Only a clod

Within a month from that night on which the merchant’s daughter and Francis Tredethlyn had lingered so long together on the terrace up the river, Maude Hillary sat at her desk in the little study, trying to begin the most difficult letter she had ever had occasion to write.

The letter was to be addressed to Harcourt Lowther, and the three words, “My dear Harcourt,” were already written on the rose-tinted foreign note-paper; but beyond those preliminary words Maude found it very difficult to proceed.

That which she had to tell the distant soldier, sorely tried by inglorious idleness in a penal settlement, and inclined to resent every stroke of ill-fortune, was by no means a pleasant thing to tell. She had to announce to him that the promise she had made long ago in the twilight by the river had been deliberately broken. She had to tell him that she was the plighted wife of another man; and she was not free to reveal to him any one of the strange circumstances that had pressed so cruelly upon her, pushing her, little by little, into this renunciation of her first and only love.

It was only a very commonplace letter that Miss Hillary could write to her discarded lover. She could only tell the old, common story, and put in the hackneyed pleas so often heard in the court of Cupid;—her father’s wishes: her desire to secure his happiness rather than her own; and then a wild womanly prayer for pity: an entreaty that her lover would believe in the existence of stronger reasons—higher motives—the nature of which she was not free to reveal. And last of all, after many pages of passionate supplication for pardon, with not a little violation of the nicer laws propounded by Lindley Murray and his successors,—at the very last there came one page blotted with tears, earnest yet incoherent, in which Miss Hillary implored Mr. Lowther to forget her, and to seek happiness with a happier woman. Never had she loved him so dearly as while she wrote that last page, in which she resigned him for ever. Surely Queen Guinevere’s diamonds must have sparkled their very brightest just in that one angry moment in which she flung them into the river.

Yes, it had come to this. Maude Hillary, like a modern Iphigenia, had sacrificed herself for the benefit of her father. The burden of that debt which had been incurred by her agency had weighed too heavily upon her girlish breast. Somehow or other Francis Tredethlyn must be paid; and since he loved her so devotedly, so foolishly—since he held her as the brightest treasure to be won by aspiring man—it was surely better that he should take this poor recompense than go altogether unrewarded. It may be that Maude Hillary would under no circumstances deliberately have broken faith with her betrothed lover. But these grand crises, upon which the fate of a lifetime may depend, are apt to come very suddenly upon us. The great flood-tide of fate arises, and carries away the weak creatures afloat on its resistless waters. A moment of hesitation—a few faltering words—half doubtful, half imploring, and the thing is done.

It had all happened on the day on which Francis Tredethlyn accepted Mr. Hillary’s magnanimous offer, and allowed himself to be created a sleeping partner in the Australian house. It was only natural that on such a day Francis should dine at the Cedars; and it was only natural that Lionel Hillary should make a little speech about the young man, telling his daughter of the generosity of this noble-minded Cornishman, who had been something more than a son to him—a friend, a benefactor, a preserver. What praise could be loud enough for a man who would lend thirty thousand pounds without security? And then this noble-minded Cornishman, whose heart was like a great lump of tinder—only wanting the feeblest spark to kindle it into a blaze—burst out into a passionate declaration of his love. What was his fortune but so much dirt, which he was only too glad to fling under the feet of Miss Hillary? Would he not go out into the world to-morrow penniless, barefoot, a beggar, if by so doing he could add to her happiness? He asked a few such questions as these: and then cried out suddenly that he was a despicable wretch, and that he was ashamed of himself for saying all this, when he knew that Miss Hillary’s heart was given to another man. He would go, he said; she should never again be tormented by him. She should not be annoyed by so much as the mention of his name. After which passionate speech Mr. Tredethlyn grasped the merchants hand, and then made a rush towards the door. He would fain have suited the action to the word; he wanted to go away that moment, and hide himself for ever from Maude Hillary. But before he could reach the door Maude was by his side, with her hands clasped about his arm her face looking upward at his, and drowned with tears.

“How good you are!” she cried. “Don’t go away; we cannot part from you like this. You have been so good to my father. Ah, how can we ever recompense so much devotion! If my esteem—my gratitude—can make you happy, they are yours,—they have long been yours. I renounce every other thought, every other duty. I can have no duty higher than this.”

The last words were almost stifled on her lips, for Francis Tredethlyn caught her to his breast as passionately as in that last scene of the “Lady of Lyons.”

“Maude, my love—my angel—you will renounce, for my sake—you—you—will be my own—my wife!” he gasped, incoherently. “No—no, I cannot accept such a sacrifice—I am not so mean, so selfish, as to—”

But Mr. Hillary, hovering over his daughter and the generous-minded young Cornishman, would not allow Francis to finish this sentence.

“My dear boy!” he exclaimed,—“my darling Maude! nothing upon earth could give me greater pleasure than this, because I know that it is for your mutual happiness. What joy can be deeper or purer than that of a father who knows that his child has won for herself the devoted affection of a good man?”

“And the thirty thousand pounds will be sunk for ever and ever in the firm of Hillary and Co.,” the merchant may have thought at the close of that enthusiastic address.

Thus it was that Maude Hillary arrived at the very point towards which fate and her father had been pushing her for the last twelve months. After that passionate impulse of self-sacrifice had passed away, a dull dead feeling of pain took possession of her breast. Alone in the quiet of her own pretty rooms; alone through the long sunny July mornings with her books, and Berlin-wool work, and piano, she had only too much time to consider the step she had taken; she had only too much time to think of her broken vows, her scattered hopes. And she did think of these things,—with cruel remorse and self-upbraiding, with bitter and unavailing regret.

And now Francis Tredethlyn appeared to her all at once in a new light. Alas! he was no longer the noble-hearted friend to whom she could appeal for help in the day of trouble. He was no longer the humble adorer, kneeling on the lowest step of the altar, remote and submissive. He was her affianced husband, and he had a right to her society. He had a right to attend her in her walks and rides, to linger near the piano when she sang, to hold perpetual skeins of Berlin-wool during those tedious morning visits which he made now and again to the Cedars. All these privileges were his by right; and other people gave place when he approached Miss Hillary, and watched to see her face brighten as he drew near her. It was not that Francis himself was in any way altered. His adoration of his bright divinity was no less humble than of old—even now when he knew that the goddess was to descend from her pedestal and exchange her starry crown for the orange-blossoms of an earthly bride. He was in no way changed; the distance between himself and Maude Hillary was as wide as ever. He could set it before him—a palpable gulf, across which he beheld her, a strange creature, in a strange land,—a creature who might hold out her hand to him once in a way across the impassable abyss, but who could never draw him near her. Alas for Francis Tredethlyn’s loveless betrothal! that dreary distance was growing wider every day, now that Iphigenia knew the hour of sacrifice was drawing near.

It had been one thing to think of Mr. Tredethlyn as a friend—a dear and devoted friend, worthy to be regarded with an almost sisterly affection. It was another thing to contemplate him as a future husband. All his ignorance, his homely ways of speaking and thinking, his little awkwardnesses and stupidities, his vacillating temperament in the matter of spoons and forks at those elaborate Russian dinners,—all these things pained Maude Hillary now as cruelly as they had galled Miss Desmond’s proud spirit some six months before. And then to the faint shivering pain of disgust was joined all the bitterness of contrast. Never had Harcourt Lowther’s image seemed so near to this wayward girl as it seemed now, when she was the promised wife of another man, and tried most honestly to shut the memory of her old lover completely out of her mind. Never had he been so near to her. His graces of manner, his accomplishments, the light touch of his pointed fingers on the piano, the deep organ-tone that he alone amongst amateurs could draw out of a flute, the free outlines of his pencil, the transparency of his water-colour sketches, the graphic humour of his pen-and-ink caricatures; the airy wit, which never verged upon vulgarity; the fervid eloquence, which never degenerated into rant; the trenchant satire, which never sank to the vile level of personal spite: she thought of her discarded lover: and all the showy attributes that had won her girlish love arose before her in cruel contrast with the deficiencies of Francis Tredethlyn.

Yet all this time she was very kind to her betrothed husband. It was not in her to be scornfully indifferent to the man whom she regarded as her father’s friend and benefactor. She was not a woman to sacrifice herself with an ill grace. The silent warfare went on within her breast. She struggled and suffered, but she had always the same kind, cold smile, the same gentle words for the man whom she had promised to marry.

And in the meantime the hands went steadily round upon all the clock-dials, and the inevitable hour drew very near. Busy milliners and dressmakers, bootmakers and outfitters, came backwards and forwards from Wigmore Street to the Cedars, and were busy and glad. Mr. Hillary’s credit was unlimited, and it was almost as if a princess of the blood royal had been about to marry. Francis Tredethlyn bought the lease of a big black-looking house in a new neighbourhood near Hyde Park: and there were negotiations pending for the purchase of an estate within a few miles of Windsor.

August was melting into September. Already there were bright glimpses of red and yellow here and there among the sombre green of the woodlands. The wedding was to take place very early in October: the guests were bidden, the dresses of the bridesmaids were chosen, and in the still evening Iphigenia walked alone on the terrace. She was very seldom alone at this hour; but to-night her father had taken Francis Tredethlyn to a club-dinner, given by a bachelor stockbroker of some eminence in Mr. Hillary’s circle. To-night Maude was alone; and leaning upon the broad balustrade, with her elbow resting amongst the thick ivy that crept along the stone, she looked down at the still water—the dark melancholy water—and thought of her past life.

It seemed so far away from her now, left so entirely behind—all that frivolous past. She seemed to have grown out of herself since the knowledge of her father’s troubles had come upon her; and looking backwards she saw a careless and happy creature, who bore no relationship to this thoughtful woman, before whom all the future seemed a blank and dreary country, unillumined by one glimpse of sunshine.

She turned away from the water presently, and walked slowly up and down the long terrace. There seemed to be a melancholy influence in the evening stillness, the dusky shadow lying upon every object, the distant peal of bells floating across the river from some church where the ringers were practising; even the voices of passing boatmen and the low monotonous splash of oars took a pensive tone, in unison with the hour and Maude Hillary’s sad remorseful thoughts.

She was near the end of the terrace, close to that ivy-grown old summerhouse which had sheltered the patched and powdered beauties of King George the Second’s Court, when she was startled by the sound of a chain grating against stone-work, and rapid steps on the flight of stairs leading from the terrace to the river. The young men who came to the Cedars were very fond of making the journey by water: so there was nothing strange in the sound of a step on the river stair. Maude turned to meet the intruder with a sense of weariness and vexation. He would not be likely to stay long, whoever he was; but the prospect of even ten minutes’ idle conventional discourse jarred upon her present frame of mind.

She turned to meet the unwelcome visitor with a languid sigh, and saw a man hurrying towards her in the twilight; a man in whose figure and dress there was a careless grace, an undefinable air of distinction, which, in Maude Hillary’s eyes, stamped him as different from all the rest of the world.

He came hurrying towards her. In a moment he was close to her, holding out his arms, eager to take her to his breast. But she recoiled from him, deadly white, and with her hands extended, motioning him back.

“Don’t touch me,” she cried; “don’t come near me. Ah, you don’t know—you cannot have had my letter.”

“What letter?” cried Mr. Lowther, staring almost fiercely at the shrinking girl. These sort of things so rapidly make themselves understood. Harcourt Lowther saw at once that something was wrong. “What letter?”

“My last; the letter in which I told you that—Ah, how you will hate and despise me! But if you could know all, Harcourt, as you never can, you might excuse—you might forgive—”

A torrent of sobs broke the sentence.

“Oh, I think I understand,” said Harcourt Lowther, very quietly. “You have thrown me over, Miss Hillary.”

She held out her clasped hands towards him with an imploring gesture; and then in broken sentences, in half-finished phrases, that were rendered incoherent by her sobs, she recapitulated something of her letter of explanation. Mr. Lowther’s face had blanched before this, and his lower lip quivered now and then with a little spasmodic action; but he listened very quietly to all Maude had to say.

“I ought never to have expected anything else,” he answered, when she had finished her piteous attempt to explain and justify her conduct without revealing her father’s commercial secrets. “I don’t know that I ever did expect anything else,” he went on very deliberately. “What has a penniless younger son to do among the children of Mammon? How can the earthen pot hope to sail down the stream with the big brazen vessels, and escape wreck and ruin? Don’t let there be any scene between us, Miss Hillary; I hate all domestic tragedy, and I think if my heart were breaking—and men’s hearts have been known to break—I could take things quietly. You have grown tired of our long and apparently hopeless engagement, and you have promised to marry somebody else. It is all perfectly natural. May I know the name of my fortunate rival?”

“His name is Tredethlyn—Francis Tredethlyn.”

“A Cornishman,” added Harcourt Lowther,—“a fellow who has lately come into a great fortune?”

“Yes. You know him, then?”

“Intimately. I congratulate you on your choice, Miss Hillary. Francis Tredethlyn is a most excellent fellow. I have reason to speak well of him, for he was my servant for a year and a half out yonder in Van Diemen’s Land.”

“Your servant?”

“Yes. He was really the best of fellows; and in the art of brushing a coat or cleaning a pair of riding-boots was positively unrivalled.”

“If you could know all, Harcourt, as you never can, you might excuse—you might forgive—”

Harcourt Lowther, very quick of apprehension always, especially so where his own interests were concerned, had taken careful note of these broken sentences uttered by Maude Hillary, and, rowing Londonwards in the summer darkness, pondered on them long and deliberately, only arousing himself now and then from his sombre reverie, in order to express his profound contempt for some amateur waterman who was just saved from a foul by the superior skill of the young officer.

What did it mean? That was the question which Mr. Lowther set himself to answer.

“It means something more than the caprice of a shallow-hearted jilt,” he thought, as he rested on his oars and lighted his cigar. “How pale she grew at sight of me! That white, agonized look in her face was real despair. ‘If I could know all!’ she said. All what? There’s a mystery somewhere. Maude Hillary is the last woman in the world to throw over a poor lover for the sake of a rich one. The sentimental girl, who was ready to keep her engagement with me at the sacrifice of her father’s fortune, would scarcely marry a clownish rustic for the sake of his thirty thousand a year. Besides, these heiresses, who have never known what it is to have a wish denied them, are the most romantic creatures in creation, and cherish sublimely absurd ideas upon the sordid dross question. No, I cannot think that Maude would be influenced by any mercenary considerations—and yet how else—?”

The villas and villages on the river-banks flitted past him like phantom habitations in the dim light. The flat shores of Battersea; the dingy roofs and chimneys of crowded Chelsea and manufacturing Lambeth; the bridges and barges; the low-lying prison, lurking like some crouching beast upon the swampy ground, shifted by as the oars dipped in the quiet water, while Harcourt Lowther’s light wherry sped homeward with the tide. But all the length of his water-journey he could find no satisfactory answer to that question about Maude Hillary; and when he relinquished his boat to its rightful owner at a certain landing-place in Westminster, he was still undecided as to the meaning of those broken phrases which had dropped from the lips of the merchant’s daughter in the first moment of surprise and emotion.

“I dare say it is only the old story after all,” he thought, as he walked towards the Strand, in the purlieus of which he had taken up his quarters. “Lionel Hillary, being as rich as Crœsus, is determined that no poor man shall profit by his daughter’s fortune. Water runs to the river, and Maude’s dowry will go to swell that old Cornish miser’s savings. It’s only my usual luck. I am engaged to a beautiful woman with a hundred thousand or so for a fortune, and I find a victorious rival in the man who cleans my boots.”

But Mr. Lowther had not settled the question even yet. Lying awake and feverishly restless in his lodging in Norfolk Street, Miss Hillary’s pale face was still before him, the sound of her imploring tones was perpetually in his ear.

“‘If I knew all, I might forgive, I might excuse!’ There must have been some meaning in those words, some secret involved in them. Surely, if her father had forced this marriage upon her, after the manner of some tyrannical old parent in a stage-play,—surely, if that had been the case, she would have candidly told me the truth; she would have pleaded the best excuse a woman can have. There must be some secret reason for this marriage, and I must be a consummate fool if I fail in getting to the bottom of the mystery.”

Mr. Lowther breakfasted early the next morning, and dressed himself with his accustomed neatness before going out. He had no body-servant now whom he could badger and worry when the world went ill with him; or that individual would most assuredly have paid the penalty of Miss Hillary’s broken faith. Harcourt Lowther, the younger son, was too poor to keep or pay a valet. He had grown weary of waiting for promotion in the army, as he had sickened of hoping for advancement at the bar, and had sold his commission. The world was all before him now, as it had been seven years ago, when he had first looked about him for a profession. The world was all before him, and his one chance of fortune, the possibility of a marriage with Maude Hillary, seemed entirely lost to him. It was scarcely strange if his spirits sank before the dismal blankness of the prospect which he contemplated that morning, as he loitered over his breakfast of London eggs and lodging-house toast and coffee.

He went out a little after twelve o’clock, hailed the first prowling hansom he encountered in the Strand, and ordered the man to drive to a certain street in the City, sacred to the stockbroking and money-making interests. Here he alighted, dismissed the cab, turned into a narrow court, still more entirely sacred to stockbroking, and entered a little office, where there was a desk, two or three horsehair chairs, a great many bills hanging against the wall, all relating to the stockbroking interests, and a six-foot screen of wooden panelling, dividing the small outer office from a larger inner office.

Mr. Lowther walked straight to this screen, and standing on tip-toe, looked over into the second office.

A gentleman with sandy whiskers, a light overcoat, and a white hat, was standing at a desk, and jotting some pencil memoranda upon the margins of a file of documents, which he was turning over with a certain rapidity and precision of touch peculiar to a man of business.

“Can you spare a quarter of an hour of your valuable time from the calculation of last year’s prices for the Fiji Island Grand Junction Stock in order to devote it to the claims of friendship?” asked Mr. Lowther.

The clerks smiled as they looked up from their desks; and the gentleman in the white hat dropped his pencil, and ran to a little wooden door in the partition, over which Harcourt Lowther’s hat made itself visible.

“My dear Lowther!” he exclaimed, presenting himself in the smaller office, and stretching out both his hands towards the intruder; “this is a surprise; I thought you were at the Antipodes.”

“Yes, that’s the way of the world,” answered Mr. Lowther, rather peevishly; “a man is banished to some outlandish hole at the remotest end of the universe, ergo he’s never to return to the civilized half of the globe.”

“But it seems only yesterday when—”

Harcourt Lowther’s City friend was not the most brilliant or original of men when you took him away from the stockbroking interests. He stared blankly during Mr. Lowther’s discontented remarks upon the selfishness of mankind.

“Haw! that’s good. Meant no offence by allusion to yesterday; only meant that I was jolly glad to see you, you know, and so on. But, you see, a fellow turning up in the City when you’ve been given to understand that he’s in Van Diemen’s Land is rather a surprise, you know. Can I do anything for you? I’ll tell you what, old fellow; I can put you up to a good thing in the Etruscan Loan,—panic prices,—nine percent, and certain to turn up trumps in the long run.”

Mr. Lowther smiled bitterly.

“Do you suppose that I’ve any money to invest; or that if I had money, I’m the sort of man to sink the glorious principal for the sake of some miserable dribblings in the way of interest? No, my dear Wilderson, you can do me a good turn, but it’s in quite another direction. Just step this way.”

He put his hand on his friend’s shoulder, and led him to the door leading into the court. Here, safely out of the hearing of the clerks at work in the inner office, Mr. Lowther lowered his voice to a confidential tone.

“Wilderson,” he said, “I think you know Lionel Hillary, the Australian merchant?”

“Hillary and Co.?” exclaimed Mr. Wilderson,—“I should flatter myself I did.”

“I want you to tell me all about him—how he stands—how he has stood for some time past; in short, all you know about him.”

The stockbroker pulled his hay-coloured whiskers thoughtfully, and shook his head.

“These sort of things are rather difficult to know,” he said, “but a man may have his thoughts about ’em.”

“And what are your thoughts? Hang it, man, speak out. You talked just now of being ready to serve me. You can serve me in this matter, if you choose.”

Mr. Wilderson shrugged his shoulders, and again pulled his whiskers in a reflective mood.

“Dear boy,” he said presently, “come out into the court.”

Evidently in Mr. Wilderson’s mind the court was as some primeval forest, wherein no listener’s ears could penetrate.

Out in the court the stockbroker hitched his arm through that of Harcourt Lowther, and began to discourse upon Lionel Hillary, or Hillary and Co., as Mr. Wilderson preferred to designate him. He said a great deal in a low, confidential voice, and Harcourt Lowther’s lower jaw fell a little as he listened. One thing was made clear to the ex-officer, and that was, that Lionel Hillary’s affairs had been hinted at by the knowing ones as rather shaky; that there had been even whispers of that awful word, “suspension:” but that somehow or other Hillary and Co. had contrived to right themselves; and that it was supposed by the aforesaid knowing ones that the Australian merchant had found a wealthy backer.

“There’s fresh blood been let into his business, you may rely upon it, dear boy,” said Mr. Wilderson. “I know that he was in Queer Street last Christmas. Bills referred to drawer, and that sort of thing. The bankers were beginning to get shy of his paper. I held a little of it myself, and a deuced deal of trouble I had to plant it.”

This and much more to hear did Harcourt Lowther seriously incline. Then he asked Mr. Wilderson to dine with him at a certain noted establishment in the Strand, and left the court very grave of aspect and slow of step.

“So my lovely Maude is not a millionaire’s daughter after all,” he thought. “And my friend Hillary has been dipping his capacious paw into Francis Tredethlyn’s purse. I ought to have known that half these reputed rich men are as rotten as a pear. So this is the explanation of my simple Maude’s heroics. Poor little girl, she has been the pretty fly with which that accomplished angler, Mr. Hillary, has whipped the stream for his big gudgeon! Any little card I may have arranged to play for myself has been very neatly taken out of my hands; and I find my friend provided with a needy father-in-law and an extravagant wife. However, I dare say there’s some small part left for me to play: and perhaps the best thing I can do is to take it quietly.”

Harcourt Lowther’s servant!

The man to whom Maude Hillary was now engaged had once been the valet of her discarded lover. This could scarcely be a pleasant thought to any young lady early imbued with all the ordinary prejudices of society. Miss Hillary was not a strong-minded woman; she could not console herself with a neat aphorism from Burns to the effect that “a man’s a man for a’ that;” and to her Harcourt Lowther’s revelation seemed cruelly humiliating. She had heard of young women in her own position marrying grooms, or perhaps even footmen, for love, and she had shuddered at the very idea of their iniquity. But was it not quite as degrading to marry a valet for money, as to elope with a groom for love?

“He blacked Harcourt’s boots!” thought poor Maude; and it is impossible to describe the utter despair expressed in that brief sentence. She met her lover with a very pale face the next day, and, seating himself in his accustomed place by her embroidery frame, Francis Tredethlyn saw that there was something wrong. Alas! poor—Francis, he had already learned to watch every change upon that beautiful face; already, before the marriage vows had been spoken, all the miserable tortures of doubt had begun to prey upon his devoted heart. She had promised to marry him, but she had not promised to love him. He remembered that. She had given herself to him in payment of her father’s debt. She had sacrificed herself in accordance with the loyal instincts of her noble nature. Francis, generous and loyal himself, could understand this, much better than it was understood by Lionel Hillary, for whose sake the sacrifice was made.

There were times when the young man reproached himself for his selfishness in accepting the supreme desire of his soul. Ought he not rather to have wrestled with himself and let this bright young creature go? But there were other times when Francis Tredethlyn suffered himself to be beguiled by delicious hopes. Had not true and honest love sometimes triumphed over circumstance? Might not the day come when Maude Hillary would be able to return his affection, to reward his patience?

“I can afford to be so patient,” he thought; “for it will be such happiness to be her slave.” To-day, watching her pale face in pensive contemplation, Francis puzzled himself vainly to guess what was amiss with his promised wife. It was not only that she was paler than usual,—and the brightness of her colour had faded very much of late,—but to-day, there was a shade of coldness in her manner which was quite new to her affianced husband, and which sent a chill to his heart, always ready to sink under some vague apprehension where Maude Hillary was concerned. We hold these supreme joys of life by so slender a thread, that half our delight in them is poisoned by the dread of their possible loss.

“Maude,” he said by-and-by, after a few commonplace phrases, and after he had watched her for some minutes in silence, “I am sure there is something amiss with you to-day. You are ill—you—”

“Oh, no, not ill. Only a little worried.”

“Worried—but about what?”

“I heard something about you last night, Mr. Tredethlyn,” said Miss Hillary,—it was the first time she had called him Mr. Tredethlyn since their engagement,—“something which you never told me yourself. Mr. Lowther,—a friend of papa’s, who has just come home from Van Diemen’s Land, told me—that—that—you had been—”

“His servant! Yes, Maude, it is quite true. I was a soldier, and I was obliged to obey orders. I was ordered to attend upon Ensign Lowther, and I did my best to serve him well. When I enlisted in her Majesty’s service, I had all sorts of foolish fancies about fighting and glory, but they all dwindled down to the usual routine. No fighting, no glory, no desperate attacks upon Indian fortresses, no scaling walls to plant the British flag upon the enemy’s ramparts; but any amount of drill and hard work, and a discontented fine gentleman to wait upon.”

A flood of crimson rushed into Maude’s face as Francis said this; but the young man’s head was drooping over the embroidery frame, and he was trifling mechanically with the loose Berlin wool lying on Miss Hillary’s canvas.

“I am afraid you think it a kind of degradation to you, that I should have been a servant, Maude?” he said presently.

“You never told me—”

“No—I told you I had been a private in the 51st. The other business was only a part of my duty.”

Maude was silent for some moments after this. She sat looking dreamily out of the window, while Francis still twisted the Berlin wools in his strong fingers. Maude was the first to speak.

“Was it Mr. Lowther you meant just now, when you spoke of a discontented fine gentleman?” she asked, with some slight hesitation.

“Yes; I never served any other master. Ensign Lowther was horribly discontented. He was one of those men who can’t take things easily; but I can understand a good deal of his peevish restlessness now. I can sympathize with him now, Maude.”

His voice grew low and tender as he said this.

“Why?” asked Miss Hillary, rather coldly.

“He was in love, Maude,—an unhappy attachment, as I understood, to some lady—an heiress, I think—whose money was a hindrance to a marriage between them.”

From the beginning to the end of this conversation Maude Hillary’s thoughts had been employed in debating one question—should she, or should she not, tell her future husband that Harcourt Lowther was the man to whom she had been previously engaged? He knew of that broken engagement, but he did not know the name of her lover. Was it her duty to tell him? It would be very unpleasant to do so; but then duty is so often unpleasant. She was still silently debating this subject; the words which she should speak were forming themselves in her mind; when the drawing-room door was opened, and a servant announced Mr. Lowther. Maude’s heart beat violently. Would there be a scene? Why had Harcourt come, when he knew—? But Mr. Lowther very speedily relieved her fears upon this subject. Nothing could be more delightful than his manner. He was cordial to his old servant, without attempting any airs of patronage. He could not have been more entirely at his ease with Maude, had he been the most indifferent of first-cousins.

Mr. Lowther was only acting up to his determination to take things quietly. He had met Lionel Hillary in the City that morning, and had surprised the merchant by speaking of Maude’s engagement to Francis Tredethlyn.

“But don’t alarm yourself, my dear Hillary,” he said with a frank smile. “To say that I adored, and do adore, your daughter, is only to admit a fact to which, I dare say, every male visitor at the Cedars would be happy to testify in a round-robin. Miss Hillary is made to be worshipped. I have only been one among a score of worshippers. If ever I hoped to overcome your very natural prejudice against my disgusting poverty, I have long ceased to hope it; so it was scarcely such a death-blow to me to discover what had happened during my exile. Will you let me renew my old relations with your household? Will you let me be one of the moths again? I know now that the candle will burn, and that its dangerous glare alone, and not its tender warmth, is reserved for me, so I shall have only myself to blame if I come away with a scorched wing.”

Mr. Hillary’s only reply to this rather sentimental speech was a hearty invitation to dinner.

“I can give you your favourite Rüdesheimer with the oysters. Chablis is a mistake, when you can get good hock. Sharp seven, remember; but you may go earlier if you care for croquet. I dare say you’ll find Tredethlyn there.”

“The poor fellow is very hard hit, I suppose?”

Mr. Hillary smiled and shrugged his shoulders.

“I never saw such a devoted creature. Good day.”

The merchant hurried off, and Harcourt walked slowly away, pondering as he went.

“A devoted creature. Yes, and there has been new blood let into the commercial anatomy of Hillary and Co. I dare say that poor devil Tredethlyn has been bled to a hideous extent.”

The dinner at the Cedars went off very pleasantly. What dinner could fail to go off tolerably well, enlivened by Harcourt Lowther, when that gentleman cared to exercise his genius for making conversation? There were other guests at the merchant’s round table; and after dinner people showed an inclination to stroll out of the lamplit drawing-room on to the dusky lawn, and down to the terrace, drawn perhaps by the magnetic influence of the river, which will be looked at.

It happened somehow—I suppose Mr. Lowther himself managed it—that he and Maude were left a little way behind the rest of the loiterers upon the twilit terrace. Ah! how vividly in the memory of both arose the picture of a time long ago, when they had stood there side by side, by the same river, in a twilight calm like this, with the same star glimmering faintly in a low rose-tinted western sky! In Maude’s breast that memory awakened cruel pangs of shame and remorse! In Harcourt Lowther’s breast there was a strangely mingled feeling of bitterness and regret;—bitterness against the Destiny which had given him so few of life’s brightest possessions; regret for the vanished time in which some natural earnestness, some touch of fresh and manly feeling, had yet lingered in his heart.

“Poor, simple, unworldly Maude,” he thought, as he contemplated the girl’s pale face, “what a penitent look she has! and yet if she knew—”

He smiled, and left the thought unfinished. Then, turning to Maude, he said, with a little touch of melancholy solemnity, worthy of Edgar Ravenswood himself, “Miss Hillary, let us be friends. If you can bury the past, so can I. We may yet strew sweet flowers of friendship on the grave of our dead love.”

“And I really don’t want to let Francis Tredethlyn slip through my fingers altogether,” Mr. Lowther added, mentally, as a sort of rider to that pretty little speech.

Maude looked at him with rather a puzzled expression.

“You are very generous,” she faltered, embarrassed, and at a loss how to express herself, “but—don’t you think it would be better for us—to—to say good-bye to each other—for ever? I—I—hope you will marry some one—worthy of you—some one who is less the slave of circumstances than I am. I want to do my duty to Mr. Tredethlyn—and I think it is a part of my duty to tell him of our broken engagement.”

“My dear Miss Hillary, you would surely never do anything so foolish. Poor Francis is the best fellow in the world, but he is just the man to be ferociously jealous if he once got any foolish crotchet into his head. I have lived in the same house with him, remember, and must therefore know him better than you do. As for saying farewell for ever, and all that kind of thing, your eternal parting reads remarkably well in a novel, but it isn’t practicable between civilized people who belong to the same rank of society. Georgina bids Algernon an irrevocable adieu on Tuesday morning, and there is burning of letters and love-locks, and weeping and wailing in Brompton Crescent; and on Wednesday evening the same Algernon takes her down to dinner in Westbourne Terrace. We can bury the past in as deep a grave as you like, and lay the ghost of memory with any exorcism you please, but we can’t pledge ourselves not to meet any day in the week in the houses of our common friends.”

Maude was quite unable to argue with so specious a reasoner as Mr. Lowther. She did her best to defend her position, and urged the necessity of telling Francis Tredethlyn the whole truth. But Harcourt overruled her objections, and in the end obtained from her a promise that she would still remain silent as to the name of her discarded lover.

Absorbed in the conflicting tortures and delights of his bondage, Francis Tredethlyn had thought very little of that missing cousin who had once been so near and dear to him. Now and then, when he had been most entirely under the spell of Maude Hillary’s fascinating presence, the vision of a rosy rustic face, framed in a little dimity bonnet, had arisen suddenly before him, mutely reproachful of his forgetfulness and neglect, and he had resolved that on the very next day some new steps should be taken in the search for Susan Tredethlyn. But then, on that next day, there was generally some flower-show or matinée musicale, some boat-race at Putney or appointment to play croquet at Twickenham; in short, some excuse or other for devoting himself to Maude Hillary; and poor Susan’s rustic image melted away into chaos. But Mr. Tredethlyn was suddenly startled into recollection of his neglected duty by the receipt of a letter from his solicitors, Messrs. Kursdale and Scardon, asking for an early interview, and announcing that they had an important communication to make respecting Miss Susan Tredethlyn, otherwise Miss Susan Turner.

An important communication. The Cornishman felt his face grow hot as he read the letter. Susan was found, perhaps, he thought. He had never mentioned her name to Maude Hillary, and now it might be that she would need all the devotion of a loving protector, perhaps even the strong arm of an avenger, at a time when his every thought was absorbed by his approaching marriage. The young man did not wait for any ceremonious appointment, but hurried off at once to Gray’s Inn, and presented himself before Mr. Kursdale, the senior partner.

In the quiet office Francis Tredethlyn’s hot eagerness tamed down a little before the matter-of-fact manner of the solicitor. There was a sober tranquillity in the aspect of the man and of the place, which seemed to have a singularly soothing effect upon all human emotion. The sober little clock ticking on the grey stone mantel-piece—a skeleton clock, exhibiting its entire anatomy to the public eye, and superior to all meretricious adornment—seemed to be perpetually ticking out in the stillness:

“Let me advise you to take it easily; let me recommend you to take it quietly: whatever the Law can do for you will be done for you here; but it must be done in the Law’s own way, which is very slow, and very complicated, and rather trying to human patience.”

Mr. Kursdale received Francis with calm cordiality, and after a few stately compliments proceeded at once to business.

“You will remember that my opinion, and that of my partner—for I availed myself of his judgment in the matter,—you will, no doubt, recollect, that after considerable study of the manuscript or journal which you confided to me, I came to the conclusion that the writer of that journal had contemplated imposing upon your cousin’s simplicity by a mock marriage, a sham ceremonial, performed before some person falsely representing himself to be a district registrar. This opinion was really forced upon me by the wording of the diary. Look at the diary in what light I would,—and I assure you I weighed the matter most carefully,—I could not see my way to any other conclusion.”

“I understand,” answered Francis. “I knew the man was a scoundrel. I made that out, somehow or other, from his journal. I knew he meant mischief and treachery upon little Susy; but I couldn’t make out what treachery till you opened my eyes to the truth.”

“But suppose that, after all my care, I was too hasty in forming a conclusion. Suppose that we have been mistaken, Mr. Tredethlyn?”

“How do you mean, sir?”

“Some days since, I happened to open a drawer which had been unopened for a long time, and hidden under a lot of other documents I found the diary which you entrusted to me. The sight of the manuscript reminded me of you and your missing cousin; so I suppose it was only natural that I should turn over the pages,—not in the hope of finding any new meaning in them, however, for I had studied them too carefully for that. I turned them over, and while debating the question of a mock marriage, the thought suddenly flashed upon me that it would be at least very easy to ascertain if any genuine ceremonial had taken place in London. Remember, Mr. Tredethlyn, I did not for one moment imagine that there had been a real marriage, and I fully believed that the trouble I was about to take would be wasted trouble. If I had not from the first been firmly convinced that the writer of the diary contemplated a sham marriage, and nothing but a sham marriage, I should, at the outset, have done that which I only did the other day.”

Francis Tredethlyn’s impatience was so very evident, that the lawyer, slow as he generally was, quickened his pace a little as he went on.

“I was determined to institute an investigation of the books of every registrar’s office in the metropolis during the months of January, February, and March, 1849. I entrusted a confidential clerk with this task, and three days afterwards he brought me the result of his investigation. On the 27th February, 1849, Robert Lesley was married to Susan Turner, in the office of the district registrar for Marylebone. The registrar’s name was Joseph Pepper; the names of the witnesses were Mary Banks and Jemima Banks, of No. 7, Woolcote Villas, St. John’s Wood.”

“Thank God!” ejaculated Francis Tredethlyn, reverently. “Thank God, for my little Susan’s sake, that this man was not the scoundrel we took him for.”

“Whether such a marriage, contracted under a false name on your cousin’s part, and it is very possible, also under a false name on the part of the writer of the diary,—whether such a marriage might not be open to dispute, is another question. However, the ceremonial, so far as it went, was genuine, and in any case there would be some little difficulty in setting it aside.”

“It shall not be set aside!” cried Francis, “if I have the power to enforce it. Thank God for this, Mr. Kursdale, and thank you for the thought, late as it came, that led to the discovery of the truth.”

“You must remember, though, my dear Mr. Tredethlyn,” remonstrated the solicitor, who was almost alarmed by the young man’s eagerness, “you must bear in mind that it is just possible there may have been some other Susan Turner and some other Robert Lesley married in the month of February, 1849, and that this registration may refer to them.”

“I am not afraid of that,” Francis answered, decisively. “No, the man meant to be a scoundrel, I dare say; but my little Susy’s artless confidence touched his heart at the very last, perhaps, and he could not be such a villain as to deceive her. Rely upon it, Mr. Kursdale, the marriage was a genuine marriage, and I shall live to see my cousin righted, and to divide my uncle Oliver’s money with her.”

Mr. Kursdale stared at his client in blank amazement.

“You would—do that?” he asked, after a pause.

“Of course I would. Poor little ill-used darling! The money was hers, every penny of it, by right. I—I meant at first to have restored it all to her; but new claims have arisen for me, and I can only give her half the fortune that should have been her own.”

The solicitor stifled a groan.

“And now how am I to find Susy?” asked Francis. “This registration business gives us a new clue, doesn’t it?”

“Unquestionably. We can, at any rate, hope to find the two witnesses, Mary and Jemima Banks, and from them we may discover your cousin’s present whereabouts. I’ll send a clerk to these Banks people to-morrow.”

“Do you know I think I’d rather go and look for them myself, and at once,” said Francis. “I’ve been very neglectful of Susy’s interests lately, and I feel as if I ought to do something to make up for my neglect. I’ll go myself, Mr. Kursdale, and try to find out these people. If I fail, you must help me to find them. If I succeed, I’ll come here to-morrow morning and tell you the result.”

The young man wrote the address of the people in St. John’s Wood in his pocket-book, shook hands with his legal adviser, and hurried away; he was so eager to atone for the neglect of the past by the activity of the present. He hailed a hansom in Holborn, and was on his way to St. John’s Wood five minutes after he had left the lawyer’s office. He sat with his watch open in his hand, while he made abstruse calculations as to the time it would take him to find the females, Mary and Jemima Banks, extort from them all the information they had to give, drive back to his hotel, reorganize his toilet, and then make his way to Twickenham. Mr. Tredethlyn had grown something of a dandy of late; he employed a West-end tailor, belaboured his honest head with big ivory-backed brushes, and bedewed his cambric handkerchief with the odorous invention of that necromancer of the flower-garden, Monsieur Eugene Rimmel. The big Cornishman smiled at his reflection in the glass sometimes, wondering at his own frivolity. But it was for Maude Hillary’s sake that he brushed his hair laboriously every day, and grew critical in the choice of a waistcoat. He had even hired a man to wait upon him, and had a little regiment of boot-trees in his dressing-room.

St. John’s Wood proper is perhaps one of the most delightful suburban retreats in which the man can make a pleasant temple for his lares and penates, who, yearning for the waving of green trees about his abode, is yet obliged to live within an easy cab-drive from the City. Dear little villas, embosomed in foliage; stately mansions, towering proudly out of half an acre of trimly-kept garden, invite the wealthy citizen to retirement and repose. The young lilacs and laburnums of to-day may represent but poorly the bosky verdures of the past, but still the Wood of St. John is a cool and pleasant oasis in the great arid desert of London.

But there are outskirts and dependencies of St. John that are not quite so pleasant,—ragged wastes and shabby little terraces, that hang like tattered edges disgracing a costly garment. These dismal streets and dreary terraces may not belong of right to St. John, but they hang about him, and cling to him, and shelter themselves under the grandeur of his name, nevertheless.

Woolcote Villas, St. John’s Wood, were very pretentious little dwelling-places, fronted with damp stucco, and with a tendency to a mossy greenness of aspect that was eminently dispiriting. Woolcote Villas were of the Elizabethan order of architecture, and went off abruptly into peaks and angles wherever a peak or an angle was possible. How such small houses could require the massive stacks of Elizabethan chimneys which made Woolcote Villas appear top-heavy and incongruous to the eye of the stranger, was an enigma only to be solved by the architect who designed those habitations; and why Woolcote Villas should each be finished off with a stuccoed mustard-pot, popularly known as a campanello tower, which was not Elizabethan, and not practicable for habitation, being open to the four winds of heaven, was another problem perpetually awaiting the same individual’s solution.

The hansom cabman, after driving through all the intricacies of St. John’s Wood on different false scents, came at last upon Woolcote Villas, through the friendly offices of a milkman, and pulled up his horse before the door of No. 7.

Francis alighted and rang a bell,—a bell with a slack wire, which required to be pulled a great many times before any effect was produced. At last, however, the bell rang; and then, after a pause and another peal, the door was opened, and a slipshod servant-maid, with a flapping circle of dirty net hanging from the back of her disorderly head, emerged from No. 7, Woolcote Villas, and presented herself at the little gate before which Francis Tredethlyn was waiting.

The young man asked if Mrs. Banks was at home. Yes, she was at home, and Miss Banks also. Did he please to want the apartments?

Mr. Tredethlyn told her that he had particular business with Mrs. Banks, and that it was that lady whom he wished to see. The girl looked disappointed. There were a good many bills in the Elizabethan windows of Woolcote Villas, and the demands of lodgers were not equal to the supply of furnished apartments.

The sound of a tinkling piano, played very badly, greeted Mr. Tredethlyn as he entered the narrow passage. The dirty maidservant opened the door of the apartment whence the sound came, and Francis found himself in a shabby parlour, tenanted by a young lady, who rose from the piano as he entered, and who was very fine and yet very shabby, and a trifle dirty, like the parlour, and like Woolcote Villas generally. The young lady wore a greasy-looking black silk, relieved by a coquettish little apron of Stuart plaid, and adorned by all manner of ribands and narrow velvets, with a good deal of Mosaic jewelry in the way of hearts and crosses, and anchors and lockets; and her hair was turned back from her forehead, and flowed in graceful ringlets of the corkscrew order upon her stately shoulders. She was altogether a very extensively adorned young lady; and she gave a little start expressive of surprise and timidity, with just a slight admixture of pleasure, as Mr. Tredethlyn presented himself before her. Many single gentlemen had inspected the long-vacant lodgings; but there had been no one among them so good-looking, or so splendid of aspect, as this tall, broad-shouldered Cornishman, revised and corrected by his West-end tailor.

“The apartments, I suppose,” the young lady said, curtseying and simpering. “My ma being busy, perhaps you will allow me to show them to you? This is the parlour. If the use of a sitting-room only is required, with partial board, including dinner on Sundays, the terms would be seventeen and sixpence. Private apartments, without board, fifteen shillings, or with full board—”

The young lady would have proceeded further, but Francis Tredethlyn interrupted her.

“I beg your pardon,” he said, “I don’t require apartments; my business is quite of a different nature. Your name is Banks, I believe?”

The lady inclined her head graciously. Life was very dreary in Woolcote Villas, and the advent of a good-looking stranger could scarcely be otherwise than agreeable, even if he was not a prospective tenant.

“Mary—or Jemima—Banks?” asked Francis.

“I am Miss Jemima Banks,” the young lady replied, with considerable dignity. She began to think the good-looking stranger inclined to be presumptuous; but Francis was too preoccupied to be aware of the intended reproof.

“I am very glad that I have been so fortunate as to find you,” he said, “for I believe you can give me the information I want. You were present at a marriage before the registrar, at an office in Folthorpe Street, Marylebone, on the 27th of February, 1849. Can you tell me where the young lady who was married went after the ceremony? I have some right to ask this question, for Susan Tre—Susan Turner is my first-cousin.”

“Well, I never did!” exclaimed Miss Banks, surprised out of her stateliness. “Poor Susan was your cousin, was she? Why, she came home here a fortnight after her marriage.”

“She came here?”

“Yes, she was lodging here before that; and she and her husband went off to Paris after the ceremony; and there was no breakfast and no nothing; and Mr. Lesley, he was always very high and mighty-like in his ways—he flung down a twenty-pound note upon the desk before the registrar, and when the man said something about change, he threw up his head scornful-like—it was a way he had if anything vexed him,—‘There’s your money,’ he said, ‘and don’t let’s have any humbug;’ and then he dragged his poor little wife’s hand through his arm, just nodded to me and mother, and walked off to the cab without a word, leaving me and mother in the registrar’s office. The registrar was full of praises of the gentleman’s generosity, and said he’d like to tie up a half-a-dozen such couples every week; but mother was regularly cross about that twenty-pound note, and went on about it all the way home, saying that Mr. Lesley had ground her down close enough about the rent for these rooms, and needn’t go showing off his generosity to strange registers.”

“And my cousin Susan went to Paris?”

“Yes, but only for a fortnight, and we was to keep the apartments for her, which we did; and at the end of a fortnight she came back, dressed beautiful, and with all sorts of lovely things in her boxes, and she was looking so well and so happy, and anybody would have thought she was the luckiest woman in the world. But mother, she used to shake her head about it, and say she never knew those secret sort of marriages to come to any good, because when a gentleman begins by not wanting to own his wife, he’s very apt to end by wishing he hadn’t married her. But mother always looks at the black side of things, whether it’s taxes, or whether it’s lodgers, or whatever it is; so I didn’t take much notice. Mrs. Lesley seemed very happy; and Mr. Lesley, for the first week or so, he stopped at home a great deal, and scarcely ever went out, except to take his wife out to dine, or to a theatre, or something of that kind; and they really seemed the happiest couple that ever was; but by-and-by Mr. Lesley went away,—to college, his wife told me; and I shall never forget how she cried, poor thing, the night he left her, and how lonely she looked sitting in this room, where they’d been so happy together, with their little oyster-suppers after the theatre, and everything that heart could wish. She’d got some books that he’d left behind him spread out before her on the table, and she was turning one of them over when I went in to see her.

“‘They’re very hard to understand, Miss Banks,’ she said; ‘but I try to read them, because I want to be clever, and able to talk to Robert when he comes home.’

“After this she was almost always reading, poor little thing, and she’d sit in this room for days and days together; for she didn’t like to go out alone, and mother does drive and worry so, that it wasn’t often I could get out with her. Mr. Lesley was to be away three months, she told me; and I’m sure that poor thing used to count the hours and minutes almost, wishing the time to go: but when the three months was up, there was no Mr. Lesley; he was going fishing, somewhere in Wales, with some grand friends she told me, and wouldn’t be home till the next vacation. I never saw any one so cut up as she was by the disappointment, though she wouldn’t talk about it; only I could see every morning by her face, that she’d been lying awake half the night, crying her poor eyes out.”

“Poor girl, poor girl!” murmured Francis Tredethlyn.

This all-absorbing passion called love was a sorrowful thing, then, he thought, let it come to whom it would—a one-sided frenzy, a perpetual sacrifice, a self-imposed immolation.

“Pray tell me all you can about my cousin,” he said to Miss Banks. “You cannot imagine how anxious I am to hear of her.”

“I’m sure she and me was always the best of friends,” answered the fair Jemima, with a touch of diplomacy; “and if you did think of taking the apartments, me and mother would do all in our power to make you comfortable, if it was only on Mrs. Lesley’s account; for she was one of the sweetest young creatures I ever knew. She stayed with us three weeks before she was married; and I never shall forget her pretty face the day she first came up from the country after the lodgings had been took for her.”

“Mr. Lesley engaged the lodgings, I suppose?”

“No, it was Mr. Lesley’s brother.”

“Oh, he had a brother, then?”

“Yes, his brother was something in the law, I think—a very nice gentleman, and almost the living image of Mr. Lesley himself.”

“Can you give me a description of Mr. Lesley? I never saw him, and I want very much to know what kind of man he is.”

Miss Banks hesitated for some moments.

“It’s so difficult to give an exact description of any one,” she said. “Mr. Lesley was a tall, handsome-looking man, with fair hair and blue eyes. I don’t think I could describe him any nearer than that.”

Francis Tredethlyn sighed. There are so many tall, handsome-looking men with fair hair and blue eyes! and it is chiefly in melodrama that people go about the world conveniently marked with a strawberry or a coronet.

“Answer me one question,” said Francis, eagerly, “before you tell me the rest of my cousin’s history. Do you know where she is now?”

Miss Banks shook her head, and sighed despondently.

“No more than you do, sir,” she exclaimed. “It’s two years and a half ago since I set eyes upon Mrs. Lesley, and I don’t know no more than the dead what’s become of her since.”

“Then she’s as much lost to me to-day as she was yesterday,” said Francis, sadly. “But you can at least tell me all you know of my poor cousin. It may help me to some clue by which to find her.”

Jemima was evidently a good-natured girl. She begged Mr. Tredethlyn to be seated, and placed herself opposite to him.

“I’ll call mother if you like,” she said; “but I think I can tell you more about Mrs. Lesley; mother is such a one to wander, and when one’s anxious to know anything quick, it don’t do to have to deal with a person whose mind’s always harping upon lodgers and their ways. Of course everybody knows lodgers are tiresome, and nobody lets apartments for pleasure, and nobody would pay taxes if they could help it, and poor-rates are not expected to raise people’s spirits; but if facts are disagreeable, that’s no reason you should have them cropping up promiscuous in every style of conversation. Till now it used to be a relief to me to come and sit with Mrs. Lesley of an evening, and hear her troubles, if it was only for the sake of a change.”

“I thank you heartily for having been good to my cousin,” Francis said, earnestly. He was thinking that he would drop into a jeweller’s shop on his way homeward, and choose the handsomest diamond ring in the man’s stock for Miss Jemima Banks.

“I don’t know as I deserve any thanks, sir,” answered the girl. “I couldn’t help taking to Mrs. Lesley, and I couldn’t help feeling for her when I saw her so solitary and so sad. Months and months went by before her husband came back to her; and when he did come her baby was born, and there was the cradle in the corner just by where you’re sitting, and she seemed as if she couldn’t make enough of the child.”

“A child!” murmured Francis. “Mrs. Burfield never told me of the child.”

“But Mr. Lesley, he didn’t seem so wrapped up in the baby as she did,” continued Miss Banks; “and I used to fancy she saw it, and fretted about it. He couldn’t take her out to dinner anywhere this time, nor yet to the theatre, on account of the child. She asked him once to take her for a drive somewhere in the country, and to take the child with them; but he laughed at her, and said, ‘I don’t think there’s a pleasanter sight in creation than an estimable mechanic in his Sunday clothes, with three children in a wicker chaise, and a fourth in arms; but don’t you think we may as well leave that sort of thing to the mechanic, Susy? the poor fellow has so few chances of distinguishing himself.’ That was just the sort of speech Mr. Lesley was always making, half laughing, half scornful; he was always going on in a sneering way about the baby, and her being so fond of it, and devoting herself so much to it; and sometimes one of those nasty speeches of his would set his wife off crying, for her health wasn’t very strong just then, and any little thing would upset her. And then he’d look at her with a hard, cruel look that he’d got sometimes, and throw his book into a corner, and get up and walk out of the house, banging the door to that degree that mother would be unnerved for the rest of the evening. Mr. Lesley took to stopping out very late this time, and used to let himself in with a latch-key, long after me and mother had gone to bed; but I know that Susan used to sit up for him, and I know that he used to be angry with her for doing it; for Woolcote Villas are slight-built, and I’ve heard him talking to her as I lay awake overhead. He was at home for some months this time off and on,—but he’d be away for days together,—and when he was at home he had a tired way like, that made me feel uncomfortable somehow to see him. He was always yawning, and smoking, and sitting over his books, or lying asleep upon the sofa; and I’m sure if I’d been Mrs. Lesley, I should have been very glad when he took himself off. But, Lor’ bless your heart! poor little thing, she fretted about his going away, just as if he’d been the kindest of husbands. He wasn’t going back to college any more; he was going to Germany this time. I know she wanted to go with him, poor, tender-hearted thing; and I heard her say to him, so pitiful like, once, ‘Oh, Robert, what will become of me when you are gone! If you would only take me!’ But he only laughed at her, and cried out, ‘What! abandon the baby?’ So at last the time came for him to go, and his poor wife got paler and paler every day, till I’m sure she looked like a living corpse walking about the house,” said Miss Banks, unconsciously paraphrasing Shelley.

“And this man left her?”

“Lor’, yes, what did he care for her looking white and sorrowful? He was more wrapped up in his new portmanteaus, and travelling-bags, and dressing-cases, and such-like, than in his wife or his child. He went off as gay as could be, though he left Mrs. Lesley almost broken-hearted. And he didn’t leave her too well off either, I know, though she always paid mother to the moment; but all her pretty dresses and bonnets that Mr. Lesley had bought her in Paris had grown shabby, and he hadn’t bought her any new ones. He had so many expenses, she told me; for she was always making excuses for him like, and pretending that he was very good to her. Poor dear thing! after he was gone away the baby was her only comfort; and I’m sure if it hadn’t been for that child she’d have fretted herself away into the grave. Well, sir, the baby was four months old when Mr. Lesley went away to Germany, and he was only to be away three months at the longest, Susan told me: she was very friendly with me, and I always called her Susan. And she used to count the days just as she did before; and she’d say to me often how the time was going, and her husband would soon be back. She used to write him letters,—such long letters, all full of her talk about the baby, and his taking notice, and growing, and such-like; but she didn’t have many letters from him. ‘You see, Jemima, he’s always going from place to place,’ she said; ‘and then my letters lie at the post-offices where I direct them, and half the time he doesn’t receive them at all; so I can’t wonder at not hearing very often from him.’ She used to be so pleased, poor dear, when a letter did come, though I’m sure they were short enough, for I’ve seen her open them; but, ah! when the three months went by, and Mr. Lesley didn’t come back, how dreadfully she did fret!—always secretly, though; for she didn’t seem to like that anybody should know her troubles, for fear they should blame him, the brute! ‘He’s going farther north,’ she told me; ‘Germany’s such a big country, you know, Jemima; and I’m afraid, from what Robert says, he thinks of going beyond Germany, to St. Petersburg, perhaps. You see, it’s necessary for him to travel in order to complete his education.’ I couldn’t help laughing outright at this; for I thought if Mr. Lesley wasn’t educated enough with all his books, and colleges, and crackjaw languages, and such-like, he never would be educated. However, that was no business of mine, and I kept my thoughts to myself. The time went by, and still there was no news of Mr. Lesley coming home. He was always going farther and farther north, Susan told me, when she spoke of him; but she’d got to talk of him very little now, though I know she was thinking of him and fretting about him all day and all night too: for I’ve slept with her sometimes, and heard her moan in her sleep, and speak his name, oh, so pitiful!”

“Poor girl! poor child! she was little more than a child!” murmured Francis Tredethlyn.

“I wish to Heaven she had stopped with you!” exclaimed Francis Tredethlyn. “She had few friends, poor girl, and had no need to leave any one who felt kindly towards her.”

“But she did leave us,” replied Miss Banks; “she paid mother every farthing she owed her, and packed up her few little things. She would make me take some of her pretty ribands and collars that had been bought in Paris, and never worn out, for she didn’t care to dress herself smart when Mr. Lesley was not at home; and then she sent for a cab, and went away. I heard her tell the driver Shoreditch railway station, for I ran out to the cab and kissed her the last thing, and begged her to come and see us whenever she came back to London; and she promised that if she lived, and things went well with her, she would. But from that day to this we’ve never set eyes upon her.”

And this was the end of what Miss Banks had to tell. Francis Tredethlyn’s thoughts wandered back to Mrs. Burfield; it was to her that Susan Tredethlyn had gone in the March of 1851. So far the girl’s history was complete; but the grand question still remained, Where was she now to be found? A deserted wife, a friendless and perhaps penniless mother; what had become of this lonely, inexperienced girl between the March of 1851 and this present autumn of 1853?

“But surely you can give me some clue by which I may trace my cousin?” said Francis, after a pause; “you can give me the address of some friend, some intimate acquaintance of Mr. Lesley’s: he must have had visitors while he lived here.”

Jemima shook her head decisively.

“Not one,” she answered: “except for bringing his brother home to dinner once or twice, when he was first married, no mortal belonging to Mr. Lesley ever darkened mother’s doors. Mother and me used to think it odd; and of course there always are advantages in lodgers keeping much company, which makes up for extra trouble; and the most audacious lockers-up that ever were can’t go and lock-up under visitors’ very noses. But we supposed, as Mr. Lesley’s marriage was a secret one, he didn’t care to bring his friends home.”

“But his brother came?”

“Yes, only when they were first married; he never came after.”

“Did you hear the brother’s address?”

“Well, I have heard that it was in some of those law-places, the Temple, or Gray’s Inn; but I never heard any nearer than that.”

Mr. Tredethlyn gave a despairing sigh; he thought of Mrs. Burfield’s description of his cousin, pale and wan, waving her little hand out of the carriage-window as she left Coltonslough, friendless and poor. Was it not more than likely that she had only gone away to die, and that his search for her would end at last in the discovery of a grave?

But might not the man, the husband who had deserted his innocent and confiding wife, might not he be found and made to pay a heavy penalty for his sins? Vengeance seems but a poor thing at the best, but it is at least something; and Francis Tredethlyn felt a fierce desire for revenge against the coldblooded destroyer of his cousin Susan’s happiness.

He asked Miss Banks many more questions; but she could tell him no more than she had already told him. She had never heard anything of Mr. Lesley’s family or antecedents, directly or indirectly. She knew he went to college, but she never remembered hearing what college. She had fancied sometimes that Mr. Lesley’s name was an assumed one; indeed, she was sure it was; for when his brother had come to dine at Woolcote Villas the first time, he had inquired for Mr. Robert by some other name. Unfortunately, that other name had entirely escaped Miss Jemima’s recollection.

“He caught himself up short,” she said, “as if he was vexed with himself for having let slip that other name, and I never heard it again the whole time Mr. and Mrs. Lesley were with us. I don’t think Susan knew much more about her husband’s affairs than I did, for he always treated her like a child; and even when he was kindest to her, he seemed to have a high and mighty way with her, that would have kept any timid person from asking questions.”

Francis thanked Miss Banks very heartily for the trouble she had taken to enlighten him to the extent of her power, and then bade her good afternoon.

“If you should meet with any one wanting apartments and board, either partial or entire, you’ll perhaps be kind enough to bear mother in mind,” the young lady said, as she escorted him to the door. He murmured some polite assurance that he would neglect no opportunity of promoting Mrs. Banks’s interest, and returned to the hansom, which had been waiting for him during his prolonged interview with the good-natured Jemima.

From Woolcote Villas he drove to the office of the Marylebone registrar, and from that official he obtained an assurance that the marriage between Robert Lesley and Susan Turner, on the 27th of February, 1849, was, so far as his part of the business went, as legally binding as if the ceremony had been performed by the Archbishop of Canterbury within the solemn precincts of Westminster Abbey.

“If they chose to be married in false names, that was their business,” said the registrar, “and they might find themselves bothered about it by-and-by. But, except where there’s property, it isn’t often that a person’s called upon to prove his marriage. I suppose, by your making the inquiry, there is property in this case?”

Francis Tredethlyn shook his head.

“I know no more about that than you do,” he said.

“Well, I shan’t forget that business in a hurry,” said the registrar, who was inclined to be communicative. “In the first place, the man was one of your regular tip-top swells, and that’s a kind of party we don’t often see here; and in the next place, he gave me a twenty-pound note, which was the first windfall of that kind that ever dropped into my pocket, and is more than likely to be the last.”

“Can you tell me what the man was like?”

“Tall and fair, with blue eyes and light hair; your regular swell: not the heavy military swell,—more of a delicate womanish way with him; but such as you may see by the dozen any afternoon in St. James’s Street or Pall Mall.”

This description was no clearer than that given by Jemima Banks. Francis could scarcely walk through a London street without meeting with some man who might be described in the same words. He left the registrar’s office, and went back to his hotel; and, absorbed in the arduous duties of his toilet, thought alternately of lost Susan Tredethlyn, alias Susan Lesley, and of beautiful Maude Hillary, who was so soon to be his wife.