Johnny Ludlow, Fourth Series

How we went in to dinner I don’t remember, except that Bob and I brought up the rear together. Sir Dace took Mrs. Letsom, I think, and the colonel Mrs. Todhetley; and that beautiful girl, Verena, fell to Tod. Tod! The two girls were about the most self-possessed girls I ever saw; their manners quite American. Not their accent: that was good. Major Letsom and Sir Dace fraternized wonderfully: they discovered that they had once met in the West Indies.

After dinner we had music. The sisters sang a duet, and Mary Ann Letsom a song; and Herbert Tanerton sang, forgetting his throat, Grace playing for him; and they made me sing.

The evening soon passed, and we all left together. It was a warmish night, with a kind of damp smell exhaling from the shrubs and hedges. The young ladies muffled some soft white woollen shawls round their faces, and called our climate a treacherous one. The parson and Grace said good-night, and struck off on the near way to Timberdale; the rest of us kept straight on.

“Why don’t your people always live here?” asked Verena of me, as we walked side by side behind the rest. “By something that was said at dinner I gather that you are not here much.”

“Mr. Todhetley’s principal residence lies at a distance. We only come here occasionally.”

“Well, I wish you stayed here always. It would be something to have neighbours close to us. Of course you know the dreadful little cottage we are in—Maythorn Bank?”

“Quite well. It is very pretty, though it is small.”

“Small! Accustomed to our large rooms in the western world, it seems to us that we can hardly turn in these. I wish papa had managed better! This country is altogether frightfully dull. My sister tells us that unless things improve she shall take flight back to the States. She could do it,” added Verena; “she is twenty-one now, and her own mistress.”

I laughed. “Is she obliged to be her own mistress because she is twenty-one?”

“She is her own,” said Verena. “She has come into her share of the money mamma left us and can do as she pleases.”

“Oh, you were speaking in that sense.”

“Partly. Having money, she is not tied. She could go back to-morrow if she liked. We are not bound by your English notions.”

“It would not suit our notions at all. English girls cannot travel about alone.”

“That comes of their imperfect education. What harm do you suppose could anywhere befall well brought-up girls? We have been self-dependent from childhood; taught to be so. Coral could take care of herself the whole world over, and meet with consideration, wheresoever she might be.”

“What do you call her—Coral? It is a very pretty name.”

“And coral is her favourite ornament: it suits her pale skin. Her name is really Coralie, but I call her Coral—just as she calls me Vera. Do you like my name—Verena?”

“Very much indeed. Have you read ‘Sintram’?”

“‘Sintram’!—no,” she answered. “Is it a book?”

“A very nice book, indeed, translated from the German. I will lend it you, if you like, Miss Verena.”

“Oh, thank you. I am fond of nice books. Coralie does not care for books as I do. But—I want you to tell me,” she broke off, turning her fair face to me, the white cloud drawn round it, and her sweet blue eyes laughing and dancing—“I can’t quite make out who you are. They are not your father and mother, are they?”—nodding to the Squire and Mrs. Todhetley, who were on ever so far in front with Sir Dace.

“Oh no. I only live with them. I am Johnny Ludlow.”

Maythorn Bank had not an extensive correspondence as a rule, but three letters were delivered there the following morning. One of the letters was for Verena: which she crushed into her hand in the passage and ran away with to her room. The others, addressed to Sir Dace, were laid by his own man, Ozias, on the breakfast-table to await him.

“The West Indian mail is in, papa,” observed Coralie, beginning to pour out the coffee as her father entered. “It has brought you two letters. I think one of them is from George Bazalgette.”

Sir Dace wore a rich red silk dressing-gown, well wadded. A large fire burnt in the grate of the small room. He felt the cold here much. Putting his gold eye-glasses across his nose, as he slowly sat down—all his movements were deliberate—he opened the letter his daughter had specially alluded to, and read the few lines it contained.

“What a short epistle!” exclaimed Coralie.

“George Bazalgette is coming over; he merely writes to tell me so,” replied Sir Dace. “Verena,” he added, for just then Verena entered and wished him good-morning, with a beaming face, “I have a letter here from George Bazalgette. He is coming to Europe; coming for you.”

A defiant look rose to Verena’s bright blue eyes. She opened her mouth to answer; paused; and closed it again without speaking. Perhaps she recalled the saying, “Discretion is the better part of valour.” It certainly is, when applied to speech.

Breakfast was barely over when Ozias came in again. He had a copper-coloured face, as queer as his name, but he was a faithful, honest servant, and had lived in the family twenty years. The gardener was waiting for instructions about the new flower-beds, he told his master; and Sir Dace went out. It left his daughters at liberty to talk secrets. How pretty the two graceful little figures looked in their simple morning dresses of delicate print, tied with bows of pale green ribbon.

“I told you I knew George Bazalgette would be coming over, Vera,” began Coralie. “His letter by the last mail quite plainly intimated that.”

Verena tossed her pretty head. “Let him come! He will get his voyage out and home for nothing. I hope he’ll be fearfully sea-sick!”

Not to make a mystery of the matter, which we heard all about later, and which, perhaps, led to that most dreadful crime—but I must not talk of that yet. George Bazalgette was a wealthy West Indian planter, and wanted to marry Miss Verena Fontaine. She did not want to marry him, and for the very good reason that she intended to marry somebody else. There had been a little trouble about it with Sir Dace; and alas! there was destined to be a great deal more.

“Shall I tell you what I hope, Vera?” answered Coralie, in her matter-of-fact, unemotional way. “I hope that Edward Pym will never come here, or to Europe at all, to worry you. Better that the sea should swallow him up en voyage.”

Verena’s beaming face broke into smiles. Her sister’s pleasant suggestion went for nothing, for a great joy lay within her.

“Edward Pym has come, Coral. The ship has arrived in port, and he has written to me. See!”

She took the morning’s letter from the bosom of her dress, and held it open for Coralie to see the date, “London,” and the signature “Edward.” Had the writer signed his name in full, it would have been Edward Dace Pym.

“How did he know we were here?” questioned Coralie, in surprise.

“I wrote to tell him.”

“Did you know where to write to him?”

“I knew he had sailed from Calcutta in the Rose of Delhi; we all knew that; and I wrote to him to the address of the ship’s brokers at Liverpool. The ship has come on to London, it seems, instead of Liverpool, and they must have sent my letter up there.”

“If you don’t take care, Vera, some trouble will come of this. Papa will never hear of Edward Pym. That’s my opinion.”

She was as cool as were the cucumbers growing outside in the garden, under the glass shade. Verena was the opposite—all excitement; though she did her best to hide it. Her fingers were restless; her blushes came and went; the sweet words of the short love-letter were dancing in her heart.

“Who is it—the sort of aunt?” cried Coralie, when Verena had read out the letter; “and what does he mean?”

“Mrs. Letsom, of course. Did you not hear her talking to papa, last night, about her dead sister, who had married Captain Pym?”

“And Edward was the son of Captain Pym’s first wife, papa’s sister. Then, in point of fact, he is not related to Mrs. Letsom at all. Well, it all happened ages ago,” added Coralie, with supreme indifference, “long before our time.”

Just so. Edward Pym, grown to manhood now, and chief-mate of the Rose of Delhi, was the son of that Captain Pym and his first wife. When Captain Pym died, a relative of his, who had no children of his own, took to the child, then only five years old, and brought him up. The boy turned out anything but good, and when he was fourteen he ran away to sea. He found he had to stick to the sea, for his offended relative would do no more for him: except that, some years later, when he died, Edward found that he was down for five hundred pounds in his will. Edward stayed on shore to spend it, and then went to sea again, this time as first officer in an American brig. Chance, or something else, took the vessel to the West India Islands, and at one of them he fell in with Sir Dace Fontaine, who was, in fact, his uncle, but who had never taken the smallest thought for him—hardly remembered he had such a nephew—and made acquaintance with his two cousins. He and Verena fell in love with one another; and, on her side, at any rate, it was not the passing fancy sometimes called by the name, but one likely to last for all time. They often met, the young officer having the run of his uncle’s house whenever he could get ashore; and Edward, who could be as full of tricks and turns as a fox when it suited his convenience to be so, contrived to put himself into hospital when the brig was about to sail, saying he was sick; so he was left behind. The brig fairly off, Mr. Edward Pym grew well again, and looked to have a good time of idleness and love-making. But he reckoned without his host. A chance word, dropped inadvertently, opened the eyes of Sir Dace to the treason around. The first thing he did was to forbid Mr. Edward Pym his house; the second thing was to take passage with his family for America. Never would he allow his youngest and prettiest and best-loved daughter to become the wife of an ill-conducted, penniless ship’s mate; and that man a cousin! The very thought was preposterous! So Edward Pym, thrown upon his beam-ends, joined a vessel bound for Calcutta. Arrived there, he took the post of chief mate on the good ship Rose of Delhi, Captain Tanerton, bound for England.

“What is this nonsense I hear, about your wanting to leave the sea, John?”

The question, put in the Rector of Timberdale’s repellent, chilly tone, more intensified when anything displeased him, brought only a smile to the pleasant face of his brother. Ever hopeful, sunny-tempered Jack, had reached the Rectory the previous night to make a short visit. They sat in the cheerful, bow-windowed room, the sun shining on Jack, as some days before it had shone on Grace; the Rector in his easy-chair at the fire.

“Well, I suppose it is only what you say, Herbert—nonsense,” answered Jack, who was playing with the little dog, Dash. “I should like to leave the sea well enough, but I don’t see my way clear to do it at present.”

“Why should you like to leave it?”

“Alice is anxious that I should. She cannot always sail with me now; and there are the little ones to be seen to, you know, Herbert. Her mother is of course—well, very kind, and all that,” went on Jack, after an imperceptible pause, “but Alice would prefer to train her children herself; and, to do that, she must remain permanently on shore. It would not be a pleasant life for us, Herbert, she on shore and I at sea.”

“Do you ever think of duty, John?”

“Of duty? In what way?”

“When a man has deliberately chosen his calling in life, and spent his first years in it, it is his duty to continue in that calling, and to make the best of it.”

“I suppose it is, in a general way,” said Jack, all smiles and good-humour. “But—if I could get a living on shore, Herbert, I don’t see but what my duty would lie in doing it as much as it now lies at sea.”

“You may not see it, John. Chopping and changing often brings a man to poverty.”

“Oh, I’d take care, I hope, not to come to poverty. Down, Dash! Had I a farm of two or three hundred acres, I could make it answer well, if any man could. You know what a good farmer I was as a boy, Herbert—in practical knowledge, I mean—and how I loved it. I like the sea very well, but I love farming. It was my born vocation.”

“I wish you’d not talk at random!” cried Herbert, fretfully. “Born vocation! You might just as well say you were born to be a mountebank! And where would you get the money to stock a farm of two or three hundred acres? You have put none by, I expect. You never could keep your pence in your pocket when a lad: they were thrown away right and left.”

“That’s true,” laughed Jack. “Other lads used to borrow them. True also that I have not put money by, Herbert. I have not been able to.”

“Of course you have not! It wouldn’t be you if you had.”

“No, Dash, there’s not a bit more; you’ve had it all,” cried Jack to the dog. But he, ever generous-natured, did not tell his brother why he had not been able to put by: that the calls made upon him by his wife’s mother—Aunt Dean, as they still styled her—were so heavy and so perpetual. She wanted a great deal for herself, and she presented vast claims for the expenses of Jack’s two little children, and for the maintenance of her daughter when Alice stayed on shore. Alice whispered to Jack she believed her mother was making a private purse for herself. Good-natured Jack thought it very likely, but he did not stop the supplies. Just as Aunt Dean had been a perpetual drain upon her brother, Jacob Lewis, during his lifetime, so she now drained Jack.

“Then, with no means at command, what utter folly it is for you to think of leaving the sea?” resumed the parson.

“So it is, Herbert,” acquiesced Jack. “I assure you I don’t think of it.”

“Alice does.”

“Ay, poor girl, because she wishes it.”

“Do you see any chance of leaving it?”

“Not a bit,” readily acknowledged Jack.

“Then where’s the use of talking about it—of harping upon it?”

“None in the world,” said Jack.

“Then we’ll drop the subject, if you please,” pursued Herbert, forgetting, perhaps, that it was he who introduced it.

“Jump then, Dash! Jump, good little Dash!”

“What a worry you make with that dog, John! Attend to me. I want to know why you came to London instead of to Liverpool.”

“She was laid on for London this time,” answered Jack.

“Laid on!” ejaculated Herbert, who knew as much about sailor’s phrases as he did of Hebrew.

Jack laughed. “The agents in Calcutta chartered the ship for London, freights for that port being higher than for Liverpool. The Rose of Delhi is a free ship.”

“Oh,” responded Herbert. “I thought perhaps she had changed owners.”

“No. But our broker in London is brother to the owners in Liverpool. There are three of them in all. James Freeman is the broker; Charles and Richard are the owners. Rich men they must be!”

“When do you think you shall sail again?”

“It depends upon when they can begin to reload and get the fresh cargo in.”

“That does not take long, I suppose,” remarked Herbert, slightingly.

“She may be loaded in three days if the cargo is ready and waiting. It may be three weeks if the cargo’s not—or more than that.”

“And Alice does not go with you?”

Jack shook his head: something like a cloud passed over his fresh, frank face. “No, not this time.”

We were all glad to see Jack Tanerton again. He had paid Timberdale but one visit, and that a flying one, since he took command of the Rose of Delhi. It was the old Jack Tanerton, frank of face, hearty of manner, flying to all the nooks and corners of the parish with outstretched hands to rich and poor, with kind words and generous help for the sick and sorrowful: just the same, only with a few more years gone over his head. I don’t say but Herbert was also glad to see him; only Herbert never displayed much gladness at anything.

One morning Jack and I chanced to be out together; when, in passing through the green and shady lane, that would be fragrant in summer with wild roses and woodbine, and that skirted Maythorn Bank, we saw some one stooping to peer through the sweetbriar hedge, as if he wanted to see what the house was like, and did not care to look at it openly. He sprang up at sound of our footsteps. It was a slight, handsome young man of five or six-and-twenty, rather under the middle height, with a warm colour, bright dark eyes, and dark whiskers. The gold band on his cap showed that he was a sailor, and he seemed to recognize Jack with a start.

“Good-morning, sir,” he cried, hurriedly.

“Is it you, Mr. Pym?—good-morning,” returned Jack, in a cool tone. “What are you doing down here?”

“The ship’s finished unloading, and is gone into dry dock to be re-coppered, so I’ve got a holiday,” replied the young man: and he walked away with a brisk step, as if not caring to be questioned further.

“Who is he?” I asked, as we went on in the opposite direction.

“My late chief mate: a man named Pym.”

“You spoke as if you did not like him, Jack.”

“Don’t like him at all,” said Jack. “My own chief mate left me in Calcutta, to better himself, as the saying runs; he got command of one of our ships whose master had died out there; Pym presented himself to me, and I engaged him. He gave me some trouble on the homeward voyage; drank, was insolent, and would shirk his duty when he could. Once I had to threaten to put him in irons. I shall never allow him to sail with me again—and he knows it.”

“What is he here for?”

“Don’t know at all,” returned Jack. “He can’t have come after me, I suppose.”

“Has he left the ship?”

“I can’t tell. I told the brokers in London I should wish to have another first officer appointed in Pym’s place. When they asked why, I only said he and I did not hit it off together very well. I don’t care to report ill of the young man; it might damage his prospects; and he may do better with another master than he did with me.”

At that moment Pym overtook us, and accosted Jack: saying something about some bales of “jute,” which, as I gathered, had constituted part of the cargo.

“Have you got your discharge from the ship, Mr. Pym?” asked Jack, after answering his question about the bales of jute.

“No, sir.”

“No!”

“Not yet. I have not applied for it. There’s some talk, I fancy, of making Ferrar chief,” added Pym. “Until then I keep my post.”

The words were not insolent, but the tone had a ring in it that betokened no civility. I thought Pym would have liked to defy Jack had he dared. Jack’s voice, as he answered, was a little haughty—and I had never heard that from Jack in all my life.

“I shall not take Ferrar as chief. What are you talking of, Mr. Pym? Ferrar is not qualified.”

“Ferrar is qualifying himself now; he is about to pass,” retorted Pym. “Good-afternoon, sir.”

Had Pym looked back as he turned off, he would have seen Sir Dace Fontaine, who came, in his slow, lumbering manner, round the corner. Jack, who had been introduced to him, stopped to speak. But not a word could Sir Dace answer, for staring at the retreating figure of Pym.

“Does my sight deceive me?” he exclaimed. “Who is that man?”

“His name is Pym,” said Jack. “He has been my first mate on board the Rose of Delhi.”

Sir Dace Fontaine looked blacker than thunder. “What is he doing down here?”

“I was wondering what,” said Jack. “At first I thought he might have come down after me on some errand or other.”

Sir Dace said no more. Remarking that we should meet again in the evening, he went his way, and we went ours.

For that evening the Squire gave a dinner, to which the Fontaines were coming, and old Paul the lawyer, and the Letsoms, and the Ashtons from Timberdale Court. Charles Ashton, the parson, was staying with them: he would come in handy for the grace in place of Herbert Tanerton, who had a real sore throat this time, and must stay at home.

But now it should be explained that, up to this time, none of us had the smallest notion that there was anything between Pym and Verena Fontaine, or that Pym was related to Sir Dace. Had Jack known either the one fact or the other, he might not have said what he did at the Squire’s dinner-table. Not that he said much.

It occurred during a lull. Sir Dace craned his long and ponderous neck over the table towards Jack.

“Captain Tanerton, were you satisfied with that chief mate of yours, Edward Pym? Did he do his duty as a chief mate ought?”

“Not always, Sir Dace,” was Jack’s ready answer. “I was not particularly well satisfied with him.”

“Will he sail with you again when you go out?”

“No. Not if the decision lies with me.”

Sir Dace frowned and drew his neck in again. I fancied he would have been glad to hear that Pym was going out again with Jack—perhaps to be rid of him.

Colonel Letsom spoke up then. “Why do you not like him, Jack?”

“Well, for one thing, I found him deceitful,” spoke out Jack, after hesitating a little, and still without any idea that Pym was known to anybody present.

Verena bent forward to speak then from the end of the table, her face all blushes, her tone resentful.

“Perhaps Mr. Pym might say the same thing of you, Captain Tanerton—that you are deceitful?”

“I!” returned Jack, with his frank smile. “No, I don’t think he could say that. Whatever other faults I may have, I am straightforward and open: too much so, perhaps, on occasion.”

When the ladies left the table, the Squire despatched me with a message to old Thomas about the claret. In the hall, after delivering it, I came upon Verena Fontaine.

“I am going to run home for my music,” she said to me, as she put her white shawl on her shoulders. “I forgot to bring it.”

“Let me go for you,” I said, taking down my hat.

“No, thank you; I must go myself.”

“With you, then.”

“I wish to go alone,” she returned, in a playful tone, but one that had a decisive ring in it. “Stay where you are, if you please, Mr. Johnny Ludlow.”

She meant it; I saw that; and I put my hat down and went into the drawing-room. Presently somebody missed her; I said she had gone home to fetch her music.

Upon which they all attacked me for letting her go—for not offering to fetch it for her. Tod and Bob Letsom, who had just come into the room, told me I was not more gallant than a rising bear. I laughed, and did not say what had passed. Mary Ann Letsom plunged into one of her interminable sonatas, and the time slipped on.

“Johnny,” whispered the mater to me, “you must go after Verena Fontaine to see what has become of her. You ought not to have allowed her to go out alone.”

Truth to say, I was myself beginning to wonder whether she meant to come back at all. Catching up my hat again, I ran off to Maythorn Bank.

Oh! Pacing slowly the shadiest part of the garden there, was Miss Verena, the white shawl muffled round her. Mr. Pym was pacing with her, his face bent down to a level with hers, his arm passed gingerly round her waist.

“I thought they might be sending after me,” she cried out, quitting Pym as I went in at the gate. “I will go back with you, Mr. Johnny. Edward, I can’t stay another moment,” she called back to him; “you see how it is. Yes, I’ll be walking in the Ravine to-morrow.”

Away she went, with so fleet a step that I had much ado to keep up with her. That was my first enlightenment of the secret treason which was destined to bring forth so terrible an ending.

“You won’t tell tales of me, Johnny Ludlow?” she stopped to say, in a beseeching tone, as we reached the gate of Crabb Cot. “See, I have my music now.”

“All right, Miss Verena. You may trust me.”

“I am sure of that. I read it in your face.”

Which might be all very well; but I thought it would be more to the purpose could she have read it in Pym’s. Pym’s was a handsome face, but not one to be trusted.

She glided into the room behind Thomas and his big tea-tray, seized upon a cup at once, and stood with it as coolly as though she had never been away. Sir Dace, talking near the window with old Paul, looked across at her, but said nothing. I wondered how long they had been in the drawing-room, and whether he had noticed her absence.

It was, I think, the next afternoon but one that I went to Maythorn Bank, and found Jack Tanerton there. The Squire had offered to drive Sir Dace to Worcester, leaving him to fix the day. Sir Dace wrote a note to fix the following day, if that would suit; and the Squire sent me to say it would.

Coralie was in the little drawing-room with Sir Dace, but not Verena. Jack seemed to be quite at home with them; they were talking with animation about some of the ports over the seas, which all three of them knew so well. When I left, Jack came with me, and Sir Dace walked with us to the gate. And there we came upon Mr. Pym and Miss Verena promenading together in the lane as comfortably as you please. You should have seen Sir Dace Fontaine’s face. A dark face at all times; frightfully dark then.

Taking Verena by the shoulder, never speaking a word, he marched her in at the gate, and pushed her up the path towards the house. Then he turned round to Pym.

“Mr. Edward Pym,” said he, “as I once had occasion to warn you off my premises in the Colonies, I now warn you off these. This is my house, and I forbid you to approach it. I forbid you to attempt to hold intercourse of any kind with my daughters. Do you understand me, sir?”

“Quite so, Uncle Dace,” replied the young man: and there was the same covert defiance in his tone that he had used the other day to his captain.

“I should like to know what brings you in this neighbourhood?” continued Sir Dace. “You cannot have any legitimate business here. I recommend you to leave it.”

“I will think of it,” said Pym, as he lifted his cap to us generally, and went his way.

“What does it mean, Johnny?” spoke Tanerton, breathlessly, when we were alone. “Is Pym making-up to that sweet girl?”

“I fancy so. Wanting to make up, at least.”

“Heaven help her, then! It’s like his impudence.”

“They are first cousins, you see.”

“So much the worse. I expect, though, Pym will find his match in Sir Dace. I don’t like him, by the way, Johnny.”

“Whom? Pym?”

“Sir Dace. I don’t like his countenance: there’s too much secretiveness in it for me. And in himself too, unless I am mistaken.”

“I am sure there is in Pym.”

“I hate Pym!” flashed Jack. And at the moment he looked as if he did.

But would he have acknowledged as much, even to me, had he foreseen the cruel fate that was, all too soon, to place Edward Pym beyond the pale of this world’s hate?—and the dark trouble it would bring home to himself, John Tanerton?

II.

Striding along through South Crabb, and so on down by old Massock’s brick-fields, went Sir Dace Fontaine, dark and gloomy. His heavy stick and his heavy tread kept pace together; both might have been the better for a little lightness.

Matters were not going on too smoothly at Maythorn Bank. Seemingly obedient to her father, Verena Fontaine contrived to meet her lover, and did not take extraordinary pains to keep it secret. Sir Dace, watching stealthily, found it out, and felt just about at his wits’ end.

He had no power to banish Edward Pym from the place: he had none, one must conclude, to exact submission from Verena. She had observed to me, the first night we met, that American girls grow up to be independent of control in many ways. That is true: and, as it seems to me, they think great guns of themselves for being so.

Sir Dace was beginning to turn his anger on Colonel Letsom. As chance had it, while he strode along this morning, full of wrath, the colonel came in view, turning the corner of the strongest and most savoury brick-yard.

“Why do you harbour that fellow?” broke out Sir Dace, fiercely, without circumlocution of greeting.

“What, young Pym?” cried the little colonel in his mild way, jumping to the other’s meaning. “I don’t suppose he will stay with us long. He is expecting a summons to join his ship.”

“But why do you have him at your house at all?” reiterated Sir Dace, with a thump of his stick. “Why did you take him in?”

“Well, you see, he came down, a stranger, and presented himself to us, calling my wife aunt, though she is not really so, and said he would like to stay a few days with us. We could not turn him away, Sir Dace. In fact we had no objection to his staying; he behaves himself very well. He’ll not be here long.”

“He has been here a great deal too long,” growled Sir Dace; and went on his way muttering.

Nothing came of this complaint of Sir Dace Fontaine’s. Edward Pym continued to stay at Crabb, Colonel Letsom not seeing his way clear to send him adrift; perhaps not wanting to. The love-making went on. In the green meadows, where the grass and the sweet wild flowers were springing up, in the Ravine, between its sheltering banks, redolent of romance; or in the triangle, treading underfoot the late primroses and violets—in one or other of these retreats might Mr. Pym and his ladye-love be seen together, listening to the tender vows whispered between them, and to the birds’ songs.

Sir Dace, conscious of all this, grew furious, and matters came to a climax. Verena was bold enough to steal out one night to meet Pym for a promenade with him in the moonlight, and Sir Dace came upon them sitting on the stile at the end of the cross lane. He gave it to Pym hot and strong, marched Verena home, and the next day carried both his daughters away from Crabb.

But I ought to mention that I had gone away from Crabb myself before this, and was in London in with Miss Deveen. So that what had been happening lately I only knew by hearsay.

To what part of the world Sir Dace went, was not known. Naturally Crabb was curious upon the point. Just as naturally it was supposed that Pym, having nothing to stay for, would now take his departure. Pym, however, stayed on.

One morning Mr. Pym called at Maythorn Bank. An elderly woman, one Betty Huntsman, who had been employed by the Fontaines as cook, opened the door to him. The coloured man, Ozias, and a maid, Esther, had gone away with the family. It was the second time Mr. Pym had presented himself upon the same errand: to get the address of Sir Dace Fontaine. Betty, obeying her master’s orders, had refused it; this time he had come to bribe her. Old Betty, however, an honest, kindly old woman, refused to be bribed.

“I can’t do it, sir,” she said to Pym. “When the master wrote to give me the address, on account of sending him his foreign letters, he forbade me to disclose it to anybody down here. It is only myself that knows it, sir.”

“It is in London; I know that much,” affirmed Pym, making a shot at the place, and so far taking in old Betty.

“That much may possibly be known, sir. I cannot tell more.”

Back went Pym to Colonel Letsom’s. He sat down and wrote a letter in a young lady’s hand—for he had all kinds of writing at his fingers’ ends—and addressed it to Mrs. Betty Huntsman at Maythorn Bank, Worcestershire. This he enclosed in a bigger envelope, with a few lines from himself, and posted it to London, to one Alfred Saxby, a sailor friend of his. He next, in a careless, off-hand manner, asked Colonel Letsom if he’d mind calling at Maythorn Bank, and asking the old cook there if she could give him her master’s address. Oh, Pym was as cunning as a fox, and could lay out his plans artfully. And Colonel Letsom, unsuspicious as the day, and willing to oblige everybody, did call that afternoon to put the question to Betty; but she told him she was not at liberty to give the address.

The following morning, Pym got the summons he had been expecting, to join his ship. The Rose of Delhi was now ready to take in cargo. After swearing a little, down sat Mr. Pym to his desk, and in a shaky hand, to imitate a sick man’s, wrote back word that he was ill in bed, but would endeavour to be up in London on the morrow.

And, the morning following this, Mrs. Betty Huntsman got a letter from London.

Betty Huntsman, honest herself, never supposed but the letter was written by Miss Fontaine. By-and-by, there came a ring at the bell.

“My uncle, Colonel Letsom, requested me to call here this morning, as I was passing on my way to Timberdale Rectory,” began Mr. Pym; for it was he who rang, and by his authoritative voice and lordly manner, one might have thought he was on board a royal frigate, commanding a cargo of refractory soldiers.

“Yes, sir!” answered Betty, dropping a curtsy.

“Colonel Letsom wants your master’s address in London—if you can give it him. He has to write to Sir Dace to-day.”

Betty produced a card from her innermost pocket, and showed it to Mr. Pym: who carefully copied down the address.

That he was on his way to Timberdale Rectory, was not a ruse. He went on there through the Ravine at the top of his speed, and asked for Captain Tanerton.

“Have got orders to join ship, sir, and am going up this morning. Any commands?”

“To join what ship?” questioned Jack.

“The Rose of Delhi. She is beginning to load.”

Jack paused. “Of course you must go up, as you are sent for. But I don’t think you will go out in the Rose of Delhi, Mr. Pym. I should recommend you to look out for another ship.”

“Time enough for that, Captain Tanerton, when I get my discharge from the Rose of Delhi: I have not got it yet,” returned Pym, who seemed to take a private delight in thwarting his captain.

“Well, I shall be in London myself shortly, and will see about things,” spoke Jack.

“Any commands, sir?”

“Not at present.”

Taking his leave of Colonel and Mrs. Letsom, and thanking them for their hospitality, Edward Pym departed for London by an afternoon train. He left his promises and vows to the young Letsoms, boys and girls, to come down again at the close of the next voyage, little dreaming, poor ill-fated young man, that he would never go upon another. Captain Tanerton wrote at once to head-quarters in Liverpool, saying he did not wish to retain Pym as chief mate, and would like another one to be appointed. Strolling back to Timberdale Rectory from posting the letter at Salmon’s, John Tanerton fell into a brown study.

A curious feeling, against taking Pym out again, lay within him; like an instinct, it seemed; a prevision of warning. Jack was fully conscious of it, though he knew not why it should be there. It was a great deal stronger than could have been prompted by his disapprobation of the man’s carelessness in his duties on board.

“I’ll go up to London to-morrow,” he decided. “Best to do so. Pym means to sail in the Rose of Delhi if he can; just, I expect, because he sees I don’t wish him to: the man’s nature is as contrary as two sticks. I’ll not have him again at any price. Yes, I must go up to-morrow.”

“L’homme propose”—we know the proverb. Very much to Jack’s surprise, his wife arrived that evening at the Rectory from Liverpool, with her eldest child, Polly. Therefore, Jack did not start for London on the morrow; it would not have been at all polite.

He went up the following week. His first visit was to Eastcheap, in which bustling quarter stood the office of Mr. James Freeman, the ship’s broker. After talking a bit about the ship and her cargo, Jack spoke of Pym.

“Has a first officer been appointed in Pym’s place?”

“No,” said Mr. Freeman. “Pym goes out with you again.”

“I told you I did not wish to take Pym again,” cried Jack.

“You said something about it, I know, and we thought of putting in the mate from the Star of Lahore; but he wants to keep to his own vessel.”

“I won’t take Pym.”

“But why, Captain Tanerton?”

“We don’t get on together. I never had an officer who gave me so much provocation—the Americans would say, who riled me so. I believe the man dislikes me, and for that reason was insubordinate. He may do better in another ship. I am a strict disciplinarian on board.”

“Well,” carelessly observed the broker, “you will have to make the best of him this voyage, Captain Tanerton. It is decided that he sails with you again.”

“Then, don’t be surprised if there’s murder committed,” was Jack’s impetuous answer.

And Mr. Freeman stared: and noted the words.

The mid-day sun was shining hotly upon the London pavement, and especially upon the glittering gold band adorning the cap of a lithe, handsome young sailor, who had just got out of a cab, and was striding along as though he wanted to run a race with the clocks. It was Edward Pym: and the reader will please take notice that we have gone back a few days, for this was the day following Pym’s arrival in London.

“Halt a step,” cried he to himself, his eye catching the name written up at a street corner. “I must be out of my bearings.”

Taking from his pocket a piece of paper, he read some words written there. It was no other than the address he had got from Bessy Huntsman the previous day.

“Woburn Place, Russell Square,” repeated he. “This is not it. I’ll be shot if I know where I am! Can you tell me my way to Woburn Place?” asked he, of a gentleman who was passing.

“Turn to the left; you will soon come to it.”

“Thank you,” said Pym.

The right house sighted at last, Mr. Pym took his standing in a friendly door-way on the other side of the road, and put himself on the watch. Very much after the fashion of a bailiff’s man, who wants to serve a writ.

He glanced up at the windows; he looked down at the doors; he listened to the sound of a church clock striking; he scraped his feet in impatience, now one foot, now the other. Nothing came of it. The rooms behind the curtained windows might be untenanted for all the sign given out to the eager eyes of Mr. Pym.

“Hang it all!” he cried, in an explosion of impatience: and he could have sent the silent dwelling to Jericho.

No man of business likes his time to be wasted: and Mr. Pym could very especially not afford to waste his to-day. For he was supposed to be at St. Katherine’s Docks, checking cargo on board the Rose of Delhi. When twelve o’clock struck, the dinner hour, he had made a rush from the ship, telling the foreman of the shed not to ship any more cargo till he came back in half-an-hour, and had come dashing up here in a fleet cab. The half-hour had expired, and another half-hour to it, and it was a great deal more than time to dash back again. If anybody from the office chanced to go down to the ship, what a row there’d be!—and he would probably get his discharge.

He had not been lucky in his journey from Worcestershire the previous day. The train was detained so on the line, through some heavy waggons having come to grief, that he did not reach London till late at night; too late to go down to his lodgings near the docks; so he slept at an hotel. This morning he had reported himself at the broker’s office; and Mr. Freeman, after blowing him up for his delay, ordered him on board at once: since they began to load, two days ago now, a clerk from the office had been down on the ship, making up the cargo-books in Pym’s place.

“I’ll be hanged if I don’t believe they must all be dead!” cried Pym, gazing at the house. “Why does not somebody show himself? I can’t post the letter—for I know my letters to her are being suppressed. And I dare not leave it at the door myself, lest that cantankerous Ozias should answer me, and hand it to old Dace, instead of to Vera.”

Luck at last! The door opened, and a maid-servant came out with a jug, her bonnet thrown on perpendicularly. Mr. Pym kept her in view, and caught her up as she was nearing a public-house.

“You come from Mrs. Ball’s, Woburn Place?” said he.

“Yes, sir,” answered the girl, doubtfully, rather taken aback at the summary address, but capitulating to the gold-lace band.

“I want you to give this letter privately to Miss Verena Fontaine. When she is quite alone, you understand. And here’s half-a-crown, my pretty lass, for your trouble.”

The girl touched neither letter nor money. She surreptitiously put her bonnet straight, in her gratified vanity.

“But I can’t give it, sir,” she said. “Though I’m sure I’d be happy to oblige you if I could. The Miss Fontaines and their papa is not with us now; they’ve gone away.”

“What?” cried Pym, setting his teeth angrily, an expression crossing his face that marred all its good looks. “When did they leave? Where are they gone to?”

“They left yesterday, sir, and they didn’t say where. That black servant of theirs and our cook couldn’t agree; there was squabbles perpetual. None of us liked him; it don’t seem Christian-like to have a black man sitting down to table with you. Mrs. Ball, our missis, she took our part; and the young ladies and their papa they naturally took his part: and so, they left.”

“Can I see Mrs. Ball?” asked Pym, after mentally anathematizing servants in general, black and white. “Is she at home?”

“Yes, sir, and she’ll see you, I’m sure. She is vexed at their having left.”

He dropped the half-crown into the girl’s hand, returned the note to his pocket, and went to the house. Mrs. Ball, a talkative, good-humoured woman in a rusty black silk gown, with red cheeks and quick brown eyes, opened the door to him herself.

She invited him in. She would have given him Sir Dace Fontaine’s address with all the pleasure in life, if she had it, she said. Sir Dace did not leave it with her. He simply bade her take in any letters that might come, and he would send for them.

“Have you not any notion where they went?—to what part of the town?” asked the discomfited Pym. That little trick he had played Betty Huntsman was of no use to him now.

“Not any. Truth to say, I was too vexed to ask,” confessed Mrs. Ball. “I knew nothing about their intention to leave until they were packing up. Sir Dace paid me a week’s rent in lieu of warning, and away they went in two cabs. You are related to them, sir? There’s a look in your face that Sir Dace has got.”

Mr. Pym knitted his brow; he did not take it as a compliment. Many people had seen the same likeness; though he was a handsome young man and Sir Dace an ugly old one.

“If you can get their address, I shall be much obliged to you to keep it for me; I will call again to-morrow evening,” were his parting words to the landlady. And he went rattling back to the docks as fast as wheels could take him.

Mr. Pym went up to Woburn Place the following evening accordingly, but the landlady had no news to give him. He went the next evening after, and the next, and the next. All the same. He went so long and to so little purpose that he at last concluded the Fontaines were not in London. Sir Dace neither sent a messenger nor wrote for any letters there might be. Two were waiting for him; no more. Edward Pym and Mrs. Ball became, so to say, quite intimate. She had much sympathy with the poor young man, who wanted to find his relatives before he sailed—and could not.

It may as well be told, not to make an unnecessary mystery of it, that the Fontaines had gone straight to Brighton. At length, however, Mrs. Ball was one day surprised by a visit from Ozias. She never bore malice long, and received him civilly. Her rooms were let again, so she had got over the smart.

“At Brighton!” she exclaimed, when she heard where they had been—for the man had no orders to conceal it. “I thought it strange that your master did not send for his letters. And how are the young ladies? And where are you staying now?”

“The young ladies, they well,” answered Ozias. “We stay now at one big house in Marylebone Road. We come up yesterday to this London town: Sir Dace, he find the sea no longer do for him; make him have much bile.”

Edward Pym had been in a rage at not finding Verena. Verena, on her part, though rather wondering that she did not hear from him, looked upon his silence as only a matter of precaution. When they were settled at Woburn Place, after leaving Crabb, she had written to Pym, enjoining him not to reply. It might not be safe, she said, for Coralie had gone over to “the enemy,” meaning Sir Dace: Edward must contrive to see her when he came to London to join his ship. And when the days went on, and Verena saw nothing of her lover, she supposed he was not yet in London. She went to Brighton supposing the same. But, now that they were back from Brighton, and still neither saw Pym nor heard from him, Verena grew uneasy, fearing that the Rose of Delhi had sailed.

“What a strange thing it is about Edward!” she exclaimed one evening to her sister. “I think he must have sailed. He would be sure to come to us if he were in London.”

“How should he know where we are?” dissented Coralie. “For all he can tell, Vera, we may be in the moon.”

A look of triumph crossed Vera’s face. “He knows the address in Woburn Place, Coral, for I wrote and gave it him: and Mrs. Ball would direct him here. Papa sent Ozias there to-day for his letters; and I know Edward would never cease going there, day by day, to ask for news, until he heard of me.”

Coralie laughed softly. Unlocking her writing-case, she displayed a letter that lay snugly between its leaves. It was the one that Vera had written at Woburn Place. Verena turned very angry, but Coralie made light of it.

“As I dare say he has already sailed, I confess my treachery, Vera. It was all done for your good. Better think no more of Edward Pym.”

“You wicked thing! You are more cruel than Bluebeard. I shall take means to ascertain whether the Rose of Delhi is gone. Captain Tanerton made a boast that he’d not take Edward out again, but he may not have been able to help himself,” pursued Vera, her tone significant. “Edward intended to go in her, and he has a friend at court.”

“A friend at court!” repeated Coralie. “What do you mean? Who is it?”

“It is the Freemans out-door manager at Liverpool, and the ship’s husband—a Mr. Gould. He came up here when the ship got in, and he and Edward made friends together. The more readily because Gould and Captain Tanerton are not friends. The captain complained to the owners last time of something or other connected with the ship—some bad provisions, I think, that had been put on board, and insisted on its being rectified. As Mr. Gould was responsible, he naturally resented this, and ever since he has been fit to hang Captain Tanerton.”

“How do you know all this, Verena?”

“From Edward. He told me at Crabb. Mr. Gould has a great deal more to do with choosing the officers than the Freemans themselves have, and he promised Edward he should remain in the Rose of Delhi.”

“It is strange Edward should care to remain in the ship when her commander does not like him,” remarked Coralie.

“He stays in because of that—to thwart Tanerton,” laughed Verena lightly. “Partly, at least. But he thinks, you see, and I think, that his remaining for two voyages in a ship that has so good a name may tell well for him with papa. Now you know, Coral.”

The lovers met. Pym found her out through Mrs. Ball. And Verena, thoroughly independent in her notions, put on her bonnet, and walked with him up and down the Marylebone Road.

“We sail this day week, Vera,” he said. “My life has been a torment to me, fearing I should not see you before the ship went out of dock. And, in that case, I don’t think I should have gone in her.”

“Is it the Rose of Delhi?” asked Vera.

“Of course. I told you Gould would manage it. She is first-rate in every way, and the most comfortable ship I ever was in—barring the skipper.”

“You don’t like him, I know. And he does not like you.”

“I hate and detest him,” said Pym warmly—therefore, as the reader must perceive, no love was lost between him and Jack. “He is an awful screw for keeping one to one’s duty, and I expect we shall have no end of squalls. Ah, Verena,” continued the young man, in a changed tone, “had you only listened to my prayers at Crabb, I need not have sailed again at all.”

Mr. Edward Pym was a bold wooer. He had urged Verena to cut the matter short by marrying him at once. She stopped his words.

“I will marry you in twelve months from this, if all goes well, but not before. It is waste of time to speak of it, Edward—as I have told you. Were I to marry without papa’s consent—and you know he will not give it—he can take most of the money that came to me from mamma. Only a small income would remain to me. I shall not risk that.”

“As if Sir Dace would exact it! He might go into one of his passions at first, but he’d soon come round; he’d not touch your money, Vera.” And Edward Pym, in saying this, fully believed it.

“You don’t know papa. I have been used to luxuries, Edward, and I could not do without them. What would two hundred pounds a-year be for me—living as I have lived? And for you, also, for you would be my husband? Next May I shall be of age, and my fortune will be safe—all my own.”

“A thousand things may happen in a year,” grumbled Pym, who was wild to lead an idle life, and hated the discipline on board ship. “The Rose of Delhi may go down, and I with it.”

“She has not gone down yet. Why should she go down now?”

“What right had Coralie to intercept your letter?” asked Pym, passing to another phase of his grievances.

“She had no right; but she did it. I asked Esther, our own maid, to run and put it in the post for me. Coralie, coming in from walking, met Esther at the door, saw the letter in her hand, and took it from her, saying she would go back and post it herself. Perhaps Esther suspected something: she did not tell me this. Coralie had the face to tell it me herself yesterday.”

“Well, Vera, you should have managed better,” returned Pym, feeling frightfully cross.

“Oh, Edward, don’t you see how it is?” wailed the girl, in a piteous tone of appeal—“that they are all against me. Or, rather, against you. Papa, Coralie, and Ozias: and I fancy now that Coralie has spoken to Esther. Papa makes them think as he thinks.”

“It is a fearful shame. Is this to be our only interview?”

“No,” said Vera. “I will see you every day until you sail.”

“You may not be able to. We shall be watched, now Coralie has turned against us.”

“I will see you every day until you sail,” repeated the girl, with impassioned fervour. “Come what may, I will contrive to see you.”

In making this promise, Miss Verena Fontaine probably did not understand the demands on a chief mate’s time when a ship is getting ready for sea. To rush up from the docks at the mid-day hour, and rush back again in time for work, was not practicable. Pym had done it once; he could not do it twice. Therefore, the only time to be seized upon was after six o’clock, when the Rose of Delhi was left to herself and her watchman for the night, and the dock-gates were shut. This brought it, you see, to about seven o’clock, before Pym could be hovering, like a wandering ghost, up and down the Marylebone Road; for he had to go to his lodgings in Ship Street first and put himself to rights after his day’s work, to say nothing of drinking his tea. And seven o’clock was Miss Verena Fontaine’s dinner hour. Sir Dace Fontaine’s mode of dining was elaborate; and, what with the side-dishes, the puddings and the dessert, it was never over much before nine o’clock.

For two days Verena made her dinner at luncheon. Late dining did not agree with her, she told Coralie, and she should prefer some tea in her room. Coralie watched, and saw her come stealing in each night soon after nine. Until that hour, she had promenaded with Edward Pym in the bustling lighted streets, or in the quieter walks of the Regent’s Park. On the third day, Sir Dace told her that she must be in her place at the dinner-table. Verena wondered whether the order emanated from his arbitrary temper, or whether he had any suspicion. So, that evening she dined as usual; and when she and Coralie went into the drawing-room at eight o’clock, she said her head ached, and she should go to bed.

That night there was an explosion. Docked of an hour at the beginning of their interview, the two lovers made up for it by lingering together an hour longer at the end of it. It was striking ten when Verena came in, and found herself confronted by her father. Verena gave Coralie the credit of betraying her, but in that she was wrong. Sir Dace—he might have had his suspicions—suddenly called for a particular duet that was a favourite with his daughters, bade Coralie look it out, and sent up for Verena to come down and sing it. Miss Verena was not to be found, so could not obey.

Sir Dace, I say, met her on the stairs as she came in. He put his hand on her shoulder to turn her footsteps to the drawing-room, and shut the door. Then came the explosion. Verena did not deny that she had been out with Pym. And Sir Dace, in very undrawing-room-like language, swore that she should see Pym no more.

“We have done no harm, papa. We have been to Madame Tussaud’s.”

“Listen to me, Verena. Attempt to go outside this house again while that villain is in London, and I will carry you off, as I carried you from Crabb. You cannot beard me.”

It was not pleasant to look at the face of Sir Dace as he said it. At these moments of excitement, it would take a dark tinge underneath the skin, as if the man, to use Jack Tanerton’s expression, had a touch of the tar-brush; and the dark sullen eyes would gleam with a peculiar light, that did not remind one of an angel.

“We saw Henry the Eighth and his six wives,” went on Vera. “Jane Seymour looked the nicest.”

“How dare you talk gibberish, at a moment like this?” raved Sir Dace. “As to that man, I have cursed him. And you will learn to thank me for it.”

Verena turned whiter than a sheet. Her answering words seemed brave enough, but her voice shook as she spoke them.

“Papa, you have no right to interfere with my destiny in life; no, though you are the author of my being. I have promised to be the wife of my cousin Edward, and no earthly authority shall stay me. You may be able to control my movements now by dint of force, for you are stronger than I am; but my turn will come.”

“Edward Pym—hang him!—is bad to the backbone.”

“I will have him whether he is bad or good,” was Verena’s mental answer: but she did not say it aloud.

“And I will lock you in your room from this hour, if you dare defy me,” hissed Sir Dace.

“I do not defy you, papa. It is your turn, I say; and you have strength and power on your side.”

“Take care you do not. It would be the worse for you.”

“Very well, papa,” sighed Verena. “I cannot help myself now; but in a twelvemonth’s time I shall be my own mistress. We shall see then.”

Sir Dace looked upon the words as a sort of present concession. He concluded Miss Verena had capitulated and would not again go a-roving. So he did not go the length of locking her in her room.

Verena was mild as milk the next day, and good as gold. She never stirred from the side of Coralie, but sat practising a new netting-stitch, her temper sweet, her face placid. The thought of stealing out again to meet Mr. Pym was apparently further off than Asia.

I have said that I was in London at this time, staying with Miss Deveen. It was curious that I should be so during those dreadful events that were so soon to follow. Connected with the business that kept me and Mr. Brandon in town, was a short visit made us by the Squire. Not that the Squire need have come; writing would have done; but he was nothing loth to do so: and it was lovely weather. He stayed with Mr. Brandon at his hotel in Covent Garden; and we thought he meant to make a week of it. The Squire was as fond of the sights and the shops as any child.

I went down one morning to breakfast with them at the Tavistock, and there met Jack Tanerton. Later, we started to take a look at a famous cricket-match that was being played at Lord’s. In crossing the Marylebone Road, we met Sir Dace Fontaine.

His lodgings were close by, he said, and he would have us go in. It was the day I have just told you of; when Verena sat, good as gold, by her sister’s side, trying the new netting-stitch.

The girls were in a sort of boudoir, half-way up the stairs. The French would, I suppose, call it the entresol: a warm-looking room, with stained glass in the windows, and a rich coloured carpet. Coralie and Vera were, as usual, dressed alike, in delicate summer-muslins. Vera—how pretty she looked!—had blue ribbon in her hair: her blue eyes laughed at seeing us, a pink flush set off her dimples.

“When do you sail, Captain Tanerton?” abruptly asked Sir Dace, suddenly interrupting the conversation.

“On Thursday, all being well,” answered Jack.

“Do you take out the same mate?—that Pym?”

“I believe so; yes, Sir Dace.”

We had to go away, or should not find standing-room on the cricket-ground. Sir Dace said he would accompany us, and called out to Ozias to bring his hat. Before the hat came, he thought better of it, and said he would not go; those sights fatigued him. I did not know what had taken place until later, or I might have thought he stayed at home to guard Verena. He gave us a cordial invitation to dinner in the evening, we must all go, he said; and Mr. Brandon was the only one of us who declined.

“I am very busy,” said Jack, “but I will contrive to get free by seven this evening.”

“Very busy indeed, when you can spend the day at Lord’s!” laughed Verena.

“I am not going to Lord’s,” said Jack. Which was true. “I have come up this way to see an invalid passenger who is going out in my ship.”

“Oh,” quoth Vera, “I thought what a nice idle time you were having of it. Mind, Johnny Ludlow, that you take me in to dinner to-night. I have something to tell you.”

Close upon the dinner-hour named, seven, the Squire and I were again at Sir Dace Fontaine’s. Tanerton’s cab came dashing up at the same moment. Coralie was in the drawing-room alone, her white dress and herself resplendent in coral ornaments. Sir Dace came in, and the Squire began telling him about the cricket-match, saying he ought to have been there. Presently Sir Dace rang the bell.

“How is it that dinner’s late?” he asked sternly of Ozias—for Sir Dace liked to be served to the moment.

“The dinner only wait for Miss Verena, sir,” returned Ozias, “She no down yet.”

Sir Dace turned round sharply to look at the sofa behind him, where I sat with Coralie, talking in an undertone. He had not noticed, I suppose, but that both sisters were there.

“Let Miss Verena be told that we wait for her,” he said, waving his hand to Ozias.

Back came Ozias in a minute or two. “Miss Verena, she no upstairs, sir. She no anywhere.”

Of all the frowns that ever made a face ugly, the worst sat on Sir Dace Fontaine’s, as he turned to Coralie.

“Have you let her go out?” he asked.

“Why of course she is not out, papa,” answered Coralie, calm and smiling as usual.

“Let Esther go into Miss Verena’s room, Ozias, and ask her to come down at once.”

“Esther go this last time, Miss Coralie. She come down and say, Ozias, Miss Verena no upstairs at all; she go out.”

“How dare——” began Sir Dace; but Coralie interrupted him.

“Papa, I will go and see. I am sure Verena cannot be out; I am sure she is not. She went into her room to dress when I went into mine. She came to me while she was dressing asking me to lend her my pearl comb; she had just broken one of the teeth of her own. She meant to come down to dinner then and was dressing for it: she had no thought of going out.”

Coralie halted at the door to say all this, and then ran up the stairs. She came down crest-fallen. Verena had stolen a march on them. In Sir Dace Fontaine’s passionate anger, he explained the whole to us, taking but a few short sentences to do it. Verena had been beguiled into a marriage engagement with Edward Pym: he, Sir Dace, had forbidden her to go out of the house to meet him; and, as it appeared, she had set his authority at defiance. They were no doubt tramping off now to some place of amusement; a theatre, perhaps: the past evening they had gone to Madame Tussaud’s. “Will you take in Miss Fontaine, Squire?” concluded Sir Dace, with never a break between that and the explanation.

How dark and sullen he looked, I can recall even now. Deprived of my promised partner, Verena, I went down alone. Sir Dace following with Jack, into whose arm he put his own.

“I wish you joy of your chief officer, Captain Tanerton!” cried he, a sardonic smile on his lips.

It must have been, I suppose, about nine o’clock. We were all back in the drawing-room, and Coralie had been singing. But somehow the song fell flat; the contretemps about Verena, or perhaps the sullenness it had left on Sir Dace, produced a sense of general discomfort; and nobody asked for another. Coralie took her dainty work-box off a side-table, and sat down by me on the sofa.

“I may as well take up my netting, as not,” she said to me in an undertone. “Verena began a new collar to-day—which she will be six months finishing, if she ever finishes it at all. She dislikes the work; I love it.” Netting was the work most in vogue at that time. Mrs. Todhetley had just netted herself a cap.

“Do you think we shall see your sister to-night?” I asked of Coralie in a whisper.