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Title: Two, by Tricks
       A Novel.

Author: Edmund Yates

Release Date: April 1, 2020 [EBook #61728]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

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(Harvard University Library) Routledge 1893

TWO, BY TRICKS.

TWO, BY TRICKS

A Novel

By EDMUND YATES

AUTHOR OF
'BROKEN TO HARNESS,' 'BLACK SHEEP,' 'THE YELLOW FLAG,' ETC.

'Still, for all slips of hers,
One of Eve's family'

LONDON
GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND SONS, LIMITED
BROADWAY, LUDGATE HILL
MANCHESTER AND NEW YORK

Cordially Inscribed
TO
JOSEPH CHARLES PARKINSON.

TWO, BY TRICKS

CHAPTER I.

ON THE GRAND TIER.

It was the week after Ascot, and town was full. Society, which had been amusing itself with the cancans of the season--such as how the Duke of Pimlico, who had been hitherto regarded as the greatest screw in the world, buying his coats from Hyam's, and his hats from the peripatetic Israelites in the streets, dining off a fried sole and half a pint of Hungarian wine, and driving a horse so starved and weak that even Lord ---- would have spared it, had suddenly taken to giving splendid banquets to Royalty, and lighting up the ancestral hall with more wax candles than his grace's father-in-law, the eminent tallow-chandler, had ever sold in a week; how the slim and good-looking Charles Bedford, while playing whist at the Tattenham, had been discovered, not merely with two aces on his lap, but, like the heathen Chinee, with twenty-four packs secreted on various portions of his person; how the noble Master of the Buckhounds had given one of the best boxes at Ascot to pretty Mrs. Delamere, whose husband was away on a scientific expedition inspecting the Fauna and Flora of Central Asia,--society had discussed all these matters, and wanted something new to talk about. It was going to have it.

It was hot everywhere in London that night, but hottest of all at the Opera. Outside, the air was thick and heavy, tainted by vegetable refuse from the neighbouring market, laden with fetid odours from the surrounding coffee-shops, taverns, and crapulous dens; inside, the eye was distracted by the constant fluttering of the fans in the boxes and from the area of the stalls, and the ear tortured by the stifled groan of the obese foreigners who line the outer ring of the pit, sweltering terribly.

There were many foreigners present that night: slim, olive-skinned, black-muzzled Spaniards, with close blue-black hair growing low down on their foreheads, and with their forefingers stained by constant contact with the cigarette; plethoric pudgy Germans, long-bearded and bald-headed, beating time with dumpy hands, ring-bedecked, and not too clean; lively volatile Italians, musical fanatics, who winced at a false note, and shrieked out 'Sh--sh!' in shrillest anger when any of their neighbours attempted conversation. Other foreigners in the boxes--ambassadors these. The Turk, with his crimson fez, in such contrast with his dead-white face; the Russian, who sits with sated eyes and palled ears, looking at indeed, but not regarding, what is going on before him, and thinking of the days when Taglioni danced and Malibran sang; the Frenchman, smiling and chattering with the full knowledge that his own recall is imminent, and that the members of the government which he served might be at any moment displaced, and would be only too thankful if they escaped massacre. A subscription night this, with Patti in the Barbiere, with royal highnesses and a serene transparency on a visit for a few weeks, in the royal box; with Philippa Marchioness of Mont-Serrat, with her luxuriant ringlets, looking like a vignette from the Book of Beauty of the year '42, on the grand tier; and with Tom Lydyeard in the fifth row of the stalls, yawning as though his head were coming off.

This is Tom Lydyeard, the tall well-bred-looking man with the red beard turning silver at the roots, and the fair hair in which the parting is rather broader than it used to be. Not so young or so active as on that cheerless April morning when he marched across Waterloo-bridge with his regiment on their way to join the troops in the Crimea; but a handsome fellow yet, with a well-preserved figure and a keen eye. Tom has preserved his figure better than his temper, which, on occasions, is apt to be remarkably short; 'Hansom and Growler' is the nickname which this combination of good looks and bad temper has obtained for poor Tom from some of the junior members of the Rag, where he grumbles about the wine and the cooking, snaps at the waiters, and requires all the cajolery of St. Kevin, pleasantest of Irish army-doctors, to keep him within bounds.

Tom is evidently not best pleased at the present moment. The man in the stall next to his is a very stout Italian, with lustreless black gloves on his hands and a square diamond brooch in the middle of his plaited shirt-front, who is mopping himself with a purple-silk handkerchief, and with whom Tom Lydyeard is horribly disgusted.

'Can't think what they let such brutes into the place for!' he says to himself, looking over rather than at his dripping neighbour. 'Gad, what a comfort he would have been in the Row this morning when the dust was blowing! I can't imagine what has come to this place; one scarcely ever sees a soul one knows--a lot of foreigners and City people; not like the old stamp of men whom one could always rely upon finding in the stalls, or in the omnibus-box at the old house when the curtain for the ballet went up. They were a better style, those fellows; what they call the "old school,"--vieille école, bonne école,--and that sort of thing. Men go now to that reeking Alhambra, and think they enjoy it. What a queer thing it is to think that so few of the old set are left! There is one of them though, by Jove!' he muttered with a start. 'I haven't seen him for twenty years, but I'd lay my life that's Uffington.'

The man by whom he was attracted looked up at the same instant, and their eyes met. The stranger's cheeks flushed, and for a moment he made as if he would turn away; but when he saw that Tom Lydyeard had left his stall he stopped, and the next moment they were shaking hands with more effusion than is usually shown in present society.

He was a man of middle height, with small regular features, keen black eyes, thick black hair and moustache, small hands and feet, and a youthful, almost a boyish, figure. At a distance you might have guessed him five-and-twenty; and it was only when you looked closely at him that you noticed the lines round the eyes and deep indented furrows stretching from the nostrils to the corner of the mouth, which, like the ground-swell on the shore, told of the storms that had been. In the year '51 Nugent Uffington was looked upon as one of the likeliest young fellows in town, though he had nothing in the world beyond his handsome face, some two hundred a year, and his commission in the Grenadiers. Every one, however, was kind to the cheery good-looking lad; men lent him money and horses, women smiled upon him, and manoeuvring mothers, when they had no more daughters of their own to provide for, enlisted themselves in Nugent's service, and actually tried to procure for him some of the season's prizes. It was said at one time that he might have married Miss Amelia M'Craw, the prettier of the twin Scotch heiresses, who in their marriage gave up to the peerage what was meant for themselves. Good-natured Mrs. Waddledot Hepburn gave three dances (at the command of the Marchioness of Melton) in order that the young people might be thrown together; and old Waddledot himself used to lean across the railings by Apsley House regarding them caracoling in the distant Row with a 'Bless-you,-my-children!' kind of aspect. But, as fate would have it, in the month of June that year Mr. Mudge, whose father and grandfather had made an enormous fortune by converting old rags into shoddy-cloth in the village of Batley, Yorkshire, came to town to see the Great Exhibition, bringing with him his wife and letters of introduction to the members for the county and several leading spirits among the commercial magnates who were just beginning to colonise the now plutocratic region of Tyburnia. The people who asked them out to dinner did not think much of Mr. Mudge, who was a fat, stupid, good-looking man of a common type, but they (the male portion at least) found Mrs. Mudge very charming. She was a Canadian blonde, very pretty and piquante, whom Alfred Mudge had met when on a business excursion to Montreal, had a captivating way of saying saucy things with a tinge of French accent, and was sometimes full of sentiment, at others full of raillery, but always coquettish in the highest degree.

After Nugent Uffington had seen Julie Mudge once or twice, he left off thinking about Miss M'Craw and her hundred thousand pounds, though, indeed, that heavily-ingoted lady had never occupied many of his thoughts; after he had met Julie half a dozen times, he thought of no one else. Julie was very much taken by the appearance and manners of Captain Uffington, who belonged to quite a different world from any which she had known. She did not care for Alfred Mudge; but she had no intention of doing him any harm; that was all Nugent Uffington could get out of her after assailing her with more numerous and more delicate temptations than ever beset St. Antony. This continued for three weeks, and Nugent, who had never given so much attention to any matter before, and who was becoming exhausted, thought of retiring from the pursuit, when one night after Alfred had started off to dine with the Bellowsmenders' Company in the City, and Julie had announced to him her intention of going to bed at eight o'clock as some compensation for unwonted dissipation, a note came from Lady Rosemount saying that she had stalls at the French plays, where M. Levassor was then giving his delightful entertainment, and nothing would so please her as that her dear Mrs. Mudge should keep her company. Julie pondered for an instant. She knew that Lady Rosemount was a great friend of Nugent Uffington's, and would probably arrange for his attendance; but she wanted to see M. Levassor, and as Alfred had deserted her for the Bellowsmenders, she could see no reason why she could not accept such innocent amusement. Lady Rosemount called for her at half-past eight. They found Nugent Uffington on escort duty at the theatre-door, and as they walked up the stairs they were stopped by an altercation between the checktaker and a lady and gentleman immediately preceding them, as to the number of a certain box. The lady was gorgeously dressed in a cerise-coloured satin and a voluminous crinoline, as was the fashion in those days, very much decollétée, with diamonds on her neck and in her ears, and a liberal allowance of rouge and bismuth on her cheeks and chin. The gentleman who was with her seemed very angry at not being permitted immediate access to the theatre; but reference had to be made to another official, and in the mean time he stepped by to let the Rosemount party pass; in doing so he presented under the bright flare of the gaslight his full face, the full face of Mr. Alfred Mudge, who, instead of carousing with carnival Bellowsmenders, was acting as escort to the notorious Miss Leggat of the Theatre Royal, Hatton-garden.

The next day Mrs. Mudge, accompanied by her maid and Captain Uffington, crossed the Channel and proceeded by long stages to Switzerland. At the Hôtel Beau Rivage at Ouchy they remained during the summer and autumn months, and only left it to settle down into a pretty quaint old châlet in the neighbourhood of Lausanne. There was the usual three-days' scandal in town, where some laughed, some shrugged their shoulders, and all had a secret delight that Nugent Uffington, of whom, as a popular man, they had naturally been envious, had come to grief. Mr. Alfred Mudge brought an action in the Divorce Court, which he would probably have gained but for the intervention of the Queen's Proctor, who had heard of the petitioner's intimacy with Miss Leggat, an intimacy which had cost Mr. Mudge two or three thousand pounds, which the lady had duly divided with her complacent husband, Mr. Tapps, the leader of the orchestra.

For ten years Julie and Nugent lived in the little Swiss châlet, a guilty life of course, but a thoroughly happy one. They were rich enough to satisfy all their wants, for, in addition to his small income and the price of his commission, she had five hundred a year, and they were devoted to each other. No boy and girl in their first delicious dream, which is never to be renewed, though its every detail haunts our latest memories; no sharers of that bliss beyond all which the minstrel has told; no two who were linked in one heavenly tie--were more all in all to each other than this pair of sinners. The ex-Guardsman was never dull; occasionally he had cheery letters from friends in England telling him of what was going on there; but he knew that on the day of his flight with Julie he had renounced all his old life, and his chief amusement was in shooting and in fishing, of which at most seasons of the year there was abundance in the neighbourhood.

Well-regulated people will be pleased to hear that Nemesis, which is always supposed to await such evil-doers, came down upon them at last. One autumn night, as they were crossing the lake after dining at the Beau Rivage with an American gentleman and his family, a sudden storm swept down and overset their little boat. Nugent came to the surface at once, and, being a splendid swimmer, struck out, swimming round and round in search of Julie. The night was very dark, and it is probable, encumbered by the weight of her clothing, she never rose; it is certain that Nugent never saw her again, and that his own life was only saved by his being dragged on to the bottom of the boat, when half-dead with exhaustion, by the servant, who had already found a refuge there.

When Nugent Uffington recovered from the illness consequent upon the cold and exhaustion, he broke up the little establishment at the châlet and disappeared, no one knew where. Letters were occasionally read from men who thought they had seen him, but they were from such diverse latitudes that no reliance could be placed upon them; and when his nephew Sir Mark Uffington died, the lawyers did not know where to write to Nugent to tell him of his succession. That was the key-note struck by Tom Lydyeard in their conversation.

'Heard you were lost, my dear boy, and scarcely a possible chance of ever seeing you again; private detectives, and all that kind of thing, hunting for you all over the globe--been to Australia after you, some one said, and didn't find you there.'

'No,' said Uffington, with a slight smile. 'I had been in Australia, but when the agent went out there to search for me I was living in a little place in Brittany, where there was wonderful sport, but where I never saw an English newspaper, not even Galignani; and even if I had seen the announcement of poor young Mark's death, I doubt whether I should have felt any impulse to hurry over here and claim his place.'

'Do you act upon impulse?' asked Tom Lydyeard.

'Always,' said Langton quickly. 'Three weeks ago the impulse seized me, and I came over here; and,' he added, shrugging his shoulders drearily, 'it looks as if in a very short time it would seize me again, and send me off to the uttermost ends of the earth.'

'You don't know many people here?' said Tom Lydyeard, observing his friend's eyes wandering round the house.

'Beyond yourself not a soul,' said Uffington; 'tell me who they are.'

'Gad,' said Tom Lydyeard, 'you have given me a pretty difficult task, though I have scarcely missed a London season since--since you went away. I haven't much acquaintance with the Jews, Turks, and infidels of whom this audience seems to be composed.'

'There seems to be an undue proportion of the tribes scattered about the house,' said Uffington, after another look round, 'and, as you say, of foreigners generally. Who are these people, and how do they get here?'

'Who are they?--diamond merchants, owners of newspapers, riggers of stock, promoters and projectors, which is modern English for swindlers and thieves. How do they get here?--through the money they have made. Look round the grand tier, and you will scarcely see half a dozen English faces, and certainly not two with any high-bred look about them. Don't you remember how different it was in the old time under Lumley's management, when you used to wait regularly every night to see Carlotta and Perrot dance the Truandaise?'

'Don't mention those times!' muttered Uffington, shrinking as though he had been struck. Then, as though to change the conversation, he said: 'There is a pretty woman--very pretty and distinguée-looking too--in the fourth box from the stage; who is she?'

'That,' said Tom Lydyeard, after looking through his glass, 'is Lady Forestfield; she is a daughter of Lord Stortford's, and married Forestfield about two years ago.'

'I recollect Lady Stortford,' said Uffington; 'she was our contemporary, a very sweet woman. Is she alive?'

'No; she died last year,' said Tom Lydyeard. Then added under his breath, 'Thank God!'

Uffington heard the words and looked sharply round, but Tom Lydyeard's eyes were hidden by his glass, and his uplifted hands covered that tell-tale of any emotion--the mouth.

Nugent Uffington then made a long inspection of the box, and at its conclusion said, I can now recognise many traces of her mother in Lady Forestfield. She is the same [Greek: Boôpis `'Eze], and seems to have the same splendid hair. What is her husband like?'

'Forestfield is a cool cynical sensualist, the type of a race very common in the present day, who is always very quiet and apparently unimpassioned, and yet I believe that a wickeder little wretch does not walk.'

'He doesn't treat his wife well, then?'

'My dear fellow, no one treats his wife well nowadays; it isn't the fashion. I suppose, if anything, Forestfield may be looked upon as rather an exemplary person, as he doesn't care to beat his wife or afficher his infidelities as many of these youths do; but he is notoriously unfaithful for all that, and I have sometimes seen my lady looking very sad indeed.'

'She cares for him, then?'

'She--well, she did; most people would say she does--but I have my own ideas on that point.'

'Poor child!' said Uffington, with a sigh; then added quickly, 'Who is that just come into the box?'

Tom Lydyeard looked up, and saw a gentlemanly-looking young man, with fair curling hair, fresh complexion, blue eyes, and white teeth, talking to Lady Forestfield's companion, the Duchess of Melrose.

After his inspection, Lydyeard put down his glass, and commencing with 'Gad,' given with a peculiarly rich smack, continued, 'that's Gustave de Tournefort, a young Frenchman of good birth, who has been over here, off and on, for the last two years; he sings well, and that sort of thing, and, what is odd for a Frenchman, rides very straight to hounds. He had rooms at Leamington last winter near Forestfield's place, and they say his going was very good indeed.'

'Poor child!' repeated Uffington, with his glasses still upon Lady Forestfield.

'Yes, quite; isn't he?' said Tom Lydyeard, who only caught the last word. 'They call him "l'enfant terrible," and say, for all that mild and innocent look of his, that he is the very mischief when he takes a fancy. See! this is Forestfield coming this way.'

As he spoke there advanced towards them a small slight man, with delicate effeminate features, sunken eyes, and a hard cruel mouth. He nodded to Lydyeard and stared rather insolently at Uffington as he passed.

'I don't like that man's looks,' said Uffington. 'I have studied physiognomy a good deal in the course of my wanderings, and I scarcely ever saw a more secretive, untrustworthy face. I should think that poor girl yonder must sooner or later have a bad time with such a man.'

* * * * * *

Nugent Uffington would not have said differently had he seen and heard what was passing in the box on the grand tier. M. de Tournefort chatted very pleasantly with the Duchess of Melrose, who had been accustomed to admiration for thirty years, and who still enjoyed it; but when another gentleman came into the box, the Frenchman ceded the chair by her grace's side, and, taking advantage of an opportunity when the duchess and the new-comer were in animated conversation about the diamonds of the ambassadress opposite, managed to whisper in Lady Forestfield's ear,

'We have been watched, and Forestfield knows all!'

A bright flush mantled over her neck and mounted to the roots of her hair; then faded away, leaving her whiter than before. The hand holding her glass trembled, and her lips twitched convulsively; but after a minute she managed to regain her self-control, and without looking at him, she said, in a voice which he alone could hear, the one word, 'Go!'

CHAPTER II.

LADY FORESTFIELD AT HOME.

'We have been watched, and Forestfield knows all!' Those words seemed to have crept into Lady Forestfield's heart, deadening its action and stupefying her brain. She sat perfectly motionless until just before the curtain fell, then rose, accompanied by the duchess and attended by the two gentlemen who had subsequently come into the box, and sought her carriage. While waiting in the crush-room, in reply to a question put, she scarcely knew by whom, she pleaded a severe headache, and excused herself from seeing any more of her friends that night. The after-theatre suppers at Lady Forestfield's house in Seamore-place were renowned, and the Duchess of Melrose, who had come to that sensible time of life when eating is regarded as something more than the mere swallowing of food, and both the attendant sprites who wanted to fill up a couple of hours before going to Pratt's, were disappointed; but Lady Forestfield's look was so dazed and colourless and helpless, that it was evident that her plea was no pretence, and the duchess took advantage of an opportunity to ask her in a whisper if anything had happened.

'Nothing,' she replied in a flat tuneless tone, 'nothing.'

'I thought, my dear, from your looks, that a hawk might have dropped down into the dovecot; but you are very young and very sensitive, my poor child; in a few years you will learn to treat any little temporary storms with proper unconcern.' And then the carriages were signalled, and the ladies took their departure.

On reaching home, Lady Forestfield, with a passing glance into the dining-room, where the table was set out for supper, went straight to her room, and dismissing her maid as soon as possible, threw herself in her peignoir into a low chair near the window overlooking the Park, and gave herself up to thought.

'Forestfield knows all!' Those words were her social death-knell, ringing out farewell to friends, to position, to hope, almost to life; for what would life be to her without the surroundings in which she had revelled, and which were about to be ruthlessly cut away? Was there the remotest chance of escape? Could there be any possible motive by which her husband, cognisant of her crime, would consent to condone it? Of his own irregularities since their marriage, common and manifold as they were, she had long since been made aware, and had suffered them in silence. Might not he, in simplest justice to her, do likewise? He knew all; but none else, save the creatures in his employ, whose silence was as easily purchased as their espionage. He had been with her but five minutes before De Tournefort had told her the fatal news, and his manner, as ordinarily, was cold and cynically polite. She had seen him very different at times when she had unwittingly given him trivial cause for offence, when he had cursed and sworn, and once seized her arm and wrenched it round so violently that for weeks she had borne the blue impress of his fingers. Surely De Tournefort must have been misinformed. Surely, if Richard knew his disgrace, he would have avoided her in public; and when they met in private would have wreaked his wrath upon her, as he had done for far more venial matters.

From thinking of her husband she turned to thinking of herself, wondering how and why she had fallen; patiently, but in a vague dreamy kind of manner, analysing her feelings towards the man who had wrought her ruin, and for whose gratification she had imperilled her social status and her soul. For his gratification, not for hers! In her self-examination she did not find one grain of love for Gustave de Tournefort; she had not even had a caprice, a passion for him, and had only listened to his oft-urged suit when completely worn out with solitude, loneliness, and neglect. Love, passion--she had known them but once, in the early days of her marriage, when she thought that there had never lived on this earth a man comparable to her husband; none so handsome, none with such an easy bearing, such biting wit, such delicious insolence. She had sat down and worshipped him with all her soul and strength, heedless of her father's good-humoured raillery, heedless of her mother's tearful entreaties and solemn warnings; she had set up her idol and bowed down before it, only to find after a little time that it was a very ordinary kind of fetish indeed.

Those feelings were played out now, but at one time they had been all-powerful, and the mere recollection of them had a softening and humanising effect upon the wretched girl as she sat, her elbows resting on her knees, the lower part of her face buried in her hands, looking out across the road dotted with lamps and echoing the rattle of an occasional carriage, to the park beyond, where the big trees bent whisperingly to each other, and beckoned solemnly like dim gigantic spectres.

Suddenly a terror seized her. What Gustave had said must be true; he would never have dared to trifle with her on such a subject. They had been watched, and her husband knew all! Her husband would come home--he was on his way thither at that moment perhaps--and in his wild ungovernable fury he might murder her. Even if her life were spared it would be rendered desolate; she would be driven forth from her home, and left to fight her way in the world alone, without friends or resources.

Then there arose suddenly in her mind a scene which she had witnessed during the previous autumn, when she and Lord Forestfield were travelling in Germany. They were travelling from Ischl to Salzburg, and at the driver's request halted midway that he might bait his horses. A kermesse was being held in the little village, and amongst the numerous carts gathered together before the inn-door was a travelling-carriage, from which the horses had been removed. It was, however, still occupied, and nestled into one corner under the hood May Forestfield had made out the dim outline of a female form. The courier attached to this carriage, of course making friends and drinking with the Forestfields' courier, told him that the lady whom he was taking to Ischl was an Englishwoman, and very ill, so ill that the baths and waters of Ischl had been prescribed for her as a last resource. Lady Forestfield, hearing this from her maid, inquired the name of the lady, which in the courier's mouth was unintelligible; but May, learning that the invalid was alone, and all but unattended, acting under the kindly impulsive wish to be of some use, she scarcely knew how, made her way to the side of the carriage, and in her sweet tone spoke a few words of sympathy. The invalid, who had been lying huddled in the corner, turned quickly at the sound of the voice; and worn and ghastly as was her face, Lady Forestfield recognised her in an instant as Fanny Erle, an intimate acquaintance, who two years before had fled from her husband's roof, and had since been divorced. Some one else had recognised her at the same moment--Lord Forestfield, who, following his wife, had a look over her shoulder and instantly divined what had taken place. Mrs. Erle, on whose pale cheeks two bright red spots suddenly appeared, would have spoken; but Lord Forestfield, seizing his wife by the shoulder, hurried her away, and peremptorily insisted on her making no farther attempt to see the wretched woman again, speaking of her crime with the bitterest reprobation, and of the punishment which had fallen upon her with genuine contemptuous approbation.

Before Lady Forestfield's eyes, which were apparently fixed on the dim and distant park, rose this scene in all its minutest details: she heard the noisy laughter of the peasants; the jingle of the horses' bells and the rattle of their rope harness; the shouts and cries of the vendors in the kermesse; she saw the little square in which the inn stood, with the quaint gabled houses opposite, the loiterers round the carriage, the two couriers drinking beer on the steps of the inn; and above all, she saw the miserable look which Fanny Erle gave when Lord Forestfield hurried her away, and heard the moan of despair with which the wretched woman fell back into the corner of the carriage.

Was she to be like that, a leprous object, a pariah, from the contemplation of which people would turn in disgust? God forbid! And yet the sin of Fanny Erle was hers; why should she not incur the penalty?

Wearied and heart-sore, she at last made her way to bed, and fell into a heavy slumber, from which she did not wake till noon. Her first care was to inquire after her husband's movements. Her maid learned from the valet that his lordship had gone out early in a cab which had been fetched for him; the valet could not recollect the directions given to the driver, but had an idea it was to somewhere in the City; his lordship had said nothing as to when he should be back.

There was a respite, then. No man, May Forestfield thought, having sinister intentions would act in such a manner; he would either have blazed out at her in a personal interview, when murder might have been done, or he would have written her a cutting letter, stating the discovery he had made, and his consequent intention of getting rid of her. It was plain to Lady Forestfield that Gustave had been misinformed, and that her husband knew nothing. Though a constant attendant at afternoon service at All Saints', and quite familiar with as much of the liturgy as is then and there intoned, May Forestfield was not in the habit of putting much heart into her supplications; but in the belief that a great and deserved punishment had been averted from her, she knelt down and implored the Divine forgiveness for her past crime, and pledged herself to sin no more.

As usual there was a little luncheon party in Seamore-place, to which came Mrs. Ingram and Lady Northaw--of course, unaccompanied by their husbands--and Captain Seaver, of the Blues, and Sir Wolfrey Delapryme. Kate Ingram was a tiny blonde, with pretty fair hair and blue eyes, a creamy complexion, and the wee-est imaginable hands and feet. She was very spirituelle, and better educated than most of her class, spoke French and German to perfection, and acted and sang admirably. Théo herself, whom she much resembled, could not have given more unmistakable point and colour to a chansonette grivoise than did Mrs. Ingram, who was the daughter of a Church dignitary, and the wife of a director of the Bank of England. Her father, long since in his grave, would have been very much astonished at a display of the accomplishments by which his daughter had made herself attractive in the highest quarters; but her husband, like Gallio, 'cared for none of these things.' Lady Northaw was a brunette, with regular features, sleepy black eyes, and blue-black hair; a tall imperial Juno-like woman, with full bust and rounded arms, and a grand way of carrying herself. It is scarcely necessary to say that every rickety little knock-kneed subaltern in the Guards worshipped her. Both ladies were intimate friends of May Forestfield, both were very liberal in all their notions, and both spoke the argot of the day with perfect fluency.

There were three vacant places at the round table where M. de Tournefort usually found himself at two o'clock; this day, however, he was an absentee; but one of the places soon after the meal commenced was occupied by Lord Forestfield, who came in with a smiling salutation, which included the company, and an apology for being late, having been detained on business.

'Business?' growled Sir Wolfrey Delapryme, deep in investigating the recesses of a pie; 'nice man of business you are! What was it--horse-chaunting or rigging the market that you have been up to?'

'Don't speak with your mouth full, Wolfrey, and never talk of things you don't understand,' said Lord Forestfield. 'I assure you I have been on important business to the City.'

'I wish I had a pal who would put me up to something good in the City,' murmured Mrs. Ingram plaintively. 'I don't see the good of having a Bank director for one's husband if he can't help himself to coin.'

'Plain enough he cannot do that,' said Captain Seaver, 'or he would get himself a new hat; never saw such a confounded bad hat as Ingram wears in all my life.'

'He has to have it made large,' growled Sir Wolfrey to Lady Northaw; 'particularly over the forehead.'

'Hush!' said her ladyship with a deprecatory smile; then added aloud: 'Are any of you going to Lady Paribole's? I understand all the smart people in London are to be there.'

'I lay odds that one who thinks herself very smart won't show up,' said Mrs. Ingram; 'because I happen to know that a "distinguished person," as the newspapers say, sent for the list and ran his pen through her name.'

'Whom do you mean?' asked Lady Forestfield.

'Why, that horrible old Mrs. Van Groot, who, because she is hideous and common-looking, is always going about saying atrocious things of everybody nice.'

'I don't care much about Mrs. Van Groot myself,' said Sir Wolfrey; 'but it's enough to make a woman rear and plunge a bit when she has to run in double harness with such an unmitigated cad as Van Groot. The little Dutch pug is always getting up in the House, whelping and snarling at his betters.'

'I don't think it makes much matter what sort of a husband a woman may happen to have,' said Lord Forestfield, speaking deliberately, and looking round with his cold cynical smile. 'If she is naturally wicked, the vice is sure to show itself, no matter what treatment she may receive.'

May Forestfield struggled hard but ineffectually to repress her rising colour, and the other ladies bit their lips in silence. Ugly topics such as crime (when called up for punishment), duty, and death were habitually testily ignored by them.

Captain Seaver struck in to the rescue. 'I suppose you will be going away about the beginning of next month, Lady Forestfield?' he said. 'You generally stay at your place in Sussex--I forget its name--first, don't you?'

'You mean Woodburn?' said May, whose voice exhibited traces of the emotion under which she was suffering.

'Ay, Woodburn,' said the Captain; 'handy for Goodwood, isn't it, Dick?'

'Very handy, and a pleasant place,' said Lord Forestfield quietly. 'I am going down there this afternoon.'

'To tell the people to get it all in readiness,' said Mrs. Ingram. 'What a delightful man to take such trouble off one's hands!'

'I hope you will manage to take Snubs with you, Lady Forestfield,' said Sir Wolfrey. 'He has always been accustomed to go out of town, and he would feel it horribly if he were left behind.'

'And the cat, May, your lovely cat,' said Lady Northaw.

'I am afraid she would not stay,' said May.

'Probably not,' said Lord Forestfield; 'cats are like statesmen--they prefer places to persons. Now I must go to catch my train;' and with a smile and a general bow he left the room.

There was little reticence in that company, and so, as soon as the door was closed, Captain Seaver said, 'I wonder what Dick has got in hand now! I always notice that peculiar expression on his face just before he is going to land some great coup. He looked just like that when he won at Stockbridge last year.'

'He is uncommonly wide awake,' said Sir Wolfrey; 'though what can he be going down to Woodburn for just now? Have you any notion, Lady Forestfield?'

'Not the faintest,' said May, whose courage by this time had pretty well returned. 'One can never account for Dick or his ways. He has the habit of running off when one least expects it, and never gives one a notion of when he will return.'

'That must be very inconvenient,' said Mrs. Ingram.

'I was hearing his praises sung the other night,' said Lady Northaw. 'Mrs. Rouge-croix says there is no man in the world so well able to put one up to a wrinkle or two.'

'That is not necessary in her case,' growled Sir Wolfrey, 'for she has quite enough of her own.'

'Well,' said Mrs. Ingram, rising, 'I cannot wait, even to hear the glorification of Lord Forestfield, as I have some calls to make. Recollect, May; you come to my box at the French plays, and we can afterwards go on to Lady Paribole's.'

When her guests were gone, Lady Forestfield went to her boudoir, and seated herself at her little writing-table. Not that she had any intention of writing; her hand toyed with the pen, and wandered idly among the nicknacks with which the table was covered, as she thought of the occurrences of the morning, and tried to find a clue to the future in anything her husband had said or done. There had been nothing extraordinary, she thought; he had been quiet and reticent in his usual cool cynical way; and though she had winced at his speech about wifely duties and wifely sins, it was probably merely a conscience smart, as the observation was not pointedly addressed to her. Not another word had she heard from Gustave, who, had he found his suspicions correct, would undoubtedly have found some means of giving her farther warning. He must have been deceived; a man of Lord Forestfield's temper, with such knowledge rankling in his breast, could not have come quietly home, taken his luncheon with her in the presence of friends, and gone off to the country, as was his frequent custom, without making any sign. The danger was over, she thought; but the vow of resistance to temptation which she had made that morning should be steadfastly kept.

The door opened, and a servant presented her with a card. It bore the words, 'Mr. Bristow, 96 Bedford-row.' She knew the name to be that of the family solicitor, a gentleman enjoying an exceptionally confidential position, and who was in the habit of dining with them once or twice in the season; and she gave orders for his admission.

Mr. Bristow, a tall, white-haired, white-whiskered man, scrupulously clean and very neatly attired, appeared in the doorway, and made a grave bow.

'How do you do, Mr. Bristow?' said Lady Forestfield, rising from her chair. 'It is seldom you give us the pleasure of a visit, but I am very glad to see you.'

'I am come, Lady Forestfield,' said Mr. Bristow, 'on peculiarly painful business.'

'Painful business!' she echoed, with a sudden sinking at her heart.

'Very painful business,' he repeated. 'I have,' he added, drawing a paper from his pocket, 'to serve this paper upon you.'

'What is it?' she added, shrinking back.

'It is a citation from the Divorce Court,' said Mr. Bristow, 'which I serve upon you on behalf of Lord Forestfield. Be good enough to sit down and read it.'

She took the paper tremblingly, and glancing at it saw her name. Then she let it drop to the ground. 'What does it mean?'

'It means,' said Mr. Bristow, 'that Lord Forestfield is about to divorce your ladyship on the ground of adultery with Monsieur Gustave de Tournefort.'

'Good God!' cried May, 'why does Lord Forestfield not come to me?'

'Your ladyship will never see him again,' said Mr. Bristow quietly.

'Never see him again!' she cried. 'Why, he was here an hour ago! He has only gone down to Woodburn, and he will be back tomorrow.'

'Lord Forestfield has not left town,' said Mr. Bristow; 'nor has he any intention of leaving it at present.'

'But I must see him!' cried May.

'It is perfectly impossible,' said Mr. Bristow. 'I have now discharged my very painful duty, and all that is left for me is to express a hope on Lord Forestfield's part that your ladyship will employ a respectable solicitor.' Then turning to the door he said, 'You can come in;' and four persons entered, his own clerks and her servants, which or what May never clearly knew. 'You are witnesses that I have served this citation from the Divorce Court upon Lady Forestfield.' Then with a grave bow he left the room, and in the last glimpse he had of May Forestfield, she was standing like a statue, dumb, motionless, with the paper on the ground at her feet.

CHAPTER III.

WAITING.

Podbury-street, a small and narrow street of unimportant houses, in the south-western postal district of London, has seen various mutations of fortune. Twenty years ago, it was Podbury-street, Pimlico, and the unimportant houses were for the most part occupied by persons who contented themselves with the basement floor, and let the rest of the rooms in lodgings. The tenants of these lodgings were generally young men who were engaged in qualifying themselves for the medical profession by 'walking' the near-lying St. George's Hospital; young men of convivial temperament, who attended lectures with regular irregularity, and never thought of giving up to study or sleep the hours which they apparently imagined should be devoted to comic singing. It was the perpetual presence of these gentlemen, no doubt, which caused the private residences of Podbury-street to be dotted here and there with public-houses and tobacconists' shops. A procession of slatternly maids-of-all-work, with the door-key in one hand, and a jug either dependent from the finger or firmly grasped by the other hand, was perpetually filing through Podbury-street; and the drivers of the Royal Blue omnibuses, which at that time used it as a thoroughfare, were, from the altitude of the box, enabled to peer into the drawing-room floors, or to gaze down into the parlours, in both of which localities the same spectacle of a table covered with pewter vessels, and flanked by half-a-dozen gentlemen in their shirt-sleeves, who, using it as a leg-rest, lay back in their armchairs with clay pipes in their mouths, invariably presented itself.

The lapse of time, and the enterprise of the late Mr. Cubitt, effected a wondrous change in the condition of Podbury-street. When its denizens saw themselves gradually surrounded by squares, terraces, and crescents of enormous mansions, which were each year springing up, and converting into a suburb of palaces what had recently been a dismal swamp, they unerringly perceived that the opportunity had arrived for changing the scale of their prices and the style of their lodgings. The medical students packed up their Lares and Penates, their preparations and tobacco-jars, and moved off with them to more distant quarters; the omnibuses went round another way; the beer-shops and tobacconists disappeared as the leases fell in; finally, the name of Pimlico became unsavoury in the nostrils of the neighbourhood, and the lodging-house letters had 'Podbury-street, Eaton-square,' imprinted on their cards; for they let lodgings still, but to a very different class of tenants. Gentlemen in the government offices, who invariably put on evening-dress even if they only dined at their club, who stuck the looking-glass full of the cards of invitation which they received from great people, and who smoked dainty Russian cigarettes, but would have fainted at the notion of anything so low as a pipe; managing mammas, who brought their marriageable daughters to London during the season; rich valetudinarians, who came up to town to consult famous physicians,--such were the persons of gentility who now found a temporary abode in Podbury-street. No slatternly maids-of-all-work were to be seen now; nearly every house boasted a page, a youth whose waiting at table would have been more pleasant had he been able to rid himself of the scent of the blacking which hung around him from his early domestic duties; and during the season, when some of the managing mammas gave little dinners or small musical evenings in return for the hospitality which they had experienced, and in the hope of making a special coup for their marriageable daughters, the little passage, called by courtesy the 'hall,' would be so filled up by two footmen, that the other attendant giants in plush would have to cool their calves in the open air.

In a drawing-room floor in Podbury-street, Lady Forestfield had taken up her abode, and was living in seclusion, awaiting the result of her husband's application to the Divorce Court. After the scene with Mr. Bristow, and the degradation which she had suffered before her own servants, she felt it impossible to stay on in Seamore-place, and accordingly the next day, as soon as she was able to contemplate the immediate future with some degree of calmness, and to make up her mind as to the course she should best pursue, she had removed to these lodgings, accompanied only by a young girl who had been a housemaid at Seamore-place, had always shown a strong attachment for her mistress, and now refused to be separated from her. This girl's mother, a respectable woman, was the landlady of the house in Podbury-street, and everything was done as far as possible to insure Lady Forestfield's comfort.

As far as possible indeed, but, under the circumstances, worthy Mrs. Wilson's possible went but a little way. For the first fortnight of her tenancy, May Forestfield scarcely tasted food, scarcely lifted her head from the pillow, but lay there passing the bygone days of her life in review before her, and silently bemoaning her hard fate. The loss of wealth and position--the position, that is, which her rank had given her--affected her but little; she took no heed of them, she had no time to give them a thought, nor did she trouble herself in regard to the future; her whole time was occupied in thinking over the details of her early acquaintance with her husband, and in wondering at the infatuation which had induced her to prefer the other man to him. Not that she ignored or attempted to deceive herself in regard to his heartless cynicism and savage brutality. Every bitter word seemed burnt into her brain, each cruel deed seemed to rise before her fresh as at the time of its perpetration; and yet in her present mood she found excuses for them all, and ascribed to herself the provocation of epithets which a 'beggar in his drink' would not have fouled his mouth with.

Do you wonder at this conduct? I take it, it is common enough. May Forestfield was no peculiar character, and in some things had a certain clearness of sense and strength of mind; but she was a woman, and consequently when she found she had been deprived of something which up to this point she did not value, but which it was impossible to regain, she set about grieving after and bewailing its loss with all her strength. Never even in the early days of her acquaintance with Lord Forestfield, when uncertainty of his regard for her rendered her doubly keen in the chase, had she felt that worship, that hungering after him which now beset her.

While she was lying in this state she received the following letter, dated from Spa:

'You will have been surprised at my silence and apparent desertion of you, but I waited until I could learn what steps that scoundrel who calls himself your husband was about to take. I knew him to be too great a coward to ask satisfaction of me, but I doubted whether, knowing with what a character he himself must come into court, he would venture to claim the aid of the law. I learn now that he has done so, and that in a short time you are likely to be free. His plots were too skilfully concocted, his spies too carefully trained, to allow of there being any doubt in the matter; the court will pronounce for the divorce, and he will be at liberty to carry to its end a pursuit in which he has been long engaged.

'Blinded by my passion for you, I have done you a grievous wrong, for which there is but one reparation. That reparation I offer you now. One line from you will bring me at once to your feet, and I swear on my honour and my name that so soon as the decree of the court is pronounced I will make you my wife.

'GUSTAVE DE TOURNEFORT.'

Two short weeks ago May would have welcomed this letter with eagerness, and would have accepted the proposal it contained with avidity; when the blow dealt her by her husband through Mr. Bristow's agency had fallen upon her with crushing force she would have welcomed almost any means to free herself from the thraldom which even the retention of his name seemed to imply. She felt most deeply the baseness of his conduct in continuing semi-amicable relations with her, relations such as for a long time had existed between them, up to the last moment of his leaving her for ever, and when he had planned and matured the design of casting her forth and holding her up to the reprobation of the world. Her caprice, passion, call it what you will, for Gustave de Tournefort had never been sufficiently strong to ennoble him in her eyes, or to prevent her from recognising him for what he really was--a careless libertine; but suffering as she had suffered at first, she would have been glad of any escape from the tortures of shame, degradation, and abandonment, and would have accepted his proffered hand, though knowing perfectly that what he called his heart would have no part in the alliance.

Now, however, all was changed. In the strange reaction which she had undergone under the revulsion of feeling which made her long to see her husband once again, she looked upon this letter from De Tournefort as little less than an insult. It was not a voluntary offer, she thought on reperusing it; it had been wrung from him by his yet remaining faint adhesion to that code of honour which even such men as he were bound to obey, and it was made, not from any love for her, but in order that he might stand well in the eyes of that world in which he still doubtless hoped to play many a similar part. He had 'done her a grievous wrong,' and he offered her 'reparation;' that was the keynote of the whole affair, his reading of that odious word 'duty,' which throughout her life she had always found put forward as an excuse. Had it been otherwise, had this offer been prompted by any feeling of liking or even of regard for what had occurred, it would have been made long since. He must have heard, for all that world in which he moved knew it perfectly, that she had left her home; and had there been the least spark of chivalrous feeling in him, he would have come to her at once. Her mind was speedily made up; she would not demean herself by accepting a proposition which was merely made to her out of charity, and M. de Tournefort's letter should remain unanswered.

O, the weary, weary days in Podbury-street! The getting-up, protracted until a late hour, in order to get over as much of the day as possible; the wretched little breakfast, with London eggs from fowls who lived in an area, and London milk from a cow which had not seen a green field for years; the long mornings, spent in reading in the newspaper the chronicled doings of that world in which she had once played so conspicuous a part,--records of dinners, balls, and fetes, with guest lists containing the names of persons her intimacy with whom she could scarcely even then imagine to be broken,--gossip of forthcoming arrangements at Goodwood and Cowes, in both of which places she had always held her court. The journal would drop from her hand as memory brought before her the ducal lawn, dotted all over with loveliest dresses, and ringing with merriest laughter from happily improvised luncheon parties; or a covered bit of sea-walk in front of the club-house at Cowes, where on the night of the last regatta-ball she had met De Tournefort, and listened to his impassioned pleading. Her thoughts were far away, busy with the memories of these once-happy times, but her eyes were gazing idly before her on the tradespeople flitting about from house to house, the flirtations of the stalwart and greasy young butcher with grinning Molly the cook, the heavily-laden postmen steadily pursuing their rounds, the loitering cabmen looking round for fares, and all the panorama of morning life in the great city.

In the afternoon, when the carriages were rolling about, and the little street was sonorous with the echoing double-knocks dealt on its tiny doors by huge footmen, May would sit behind the window-curtain watching all that was passing, and ever and anon drawing farther back into the shadow, as though fearful of being recognised. She had little cause for such anxiety, poor child, though in the course of the day she would see many of those with whom but a short time ago she used to be in constant association: the Duchess of Melrose, leaning back in her luxurious carriage, and surveying mankind superciliously, though not without interest, through her double glasses; Sir Wolfrey Delapryme in his mail phaeton, tooling his roan cobs; Captain Seaver on his neat hack; and Mrs. Ingram in her victoria. Mrs. Ingram had stopped in Podbury-street, and had come up to see May; it being her maxim, she said, that 'when any one had come to grief her pals should stick by her.' Kate Ingram's sympathy, however well meant, was not put in a very acceptable manner; she said that no doubt May had had a 'facer,' but that it was 'no use crying over spilt milk.' She spoke of De Tournefort as that 'foreign sportsman,' said she considered him a 'snob' and a 'cad,' and that May had done quite rightly in refusing to have anything more to say to him. She proposed to make up a little Sunday river-party of people who 'wouldn't mind, don't you know,' and to invite May to it, but she was rather pleased than otherwise when she found May quietly but firmly declined; and shortly after took her leave, promising to come again soon; a promise which she would not keep.

Once May saw her husband. Lord Forestfield drove through Podbury-street in a hansom cab, sitting well back, with his arms crossed and a pleasant smile upon his face. With her renewed feeling for him, May would rather not have seen that smile; it showed that he was happy and careless, while she was suffering such acute misery. In the eyes of the world she was the guilty one, and had to bear the consequences of her guilt; but in his own inmost mind he must know that he had been at least equally criminal, and that if it had not been for his neglect and desertion of her she would never have committed the crime for which he was now exacting so fearful a penalty.

And as she pondered over this a horrible idea flashed across her; a passage in De Tournefort's letter recurred to her mind, in which, speaking of Lord Forestfield, he had said, 'he will be at liberty to carry to its end a pursuit in which he has been long engaged.' What could that mean? What but that her husband had determined on divorcing her, with the view of marrying some one else to whom he had been long attached. Of marrying some one else! The fact that he himself was married had had no effect in preventing his forming other connections, but marriage while she lived undivorced was for him impossible; it was in that view, then, that he had determined on pursuing his vengeance to the bitter end.

The thought drove her nearly mad. She felt that she could not support it in silence, that she must go to him at once and make one final appeal. She rose and looked in the glass. Her beauty had suffered but little from what she had undergone; she was perhaps a trifle paler than usual, but Lord Forestfield had always expressed his dislike of blooming hoydens, and there was no doubt that at one time he admired her deeply and was greatly influenced by her beauty. Would he be so again? She would see.

The next day the maid, who had been sent to see her former fellow-servants in Seamore-place, returned with the information that Lord Forestfield had gone down to Woodburn. May looked upon this as a happy chance, and determined on following him there at once. She could see him more readily, could speak to him more freely, in the seclusion of Woodburn than if he had remained in town; she would go down there that very afternoon. In pursuance of this determination she set out, accompanied only by her maid, and dressed in a common gown and bonnet in order to escape any recognition. After a two hours' railway journey they arrived at Crawley, the station from which Lord Forestfield's seat was reached, and taking a fly were driven over to the gates of Woodburn Park. There they halted, leaving the vehicle to await their return. The maid, who was known to the lodge-keeper, went forward; and after learning that his lordship was there and alone, easily obtained admission for herself and friend to pass through the gates. Up the long avenue, the scene of her great reception by her husband's tenants on her return home after her marriage, May Forestfield now crept with trembling limbs and a desperate sinking at heart, her humble companion endeavouring to sustain her by well-meant though ill-chosen exhortation. Far away in the distance glimmered the house, a long low stone building, from one window of which a light was shining. So far as May could make out, this proceeded from the library, a room immediately on the left hand of the porch, to which access was perfectly easy. The thought of seeing her husband and completely humbling herself before him, and of begging, not indeed to be placed back in her old position in the eyes of the world--that she scarcely dared to wish, much more to hope--but for restoration to his favour and his love, for permission at least to pass some portion of her life in his society,--the thought of this nerved her with fresh strength, and enabled her to reach the end of the avenue. There she and her companion halted for a moment and looked around them. So far as they could make out through the deepening dusk the hall-door was open. It was May's intention to creep in there, and enter the library immediately, to throw herself at her husband's feet. By the aid of the lamp which burned on the writing-table, she could discern through the open window the dim outline of Lord Forestfield's figure bending over some papers. From time to time he looked up, and it was necessary for her to watch the moment of his absorption in order to effect her entrance unobserved.

The opportunity offered itself, and May stole quietly towards the porch. Just at that moment Lord Forestfield walked to the window and peered out into the gloom.

'Who is there?' he cried, as he observed the shrinking figure.

May was silent.

'Who is there?' he repeated. 'I insist upon an answer.'

'Richard,' faltered May, spreading her hands towards him, 'I--'

'I thought it was you,' he said, in a harsh low tone. 'I shall discharge the lodge-keeper to-morrow for having permitted you to pass the gate. Now be off!' he cried, waving his hand; 'I should be sorry to have to ring for the servants to turn you away. Be off, do you hear?'

But May heard nothing. She had sunk in a fainting state on the steps.

Lord Forestfield then turned to the maid, who was hastening to her mistress's assistance. 'Take this woman away,' he cried; 'and if you value your own liberty, never bring her here again.' Then he violently closed the window and returned to his papers.

CHAPTER IV.

THIS LOT TO BE SOLD.

May Forestfield was brought back to her lodgings in Podbury-street--how she never knew. The maid, whose devotion had brought such obloquy upon her, half helped, half carried her mistress down the avenue, and at the lodge they found the fly which had brought them from Crawley. All the way to the station, and in the railway carriage up to town, May lay in a half-comatose, half-hysterical state; and when she had reached her lodging, and was once more installed in her clean and pretty, if not luxurious, bedroom, it was plain to the maid and to Mrs. Wilson that Lady Forestfield was 'in for an illness' of some kind or other. Their predictions were speedily verified. When the maid visited her mistress next morning, she found her in a burning fever, so far advanced that her utterances were already half delirious. The girl, who was tolerably bright, as well as thoroughly devoted, remembered that in one or two cases of slight illness, under which Lady Forestfield had suffered in Seamore-place, a fashionable physician, Dr. Chenoweth, had been called in to attend her. By the aid of the Blue-Book his address was obtained, and the maid started off in a cab to beg an immediate visit from him.

Dr. Chenoweth was something more than a fashionable physician; he was, like most of his brethren with whom the present writer is acquainted, a gentleman, kind-hearted, self-sacrificing, and benevolent to a rare degree. He knew all about the story of Lord and Lady Forestfield. There were few scandals of any kind which did not come to his ears, to be listened to generally with a smile and a shrug, to be repeated sometimes--for there are certain patients to whom gossip is better than medicine, and to whom the sound of the doctor's cheery voice is of more service than his learned prescriptions--but never to be allowed to militate in his mind against those who were the subjects of them. Dr. Chenoweth thought it not at all improbable that in visiting Lady Forestfield he might affront some of his most important patients; for the affair had been much discussed, and it is needless to say that few partisans ranged themselves on poor May's side. He knew nothing of the pecuniary circumstances in which Lady Forestfield was then placed, and would not have been surprised had they been such as possibly to preclude the payment of his fees; he only recollected May Dunmow, the pretty child whom he remembered riding with her father Lord Stortford in the Row, and at whose wedding at St. Andrew's, Wells-street, he, an old and intimate friend of the family, had been present. Dr. Chenoweth accordingly bade his servant tell the messenger that his first visit that day would be to Podbury-street.

May Forestfield had a very sharp attack; indeed, for more than a fortnight she lay between life and death. Dr. Chenoweth's earliest and latest visits were paid to her, and two professional nurses, hospital sisters--skilled and attentive women who have succeeded to the Gamp and Prig creatures--relieved each other in daily and nightly watch at her bedside. When, however, one morning in the beginning of the third week of her illness, May opened her weary eyes, and for the first time was able to recognise things around her, her glance fell, not upon any hired attendant, but upon the upturned face of a pretty girl; a delicate, pensive face surrounded with shining fair hair, a face which, though half strange to her, seemed to bring back pleasantly familiar recollections of long ago.

The girl's attention was at once attracted by the movement of the patient, and she rose from her seat and placed herself quietly by the bedside.

'It is Eleanor,' murmured May, raising her hand to shade her eyes; 'it must be Eleanor, and yet how can she be here? My head throbs, and I feel as though I were yet in a dream. Speak to me and say whether you are really there.'

'It is Eleanor,' said the girl, bending over the bed and smoothing the rumpled pillow; 'it is Eleanor, and you are in no dream, dear Lady Forestfield; but I must implore you not to talk now. Dr. Chenoweth has left the strictest orders that you should have no excitement, and, for your own sake, I must see that he is obeyed.'

May made no resistance; the mere effort of speech had completely exhausted her; and she sank back into a slumber, during which, as her gentle nurse noted with pleasure, her breathing was regular and her whole manner devoid of the feverish restlessness which had characterised her slumbers during her illness. When, after a couple of hours' peaceful repose, May again opened her eyes, she recognised her companion in an instant, and in a clearer and firmer voice spoke to her at once.

'I know you now, Eleanor,' she said, 'but even now I cannot account for your presence here. I know perfectly well I am at Mrs. Wilson's lodgings in Podbury-street, but that knowledge does not account for your presence. My head is heavy and my limbs horribly weak and languid. I feel as though I had gone through an illness.'

'You have gone through a very severe illness, dear Lady Forestfield,' said the girl, fanning the patient's face with a huge palm-leaf, on which she had previously sprinkled some drops of scent, 'and even now, though I am delighted to see you recognise me, and to hear your own well-remembered voice once again, I must warn you that you are only in the very earliest stage of convalescence. It will be brave news for Dr. Chenoweth when he comes to-night, for though he anticipated your recovery, he did not think it would commence so soon.'

'Have I, then, been so very ill?' asked May.

'For more than a fortnight you have lain here so completely prostrated with fever that the doctor would not answer for you from day to day. Now, however, thank God, we may think that all danger is passed.'

May buried her face in the pillow and was silent for some minutes. When she looked up again there were traces of tears upon her cheeks.

'And during all that time,' she whispered, stretching out her thin wan hand, 'you, dear Eleanor, have been my nurse.'

'I have been here off and on for the last ten days,' said the girl. 'I did not hear of your illness until some little time after you had been attacked, or, of course, I should have been with you before.'

'And how did you hear of it?' asked May.

'In a very curious way,' said the girl. 'It appears that in your delirium--you must not mind my mentioning it, dear Lady Forestfield--you talked about all kinds of curious things, declared that you were destitute, and that your only means of supporting yourself would be by painting pictures for your livelihood. In connection with this you mentioned the name of your old drawing-master, Mr. Irvine, who, you said, could speak as to your capability in art. Your frequent repetition of this name attracted the attention of Dr. Chenoweth, who was an old friend of my poor father, and who still keeps up his acquaintance with my sister, Mrs. Chadwick. He knew I was staying at their house, and one day, when he was calling there, he took me aside before my sister came down, and told me how very ill you were; told me, moreover, that while you were carefully and assiduously attended by the good people in this house, he thought that when you came to yourself--a period which he anticipated, but for which he could fix no date--it would be a comfort to you if your eyes could fall upon a face which you had known in--in happier times, and of which you had nothing but pleasant reminiscences. I understood him at once. I told him I thought I could say there had been no cloud upon the friendship with which you had once honoured me; and I came here that day with a letter from the doctor, which secured me a pleasant reception from Mrs. Wilson.'

May's heart was too full to speak. She pressed the young girl's hand and fell back dreamily on the pillow, grateful to the Providence which, in the midst of her complete abandonment, by those who in her prosperity she had imagined were devoted to her, had sent her one friend to prove that the old-fashioned sentiment called gratitude, mocked at and ignored nowadays, yet existed.

It was a strange history, that of the friendship between these two young women, so different in birth and surroundings. Eleanor's father, Angus Irvine, the son of a small Scotch farmer, had at an early age evinced such artistic talent as to attract the attention of the old Lord Stortford, the great landowner of the district, who purchased two or three of the young lad's early sketches, and better still, furnished him with the means of establishing himself for two or three years as an art student in Rome. The good which the young man here did for himself (on his first arrival his tastes and sympathies, quickened by the ever-present daily surroundings, so fired his eye and nerved his hand that old Roman colonists, whose judgment had been tempered by time and experience, predicted the greatest things of him) was not without a certain counterbalance of evil. The loose life led by many of his Bohemian companions, the gatherings at the Caffè Greco, the soirées intimes of men and women at which he was a constant guest, had a baleful effect on the hitherto strictly-kept Scottish youth, and his name was scarcely known in the art circles of Rome before a rumour ran round that Angus Irvine was following in the footsteps of so many other young men of promise, and was becoming dissipated, not to say drunken. The rumour was harsh and exaggerated, and it had an exaggerated and harsh effect. He was a mere boy after all, this gaunt beardless youth of two or three and twenty, and a few glasses of wine had unwonted power on one who, in the seclusion of his mountain home, had been brought up a strict abstainer; and had the censorious left him in peace, it is probable that, so far as the drink was concerned, he would soon have got the better of his newly-acquired freedom, and settled down to a steady plodding life. As it was, when he learned--as he did speedily--that his conduct had become the subject of conversation amongst a certain set, he received the news with an outbreak of wrath, which, cooling down, was supplanted by a sturdy Scotch obstinacy, under which he determined to 'gang his ain gait,' and to treat the animadversion of his detractors with contempt. He laboured fitfully thenceforward, turning out now brilliant work, now pictures which, though undeniaSSTAVEbly possessing genius, were hurried and scamped; his doing of that which he ought not to have done was more regular, while his drinking was harder than ever.

Suddenly there came a change. Angus Irvine received a letter from Lord Stortford intimating a desire that he should come to London, it being the old lord's wish to see his protégé settled and striving for the honours of the Academy before he died. Irvine was sensible enough to know that this was the turning-point of his fate, and that if he neglected such an opportunity he would have no other chance. He was aware of his lamentable failing, and was determined to seize on and overcome it there and then; and being a man of great power of will and determination, he was able to carry out his intention. He started for England within a few weeks, and immediately on his arrival paid a visit to his patron. The old nobleman was delighted with the modest demeanour and brilliant conversational powers of the young artist; he introduced him to his son, Mr. Dunmow, a young man of about Angus's own age, who had already made a brilliant figure in Parliament, and who was about to be married to a charming girl, to whom Angus was also made known. He presented him to the leading art critics and connoisseurs of the day, from some of whom the young Scotchman received valuable commissions; and when, in the course of a couple of years, Lord Stortford heard from Angus of his approaching marriage with a young lady, the daughter of a brother artist, the old nobleman was scarcely less happy than he had been at his own son's wedding, which had taken place a year previously, and he bestowed a substantial mark of his regard upon the bride and bridegroom.

Years went on, and after a lapse of some sixteen or seventeen of them, the two pretty girls who had been born to Mr. and Mrs. Irvine were growing into young women, and Angus Irvine himself, his constitution undermined by excesses of all kinds, was rapidly lapsing into a broken elderly man; for within a very few years of his marriage, so soon as the joys of domesticity were beginning to pall upon him, he found delight in the loose and brilliant society only too ready to welcome him; the old desire for drink came upon him, and he yielded to it with scarcely a struggle. All the young fellows about town were delighted to have the company of Angus Irvine, who talked so brilliantly, and sung the homely Scotch ditties with such exquisite pathos; who could brew a bowl of punch as quickly and as deftly as he could sketch a delicious caricature, and who never minded to what hour of the morning he sat up. Nor did this cheery convivialist confine himself to men's society, or blush to be seen driving in the carriages or seated in the opera-boxes of some of the most noted improprieties of the time. Old Lord Stortford was dead; but his son and his son's wife, and the friends to whom they had introduced their northern protégé, shook their heads dismally, prophesied Angus's ruin, and wondered what Mrs. Irvine would do.

Mrs. Irvine settled that question within a very few months. She was a meek little woman, devoted to her Angus, with a sweet temper and a bad constitution; and when she found that she was deserted by her husband, and that the establishment generally was going to ruin, she thought the best thing she could do was to die--and she did it off-hand. The shock of her death sobered the poor wretch for a time. He had long since given up all hope of selling, or indeed of painting, any more pictures; his muddled brain and unsteady hand forbade that; but Lord Stortford and a few other gentlemen who had known him in better times had engaged him as drawing-master to their children, more for the sake of bestowing a small annuity on him than from the idea of any good to be obtained from his instruction, and he now saw his way to a new method of money-making.

His elder daughter, Fanny, who was eighteen years of age, inherited from him a remarkably sweet voice, and sung Scotch ballads with all the taste and pathos which had been so much applauded in her father. This was a talent which it struck Angus should be cultivated, and accordingly, by Lord Stortford's aid, he procured her entrée as a pupil at the Academy of Music, and, after a few years' instruction, she made her début as a concert-singer with considerable success. The talent of one daughter having been thus utilised, Angus Irvine thought it time that the younger, Eleanor, should take her turn at bread-winning. What to do with her was the crux. Eleanor had a good speaking voice, but no ear and no musical talent; neither of the children had inherited her father's artistic ability, and the education which they had received, though fair enough, was not sufficient to qualify them to act as governesses in the present day, when ladies, possessed of every possible accomplishment and willing to accept next to nothing, are advertising for situations.

What occurred to him as a happy thought at length flashed into Angus Irvine's brain--he would make his girl an actress! She was really good-looking--much handsomer than many of those women whom he used to know in the old time, and who drew large salaries. He could get her taught to speak by a professional elocutionist, and she would soon be able to contribute to the household expenses.

When this plan was mooted to Eleanor, her horror was extreme. She implored her father not to attempt to carry it out, declared her readiness to undertake any kind of service, no matter how menial, but spoke in such piteous terms of the degradation she should feel in having to appear before the public, that the Angus Irvine of a few years before would not have required her to speak twice on the subject. Now, however, drink and misfortune had rendered him callous; he released himself from his daughter's weeping embrace, and bade her make up her mind to what he had decided. In an agony of terror and fright, the girl rushed off to the one person in London whom she knew to be a true and influential friend of her father's, Lord Stortford, and told him all, imploring his interference on her behalf. Lord Stortford was greatly touched at the girl's entreaties, and after a consultation with his wife, he called on Angus Irvine, and, without hinting at his interview with Eleanor, said that he had a plan to which he requested Mr. Irvine's sanction. This was that Eleanor should come to and live in Grosvenor-square as companion to his daughter May. This proposition suited Angus Irvine very well. He would be rid of the very moderate expense entailed upon him by Eleanor, who would hand over to him the liberal salary she was to receive in consideration of her services; so that he made no objection, and the next week saw Eleanor installed as May's companion in Grosvenor-square, where, a great friendship having grown up between the girls, she remained for eighteen months, until May's marriage with Lord Forestfield.

Later in the afternoon of the first day of her convalescence, May renewed her conversation with her friend.

'You must have thought it very unkind of me, dear,' she said, placing her hand in Eleanor's, 'that notwithstanding our great intimacy, and the love and affection I had from you in Grosvenor-square, I have scarcely taken any notice of you since my marriage.'

'Not at all, dear Lady Forestfield,' said Eleanor. 'I never imagined that that intimacy, pleasant as it was to me, could be kept up. You were not out during the most part of the time I was with you, you must remember, and after your marriage I knew that you would take up your position in society, which involved innumerable claims upon you, and would form your own circle of friends.'

'From which circle,' said May, with a sigh, 'I omitted you, the very best of them, the only one who has remembered me in my time of trouble. I think you said you were staying with your sister? Where is Mr. Irvine?'

'Papa has been dead for nearly a twelvemonth,' said Eleanor, glancing down at her black dress. 'He was ill, if you recollect, just before your marriage, and he never recovered, but faded gradually away.'

'I wish my poor papa had been alive to help him,' said May; 'he would have seen that his old friend wanted for nothing.'

'I am sure of that,' said Eleanor; 'but, fortunately, my sister was enabled to take care of her father in his last illness. She was married a few months before his death to a very rich man.'

'Indeed!' said May. 'Who is he?'

'His name is Chadwick,' said Eleanor. 'I suppose he would be called a tradesman, for he is the senior member of a firm which employs hundreds of men in making boilers and engines for steam vessels. He attends to business himself, and is every day at his works, which are down the river somewhere; but they live in a splendid house in Fairfax-gardens, and Fanny now receives and goes into a great deal of what I suppose is called excellent society.'

'I recollect having heard of Mrs. Chadwick's parties, now you mention the name,' said May, 'and of their having some specialty, but what it is I cannot remember.'

'They are very grand, very hot, and, I believe, considered very splendid,' said Eleanor; 'but I do not know that there is anything particular about them, unless it be the presence of a large number of artists of different kinds--painters and musical people I mean. Fanny always takes occasion to say that she never forgets the class of which she was once a member, but I am bound to say her recognition of them is something too like patronage for my taste.'

'And you live with Mr. and Mrs. Chadwick, Eleanor? and you are happy?'

'Yes,' said Eleanor, 'I suppose so.'

'That was but a half-hearted answer,' said May. 'Are you really happy? You, used to speak frankly to me in the old days; are you frank now?'

'I never could be otherwise with you, dear Lady Forestfield, and I will tell you plainly that just now I have some cause for discomfort. The general life at Fairfax-gardens is not particularly suited to my taste; but everybody is especially kind to me, and I should make no complaint, were it not that recently Fanny seems to have made up her mind to carry out a project with which I am greatly concerned, and to which I have a strong objection.'

'This project is, of course, to marry you,' said May, 'to some friend of her own?'

'Not particularly a friend of hers,' said Eleanor, 'but a man of fashion, and for the matter of that, a celebrity, a connection with whom would, she thinks, be advantageous.'

'And you don't care for him?' asked May.

'Not in the faintest degree,' replied Eleanor. 'He is very clever, very agreeable, and particularly polished and courteous in his manner towards women; a little too polished perhaps,' she added.

'May I ask his name?' said Lady Forestfield. 'Certainly,' said Eleanor, with a smile. 'It is a curious one, but his mother or grandmother--I do not know which--was originally Greek: his name is Spiridion Pratt.'

Lady Forestfield started. 'Spiridion Pratt!' she echoed; 'I think I know him; there could not be two men of that name.'

'O, he knows you,' said Eleanor; 'he has been to your house; he was taken there by Mrs. Hamblin.'

'Exactly,' said Lady Forestfield; 'I remember now.'

'Do you dislike him?' asked Eleanor, looking up astonished at her friend's evident embarrassment.

'I know--I know very little of Mr. Pratt. And it is to him that your sister wishes to marry you?'

'Yes,' said Eleanor. 'And from what little you do know of him, you think I am right in objecting, do you not?'

'I don't say that, dear,' said May, 'but I certainly do not think you are wrong.'

CHAPTER V.

NOUVEAUX RICHES.

Eleanor Irvine spoke with perfect truth when she said that her brother-in-law, Mr. Chadwick, was a very rich man. Boiler-making and engine-supplying, when you have secured almost a monopoly of the business, are very paying concerns; and very few of the large steam-shipping companies, not only in England but on the Continent, did not procure their propelling apparatus from Chadwick and Co. In the United States, too, the firm was well known and largely employed. Some of the largest grain elevators in Chicago had been supplied by them, and the lifts which convey you to your bedroom on the tenth story at the Jefferson House, Saratoga, or the Great Atlantic Hotel, Newport, N.J., bear the familiar name. This preëminence in his trade had all been achieved by Mr. Chadwick himself. He was a very poor boy, with but a smattering of education, when he first went in as an apprentice to the drawing-office of the works at Newcastle, the manager having taken him on out of friendship for his father, then recently dead; but he went through the whole routine of that establishment, from the hardest hand-labour to the highest head-work, until he emerged from it as its owner, and now held it as a kind of adjunct to his larger and more important establishment on the Thames. Mr. Chadwick was not a speculative man, and was never tempted to put out any of his capital with the perspective hope of large interests in Baratarian loans or investments in the enormous silver mines of Grass Valley, Colorado. He held a certain number of shares, just sufficient to make the directors regard it as good policy to keep well with him, in such steam-shipping companies as he supplied with engines, but he found that the profits derived from his legitimate undertaking brought him in income sufficient to satisfy all his wants.

This income enabled him to maintain a handsome residence in Fairfax-gardens; to entertain company constantly, and with more than ordinary hospitality; to allow his wife to commit any extravagances she pleased at the milliner's and the jeweller's, and to have all the carriages and horses she chose. It gave him a villa on the Thames, and a shooting-box in Aberdeenshire; and if it did not make him happy, there were plenty of people who said it ought to have done so, and who passed their lives in envying him and wishing to be in his place.

On the whole, however, Mr. Chadwick is a happy man. He has an imperturbably good temper, which no amount of business worry can upset, and he is very proud of his wife. There were plenty of men of birth and breeding whom Mr. Chadwick had met in business, and who, knowing his wealth and the value of a connection with him, would have been only too glad to introduce the rich boiler-maker to their sisters and daughters, and to use all their influence to induce those female members of their family to secure his hand. But Mr. Chadwick, in his own frank phraseology, 'did not go in for swells;' and though in later days he was pleased to see a large number of smart people at his house, and to read their names and titles duly set forth in the next morning's paper, it was because he knew this gave pleasure to his wife, whose every wish he delighted in forestalling. When Mr. Chadwick first saw Miss Irvine, with a rose in her hair and a piece of music in her hand, in front of the orchestra at the St. James's Hall, and heard her warble 'Coming through the Rye,' he determined that, if possible, she should be his wife. The difficulty was not great; the young lady was ambitious, her father was mercenary; and from the day on which they were married, 'my Fan' was Mr. Chadwick's first consideration, ranking even before 'the works,' which up to that time had held possession of his mind, to the exclusion almost of any other subject.

Mrs. Chadwick was what is called 'an elegant-looking woman,' with dark complexion, regular features, and a slight figure; her manners were good, she spoke French and Italian with fluency, had sufficient shrewdness to catch the pervading tone, and was altogether quite presentable in society. She had been ambitious when she was only a concert-singer, and dependent on her own resources. Now that she had a large income at her command she determined to make her mark; to be talked of, renowned, the object of curiosity, and the subject of gossip, was her dearest wish. She could have obtained the notoriety she wanted in one season, by entering into a desperate flirtation--for there would have been no lack of men willing to flirt to any extent with her, some for mere fun, and others in the hope of making a good thing of it--and there are always plenty of persons ready to spread scandal and slander. But Mrs. Chadwick had no intention of entering upon any flirtation, even of the mildest kind; she said she was 'not naturally given that way,' and moreover she had seen quite enough of poverty and precarious existence to prevent her from compromising the very excellent position which fate had assigned her; so she sat herself calmly down at the foot of the social ladder, determined to scale it by entertainments given to the best people whom she could induce to accept her invitations. She began by inviting the wives of the baronets and members of parliament with whom Mr. Chadwick was concerned in various business matters; and though these ladies, who were for the most part intensely respectable, at first hung back, having heard rumours of Mrs. Chadwick's ante-nuptial professional experiences, and having a vague idea that she had been 'on the stage,' their husbands, to whom the business connection with Mr. Chadwick was valuable, insisted on their not merely accepting the invitation, but on their behaving themselves without the stiffness and frigidity which they delighted to display whenever they thought they could safely do so.

The step thus made was satisfactory, but the society obtained by it was rather poor. It began to improve when some of the younger members of the House, and the private secretaries of ministers whom Mr. Chadwick had now and then occasion to wait upon, found out and appreciated the excellence of the cuisine and the cellar in Fairfax-gardens, and not only came themselves when asked, but brought their friends--guardsmen, Foreign-office clerks, and men about town of various ages and degrees. So far as the men were concerned, this was all very well; but Mrs. Chadwick saw with regret that, with the ladies she had made very little way. The extremely proper and generally plain-headed wives of the commercial baronets and M.P.s turned up their eyes at each other in horror at some of the male company, whose loose living was notorious, and whom they saw dancing attendance in Fairfax-gardens; dear Lord George never brought dear Lady George, the Marquis never so much as mentioned the Marchioness, although Mrs. Chadwick gave him frequent opportunities for doing so; and though several of the private secretaries chattered volubly enough about their sisters, no cards from those ladies were ever delivered in Fairfax-gardens.

Mrs. Chadwick suffered deeply under this social ban; she could not see the way to fight against it herself, and at last took Charley Ormerod, one of the private secretaries, and the best leader of a cotillon in London, into her confidence. Charley was very frank in deed upon the point. 'If you want to get hold of this sort of people, my dear Mrs. Chadwick,' said he, 'and 'pon my word I don't see why--you being so very charming yourself, and all that sort of thing--you will find it uncommonly difficult. There is so much going on in their own set, that they won't go anywhere, don't you know, unless it is to meet some particular person or to see some particular thing. Now your cook is first class, and Chadwick has some dry champagne that is really A1, and if there were nothing so good elsewhere in both those ways, they would come for that; but there is, and so they won't. You will ask how it is that Madame Schottenberger and Mrs. Stutterheim go into society when their position is no better than yours, and their houses, I think, nothing like so nice; but then, you see, both Schottenberger and Stutterheim are in the City, and they are able, don't you know, to give these people what one may call a leg-up in the way of making a little premium on shares. Mr. Chadwick is not in that line; he is the last man who would think of doing anything of that sort if he were. Now if you could only give them some specialty. There is that fine billiard-room at the back; what do you say to turning it into a theatre, having a stage at the end, and that sort of thing? And there are lots of amateurs who would be only too delighted to come and act; or you could get up tableaux, don't you know, with pretty girls, and have Eardley or some of those fellows to pose them, and then supper, don't you know, and that sort of thing; if you could do one, and just get it talked about, everybody would be wild to come to the next.'

Mrs. Chadwick ponders over this idea, but is afraid it will not do, at least so far as dramatic representation is concerned. The tableaux might be managed quietly at some future time; but Mr. Chadwick, whose childhood was passed among strict dissenters in the North, has a strong objection to theatrical entertainments, and his wife thinks best to give him no cause for complaint. Nevertheless, the attempt to secure superior society must be made; and it is first made with concerts. Mrs. Chadwick drives round to some of those whom she used to know in her professional days; old Sir Gottlieb Moto, the famous music-master, who smiles and rubs his hands, and will give her all the assistance in his power, and Mr. Bluck, the well-known entrepreneur of the Ante-Chamber Concerts, who every year produces such a wonderful prospectus, and who knows far too much about music to attempt to play or sing. By the aid of these gentlemen a very excellent concert was given, at which all the noted singers of the day were present, and were exceptionally treated in being asked to remain after their labours were over, and mingle with the company. Mrs. Chadwick made a great point of this, and went about murmuring to the wives and daughters of the baronets and M.P.s that she did not forget the time when she herself was in a similar position, and that she would always be glad to welcome her brothers and sisters in art; at which the wives and daughters muttered 'How charming!' to her face, and shrugged their shoulders and raised their eyebrows to each other when her back was turned.

All those who were present congratulated Mrs. Chadwick on her delightful concert, but she was shrewd enough to see that she was no nearer the end she had proposed to herself--the entertainment of a better class of society; so Charley Ormerod was again called into consultation, with the result that the tableaux were determined upon, and set about in earnest. There was no difficulty in finding good-looking young people to volunteer for the different characters so soon as the idea was promulgated, and it was understood that the thing was to be carried out without reference to expense. The sisters of two or three of the private secretaries, who knew the fascination of dishevelled hair and bare arms, and who saw their way to Andromache lamenting over the dead body of Hector, or Jephtha's daughter in her solitude amongst the mountain fastnesses, induced their brothers to propose them at once; and amongst Mr. Chadwick's plutocratic Tyburnian connection there were many pretty girls only too glad to be utilised. The committee of management was composed of men of the highest artistic repute in London. Old Mr. Tabardy, who passed his early life in writing burlesques, and whose latter days are spent in even a more comic way in the manufacture of pedigrees and the search for coats-of-arms for parvenus, came up from the Heralds' College, bearing two elaborate books of costume pictures; Mr. Eardley, R.A., who looks like Glaucus the Athenian, was there to superintend the embodiment of one of his own dreamy sensuous creations; and Mr. Gurth, who would be Eardley's shadow if he had not a large body and capable brain of his own, was of course there also. Mogg, R.A., came (of course in his worsted comforter, though the month was June), and gave excellent advice and assistance in preparing a tableau of the days of Charles II.; and Ghoule, the great tragedian, who was never before seen in the daylight, 'made up' the gentleman who was to portray the dead body of Hector in the most approved charnel-house fashion. Each tableau was to be ushered in by music, and the choice of that music and its direction was left to Mr. Shamus O'Voca, who is as popular in society as he is clever in his art. Auguste and Nathan were nearly worried out of their lives; and in addition to them, by favour of the managers, various theatrical tailors were busily engaged in the preparation of costumes. All this preparation began to be talked of in those circles amongst which Mrs. Chadwick most wanted it made known; faint wishes for invitations were heard, which, after the full-dress rehearsal carefully arranged for by Charley Ormerod and duly notified in the newspapers, grew into furious desire. Under Charley's advice, Mrs. Chadwick at first stood firm, and issued very few cards to persons whom she had not previously known. 'There would be another representation later on,' she said to those asking on behalf of their friends, 'and they could come then.' This reply, of course, fanned the flame--they must come the first time, nothing could prevent them; and eventually, by what Charley called 'jockey-ship' And Mrs. Chadwick 'diplomacy,' the boilermaker's wife had the pleasure of receiving one duchess, two marchionesses, four countesses, and a great number of lords and ladies at the first representation of her tableaux.

From that time forth Mrs. Chadwick's course was easy. After her second season, now just concluded, she was honoured by the presence of royalty at her tableaux, and a garden-party which she gave at the villa on the Thames was pronounced the most perfect fête seen for many years; the description of it and of the company assembled filled a column of the Sluice, a journal not generally given to reporting such matters; and old Lord Quoch wrote a poem about it, which was made to do duty as letter-press to a fanciful river-side illustration, and published in the Albert-gate Magazine. By this means Mrs. Chadwick was fully established as one of the personages of the day, and her movements were duly chronicled among the 'fashionable arrangements' advertised by the fashionable journal.

With all her frivolity and her hankering after great society, the woman was kindhearted, as she had proved by her treatment of her sister. When in the days gone by it was proposed by Mr. Irvine that Eleanor should be sent upon the stage, the plan was rather approved of than otherwise by Fanny, who thought it time that her sister should be earning her own livelihood, and saw nothing to be complained of in the means by which it was proposed she should do so. After her marriage, indeed, while enlarging on her own experiences in the concert-rooms, she would aver it to be a very different arena from the stage, would shake her head at the mention of ladies of the theatrical profession, of whom not more than two (who were supposed to have certificates of character from the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Editor of Punch) were admitted into Mrs. Chadwick's society. But formerly, when there had seemed to be a chance of thirty shillings a week being added to the general income, Fanny not merely had felt no scruple at Eleanor's following this despised profession, but had rated her sister soundly when the girl expressed her horror at the career in store for her; nor while she was still toiling in concert-rooms was she best pleased that Eleanor should be leading a comparatively easy life in that very society to which she, Fanny, had always aspired. After her marriage, however, all was very different. Mrs. Chadwick then thought it scarcely right that her sister should be 'dependent on a fine lady,' more especially a fine lady who could not be induced to take any notice of Mrs. Chadwick, although that worthy woman had what children call 'spelled' for it in every possible way; and when Mr. Irvine died, Fanny took her sister from her father's poor lodging, to which she had returned after May Dunmow's marriage, and bade her be happy at Fairfax-gardens until she should possess a home of her own.

At Fairfax-gardens Eleanor lived happily enough until this question of her marriage arose to cause her annoyance. Occasions of difference between the sisters had previously been slight and few, for Eleanor was in the habit of giving way to her sister's whims, and save when she was requested to give up her black dress at the end of six months--a period which Mrs. Chadwick thought quite long enough to show any outward signs of lamentation for her deceased father--she had but little difficulty in doing so. On that point, however, she was firm; and as it would have been impossible for her in her mourning attire to take part in the festivities which commenced so soon as the prescribed time was over, Eleanor did not mix with the general society, but only saw those who were intimate friends at the house. Amongst the latter was Mr. Spiridion Pratt, a dilettante gentleman of five or six and thirty, who, having an excellent fortune and a cultivated taste, chose to pass the 'fallow leisure of his life' with painters, sculptors, writers, musicians, and actors, and to attempt himself to shine a little in each of those vocations in which his friends were proficient. Poems signed 'S.P.' were not uncommon in the pages of the fashionable magazines; the President of the Royal Academy (remembering a commission which he had received and executed for painting an equestrian portrait of the late Mr. Pratt for presentation to the Muffletubbe Hunt, of which he had been M.F.H.) had made a very graceful allusion at one of the annual banquets to 'an amateur contribution of great merit which graces our walls,' and all the R.A.s of Spiridion's acquaintance, who were in the habit of dining with him very often, tried to catch his downcast eyes, and in their after-dinner perambulations through the room nudged each other as they pointed out a rather gloomy canvas representing a Rhenish wineglass, a bunch of grapes, half a cut orange, and two boiled prawns, which, under the title of 'Still Life,' had been S.P.'s contribution to the exhibition. It is needless to say that 'Ballads of the Blighted,' words and music by Spiridion Pratt, Esq., are on every piano, and that two of them, 'My Muffineer' and 'Take, O take the toast away,' have achieved an unparalleled success.

With all these social advantages, and with a certain amount of good looks of the black-eyed, straight-nosed, hairdresser's-dummy style, Mr. Pratt was naturally a favourite with the ladies, and certain affaires with which his name was mixed up had been freely discussed in society. These affaires Mrs. Chadwick professed to look upon as mere trifles, though one of them had lasted for a considerable time, and was supposed to be even then in existence. Any discreditable connection of the kind, however, could not possibly be known to a lady of Mrs. Chadwick's virtue, and wholly ignoring it, she laid plans for making a match between her sister and the accomplished Spiridion. Eleanor, as we have seen, was by no means pleased at the idea; but Mr. Pratt was not merely much struck by the girl's beauty, but thought it would be very delightful to have the moulding of such a young and ingenuous creature, and to undertake the formation of her character on a plan peculiarly his own. The already existing connection threatened to prove an obstacle; but that connection must be broken at some time or other, and Spiridion thought he would have little chance of finding a better excuse than Eleanor Irvine.

Such was the state of affairs at the time when Eleanor was paying her stolen visits to Lady Forestfield; necessarily stolen, because Mrs. Chadwick imagined that all connection between Eleanor and her quondam patroness had ceased, and would have been horribly scandalised at the notion that her sister was in the habit of seeing one 'who had so painfully forgotten herself.' Fanny had never had any liking for Lord Stortford's family, and the fact that her younger sister had been preferred to her for adoption in the Grosvenor-square household had never ceased to rankle in her mind. When, therefore, the story of Lady Forestfield's disgrace became known, Mrs. Chadwick made it the theme of many bitter discourses, with which she improved the occasion, and inflicted the deepest pain on her sister when kindness was needed.

When she left Podbury-street after the conversation recorded in the last

, Eleanor found herself suffering from unusual depression. Something in Lady Forestfield's manner when speaking about Spiridion Pratt convinced the girl that May knew more than she was willing to tell. So far as Mr. Pratt himself was concerned Eleanor had no feeling in the matter, and had she regarded him in the light of a common acquaintance she would have pronounced him to be a gentleman, but rather a vain and silly man. She knew, however, that Mrs. Chadwick's project had not been lightly conceived, and would not be easily departed from, and objectionable as the idea of, marriage with Mr. Pratt had been before, since she had discussed it with her friend the vague dread with which May Forestfield's words had inspired her made her regard it with increased aversion. On her arrival at Fairfax-gardens she found her sister just returned from her drive, and looking through the cards which had been left during her absence.

'"P.P.C." on nearly all of them,' said Mrs. Chadwick, looking up. 'There was quite a thin Park, and there is not the smallest doubt that everybody is leaving town; and it was only this morning that James told me there was no possibility of our getting away for another month. That won't matter to you, Eleanor, I suppose,' she said as she seated herself; 'for you don't seem to me to care whether it is the season or not--indeed, I think you are rather happier when nobody comes.'

'I am sure of it,' said Eleanor quietly.

'Well, my dear child, you really must get out of these moping ways,' said Fanny. 'As I have told you so many times, you should leave off your mourning and come out with me; a drive in the Park would have done you infinitely more good than sitting with that invalid schoolfellow of yours; for I suppose that is where you have been all the day?'

'Yes,' said Eleanor, with a slight blush; 'that is where I have been.'

'I can't understand it; for my part,' said Mrs. Chadwick, 'I don't believe I should be alive if I did not have a drive every day, and I was just looking forward to Scotland to revive me. However, I daresay we shall do tolerably well; there are sure to be some people left in town, and we shall be more thrown together with them than is possible when all the world has to be attended to. It is time to dress now, dear; and will you please make yourself look particularly nice?'

'Why?' asked Eleanor.

'For my sake,' said Fanny. Then stepping to her sister she said, in what she intended to be an arch voice, but what was really a somewhat angular manner, 'Spiridion Pratt is coming to dinner.'

CHAPTER VI.

A LITTLE DINNER.

Mrs. Chadwick was in the drawing-room when Eleanor came down, and looked up as her sister entered the room to see whether Eleanor had adopted her suggestion as to her dress. A plain black-silk gown with simple muslin frilling such as Eleanor wore was not much to Mrs. Chadwick's taste, for it was her custom to attire herself in bright colours made in the extremest fashion, and to wear about her head and shoulders so many flowers and trinkets as to make her look like a combination of a florist's shop and a jeweller's window. This was done partly in accordance with her own rather vulgar taste, and partly out of desire to please Mr. Chadwick, who, all generous as he was, liked to see what he called 'his money's worth.' For this reason, though a great patron of art, he never bought specimens of the old masters, arguing that there was 'nothing to look at in them;' never gave still champagne; and on the occasion of his entertainments liked to have as few of the blinds drawn as possible, in order that the outside world might see what was going on. But Mrs. Chadwick, who was in no way jealous of her sister, could not help admitting to herself that she had never seen Eleanor more to advantage; and the gentleman who was sitting by her roused up at once from the somewhat indolent manner in which he had been carrying on conversation and awoke to life. A somewhat romantic-looking gentleman this--rather like a Velasquez portrait--with long dark hair parted in the middle and taken off behind the ears, dark eyes, regular features, peaked beard, and sallow complexion. He wore tiny mosaic studs in his shirt, and a large antique cameo on his little finger; had the finest line of coral links for a watch-chain; and during his talk with Mrs. Chadwick had been engaged in contemplating with great admiration his little feet, which were incased in black-silk socks and shoes with silver buckles. This was Mr. Spiridion Pratt, who rose to greet Miss Irvine, and to express his delight at finding her still in town.

'I was just saying to Mrs. Chadwick,' he murmured, 'that, delighted as I have always been to find myself a guest at this house, I never found it so delightful as now, when it is positively an oasis in this desert of London.'

'We may think ourselves lucky in securing you, Mr. Pratt,' said Eleanor. 'I should have thought that you, who are so essentially a portion of the world, would have been with the world.'

'Where should I go to, my dear Miss Irvine?' said Spiridion plaintively. 'To Goodwood, to sit on the burnt lawn in a broiling sun, with a hundred wretches bawling their wagers in my ears; to Cowes, to sit on the damp deck of a yacht with my knees up to my chin, to have to move perpetually while the men shift their horrible sails, and to get my fingers covered with pitch and tar? That's what the world is doing just now, I believe, and I confess it has no attraction in my eyes.'

'Mrs. Hamblin is still in town, is she not?' asked Mrs. Chadwick, looking fixedly at him.

'Yes, I believe she is,' said Spiridion, with the faintest trace of colour appearing in his cheeks; 'Mr. Hamblin's official position prevents his getting away just yet, and--and--'

'Exactly,' said Mrs. Chadwick. 'Where will they go when Mr. Hamblin can get away?'

'I have no idea for certain,' said Spiridion, who was growing uncomfortable under Mrs. Chadwick's gaze. 'I don't think, however, that they will leave town till October, and then I heard something of their going to Italy.'

'You had yourself some idea of wintering in Rome, had you not?' asked his unswerving questioner.

'I had at one time, but that was before you--I mean to say that I have given up that notion, and I am now by no means certain of my plans.'

To relieve him from his confusion, Mr. Spiridion Pratt was only too glad to welcome the entrance of Mr. Chadwick; a big, burly, broad-shouldered man of about fifty, with a bald head fringed with crisp iron-gray hair, clean-shaved ruddy face, merry gray eyes, and a manner redeemed from vulgarity by its hearty geniality.

'Glad to see you, Mr. Pratt,' said he, seizing Spiridion's little hand in a tight grip, which printed off an impression of the cameo on his other finger. 'How d'ye do? Nell, you were off early this morning, young lady; I thought to see you at breakfast, but they told me you had gone out.'

'To see her sick schoolfellow, you know,' said Mrs. Chadwick. Then turning towards Spiridion Pratt, she whispered, 'She has such a tender heart.'

'Quite right,' said Mr. Chadwick; 'always look after those who are down on their luck, Nelly. I recollect when I was a youngster being laid by the heels with typhus fever down at Jarrow, when I would have given anything for the sight of a kindly woman's face at my bedside; but I never saw anybody except the pitman's wife who kept the cottage where I lodged, and the doctor attached to the works, who had to attend to about two hundred of us for thirty pounds a year. I pulled through somehow, though.'

'Thanks to our blessed Nature,' said Spiridion, with a side-glance at Eleanor, to see if she were looking at him. 'What beneficent wonders does she not work when left to herself!'

'She has worked the beneficent wonder of giving me a rare appetite this evening,' said Mr. Chadwick; 'not that that is a wonder though, when I come to think of it, as I have it pretty nigh every day about this time. My Fan, shall I ring for dinner, or do you expect any more swells?'

Mrs. Chadwick crimsoned as the objectionable word--of the perpetual use of which she had tried so hard to break her husband--struck upon her ear; but seeing that Mr. Pratt, being engaged in conversation with Eleanor, evidently had not heard it, she merely said, 'I am waiting for Mr. Eardley, my dear James, and a friend of his whom he has promised to bring with him.'

'Any friend of his will be welcome,' said Mr. Chadwick. 'I like Eardley, and I like his pictures, though I don't quite understand them; but he puts in plenty of colour; and though I wish he wouldn't paint so many people without their clothes, I--'

'James!' whispered his wife; and at that moment the door was thrown open, and the butler announced Mr. Eardley and Mr. Huff. It was not, however, under that name that Mr. Eardley introduced his friend to the hostess. 'Let me present to you Sir Nugent Uffington, my dear Mrs. Chadwick,' said he; 'a friend whose acquaintance I made under strange circumstances in a wild place several years ago, and to whose kindness and attention I owe my life.'

'Pray don't believe a word of this, Mrs. Chadwick,' said Uffington, with a somewhat cynical smile; 'our friend Eardley carries that romantic spirit which is so invaluable to him in his painting into his daily life, and unconsciously allows it to colour his utterances. His recovery was due rather to my medicine-chest than to my exertions, and there was nothing wonderful about it.'

'You say that out of courtesy, Sir Nugent, but I have heard Mr. Eardley speak of it before,' said Mrs. Chadwick, with her most gracious smile. 'Let me introduce you to my husband--Sir Nugent Uffington.'

'Glad to know you, sir,' said Mr. Chadwick, putting out his hand--'glad to know any friend of Mr. Eardley's. Are you in this line?' pointing to the pictures on the walls.

'Not I, Mr. Chadwick,' said Uffington, with a laugh. 'I wish I were anything as useful. I have the misfortune to do nothing, to have been doing it all my life, and,' he added in rather a lower tone, 'to have made a singularly bad job of it.'

And then dinner was announced, and the conversation stopped.

Charley Ormerod was quite right when he spoke with such high praise of the quality of the dinners and the wines in Fairfax-gardens. Mr. Chadwick looked after these himself. He had a natural taste for good living, and though in his early days he had been quite content with a chump of coarse-grained meat broiled by himself over the furnace fire, and washed down by some cold weak tea out of a soda-water bottle, as soon as he could provide himself with better fare he took care to have it. 'A man is like an engine,' he used to say; 'his bearings get hot, and the whole thing goes crank and stiff, unless his works have been properly greased. Half my planning and thinking is done at night, after a good dinner and a bottle of fizz, when my Fan's in bed, and all these chattering servants are out of the way, and I sit up in the library and put down all I have got in my head. It's no good to attempt to plan anything up in the North, for there they have their heavy meal in the middle of the day, and after that I am good for nothing but to go to sleep, or to see what I have ordered is carried out; but here, after a filly dy sole and a bottle of Irroy, I am as clear as a bell and as fresh as a two-year-old.'

The dinner on this occasion was especially good, for it was the host's boast that, whatever kudos he might have gained in the world for his 'large spreads,' his 'little feeds,' or, as Mrs. Chadwick called them, their dinners 'en petit comité,' were really much better. Spiridion Pratt, who was a gourmet, revelled in the various dishes, and the rare wines brought a slight flush into Uffington's usually pale cheeks.

'Like that sherry, Sir Nugent?' cried the host, beaming from his side of the round table. 'That's some of the Emperor's wine from the Tooleries. I was in Paris at the time of the sale, and when I tasted, I determined to have some. This is the real stuff, I know, because I took care to have it put aside and brought over at once. But, lor bless you, at some of the houses where my Fan and me dine--you know the parties I am alluding to, Eardley--they have got some stuff which passes for the Emperor's wine that old Nap would never have put his beak into.'

'My dear James!' murmured Mrs. Chadwick.

'Fact, Fan,' said her husband, who misunderstood the gist of the hint--'never put his beak into; though I daresay the Swassers--what a fellow I am! there I have been and let the name out!--well, I daresay the Swassers paid a long figure for it, and believed it was old Nap's own tipple. Poor old Nap! fancy him gone, and Ujaney left alone!'

'Were you ever at the imperial court?' asked Spiridion.

'O yes,' replied the host. 'We supplied a set of engines for the imperial yacht Leagle, I think it was called--the Eagle--very like English, ain't it? And there was some talk about our building a new vessel for him, and I was sent for to see the Emperor about it. I shall never forget. Just before I started, I was talking to some funny fellows I knew then who wrote in the newspapers, and when I told them I was going to see the Emperor, one of them, named Rupert Robinson, said, "Well, then, just have the kindness to ask him for the eighteenpence he owes me." "Eighteenpence!" says I. "How can he owe you eighteenpence?" "Why," he says, "I often used to see him in the old days at Lady Blessington's, at Gore House, on a Sunday night; and one night we came home together in a cab, and he asked me to pay his share as well as my own, as he had no change, and he would pay me next time he saw me. Next time I saw him," Robinson said, "he was driving in his carriage, with an escort riding beside him, and I thought that was a bad time to ask him for the eighteenpence; so he owes it me still."'

'I suppose you did not ask the Emperor for it?' said Spiridion.

'Not I,' said Mr. Chadwick, with a laugh. 'I had enough to do to mind my own business. Our friend Eardley here tells me that you have been a great traveller, Sir Nugent?'

'Yes, I have knocked about a good deal, Mr. Chadwick,' said Uffington, turning towards him. 'I have been and done and suffered as much as most men.'

'Quite like a dear old verb, isn't he?' said Eardley, shaking back his clustering locks and smiling at Eleanor.

'I had a great notion of travelling once myself,' said Mr. Chadwick. 'When I was first apprentice, at the Jarrow works, I thought I would like to see the world, and I was very nearly running off to be a cabin-boy.'

'My dear James!' murmured Mrs. Chadwick. Then turning to Spiridion with a sweet smile, 'You too, Mr. Pratt, have been a great traveller; only the other day I was reading to Eleanor that delightful description of your being stopped by the brigands in Greece.'

'The description, I imagine, was a good deal pleasanter than the reality,' murmured Eardley. 'They kept dear old Prattikins on very short commons, and wouldn't let him have a comb to do his back hair with.'

'Well, I'm a queer kind of John Bull, I suppose, in my notions,' said Mr. Chadwick; 'but I don't hold much with all this travelling abroad and intercourse with foreign nations. It's all very well so far as business is concerned--gives us an outlet for our goods, and enables us to pick up a good many wrinkles in matters in which these fellows beat us hollow--but I don't think we have gained much by being so hand and glove with these chaps, having them at our houses, and that sort of thing.'

'Ungrateful monster,' laughed Eardley, 'to say such things when the work of the French stranger within your gates has scarcely left the table! Could any one but a Frenchman have made that bonne femme soup? Is there a British hand light enough to have turned out that soufflet?'

'I wasn't talking about cooking,' said Mr. Chadwick; 'there they're A1, and no mistake. When I was a lad we used to think that all Frenchmen were either cooks or dancing-masters; and I imagined all French boys were brought up in the belief that Englishmen were either sailors or grooms. No; what I meant to say,' he continued, looking a little more serious, 'is, that I don't think we are quite so respectable since we have mixed so freely with foreigners.'

'You are not alluding to ourselves, James, I suppose,' interposed Mrs. Chadwick. 'I am sure that--'

'No, no, my dear Fan,' said her husband; 'I mean English people generally. It don't appear to me that we are so strong in temperance, soberness, and chastity--those three virtues which the Catechism tells us to look sharp after--as we were before the days of excursions abroad and cheap tourists' tickets.'

'I don't see that anything could possibly be more temperate than the French and the Italian gentlemen who come to this house, James. Some of the Germans are large eaters, we know, but seem to be even more so than they are from the manner in which they handle their knives and forks and swallow their food.'

'I rather think that it is to a falling off in the other virtues named to which Mr. Chadwick is making special allusion,' said Spiridion Pratt, with a smile. 'Some of our continental visitors have recently proved themselves rather destructive to the peace of families.'

'Are you speaking generally, or alluding to any special case?' asked Uffington.

'I was speaking generally,' said Spiridion; 'but there are doubtless special cases which would point the--immoral.'

'There is one, a very flagrant case, which quite bears out what my husband says,' observed Mrs. Chadwick, drawing herself up and looking as virtuous as the mother of the Gracchi. 'I understand that you have only just returned to England, Sir Nugent Uffington, and therefore, perhaps, you have not heard of it--the scandal about Lady Forestfield.'

Uffington bowed coldly. He had heard some mention of that sad story, he said.

'A sad story indeed, and a great disgrace to our English nobility, of which we are naturally so proud,' said Mrs. Chadwick. 'Anything worse than the conduct of Lady Forestfield could not well be imagined.'

Eleanor Irvine, who had been endeavouring to hide her agitation as this conversation proceeded, could restrain herself no longer. 'Surely Lady Forestfield is not entirely to blame, Fanny!' she cried. 'Surely some excuse is to be made for one who was cruelly treated and almost wholly deserted by her husband, whose sole recognition of her was to throw dust in the world's eyes!'

'Eleanor,' cried Mrs. Chadwick, bridling up, 'I cannot understand what you mean.' Then, seeing that the sharpness of her tone had been remarked by the company, she changed her voice, and said, with affected gaiety, 'You must allow me, as an old married woman, to be a much better judge of such matters than you. It is not to be surprised at,' she said, turning to Spiridion Pratt, 'that Eleanor, who has the sweetest nature in the world, should feel a strong compassion for Lady Forestfield, for they were brought up together, and in their childhood were quite like sisters, though Lady Forestfield is two or three years the elder of the two. I admire her generosity,' she added, in a lower tone; 'but of course it is my duty, in my position as elder sister and married woman, to rebuke the expression of such sentiments.'

'Gad, I don't see that,' returned Spiridion in the same undertone. 'She seems to me perfectly charming, and it is, we are told, the duty of angels to plead for the fallen.'

'You asked me if I had heard anything of this wretched case,' said Uffington to Mrs. Chadwick. 'What has been mentioned to me is, that for some time before their separation Lord Forestfield had been in the habit of treating his wife with systematic rudeness and even cruelty. If that be the case, he has himself to thank for all that has subsequently happened to him.'

'It is as bad a case against him as could possibly be,' said Eardley, turning to Uffington, who was his neighbour, and speaking quietly. 'Both before and after the birth of her child he worried her so savagely, that the baby, naturally small and weak, only lived a few months. She was desperately fond of this infant, and from the time of its death, which she attributed entirely to her husband's misconduct, she has been scarcely accountable for her actions.'

'That, I suppose, Mr. Eardley,' said Mrs. Chadwick, who caught the last words, 'will be the excuse for Lady Forestfield taking up with such people as Mrs. Ingram and Lady Northaw, and declining to associate with others who, though they cannot boast of being fast, have at least a reputation, and are visited by some of the best people.'

'I don't think,' said Mr. Chadwick, who had been silent for some time, 'that we ought to lay the blame wholly upon one or the other of these unfortunate young people. I don't quite agree with my Fan that Lady F.'s the party in fault, though I daresay she was flighty, and didn't keep herself as strict as she would have done had she lived half a century two ago; and I don't think Lord F. is to be entirely blamed, though from what I have seen of him in one or two matters of business he is a roughish customer. My verdict should be against the third person in the case; the man who, in the guise of a friend, comes into a house where, to all outward appearance at least, and for anything that he could tell, things were going on quite smoothly, and takes advantage of the opportunities of his intimacy to bring ruin upon one and misery upon both. Upon both, I say. Don't tell me--whatever sort of man this Lord Forestfield may be, however glad he may be now to be freed from his wife, he will not be able to give up all thought of her. He may get rid of her, as of course he will; and he may marry again, as they say he wants to; but he cannot get rid of the memory of her, let him be as happy as he may. Years hence he will find himself thinking about her, wondering what has become of her, what she may be like then--thinking of the early days of their courtship, when she was a pretty girl and he a likely young fellow, when their lines lay in pleasant places and all that the world held good seemed to be in store for them. Lord, Lord, they will be wretched enough then! The crime in a case of this kind belongs to the seducer. Don't you think so, Sir Nugent Uffington?'

Uffington started for an instant, as did Eardley, to whom his story was known. Then he said quietly, 'No doubt; but it brings its own punishment with it sooner or later, as he will find.'

The conversation then turned into another channel, and soon afterwards the ladies retired.

Uffington, who had been much struck with Eleanor's outburst in defence of Lady Forestfield, made up his mind to have some farther talk with her; but when they reached the drawing-room they found Mrs. Chadwick alone.

'Eleanor had a headache,' the hostess explained to Spiridion Pratt; 'and though I did all I could to persuade her, I found it impossible to make her await your coming.'

'She was right,' Uffington muttered to himself, pondering over this as he walked home. 'Headache or no headache, she is far too sensible a girl to waste her time on such a donkey as that man Pratt. There must be something more in Lady Forestfield than I imagined to enlist the sympathies of such a girl as this. For the first time for years I really begin to feel interested in something.'

CHAPTER VII.

THE MORNING AFTER.

When Sir Nugent Uffington woke the next morning, instead of, according to his usual custom, yawning and composing himself for another nap, he roused up at once. It is for a psychologist to explain how it is that the subject uppermost in our minds invariably flashes across our thoughts at the first instant of shaking off our slumbers, and that we go to the pleasure or business of the day with a light or heavy heart, according to our impressions on waking. That acceptance which has so nearly run out; that confoundedly incautious letter which, on the spur of the moment, we wrote to a man who is now doubtless making use of it; that awkward dilemma in which, without any serious intentions, we placed ourselves with Smith's wife--all these things rise before us with as much but not more certainty than the recollections of our successful after-dinner speech, of thrilling tones and touches at that special interview on the previous evening, or of the assurance from our attorney that the long-protracted lawsuit was coming to an end at last, and that the judgment could not fail to be in our favour. Through the Gate of Ivory and through the Gate of Horn come dreams and thoughts to sleeping man, who is acted upon by them in his waking moments.

Nugent Uffington had been so long unaccustomed to anything like the smallest excitement, his life for so many years past had gone on slowly and monotonously, that he could not at first understand what it was that caused him to rouse up briskly, and with a certain hitherto unwonted feeling of interest. A little reflection brought before him the events of the previous evening, and he lay lazily back on his pillow, thinking them through and making his comments upon them.

'It is a curious thing,' he said to himself 'that a man of my age and experience should find himself suddenly intrigué about the affairs of a set of people, some of whom I never saw till Wednesday, and one of whom I could scarcely be said to have seen at all. And yet undoubtedly I was much amused, and something more than that, at the proceedings of those queer people with whom Eardley took me to dine last night. There was an honesty and a sense of right about that genial rough fellow, the host, which was to me infinitely pleasanter and more refreshing than the fade nonsense talked by people who are far better educated, and who are supposed to be better mannered; though unintentionally, in his great blundering way, he came down hot and heavy upon me, and sent his blade through the joints in my harness. I wonder how I looked under the infliction? I must ask Eardley, whose glance I caught at the moment; but I have a notion that to him, at least, I must have shown that the hit had gone home. Strange that after all these years anything which in the slightest degree resembles or hinges upon my life with Julie should have such an effect upon me. All the time that that good honest fellow was droning away about the impossibility of Forestfield's being able to shake off the memory of this wife whom he has just deserted--and I think Chadwick was right there, it is impossible to lay such ghosts--I was thinking of that day, when I first induced her to meet me at the Great Exhibition, when we were hidden away in the Machinery Court amongst all kinds of wonderful engines, as much to ourselves as if we had been in a palm-grove in Africa. At this instant I can see her in the thin muslin dress which she wore, the bright gold chain round her neck, the tiny parasol swinging open over her shoulders; can distinguish that soft violet perfume, which seemed to be a portion of herself, and--I imagined I had cured myself even of thinking of these things! "The crime in a case of this sort belongs to the seducer--don't you think so, Sir Nugent Uffington?" It was a home thrust. I wonder whether I turned red or white, or betrayed myself in any way to the rest of the party? The man never meant to sting me--he hadn't made his money in those days, and such a story was not likely to penetrate to Newcastle, though Manchester and its neighbourhood must have heard enough of the wrongs of the injured husband, and Mrs. Chadwick must have been a mere child at the time. That man Pratt may have heard something about it, but, donkey that he is, he is decently behaved, and made no sign. I don't think I should quite like that young girl, Mrs. Chadwick's sister, to have Mr. Pratt's version of the affair though, for I don't think he would make the best case for any one else, and I am rather interested in Miss Eleanor Irvine; not for her beaux yeux, God knows, for I am past any attraction from that kind of thing; I don't know what for, unless it is for the manner in which she spoke up for her friend, Lady Forestfield. How the girl's eyes flashed, and what ringing scorn and defiance there was in her tone as she defended her absent friend! Men do not do that sort of thing if any of their particular acquaintances is attacked; they content themselves with a very mild protest; but this girl plainly meant to hit hard, and was all too many for that conventional moralist, her sister, who made a bad retreat of it. Those two women do not pull well together, it is impossible they should; for one is all natural fire, and the other all artificial ice. Mrs. Chadwick is evidently bent upon throwing this pretty girl at the head of Mr. Pratt, who is graciously condescending to spread out his palms to catch her; but Miss Eleanor, I imagine, does not intend to allow herself to be tossed about for her sister's amusement or advantage, and she will hold to her friend whom the worldly-wise Mrs. Chadwick so roundly denounces. Both these women, each in her own way, evidently feel strongly about that matter. There must have been a further discussion about it in the drawing-room, in which the married lady must have carried the day and reduced her sister to tears, or she would not have quitted the room for the mere sake of shirking a further interview with Spiridion Pratt. I am actually curious to see more of those people and to watch the progress of affairs there; for an idle than with all his time to fill up it will afford at all events occupation, and perhaps amusement. Moreover, I may in some way or other--one can never tell how--be able to lighten the burden which this poor deserted woman seems to have brought upon herself, which, as a voluntary act on the part of the "seducer," may perhaps be looked upon as some expiation of his "crime."'

And with a shrug, Nugent Uffington rang for his valet and turned out of bed. He was pretending to eat his breakfast, dallying with his toast and grumbling over the newsless newspaper, when Mr. Eardley was announced.

Nothing could be more unlike the conventional idea of an artist than Mr. Eardley's appearance, so far as dress was concerned. His classical profile and hyacinthine locks were all that could be looked for in those Greek heroes whom he loved to paint; indeed, it was said, and not without truth, that his looking-glass supplied him with the best models. But in his costume he not merely despised the velvet shooting-coat and general looseness of garb which are supposed to be characteristic of his calling, but affected a neatness and precision which were in strong contrast with the prevailing loudness of taste. He was a man of excellent education and information, who had taken up the profession of a painter simply because it was the first that came to his hand, and who had continued it because he saw his way to large prices and high social position, but who had talent and pluck enough to have succeeded in several other callings had he felt so disposed. Mr. Eardley's talent was, moreover, of a very different kind from that of Spiridion Pratt, and although the latter was always putting himself forward, whilst the former never made any public appearance outside his adopted art, Mr. Eardley's self-contained reticence was regarded as evidence of much more power than Mr. Pratt's perpetual attempts. There were few men to whom the world had shown so much of its sunny side, fewer still who would have been so little spoiled by the indulgence. Dick Tinto and Jack Whitewash, with their tobacco-smelling beards, their paint-bedaubed jackets, and their dirty hands, and their companions of the Palette Club, used to revile Frank Eardley, calling him swell and stuck-up beast; but when the first lay ill for six weeks with the fever, it was Frank's purse which induced the doctor to come in and the broker's man to go out; and when Jack Whitewash swaggered about the good position awarded to his picture at the Academy, he little knew that it was owing to Frank's interposition with the council. Eardley mixed but little with men of his own profession, though he took much interest in all its charitable and social institutions at the periodical gatherings, where he spoke with great readiness and fluency; and though he went a great deal into society he had but very few intimates. For Nugent Uffington, Eardley entertained a great liking; the kindness shown to him by Nugent at their first meeting had touched him very deeply, and there was something in Uffington's solitude and isolation--which was even more noticeable now in the midst of the London world than it had been in the wild and uncivilised regions where they first formed acquaintance--that called forth his pity and admiration. Since Nugent's return, a day seldom passed without the friends meeting. Uffington would sit for hours in Eardley's studio, smoking countless cigarettes and watching his friend at work; their talk was always of the frankest and most open character, and Nugent's one wish seemed to be that Frank, with all the world at his feet, should shun the social snares and pitfalls into which he himself had fallen at the outset of his career.

'You will wonder what brings me to you at such an early hour,' said Eardley, 'more especially after our settling that you should come round and give me your opinion of the Niobe; but when I got home last night, I found a letter from Dossetor, asking me to look at some blue Chelsea china at one o'clock. So I thought I would make an idle morning of it, and inflict my company on you.'

'I am very glad to see you--more glad than I usually should be at this hour; but to-day I happen to be awake--not a very frequent occurrence with me--at eleven o'clock.'

'And in Albania you were always ready to start on our excursions at five,' said Eardley, with a laugh.

'Exactly, my dear Frank; but Albania and the Albany, though almost synonymous, are very different places. It was worth while getting up at any absurd hour for the wild-fowl, shooting there; but there is nothing to shoot at here, unless I were to pot the beadle, or a fellow-lodger shaving at the opposite window. Recollect, too, the air and the silence and all the other enjoyable things.'

'Silence!' cried Eardley. 'If you call that enjoyable, you surely have got enough of it here. I never could understand how people lived in these chambers, with nothing ever to wake the echoes except the occasional footfalls in that melancholy long covered walk.'

'You have that idea because you are never here of an evening, my dear Frank,' said Uffington, 'and have never heard the shrieks of laughter and the very unbridled mirth which floats out upon the evening air when the opposite windows are open, and little Mr. Pincushion, of the Stock Exchange, is entertaining his female friends from the Varieties and the Parthenon. By the way, that was a very good dinner you took me to last night.'

'Of course it was; you have known me long enough to trust me in such matters, have you not? You may be certain that your palate and digestion are always safe in my charge; not that I could guarantee you such wines and such cooking as Chadwick's on every occasion, for they are really first-rate. And the company, what did you think of that?'

'I was amused.'

'Indeed, how very kind of your lordship! We ought all to be deeply indebted to you for your condescension.'

'Don't be an ass, Frank. I was more than amused, for I was pleased and interested.'

'I thought you would be pleased with Mr. Chadwick's high-bred punctiliousness, interested by Mrs. Chadwick's unaffected geniality,' said Eardley, laughing. 'Chaff apart, they are very pleasant people. What did you think of the young lady?'

'What little I saw of her I was much pleased with, but I had hardly a chance of speaking to her.'

'Of course not; Mrs. Chadwick, who is always managing for somebody else, has taken it into her head that it would be a great thing if she could catch that tremendous idiot, Spiridion Pratt, and make up a match between him and her sister; the girl is much too good for that, don't you think?'

'It is impossible for me to say,' replied Uffington, 'having only seen Mr. Pratt once; but he does not seem to me to be such a goose as you rate him. He affects to be romantic, and is unquestionably conceited, but I don't see much else the matter with him, and he is a gentleman, which, after all, goes a very long way.'

'What a dear large-hearted old boy it is!' said Eardley, clapping his friend affectionately on the shoulder. 'But what do you say, then, to Mr. Chadwick? I am afraid he won't come up to your standard.'

'I don't see why not,' replied Uffington. 'Do you imagine that I should not consider Mr. Chadwick a gentleman, because his manner is rather brusque, and he uses odd phrases? I declare to you he seems to me as perfect a specimen of a real gentleman as I have seen for many a long day. There are many men, my dear Frank, who drop their h's and pick up fish-sauce with their knives, who are more truly preux chevaliers than the purest bred among us.'

'Very likely,' said Eardley, 'but a dropped h grates on the ear, and knife-swallowing, except at a circus, is not pleasant to look at. Did you notice--but of course you did--how Miss Irvine blazed out in defence of her friend, Lady Forestfield?'

'I noticed it with more than astonishment,' said Uffington. 'But from what little I saw of her I should judge her to be a young lady who would speak out boldly in favour of any one whom she imagined to be oppressed, whether a friend of hers or not.'

'Perhaps so,' said Eardley; 'but I know she was particularly fond of Lady Forestfield.'

'The intimacy has been dropped since the smash, I presume,' said Uffington. 'Mrs. Chadwick seems far too strict a person to allow it to continue.'

'Decidedly, if she knew it,' said Eardley; 'but I have some idea that the worthy woman is slightly hoodwinked in the matter. Mrs. Ingram told me that Lady Forestfield is lodging in Podbury-street--poor child, fancy Podbury-street after the lovely luxury of Seamore-place!--and the other morning I saw Miss Irvine walking down that very street. I know it was she, though I did not recollect her at first, and I was thinking what a pretty model she would make for a certain class of subject, when suddenly it came upon me that she was the daughter of that raffish old buck Irvine, who used to hang about Clipstone-street in former days.'

'So Lady Forestfield is lodging in Podbury-street, is she?' said Uffington musingly. 'Do you know the number?'

'Sixty-eight, I think,' said Eardley, looking at him in surprise; 'but what on earth does it matter to you?'

'Nothing,' said Uffington with a start, 'not the least in the world; I was only wondering--'

'My dear old Nugent,' said Eardley, taking him by the arm, and looking inquiringly into his face, 'what are you thinking about? You are not going to do anything quixotic, I hope. Lady Forestfield, as every one will allow who knows anything about the case and speaks fairly, has been deucedly badly treated; but nothing would warrant any interference in the matter, and any attempt might probably recoil upon the poor woman herself.'

'You need not be afraid, Frank,' said Uffington; 'I am not likely to make any such attempt. I was only thinking--' and again he fell into a musing fit.

'Exactly; but don't think,' said Eardley, touching him on the shoulder. 'You have finished your breakfast; come down with me to Dossetor's, and help me to form an opinion on the blue china. After that we will go down to Richmond, stroll about the park, and have a dinner at some quiet place where we shall not have to watch the melancholy amusement of professedly festive people.'

'Agreed, so far as Richmond, the stroll, and the dinner are concerned; but I cannot come with you now, I will meet you there. My head aches a little, and would ache worse if I had to listen to Dossetor's disquisitions on his china; so I will go and get rid of my trouble by a canter in the Row.'

'That will be better perhaps,' said Eardley, 'not only for yourself, but for my china, as it is the one thing in which I require that the opinions of people I consult should coincide with my own, and you seem to me to be rather contradictory this morning. I suppose you will drive me down? Then I will be waiting for you at the club at four.'

'I shall be there to the minute,' said Uffington.

And then Eardley, with an 'Au revoir!' took his hat and strolled leisurely away.

Sir Nugent Uffington was rather more lively and alert after his friend's departure than he had been in the early morning. He paced up and down the room, revolving in his mind whether the affection of Eleanor Irvine for Lady Forestfield was such as would naturally be felt by her for any other person in so desolate and unfortunate a position, or whether it was the outcome of some special interest which Lady Forestfield had awakened in her--if so, what were the sources of that interest? She must be a peculiar woman, Nugent thought, to arouse a feeling which, in the fact that it caused Miss Irvine to act in opposition to the expressed wish of one on whom she was dependent, as Eardley had hinted, must approach devotion. Lady Forestfield must have a powerful will of her own to obtain ascendency over a mind like Eleanor's.

Altogether, Sir Nugent Uffington, who for so many years had been almost emotionless, was beginning to take a certain amount of interest in the affairs which were passing round him, and the centre of that interest, so far as he could judge, was Lady Forestfield.

The ordinary frequenters of the Row, to whom Sir Nugent Uffington had become a familiar figure, and who were not disposed to regard him as a lively or agreeable companion, had no occasion to alter their opinion of him from his behaviour on this particular day. The few who noticed him mentioned him to each other as 'mooning about as usual;' he nodded to very few, and only stopped once, and that was to speak to his old friend Tom Lydyeard, who was leaning over the rails. Their conversation was common-place and matter-of-fact enough, the usual platitudes of society talk--for Tom Lydyeard, a really good-natured fellow, was not much gifted with brains, and even in what he had to say was a trifle rococo and old-worldly--when a sudden impetus was given to it by Lydyeard saying, 'Look at this man on the bright bay, riding outside of the girl with the chestnut; that is the man that everybody is talking of just now--I pointed him out to you the first night we met at the Opera--Lord Forestfield.'

Uffington looked quickly round. At that moment the bay horse shied at a dog which darted from under the railings, and its rider, turning white with rage, brought his riding-stick down with all his force between its ears. The horse bucked and lashed out, but its rider never moved in his seat, and the next moment the little cavalcade had broken into a gallop and were out of sight.

'Nice lot, isn't he?' muttered Tom Lydyeard between his teeth; 'they say he treated his wife that way, and yet they tell me that now there is not a soul in the place, man or woman, to speak a kind word to her, or to do her a good turn. Queer world, ain't it, Uffington?'

'Very,' said Nugent. 'Good-bye;' and he cantered off in the direction of Grosvenor-place.

It was not time for luncheon yet, he thought, as he rode out under the arch, and he might as well ride round and see where Podbury-street--what a curious name!--where Podbury-street was. Sixty-eight was the number that Frank Eardley had mentioned; and here was Podbury-street, and there was sixty-eight, with a handsome brougham--harness a little too heavily plated, and coachman's livery a thought too gorgeous--standing at the door. Now the door opened, and a young lady came out, whom Nugent had no difficulty in recognising as Miss Irvine--she did not see him, for she darted hastily into the carriage--saw her, too, sufficiently plainly to notice that tears were rolling down her cheeks.

What could be the meaning of that? Decidedly Sir Nugent Uffington was much interested in Miss Eleanor Irvine and Lady Forestfield.

CHAPTER VIII.

IN DEFENCE.

Frank Eardley was punctual to his appointment with Sir Nugent Uffington, and the friends started at once for their proposed drive to Richmond.

During this drive, the stroll under the trees and through the fern which followed it, and the dinner which crowned the day's amusement, Sir Nugent Uffington was much more companionable, and took far greater interest in his friend's remarks. The fact was that he had skilfully led the conversation in the direction of Lady Forestfield, and induced Eardley to chat to him unreservedly about that lady and the manner of her life before and after her marriage. On such matters Eardley was just the man to be the mouthpiece of that portion of the world which hears everything that is going on in society, and comments upon it in a broad and genial spirit, untinged by envy or jealousy, but sufficiently flavoured with that sarcasm which comes natural to worldlings in this age of cynicism and disbelief. He had known Lord Stortford; indeed, the worthy peer, who had inherited his father's love of art of all kinds, had been one of the first to discover early indications of the talent which had raised the Royal Academician to his present rank in art, and had given him his earliest commission. Eardley was received in Grosvenor-square on those pleasant terms of equality which were always extended by the host to those whose social manners permitted it, had made May's acquaintance even before she was presented, and had struck up a pleasant friendship with her. Frank Eardley knew too well his own position and the girl's destiny to attempt to convert this friendship into any stronger alliance; and May, who appreciated the state of affairs with equal correctness, made the kindly artist the confidant of many of her hopes and fears. Of Lord Forestfield, who proposed to Miss Dunmow very shortly after his return from a protracted residence abroad, Frank Eardley knew nothing; but he saw enough of him during the few weeks previous to the marriage, to make up his mind that the intended bridegroom was by no means all that could be looked for in the husband of so charming a girl. What May required to guide her aright was a man of sound common sense with a very light hand, who would keep herself sufficiently in check while never allowing her to feel the curb; a man to whom she could look up with respect and admiration, and to whom she could defer even when her wishes were most strongly engaged, knowing that he would be in the right. To Eardley, Lord Forestfield's character seemed wholly different from this: he was at the same time narrow-minded and impetuous, with a strong belief in himself, and an undisguised contempt for the opinion of others. Moreover, the clubs rang with rumours of his previous life, and of his ideas as to domestic loyalty; which argued but ill for the future peace of mind of the girl whose lot in life he was destined to control. After their marriage, Eardley had seen but little of them. He paid his duty call, but May's suggestion that he should be asked to dinner was met with a prompt negative from her husband, who declared his intention of eliminating all 'such kind of people' from his house. They met, however, pretty frequently in society, and though May, in obedience to Lord Forestfield's wishes, restricted her conversation with her old friend to ordinary conventionalities, Eardley saw from her manner that she was unhappy, and soon gathered from general gossip that she was ill-treated. He had seen so many affairs of this kind, that when the gossip further informed him that Lady Forestfield was avenging herself, the kind-hearted artist was thoroughly sorry, but very little surprised. 'Tu l'as voulu, Georges Dandin,' he muttered to himself with a shrug, as the purveyor of scandal left his studio to proceed further on his self-imposed generous mission. 'I guessed it would come to that, and there is no use in my attempting to stop this stream of poached filth which floods the middle street, which that rascal who has just left is assiduously helping in its course;' but he did what he could to stem the current nevertheless, and there were some people who hesitated to believe the stories whispered against Lady Forestfield's fair fame, simply because Frank Eardley declared them to be false.

He told all this in his simple quiet manner to his friend as they sat over their bottle of claret in the calm evening.

'I have not seen Lady Forestfield since the smash,' he said, 'though, of course, I would do anything in the world I could to be of service to her. But,' he added, looking steadily at Uffington, 'I don't believe, Nugent, in interference in such matters, at all events by men. I am delighted to think that she has Eleanor Irvine with her. A straightforward right-thinking girl like that, whatever the Mrs. Grundys may choose to say, cannot come to any grief herself in keeping up her old friendship with this poor lady, while she may be the means of doing her an infinity of good; but a man who sought to take up any position in the matter would only compromise Lady Forestfield and himself; and is far better out of the scrape. Don't you think so?'

'Yes,' said Sir Nugent; 'it depends a good deal on the kind of assistance intended, and upon the manner in which it is proffered; but I think upon the whole you are right. Now let us go.'

Nevertheless, when he found himself alone in his chambers, thinking over the occurrences of the previous night, and over all that he had so recently heard of Lady Forestfield's trials and temptations, the desire to know something more of her and of the league which bound Eleanor Irvine to her arose more strongly than ever within him. He had chosen to express his agreement with what Frank Eardley had said about interference, partly in order to avoid a further discussion on the subject, and partly that he might not be suspected of carrying out his decided intention of moving in the matter. If he had been called upon to define the impulse which prompted him he could not have done so; but he had a vague idea that he might be able in some way and at some future time to be of assistance to this stricken woman; and under that influence he sat down and wrote the following letter:

'The Albany, Thursday night.

'Dear Lady Forestfield,--I have just returned to England, after a long absence, and, as is usually the case with wanderers, find that many of my familiar friends are no longer here to greet me, and many of the houses where I once was welcome are now in the hands of strangers. In my early days in London, when you were a very little child, Lady Stortford was good enough to distinguish me with her notice and her friendship, and it is impossible for me ever to forget the kindness which I received at her hands. Very frequently in my travels I had looked forward with sincere pleasure to the thought of meeting her again. As this is not to be, I have ventured to ask my friend Mr. Eardley for your address, and I write to express a hope that you will allow me as your mother's old friend to call upon you.--Sincerely yours,

'NUGENT UFFINGTON.'

'That reference to Eardley,' said Uffington to himself as he folded the letter, 'will let her know that I am in full possession of the facts of her story, and am not writing under any misapprehension. Take this,' he added, giving the note to his servant, 'early in the morning; and be sure to bring me back an answer.'

The next morning he found a small hand-delivered note lying on his breakfast table amongst the correspondence which the post had brought him. He seized upon it at once, and read as follows:

'Lady Forestfield will be happy to receive Sir Nugent Uffington between the hours of three and five on this or any other afternoon.'

To his own surprise and amusement, Uffington found himself making a more elaborate toilette than usual, and at the hour named he presented himself in Podbury-street.

Hitherto he had only had slight opportunity of seeing Lady Forestfield, and he had no idea she was so beautiful. She was very simply dressed in a plain muslin morning gown, and her whole appearance coincided with the neat and modest rooms in which she was living. Uffington was struck at once with the classical beauty of her head, with her wavy dark hair, taken off from her forehead and gathered in a clump behind, with her large lustrous melancholy eyes, and with her bright fresh colour. She received him kindly, but with some embarrassment, which he endeavoured at once to dissipate.

'You will probably have been surprised at the receipt of my letter, Lady Forestfield,' he said; 'but I fear it must be self-explanatory, as I have very little to add to it in justification of my desire to see you. I have always had the keenest remembrance of Lady Stortford's kindness, at a time when her support and countenance were most valuable to me; have always had a hope of thanking her for it; and when I found that was beyond my power, I desired to thank her representative.'

'I am scarcely in that position, Sir Nugent Uffington, I fear,' said Lady Forestfield, flushing deeply.

'You are her ladyship's daughter, Lady Forestfield,' said Uffington quickly, 'and as such worthy of all respect from me.'

'I am grateful to Providence that my mother is no longer alive to see me as I am,' said May with bitter emphasis. 'It would be worse than useless for me to disguise from myself that you are perfectly well acquainted with my present position, Sir Nugent Uffington.'

'If I had not been, had your position been other than it is, Lady Forestfield,' said Nugent, 'I scarcely think I should be here now. Believe me, my earnest desire is to serve you in any possible way.'

'I am grateful to you for these expressions, Sir Nugent Uffington, but I do not see how you can aid me. There is nothing to be done,' she added with a sigh; 'I have taken my own course, and I must abide the consequences.'

'There is much to be done,' said Uffington gently, 'in mitigating the severity of your sentence, though the person with whom one has to deal renders the operation somewhat difficult.'

'I can look for no mercy at Lord Forestfield's hands,' said May, shaking her head; 'from him I can only expect the worst that could befall me.'

'Under compulsion a man has to set aside his own wishes and desires, and one might find means of making even Lord Forestfield do much that would be naturally disagreeable to him,' said Nugent. 'I know nothing of him, but from what I have heard, I cannot imagine how Lady Stortford, with her knowledge of the world, could have permitted you, child as you were, to make such a marriage.'

'Child as I was, I had a strong will of my own,' said May--'a will which I was accustomed to indulge, no matter what opposition was made to it or by whom. My poor mother, who, in this instance at least, seemed to be endowed with strange foresight, prayed me to reject Lord Forestfield's advances, urging as a reason that she was sure I was but temporarily infatuated, and that I should soon repent my determination. I would not listen to her, I would not hear a word against him; I had my own way, and--this is the result.'

'Temporarily infatuated. Was Lady Stortford right? were you, then, so deeply fascinated by this man?'

May paused an instant. 'All that you have ever heard or read of insane infatuation was nothing to mine,' she said; 'I worshipped him with all my soul. Brought up strictly as I had been, I believed there was no position in the world I would not have gladly accepted to insure always being at his side. I cannot tell,' she said, after another pause, 'why I am speaking thus freely to you, except that I have had no one in the world to open my heart to; and though I have never seen you before, I have instinctive confidence in you.'

'You will find that confidence is not misplaced,' said Uffington gravely. 'When did you first find your mother's words come true?'

'Not until some little time after she was dead, not until my husband had begun to weary of his plaything; for that I was, and nothing more. During the first months of our marriage, my life was one of perfect happiness; the man whom I adored was constant in his attentions to me; I was indulged in every whim, and flattered to the top of my bent. Money was recklessly lavished upon me, and as I had all I wished and all my pleasures were shared by my husband, my happiness was greater than even I ever deemed possible.'

'And that happiness lasted?'

'Just as long as pleased Lord Forestfield's fancy, and no longer. He told me afterwards, with much bitter frankness, that I ought to be very proud of having kept him in thrall for such a length of time, adding that he was changeable by nature, and had never before worshipped so long at one shrine.'

'What an infernal scoundrel!' muttered Uffington, under his breath. Then aloud: 'Did he break with you at once?'

'O no,' said May. 'So long as he cared for me in his own peculiar way, he had given me the fullest liberty, knowing that I never had any thought but for him; but after he wearied of me he began to grow, or to pretend to grow, absurdly jealous. It has been truly said that there is no love without jealousy, and could I have persuaded myself that my husband's passion for me had not changed, I should not have minded jealousy and suspicion, even misplaced as his were, but should rather have regarded them as proofs of his attachment; but knowing what I did, it was easy for me to perceive that this jealousy sprang from temper, and not from love, and was a degradation instead of what it would otherwise have been, a tribute.'

'Your sad experience seems to have taught you much,' said Uffington, looking at her compassionately.

'So I thought myself; and yet it failed me in my direst end,' said May. 'My sad experience stripped the mask from my demigod, and showed him to me as he was, simply a libertine, cold, selfish, and exacting. Having no fault to find with me, save that I had failed any longer to please or amuse him, he vented his rage on me under the frivolous pretext of being jealous, when he knew that I had no eyes or voice for any one in the world but him.'

'To a man of this stamp the possession of such a wife must always be a matter of congratulation; he must at least have been proud of you, though you say you no longer pleased his fancy.'

'I suppose so,' said May sadly; 'for though his insults to me in private were constant and unsparing, he always paraded me in public, and seemed to look upon me as a portion of his state. There came a time when these insults were not confined to our private interviews, when he would not scruple to outrage and humiliate me before our own acquaintances, and those acquaintances did not hesitate to say that he wanted to get rid of me. This, of course, I did not know until later. Up to that time I had suffered silently, hoping, believing that some change would take place, that what I still fancied had been his genuine love for me would return, and that all would go on as in the first days of our marriage; but when I found from looks and half-dropped hints that I had become a subject of pity for my friends, my pride stepped in to my assistance, and I revolted.'

'The old story,' muttered Nugent Uffington, shrugging his shoulders, and speaking more to himself than his companion; 'that was the time when above all others you wanted some one at hand to help and sustain you.'

'You are right,' said May. 'And some one was there, though with other plans and other motives. My pride was outraged, my heart was lacerated, and there was some one ready if necessary to avenge the one and to bind up the other, to sympathise, sentimentalise, and console.'

'Always so, always so!' muttered Uffington. 'And you accepted this sympathy and consolation?'

'Not at first,' said May. 'Stung to madness though I was by mingled pride and sorrow, I still kept my senses sufficiently to discern the fatal gulf that lay before me, and to feel hurt and grieved at the condolence, glossed over as it was in the most specious manner, which was offered to me. But the man, who for his own purposes had constituted himself my champion, from long practice knew every trick and turn of the game he was playing, and was thoroughly well aware of the advantage of waiting. He waited--and won! That is my story, Sir Nugent Uffington. I have told it to you--not because I thought you could in any way assist me, but because I felt it would be a relief to tell it in my own way to any one who could understand it, and because you are the only person of what was once my own social standing--save one, who is even more powerless than yourself--who for weeks has spoken a kind word to me.'

Uffington bowed his head, but affected not to notice that tears were streaming down Lady Forestfield's face. He did not choose to speak for an instant; indeed, he had but little to say--he knew well enough from his own past experience that in such a wreck as that which she described all future hope was almost necessarily lost, and that of the débris which after a time came floating to the surface nothing serviceable could be made. He knew this, and acknowledged it in his own mind, but did not choose at once to acknowledge it to her, so asked her, when he saw that the tears had ceased to flow and that she was somewhat more composed, 'Can anything be done?'

'Nothing,' she replied quietly--'nothing at all. So far as the world is concerned my life is ended. When my child was taken from me I grieved bitterly; now I acknowledge the wisdom of the sentence, and am grateful to Providence that her life was not spared--better far she should be dead than that she should have grown up to know me as I am, and be parted from me, living.' And once more she broke down and buried her face in her hands.

'I am not sure even now that I cannot be of some service to you, Lady Forestfield,' said Uffington, after a pause; 'but my plan, if I form one, will require consideration, and cannot be proceeded with hastily. In the mean time, you can thoroughly depend on my warm friendship and readiness to help you in any way suggested. By the way, you alluded to a friend who has seen you in your trouble. You will not think me impertinent in asking if you were referring to Miss Eleanor Irvine?'

'Yes,' said Lady Forestfield, 'I alluded to Miss Irvine. I have known her for years, and am very much attached to her. Have you ever met her?'

'I dined in her company the night before last, and judged, from something she said, that she was a warm friend of yours.'

'She comes to see me every day,' said Lady Forestfield; 'that is to say, she has done so up to this time.'

'And is she going to discontinue her visits?'

'I fear I must insist upon her doing so,' said May.

'And why? You must find them a pleasant break in the monotony of your life.'

'They are far more than that to me,' said May, 'but when Eleanor was here last, I discovered quite accidentally that she visits me without the knowledge of her sister, with whom she lives, and to whom she is much indebted. Then, for the girl's own sake, I spoke out frankly. I told her this must not be, and that she must either tell her sister where she came to daily, or cease seeing me. Did not I do right?'

'Quite right in theory, but in practice I think you were a little too punctilious towards Mrs. Chadwick, who, though a practical, well-meaning woman, would scarcely be able to appreciate the delicacy of your motives.'

'Let all my misery rest on my own head,' said May. 'I am very fond of Eleanor Irvine, her visits are inexpressibly precious to me, and yet I have doubted whether I ought to let her come to this house.'

'I have not the slightest doubt in the matter,' said Uffington; 'on the contrary, I am certain that from you and from your valuable experience of life, Miss Irvine will learn to avoid much which may be before her in that curious position in society which she now occupies.'

And then he took his leave, promising to see Lady Forestfield again very shortly.

CHAPTER IX.

THE OLD LOVE.

Mr. Eardley lived in St. John's Wood, in a quaint fantastic house which he had built after his own design, on a plot of land which he bought because the situation pleased him. There were big elm-trees in the neighbourhood, peopled by a colony of rooks; and the grounds were so disposed as to shut out all inquisitorial prying, and give plenty of space for Mr. Eardley and his friends to wander about in the eccentric costume which in the privacy of his home the artist rather encouraged, without leading his neighbours to believe that a private asylum had been opened on the premises. Mr. Eardley was a great lover of nature, and even in the height of the season, when the severest calls upon his time were made by duty and pleasure, he invariably found leisure to devote some portion of the day to strolling in his garden, and enjoying the sight and scent of the flowers which had either been planted by his own hands, or under his direction.

The interior of the house was as quaint and fantastic as the exterior, and was furnished and painted in a manner which was pronounced 'perfectly charming' by the ladies, and 'deuced odd' by their husbands. Anything more entirely different from an ordinary mansion arranged by the upholsterer with an unlimited order it would be difficult to conceive. The hall, the passages, and most of the rooms were hung with tapestry, and, where there was wall paper, it was in the wondrous colours and strange devices which Mr. Eardley and his friends occupied their leisure in inventing. Ordinary chairs and tables there were none, but in the course of a stroll through the rooms you would come upon old carved chests; prie-dieus; stately, high-backed, black-oak chairs, the spoil of some Elizabethan manor-house; couches covered with Utrecht velvet, and odd short seats, like the 'settles' in the porch of a country tavern, only in elaborately-carved oak. The walls, the tables, the ledges of the book-cases, were all laden, and throughout the house there seemed to be no vacant space. Objects of art lay about in extraordinary confusion and disorder; the light was reflected from steel mirrors, Venetian glasses, and old looking-glasses with china frames; from ancient armour, in which the rust was gradually eating away the gold and silver niello work; from Damascus blades and Persian tulwars and Albanian yataghans. Here were Dresden shepherds and shepherdesses smirking painfully at hideous porcelain monsters from China and Japan; a buhl clock on which Louis Quatorze had been accustomed to look was flanked on either side by a coffee-coloured pug-dog in china, while over it was suspended a Japanese paper-lantern; a gauntlet, with the blood and rust of Naseby field for ever eaten into it, lay on a mosaic slab in the immediate vicinity of a carved ivory set of chessmen; and a pair of Moorish slippers had for their supporters on the one side a fan painted on chicken-skin which had once been the property of a beauty of the Regency, and on the other a plaster-of-paris caricature statuette of M. Thiers, by Danton.

At the very time that Frank Eardley was making his way to the Albany, for the purpose of inducing Sir Nugent Uffington to accompany him to the china sale at Dossetor's, and to spend the rest of the day with him, as already recorded, Mr. Spiridion Pratt pulled the loud-sounding bell of the Villa--for such was the name of the artist's house in St. John's Wood--and awaited its answer by Eardley's Italian valet, who was held in high respect by his master's intimates.

'Good-morning, Gaetano,' said he, when the man appeared. 'Is Mr. Eardley at home?'

'No, signor,' replied the valet; 'he started out about half an hour ago.'

'Indeed!' said Spiridion, shaking his head with a smile. 'Is this the way he makes up for the time lost during the season? I am afraid the master is growing idle again, Gaetano?'

'The master had an idle fit on him this morning, signor,' said Gaetano; 'but recently he has been wonderfully attentive to his work. Will not the signor walk in and see what progress has been made with the Aspasie?'

'Well,' said Spiridion, 'I have nothing to do just now, and I am a little tired with my walk. I may just as well rest myself for a few minutes. Mr. Eardley did not say at what time he would return, did he, Gaetano?'

'No, signor,' replied the valet; 'it is seldom that the master gives any hint of his movements; he likes to come and go without the knowledge of his people.'

'He is quite right,' muttered Spiridion to himself as he entered the house, and, followed by the servant, made his way to the studio, which was in the rear of the premises.

A splendid room, the walls hung with deep maroon-coloured cloth; on one side a huge oaken press, with its open doors showing an omnium gatherum of all kinds of costumes, some of which had overflowed their receptacle, and were lying on the floor; on the other side a second oaken cabinet, almost equally huge, and devoted to the reception of tobacco and cigars: an artistic pipe-rack, consisting of a number of heads cast in plaster-of-paris, was nailed against the wall, and pipes of all kinds, from the narghile of the Turk and the painted porcelain of the German to the humble cutty of the Irish labourer, were to be found about the room. At the end opposite to that by which Spiridion Pratt had entered was an open glass door leading into a lovely circular conservatory, where in the midst of a tesselated pavement a fountain was plashing, and where sweet singing birds were hanging amidst the ferns and flowers. In various parts of the room were three easels of different sizes, on one of which was a half-finished picture of a woman of great beauty and intellectual expression, but of a large size and commanding type. The colours on this picture were still wet, and on the ledge of the easel were the unclean palette and the sheaf of brushes.

'There is the Aspasie,' said the valet, pointing to the picture; 'and here,' producing them, 'are the cigarettes. Will not the signor take something to drink after his walk--a cup of coffee, or some Rhine wine and seltzer-water? It is here, close at hand.'

'No, thanks, Gaetano,' said Spiridion. 'I have a poor head, you know, and should never be able to do anything if I drank in the morning, but I will smoke a cigarette or two with pleasure, and will wait here, at all events, for half an hour to see if Mr. Eardley returns.'

Then the valet bowed and left the room.

'So this is the Aspasie, is it,' said Spiridion, lighting a cigarette and seating himself in a chair opposite the easel; 'this is the picture which next spring is to bring our friend two or three thousand pounds and a large addition to his fame? I cannot say with Browning, "I could have painted pictures like this youth's," for everything he does is immeasurably beyond me. This head, for instance, is remarkably fine, and there is a certain calm dignity, and sense of power about it which pleases me very much. Eardley has caught the right idea, no doubt. One can fancy that being the sort of woman to whom Socrates would give way, and whom Pericles would adore. A delightful person in her way,' he murmured, leaning back in his chair and shading his eyes with his hands, 'but scarcely the kind of person to have always about with you--to make one's wife, for instance. My idea of a wife is a little lovable creature like Eleanor Irvine, kind and gentle, but with plenty of spirit about her, as she showed last night at dinner in her defence of Lady Forestfield. If I am to marry, I do not see that I could do better than choose that little girl. She has no money, to be sure, but I have plenty, and she is quite the sort of person who will do one credit by her appearance. There is nothing objectionable in her surroundings either, which is a great point; for though Chadwick is not polished, every one knows him and he receives the best people, and there would be no real reason for seeing more of him than we chose. The question is, whether I ought to marry at all? I am not growing younger,' said Mr. Pratt, rising and surveying himself in the glass, 'and I have begun to get deuced liney round the mouth and eyes, and if I intend to do it at all, I had better do it now. It is a mistake, I believe, to suppose that marriage destroys your prestige with women. There are a lot of fellows of my acquaintance who seem to have infinitely more on their hands since their marriage than they had before--not that I think I should go in for that sort of thing myself. I should not either object, if I were once married, to settling down and becoming the most exemplary husband, that is to say, if people would only let me. When one has a certain amount of good looks and romantic feeling, and that kind of thing, it is almost impossible to go straight, and I know I have never had the heart to join in any of the abuse which I have heard showered upon the Forestfields, and wretched people of that kind, knowing how deserving I am of it myself. That is another reason, too, which makes me think it would be advisable to marry and get out of the way of temptation--the fear of any éclaircissement, and being dragged up before the world and written about in the newspapers. When a man regularly goes in for bonne fortune, such a thing does him no harm, and the more he is talked about the better he likes it; but I am not strong, and the mere worry of the thing would wear me to a shadow. I don't know how I am to get clear of my present entanglement; and yet if I am to fall in with Mrs. Chadwick's views, and propose to Eleanor, of course it must be done somehow. This picture,' he continued, turning back to the easel, 'reminds me uncommonly of Margaret. It has just her broad brow and queenly air; just her flashing eyes, and they will flash like the deuce when she hears what I am going to do. I wish I had never made her acquaintance. I was uncommonly proud of her at first, and used to like to be seen everywhere with her; but when that kind of thing is beginning, one never imagines or chooses to think what the end of it is to be. I have a strong idea, too, that Mrs. Chadwick has her suspicions in that direction. The persistent way in which she talked to me about the Hamblins last night--asking why they remained in town, and what was their probable destination when they left--could not have been mere chance work. She is, however, too much a woman of the world to allow an intrigue that was past and dead to interfere with my marriage with her sister, but would be sure to convince herself that it was very dead indeed before she sanctioned such a step. She is a very clear-sighted woman, whom one could not possibly hoodwink about such a matter, and I must therefore take some very decisive step with regard to Margaret.'

Mr. Spiridion Pratt's soliloquy was interrupted by the opening of the door; Gaetano appeared ushering in a lady.

'No, madame,' he said, 'I was mistaken; the master has not returned. Here is a signor who is still awaiting him--a signor who is, I think, known to madame.'

And the valet retired at once, closing the door carefully behind him.

'O, how do you do, Mrs. Hamblin?' said Spiridion Pratt, with very crimson cheeks and a rather shaking hand, rising to greet the lady.

A tall handsome woman of some eight-and-thirty years old, with bold black eyes and soft creamy complexion, very dark chestnut hair, and full scarlet lips. A majestic-looking woman, with a splendid figure, whose walk, without any absurd exaggeration, was stately, and whose every pose was perfect. She was dressed in a morning-gown of thick linen, fringed with handsome work, and set off with a blue sash; her bonnet was very plain, of white straw, with white and blue feathers in it. A physiognomist looking at her would have told you that she could experience passion but not love, and that she was an unhappy woman, proud, scornful, and conscious of being misunderstood.

She put out her hand indeed, but advanced towards Spiridion with uplifted eyebrows and with something of a pained expression in her face.

'Why this formality, Tito?' she asked.

'I was not aware that I was guilty of any,' said Mr. Pratt, on whose cheeks the colour still remained.

'You know my Christian name; why do you not call me by it?'

'Not before the servants, my dear Margaret,' said Spiridion, bending over her hand. 'Gaetano's ears are remarkably sharp, and he is peculiarly appreciative in such matters.'

'In such matters,' repeated Mrs. Hamblin scornfully. 'Well, you are doubtless right. What an age since I have seen you!'

'To my sorrow,' said Spiridion. 'The world believes me to be an idle man, but you know how really busy I am.'

'I have observed of late that you have had a great deal to do,' said Mrs. Hamblin, in the same tone. 'We were disappointed in not seeing you at dinner last night.'

'You are very good to say so. It seems almost ludicrous to have had an engagement at this time of year, when there is really nothing going on, but some friends of mine had been kind enough to ask me for last night, and I had pledged myself to them days before.'

'And was it pleasant at the Chadwicks'? You need not start; I don't pretend to any powers of divination,' she said, with a short laugh. 'Mr. Chadwick called in to see my husband at breakfast this morning, and told us you had been dining there.'

'O yes, it was very pleasant,' said Spiridion, on whose cheeks the flush seemed permanently fixed. 'Mr. Chadwick, you know, always gives such excellent dinners.'

'And has such pleasant guests. Had you any ladies present?'

'Only the ladies of the family.'

'Ladies of the family,' repeated Mrs. Hamblin. 'I did not know that there was any one except Mrs. Chadwick.'

'O yes, her sister, Miss Eleanor Irvine, was present,' said Spiridion, who began to see plainly that his recent determination had not been taken at all too soon, and to wonder whether he should have pluck enough to carry it out.

'Mrs. Chadwick's sister,' said Mrs. Hamblin. 'O yes, I remember; rather a pretty person--pink and white, is she not? I cannot imagine where I have seen her, for she doesn't go out, I believe.'

'She is in mourning for her father, who is recently dead,' explained Spiridion.

'And yet if this young lady is Mrs. Chadwick's sister, Mrs. Chadwick's father must be recently dead too,' said Mrs. Hamblin, looking straight at him. 'If there is any man in the world who knows what real romance is, or, at least, can pretend to know sufficiently to deceive others, it is you. Do you think this girl pretty?'

Two months since Spiridion Pratt would have vowed that he never thought about the girl at all, or, if the point were pressed to him, that he considered her downright ugly; but he had made up his mind now, and perceived that the time to strike had come.

'Yes; I think she is decidedly pretty,' he said.

Mrs. Hamblin was disconcerted; she evidently had not anticipated such a reply. After a moment's pause she asked:

'Was that your first time of seeing her?

'O no; I have met her several times before.'

'And talked with her?'

'Yes, as one talks with a young girl whom one only meets at dinners and dances.'

'Ay, as you say, "with a young girl"--you found her rather missish, then?'

'On the contrary, she is bright and intelligent, and can quite hold her own in conversation.'

Mrs. Hamblin was silent for a few moments. Then she said, looking up at him with as much unconcern as she could throw into her glance, 'Do you remember, Tito, how often we have talked about the time that must come sooner or later when you would marry and settle down?

'Ye-es,' said Mr. Pratt, beginning to feel very uncomfortable. 'I think we have mentioned the subject once or twice.'

'O, we have talked of it very often,' said Mrs. Hamblin. 'I recollect that on the night when Mr. Eardley gave his fancy-dress ball, and when I was so absurdly jealous of Miss Harrington, we sat in the conservatory yonder after we had made up our little quarrel, and I then told you that I knew that there would come a time when our pleasant intimacy would be at an end, and when you would give up all your romance and lead an exemplary British married life.'

'Ye-es,' said Spiridion, a little crestfallen, 'I recollect your saying that now; but why do you refer to it?'

'Because I think the time has come,' said Mrs. Hamblin; 'because,' she added, with a half-scornful laugh, 'because I think your knell is sounded, and that you are a doomed man.'

'What makes you think that?' asked Spiridion uncomfortably.

'You yourself give me the clue to the idea--I judge entirely by your own manners,' said Mrs. Hamblin. 'You never had the power of concealing your thoughts from me, and I read them now as easily as I read a book.'

'There are some books that are not very easily read,' said Spiridion, plucking up a little. 'But what do you read in my thoughts?'

'I read that this new acquaintance of yours, Miss Eleanor Irvine, has made a great impression on you; not merely a passing impression, which has been made on you by girls a hundred times since I have known you, but something which seems to me to be deeper and more lasting. I never heard you before speak of any young girl's intellect and powers of conversation with enthusiasm, though I have often heard you admire their faces; farther, let me say frankly that if Miss Irvine had not made a deep impression on you, I do not think you would have thrown me over last night to dine in her company.'

'You don't imagine that--' commenced Spiridion.

'My dear Tito,' said Mrs. Hamblin, lifting up her hand, 'do not misjudge me--I am not in the least angry. As I told you before, I always knew that the thing must come, and though of course I regret it, I am prepared for it. I only hope that the young lady is as charming as you seem to think her.'

'You have only to know her to prove that,' said Spiridion. 'I am certain that you even, of all people in the world, would appreciate her.'

'Very likely,' said Mrs. Hamblin quietly. 'Then you acknowledge that I was right in all I said--you have been fascinated by this young lady, and the impression she has produced is likely to be a lasting one?'

'Frankly, yes,' said Spiridion, who was delighted to find matters going apparently so smoothly. 'I do not think I ever saw a young lady who pleased me so much.'

'You have not proposed to her?' said Mrs. Hamblin quickly.

'No, O no!'

'But you have let her see that you are very much taken with her?'

'Scarcely even that,' said Spiridion. 'I have merely paid her the ordinary attentions of society; but her sister--'

'Ah, yes, her sister, Mrs. Chadwick--clever managing woman that; you have talked with her about it?'

'Not in so many words; but from certain hints which she has given me, I am led to believe that the alliance would not be disagreeable to her.'

'I should think not,' said Mrs. Hamblin. 'Well, now that we have had this frank talk, you must make me acquainted with your idol, and avail yourself of any help I can give you towards winning her.'

'Margaret,' said Mr. Pratt, springing up and seizing her hand romantically, 'you were always generous and--'

'Not at all, my dear Tito,' said Mrs. Hamblin, disengaging herself with a smile; 'however we may be situated, there will always be a great bond of camaraderie between us.'

There was no smile, however, upon her face when, five minutes afterwards, she threw herself into the corner of her brougham, and lay back revolving plans of vengeance.

CHAPTER X.

ON THE WATCH.

Mrs. Hamblin, although she spoke so fairly to Spiridion Pratt, and seemed to experience so little annoyance at the idea of his proposing for Eleanor Irvine, was by no means prepared to let the matter run on smoothly and in an even course. Spiridion himself, who knew the passionate nature of the woman, and whose vanity induced him to believe that her existence without his devotion was almost impossible, had been wonderfully relieved when he found not merely that there was no necessity for him to break the real facts of the case to her, but that when he had confirmed her impression she received his candid declaration with more than calmness, and with the expression of a desire to help him in the attainment of his wishes. He was too foolish and too vain to believe that this woman with whom he had been intriguing would grow tired of him as he had grown tired of her; and yet such little knowledge of the world had he gained during all his six-and-thirty years of life as to think it possible that a woman's affection could be strong enough not only to permit her to give up the man whom she loved, feeling it was for his good, but actually to help him in his attempt to win the hand of another.

Mrs. Hamblin's character was not easily to be fathomed by such a superficial observer as Spiridion Pratt; and when she quitted the Villa after the interview in which her quondam admirer had suffered his secret to be so easily extracted from him, however calm she appeared outwardly, she was inwardly raging with spite and jealousy. Not that she particularly regretted the loss of Spiridion as an admirer. She had originally conceived the idea of allowing him to pay her attention at a time when the publication of his book of poems had given him a little temporary popularity amongst people in society, and when, consequently, many women of a certain class would have been glad to have entangled the lion in their net; and once entangled, Mr. Pratt was one of those tea-table Lovelaces whose romantic outpourings in private, and perpetual attentions in public, are so agreeable to some women. Mrs. Hamblin, however, who in far-seeing appreciation was in advance of the generality of her sex, had long since become somewhat weary of her adorer's inanity, and had more than once meditated on the desirability of giving him his congé; when, however, she discovered that the man of whom she thought it would be difficult to rid herself had actually transferred his devotion to another shrine, she was furious; and though she cared nothing at all about him for herself, she determined as far as possible to thwart his plans with regard to Eleanor Irvine solely to gratify her revenge.

Whirling away from the Villa, Mrs. Hamblin lay back in her brougham, pondering how her purpose could best be accomplished.

'Very bright and intelligent, is she?' she muttered. 'That may or may not be. A man in love not merely finds a Venus in the object of his admiration, but credits her with innumerable qualities which she never possessed; and Tito in this respect is worse than the majority of men, for he allows his folly, which he calls his fancy, completely to run away with him. The girl is pretty--I remember that distinctly--but I cannot call to mind anything else about her, and it is just such an alliance as would please that weak-minded Tito; to have a young girl sit and worship him all day, and to realise all his romantic aspirations of love in a cottage, with the cottage left out and a charming villa with all kinds of luxury instead, would render him supremely happy. And I am to sit by actually; and when we meet I am to be specially introduced, and to hear told before my face what a dear friend I have been, and under what obligations he is to me; and to imagine her being told behind my back--for the man is vain and weak and boastful, like most of them--what a conquest he had made of me, and how I had followed at the wheels of my lord's chariot. No, I do not think that I can quite brook that from any man. One might put up with a good deal from a great creature who was obviously one's master, but from Tito, who was my slave, and whose every thought and action I have directed since I first knew him, it is too absurd. I always knew that he would marry, for his romance, like his cynicism, and most of his other self-asserted characteristics, is a sham, and he would be far happier in the honest prose of domestic life; but I intended that his wife should be one of my choosing; and if this young lady really answers his description, she is by no means what I should have selected for him. He would be convenient for many reasons, even as a married man, under one's thumb; and with a wife of any sort of intelligence that would of course be impossible.

'Very bright and intelligent, and can quite hold her own in conversation. That I can perfectly understand; her sister, Mrs. Chadwick, is one of those women who have the superficial knowledge and the taking manner which would please a man like Tito, and the girl no doubt has caught it from her. But, in addition to this, Mrs. Chadwick is a keen woman of the world, who conducted her own marriage on the cleverest commercial principles, and who wishes to see her sister as safely and as reputably landed. To such a person Tito is a catch, and his alliance very desirable; so that I shall have no assistance from her. The girl may possibly have the same views; but I should have a better chance with her than with her sister. If she be as described, it is impossible she can have any real feeling for Tito, but is simply prepared to accept him from a worldly point of view; and it seems to me that there are two ways by which I can spoil the plan on which my faithless Tito has set his heart. To carry out either I must make the acquaintance of the young lady, and find out all about her. If she does not care for Tito, it will be easy enough to introduce her to some one who will soon obliterate any recollection of that romantic youth; and if she does care for him, it will not be difficult to lead her into such an entanglement as, once proved to him, will prevent his having any further thought of her.'

Actuated by these benevolent intentions, Mrs. Hamblin determined upon calling upon Mrs. Chadwick as soon as possible.

Accordingly, the next day, she made her way to Fairfax-gardens. The acquaintance between the ladies had up to this time been slight, and though Mr. and Mrs. Hamblin had been present at the charades and other entertainments, and Mr. and Mrs. Chadwick had dined once during the season with the Hamblins, there had been no farther intimacy. When the servant brought in Mrs. Hamblin's card, Mrs. Chadwick was a little surprised, as the usual formal visits on either side had been paid, and she was not looking forward to a renewal of such courtesy until the ensuing season. Nevertheless she was gratified, for Mrs. Hamblin stood exceptionally well with society--her husband's official rank, and her own good looks, wealth, and savoir faire, enabling them to hold their own with the best; while Mrs. Chadwick fancied she had hitherto been only received by them on sufferance as it were, and that they had no intention of farther prosecuting the acquaintance. But Mrs. Chadwick was quite sufficiently clever to know that Mrs. Hamblin would not have come to see her without some motive, and what that motive might be--whether it was the filling up of an idle half-hour at a time when most of her intimates were out of town, or whether it was dictated by some deeper design--the lady of Fairfax-gardens revolved in her mind as she descended to the drawing-room to greet her visitor.

Mrs. Hamblin when she chose had a very fascinating manner, and she used it on this occasion. Mrs. Chadwick could not imagine how she could ever have suspected her guest of formality or frigidity, so thoroughly kind, pleasant, and familiar did she now find her.

'I call this for some reasons really the very pleasantest time of the year in London,' said Mrs. Hamblin, 'for now there is a possibility of seeing something of those people whose tastes are in accordance with one's own, and who therefore one is disposed to look upon as one's friends. In the season, as you know perfectly well, my dear Mrs. Chadwick, one lives in a perfect whirl from morning till night, and from May to July we scarcely have more opportunity for a friendly chat than if we were at opposite poles. Now, however, that all the bustle and party-giving is over, there is an opportunity for real enjoyment, and I was really wicked enough to be glad when I heard from our friend Mr. Pratt that you and Mr. Chadwick were detained in town as well as ourselves; for I thought we should be glad to get you to come and see us in an informal manner, and that I should have the chance, which I have often wished for, of knowing you more intimately.'

Mrs. Chadwick seemed taken aback at this; she nevertheless replied much in the same strain, expressing her obligations at the compliment, and the delight which she and her husband would experience in meeting Mr. and Mrs. Hamblin on the terms suggested. The line taken by her visitor gave her a chance of magnifying her own importance, and she expatiated to Mrs. Hamblin on the vast amount of society which during the season she was compelled to keep up, and on the relief which she, in her turn, experienced when relieved from so much social pleasure. But, like an astute sword-player, she kept her wits about her during all this flourish and preamble, and the mention of Spiridion Pratt's name had aroused her suspicions. Upon Mrs. Chadwick herself the breath of scandal had never blown, but there were few virtuous ladies better posted upon all that was said about their neighbours, and the relations between Mrs. Hamblin and her romantic Tito had been frequently discussed at Fairfax-gardens and elsewhere in Mrs. Chadwick's presence.

'And we hope to have the additional pleasure,' continued Mrs. Hamblin, all smiles, but with a shrewd perception of what was passing across her companion's mind, 'of making the acquaintance of your charming sister. Miss Irvine is quite a stranger to Mr. Hamblin, and though I have seen her once, it is true, it was for a moment only. I have constantly looked forward to meeting her again, but I have always been disappointed. Now you must bring her with you, and I have promised myself a great treat, for I am sure she must be as agreeable as she is pretty.'

Mrs. Chadwick was much confused at this move, and could not understand Mrs. Hamblin's motive for it. Spiridion she knew would naturally be at the dinner, and she could not define Mrs. Hamblin's object in throwing Eleanor in his way.

That there was an object, however, she was certain, and it was accordingly somewhat coldly that she replied, 'I will be the bearer of your message, of course, with much pleasure, but I can hardly hope that it will have any satisfactory result, for my sister resolutely refuses to go into society.'

'That I can perfectly understand,' said Mrs. Hamblin, 'as she is young and inexperienced, and has not the necessity, like you, to hide her own griefs and feelings in order to play an important part in the world; but such a little family gathering as I propose cannot be called society--there will only be ourselves and Mr. Pratt, and perhaps two or three unfortunate men who have been left stranded in town, and whom we can secure at a short notice.'

This frankness was still farther confusing. Spiridion was to be there--what could be the meaning of it? And then Mrs. Chadwick recollected having heard Charley Ormerod say that Mrs. Hamblin would soon get tired of Little Petrarch--the name by which Mr. Pratt was known in the set--and send him flying like the rest of them. Perhaps this had come about; perhaps she had grown tired of Little Petrarch and sent him flying, careless as to who should pick him up.

'I can only repeat that I will give your message to my sister and do all I can to induce her to come, but I have strong doubts about success.'

'Would you let me make my application to Miss Irvine in person, my dear Mrs. Chadwick?' said Mrs. Hamblin. 'Not that I for an instant doubt your good intentions, or am unaware that what I am about to say sounds horribly vain, but I candidly confess I have a great belief in my own powers of persuasion.'

'Such a belief is doubtless merely the result of experience, Mrs. Hamblin, and in accordance with what all the world says of you,' said Mrs. Chadwick half spitefully--for except her honest old husband no one had ever found her particularly fascinating--'and I will take care that you have the opportunity of seeing Eleanor.'

'At once?' asked Mrs. Hamblin. 'May I try at once? I feel full of mesmeric influence to-day.'

'I am sorry that you will not have the opportunity of exhibiting your skill to-day, unless you choose to wait for an hour,' said Mrs. Chadwick coldly, 'for Eleanor is not in the house just now, and I have sent the brougham to fetch her.'

'Not in the house,' repeated Mrs. Hamblin; 'O, I am so grieved!'

'She has been very much engaged for the last few weeks,' said Mrs. Chadwick. 'First, in attendance on an old schoolfellow, who required care and attention--which she could not possibly have had but for Eleanor's help--and more recently she has been occupied at the South Kensington Museum.'

'At the South Kensington Museum!' cried Mrs. Hamblin, whose notions of that establishment were confined to an occasional languid stroll through the loan collection, but who had heard of it as a convenient place of meeting for people who wanted accidentally to encounter each other. 'At the South Kensington Museum!' she repeated. 'How very funny! What does she go there for?'

'To study, Mrs. Hamblin,' said Mrs. Chadwick, with virtuous dignity. 'Eleanor has a great idea of independence, and desires to perfect herself in that art of which poor papa was so admirable a professor.'

'Was Mr. Irvine, the great artist, your father?' said Mrs. Hamblin, with well-feigned astonishment--she knew perfectly well all about poor Angus Irvine, to whose assistance she had more than once contributed--'I had no idea of that. And so your sister, who has talent of course, is thinking of following in his footsteps. How noble and courageous of her, and what a reproof to us, who are only fitted to be burdens upon men! But you surely will not permit her to persevere in this idea, my dear Mrs. Chadwick; she is far too pretty and interesting to be doomed to such a life. This is she, is it not?' she added, taking up a coloured photograph which stood upon the table. 'I thought I recognised those lovely eyes and that charming hair, though I had only seen her once; the likeness to you is most remarkable; a girl with a face like that must not be permitted to "wither on a stalk," as some one has said. There is scarcely any position which she might not aspire to if she were seen in society.'

'So I have told her,' said Mrs. Chadwick, delighted at the compliment to herself, 'but it does not seem to be of much use. However, as I said before, I will do my best to induce her to accept your kind invitation.'

'And if you succeed you may leave the rest to me,' said Mrs. Hamblin. 'I shall certainly try and dissuade her from this, in her case very natural, but wholly romantic, idea of becoming an artist, and the best means to that end is by encouraging her to go into society and become conscious of the excitement which she will create there. In a small company such as I propose having on Thursday, dear Mrs. Chadwick, there will be even a better chance for a beginner than in a larger assemblage, and you may depend upon my having no detrimentals present.'

'You include Mr. Pratt in your list?' asked Mrs. Chadwick, with a forced titter.

'Certainly,' replied Mrs. Hamblin quickly; 'Mr. Pratt will probably be the most eligible man there.' And soon afterwards she took her leave.

'That woman is decidedly my inferior in every variety of tactics,' said Mrs. Hamblin to herself, as she drove away. 'She could not hide her astonishment when I announced that I should have Tito to dinner to meet this rosebud, and ever since has been turning over in her mind what I meant without ever arriving at a conclusion. I hope the rosebud will come, as I am anxious to see her and form my own opinion about her. I don't choose that these vulgar people should carry all before them in the way they intend, and I am determined that this match, which seems to have been arranged with the greatest coolness and confidence on both sides, shall not take place. It will not require any very intricate scheming to break it off, I should think--I have had many a more difficult task, and have carried it through successfully before now. If the rosebud is not really desperately in love with my poor Tito, it will be easy to make her like some one else. If she is very fond of him, then one must work upon him, depreciate her in his eyes, and finally make him give her up. That would not be difficult in any case, and fortunately, as a means to that end, we get the rosebud's artistic tendencies and her habit of frequenting the South Kensington Museum. What a very weak woman Mrs. Chadwick must be to put any faith in such rodomontade as that! The girl goes there, I have no doubt; but I don't imagine that all she has learnt by the end of the day in the way of art-study would be worth much; though her knowledge of character, if she have the faculty of observation, is greatly increased. It might be as well just to see for oneself whether she really goes there, what she does, and whom she meets. She would not recognise me, and I might pick up some information which would be valuable. James,' she said, opening the front window of the brougham, 'go to the South Kensington Museum.'

The Chadwick brougham, noticeable always for that exaggeration in every particular which in such matters appears peculiar to parvenus--the horses a little too much for the carriage, the plating a little too much for the harness, and the servants' liveries considerably overdone--was standing before the entrance gate of the Museum as Mrs. Hamblin drove up.

'That is the carriage, no doubt,' said Mrs. Hamblin to herself; 'one could recognise it from any distance from its excessive vulgarity. And what on earth do people mean by having cockades in the servants' hats? I suppose the man is a deputy-lieutenant, or something of that sort; but I should have given Mrs. Chadwick credit for better taste than to ape such a distinction on such grounds. The brougham being there, one may take it for granted that the young lady is inside. I have a great mind to go in to see what peculiar form of art-study she may be at present engaged in. If she really is drawing, I don't suppose I should have much difficulty in finding her, and if she were not in the schools, why, that would be a point in my favour. Even were I to see her she would not recognise me, and I should therefore run no risk. I will go in and take my chance.'

Mrs. Hamblin called to the servant to open the door, but she had scarcely placed her foot upon the step before she withdrew it and resumed her seat, for, on looking round, she had perceived a young lady, who was no doubt the person she was seeking, advancing hurriedly from an opposite direction. When this young lady stepped into Mrs. Chadwick's carriage, and was rapidly driven off, Mrs. Hamblin had no farther doubt.

'It was she,' she said to herself. 'Even if I hadn't had such a recent glimpse of the photograph I should have remembered that striking face. There is no doubt she is exceedingly pretty, and I don't wonder at that soft-hearted Tito being captivated. There is much more style about her, too, than I had thought for, and she has quite enough charm to make her a dangerous rival to any one. So much the more reason for putting an end to this elaborate plan. And so that is the way she studies art, is it? How absurd to think that the sister, who fancies herself a thorough woman of the world, should be completely hoodwinked by such an apparently ingenuous creature! It is perfectly plain that the coachman must be in her confidence, and must bring the carriage in here and wait for her whilst she studies art elsewhere. It would not be difficult, I imagine, to learn through the servants what time the carriage is ordered to-morrow, and to see exactly where she goes. Circumstances seem so far to have played into my hands, and I don't think it will be very difficult to produce such a chain of evidence as will tend to render Tito somewhat less confident in the innocence of his innamorata.'

The next morning, at a few minutes before eleven o'clock, a hansom cab, in which was a lady with a black-lace veil, drew up in the side street next to Mr. Chadwick's mansion in Fairfax-gardens. Within a quarter of an hour the family brougham drove round to the door, and Miss Irvine having entered it, drove quickly off, followed at a little distance by the cab. After proceeding some way, the coachman changed his direction, and the cabman did the same. Finally, the brougham stopped at the door of Lady Forestfield's lodgings in Podbury-street. Miss Irvine descended and entered the house, the carriage driving away, but the cab remaining at a convenient distance. A few minutes afterwards another cab drove up to Lady Forestfield's door, and a slight good-looking man, with a dark beard, knocked, and was admitted. Then the veiled lady in the hansom ordered the driver to go to the South Kensington Museum, and on arrival instructed him to take up his position close to Mr. Chadwick's brougham, which was duly waiting there.

Two long hours passed, but the veiled lady showed no sign of weariness. Her patience was at last rewarded; Miss Irvine appeared within sight, making her way to the brougham. Just as she was approaching its door Mrs. Hamblin descended from her cab, and stretching out her hand, said, with an air of great delight, 'Miss Irvine, I believe? You will scarcely recollect me. I am Mrs. Hamblin, and I hope to have the pleasure of seeing you with your sister on Thursday next.'

CHAPTER XI.

AN UNEXPECTED ARRIVAL.

Time to Lady Forestfield passed on a leaden wing. From her earliest youth, from her nursery and governess days, she had always been accustomed to have amusement and excitement provided for her, and she was therefore totally unused and unable almost to think for herself, even when the topics to be thought of were of the vainest and lightest character. In her happiest days she had been always at the mercy of others, even for the suggestion of the frivolities in which she proposed to pass her time; and when these frivolities were at an end and she had to rely on her own unaided exertions to get through her day--without the power of squandering money, and with the feeling that her appearance in public when not absolutely compulsory would be in bad taste--she was wretched enough indeed. Neither she nor her companions had ever had any occupation. Their reading was confined to the trashiest romances which the circulating-library clerk chose to send to them; as to the meaning of needlework in its good old-fashioned sense they had not the slightest idea. Some of them would take up a bit of braiding or embroidery now and then, when it was thought that slippers or braces would be acceptable offerings to their 'pals;' a few of them now and then made a helpless mess with watercolours, under the idea that they were painting; and one, perhaps the most impudent and fastest of the set, took to illuminating texts, a work which she performed with great skill and exquisite good taste, and which added greatly to the attractions of the fashionable church of St. Boanerges.

But May Forestfield neither braided, nor drew, nor illuminated; and as the novels of the day principally turned upon various phases of the sin for the commission of which she was suffering, she had little pleasure in perusing them. Once or twice, indeed, she tried to take up some reading of a better and more serious kind, but she found it impossible to fix her attention; her thoughts wandered away from the book, which fell idly on her lap, and she was reduced to her old condition of staring blankly before her and wondering what would be the result of her 'case.'

That case, or rather the first stage of it, was very shortly to be brought to trial; the day had been fixed, and the date had been duly communicated to her by her attorney; for although it was not her intention to offer any defence to Lord Forestfield's application for a divorce, it was yet necessary for her to have legal advice. As the time slowly wore on and that dreadful date approached, May felt that such little courage as her elimination from society and from all chance of hearing herself and her past conduct discussed had afforded her, was virtually ebbing away. So far as publicity was concerned, a more terrible crisis awaited her than even that through which she had passed, for the gossip, hard and bitter though it was, had hitherto been confined to persons of her acquaintance, or who knew of her by repute; but so soon as the case should be brought into the law-courts, it must become public property, to serve as a theme of comment for the newspapers, and all the misery of shame which she had undergone at the time of the discovery would be renewed a hundredfold.

The sense of degradation which now overwhelmed her, she had to keep within her breast; for with all her desire to pour out her sorrows to Eleanor, and with perfect knowledge of the relief which such a course would afford her, innate delicacy forbade Lady Forestfield's entering upon such a subject with a young and inexperienced girl. It was bad enough for her to know that Eleanor was generally acquainted with the circumstances which had broken up her friend's home, and thrown her into the position which she was then filling; it was quite impossible that May could enter into detail, even though certain of the sympathy and consolation which she would receive. She might, indeed, have talked the matter fully out with Mrs. Ingram, but that volatile lady had long since quitted the deserted metropolis, and was the reigning belle of a select circle of congenial spirits at Hombourg. Moreover, in her existing state of mind, May would have found no comfort in Kate Ingram's society; the style of life which she had at one time led, its interest and its pleasures, nay, its very jargon, seemed to have passed away and belonged to another portion of her existence. She was wretched enough now; shunned by those amongst whom she had formerly queened it, with but two real friends, Eleanor Irvine and Sir Nugent Uffington, in the whole wide world; and yet she somehow felt that her condition, desolate and forlorn as it seemed to be, was preferable, as being more reputable, to that which she had previously enjoyed.

It is probable that the influence which Uffington had quietly and inexplicably acquired over her contributed a great deal to this result. That influence, always exercised for her good, without any special or direct application, without the remotest possibility of wounding her, even at her most sensitive times, was exerted in destroying the baleful influence of her bringing-up and her previous surroundings, and in endeavouring to induce her to take a healthier, quieter, and broader view of life. The peculiar circumstances which had overshadowed Uffington's existence at an early period of what looked to be a very promising career had not indeed made him 'kindly with his kind,' had not opened any well of gushing sentiment and rendered him generally philanthropic. On the contrary, among his friends the fountain of his feelings was supposed to be frozen over, and it was certain that, towards the majority of his acquaintance--he never could allow to himself that any one had further intimacy with him--he maintained a sufficiently icy exterior; but there was something in May Forestfield which touched him far more deeply than he would have admitted or than he would have liked to be known.

On the first night of his seeing her, when Tom Lydyeard had pointed her out at the Opera, he felt an odd kind of interest in her, such as for years no human being had awakened in him; an interest which was strengthened when he learned that she was the daughter of the woman who had patronised his youth and offered to stand by him when the rest of the world turned their backs. Nor was this interest lessened when he learnt of the folly and sin which she had committed; crimes comparatively roughly venial in his eyes, which had seen greater wrong-doing far less visited. His experience had taught him that the critical time of all others was when the consequences of discovery first began to be felt, when all fear of the past or for the future was merged in the desperation of the present, and when, a fatal recklessness taking possession of the soul, all chance of restoration to a healthy tone was in the highest degree imperilled. Nor had the fact of having made her personal acquaintance in the manner already shown lessened Uffington's interest in May Forestfield. He found her mentally much weaker than he had anticipated; a mere child drifting hither and thither under stress of the winds of circumstance, unstable and almost purposeless; but he recognised in an instant that it was owing to this mental weakness, to this indecision and want of force of character, that she had become what she was--a deserted woman, a proscribed wife, without even the poor satisfaction of feeling that she had deeply loved and been deeply loved by the man for whose sake she had fallen.

It was with no pharisaical idea that Nugent Uffington exerted his influence without appearing to do so, to prove to May how small and contemptible had been the life in which she had so long revelled. There was very little of the repentant sinner about this grim cynic; but he had heart and brain, and he gave the men and women of the present generation very little credit for the possession of either. He, too, had outraged the law which alike is human and divine, but in his sin there had at least been some condoning element of passion; he had loved the woman whom he destroyed with his whole soul and strength, and had sacrificed position and prospects to make and keep her his. They two had been scouted by the world, but they had been all and all to each other, and had set the world at defiance; and she--she was gone now, but she had passed away in the full knowledge of his devotion; and he had the satisfaction of knowing that, unless it were for remorse, and of that she had never shown any sign to him, she had not, from the time they left England together, had an unhappy moment.

'The Giaour was right,' he said to himself one day, as he was revolving these matters in his mind:

'"I die, but first I have possess'd;
And come what may, I have been bless'd."

My now solitary life is not without its constantly recurring bitter grief, but I have the memory of Julie to fall back upon, and the knowledge that whatever sacrifice I may have made was made for one who was doubly, trebly worthy of it. But this poor girl has ruined herself for a man whom she did not care for, and merely, as it seems to me, from ignorance and want of proper guidance.'

* * * * * *

When the day came on which Lord Forestfield's petition was to be heard, May had the uncomfortable feeling of knowing that all round her were thoroughly aware of what was going on. The first post brought her a letter from Mrs. Ingram, written in charming spirits and in the most playful manner, telling her a large circle of her quondam friends who were at Hombourg often talked of her trouble, and suggesting to her, under the circumstances, the advisability of 'keeping up her pecker.' It was plain, too, that the coming event had been duly discussed in the lower regions; for although the girl who had come with her from Seamore-place, and had ever since remained in most faithful attendance on her mistress, actually said nothing, it was evident, by her extra care and solicitude, that she was endeavouring to show her sympathy with her mistress. The worthy landlady, however, showed no such reticence; she speedily found an excuse for making her way into May's presence, and when there could not refrain from half-direct allusion, half-soliloquising reference to the important events of the day; allusion which took the form of a kind of inward prayer that all things might go right, and references in which a certain 'poor lamb' played a conspicuous part. A few months since May would have shrunk from and repelled these intrusions upon her privacy, however well intentioned they might have been; but now, though they caused her a certain sense of humiliation, she accepted them as they were meant, and took care to show no signs of annoyance. The receipt of the letter from Mrs. Ingram had rather astonished her; she had been so long removed from the reach of her former companions that she imagined herself forgotten by them, as indeed she was for all good or charitable purposes; but the list of cases for hearing in the Divorce Court is one of the portions of the newspaper which these people read, and when they found the Forestfield trial among them, being generally dull and at a loss for conversation, they were glad to revive the recent scandal.

All that day May sat as though in a dream, thinking over the past and wondering what was to become of her in the future, which, as it seemed to her, was to open in complete novelty from the time the judge's decision was given. Up to the time, however disgraced and degraded she might be, she was in the eye of the law Lord Forestfield's wife. After that--nothing; nor maid, nor wife, nor widow. Her lawyer had explained to her that if the decree were granted it would only be temporary and provisional, and would need confirmation at a later period; but May was perfectly well aware that this confirmation was as good as ratified, and that her new career was virtually to commence from that date.

What that career was to be she had not the slightest idea; she had not been able to give it an instant's thought, although Sir Nugent Uffington had more than once tried to direct her attention to the necessity of settling her plans. It was a delicate subject to touch upon, and Uffington could do no more than give a hint, which May invariably avoided taking; she knew that she had an income of her own, which would suffice to keep her at least in such comfort as she was enjoying in Podbury-street, and beyond that she declined to think. It was all one to her, she felt, how she lived or where, so long only as she could enter upon an entirely new phase of existence in some place where she herself, her history, and her troubles were unknown. Uffington's teaching had had this effect upon her, that she completely despised the people with whom her youth had been passed, and was ashamed of herself for having wasted and misused such precious hours. For the rest, the future was to her a blank, without scheme and without hope.

Mr. Patten, the worthy old attorney who had the conduct of her case, and who throughout had treated her with much fatherly consideration, had promised to come down as soon as the decision had been given by the court and acquaint her with it. 'Not that there will be any doubt as to the result, Lady Forestfield,' he had said. 'By your own wish we do not appear against the application, and therein I think you are wise, as no demonstration on our part would, I fear, have any effect. I am given to understand that no defence either will be made on the part of the co-respondent; but that of course is no affair of yours. However, I will come down after the sitting of the court, and set your mind at rest.'

'Set your mind at rest' was the phrase which worthy Mr. Patten used, though never perhaps was one less applicable. It would have taken more than lay in the attorney's power to set Lady Forestfield's mind at rest; for never since the time when she was served with the citation had she been in so excited a state as on that day. It was not that she had any doubt; even had it been possible that the law could have been so strained as to refuse her husband the relief which he sought, it would have been no satisfaction to her. In her own conscience, which for the first time began to play some part in the scheme of her life, she knew herself to be guilty, and felt that retribution was due. All that she desired ardently was to know that the sentence had been pronounced, to feel that her doom had been publicly spoken, and that thenceforward she would be unheard of by the world.

Would the day never pass? Would Mr. Patten never come? The afternoon was far advanced, and May was still sitting, as she had been sitting all the morning, buried in the arm-chair which commanded a view of the street, with a little table at her elbow. On this table were some memorials of her early girlhood: the jewels which she had worn at her first ball; a photograph of herself surrounded by her bridesmaids in the drawing-room in Grosvenor-square; and almost the first present she had ever received, a double scent-bottle, which Frank Eardley had given to her years ago. She could not tell why she had brought out these things at this particular time--their association with that period of her life, when she was young and innocent, may have had something to do with it; but there they were, and between her intervals of looking out of window and listening to the approaching footsteps, May Forestfield turned them idly over and over, and seemed to derive satisfaction from looking at them.

There came a ring at the bell, and May, whose attention had been diverted from the window, started at the sound. It must be Mr. Patten at last! No, the advancing footstep on the stairs was much lighter than the solid ponderous tread of the worthy attorney. A man's foot too, but soft and active--it must be Sir Nugent Uffington, though May had reason to believe from what he had said on the previous evening that he would not call there that day. Then the door opened quickly, and May's expectant glance fell upon Gustave de Tournefort.

He came forward impetuously, but seeing that May shrank back, and held up her hand as though warning him off, he stopped short. 'You are surprised to see me?' he said.

May could not answer for a minute. Then she said, 'I am indeed surprised; I had no idea that I should ever set eyes on you again.'

'That would have been your own fault,' said De Tournefort; 'it is your own fault that I have not been with you long since. You received my letter?'

May bowed her head.

'But you sent me no answer.'

'I did not think that there was any necessity for answering such a letter,' said May firmly.

'No necessity for an answer!' cried De Tournefort. 'Do you recollect what that letter contained? In it I told you that I had heard that your husband was about to claim the aid of the law, and that in a short time you were likely to be free. I told you that I had done you a grievous wrong, and that I owed you reparation, and I pledged myself, so soon as the law had given you freedom, to make you my wife.'

'I have a perfect recollection of every word of that letter, M. de Tournefort,' said May coldly, 'and you have quoted it quite correctly.'

'And yet to such a letter as that, in which a man laid himself at your feet,' said De Tournefort passionately, 'you thought fit to send no answer.'

'The answer which I should have sent would probably have been even more objectionable to you than my silence,' said May.

'That is possible,' he cried. 'Ah, who can comprehend the eccentricity of an English prude, who will give all, yet refuse to answer a letter, and who insists on addressing her lover as monsieur.'

'Be good enough to leave this house, M. de Tournefort,' said May, rising with great dignity, though her face was pale and her lips were trembling. 'You intrude here, uninvited, and have strangely forgotten yourself since your arrival. I request that you will relieve me of your presence at once.'

'Ah, May,' cried De Tournefort, clasping his hands, and looking feelingly towards her, 'do not be so cruel to me! I apologise in the humblest manner for what I said just now; it was wicked, cruel, and unmanly, but I did not know what I was saying--I was driven mad by your harshness.'

'I do not know what kind of reception you could have expected at my hands,' said May. 'I purposely did not answer your letter, in order that there might be no chance of any misunderstanding between us. You talk to me about the offer which you made me in that letter! It was not a voluntary letter--it did not come until weeks after I had been thrust from my home, during which time you had maintained absolute silence; and when it did come, it was made, not from any love for me, but simply because you felt it due to make it, in order that you might stand well in the eyes of the world.'

'If you think that,' said De Tournefort quietly, 'I can well understand both your silence and the manner of your reception of me to-day. That letter was written in all honesty and good faith, and prompted simply by my love for you. You ought to know me well enough to recognise that I am not one of those who care much for the opinion of the world. By what you call in England respectable society I was already condemned for the part which I had played with regard to you, and no amende which I could have made would have set me right with them had I required their good will. With the social vauriens with whom I live such a step would have been regarded as a serious blunder, unworthy of a man with any pretensions to esprit. These facts themselves ought to convince you that I was in earnest, and that in making the offer I was prompted solely by my love for you; but there is a yet more potent argument, which must convince you, and that is my presence here. I told you that when you were free I would claim you for my wife. You are free now. I made it my business to learn when this case was coming on, and I came over to England on purpose to learn the result in person. To-day I have been in the law-court and heard the decree pronounced. You are no longer Lord Forestfield's wife; will you be mine?'

He had completely dropped the dilettante tone, the sneering cynicism which usually characterised him, and spoke with force and heat. So earnest, so impassioned, was he, that May stood astonished at his vehemence. Even if she had misread the letter, there could now be no doubt as to the sincerity of his devotion. No desire for mere reparation could have so inspired him. Never, even in the earliest days of their wretched folly, had he spoken so strongly. Would it be possible for her to accept the future which De Tournefort proposed to her?

He saw her hesitation, and took it for a favourable sign.

'You will say "yes" to that question?' he said eagerly. 'O May, you will not refuse me what is now the one hope of my life!'

'A man's life is made up of such hopes,' she replied, after a moment's reflection, and yours is not likely to be an exception. 'It can never be, Gustave; you must never see me again!'

'Never see you again, May! Good heavens! what can you mean? Never see you more, now that the worst which could happen has befallen you, and there is no one to stand by you but me!'

An odd sort of smile, a smile of more expression than had been common to May's face, passed slowly over it--a smile which would have wrung the heart of any woman who loved her and had been there to see it--as she retreated to a chair by the window, and sank into it wearily.

'No one to stand by me but you,' she repeated, not bitterly, but dreamily, as though she were talking to herself. 'I suppose that is true; and if so, I have less than no one: I am quite, utterly alone.'

'Only for a little while, only until the law will let me claim you.'

'Now, and then, and always, Gustave.' The expression of her face had changed; there was no avoidance, no hesitation in her manner now. She looked at him, she spoke to him steadily, but she looked years older than she had done when Gustave de Tournefort entered the room. The sight of him had changed the dream-like impossibility which had been her prevailing sense during the whole of that day into an overwhelming and awful reality. And yet in that reality he had no share. Ever since the crash had come, May Forestfield's better nature had shaken off the thrall of the guilty infatuation under which she had been held by De Tournefort, and lured to her ruin; and there had succeeded to it a bewildering wonderment as to its former existence. For many days together May never once thought of her 'lover.' Her mind was ever busy with the past, but not with his brief, terrible, fatal share in it; busy with her old home, her dead mother, her dead baby, even her husband as he used to be, with every incident of the every-day life of her lost past; full of a fond regret, agonised, though dreamy, and with intervals of incredulousness concerning her own fate--as if this dreadful thing could not be. But she recognised with melancholy surprise that in these reveries De Tournefort's figure had no place; and sometimes she abhorred herself as the fact forced itself upon her recognition. She had sinned before God, and ruined herself for ever in this world, for a man whom she now never thought of in any sense of association with her present or her future. What part had he had in the musings from which his entrance had roused her? Was there a trace of him among the mementoes of the past which she had collected together in this supreme hour of her life? This truth, and the full significance of it, inspired her words, and lent to her voice the calm tone of conviction as she spoke to him, without the slightest hurry or emotion, he observing her the while with astonishment, and a growing conviction that some extraordinary change had passed over her.

'Now, and then, and always. I am not a wise woman even yet, but I am at least a wiser than when you and I first met; and I know what would come of putting my fate into your hands for the future.'

'Do you mean to say that I am not to be trusted with it? That I should treat you ill? That you no longer love me?'

'I mean all these. Do you or do I deserve trust? Who can possibly know the worthlessness of the other so well as we know it--we two, who are detected accomplices. Would you ill treat me? Why should you not? What reverence or respect have I or you shown for the ties and the rights of marriage that you should observe them towards me, or believe that I would observe them towards you? No, Gustave; a wife who starts fair has little chance in what was our world with a man like you. What chance would a wife have who should face the only world which would give us admittance with a man like you? At least I have learned to calculate those odds since I have been an outsider; at least I have come to know that no loneliness for the future could be so bad as the tremendous and hopeless misery of a marriage with the man who has a right to begin by despising me.'

'You--you utterly reject me, then?' said De Tournefort, in a voice almost inarticulate with anger. 'You think me an utter scoundrel, and you reject me?'

'Let us use no hard words,' said May gently. 'I am not blaming you, or reproaching you, or condemning you, or indeed speaking with any reference to your conduct or character. I am speaking for myself, and of myself, according to my conviction and my unchangeable resolve. Gustave, spare me any more argument or contention, and believe me--I am as firmly determined as ever I was in the days of the self-will which led me to my fate--when I tell you that I will never voluntarily see you, and that I will never, under any circumstances, speak to you again after to-day.'

'I asked you a third question, madam; I asked you whether I am to understand that you no longer love me.'

She raised her weary eyes, and looked at him mildly.

'I no longer love you,' she said. 'I cannot remember what love means. You do not understand--no man could understand, I suppose; I don't blame you--the tremendous meaning of what has befallen me. All is changed; the whole of the past is lost and dead to me. Don't mistake me,' she went on earnestly. 'If I did love you, I think I should be too wise to accept your offer. But it is over for ever. And now I must beg you to leave me; I am expecting my lawyer, to tell me the news which you have forestalled him in, and--'

A knock at the street-door interrupted her.

'No doubt this is Mr. Patten. Pray leave me.'

Gustave de Tournefort went close up to her, and spoke low and rapidly, 'I will leave you. But on the day when the decree is made absolute, you shall receive the same offer from me.'

Without another word, without any farewell from her, he left the room, and--having passed Mr. Patten on the stairs--the house.

CHAPTER XII.

AN ODD FRIENDSHIP.

It was not in a spirit of idle curiosity that Sir Nugent Uffington induced May Forestfield to talk to him on the events of her past life, and to accustom herself to talk to him without the slightest reserve as to her hopes and fears. That he was deeply interested in her he had long since allowed to himself; but dreamer and idler as he had been throughout his life, he began to feel that all this interest was of no avail unless he could turn it to practical use. How that was to be done, how he could render any assistance to a woman in such a forlorn situation, he could not for a long time divine; and when after giving himself up to much solitude and the smoking of innumerable pipes, he at length hit upon what he considered was best to be done, he had to confess to himself with much shame that he had not yet discovered the way to do it.

For the carrying out of his project it was not merely necessary that he should make Lord Forestfield's acquaintance, but that he should cultivate a certain amount of intimacy with that distinguished nobleman; and when Uffington had got over what seemed to him the superhuman task of forcing himself to consent to such an intimacy, he had still to encounter the practical difficulty of finding out where Lord Forestfield was. The only thing to be learned with any certainty about him was that he was not in London, having quitted town the day the decree nisi was pronounced; but neither at his clubs nor from the columns of those courtly journals in which the movements of distinguished personages are usually announced could Uffington learn anything of his whereabouts.

There was no reason why he himself should remain any longer in the solitude of London; the pleasure of seeing May Forestfield daily, which had been his principal attraction, no longer remained to him. In conformity with the confidence which had been established between them, Lady Forestfield had informed him of Gustave de Tournefort's unexpected visit, of the renewal of his proposals of marriage, and of the reply which she had given him. Uffington, who seemed considerably agitated when she commenced her recital, grew calm as she approached its conclusion, and told her that she had acted exactly as he would have advised her.

'I think, however,' he added, 'that if I were you I would not give M. de Tournefort another chance of going into heroics. By what I gather from you the man has some sense of decency left in him, and probably means well; but these Frenchmen are desperate fellows for theatrical display; and as he seems to have taken his departure in the thorough conviction that your accepting him was merely a matter of time and importunity, notwithstanding your very convincing refusal, it would be, I think, advisable that you should do away with any chance of his proving of farther annoyance to you by rendering it impossible for him to find your address. He will doubtless remain in town under the impression that the next time he presents himself before you, you will be in a far more complacent humour; and in order to prevent any possible chance of any such annoyance, I propose that you should leave London at once for a time.'

May was frightened to take such a step. She had become accustomed to the lodging and to the landlady, who was exceedingly kind to her; she would have, she was sure, immense difficulty in finding anything that would suit her as well. The very fact of London being empty made it pleasant to her, as she was enabled to walk out or to drive in a hansom cab in the evenings and get the air without the fear of being seen. She would much rather remain where she was; she did not think there was any chance of M. de Tournefort attempting again to see her; and even if he did she would not have the least difficulty in acting as she had done on the previous occasion, and letting him see that his pursuit must be fruitless. But Uffington was equally determined on his side; he combated all she had to say, told her there were scores of pretty places in which she could pass a few weeks in the utmost retirement under an assumed name, without the smallest attempt being made to penetrate her identity. He acknowledged that she was perfectly able to cope with any farther attempt on De Tournefort's part; but added that what gave him the most uneasiness, and in his mind rendered it imperative that she should at once seek change of scene, was the fact that she was growing pale and thin. It was evident that, accustomed as she had been all her life to a vast amount of air and exercise, the deprivation of both which she had recently undergone was beginning to tell seriously upon her health, and it was absolutely necessary that she should at once have some change. When May's reluctant consent had been obtained, Uffington, determined that she should have no excuse for delay in carrying out the project, set to work himself. In a few days he had secured for her some rooms in a farmhouse, in a river-side village within thirty miles of London, but far removed from any of the haunts of society; and within a fortnight the Mrs. Murray who entered upon the occupation of these rooms was well known by sight to nearly all the villagers, who highly approved of her pretty appearance and gentle manners, without having the slightest idea that she and the Lady Forestfield, of whose atrocious behaviour they had read in the penny weekly journal which had found its way into some of their homesteads, were identical.

When he had seen her safely off, and felt that with her departure London had no farther attraction for him, Nugent Uffington thought it was time for him to make a start. He knew that in his early days Lord Forestfield had been a great yachting man; and thought, though he no longer owned a vessel, he might probably be sailing with some acquaintance, yachtsmen of the present day being peculiarly susceptible to the charms of titled friends, and being willing to condone any amount of bad conduct in a member of the peerage; so he first visited the Isle of Wight, where he found Ryde and Cowes presenting a very different appearance from that familiar to them at regatta time, being now given up to stout women in alpaca gowns and flapping straw hats; their husbands, in serge suits and canvas shoes out of the slop-sellers' shops; and brown-faced batheable children.

Lord Forestfield was not there. 'Hadn't been there that season,' said old Mr. Woolsey, whom Uffington found at his usual post in the club, giving at the same time a very knowing wink, as much as to convey that he for one had not been sorry at the noble lord's absence. 'I don't think,' added Mr. Woolsey, 'that he is out sailing at all this year. People have fought rather shy of Master Forestfield since all that business about his wife; but if he is sailing with anybody, it will probably be with Spokeshave; and a nice pair they will make, for Spokeshave is about as unpopular as Forestfield himself, though from a very different cause. I heard of him in the west, and I shouldn't be surprised if you picked him up somewhere round Torquay way.'

It was no matter to Nugent Uffington where he went, and, as he was told that Torquay was pretty and the Imperial Hotel comfortable, he started off there at once. But they knew nothing of Lord Forestfield at the Imperial, for at the cozy little club overlooking the harbour; and after a stay of two or three days, during which he had enjoyed the severest idleness, Nugent was consulting Bradshaw with the view of ascertaining to what place he should next bend his steps, when he felt a slap on the shoulder, and looking up, saw Tom Lydyeard's grizzled beard and bronzed face bending over him.

'I thought I was not mistaken, though I could not see your face,' said Tom, in his great cheery voice. 'What on earth brings you to this place? You haven't got a yacht here, have you? you are not a flower-show frequenter, or an archery-fête supporter, or anything of that kind; and you don't take any interest in the fine new harbour which Sir Lawrence has built for these Torquay folk? Then what brings you here?'

'I might ask the same question of you,' said Uffington. 'I don't suppose you are particularly wedded to any of the wildly-exciting diversions you have named, and yet here you are, looking as much at home as if you lived in the place.'

'O, I am staying over at Portslade, shooting with Billy Norreys, who has got a whole houseful of people there, and I only came over because I got a confounded twist of tic last night, and have emptied my neuraline bottle.'

'You must have done a deal of shooting, or the sun must be considerably more powerful down here than it is in other parts of the country, to have turned you that colour, Lydyeard,' said Uffington, with a smile. 'You look like a young brave on the war-path.'

'This is continental painting, sir, not English work,' said Toni Lydyeard. 'I had an invitation to go North with McDiarmid; man who used to be in the regiment--you must remember him--and who has since come into a lot of money, and got the best moor, they tell me, in Aberdeenshire; but I find I am growing a little too old for that kind of gunning; I don't walk as lightly as I did, and--well, I suppose the truth is, I don't care to let the fellows see that I am ageing a bit. Pheasant-shooting I can manage easily enough; so to fill up the time between Goodwood and the last of August, when I was due with Billy Norreys, I went abroad.'

'Where did you go to?' asked Uffington, with an assumption of interest; for he was rather glad to find some one whom he liked, and who in his way amused him, to speak to.

'O, Hombourg, Baden, and all that round,' said Lydyeard. 'Never saw places so altered in my life--just like going into Hurlingham in the winter, don't you know? There are the places which one knows so well, the rooms and the gardens and the orchestra where the band plays, and the hotels and all that kind of thing, but there is nobody there; no French--not a single Frenchman or Frenchwoman, and you know what crowds there used to be--and no English to speak of only a few old boys drinking the waters for gout and that sort of thing. The whole place is filled up with Germans, sir, fat stuffy men who do nothing but eat and smoke, and fat fubsy women who do nothing but eat and knit; horrible people! very domesticated, I daresay, but I hate that sort of middle-class domesticity.'

'Well, there is one comfort, then, to think that domesticity in the upper classes doesn't trouble them very much, does it, Lydyeard?' said Uffington with a smile.

'No, by Jove, not at all,' said Tom Lydyeard. 'By the way, talking of that, you recollect my showing you Lady Forestfield at the Opera that night, when that French fellow De Tournefort was in her box paying her such attention?'

'Certainly,' said Uffington.

'Well, that affair éclatéd soon afterwards, as everybody thought it would, and Forestfield went in for a divorce, which he got.'

'Not exactly,' said Uffington. 'Lord Forestfield has hitherto only obtained the first portion of what he seeks--the decree nisi.'

'O, you know all about it,' said Lydyeard. 'I thought with your passion for wandering you might have rushed away immediately after I saw you, and only just returned. What I was going to say was that I came across Forestfield the other day.'

'The deuce you did!' said Uffington, now really interested; 'how long ago?'

'O, just before I came down here, about ten days since. I came home through Paris, and there I found our young friend. He must be desperately hard up for some one to speak to, I imagine, as, though I know very little of him, he seemed to make tremendous advances for my society.'

'In Paris, was he?' said Uffington. 'Do you think he is there still?'

'O yes,' said Lydyeard. 'He said he should probably remain the winter, and I should think very likely he would from all I saw and heard.'

'Where is he staying?' asked Uffington.

'Nominally at Meurice's, but he is only to be found there between five in the morning, when he goes to bed, and three in the afternoon, when he gets up. I didn't mix myself up with him much, for he isn't quite my style, as you know; but from what I hear I have an idea that he must have taken to punting again--he used to be death on that when he was quite a lad, but I understood he had quite given it up. Now he seems to have gone at it again with additional vigour. He is a bad lot anyhow, and will come to a bad end. How long are you going to stay here? Why don't you come over and see Billy Norreys? He would be delighted to give you as much shooting as you liked.'

'Thanks. I don't know Mr. Norreys, but I am happy to assume his kindness, and yours, too, in thinking of me; but I must go to town this morning by express, as I want to catch the night mail to Paris.'

'You going to Paris? Then perhaps you will come across Forestfield. If you do, take my advice, and don't play with him. I shouldn't have said anything more if you hadn't been likely to meet; but I may tell you now that I heard he was mixed up with a very shady lot.'

'Much obliged for the warning,' said Uffington, with a light laugh, 'but I don't think I have much cause for fear. At games of skill I can hold my own with most men, and I rarely, if ever, play at games of chance. And now I must go and give my servant notice to pack; so good-bye. You don't know how pleased I am to have seen you.' He shook Lydyeard's hand warmly, and left the room.

'There is something more than I can quite make out in all this,' said Tom Lydyeard, whose powers of comprehension were somewhat limited. 'It strikes me that Uffington had no idea of going to Paris when I saw him ten minutes ago, and now he is off as fast as train and boat can carry him. I wonder what his motive can be. Let me see; I told him about Forestfield and his having taken to play. Perhaps Uffington intends to bleed him. I have heard said, by fellows who have met him abroad, that he is first rate at picquet and écarté I never heard of his rooking anybody, and there is no reason why he should, as he has plenty of money of his own. Perhaps he is smitten with my lady--he seemed to take great notice of her that night at the Opera--and has gone over to shoot Forestfield; but that is quite unnecessary, for if he wants to marry her he has only to wait a little time, and she will be regularly divorced. Perhaps he wants to "avenge" her, as they say on the stage, and is going over to call Forestfield out on that account; but that sort of thing has long died out among Englishmen. I cannot make out what he is going over for, it quite beats me,' said honest Tom, 'and after all it's no business of mine;' with which remark he was in the habit of consoling himself when he found his intelligence at fault.

'Now blessings on that worthy old gentleman at Cowes Castle who was good enough to send me on to Torquay,' said Uffington to himself, as he took his seat, an hour after this conversation, in the up express, 'and blessings on the tic or toothache, or whatever it was, that knocked off a day of Tom Lydyeard's pheasant-shooting, and sent him into the town for a bottle of medicine. There is probably no other man in England who could have given me the exact information I wanted.'

He reached London in time to catch the mail, and the next morning at seven o'clock rang the great bell at Meurice's so loudly as to startle the porter, who, in his high sabots, was actively engaged with the flexible hose in drenching the glazed roof of the courtyard.

Meurice's was not a house with which Nugent Uffington was familiar; he had made a practice during his long sojourn abroad of shunning all those hotels which were generally patronised by his countrymen. At one or two old-fashioned establishments on the Quay Voltaire, the whole household would have rushed to greet his arrival, but to the porter of Meurice's he was a stranger. So much the better, he thought, as, while his luggage was being brought in, he asked if Lord Forestfield was staying in the house.

'Yes, sir,' replied the porter, 'milord has the suite of rooms number thirty-seven.'

'And milord was in them now?' asked Uffington, with a smile.

'En effet,' replied the porter, looking up at the clock, and perfectly comprehending the joke, 'it was probable that milord had not yet risen. Shall I give him the gentleman's name when he comes down, and say that he has been inquired after?'

'On the contrary,' said Uffington, 'you had better forget that I have ever spoken to you on the subject.'

'Parfaitement,' said the porter, whose knowledge of life was necessarily so large that he was never astonished at anything.

That day, about two o'clock, as Uffington was lounging in the courtyard, Lord Forestfield appeared with a cigar in his mouth, for which he was seeking a light. He searched two of the china match-boxes standing on the round zinc tables outside the reading-room window without effect, for they were empty, and he was turning round to curse the waiter, when Uffington offered him a light from his cigar.

Lord Forestfield took the light, and, after returning the cigar and touching his hat, was moving away, when Uffington said, 'I think I have the pleasure of speaking to Lord Forestfield? My name is Sir Nugent Uffington, and we have no doubt many common friends, among them Colonel Lydyeard, who happened to mention you were here.'

Lord Forestfield bowed. 'Very happy to make your acquaintance, Sir Nugent Uffington, I am sure,' he said. 'Heard of you very often, though you were rather before my time, and have been living abroad a good deal since, haven't you? Excellent fellow, Toni Lydyeard--liked by every one who knows him. Are you staying here?'

'Yes,' answered Uffington; 'and, so far as I can see, for some little time.'

'I shall have the pleasure, then, of seeing you again, I hope. For the present au revoir.' And Lord Forestfield sauntered away into his brougham, which just then drove up to the door.

He could not tell where he had seen Uffington, and yet he had some faint recollection of him. Not a pleasant recollection either, as it seemed to him, but one to which he could assign no particulars. He was very much pleased on the whole that he had been addressed, for such an experience was rare with him nowadays, and Uffington was a man who, although he had been for a long time away from England, and was looked upon as somewhat rococo and bygone, was yet a member of some of the best clubs, and had been in his early days, so Lord Forestfield had heard, very highly thought of in society.

Uffington saw no more of his newly-formed acquaintance that day, but strolling in the evening into the Cirque d'Eté in the Champs Elysées, he saw the British milord in the middle of a large party of French people in the best seats in the house. There was a flush on Lord Forestfield's face, and an empressement in his manner towards his next neighbour, a very handsome woman, which made Uffington suspect that he had been drinking freely. This was quite a new phase in Forestfield, whom Uffington had always heard described as of a cold, phlegmatic, cynical character; but as it chimed in well with his purpose he was not displeased to remark it. Uffington left the Cirque before the performance was over, and strolled to his hotel. On arrival, he received from the porter a note from Lord Forestfield requesting the pleasure of his company at breakfast at Bignon's the next day at one o'clock.

He went, and the breakfast was excellent. The other guests were three Frenchmen, well-dressed, decorés, pleasant-mannered, and, so far as is possible with Frenchmen, convivial persons. No other Englishman was present. The conversation was of the kind usual when such men are gathered together. In it Lord Forestfield took the lead, and Uffington was astonished to find that his host, who in England had the character of being very reticent, here told stories which were remarkable for their breadth as well as their length, and seemed to be looked upon by his convives as a table-wit of the first order. No doubt the excellency of Bignon's cellar contributed to this result. So much wine was consumed that if Uffington's head had not been casehardened, he must have felt its effect. As it was, the deep red flush stood in Lord Forestfield's cheeks, and there was a thickness in is speech as, at the close of the repast, while they were finishing their cigars, he said to his companion, 'You are here en garçon, I suppose?'

'O yes,' said Uffington, with a laugh, 'here and everywhere else--I have no ties.'

'So much the better,' said Forestfield, frowning heavily; 'they are infernal things, and I, at least, have reason for saying so. However, that is neither here nor there. I must go now, but if you like to come to-night to 240 Avenue Marigny, I will introduce you to some friends of mine, and show you some life.'

'Good,' said Uffington; 'you may depend upon it, I will be there.'

CHAPTER XIII.

IN THE AVENUE MARIGNY.

Between ten and eleven that night Sir Nugent Uffington presented himself at the house No. 240 Avenue Marigny, and asked, as he had been instructed, for Madame de Nerval. The porter having told him that it was au premier, Uffington proceeded thither up a broad and splendidly carpeted staircase, and, touching the plated bell, was immediately confronted by an immense huissier in gorgeous uniform. This magnificent creature, whose manners were much milder than his appearance denoted, bowed the guest into the vestibule, and there handed him over to the care of the groom of the chambers. On giving his name, Uffington learned that he was expected, and the servant, begging him to follow, led the way, along a passage brilliantly lighted and decorated with stags'-heads and other trophies of the chase, towards an apartment at the farther end, whence came roars of laughter intermixed with occasional snatches of singing.

So thick was the tobacco smoke in this apartment that on the first opening of the door it was almost impossible to ascertain the features of its denizens; but on hearing the name of the visitor a lady rose from a low ottoman, on which, in company with two or three of her friends, she had been seated, and approaching Uffington offered him welcome, announcing herself at the same time as Madame de Nerval, the hostess.

'Your friend, Lord Forestfield, told me you had promised to do me this honour, Sir Nugent,' said she, speaking in excellent English, 'and I assure you I was quite looking forward to it. I know many of your acquaintance, and have often heard you spoken of, but always as a misanthrope; consequently, you see, I value this honour more highly.'

'Those who described me as such knew that I had not yet had the pleasure of seeing you, madame, and that therefore I hadn't had any temptation to give up my solitary manner of life.'

'Your language is rather that of a courtier than that of a hermit, Sir Nugent,' said Madame de Nerval. She was a tall, handsome, large-framed woman of about five-and-thirty, with bold black eyes, which she used with great effect. 'But come, let me introduce you to my friends--Madame Pierotte, Madame Chauvain--Sir Nugent Uffington.'

Two rather pretty women--both with very fair hair; one in rose-coloured satin, the other in green silk; both very much décolletées, very much powdered, and wearing a vast number of rings--bowed at the presentation.

'Now for the gentlemen,' said Madame de Nerval, continuing the introduction. 'The gentleman on the ottoman is M. le Comte de Gerfuzet; next to him Alexis Eyma, the feuilletoniste, who is of course known to you by repute; and this is,' she added, bending forward and playfully patting the close-cut silver-white hair of a big handsome old man, who stooped his massive head for the purpose,--'this is my grandpapa, the Baron von Höchstadt.'

Each of these gentlemen bowed as his name was pronounced; and when Madame de Nerval spoke of the Baron as her grandfather, there was a universal roar of laughter, in which the Baron himself bore the principal part.

'Zee Count ee eez to me,' said Madame Pierotte, nestling down on the ottoman, and lighting her cigarette from her friend's cigar; 'ee eez mai lofe.'

'Tiens, Rosette; oublie-t-on les convenances ici, par exemple?' cried the Count, elevating his eyebrows, and causing immense delight to his companions by adding, 'Eet eez shocking!'

'You must erlaub, Sir Nugent Uffington,' said Baron Höchstadt, 'that mein gross-child is what you call very pretty.'

'I think it will be better,' said Madame de Nerval, smiling, and administering to the Baron a reproving slap, 'that we should make up our minds to talk French, which I am sure Sir Nugent Uffington speaks perfectly. I don't think, from the specimens I have heard, that you are to be trusted with English any longer.'

'You will do me the justice to say, Mélanie,' said M. Alexis Eyma, 'that during our long acquaintance you have never heard me attempt to pronounce a word of English except "jockei" and "come up." There is no language a horse understands so well; but I doubt whether it is of much use for other purposes.'

'And yet, monsieur, Shakespeare wrote in it,' said Uffington, turning towards him, 'and Walter Scott; you may possibly have heard of them?'

'As for Shakespeare, monsieur, je m'en fiche. I have read him in translation, and he is very ennuyeux; and Walter Scott was merely an inferior Dumas of the last century.'

'Let us go and find your friend Lord Forestfield, Sir Nugent,' said Madame de Nerval, interposing; 'he is in the other room, I think. Is it not curious,' she said, as she passed through the velvet portière into the antechamber, 'that that horrid little man cannot be quiet, even in the houses of friends, but must endeavour at all risks to make himself conspicuous? Nothing in the world would please him better than to force you into a duel, even upon the most ridiculous questions. He is as brave as a lion, and has been out many times.'

'I think it would be better for his own comfort,' said Uffington, with a grim smile, 'if he wishes to make an Englishman his victim, to try his hand on Forestfield rather than on me. I have had a tolerable amount of practice both with sword and pistol, and my honour would not find itself satisfied after I had given or received a simple scratch. I should kill that little man, madame, and that would pain me very much after having had the pleasure of meeting him at your house.'

Madame de Nerval looked at him with great interest. 'They told me I should find you very eccentric,' she said, 'and they certainly were not wrong. Have you been intimate with Lord Forestfield?'

'I am not at all intimate with him,' said Uffington; 'on the contrary, I never spoke to him until yesterday.'

'I am glad of that,' said Madame de Nerval, 'very glad of that. You would not have been the man I had always heard of, and, au reste, the man I take you to be, if you had been a friend of milord's.'

'And yet you must be a friend of milord's, as you call him, and a very intimate friend too,' said Uffington. 'I saw him sitting next to you at the Cirque d'Eté last night, and paying you the most devoted attentions, and he is sufficiently at home here to be able to invite me to your house.'

'Ah,' said Madame de Nerval, with a shrug of her shoulders, 'that is quite a different thing. A woman is often compelled to be intimate with a man because it suits her purpose; in many instances we have not the option of taking or leaving, as is the case with men, and Lord Forestfield is tant soit peu necessary to me at the present moment. You are smiling at my frankness, I see. I speak frankly because I had heard so much of you that I have always had a desire to see you, and now that we have met, I am not disappointed.'

'It is pleasant to have such a mark of your confidence,' said Uffington, with a smile; 'though I do not know what people have said of me, or what I can have done, that I should be so distinguished.'

'One word more before we find milord,' said Madame de Nerval: 'do you play cards?'

Uffington's face brightened at once, and the look of insouciance which it generally wore passed away; but his voice had lost nothing of its ordinary tone of weariness as he replied,

'Occasionally, when I am in the company of card-players.'

'Have you skill or luck, or both?' asked Madame de Nerval.

'Or neither? you might have asked,' said Uffington, with a short laugh, 'for that is often the condition of your inveterate gambler. For my part, I can hold my own with most men that I play with, and occasionally I am exceptionally lucky. Why do you ask?'

'Because a considerable amount of play goes on here,' said Madame de Nerval, 'and if you had objected to it I should have advised your withdrawing at once, before Lord Forestfield knew of your arrival.'

'You are really very good,' said Uffington, 'and I am more than grateful for your thoughtful kindness; but the fact is, that I want a little distraction just now, and I am glad to think that I shall find it at the card-table.'

'Allons, then,' said Madame de Nerval, opening the door as she spoke.

Uffington found himself in a large room, with several card-tables set out and occupied.

At one the three Frenchmen whom he had met at Bignon's at breakfast in the morning were engaged with Forestfield at whist; at another baccarat was being played, with some ladies, of the same pattern as those in the other room, looking on and occasionally betting, while now and then a Russian exclamation which escaped them betrayed the nationality of the gentlemen. There was a sideboard at one end of the room, on which were heaped various cold delicacies and tall bottles, while from time to time a couple of liveried servants walked round the tables, attending to the wants of the guests.

The rubber at whist was just over, and Lord Forestfield, having won, was pocketing his gains in great good humour, and leaning back in his chair with a saucy laugh of triumph, when Madame de Nerval touched him on the shoulder.

'Hallo, Mélanie, what is it?' he said, looking up. 'I have just finished my rubber, and was going to look after you. I was thinking--'

'I have brought your friend Sir Nugent Uffington, milord,' said Mélanie, interrupting him. 'I have introduced myself, and explained to Sir Nugent how glad I am to see him.'

'Here you are then, my good fellow,' said Forestfield, jumping up; 'I didn't catch sight of you at first behind Mélanie's ample skirts. So you have made acquaintance with her already, have you? that's right. I hate most women--I have reason to; but she is an exception to her sex--true-hearted, staunch, and if she did not understand English so well, I would say devilish handsome!'

'There is no woman, I think, who would not understand a compliment, in whatever language it might be paid to her,' said Mélanie, 'and I don't pretend to be any stronger-minded than the rest. One could tell that your friend was an Englishman, milord,' continued Mélanie, with a touch of coquetry which Uffington had not hitherto remarked in her, and which he soon saw was assumed, 'for we have been full five minutes together, and he has not yet said one pretty thing to me.'

'Has he not?' said Lord Forestfield. 'Well, I can understand that. You said all your sweet things years ago, didn't you, Sir Nugent? and a pretty mess you got into by saying them, I have heard.'

Uffington's face grew very dark; his nostrils dilated and his nether lip quivered; but he checked himself sufficiently to say, without any perceptible tremor in his voice, 'I grieve to hear so bad a character of myself from Madame de Nerval; and though I must own to having been silent about her charms, it was not owing to any want of appreciation of them. There is a proverb in our language, madame, in which it says that passions are like streams, "the shallow murmur, but the deep are dumb." I must ask you to think that that is my case, and also that,

"Old as I am, for ladies' love unfit, The charms of beauty I remember yet."'

'That is all rot about your being so old, Sir Nugent,' said Lord Forestfield gruffly; 'I can guess your age pretty well. I had just gone to Eton when that affair of yours with Mrs. Moggs, or whatever her name was, came off; and I recollect quite well all the fellows talking about it, and I wondered--'

'All the fellows have talked about it rather too much, Lord Forestfield,' said Uffington, touching him lightly on the arm; 'and I object to its being further discussed.'

'O, very well; I don't want to say anything more about it,' said Lord Forestfield, with a forced laugh. 'What will you do now? that is the thing. Are you fond of a game at cards? You might like to cut in at this whist-table; I am not going to play any more--these fellows don't play high enough for me--and you can have my place.'

'Thanks,' said Uffington, 'but I confess when I play I like to have some excitement. I like to rise up with the knowledge that I have either won or lost something considerable--not merely a few francs which will pay for my cab home, or which I shall not miss the next morning. The man who said that the greatest pleasure in life next to winning money at cards was losing it, was not far off the truth.'

'Gad, you are full of pluck,' said Lord Forestfield. 'It isn't often you hear fellows talk like that now.'

'That is because the men of the present day go into card-playing as they go into everything else,' said Uffington--'horse-racing, courting, what not, for the mere sordid sake of making money. They care nothing for the excitement of the game; they merely look to its pecuniary results--that is the feeling which, carried to an excess, turns high-bred gentlemen into club sharpers, and destroys the best elements which constitute society.'

'Yes, I daresay,' said Lord Forestfield, with a yawn, having been rather bored with this dissertation, 'no doubt what you say is quite right. By the way, do you play écarté?'

'Yes,' said Uffington, 'I play most games after a fashion.'

'Let us have a turn then,' said Lord Forestfield. 'I rather fancy myself at écarté, do you know?'

'Then you won't mind the stakes being high,' said Uffington. 'As I told you before, it seems to me waste of time to give oneself the trouble of playing with the interchange of a few shillings for the result.'

'O, I am on,' said Lord Forestfield. 'I don't mind particularly what the stakes are--let us say fifty pounds a game; you can raise your interest to what you like by betting on the hand.'

'That will do for me,' said Uffington. Then turning to Madame de Nerval, he said, 'If I had had the good fortune to make madame's acquaintance earlier, I should have asked her to wish me success. Now I have to struggle, not merely against my antagonist's skill, but against the knowledge that your prayers are being preferred in his favour.'

'Come, there is a polite speech for you at last, Mélanie,' said Lord Forestfield. 'Look here, like a good girl; tell one of those fellows to get us a table, and to bring a bottle of champagne and a tankard. I am horribly thirsty, and nothing will satisfy me but a big drink.'

The table was found, and the gentlemen seated themselves, Lord Forestfield having by his side a silver tankard, and at his feet the champagne-bottle in its cooler. Uffington contented himself with a glass of lemonade, which provoked much raillery on the part of his rival.

'You are going in for keeping your head cool, Sir Nugent, I see,' said Lord Forestfield, as he dealt; 'that sort of thing doesn't do for me. I have been so confoundedly bored at that game at whist with those three Frenchmen, though I won their money, that I want something to pick me up. I mark the king. That is not a bad beginning, Sir Nugent; champagne against lemonade any day. Come on.'

'That is owing to the presence of your guardian angel,' said Uffington, pointing to Madame de Nerval, who was standing by Lord Forestfield's side.

'Another compliment for you, Mélanie,' said Lord Forestfield, who was at this moment in high good humour. 'This cold Englishman is coming out--guardian angel, eh? Well, she is a very good girl, I believe,' he continued, tapping Madame de Nerval's hand familiarly. 'They say, don't they, that every man has two guardian angels--one good and one bad--to watch over his life. I have had enough of the bad,' he muttered between his teeth, 'and it is time the luck turned.'

When they fairly settled down to their play it was thought that they were very evenly matched, and that there was but little to choose between them. Lord Forestfield played with some recklessness, but with considerable skill and no small luck; Sir Nugent Uffington's play was cautious and guarded throughout; and so much interest was evoked by the contest, that gradually the other tables were deserted, and the company formed themselves into a circle round the écarté players. A good deal of betting was started, and Lord Forestfield seized every opportunity of backing his own hand to a considerable amount. Uffington, on the other hand, declined to bet, and concentrated his attention on the cards.

The result was that about five in the morning the party broke up; Lord Forestfield rose the conqueror by three games, and the winner of a great many bets. He was as overjoyed at his success as any neophyte, and on bidding Uffington good-night expressed his earnest hope that they should meet again and renew their tournament that evening. Uffington smiled, and declared his perfect readiness; then sauntered home to bed.

The sun was just beginning to rise as he reached his room at Meurice's. He threw open the window and leant out, inhaling the sweet scent which rose from the turf and trees in the Tuileries gardens, and watching the rising rays stealing over the cupolas of the old palace, and bathing them in golden light.

'Strange,' he said to himself; 'how exactly it has all come about as I could have wished. The meeting with Lydyeard at Torquay with the information of where this man was to be found; the stumbling upon him at once in Paris, and the quasi-intimacy that has ensued; then his newly-developed mania for play, the very means which I had devised for the end which I will most assuredly bring about. He has won to-night, and is exulting in his triumph; but I have no more doubt as to the ultimate result than I have of the right and justice of the cause in which I am engaged. They used to call me a fatalist in Moscow years ago, and I suppose they were not far wrong. This I know--that I have the most perfect faith in my carrying through this project, the most perfect certainty that luck will favour me; simply because I happen for once to be doing the right thing--to be fighting the battle for a woman who is, as I believe, more sinned against than sinning, and who is unable to help herself. This is the first time since I succeeded that I have felt thankful to fate for giving me poor young Mark's inheritance, with power and position and money wherewith to fight this scoundrel, for without them there would be no doing any good. He has no idea how much I know of his pecuniary embarrassments, and how completely he has spoiled his chance of marrying the heiress, as he hoped, by his conduct of the last three months. I am afraid that his recklessness and his fondness for drink must be ascribed to his annoyance at these lost chances. Now if Messrs. Moss only intelligently carry out my instructions, and secure for me the mortgage which Richards holds on the Woodburn property, so that I can foreclose at once, I have my friend in a vice and can screw him up to my terms. I had better get to bed now, and secure all the rest I can, for I have some heavy nights' work before me.'

That day week the Comte de Gerfuzet was busily engaged on his breakfast at the Café Anglais, and had arrived at the tranche-de-melon stage, when the portly old Baron Höchstadt entering begged permission to seat himself at the table. This granted and his own breakfast ordered, the Baron, who was known among his acquaintance as a gobemouche of the first order, assumed his interest-provoking expression, and began to talk.

'You were not at Mélanie's last night, mon cher?' quoth he, tucking a flowing napkin under his pendulous double chin.

'No. We dined at the Moulin Rouge, where it was horribly cold; and afterwards went to Bullier's, where it was hideously dull,' said the Count. 'It is getting too late in the season for open-air amusements. I should have enjoyed myself better at Mélanie's, I daresay. Was anything going on?'

'Anything! everything!' cried the Baron. 'You know that those two Englishmen, Milord Froschfeld and Sir Ofton, have been playing écarté there every night?'

'I know they played one night,' said the Count, 'but I have not been to Mélanie's since first Sir Ofton arrived. And they have been playing écarté, ces gaillards, have they? Which has been the winner?'

'At first milord; but about the third night fortune changed, and milord has lost énormément--Mélanie herself says cinq mille livres sterlings.'

'That is bad for Mélanie,' said the Count, giving the points of his moustaches an insinuating twist, 'for Lor' Frosfeel was very devoted and very generous to her.'

'So I thought, and yet she doesn't seem to feel it much,' said the Baron. 'However, you must come to-night, for they are going to play quitte à quitte, and there are several wagers, amounting to about as much, which milord proposes to settle in the same way.'

'Hein!' said the Count; 'they are curious people these English, certainly the most eccentric nation in the world. I have no great love for them, and shall certainly be present to see one of them ruin the other.'

At three o'clock the next morning, though upwards of fifty people remained in the large room at Madame de Nerval's, standing round a table at which two players were engaged, not a word was spoken, not a sound was heard save that made from time to time by the dealing of the cards. Gradually the interest and expectancy increased; the spectators ppushed forward with held breath and straining eyes. Then suddenly the ccrowd fell back, a long 'A-h!' conveying their pent-up feelings, and Lord Forestfield rose from his seat. He was pale, and had a seared strained look round the eyes, but otherwise was quite calm.

'You have been fortunate, Sir Nugent Uffington,' he said, with a slight tremor in his voice, 'and I am in your debt exactly double the sum for which you hold my acknowledgment. I will do myself the pleasure of calling on you to-morrow;' and with a stately bow to the company he walked out of the room.

'Trés-bien fait!' whispered the Count to his neighbour. 'It is on occasions like this that an Englishman's natural froideur is of so much use to him.'

CHAPTER XIV.

UFFINGTON'S BARGAIN.

The next morning Sir Nugent Uffington, notwithstanding the late hour at which he had retired to rest, woke early, and stretching out his hand, gathered up some papers which lay on the table by his bedside. The first in his grasp was a crumpled green telegraph form, which, being untwisted and spread out, read as follows:

'Messrs. Moss and Moss, Thavies Inn, London, to Sir Nugent Uffington, Bart., Hôtel Meurice, Paris. Richards has made over to you Woodburn mortgage. We hold it on your account. Foreclosure so soon as orders received.'

'So far so good,' said Uffington, raising himself on his elbow. 'Those charming people, Messrs. Moss, have obeyed my instructions implicitly, and that earth is stopped. By which means by friend will be more readily brought to book, that is all! How right I was years ago to make a resolution never to read letters which I might find awaiting me on my return home late at night, and what singular resolution I must have had to keep to it! It was a sensible thing--the idea of having oneself upset, and one's valuable night's rest scared away, for something which could not be remedied! To be sure, I could not resist a glance at that telegram last night, because I knew it would have no actual effect on the position of affairs; and if it turned out right--as has happily proved the case--could only make me a little more secure in the saddle. But here is something else,' taking up a twisted scrap, 'this note which Madame de Nerval left in my hand when I took my leave of her. Now certainly I deserve credit for having left that unread up to this time. What does it say?

"I have guessed your secret. You hate Lord Forestfield, and have come here determined to ruin him. There is a woman in this; I know it, my jealousy tells me so. For he is not the only one whose peace of mind you have destroyed. Let me see you very soon. A toi.--M."

'Exactly so,' said Uffington to himself, laying down the paper with a cynical smile. 'To him that hath, &c. The vagrant dies of starvation in the ditch, and the philosopher is too lazy to take his hands from his pockets, but bites at the peaches as they hang a-ripening on the wall. I fear I shall not be able to obey your commands, fair lady, for by this evening I expect my mission will be accomplished and I shall have left Paris. Everything has succeeded with me exactly as I could have wished. Forestfield must be on the brink of ruin, and this news about the mortgage deprives him of his only chance of escape. Will he face ruin, or accept the alternative I offer? The alternative, without a doubt. When I show him, as I shall, that he has not the remotest hope of obtaining that for which he has been playing for the last twelvemonth; when I point out to him, as I shall, that without my aid he must be made a bankrupt, and henceforth live, like other bankrupt peers, on his title and his wits; when I make clear to him how little I require in proportion to what I give--he will come to my terms. And such a success will amply repay the trouble and the cost which have been necessary to secure it. It has been loathsome enough to live once more in what is called society, and to look on at all the miserable meanness and petty spite by which those moving in it are governed. It has been heart-sickening to see this woman shunned, tabooed, and pointed at by a world which still continues to receive this hound, and dares not say openly, "You are a scoundrel, whose ill conduct has driven your wife to do what she has done; and though we must ostracise her, we decline at the same time to have anything more to say to you." It has been weary work to listen to all the old lies, to pretend to be deceived by all the old cajolery, to look on or take part in so-called pleasure, with which one has been surfeited at five-and-twenty; but it has all worked out well, and the end--or I am very much mistaken--will justify the means. Now I will dress myself and prepare for my visitor!'

At twelve o'clock Lord Forestfield was announced, and entered the room, looking worn and ill. The seared strained appearance round the eyes was more marked, and he had lost the self-command which was so conspicuous on the previous evening. From time to time he kept moistening his lips, and there was an involuntary fluttering motion of his hands which he in vain endeavoured to suppress. He fell into a chair, and at once lay back, covering his face with his hands, apparently oblivious of where he was; then, rousing himself with a start, he leant forward, and in an odd abrupt way, totally different from his usual manner, he said:

'Well, Uffington, I'm here as I said I would be. This is a d--d pretty business! You didn't think I'd come, I suppose, eh?'

'Because I didn't ask you for any farther acknowledgment than that which I hold, and which only represents half your debt, is that the reason?' asked Uffington. 'O no, Lord Forestfield, I was sure you would come this morning.'

'How could you be sure'? I suppose you mean that you've heard I always keep my word, and pay my debts, and that kind of thing--is that it?'

'Not exactly. I knew--I felt--you would come; how or why I could hardly explain; and no explanation is necessary since you are here.'

'Yes, that's all devilish fine!' said Lord Forestfield, rising from his chair and pacing the room. 'I heard fellows say you're a fatalist--believe that what will be, will be; and that sort of thing. I suppose you felt certain beforehand that you would win those conquering games?'

'I had an inward conviction that I should obtain what I wanted,' said Uffington quietly.

'What you wanted?' cried Forestfield coarsely. 'What you wanted was my money I presume? Mine or some one else's--it didn't matter much. However, the result of all this fatalism is that I owe you ten thousand pounds, Sir Nugent Uffington.'

'Exactly,' said Uffington, with a cold smile. 'And that being the result, Lord Forestfield, you can scarcely wonder that I am a fatalist.'

'Suppose I were to say that I could not pay you--for the present, at all events,' said Forestfield--'what would you say to that?'

'I should remind you--though I am sure there would be no occasion to do so--that debts of honour always must be paid. It would be impossible for you to show your face in society with the rumour that you had played and lost and repudiated hanging round you. Besides, I suppose you do not wish to be added to the distinguished list of peers who have figured in the Bankruptcy Court?'

'Of course not,' said Forestfield, whose pale cheeks were gradually becoming very red; 'but it's all devilish fine to say "pay"--how are you to do it when you have no money? The truth is, I have been disappointed. I've just heard some news which has completely upset my calculations, and I'm infernally disappointed!' And he threw himself into the chair.

'I know it,' said Uffington, bending towards him across the table, 'and I know you! Know you to be as mean a scoundrel, as contemptible a blackguard, as poor a trickster, as is to be found even in this city! Bah, don't attempt that!' he cried, catching Forestfield's uplifted arm by the wrist and holding it. 'I'm a stronger man than you, though I'm ten years older, and I haven't forgotten the lessons I used to take from Alec Keene in the old days. You would have no chance standing up against me; and as for a duel, I could take care of myself there also if I found--as I very much doubt--that you are in a position to call any gentleman to account. There,' he said, throwing Forestfield's arm away from him, 'I tell you I know you and all your miserable scheming! You say you have been disappointed, and for once you speak the truth. Months since, when you first began to suspect that your treatment of your wife had driven her to wrong-doing, you determined to profit by her sin. You would get her divorced, you said to yourself; and once free you would form an alliance, not again with a pretty trusting girl, but with some woman whose wealth would enable you to indulge in the costly dissipations of play, &c. to which you had become addicted. You looked round and made your selection, working the oracle with all that tact which I grant you possess. When your story became public, and Lady Forestfield was turned from her home, you carried your bleeding heart to Palace-gardens, there to have it bound up by Miss Vandervelde, the American heiress. Ha, ha! you see I am tolerably well informed! They could not show you too much compassion, those kindhearted people; and even when you were bold enough to hint that you would shortly be in a position to bestow your hand and title again, they were not too sensitive to bid you be silent, for they are true Republicans and dearly love a lord. But then your common sense failed you; you thought the game secure, and coming over here, launched out into those pleasures in which alone you have real enjoyment. The manner of your life in Paris has been made known in Palace-gardens, and you have received an intimation that you need show your face there no more.'

'How did you learn that?' said Lord Forestfield, taken off his guard. 'I only got old Vandervelde's letter yesterday morning.'

'I learned it because I made it my business to learn not only that, but everything about you,' said Uffington, speaking with hard earnestness. 'Not from any interest in you, God knows; for from the first time I saw you, and heard how you treated your wife, I regarded you with a loathing and an aversion so great that they can scarcely be said to have increased now, when we have been thrown so much together. Lady Forestfield's mother was my kindest friend, and seeing how much her daughter wanted an outstretched hand to help her in her solitude and her misery, I determined to repay, so far as I could, the kindness I had experienced when I stood in need of it.'

'And you stretched out your hand to help a very pretty woman, did you?' growled Forestfield. 'What a generous, unselfish creature!'

'Less selfish than appears at first sight,' said Uffington; 'for in carrying out my plan I have had to endure things against which my sense of decency, to say nothing of my pride, revolted; such as putting up with your familiarity, Lord Forestfield, and mixing with a miserable set of Pharisees, who consent to receive you into their society while they scorn your wife, whose crime has been really the outcome of your cruelty.'

'You're a pretty kind of fellow to talk in this way!' said Forestfield, looking up from under his eyebrows and speaking in a thick voice. 'You're a nice lot to preach virtue, and the necessity for domestic happiness, and that sort of thing; and you practise what you preach, don't you, and always did? You never heard of such a thing as a fellow in the Guards running off with another mans wife, say to Switzerland now, and living there with her? That wouldn't enter into your scheme of morality, would it?'

'This is the second time you have dared to make allusion to that event in my life, Lord Forestfield,' said Uffington, with a strong effort at self-control, 'and I advise you not to repeat it. In a blundering way, however, you happen to have hit upon the truth. What promised at the time to be but a mere episode in my reckless youth had its influence on my whole career, and made me what I am; a man neither ashamed to acknowledge his guilt nor professing to be sorry for his misdeeds. If the lady to whom you have made reference lost caste in the eyes of that society of which you still continue a flourishing member, she, at all events, passed the remainder of her life in peace, and was secured from the outrage to which she had been subjected by one whose duty it was to love and protect her. God knows, I set myself up as no judge of my fellow-creatures, but it is from what I knew of that lady's history and what I saw of her sufferings that I have learned to understand and pity your wife.'

'My wife! always my wife!' cried Forestfield, choking with rage. 'Is she to be brought up and thrown in my teeth at every trick and turn? Am I never to hear the last of her?'

'Never,' said Uffington quietly. 'You imagined that, when driven to despair by your cruelty and neglect, she fell into the trap, and gave you the opportunity you had so long sought for, you had got rid of her for ever, and were free to follow your own devices. It is partly to show you how mistaken you were in such an idea that I am here to-day.'

'Don't you think you had better sink all this fine tirade of virtuous indignation, Sir Nugent Uffington?' said Forestfield, with a gleam of his old insolence returning to his face. 'Let us stick to business, please--you are neither my confessor nor my executioner, so far as I know, but merely a gentleman whose hermit-like austerity has not prevented his winning my money at cards--that's what we have to discuss; and, as the lawyers say, we will, if you please, not travel out of the record.'

'I am perfectly willing to confine our discussion to that point,' said Uffington. 'You owe me 10,000l., Lord Forestfield, and you have at once to pay me that amount, or give me an equivalent.'

'An equivalent!' cried Forestfield; 'you mean a mortgage, or something of that sort? Well, then, it is best to say frankly at once that I can do neither. My account at my banker's is overdrawn, and my estate at Woodburn is mortgaged to the value of every acre. The infernal thief who holds it talks about foreclosing; but I am in communication with my lawyers just now, and I am in hopes of getting it held over.'

'I should advise you not to lean on any such rotten reed,' said Uffington. 'The gentleman who held the mortgage, and whom you are pleased to style an infernal thief, was a Mr. Richards, I believe?'

'That is his name,' said Forestfield; 'how on earth did you know it?'

'Simply from having had a few business transactions with him myself,' said Uffington. 'The fact is, Lord Forestfield, that Mr. Richards has transferred his interest in the Woodburn mortgage to me, and, so far as that is concerned, you are entirely in my power.'

Lord Forestfield's jaw fell and his face became deadly pale. 'This is a devilish deep conspiracy you have been hatching for my ruin, Sir Nugent Uffington,' he said; 'a nice gentlemanly scheme to bring me on my knees for some purpose of your own. What is it all about? What do you want?'

'What I intend to have,' said Uffington; 'your money, or the equivalent. You owe me 10,000l., and if you don't pay it I will post you in every club in London. I hold the mortgage on the Woodburn estate, and can at any moment telegraph to my lawyers to foreclose, and thus deprive you of your patrimony. You see, there is no chance of escape, and that you are completely ruined--unless, indeed, you choose to accept the equivalent.'

'Damn the equivalent!' cried Lord Forestfield, in an access of rage. 'Why don't you tell me what it is, sir? What is the use of beating about the bush in this way?'

'It is merely this,' said Uffington. 'I will tear up your notes of hand which I hold, and will regard the debt as cancelled for ever,--further, I will give you an undertaking that no steps shall be taken in regard to the mortgage on the Woodburn property for a number of years to be agreed upon,--provided that you, take back your wife--'

'What!' cried Lord Forestfield, springing from his seat; 'take back my wife! Is that the game you have been playing for? Take back my wife after all that I have gone through; all the exposure which I have suffered! Not if I know it. You have missed your mark, Sir Nugent Uffington.'

'The exposure which you have suffered is nothing to that which you will have to undergo at my hands if you do not accept these terms,' said Uffington coldly. 'Besides, in your vehemence you interrupted me before I had sufficiently explained myself. Do not think for an instant that I am stipulating for any reconciliation between you and Lady Forestfield. However much you may wish for it at a future time--and that time will surely come--it would be difficult to induce your wife to agree to it. I do not even suggest that there should be any meeting between you, as such a proceeding were much better avoided.'

'You're uncommonly good, I am sure,' said Forestfield grimly. 'What is it, then, that you require, may I ask?'

'I require you to abandon the divorce suit which you have instituted, and to take no further steps for procuring the confirmation of the decree nisi which you have obtained. Further, I require that Lady Forestfield be reinstated in her proper position as mistress of your house.'

'I thought you said there was to be no reconciliation, no meeting?' cried Forestfield.

'Nor need there be,' said Uffington. 'My notion is that Lady Forestfield should go to Woodburn and remain there for the present--your people being, of course, there to attend to her, and she being received and recognised as their mistress. She desires to live in the strictest privacy and to interfere with you in no way.'

'And suppose I were to refuse, what then?'

'For you, beggary, outlawry, and exposure--a state of life to which you have not been accustomed, and which I think would scarcely suit you.'

There was a pause for a few moments. Then Lord Forestfield said:

'You take advantage of your position to drive a hard bargain, sir; but I am at your mercy, and I don't see how I can resist. How long will you give me to think it over?'

'Till this afternoon,' said Uffington. 'I have promised my lawyers instructions in regard to the mortgage affair, which admits of no delay. So that I must return to England to-night, and I should be glad if you would accompany me. If I do not hear from you before, I shall expect to meet you at the mail train at the Chemin du Nord.'

'Was there ever such a beaten hound?' said Uffington, after his companion had left him. 'There is no doubt about his accepting my terms. The thought of a future without money to spend in drink and gambling was too dreadful for him to contemplate.'

CHAPTER XV.

FIVE-O'CLOCK TEA.

The pleasant intercourse which had sprung up between Mrs. Hamblin and Mrs. Chadwick lasted throughout the whole of the dead season. For her own purposes Mrs. Hamblin had affected a great interest in all that concerned, not merely the mistress of the house in Fairfax-gardens, but all her family, and Mrs. Chadwick was only too delighted to revel in the friendship thus offered to her. For she was quick-witted enough and sufficiently a woman of the world to see plainly that, although she had secured the attendance of the best people in London at her parties, and in return was regularly invited to their set and formal entertainments, she had as yet no intimacy with any members of that world in which alone she cared to live. Men dropped in to dinner now and then certainly--there were always plenty to whom the boiler-maker's capital cuisine and exquisite wine were sufficient attraction--but there had hitherto been none but the most ceremonious visiting on the part of the ladies, and none of those pleasant gatherings en petit comité at which Mrs. Chadwick longed so much to assist, and from which she bitterly felt her exclusion. Mrs. Hamblin's house was one at which, as Mrs. Chadwick knew, there was a constant influx of visitors, and where the coziest little impromptu luncheons, tea-parties, and suppers were frequently taking place, all the guests being people of position in society. Mrs. Hamblin herself looking upon flirtation with a lenient eye, was scarcely likely to disapprove of in others; and the consequence was that many very pleasant meetings took place, apparently quite unexpectedly, in the handsome drawing-rooms of her house in Cumberland-place, or better still in the pretty little boudoir, all green-silk hangings and Dresden china, which was approached by double doors on the first landing, and was only accessible to the initiated. When, therefore, Mrs.. Hamblin was not merely constantly in Fairfax-gardens, but had received Mrs. Chadwick in the most friendly manner at Cumberland-place and made her free, as it were, of the boudoir, the latter lady was surely justified in thinking that when the season arrived she would be permitted to associate on a footing of intimacy with Mrs. Hamblin's friends, who, in their turn, would become intimate friends of her own, and that after this fashion her highest hopes would be realised.

One morning, when one of those opaque yellow fogs which visit London in the early days of November had settled down like a pall over the metropolis, when gas was lighted in the shops, and locomotion rendered next to impossible, Mrs. Hamblin sat in her boudoir in rather a dejected frame of mind. The utter ghastliness of the weather would have been alone sufficient to account for that, but there were other causes. Mrs. Hamblin had become thoroughly sick of London; the letters received each morning from her friends spoke of pleasant times in country houses, where hunting and shooting parties were assembled, and made her long for escape from the dead dull monotony of empty streets and deserted houses to which, for the first time in her life during this season of the year, she had for three months been relegated. She was, moreover, excessively annoyed at having to confess to herself the fact that it was wholly her own fault; that she had no one but herself to blame for the weariness she had undergone. It was true that circumstances had prevented Mr. Hamblin from taking his official holiday at the usual time, but that was no reason why she should have remained in town; they had managed before now to get on very comfortably without seeing each other for three or four months, and indeed when domesticated under the same roof they met but seldom; for Mr. Hamblin, away from his office, was a bibliomaniac, spending most of his time in hunting up rare editions and curious copies, surrounded by which musty old tomes he would sit for hours in his library, perfectly content in looking at his book-treasures, and not taking the slightest notice of whatever fun or festivity might be going on in other portions of the house. So that it was not entirely on her husband's account Mrs. Hamblin had refused the numerous invitations which she had received to stay with friends, and had given up her usual visit to Hombourg. If Spiridion Pratt had been an intending guest at any of the country houses to which she was invited, or had been going, according to custom, to the German spas, assuredly Mrs. Hamblin would not have chosen to immure herself in Cumberland-place during the autumn months; but he, to whom anything like a change was most welcome, even though it involved flying in the face of all conventional and set rules, had determined to see whether London was really habitable in September, and as he had decided upon staying in town, Mrs. Hamblin had concluded it was better she should remain there also. Not that the feeling, which had always been rather a caprice than a passion, which she had at one time entertained for the dilettante little man had not passed away; but her pride was touched at the notion of his escaping her so easily, at his attempt to slip from his bonds without giving her the notice to which she had been accustomed in such cases, and she thought it would be actually worth while to attempt to bring him back into slavery. The season of the year promised well for this project; she would be able to devote all her time to carrying it out, and there would not, as she thought, be any one in town likely to divert her quondam admirer's attention.

The discovery which she had made concerning Eleanor Irvine had entirely dispelled this pleasant idea. Here was a rival on the spot, one to whom she had never given any heed, and of whom, if she had not had evidence which it was impossible to set aside, she could never have had the least fear. To be sure she had done her best to ruin the girl in Spiridion's opinion; all that she had seen during the performance of her self-imposed duties of espionnage was not merely constantly hinted at in Spiridion's presence, but actually formed the subject of various anonymous letters which Mr. Pratt was in the habit of receiving, written in an unknown female hand, and posted in the south-eastern district of London. If these communications were intended to frighten the little man, and to induce him to neglect those frequent opportunities of being in Eleanor's society which the assiduous foresight of Mrs. Chadwick provided for him, they failed in their effect. Mr. Pratt was greatly pleased to think that the fact of his paying attention to one woman induced another to resort to such means for undermining her rival. In matters of this kind he was by no means a fool, perfectly understanding whence the letters came, and appreciating the motive which caused them to be sent. He therefore continued without intermission his pursuit of Eleanor, of whom he day by day became, after his queer fashion, more and more enamoured, and made up his mind that he would most certainly propose to her.

Though Mrs. Hamblin was not aware of her former admirer's intention to carry matters to an such serious pitch, she could not but see that her own influence over him was at an end; and she was musing over this, and regretting her misspent autumn, on the foggy morning in November, when a note was handed to her, which, in addition to the usual superscription, bore the words 'Private and immediate' and 'Answer.' Mrs. Hamblin had no difficulty in recognising the rather florid handwriting of Mrs. Chadwick, and the little excitement consequent upon the idea that some one might have returned to town and be coming to see her therefore subsided before she broke the seal. The note ran thus:

'Dear Mrs. Hamblin,--Will you come round to me this afternoon? I have something of the most important and confidential character to communicate to you, on which I require the advice which you, and you alone, could give. When you hear it you will understand the grief and consternation into which I am now plunged, and excuse the apparent incoherence of this note. Pray send me a line to say that I may expect you, and believe me yours always affectionately,

'FANNY CHADWICK.'

'This woman always deals in gush and superlatives,' said Mrs. Hamblin to herself as she glanced over the note; and she contented herself by writing a line to say that she would call at Fairfax-gardens in the course of her afternoon's drive. 'It cannot possibly be,' she thought, 'that Mr. Chadwick can have failed in business; but absolute ruin is the only thing that ought to have called forth such a demonstration.'

When Mrs. Hamblin arrived at Fairfax-gardens, she found Mrs. Chadwick eagerly expecting her. They talked on light topics until tea--which had been ordered on the visitor's arrival--was served, and then, as soon as the servant had closed the door behind him, Mrs. Chadwick broached the important subject.

'It is quite too kind of you, my dear friend,' said she--for she had quick eyes and ears, and readily picked up both the manner and the jargon of those whom she thought proper to imitate--'it is quite too kind of you to come here and to help me in the midst of my horrible perplexity. There is no one besides you in the world whom I could consult, for Mr. Chadwick happens to be away in the North, and I know also that the view he would take of the matter would not entirely coincide with mine, and it is no use having people to advise you when your whole time must be spent in combating their opinion.'

'What is this momentous question, my dear Mrs. Chadwick, which seems to have given you so much trouble?' said Mrs. Hamblin, with an appearance of great interest. 'I shall be delighted to give you any advice, though I can hardly promise that it shall be in accordance with what you wish; but at all events it shall be honest and straightforward. Now what is it that has set you so completely bouleversée?'

'I will tell you frankly,' said Mrs. Chadwick; 'it is the conduct of my sister Eleanor. You know her pretty well, though you have seen but little of her; for she avoids all my friends, and seems to take refuge in a narrow circle of her own. You have been able to judge what a home that girl has here, and how perfectly devoted I am to her.'

As Mrs. Chadwick stopped at this point Mrs. Hamblin bowed, and murmured something in acquiescence.

'You would think that in return for such advantages she would do her best to make herself amiable and agreeable to me at all events, even though she chose to decline the acquaintance of my friends. Nothing of the sort; for the last few months her conduct has been most extraordinary; and though I have put up with a great deal, I am not prepared to bear it any longer now that she has completely set me at defiance.'

'How has she done that?' asked Mrs. Hamblin.

'By thwarting a project which she knew I particularly wished carried out, and in which, Heaven knows, I was animated by no selfish feeling, as it would have been entirely for Eleanor's own benefit.'

'Indeed,' said Mrs. Hamblin, whose interest materially increased as she heard this last sentence; 'and what may this project have been?'

'Eleanor's marriage,' said Mrs. Chadwick. 'Her mother being dead, and I being the elder and married sister, I look upon myself as responsible for that girl's future, and that responsibility naturally involves the choice of a proper husband for her. I thought I had succeeded in finding such a person, a gentleman of exceptional cultivation and refinement, and one whose position in society could not be questioned. The gentleman to whom I allude is well known to you, my dear friend; and I am sure you will indorse every word I say about him--I mean Mr. Spiridion Pratt.'

The commencement of the sentence had prepared Mrs. Hamblin for the announcement of the name, so she said very quietly,

'Mr. Pratt? His would be a most eligible connection, and I don't think you have extolled his position or his merits at all too highly. And were his views the same as yours in regard to the matter? Of course as a known connoisseur he would admire Miss Irvine's beauty; but was he generally attracted by her?'

'Completely. I never saw a more thorough case of genuine admiration and affection,' said Mrs. Chadwick, whose manner was a little intensified by the knowledge that every word she said conveyed a stab to her dear friend. 'For weeks past he has constantly sought every opportunity of meeting her, and of paying her the most marked attention, and yesterday he proposed to her.'

Mrs. Hamblin's face was admirably made up, delicately and most artistically, but she obviously paled under her rouge.

'Proposed to her!' she repeated in a flat and unnatural tone. 'Miss Irvine is to be congratulated on having snared so wary a bird.'

'"Snared" is scarcely the term,' said Mrs. Chadwick indignantly; 'it isn't likely that anything like artifice would have been resorted to in this house, as the result will prove.'

'The word was inadvertently chosen, but I meant no offence,' said Mrs. Hamblin. 'Pray tell me what was the result.'

'Eleanor refused him--refused him, my dear friend!' said Mrs. Chadwick, who was easily mollified. 'When I came home yesterday afternoon I found her in tears. She told me what had happened, and hoped she would never again be exposed to such an ordeal.'

'What a very primitive person!' said Mrs. Hamblin, with icy composure. 'Did Miss Irvine state the nature of her objection to the proposition she had received?'

'She said, generally, that she liked Mr. Pratt, had always found him gentlemanly, kind, and pleasant; but that she had not, nor ever could have, any idea of marrying him. I was at first so completely overwhelmed that I could not give the matter proper thought,' said Mrs. Chadwick; 'but since writing to you I have come to the conclusion that Eleanor is acting under advice in what she did.'

'And who do you suspect is her adviser?' asked Mrs. Hamblin.

'A person whose name I have forbidden to be mentioned in this house,' replied Mrs. Chadwick, 'but with whom Eleanor was very intimate in her early youth--I mean Lady Forestfield.'

'Does Miss Irvine keep up her acquaintance with Lady Forestfield?' asked Mrs. Hamblin innocently.

'Not a personal acquaintance,' said Mrs. Chadwick severely. 'I have forbidden that long ago; but I believe they correspond, and, so far as I can gather, Lady Forestfield has actually induced Eleanor to send Mr. Pratt to call upon her.'

'What!' cried Mrs. Hamblin, surprised out of her composure; 'Mr. Pratt has called upon Lady Forestfield?'

'Exactly; and has had a long conversation with her.'

'Conversation, too! Of what nature, in Heaven's name?'

'Of a very private and confidential nature;' said Mrs. Chadwick. 'If Lady Forestfield had expressly wanted to thwart my plans, she could not have laboured more earnestly than she seems to have done. It appears that she took her own life as the text of the sermon which she preached to Mr. Pratt, talking to him all sorts of things about the misery of marriage without love, and the difference between imaginary and real love, and a great deal more in the same style.'

'And what did Mr. Pratt say to this?' asked Mrs. Hamblin. 'He is scarcely, I should have thought, the style of man on whom such an argument would have had much effect.'

'On the contrary, he seems to have been very much impressed by it,' said Mrs. Chadwick. 'He agrees to all Lady Forestfield says, and there is quite a ridiculous friendship and confidence between the three.'

'A friendship and confidence between three people never lasts,' said Mrs. Hamblin; 'for one is always certain to be jealous of the other two. But I am much surprised at what you tell me; I confess I do not see the bond of union.'

'O, the bond of union with which they have entrapped that silly little man,' said Mrs. Chadwick, rather forgetting herself; 'is their common love of art, and their superiority over the people in society, who are supposed to be heartless and frivolous, and that sort of thing.'

'And the result of this delightful conference is, then, that Mr. Pratt has not merely been refused by Miss Irvine, but has been persuaded that she cannot love him with that pure and holy affection which is so desirable; but ought to be rather ashamed of his boldness in venturing to think of her, and quite proud of being permitted to remain her friend. Lady Forestfield's convincing powers are really very extraordinary.'

'O, I am quite disgusted with it all,' said Mrs. Chadwick; 'the time and trouble I have spent in endeavouring to secure a proper position for that girl no one can tell but myself; but I should not grudge them one atom if she had shown me the slightest gratitude.'

'The affection you have shown, and the skill you have brought to bear, have been equally ill rewarded,' said Mrs. Hamblin, who preserved her outward calmness of demeanour, although inwardly raging at Spiridion's defection.

'I am tired of it,' said Mrs. Chadwick, not perceiving the least sarcasm in her friend's tone; 'and the result is certainly enough to make me give up any farther attempt. Mr. Pratt was, as I have said before, exactly the man to suit Eleanor; but if she intends to do with others as she has done with him, and when she finds a man perfectly devoted to her she won't marry him, but will go in for making a tame cat of him, she deserves to lose any chance of settling herself.'

With all this, and very much more, Mrs. Chadwick went prosing on, Mrs. Hamblin from time to time throwing in an interjectional remark which incited her companion to continue, though it had no value or meaning in itself; for indeed her thoughts were very far away from the worthy woman, whose monotonous voice, like the dropping of water, kept ceaselessly falling on her ear. To her jealous mind the introduction of Lady Forestfield among the persons of the drama acted as a shock; for Mrs. Hamblin believed in neither virtue, nor repentance, nor honesty in friendship. Lady Forestfield had 'gone wrong' once, and there was every reason to suppose would do so again. What more likely than that she should adopt Spiridion Pratt as a lover? He was weak minded, as Mrs. Hamblin well knew, ridiculously romantic, could easily be persuaded into accepting the position of champion to beauty in distress, and would feel infinitely flattered at its being known that he had been selected by a woman of Lady Forestfield's rank to do battle for her with the world. However much she had endeavoured to persuade herself to the contrary, Mrs. Hamblin in her secret heart had never given up the intention of bringing Spiridion back to his allegiance to her, and she saw at once that any mésalliance such as that the possibility of which she was then contemplating would bring entire destruction upon her hopes. She could have looked on at his marriage with a quiet simple girl like Eleanor Irvine with comparative equanimity; men, as Mrs. Hamblin knew from experience, and more especially men of Spiridion Pratt's disposition, very soon tired of innocence, and it was probable, or at all events possible, that when the charm of domesticity began to wane she might without much trouble, had she been so disposed, have regained her old lover. And now all this has been knocked on the head. Spiridion had kept away from her, and so she had been left unacquainted with all that was going on. What she felt most acutely was that Spiridion had so completely ignored her. If she had had the least inkling of his intention to propose to Miss Irvine, even if, after he had proposed and had been rejected, he had come to her and taken her into his confidence, she could have prevented this horrible introduction to Lady Forestfield, and all that would probably ensue from it.

While, with rage and fury at her heart, Mrs. Hamblin was revolving these things in her mind, the servant announced Sir Nugent Uffington, and Mrs. Chadwick, stopping short in her dreary monologue, at once rose to the occasion. Here was an opportunity for her to show Mrs. Hamblin that she too had friends among the aristocracy.

'To say that I am delighted to see you, Sir Nugent, at this dull season of the year, is not to express half enough,' she chirped. 'I had an idea that you were still in Paris.'

'I only returned thence two days ago,' said Uffington, as soon as he could put in a word.

'I assure you I look upon your friendly haste to come and see us as most flattering,' said Mrs. Chadwick. 'You will excuse me telling you that you look remarkably well and seem in high spirits. Does not Sir Nugent seem in high spirits, Mrs. Hamblin?' she continued, appealing to her friend.

Mrs. Hamblin coincided, wondering all the while what had brought Sir Nugent there.

'I have cause to be in good spirits, for I am the bearer of very good news, which I particularly wish your sister to hear,' said Uffington, turning to Mrs. Chadwick.

'Her sister?' said Mrs. Hamblin to herself. 'Then his visit is sufficiently accounted for!'

'Eleanor is out, I believe,' said Mrs. Chadwick; 'I have not seen her for some little time. I will send to inquire if she is in her room,' she added, ringing the bell; 'but you must not delay your good news. I am sure both Mrs. Hamblin and myself are equally eager to hear it. Whom does it concern?'

At that moment the door opened and Eleanor entered the room. She was rather pale, but looked very pretty, and her face slightly flushed as she advanced to greet Uffington, which made Mrs. Hamblin tolerably certain that her suspicions were correct.

'I was just saying that I particularly wished you to be present at this moment, Miss Irvine,' said Uffington, 'for I have some good news which will especially interest you. It concerns Lady Forestfield.'

'Lady Forestfield!' cried all three ladies at once, but with different intonation; Eleanor eagerly, Mrs. Chadwick flatly, and Mrs. Hamblin savagely.

'I do not see that anything that has happened to Lady Forestfield could, or at all events ought to, have any interest for a respectable family like ours,' said Mrs. Chadwick, bridling up and casting a sidelong glance at her sister.

'Will you please tell us what it is, Sir Nugent?' said Eleanor, without heeding her. 'You say it is good news--and I know it must be, or you would not have been so anxious to bring it.'

'It is good news--the best that under the circumstances could be,' said Uffington. 'The fact is, that all farther proceedings in the Divorce Court are to be stopped, and Lady Forestfield returns at once to her husband's protection.'

'O, thank Heaven!' cried Eleanor, 'this is indeed good news;' and her joy was so great that she found it impossible to restrain her tears.

'Well, indeed,' said Mrs. Chadwick, veering round at once, as she saw the position vastly improved, 'I am really delighted to hear it. Poor dear Lady Forestfield! When one imagines all that she must have gone through, it is quite delightful to think that she will be restored to her place in society again. I wonder whose influence brought that about?'

Uffington was silent on this point. He knew by Eleanor's manner that she recognised his influence in the matter, and that was all he cared for.

'And so Lady Forestfield is to be received back by her husband,' said Mrs. Hamblin, with a cold smile, as she rose preparatory to taking her leave. 'What a very strange world we live in! I confess I cannot join my voice to your chorus of congratulations, for it appears to me that Lady Forestfield is no more respectable than she was before, and that Lord Forestfield has made himself contemptible.'

CHAPTER XVI

AT WOODBURN.

The happy change which had come over Lady Forestfield's life had its effect in restoring her bodily health and, to a certain degree, her mental quietude. When Uffington first told her that her husband had consented to her taking up her abode at Woodburn she had ventured upon some slight objection. The place, beautiful as it was, had not, in her most favourable recollection of it, been what, according to her present idea, a home should be. It had been filled with people whom she never cared to see again, and had been the scene of many escapades, in which Mrs. Ingram, Lady Northaw, and their friends had played the principal characters, and the very memory of which was now repulsive to May. She had never known the place more than as one where, though nominally the mistress, she had really left all the arrangements to the housekeeper, and contented herself with the leading part in the follies which were perpetrated. And then there was the recollection of the last time she had visited Woodburn; that fatal night when, after having been spurned by her husband, she had sunk senseless on the door-step, and had been carried away, how she knew not. It was impossible, she thought, that she could go there; but Uffington firmly, but with great delicacy, urged her to reconsider this determination, pointing out the necessity of her being in her husband's house, and promising her, not merely the utmost respect and the acknowledgment of her proper position from the servants, which was guaranteed by Lord Forestfield's own written order, but the certainty of a quiet unmolested life.

So Lady Forestfield came to Woodburn, and a very few days after her arrival acknowledged to herself the wisdom of Uffington's counsel. The fresh pure air brought back the roses to her cheeks; and in her daily wanderings in the park and through the surrounding woods she gradually acquired the calm happiness and peace of mind which nature can alone restore to a soul that has been bruised and buffeted in its conflict with the world. Hitherto, at least since the days of her childhood, May had had but little appreciation of the beauties of nature; the park had been merely so much land lying between the house and the village, and she had only visited the woods for the sake of having luncheon with a shooting-party. Now all their beauties were gradually revealed to her. She would sit for hours in an oriel window of a little room which she had taken for her own, and which overlooked the park, watching the sun doing battle with the heavy dun autumnal clouds, and the wide expanse of landscape kindling into light. She took delight even in gazing on the great bare fields whence the golden grain had been reaped and carried, and the long ranges of hops gathered by the busy pickers, their dark poles, piled together in fantastic shapes, alone remaining to remind one of their recent existence. She loved to ramble in the home wood, which on her first arrival had been a sombre mass of dark green, and which now stood out flecked here and there with tints of yellow, brown, and red. For all she met she had a kindly greeting and a pleasant word. The husbandman, tramping over the newly-turned fresh-smelling earth as his furrow made the never-varying pattern, and the toiling many-childrened women in the cottages, for the first time began to understand that the 'people in the 'All' could take any interest in their welfare. When the days were wet, too, May was never dull or depressed; for the library was filled with books, and literature, which in her childhood she had loved so much, but had so long left unheeded, now again became her constant solace; and in her walks and drives, in her studies and endeavours to help the poor of the estate, May had a ready and intelligent companion in Eleanor Irvine, who, at her urgent request, came to her almost as soon as she was settled at Woodburn, and had remained with her ever since.

How this happy change in her life had been brought about, how Lord Forestfield had been induced to forego the further proceedings against her, and to consent to her being reinstalled in her own proper position, she had never learned; but she knew generally that it was Uffington's work, and to him she was proportionately grateful. She had scarcely seen him since she had been at Woodburn, but had received several letters written in the common-sense friendly spirit which had characterised all his communications with her. She found herself wondering what had led him--whom all the world looked on as a heartless cynic--to feel such interest in her, and take the trouble which she knew he must have taken in order to compel her husband to give up his long-cherished scheme of revenge, and to restore her to that position from which he imagined he had completely ousted her.

'He cannot be as cynical as people say,' thought May. 'I remember having heard that he had some great trouble in his early life, and the effect of that has probably been to make him eschew society and the pleasures which society affects; and the people whom he has scorned have repaid him by branding him as a cynic. As to his real goodness of heart, however, there can be no doubt. It has been sufficiently proved by the generosity with which, at what trouble to himself I shall never know, he has advocated my cause. I wonder whether admiration of Eleanor has anything to do with it? It seems almost ungenerous in me to suspect such a thing for an instant; and yet there is no doubt that Eleanor is very good-looking, and that Sir Nugent has always shown the kindliest feeling towards her. It would be strange indeed if my misfortune should be the means of bringing together the two persons who have been kindest to me in my trouble.'

This idea presented itself pretty frequently to May's mind. Since she had been taken into Eleanor's confidence respecting her rejection of Spiridion Pratt, and by her counsel had enabled that romantic gentleman to bear his disappointment with greater fortitude than at one time he believed would have been possible, Lady Forestfield had given great consideration to Eleanor's future. The mere fact of having herself made an unhappy match did not make May think it necessary to indulge in invective against the matrimonial state, and she allowed to herself that Eleanor's gentle disposition, patient temper, and clear common sense eminently fitted her for a wife. She would have been completely thrown away upon Mr. Pratt, with whom she had not one single sentiment in common, and whom she had always regarded with a feeling of contempt softened by pity. The man whom Eleanor should marry, thought May, must be one whom she could look up to, and who would expect to find in his wife some more sterling qualities than the stock-in-trade of those which constitute a frivolous woman of the world.

Oddly enough the conversation between the two friends, which had ranged over most topics, had never touched upon this, until one day when, warmly wrapped up in furs--for the first breath of winter was in the air--they were driving in May's pony-phaeton in the park; and thus it came about.

'I have a letter from your sister this morning, Eleanor,' said Lady Forestfield, 'written in remarkably good spirits, and with many affectionate messages to you. She seems to have quite forgiven your bouleversement of her favourite plan for marrying you to Mr. Spiridion Pratt.'

'I knew that her anger on that account would not last very long,' said Eleanor. 'You don't know Fanny, dear May; but when you do you will find that she is the most extraordinary reflection of all that is passing around her. During the season she saw all her friends, and those whose example she thinks fit to copy, intent on matrimonial schemes; Fanny did not like to be out of the fashion, and fortunately there I was ready to her hand. The next thing was to look round for the other victim, and she speedily settled upon poor Mr. Pratt, who, I firmly believe, was never more astonished in his life than when it was first hinted to him that he was desperately in love with me. This attempt at match-making served to amuse Fanny during the season, and having talked of it so much, she had really begun herself to believe in its possibility, and was therefore vexed when she found I could not be so easily disposed of. But I knew her annoyance would soon be over, and therefore I am not surprised at what you tell me.'

'She seems to be a very forgiving person,' said May, with the least tone of malice in her voice. 'You remember my discovering the difficulties you had in coming to me in Podbury-street, when you told me her objections and the strict surveillance in which she kept you. Her sentiments as regards me must also have undergone a great change, for she not only writes in the most friendly manner, but says that she and Mr. Chadwick will be delighted to accept the invitation I sent them to come and spend a fortnight here.'

'Fanny is very human, dearest May,' said Eleanor, with a blush. 'I was perfectly certain that so soon as your time of trouble was over, and you were restored to your old position, she would be quite as much in your favour as she had been the reverse. And so she, is coming down to stay here. It was out of kindness for me that you asked her, I know.'

'Not entirely,' said May. 'I don't pretend to say that I thought you had been dull with me alone, for I know that is not the case, but still I thought that we had been travelling over each other's minds long enough, and that a little diversity would be agreeable. Besides, I very much wanted to see something of Mr. Chadwick. I have heard from more than one quarter of the kind way in which he was in the habit of speaking of me at the time when I wanted a friend, and I wished to thank him in person.'

'Don't do that, or you will offend him for ever,' said Eleanor. 'He is the kindest, best-hearted man in the world--a little rough, perhaps, but a thorough gentleman in every thought.'

'You have not yet learned the extent of my company,' said May, looking maliciously at her friend. 'I have a great idea that perhaps the fiasco which Mrs. Chadwick so deplored last season was caused by her own mismanagement; so that in order that she may have another chance of carrying out that project upon which her heart was at one time set, and that I may give her the benefit of my assistance, I have invited Mr. Pratt to stay down here at the same time--and, what is more, he is coming.'

'How can you be so ridiculous!' said Eleanor. 'You know you have done nothing of the kind!'

'Most certainly, and in all seriousness, I have, dear; not, of course, with any such idea as I have just suggested, but simply because he is a pleasant little man, whose admiration for you has now toned down into a sincere and genuine regard, and for whom I myself have a real liking. I wonder,' she said suddenly, after a pause--'I wonder whether Sir Nugent Uffington would care to come here for a few days?'

Eleanor looked quickly round at her, but seemed reassured by the calm, though earnest, expression on her friend's face.

'It is impossible to say,' she said; 'but I think he would like it very much. He seemed on the only occasion on which I saw them together to be impressed by Mr. Chadwick's honest common sense; and Fanny now thinks there is nobody like him.'

'That ought to be my opinion,' said May quietly; 'for though the subject has never been mentioned between us, I am certain that I owe all the good which has lately happened to me to Sir Nugent Uffington's interposition with my husband.'

'You think it?' said Eleanor.

'I am sure of it,' replied May; 'though how it was brought about I have not the least idea. Sir Nugent has a strangely determined manner with him, and when he first became interested about me he bade me not to cease hoping for better days. Even then, when everything was at its worst and blackest, I derived some kind of comfort from his words, and I feel now that I am indebted to him for what has been my restoration to life.'

Again Eleanor looked keenly at her friend, and was again satisfied at May's appearance.

'It is strange that a man like that,' said May, 'should never have married; so far as one can judge, he has all the qualifications for making a woman happy.'

'There is, is there not,' said Eleanor, 'some story about him, some romantic adventure of his youth, which soured his disposition and brought on him that cynicism which men are always talking of but which I in vain have tried to discover?'

'He is not, I imagine, so cynical or so hard as he was,' said May. 'Mr. Eardley, who came to see me once or twice, told me he had never seen a man so much changed, and wondered to what influence the alteration could be ascribed.'

'Probably to longer life and greater experience,' said Eleanor demurely.

'I doubt that very much,' said May, with a smile. 'In default of some more powerful motive, Sir Nugent's nature would remain stubborn to the last. However, probably longer life has something to do with the other part of the question which we were discussing. It may be that most girls would think him too old for a husband.'

'That would not be the verdict of any girl with a particle of common sense, I should think,' said Eleanor. 'I know comparatively very little of him, and yet even I have seen him at times when he has thrown off the air of reserve which he habitually wears, and been as young as anybody present.'

May marked the eager manner and quick tone in which these words were said, and at once drew her own conclusions.

'I think, then, I will ask Sir Nugent down,' she said; 'running the risk of his being bored by us all. If, as it seems, he has taken to Mr. Chadwick, he can at least always find with him a refuge from female society.'

Eleanor did not reply to this last sentence. Perhaps she had her own reasons for thinking, or at all events for hoping, that from certain female society Nugent Uffington would make no attempt to escape. From the time of that conversation Eleanor was brighter, and evidently happier than she had been during the whole of her stay at Woodburn.

She was pleased to think that Uffington was coming to Woodburn, that she would have constant opportunities of being with him, and of listening to his best thoughts and aspirations in that voice which she knew was softer and more musical in its tone when addressed to her than to any other person, even to May. Even to May? Yes, Eleanor was very much pleased that she had had that conversation, for it had set her mind completely at rest on a point which for some time had caused her much disquietude. There was no question about it now, she thought; she had looked into May's eyes, and read there what must be the truth. She could go on very quietly now, and that sinking of the heart which she felt occasionally when she used to see May Forestfield and Nugent Uffington much together would come no more.

Two days later Mr. and Mrs. Chadwick and Mr. Pratt, travelling together, arrived at Woodburn, and were all received with much cordiality by Lady Forestfield. Mrs. Chadwick professed herself delighted to see Eleanor again, and congratulated her upon the improvement in her looks. 'It is all the country air and your sweet society, dear Lady Forestfield,' she said. 'I am determined, come what may, that nothing shall keep me in town during the autumn months again; and if Mr. Chadwick is compelled to remain there to attend to his business, I shall not stay with him; so I give him fair notice.'

'Halloo, that will never do,' cried Mr. Chadwick. 'I don't mind your imitating the swells in most ways, Fanny, but that is one of their plans that I will never have followed. To have and to hold, sickness and health, richer and poorer, death do us part--that is what we settled, you know, in St. George's Church, and that is what I mean us both to stick to.'

'My dear James!' murmured Mrs. Chadwick.

'I can perfectly understand Mr. Chadwick's feelings,' said May, with a bright blush in her face, 'and I highly applaud his resolution. The less that husband and wife are parted the better, be sure, for their domestic happiness.'

'Well, at all events,' said Mr. Pratt, with more than usual tact, seeing the awkwardness of the situation, 'there is no reason why a bachelor need stay in town. I have done so this year of my own free will; and I must say that, all things considered, I have enjoyed myself very much.'

'Is that really so?' said Mrs. Chadwick, looking at him meaningly.

'Yes, indeed,' said Spiridion, meeting the glance with good-humoured firmness. 'I daresay that perhaps, physically, I might have been better if I had gone to Ems or Carlsbad; but, morally, I found the air of London this autumn quite bracing--very bracing, indeed.'

'You have got a fine place here, Lady Forestfield,' said Mr. Chadwick, who did not understand any of these side allusions, walking into a bow window, and looking round upon the prospect. 'This bears out what I have always said--the North is well enough for business, but give me the South for pleasure. Now in the North at this time of year, and at this time of day, you would have a great thick fog looming all over here, so that you could not see your hand before your face, and there would be a real taste of coal-dust in your mouth. What's here in front beautiful turf would be brown or black swampy stuff; and them woods beyond would have lost all their pretty leaves, and been nowt but a bundle of sticks.'

'I only hope you will be able to amuse yourself while you are here, Mr. Chadwick,' said May. 'The head keeper gives plenty of promise of sport, if you are fond of shooting.'

'Yes, my lady,' answered Mr. Chadwick, in his old-fashioned manner; 'I have been fond of shooting ever since I was a boy, and used to go out on Sunday mornings at Jarrow a-birding with an old horse-pistol. I have had some great times since then, battoos, as they call 'em, and wholesale slaughter of all kinds; but I doubt if I really enjoyed any of it so much as those Sunday mornings.'

'You will have a companion in your sport in a day or two,' said May; 'Sir Nugent Uffington has promised to come down on Thursday.'

'Sir Nugent coming?' cried Mrs. Chadwick. 'That is delightful news; he is a most charming man!'

'Yes, he is a good fellow,' said Mr. Chadwick. 'I took a liking to him the first time I saw him, because I thought he spoke up so well and pluckily about--'

And here the fact of its having been Lady Forestfield's case which Sir Nugent Uffington had so promptly and readily defended came in full force upon Mr. Chadwick, causing him to stop abruptly and to become purple in the face.

Fortunately Mr. Pratt was fully equal to the occasion. 'When you tell Mr. Chadwick that he will not have a companion for a day or two, Lady Forestfield,' he said, with a smile, 'I see you perfectly appreciate my performances in the field. To tell the truth, I never could see the pleasure of tramping about over stubble and furrow, tiring yourself to death, and rendering your shoulder painful for a week.'

'He is more delightful than ever,' whispered Mrs. Chadwick to her hostess. 'I was afraid that Eleanor's behaviour to him might have caused some coolness between us; but he seems to have quite got over what I cannot help even to you, her great friend, Lady Forestfield, calling her rather cruel treatment of him; and though I confess I was disappointed at the failure of a plan which I certainly could not have espoused if I had not thought it would have been for the good of all, I am delighted to say it has had one excellent result, which I may tell you in confidence.' Then, dropping her voice to a tragic whisper, she said: 'He has completely broken with that person.'

'Indeed!' said Lady Forestfield, who took not the least interest, and scarcely understood what was said; 'I am glad to hear it.'

'Completely broken with her,' said Mrs. Chadwick; 'and I am sure all who have any sense of decency and self-respect must be delighted to hear it.'

The next morning, as they were returning from an early drive round the park, Lady Forestfield saw a telegraph messenger entering the lodge gate, and beckoning him to her, received from him a message with which he was proceeding to the house. It was from Sir Nugent Uffington, and ran as follows:

'Most important. I am coming down by next train, and must see you, as I return to town to-night.'

May's heart sank within her with a sense of impending trouble as she read these words, and Eleanor, to whom she handed the message, turned pale as death.

CHAPTER XVII.

UFFINGTON'S ERRAND.

The message which the telegraph-boy brought to Woodburn had the effect of throwing a chill upon the spirits of the party, and caused more than ordinary consternation in the breasts of two of its members.

As soon as they reached the house Lady Forestfield retired to her room, not even asking Eleanor to bear her company, so deeply did she feel the necessity for silence and cogitation. Once there, she turned the key in the door to prevent any attempt at intrusion; for she knew Mrs. Chadwick to be one of those persons who are always most inclined to gossip at inconvenient seasons; and settling herself in her favourite chair in the oriel window, gave herself up to thinking of possibilities.

Taking the telegram from her pocket, she reperused it quietly. 'Most important,'--those were the first words. Sir Nugent Uffington, as she well knew, was anything but impulsive, and not in the least likely to use a term stronger than the occasion warranted; nor was it at all probable that, as he had arranged to visit Woodburn at the latter end of the week, and to spend some days there, he would come down, especially for a few hours, unless the business which brought him was of a pressing and particular nature. What could that business be? The first idea that occurred to Lady Forestfield's mind was that the influence, whatever it might have been, which had induced her husband to restore her to her former position, had waned; that the divorce action would be proceeded with, and she would again be driven forth an outcast on the world. The possibility, not the probability, of this being the explanation of the telegram was all that occurred to her; but she yet turned it over in her mind as though it were already an accomplished fact. It would be very terrible, she thought, to have again to face that wretched solitary life in the dull lodging, with all its sordid and mean surroundings; to have her miserable story again publicly commented on, and privately bandied from mouth to mouth, by those amongst whom her name was no more mentioned, and her very existence had long since been forgotten; it would be hard to give up that fresh love of life which, since her residence at Woodburn, had dawned upon her simultaneously with her appreciation of nature and the exquisite enjoyment of the country.

If this supposition were correct, she must have been at fault in the idea that the recent change in Lord Forestfield's conduct had been produced by Sir Nugent Uffington's agency, for she knew Uffington too well to suspect for a moment that anything which he had once taken in hand could be suffered to fail. What, then, could it be? For an instant a burning flush suffused May's neck as a thought, to which she had hitherto never dared to give attention, flashed across her mind. Could it be possible that this close and constant intimacy into which they had been thrown had led him to think of her with something warmer than those feelings of friendship which he had never indeed openly professed, but which by every action he had manifested towards her? She herself knew that for her own part--No, under other circumstances it might have been possible, but now it was hopeless; she had hitherto succeeded in prohibiting such a thought from entering her breast, and it should find a place there no more.

What could it be, then? Could it be the question of Eleanor's future that brought Sir Nugent thither in such haste? From the conversation which she had had with her friend, May was certain that Eleanor was deeply impressed with Uffington, and that though perhaps her rejection of Spiridion Pratt was not entirely influenced by that feeling, it was tolerably certain that, if Uffington had been the suitor, he would have received a very different reply. The spirit and eagerness with which Eleanor had combated the idea of his being too old to marry a young girl had given May a complete insight into her friend's feelings, and if Uffington's errand were to propose for Eleanor Irvine, its success was assured. May could not, however, think that this could be the case; Sir Nugent was to have come down in a few days, and would then have taken advantage of the opportunity to propose for the girl's hand if he had any such intention. It was entirely unlike him to make a special excursion for the purpose, which would necessarily lead to comment and question; moreover, it was to herself, Lady Forestfield, that the telegram was addressed, and the request that she should remain at home was made to her. May gave it up in despair; she was totally unable to divine the cause of Uffington's coming unless it related to private affairs of his own, and she could scarcely think that concerning them it could be necessary to consult her.

May was not the only one who was brooding over what the message might portend; Eleanor Irvine, so soon as she could rid herself of the fussy companionship of Mrs. Chadwick, devoted her energies to its solution. To her the fact that the writer attached importance to an interview with Lady Forestfield seemed of alarming significance. More than once during the last few months Eleanor's heart had been wrung with the idea that an attachment had innocently, and perhaps without their knowing it, sprung up between May Forestfield and Sir Nugent Uffington. It seemed to her impossible that two such persons could be thrown together without falling in love with each other, for May, in Eleanor's eyes, was the prettiest, the sweetest, the most lovable of women; while, as for Uffington, when her own heart told her that she loved him with all the admiration and affection of which her deep strong nature was capable, she, of course, thought that every other woman must be similarly fascinated. May had never given her the smallest hint to lead her to believe in the existence of such a state of things, and, indeed, during their last conversation when the merits of Uffington and the reasons for his having hitherto remained unmarried had been fully discussed, Eleanor had taken the opportunity of narrowly watching Lady Forestfield, and was at the time convinced that no feeling stronger than grateful friendship had dictated her panegyrics. Of Uffington, however, Eleanor had never been so sure. She had fancied once or twice that he seemed attached to herself, but in such matters had had little experience, and thought she might possibly have been deceived. It seemed almost absurd to think that a man of such taste and refinement could have been thrown so much as he had recently been into the society of a woman like May without bowing to the spell which her beauty and fascination never failed to exercise. And if such were the case, if Uffington's errand were to implore May to let the decree nisi be confirmed and to trust her future to him, Eleanor felt certain that May would not have the power to resist. What would then become of her?

Mrs. Chadwick, from the sanctity of the connubial bedchamber, screamed to Mr. Chadwick, who was washing his hands before luncheon in the adjacent dressing-room, that she thought both Lady Forestfield and Eleanor were 'behaving very oddly,' but she had little idea what was going on or what importance was attached both by her sister and her hostess to the message which had just arrived. Mr. Chadwick, who was always good-tempered, contented himself by remarking that apparently something was 'up,' but that it was 'none of their business;' and adroitly turned the subject by praising the beauty of the place and the friendly warmth of their reception by Lady Forestfield.

They were all seated at luncheon, when a fly from the station was seen coming up the avenue, and Lady Forestfield, asking her friends to excuse her, at once proceeded to her boudoir, to which room she directed her servants that Sir Nugent Uffington should be conducted. That sad sinking of the heart, that painful feeling of impending danger which she had before experienced, came upon her strongly as she heard Uffington's footstep on the stairs; and, as the door opened, she had to summon all her fortitude to avoid fainting.

Uffington was perhaps a thought paler than usual, and looked anxious and careworn. He advanced towards Lady Forestfield in his usual earnest manner, and taking her hand, and holding it for an instant in his grasp, he said: 'You received the telegram?'

'Certainly,' said May, 'and I was fully expecting you. You said that your business was important--I fear also that your errand is a melancholy one.'

'What makes you think that?' said Uffington, evading her gaze.

'I do not know--I cannot tell, save that I have a certain inward consciousness of coming misery. I have been so happy for the last few weeks that, perhaps, I am more acutely sensitive of even the shadow of sorrow. But you yourself, Sir Nugent, look tired and worn--will you not have some luncheon?'

'Not until I have explained my errand, which, as you have correctly judged, is a melancholy one. You must hear with courage all I have to say, and then quietly and deliberately make up your mind as to what is the best course for you to pursue, for by what you do to-day the whole tenor of your future life will be influenced.'

The burning flush which had suffused May's features during her self-examination that morning crept over them again, caused by the same thought; but as quickly as before she east it forth, and said: 'What have you to tell me?'

'I am here to speak to you of your husband; he is very ill.'

'Richard very ill!' cried May. 'Where is he? what is the matter with him?'

'He is at the house in Seamore-place,' said Uffington. 'He was in an unsettled, unhealthy state when he arrived there a few days ago from Paris, where, for the last few weeks, he had been leading a hard life and drinking to excess. Yesterday I chanced to call upon some business, and found that during the night he had been attacked with typhus fever. His recent career has been anything but favourable to him under the circumstances, and the truth is that he is lying in a very dangerous state.'

'Good Heavens, how dreadful' said May. 'Is he properly cared for?'

'Yes,' said Uffington. 'I inquired into that. His servant Stephens, who remained with him in all his various fortunes, sent off at once for Dr. Whitaker, who, as you know, had attended Forestfield once or twice before. Whitaker fortunately was in town, and came at once. Stephens told me that he shook his head when he saw the patient, and, knowing the confidential position which Stephens occupied, told him that he thought very badly of the case. And now, dear Lady Forestfield, I am coming to what more immediately concerns you. From something Stephens told me, I sent up for the nurse in attendance, and had a little conversation with her. Afterwards I made a point of seeing Dr. Whitaker, and from each of them I learned that both during the time of delirium and in his saner moments Forestfield has made frequent reference to you.'

'To me?' cried May, trembling from head to foot; 'to me?'

'To you,' said Uffington; 'speaking of you as his wife, calling on you by your Christian name, and declaring that you are "his after all."

'O, thank God! thank God!' cried May, burying her face in her hands and bursting into tears. 'I knew the time would come when he would say that of me.'

'Do not excite yourself, for you will have need of your strength,' said Uffington. 'The question is now, what do you think it right to do?'

'What do I think it right to do?' repeated May, raising her head. 'Can there be any question about it? Before you told me that he had mentioned my name and spoken of me in that manner, I hesitated, simply because I was afraid that my presence might irritate him and make him worse; but now that I have heard what you said, I have no longer any reason for indecision. Will you take me to Seamore-place at once?'

'I imagined that your good heart would prompt that determination,' said Uffington; 'but, dear Lady Forestfield, it is my duty to lay the case before you in all its bareness, and you must remember that if you go to Seamore-place, and install yourself as Forestfield's nurse, as is no doubt your intention, you run the greatest risk of catching the fever.'

'I should be but little worth if I allowed such a consideration to weigh with me for an instant,' said May, with a sad smile. 'My life has not been so full of happiness that I need be particularly careful of it, and there can be no doubt that my place at such a time is by my husband's side. Will you take me with you back to town?'

'Certainly,' said Uffington. 'The express passes at five, and we will go by that.'

'By that time I will have everything ready,' said Lady Forestfield, 'and in the mean while I will see Eleanor, tell her what has occurred, and ask her to make my excuses to her sister, who has unfortunately just arrived on a visit. And now for yourself, Sir Nugent. I am sure you are sinking from hunger and fatigue, and I will order some fresh luncheon for you at once.'

Mr. Chadwick, who seldom allowed anything to put him out, had ensconced himself in a corner of the library, and deep in a volume of the Life of Joseph Locke, was thoroughly enjoying the early struggles of that celebrated engineer, whose career greatly resembled his own, when he was startled by the loud tones of his wife's voice, and looking up, saw that lady in a state of great agitation by his side.

'O, here you are at last, James,' she said. 'I have been looking for you all over the house, and never thought you would have hidden yourself away among these dull, musty, old books. I wonder people of position do not attend more to their libraries. Now on our shelves there is not one single volume that is not handsomely bound.'

'Still, I would not mind swopping my book collection for this,' said the boiler-maker, looking round him with pleased eyes--'there are some rare works here, my Fan. However, I suppose it was not to talk about books that you have been "hunting" me, as you say?'

'No, indeed,' said Mrs. Chadwick; 'I have got the most extraordinary news for you. O, what do you think was the business that brought Sir Nugent Uffington here today?'

'Well, indeed, I cannot say,' said Mr. Chadwick reflectively, unless it were to propose for our pretty Eleanor. 'I have fancied ever since I first saw them together that Sir Nugent had a sneaking kindness for that girl.'

'Propose for Eleanor, indeed!' cried Mrs. Chadwick; 'nothing of the sort. No such idea ever entered Sir Nugent Uffington's head. He has fixed his fancy on some one else; and he is very likely to have his way.'

'Indeed!' said Mr. Chadwick, who, when the question of Eleanor was thus disposed of, had no farther interest in Sir Nugent Uffington's matrimonial project; 'indeed!'

'Yes,' said Mrs. Chadwick; 'and the chance has come about in this way. Sir Nugent has come down to say that Lord Forestfield is very ill indeed--almost dying, I believe--and that he wishes to be reconciled to his wife before his death.

'That's good,' said honest Mr. Chadwick, slapping his great band on the book to emphasise his declaration; 'that is the best thing I have ever heard of that chap. And the poor lady, she is going, of course?'

'Of course?' repeated Mrs. Chadwick. 'I really do not see any "of course" in the matter; considering the manner in which he has treated her, and the horrible life which, according to Charley Qrmerod's account, Lord Forestfield has been living for the last few months. However, she is going, says that nothing in the world will keep her away from him, and all that sort of thing, and has sent Eleanor to beg us to accept her excuses for having to leave so hurriedly. Lady Forestfield said, too, that if we thought the change was doing us good, she would only be too delighted for us to remain, and Eleanor would make an excellent hostess; but of course, that is out of the question. What I am looking at is, what is to be the result of all this?'

'The result of our not remaining?' asked Mr. Chadwick. 'I don't see that that requires much foresight. Of course I shall go and take a house at Brighton, and you will be very happy there till Christmas, when we will return home.'

'You silly James, I did not mean that at all; I meant the result of this illness and reconciliation and that--and I see it all. I have a kind of inward conviction that Lord Forestfield will die, and then the way will be clear for the others.'

'What others?' asked Mr. Chadwick, who did not follow the thread of his wife's discourse, and was longing to get back to his Life of Locke.

'Why, Sir Nugent Uffington and Lady Forestfield, of course,' said Mrs. Chadwick. 'You must have seen--but I declare you have no eyes. It has been perfectly plain to me for months past that he has been deeply smitten with her, else why should he have taken all this trouble of getting her back into her former position, arranging her affairs, and all that; besides, I have seen them together, and I am a pretty good judge of such matters. Now, when she is once a widow there will be no bar to their union, and you may depend upon it that that will be a match within a very few months.'

'It would seem to me to be a sensible proceeding,' said Mr. Chadwick; 'they are both well suited to each other, and if he is as devoted as you say, he might make up to her for the hard lines which she has suffered with her first husband, poor creature.'

'I wonder,' said Mrs. Chadwick, speaking to herself rather than to her companion--'I wonder what she will be called: whether she will continue Lady Forestfield, or become Lady Uffington. They are both "Ladies," of course; but I don't think if I had been a viscountess I should like descending to be a mere baronet's wife. I don't know how that is, and I shall have to wait till we get to town before I can learn, for there is no one here to tell me. I could not ask Lady Forestfield under the circumstances, and Eleanor is dreadfully ignorant on such subjects. By the way, I wonder where Eleanor is?'

It was lucky that Mrs. Chadwick did not know; for certainly Eleanor had no desire to be interrupted by her sister at that moment. After she had received the news from Lady Forestfield, and broken it to Mrs. Chadwick, Eleanor, on May's assurance that she could render her no assistance, had returned to the boudoir, and was standing in a pensive attitude at the oriel window, musing over what had occurred, when Uffington, who had finished his luncheon, entered the room. He stole quietly up behind her and called her by her name.

Eleanor started. 'I had no notion you were here, Sir Nugent,' she said with a blush.

'Fortune has so far favoured me as to find you alone, Miss Irvine,' said Uffington, 'for I have something very special to say to you; and under the present aspect of affairs it seems doubtful whether I may have another chance. I am a man of few words, but little speech is necessary to declare my intentions, and I am willing to accept your decision in a single syllable. Since I first saw you I have been irresistibly attracted towards you, and have remarked in you qualities such as I have never noticed in another woman. In short, I have learned to love you very dearly, and though my life has been neither an uneventful nor an unclouded one, I think I may say there has been nothing in it which should prevent me from placing the rest of it at your disposal if you will honour me by becoming my wife.'

Why stop to record the trembling words of happiness in which Eleanor accepted this proposal, so oddly and so bluntly made? Nugent Uffington had been the ideal man of her life, and she now saw him at her feet, conscious too that love such as his was not transient, but of that enduring quality which lasts for life.

CHAPTER XVIII

HUSBAND AND WIFE.

Sir Nugent Uffington found his brougham waiting at the Victoria Station, and as he handed Lady Forestfield into it he gave her a few words of parting counsel. She was to expect a great physical change in her husband's condition, he told her, and was not to be frightened; she was to be prepared to hear many things during the sick man's ravings which would necessarily pain her, but she must listen to them with patience; unasked she had declared her intention of doing her duty, and that must be her consolation. Then, promising to see her the next day, he took his leave, and the carriage containing her rolled away.

It was a dismal autumnal night, and the long lines of lamps reflected in the wet pavement struck May, staring out of the carriage window, with strange familiarity. It was months now since she had seen London lighted up by night, for the time of her residence in Podbury-street had been during the long days and evenings of the summer; and now her thoughts insensibly reverted to the time when night after night, with unvarying regularity, she was whirled away to some gay scene of triumph, where her presence was anxiously expected, and where her command was law. That was all over now she knew, and save for the time wasted and the precious opportunities missed, she could think of it all without regret; in her quiet solitude at Woodburn she had learned the great secret of happiness, in endeavouring to do her duty, and she looked back upon her early days of feverish excitement with feelings of sorrow and disgust. What was before her now she knew not, but in breaking away from the calm life, and in trying to alleviate the sufferings of him who, whatever had happened, was her husband 'after all,' she had obeyed the dictates of her conscience, and knew she had acted rightly.

But notwithstanding this sense of rectitude, May felt her heart sink within her as the carriage drew near to Seamore-place, and it needed all her fortitude to prevent her bursting into tears. Painfully and vividly rose before her the scene which had occurred when she quitted the place which had been her home, never, as she thought, to return again. The agony of shame which she had felt as she passed the servants, all of whom she could not but know were acquainted with the cause of her degradation; the terrible heart-sickness which beset her as she crossed the threshold an outcast and a wanderer--what humiliation must she go through in meeting these people again! It would have been almost better, she thought, to have remained in her solitude, unheard of and uncared for; but she had accepted the issue and must abide by it.

As the carriage drove up to the well-remembered house, the street-door opened quietly, and Stephens, Lord Forestfield's valet, assisted his mistress to alight, a telegram from Sir Nugent Uffington having apprised him of Lady Forestfield's arrival. May was thankful to learn that the establishment at Seamore-place had long since been broken up, and that with the exception of a couple of women servants and the nurse there was no one there but Stephens, whose manner to her was, as it always had been, thoroughly respectful.

'His lordship is very bad, my lady,' he said in reply to May's hurried inquiry; 'I am afraid about as bad as he can be to be alive. He takes nothing to eat, has a terrible thirst upon him, always crying out for something to drink; he is as weak as a baby, and quite out of his mind, not knowing me nor any of us when we come near him. Dr. Whitaker is in the house, my lady,' he added. 'When he called this afternoon, I told him I had heard from Sir Nugent Uffington that your ladyship was expected; and he said he would look in again about this time. Shall I tell him your ladyship is here?'

'Yes,' said May, after an instant's hesitation; 'I should certainly like to speak to Dr. Whitaker before I go up-stairs.'

Her first trial was now at hand. In former days Dr. Whitaker would have been very little more to her than a higher kind of servant; for the insolent people among whom she had lived were in the habit of treating all those who were not of their own class, no matter how far superior to themselves in everything save the accident of birth, as persons who were necessary to their well-being, but who were in no wise to be encouraged by familiarity. Among the members of the medical profession, in which throughout the world are enrolled many of the kindest, the bravest, and most independent specimens of humanity, there are, of course, to be found some who, whatever their private opinion of such treatment as this may be, have not the courage to resent it. Dr. Whitaker was one of these; the great Pickwickian sentiment of shouting in accordance with the wishes of the largest number was carried out by him to its fullest extent, and his horror of peccant mortality, when it not merely did not interfere with, but absolutely helped, his professional practice, was formidable in its sternness. When the scandal about Lady Forestfield had first been made public, Dr. Whitaker had given many a patient ten minutes of grateful ease from pain by his admirably graphic account of the whole transaction, and had stamped himself for ever in their minds as a man of the finest feelings, by his indignant denunciation of the women who bring shame and sorrow into the homes of such men as 'my excellent friend and patient, Lord Forestfield.' Of course Dr. Whitaker's conduct in this matter had been reported to May--when does any one say anything derogatory of us that we do not immediately hear of it from some one else?--and she was consequently somewhat alarmed at the idea of their meeting. Her knowledge of the world was not sufficient to suggest to her that the doctor would probably also have heard of the condonation and quasi-reconciliation that had taken place, and that more especially as his noble friend and patient was in a dangerous condition, there could be now no harm, even to a man of his respectability, in holding out the olive-branch to May.

A short stout man Dr. Whitaker, with a bald head, a red face, and a small gray whisker; his manner was bustling and self-satisfied, he was always dressed in solemn black, and invariably wore creaking boots. Many years before, when, as a young man, he first set up for himself in practice, having emancipated himself from his father--a worthy man, who kept a chemist's shop, from which he would not retire, and of whom in consequence his son was horribly ashamed--Dr. Whitaker's manner had been very different. He had crept in and out of the smallest and most modest houses, taking care to make no noise and to give no offence; he had listened for hours to the monotonous complaints of old women in little lodgings for the sake of the five shillings a visit which he was enabled to charge them, and he had been humble, deferential, and presumably grateful to many upon whom he had long since ceased to look with anything like a sign of recognition. A man of the world Dr. Whitaker, whose success in life was assured.

With persons of rank, indeed, his manner remained very much the same as it had been in bygone days to persons in lodgings, and he accordingly entered the room as softly as the creaking boots would permit him, and marched straight up to Lady Forestfield with extended hand and grave bow.

'Even under these sad circumstances,' he said, 'I cannot omit the expression of my great pleasure at seeing you once more, Lady Forestfield, under this roof; which I venture to think, had you been well advised, you would never have quitted--'

'Pray give me news of Lord Forestfield,' said May, hurriedly interrupting him; 'you have seen him just now--is there any change in his condition?'

'No change whatever,' said Dr. Whitaker. 'His lordship is certainly not better, and I do not think he is worse; but there can be no denying that he is in a very critical state, as I ventured to inform your ladyship through the medium of Sir Nugent Uffington.'

'Do you think then, Dr. Whitaker,' said May in low earnest voice, 'that there is hope of his recovery?'

'I do not say that,' replied the doctor; 'your ladyship is aware of the old proverb which says that there must be hope while there is life; and though Lord Forestfield is in extreme danger, with human skill and attention, under Divine Providence' (Whitaker always spoke of this last as a kind of copartnership) 'we may pull him through. Your ladyship, I understand, intends to remain in the house, and in case there should be any sudden change I will give orders to the nurse, that you are warned in time.'

'I do not understand you,' said May. 'If there were any sudden change I should see it, I imagine, as soon as the nurse, whose watch I intend to share.'

'What!' cried Dr. Whitaker, in high key, for he was startled out of his composure and professional manner; 'you don't mean to tell me that you are actually thinking of nursing his lordship?'

'With what other object do you think I am here?' asked May simply.

'But do you know that this fever is what vulgar people call "catching," and that exposing yourself in this way you run the greatest risk of being attacked by it?'

'I am willing to take my chance,' said May, 'and am prepared to run all risks.'

'Admirable self-sacrifice,' murmured Dr. Whitaker, in a kind of stage-aside, which he had found very effective with many people. 'I am not sure, however,' he added aloud, 'whether I ought not to put my veto upon this plan.'

'It would be useless, doctor; for my determination is fixed. And now I will wish you good-night, as I am anxious to get to my work at once.'

Dr. Whitaker bowed over the hand which May extended to him, and stepped into his brougham in a state of the greatest astonishment. He had several special 'last visits' to pay that night, and to such of his patients as were at all in a state to hear it he told the wonderful story of Lady Forestfield's return to her home, 'where she is actually engaged, my dear sir, in nursing her husband in fever, which she is very likely to take herself.'

Meanwhile, May had sought the bedchamber, and had been received by the nurse, whom Dr. Whitaker had apprised of her coming.

'My lord's asleep now, my lady,' the woman said, pointing to the bed, 'but terribly restless and uneasy; the sleep that he gets does not do him any real good, for he tosses and tumbles from side to side, and is scarcely ever done talking. Dr. Whitaker said that you wished to sit up with my lord, my lady; but I should advise you to think twice about it, for letting alone your not looking strong yourself, and running the risk of catching the fever, his lordship from time to time screams out and raves about all sorts of things, and that it would most likely frighten you to hear. I would advise your ladyship to think twice about it--I would indeed.'

May, however, was not to be shaken in her determination.

'I am quite strong,' she said, 'much stronger than you suppose; and though I have never seen any one in fever, I am not unaccustomed to nursing, as I watched by the bedside of my father during his last illness. At all events, I will see how I succeed. There is no medicine, you say, to be given for the next two hours. Leave me, please, until then. I shall be better able to know what I have undertaken by that time.'

As soon as the woman had left the room, May took the candle, and shading it with her hand, approached the bed. Her husband lay there, sleeping heavily. May thought him much changed; his cheeks were hollow and sunken, thus giving greater prominence to the hard cynical expression which had always detracted from his good looks. His lips were shut, his brow was contracted, and from time to time he uttered sounds more like the ebullitions of wrath than the wailings of despair. As she stood by the bedside gazing at him, he turned round, and soon afterwards opened his eyes. As soon as she perceived this, May shrank behind the curtain, but it was too late; Lord Forestfield had seen her, or, rather, had noticed the fluttering of her robe without recognising its wearer, and, after one or two inarticulate efforts, he said, in a low and feeble voice:

'Are you there again, Mélanie? For how many nights now have I seen you standing there, glaring at me with those bright black eyes, but never saying a word? What makes me so weak, I wonder? I seem to be tied to this bed without a possibility of moving from it. Mélanie darling, have some pity on me Why are you always so cruel now? You were not so once; recollect the happy days we have passed together. Sing to me, Mélanie, my loved one; sing what you first sang to me that day at the Gorge de Franchard--"Pour que je t'aime, ô mon poëte!" Ah, I have forgotten it like everything else; my memory is all gone now. No, stay; sing me this verse:

          "L'oiseau qui marche dans l'allée
                     S'effraye et part au moindre bruit;
                Ma passion est chose ailée
                     Et s'envole quand on la suit."'

As he ceased murmuring these words he made an attempt to touch her hand, but May hastily drew back.

'This is too much,' she said, as she sank into a chair; 'I had not looked for anything like this;' and she burst into tears.

CHAPTER XIX.

RELEASED.

Some ten days after May's arrival in Seamore-place, owing principally to her constant care and watchfulness, and the unremitting attention with which she devoted herself to him, Lord Forestfield was pronounced not merely to be out of danger, but well on his way to convalescence. It had been a desperate trial for May, not only as regards her bodily strength, which during her long vigils was taxed beyond its powers of endurance, but to her mind, which, so long at least as her husband's delirium continued, was kept ever on the rack. When, with his returning senses, Lord Forestfield recognised his wife, and realised all that she had done for him during his illness, he seemed, for the first time in his life, to be profoundly touched, and indeed became so excited as to give ground for fearing that, in his then weak and almost prostrate condition, he would suffer a relapse. As his strength gradually returned to him, he grew more anxious that May should be constantly in his sight, more exacting in his demands on her time and attention; and this, not in the usual querulous and complaining tone of an invalid, which he adopted towards all others, but with that yearning tenderness of which he had never previously manifested any sign.

One day, as he was sitting propped up with pillows in an easy-chair, and she, at his request, was reading to him from the newspaper, he took her hand between his, still thin and gaunt, but freed now from the burning fever, and spoke to her as he had never spoken for years, as he had probably never spoken at all before. In his weak-voice there was something of the earnest fervour which took her back to the time of their first acquaintance--all his words then were tinged with the roseate hue of youth and love--what he said now was spoken falteringly, and seemed at least to bear the impress of truth. He told her that he had done her grievous wrong, and that whatever faults she might have committed he was, in the first instance, to blame for the manner in which he had neglected her and left her at the mercy of others. He acknowledged that he had been cruel, harsh, and unsympathetic, blaming his bringing-up, by which he had never been taught to bridle his passions or to look for the possibility of the non-fulfilment of any of his wishes, and he promised her that if, when his strength was fully recovered, she would remain with him, as forgiving and as loyal as she had been during his illness, he would prove to her the alteration that time and trouble had worked in him, and devote himself for the remainder of his life to secure her happiness.

Was May to believe in so radical a reformation thus easily worked? The experience of her past life convinced her to the contrary; and yet the attempt must be made. She would shut out all those recollections of insult suffered and misery undergone, which came thronging upon her at the mere idea of renewing her life with her husband; she would forget the more recent horror with which the revelations in his ravings had inspired her; it was her duty to accept his proposition, and she would do it. Lord Forestfield was exhausted by the fatigue which he had undergone in speaking to her at such length, and May, telling him that she had been warned against allowing him to excite himself, promised to talk to him on the subject to-morrow.

The next morning at an early hour, while Dr. Whitaker was sleeping the sleep of the just, his bell was rung furiously by a messenger from Seamore-place, who brought a request from the nurse that the doctor would come there at once, as Lady Forestfield was very ill. Dr. Whitaker shook his head when he received this message, and told his wife he had been all along afraid that her ladyship might contract typhus from her husband, and that, as in nursing and attendance she had exhausted the stock of health which she had brought with her from the country, it was not improbable that it might go hard with her.

After Dr. Whitaker had visited May he shook his head more dolefully still; and the nurse, who had been relieved of her attendance on Lord Forestfield owing to his convalescence, and had transferred her care to the new patient, was observed, after a hurried and whispered talk with the physician, to have tears in her eyes. That night it became known throughout the household that her ladyship was in a very bad way. The attack was a desperate and a malignant one, and, as Dr. Whitaker had said, such health and strength as she had acquired during her sojourn at Woodburn were already exhausted by her close confinement to the sick-room, and she could not make headway against it.

She had but little delirium, and even when the fever was at its worst her head was tolerably clear; so that, as she lay during the long day, and still longer night, she would muse over all that had been, over what was so shortly to be. For May felt that she was dying; she had an intuitive perception that for her all was nearly over; that she should never rise from that couch, to take even so small a part in the world's affairs as she had hitherto played, again. That thought brought no sadness with it. There was a time, only a few weeks since, when in the first flush of her enjoyment of the beauties of nature, of the freedom from care and calmness of spirits which came upon her after her arrival at Woodburn, she felt that life had yet a hitherto unknown charm in store for her; but since her return to Seamore-place that notion had been entirely put aside. She had remembered once more that she was Lord Forestfield's wife, and she had heard him express with his own lips his desire that they should pass the remainder of their lives together. That desire May had determined should be fulfilled. She had made up her mind to do her duty, and she would have done it at any cost; but there were passages in her husband's conduct during the earlier portions of their married life which she had found it impossible to forget, and the remembrance of which had been aroused by his ravings during his delirium. O, how much better 'dark death and dreamful ease' than a prolongation of the life of sin and shame, of constant fear of discovery, of frantic search after so-called pleasure, and sickening disgust so soon as the momentary recklessness was over! Better, far better, that her name, now almost forgotten, should never be heard of again, and that her husband--whose contrition for the part he had played towards her was, May could not help feeling, a spasmodic result of his recent illness, to be forgotten when his strength returned--should be freed from the incumbrance which her presence must necessarily be to him.

This view of Lord Forestfield's character was tolerably correct. So soon as he had 'turned the corner,' as he phrased it--so soon as he had recovered his appetite, and convalescence had once set in--his progress towards recovery was wonderfully rapid. Soon he began to take carriage airings; and as in passing through the streets he recognised his friends, and again looked upon the vast panorama of London life, from which he had been so long excluded, the good impulses which had recently sprung up within him died away, and the old desires were as rampant as ever. It was lucky, he thought, that in his weakness he had a sufficient excuse for going but seldom into his wife's sick-room. He would look in there in the morning when he first got up, and in the evening before he went to bed--for his health was not yet sufficiently reestablished to allow him to keep late hours, or in any way to play tricks with himself--and, if May were awake, he would say a few words to her; if her eyes were closed, as was generally the case, he would content himself with a nod to the nurse and disappear. On the sixth day of his wife's illness Lord Forestfield met Dr. Whitaker coming down the stairs with a very solemn face, and, taking him aside, asked him his impression of the result. There is probably no man without some spice of good in him; and with all his snobbishness and garrulity, Dr. Whitaker had a sincere affection, based partly on regard, partly on the advantageous use which he had been enabled to make of the three thousand pounds which she brought him as her marriage portion, for his own wife. He was greatly disgusted at what he rightly conceived to be Lord Forestfield's motive in making this inquiry, and referred his lordship to Divine Providence with much greater asperity than he was accustomed to use in dealing with persons of title.

One morning the nurse waited upon Lord Forestfield with a message from May to beg that Sir Nugent Uffington might be sent for to see her, as she had one or two important matters on which she wished to communicate with him. Forestfield made no immediate reply; and the woman, noticing his heavy frown and the angry flush which spread over his face, said: 'I don't think, if I was you, my lord, I would deny her anything, poor lamb. She has had a dreadful night--scarcely a minute's sleep from first to last--and there's no doubt she's sinking.'

'Do you think so, nurse?' asked Forestfield, with all the colour fading from his face. 'Do you think she is going from us?'

'If she continues losing strength as fast as she has done during the last twenty-four hours, she can't be alive to-morrow morning,' said the woman; 'and it would be a sad thought for you afterwards, my lord, to think you had acted in any way contrary to the poor dear.'

'Tell them to send a groom down to the Albany at once,' said Forestfield, 'to say to Sir Nugent Uffington, with my compliments, that Lady Forestfield is very ill, and would be glad to speak to him directly.' Then he shut himself up in his room and fell into a reverie. Hitherto he had only dimly contemplated the idea of losing his wife; now, if what the woman said was correct, her death must be a certainty. In the multitude of thoughts which came crowding upon his brain, regret for the loss of the woman whom he had sworn to love, and to whom he had quite recently renewed his vow, had no part. What struck him most forcibly, and remained by him longest, was the reflection that he would be free to do as he liked, and that she would be no longer a reproach to him. That thought was still in his mind, when the messenger returned to say that Sir Nugent Uffington was at Brighton, but that a telegram had been despatched to him.

Uffington arrived that afternoon. Lord Forestfield was out, the nurse said, but she had orders to show him at once into the sick-room. Her ladyship was very bad, the woman said, in answer to his eager inquiry, 'was sinking fast, and could not possibly last through the night, but was wonderfully calm and composed, and had all her senses about her.' Uffington set his teeth hard, and followed his guide with a noiseless footstep.

In the uncertain twilight he saw May lying on the bed, covered with a light cashmere shawl. She was dreadfully wan and emaciated; but she knew him as he approached, and welcomed him with something like one of her old smiles.

'I knew you would come,' she said in a very low voice; 'and I knew you would be shocked at the change in me, and at the thought that I was going to die. So I would not send for you--until--until the very last.'

'You should have let me know sooner of your illness,' said Uffington, with tears rolling down his cheeks. 'I was at Brighton when your message arrived.'

'Yes, I know,' said May. 'Mrs. Chadwick and Eleanor are there, are they not?'

'They are,' said Uffington. 'I came straight from their house.'

'Tell me,' said May, laying her thin burning hand on his. 'I always thought you liked Eleanor; was I right?'

'You were,' said Uffington. 'I have told her so, and she has agreed to marry me.'

'Ah, thank God for that!' said May reverently. 'Eleanor's happiness was all I was anxious for; for I loved her very dearly.'

'And she loves you better than any one on earth--better than she loves me, I fancy. She wanted me to bring her to you now.'

'No, no; that would never do--she must not run any risk. Besides,' added May, with a faint sweet smile, 'it is too late now. But I wanted to see you to say good-bye. I could not have died in peace without telling you how truly grateful I am to you for all that you did for me. No brother could have striven harder for his sister than you have done for me. And I was so happy at Woodburn, all brought about by you. I once thought I should have liked to remain there; but it is better as it is--much better as it is.'

She paused for a minute and her eyelids dropped. Then she raised them, looking up at him, and saying, in a still lower voice:

'You must go now, I think; I feel so strangely weary. Say good-bye to me, my kindest, my best friend.'

He bent down over her, and murmuring 'God bless you!' touched her uplifted forehead with his lips; then turned away with a convulsive sob, burying his face in his hands. When he looked round again the nurse was bending over the bed. Presently she turned round, nodded her head slowly, and with her finger pointed upward.

May Forestfield was dead.

CHAPTER XX.

COMING UP TO TIME.

Lord Forestfield had gone out, without seeing his wife, immediately after he had despatched the summons which brought Sir Nugent Uffington to her death-bed. He had, however, returned a few minutes before the close of the friend's interview and of May's life; and when Uffington, after a few words exchanged with the nurse, left the room where the woman to whom he had been so true a friend lay dead, happily beyond the need of all human friendship or reach of blame, he encountered her worthless husband in the hall. He had hoped to escape from the house unnoticed; but this hope was vain; and so proved his next idea, that he might hastily pass Forestfield with a word, and get away before he knew what had happened. He had not taken his own quivering lips and agitated look into account in this hope, and it vanished with Lord Forestfield's first glance at him.

'What--what's the matter? What has she said to you?' Lord Forestfield stammered, staring blankly at Uffington.

'She has said good-bye,' Uffington began; and then, touched by a momentary pity for the man who so little deserved it--though of the reaction in his feelings Uffington knew nothing--he took him by the arm, led him into the library, and told him the truth.

'Dead!' was all Lord Forestfield replied. 'Dead--so soon!'

'Ay, dead--and so soon. She had not much strength to spare, and she spent it in--saving your life.'

He went away without another word, and for a few seconds Lord Forestfield gazed vacantly at the door through which he had passed. A look of hatred then came into his evil face, still worn and rigid with the traces of wasting fever, and he muttered:

'D--n him! he's beaten at last, and I've got the Decree Absolute, after all!'

A minute later the nurse knocked at the library-door, having come to communicate the melancholy intelligence to his lordship, who received it with sullen propriety; and the dreary, dreadful bustle which precedes the awful stillness of a house wherein one lies dead, to last until the drearier and more dreadful bustle of the funeral, immediately commenced in that beautiful house in Seamore-place, where May's short life of joy, folly, guilt, repentance, and reparation had been lived.

When the night was some hours old, Sir Nugent Uffington, who had passed the interval in walking for miles straight ahead, he did not know where, returned to Seamore-place, and from the opposite side of the roadway looked up at the windows of the room where May Forestfield was lying. The house was invested with the conventional marks of mourning, and the useless tan was littered deep across the street. Lights were burning in the death-room, tall torches which threw their shadows on the blinds, and flickered in the air which passed in at that ominously open uppermost six inches of window-sash. Sir Nugent's imagination was busy with the scene which that room presented. He could see the sweet young face, set in its marble paleness, with the dark-veined eyelids, on which an expression of pain and weariness had sat for so long, sealed over the eyes which were never more to smile as they had smiled so rarely, or weep as they had wept so often, since he had seen them first, and, seeing them, been reminded of her mother's eyes, hidden in the dust. He could see the outline of the graceful wasted limbs, and the waxen hands laid upon the satin coverlet in the fulness of everlasting rest. It was well that she had died there, in her husband's house, with such protection as that formal circumstance might afford her name, that name which meant nothing now, save to the few who loved her, and would so soon be utterly forgotten by those who had been most eager to blacken it with scandal and cover it with reproach; but his heart was full of bitterness as he thought of why she had died. For that worse than worthless creature; for that sensual, cynical, selfish, brutal, dastardly fellow, whose sins against the marriage vow which she had broken had been countless and unblushing, as they were unrebuked and unpunished; who owed the life which had been a curse to her, to his wife's care, and who was set free by her death to carry out any scheme which might enter his base mind. Not yet could Uffington rejoice in her release; not yet could he realise the nothingness to her of what he could not but regard with bitterness and rage as Forestfield's triumph; and when he turned away at last from his contemplation of the silent house, and went home to write to Eleanor, it was with a heart full of hate towards Forestfield and De Tournefort, the two who had to answer for the fate just fulfilled within those walls.

Uffington's letter to Eleanor was hard work to write. The intelligence it had to convey must necessarily be a dreadful shock, as well as a profound grief, to the girl who had loved May so dearly, and who had so few besides to love. Eleanor was at Brighton with Mrs. Chadwick, and though she had been told of May's illness, she had not been told--because Uffington himself was ignorant of the truth--that a fatal termination was apprehended. The chill wintry morning had dawned before his task was completed; but as he wrote, in striving to console Eleanor consolation came to himself; in endeavouring to convince her that 'it was better so,' as May herself had said, he came to believe his own words, to realise that it was indeed well with May; that the life which she must have faced would have been too hard for her, and Death, which had taken her definitively out of the hands of man, was her best friend--a better friend than even he had been, or could be in the future; a closer friend, shielding her from scorn and unkindness, from vain regret and self-reproach from external temptation, and from herself. The memory of the woman whom Uffington had loved, and ruined, and recompensed for ruin in so far as a man can, was with him as he wrote to the pure and proud young girl whose love he had won, and won with a wondering secret exultation; a dead face looked up at him from beneath the waters of the Swiss lake, as he described that other dead face, with its fresh set seal of peace. During the hours of that night something passed into the soul of Nugent Uffington which was the soundest and safest of guarantees for Eleanor Irvine's happiness and security as his wife--a message of peace and self-knowledge sent to him from the dead.

* * * * * *

The heavy days went slowly by, and that on which the mortal remains of May Forestfield were to be laid in their last resting-place had come. Her death had been much talked of and the sentiments of 'society' on the subject were various. After the nine days' wonder of her restoration to her husband's house had died away, Lady Forestfield had been suffered to fall into general oblivion. That circumstance was, of course, much discussed, and many persons were of Mrs. Hamblin's way of thinking. Those persons were chiefly among the large numbers of the sinners who have not been found out. Sinners who have been found out are, as a rule, more charitable, and the divorcées who hover longingly on the confines of the world in which they once played a part, and who are perfectly cognisant of the peccadilloes of the women who, from their own vantage ground of deferred or escaped exposure, 'cut' them, while they eagerly devour every atom of gossip concerning the new 'milieu' in which their quondam but detected associates live, were unfeignedly glad of May Forestfield's 'luck.' They knew what detection and its penalties meant, and they would not wish any one such 'hard lines.' The undetected were scandalised. They even thought it very wrong that Lord Forestfield should have been permitted to sully his 'order' by such an act of misdirected clemency, and a lady who had been much and deservedly 'talked of' with poor May's husband was particularly denunciatory of the evil example and the dangerous precedent. She found consolation only in assuring herself and others that a restoration of that kind 'meant very little after all,' though of course Lady Forestfield would be 'kept out of mischief by being under her husband's roof;' she would be just as much 'out of society' as if she were not there. All this had concerned May not at all; indeed she hardly knew or even guessed how any one talked about her, and never turned her thoughts or her eyes back upon that 'world' which she had suspected to be a fool's paradise before she had forfeited it. Very much the same sort of comment was made upon her death; perhaps it was not in any instance so bitter as that which had attended her disgrace. Mrs. Hamblin regarded the event as a very good thing indeed for Lord Forestfield, quite a relief, and spoke of it in a tone which implied that she considered it the proper thing on the part of Providence to reward him for his unheard-of generosity by interposing to prevent his reaping its possibly unpleasant consequences. Mrs. Hamblin was also 'quite thankful' that the future Lady Uffington would not be exposed to the risks of association with 'such a person as Lady Forestfield,' and she added, while discussing the subject with a man newly lancé, who was en train to become the successor in her good graces of Spiridion Pratt--'resigned'--that of course those risks would have been doubled by the moral obtuseness of Sir Nugent Uffington, whose character everybody knew, and whose history had better not be inquired into. Poor Forestfield had behaved like an angel--angels are not expected to be worldly-wise--and it was the best possible thing for him. Mrs. Chadwick was genuinely sorry and pitiful; she loved life herself, she hated the mere idea of death, and kept it away from her by every means in her power. In health, wealth, strength, and the full enjoyment of life, she felt a sort of physical compassion for the young woman who had had to go down into the darkness and silence of the grave; and she had liked Lady Forestfield. But Mrs. Chadwick kept these sentiments to herself when she met Mrs. Hamblin, and her like; was ready to acknowledge that 'perhaps, after all, considering her hopeless loss of position,' &c.; and by the end of the week was impatient with Eleanor for her overwhelming grief; and inclined to resent its evidence in the girl's tears and seclusion as an injury to herself.

'What a singular fascination there is for some men in the mere fact of a woman having lost her character,' said Mrs. Hamblin to Frank Eardley one morning in the melancholy week. The two had met on the new pier at Brighton, and the gentleman had failed in an attempt to pass the lady without stopping to speak.

'I have just seen Mr. Pratt going into Mrs. Chadwick's house, and looking as melancholy as if he had lost his adoring and adored mamma, the "madre mia" of that charming sonnet you used to quiz so kindly. I suppose he's going to the Forestfield funeral.'

'He is, Mrs. Hamblin, and so am I. I must wish you good-morning.'

'You too. It will be quite a demonstration. What a lesson to nous autres! I Henceforth we shall know exactly what are those virtues which "smell sweet and blossom in the dust." Good-morning.'

Not in the gloomy mausoleum in the Highland country, where the noble remains of the Stortfords lie, encased in lead and oak, in velvet and gilding, did they lay May Forestfield; nor was her grave made with the men and women of her husband's race. On a bright calm day, when the wintry air was still, and the sky was high and blue, the little train of friends followed her coffin to Kensal Green. Lord Forestfield behaved with perfect propriety on the solemn occasion. His demeanour was as correct as his dress. When the temporary slab had been laid upon the grave, Sir Nugent Uffington placed a wreath of violets and a cross of white camellias upon the stone--they were Eleanor's tribute. Then he and Frank Eardley regained their carriage in silence, which was hardly broken until they reached town.

When Lord Forestfield returned to his house in Seamore-place, the dreary stillness which had brooded over it for a week had disappeared. Luggage, prepared for travelling, was in the hall, and a couple of servants in deep mourning were busy with straps, buckles, and rugs. He passed them quickly, and went into the library. Presently a close carriage with posters came to the door, and the men, directed by Stephens, put some of the luggage upon it. Lord Forestfield was going away--going in this unusual style, to avoid the inconvenience of railway travelling--on the very day of his wife's funeral. He could not stay in the house; nothing would have induced him to pass another night there; its profound solitude appalled him, and there was no one whom he could ask to break or share that solitude. Lord Forestfield's friends were not of the sort who are naturally turned to in trouble, whether it be formal or real. He had suffered tortures in that house while his wife lay dead in it, tortures which even Stephens had not guessed at, and which he had utterly failed to deaden with drink. And yet how hard he had tried! In defiance of every warning, of even the physical loathing with which it inspired him, of the inability to drink as he had been accustomed to do, which was a lingering result of the fever, he had swallowed large quantities of wine during the endless hours which he passed alone in that horrible room; hours when he could not make up his mind to go to bed, and could not sleep, and was ashamed to keep his servant with him; hours when the wine, which would formerly have turned him into a drunken madman, only made him more hideously conscious, more horribly wide awake. He was going away; he did not know whether he should ever come back. He might get over this feeling in time; it was not grief; he did not attempt to deceive himself about that. He did not know what it was--only his infernal nerves, no doubt; and if he did get over it, well and good; at present his keenest desire was to get away from that room, and never to see it again.

In an hour after Lord Forestfield had reentered his house, he left it again. As he was crossing the footway to his travelling-carriage, a man passed between it and him. A man with a pale face, with a wild look of disturbance in it, and an unsteady step. A man who might be rather mad, or rather drunk, but, being either, had not quite lost his self-control, and who knew Lord Forestfield. A man whom Lord Forestfield knew, for he stepped back, as if from a blow, and stammered out:

'De Tournefort! You!'

'Yes, it is I. Is this true? Speak, man! Is it true?'

'Is what true?'

'That she is dead?'

'Yes, it is true--she is dead, and buried to-day.'

Lord Forestfield stepped past the questioner, and got into the carriage; then he leaned forward, and hissed rather than spoke these words:

'She has escaped us both.'

The carriage drove off, and Gustave de Tournefort stood still outside the door of Lord Forestfield's house, like a man in a bad dream.

He had kept his word. He had fulfilled the pact which he had made with his own sense of honour. The interval had expired between the Decree Nisi and the Decree Absolute; and De Tournefort, who knew nothing of what had occurred during that interval, had returned to England, with the intention of again offering to May the reparation of marriage. He had sought her at Podbury-street, and there learned from Mrs. Wilson the fact, which that good woman had read, with sincere regret, in the newspapers. An irresistible impulse drove De Tournefort to look upon the house whence May had been expelled for him, to which she had so inexplicably returned. And so the two men who had been her ruin--which of the two was the more guilty in the matter, who shall dare to say?--came together, face to face, ere yet the sun had set upon her grave.

The marriage of Sir Nugent Uffington and Eleanor Irvine took the world somewhat by surprise, when it was solemnised in the early spring of the following year. Their engagement had been kept quiet, almost unsuspected by their few common acquaintance, and Mrs. Chadwick had not talked about it. She liked Sir Nugent very much, but she was just a little afraid of him; he puzzled her; as she expressed it, she 'could not make him out;' and she would have thought several times about disobliging him, and then have left it undone. So that when Sir Nugent explained to her that he and Eleanor disliked the éclat of announcements, and hoped she would indulge them by keeping their hopes and projects within the small family circle, she observed his wish; Eleanor's only might not have been so strictly respected. The events which had taken place since Sir Nugent Uffington's appearance on the rapidly expanding stage of Mrs. Chadwick's life had produced a good deal of effect on that lady; had forced her, to perceive that wealth and grandeur might possibly have their seamy side, and had restored her to those sentiments of content with which she had in the first instance accepted the rise in life effected by her marriage. For a while Fanny Chadwick had been in danger of 'spoiling;' she had been tempted to grumble at her husband's want of the superficial elegance on which she had learned to set undue value, to compare him, to his disadvantage, with the fops and fools whom she was proud of collecting in her rooms at Fairfax-gardens. But the experience of the past season did Mrs. Chadwick a world of good; she gathered good fruit out of that miserable business of the Forestfields, as the tragedy of May's life and death was called, while any one remembered either, and she stored it up. She was never really guilty of feeling ashamed of her husband again, and from any approach to such a sentiment she recoiled into being ashamed of herself. It was wonderful how much Mr. Chadwick's 'Fan' refined under the influence of this clearer vision and sounder judgment; how short a time elapsed before the people who talked their own slang, and strove for their own vapid and worthless objects, but strove for them inside, not outside, the indefinable but irresistible barrier of fashion, came to acknowledge, with some wonder, that Mrs. Chadwick was 'hardly vulgar at all.' She would not, as a matter of fact, have been flattered had she been aware of the concession; and yet she might well have been, considering the victory it endorsed, and the habitual insolence of the class who made it.

When the time appointed for the marriage drew near, and people began to know, about it, Mrs. Chadwick was surprised to find that Mrs. Hamblin, of all people in the world, looked on the arrangement with cold disapproval. That lady had been too wise to drop her surface-intimacy with Mrs. Chadwick when her purpose with regard to Spiridion Pratt was fulfilled. Its fulfilment had not been attended with any triumph or profit to herself; she was intensely conscious of her defeat, but she was all the more resolute to hide it. Even when the replacement of Spiridion was in process of accomplishment, she did not choose to lose sight of him, and she knew that, unless she continued to visit Mrs. Chadwick, she must do so; for the little man had established himself on the tame-cat footing at Fairfax-gardens, and was imperturbably impervious to remark or ridicule. Eleanor Irvine had refused to marry him, it was true, and it was even true also that he had, in a surprisingly short time, arrived at the conclusion that she had done wisely; but there was no earthly reason why Eleanor, who suited him, being nice to look at and pleasant to talk to, very agreeable and not oppressively clever--Spiridion hated very clever women--should not be the friend of his 'soul.' Eleanor had no objection, especially as this sentimental arrangement did not impose any severe demands upon her time and attention, and as it did prevent the pretty constant presence of Sir Nugent from being unduly remarked upon before the convenient season.

Spiridion had been admitted to the confidence of the affianced pair, and had experienced no difficulty worth speaking of in reconciling himself to the spectacle of his rival's happiness, though he wrote some sweetly pretty verses expressive of the torments of such a situation, which Mr. Shamus O'Voca set to music, and a Diva actually sang at some of the best concerts last season. The torments in question were, however, of the mildest, and, as a matter of fact, Spiridion Pratt enjoyed himself immensely under the novel conditions of his being. How much share in his peaceful serenity his enfranchisement from Mrs. Hamblin had, it would be ungenerous to inquire; and, indeed, it is not likely that Spiridion ever asked himself the question. She did, however, and she hated Eleanor as Spiridion's friend only a little less bitterly than she hated Spiridion himself. When the marriage of Miss Irvine with Sir Nugent Uffington was announced, only a few days before its occurrence, Mrs. Hamblin saw her way, having saved appearances, to backing out of a position which had served her purpose, and was fast becoming an intolerable bore.

She assumed a tone of high and cold morality. 'She ventured, in consideration of dear Mrs. Chadwick's comparative ignorance of the world--Mrs. Chadwick must bear in mind that the London world, in which she was even yet hardly lancée, had been Mrs. Hamblin's proper home and element since her early girlhood--to inquire whether she was altogether aware of the serious responsibility she was incurring by intrusting her sister's fortune, its happiness and its credit, to such a man as Sir Nugent Uffington? Did Mrs. Chadwick know the dreadfully disgraceful history of his past life? Was she aware that he had never shown the slightest deference to the opinion of society; that, in short, the--the affaire Mudge had lasted until the death of the creature? Mrs. Hamblin could hardly conceive the possibility of a lady like Mrs. Chadwick, whose former sphere must have accustomed her to much more serious views on questions of the kind than those prevalent in the wretched world of fashion, being satisfied to place a young girl's welfare in such hands. She felt sure that Mrs. Chadwick, and especially Mr. Chadwick--such a straightforward, honest, good sort of man as he was--could not be in full possession of the facts; and though she never offered advice, or interfered in other people's affairs, she really must depart from her rule in this case, as she felt a genuine interest in Mrs. Chadwick, and could not bear the idea that her inexperience of society was possibly being imposed upon.'

All this, delivered with a smooth and smiling countenance, and in mellifluous tones to whose covert impertinence it would be impossible to do justice, Mrs. Chadwick listened to, in a state of mind which she found it difficult to describe when she afterwards repeated it to her husband. She was astounded at the woman's insolence, and her irritation was sufficiently complete to enable her to comprehend very thoroughly its portée; but the extraordinary transformation in Mrs. Hamblin's own way of thinking and talking puzzled her profoundly.

'It is not as if she had any pretensions, you know,' said Mrs. Chadwick in an aggrieved voice. 'One could put up with it from women who go in thoroughly for that sort of thing, and won't have anything to do with anybody who has ever been compromised in any way; but Mrs. Hamblin!'

There was a good deal of untutored eloquence in the tone in which Mrs. Chadwick pronounced her quondam friend's name. She had never thrown so much expression into even her most successful song in the old days.

'Fan,' said Mr. Chadwick, with a funny twinkle in his eye and a funny roll in his voice, 'prepare yourself for a blow! Mrs. Hamblin means to weed her visiting-list, and "Chadwick, Mrs." will disappear from the C's. She's in the forties, or very near them, isn't she?'

'I don't know for certain; but Mr. Pratt says so.'

'And Mr. Pratt! Terribly trustworthy authority, he. She's going in for goody, my dear; that's it, rely upon it; and poor Eleanor will be her first "example," and Uffington the text of her first sermon. Of course you'll say nothing to them about her impertinence, and I shall be more nearly angry with you than I have ever been in my life if you waste a thought of your own upon it.'

Mrs. Chadwick could not dismiss the matter with all the celerity her husband prescribed; but she really did not mind it much. Her fashionable education had made good progress in the direction of callousness.

The wedding took place, and Sir Nugent and Lady Uffington went abroad. This was on Eleanor's account. Sir Nugent had seen all that Europe had to show, but Eleanor had never travelled beyond Paris; and the old familiar scenes acquired a fresh interest for him in the delight with which they inspired her. Eleanor was very happy; as happy as she had expected to be, which, though she was much more sensible than most girls of her age, and her early life had not been of a kind to nourish illusions, is saying a great deal. She had perhaps credited Sir Nugent with some qualities in which she found him wanting; but, on the other hand, she had prepared herself to discover and bear with faults which did not exhibit themselves. She had heard him described as a 'devil of a temper,' but he was not ill-tempered to her; on the contrary, he treated her always with gentleness and courtesy, and, without departing entirely from his characteristic undemonstrativeness, studied her wishes and her welfare with practical steadiness. When their marriage was several months old, Eleanor ventured to tell him that he had 'turned out better than she expected in point of amiability;' and he remarked simply,

'You see, Nell, I have always observed that good women get horribly snubbed and bullied, where they don't meet with even more active ill-treatment. There's a better chance for the bad ones, taking life in the lump, all round. And so I am determined to keep one good woman from being sorry that she has trusted herself to a man.'

Eleanor feels and expresses a happy security that she shall never be sorry for having placed such practical confidence in him. And, indeed, it looks as if her assurance were not unfounded.

They mean to 'settle' in London, but to live their own life there; not the life of the multitude. Eleanor's home Paradise is imaged upon a different plan from that of her sister and her sister's friends. It does not exclude sociability, but it does not include servility to 'Society;' and if she carries out her ideas, the Uffingtons' house will be a pleasant one at which to have the not-too-easily-to-be-obtained entrée.

People who have met them abroad report favourably of Sir Nugent and Lady Uffington. Frank Eardley is enthusiastic about Eleanor's looks, and her increased appreciation of art and china. He always thought her bright, you know, but, by Jove, Lady Uffington takes the shine out of Eleanor Irvine in a surprising way. Lydyeard, whose irascible temper is generally sent up to white heat by the 'infernal folly,' which is his mildest term for a friend's marriage, has not once been heard to growl, and has even deigned to ask when the Uffingtons are coming home? These small particulars, together with the general news, domestic and otherwise, in which she and her husband are supposed to be interested, are communicated to Eleanor by Mrs. Chadwick, who yields to no born fine lady in existence in fluency of epistolary composition, and in always having 'an immense number of letters to get through.' Mrs. Chadwick delights in letters, dearly loves to live in an avalanche of notes and messages, and never loses an opportunity of despatching telegrams. She has a notion that it is chic to be perpetually busy 'with people and things outside her home, and she has succeeded in accreting to herself a number of fussy little intimacies which don't really mean anything--which would smash and go to pieces under the weight of a real trial, a genuine difficulty, either on her own part or on that of the object of any one of them, but which she maintains with scrupulous care. One result of this is, that she really has a good chance of hearing a great deal about every thing that is 'going on' among a certain set, and within a certain limited sphere of human action and interests, which, however, is quite wide enough for the taste and the intelligence of Mrs. Chadwick and her friends. To be beforehand with the Morning Post is a triumph to her and her like; to be forestalled in its columns of exclusive intelligence concerning any member of the favoured classes, whose movements only are worth study, whose histories only are worth tracing from point to points is a defeat. In such triumphs and such defeats it had always been desperately difficult to interest Eleanor; and it was with something approaching to exultation that Mrs. Chadwick commenced one of the latest of her letters to her sister, previous to Eleanor's return, with the announcement that she had something to tell her which would arouse even her curiosity.

'There really is quite a sensation about it, my dear Eleanor,' wrote Mrs. Chadwick; 'for it appears the Duchess of Matlock used to have a very bad opinion of Lord Forestfield, and always said he drove our poor darling friend to all that happened by his brutal neglect. So that people do think it is a little inconsistent of her to let Lady Amabel marry him, especially as the Duchess is so very evangelical,--family prayers, tracts in the kitchen, and lots of 'Low' curates to luncheon; you know exactly the sort of thing. Mr. Pratt, who really is wonderfully faithful to you in a reflected kind of way--for he's constantly here--told me all about it on Sunday. And he says it's the coal-mine. I don't know whether I told you, by the bye, that coal has been found in a small place of Lord F.'s in the North, and he is going to be ever so rich. Of course I don't quite believe that--one can't, you know, believe a thing of that kind about the dear Duchess--but it is quite certain that Lord F. was never invited to Matlock Park until the rumour of the coal got about; and in three weeks Lady Amabel was engaged to him. The Duchess despises all these rumours; she says it is not coal, but conversion, and that she is thankful her dear Amabel has been chosen by Providence to confirm a repentant sinner in grace. I hope it will be all right; but I could not help thinking of poor Lady Forestfield in her beauty and youth, and regretting he had not repented in her time. Lady Amabel is hideous, I think, and they say she has a violent temper. I hope it is true. The Duchess went to Woodburn the other day, and had every trace of poor Lady F. removed; all her boudoir furniture and a number of pictures have been sold by auction, and that good little Mr. Pratt has bought a lot of both for Sir Nugent; and he declares the Duchess speaks of the poor thing as "that unhappy person whom, of course, we cannot name." Lady Amabel will take her name cheerfully enough, and her place too. James says, "What a blessing the poor thing left no children, to suffer for her misdeeds after her death at the hands of so eminent a Christian as Lady Amabel." I daresay she isn't so bad after all, but James cannot endure that kind of religion. The wedding is to come off in three weeks, at Matlock, and Mr. Pratt says they are already getting the Duke into training, in order that he may look sober, or a least not too drunk, on the occasion.'

THE END.

Woodfall & Kinder, Printers, 70 to 76, Long Acre, London, W.C.

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