bad pen on Jockey Club 
 paper : — 
 
 " Dear Madgy, 
 
 I send you the tickets 
 For the place where they fiddle and shout. 
 At Love's cricket, were your lips the wickets, 
 My kisses would bowl you clean out. 
 And if Cupid were umpire, good innings 
 I might score with my heart for a bat, 
 Knowing he would forgive me my sinnings 
 
 When appealed to — How's that ? 
 
 Yours ad ceternam, L. F." 
 
 '' What impertinence ! " exclaimed Madge, 
 her face ablaze. ** I really think Laurence 
 Farquhar's coolness beats anything I ever heard. 
 Kead that ! " and she tossed the letter over to 
 Muriel. 
 
 " Outrageous I " exclaimed that young lady, 
 laughing, when she had read the verses. " Lau- 
 rence is really too bad. Imagine his daring to
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 81 
 
 call you Mad gy ! I'd like to hear him dare 
 call me Muriel ! " 
 
 "'No, you wouldn't. You'd sooner hear 
 Arthur " But just at this moment the foot- 
 man announced " Colonel Anstruther.'^ 
 
 VOL. I. F
 
 82 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 The gallant officer who had won the Victoria 
 Cross, and lost his right leg at Inkerman, 
 and who now came slowly into the room on 
 crutches, was a man whose real age was not 
 over fifty, but hardships, privation, and exposure 
 had so aged him in appearance that he looked 
 quite sixty. Dr Meredith had attended him, 
 just before the outbreak of the Crimean war, in 
 Paris, and had seen him through a bad attack of 
 typhoid fever, and an intimacy had then sprung 
 up between them (for Lady Anstruther had 
 come over to nurse her son, and Dr Meredith 
 always made it a point to be particularly atten- 
 tive to all members of the aristocracy of his 
 own country, in order to overcome, if possible, 
 the bad odour in which he was held in London) 
 which was agreeable to both. Meredith was a 
 thorough man of the world, and though more
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 83 
 
 especially a lady's maTi, he could make himself 
 eminently agreeable to his own sex when he 
 chose to take the trouble. His experience of 
 life had been varied, his adventures numerous, 
 and when his memory failed him, an ever active 
 imagination supplied him with a store of fictiti- 
 ous facts, always apropos, instructive, and enter- 
 taining. He could be holy with the holy, pure 
 with the pure, and simple with the simple ; and 
 although the man's natural character and habits 
 were neither holy nor simple nor pure, yet he 
 would act his part so well that no one not on 
 the look-out for deception would for a moment 
 suspect his good faith. In the Anstruthers, 
 indeed, mother and son, he had found a simpli- 
 city and absence of guile so far beyond anything 
 he had ever seen, heard, or read of, that he was 
 at first dumfounded and almost thrown off his 
 guard. Was it really possible that such Arca- 
 dian simplicity, purity, and trustfulness could 
 exist in this nineteenth century, and, what is 
 more, come to Paris, and, what is more, be found 
 in so wholly unromantic a spot as the Hotel 
 Westminster 1 Was this gaunt tall officer in 
 earnest or trying to deceive him when he told 
 the doctor that his mother had made him pro-
 
 84 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 mise not to go to the theatre in Paris, unless he 
 thought he could see his way to reclaiming 
 some one of tlie unhappy wantons who trod 
 the boards ? 
 
 '' Not that / mind," Anstruther added with a 
 sigh, " for of course these poor women could not 
 hurt 'iiic ; but my mother thinks, and no doubt 
 justly, that those poor unhappy outcasts im- 
 agine when one is really merely applauding 
 their talent that one is countenancing their sin, 
 and thus they may become still more hardened 
 than before." 
 
 Meredith could not believe his ears, and told 
 the whole story to Morny that very evening. 
 
 '' What a pity," said the Duke, with a smile, 
 " that your friend is not a Frenchman. I would 
 make him Pr6fet de Police to-morrow ! " 
 
 And yet this pure and simple giant, who 
 made the doctor read a chapter of the Bible 
 morninof and evenino^ to him when he was too 
 weak and ill to read himself, was no fool — far 
 from it : he knew not a little about his profes- 
 sion, was a first-rate mathematician, and a good 
 linguist. His simplicity was inborn, and his 
 purity was so natural that his comrades had, 
 after one or two feeble and futile attempts to
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 85 
 
 debauch him, decided to respect his spotlessness, 
 agreeing that it would be but a poor job at best 
 to cut up a first-rate saint into an indifferent 
 sinner. Lady Anstruther, his mother, was still 
 worse, for one evening during her stay in Paris, 
 having found her way to the Mabille Gardens, 
 she was arrested for causing a disturbance there 
 by endeavouring to reclaim some of the stray 
 sheep, and it needed the personal intervention 
 of Lord Cowley to effect her release from 
 durance vile. 
 
 But they were not hypocrites or Pharisees, 
 this mother and son — far from it ; nor did they 
 wish to impose in any way their Christian views 
 on others. Sin was hateful to them, but thty 
 would never be party to any harsh scheme for 
 the prevention or punishment of it. Eeclaiming 
 was their forte : they did not mind the sheep 
 straying from the fold so much, if they would 
 only come back when they went out to fetch 
 them. Anstruther would cheerfully and almost 
 gladly help a drunkard to bed, but he would sit 
 by his bedside in the morning and exhort him 
 to come at once and take the pledge. Fallen 
 women were, however, his special hobby, and he 
 had probably in his time been more robbed and
 
 86 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 hoodwinked by ladies of easy virtue than the 
 most inveterate debauchee. He would leave 
 the '' Rag " at night and walk up St James's 
 Street and Piccadilly, bestowing half-crowns 
 on gin - besodden wenches, on their readily- 
 given promises to go home and be quiet ; and 
 althoufyh the fallen women of London cost him 
 quite two hundred a -year, the money was 
 bestowed in such guileless simplicity that it 
 inevitably did far more harm than good. And 
 this was not done in any spirit of interference, 
 for he was far too well-bred for that ; nor was it 
 done to proclaim his own self-righteousness, for 
 he was the most modest and retiring of men, 
 and believed himself to be the worst of sinners. 
 His extraordinary conduct arose, first of all, from 
 his absolute simplicity and innocence ; and, 
 secondly, from his hatred of all cruelty, unkind- 
 ness, and oppression. Cruelty to him was a 
 thing so terrible, that he would readily have 
 risked his life to save a dumb animal from 
 the hands of a tormenter ; and thus as sinners 
 — and more especially fallen women — must, 
 according to his views, be most miserable and 
 unhappy (for what more cruel bondage and 
 despotism can there be than that of sin ?), it
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 87 
 
 was his duty to leave his Chib and his fireside, 
 and go out into the highways and byways to 
 bring to his suffering sisters the succour of his 
 few shillings and his warm heart. 
 
 One, however, among many other amiable 
 qualities in this good man's nature, was his com- 
 prehensive spirit of tolerance. He was used to 
 being laughed at, and did not mind it : it did 
 not embitter nor sour him in the least, nor did 
 he expect others to adopt his views, nor think 
 any the worse of them for not doing so. He 
 did not himself go to the opera or theatre, and 
 particularly objected to the ballet ; but yet you 
 might talk to him by the hour together about 
 Fiocre, Fioretti, Granzau, or any other queen 
 of the tiptoe, and never by his questions or by 
 his answers be led to suspect for a moment 
 that he looked upon public dancing with disap- 
 proval. He could not and would not associate 
 with an habitual drunkard or immoral person, 
 but he found it in his generous heart easy to un- 
 derstand and forgive the ordinary backslidings 
 and improprieties of his weaker brethren. 
 
 Another rare and good quality which he 
 possessed to a most eminent degree, was his 
 belief in the goodness of others. He could
 
 88 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 not believe evil of a man or woman until it 
 was proved to bim. Tbe women he met walk- 
 ing tbe streets, and tbe men be visited in tbe 
 prisons, tbcre could be no doubt about : they 
 had fallen, and whether or not they regretted 
 their misdemeanours, it was his duty to try and 
 help them back into the path of happiness and 
 virtue. As for the other men and women 
 whom he met in the ordinary course of his 
 life, he believed them one and all to be true 
 and good, according to their lights, and stub- 
 bornly refused to alter his opinion until some 
 overwhelming proof of his mistake should be 
 brought before him. So in the case of Mere- 
 dith : he had been told the most terrible 
 stories about this great doctor, but the man 
 had been kind to him. He liked him and be- 
 lieved in him, and therefore he very quietly 
 closed his ears to the evil reports, and nailed 
 his flag of confidence and friendship to the 
 mast. Sir William had written to him about 
 a month before that he needed his advice 
 and counsel, and so simple-hearted Jim had, 
 at great personal inconvenience, left Chelten- 
 ham, where he was residing, and come at once 
 to Paris. It had not as yet been made very
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 89 
 
 clear to his mind why his presence in the 
 French capital had been so urgently needed 
 by his friend, but he found much to interest 
 him in Paris, and the society of his friend's 
 family most delightful, so he was content to 
 stay so long as his limited means — for his 
 father was most penurious, and only allowed 
 his only son and heir a thousand pounds 
 a-year — would permit him to do so. 
 
 " I hardly dared hope to have the good 
 fortune to find you ladies in this afternoon," 
 he said, in his rambling old-fashioned way, 
 when he had at length got comfortably en- 
 sconced in an arm-chair. " I thought all the 
 queens of fashion were at the Bois at this 
 hour." 
 
 Muriel laughed merrily. " So they are," she 
 said ; " but neither Madge nor I are queens of 
 fashion." 
 
 "No, Colonel Anstruther ; we are two quiet 
 and retiring little English maidens," put in 
 Madge, '^ who like quietly sitting at home by 
 the fireside and making tea for their friends 
 while the giddy w^orld runs by." 
 
 "And very good taste, too. Miss Tyrrell," 
 said the benevolent old warrior ; " but I thought
 
 90 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 that you Parisians, or rather you English who 
 have lived so long abroad, had lost all idea of 
 what we call in England home life. I am glad 
 to see Sir William has kept alive the good old 
 feeling." 
 
 "Vive le home ! " cried Madge, ringing the 
 bell ; ''and vive le plum-pudding and le rosbif ! 
 Why, Colonel Anstruther, Muriel and I are full 
 of all sorts of good old feelings, and one of 
 them, I am sure, you will share with us." 
 
 " And which is that, Miss Tyrrell ? " 
 
 " A desire for a cup of very good tea, — the 
 de la caravane ! " 
 
 " With great pleasure," said Colonel An- 
 struther, smiling ; " I am only afraid I am giv- 
 ing you young ladies a great deal of trouble." 
 
 " You are, mon Colonel, a great deal, but we 
 like it." Then turning to the servant — " The 
 tea, Selwyn, at once. Now, Muriel, tell Colonel 
 Anstruther what auntie said about the opera 
 on Friday." 
 
 " The opera ? " said Anstruther, beginning 
 to feel rather uneasy. 
 
 " Yes," said Muriel ; " mamma is going to the 
 Affaires Etrangeres, and so Madge and I are to 
 have the box for Friday, and we want you to
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 91 
 
 go with US. It's the * Africaine,' with Naudin, 
 Sasse, and Faure. You are fond of music, of 
 course, Colonel Anstruther *? " 
 
 " Very fond of it, indeed, Miss Muriel," said 
 the Colonel, simply ; '' but I'm afraid I can't 
 accompany you to the opera, although I can 
 think of few things that would give me greater 
 pleasure." 
 
 " Then why not come ? " said Muriel. 
 
 The Colonel hesitated. 
 
 " Keligious scruples ? " said Madge, carelessly, 
 never dreaming she was hitting the right nail 
 on the head. 
 
 " Partly so, yes," said the Colonel, turning 
 towards her, delighted at having found some 
 one who seemed to understand his views. The 
 two girls stood petrified with astonishment. 
 They knew that some of their prudish country- 
 women disapproved of going to the Varietes 
 and Palais Koyal, but that even a bishop 
 should have scruples about going to the opera 
 seemed preposterous. And yet this man before 
 them was a soldier, a warrior, and a gallant 
 one, too, as the absence of that leg, lost in 
 Inkerman field, proved most distinctly. 
 
 *' Why, you don't think going to the opera
 
 92 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 wicked, do you?" inquired Muriel, while Madge 
 very diplomatically held her tongue. The poor 
 Colonel moved uneasily in his chair. 
 
 " Not wicked, no. Certainly not wicked. I 
 should be sorry to think that thousands of 
 people all over the world are every night doing 
 so very unnecessary a thing as go to the opera 
 
 if it were wicked ; but '' and he hesitated. 
 
 How could he hope to make these mere children 
 understand his views ? He hated to preach ex- 
 cept to fallen women, drunkards, gamblers, and 
 thieves, and yet he should feel like a coward if 
 he did not give his reasons for declining what 
 to him would have been a great pleasure ; for he 
 was passionately fond of music, and the idea of 
 sitting all the evening by the side of Madge 
 Tyrrell was in itself a greater delight to him 
 than he cared to acknowledge even to himself. 
 He looked at Madge appealingly. She caught 
 his glance, and saw the whole situation at once. 
 
 " I can quite understand you, Colonel An- 
 struther," she said, quietly; ^'you do not think 
 going to the opera is a sin in itself, but you 
 think it may perhaps encourage sin in others." 
 Where in the world had this imp picked up 
 this hackneyed Exeter Hall echo ? " You may
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 93 
 
 be right," she continued, with a sigh ; "I be- 
 lieve — I feel that you are ! " The Colonel was 
 radiant. He positively beamed with delight, 
 while Muriel, who had just been on the point 
 of putting her pocket-handkerchief to her face 
 to hide her smiles, let the little dainty piece of 
 batiste fall to the ground in her amazement. 
 
 " Why, Madge " she began. 
 
 " I feel sure Colonel Anstruther is right, 
 Muriel," she interrupted. " I can't tell you," 
 she continued, turning to the Colonel, *' how 
 often I think, when I am sitting in auntie's 
 splendid avant-scene, of what a waste of time 
 and money it all is, and how many poor people — 
 children, for instance — might be reclaimed frota 
 a life of sin and misery by only one small part 
 of what rich people spend so thoughtlessly on 
 their pleasures ! " 
 
 " Those sentiments do you honour. Miss 
 Tyrrell," said the Colonel, bowing; "and I 
 feel sure that when Miss Muriel has thought 
 the matter over, she will agree with you." 
 
 *' Lord Arthur Pendragon, Mr Laurence 
 Farquhar," announced the servant, most oppor- 
 tunely, thus effectually preventing any little 
 explanation which Muriel in her honesty might
 
 94 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 have been inclined to offer, and leaving Madge 
 triumphant mistress of the field. But as the 
 two gentlemen who have now entered are des- 
 tined to play parts of some importance in this 
 story, we must turn our attention to them. 
 
 Of Lord Arthur Pendragon, the second son 
 of the Duke of Tintagil, there is indeed nothing 
 very remarkable to chronicle, for he is merely 
 the ordinary type of the ordinary young English 
 nobleman to be met with in great profusion at 
 any good social gathering. Eton, where he had 
 rowed a little, and been pronounced a " nice 
 boy," and Oxford, where he had read a little, 
 and been pronounced a " promising young 
 man,*' had been all his history until he entered 
 the diplomatic service, by the members of which 
 distinguished profession he was speedily voted 
 " not half a bad sort/' and his life from the 
 " nice boy " to the '* not half a bad sort " period 
 had not contained any one incident worthy of 
 notice. He was nice-lookino^ without beinor in 
 any way handsome, and his small regular fea- 
 tures, blue-grey eyes, curly light hair, and in- 
 expressive mouth, would not have drawn any 
 one's attention to them in a crowd, though they 
 were pleasant enough to look at when the tall.
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 95 
 
 well-made young man to whom they belonged 
 happened to be talking to you. Although his 
 family was almost the most noble and aristo- 
 cratic of any in Great Britain, one might look 
 in vain for any distinctive mark in this man 
 indicative of the blueness of his blood, for such 
 was not to be found in cither his face, figure, 
 voice, heart, or mind. He was a nice, clean, 
 strong, healthy, gentlemanly youth, with a very 
 pleasing countenance and rather shy manners ; 
 but when this has been said, all has been said, 
 unless, indeed, the very natural fact that he 
 was very proud of his name and family, and 
 very properly thought himself a personage of 
 considerable consequence, be judged worthy *of 
 record. As a matter of fact, however, his 
 family had never done anything very remark- 
 able in history except confiscate property and 
 pander to the vices of weak sovereigns. It had 
 produced a few statesmen, a warrior or two, the 
 inevitable traitor with the usual Tower-green 
 and headsman's block accompaniments, a score 
 of very ordinary blackguards, and, of late 
 years, some very hard-working, money-grub- 
 bing, business men, under which last category 
 of worthies Arthurs father, the present Duke,
 
 96 LITTLE HAND AND MUOKLE GOLD. 
 
 and the eldest son, T^ord Camelot, would surely 
 come. 
 
 The noble Duke and his son the Marquis 
 knew the value of every inch of their vast pro- 
 perty, and made it the business of their lives to 
 increase, in every honest albeit harsh way they 
 could, and no matter at what expense of incon- 
 venience or toil, this value ; not, of course, be- 
 cause their already vast wealth needed any 
 augmentation, but because it was in the nature, 
 character, and tastes of these descendants of the 
 blameless husband of Queen Guinevere to pre- 
 fer the desk to the saddle, the pen to the sword, 
 the ledger to the song. From Christmas to 
 Christmas, from morning to night, every day 
 throughout the year, the sole and one thought 
 of the Duke and of his eldest son was how to 
 add to the wealth and material splendour of 
 their house, — not by any act of prowess by sea 
 or by land, or by any grand and lofty intellec- 
 tual effort, but by raising tenants' rents here, 
 lowering miners' wages there, taking advantage 
 of the passing visit to England of a transatlantic 
 millionaire to sell, with a Hebraic view to profit, 
 some old painting or rare book, exchanging 
 worthless heirlooms with some parvenu for
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 97 
 
 articles of real current value, or giving the sup- 
 port of their noble names, for a very important 
 consideration in cash, to some company or en- 
 terprise. That was the present and nineteenth 
 century way in which these noble descendants 
 of crusaders understood their duties to their 
 name and house. The Duke had speculated in 
 land in Nebraska and in pork in Cincinnati ; 
 Camelot had his private agent on the London 
 Stock Exchange and on the Paris Bourse, and 
 all the company promoters in the city knew 
 exactly the price at which he valued his name 
 when he condescended to allow it to appear in 
 the list of directors. 
 
 Ceaselessly and untiringly did they work, 
 this noble father and son — flying to Australia 
 one year, dashing ofl" to California the next, 
 buying and selling at a profit every conceivable 
 kind of thing, from a yacht to a Sevres tea-cup, 
 dabbling slightly in turf matters, so as to keep 
 in touch with the knowing ones of the subscrip- 
 tion-rooms when anything particularly " good " 
 might happen to be on ; flirting with philan- 
 thropy and religion, not from any love of God 
 or pity for human suffering, but to keep their 
 names before the public in a way the best cal- 
 
 VOL. I. G
 
 98 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLP] GOLD. 
 
 Ciliated to inspire sympathy and admiration ; 
 ferreting out new inventions, and driving 
 hard bargains with the guileless inventor; 
 and opening their town - house and country 
 palaces to all and every condition of man or 
 woman who was worth anything like money, 
 either positively or relatively. The Duke had 
 sold his strawberry-leaves to a Manchester girl 
 for money, and Camelot had majried a Chicago 
 widow for the same useful article. The Mar- 
 chioness had died childless ; but the red, coarse 
 face of the factory Duchess was still to be seen 
 at Court functions and other social ffatherino^s, 
 shining as a beacon-light to the outsider, to 
 remind him that for a pecuniary consideration 
 he might be permitted to take his seat among 
 the Olympian gods. No daughters, and only 
 two sons, had been born to this ducal couple, 
 Camelot and Lord Arthur. Camelot was a 
 source of unbounded satisfaction to his noble 
 parents, for he had shown, by his marriage and 
 by his habits of life, that he appreciated the 
 market value of his rank ; but Arthur was 
 viewed with less favour, for he had hitherto not 
 only flatly declined to marry for money, but 
 had elected to adopt a career which was wholly
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 99 
 
 incompatible with the raking in of many shekels. 
 One thing, however, might be said in his favour : 
 he had no expensive tastes, and as he refrained 
 from TattersalFs and the Divorce Court, and 
 merely indulged in the milder forms of enjoy- 
 ment provided by Cook, Lock, and Beale and 
 Inman, the ducal exchequer ran no immediate 
 danger of being impoverished by the younger 
 son. 
 
 His companion and friend, Laurence Farquhar, 
 was a totally different man in every way. Born 
 of poor parents in the south of England, he had 
 been sent to Eton to form connections which 
 might be useful to him in after-life ; but these 
 connections, such as they were, he had form'ed 
 in so extraordinary a fashion that their imme- 
 diate result was expulsion — the " Farquhar row " 
 beinof one of the most scandalous which has ever 
 been chronicled by Barnes's Pool. Nothing 
 daunted, his parents had sent him to Christ 
 Church, from which seat of learning pecuniary 
 embarrassment, engendered by unlimited loo, 
 horse grinds, and the Bullingdon, had forced 
 him to fly by stealth after two years' residence. 
 Just at this painful crisis in his career, an 
 aunt had died leaving him ten thousand pounds
 
 100 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 in cash ; and young Farquliar found himself 
 face to face with the fact that his habits of life 
 had rendered it imperatively necessary to his 
 comfort and wellbeing that these ten thousand 
 pounds should be forced, by fair means or by 
 foul, to yield him a net income of not less than 
 five thousand golden sovereigns per annum. Tlie 
 difficulty was not an insurmountable one, and 
 indeed, to a man of the very elastic morality 
 of Farquhar, rather embodied an amusing pro- 
 blem to solve, the key to which, fashioned he 
 cared not how, he felt confident he should find 
 from year to year, as he took his time strolling 
 leisurely down the sunny side of the Road to 
 Ruin, leaving it to his more impetuous friends to 
 cab it. For we are forced to chronicle the fact, 
 though with regret, that Laurence Farquhar 
 was essentially a bad man, and a bad man in 
 the very widest and most comprehensive accep- 
 tation of the term. He had been a bad son and 
 a false friend, and he was only looking out for 
 the first opportunity of proving his transcen- 
 dent ability to blossom into an execrable hus- 
 band. He had been a sneak at Eton — enticing 
 his comrades into nameless enormities, and 
 then quietly giving up their names, with a
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 101 
 
 highly coloured and detailed catalogue of their 
 iniquities, to the head -master ; he had been 
 a thief at Oxford — intoxicating mere babies 
 fresh from home, and then rifling their pockets 
 under the kindly guiding light of ecarte and 
 loo, which on such occasions he took good care 
 should shine for him alone ; and he had proved 
 himself a villain at Pratt's by telling a man 
 of his wife's dishonour, merely because that 
 wretched woman had declined to continue fur- 
 nishino; him with further funds. He was wicked 
 and bad from head to foot ; and the evil in him 
 was rendered totus teres atque rotundus by the 
 fact that he was very clever, morally an arrant 
 coward, and personally attractive. His, indeed, 
 was not the bold, open wickedness that, while 
 inspiring horror, may in some morbid and sensi- 
 tive minds awaken feelings of wonder and awe 
 akin to admiration, but the efl'eminate, cold, and 
 calculating villainy which finds its ultimate ex- 
 pression in the poisoned cup — the spirit of evil 
 which, shrinking from the fierce murder-heated 
 breath which dilated the nostrils of a Coesar 
 Borgia, sported and displayed itself in the 
 sickly and infernal fumes which nourished a 
 Lorenzaccio. But although it would be almost
 
 102 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE flOLD. 
 
 impossible to exaggerate the dee]) baseness of 
 this man, it must not for one moment be sup- 
 posed that this baseness was apparent, or rather, 
 to speak with more absolute precision, that it 
 betrayed itself to society at large in any very 
 offensive form. He was known to be a man of 
 very limited means, who had been thrown into 
 and received with open arms by a society far 
 above that to which his birth or his fortune 
 would have entitled him honestly to aspire, — 
 that, in other words, he was one of those num- 
 erous individuals who are forced to live more 
 or less by their wits, which modern euphemism 
 covers more sins than charity — and as such but 
 little was required of him, while much met with 
 forgiveness. He was good-looking, agreeable, 
 and amusing, writing and publishing pretty 
 verses, knowing every possible and impossible 
 way out of a scrape, and never loath to ex- 
 change his precious advice for the still more 
 precious confidence which bound the luckless 
 seeker after aid to him for ever. Moreover, he 
 was good-tempered — nothing ever put him out 
 — and generous when he had money. And what 
 difference did it make, after all, to the general 
 public whether or not this amiability and gene-
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 103 
 
 rosity were the results of diplomatic calculation 
 or the spontaneous impulses of his nature ? He 
 was not a man born to succeed in the long-run, 
 for his character greatly needed real stability 
 (although for a short period he could be very 
 firm and inflexible) ; but he was one well 
 adapted to win many and small prizes, for he 
 could ruthlessly take advantage of a weakness, 
 and by his captivating manner frequently lead 
 an associate into an error which he found but 
 rarely any difficulty in turning to good account 
 for himself. Men liked him because he was 
 amusing, and they thought him useful ; women 
 because he was 2:ood-lookin2f and dan onerous : 
 and so, as he went everywhere and knew every- 
 body, from a social point of view (taking into 
 consideration his obscure birth and meagre for- 
 tune) he might be considered a success, for but 
 a very limited few suspected the cynical and 
 profound wickedness of the man ; and he had 
 avoided getting into any serious scrape since 
 Eton — tlie flight from Christ Church being 
 looked upon with most lenient eyes, and the 
 tragedy enacted at the fashionable little night- 
 house in Park Street, and which ended in the 
 suicide of the husband, being known but to three
 
 104 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 persons on earth. Madge received him with 
 marked coldness, while Muriel looked on with 
 ill-suppressed amusement. 
 
 " You got the tickets all right, I hope," he 
 said, carelessly. 
 
 "Yes," replied Madge, frigidly, ''and the 
 letter which accompanied them." If she thought 
 she was going to disturb Farquhar's equanimity 
 by her severity, she was greatly mistaken. He 
 laughed — a frank musical laugh was one of 
 his many attractions, and he used it unsparingly 
 — and threw back his head with a movement of 
 childish petulance which was so habitual to 
 him as to have won for him at Eton the 
 nickname of '' Toss." 
 
 " Not a letter," he said, his deep blue eyes 
 sparkling with good-natured mischief. " I didn't 
 send you a letter. Those verses, you mean — 
 what did you think of them ? " Madge put all 
 the scorn she could into her eyes and kept 
 silent. Farquhar immediately assumed an air 
 of the greatest concern and contrition, and 
 drew nearer to her. *' I have not offended you, 
 I hope," he said with well-feigned emotion, look- 
 ing at her straight in the eyes. His anxiety 
 appeared so sincere, while the cause of it was
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 105 
 
 really so trivial, that Madge — who, after all, it 
 must be remembered, was hardly more than a 
 child — could not for the life of her refrain from 
 smiling. 
 
 "Ah, you're not really angry with me, I 
 see, after all,'' he said, his own face lighting 
 up. 
 
 *^ Yes, I am : how dared you write such 
 thino;s to me '? " 
 
 ** Why, what was there wrong in the verses ? " 
 
 *^ Everything." 
 
 " Well, that's certainly a great deal." 
 
 " How dare you call me Madgy '? " 
 
 "You call me Laurence." 
 
 Madge coloured. " That's a very different 
 thing. It is very wrong, I know, and I shan't 
 do it any more, Mr Farquhar." 
 
 " You can call me Larry if you like, or 
 ^Toss.'" 
 
 Dignified silence on the part of Madge. 
 
 " And then, what else was there wrong 1 " 
 
 "Everything." 
 
 "Ah, you don't understand cricket, I see. 
 Show the verses to Miss Muriel — she'll under- 
 stand them." 
 
 " Madame la Mar^chale de Chassepot-Lebel
 
 lOG LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 and Madame la Comtesse d'Aramay," an- 
 nounced Selwyn, and JMadge swept majestically 
 past Farquhar to the door to receive these two 
 distinguished visitors, casting as she did so a 
 glance of extreme severity on the good-looking 
 scoundrel who was teasing her, and who bowed 
 low in mock humility. Farquhar followed her 
 with his eyes, and as he did so a very peculiar 
 smile passed over his face. It was called forth 
 by a sudden wonder which had risen up in his 
 heart, whether he were not allowing himself to 
 take too much interest in this stylish, showy- 
 lookino- mrl who wore her clothes with such 
 peculiar grace, and whose swarthy complexion, 
 lighted up by such flashing and brilliant eyes, 
 seemed to him to represent something more 
 piquant and desirable than mere beauty. Love 
 of course was impossible : he was not capable 
 of such a paltry sentiment, but he was a man 
 of strong passions, which this strange girl ap- 
 pealed to with a peculiar power. These pas- 
 sions had made a fool of him already three 
 times in his short life of eight-and-twenty 
 years, and he had resolved that a similar 
 catastrophe should not occur again. What if 
 this Qfroom's dauc^liter should make him forc^et
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 107 
 
 his good resolutions, and induce liim to put his 
 head in the lion's mouth once more ? Had she 
 any money ? that was the question, for marry 
 her without money he could not. Did Sir 
 William intend doing anything for her ? How 
 could he find out ? That the girl liked him he 
 shrewdly suspected, — in fact, most girls did ; 
 and one of his many celebrated oft-quoted say- 
 ings was, *' Only let me waltz with a girl three 
 times, and she is mine." The case was alto- 
 gether a difficult one, and needed thinking out. 
 He was seriously looking out for an heiress, 
 and even a temporary engagement to another 
 girl just now woukl do much harm, and at the 
 best cause much delay. What was to be done ? 
 He would consult Graham. Yes, that was the 
 best thing ; no man could give him better 
 advice on such a subject than Vincent Graham, 
 the only man he had ever met who was more 
 absolutely depraved even than himself, — the 
 worthy whose maxim it was that as vices out- 
 live virtues, they are the only thing a man has 
 to rely upon in his old age. Graham knew 
 everything and everybody, and could doubtless 
 find out about this girl's prospects at once. 
 This happy thought relieved Farquhar of his
 
 108 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 perplexity, and enabled him to turn his atten- 
 tion to what was c^oinof on about him. 
 
 The rooms were filling rapidly, for at a 
 certain hour every one seemed to come at once, 
 and Selwyn had to rattle off the names with 
 great volubility. These little five o'clock teas, 
 presided over by the two young girls, and 
 sometimes, though not often, graced by the 
 presence of Lady Meredith, had, as we have 
 said, become quite popular, and this afternoon 
 not a few of the notabilities of Paris w^ere 
 present. Our own embassy was represented 
 by Arthur Pendragon, and our land forces by 
 the one-legged colonel ; but the United States 
 sent the beautiful Mrs Judge Buncomb and her 
 two no less beautiful daughters, — General 
 Obadiah L. Hitchcock of Poughkeepsie, who, al- 
 thouojh his connection with the American armv 
 would appear to have been of a shadowy nature, 
 had amassed untold millions by the sale of a 
 patent medicine ; while Russia came to the 
 front in the persons of Prince Dourak, the 
 beautiful Countess Marionine and her talented 
 son, who, at the age of twelve, played Chopin 
 as well as Gottschalk, and the wicked and 
 handsome young Prince Mantischefi"; Austria
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 109 
 
 stepping boldly forward with three members 
 of the embassy, and France leavening the mass 
 with innumerable pretty women and the dessus 
 du panier of the Jockey, Union, Imperial, and 
 Petit Club. Tea and scandal flowed in tor- 
 rents, and everything was discussed, from the 
 Empress's last bonnet to Pere Hyacinthe's next 
 sermon. 
 
 " Have you heard about Kigolboche ? " in- 
 quired in a low whisper the lovely Duchesse 
 Van in de la Tour Chardin, who ought to have 
 been ashamed, by the way, of mentioning the 
 name of the lady who had invented that most 
 expeditious method of removing a man's hat 
 with her toe to such a mere child as Muriel. 
 
 " No," replied Miss Meredith, in an eager 
 undertone, her eyes sparkling with curiosity ; 
 '' what has she been doing now ? " Muriel 
 had been so used to hearing all sorts of ex- 
 traordinary tales, that it would have taken 
 a great deal to have shocked her, proceeding 
 from such lovely lips as those of Madame la 
 Duchesse. 
 
 " Why, they say " — and the Duchesse's voice 
 sank still lower — '' don't say I told you; but they 
 say that she made that imbecile Dourak "
 
 110 IJTTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 " Which one ? " interrupted Muriel, nodding 
 towards a gaunt, pale-faced Calmuck, who was 
 talking with Farquhar in the corner. " This 
 Dourak, or his brother Pierre 1 " 
 
 '' This very one, ma die re. They say," and 
 here she whispered into this mere child's ear a 
 scandalous anecdote of wanton and reckless ex- 
 travagance and folly, with which le oiionde oic 
 Von s^amiise in Paris was then ringing. 
 
 " C'est impayable ! " exclaimed Muriel. 
 
 "Au contraire, ma chere! " laughed the Duch- 
 esse, " je trouve que ce n'est que trop bien paye. 
 Qu'en dites vous, ma mignonne, hein ? " Muriel 
 coloured slightly, and shrugged her shoulders 
 impatiently. 
 
 " I hate Kussians ! " she said. 
 
 " Naturally you do, being English. I like 
 them." 
 
 " What can you see to like in them '? " 
 
 " They're the most generous men in the world," 
 said the Duchesse. " They're the only men who 
 give presents worth having nowadays." But 
 Muriel had no experience of them in this way, 
 and so could make no reply. 
 
 '^ Who told you this dreadful story ? " she 
 inquired.
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. Ill 
 
 " Oh, every one is talking of it ; but the Duke 
 told me. The Emperor had told him." 
 
 Here Mrs Buncomb and her two daughters 
 approached them, and this very naughty gossip 
 was diverted to another channel. Meanwhile 
 young Pendragon had been doing his best to 
 amuse his compatriot, Colonel Anstruther ; but 
 he found it uphill work, for the Colonel seemed 
 to have less to say for himself than usual, and 
 beyond the ever-exciting question of the weather 
 they could not get. Lord Arthur was just be- 
 ginning to say for the eleventh time, '' Yes, our 
 climate in England, although I admit we have the 
 
 November fogs " when the Colonel touched 
 
 him on the arm. • 
 
 " I beg your pardon, my lord, but I think 
 Miss Meredith is making signs to you.'' 
 
 Arthur looked up, and there, sure enough, was 
 Muriel waving a tea-cup at him. He blushed 
 like a girl as he rose, and saying, '' Thank you, 
 Colonel Anstruther," obeyed the summons. 
 
 *' Come and make yourself useful, Arthur," 
 said Muriel. ^' I've been signalling to you for 
 hours, but you would not notice me. Take this 
 to Madame de Chassepot-Lebel. She looks 
 furious, and I don't want to go near her."
 
 112 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 Lord Arthur very meekly obeyed, but came 
 back as soon as he could to the young girl's 
 side. 
 
 " Am I not to have a cup of tea ? " he in- 
 quired, — not that he wanted it, but that he had 
 to say something, and his conversational powers 
 were limited. 
 
 Muriel looked at him mockingly. " Tea ? 
 Certainly not, sir. You know you hate it; 
 and then, again, it's not good for little boys. 
 Here, take this to the youngest Miss Bun- 
 comb, and stay with her, and make yourself 
 aofreeable." 
 
 " May I not come back ? " asked his lordship, 
 tea-cup in hand. " I don't like Miss Buncomb." 
 
 "That shows your bad taste. Who do you 
 like, pray ? " 
 
 '* Oh, I like a lot of people — you among 
 others." 
 
 He put as much meaning as he dared in these 
 three last words. Muriel met his eyes, coloured 
 slightly before his ardent gaze, and then, to hide 
 her confusion, made a low obeisance. 
 
 " I am sure I ought to be very much flattered, 
 my lord, that you like me among others. Ke- 
 member I am only a little girl ! "
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 113 
 
 '^ More than others, I should have said." His 
 voice, which had sunk almost to a whisper, 
 trembled as he spoke. 
 
 " Now go to Miss Buncomb : that tea will be 
 cold." 
 
 " But tell me I may come back." 
 
 " I'm going away myself. Madge must pour 
 out the tea now." Then, as she saw the look of 
 disappointment in his face, she added coquet- 
 tishly, " But Madge and I are going to the 
 Opera Comique to-night. You can come there 
 if you like." 
 
 " Thank you. I shall surely come," said Lord 
 Arthur, departing with his cup. 
 
 VOL. I. . H
 
 114 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Vincent Geaham, whose counsel as to the ad- 
 visability of his paying his court to Madge Tyr- 
 rell we have just seen Laurence Farquhar decide 
 upon asking, was one of the best-known men 
 in Paris, but ivlio he was exactly, nobody knew. 
 He was an Englishman, that was beyond 
 doubt ; but he hated England, and never went 
 there but when private business compelled him. 
 He moved in the best society, and always had 
 done so, — ever since, indeed, his face had first 
 become familiar on the Boulevards, and that 
 was now^ goii^g on for tliirty years ; but nothing- 
 was knoAvn about his birth or condition of for- 
 tune. Eumour had, indeed, at one time as- 
 serted that he was the natural son of an English 
 nobleman, who allowed him some few hundreds 
 a-year to keep out of England; but that was 
 unlikely, for he was on terms of intimacy with
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 115 
 
 all the leadiDg members of an aristocracy, and 
 they were, apparently, as much in the dark re- 
 garding his birth and family as others. He was 
 old and ugly now ; but some people, who could 
 remember him years back, said that in the old 
 days, when the famous Marquis of Hertford, 
 and his no less famous but more lovable brother, 
 Lord Henry Seymour, had made the French 
 capital ring with their splendid eccentricities, 
 and when there used to be a crowd around Tor- 
 toni's to see the handsome youug Alfred d'Orsay 
 dash up in his Tilbury and throw his reins to 
 his tiger, Graham had been rather good-looking, 
 and certainly a great dandy. He had been one 
 of the original members of the Jockey Club, 
 when that celebrated coterie " hung out " far up 
 the Boulevard des Italiens, and, at the time we 
 now first make his acquaintance, had shared in 
 the vices of at least three generations. It was 
 he the late Duke of Hamilton was impatiently 
 waiting for on that fatal night when he met 
 with the accident which caused his death ; and 
 had *' old " Graham, as he was even then called, 
 not been detained by a game of picquet at the 
 Jockey, the Premier Duke of Scotland would not 
 have fallen down-stairs at the Maison Doree.
 
 116 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 He was evidently not rich, for lie hated walk- 
 ing, and did not keep a carriage ; but he had 
 collected together a mass of erotic monstrosities, 
 both in the way of books, engravings, ohjets 
 d/arty and, in fact, all kinds of bibelots. His 
 apartment over Tortoni's was small, but fur- 
 nished with artistic taste. But, rich or not 
 rich, he had evidently wasted the bulk of his 
 fortune in his special treasures ; for he was 
 never known to have any more ready money 
 than was necessary for his nightly dinner at 
 the Maison Doree. At that famous cabaret^ 
 on the very stroke of eight, always at the same 
 table — the first to the right on the ground floor, 
 in the window as you enter from the Boulevard 
 — every night when he was not invited out to 
 dine, winter or summer — for he never left Paris 
 for more than a week in August — Vincent 
 Graham was to be found. The solar cannon in 
 the gardens of the Palais Eoyal was not more 
 exactly punctual in announcing mid-day than 
 was ''old" Graham in taking his seat at that 
 table ; and thus any one, man or woman, young 
 or old, who sought information concerning any- 
 thing connected in any way with the shafts of 
 Cupid, might be sure to find him.
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. llV 
 
 Of course, every one in the restaurant knew 
 him fromVerdier, the proprietor, who would every 
 evening greet him on his arrival, and inquire 
 how he had liked his dinner on his departure ; 
 and Joseph, the famous head waiter and friendly 
 rival of the magnificent Ernest of the Cafe An- 
 glais opposite, who would descend from the 
 cabinets 'particuliers above to make similar in- 
 quiries, to Casimir, the prince of cooks. He was, 
 as it were, one of the family ; and any boy in 
 the Guards or Household Cavalry, who might 
 wish to discover to what supreme pitch of excel- 
 lence French cooking in its most artistic and 
 delicate development can reach, had only to 
 leave it to Graham to have a confidential chat 
 with Casimir at two o'clock under a certain tree 
 on the Boulevards, where that great chefwsiS at 
 that hour always to be found taking a breath 
 of fresh air, and then to have another chat 
 with the proprietor and the venerable — for he 
 was born old — Joseph, to be certain that the 
 repast ordered would be a thing of joy for ever. 
 Of course, Laurence Farquhar knew perfectly 
 well where to find the old gourmet ; and of 
 course, when he strolled into the Maison Doree 
 at five minutes past eight, there was old Graham
 
 118 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 at his table preparing to devour a dozen Ostend 
 oysters. 
 
 '' Ha ! lia 1 Farquhar ; so you are come to dine 
 with me, have you ? " said this high priest of 
 apolausticism. This was an old joke of his, for 
 he had never been known to pay for another 
 man's dinner in his life. 
 
 *' I'll dine at your table if you'll let me," re- 
 plied Laurence, giving his coat, hat, and stick 
 to the waiter, who was all bows and smiles on 
 seeing that this aristocratic-looking young Eng- 
 lishman was a friend of *' Monsieur Gram." " I 
 want to ask your advice about something." 
 And he seated himself, opened his napkin, and 
 gave his curls an encouraging caress with his 
 hand. 
 
 " Quite right, my boy," growled Graham, 
 sucking down his oyster with great gusto. 
 '' Bad luck at the club, I suppose 1 I couldn't 
 get there this afternoon." 
 
 " No ; I haven't been playing to-day. I only 
 dropped in there for a moment on my way here." 
 
 " Any one there ? " 
 
 " Nobody much. There's going to be some- 
 thing rather hot on there to-night, though, I 
 believe."
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 119 
 
 " What ? " 
 
 " Dourak is coming to try his hand at bezique." 
 
 " Capital ! " and the old sinner grinned. " I 
 wouldn't miss it for anything. I suppose you'll 
 play ? " he added, slyly. The two men ex- 
 changed a glance of intelligence. 
 
 " Eather/' replied Laurence, laughing. " I 
 think I can beat Dourak at that game." 
 
 '* And at many others, too, my dear boy, I 
 don't doubt." 
 
 " What shall I have to eat ? " asked Laurence, 
 looking from Graham to the waiter, and from 
 the waiter to Graham. 
 
 '' These oysters are not bad." 
 
 " Have you ordered much of a dinner *? " 
 
 " I have ordered what I wanted," replied 
 Graham dryly, rather disgusted that this man, 
 who was young enough to be his grandchild, 
 should know so little of his exquisite taste in 
 dining as to imas^ine for a moment that he 
 could have ordered what could be stigmatised 
 as " much of a dinner." 
 
 " All right — keep your temper," said Laurence, 
 seeing the old scoundrel's irritation. Then 
 turning to the waiter — "I'll have exactly the 
 same dinner as M. Graham."
 
 120 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 '' And will Monsieur Lave the same wine ? " 
 asked the servant, obsequiously. 
 
 ''Oil no," interrupted Graham, "you won't 
 like the wine Fve ordered. You boys of to-day 
 can't get on without champagne, and I never 
 touch it at dinner when I dine alone. Ce 
 n'est pas un vin ; ce nest qu'un boisson." 
 
 " What have you ordered '? " 
 
 "Never mind — order your own drink." 
 
 Laurence looked inquiringly at the waiter, 
 who looked at Graham and then ventured to 
 murmur, " M. Gram has only ordered half a 
 bottle of chablis moutonne and a bottle of 
 chateau margaux." 
 
 '' Capital ! that will suit me down to the 
 ground. See that everything is hot, and don't 
 keep me waiting." 
 
 '' I should think you were talking to a groom," 
 mumbled old Graham, who was now gulping 
 down his croute au pot, and making a dreadful 
 noise over it. 
 
 '' We don't pretend to have the manners now, 
 old chap, that you had when you were young," 
 said Laurence, sarcastically. 
 
 " It's a pity." 
 
 " It wouldn't pay now."
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 121 
 
 ''What do you want to ask me about ? '* 
 
 " It's about a woman." 
 
 ^' Well ? In some mess, I suppose." 
 
 " No, not exactly. But I don't want to get 
 into one." 
 
 '' Of course not. Women are very dangerous 
 animals. Who is this w^oman ? Do I know 
 her ? " 
 
 " Slightly, I think." 
 
 '' A lady ? " 
 
 '' Oh yes ; that is, not by birth." 
 
 " What the devil do you mean, Farquhar ? " 
 
 Laurence laughed, and unfolded his tale 
 with so much minuteness (Graham only inter- 
 rupting him from time to time with some 
 very pertinent question), describing his feel- 
 ings from the day on which he first saw 
 Madge in the Merediths' carriage at the Bois, 
 and omitting nothing till he came down to 
 the episode of the tickets and verses which 
 we know about, that dinner was over before 
 he had done. 
 
 '' The truth of it is," he said in conclusion, 
 '' I'm in a hole and don't know what to do. 
 She attracts me more than any girl I think I 
 ever saw. I know you'd advise me to chuck it
 
 122 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 all up and go away — any sensible man would — 
 and I suppose I shall have to make up my mind 
 to go. But the whole thing is a frightful bore, 
 and if you should see any way out of it, my 
 dear old boy, and would tell me, you may 
 count on my eternal gratitude ! " 
 
 It was one of Graham's many peculiarities 
 that he never smoked cigars or cigarettes, — 
 only a pipe ; and no matter where he went, 
 where people smoked at all, they had to put up 
 with his laro^e meerschaum. He had had some 
 trouble about this once at the Travellers' Club 
 in London, but he had stuck to his guns, or 
 rather his pipe, and had eventually won the 
 day. He now, before replying to Laurence, 
 who, having at length completed his story and 
 his dinner, was fortifying himself with fine 
 champagne, pulled out his pipe, leisurely filled 
 it, grunting now and then, lit it, and began 
 puffing out volumes of smoke, much to the 
 horror and disgust of two Cockney solicitors 
 who had ordered a most sumptuous repast at 
 the adjoining table, and who were quite con- 
 vinced they were ** doing the dog" by dining 
 at the "Maisong Dory," but who nevertheless 
 thought it the '^ correct " thing, and lent them
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 123 
 
 importance, to find fault with everything, as if 
 the fodder provided for them in Bloomsbury 
 had for ever unfitted their palate for more 
 civilised food. 
 
 *' Well, now, about your business, Farquhar," 
 he at length said slowly and thoughtfully, after 
 a pause, during which he had been puffing at 
 his pipe like a steam-engine. " Decidedly the 
 best thing for you to do is to go away at 
 once." 
 
 " I thought you'd say so," exclaimed Lau- 
 rence, greatly disappointed. 
 
 " Wait a minute : go away, and before 3^ou 
 go away write a letter." 
 
 " What for ? I hate writing letters, they 
 are so dangerous." 
 
 " That's a very common and boyish mistake. 
 Letters are the most valuable things in the 
 world. I never destroy one. I think, Far- 
 quhar, I can help you in this matter." 
 
 "Can you?" exclaimed Laurence. *' You 
 dear old scoundrel I I knew you could ! " 
 
 "Yes, listen to me. I know Meredith, of 
 course, very well indeed ; knew him when he 
 was nobody, and old Mme. de Pimbeche used to 
 be his banker. That's years ago now. Of
 
 124 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 course you know poor Morny took the man up 
 and made him." 
 
 " I know all about it/' said Laurence. 
 " The man ought to have been hanged fifty 
 times, they say/' 
 
 *' That I know nothing about. I daresay we 
 all of us deserve hanging, more or less. But, 
 as I said just now, I know the man very well, 
 and he speaks to me more openly than to any 
 one else. His wife used to be the most beauti- 
 ful woman, but not my style. I hate thin 
 women, and she was always like a toothpick " 
 — and the old reprobate paused, musing for a 
 moment. 
 
 " Well," said Laurence, impatiently. " What 
 were you going to say *? " 
 
 " Ah, yes ! Well, I happen to know Mer- 
 edith wants to marry off this governess, or 
 whatever she is, of his, to some old fool he has 
 got over from England on purpose." 
 
 " Colonel Anstruther ? was that the name ? " 
 
 "Yes, that's the man. I used to know his 
 mother. She was the most worthy woman, 
 and used to be very strong on the subject of 
 reclaiming fallen women. That, indeed, is what 
 first brought us together ! "
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 125 
 
 '' That's really too good ! " laughed Laurence. 
 '' You helped her, I suppose." 
 
 " Yes. You see, I have unfortunately known 
 so many women of that class in my time, that 
 I was able to be of some real assistance to 
 her." 
 
 " Your co-operation must have been in- 
 valuable." 
 
 " It was. We worked wonders together, and 
 then the police locked the woman up for mak- 
 ing a row at Mabille's." 
 
 " What brought her there ? " ' 
 
 "EecTaiming, of course — the old game. I 
 told her lots of times to avoid those places, and 
 that I could bring her all the fallen women she 
 could possibly take care of, but the woman 
 would not listen to me, and so she got into 
 trouble. Cowley had to go himself and bail 
 her out. It made an absurd noise, and so I 
 dropped her.'' Here again he relapsed into a 
 fit of musing. 
 
 *' Well," said Laurence ; " what were you 
 going to say about this girl ? " 
 
 " Oh, ah, yes. Well, Meredith has got this 
 man over from England on purpose to marry 
 her. Of course, he's sure to do it if Meredith
 
 126 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 makes up his mind lie shall ; for the man must 
 be a fool, like his mother. In fact, I think I 
 have heard he goes in for a little reclaiming 
 himself. Does he, do you know ? " 
 
 " I believe he does," assented Farquhar. 
 
 " Ah, so much the better ! We need that 
 kind of man very much in Paris. There's a 
 splendid field open for them here." And again 
 he fell a-musing. 
 
 '' Well ? " 
 
 " Well, what I advise is this. Go away now, 
 but write some passionate kind of trash to the 
 girl — they tell me you're very good at that 
 kind of thing ; and, by the way, now I think of 
 it, I shall want you to do something for me in 
 that line presently." 
 
 *' With pleasure." 
 
 " Write her that you can never love any one 
 else, but that as you are both too poor to 
 marry, you've gone away ; that you can never 
 forget her, but that she must try and forget you, 
 — all that kind of thing — you know what I 
 mean i 
 
 *' Perfectly : go on." 
 
 ^' That will be sure to bring an answer from 
 her. It's not worth while going too fiir until
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 127 
 
 you have an absolute assurance in writing that 
 she cares for you. Telling her you love her, 
 but are too poor to marry her, does not in any 
 way compromise you ; and if you get a favour- 
 able answer, let me know, and I will find out 
 exactly what Meredith can and will do for her. 
 If he intends giving her a handsome dot, it 
 might be worth your while marrying her." 
 
 '^ But he wouldn't under any circumstances 
 like her to marry me," said Laurence. *' He 
 knows I haven't got a penny, and then he's got 
 this gallant Colonel over on purpose." 
 
 Graham nodded his head wisely. " Leave 
 that to me. If the girl cares for you, and 
 Meredith is going to give her a handsome dot, 
 I can manage it for you. I know how to work 
 the man. I know somebody who can twist 
 him round their finger, — find out all about the 
 dot, and make him do as he's told." 
 
 "And will you really do this for me, 
 Graham ? " 
 
 '^ I will," assented Graham. '* Of course, my 
 friend can't work for nothing, and we must 
 settle accounts before you are married ; for, 
 remember, it's easier to break those things than 
 make them, and my friend will stop at nothing
 
 128 LITTLE HAND AND MUOKLE GOLD. 
 
 if she thinks you are not going to be liberal. 
 But I will introduce her to you when weVe 
 found out how the land lies, and you can make 
 your own terms. Of course, I want nothing 
 myself" And the old reprobate grinned. 
 
 *' Of course not," assented Laurence, with a 
 meaning smile. ''If you do that for me, I 
 shan't forget it. Thank you awfully, Graham. 
 Now, what can I do for you "? " 
 
 " Oh, ah, yes, I forgot. You write verses, 
 do you not ? " 
 
 " Yes ; rather good ones too." 
 
 "Very well. I've got hold of a splendid 
 American widow. I have not seen such a neck 
 and shoulders since the poor Duchesse d'Istrie's, 
 and that's many years ago ; " and again he 
 began musing. 
 
 " What about the shoulders ? You want some 
 verses on them ? " 
 
 " Oh no, not on the shoulders. The shoulders 
 will come in time. She has a pot of money, I 
 know, and it might be as well for me to settle 
 down perhaps ! " 
 
 Laurence smiled: the idea of Graham "set- 
 tling down " was too absurd. 
 
 " This w^oman, unfortunately, is very ro-
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 129 
 
 mantic. She writes verses herself, I believe, 
 for the * New York Mirror ' or some such rag. 
 She told me the name, and read me some of 
 them, but I forget all about it now. Of 
 course romance and poetry have never been 
 my forte, and I want just to say something 
 nice to her in verse that will let her understand 
 how much I admire her. Can you do it 1" 
 
 " Of course, easily. What sort of thing do 
 you want ? '' 
 
 " Something pretty, and at the same time 
 passionate and loving. Couldn't you say some- 
 thing about roses, for instance ? I have always 
 found women of her class like talking abo^t 
 flowers." 
 
 " Eoses are very useful," assented Laurence ; 
 and then taking a pencil, he wrote on the back 
 
 of his bill — 
 
 " Together '] 
 
 " One rose between us two, 
 The blossom all for you, 
 
 The thorn for me. 
 One tendril stem and flower, 
 Let us through sun and shower 
 
 United be ! " 
 
 *' How will that do ? '' he said, pushing the 
 paper over to his old friend. 
 
 Graham read the lines, smiled, nodded, folded 
 VOL. I. I
 
 130 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 up the paper, and put it in his waistcoat-pocket. 
 *' Very good indeed — just the thing. I'll send 
 them oft' to-morrow. I suppose I must send 
 some flowers with these lines, or it will look 
 queer 1 " 
 
 " You need only send one rose — a symbol, as 
 it were. It will be much less hanal than to 
 bombard the woman with a lot of flowers." 
 
 "And much cheaper too," assented Grraham, 
 rising. " And now I am ofi". I suppose you're 
 going too ? " 
 
 *' Yes. ril take you on to the club in a cab 
 if you like. It's too cold to go anywhere, and I 
 want to pre^^are for the fray." 
 
 " What time is Dourak supposed to be 
 coming '? " 
 
 " They've got something on at his Embassy, 
 I believe ; he's coming on after that." 
 
 '' How much is he supposed to drop to-night, 
 do you know ? " 
 
 Laurence laughed. '' Well, I believe we're 
 supposed to make it rather hot for him to-night. 
 Crawford takes him on at ecartc, and I'm sup- 
 posed to be the bezique man. I daresay before 
 we've done it may run into six or seven thou- 
 sand pounds."
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 131 
 
 " That's nothing for Dourak. I'm sure I wish 
 you every success. I'm sorry to say I never 
 could play cards myself — not in that way, I 
 mean. Thank you." Laurence helped the old 
 man on with his greatcoat, and then got into 
 his own with the assistance of the waiter. " Now 
 give me your arm, Farquhar. I'm not so young 
 as I used to be." And so the two got into a 
 sapin and drove off to the Jockey. 
 
 That night's work at bezique was so profitable 
 to Laurence Farquhar, that he netted for his 
 share of the spoil nearly two thousand pounds ; 
 and when he got home to his hotel, instead of 
 going to bed, he contented himself with a cold 
 shower - bath, ordered his servant to pack his 
 things, take them to the Northern Station, and 
 meet him there, to go by the morning train to 
 London. Then having paid his bill, he sat down 
 and wrote the following : — 
 
 " Hotel Wagram, February 9, 186—. 
 
 "My dear Miss Tyerell, — Long ere these 
 lines reach you I shall be far from Paris. I am 
 going I know not and I care not where — any- 
 where to try and forget my utter misery ; and 
 it is only because I know that we shall never
 
 132 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 meet again that I tell you now what you must 
 have known all along — that I love you with all 
 the whole strength of my heart and soul, — love 
 you as I think woman never before was loved 
 by man, — love you so that I am ready to make 
 the sacrifice of my life for your happiness, as 
 indeed I am now doing by leaving you for ever. 
 You are too young and inexperienced to under- 
 stand all this now, but the time will come when 
 you will understand the magnitude of the sacri- 
 fice that I am now making. My life has been 
 a lonely and unhappy one ; and although you 
 have always seen me fiippant and gay in society, 
 you little know what a miserable and unhappy 
 wretch I am — miserable and unhappy before I 
 met you, for I was discontented with myself, 
 and knew that I was leading a useless and idle 
 life while I should have been working and striv- 
 ing to be of some use to my fellow-beings, — 
 miserable and unhappy while I was with you, 
 for you revealed to me that heaven which I 
 might have aspired to if I had not wasted my 
 time and such talents as God has given me, — 
 miserable and unhappy for evermore, for I shall 
 be away from you. I am poor, Madgy (you 
 will let me call you Madgy now, won't you, oh
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 133 
 
 my darling ! now tliat we shall never meet 
 again ?), miserably poor, and the world you and 
 1 live in never forgives poverty. If I had cared 
 to stoop to such baseness as marrying for money, 
 I could have been rich long ago ; but I thank 
 God, now that I have seen you, that I had the 
 courage to resist that temptation. For now, my 
 own darling, I shall have the memory of you 
 all to myself in my heart for evermore. You 
 cannot deprive me of that. I do not complain ; 
 I have brought this punishment on my own 
 head by my idleness and selfishness. If I had 
 worked, I could have made perhaps a name for 
 myself that would have been a worthy ofieriag 
 to you ; but as it is, I must go my own lonely 
 way to my death. Marriage is not made for 
 men like me." 
 
 (" I should think not, by Jove I unless there 
 is money to be made by it," he muttered, as 
 he lit a cigarette.) 
 
 " If you had been rich, I could not have given 
 you reason to suspect that, penniless as I am, I 
 was seeking your fortune. So even then we 
 could not have married. But you are poor too, 
 my darling, and the result must be the same, 
 for I cannot be so selfish as to seek to link your
 
 134 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 lot to mine. I am not so cruel as to beg you to 
 ask your heart if you could ever have learnt to 
 love me. Forget me, that is all I ask. You 
 are a mere child 3^ct, and have all your life be- 
 fore you. God grant that it may be full of 
 sunshine ! " 
 
 " And so now, my darling, good-bye ; for ever 
 and ever and ever, good-bye, and God bless you ! 
 Foro-et me. Laueence Farquhar.'' 
 
 " That's the very thing," he said to himself, 
 with a smile, when he had read over this precious 
 epistle. "Just enough bad grammar to show 
 the presence of great emotion, and a sufficient 
 amount of God and despair in it to be palatable 
 to a young girl. She won't, of course, believe 
 all of it, but it will flatter and interest her." 
 
 He then closed, sealed, and directed the letter, 
 gave orders to have it taken to the Eue Royale 
 not earlier than mid-day, jumped into ^fiacre, 
 and rattled off" to the Northern Station en route 
 for London.
 
 135 
 
 CHAPTER YII. 
 
 While Laurence Farqnliar was busy pitting 
 his experience and skill against the stupidity 
 and obstinacy of Prince Dourak at the appa- 
 rently simple game of bezique at the Jockey 
 Club, the two young ladies in the Rue Royale 
 were having a long and serious conversation, 
 some part of which it will be our duty here 
 to chronicle. 
 
 What was formerly the nursery had now 
 been turned into a kind of sitting-room for 
 the use of Muriel and Madge (whose bedrooms 
 on either side opened into it), and in this room, 
 whenever the ladies had gone — as they often 
 did — to the theatre, opera, or what not, a 
 bright fire was always kept burning, and a 
 tea-kettle boiling, that warmth and refresh- 
 ment might greet them on their return. By 
 this blazing fire, wrapped in pretty dressing-
 
 136 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 gowns, and their hair done up for the night, 
 sat Madge and Muriel, tea-cup in hand, having 
 a more serious talk than any they had indulged 
 in since the first terrible days succeeding the 
 death of little Paul. 
 
 " No," repeated Madge, clasping her arms 
 around her knee, and looking dreamily into the 
 fire — " I don't think, Mu-mii, that I would sell 
 myself for money to any man living, and I 
 think any girl who does so is most base ; but 
 then, again, one must have money to live, and 
 you must remember, darling, that I have none." 
 
 '' Nonsense, Madgy ; you know you will have 
 just as much as me." 
 
 " I know nothing of the kind. I know that 
 Uncle Bill has already done too much for me, 
 and that if anything were to happen to him 
 to-morrow, 1 should have to look out for my- 
 self." 
 
 "Anything happen to papal Why, what 
 dreadful things you're saying to-night, Madge ; 
 what in the world could ever happen to 
 papa J 
 
 *'We must all die some day, I suppose." 
 
 '^ What a dreadful girl you are, Madge," 
 exclaimed Muriel, rising and putting her tea-
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 137 
 
 cup on the table. '* The idea of talking of poor 
 papa's death in that way ! You quite frighten 
 me ! What in the world is the matter with 
 you to-night '? " 
 
 " Nothing, darling ; but you must remem- 
 ber that I am one year older than you are, 
 and " 
 
 " What's one year ? " interrupted Muriel, 
 laughing. 
 
 *' A year is a very long time, Muriel — a very, 
 very long time." 
 
 '* And so because you are one yiear older than 
 me, and you think poor papa is going to die, 
 you want to marry this meek, old, one-legged 
 Colonel?" 
 
 "I never said I wanted to marry him, 
 Muriel." 
 
 " But you said just now that if he should offer 
 himself, you would think of it." 
 
 " I did ; but that's not the same thing." 
 
 " And then you say you think a girl is base 
 who sells herself for money. What would you 
 be doing if you married Colonel Anstruther but 
 selling yourself for money, as you say you don't 
 want to marry him ? " 
 
 " He has no money — not now, at least."
 
 138 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 " But you know he will have — you told me 
 so yourself; and I remember you said you 
 wouldn't marry him till his father was dead, 
 and he had got his money. You are really 
 a dreadfully hard, worldly girl, Madge, to 
 talk about everybody dying in that cold 
 way 1 
 
 " That was all said in fun, Muriel. If I 
 married the man at all, I should marry him 
 to-morrow. '^ 
 
 " To-morrow ! " 
 
 '' You know what I mean.*' 
 
 " Well, then, and what's to become of me ? " 
 and Muriel crept up to her friend, and put 
 her arms around her neck, and kissed her. 
 Madge drew her down on to her lap, and 
 beo:an caressino; her as if she were a child. 
 
 " Become of you, my beautiful Mu-mii ? 
 Why, you'll marry some great man, have a 
 lot of diamonds and children, and forget all 
 about your poor little friend Madgy ! " 
 
 " Never ! " 
 
 ** Yes, you will ; you'll marry Arthur ! " 
 
 " Arthur isn't a great man ; and besides, I 
 shan't marry him." 
 
 " Not if he asks you'?"
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 139 
 
 *' Certainly not if he doesn't ! " laughed Miss 
 Meredith. 
 
 '' But if he does ? " 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Yes, you will." 
 
 " No, I shan't, I tell you ; and then, besides, 
 Arthur is not such a fool as to think of 
 me. 
 
 " I think he thinks a great deal about you." 
 
 " That's only your fun, Mrs Anstruther." 
 
 Madge laughed. 
 
 " We shall see," she said. " If you'd seen the 
 way he sat worshipping the back of your head 
 at the Opera Comique to-night, you'd have 
 thought he was thinking a great deal about 
 you!" 
 
 " Arthur would worship the back of any one's 
 head," exclaimed Muriel, turning crimson. 
 
 *' Well, he certainly worshipped yours to- 
 night. It would be a splendid match for you, 
 Mil." 
 
 " I don't see that at all. Arthur is nobody 
 in particular — only a good-natured, good-looking 
 boy." 
 
 " He's twenty -eight, and the son of a duke, 
 and one of the richest dukes in Eno[land." 
 
 o
 
 140 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 " But he's only the second son." 
 
 " But you always will forget, Muriel, that 
 people may die 1 " 
 
 " There you are again, Madge. Dying, dying, 
 dying — every one is dying according to you ! 
 You ought to marry the director of the Pompes 
 Funebres." 
 
 " I shouldn't mind, if he was rich and good- 
 looking." 
 
 " You're the most mercenary heartless girl that 
 ever lived ! " exclaimed Muriel, sitting up in her 
 friend's lap. *' I wonder if you ever cared for 
 anybody ? " 
 
 Madge kissed her tenderly. ''Nobody but 
 you, darling." ij 
 
 " Not even poor papa and mamma, then ? " 
 
 Madge coloured. " Oh, of course. Uncle 
 Bill and Aunt Laura ! That ofoes Avithout 
 saying." 
 
 '' And nobody else ? " 
 
 " Nobody else. Why ? " 
 
 " Because I thought " 
 
 Madge looked at her sharply. " Thought 
 what ? " 
 
 " I thought you might, perhaps, have cared 
 for somebody else."
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 141 
 
 '' Who ^ " 
 
 ^' Never mind, as long as you don't." 
 
 " But who did you think I cared for ? " 
 
 " I thought you liked Laurence Farquhar." 
 
 Madge turned very red, and then deathly 
 pale, but Muriel was stooping down to put on 
 her mille that had slipped off, and this display 
 of emotion escaped her. 
 
 " You talk about being silly ! I think you're 
 the silliest girl in the world, Muriel." 
 
 " Why ? Because I said I thought you liked 
 Laurence 1 Why, there would be nothing silly 
 in that." 
 
 *' It would be worse than silly were it true." 
 
 " Why % " 
 
 " Because Laurence Farquhar has no money 
 and no heart." She spoke in a cold, decided 
 way that quite astonished Muriel, who looked 
 up into her friend's face with surprise. 
 
 " What do you know about his money or his 
 heart ? " 
 
 " Every one knows he has no money, and any 
 fool can see he has no heart." 
 
 "You've evidently been examining him very 
 closely." 
 
 " I never knew you such a tease as you are
 
 142 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 to-night, Muriel ! " exclaimed Madge pettishly, 
 pushing her friend roughly off her lap and 
 risinor. " It's time to q-q to bed." 
 
 " To bed ! to bed ! to bed ! " exclaimed 
 Muriel, tragically remembering past perform- 
 ances of '' Macbeth " with Mado;e. '' So it's not 
 true, then ? " 
 
 " What ? " 
 
 " That you care just a little bit for Lau- 
 rence ? " 
 
 What evil angel prompted her to equivocate 
 and not frankly confess to Muriel the truth ? 
 What endless misery might have been averted 
 had she done so ! She might indeed have 
 avowed her secret had Muriel pressed her 
 seriously, but this flippancy grated on her 
 nerves, and she replied sharply — 
 
 "You're a greater fool than I thought, 
 Muriel ! " 
 
 " That's civil, certainly, but it's no answer." 
 
 ** Well, * no ' is an answer, I suppose," and she 
 shook her head impatiently. 
 
 *' Shake not thy gory locks at me, Mad gy ! " 
 exclaimed the younger girl, laughing. "AVliy, 
 you look as cross as a bear." 
 
 *'* You're enough to vex a saint, Muriel."
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 143 
 
 '* Why, I am not angry when you chaff me 
 about Arthur. Why should you be angry when 
 I chaff you about Laurence ? " 
 
 " I wish you wouldn't call him Laurence." 
 
 *' Why, you call him Laurence yourself." 
 
 "I shan't any more. Tm certain it's not 
 right." 
 
 "But you call Arthur Arthur." 
 
 "That's a very different thing." 
 
 " I don't see it. They neither of them are 
 our brothers, or" — she hesitated, and then con- 
 tinued in a lower voice — " our lovers ! " 
 
 " Not mine, certainly," said Madge ; " but 
 Arthur is a good boy, and would never take 
 advantage of our silliness, whereas Lau- 
 rence " 
 
 " Well, what would Laurence do ? eat us up, 
 I suppose ? " 
 
 "Mr Farquhar is a very different kind of 
 man." 
 
 " Yes ; he's brown, and Arthur is as fair as 
 a lily." 
 
 "There's more difference than that between 
 them ; but if you don't see it, I shan't take the 
 trouble to tell you. You can go on calling him 
 Laurence for ever if you like ; I know I shan't."
 
 144 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 "You'll call the Colonel 'Jim ' when you marry 
 liim, I suppose ? " 
 
 *' Qui lo sa f " laughed Madge ; and then the 
 girls embraced and separated for the night. 
 
 As a matter of fact, Colonel Anstruther had 
 found that afternoon, before leaving, an oppor- 
 tunity of saying to Madge Tyrrell a few words 
 which had clearly indicated to her that she had 
 only to give him the very slightest encourage- 
 ment for him to offer her his hand ; nor was the 
 idea wholly unpleasing to her. This was her 
 first serious conquest, and should he lay his 
 heart at her feet, this would be her first offer of 
 marriage. To no girl can such an event be 
 without interest and importance, nor in most 
 cases is it unmixed with a pleasing feeling of 
 flattered vanity, as in the present instance. 
 
 Although it had suited Madge to hold him 
 up to ridicule, she was not without having a 
 suspicion that in many ways Colonel Anstruther 
 was one of the most distinguished men that had 
 ever been in her presence. She had heard Lady 
 Cowley and others speak of him as a man of 
 whom his sovereign and country were proud; 
 and she had noted the marked respect with 
 which even so impassive an individual as Lord
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 145 
 
 Arthur Pendragon treated him on all occasions, 
 and that a man so spoken of and so treated 
 should be the first to bow the knee before her 
 was in itself no unsatisfactory triumph. That 
 he was a man of strikingly handsome manly 
 beauty would have been allowed by most ; that 
 he was kind, gentle, innocent, and tender as a 
 child, was admitted by all ; and that this glo- 
 rious, although time-, battle-, and storm-beaten 
 combination of heroism and gentleness, of valour 
 and simplicity, might be hers whenever she 
 should so please, was to Madge, after the few 
 words said that afternoon, no longer doubtful. 
 Should she accept him or not ? That was the 
 only question left to answer. But for one rea- 
 son, and one only, she would not have hesitated 
 for a moment — nay, would have thought herself 
 the luckiest girl in the world to have secured a 
 prize of so great and undoubted value, and one 
 so universally highly appreciated by the world 
 at large. Her peculiar experience and training 
 had made Madge Tyrrell a woman of the world 
 before her time, and she did not hide from her- 
 self for one moment the fact that for her, the 
 penniless daughter of a groom, brought up with 
 the extravagant tastes of a duchess, to find a 
 
 VOL. I. K
 
 146 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 man of honour and good social position ready to 
 give her his heart and name would indeed be no 
 easy task. 
 
 None of the many Frenchmen and foreigners 
 whom she knew would, of course, look at her 
 without a dot — that is, with a view to matri- 
 mony — and she had long since told herself that 
 her sole and only chance of marriage was to 
 wed one of her fellow-countrymen. But here 
 again the difficulty was great, for the few 
 Englishmen who found their way to the saloons 
 of the Merediths were either aged celebrities 
 whose faculties for the making of love had been 
 chilled by their approach to Westminster Abbey 
 or St Paul's, or dashing youths of patrician 
 blood who were beginning life well provided 
 with every advantage that youth, wealth, and 
 rank can give, and who therefore could hardly 
 be expected to be willing to connect their 
 budding and brilliant fortunes with the ignoble 
 lot of a groom's daughter. Indeed, that Colonel 
 Anstruther had been specially brought over from 
 England and provided for her by Sir William, 
 she more than suspected ; for the Colonel's 
 sudden arrival in Paris and introduction to the 
 family circle in the Rue Royale had succeeded
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 147 
 
 only by a few days a long and serious interview 
 she had had with Sir William, in which he had 
 very plainly told her she must marry money, 
 and further announced to her that he was about 
 to make it his business to find a husband suit- 
 able for her, adding, with a smile and a caress, 
 that he thought he had in his mind's eye the 
 very man. 
 
 But for one reason, Madge told herself, the 
 idea of this marriage with so good a man, and 
 one so easy to manage, and the independence 
 and social position such a marriage brought with 
 it, would have filled her soul with joy ; for the 
 fact which had occurred to her from the begin- 
 ning, that as Lady Anstruther she would be 
 millions of miles higher in the social scale than 
 poor Lady Meredith, was in itself so sweet to 
 her, that it would easily have counterbalanced 
 any drawbacks, had such existed, and more than 
 compensated for an ordinary sacrifice. But for 
 one reason — and that reason, of course, was that 
 she had been weak enough to fall wildly in love 
 with Laurence Farquhar. How this had come 
 about she hardly knew. 
 
 Arthur Pendragon had brought him to the 
 house only three or four months before, and
 
 148 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 although he had been there every day since, 
 and indeed been the life of the ball given by 
 Lady Meredith on Christmas Eve — on which 
 occasion he had fairly bewildered Madge with 
 kisses under the mistletoe — he had never given 
 her any special reason to imagine that she occu- 
 pied his thoughts, and much less his heart, more 
 than Miss Muriel. His half-teasing, half-petting 
 manner had been the same to both, and he had 
 never sought the secret interviews, the long 
 walks together, or indulged in any of those 
 lover's tricks, such as the furtively delivered 
 letter, or the no less furtively acquired pocket- 
 handkerchief, or flower, or glove, which Madge 
 had read so much about in all the novels, and 
 which she firmly believed to be inseparable 
 accidents of the amorous state. And yet, al- 
 though his manner to her had been apparently 
 the same as to Muriel, Madge knew in her 
 heart that there had been a diflference. We 
 have said that her nature was coarse, but 
 it was also passionate ; and the admiration, 
 leavened with a much warmer feeling, with 
 which she had inspired Laurence Farquhar was 
 not without having had a very appreciable effect 
 upon his attitude towards her, although he had
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 149 
 
 not unsuccessfully striven to so play his part that 
 his sentiments could be suspected by her alone. 
 It might have been merely by a hand pres- 
 sure, or a glance, or a tone, or a mere word ; but 
 be it as it may, the secret had been told her, and 
 she felt sure that Laurence Farquhar looked upon 
 her with much warmer feelings of regard than 
 he did upon Muriel. And this precious secret 
 once discovered, of course she had given up her 
 heart to him — given it up at first almost uncon- 
 sciously, but as naturally as flowers open and 
 expand beneath the warming rays of the sun. 
 She never stopped to ask herself whether or no 
 he loved her, and whether this tender difference 
 of manner, which her eyes alone had detecfed 
 as marking his attitude towards her, indicated 
 more than a mere passing feeling of pleasure 
 at being in her society. Madge, as we have 
 said before when speaking of her childhood, 
 was not, like Muriel, given to self-examination 
 and mental analysis. In all her affairs of life, 
 so far, she had listened merely to two voices 
 —"I like it" and "I don't like it''— and the 
 thought never for one moment entered her mind 
 to dissect her feelings, lay bare their cause, and 
 trace out their probable consequences.
 
 150 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 Laurence Farquhar was to her simply the 
 most beautiful and fascinating man that had 
 ever come across her path, and this man had 
 in her heart been transformed into a god on 
 the day when she first discovered that she had 
 awakened some tender emotion — no matter how 
 slight — in his. But although she had at first 
 given up her heart wholly, and without reser- 
 vation, she had had time for reflection since ; 
 and without indulging in any complex mental 
 analysis, it was not long before she came to 
 the obvious conclusion that this love was folly, 
 and could only beget trouble. He was penni- 
 less, extravagant, ambitious, and selfish : these 
 were all facts very well known to her, and these 
 facts were wholly incompatible with the idea of 
 any possibility of his uniting his fortunes to hers 
 by ofiering her his hand. 
 
 He had told her over and over again, in a 
 laughing way, that all he cared for in life was 
 money, and she knew that he, in so speaking, 
 spoke the truth ; but then, even while enunciat- 
 ing these hard mercenary principles, a tender 
 and caressing light would come into his eyes, 
 which would tempt her to half believe that 
 that coveted money once possessed, his heart
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 151 
 
 would still remain unsatisfied until it had 
 absorbed that love which her own was dying 
 to outpour. 
 
 The conviction which, on the merest casual 
 reflection, her mind and common-sense had 
 arrived at, that under existing circumstances 
 marriage between herself and Laurence was 
 impossible, had not in any way checked the 
 current of her passion ; for it must be borne 
 in mind that breeding she had none, and that 
 the moral education afforded to her under the 
 roof- tree of the Merediths had all gone to teach 
 her to concentrate her forces more for the avoid- 
 ance of the appearance of evil than to avoid 
 evil itself. She saw men and women, and read 
 of men and women, every day who loved each 
 other passionately, and yet who could not 
 marry : why, therefore, should not she and 
 Laurence be as these ? Had he asked her, she 
 would gladly have fled with him, throwing her 
 honour to the winds, trampling under foot her 
 future, her youth, her life, and leaving all, 
 even Muriel, without the least compunction or 
 regret. But she felt sure he would not ask 
 her to take so bold a step, and this passion 
 must go on smouldering as it had been doing
 
 152 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 for the past three months or more, until some 
 accident should occur to quench it, or to en- 
 able it to burst out into a strength of flame. 
 
 What would be the end of it all 'i Madge 
 would ask herself, wearily. If Laurence would 
 only speak, matters would be better; some clear 
 understanding might be come to, and they might 
 find some way out of the difficulty by taking 
 counsel together. She might find some money, 
 or perhaps indicate to him some way in w^hich 
 he might make some money ; or, lastly, she 
 might be able to induce him to cast all con- 
 siderations about money to the winds, and to 
 content himself with taking her, life, soul, and 
 body. But he had not, so far, spoken — that is, 
 not in words ; and the situation thus became 
 from day to day less bearable, especially as, of 
 course, Madge had to spare no pains to hide the 
 fact that she was madly in love with a man 
 who could not, or would not, marry her, not 
 only from the outer world and the Merediths, 
 but from Muriel herself, wlio first of all could 
 not have understood, and then, when she had 
 been brought to understand, would surely have 
 strongly disapproved. 
 
 What Madge lons^ed for most of all was not
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 153 
 
 SO much that all the difficulties in the path of 
 her love might disappear, but that she might 
 be able to co-operate with him she loved in 
 endeavouring to overcome them. 
 
 It was while she was in this frame of mind 
 that the extraordinary epistle which Farquhar 
 had hastily composed before leaving Paris 
 reached her. It did not deceive her for a 
 moment : she saw through it at once, and far 
 from causing her pain, — or at least more than 
 a passing pang at the thought that weeks, and 
 perhaps months, might elapse before she should 
 be able to gaze upon his beloved face again, — 
 this precious document inspired her with great 
 joy, for now at length she held in her hand Ihe 
 absolute proof of his love, and this letter formed 
 as it were the foundation of a compact or 
 partnership between them. She never thought 
 of answering it. She knew she was penniless, 
 and that Farquhar had nothing. He loved her ; 
 that was enough. She would marry money, 
 and then she might help him. 
 
 She immediately decided to marry Colonel 
 Anstruther, for it was only by the independence 
 that such a union would bring to her that she 
 could find the means of reaching and being of
 
 154 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 service to lier beloved Laurence. So great was 
 Ler delight at the interruption of this inactivity 
 which was killing her, and at the thought that 
 she was now at length able to set forth on her 
 pilgrimage to a definite goal, that she found no 
 place in her heart to harbour any remorse for 
 the great act of treachery she was about to be 
 guilty of, in giving her hand to her elderly 
 adorer. It was a mariage de raison : such 
 things were done every day — in fact, even had 
 she never seen Laurence Farquhar, it would 
 have been impossible for her, or at least so 
 she told herself, to have contracted any other 
 kind of matrimonial alliance. As it was, she 
 could now at once better herself, make Colonel 
 Anstruther happy, and no doubt be of service to 
 the only man she loved. 
 
 It is probable that in coming to this decision 
 she had formulated in her mind no distinct in- 
 tention of ever forgetting in favour of Laurence 
 or another the sanctity of the marriage vow : 
 she indeed thought of nothing but the great 
 and all-important fact that she had now in 
 this terrible crisis of her life, when Laurence 
 had avowed his love for her, an opportunity 
 which might never offer itself again, of gaining
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 155 
 
 such liberty of action as would enable her to 
 benefit in some way, she stopped not to in- 
 quire how, the only man she loved. As Lady 
 Anstruther (and the Colonel could not fail to in- 
 herit soon, and the property was strictly entailed, 
 as she had found out), with twelve thousand a- 
 year, she could do much for her idol ; and this 
 thought so excited her imagination that she 
 would almost, in her exaltation, have spurned, 
 as a temptation to neglect her duty, any sug- 
 gestion that she was doing a dastardly and 
 damning act in accepting the Colonel's name 
 and fortune. But no such suggestion was of 
 course made to her, and ere ten days had 
 elapsed from the time of Laurence's precipitate 
 departure, Madge was the affianced wife of the 
 Inkerman hero, much to the surprise of Muriel, 
 and to the delight of Sir William and Lady 
 Meredith. 
 
 To Muriel, indeed, this was a terrible and 
 sudden blow, for she had paid no real attention 
 to what Madge had said about her matrimonial 
 intentions, believing that her foster-sister only 
 spoke in jest ; but now that all was settled and 
 arranged, and that Madge was to be married 
 almost at once, — for Sir William, whose ever-
 
 15G LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 increasing financial difficulties had induced liim 
 to spur on the eager Colonel, and Madge had 
 offered no resistance, — she felt as one lost. 
 What in the world would become of her in the 
 home about to be left desolate and empty by 
 the departure of her one and only friend and 
 companion ? she asked herself in blank despair. 
 Her father and mother she now saw less of than 
 ever, and on such rare occasions, for the most 
 part only at luncheon and dinner. When she 
 did see them, they appeared so preoccupied and 
 out of sorts, that she could hardly look upon 
 the probability of being forced to give vent to 
 her love of sympathy in that quarter with any 
 degree of pleasure. Then, again, had Madge 
 been about to marry a Frenchman and live in 
 Paris, this catastrophe — for Muriel looked upon 
 the approaching nuptials in the light of an event 
 of ill omen — would not have been so over- 
 whelmingly terrible, for then, at least, she might 
 have had her foster-sister within call, and have 
 still enjoyed her love and sympathy ; but it had 
 been, of course, decided that the Colonel, after 
 a brief honeymoon in Italy, should take his bride 
 to reside at the familv seat in Kent, — and Kent 
 seemed to Muriel, who knew little or nothing
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 157 
 
 about England save London, about as far from 
 Paris and the Rue Royale as Timbuctoo. 
 
 Muriel had, moreover, very grave doubts in 
 her young and inexperienced mind as to the 
 advisability of the step about to be taken ; and 
 notwithstanding all that her father and mother, 
 and, in fact, all their friends, said about this 
 being such a splendid match for Madge Tyrrell, 
 Muriel felt almost satisfied in her heart that 
 her friend was injuring her future happiness 
 by giving her hand to a man whom she did not 
 even pretend to love. For indeed Madge, in 
 their long chats in the nursery, was as frank to 
 her foster-sister as she dared be. She told her 
 very openly that she looked upon the Colonel 
 as a good and kind friend, and nothing more ; 
 but as she scornfully repudiated any suggestion 
 that her heart might be engaged elsewhere, and 
 spoke very plainly to Muriel about the perils 
 which would beset her future if — without any 
 fortune, and with only a few friends, of whose 
 protection she might be so easily deprived at 
 almost any moment, by any one of the thou- 
 sand and one accidents of life — she should not 
 take advantage of this unique opportunity of 
 " settling down," as she called it, poor little
 
 158 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 Muriel had to refrain from any active opposi- 
 tion, and content herself with deploring the 
 hard destiny which compelled her one and only 
 friend to leave her, not in the full sunshine of 
 connubial bliss, but in the chill light of a ma- 
 riage de raison. It could not be helped, how- 
 ever : the die was cast, and the only consolation 
 offered to heart-broken Muriel was the promise 
 that she should pass the coming summer with 
 Mrs Anstruther in England. 
 
 The necessary preparations were all pushed 
 forward rapidly, and before the end of April 
 the day dawned that saw Madge Tyrrell and 
 Colonel Anstruther standing before the altar in 
 the shabby little church in the Eue I'Aguesseau, 
 mutually swearing to love and honour one an- 
 other till death should release them from their 
 vow. Then came the breakfast and the de- 
 parture, and Muriel was left to sob her heart 
 out in the bony and unsympathetic arms of 
 old Agnes, who waxed eloquent in prophecies 
 of all sorts of horrors in store for a couple so 
 unsuited for one another both as regards age 
 and sympathies, and one merely united for the 
 common-sense reason of pounds, shillings, and 
 pence.
 
 159 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 The word loneliness would not adequately 
 express the miserably desolate condition of 
 Muriel after the departure of her only friend 
 and companion. A wedding is at the very best 
 a painful function for nearly all, save perhaps 
 the bride and bridegroom, entailing as it almost 
 invariably does the severance of many dear 
 and close ties which have wound around our 
 hearts like tendrils, and become part of our very 
 lives through habit ; but in this case the separa- 
 tion was especially full of anguish, at least to 
 Muriel. We have seen how her childhood, 
 until the advent of Madge, had been lonely 
 and haunted with morbid doubts and fears, 
 and how a child's natural friends, the parents, 
 had in her case been little more than kindly 
 though indifferent acquaintances. In the old 
 days, however, she had had at least, even
 
 160 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 though only at brief intervals, the companion- 
 ship of her baby brother whom she adored, 
 and around whom had grouped all her dreams 
 for the future. That, however, was all over 
 now, and nothing but a pretty marble cross in 
 the cemetery at St Germains was left to mark 
 the passage upon earth of one who, although so 
 frail himself, had been freighted with so rich 
 a cargo of ambitious dreams and tender care. 
 Then, again, in the days preceding the advent 
 of Madge she had but vaguely longed for love 
 and sympathy, not really knowing their sweet 
 power ; but now that she had tasted of these, — 
 that she had had a life and heart so intertwined 
 with her own during all the most receptive and 
 impressionable years of her childhood and early 
 girlhood — that these experiences and emotions 
 had been shared, — Muriel felt it harder to 
 walk alone than if she had never known the 
 sweet solace of sympathetic friendship. So the 
 first fortnight that succeeded the marriage of 
 Madge was full of anguish and despair to 
 Muriel, who shut herself up and refused to 
 receive any one. And it is not indeed unlikely 
 that this exaggerated grief might have brought 
 on a serious illness had not Lady Meredith, for
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 161 
 
 the first time in her life, just at this crisis began 
 to make some feeble attempts to treat her as a 
 daughter. 
 
 Acting probably on some hint given her by 
 Sir William (whose financial troubles grew 
 worse daily and almost hourly), and moreover 
 actuated perhaps a little by a natural pride 
 at possessing so attractive a daughter, whose 
 charms she, the mother, appeared only recently 
 to have discovered. Lady Meredith now called 
 upon Muriel to accompany her into society, and 
 to begin the game of life in earnest. There was 
 no formal presentation at Court — such, indeed, 
 under the circumstances, was not necessary, 
 according to the very lax laws of etiquette 
 which prevailed in the days of the Second 
 Empire ; but Lady Meredith gave it generally 
 to be understood that her daughter might be 
 considered as "out," and so a gracious and 
 entirely informal command to lunch with the 
 wife of Csesar at the Tuileries opened the ball, 
 and invitations came pouring in. 
 
 But the fever of excitement naturally caused 
 by these festivities, and the attendant splendour 
 of beautiful dresses and jewels, had but a very 
 temporarily beneficial effect upon Muriel, and 
 
 VOL. I. L
 
 162 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 before she had been a month in society she 
 longed for the quietude of home, and looked 
 back with more poignant regret than ever to 
 the days of her sweet companionship with 
 Madge. This was perhaps partly owing to her 
 extreme youth, — for Muriel Meredith was in 
 years the youngest girl brought out into society 
 in Paris that season — and partly to the fact that 
 all this seemed to her as a twice-told tale. 
 
 Muriel had indeed in one sense been in 
 society all her life, and she found little or no 
 appreciable difference between the pleasures 
 offered to her, now that she was entitled to 
 enjoy all the privileges accruing to the fact of 
 being " out," and those which she had looked 
 upon with but an indifferent eye formerly when 
 she was a child. Very many of the young un- 
 married men and women she met now were 
 the same individuals she had known for years, 
 the only difference being that a little while ago 
 they were amusing as little boys and little girls, 
 whereas now, as grown-up and important social 
 factors, they were not unfrcquently dull and 
 pretentious. As for the really important per- 
 sonages in society, and especially the young 
 married women, — and there had ever been a
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 163 
 
 goodly sprinkling of these at the little teas 
 presided over by herself and Madge, as we 
 have seen, — Muriel found them strangely cold 
 to her, now that she was almost on an equal 
 footing with them in society ; and being too 
 inexperienced to credit them with jealousy, she 
 ascribed it to some gaucherie on her part which 
 offended them. But although, after her first 
 month of social festivity, she would gladly have 
 retired and stayed quietly at home. Lady 
 Meredith would not listen to such a thing, 
 and so the ball was kept rolling — balls, dinners, 
 receptions, and concerts following each other in 
 bewilderingly quick succession. 
 
 Of her old friend Arthur Pen dragon, Muriel 
 had seen but little since the marriage of Madge, 
 for having met with an accident to his foot 
 while on a visit to his father the Duke, he had 
 been forced to remain in England, and Muriel 
 only heard of him now and then when some 
 one of his confreres at the Embassy brought her 
 some trivial message he had sent her. 
 
 And now a most annoying accident took 
 place. Colonel Anstruther's aged father fell 
 ill, and Madge was called upon to be the sick- 
 nurse, and dutiful and devoted daughter-in-
 
 164 LITTLE HAND AND MUOKLE GOLD. 
 
 law, l)y the bedside of the dying man, whose 
 demise would give her the rank and fortune 
 she had married to obtain, so that for the pres- 
 ent, at all events, any chance of the two friends 
 meeting, as had been originally intended, was 
 of course quite out of the question. This was 
 a bitter disappointment to Muriel, but she en- 
 deavoured to be patient and comfort herself 
 with Madge's promises, that when once she 
 should be Lady Anstruther and mistress of 
 Courthope Park, her Muriel should come and 
 stay with her on a visit so long that its 
 termination would be lost in the nic^ht of time. 
 So Muriel for the nonce had to content herself 
 with living on hope, and in venting her bad 
 temper engendered by disappointment on the 
 devoted heads of Worth, Pingat, and Virot. 
 
 One night, however, poor weary Muriel was 
 rewarded for her filial obedience in meeting lier 
 mother's wishes as regards going into society — 
 for at a ball given at the Austrian embassy her 
 delighted eyes lighted on the handsome and 
 familiar face of Laurence Farquhar, and the 
 mere sight of him brought back to her mind 
 a delightful flood of memories. 
 
 "Why, how you've grown. Miss Meredith!
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 165 
 
 — you're quite a young lady now. But I hope 
 you're not ashamed to recognise an old friend ! " 
 '* No, indeed, Laurence — I mean Mr Farquhar ! 
 I can't tell you how delighted I am to see you. 
 It seems quite like old times, does it not ? " 
 
 " There is an isle called the Long Ago, 
 And my heart lies bnried there ! " 
 
 quoted Laurence, romantically. He was, in- 
 deed, most agreeably surprised at the astonishing 
 chancre for the better which he saw in Muriel. 
 A very few short months ago he had left her a 
 mere child, and now he found her in the full 
 delicate beauty of girlhood, verging on woman- 
 hood. She was more beautiful than Mado^e, he 
 told himself — yes, a thousand times more beau- 
 tiful, for indeed Madge had had little real 
 beauty to recommend her — but not so piquant 
 and attractive to his hlase sensuality as the 
 odd, wayward, gipsy - looking girl had been. 
 The difference, in fact, was simply this : that 
 whereas Madge was a woman to be taken and 
 cherished during a few short months full of deli- 
 cious passion, and then put aside, Muriel was 
 the sort of girl a man might marry, and be 
 proud to see presiding at his dinner-table or 
 bending over his child's cradle.
 
 IGG LITTLE nAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 " What a pity there seems to be some doubt 
 about her fortune ! " he found himself mentally 
 siofhing before he had been five minutes in Miss 
 Meredith's society. 
 
 " Does your heart lie buried in the Long Ago, 
 Mr Farquhar 1 That's the question." 
 
 '•' Well, I thought so until I saw you ; but 
 now I am not so certain that it lies buried so 
 deep that it could not be dug up again if you 
 would help me." 
 
 Muriel laughed. " Well, I must think over 
 your proposition. Where have you been all 
 this time ? " 
 
 "Walkino^ to and fro over the face of the 
 earth, like an old friend of mine." 
 
 " You haven't come across Madge in your 
 wanderings, I suppose ? " 
 
 ' '^ No ; I haven't had such luck. Where is 
 she now 1 " 
 
 " She's in England, taking care of Colonel 
 Anstruther's father, who is dying." 
 
 '^ Miss Madgy was certainly born under a 
 lucky star. Such well-conducted fathers-in-law 
 are rarely to be met with. And what have you 
 done with Arthur Pendragon ? " 
 
 " He's at home with his father. He was
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 167 
 
 thrown from his horse or something, and has 
 been laid up ; but they expect him back at the 
 Embassy very soon now." 
 
 '' Tant mieux, I want very much to see him. 
 He's an awful fellow for not answerinof letters. 
 I have not had a line from him since I left 
 Paris." 
 
 " What made you run away so suddenly with- 
 out even coming to say good-bye ? " 
 
 *' Two reasons, and both good ones. I was to 
 be guillotined the following morning in Paris ; 
 and the prettiest girl in Europe, except yourself, 
 was longing to throw herself into my arms that 
 afternoon in London." 
 
 " I hope it came off all right ! " • 
 
 " You mustn't be too inquisitive, Miss Muriel. 
 Ah ! there's the ' Carmen ' at last. I asked 
 Waldteufel especially to play it for me. Shall 
 we enjoy it together ? " 
 
 " With pleasure ! " and the next mioment they 
 were waltzing. 
 
 " And how is petit pere and Lady Meredith ? " 
 asked Laurence, when a pause came. 
 
 *' Oh, quite well. Mamma is here to-night ; 
 she will be delighted to see you. You must 
 come to see us without fail."
 
 168 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 *' Of course I shall. I only arrived yesterday 
 morning. We must have long talks over old 
 times." 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " And you must not mind if I make love to 
 you a little bit. You see you are the only one 
 left now." 
 
 " How about the girl in London, then ? " 
 
 "Ah, she proved a heartless jilt ! I look en- 
 tirely to you now, Miss Muriel, to pour balm on 
 my wounded heart.'^ 
 
 " Very well ; I will do what I can. But don't 
 fail to come." 
 
 " Shall I come to-morrow 1 " 
 
 "Do." 
 
 " Five o'clock tea as usual ? " 
 
 " Well, if you'll promise to come at five, I'll 
 stay in for you. But we haven't had any of 
 those dissipations since Madge left." 
 
 "Poor Madge!" 
 
 " Why do you say poor Madge 1 " 
 
 " Showing such bad taste as to leave you." 
 
 Muriel laughed. " Oh, you must keep all that 
 till to-morrow. Have you brought any horses 
 with you this time ? "
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 169 
 
 " No ; but I can always borrow one if tliere's 
 a chance of a ride with you." 
 
 " Very well. Papa sold my two the other 
 day ; but I daresay I can manage, and the Bois 
 is divine just now." 
 
 " Very well, then ; we'll indulge in equestrian 
 exercise together without fail, and I'll tell you 
 what Browning says about riding together." 
 And then their tete-ct-tete was interrupted, and 
 they parted. 
 
 " That Meredith girl is vastly improved," said 
 Laurence that evening at the Jockey to old 
 Graham. 
 
 " So they tell me. Quite one of the prettiest 
 girls in. Paris, they say." * 
 
 *'Are you certain the father has gone a 
 mucker ? " 
 
 " No, I am not certain. Some people say so ; 
 but then people tell such lies. I haven't seen 
 the man for some weeks. He's a great deal 
 absent from Paris now, I think." 
 
 "That looks queer." 
 
 " Oh no. Meredith is an active man, and he 
 has got something very good on at Bordeaux, I 
 believe."
 
 170 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 "Oh, indeed. How about the girl's dot^ do 
 you know ? " 
 
 " Nothing at all ; but I daresay I can find 
 out. Why ? " 
 
 '' Well, if she's worth it, I might marry 
 her." 
 
 '* There's sure to be something left, for I 
 believe her mother's father left her a biggish 
 sum." 
 
 "Who was heV 
 
 *^ Some frightful creature from Liverpool. 
 Nobody ever saw him." 
 
 " Well, I wish you'd find out and let me 
 know — that's a good fellow." 
 
 " I will. I can know all about it to-morrow, 
 for I am lunching with a woman who knows all 
 about Meredith's private matters." 
 
 "Thanks, awfully. Will you dine with me 
 to-morrow night, then, at the Maison Dor^e, at 
 the usual time 1 You may have some news 
 then." 
 
 " You seem to be in a great hurry. No im- 
 pending sword, I hope ? " 
 
 " Oh no ; but I always believe in striking the 
 iron while it's hot." 
 
 " Ah, so this iron is hot, is it ? "
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 1*71 
 
 Laurence laughed. " I think I could easily 
 make it so. The girl is lonely, I fancy, and 
 I'm going to console her. You know what that 
 trick leads to ? " 
 
 " Capital ! But don't go too far till you hear 
 what I have learnt." 
 
 " Oh no. I can easily afford to wait a few 
 days." 
 
 The following day, punctually at five, Far- 
 quhar drove up to the Merediths' and found 
 Muriel alone and waiting for him. The girl 
 took no pains to hide her delight at his arrival, 
 and had tea ready as in the olden times, although 
 she knew Laurence never indulged in that 
 harmless beverage. Farquhar was, of course, 
 greatly flattered by the very evident pleasure 
 which his presence caused this most attractive 
 young lady, and thought it was on the whole 
 lucky that Graham's report could be so s]3eedily 
 delivered. 
 
 " What a pity it is," he said, sadly, after they 
 had been laughing over many mutual recollec- 
 tions, *' that you and I can't sit here for ever 
 just like this, chatting and amusing each other 
 and doing no harm to anybody ! " 
 
 " But why can't we 1 " inquired Muriel.
 
 172 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 Laurence siglied. "Because everything is 
 very different from what it was three months 
 ago." 
 
 " Very different indeed for me, I know. But 
 in what way do you mean ? " 
 
 " Why, you were a little girl then, and now 
 you're a beautiful young woman." 
 
 Muriel coloured, and laughed. '' No," she 
 said, shaking her golden head, "I am the same 
 and you are the same. We remain steadfast, 
 true, and unchangeable — ' firm as the marble, 
 founded as the rock.' It's the others that 
 have changed." 
 
 *' You mean Madsfe ? " 
 
 " I mean Mrs Anstruther." 
 
 '^ Mrs Fiddlesticks ! Have you written to her 
 that you have seen me '? " 
 
 "No, not yet; but I shall to-morrow." 
 
 "Don't." 
 
 Muriel looked at him with surprise. '^Why 
 not ? " 
 
 " I ask you not to — that's all. I will explain 
 it all to you next week. It's only a joke I am 
 going to try and play on her, and you will 
 spoil it all by writing." 
 
 Muriel hesitated.
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 1*73 
 
 " Well, you can do as you like, of course, 
 little Miss Goldenlieacl ; but if you do, I shan't 
 ever come to see you again — that's all." 
 
 " Oh, I won't speak of you if you don't want 
 me to, of course ; only " 
 
 " Does she ever speak of me in her letters 1 " 
 interrupted Farquhar. 
 
 " Never ; except once, I think, I asked her if 
 she had met you or Arthur or anybody in 
 London, and she wrote that she had not." 
 
 Farquhar mused for a while, and then said 
 simply — 
 
 " I'll tell you a secret, if you will promise, on 
 your word of honour, not to breathe a word of 
 it to any one." 
 
 " Oh, I'll promise." 
 
 " Not a word ever to any one. You will 
 swear 1 " 
 
 ** Never a word to any one. I will swear — 
 what shall I swear by '? " 
 
 *' By the Emperor's moustache." 
 
 " Very well — par les moustaches imperiales 
 de Sa Majesty I'Empereur ! " 
 
 '' All right ; now I'll tell you. Do you know, 
 
 Muriel " Miss Meredith coloured slightly. 
 
 This was the first time since the old days that
 
 174 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 he had called her by her Christian name, and 
 it sounded odd to her ears. Laurence felt 
 rather than saw this passing agitation, and 
 drew his chair a little nearer to the girl. " Do 
 you know," he continued — "and I think you 
 know me well enough not to think me a cox- 
 comb for saying so — that I have half an idea 
 I could have married Miss Madgy myself if Td 
 liked!" 
 
 Muriel was so perfectly dumfounded by the 
 cool, quiet, even gentle, audacity of the man, 
 that she could not reply at once. 
 
 "And what is more," resumed Laurence, "I 
 feel sure that you think so too. I defy you to 
 deny it." 
 
 She was caught here. She could not tell a 
 lie, and it was true, as we know, that she had 
 thought so. 
 
 " I don't think it's fair to talk of a girl like 
 that," she said, coldly. 
 
 " You mustn't be angry. Miss Muriel. You 
 and I are old friends, you know. You are the 
 best friend she has in the world, and I only 
 say this to you here now, where nobody can 
 hear us. I would tear my tongue out by the 
 root sooner than say it to any one else."
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 175 
 
 " But why do you say it at all, even if you 
 are vain enough to think it ? " 
 
 *' Because it's a part of the past," he said, in 
 a low, sad, musical tone ; " and the past is, I 
 think, very dear to both of us, is it not ? " 
 
 "It is very dear to me." 
 
 "And very dear to me too. Dearer perhaps 
 than it ought to be — dearer perhaps than you 
 have any right to guess ! " 
 
 How well he knew how to puzzle a girl with 
 meaningless verbiage — entangle her so that she 
 might at any moment be forced to endeavour 
 to extricate herself by putting almost in his 
 mouth words he would otherwise hardly have 
 dared to speak. What he expected came, of 
 course. 
 
 *' I don't understand you," said Muriel. 
 
 Laurence sighed, and then smiled sadly, 
 " No, I am glad you don't. But you asked 
 me why I said what I did, and what you know 
 to be true, and I must answer you, must I 
 not ? " 
 
 " Not if you don't wish to. " 
 
 " Yes, I must answer you, for you have 
 called me vain, and I am not vain ; but you 
 would have a right to think me vain if I did
 
 176 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 not answer you. I told you what I did, be- 
 cause it explains much of the past that is so 
 dear to both of us." 
 
 " What does it explain, and what needs 
 explanation ? I don't understand you." 
 
 '' If I thought, as I just now said I thought, 
 that Miss Tyrrell would have accepted me if I 
 bad offered myself to her, Avhy did I not offer 
 myself? Does not that need explanation '? " 
 
 Laurence had a double motive in asking this 
 searching question, for not only he wanted to 
 get Muriel on to delicate ground, but he wanted 
 if possible to ascertain how much (if anything) 
 she knew about his letter to Madge. 
 
 " I suppose you didn't care for her, or 
 
 else " and she hesitated. Laurence mistook 
 
 the cause of her hesitation, and leaned tenderly 
 towards her. 
 
 " Or else — what ? " he murmured. 
 
 Muriel threw back her head, and laughed. 
 " Well, as you're so frank I'll be the same. I 
 was going to say, or else because you were too 
 poor to marry her ! " 
 
 This was so entirely different from what 
 Laurence had expected to hear, that for a 
 second he was almost taken aback ; but he
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 177 
 
 recovered himself at once without allowing his 
 discomfiture to become apparent. 
 
 " You are right ! " he said, with a weary sigh. 
 " I knew you would see no further than that. 
 Thank God you see no further than that ! Yes, 
 you are partly right. Even if I had loved her, 
 I could not, beggar as I am, have married her. 
 Even if I had loved her ! " he repeated sadly. 
 He felt certain that this last remark of his 
 would show him how much Muriel might know. 
 She said nothing. 
 
 " What a horrible thing money is, isn't it 1 " 
 he resumed, speaking now in his usual light, 
 trivial way. 
 
 '' I'm sorry to say I don't know much about 
 it," replied Muriel, smiling. " But you mustn't 
 think me rude for saying what I did just now. 
 You forced me to speak, you know." 
 
 " Why, you said nothing rude, Miss Muriel. 
 Every one knows I am poor — penniless, as a 
 matter of fact. You only spoke the truth, and 
 the truth ought never to hurt any one," said 
 this professional liar. 
 
 " I know I ought not to have said what I 
 did." 
 
 "Yes, you were quite right, on the contrary 
 
 VOL. I. M
 
 178 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 — that is, partly right. As I told you very 
 frankly just now, I think Miss Tyrrell might 
 not perhaps have refused me if I had offered 
 myself before the Colonel did, and you very 
 cleverly and rightly guessed that one of my 
 reasons for not offering myself was that I was 
 too poor. But that was only one of my reasons. 
 I am glad for your sake and for mine that you 
 did not guess the other. But now I must 
 go!" 
 
 " So soon ? " 
 
 ** Why, I have been here over an hour, and if 
 you are going to let me come every day as you 
 promised " — of course she had promised no such 
 thing, but she never thought of that — " I 
 mustn't wear out all your patience at one visit. 
 May I come to-morrow^ '? " 
 
 " I shall always be delighted to see you. I 
 daresay mamma will be in to-morrow. Shall I 
 tell her you are coming at five ? '' 
 
 " Yes, do. You arc not angry Avith me, are 
 you, Miss Muriel r' 
 
 " Angry with you ? No ! Of course not ! 
 Why should I be ? " 
 
 " And do you think me vain, as you said you 
 did 1 " Muriel hesitated. Laurence burst out
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 1*79 
 
 into a joyous, boyish laugh. Things had taken 
 the very turn he wished. He always liked 
 closing an interview with a laugh or a smile ; 
 and his experiences of life had taught him that 
 sentimental exits are difficult and dangerous 
 things. 
 
 '' I see you do ! " he exclaimed, tossing back 
 his head in his old habitual manner. ** And as 
 we're so painfully frank this afternoon, I don't 
 mind confessing to you that you are not far 
 wrong 1 I believe I am the vainest coxcomb 
 living, vain enough to believe almost anything, 
 — anything, in fact, but one thing — one thing 
 only, and to believe that would drive me mad 
 with joy — or grief — I don't know which 1 But 
 I must be off now. I shall hope to see Lady 
 Meredith to-morrow. Where is your father 
 now ? " 
 
 "Papa is at Bordeaux, but we expect him 
 back next week. You're a great favourite of 
 his, and he will be glad to see you again." 
 
 " Don't add to my already overwhelming 
 weight of vanity, Miss Muriel ! And now good- 
 bye," — and he stooped and kissed her hand and 
 departed, well satisfied with his afternoon's 
 performance.
 
 180 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 " Valentine tells me that the girl's dot is all 
 right/' announced old Graham that evening at 
 dinner. " She says Meredith is in trouble for 
 the moment, and is realising all over the shop, 
 but that he will probably pull through if the 
 Emperor, and Persigny, and all that lot, stick 
 up for him as they're bound to do ; but at all 
 events, Valentine says the girl's fortune is all 
 right." 
 
 " How is that 1 " 
 
 " It appears it's her grandfather's money, as I 
 told you — the Liverpool man. It's some pro- 
 perty in America, she thinks ; but at all events 
 it's settled on the mother and daughter, and 
 Meredith cannot touch a penny of it, even with 
 his wife's consent. Valentine swears she is sure 
 of that." 
 
 ''So if the girl has not consented to cut it up, 
 it is intact?" 
 
 " It must be." 
 
 " What's about the figure ? " 
 
 "About ten thousand a-year." 
 
 '' Capital ! So much as that ? " 
 
 " Quite that, Valentine says, and she knows 
 all about it, for she was very thick with Meredith 
 when the Liverpool man died ; and Meredith,
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 181 
 
 who can never keep anything from a woman, 
 told her all about it, and she, in fact, herself 
 saw all the papers. '^ 
 
 Laurence mused for a while. 
 
 *^ The only thing is," resumed Graham, "the 
 girl may have been induced to give up her 
 money to tide over these difficulties. If she 
 has not, it is all right ; but if she has, it is all 
 wrong. Now, how are you going to find out 
 about this ? ^' 
 
 " I shall ask her ! " replied Laurence, coolly. 
 
 '* That's certainly the best way," grinned 
 Graham, '' for I don't suppose she would be 
 such a fool as to lie about it ; but I don't quite 
 see how you can do it." 
 
 ** Oh, I shall manage all right enough," replied 
 Laurence. " I always find plain open dealing 
 far better in all business matters." 
 
 *' Do you indeed?" said Graham, dryly. 
 
 ''I do. Of course I shall bide my time and 
 put the question casually, so that she may not 
 think of deceiving me, as she might do if she 
 saw my game. I shall do it, however, not later 
 than to-morrow, for if this thing is to come off 
 at all, it might as well come off at once. If 
 Meredith is so hard up as you say, there's no
 
 182 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 time to be lost, for if he hasn't swindled his 
 daughter already he may to-morrow." 
 
 " You're quite right," assented Graham. 
 " And then another thing is, the girl may be 
 bespoken before you know it if you waste time. 
 She's only been going about for the last two 
 months, or she'd have been engaged before, for 
 her father is an ambitious man, and has plenty 
 of young friends with good titles who would not 
 object to sharing his daughter's . ten thousand 
 a-year." 
 
 " Of course. It's very lucky I'm first in the 
 field, so far." 
 
 On the following day Laurence was in the 
 Rue Royale punctually at five, and found Muriel 
 waiting for him alone, her mother, she explained, 
 having been forced to go out. " But we're 
 going to the opera to-night," said Muriel, " and 
 mamma wants you to join us there." 
 
 Of course Laurence accepted the invitation 
 with much gratitude, and that little matter 
 having been settled, he began asking her 
 about her experiences and impressions since 
 she had been out in society — his object, of 
 course, being to ascertain, if possible, whether the 
 matrimonial coast was still clear. It was not
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 183 
 
 long before he was fully edified on that point, 
 and Muriel's very conclusive and candid replies 
 to his searching questions thoroughly satisfied 
 him that, so far as she herself knew at any rate, 
 there were no suitors after her hand and dowry 
 as yet. Arthur Pendragon, he reminded him- 
 self, might be dangerous, but then it was hardly 
 likely that even the second son of so great a 
 man as the Duke of Tintagil would marry the 
 daughter of a man like William Meredith ; and 
 then, again, Arthur Pendragon was absent, and 
 so, for the moment at least, not dangerous. He 
 hardly cared to sound the girl on this point, for 
 he, being an intimate friend of Arthur — who 
 indeed had introduced him to the Merediths — 
 the subject, under the circumstances, was a 
 delicate one, and so he resolved to chance that 
 remote danger and content himself for the nonce 
 with finding out about the money. 
 
 ^' We are old friends," he said at length, very 
 seriously, after a short pause — ^' are we not ? " 
 
 *' The oldest of old friends," assented Muriel, 
 smiling. They had known each other at the 
 outside about a year. 
 
 " So if I ask your advice about a very import- 
 ant and private matter concerning myself, you
 
 184 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 will give it me *? And promise me solemnly to 
 say nothing about it to any one ? " 
 
 " Why, of course I will. But what a funny 
 idea to ask m/y advice ; nobody asks it now," — 
 and she sighed, — "now that Madge is gone." 
 
 *' That's exactly it," said Laurence, catching 
 at the idea. " Miss Tyrrell often told me what 
 capital advice you always gave her, and that's 
 why I seek it. Besides, it is merely a matter of 
 sentiment ; and if I asked any of the men I 
 know, they would all laugh at me. When a 
 man of honour is in doubt, let him ask advice of 
 a lady. Women have a much higher and more 
 delicate sense of honour than we have." 
 
 Muriel acknowledged the compliment paid to 
 her sex by a playful bow. 
 
 ^* What I want to ask you about is this," re- 
 sumed Farquhar, very gravely, *' and you will 
 see that it needs no knowledge of the world or 
 experience to give me the advice I ask, — only a 
 pure good heart, such as I am sure you have." 
 Muriel bowed again. " I told you yesterday, 
 or rather you told me, that I am a penniless 
 beggar." 
 
 Muriel turned crimson. '' Oh, Mr Farquhar 
 ■ " she began.
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 185 
 
 Laurence held up a hand in playful warning. 
 '* Now don't interrupt me, Miss Muriel, I beg of 
 you, or else I shall never get through what I have 
 to say. Now, whether I told you or you told me 
 it makes no diflference, and does not alter the 
 lamentable fact that I am a beggar. But how 
 do you suppose that I became so ? " 
 
 Muriel shook her head, rather amused. ^' Fm 
 sure I have no idea, but I must say that you 
 look a very comfortable and well-to-do beggar." 
 
 '' Tm not quite so offensive as Lazarus, and 
 that is about all you can say," he replied, 
 smiling. '* No ; but, seriously speaking, how do 
 you suppose I lost all my money, for wheit I 
 came of age I had all I wanted '? " 
 
 Muriel ransacked her brains for a minute, 
 and then said, hesitatingly, ''Cards!" 
 
 Laurence could not for the life of him repress 
 a smile, so exactly had the girl in her innocence 
 hit the right nail on the head. *' No," he said, 
 laughing, " not cards, nor horses, nor gamb- 
 ling, nor anything in any way wicked. Guess 
 again." 
 
 Muriel reflected again for a moment, and then 
 said, *' Kobbed ? " Laurence shook his head. 
 
 Then I give it up," said Muriel. "If it 
 
 <( r
 
 180 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 wasn't cards, or anything in any way wicked, 
 and if you were not robbed, I don't see how you 
 can have lost your money." 
 
 Laurence sighed, and cast down his eyes. 
 *' I gave it away," he said, simply. 
 
 " Gave it away ! " 
 
 " Yes, every penny of it ! " 
 
 " Who to ? " 
 
 " To my father, to save him from ruin," — and 
 as liaurence uttered this audacious falsehood he 
 looked the girl straight in the eyes. But he 
 saw nothing there to frighten him — only aston- 
 ishment melting into pity ; and so, greatly en- 
 couraged and relieved, and yet not wholly 
 satisfied, he continued with renewed and re- 
 invigorated eloquence — " The money was mine, 
 entirely mine, five thousand a-year, left solely 
 to me by a maiden aunt, and I had complete 
 control of it when I came of age. But when 
 my poor father came to me, and told me how 
 all his speculations had failed ; how he had been 
 robbed right and left, until he had come down 
 to his last sovereign ; how he was hopelessly 
 and irretrievably ruined and dishonoured, if I 
 did not come to his assistance ; and how his 
 heart was broken, — I gave him up every penny
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 18*7 
 
 of my fortune gladly, and resolved to — to — to — 
 do the best I could without it." 
 
 " But how do you manage ? " asked Muriel, 
 the enormity of the sacrifice being as nothing 
 in her eyes compared to the miraculous fact of 
 this well-dressed dandy, who refused himself 
 nothing, living upon air. Laurence was hardly 
 prepared for this very practical and natural 
 question, and hesitated for a moment before 
 replying. Then he said, averting his head as if 
 in shame, but in reality to hide a smile, " I 
 write for the press ! " 
 
 " What ? You mean the 'Times,' and ' Tele- 
 graph,' and all those papers '? " ^ 
 
 " Yes. They like my style, and pay me 
 well, and even pay my expenses to go about in 
 society and pick up news for them, and so that 
 is why you always see me, and hear of me, 
 about so much. I couldn't possibly afford to 
 live in the way I do if the editors of these 
 great newspapers did not pay my expenses." 
 
 '' Oh, I see now ! " exclaimed Muriel. " Madge 
 
 and I often used to " and then she stopped 
 
 abruptly, her face suffused with blushes. 
 
 " Used to wonder how I lived, I suppose," 
 put in Laurence, laughing at her confusion.
 
 188 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 " Well, you know now.'' Muriel said nothing. 
 Laurence tlious^ht he would give her time to 
 think the matter over, and so he rose from his 
 chair and walked moodily up and down the 
 room. 
 
 " Well ? " he said at last, stopping in front 
 of her, and looking with fixed sadness into her 
 upturned face, " what do you think of my 
 story ? " 
 
 " I think you were very, very, very good to 
 your poor father," exclaimed Muriel, earnestly. 
 
 *' But do you think I was right in doing 
 what I did ? " insisted Farquhar. " That's the 
 question I want to ask you ; that's what I am 
 seeking your opinion about." 
 
 " Why, you say the money was yours, so of 
 course you could do what you liked with it." 
 
 " Yes, of course ; but then, you see, by doing 
 this for my father — by giving him every penny 
 I had in the world — I ruined myself." 
 
 '^ Well," said Muriel, with exasperating cool- 
 ness, not really knowing what to say, but fully 
 conscious that some kind of remark was re- 
 quired of her. Laurence had to bite his lip to 
 keep from laughing, but preserving his serious- 
 ness with a mighty effort, he continued —
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 189 
 
 " And don't you see that by ruining myself 
 I altered all my life, and perhaps did harm to 
 others ?" 
 
 " How ? I don't understand." 
 
 "Why, here is an example. If I had kept 
 my five thousand a-year, of course I could have 
 afforded to marry any girl, no matter how poor 
 she might be, whom I loved. Now, of course, 
 I can't ; so by giving away my fortune to my 
 father, I have been doing perhaps a great wrong 
 to this poor girl who loves me, and whom I 
 might have married and made happy. Don't 
 you see V 
 
 " Yes, I see now. Who is this poor girl ? .Do 
 I know her ? " inquired Muriel, innocently. 
 
 " What a tease you are, Muriel ! " exclaimed 
 Laurence, not knowing whether to laugh out- 
 right or not. " There is no poor girl really in 
 the matter at present. It's only a supposition, 
 of course. There might have been, and then of 
 course she would have been sacrificed." 
 
 Muriel said nothing. 
 
 " Was I right ? " 
 
 "I suppose you were," said Muriel, hesitatingly. 
 
 " Would you have done the same in my 
 place ? That's what I mean ? "
 
 190 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 *' I don't quite understand you." 
 
 " Suppose your father were ruined, and you 
 had money of your own, would you give him 
 up every penny of your money to pay his debts 
 with, and leave yourself a beggar, as I left 
 myself ? " 
 
 " Certainly not ! " The reply came as clearly 
 and distinctly as a bell. Laurence could have 
 fallen on his knees before her there and then, 
 and worshipped her. 
 
 '' What ! " he exclaimed, trembling with de- 
 light. " Do you mean to say that if your father 
 were ruined, and you had money, and he came 
 and begged you to give it to him to save him 
 from further ruin, you would refuse him ? Is 
 that what you mean, Muriel ? " 
 
 "It is. I would not give him a penny." 
 
 Laurence felt actually giddy with admira- 
 tion, and had to sit down. " You can't mean 
 what you're saying ! " he exclaimed, his voice 
 trembling with emotion. 
 
 "Yes, I do," replied Muriel excitedly, her 
 eyes flashing. " If papa were ruined, and came 
 to me for my money, I should say to him, ' No, 
 my darling, leave it in safety. You have been 
 robbed before, and you will be robbed again.
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 191 
 
 Let US keep what we have got, and go away 
 and leave all those horrid people who have been 
 cheating you, and live in peace somewhere else.' 
 That's what I should say, and I know I should 
 be doing right." 
 
 " Doing right to refuse your own father — 
 your poor father '? " insisted Farquhar. 
 
 " Yes, perfectly right ; and I know papa 
 would be the first person to say so too. You 
 ask him yourself when he comes back from 
 Bordeaux." 
 
 " You are certainly the most extraordinary 
 girl I ever met," said Laurence, after a short 
 pause ; " and I only wish I had asked your ad- 
 vice before doing what I did." 
 
 ** I wish you had," replied Muriel, simply ; 
 '' and I certainly should have told you not to 
 do it." 
 
 *' I must see what I can do," said Laurence, 
 after a long pause, and anxious to get away, 
 now that he had ascertained all he wanted to 
 know. " It may not be too late to save some- 
 thing out of the wreck yet. I see now that you 
 are right, and that your noble, splendid heart 
 has spoken the real truth, and shown me my 
 real duty. God bless you for what you have
 
 192 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 just said ! " and he took her hand and kissed it, 
 his eyes filling with real tears. Muriel looked 
 at him with wonder and compassion : this sud- 
 den emotion in one generally so flippant afl"ected 
 her strangely. 
 
 '' Why, you're crying ! " she said, her own 
 voice trembling. 
 
 " Tears of gratitude, Muriel, — gratitude, and 
 — and more than that. I must go now. For- 
 give me ; but these recollections have quite up- 
 set me. I can never think of my poor father 
 without emotion. I'll come to-morrow if you'll 
 let me. Will you ? " 
 
 " So you won't come to the opera to-night, 
 then ? " 
 
 " Oh yes ; I forgot. I will be there at ten 
 without fail. Tell Lady Meredith I would not 
 miss seeing her for anything ; and don't forget 
 to remember me to Sir William when you write. 
 And now good-bye, or rather a rivederci!'^ 
 And so he got away, the clumsiest and most 
 uncomfortable exit he had ever perpetrated in 
 his life. 
 
 The London morning papers received that 
 evening in Paris contained a piece of informa- 
 tion which interested many characters in this
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 193 
 
 story, for they announced briefly that no less a 
 personage than Uther, Marquis of Camelot, eldest 
 son of the Duke of Tintagil, had so far forgotten 
 the dignity due to his birth and rank as to fall 
 down a precipice in Switzerland, like a vulgar 
 curate, and lose his life. So our friend Arthur 
 Pendragon, as Marquis of Lyonesse, reigned in 
 his stead. 
 
 VOL. f. N
 
 194 
 
 CHAPTEK IX. 
 
 The extraordinary confession of self-sacrifice 
 which Laurence Farqiihar had made to Muriel 
 had affected her greatly — for, of course, it never 
 entered into her mind for a moment to doubt 
 its absolute veracity. He was then a hero — 
 a hero such as she had dreamt of, one capable 
 of the loftiest self - sacrifice, the splendour of 
 which was specially sanctified by the hidden 
 way in which it had been made. She had 
 been greatly mistaken in him all along, and 
 now bitterly reproached herself not only for 
 not having recognised the nobility of his nature 
 at once, but still more, of course, for having 
 really estimated his character as being by no 
 means above the ordinary level of the amusing 
 and selfish men of the world she met with every 
 day. Had she been able to consult any one 
 in these first moments of astonishment, ad-
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 195 
 
 miration, and self-reproach, it is not improb- 
 able that some healthy light might have been 
 shed upon the matter which would have caused 
 her to hesitate before at once enrolling Laurence 
 Farquhar among the gods ; but she was bound 
 to secrecy by her oath, and so the seed thus 
 artfully planted by Farquhar bore the fruit 
 which he had foreseen it would, and she began 
 by almost imperceptible degrees to look for- 
 ward to his daily visits as being not only 
 delightful breaks in the splendid and empty 
 monotony of her existence, but as glimpses 
 all too brief into a life of heroism, which 
 lost nothing of charm and fascination in lier 
 eyes by being carefully and voluntarily hidden 
 from vulgar admiration and reward by the 
 trivialities of fashionable society. That she 
 herself could never hope to rival such nobility 
 of nature, nor dare to reach up so high as to 
 become the heroine of one of her own dreams 
 of chivalry, she told herself over and over 
 again. How great, how in every way admir- 
 able, therefore, was this paladin who went to 
 Lock and Poole for his helmet and armour, 
 and bought his battle - axe and lance at 
 Briggs'.
 
 196 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 This admiration had not as yet merged into 
 a warmer and more tender sentiment, but it 
 went far to prepare the way for a favourable 
 reception of Cupid's shaft. Muriel was indeed 
 so far heart-whole : the only man she had ever 
 seen whom she thought she might in time 
 perhaps be brought to love was Arthur Pen- 
 dragon ; but he had now — as it seemed to 
 this child, who counted days as months and 
 weeks as years — passed out of her life, leav- 
 ing behind no token that he Avould return, 
 and the only male being whom she now had 
 every day submitted to her inspection was 
 this amiable, amusing, and gay-hearted sym- 
 pathiser with her retrospective melancholy, who 
 had honoured her with the frank and modest 
 confession of his heroism, merely to seek her 
 girlish and unworldly approbation of his noble 
 conduct — an approbation which, in truth, her 
 impulsive common -sense had at first, as we 
 have seen, denied him. What wonder, then, 
 that these daily meetings, hallowed by con- 
 stantly recurring references to the happiest 
 period of Muriel's life, when she had had Madge 
 by her, and carefully regulated, as of course 
 they were, by Laurence's perfect knowledge
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 197 
 
 of the working of her girl-heart, should by 
 degrees have become inexpressibly and danger- 
 ously sweet to this uncared-for child ? As he 
 had broken the ground by confiding to her 
 the great and sacred secret of his life, she felt 
 herself not only justified, but almost bound, 
 to repose a similar confidence in him, and thus 
 pour forth into his sympathetic ear that full 
 tide of her secret wishes, and aspirations, and 
 hopes, and dreams, and joys, and sorrows, 
 which, now that her only friend had been 
 removed from her, it almost stifled her to 
 retain within herself. 
 
 The inevitable end came about in this wise, 
 about ten days after Laurence had told her 
 the romantic cause of his impecuniosity. They 
 were riding together in the Bois on a glorious 
 summer morning, and had found their way 
 to the broad road running by the back of 
 Bagatelle. The world of fashion on horseback 
 they had left far behind them — in the Avenue 
 de rimperatrice, by the lakes, in the Avenue 
 des Acacias, or in some one of the many um- 
 brageous and lovely alleys in which the Bois 
 abounds, and which, as a sign indicates, are 
 reserved *'Pour cavaliers seul." Here in this
 
 198 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 wide sliadeless avenue they were alone, save 
 for the groom who followed Muriel, and two 
 or three sleepy keepers who yawned in the 
 sunshine, and longed for the hour to come 
 when they could recuperate their energies at 
 breakfast with an artichaut d rimile, washed 
 down with half a bottle of petit hleu. The 
 heavy air was musical with the hum of in- 
 sects and the shrill voices of innumerable 
 birds ; and there, to the right, beyond the belt 
 of trees which hid the river, the laughter of 
 a few noisy and early caiiotiers might be 
 heard as they dug their oars obstinately into 
 the stream, and gave vent from time to time 
 to the delirious joy begotten of this manly 
 exercise by lusty carollings of "La Femme a 
 barbe," or "Les Pompiers de Nanterre." The 
 time had come — the psychological moment, as 
 Dumas jils calls it — the hour when Francesca 
 and her lover put aside the book that told 
 of Lancelot, *' Come Tamor lo strinse," and 
 looked into each other's eyes. Laurence felt 
 it — perhaps Muriel was not wholly unconscious 
 of it ; at all events, Farquhar began, as their 
 horses walked side by side — 
 
 " I am afraid I shall never get back any of
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 199 
 
 that money I spoke to you about the other day, 
 Muriel." 
 
 He had fallen into the habit of always calling 
 her Muriel now when they were alone, and 
 indeed they had exchanged during these last 
 few days so many confidences, that any such 
 trivial non-observance of the ordinary formali- 
 ties of social etiquette might easily be over- 
 looked or pardoned. 
 
 " I am very sorry to hear that," she replied, 
 turning her head and looking into her com- 
 panion's face with serious concern. 
 
 '' Yes, your advice came too late. I had a 
 letter from my poor father's solicitor this morn- 
 ing, telling me that very nearly all is lost, and 
 that what little remains is so compromised as 
 to be useless." 
 
 " I am very sorry to hear that," she repeated. 
 
 "Oh, if I had only known you in time, how 
 different my life would have been ! " Muriel 
 merely bowed her head in silent acknowledg- 
 ment of the implied compliment. 
 
 " Think of it, Muriel — just think of it ! Every 
 penny I possessed gone, and without doing any 
 good to anybody ; for my poor father, whom I 
 cannot even in my darkest moments of despair
 
 200 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 blame, never benefited a farthing by my quix- 
 otic and suicidal sacrifice ! The villains who 
 robbed him at first robbed him again, and now — 
 God help and bless him ! — he has only what I 
 may earn with my pen to support him ! " 
 
 As a matter of fact, Mr Farquhar, senior, 
 was endeavouring to forget some of the troubles 
 his son had caused him by indulging in the 
 luxury of playing battledore and shuttlecock 
 with delirium tremens in a small cottage on the 
 Sussex coast. 
 
 " But you have your reward in your own 
 heart, Laurence," said Miss Meredith. 
 
 " No, I have not ! " he exclaimed passionately, 
 and tossing back his head in impatient denial — 
 " and that's the hardest part of it. My heart 
 tells me I have done wrong — terribly, fatally 
 wrong, as you told me. I should never have 
 listened to my father, who was stung to mad- 
 ness by the thought that his honour might be 
 suspected, and to whose wild prayers I listened 
 like a fool — worse than a fool, for by listening 
 to them I gave up to him to destroy the only 
 means I had of making him ultimately happy. 
 It was selfish, Muriel — utterly and miserably 
 selfish. There was nothing noble in it, and
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 201 
 
 this is my just reward. I never knew the 
 value of money when I gave this up. I could 
 not bear to see my father's anguish and despair, 
 and in a weak moment of selfish pity I did him 
 the cruellest wrong I could. Don't pity me, 
 Muriel — I am not worthy of it. My selfishness 
 has made my bed, and my despair must lie 
 on it." 
 
 " But you did it for the best." 
 
 " No, I did not. I cannot honestly say that 
 I did. I did it without thinking, so I have 
 the martyr's sufiering without the martyr's 
 crown." 
 
 Muriel thought his martyr's crown very 
 radiant indeed, and perhaps her eyes told him 
 so, as she turned and glanced at him for a 
 moment, and then averted her head. 
 
 "You judge yourself too harshly," she 
 murmured. 
 
 " Muriel," he said, in a low passionate voice, 
 drawing close to her, and bending his head so 
 that his breath almost came upon her cheek — 
 " think of all that I have lost. Fortune, hope, 
 love — almost life itself, for what is life without 
 love '? If I had known you before — if I had 
 only met you before I did this — I should have
 
 202 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 seen there was a higher duty than to one's 
 father, — a higher, nobler duty. Do you know 
 what that duty is? Do you know what that 
 duty is, Muriel ? " 
 
 Her heart beat so quickly she could not 
 speak, nor indeed did he give her the time 
 to reply, for he continued at once — 
 
 "It is the most sacred duty of all — it is the 
 duty to the woman one loves, to the woman 
 one would hope to make one's wife. Am I 
 never to be pardoned, Muriel, for this one 
 great mistake ? Can you find it in your heart 
 to condemn me for ever for this one fault ? Or 
 will you try to forgive me, and help me to 
 undo all this harm that in my folly I have 
 done ? " 
 
 Muriel spoke not. 
 
 " Answer me, my darling ; or if you cannot 
 answer, give me your hand, and I will ask no 
 more. I do not ask you to say ' yes ' all at once, 
 — take time to think ; but, for the love of mercy, 
 do not throw me back into despair by saying 
 * no ' ! I can wait for you, Muriel. I can wait, 
 and work, and strive to win you, if you will 
 only give me hope. Hold out your hand to me, 
 my darling, and I am saved ! "
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 203 
 
 The little trembling hand grasping the whip 
 was held out to him. " I will do all I can for 
 you, Laurence," she said, almost with a sob. 
 " You are the noblest man I ever met." 
 
 "God bless you!" he exclaimed, with genuine 
 exultation. "Of all the good deeds you have 
 ever done, you have done the best to-day, for 
 you have saved a soul that worships you," — and 
 regardless of the astonished groom, he stooped 
 and kissed the tiny gloved fist. Then, not to 
 give her time for reflection, and perhaps for 
 regret, he continued quickly, releasing her 
 hand — ''I am the happiest man in the world. 
 God bless you, Muriel ! I can now wait and 
 work, and with the hope of winning you I 
 shall be sure to succeed. We must wait, for 
 I am poor, but " 
 
 " If you are poor I am rich," broke in Muriel, 
 turning to him a blushing face, where sorrow 
 seemed to strive with smiles. " At least, papa 
 is rich." 
 
 " I can't take your father's money, Muriel — 
 I would not stoop to do that. But he is 
 powerful, and he will aid me with his in- 
 fluence when he knows that I am trying to 
 become worthy of your love. You will plead
 
 204 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 for me, won't you, my darling ? You will tell 
 him that I am ready to work night and day to 
 win you ? " 
 
 " I shall say nothing to mamma," said Muriel, 
 who in truth was in deadly fear of her mother. 
 *' We had better wait until papa comes back." 
 
 *'You are right, darling; you are always 
 right. Shall we have to wait long ? " 
 
 " No ; he is coming back on Saturday." 
 
 This was Wednesday. And so they rode on, 
 he pouring into her eager ear all the glib false- 
 hoods that long experience in making love had 
 taught him, and she listening as one in a dream, 
 hardly realising all that had taken place, or all 
 that he was saying, but possessed withal with 
 one soothing dominant feeling that a great 
 crisis in her existence had come and passed, 
 and that her whole life and future now lay in 
 the safe - keeping of one of the most noble- 
 hearted men on earth. That evening she de- 
 clined all her mother's propositions to go into 
 society on the plea of a headache, and retired 
 to the nursery early to think over the important 
 event of the day. Her greatest trouble was that 
 her lover, just before parting from her, had ex- 
 tracted a most reluctantly-given promise that
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 205 
 
 she would, until the return of her father at 
 least, write nothing to Madge about her engage- 
 ment. Had she not given this promise, she 
 would long ago have covered sheet after sheet 
 of letter-paper with a detailed recital of the 
 offer of marriage which had been made to her, 
 her favourable reception thereof, and general 
 reflections thereon — and doubtless then, with 
 pen in hand, she would have seen the exact 
 situation of affairs more clearly ; but as it was, 
 she could hardly collect her thoughts and 
 arrange them in proper sequence, so great, 
 sudden, and wholly unexpected had been this 
 change in her future. • 
 
 First of all, did she love him ? Yes, and no ; 
 that is, she hardly knew the full meaning that 
 the word " love " should convey. She liked him, 
 thought him handsome, clever, and charming, 
 and was happy in his society : furthermore, 
 she thought him noble beyond all men, for 
 she acknowledged to herself that she had 
 never hitherto in her short life come across 
 one capable of such splendid heroism as 
 that which had ennobled the life of this 
 man. This feeling of admiration, indeed, 
 coming upon her so suddenly, and inspired
 
 206 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 by one whom she had hitherto looked upon 
 as being made of quite ordinary clay, almost 
 quelled any more tender feeling that his sweet 
 words, grace, and good looks might have en- 
 gendered. She could not get over the astound- 
 ing fact that Laurence Farquhar was a hero : 
 that he should love her and have offered her 
 his hand was another cause of wonder, but as 
 nothing in magnitude compared to the first. 
 She would perhaps in her heart have preferred 
 that he should not have been quite so Olympian 
 in his godlike attributes, — something made of 
 more common material, something perhaps more 
 like Arthur Pendragon. But as this thought 
 crossed her mind, the blood surged to her cheek 
 with shame, and she banished it as being almost 
 an act of treason against the man whose wife, 
 but a few hours before, she had promised to 
 become. 
 
 That her father would gravely object to the 
 match she shrewdly foresaw, and her mother, 
 she felt sure, would be almost more hostile than 
 her father. But all that Laurence must see 
 about, she told herself, with no slight feeling 
 of pleasure and satisfaction that she had now 
 at least got some one to protect her and battle
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 207 
 
 for lier — one before whose wishes even the will 
 of her parents must bend and give way. Lau- 
 rence must see about all that. The fact of his 
 having no money could hardly be a serious 
 obstacle, for her father, she knew, was rich, and 
 she had been given to understand that her 
 grandfather had left her a large fortune at his 
 death. Then, again, if her father should not 
 indeed approve of Laurence as a son-in-law at 
 first, how greatly would his feelings change 
 when he heard the story of this splendid self- 
 sacrifice and heroism ! Her father would no 
 doubt repair the fallen fortunes of Laurence's 
 poor father ; and if he did not, at all events "She 
 herself was determined to do so with such 
 money as might be hers, for she saw in this a 
 way of stepping up partly to the high nobility 
 of the man whose wife she was about to be- 
 come. She would not, she could not, hope to 
 rival her husband in self-sacrifice, but she was 
 fully determined to do all that love and a liberal 
 expenditure of money could do to heal the 
 wounds inflicted on old Farquhar by unmerciful 
 disaster. The thought of this inspirited her 
 greatly : her father could do so much, merely 
 by influence and without putting down a penny !
 
 208 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 She herself could remember three or four in- 
 stances in her short life where her father had 
 transformed ignoble despair and failure into 
 happiness and delighted success. If he had 
 done so for mere friends, how much more would 
 he be likely to do so for the father of the hus- 
 band of his only child. This idea filled her 
 with rapture ; and in her heroic enthusiasm, 
 brooding alone in the nursery, she thought 
 almost more of the father of the man she was 
 about to marry than of her future husband 
 himself — a sure proof, if some philosopher had 
 been there to tell her so, that her heart was not 
 irretrievably engaged. Yes, it was by taking 
 up the work where Laurence had been forced 
 to lay it down — it was by making his father 
 happy — that she could perhaps in some measure 
 bridge over the great distance which now sepa- 
 rated her trivial and selfish life from the splen- 
 did and heroic spirit of her husband. In this 
 exalted frame of mind Miss Meredith went 
 to bed. 
 
 Laurence Farquhar, on his side, had, as the 
 reader may well surmise, been very carefully 
 considering the situation in his mind, and con- 
 sulting with the wily Graham about the matter.
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 209 
 
 Now that the first intoxicating excitement inci- 
 dental to sudden success was over, he found his 
 second bottle of Gorton baptising thoughts not 
 altogether rosy. How would the father, Sir 
 William, take it '? and how would Madge 
 take it ? 
 
 " Meredith is sure to play the devil's delight," 
 said Graham grimly, by way of consolation. 
 ^' He's up a tree himself, and is sure to want a 
 rich, or at least a useful, son-in-law." 
 
 Laurence said nothing. 
 
 " There is really nothing particular against 
 you, I suppose ? " continued Graham, after a 
 pause. • 
 
 " What the devil do you mean ? " growled 
 Farquhar. 
 
 " Any skeleton in the closet that happens to 
 rattle rather too audibly at times ? " 
 
 Laurence shook his head. 
 
 " I thought I heard of some trouble in 
 Canada," persisted Graham, maliciously. 
 
 Laurence frowned. "That was all twaddle, 
 and has blown over centuries ago.'^ 
 
 " So much the better. But all the same you 
 must make up your mind to find Meredith very 
 disagreeable ; so if you should happen to have 
 
 VOL. I, o
 
 210 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 any enemies — women especially, of course, I 
 mean — I should advise you to square them 
 while there is time." 
 
 *' There are no women to square." 
 
 "Ah," remarked Graham, with a smile ; '' then 
 you are lucky." 
 
 "Ten thousand a-year (as you say it is) is 
 worth a little trying for," said Laurence. 
 
 Graham nodded acquiescence to this self- 
 evident truism. " It's a pity you can't run 
 away with her," he said, after a pause. " I have 
 always strongly recommended all my young 
 friends to do that with their sweethearts. It's 
 like dining without a penny in your pocket. 
 They can't take the dinner away from you, and 
 so they generally make the best of a bad bar- 
 gain. It's a capita] system for boys like you 
 to work on. We old ones can't : there is no 
 run left in our legs." 
 
 " There is nothing of that kind to be done 
 here," said Laurence, moodily. 
 
 Graham shook his head. " Oh dear, no ! " 
 he said quietly. " Meredith knows every move 
 on the board, and he would have you up for 
 enticing away a girl under age before you could 
 get to Brussels. No ; if you are to win at
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 211 
 
 all, it must be entirely tlirough diplomacy and 
 handling that old scoundrel with great delicacy. 
 I have no doubt I shall be able to be of great 
 service to you, and of course you can count 
 on me." 
 
 " Thanks. You know Meredith very well, 
 do you not ? " 
 
 Graham smiled. " Very well, indeed ; yes." 
 
 " Could you give the screw a twist if neces- 
 sary ? " 
 
 " Perhaps." 
 
 '' Well, if you do, and it comes off all right, 
 you shall not regret it — that's all that I can 
 say." 
 
 " Very well. We must wait until the man 
 comes back. Now I think I shall go to the 
 club." 
 
 " So shall I ; ecarte may do my head good. 
 Come on." 
 
 Little did Laurence Farquhar think, as he 
 sat in the card-room of the Jockey Club that 
 night, endeavouring to turn his skill at ecarte 
 to some account (although, of course, at this 
 season of the year the club was almost empty), 
 that a letter was coming up in the mail-train 
 that very moment from Bordeaux that would
 
 212 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 for ever shatter his dreams of marriaore with 
 Miss Meredith, and that the arrival of this fatal 
 letter would be preceded — in the early morning, 
 and long before he should be up and about — by 
 the reception of a hardly less terrible telegram, 
 which would fall as a thunderbolt upon the 
 family he was so ambitious to marry into. At 
 nine o'clock in the morning a telegram was 
 brought for Lady Meredith, but as her ladyship 
 was asleep, she was not disturbed. At ten the 
 post came in, and among other letters her lady- 
 ship's maid noticed one addressed to her mistress 
 in the well-known handwriting of Sir William, 
 and bearing the post-mark of Bordeaux upon it. 
 This fact, of course, later on gave rise to much 
 speculative discussion among the servants. At 
 eleven Lady Meredith awoke, rang her bell, 
 arose, and prepared to take her matutinal tea 
 and toast, sending for her correspondence, and 
 of course opening the telegram first. Then one 
 hideous, piercing, agonising scream rang through 
 the house, and Lady Meredith fell prone and 
 insensible upon the floor of her boudoir. Of 
 course all was in the wildest state of confusion 
 in a moment — servants running to and fro, 
 getting in each other's way, and doing no good ;
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 213 
 
 the women weeping, sobbing, and wringing their 
 hands, and the men casting up their eyes and 
 arms in a theatrical appeal to le hon Dieu to 
 have mercy upon this stricken house, — for of 
 course the telegram had been read at once, and 
 it was terrible in its conciseness, merely an- 
 nouncing as it did that Sir William Meredith 
 had been found dead in his bed that very morn- 
 ing at the Hotel de France in Bordeaux. 
 
 The only person in this distracted household 
 who kept her head was the old nurse, Agnes, 
 who broke the news to Muriel (who followed 
 her mother's example and fainted), and fehen 
 busied herself about getting Lady Meredith to 
 bed, sending for a doctor, and above all putting 
 things in order and in places of safety, so that 
 in this tumult and excitement no unnecessary 
 pillaging might take place. When Muriel re- 
 covered consciousness her first thought was 
 to go to her mother ; but this Agnes told her 
 was impossible, the doctor having given the 
 strictest orders that on no account should Lady 
 Meredith be disturbed at present. Indeed this 
 same medical man, who, having seen the widow, 
 now came up-stairs to see the orphan, found 
 Miss Meredith in such a state of nervous ex-
 
 214 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 citement that he ordered bed, tranquillity, and 
 quieting medicines at once. Everything, there- 
 fore, during the first thirty-six hours which 
 followed the receipt of this fatal news, fell to 
 old Agnes to do, and most creditably did this 
 worthy representative of the '' Land o' Cakes " 
 acquit herself of this most difficult task, answer- 
 ing innumerable telegrams, and receiving all 
 sorts and conditions of men — from a chamberlain 
 of the Empress, who had come on purpose from 
 Compiegne to offer the condoUances of their 
 Imperial Majesties, to greatly agitated and very 
 dirty Hebrew gentlemen hailing from the neigh- 
 bourhood of the Bourse. 
 
 Laurence Farquhar called at his usual hour, 
 five, having heard nothing of the terrible news, 
 owing to the very simple fact that he had but just 
 arisen from his couch in time to breakfast hur- 
 riedly atVoisin's (which at that hour was empty), 
 and come on to the Rue Royale ; but the weep- 
 ing Selwyn, who opened the door, told him of 
 the fatal catastrophe at once. The blow was 
 terrible, and Laurence shrank dismayed before 
 it, for it seemed to him as if by this sudden and 
 untimely demise of one whose existence was 
 of such moment to him just then, an angry
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 215 
 
 Nemesis had suddenly stalked across his path. 
 He needed time to recover himself, and did not 
 for the moment even dare face the astute Agnes; 
 so, after having made tender inquiries about the 
 ladies, and leaving cards, he retired, and jump- 
 ing into the first vacant cab, he drove at once 
 to the Kue Lafitte to consult with Vincent 
 Graham. That worthy gentleman he found in 
 great glee, owing to the fact of his having that 
 very morning become the happy possessor of 
 the most rare edition of the * Anti- Justine ' of 
 Restif de la Bretonne, and so he was received 
 with great cordiality. 
 
 *' I exchanged some worthless Deverias, and 
 an equally worthless Clodion, for this ! " he 
 exclaimed, holding up the book as Laurence 
 entered the room, and before his visitor had 
 had time to say a word, " with that young fool 
 Vavasour of the Blues. He picked it up in 
 Amsterdam, and did not know its value, of 
 course. I have been seeking for it for years. 
 There are only six copies extant, and I had four 
 already. I have only one to get now. But 
 what's the matter '? You look upset." 
 
 Laurence told him the news at once. 
 
 " Bah ! " cried Graham, hugging his literary
 
 216 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 enormity in his arms as if it were a cherished 
 infant. " That is bad news for you. The man 
 killed himself, of course ! " 
 
 " I never thought of that, by Jove ! What a 
 man you are, Graham ! Do you really think 
 he did 1 " 
 
 " Why, of course he did. Cela saute aux 
 yeiix ! What do they say was the matter ? " 
 
 " The heart ! " 
 
 " Heart be d — d ! Meredith never had a 
 heart. Besides, he was supposed to be the very 
 best man for that sort of thing himself." 
 
 " Yes, but that wouldn't prevent his dying of 
 it if he had it." 
 
 *' Bosh ! I tell you the man killed himself. 
 It's as plain as a pikestaff! I shall know all 
 about it presently. Well, and what are you 
 going to do now ? " 
 
 " What do you advise 1 " 
 
 " Well, you must keep quiet for the moment, 
 of course, and see what turns up. I fancy you 
 will find everything has gone to ruin and smash, 
 and so you are well out of it ! " 
 
 " The girl's money, too 1 " 
 
 " Very likely. Valentine knew nothing about 
 that ; and I thought the other day, when you
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 217 
 
 told me, that you were very mild to believe all 
 the blarney the girl played off on you. Then, 
 again, we were both of us fools as a matter of 
 fact, and forgot that the girl being a minor, her 
 father could have played ducks and drakes with 
 her money without ever asking her consent." 
 
 '^ By Jove ! you're right," exclaimed Farquhar, 
 ruefully, stricken with shame and consternation 
 at having, in his precipitancy, overlooked so 
 very obvious a fact. 
 
 *'But I hardly think Meredith would have 
 done that, all the same," continued Graham, 
 reassuringly. , 
 
 "Who can tell?" 
 
 *' Who, indeed ? But you must hope for the 
 best, and, at all events, you haven't gone so far 
 yet that you can't get out of it if the game 
 turns out to be not really worth the candle." 
 
 " No ; of course not." 
 
 '' My advice is to stick to your guns for the 
 present, and see how things turn out. It may 
 be all right after all. Keep the passion at fever- 
 heat, but have the hose ready. You must wait 
 now, at all events." 
 
 " I suppose I must." 
 
 " Of course you must."
 
 218 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 " I suppose I ought to write a nice letter to 
 her ? '' 
 
 " By all means. It can do no harm ; and if 
 things should happen to turn out all right, of 
 course it will have been a trump-card to play. 
 Girls like that never forget sympathy in time of 
 trouble. Write by all means. You will find 
 me at the old place to-night, and I may by that 
 time have some news to give you ; but write at 
 once." 
 
 So Laurence went back at once to his hotel, 
 dashed ojff a masterpiece of passionate and ten- 
 der sympathy to Miss Meredith, beginning *' My 
 own darling wife," and ending, " Yours for ever 
 and ever, till death do us part." Graham had 
 no particular news to give him that evening 
 when they met at dinner at the Maison Dor^e, 
 but reported that the impression was gaining 
 ground in Paris that Meredith was ruined, and 
 had died by his own hand. The following day, 
 at mid-day, a servant in deep mourning brought 
 the following note to Farquhar's hotel : — 
 
 " God bless you, my own dear, true, and only 
 friend, for your dear letter, which is the only 
 word of comfort or sympathy I have had. 
 
 i
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 219 
 
 Mamma is much worse to-day than she was 
 yesterday, directly after she heard the dreadful 
 news, and the doctor says I cannot hope to see 
 her for a week yet, at least. And you, my dar- 
 ling ! when shall we meet again, my hero, my 
 own true, noble Laurence ? My heart is broken ; 
 and I should pray to die myself, only I think 
 of your blessed love, and then I try to feel re- 
 signed. Do you remember that line you read 
 to me by that new poet Swinburne only the 
 other day 1 — * Between two joys a grief grows 
 unawares.' How little did we think, you and 
 I, how terribly true these lines would pi;ove ! 
 Yes, as you say, Laurence, I am yours till 
 death do us part. — Yours for ever and ever, 
 your own Mueiel. 
 
 " P.S. — I have covered your dear letter with 
 kisses, and slept with it on my pillow I God 
 bless you for it, my hero ! " 
 
 '* That's hot enough ! " murmured Laurence, 
 as he refolded this letter and put it carefully 
 away. " That's about as hot as they make it ! 
 It may prove a most valuable document in time, 
 if properly used. I must wait now, as Graham
 
 220 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 says, and see what turns up. I shall do nothing 
 further." 
 
 On second thoughts, however, he did just 
 write the following : — 
 
 ** My darling Wife, — Your letter to me is 
 more precious than I can tell you ; but I must 
 not speak of myself, or even of you, at this ter- 
 rible moment. We must think of nothing but 
 your poor mother. Do not say a word to her, 
 when you do see her, about our engagement. 
 It would be selfish and ungenerous to intrude 
 our future happiness on her present grief. 
 Leave all that to me. I will tell her all when 
 the right time comes. Till then, do not say a 
 word to anybody about our engagement, no 
 matter what your mother may say to you. 
 Leave it all to me. I shall consider that you 
 have solemnly promised me to do this until we 
 meet, and until I absolve you from your pro- 
 mise. Of course, I shall call several times every 
 day to know how you and your dear mother 
 are, and shall see you both as soon as you will 
 let me. — Yours till death, Laurence. 
 
 '^F.S. — How happy I am to think now of what
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 221 
 
 you told me once, that your father liked me ! 
 His soul, which is in heaven, will smile upon 
 our union and bless it I '' 
 
 When the doctor had told Muriel that her 
 mother was even more thoroughly prostrated 
 on the second day of her bereavement than on 
 the first, he had merely spoken the truth. On 
 the morning of the second day Lady Meredith 
 had had her correspondence brought to her 
 bedside, and an hour after, having read her 
 letters — but not, however, until the faithful 
 Agnes had very carefully put them away and 
 out of the sight of prying servants — her lady- 
 ship had had a fit, and for an hour or more the 
 physician in attendance had almost despaired of 
 saving her life. Later on in the day, however, 
 she had rallied, and all immediate danger hav- 
 ing now seemingly passed away, Muriel had not 
 been made acquainted with this new peril which 
 at one time had been so imminent. The next 
 few days were, of course, terrible. The body 
 arrived from Bordeaux, but was not brought to 
 the house, and the funeral took place with the 
 greatest privacy and despatch that decency and 
 proper reverence would admit of, — Agnes, a
 
 222 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 kind friend at the British Embassy, and the 
 Empress's chamberlain superintending all the ne- 
 cessary details, and being, in fact, almost the only 
 mourners, save, of course, Laurence Farquhar — 
 for Madge and her husband could not leave the 
 bedside of the aged baronet, whose death was 
 hourly expected. So, accompanied by a detach- 
 ment of troops, as befitted his rank as officer of 
 the Legion of Honour, and followed by barely a 
 dozen friends and acquaintances, the coffin of 
 Sir William Meredith was laid beside that of 
 his beloved son in the cemetery at St Germains.
 
 223 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 All letters had, by the express orders of the 
 doctor, been kept away from Lady Meredith ; 
 but on the second day after the funeral, as she 
 seemed in some measure to have recovered her 
 strength, and appeared, moreover, greatly anx- 
 ious to have some tidings from the outer world, 
 this prohibition was withdrawn, and a very for- 
 midable pile of envelopes and telegrams was 
 brought and laid before Sir William's widow. 
 This was on a Monday, and on the following 
 day, Tuesday, at one o'clock, Agnes informed 
 Miss Meredith that her ladyship could now see 
 her, — a summons which Muriel obeyed with a 
 shrinking heart — for, now that the first parox- 
 ysms of grief had somewhat calmed down, the 
 awe with which her mother had ever inspired 
 her returned with renewed vigour. When 
 she entered the room. Lady Meredith was lying
 
 224 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 back in a chaise loiigite near the half-opened 
 window, and on the table by her side lay a 
 square English-looking envelope, deeply edged 
 with black. Muriel was surprised, nay, almost 
 shocked, to find her mother looking so well : 
 she had expected to find her greatly changed. 
 Indeed the reports which had reached her from 
 Agnes and the doctor had prepared her to find, 
 in the gay, cold, worldly lady whom she had 
 known from infancy as her mother, almost a 
 total wreck. But Lady Meredith, with the excep- 
 tion, perhaps, of great and unnatural pallor, and 
 the widow's cap which she wore, looked much 
 the same as usual, as she lay back robed in the 
 most becoming black mourning-gown which the 
 imaofination of Worth could fashion. 
 
 *' My dear daughter I my own poor Muriel I " 
 she exclaimed, opening her arms to her daughter. 
 Then tears and kisses followed, Muriel being 
 almost more surprised by this tender and affec- 
 tionate reception than she was by her mother's 
 apparent good health. " Don't cry, my darling," 
 murmured Lady Meredith soothingly, as she 
 stroked her daughter fondly, while Muriel gave 
 vent to a passion of sobs on her mother's bosom. 
 " Don't cry, Muriel ; we must bow to God's
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 225 
 
 will. Petit pere, who loved us botli so much, 
 is in heaven now. We must think of him now 
 and his wishes, and not of ourselves." 
 
 How strangely like Laurence Farquhar she 
 spoke, thought poor Muriel, and what a selfish 
 creature she must be to always need these 
 reminders to think less of herself! 
 
 " Oh, I know, mamma, I know," she sobbed, 
 trying to stop her tears ; " but to die so far 
 away like that, without you or me near him — 
 alone in a hotel ! as poor, poor, poor little Paul 
 died in the street ! Oh, mamma, mamma, it is 
 too hard ! Are you and I never to have those 
 we love near us when they die ? " Then more 
 tears, more kisses, more comforting, until at 
 length Muriel lay exhausted by her sorrow, 
 with her head on her mother's shoulder. 
 
 " My pretty Muriel," murmured Lady Mere- 
 dith — " my dear little daughter ! — all I have left 
 now ! How kind every one has been to us ! 
 How can we ever forget all that the dear Em- 
 peror and Empress have done for us in our 
 trouble ! She, she especially wrote me such a 
 letter when she sent those beautiful flowers ! I 
 can never, never forget it." And here the recol- 
 lection of this Imperial sympathy aff'ected Lady 
 
 VOL. I. P
 
 226 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 Meredith so greatly that she too fell a-sobbing, 
 and it was now Muriel's turn to soothe, comfort, 
 and pet. But at length even this paroxysm 
 passed by, and the two lay locked together in a 
 tender embrace, the quiescence of which was 
 only from time to time interrupted by long- 
 drawn quivering sighs, and little caressing and 
 sympathetic pressures. After a long silence 
 Lady Meredith said, gently — 
 
 " Gret up, my darling. I have something 
 important to say to you." 
 
 Muriel staggered to her feet. 
 
 " Sit down, Muriel — here, close to me." 
 
 Muriel drew up a chair close to her mother's 
 side and sat down. 
 
 " Give me your hand, darling." 
 
 Muriel put her hand in that of her mother, 
 and Lady Meredith began to caress it softly. 
 
 " Listen to me, Muriel, and try to understand 
 me. I know you will ; for although you are 
 little more than a child in years, you have seen 
 more life than most girls of your age, and you 
 have, I feel sure, your dear father's common- 
 sense. So I shall speak to you as if you were 
 already a woman, Can I, Muriel ? Do you 
 think you will understand me ? "
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 227 
 
 " I will try to, mamma," said Muriel, raising 
 her mother's hand and kissing it fondly. 
 
 " And will you promise to do what I tell you, 
 and follow my advice, and let me guide you, my 
 darling ? " 
 
 "I will, mamma; of course you know I 
 will." 
 
 " Very well, then : listen to me, my daughter. 
 You must not be frightened at what I am going 
 to tell you ; for although I have bad news, yet 
 I have good news too, and both in the sunshine 
 and the shadow you and I shall be together, if 
 you will keep your promise and let me guide 
 you." 
 
 Muriel kissed her mother's hand again. ^' Any- 
 thing that I can do, mamma, you know I will. 
 What bad news ? " 
 
 '^ Why, Muriel, my darling, you must know 
 that your poor father's aifairs have been going 
 from bad to worse for the last few years." 
 
 " Money, do you mean ? " inquired Muriel, 
 looking sharply into her mother's half-averted 
 face, and feeling instinctively that some new 
 and terrible and unforeseen sorrow was about 
 to come upon her. ^* Do you mean money ? " 
 
 '' Yes, I mean money. M. de Morny's death
 
 228 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 was a terrible blow to your poor father, and 
 since then everything has been going from bad 
 to worse. So now, now at his death, poor petit 
 pere has been hardly able to leave anything to 
 you and me." 
 
 ^' Do you mean to say we have no money ? " 
 
 " Hardly anything, my darling, hardly any- 
 thing ; and we are over head and ears in 
 debt." 
 
 Here there was a pause — a terrible pause. 
 The world seemed coming to an end to Muriel. 
 
 " When did you know this, mamma 1 " she 
 said at last, in a low stifled voice. '' Have you 
 known it for long ? " 
 
 Lady Meredith hesitated, and then said, with 
 an evident effort — 
 
 " No, I have not known it for long ; only 
 since a few days, in fact. Of course, I knew 
 your poor father had been losing and losing 
 money for years past, but he was always in 
 hopes something would turn up to save him. 
 I had no idea it was so bad as it is until the 
 other day." 
 
 " How did you hear it ? " 
 
 Lady Meredith hesitated again. " Your 
 father wrote to me."
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 229 
 
 *' When ^ " 
 
 "A few days ago/' 
 
 " From Bordeaux — from that dreadful place '? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Only just before — before his death, then ? " 
 
 Lady Meredith gently bowed her head in 
 assent. 
 
 Another pause. Then Muriel broke the si- 
 lence again. " But I thought I had money 
 grandpapa left me ? " 
 
 " It was all in American securities : they are 
 absolutely worthless now. They may revive, 
 but we can hardly hope it. Poor grandpapa ! " 
 Lady Meredith said in a low voice, averting 
 once more her face. 
 
 " And so it has all gone 1 '' continued Muriel. 
 
 ''All." 
 
 *' And we have nothing left to live on 1 " 
 
 ''Nothing." 
 
 " My God ! my God ! my God ! " almost 
 screamed the gir], rising and wringing her 
 hands in passionate despair. 
 
 Lady Meredith was astounded beyond mea- 
 sure at her daughter's vehemence, but not dis- 
 pleased. She had, then, the true Meredith love 
 of money, and all that it can bring, in her heart
 
 230 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 after all ! She had been deceived in her own 
 daughter, whom she had almost disliked and 
 despised for her apparent carelessness about 
 worldly matters. She was a true Meredith 
 after all : she knew the value of money. The 
 thought pleased Lady Meredith, and gave her 
 courage to proceed. 
 
 " Sit down, Muriel — sit down, my child, and 
 listen to me." Muriel, who was striding up 
 and down the room like one possessed, obeyed 
 her mother mechanically and resumed her seat, 
 her trembling hands pulling her little black- 
 bordered cambric pocket-handkerchief to shreds 
 in her agitation. 
 
 '^ Listen to me," said Lady Meredith earnest- 
 ly, laying a soothing hand on her daughter's 
 knee. ** I have told you the bad news first — 
 listen to the good." 
 
 Muriel stared at her blankly. She did not 
 understand. " Good news 1 " she echoed. 
 
 " Yes, good news. Be quiet and listen, and 
 above all don't forget that you have promised 
 to obey me and be guided by me." 
 
 ** I remember." 
 
 " Papa, as I have just told you, has left us 
 nothing, — worse than nothing — terrible debts."
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 231 
 
 Muriel shuddered. " But you can save us — you 
 can save both me and yourself and your father's 
 memory.'' 
 
 " I can ? How ? " 
 
 Lady Meredith smiled, took the English- 
 looking letter with the black border from the 
 table and handed it to her daughter. 
 
 " Bead that," she said, '* and you will see." 
 
 Muriel took the letter mechanically ; but 
 when she recognised the handwriting of Arthur 
 Pendragon, her heart gave a leap and then 
 almost stopped beating. The letter, dated from 
 Camelot Castle only a week before, ran as fol- 
 lows : — 
 
 "My dear Lady Meredith, — You will, I 
 know, need no words from me to tell you how 
 deeply and from my heart I sympathise with you 
 and Miss Muriel in your great and terrible loss. 
 Both you and Sir William have always been 
 good friends to me, and the happiest hours of 
 my life I have spent in the Eue Koyale. It is 
 not, therefore, with merely a letter of sympathy 
 that I intrude upon your grief now. I write to 
 ask you if you will give me your consent to let 
 me do my best to win your daughter Muriel for
 
 232 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 my wife ? I know that you have lived in 
 France so long that you follow French customs, 
 and one of these is, I also know, to obtain the 
 consent of the parents before seeking to obtain 
 the daughter's love. It is not so with us in 
 England, of course, as you know ; but I think, 
 after all, that perhaps your French way is the 
 best. Had poor Sir AVilliam been alive, I think 
 I could have counted on his approbation : can I 
 count on yours 1 Of course, even if you do 
 grant me what I ask, all will depend upon Miss 
 Muriel herself; but I love her so truly and 
 with my whole heart, that I almost hope in 
 time to be able to win her. At all events, if 
 you will let me try, my future will be in her 
 hands. She has already my heart : whatever 
 little else I have to give, I lay at her feet. Take 
 your own time to answer this. Think over what 
 I propose, my dear Lady Meredith, and forgive 
 me for writing to you in such a dark moment 
 on such a subject, but I am anxious to know 
 my fate, and my great love has, I fear, made 
 me selfish. My mother and father both send 
 their heartfelt sympathies to you and Miss 
 Muriel, and they tell me to tell you how glad 
 they will be to welcome you both as members
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 233 
 
 of our family. — Believe me to remain, my dear 
 Lady Meredith, ever very truly yours, 
 
 " Lyonesse." 
 
 So it had come at last. This was the first 
 sensation worthy of the name of thought that 
 formed itself in the midst of the chaos of emo- 
 tions which raged in poor Muriel's mind as she 
 read the letter. It had come at last ! Arthur 
 loved her ! And in what simple, unaffected, 
 manly terms he spoke of his love ! It had come 
 at last ; but then, when for the third time this 
 feeling strongly akin to exultation seized her, 
 the cold, chilling, killing revolution of feekng 
 set in, heralded by the fatal reflection — it is too 
 late ! Yes, too late ! She had given her hand 
 to another, to perhaps a nobler man ; but at all 
 events she was his, and could listen to no 
 words of love from others, even were they the 
 sweetest words her heart could dream of — sweet 
 even as these which she had just read. Was 
 she so utterly vile as to regret having of her 
 own free will given, but the other day, her hand 
 to one lover, merely because another came sigh- 
 ing for it to-day ? Was she at heart a jilt ? 
 Her deadly pallor brightened into a blush at
 
 234 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 the dcgradiiig thought. No ; she was not so 
 base as that : this thing could not be. It was 
 his own fault — Arthur's fault ; he should have 
 sung his love -song sooner. As it was, it was 
 impossible. 
 
 " Well ? " said Lady Meredith, who had been 
 anxiously, but in vain, endeavouring to read 
 her daughter's feelings in her face. 
 
 " Well," echoed poor heart-weary Muriel. 
 
 " I was right when I said I had good news, 
 — was I not, darling ? " 
 
 Muriel remained silent, but began trembling 
 violently. Her mother leant forward eagerly 
 and caught her by the arm, a terrible dread 
 passing like a lightning-flash through her mind. 
 
 *' Speak, Muriel, speak ! " she called almost 
 roughly ; and then leaning forward, she clasped 
 her daughter in her arms and burst into tears. 
 " My darling, darling girl, we are saved, we 
 are saved, my own beautiful, fair, dainty dar- 
 ling, golden-headed little duchess ! " 
 
 Duchess ! She a duchess ! And Arthur — 
 good, simple, honest Arthur — her duke, and 
 lord, and lover, and master ! Oh God, it was 
 hard to bear ! 
 
 '^ Mamma," she said, gently disentangling
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 235 
 
 herself from her mother's embraces — *^ mamma, 
 you must not be angry, but this cannot be ! " 
 
 " Cannot be ? '' 
 
 *' I cannot marry Arthur." 
 
 Lady Meredith, who had drawn back at her 
 daughter's first words to scan her face, now 
 leant suddenly forward — or rather sprang for- 
 ward would be more accurate — and caught 
 Muriel by both arms with such violence as to 
 cause her pain. 
 
 '* You say — you say you can't marry 
 Arthur ? You can't marry him 1 Do you know 
 what you say ? You can't marry him ? " 
 
 *^ I cannot, mamma ; oh, have pity on me, I 
 cannot." 
 
 " You cannot ? You cannot *? Girl, do you 
 know^ what you are saying 1 Why ? Tell me 
 why ? Speak ! Do you want to drive me 
 mad '? " 
 
 "Oh, mamma, mamma! don't, don't — you 
 frighten me. I can't tell you why, but I cannot 
 — indeed I cannot." 
 
 " But you shall / " almost screamed Lady 
 Meredith, who was now livid with fury. " By 
 the God above, you shall marry him or tell me 
 why not ! You shall marry him if he will still
 
 236 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 marry you, if I have to tie you hand and foot, 
 and gag you and give you to him ! " 
 
 "Oh, mamma, mamma !" — and Muriel, horror- 
 stricken, buried her face in her hands to keep 
 out the hideous vision of her mother's hate and 
 anger. 
 
 "You shall marry him, I tell you," and Lady 
 Meredith seized the poor girl's hands and 
 dragged them from her face — '* you shall marry 
 him if you are even lower than the lowest ! 
 For if you do not, you will have your father's 
 curse and blood upon you ! " 
 
 " Mother ! " and Muriel sprang to her feet, 
 and tried in vain to wrest herself from her 
 mother's iron grip. 
 
 "And I'll tell. you all now — all, all, all — since 
 you say you will not have him : your father 
 killed himself, poisoned himself, and all for 
 you! 
 
 ** God in heaven, this is not true ! " 
 
 " I lie, do I ? Well, read this ! " and Lady 
 Meredith spurned her daughter from her, put 
 her hand in her bosom, and pulling out a letter, 
 threw it in Muriel's face. Muriel stooped, picked 
 the letter up, and was about to open it, when 
 her mother snatched it from her.
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 237 
 
 " No ! give it to me ; I will read it to you, 
 and then give it to you, that you can keep it as 
 a memorial of the curse that hangs over you ! " 
 and in a hoarse voice, broken up by delirious 
 passion and sardonic and cruel delight in in- 
 flicting pain, she read the following, although 
 her hands trembled so, they could hardly hold 
 the paper : — 
 
 " Hotel de France, Bordeaux, 
 ''Julys, 186—. 
 
 " My deaeest Laura, — These are the last 
 lines you will ever receive from me, for when 
 I have posted this letter I am going to destroy 
 myself, and the news of my death will reach 
 you before you get this. I am utterly and irre- 
 trievably ruined. I have not only not a penny 
 left, but should be arrested if I returned to 
 Paris for my share in the Vera Cruz railway 
 scheme. There is absolutely no hope, so I am 
 going to slip out, and let you and Muriel have 
 a chance. Now listen to me, and obey me, as 
 you always have done. I have arranged so that 
 my death will be attributed to heart disease ; 
 and once I am gone, as I have this afternoon 
 destroyed all the most compromising papers.
 
 238 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 you will have quite two months free before 
 any disgrace can come upon you, for the evi- 
 dence will have to come out from Mexico. 
 There is over two thousand pounds of mine 
 at Eothschild's, and, of course, they will let you 
 overdraw. If not, see the Emperor alone, tell 
 him all, and he will help you. This, however, 
 will only keep you going for a short time, and 
 the ruin is sure to come at last if you do not 
 obey what I tell you now. You must get 
 Muriel married in some way to a man with 
 money, — no matter who, but he must have 
 money, for your sake and hers. If she rebels, 
 show her this letter, and tell her my curse will 
 be for ever upon her, and the blood which I 
 now spill be upon her head ! But she will not 
 rebel. When she knows of my death, and lioiv 
 I die, and when she knows that if she does 
 not obey me, she will bring you and herself to 
 beggary in the streets and starvation, and my 
 name to everlasting dishonour, she will consent. 
 I know but little of her, but she cannot be so 
 bad and hard as that. A very little money 
 will settle the Vera Cruz people : the Emperor 
 will do that for me if you tell him all, as you 
 had perhaps better do. AVhat they want espe-
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 239 
 
 cially is to disgrace me ; but when I am once 
 dead, and all my papers destroyed, a very little 
 money will quiet them. Good night, Laura, 
 and good-bye. I am off to join Paul. — Your 
 loving husband, William Meredith." 
 
 The strain occasioned by the reading of this 
 dreadful letter was too much for the already 
 over-excited nerves of Lady Meredith ; and as 
 she finished it and threw it from her on to the 
 floor by Muriel, she burst into a wild fit of 
 hysterical tears and sobs. 
 
 ^' My God, my God ! '^ she moaned, '^ it has 
 come to this. Alone, desolate, ruined, penni- 
 less ; a widow, and with disgrace aud perhaps 
 worse before me ! And my own child, my own 
 daughter — my only child — will not stretch out 
 her hand to save me, though her murdered 
 father calls to her to do so from the grave 1 " 
 Then throwing herself suddenly on her knees 
 before Muriel, she caught both her hands in 
 hers. " Listen to me, Muriel — listen to me. 
 Have mercy on me, for God's sake ! Forgive, 
 forget what I have said. I did not mean it — 
 I did not think it. Have mercy on me, my 
 child — have mercy on me for your father's
 
 240 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 sake ! You alone can save us. You cannot 
 find it in your heart to let me die of starva- 
 tion, or be dragged to prison, when you have 
 but to put out your hand to grasp a coronet ! 
 And think how noble he is — how good and true 
 and brave " 
 
 A hoarse voice interrupted her sternly. 
 
 "Hush, hush! Don't speak of him. Give 
 me time to think — give me time to think ! " 
 and with a violent and almost brutal effort 
 Muriel detached herself from her mother's grasp 
 and walked towards the window. 
 
 Lady Meredith rose slowly, seated herself by 
 the table, and watched her daughter without a 
 word. Suddenly Muriel turned, and walking 
 quietly to where the fatal letter had fallen, she 
 stooped and picked it up, shuddering as she 
 did so. Even Lady Meredith was shocked at 
 the change she saw in her child's face. It was 
 white, peaked, and drawn, and she had grown 
 ten years older in appearance during the last 
 ten minutes. 
 
 " I will take this," said Muriel, in a low voice, 
 and staring vacantly before her, "as you say 
 I may. I will take this and read it over. I 
 will see what I can do. I will ffive it back
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 241 
 
 to you to-morrow, — I will see what I can 
 do." 
 
 " My child, my child " began Lady 
 
 Meredith. 
 
 " Hush, mamma ! " interrupted Muriel sternly, 
 and turning on the woman a look of ineffable 
 scorn. " Hush ! I am not your child. If I do 
 anything, it will be for papa's sake, not for 
 yours. You have called me lower than the 
 lowest — you, my mother ! " 
 
 *' Muriel! My child, I " 
 
 "'Lower than the lowest' you said — those 
 were your words. God knows I am not ; I am 
 as pure as any girl living. Hush, mamma ! •/ 
 know it, and that is enough. I care nothing for 
 what you may think — nothing ; " and this weak, 
 tender-hearted child threw out her arms with 
 an impassioned gesture of contempt and scorn 
 that would have delighted Each el. " I shall 
 think over this, and see what I can do ; but 
 it will be all for papa's sake, not yours ! " and 
 without another word, Muriel walked slowly out 
 of the room. 
 
 VOL. I. Q
 
 242 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 When she readied the nursery, Muriel never 
 thought for a moment of giving vent to tears, 
 or even of taking any time for reflection. She 
 sat quietly down and wrote the following, her 
 hand not even trembliuo- as she traced the 
 lines : — 
 
 ^' Deae Laurence, — I must see you at once. 
 Something terrible has happened. Meet me in 
 the garden of the Tuileries by the Arbre du 20 
 Mars punctually at five. — Truly yours, 
 
 "Muriel Meredith." 
 
 Then she rang. 
 
 *' Take this," she said, very quietly, and giving 
 the letter to the servant, " at once to the Hotel 
 Wagram, and if Mr Farquhar is in, give it to 
 him yourself. Tell him there is no answer — but
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 243 
 
 give it to him yourself. If he is not in, try and 
 find out where he has gone, and go after him 
 and give it to him. If they don't know where 
 he has gone, go to Voisin's ; if he is not there, 
 go to the Jockey Club ; if he is not there, go to 
 the Jeu de Paume ; if he is not there, call next 
 door at the Petit Club, asking at each place if 
 he has been there, and if they know where he 
 has gone. If you find him, give it to him your- 
 self; if not, bring it back to me, — but lose no 
 time, and do your best." 
 
 The servant, astonished beyond measure at 
 his young mistress's strange change of manner, 
 took the letter, bowed, and retired. When slie 
 found herself once more alone, Muriel took her 
 father's dying letter from her pocket and began 
 reading it over again carefully from beginning to 
 end, omitting no detail, and carefully examining 
 even the envelope and the Bordeaux and Paris 
 post-marks. Outwardly she evinced no emotion, 
 save perhaps by a slight shudder when she came 
 to the words, " Tell her my curse will be for ever 
 upon her, and the blood which I now spill will 
 be upon her head I " and by a deep-drawn sigh 
 when she came to the concluding words, ** I 
 am off to join Paul." When she had read it
 
 244 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 once, she began again at tlie beginning and 
 read it all through again, and again a third 
 time ; then she quietly refolded it and put it 
 back in her pocket. Hardly had she done so 
 when the servant returned. He had looked into 
 Voisin's on his way to the Wagram, and found 
 Farquhar there. Here was the reply : — 
 
 " 2.30. 
 
 *'My own darling, dearest Wife, — What 
 is this new trouble ? and Avhy wait till five ? 
 Your servant tells me you are in now. Come 
 to me without delay. I shall be waiting for 
 you where you have appointed. — Yours until 
 death, Laurence." 
 
 " Thank you," she said, quietly, to the ser- 
 vant — " it is all right," and the man departed. 
 
 Yes, Laurence was right : she must see him 
 at once — the sooner the better; and she rose 
 quietly and began putting on her bonnet. This 
 trivial act was the first thing which brought 
 her to think of herself. Hitherto, ever since 
 she had first read this dreadful letter, she had 
 thought of nothing in particular save in a vague, 
 general, half-dazed way of her father — of how
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 245 
 
 lucky he was to be with Paul ; but now, as she 
 put on for the first time her mourning bonnet 
 and looked at herself in the glass, she thought 
 of herself. How old and ill she looked, to be 
 sure ! She looked like a widow. But how 
 strangely calm she was ! She wondered at her- 
 self, and put her hand to her heart ; it beat 
 regularly. Then she looked at herself in the 
 glass again and tried to smile ; but a most 
 horrible grimace that half frightened, half 
 amused her was the result of this effort, so she 
 did not try the experiment again. How dis- 
 agreeable black gloves were in hot weather, and 
 how terribly hot that veil would be in the 
 street ! Then she quietly took up her parasol 
 and went out to meet her affianced husband. 
 She had not taken twenty steps in the street 
 before she stopped short. Her heart was broken, 
 that must be it. She had heard and read of 
 people's hearts being broken ; hers must be 
 broken now, otherwise, she told herself, she 
 could not possibly be so calm. She felt noth- 
 ing — absolutely nothing, save perhaps pleasure 
 at getting out into the open air ; no other 
 feeling, — no pleasure at being about to meet the 
 man she was going to marry, and no fear of
 
 246 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 that meeting. She was utterly listless and care- 
 less. As she attempted to cross the Rue Royale, 
 a servant on horseback, and in the Imperial 
 livery, nearly ran over her. She drew back, 
 and watched to see where he was going. He 
 stopped at their house. Some message from the 
 kind Empress, probably. How good she was! 
 Then Muriel crossed over into the gardens, and 
 went to meet her lover. He was there waiting 
 for her. She recognised his well-known figure 
 at once, but this recognition caused her neither 
 fear nor pleasure. She cared nothing about 
 anything or anybody ; but she was very thirsty, 
 and so, as Laurence had not seen her yet, she 
 went up to an itinerant vendor of limonade 
 fraichc whom she had known by sight ever 
 since her childhood, when she had been in the 
 habit of walking in the gardens with old Agnes 
 and little Paul (oh, how long ago ! and was it 
 not all a dream '?), drank one glass of the dread- 
 ful mixture, found it delightfully cool, drank 
 another, paid, and walked quietly on. Laurence 
 now saw her, and came eagerly to meet her. 
 
 ^' My own darling, what is if? — what is 
 it % " he asked with unfeigned emotion, taking 
 her listless hand in his and pressing it tenderly.
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 247 
 
 " How dreadfully hot it is ! This is the 
 hottest day we have had yet, I think ! " 
 
 Laurence looked at her in bewilderment. 
 He could not see her face, which was hidden 
 by a veil ; but her voice was so strangely 
 altered that he hardly recognised it. 
 
 "What is it, Muriell — what is it, my dar- 
 ling? Don't you know that I am here to 
 protect you ? " 
 
 "Thank you, Laurence. You are always 
 good and kind, but I don't think I want any 
 protection. I wanted to see you to tell you 
 some news that mamma only told me just 
 now. We are quite ruined, Laurence : "we 
 have not got a penny left, and both mamma 
 and I will be probably arrested and put in 
 prison in a few days if the Emperor does not 
 help us.'' 
 
 " Euined ! Imprisoned ! " 
 
 "Yes, read that — poor papa wrote it just 
 before killing himself ! '' and she gave him the 
 letter. 
 
 Laurence, his face as white as a sheet, took 
 the letter without a word, walked away from 
 her a few steps, and sat down to read it. He 
 had to sit down, for he felt unwell. It never
 
 248 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 for a moment entered into his mind that the 
 poor frail little thing in black he left standing 
 there needed support or rest. He never thought 
 at first of taking her in his arms and comfort- 
 ing her, so completely had this hideous news 
 overwhelmed him, and thrown him off his 
 guard. He read the letter, and while he was 
 doing so he was conscious by some strange 
 double sight — for his eyes were fixed upon the 
 paper — that Muriel had walked up to the famous 
 tree which is always supposed to show, before 
 all the other trees in Paris, the approach of 
 spring, by every year putting forth a few buds 
 on the 20th March, and was standing there 
 examining it with much interest, as if indeed 
 she had never seen it before. Before he had 
 read three lines, Laurence had recovered him- 
 self and taken in the whole situation. Of 
 course he must get out of the scrape at once — 
 there could be no question about that — but how ? 
 Not at this present meeting, of course : he 
 would have to be, if anything, more tender 
 than ever now ; but he would write a line that 
 night from the hotel, and leave Paris at once. 
 Then he read to the end, put the letter back 
 into the envelope, rose, and came up to Muriel.
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 249 
 
 "Oh, my darling ! How dreadful ! How 
 dreadful ! " and as she quietly advanced her 
 arm to take back the letter, lie caught her hand 
 in his and pressed it with passionate tenderness, 
 — " My own poor darling ! " He hardly knew 
 what to say. 
 
 " So now I don't know what we shall do, 
 Laurence," she said, taking back the letter. 
 "You will have your father and me both to 
 take care of now, won't you '? " 
 
 *' But you have something of your own, you 
 told me ? " 
 
 She had never told him so, but she never 
 noticed this. 
 
 " I had," she said, simply. " But they were 
 American securities, and are worth nothing 
 now — so mamma says. All is gone. Mamma 
 says we have not a penny left. What can I 
 do to make money, Laurence ? I can make 
 bonnets, perhaps. You, of course, always have 
 your newspapers : you will have to work harder 
 than ever now, my poor Laurence, for you will 
 have your father, and me, and — and — mamma, 
 of course, now." 
 
 What could he say ? He ransacked his brain 
 in a lightning- flash, and saw nothing to do but
 
 250 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 murmur, '^ My poor darling," and press her 
 Land, tenderly. This preternatural absence of 
 all passion and sympathy hardly surprised her, 
 she was so calm herself. Everything seemed 
 so strange ! 
 
 *' Then I have got something else to tell 
 you," she said, after a short pause. " Arthur 
 has written to mamma to ask her consent to 
 marry me." 
 
 "Arthur has!" 
 
 "Yes; mamma showed me the letter. He 
 is a marquis now, you know, and will be a 
 duke when his father dies. How strange it 
 seems, doesn't it, Laurence ? Fancy Arthur a 
 duke ! I wonder if he will let me make 
 bonnets for his wife ! " And at this thought 
 Muriel laughed, — one or two notes merely 
 of strange, harsh gaiety, that were hardly 
 pleasant to hear. Laurence's heart bounded ! 
 Here was the rock of salvation ! Here was a 
 splendid and triumphant means of escape ! He 
 could hardly be too tender and passionate 
 now. He must " pile on the agony," as he 
 expressed it to himself He caught her arm 
 and drew her close to him. 
 
 ** Muriel," he murmured, — " Muriel, my
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 251 
 
 poor darling, what did you say to your 
 mother '? " 
 
 " Who ? I ? I said nothing ! '' 
 
 *' You did not tell her about me — about our 
 engagement "? " 
 
 *^ Why, no, Laurence ; you remember you 
 made me promise not to." And she looked 
 up into his face for the first time. What a 
 strange question to ask her, she thought. 
 
 "And what did you say to her about the 
 offer — about Arthur's offer, I mean ? " 
 
 "Oh, I told her, of course, that was im- 
 possible." 
 
 " And what did she say ? " • 
 
 Muriel shuddered. Laurence felt her trem- 
 ble, and guessed it all, for he knew Lady 
 Meredith had a temper of her own, and was 
 not the most refined of women, — hardly one 
 one might term ad unguem facta. 
 
 "Oh, mamma was very much disappointed, 
 of course. She could not understand it. I 
 don't care to remember what she said, Lau- 
 rence. She was in great trouble." 
 
 " Poor Lady Meredith ! " The words escaped 
 him before he thought what he was saying, 
 and he added hastily, "And my poor darling
 
 252 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 Muriel ! Come and sit down, my darling — 
 come." He led her to the seat he had just 
 left, and sat down close by her ; then he took 
 her hand in his and began, " Listen to me, 
 Muriel. Are you listening ? " She had turned 
 away her head, but she now looked at him. 
 
 " Yes, Laurence, I am listening." 
 
 *' You remember the story I told you ? " 
 
 " What story ? " 
 
 *' About my father, and my having given up 
 everything for his sake." 
 
 *' Oh yes. Of course I remember that." 
 
 " Now, will you be guided by me, Muriel ? " 
 Why, that was how her mother had begun ! 
 How strange ! 
 
 " Yes, Laurence, of course you know I will." 
 
 " And do exactly as I tell you ? " 
 
 *^ Yes." What could be coming ? 
 
 "And know that what I tell you is for your 
 good, and that I love you better than my life ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 "Well, Muriel, my own dear, darling, lost 
 treasure, you must forget me, — you must only 
 think of your mother. You must marry 
 Arthur." 
 
 " Marry Arthur ! "
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 253 
 
 " Yes, my one, own, first, last, and only love, 
 you must sacrifice yourself and me for your 
 mother's sake, as I sacrificed myself for my 
 father's sake. You must marry Arthur." 
 
 " Marry Arthur ! " She echoed the words 
 again, but this time faintly, as one in a swoon. 
 
 *^ Yes, Muriel ; I cannot stand in your way. 
 I cannot let my poor, selfish happiness, my one 
 only hope of sunshine, stand in your way, and 
 bring upon you your father's curse ; — think of 
 that, Muriel, your father's curse ! How could 
 you and I ever live with that ? You must 
 forget me — I must go away. Arthur is good 
 and true, and loves you. You will lear^ to 
 love him, — in time you will, — you will forget 
 me ; but even if you do not, you will be happy, 
 and even if you are not happy you will make 
 your mother happy, you will make Arthur 
 happy, you will be spared at least your father's 
 curse. We could not live with that, Muriel ; 
 we could not live with it over us. It would 
 kill me and kill you — it would turn our kisses 
 
 to poison, our children to " But he stopped 
 
 appalled, for with a low moan, '' Merciful Grod ! " 
 Muriel had slipped from him and from the 
 bench, and lay prone upon the ground insen-
 
 254 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 sible. Ill a moment there was a crowd, but 
 luckily not a large one, for at that hour and 
 at that season of the year there were not many 
 people in the gardens. A few frightened nurses 
 and children, and soldiers, and sergents de ville, 
 and vaofabonds clustered around, as Laurence 
 stooped over the prostrate form, raised it, laid 
 it on the bench, hastily sent for water and a 
 doctor, and lifting the veil, tried to undo the 
 crape which nestled around the little, slender, 
 white, girlish throat. 
 
 " Mademoiselle had but just lost her father, 
 and had been overcome by the heat and her 
 emotions," he hurriedly explained; "let a doctor 
 be brought at once. He would explain all to 
 him." 
 
 Luckily a doctor was easily found — they 
 abound in every crowd in Paris — and Laurence 
 put him au courant de la situation at once, 
 giving him Muriel's name and address. 
 
 *' It is only a fainting-fit," said the disciple of 
 ^sculapius, after a moment. '* But she must 
 be taken home at once. Luckily she does not 
 live far ; " and the poor man thought how lucky 
 he was to have been crossing the gardens just 
 in time to be of use to so great a lady as the
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 255 
 
 daughter of Sir William Meredith. Eestora- 
 tives were used, and ere long Muriel opened 
 her eyes, stared around her, and then tried to 
 raise her head from Laurence's shoulder. 
 
 "Where am I '?" she whispered. 
 
 " With me, darling, never fear ; you have 
 fainted, that is all/' said Laurence, speaking 
 of course in English. 
 
 " Fainted ? Why ? I never faint. Where 
 am I ? Oh, I remember ! " and she sank back 
 and closed her eyes. ^'' Take me home," she 
 murmured, in a whisper. '^ Take me home, 
 Laurence. You must carry me. I can't walk, 
 and I don't want to die here." 
 
 A closed Jiacrc had been brought into the 
 gardens by the gate on the Place de la Concorde, 
 and was waiting near them. Laurence took 
 Muriel in his arms as if she were a child and 
 brought her to the carriage, and placed her 
 gently in it. 
 
 " Thank you, Laurence," she murmured, open- 
 ing her eyes. " How good you are ! " 
 
 '' Hush, my darling, don't speak," he said, 
 stooping and kissing her little listless hand, 
 from which an enero^etic honne had torn off the 
 glove, and which now lay bare and motionless.
 
 256 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 its delicate moist whiteness stained by the black 
 dye. '^ I am near you — you need not fear." 
 
 Then he and the doctor got into the cab and 
 drove to the Eue Eoyale. When they had 
 arrived at the house of mourning Laurence 
 got out first, explained matters briefly to the 
 frightened concierge^ and sent for Agnes, giving 
 strict orders that nothing was to be said, but 
 that Mr Farquhar was waiting for her below, 
 and must see her at once. The old Scotch- 
 woman was down-stairs in a few minutes, and 
 then Laurence told her how he had met Muriel 
 in the gardens, how she had fainted, overcome 
 by the heat and while speaking of her father's 
 death, and how he had brought her home in 
 a cab. 
 
 " It is nothing," he said — '' only the com- 
 monest fainting - fit, so you had better not 
 trouble Lady Meredith." 
 
 The old Scotchwoman looked at Laurence 
 with scornful distrust and disapproval. 
 
 " I shall follow my ain counsel about that," 
 she said. " If it's nothing but a faint, as you 
 say, I shall do as Miss Muriel tells me, about 
 saying anything to her ladyship ; but if my 
 darling is really bad, you mon be ready to
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 257 
 
 explain all this — that's all, Mr Farquhar. We 
 dinna want your advice here. Where is she ? 
 Let me see her." 
 
 But when Agnes reached the cab she found 
 Muriel so far recovered (thanks to some brandy 
 which the doctor had had presence of mind 
 enough to send for from Imoda's, while Lau- 
 rence was talking with the concierge) that her 
 worst fears were temporarily allayed. 
 
 " I fainted, Agnes/' explained Miss Muriel. 
 ** It was the heat and all this crape. I don't 
 know what I should have done but for Lau- 
 rence. But don't say anything to mamma 
 yet. It is nothing. I am all right now. • I 
 can walk," and to prove the truth of this she 
 clambered out of the cab and stood trembling 
 on the pavement, clinging to the doctor and her 
 old nurse. 
 
 "Mademoiselle is very much better now," 
 said the doctor, when Muriel had been led to 
 the lodge of the concierge ; " and after this 
 second dose of brandy which I am now about 
 to give her, she will certainly be able to walk 
 up-stairs." 
 
 His prediction was speedily verified, for 
 hardly had Miss Meredith swallowed a second 
 
 VOL. L R
 
 258 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 half wine-glassful of this unwonted stimulant 
 than the colour returned to her cheeks, and she 
 rose strong and refreshed. 
 
 "I am all right now,'' she said, looking 
 around her and trying to smile. *' I feel quite 
 strong again. Agnes, you must say nothing 
 to mamma. She has quite enough to trouble 
 her as it is. But now that I think of it, I 
 must see her myself. That is, I think I 
 must ; '' and the poor child, who had been 
 worn out by the terrible emotions of the past 
 fortnight, and especially of the past few hours, 
 pressed her hand to her temples. 
 
 " It's the brandy you're feeling. Miss — it isn't 
 real strength. Come up to bed, and leave speak- 
 ing to her ladyship till you're better. You'll be 
 down with fever before you know it." 
 
 Agnes was right : the brandy had mounted to 
 the girl's head, and had given her unwonted, 
 though fictitious and ephemeral, strength and 
 courage. 
 
 " Wait, Agnes," she said, speaking feverishly. 
 " I must speak to Mr Farquhar for a minute." 
 
 "Ye dinna want to speak to him enow. 
 Another time will do. Come to bed." 
 
 But the girl would not listen to her : she had
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 259 
 
 something to say to her lover, and the stimulant 
 she had absorbed had created a wild craving in 
 her heart to have it all over and done with, now 
 and at once and for ever. She remembered 
 everything perfectly, — how he had told her her 
 duty was to give him up and marry another. 
 Could this be true, or w^as this but a dream 
 bred of delirium ? Know she must, and at 
 once. 
 
 " I must speak to this gentleman for a mo- 
 ment,'' she said, speaking in French, seating 
 herself wearily again, and turning to the doc- 
 tor. " If you will all kindly leave us here 
 together for a few minutes, I will then go up- 
 stairs. Do not go away," she added hastily, as 
 she saw a look of great disappointment come 
 across the doctor's face. " I shall want you to 
 help me up-stairs, and mamma will want to 
 thank you. But leave now. I wish it." 
 
 There was no withstanding the imperative 
 tone in which this request was made; so the 
 concierge sighing, the doctor bowing, and Agnes 
 growling, left her alone with Laurence, and stood 
 at the street-door. 
 
 *' I will gie ye five minutes, not more," said 
 Aornes.
 
 260 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 The moment they were alone in this dingy 
 little porter's lodge, Laurence leant over her 
 tenderly. Of course he knew what was coming, 
 and blessed the brandy that it had inspired the 
 girl to have the matter settled at once. 
 
 *' What is it, my darling ? '^ he inquired, in 
 his most tender voice. 
 
 "Did you tell me just now that it was my 
 duty to give you up and to marry Arthur, or 
 did I dream it ? " 
 
 ** You did not dream it, my darling ; I told 
 you so. Not only your duty to your father, to 
 your mother, and to yourself, but to me. Re- 
 member what your father wrote." 
 
 " I remember. But what will become of 
 you ? " 
 
 " Of me ? " And he put on a Byronic air of 
 sadness, which he did not care to intensify too 
 much lest it should bring on another outbreak 
 of emotion. " Oh, I shall resume my old life, I 
 suppose." And then, seeing her turn away her 
 head in anguish, he added hastily, '' But you 
 must not grieve for me, Muriel : 1 shall be 
 happy ! " 
 
 *' Happy ? " she echoed, turning and looking 
 at him. " How ? f do not understand."
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 261 
 
 "Yes, liappy, if you will let me be your 
 friend, — see you when I like, be a brother, if I 
 cannot be nearer and dearer." 
 
 Muriel rose, threw her arms around his neck, 
 and kissed him. " God bless you, Laurence ! " 
 she exclaimed, in an outburst of wild joy, for 
 the brandy was now rushing like madness to her 
 brain. " You are too good for me ! You shall 
 always be my best and truest friend. Kiss me, 
 dear brother, kiss me ! we shall never, never say 
 good-bye ! " 
 
 " Hush, Muriel ! '^ exclaimed Laurence, in a 
 low tone ; '' they will hear you. Go to bed 
 now. You will be ill.'' 
 
 "Think of all that I can do for your father ! 
 think of what Arthur will do ! think " 
 
 " Hush, my darling ! hush ! Be quiet now, I 
 beg of you. See, they are coming back ! " and 
 Agnes stalked in. 
 
 " Noo come to bed, Miss Muriel. You'll 
 talk yoursel' into a brain -fever ! Whatever is 
 the matter with the lassie ? " 
 
 This last exclamation was drawn forth by the 
 fact that Muriel, having thrown herself into her 
 old nurse's arms, was devouring her rugged face 
 with kisses.
 
 262 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 " Mademoiselle must go to bed at once," said 
 the doctor, " or else I will not answer for the 
 consequences." 
 
 " Muriel, you must listen to reason," said 
 Farquhar, gravely. " You must go up-stairs 
 now. See, all the servants are looking!" And, 
 in truth, the whole Meredith household was 
 now out, and crowding around the door of the 
 concierge s logc. '^ I will go now, but will call 
 again this evening. Good-bye." And he took 
 her hand. 
 
 " Not good-bye ! " she exclaimed. 
 
 " Not good-bye, then, — a ce soir! " And he 
 rushed away as from a nest of hornets. 
 
 "Agnes, I must see mamma," said Muriel, 
 when he had gone — "I must see mamma." 
 
 " Not now, my darling, not now — later on. 
 Come to bed now." 
 
 Muriel repeated her request to the doctor in 
 French, but that gentleman shook his head. 
 
 "Go to bed now, mademoiselle, and then 
 madame votre mere will perhaps come and see 
 you. But now you need repose." 
 
 " Agnes," said Muriel, " if I go to bed now, 
 will you promise to bring mamma to me when 
 I ask you ? " Agnes stood aghast. Why, the
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 263 
 
 girl must have taken leave of her senses. Lady- 
 Meredith had never been to her daughter's bed- 
 side twice in her life. " Mamma will come if 
 you tell her I want to see her. I know she 
 will,'' said Muriel, reading what was passing in 
 her nurse's mind ; " will you promise ? " 
 
 " Yes, yes, — I'll promise to tell her, Miss Mu- 
 riel : that's all I can do. Now are you satisfied ? 
 Come, then, to bed." 
 
 And so the girl, leaning on her nurse's arm, 
 and followed by the doctor and the gaping ser- 
 vants, slowly ascended the staircase, and was 
 taken to her room. Lady Meredith had heard 
 nothing of all this, having taken a strong dose 
 of chloral directly after her daughter's departure 
 that morning, and the drug had brought to her 
 that solace from her agonising thoughts which 
 she had sought, by plunging her into a profound 
 sleep, from which she was rudely awakened by 
 Agnes. 
 
 ^' What is it ? " she exclaimed, jumping ujd, 
 and fancying some new horror was about to 
 befall her. " What do you want ? " 
 
 " Miss Muriel would like to see your lady- 
 ship. She has been ill." 
 
 " Muriel ill '? "
 
 264 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 " Fainted in the street, my lady ! She is 
 better now, and in bed, but she wants to see 
 your Ladyship at once." 
 
 Lady Meredith pushed back the old Scotch- 
 woman roughly, and ran rather than walked to 
 her daughter's room. What last terrible and 
 final blow was about to come upon her now, 
 she wondered. Her daughter dying ! Then, 
 indeed, there was nothing left to her but death ! 
 Heedless of the strange man, the doctor, whom 
 she found seated in the nursery, and who rose 
 and bowed profoundly at her approach, she 
 rushed wildly into her daughter's bedroom. 
 
 " Muriel ! Muriel ! My child, what is it ? 
 Are you dying 1 " 
 
 Muriel was sitting up in bed, with her arms 
 extended eagerly to embrace her mother. 
 
 " Dying I " she cried, as she pressed her 
 mother to her bosom. ** Oh, no ! I am so 
 happy ! " Then, lowering her voice, she con- 
 tinued — " Oh, mamma, forgive me ! I will do 
 as you wish ! I will marry Arthur ! " 
 
 "Thank God!" Never was the Almighty 
 more earnestly thanked than on this occasion 
 by Lady Meredith. '' Thank God, my darling I " 
 Then rapturous kisses. " But you are ill, my
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 265 
 
 love ! Agnes told me you were ill. Why are 
 you in bed, and who is that strange man in the 
 next room 1 " 
 
 Muriel laughed, a hysterical nervous laugh. 
 
 *' Oh, that's the doctor, mamma ! I fainted 
 in the Tuileries Garden from the heat. He was 
 passing, and when I came to, and told him who 
 I was, he brought me home. He has been so 
 kind, mamma. You must let him take care of 
 me. I am not ill. I shall be quite well by 
 dinner-time." 
 
 She said nothing of Laurence ; but then her 
 mother had never been her confidant, and she 
 had something more of great importance to say 
 which would brook of no delay. Lady Mere- 
 dith herself was so overjoyed by this unexpected 
 turn events had taken, that she thought or cared 
 but little about her daughter's health. Only let 
 her live to become Lady Lyonesse, and she might 
 fall down dead in the street for all she cared ; 
 for, in truth, the stormy interview she had had 
 that morning with Muriel had eradicated with 
 violence any slight feeling of affection she might 
 ever have felt for her daughter. 
 
 "But, mamma, I have something more to say." 
 
 " What is it, my angel ? "
 
 266 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 *' You must tell Arthur everything before we 
 marry." 
 
 " Of course, my love." 
 
 "I mean, not only about our being ruined — 
 he will not care so much about that — but about 
 what papa wrote about the disgrace — about 
 Vera Cruz." 
 
 " I will, my love, I will. That is all nothing 
 now — nothing." 
 
 ** But Arthur may not want to marry the 
 daughter of a — a " 
 
 " Hush, my love ! That is all nothing now, 
 I tell you." 
 
 " But you must tell him, mamma, nothing 
 or not ! I shall not marry him until I know 
 you have told him. I shall ask him myself" 
 
 '' I will tell him, I promise you." 
 
 " Swear, mamma." 
 
 ** I pledge you my solemn word I will, 
 Muriel. And now can I write to him to- 
 night '? " 
 
 " Oh mamma, mamma, I have always loved 
 him ! " and the poor child burst into so violent 
 a passion of tears that the doctor rose, ap- 
 proached the door, and coughed. 
 
 Forty-eight hours later Lord Lyonesse received
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 267 
 
 a letter from Lady Meredith telling him that 
 not only he had her full consent to seek her 
 daughter's hand in marriage, but that moreover 
 she had herself spoken to her daughter, and 
 that he was accepted, Muriel having confessed 
 that she had always loved him. Two days later 
 Lady Meredith saw the Emperor, laid the situa- 
 tion before his Majesty, and that most generous 
 and kind-hearted of princes promised to settle 
 the Vera Cruz difficulty, so that the daughter 
 of Morny's friend might become an English 
 duchess. So when Lyonesse arrived. Lady Mere- 
 dith had only to touch most lightly on this deli- 
 cate subject, and confined herself principally to 
 urging on her future son-in-law the necessity of 
 telling Muriel, when first he should see her, that 
 he knew all about the Vera Cruz trouble, and 
 that it was nothing, — instructions which the 
 delighted and love-sick Marquis carefully carried 
 out. On the morning after the fainting-fit in 
 the Tuileries Garden, Muriel received the fol- 
 lowing letter : — 
 
 " Hotel Wagram, Tuesday Night. 
 
 "My own daeling lost Love, — I called 
 twice this afternoon and evening, and heard
 
 268 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 that you were much better, so I have decided 
 that it is best for both of us not to meet again 
 just yet. The sacrifice is hard and bitter enough 
 as it is ; why make it harder for both of us ? 
 When you are married we shall meet again, and 
 be, as you yourself said, brother and sister to 
 one another, and nothing more. We shall both 
 be strengthened in this terrible sacrifice by the 
 knowledge that we have both done our duty. 
 For my part, I have made the ultimate and 
 supreme offering to you. I have given up life, 
 love, and almost hope ; but you must solemnly 
 promise me one thing, my darling, in return for 
 this. You must never by word or deed let any 
 one ever suspect what has passed between us — 
 not even Arthur. Men are jealous even of the 
 past, and we should never be able to be brother 
 and sister if any one knew. This secret must 
 be sacred between us — the bond which binds 
 my dear sister and friend to me. You will be 
 doing no harm in keeping this secret. You 
 know I would never, even to save my life, ask 
 you to do harm ; so let it be as I say. It is 
 not much to ask you in return for my heart and 
 life, which I have gladly laid before you to 
 walk over, as Kaleigh did his cloak before the
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 269 
 
 Queen. I will not say good-bye, my darling ; 
 you said we should never say good-bye. We 
 shall meet soon. God bless you ! 
 
 " ' The past is nothing, and at last 
 The future has become the past.' 
 
 *' Yours for ever, Laurence Farquhar." 
 
 The moral of all this may perhaps be best 
 summed up by a philosophical remark made by 
 Graham that night at the Maison Dor^e, when 
 Farquhar had told him of the interview in the 
 Tuileries Garden, and of the result. " See how 
 strange life is," said that worthy gentleman. 
 " You owe all this to the brandy, Farquhar." 
 
 " How is that ? " 
 
 " Yes, you do. If the brandy had not given 
 that girl an unusual and unnatural stimulus, she 
 would never have released you, and you would 
 have been in the hole still. She would never 
 have had the courage to accept your sacrifice 
 (women never like that, — they want to do all the 
 self-sacrificing themselves always), or at the best 
 there would have been a row. TintagiFs son 
 would have heard all about it, and that match, 
 at all events, would have been impossible." 
 
 " Perhaps you are right," mused Farquhar.
 
 270 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 
 
 ^' I know I am right ; and so now, merely 
 because a little girl gets tipsy in a dirty porter's 
 lodge, the daughter of one of the biggest scoun- 
 drels that ever lived becomes a duchess, and 
 you occupy the enviable position of being for 
 ever her devoted friend. Que la vie est 
 drole ! ''
 
 271 
 
 CHAPTER Xir. 
 
 When Lyonesse wrote to Lady Meredith that 
 his father and mother had instructed him to 
 tell her how glad they would be to receive her 
 and her daughter into their illustrious family, 
 he had told no falsehood — in fact, anything ap- 
 proaching falsehood, or even prevarication, was 
 utterly abhorrent to Arthur's healthy nature. 
 It must be borne in mind that Sir William 
 Meredith had the reputation of having amassed 
 an immense fortune in the course of his adven- 
 turous career, and although very many might 
 perhaps have been found who would not 
 have cared to participate in a fortune so sus- 
 piciously acquired, his Grace the Duke of Tin- 
 tagil was not of this number. The Duke was 
 fond of money, fond of making it, fond of hav- 
 ing it, fond of spending it. His eldest son 
 Camelot had, with his full consent, married a
 
 272 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 very strange widow lady from Chicago, merely 
 because she was possessed of £40,000 per an- 
 num, although indignant and jealous mothers 
 in May fair avowed that, as the Duke was well 
 known to have £100,000 a-year, and to allow 
 the Marquis £10,000 a-year — not to speak of 
 the immense sums made by both father and 
 son in their divers speculations in the city and 
 elsewhere — the want of money, which alone 
 could have accounted for so unequal and most 
 inexcusable a match, did not exist. The mar- 
 riage had not been altogether an unhappy one, 
 however. Lady Camelot had worn a great 
 many diamonds, and been on terms of familiar- 
 ity with a great many very great people, before 
 her premature and sudden death prevented her 
 from attaining the great, splendid, ultimate joy 
 of becoming an English duchess ; and although 
 her father-in-law and husband had tried to bully 
 her at first, and very many of the leaders of 
 society, both at home and abroad, had scorned 
 her up to the last, her indomitable pluck and 
 coolness on the one hand, and the advantages 
 of her rank and fortune on the other, had ere 
 long enabled her to enjoy a reasonable share of 
 both domestic felicity and social success. This
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 273 
 
 lady had, moreover, done her best, and not with- 
 out success, to win posthumous gratitude from 
 the Duke and Marquis by dying and leaving 
 no child behind her, so that the bulk of her 
 property went to swell the ducal stores. 
 
 When the noble Marquis had lost his equi- 
 librium and life on the Swiss mountain, the 
 Duke's first thought had been how to provide 
 his only remaining child, our friend Arthur, now 
 Marquis of Lyonesse, and heir to all the splen- 
 dour of the ducal house of Pendragon, with a 
 consort whose pecuniary advantages might at 
 least be satisfactory. Hitherto, as indeed we 
 have already intimated, the Duke had not foimd 
 his son amenable to reason in the matter of 
 marrying for money ; but so long as Camelot 
 had been alive, and looking out anxiously for 
 a lady fit from a financial point of view to 
 replace the dear dead Chicago marchioness (as 
 indeed his lordship always was), this had not 
 much mattered. Now, however, everything 
 was wholly altered. Camelot was no more : 
 even the title and familiar name had, according 
 to the usages of society, passed into abeyance, 
 only to be revived in the next Duke's eldest 
 son ; and Lord Arthur Pendragon, the unim- 
 
 VOL. I. s
 
 274 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 portant attacMy had suddenly blossomed into 
 the Marquis of Lyonesse, one of the most 
 splendid matrimonial prizes ever hung before 
 the thirsty lips of Mayfair mothers. Surely, 
 the Duke thought in his heart, this sudden 
 and wholly unexpected approach to the straw- 
 berry-leaves could not fail to have some effect 
 in modifying and softening the Spartan stern- 
 ness Avith which Arthur had always hitherto 
 declined to entertain any proposal to seek 
 and find, clasp and have in wedlock, a " little 
 hand and muckle gold." Surely Camelot's 
 death would bring home forcibly to the mind 
 of Lyonesse, amid, of course, a host of other 
 newly incurred responsibilities and obligations, 
 the one great vital truth that it was incumbent 
 on him to marry, and not only so, but to marry 
 at once, and still further and more important 
 than all, to marry money. 
 
 But these very proper and justly founded 
 hopes entertained by his Grace were rudely 
 overturned and demolished by the very first 
 words that Lyonesse uttered when the matter 
 was put before him. He very quietly and 
 respectfully, but no less firmly, informed his 
 father that he had already fully made up his
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 275 
 
 mind whom he would marry, that his heart was 
 already engaged, and that although he had 
 every reason to believe the lady he loved to be 
 indeed an heiress, that consideration sank into 
 complete insignificance by the side of the terrible 
 uncertainty which he felt as to whether his 
 suit would be accepted. Of course the Duke 
 and his Manchester-manufactured Duchess both 
 held up their hands in holy horror when they 
 heard the name of the young lady who had 
 won the heart of their only surviving child ; 
 but the manual exercises of Balbus, as chron- 
 icled by Arnold, have inspired more terror in 
 the hearts of stupid schoolboys than did, this 
 dissatisfaction of his parents affect the love-sick 
 Marquis. The end of it all was that the Duke, 
 after having made inquiries, and found from 
 hearsay that Sir William Meredith's daughter 
 must be very rich, no matter how the money 
 was got, resolved to abide by the wholesome 
 advice given by his friends in Capel Court to 
 '* cut losses," or, in other words, make the best 
 of a bad bargain, and welcome this apothecary's 
 granddaughter to his ducal bosom. The whole 
 thing was hurried through in no time — a vio- 
 lent attack of gout preventing the Duke from
 
 276 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 using his usual vigilance ; and thus it was that 
 Muriel Meredith had become Marchioness of 
 Lyonesse before his Grace had become aware 
 of the heartrending fact that his only child had 
 married a pauper. Great, of course, was the 
 dismay and anger of the Duke and Duchess, 
 but it was now too late to do anything, save 
 make themselves very disagreeable to the young 
 bride, and most impossibly offensive and inso- 
 lent to the bride's mother, — a line of conduct 
 which, by the way. Lady Meredith so far resented 
 that she determined to content herself with the 
 handsome allowance made to her by her son-in- 
 law, and pitch her tent for evermore in Paris. 
 Lyonesse of course rebelled, and told his father 
 and mother in very plain and pregnant Saxon 
 that as his wife would some day, D. V., be no 
 less a personage than Duchess of Tintagil, he 
 wished her treated with the respect due to her 
 present and future rank ; but that as he saw his 
 parents had no intention of so treating her, he 
 should take good care that, at all events, his 
 darling should be sheltered from their vulgar 
 impertinence by living far from the shadow of 
 their ducal frowns. This very terrible decision 
 having been come to, it was with feelings of
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 277 
 
 unmixed satisfaction that the young Marquis 
 accepted the kind offer of Lord Hugo Drury, 
 uncle and guardian of the baby Marquis of 
 Harrislane, to lend him his pretty place in 
 Kent, Leavenworth by name, which had in the 
 eyes of the bewildered Muriel the great and 
 supreme advantage of being directly next to 
 Courthope Park, the residence of her beloved 
 Madge, now Lady Anstruther. 
 
 But this reminds us that we have lost sight 
 of Madge for so long, that it is time once more 
 to bring her before the notice of our readers. 
 She had found in Colonel Anstruther all that 
 she had expected or required — a tender, deVoted 
 husband, and honest and noble-hearted friend ; 
 and the opportune though reluctant and vexa- 
 tiously dilatory exit of the old baronet from 
 this vale of tears, followed as it was by the 
 birth to her of a daughter, christened Laura 
 after the Colonel's late mother, seemed to her 
 to be events especially ordained by a beneficent 
 Providence to, in the first place, give her the 
 present enjoyment of a handsome fortune, and 
 then, in the event of the death of her no longer 
 youthful consort, complete control over the 
 same for the benefit of her daughter. But it
 
 278 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 must not be supposed that this most strange 
 young lady, who had latent within her nature 
 many of the coarse failings so often to be found 
 in the low rank of life in which she had been 
 born, and which, once innate, no education or 
 training can ever wholly eradicate, — it must 
 not, we say, be imagined that Lady Anstruther 
 forgot, even amidst the harassing cares and 
 troubles of maternity, the love-dream in which 
 Madge Tyrrell had indulged, and to ensure the 
 realisation of which she had accepted the hand 
 and heart of the one-legged Inkerman hero. 
 She never ceased thinking of her darling Lau- 
 rence, and eagerly looked forward to the day 
 when, if it so pleased God as to let her survive 
 her husband, she could lay all she had obtained 
 by her self-sacrifice at the feet of the only man 
 she had ever loved. No thought of dishonour 
 ever entered her mind, nor was she indeed 
 anxious to hasten that meeting with Laurence, 
 which nevertheless it made her heart leap with 
 joy to think could not, now that Muriel and 
 Arthur were living next to her, be long delayed ; 
 but, on the other hand, she could not bring 
 herself to think it a sin to speculate on her 
 chances of happiness in the likely event of her
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 279 
 
 finding herself a widow, while still compara- 
 tively young and enjoying complete control of 
 a very handsome fortune, a considerable portion 
 of which she could dedicate to the use and 
 benefit of whosoever might be most dear to her. 
 Lady Anstruther was indeed (as is often the 
 case when it is a mariage de raison on one 
 side) an exemplary wife ; and although she 
 cared absolutely nothing for her child. Sir 
 James found, in his enamoured and grateful 
 heart, plenty of excuses for this strange absence 
 of maternal affection, and indeed principally 
 ascribed it to his wife's youth, and to the fact 
 of her openly acknowledged disappointmeut at 
 not having had a son instead of a daughter. 
 Jim Anstruther's life had been so entirely de- 
 void of the tender influence of woman's love, 
 and he had kept himself so pure and undefiled, 
 that the caresses and sympathy of his attractive 
 and captivating young wife seemed to him to 
 lack nothing ; and so for the first eighteen 
 months of his married life this honest gentle- 
 man, who began his youth and murmured 
 his first love-song when he had passed fifty, 
 may be said to have been thoroughly and com- 
 pletely happy. He knew he could not live
 
 280 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 long — he knew that he had inherited the heart 
 disease which had killed his dearly beloved 
 mother, and he had in fact told Madge very 
 plainly this ; but he dared to hope nevertheless 
 that his almighty Father, whom he had done 
 his best in his little way to serve, would perhaps 
 in His infinite mercy spare him to enjoy some 
 years of his daughter's early girlhood. 
 
 But the time has now come to introduce to 
 our readers an individual who is destined to 
 play no unimportant a part in this true story. 
 
 When Lydia Evans accepted the very red 
 hand of the Eeverend John Paul Peter Mill- 
 wood, she knew very thoroughly, from what she 
 had seen in her own father's vicarage, what we 
 would be almost tempted to call the dessous cles 
 cartes of a parson's life. She was the type of a 
 class happily but rarely to be met with, — the 
 daughter, indeed one of the very numerous 
 daughters, of a very worldly and very poor man, 
 who had taken holy orders without any qualifi- 
 cation for the telling of the Good News, and 
 who had merely become a clergyman in the 
 vain hope that, his vulgarity hidden by his 
 frock, he might pray his way into society, be- 
 come knighted as it were by kneeling; and at the
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 281 
 
 same time feeling justly confident that, so long 
 as he did not quarrel with his bishop, he could at 
 least during his lifetime provide for his children. 
 He had then married the daughter of a gloriously 
 prolific but painfully impecunious ecclesiastic, 
 and had enthusiastically accepted his father-in- 
 law's reading of the admonition to increase and 
 multiply. Now to have the quiver full is one 
 thing, and doubtless the source of unmixed 
 satisfaction to the ambitious archer, but to have 
 stacks of arrows piled in every corner of the 
 house is quite another thing, and a bewildering 
 accident which can hardly fail to bring much 
 vexation to one whose bow wherewith to speed 
 these missiles to a successful bull's-eye is of but 
 limited power and fibre. The blessing which 
 glorified the matrimonial felicity of the wife of 
 Abraham so late in life imposed itself upon the 
 notice of the wife of the Eeverend Jabez Evans 
 with the tedious benignancy of the recurring 
 decimal in the arithmetic so loved by school- 
 boys, and daughter after daughter had been 
 born to her. Now this drawback — and with 
 the image of the bowman in our mind, the term 
 drawback is not perhaps inapt — of perpetual, 
 and what we are almost tempted to call aggressive
 
 282 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 maternity, had led to the sad result of the too 
 numerous children being wholly neglected and 
 left very much to shift for themselves, being 
 merely broadly taught that to marry soon, and 
 above all to marry rich men, comprised in a 
 handy duodecimo pocket form the whole duty of 
 impecunious woman. 
 
 Lydia Evans had had from infancy this crude 
 lesson dinned into her ears, and that such teach- 
 ing may have warped what little innate good 
 was latent in her nature may be shrewdly 
 surmised ; but be this as it may, that she put 
 the doctrine thus incessantly preached to her 
 into practice at the very first available oppor- 
 tunity is beyond all doubt, for she married a 
 man almost as godless as her father, merely 
 because he had happened to have been pitch- 
 forked into a good living. She had been one of 
 twelve, and it would seem almost as if the god- 
 dess Lucina had thought she had done enough 
 for that branch of the Evans family, for Lydia, 
 notwithstanding her frequent appeals to Provi- 
 dence, remained childless. Having therefore no 
 particular affairs of her own to attend to, Mrs 
 Millwood busied herself principally about the 
 affairs of others ; and here the sacred calling of
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 283 
 
 her husband stood her in good stead — for charity, 
 which so proverbially covers such a multitude of 
 sins, has a large pocket with a button made in 
 the inner part of her cloak, wherein she may 
 stow away selfish and impertinent interference. 
 Mrs Millwood was the worst type of the worst 
 class of the women we have been describing. 
 She had been from her infancy so in the 
 habit of seeing divine mysteries, and those 
 sweet, tender channels of sympathy which link 
 man to his dear Father in heaven, looked upon 
 merely as means of making a leg of mutton 
 fill fourteen mouths, that what little soul she 
 may originally have had very speedily shrivelled 
 and dried up. She knew all about the bore of 
 writing sermons — the bad temper and bad lan- 
 guage it gives rise to (not to speak of the fre- 
 quent acts of the broadest dishonesty in the 
 way of plagiarism) ; she knew how far marriage,^ 
 baptism, and death went in the buying of new 
 socks and boots, and exactly how much of the 
 money collected for the heathen, when '' Green- 
 land's icy mountains " thawed the hearts of her 
 father's congregation, would find its way into 
 the paternal exchequer. A rustic bard, doubt- 
 less jealous of Bloomfield's laurels, once very
 
 284 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 rudely wrote in chalk on the doors of a church 
 in Dorsetshire — 
 
 " The parson enrols 
 For salvation our souls, 
 While the missus looks after the blankets and coals." 
 
 And SO Lydia, when her exhausted mother had 
 panted out her life in giving birth to her twelfth, 
 had cheerfully accepted the responsibility of 
 looking into what her ferret-like inquisitiveness 
 prompted her to suspect to be the most delicate 
 and amusing and scandalful crannies of her 
 father's parishioners' lives — distributing tracts 
 and advice in merciful abundance, but confer- 
 ring coals (typical of the eternal and ardent 
 punishment which must await the unrepenting 
 sinner) and blankets (emblematic of the warm 
 and comfortable covering provided for the elect) 
 with rather less generous a hand. 
 
 To speak of this creature's spiritual life would 
 be like writing a chapter on snakes in Iceland, 
 for the flame had long been quenched, and 
 naught remained in the lamp but the unfra- 
 grant oil ; and even moral purity she had hardly 
 ever known, for almost her earliest recollection 
 was of her habit of stealing down and putting 
 her ear to the study-door where half-a-dozen
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 285 
 
 raw hobbledehoys, whom her father was coach- 
 ing for the universities, were nightly in the 
 habit of baptising their emancipation from the 
 sweet influence of their mother's kisses with 
 terrible oaths and still more terrible anecdotes. 
 
 Mrs Millw^ood, when once she had become 
 fully convinced that she was to be denied the 
 joys of maternity, turning coldly from her hus- 
 band and neglecting parish duties, of which she 
 had had quite enough in her girlhood at home, 
 sought solace and balm for her wounded spirit 
 in looking after the affairs of such Magdalens as 
 might find it convenient to listen to her exhor- 
 tations ; and it was while battling in this field 
 of labour that she had first met poor old Lady 
 Anstruther, in whom the well- trained and eager 
 eye of Lydia Millwood immediately recognised 
 a most valuable ally. The guileless and bene- 
 volent old lady, listening with all eagerness, be- 
 lieved implicitly in the truth of all the tales told 
 her by her new friend of the splendid successes 
 which had attended her divers tiltings against 
 those two most dangerous adversaries to purity, 
 love and alcohol ; and so, before the two months 
 which succeeded their first meeting were over, 
 the baronet's wife and the parson's adjunct were
 
 286 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 very tightly knitted together in a bond woven 
 of generous admiration on the one hand and 
 vulgar duplicity on the other. 
 
 Lady Anstruther, who was loath to believe 
 evil even of those who took no pains to hide 
 their iniquities, was of course easily deceived 
 by one so well versed in all the dirty network of 
 guile as was this spiritual laundress ; and the 
 result was, that a year after this strange friend- 
 ship had been formed, and when it pleased Pro- 
 vidence to call upon the Reverend J. P. P. Mill- 
 wood to rest from his earthly labours and enjoy 
 his celestial reward, Lady Anstruther had in- 
 vited the unwholesome widow to pay her a 
 visit at Courthope Park ; and Mrs Millwood once 
 there, had taken good care to make herself so use- 
 ful to the gouty and disagreeable baronet, that 
 when poor Lady Anstruther died, the parson's 
 relict took up her permanent abode at Courthope, 
 and was resident there and a fixture when we 
 make her acquaintance. 
 
 Madge had involuntarily but instinctively 
 shrunk from this woman — and the aversion in- 
 deed, from the moment of their first meeting, had 
 been mutual. But young Lady Anstruther could 
 not find it in her heart at first to speak her mind
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 287 
 
 fully to her husband (who, of course, shared his 
 mother's belief in Mrs Millwood) on the subject 
 of this woman's objectionable and interfering 
 presence in their home ; and then, during the 
 period of her ladyship's confinement, and subse- 
 quently in the care of the infant, the woman 
 had made herself so useful that Madge had 
 put off the disagreeable task of telling her hus- 
 band that the removal of this creature from 
 their home circle would be necessary to her hap- 
 piness. The arrival of Muriel and her husband 
 at Leavenworth — a small but remarkably pretty 
 property which adjoined Courthope, and which 
 Lord Lyonesse had been granted the use qf for 
 so long as he might choose to occupy it — was a 
 source of unmixed satisfaction and delight to all 
 concerned ; for not only, of course, were the two 
 ladies more than pleased at renewing their ten- 
 der intimacy and friendship (especially as they 
 neither of them had many friends in England, 
 and their peculiar training in Paris had rather 
 unfitted them to enjoy in all its aspects English 
 country life), but a mutual liking and regard 
 had always existed between the Colonel and the 
 young nobleman, and they were both heartily 
 glad that a lucky chance had once more thrown
 
 288 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 them together. Indeed, but for the hateful pres- 
 ence of Mrs Millwood, who was as obnoxious to 
 Lady Lyonesse as she was to Lady Anstruther, 
 life at Courthope and Leavenworth during these 
 first few months would have been one of un- 
 clouded happiness ; and the two households so 
 constantly intermingled that — with the consent 
 of Lord Hugo, the owner of Leavenworth — a 
 private means of communication was made be- 
 tween the two estates, and a little wicket-gate 
 constructed, opening from lawn to lawn, so that 
 the inhabitants of the one place could easily call 
 upon the inhabitants of the other, without being 
 forced to make use of the principal entrances, 
 and passing by the highroad. Lord Lyonesse 
 was much in town during the day, seeing the 
 leading Tories at the Carlton, and having long 
 consultations with. Mr S., the then agent of that 
 great party ; but he spent a small fortune in 
 hiring specials to dash back home in time to 
 dine, and pass the evening with his adored wife, 
 and by no means allowed the fact of his being 
 about to stand for the seat in Parliament ren- 
 dered vacant by the death of his brother to 
 interfere with his perfect connubial bliss. Mu- 
 riel would spend the day with Madge and her
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 289 
 
 husband, talking over old times, walking, riding, 
 driving, or petting the baby ; and in the even- 
 ing they would invariably all meet together at 
 the dinner-table, either at Leavenworth or Court- 
 hope, and dear old Sir James would do his best 
 to instil into the mind of the young marquis the 
 vital importance of making Indian — especially 
 Indian military — matters a prominent item in 
 his forthcoming electoral address. Thus the 
 days passed pleasantly enough, but for the 
 obsequious and servile presence of Mrs Mill- 
 wood, which Madge, partly from indolence, 
 partly out of pity, and partly from a half-super- 
 stitious dread of disturbing the existing state of 
 tranquil happiness, postponed from day to day 
 dispensing with. 
 
 But Lydia Millwood, although for the most 
 part ignored in general conversation, and only 
 consulted in matters pertaining to the nursery, 
 kept her eyes open and her morbid brain 
 active, and read the hearts of the Colonel, Ar- 
 thur, Madge, and Muriel, as if they had been 
 open books. She noted in Lady Anstruther 
 some strong underlying preoccupation which 
 entirely escaped the notice of the others (even 
 of Muriel), and mentally ascribed it to regret for 
 
 VOL. I. T
 
 290 LITTLE HAND AND MUCKLE GOLD. 
 
 some lover left in that metropolis of wickedness, 
 Paris ; she keenly perceived all the weak points 
 in the brave armour of the gallant Colonel, and 
 despised him for so innocently indicating to her 
 so many vulnerable parts ; she wormed out of 
 old Agnes, who had accompanied the young 
 marchioness to her English home, the secret of 
 Madge's origin and birth, and of the curious 
 accident which had thrown the waif into the 
 path of Sir William Meredith ; and finally, by 
 means of much unctuous religious discourse, she 
 so found her way to loosen the tongue of the 
 old Scotchwoman, that but few incidents of 
 the Paris life of either Muriel or Lady An- 
 struther remained unpolluted by her malicious 
 speculations. She felt that she was hated, that 
 the time of her departure from the pleasant 
 home she had made for herself at Courthope 
 "was at hand, but she decided that the Parthian 
 arrow she should choose wherewith to wound 
 her benefactor as a memorial of her departure 
 should be steeped in as fatal a poison as her 
 malignancy could discover. 
 
 Such was the condition of affairs with the 
 leading characters of our story, when relentless 
 destiny once more brought Laurence Farquhar
 
 THE SOWING OF THE SEED. 291 
 
 across the path of the lady whose very existence 
 he had almost begun to forget, but who cher- 
 ished for him a passion which had lost nothing 
 of its ardour by being lighted by the brilliant 
 flame of imagination which is so often intensi- 
 fied by memory and absence. 
 
 END OF THE FIRST VOLUME. 
 
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